The Squad Steps In It Again, Con't

Most of the time it's not fair to compare the members of The Squad, House Democrats on the far left, to the bombthrowers, insurrectionists. and terrorists on the GOP far right like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Bobert or Chip Roy. I say "most of the time" because House Democrat Rashida Tlaib absolutely crossed a big red line on Palestine and Israel and got deservedly rung up by her House colleagues.

The House passed a GOP-led resolution on Tuesday to censure Rep. Rashida Tlaib over comments critical of Israel and in support of Palestinians amid Israel’s war against Hamas.

The move amounts to a rare and significant rebuke of the Michigan Democrat, who is the first Palestinian-American woman to serve in Congress. The vote was 234 to 188 with four Republicans voting against and 22 Democrats voting in support of the censure resolution.

The resolution, which was introduced by Georgia GOP Rep. Rich McCormick, advanced earlier in the day after a Democratic-led effort to block the measure failed.

Tlaib has defended herself against the censure attempts, arguing that they are an effort to silence her and saying that her “colleagues have resorted to distorting my positions in resolutions filled with obvious lies.”

Following the vote to advance the censure resolution, Tlaib delivered an emotional speech on the House floor and argued that her criticism of the Israeli government should not be conflated with antisemitism.

“It is important to separate people and governments. No government is beyond criticism. The idea that criticizing the government of Israel is antisemitic sets a very dangerous precedent, and it’s been used to silence diverse voices speaking up for human rights across our nation,” she said.

She grew emotional and had trouble speaking after she said, “I can’t believe I have to say this, but Palestinian people are not disposable.”

“We are human beings just like anyone else,” she said after a long pause, during which Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota stood up to comfort her and put her hands on Tlaib’s shoulder as the congresswoman braced herself against the podium.

After the House voted to block a resolution from GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene to censure Tlaib last week, Greene put forward a new version of the resolution that drops a reference to a pro-Palestinian protest at the Capitol as an “insurrection,” which had made some Republicans uncomfortable. But McCormick’s resolution had been expected to have more support from Republicans because the language is narrower and more tailored to recent events.

A censure resolution is one of the most severe forms of punishment in the House, which has historically been saved for the most egregious offenses such as a criminal conviction. A censure does not remove a member from the House and carries no explicit penalties beyond a public admonition.

Most recently, the House voted to censure Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff of California in June, a key lawmaker in the Democrats’ congressional investigations into former President Donald Trump.

In addition to the Republican criticism directed at Tlaib, a number of Democrats have been critical of the congresswoman over her defense of the pro-Palestinian chant “from the river to the sea.”

The Anti-Defamation League describes the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” as “an antisemitic slogan” and “rallying cry (that) has long been used by anti-Israel voices, including supporters of terrorist organizations such as Hamas.”

Tlaib has defended the phrase, writing on X, “From the river to the sea is an aspirational call for freedom, human rights, and peaceful coexistence, not death, destruction, or hate. My work and advocacy is always centered in justice and dignity for all people no matter faith or ethnicity.”

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said, “Of course I do,” when asked by CNN on Monday if he has concerns over Tlaib’s use of the chant.

Both censure resolutions reference the chant. McCormick’s resolution states that it is “widely recognized as a genocidal call to violence to destroy the state of Israel.”

Republicans censuring Adam Schiff earlier this year was a prime example of their hateful nonsense. But I'm siding with the ADL on this one. They know exactly what documenting antisemitism looks like, and Tlaib trying to pass this off as an "aspirational chant" is quite frankly, bullshit of the highest degree. The Squad keeps catching primary challengers, and deservedly so.  

Yes, Israel has killed over 10,000 Gazans in their ground invastion. They are terribly wrong for doing this.

But you don't get to act like a Hamas terrorist in Congress and use a wildly documented call for the extermination of the Jewish State, folks. Full stop.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It

More than a few Muslim groups in the US are telling Joe Biden to broker a cease fire between Israel and Hamas now or else they will hand the country over to Trump and the GOP.

 

The National Muslim Democratic Council, which includes Democratic Party leaders from hotly contested states that can decide elections, such as Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania, urged Biden to use his influence with Israel to broker a ceasefire by 5 p.m. ET (2100 GMT) on Tuesday.

In an open letter entitled "2023 Ceasefire Ultimatum," Muslim leaders pledged to mobilize "Muslim, Arab, and allied voters" to "withhold endorsement, support, or votes for any candidate who endorses the Israeli offensive against the Palestinian people."

"Your administration's unconditional support, encompassing funding and armaments, has played a significant role in perpetuating the violence that is causing civilian casualties and has eroded trust in voters who previously put their faith in you," the council wrote.

Emgage, a Muslim American civic group, found that nearly 1.1 million Muslims voted in the 2020 election. Associated Press exit polls showed 64% of Muslims voted for Biden, a Democrat, and 35% for his Republican rival, Donald Trump.

The Arab American Institute estimates 3.7 million Americans "trace their roots" to an Arab country; its poll results issued on Tuesday show support for Biden and Democrats has dropped significantly in this group.

The White House has scrambled to address concerns raised by community members and political appointees within the administration. Biden met with a handful of Muslim leaders last Thursday, a White House official said.

White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre declined to comment on the poll, but told reporters that Biden was aware that American Muslims and those perceived to be Muslim had "endured a disproportionate number ... of hate-fueled attacks" and respected their perspectives.

She said the Biden administration had been engaging with Arab and Muslim community members, along with Jewish leaders, as well as political appointees within the administration on their different concerns, and would continue those efforts.

Biden has spoken out against rising antisemitism and Islamophobia, but Muslim leaders say the war must end.

Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) in Minnesota, said he had no option but to vote against Biden in 2024 unless he worked to end the fighting. He said he was speaking as an individual, not on behalf of CAIR, which is barred from political campaigning.

Local pro-Palestinian groups have scheduled a protest in Minneapolis on Wednesday during a visit by Biden to Minnesota to tout his administration's investments in rural America.

Arab and Muslim American communities have voiced frustration that Biden has not condemned Israel's attacks on the Gaza Strip after an Oct. 7 attack by Palestinian Hamas militants from Gaza that Israel says killed 1,400 people and took 240 hostages.

Biden has said Israel has a right to defend its citizens but should protect innocent Palestinian civilians in Gaza who are victims of the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Gaza health authorities say that 8,525 people, including 3,542 children, have been killed in Israeli attacks since Oct. 7. U.N. officials say more than 1.4 million of Gaza's civilian population of about 2.3 million have been made homeless.

Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Monday he would not agree to any cessation of the attacks on Gaza. U.S. national security spokesman John Kirby said, "Hamas is the only one that would gain from that right now."

 

Needless to say, that 5 PM deadline yesterday passed without said ceasefire, and as a matter of fact, Israeli Defense Forces bombed a Gaza refugee camp in order to kill a top Hamas leader, and killed hundreds of civilians while they were at it.

 

Support for Biden has dropped from nearly 60% in 2020to the upper teens among Arab Americans in the latest Zogby poll, with support for Donald Trump up to 40%.

 

Believe me, I understand the rage of American Muslims right now, and I understand the rage of American Jews right now. I'm telling everyone that the solution to this problem in now way involves another Donald Trump term.

 

But I guess when Trump gets back in the White House and starts mass detainment of Muslims and closures of mosques, CAIR and company will have really shown Biden who's boss. 

That boss being Donald Trump. Keep thinking you'll even be able to vote at all under a GOP regime. Virginia purged more than 3,000 voters ahead of next week's elections by "accident". Republicans in NC and Mississippi are doing the same, except they're omitting the whole accident excuse.

Once these autocrats get into power, they will never relinquish it. But feel free to be on the side of the devils to make your bargain, folks. Trump's flunkies are gearing up for fascism as we speak, and you want to threaten the rest of us with that?

The rest of us will certainly remember.

Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

 Israel is still holding off on that Gaza ground offensive after intense pressure from the US and EU.

The US and several European governments are quietly pushing Israel to hold off on launching a ground invasion of Gaza following Hamas’s release of two hostages, fearing that the incursion will all but scuttle efforts to secure additional releases for the foreseeable future, a senior diplomatic official told The Times of Israel.

The Western governments currently pressuring Israel each have citizens among those unaccounted for and believe that the more time that passes, the harder it will be to secure the hostages’ release, the official said.

The senior diplomatic official said that the governments recognize that a ground invasion is very likely and are not telling Israel not to launch one at all, but rather hold off to try and see if additional diplomatic efforts can succeed.

Israel says its offensive is aimed at destroying Hamas’s infrastructure, and has vowed to eliminate the entire terror group that rules the Strip and carried out the deadly onslaught on October 7 in which 1,400 were killed in southern Israel, about 1,000 of them civilians.

Israel says it is targeting all areas where Hamas operates, while seeking to minimize civilian casualties.

Meanwhile, the White House walked back US President Joe Biden’s apparent comment that Israel should delay its expected offensive in Gaza until more hostages held by Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups are released.

While boarding Air Force One earlier, Biden was asked by a reporter whether Israel should push off a military operation in Gaza, to which he responded, “yes.”

“The president was far away. He didn’t hear the full question. The question sounded like ‘Would you like to see more hostages released?’ He wasn’t commenting on anything else,” White House spokesperson Ben LaBolt was quoted as saying by Reuters.

Hamas on Friday night released two hostages — US-Israeli dual citizens Judith Raanan and her teenage daughter Natalie — who were vacationing in Israel from the US when they were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the terror group’s assault.

It was the first release out of at least 203 hostages held in Gaza since Hamas’s infiltration and massacre in Israeli southern communities that started the ongoing war.

 

How much time Hamas can buy with international hostages, we'll see. Israel of course is not sparing the bombing campaign, with another evacuation order of Gaza City and norther environs issued Sunday, including two dozen hospitals.

Demands by Israel for the evacuation of Gaza hospitals amount to “a death penalty for patients,” according to the Palestinian Red Crescent

 

The organization said the Israeli military issued three evacuation orders for the Al-Quds hospital on Friday. Spokesperson Nebal Farsakh told CNN Sunday: “We do not have the means to evacuate them safely. Most of the patients are with critical injuries.”

A total of 24 hospitals, including Al-Quds, are under the threat of “being bombed at any second due to Israeli evacuation orders,” Farsakh said.

CNN has not independently verified this number. The Israel Defense Forces says Hamas frequently uses civilian facilities as cover for its military operations. The IDF told CNN Friday: "Hamas intentionally embeds its assets in civilian areas and uses the residents of the Gaza Strip as human shields.”

The World Health Organization has condemned “Israel’s repeated orders for the evacuation of 22 hospitals treating more than 2,000 inpatients in Northern Gaza.”

Farsakh said her team is counting on the international community to take action ahead and “stand for humanity.

 

Aid trucks continue to trickle in from the Egypt side of the Gaza strip, but the UN says Gaza will run out of fuel and water later this week.

Meanwhile here in the US, we're seeing rabbis murdered.

Investigators are searching for a motive in the death of a Detroit synagogue leader found stabbed over the weekend, the city’s police chief said.

The body of Samantha Woll, president of the board of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, was discovered with multiple stab wounds at her home on Saturday morning, the Detroit Police Department said in a statement. She was pronounced dead at the scene.

Responding officers had followed “a trail of blood leading officers to the victim’s residence,” where it is believed the crime happened, the Detroit Police Department said in a statement.

Police have not identified a suspect in the case, and it’s still unclear what led up to the killing.

“Understandably, this crime leaves many unanswered questions,” Detroit Police Chief James E. White said in a statement on social media site X. “This matter is under investigation, and I am asking that everyone remain patient while investigators carefully examine every aspect of the available evidence.”

“It is important that no conclusions be drawn until all of the available facts are reviewed,” White added.

 

No suspects, no motive, but the Detroit PD, Michigan State Police, and the FBI are on it. The police continue to say it's not related to antisemitism, but a stabbed Rabbi is still a tragedy. Some 4,500 Gazans have been killed over the last two weeks. Those all are tragedies as well.

A ground offensive in Gaza will be a slaughterhouse akin to ethnic cleansing. The people loudly pushing for that are the people we should trust the least. And President Biden and the Pentagon are likewise sending another aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf, while Israeli Defense Forces are now attacking the West Bank and Syria.

The odds of a catastrophic misstep that leads to a massive regional conflict are ludicrously high at this point, and things are only going to get worse.

Last Call For Israeli Getting Serious Out There, Con't

President Biden is expected to address the nation in a primetime speech Thursday evening explaining the US response to the current Israel-Hamas war.

 

President Joe Biden will address to the nation Thursday to update Americans on the U.S. response to the Hamas attacks, the White House said.

The 8 p.m. ET Oval Office speech comes a day after Biden's high-stakes visit to Israel where he pressed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to allow aid from Egypt into Gaza for Palestinian civilians reeling from Israel airstrikes.

In a rare move, Biden spoke to reporters aboard Air Force One, telling them he had been on the phone with Egypt's President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi in "blunt negotiation" and that El-Sisi had agreed to open the closed Rafah crossing gate in southern Gaza to allow up to 20 trucks with aid through.

"I came to get something done -- I got it done," he said.

"They're going to patch the road -- they have to fill in the potholes for the trucks to get through," he said. "Expect that to take about eight hours tomorrow.So, there may be nothing rolling through … probably until Friday."

Asked about what he told Israeli officials, Biden said, "I was very blunt about the need to support getting humanitarian aid to Gaza, get it to Gaza and do it quickly."

He added, "I got no pushback, virtually none. ... Let me say it again, I got no pushback."

"Look, Israel has been badly victimized, but you know, the truth is that if they have an opportunity to relieve suffering of people who are, have nowhere to go, they're gonna be, it's what they should do," Biden said. "And if they don't, they'll be held accountable in ways that may be unfair."

 

Brutal honesty from the president as the White House also announced $100 million in additional humanitarian aid to Gaza and the West Bank.

Meanwhile stateside, hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested demonstrating in the Capitol Rotunda on Wednesday.

Hundreds of protesters demonstrated on Capitol Hill and occupied part of a House office building on Wednesday, urging lawmakers and the Biden administration to push for a cease-fire in Gaza, which has been under Israeli airstrikes since a deadly Hamas terror attack.

Dressed in black T-shirts emblazoned with the words "Jews say cease fire now" and "Not in our name," the activists sat clapping and singing on the floor in the rotunda of the Cannon House Office Building and held up large banners that read "Ceasefire" and "Let Gaza Live."

"We warned the protestors to stop demonstrating and when they did not comply we began arresting them," the U.S. Capitol Police said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Capitol Police said protests are not allowed inside the building. They told CBS News the protesters entered the building legally and properly through visitor security checkpoints, and were permitted to gather and congregate, but failed to follow police warnings after beginning the demonstrations.

Police gave an early estimate that about 300 demonstrators were arrested, but said the number could grow as they continue processing arrests.

The protest was organized by the group Jewish Voice for Peace, a Jewish anti-Zionist organization.

Before the sit-in, hundreds of people had gathered on the National Mall near the Capitol urging the Biden administration to call for a cease-fire.

 

Nationally, some 85% of Americans believe this conflict is going to become a larger regional war, and you can count me among them.

In the wake of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and Israel declaring war on Hamas, an overwhelming majority of voters (85 percent) are either very concerned (49 percent) or somewhat concerned (36 percent) that the war between Israel and Hamas will escalate into a wider war in the Middle East, while 13 percent are either not so concerned (8 percent) or not concerned at all (5 percent), according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today. The poll was conducted from October 12 through October 16.

Voters (76 - 17 percent) think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States.

Republicans (84 - 12 percent), Democrats (76 - 17 percent), and independents (74 - 19 percent) think supporting Israel is in the national interest of the United States.

Voters (64 - 28 percent) approve of the United States sending weapons and military equipment to Israel in response to the Hamas terrorist attack.

Republicans (79 - 19 percent), Democrats (59 - 29 percent), and independents (61 - 32 percent) approve of the United States sending weapons and military equipment to Israel.

There are wide gaps when looking at age. Voters 18 - 34 years old disapprove (51 - 39 percent) of the United States sending weapons and military equipment to Israel in response to the Hamas terrorist attack, while voters 35 - 49 years old (59 - 35 percent), voters 50 - 64 years old (77 - 17 percent), and voters 65 years of age and over (78 - 15 percent) approve.

When it comes to the relationship between the United States and Israel, slightly more than half of voters (52 percent) think the U.S. support of Israel is about right, while 20 percent think the U.S. is not supportive enough of Israel, and 20 percent think the U.S. is too supportive of Israel. This compares to a Quinnipiac University poll in May 2021 when 35 percent thought the U.S. support of Israel was about right, 25 percent thought the U.S. was not supportive enough, and 29 percent thought the U.S. was too supportive of Israel.

Voters were asked whether their sympathies lie more with the Israelis or more with the Palestinians based on what they know about the situation in the Middle East. Roughly 6 in 10 voters (61 percent) say the Israelis, while 13 percent say the Palestinians. This is an all-time high of voters saying their sympathies lie more with the Israelis since the Quinnipiac University Poll first asked this question of registered voters in December 2001. The previous high for saying the Israelis was in April 2010 when 57 percent said the Israelis and 13 percent said the Palestinians. The low for saying the Israelis was in May 2021 when 41 percent said the Israelis and 30 percent said the Palestinians.

 

Slaughtering hundreds of civilians at a peace rally makes it pretty clear you're the problem and that you need to made to pay the piper.

 

Unfortunately, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of Palestinians are going to be made to pay as well.

Orange Meltdown, Israel Edition

Donald Trump may be a blithering chaos elemental, but he does tend to follow a couple of rules in general, which explains him turning on Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday night.

 

Donald Trump lashed out at Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, telling a crowd of Florida supporters that the countries' intelligence failed, and its enemies were ''very smart."

"I'll never forget that Bibi Netanyahu let us down," Trump told a group of supporters Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Fla. "That was a very terrible thing."

Trump discussed the operation that killed Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in early 2020. The former president said Israel now has to strengthen itself as it fights Hamas and other militant groups, including perhaps Iran.

Supporters of Israel said on social media said that the Soleimani operation was aided by Israeli intelligence, while others criticized Trump for criticizing Israel's government in the midst of a crisis.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is running against Trump for the Republican nomination, zeroed in on Trump's description of Hezbollah leaders as "very smart."

Noting that at least 1,200 Israelis and 22 Americans have been killed in recent days, DeSantis said on the X website that "it is absurd that anyone, much less someone running for President, would choose now to attack our friend and ally, Israel, much less praise Hezbollah terrorists as 'very smart.' As President, I will stand with Israel and treat terrorists like the scum that they are."

During what was otherwise a campaign speech, Trump claimed that an unnamed U.S. official described Israel as being vulnerable from the north, and that kind of information would be helpful to adversaries.

"You know, Hezbollah is very smart - they're all very smart," Trump said at one point.

 

Many of you have already sussed out these rules, and they follow a pattern that explains Trump's modus operandi here.

 

First, Trump doesn't like "losers". He's seen Netanyahu come under attack for critical intelligence failures at best on the Hamas attack and at worst, being warned and letting it happen anyway. 

Mounting questions over Israel’s massive intelligence failure to anticipate and prepare for a surprise Hamas assault were compounded Monday when an Egyptian intelligence official said that Jerusalem had ignored repeated warnings that the Gaza-based terror group was planning “something big” — which included an apparent direct notice from Cairo’s intelligence minister to the prime minister.

The Egyptian official said Egypt, which often serves as a mediator between Israel and Hamas, had spoken repeatedly with the Israelis about “something big,” without elaborating.

He said Israeli officials were focused on the West Bank and played down the threat from Gaza. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is made up of supporters of West Bank settlers who have demanded a security crackdown there in the face of a rising tide of violence over the last 18 months.

“We have warned them an explosion of the situation is coming, and very soon, and it would be big. But they underestimated such warnings,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the content of sensitive intelligence discussions with the media, told The Associated Press.

Netanyahu denied receiving any such advance warning, saying in the course of an address to the nation Monday night that the story was “fake news.”

 

The problem for Bibi is that House Republicans are backing this intel. 

Egyptian intelligence officials warned their Israeli counterparts of a a possible terror attack days before Hamas slaughtered at least 1,300 people, according to the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee — who said Wednesday he doesn’t know how Israel and the US missed the signs.

“We know the Egyptian intelligence service handed this off days before the terrorist invasion, if you will, or attack,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) told CNN following a closed-door intelligence briefing. “So, there’s a lot of questions about that.”

 

Second, more than a few pundits and pols have accused Trump of being complicit in the Hamas attack with his failed foreign policy, the loudest voice being Trump's own former VP, Mike Pence.

Former Vice President Mike Pence tore into Donald Trump and pointed to isolationism in the Republican Party as complicit in the sweeping Hamas attack on Israel, decrying American “retreat on the world stage.”

In a scathing rebuke, Pence faulted “voices of appeasement like Donald Trump, Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis that I believe have run contrary to the tradition in our party that America is the leader of the free world.”

Pence’s comments in Iowa represented the first ripple in the Republican primary from the violence that erupted on Saturday — and effectively threw down a challenge to Republicans he said have “embraced the language of isolationism and appeasement.”

The role of the United States in maintaining global security is one of the most important points of friction between the Republican presidential candidates — one that could now erupt in a new way because of the violence in Israel. Pence’s criticism of Trump was uncharacteristically pointed. But it was even more remarkable for the break it represented in their previously lockstep approach to Israel. Once a signature priority of the Trump-Pence administration, the U.S.-Israel relationship Saturday was suddenly becoming a wedge issue between them.

Faulting President Joe Biden for “projecting weakness on the world stage,” Pence also pointed an accusatory finger rightward at an event here near the Nebraska border.

“This is also what happens when you have leaders in the Republican Party signaling retreat on the world stage,” Pence said.

 

Third, the Biden administration is backing Netanyahu and his war council, which means Trump will do the opposite. 

As Israel prepares to launch a likely ground invasion into Gaza, the Biden Administration and leading members of Congress are crafting an American aid package of roughly $2 billion in supplementary funding to support the nation’s war effort against Hamas, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell TIME.

The funding would go toward replenishing Israel’s stockpile of interceptors for its Iron Dome missile-defense system, artillery shells, and other munitions. If approved, the assistance would come at a crucial time for Israel, as it gears for a lengthy and devastating offensive against the terror group that brutally massacred more than 1,200 Israelis in Saturday’s surprise attack.

“We’re heading into a war for many, many weeks, maybe several months, in which the objective is to dismantle Hamas,” Rep. Brad Sherman, a California Democrat, told TIME shortly after attending a briefing from White House officials on the situation. “It will be perhaps the highest casualty war Israel has faced since the War of Independence,” he added, referring to the 1948 blitz that five Arab nations waged against Israel shortly after its establishment. “But Israel didn’t ask for this.”

 

Finally, Trump never passes on an opportunity to be a raging antisemite and an Islamophobe if he can do both at the same time. 

Dumping Bibi under the bus accomplishes Trump's agenda on all four of those points. Expect a harder line against Israel's nearly assured Gaza invasion in the weeks and months to come.

Israeli Getting Serious Out There

Apparently today is the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War and Hamas marked the occasion with a massive rocket attack from Gaza into Israel, the thousands of rockets overwhelming Israel's Iron Dome defense system and killing dozens as a new uprising is underway. Needless to say, the Israeli counterstrike into Gaza is unprecedented as PM Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that Israel is now at war.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he hopes Israel's response to the Hamas incursion on Saturday will "exact a huge price" from the militant group.

Speaking at the beginning of a political-security cabinet meeting, Netanyahu said the following:

"Since this morning, the State of Israel has been at war. Our first goal is first of all to cleanse the area of the enemy forces that have infiltrated and restore security and peace to the towns that were attacked.

The second goal, at the same time, is to exact a huge price from the enemy, also in the Gaza Strip. The third goal is to fortify other arenas so that no one makes the mistake of joining this war.

We are at war, in war you have to keep calm. I call on all citizens of Israel to unite, to achieve our highest goal -- victory in the war.'

Netanyahu may have survived scandal after scandal that divided the nation but Israel will 100% rally around hum and the flag while pounding Gaza into ash this weekend. 

More on this as it develops, but this is the strongest attack from Hamas in decades, and Israel's response is going to be bloody as all hell.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black churches in Florida are stepping up with teaching lessons now that Black history has been outlawed in Florida schools.

 

They filed into the pews one after the other on a sweltering Wednesday night, clutching Bibles and notepads, ready to learn at church what they no longer trusted would be taught at school.

“BLACK HISTORY MATTERS” proclaimed television screens facing the several dozen men and women settling in at Friendship Missionary Baptist Church. An institution in the predominantly Black neighborhood of Liberty City, “The Ship” had borne witness to many of the seminal events of the past century, shepherding its followers during Jim Crow and the heyday of the KKK, through the civil rights movement to the racial justice protests of recent years.

Now, as a new school year started, the Rev. Gaston Smith was standing at the pulpit with a lesson on one of those chapters. After months of controversy over new directives governing classroom instruction in Florida — changes that critics said sanitized or even distorted the past — he and other Black pastors across the state agreed their churches had no choice but to respond.

They would teach Black history themselves.

“Whenever there has been any kind of movement, particularly in the African American community, it started in the house of God,” said Smith, 57, a commanding presence with a resonant voice. “We cannot be apathetic, we cannot sit back, we cannot be nonvocal. We have to stand our ground, because the Bible says we have to speak up for those that cannot speak up for themselves.”

Their resolve has drawn a groundswell of support. A nonprofit coalition of religious institutions, Faith in Florida, put together an 11-chapter tool kit to guide the churches and suggest books, articles, documentaries and reports covering the Black experience through what it calls “the lens of truth.” The chapters, featuring content for all ages, cover a lot of ground. “From Africa to America,” one is titled. Another highlights “Race, Racism & Whiteness.”

Some 200 faith leaders quickly signed up to use it, representing African Methodist Episcopal, United Methodist and other denominations. Each committed to weave teachings on Black history into their sermons or Sunday school classes or Bible study sessions. That way, they’d be reaching parents as well as children.

The churches’ involvement harks back to the pivotal role many played in the struggle to end segregation and advance voting rights.

“There’s always been that connection,” said Loren Lyons, a spokesperson for the coalition. “And so, we pretty much said that because of what’s going on in the curriculum and what’s going on in Florida right now, it’s time that we took back that power.”

 

Cynical me wonders just how long Ron DeSantis's government will wait before Black churches become targets of investigation for being terrorist hotbeds, this of course coming from people who will tell you that white Christians are the most persecuted group on Earth and that religious freedom is the bedrock of American society.

 

Black communities taking education of kids and families into their own hands, often through Black churches, is nothing new. We've been doing it for decades if not centuries. From spirituals to Dr. King's SCLC to the Black Panthers to today, we survive and thrive though that community.

 

But Depressing Realist Me wonders why DeSantis would lift a finger when Black churches are technically making his case that public education is broken and that religious education for students is the answer. That this effort will be hijacked in order to push public education dollars going to churches and religious schools is inevitable.

So no, I'm not celebrating this at all. I fully expect Republicans to co-opt this movement for evil.

Black Lives Still Matter though.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

As I warned months ago, the entire point of Florida GOP Gov. ROn Desantis picking a fight directly with the College Board and AP Black History classes was to serve as cause for evicting all of the College Board's products from Florida schools and universities, including the SAT college entrance exam, and to replace it with the right-wing Christian Dominionist version.

 

The Classic Learning Test is the college admissions exam that most students have never heard of. An alternative to the SAT and ACT for only a small number of mostly religious colleges, the test is known for its emphasis on the Western canon, with a big dose of Christian thought.

But on Friday, Florida’s public university system, which includes the University of Florida and Florida State University, is expected to become the first state system to approve the Classic Learning Test, or CLT, for use in admissions.

“We are always seeking ways to improve,” said Ray Rodrigues, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida, noting that the system, which serves a quarter million undergraduates, was the largest in the country to still require an entrance exam.

It’s the latest move by Gov. Ron DeSantis to shake up the education establishment, especially the College Board, the nonprofit behemoth that runs the SAT program.

Governor DeSantis, a Republican presidential candidate, has already rejected the College Board’s Advanced Placement course on African American studies, and sparred over content on gender and sexuality in A.P. Psychology.

Now, at a time when the College Board faces a dwindling number of students taking the SAT, Governor DeSantis is giving a big lift to an upstart competitor.

Jeremy Tate, the founder of Classic Learning Initiatives, the company that developed the test, insisted that the CLT is apolitical. It’s an effort, he said, to avoid educational fads and expose students to rich intellectual material.

The company, however, describes the CLT as part of “the larger educational freedom movement of our time” — language that echoes that of conservative supporters of private-school vouchers and tax credits for home-schoolers. The “end goal,” the company says, is “promoting a classical curriculum.”

After a century of dominance by the College Board and the nonprofit ACT — which administers the test of the same name — the emergence of an alternative is “healthy and overdue,” said Frederick Hess, director of education policy at the American Enterprise Institute, a center-right think tank. “It’s all for the best if this becomes a more vibrant marketplace.”

There has been pushback. The College Board and ACT say that there is little research that shows that the CLT can accurately assess college readiness. Some classics scholars say that the CLT’s vision of classical education is too narrow; others say it’s too expansive.

While there is no single definition of classical education, the CLT celebrates canonical works from Western civilization, with an emphasis on Greek, Roman and early Christian thought. Memorization, logic and debate are considered important skills.

The test has three sections: verbal reasoning, grammar and writing, and quantitative reasoning (math). Its English sections, like the SAT and ACT, ask students to read dense passages, demonstrate their comprehension via multiple-choice questions and spot grammatical errors.

But in sample materials, there is more religious thought, with passages from Thomas Aquinas; Jonathan Edwards, the Great Awakening preacher; and Teresa of Ávila, a 16th-century saint.

 

"We need a more vibrant marketplace" in college admissions testing, bleats the AEI think tank toad, but Florida doesn't want a vibrant marketplace of ideas, it wants the CLT to be the only game in town for Florida universities period, and it wants to banish the textbooks and knowledge and ideas that might stand in opposition to what the CLT tests for.

And pretty soon in Florida it will be the only game in town.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Actual swastika flag-carrying Nazis sure love GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's policies in Florida, especially the war against "woke" corporations like Disney, and they'll gladly tell you they're on his side as they openly march in public.

Members of white supremacist and antisemitic hate groups marched outside Orlando, Florida, on Saturday screaming invectives, raising the Nazi salute, and yelling “Heil Hitler” and “white power.”

“We are everywhere!” neo-Nazis can be heard shouting in a video shared by former Florida House of Representatives member Anna V. Eskamani. Later in the footage, they yelled, “Heil Hitler” while performing a Nazi salute.

Nazis in Altamonte Springs at Cranes Roost Park screaming “we are every where” — absolutely disgusting stuff and another example of the far right extremism growing in FL. pic.twitter.com/ixgKWcsJk6— Rep. Anna V. Eskamani 🔨 (@AnnaForFlorida) September 2, 2023

 

Days before the march, the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism warned it was coming. “Two extremist groups, the Goyim Defense League (GDL) and Blood Tribe (BT), are planning to gather in Florida in September 2023 for a joint, public demonstration(s) they are calling the ‘March of the Redshirts,'” the center said in a community advisory shared via email on Thursday.

The ADL describes the Goyim Defense League as “a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism” with an “overarching goal” to “expel Jews from America.” The organization characterizes Blood Tribe, led by white supremacist Christopher Pohlhaus, as “a growing neo-Nazi group that claims to have chapters across the United States and Canada.”

“Blood Tribe presents itself as a hardcore white supremacist group and rejects white supremacists who call for softer ‘optics,'” the ADL writes.

In video captured by News2Share’s Ford Fischer, the groups chanted, “Jews will not replace us!” and “Jews get the rope.”

Pohlhaus appeared to lead portions of the march. When Pohlhaus yelled, “Heil the führer!” others responded with, “Heil Hitler!”

Speaking to reporters, Pohlhaus said, “We just have to start a fire. We’re the kindling. Once we set the fire, we get the fire hot, then we get the rest of our brothers blazing.”

“This is just the beginning,” Pohlhaus added later.

When another reporter asked a marcher what they were marching for, he responded, “White power.”

Some of the marchers individually expressed their distaste for Donald Trump, saying they prefer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. When right-wing figure Laura Loomer appeared at the march, recording the Neo-Nazis with her cell phone, the crowd began to chant “faggot, faggot” in her direction. Loomer explained she was at the rally because she was getting her hair done nearby.

“We’re not voting Trump, Laura!” one marcher shouted at her. “We’re not voting for the right wing! It’s the kike wing.”

At this, another marcher shouted, “We’re all DeSantis supporters!”

Before the neo-Nazis gathered in Florida, News2Share reported on another smaller rally taking place outside California’s Disney World where approximately 10 people who identified as “Order of the Black Sun” destroyed a rainbow pride flag near the park’s entrance. One marcher carried a Ron DeSantis 2024 flag. Another held a sign that read, “Did you thank Hitler today?"

 

It should be the end of DeSantis's career. Sadly, it's only going to raise his poll numbers a bit among his fellow racist Republican domestic terrorists.

Sunday Long Read: The Mountain Of Fear

This week's Sunday Long Read has The Believer's Joshua Hunt take us on a trip to Japan's Osorezan -- Mount Fear -- as he deals with the death of his uncle among the surreal landscape of the ancient temples, trails, and travails.

 

In January 2023, while waiting to board a plane in Stockholm, I saw how swiftly grief can take hold of a person. In a quiet corner of Arlanda Airport, it unfolded before me like a scene from a movie: an older woman answered her cell phone, listened for a few moments to the voice on the other end, then burst into tears. Her anguish was so immediate, and so visceral, that it could only have been the worst kind of news—the end of a marriage, a dream, or a life. Not just any life, though: one so precious to her that its end was immediately comprehensible.

It was this immediacy that struck me as cinematic, because in real life, or at least in my life, death is many other things before it is something I can cry about. Last year, when my uncle Bill died of a heart attack at age fifty-seven, months passed before I could even conceive of his absence. He meant more to me than any other man, including my father, and yet his death was not at once fathomable to me. It landed with no impact I could make sense of; robbed of the clarifying weight of tragedy, I experienced his death first as an inconvenience. An obstacle. A disturbance that immediately complicated my life, or at least my career, which is what I had instead of a life. The instincts that had helped lift me out of poverty had also made it hard to slow down, and so I lived as if on the run. Next stop: Tokyo, where I planned to cement my relationship with a big American magazine by writing the definitive profile of a major Japanese novelist.

These plans started taking shape in May 2022, when the lease on my apartment in Brooklyn, New York, was coming to an end. The rent was going up so much that renewing it seemed like a gamble I wasn’t likely to collect on. Instead, I decided to do the responsible thing: put my stuff in storage, fly to Tokyo, and spend three months living in a modestly priced hotel while I wrote the story. I’d lived in Japan before, and going back after two years away seemed like the best shot I had at shaking off my malaise. It was also my best shot at producing a story that might take my writing career to the next level—a level that would put me in a position to take the occasional rent increase in stride.

By the end of the first week in June, I’d made it only as far as Manhattan, where a friend had invited me to house-sit while his family was on vacation. I was in their downtown apartment when I got the phone call about my uncle Bill. In bed but not yet asleep, I picked up the second of two late-night phone calls from my mom. Crying, and almost certainly a bit drunk, she told me that her little brother was gone, and all I could say was “Oh no.” When our call ended, a little after midnight, I couldn’t sleep, so I listened to old voicemail messages from my uncle. The most recent one was dated December 25, 2021: “Merry Christmas, Josh. I love you. It’s Uncle Bill. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. Talk to you later. Bye.”

I was meant to visit him three weeks after he left that message, but on the morning of my flight to Juneau, Alaska, I tested positive for COVID-19. I’d contracted the virus while working on a story in New Mexico—my first profile for the magazine I hoped to impress by flying halfway around the world to interview a novelist. While listening to old messages from my uncle, I dwelled bitterly on two unfulfilled promises I had made when calling to say I couldn’t make it home in January: the first was that I would get to Alaska and see him again soon; the second was that he was going to love the profile I had been working on in New Mexico. It ended up being published ten days after he died.

With my flight to Japan booked, and my nonrefundable accommodations paid for in advance, I had a narrow window for making it to the potlatch that would serve as my uncle Bill’s memorial. In Tlingit culture—our culture—the memorial potlatch has traditionally served as both a funerary ritual and a proto-capitalist one; for centuries, our departed were sent on their way with singing, dancing, food, and an ostentatious display of the wealth they would leave behind for others. These days, the banquets tend to resemble any other family cookout, and not many of our people have much wealth to leave behind. A few years ago, I met a man who put off his dad’s potlatch long enough for the carving of a large memorial totem, which struck me as the height of Tlingit opulence. My uncle Bill had left nothing behind, though, because he’d had so little, and because he had shared what little he had so freely. His potlatch proceeded as soon as a small wooden box with an image of an orca was carved to receive his ashes. By that time, though, my window of opportunity for attending had closed.

My mom sent me an announcement for the memorial service, which I perused on my phone during a layover on my way to Tokyo. In a quiet corner of Los Angeles International Airport, a dull pain grew sharper as I stared at the photograph they had chosen. It shows my uncle Bill standing on a beach on the outskirts of Juneau, bathed in sunlight passing through the sieve of an overcast sky. It is October 28, 2021, and in a few hours he will drive me to the airport for the last time. First we drive back to town, though, and along the way a double rainbow appears in the distance. He slows the pickup truck, then eases it over to the side of the road. He makes a dumb joke and asks me to take a picture of the two rainbows. When I send it to him later, I include another photo I took just a bit earlier. In it he is standing on the beach, dressed in jeans and a Carhartt shirt, smiling like he can already see the rainbows waiting just up the road.

 

It's a good story. 

And tell the people whom you love that you do love them. Eventually you won't have that chance anymore.

Tales Of The Shattered Rainbow, Con't

We're back on a regular schedule today, and I wish I had better news to do that with. But late last night the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals here in Cincinnati issued a 2-1 ruling overturning the injunction against Tennessee's anti-trans law taking effect, and as Law Dork's Chris Geidner looks at this garbage fire of a ruling, the ban on Kentucky's anti-trans law will be overturned in short order.

 

The Saturday ruling itself alters the legal landscape for these bans, at least temporarily.

First, and most immediately, Tennessee is free to enforce its ban, pending any further court orders.

While calling the ruling “wrong on the facts and on the law,” Chase Strangio, who is one of the key ACLU lawyers on this and several other challenges to anti-transgender laws, added, “We also know that things are moving quickly and for many families, waiting for legal relief is not an option. The untenable position that adolescents, their caregivers and their doctors have been put in is not only illegal, but also deeply unethical and dangerous.”

One of the most prominent trans legal advocates in the country over recent years, Strangio added a personal note to those affected by Sutton’s ruling, telling Law Dork: “From the bottom of my heart, I am sorry. I know it feels bleak now and I am also confident that in time, working together, we will prevail.”

Strangio, the deputy director for transgender justice within the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, added that the ACLU “will continue to aggressively litigate these cases in Tennessee and across the country.”

It was not immediately clear, however, whether the challengers would seek to get the stay lifted, either by the full Sixth Circuit or the U.S. Supreme Court. “We are still evaluating all our options with our primary concern of course being how can we help ensure that people in Tennessee are not cut off from the care they need,” Strangio stated.

Second, the Sixth Circuit set a very quick schedule for the merits appeal of the preliminary injunction — with the “goal” of reaching a resolution by Sept. 30.

Third, Kentucky is within the Sixth Circuit and Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron has already cited the Sixth Circuit’s ruling in a filing at the district court in the case challenging Kentucky’s ban as a reason why the court should “immediately” issue a stay of its June 28 ruling granting a preliminary injunction.

Fourth, the Sixth Circuit also consolidated Cameron’s appeal of the Kentucky injunction in a separate order Saturday, which not only brings that case on the same schedule as the Tennessee appeal but also essentially confirms that Sixth Circuit would almost certainly issue a stay of the Kentucky injunction if the district court does not do so.

Finally, the new, if tentative, lack of unanimity itself matters for two reasons — one rhetorical and one practical. Obviously, having unanimity is its own argument against the constitutionality of these bans. Additionally, although only at the stay request posture, the ruling increases the likelihood that a “circuit split” on these bans will develop — a factor that greatly increases the chances of the U.S. Supreme Court taking up one of these cases.

Few people know that better than Sutton.

It was, after all, Sutton’s 2014 decision in the marriage cases out of Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee that prompted the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the issue of same-sex couples’ constitutional right to marriage equality. Less than two months before Sutton’s decision in those cases, the Supreme Court denied other states’ requests to hear similar appeals when the federal appeals courts were in unanimity on the issue. After Sutton’s decision created a circuit split, however, the Supreme Court took up the issue.

 

The most ominous part of the decision is that two Republican judges decided that the Dobbs ruling can be applied to other medical care issues.  Even if a doctor agrees that gender-affirming care is the correct issue, the state can still ban it.

 

Of course, it gets worse. 

Republican attorneys general from seven states signed a letter Wednesday to Target (TGT), warning clothes and merchandise sold as part of the retail giant’s Pride month campaigns could violate their state’s child protection laws.

GOP attorneys general from Indiana, Arkansas, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and South Carolina signed the letter, writing they were “concerned by recent events involving the company’s ‘Pride’ campaign.” The letter asserts the states are obliged to “enforce state laws protecting children” from “content that sexualizes them,” including obscenity laws. The letter also suggests Target may be breaching the law by making decisions that are allegedly “unprofitable” and not in the best interests of its shareholders, citing it as a violation of the company’s fiduciary duty.

The AGs said they believed the campaign was a “comprehensive effort to promote gender and sexual identity among children,” criticizing items such as “LGBT-themed onesies, bibs, and overalls, T-shirts labeled ‘Girls Gays Theys’; ‘Pride Adult Drag Queen Katya’ (which depicts a male dressed in female drag’); and girls’ swimsuits with ‘tuck-friendly construction.’”


The letter does not provide specific details regarding potential legal consequences if Target continues to sell the merchandise in question. It follows a wave of bills introduced in various states aiming to ban LGBTQ+ content under obscenity laws, as well as a record-shattering year for anti-LGBTQ legislation, with particular scrutiny on gender-affirming health care access for transgender children and teenagers. Nineteen states have passed laws restricting it.

The Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ+ advocacy group in the US, slammed the letter as “another attempt from the extreme right to bully anyone who stands by values of inclusion and diversity.”

“These attorneys general are trying to rile up their far-right base and force us back into the closet. It’s not going to work,” Jay Brown, HRC’s Sr Vice President of Programs, Training and Research said in a statement provided to CNN.

 

Steve M. is correct in his assessment. 

If you're saying that it's a potential violation of the law to sell children's products proclaiming that LGBTQ people exist, are equal citizens, and should be celebrated, you're a very short step from declaring that it's illegal to be a gay parent. If the presence of pro-LGBTQ clothing results in unlawful sexualization of children, so does the ongoing presence of an LGBTQ parent -- right?

"Because we have to do whatever is necessary to protect the children" mean Republicans can criminalize, harass, and imprison whomever they deem to be "bad." Steve continues:

These AGs are implying that legal action might be appropriate because Target made a business decision they don't like. That's a heavy-handed use of the power of government to try to enforce ideological conformity. And, of course, this was a questionable business decision only because the AGs' ideological allies in the right-wing rage community were encouraged to vent their wrath at Target. So first these folks boycott your company, then they threaten legal action because you as a corporation should have known they were going to do that.

 

And then these Republicans will pass laws giving legal power of the state behind these threats, because they are "necessary to save kids". It's bullshit, of course. But that's where we're headed, a toxic, corrosive mix of Hobby Lobby and Dobbs where the existence of trans folks, and eventually all LGBTQ+ folks, will be banned because people existing violates the "closely held religious beliefs" of asshole bigots and "we have to protect the children from teh gayz".

 

By the way, I expect that the next step in this battle will be contraception, eventually SCOTUS will decide that Griswold v Connecticut is void too and that women will soon have to get permission from their husbands to use birth control in a state like Missouri or Texas, and that the state has a "vested interest" in banning birth control altogether. We've been through this fight before, decades before I was even born. We're going to have it again.

The path of the falling dominoes is easy to predict, and it leads to a significant percentage of women of child-bearing age in prison for failing to give birth. And this too will be done to "protect the children".

 

When you remember the goal is to overturn the entire civil rights era and put us back into Jim Crow, where everyone who isn't a married, straight white male has second-class citizenship and fungible rights, all of this makes sense.

Indepen-Dunce Week: Israeli A Problem

With all the other awful shit in 2023, we were overdue for a "West Bank collective punishment of Palestinians" weekend.

 

Israel struck targets in a militant stronghold in the occupied West Bank and deployed hundreds of troops Monday in an incursion that resembled the broad attacks carried out during the second Palestinian uprising two decades ago. Palestinian health officials said at least eight Palestinians were killed and dozens wounded.

The assault began with drone strikes and continued with troops, which remained inside the Jenin refugee camp at midday, pushing ahead with the largest operation in the area during more than a year of fighting. It came amid growing domestic pressure for a tough response to a series of attacks on Israeli settlers, including a shooting attack last month that killed four Israelis.

Black smoke rose from the crowded streets of the camp while exchanges of fire rang out and the buzzing of drones was heard overhead. Military bulldozers plowed through narrow streets, damaging buildings as they cleared the way for Israeli forces.

The Palestinians and neighboring Jordan and Egypt and the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation condemned the violence, along with the United Arab Emirates, which established diplomatic relations with Israel in 2020.

Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said the operation was “proceeding as planned,” but gave no indication when it would end. Fighting continued some 14 hours after Israel entered the camp.

Lt. Col. Richard Hecht, an army spokesman, said a brigade-size force — roughly 2,000 soldiers — was taking part and that military drones had carried out a series of strikes.

Although Israel has carried out isolated airstrikes in the West Bank in recent weeks, Hecht said Monday’s strikes were an escalation unseen since 2006 — the end of the last Palestinian uprising.

 

So this will continue to be bad as it always is, and hey, we just sold billions in weapons to Israel.

Some things never change, I guess.

 

A Supreme Week From Hell

With the last week of June upon us, several critical Supreme Court decisions are still awaiting, and these rulings could affect the rights and lives of tens of millions of Americans in the days ahead.

The Supreme Court is set to hand down key decisions this week on student debt relief, affirmative action and federal election laws as it enters the last week of its summer session with 10 cases pending.

The court has given no indication it will break its norm of finishing decisions by the end of June, and the next batch is slated to be released Tuesday morning.

Beyond the decisions, the court is also forming its docket for the next term. The justices on Monday could announce whether they will take up several high-profile cases, including on guns, racial discrimination and qualified immunity.

Here are the remaining cases as the Supreme Court wraps up its annual term:

President Biden’s plan to forgive student debt for more than 40 million borrowers will soon be greenlighted or blocked, depending on how the justices rule.

Biden’s plan would forgive up to $10,000 for borrowers who meet income requirements and up to $20,000 for Pell Grant recipients.

But the debt relief remains on hold until the Supreme Court resolves two lawsuits challenging the plan.

If either succeeds, the debt relief will be blocked.

During oral arguments, the conservative majority cast doubt that the administration had the authority to cancel the debts, expected to amount to hundreds of billions of dollars.

But before they can strike down the plan as unlawful, the justices must first decide whether any of the challengers have legal standing.

The six GOP-led states and two individual borrowers challenging the plan have promoted various arguments.

Missouri’s argument received the most attention, and conservative Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined the court’s three liberals in questioning the state’s theory during oral argument.

The cases are Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown.

When the Supreme Court upheld affirmative action in college admissions in 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor in her majority opinion made a temporal prediction:

“The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today,” she wrote.

That landmark decision, Grutter v. Bollinger, marked its 20th anniversary Friday.

It might not reach its 21st.

The justices have been weighing whether to overturn Grutter — and decades of affirmative action programs in higher education along with it — in challenges to admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

During oral argument, the majority appeared skeptical of upholding race-conscious college admissions.

The justices tend to write no more than one majority opinion for each monthly argument session.

Chief Justice John Roberts and conservative Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh have not yet issued majority opinions for any cases argued in November, when the affirmative action challenges were heard, meaning one of them is the likely author.

The cases are Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.

Web designer Lorie Smith, an evangelical Christian, is challenging Colorado’s public accommodation law on free speech grounds.

Like many other states, Colorado’s law prohibits businesses that serve the public from discriminating based on sexual orientation.

Smith wants to expand her business to create wedding websites. But Colorado’s law would demand she create same-sex wedding websites if she wants to do so for opposite-sex unions, and Smith is vehemently opposed to gay marriage.

The justices are now set to decide whether public accommodation laws, as applied to Smith and other artists, violate the First Amendment by compelling their speech.

The conservative majority signaled support for Smith during oral argument.

Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch appear to be the likely pool of authors because they are the two remaining justices who have not issued majority opinions from a case argued in December.

The case is 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis.

The court is weighing a major election clash that will decide who has the final word on setting federal election rules.

North Carolina Republican lawmakers appealed a state court ruling that struck down their congressional map, promoting to the justices a sweeping argument known as the “independent state legislature” theory.

That theory asserts that state legislatures have exclusive authority to set federal election rules under the Constitution.

Adopting it would claw back the ability of state courts and state constitutions to block legislatures’ congressional map designs and other regulations surrounding federal elections.

It’s possible, however, that the court tosses the case without reaching the theory’s merits.

As the justices considered the case, Republicans regained control of North Carolina’s top court and overturned the underlying decision that struck down the state’s congressional map.

The Supreme Court has been paying close attention to whether they still have jurisdiction in the case, a potential offramp from the high-stakes dispute.

Based on the decisions released so far, Roberts or Gorsuch appears to be the likely author of the majority opinion.

The case is Moore v. Harper.

Again, predicting SCOTUS decisions is something even the experts get wrong, and I'm just a guy with a blog who probably should have walked away a decade ago. But as I'm here and you're reading this, I expect three really awful conservative decisions and a punt on the independent state legislature nonsense, with the court all but begging for cases where they can greatly expand on the precedents set in all four cases.

But if the worst comes to pass, and the Roberts Court sides with NC in the final case there, our democracy is all but finished. The notion that state legislatures can simply determine the electoral college outcome of each state regardless of the vote for president is heartstopping lunacy, and you'd better believe that Republican state legislatures will anoint Republican winners for everything across the board, no matter what the voters actually say or do.

Granted that would mean Democratic state legislatures could simply appoint democrats across the board too, but who knows how far that could go? We don't need to find out.

The point is, this is most likely going to be a dismal week, starting Tuesday.  

Sunday Long Read: For Christ's Sake

There is a deeply damaged section of evangelical Christianity that is dangerous, political, and violent that is openly preparing for conflict with the nation, and in this week's Sunday Long Read, Frederick Thompson at Salon notes that this brand of "prayer warriors" just so happens to be targeting the biggest swing state that went for Biden in 2020 and where Dems flipped a US Senate seat to boot: Pennsylvania. 

"You've got a friend in Pennsylvania!" was the theme of the state's ad campaign to promote tourism in the 1980s. That was a veiled historical reference to the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, the liberal Christian sect to which William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named, belonged. But since the early 2000s there has been a quiet campaign in the Keystone State and beyond to unfriend anyone outside certain precincts of Christianity — and most Quakers would almost certainly be among the outcasts.

That campaign got a lot less quiet this April, as many leaders of the neo-charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, who have been hiding in plain sight for a generation, began ramping up a contest for theocratic power in the nation and the world. Their first target is Pennsylvania.

On April 30, Sean Feucht, a musician and evangelist for conservative Christian dominion, spoke at Life Center Ministries, the Harrisburg megachurch of Apostle Charles Stock. (The honorific "Apostle" designates a leading church office in the NAR. That said, there are many apostles in the movement, and not all of them pastor churches.) During his appearance, Feucht highlighted his national tour of state capitals, called Kingdom to the Capitol, that he was conducting along with Turning Point USA, the far-right youth group led by Charlie Kirk. "[W]e are going to end this 50-state tour here in Harrisburg," he announced.

It will probably be three to four weeks before the general election. This is a state, it's the Keystone State — the seed of a nation — God is not done with this state.

The "seed of a nation" refers to the famous 17th-century words of William Penn. (Much more on this below.)

Sometimes Feucht's tour has ventured into darker terrain. He told an audience in Austin, Texas, that "no one has hope for" their city:

 

Why are we going to all these 50 capitals — because they're amazing cities? … they're actually not. They're the most horrible cities in America.

 

Indeed. Feucht and his movement consider the 50 state capitals to be demon-infested bastions of ungodly government. His tour has openly become a campaign to "unfriend" the nation. He wrote in an "Open Letter to Church Leaders" on April 23:

 

Unfriend? That seems a little harsh for some. Yet [New Testament author] James didn't seem to think so — "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

Feucht's effort to connect young people with what his movement considers William Penn's ancient vision for Pennsylvania is part of the wider, epochal campaign of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement at the cutting edge of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelicalism, which is now the second largest Christian faction in the world after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest growth sector in American and global Christianity.

This is a central story of our time, and one that has scarcely penetrated our national consciousness. Sean Feucht's ministry, for example, is overseen by NAR apostles — but media coverage does not reflect that context.

The goal here is to capture entire states and then the country as theocratic dominions of a God that sees anyone else as enemies to be exterminated in His name. People like Charlie Kirk and Sean Feucht want not just a Second Civil War, but a Holy Crusade to boot. 

They will do everything they can to get both.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

As America attempts to deal with racist attacks against Black, Latino, Asian and Native folks, we can't forget that white supremacists have been and continue to target Jewish communities. As one terrorist has been convicted in the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting this week and faces a possible capital sentence, another potential synagogue attack was stopped by law enforcement in Michigan.

 

A Michigan teenager has been arrested over an alleged plot to carry out a mass shooting at a synagogue, according to a criminal complaint filed against the teen.

The complaint charges 19-year-old Seann Pietila with transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure someone. FBI Special Agent Ryan Roskey said in the complaint that Pietila demonstrated through Instagram messages his neo-Nazi ideology, antisemitic beliefs, suicidal ideologies, praise of past mass shooters that have had similar ideologies and intent to copy their actions.

The complaint states Pietila specifically mentioned that he admires Brent Tarrant, who carried out mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand in 2019, killing more than 50 people. The Instagram account that Pietila used sent a message saying they needed a camera for livestreaming, as Tarrant did during his attack, and another saying they planned to mimic “b.t’s” attack, per the complaint.

Investigators also found a Pinterest account from Pietila that included posts containing Nazi imagery and references to mass shooters. They were able to connect the Instagram and Pinterest accounts to Pietila and also found TikTok and Discord accounts tied to him to confirm his identity.

The FBI carried out a search warrant at Pietila’s home on Friday and arrested him. Pietila confirmed during an interview with authorities that he was the Instagram user but said he did not intend to carry out the mass shootings that he referenced, per the complaint.

Officials found a shotgun, rifle, pistol, ammunition, rifle magazines, multiple knives and other instruments, firearm accessories, two tactical vests, a red and white Nazi flag, gas masks and survivor manuals during the search of his home.

Pietila consented to investigators searching his iPhone that was also recovered during the search, and they found a note referring to a synagogue in East Lansing, Mich., according to the complaint. The note lists a date of March 15, 2024, the five-year anniversary of Tarrant’s attacks, and mentions pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails and multiple firearms.

 

Thankfully, it seems like the feds had this clown's number from the start and nobody was hurt. But that date in March of next year seems like something people will want to be paying attention to as we get closer to it, as there's plenty of sick copycat killers out these who want to emulate the slaughter in New Zealand.

 

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Right-wing "Christian" churches are increasingly delivering radical calls to terrorist action, and next time you see Republican lawmakers scream about how the FBI is "targeting" churches, understand that the FBI has every reason to do so.

 

Kent Christmas, the radically right-wing pastor of Regeneration Nashville, used his sermon last Sunday to urge those in his congregation to show the same sort of “passion” that drives radical Islamic terrorists to be willing to “die for their beliefs.”

Christmas, a Trump–loving MAGA pastor and conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly declared that God will soon start killing “wicked” elected officials, got himself worked up during his sermon by falsely asserting that the state of Vermont recently passed legislation declaring that “it is legal, up to 21 days after full-term birth, that you can kill a baby.”

“I am at war with evil!” Christmas ranted. “This is one preacher that is not backing down. I can tell you this: I will give my life for the Gospel.”

“You want to know why the Muslim faith has had its advancements?” he continued. “It’s because the Muslims were willing to die for their beliefs. They were willing to strap bombs to their chest. They believed in the afterlife.”

“God, give us some men and women that will get a hold of some passion in their spirit and say, ‘I will lay down my life for the Gospel!'” Christmas thundered. “This thing was born in blood.”

 

Understand these are Christmas's actual words.

And let's remember that downtown Nashville was hit by a terrorist suicide bombing not more than a few years ago.

So yeah, if I were the FBI, I'd absolutely be keeping an eye on this asshole and everyone attending sermons of suicidal, terrorist hatred like this.

Sunday Long Read: Reading, Writing, Religion

In the wake of Roberts Court decisions like Hobby Lobby and Kennedy v Bremerton on religion in schools and in the workplace, and Texas allowing schools to dump mental health counselors for school chaplains and forcing schools to display the Ten Commandments, the crusade to put Christianity into all public schools is well on the way to becoming reality as this week's Sunday Long Read recounts.

 

After more than a decade living out of state, Jennifer Russell and her husband decided it was time to return home to northwest Louisiana. The couple, both in their early thirties at the time, wanted their two children to get to know their grandparents and to benefit from good public schools. In early 2015, lured by inexpensive rental housing on the Air Force base in the area, the family moved to a town in Bossier Parish, across the Red River from Shreveport, where they’d both grown up. Russell’s daughter started kindergarten that fall; her one-year-old son began day care. At first, her daughter adjusted well to the move and made friends. “It was what every parent wants,” Russell told me.

She had no inkling that her family’s religious identity would prove to be a complication. Russell and her husband both grew up Southern Baptist, a conservative, evangelical Protestant denomination that dominates this area of the Bible Belt. They went to the same church, in fact, and had met because their parents became friends. But she’d abandoned the Baptist church as a young adult, after studying world religions in college and starting to doubt what her faith promoted. Following graduate school and during her first years working as a psychologist, her skepticism grew. It seemed to her, she told me, that believers felt they had a “monopoly on truth, that their way was the only way.” Her husband, too, wanted a more progressive form of Christianity. After moving from Wichita Falls, Texas, the family joined a Unitarian church in Shreveport, a progressive house of worship with Christian roots that incorporates the traditions of many religions.

The first signs of trouble began a few years after the family’s move. Russell’s daughter, who did not want her name used to maintain her privacy, came home from school one day with the report that some boys on the school bus had interrogated her and other children about their religion. They asked each student, “Are you a believer in God?” The girl, who liked attending her Unitarian church but did not believe in God, recalled that she told her questioners, “‘No.’ And they said, ‘You’re going to hell.’”

Russell was dismayed, but she wanted her daughter to respect others’ views. She told her, “There are kids who believe that…. You want to be respectful, but it doesn’t mean he’s necessarily right, either.” Russell and her husband, who did not want to be interviewed for fear of backlash in the workplace, advised their daughter that if someone started talking to her about her faith, to change the subject, put on headphones, or read.

Russell felt it was harder to ignore teachers. In fourth grade, at least twice a week, the girl’s teacher said a prayer aloud in class. Following their teacher’s lead, some children clasped their hands and bowed their heads. “It was a lot about Jesus and God and help us through the day and stuff like that,” said Russell’s daughter, who sat in the back of the class and tried to tune it out.

Increasingly incensed, Russell felt her daughter’s experiences were symptomatic of the school system’s extensive promotion of evangelical Christianity, also evident in routine prayers at school board meetings, graduations and sporting events. “Teachers, administrators, other staff of the schools — they set the temperature in terms of what was accepted,” she told me. Worried that her daughter would become more of a target for her peers, however, she did not complain directly to Bossier Parish schools. Instead, Russell and her husband began to contemplate moving away.

Other families, however, did complain. In 2018, four parents from three families, listed as Does 1–4, sued Bossier Parish schools for promoting religion and coercing students to participate in prayer. They argued that the prayer was a violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which calls for a separation of church and state. The lawsuit listed more than 100 church/state violations, including teacher-led prayer in classrooms, prayer at sporting events and faculty- and administrator-led prayer at graduations. “It was all flatly unconstitutional,” said Richard Katskee, the former legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, who represented the Bossier Parish plaintiffs.

The school system acknowledged most of the incidents, but denied that all of the schools’ actions were unlawful. The following year, a federal court in Louisiana sided with the plaintiffs, and ordered the nearly-23,000-student school district to stop promoting religion.

As Bossier Parish school district was ordered to change, however, the legal landscape was changing, too. A different lawsuit was winding its way through the courts, backed by organizations that had long supported school prayer, over the right of a high school football coach to pray on the field after games. Last June, the Supreme Court ruled 6–3 in favor of the coach, Joe Kennedy, who sued the Bremerton, Washington, school district after it disciplined him when he refused to end the practice of praying at the 50-yard line following games. The majority opinion in Kennedy v. Bremerton stated that the coach had a right to freely exercise his religion because he was praying outside his coaching duties. The decision described Kennedy’s prayer as a quiet, personal act. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a dissent, noted that for years the coach had led students in locker-room prayers. Often, students from both teams joined him on the field in his prayers. Katskee, who represented the Bremerton school district, told me that students who declined to participate “got harassed and harangued.”

In Bossier Parish schools, parents, teachers, and students told me, the court order stalled, but didn’t entirely stop, Christian prayer. Now, with a Supreme Court friendly to school prayer, educators and state lawmakers around the country are testing the limits of the strict separation of church and state written into the Constitution. In a handful of states, including Kentucky, Montana and Texas, lawmakers have recently proposed or passed measures attempting to promote faith in schools. In Kentucky, for example, the legislature passed a law in March that would allow teachers to share their religious beliefs in school. A Kentucky lawmaker who sponsored the House bill told local television station Lex 18 that he hoped the measure would “embolden these Christian teachers” who may have been afraid to express themselves in public schools.

Meanwhile, attorneys from organizations that often handle complaints about school prayer told me they are receiving word that the Kennedy ruling is leading to more open proselytizing by teachers. In some states, one attorney said, teachers have set up prayer clubs for students and delivered sermons in class. In at least one case, a school district cited the Kennedy ruling as the reason for prayer at school board meetings.

 

What "personal religious freedom" is being used for of course is the camel's nose under the tent, to allow evangelical Christians to proselytize in schools with the goal of converting kids.

There's no reason to believe this Supreme Court isn't going to eventually decide that Christianity, or the dark, warped, hate-filled version we see many Republicans practicing today, will become not only allowed but encouraged and required in public schools in the very near future.

It's going to be a mess, but it's going to happen, almost certainly.