Last Call For Fleeing The Shinking Ship, Con't

With Missouri Sen. Roy Blount's announcement this week, five Republican senators have now announced their retirement ahead of 2022 contests, and that means Democrats have the opportunity to pick them off as votes who no longer need to fear Republican primary cultists, and to take those seats in 20 months.

This is not the way Republicans wanted to begin the year.

Missouri’s Roy Blunt on Monday became the fifth Republican senator to announce he will not seek reelection, a retirement wave that portends an ugly campaign season next year and gives Democrats fresh hope in preserving their razor-thin Senate majority.

History suggests Republicans are still well-positioned to reclaim at least one chamber of Congress next year. But officials in both parties agree that the surge of GOP departures will make the Republicans’ challenge more difficult in the Senate.

“Any time you lose an incumbent, it’s bad news,” said Republican strategist Rick Tyler, who briefly worked for failed Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin nearly a decade ago. “Missouri’s not necessarily a safe state for Republicans. Democrats have won there.”

The 71-year-old Blunt’s exit is a reminder of how the nation’s politics have shifted since the rise of Donald Trump. Blunt and his retiring GOP colleagues from Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Alabama represent an old guard who fought for conservative policies but sometimes resisted the deeply personal attacks and uneven governance that dominated the Trump era.

Their departures will leave a void likely to be filled by a new generation of Republicans more willing to embrace Trumpism — or by Democrats.

Several Missouri Republicans are expected to seek the nomination to replace Blunt, but none will be more divisive than former Gov. Eric Greitens, who resigned in 2018 amid the fallout of a sex scandal and ethics investigation. Missouri’s Republican base has since rallied behind him, believing he was unfairly prosecuted.

Greitens was considering running for the GOP nomination even before Blunt’s announcement. He is expected to announce his candidacy as soon as Tuesday morning.

Two leading Missouri Democrats, former Sen. Claire McCaskill and 2016 Senate candidate Jason Kander, both said they would not run for the open seat.

 

Greitens in, McCaskill out. Should be a hell of a fight, but can Democrats convince people to vote for them instead of even worse Republicans?

GOP Going After Gupta

Having collected Neera Tanden as a trophy, Republicans are eager to take out yet another Asian-American from Joe Biden's cabinet, this time they are after Deputy Attorney General nominee Vanita Gupta, who like Tanden has been a long-time activist foe of the GOP before joining the Biden team. The difference this time is that Gupta has far more allies.

Two decades ago, a former rodeo cowboy went undercover in Tulia, Texas. He targeted dozens of Black residents and accused them of selling small amounts of cocaine. He lied on the stand. Some defendants received sentences of decades in prison on his word alone.

The Lone Star State’s attorney general named the former rodeo cowboy as lawman of the year. But not long after, a young attorney weeks into her job at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund flew down to Texas, where she launched a campaign to fight for the defendants’ freedom and eventually secured a multimillion-dollar settlement.

On Tuesday, that civil rights lawyer, Vanita Gupta, will appear before the Senate Judiciary Committee for her confirmation hearing for the No. 3 position in the Justice Department. The former Texas attorney general who named that racist informant “lawman of the year,” Republican Sen. John Cornyn, will be on the other side of the dais. And he’ll probably have some questions about law enforcement and race.

It doesn’t take much imagination to see why Gupta, President Joe Biden’s nominee for associate attorney general, is drawing the ire of some Republican senators. Biden’s nominees for attorney general and deputy attorney general ― Merrick Garland and Lisa Monaco, respectively ― are both white and have spent their careers predominately on the bench and in law enforcement. Gupta, the daughter of immigrants from India, built her career as a civil rights advocate, the type of background that has doomed Justice Department nominees as recently as 2014.

Unsurprisingly, some GOP senators have signaled that they plan to attack and oppose Gupta. They’ll claim it’s because they “back the blue.” The only problem? “The blue” backs Gupta.

Policing leaders, as HuffPost first reported last month, have pushed back on the baseless “law and order”-style attacks that a D.C. conservative group launched against Gupta. Her nomination is supported by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, the Major County Sheriffs of America, the Major Cities Chiefs Association, the National Sheriffs’ Association and even the National Fraternal Order of Police, which endorsed Donald Trump twice.

Gupta has received even more support from top law enforcement officials in recent days. In a letter obtained by HuffPost, Democratic attorneys general from 22 states wrote that Gupta was “guided by a commitment to public safety,” had “worked to build partnerships across the political spectrum,” and “has a long history of working with law enforcement agencies, elected leaders, correctional officials, and advocates from many different viewpoints to build support for policies that will make our criminal justice system more just.” They also wrote that Gupta was a “smart, honest lawyer who would serve the Attorney General and the U.S. government with shared focus and mission: equal justice under the law.”

 

It will be far harder to sink Gupta because unlike Tanden, she hasn't been going after Democratic Blue Dogs like Joe Manchin, who was more than happy to personally destroy her out of spite (and Tanden going after Manchin's daughter, a former drugmaker CEO who was responsible for jacking up the price of EpiPens.)

 

We'll see how ugly this gets, but odds are very good that Gupta has 50 votes and will be confirmed like her soon-to-be boss, Merrick Garland.

 

Where's My Forty Acres And A Mule, Con't

Biden's American Rescue Plan contains billions for aid to Black, Latino, Asian and Indigenous farmers, who have been utterly crushed by the Trump Depression and by the Great Recession before that...and by American history before that.

A little-known element of President Biden’s massive stimulus relief package would pay billions of dollars to disadvantaged farmers — benefiting Black farmers in a way that some experts say no legislation has since the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Of the $10.4 billion in the American Rescue Plan that will support agriculture, approximately half would go to disadvantaged farmers, according to estimates from the Farm Bureau, an industry organization. About a quarter of disadvantaged farmers are Black. The money would provide debt relief as well as grants, training, education and other forms of assistance aimed at acquiring land.

While it’s a fraction of the $1.9 trillion bill that passed in the Senate on Saturday, advocates say it still represents a step toward righting a wrong after a century of mistreatment of Black farmers by the government and others. Some say it is a form of reparations for African Americans who have suffered a long history of racial oppression.

“This is the most significant piece of legislation with respect to the arc of Black land ownership in this country,” said Tracy Lloyd McCurty, executive director of the Black Belt Justice Center, which provides legal representation to Black farmers.

 

Historically, Black farmers have all been rendered extinct by powerful white farm interests.

Black farmers in America have lost more than 12 million acres of farmland over the past century, mostly since the 1950s, a result of what agricultural experts and advocates for Black farmers say is a combination of systemic racism, biased government policy, and social and business practices that have denied African Americans equitable access to markets.

Discrimination started a century ago with a series of federal Homestead Acts that offered mainly White settlers deeply subsidized land. Since then, local U.S. Department of Agriculture offices charged with distributing loans have frequently been found to deny Black farmers access to credit and to ignore or delay loan applications. Many Black farmers don’t have clear title to their land, which makes them ineligible for certain USDA loans to purchase livestock or cover the cost of planting, and they have seldom benefited from subsidy payments or trade mitigation compensation — almost all of President Donald Trump’s $28 billion bailout for those affected by the China trade war went to White farmers.

Today, the average farm operated by an African American is about 100 acres, compared with the national average of about 440 acres, according to the last farm census. The Center for American Progress found that in 2017, the average full-time White farmer brought in $17,190 in farm income, while the average full-time Black farmer made just $2,408.

Many civil rights advocates say the USDA’s own practices have resulted in the loss of land and generational wealth for Black families.

“For generations, socially disadvantaged farmers have struggled to fully succeed due to systemic discrimination and a cycle of debt,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said in a statement Saturday. “On top of the economic pain caused by the pandemic, farmers from socially disadvantaged communities are dealing with a disproportionate share of Covid-19 infection rates, hospitalizations, death and economic hurt.”

Of the 3.4 million farmers in the United States today, only 45,000 are Black, according to the USDA, down from 1 million a century ago. Black farmland ownership peaked in 1910 at 16 to 19 million acres, about 14 percent of total agricultural land, according to the Census of Agriculture. A century later, 90 percent of that land had been lost. White farmers now account for 98 percent of the acres, according to USDA data.

 

Read that again.

98% of farmland in America is owned by white farmers.

Ninety-eight percent.

Last Call For Vaccination Nation, Con't

CDC head Dr. Rochelle Walensky offered new COVID-19 agency guidance on Monday for small gatherings of fully-vaccinated people, saying that masks should still be considered a precaution even if you are vaccinated and are around others who are vaccinated as well.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Monday issued long-awaited advice to Americans fully vaccinated against Covid-19, freeing them to take some liberties that the unvaccinated should not, including gathering indoors in small groups without precautions while still adhering to masking and distancing in public spaces.

The agency offered good news to grandparents who have refrained from seeing children and grandchildren for the past year, saying that vaccinated people may visit indoors with unvaccinated people from a single household so long as no one among the unvaccinated is at risk for severe disease if infected with the coronavirus.

In practice, that means fully vaccinated grandparents may visit unvaccinated healthy adult children and healthy grandchildren of the same household without masks or physical distancing. But the visit should be local — the agency still does not recommend travel for any American, vaccinated or not.

The agency’s recommendations arrived as state officials move to reopen businesses and schools amid a drop in virus cases and deaths. Federal health officials repeatedly have warned against loosening restrictions too quickly, including lifting mask mandates, fearing that the moves may set the stage for a fourth surge of infections and deaths. According to a New York Times database, the seven-day average of new cases was more than 58,700, as of Sunday, a level that remains near the peaks reported last summer.

“With more and more people getting vaccinated, each day we are starting to turn a corner, and as more Americans are vaccinated, a growing body of evidence now tells us that there are some activities that fully vaccinated people can resume at low risk to themselves,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the C.D.C. director, said at a White House news conference on Monday.

But, she added, “While we work to quickly vaccinate people more and more each day, we have to see this through.”

The new advice is couched in caveats and leaves room for amendments as new data become available. The guidance is a “first step,” Dr. Walensky said. “It is not our final destination.”

The agency did not rule out the possibility that fully vaccinated individuals might develop asymptomatic infections and spread the virus inadvertently to others, and urged those who are vaccinated to continue practicing certain precautions.

 

In other words, even if the vaccine is fully rolled out to everyone tomorrow, the reality is that masks will still be necessary for some. And with the fact that a third of Americans are still refusing the vaccine, it may be a long time before we return to any semblance of normality. 

Things are getting better, but we're still seeing 50,000+ cases per week, back where we were during the July 4th spike. We have a long road to go still, but now we have a path to get there.

That simply wasn't possibly under Trump. Never forget that.

Getting Busted On The Filibuster

House Democratic Majority Whip Jim Clyburn is straight-up calling out Dem Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, saying they will be responsible for the failure of the For The People voting rights act to pass the Senate if they allow the filibuster to remain and Republicans to kill it.

One of the most powerful Democrats in Washington has issued a frank warning to members of his own party, saying they need to find a way to pass major voting rights legislation or they will lose control of Congress.

The comments from Jim Clyburn, the House majority whip, came days after the House of Representatives approved a sweeping voting rights bill that would enact some of the most dramatic expansions of the right to vote since the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Even though Democrats also control the US Senate, the bill is unlikely to pass the chamber because of a procedural rule, the filibuster, that requires 60 votes to advance legislation.

In an interview with the Guardian this week, Clyburn called out two moderate Democratic senators, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who have opposed getting rid of the filibuster. Republicans across the country are advancing sweeping measures to curtail voting rights and letting expansive voting rights legislation die would harm Democrats, Clyburn said.

“There’s no way under the sun that in 2021 that we are going to allow the filibuster to be used to deny voting rights. That just ain’t gonna happen. That would be catastrophic,” he said. “If Manchin and Sinema enjoy being in the majority, they had better figure out a way to get around the filibuster when it comes to voting and civil rights.”

Clyburn issued that warning ahead of the 56th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the day in 1965 when law enforcement officers brutally beat voting rights activists in Selma, Alabama.

Clyburn and other House Democrats have been hoping the early days of Joe Biden’s administration will be marked by passage of a bill named after the late congressman John Lewis of Georgia, a civil rights hero who was nearly killed on Bloody Sunday. That measure would restore a key provision of the Voting Rights Act, gutted by the supreme court in 2013, that required places with a history of voting discrimination to get election changes cleared by the federal government before they took effect.

“Here we are talking about the Voting Rights Act he worked so hard for and that’s named in his honor and they’re going to filibuster it to death? That ain’t gonna happen,” Clyburn said.

For his part, Joe Manchin seems to think the For The People Act can somehow be passed through budget reconciliation. 

Manchin (D-W.Va.) has previously supported efforts to require senators to filibuster by talking on the chamber floor in order to hold up a bill, an idea he raised on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“If you want to make it a little bit more painful, make him stand there and talk,” Manchin said. “I'm willing to look at any way we can, but I'm not willing to take away the involvement of the minority.”

However, Manchin did not rule out using the budget reconciliation process to pass a voting rights bill with a simple majority, keeping the door open to a potential workaround for Democrats to push through a voting overhaul while preserving the filibuster. The House on Wednesday narrowly passed a sweeping package of election-related reforms, a proposal they've given the symbolically important designation of H.R. 1.

It's not clear how Manchin envisioned that H.R. 1 could potentially be passed through reconciliation, as it is not budget-related, and Democrats' proposed minimum wage increase was tripped up by the process' strict rules and left on the cutting-room floor.

But Manchin said Democrats need to meaningfully engage with Republicans before going down that path, which they utilized late last week to pass a $1.9 trillion Covid relief package without a single GOP Senate vote.

“I'm not willing to go into reconciliation until we at least get bipartisanship or get working together or allow the Senate to do its job,” Manchin said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

I don't know what Manchin is on, but there's not going to be a single Republican senator to vote for expanding voting rights in any fashion.  He's out of his damn mind. He also thinks he'll get 60 votes on a major new infrastructure bill -- as long as Joe Biden raises trillions in taxes to pay for it -- and that Republicans will agree to it.

And as for Sinema, well, who knows?

Cuomo's #MeToo Moment, Con't

NY Dem Gov. Andrew Cuomo says there's "no way" he will resign with "unproven" multiple sexual harassment allegations, saying calls for his resignation from state lawmakers are "undemocratic".

In a potentially crippling defection in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s efforts to maintain control amid a sexual harassment scandal, the powerful Democratic leader of the New York State Senate declared on Sunday that the governor should resign “for the good of the state.”

The stinging rebuke from the Senate leader, Andrea Stewart-Cousins — along with a similar sentiment from the Assembly speaker, Carl E. Heastie, who questioned the “governor’s ability to continue to lead this state” — suggested that Mr. Cuomo, a third-term Democrat, had lost his party’s support in the State Capitol, and cast doubt on his ability to withstand the political fallout.

Once hailed as a pandemic hero and potential presidential contender, the governor has seen his political future spiral downward over eight perilous days in the wake of a New York Times report about Charlotte Bennett, a former aide to Mr. Cuomo.

In a series of interviews with The Times, Ms. Bennett, 25, said that Mr. Cuomo, 63, had asked her invasive personal questions last spring about her sex life, including whether she had slept with older men, and whether she thought age made a difference in relationships.

Ms. Bennett is one of five women who have come forward in recent days with allegations of sexual harassment or inappropriate behavior against Mr. Cuomo, with one predating his tenure as governor.

Mr. Cuomo, however, was adamantly resisting calls for his resignation, arguing he was elected by the people, not “by politicians.”

“I’m not going to resign because of allegations,” the governor said, calling the notion “anti-democratic,” and a violation of the due process clause of the Constitution. “There is no way I resign.”

The governor’s statements on Sunday afternoon came not long after Ms. Stewart-Cousins had informed Mr. Cuomo in a phone call that she was about to call for him to step down, according to a person with knowledge of the conversation; the governor then quickly convened his own news conference to pre-empt her announcement.

He told reporters that his remarks were directed at “some legislators who suggest that I resign.”

Undeterred, Ms. Stewart-Cousins fired back, releasing her statement not long after Mr. Cuomo concluded his news conference.

“We need to govern without daily distraction,” said Ms. Stewart-Cousins, citing the allegations of sexual harassment and a “toxic work environment,” and his handling of the state’s nursing homes during the pandemic. “Governor Cuomo must resign.”

Ms. Stewart-Cousins is the most prominent New York State official to call for Mr. Cuomo’s resignation, and her statement carries significance: Her Senate would be the jury for any impeachment trial of the governor, if such an action were passed by the Assembly.

It also carries symbolic weight: In 2008, when Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned during a prostitution scandal, his decision was partially precipitated by a loss of support from Albany’s legislative leaders.

Mr. Heastie did not call for Mr. Cuomo to resign, but suggested that it was time for him “to seriously consider whether he can effectively meet the needs of the people of New York.”

 

I don't think he can effectively meet the needs of anyone other than Andrew Cuomo.

 

Donald Trump decided to tough it out and he stayed in power after dozens of harassment claims, and then voters removed him. I'd hope New York voters would do the same, but frankly I think that should it become clear Cuomo will be impeached and removed, he'll step down well before an election.

We'll see what happens, but every day Cuomo stays in office is another day it becomes increasingly impossible to punish Republicans for their wrongdoing.

StupidiNews!

• French lawmaker and billionaire Olivier Dassault has died in a helicopter crash at age 69, the newspaper and aerospace group owner's death was mourned as "a great loss" by President Macron.
• Several powerful explosions rocked a military camp in the city of Bata in Equatorial Guinea according to government news sources, officials say it may be a possible armory explosion.
• Trade unions in Myanmar are calling for a "total strike" as a party member of the deposed National League for Democracy party died in military junta custody over the weekend.
• A Saudi oil site was attacked early Monday, sending Brent Sea Crude oil prices above $70 and to their highest level since 2018.
• Microsoft is warning organizations to patch vulnerabilities in the email servers, saying that as many as 30,000 corporate domains could already be compromised by hackers.
  

Last Call For America Goes Viral, Con't

Nearly 70% of Americans approve of President Joe Biden's handling of COVID-19 so far in a new ABC News poll as the administration is rolling out tens of millions of vaccine doses per week now, but Americans are split on two specific topics: reopening schools to in-class learning, and the difficulty of getting the vaccine for those who want it.

A new ABC News/Ipsos poll finds that even as American concern about the coronavirus wanes, most believe public health restrictions, like mask mandates or limits on public gatherings, are being loosened too quickly. However, opinions on re-opening schools and businesses are more mixed, reflecting the public’s desire to return to a semblance of normalcy. As the country navigates the hoped-for end of the pandemic, two-thirds of the American public continue to approve of the way Joe Biden is handling the coronavirus response. 

Two-thirds (68%) of Americans approve of Biden’s handling of the pandemic.
Support for Biden breaks clearly along partisan lines with virtually all Democrats (98%) approving compared to only a third (35%) of Republicans. However, that compares favorably to the last ABC/Ipsos poll asking about former President Trump’s handling of the pandemic when 79% Republicans approved compared to only 4% of Democrats.

Concern about being infected with the coronavirus is down from last fall. However, most Americans believe public health restrictions are being lifted too quickly, reflecting continued support for measures to limit the pandemic. 

Just under three-quarters (72%) of Americans are very or somewhat concerned about being infected with the coronavirus, down from 78% in October and 89% in April of 2020. 

A majority of Americans say that mask mandates (56%) and restrictions on public gatherings (50%) are being loosened too quickly. The remainder are split roughly equally between believing these rules are being relaxed at the right pace or too slowly. 

Attitudes on re-opening schools and businesses are more split with roughly a third on each believing it is happening too quickly, at the right pace, or too slowly. 

Over a quarter of American adults (28%) report receiving at least one dose of the vaccine. Another 15% have tried to schedule an appointment but have not been able to receive a shot yet. 

Among those who have or have tried to get the vaccine, about half (48%) describe the process of finding and registering for the vaccine appointment to be very or somewhat difficult.

 

Republicans politicizing the pandemic from day one has greatly harmed the country, hurt students, teachers, business owners, workers, you name it. I still don't expect the majority of Republicans to admit to getting the vaccine, ever.

But they will. Like Trump, they'll do it, and never tell anyone, and then lie about it.

Texas's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Racist Texans, infuriated by a Mexican restaurant's decision to require masks, called ICE to raid the place because as we all know, businesses have not business telling customers what to do when it inconveniences white Republicans, and all Mexican restaurants are staffed by "illegals" and stuff.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit and restaurant owners faced difficult decisions, the Richards family that owns Picos, a Mexican restaurant in Houston, quickly adapted to continue sharing their Latin cuisine — from selling to-go margarita kits to stationing a mariachi band at the curbside pickup.

This week, after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said Tuesday that he would rescind the statewide mask mandate while the vast majority of residents remain unvaccinated, the tough choice to enforce public health guidance fell to business owners, and Picos announced it would continue requiring masks. But, after such a challenging year, the reaction to their decision was disheartening, co-owner Monica Richards said: Several people sent hateful messages through social media and called the restaurant, threatening to report staffers to Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“It was just horrific,” Richards said. “People don’t understand unless you’re in our business what it felt like, how hard it was to go through everything we went through during covid. For people to be negative toward us for trying to remain safe, so that this doesn’t continue to happen, just makes zero sense to us.”

Abbott’s decision to lift the mandate will make Texas the largest state to not require masks, which has not come easily for many businesses that are navigating enforcement mask rules to protect employees and customers while facing backlash. Masks, which health experts say are among the most effective ways to curb the spread of the coronavirus, have become a partisan symbol, with one conservative group planning a mask burning party for March 10, the day the order is lifted.

When the mandate is rescinded, the majority of Texas restaurant owners say they will continue requiring staff to wear masks, but they are split on making the same demands of customers, according to the Texas Restaurant Association, which informally surveyed its members this week. The association’s updated guidance recommends restaurants mandate employees wear masks and encourages guests to do the same, spokeswoman Anna Tauzin said.

If a restaurant requires masks, it is unfair to argue the choice infringes on business, Tauzin said.

“This is a decision business owners are making, and it’s right for them,” Tauzin said. “For a group that touts personal responsibility is something key to good stewardship of your business, it seems strange that they might criticize or throw insults at people who are trying to do just that. It’s alarming.”

There have not been many instances reported to the association of harmful fallout for businesses that are continuing to require masks since Abbott’s announcement, such as what Picos faced. Yet restaurants have endured a share of violence and harassment this year as other businesses have remained closed.

 

And these assholes are doing this because they feel like asking them to wear masks is exactly the gay panic of 30 years ago, like denying service to Black folk at lunch counters 60 years ago, or making Jews wear stars 90 years ago.

On top of that, these assholes are willing to threaten and are definitely willing to cause physical harm, as January 6th showed us.

All over masks.

Sunday Long Read: The Lost Year

It's been one year since schools across America shut down to in-class learning in states across the country, and in Denver, Colorado school systems are still teaching kids over Zoom as classrooms remain empty. It's been a lost year for an entire generation of American kids, parents, teachers and more.

One day this past winter, a Denver Public Schools (DPS) fifth grader phoned a therapist who was helping her cope with her anxiety. She missed her friends and needed to talk. A single mom a few miles south in Littleton called her teenage sons from work one weekday, just to make sure they were doing OK with everything. In northeastern Colorado, a mother couldn’t get through the day without worrying about her four children, one of whom was in middle school and recently had asked the family’s Alexa device for advice on how to put an end to his suicidal thoughts.

The particular struggles for parents and children over the past year may be different, but they’re also awfully familiar and have the same root cause: pandemic-induced remote learning.

Jada Williams* knows the challenges. She’d seen her daughter’s slow academic slide begin late this past summer, just weeks into a school year that had started with students at home because of the novel coronavirus. After months of remote learning, DPS gave her 10-year-old daughter, Nia,* the option of in-person learning at east Denver’s Montclair School of Academics and Enrichment this past winter. Williams declined.

It was “the hardest decision of my life,” Williams, who is in her late thirties and Black, says. She knew how important it was for Nia to be in a classroom, but she also knew the risks associated with COVID-19, which has hit Black communities at disproportionately high rates. Williams worked two jobs, and she didn’t have the luxury of missing a paycheck if she got sick. Ultimately, sending Nia back to in-person schooling “wasn’t worth the risk” to her family’s health or their financial situation.

Williams watched her daughter’s reading aptitude slip each night as the two read before bedtime. Nia was a hands-on kid, so it was inevitable she’d eventually become lonely and disengaged from her schoolwork. Williams always believed her daughter’s situation would be temporary, but a sense of helplessness seized her as the pandemic dragged on through the summer and into the fall and winter. “I never imagined,” she says, “that this is what school would look like.”

Williams, who also has a three-year-old son, didn’t have any cushion in her budget to hire a tutor for her daughter. Nia cried when she learned of her mother’s decision to keep her home, where she would log in to school each morning as her mother took calls for her day job as an eye-examination scheduler for a managed care company. “How do you tell a child you’re keeping her from her teacher and her friends?” says Williams, who also cuts hair to supplement her income. “I want her to go back so bad. I don’t have a good answer for anything. She keeps asking me when she’s finally going to see her teachers and her friends. I keep saying, ‘I don’t know. I don’t know.’ How much longer can I do that?”

Nearly 100 miles north of the Williams’ home, 14-year-old Brett Shaw* sat hunched over a laptop at his kitchen table, trying to ignore his mother. His first-semester final exams were to begin the next day. Snow was piled around his family’s rustic, split-level home in the hills west of Fort Collins. It was mid-December, but indoors it looked much the same as it had every other day during the pandemic, with Brett wearing a pair of shorts, sitting next to his two younger sisters as they logged into their classes.

Brett—wiry and friendly, with a thin face and a wisp of black hair peeking out from under the back of his Dallas Cowboys beanie—had earned mostly B’s and C’s in middle school the year before. As with so many American children since then, the pandemic had upended most everything in Brett’s life. Both of his parents had temporarily lost their jobs during the previous nine months, which had been devastating to the family’s finances. Brett rarely saw his friends. He loved competitive wrestling, but he hadn’t worked out with his team in months. Of the roughly 80 days that made up Brett’s first semester, only 10 had been in an actual classroom. “I barely got to know my way around,” he said as he logged onto his English class, where the students were studying Romeo and Juliet. With one week remaining in his first freshman semester, Brett was in a bad spot academically. He had three D’s, one F, a bunch of unfinished work, and a frustrated mother trying to hold things together.

Over in the family room, Brett’s mom, Kelly Shaw,* sat at her desk. Her job as a medical coder for a hospital gave her flexibility to work from home when her husband returned to his full-time job in construction. Like most parents working through the pandemic, Kelly, who is 41, was fighting doubts about herself. One day, she’d worry she was neglecting her work and focusing too much on her children’s schooling; the next, she was certain she was ignoring her children’s schooling and focusing too much on her work. She thought about bills that would soon come due and was often angry that her school district hadn’t opened its high schools. “I feel like I’m the one who’s failing,” she said.

Kelly opened Brett’s school portal, which gave her access to attendance records, grades, and assignments. She took a deep breath. Her back stiffened. It was as if she were preparing for a crash landing.

 

I'm hoping schools will be fully back to normal soon, and by August at the absolute latest, the beginning of a new school year. But I can't help but think that it'll be a long time before we fully know the effect of the Lost Year of COVID on America's kids. 

It didn't have to be this way, but Trump and the GOP made it so.

Never forget that.

Last Call For President Biden Beats President Manchin

The Senate passage of the American Rescue Plan Act is in the books, with both Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema voting for the final bill 50-49, as Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan was out of town.

Chuck Schumer put it bluntly to Joe Manchin: If you side with Republicans, you could jeopardize everything.

The West Virginia senator was delaying consideration of President Joe Biden's $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan as he mulled whether to back a GOP bid to shave more than a month off the bill's $300 in extra weekly unemployment benefits. Democrats thought they already had corralled Manchin for their more generous proposal.

“We had what we thought was an agreement. But then Joe Manchin looked at it and was unsure,” Schumer explained in an interview as he recalled Friday’s hectic rush to rewrite the massive Covid aid bill. “If Manchin would have approved the [GOP] amendment, the bill probably couldn't have passed the House. And I told him that. And he understood that.”

Manchin gave Schumer the 50th vote on Saturday afternoon, sending one of the largest emergency spending bills in American history on a glide path to Biden’s desk sometime next week. Despite the tension and GOP jeers sparked by Friday's delay, the 50-49 Senate vote was a crucial victory for the New York Democrat. Schumer has graduated from four years commanding the Senate minority against Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump to the successful leadership of a motley but mostly cohesive majority.

Passage of the Covid aid bill validated an argument Schumer has made for more years now, that Democrats erred by trying to bring Republicans on board for a big relief plan during the last economic crisis in 2009. This time around, Republicans weren’t “even in the ballpark” when they offered a $600 billion spending bill as a compromise, said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).

So instead of searching for bipartisan support and potentially watering down a historic bill that beefs up pensions, health care and crucial unemployment benefits, Schumer rolled the dice on total party unity — and succeeded.

“If anyone thought it was going to be just a smooth path without any bumps in the road, they don't know how big and important this legislation is and how diverse our caucus is," Schumer said Saturday.

Schumer said he never doubted the package would pass. But its course was not pretty. At times Republicans insisted Biden had to lean heavily on Manchin to stay in the fold (they talked once) and that the Senate would have to recess for Democrats to reorganize after Friday's impasse. Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) even predicted Democrats might have to swallow the Republican plan on unemployment benefits.

What did happen were multiple renegotiations between Schumer and his moderates, who forced three changes just this week to the House-passed bill. The Senate's version phases out stimulus checks to some middle-class earners and shifts around the unemployment benefits. Before the final vote, the chamber stalled out several times — including on Friday for what is now the longest vote in modern Senate history.

“This last 24 hours was really chaotic. If this was the first big test, I don’t think he … crushed it. It was a very undisciplined, unorganized process,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune (R-S.D.) of Schumer.

Yet Democrats argue that the public won't remember Friday's Manchin-infused delay, the partisan vote total or the bumpy process. They will remember that Schumer got Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Manchin to hang together for an economic relief bill that many in the party believe is the most progressive legislation in decades.

“Schumer gets a lot of credit,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who said Saturday was his best day as a senator in his 14-year career. “Democrats realized it doesn’t matter how the Senate lines up. What matters is to deliver what the public wants.”

Throughout the process, Schumer stayed in close contact with Biden, often talking to the president multiple times a day or to White House chief of staff Ron Klain. And 20 minutes after the rescue package passed the Senate, Biden called the majority leader personally to thank him.

After the call, Schumer appeared in as good a mood as he’s been in since thwarting Obamacare’s repeal during the Trump administration. In the interview, he propped his shoe-less feet up on an ottoman as he parried questions. Biden showered praise on him later: "When the country needed you most, Chuck, you led."

 

And while Schumer may not have had doubts, I certainly did. I've been hard on Schumer over the years and he has dropped the ball time and again. But not this time. This time, he came through.

 

Kentucky Cancel Culture

The GOP supermajority here in Kentucky's state legislature is headed for a grim harvest of really stupid legislation headed for veto overrides and becoming law even besides the purely political attempt to impeach and remove Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear from office over COVID-19 regulations.

A Republican-led legislative panel dismissed two petitions Friday calling for Gov. Andy Beshear’s impeachment but kept alive another effort by citizens seeking the Democrat’s ouster for his restrictions to combat the spread of COVID-19 in Kentucky.

The rejected petitions were the latest in a flurry of filings aiming to unseat prominent political leaders in Kentucky, an unprecedented phenomenon in the state’s recent history. Another pending petition targets the state’s Republican attorney general.

The two anti-Beshear petitions were dismissed for failing to meet statutory requirements, said Republican Rep. Jason Nemes, the committee chairman.

But the House panel renewed its request for more information from Beshear as it reviews the remaining petition, the first one filed against the governor, Nemes said. Just four Kentuckians signed that petition, though one of them signaled he wants to withdraw. All three petitions claim the governor improperly infringed on individual rights with his coronavirus-related orders.

Kentucky’s Supreme Court ruled last year that the governor had the authority to put restrictions on businesses and individuals to try to contain the coronavirus.

The House impeachment panel previously sought information from Beshear on how his virus-related ban on mass gatherings last spring was temporarily enforced against churches, a move that especially angered conservatives. The committee resubmitted its request Friday that the governor turn over emails, phone logs or other communications related to that order.

In his letter to the governor’s lawyer, Nemes said the records “may be subpoenaed” if necessary. The lack of those records has “delayed the process,” Nemes said.

Beshear’s office said a response will be submitted Monday. His general counsel previously replied that the “extraneous information” being sought “cannot form the basis for impeachment.”

The impeachment frenzy reflects a willingness by some Kentuckians to shatter long-established political norms in an increasingly bitter political divide. It follows closely on the heels of the second impeachment of former President Donald Trump.

Beshear says there are “zero grounds” for his removal and maintains his COVID-19 orders have saved lives. He portrays the petitioners seeking his ouster as anti-government extremists.

Information compiled by Johns Hopkins University shows that Kentucky has recorded 87.7 deaths per 100,000 people, the 42nd highest per-capita rate nationally and better than neighboring states.

I'm definitely used to Kentucky being 42nd in the nation out of 50 states in basically every conceivable category and criteria, but for once it's a good thing. And as far as getting rid of Beshear, well, that just makes Lt. Gov. Jackie Coleman the person in charge.

Meanwhile, that whole grim harvest of stupid legislation continues... 

A bill moving through Kentucky's Senate would make it a crime to insult or taunt a police officer during a riot. Supporters say the bill targets people who unlawfully "cross the line" but opponents call it a blatant attempt to crush protests and a violation of First Amendment rights.

Senate Bill 211 mandates up to three months' imprisonment for a person who "accosts, insults, taunts, or challenges a law enforcement officer with offensive or derisive words," or makes "gestures or other physical contact that would have a direct tendency to provoke a violent response from the perspective of a reasonable and prudent person."

A person convicted of this misdemeanor charge could also face a $250 fine and be disqualified from public assistance benefits for three months.

The bill also has a provision pushing back on the "defund the police" movement, stating that government entities that fund law enforcement agencies must "maintain and improve their respective financial support."

The bill advanced through the Senate's Veterans, Military Affairs and Public Protection committee on Thursday in a 7-3 vote, with only Republicans supporting it. It now moves to the full Senate and could be passed there as early as next week, and would then need to be passed in the House. Republicans control both chambers of Kentucky's legislature.

CBS News requested comment from state Senator David Carroll, a Republican and retired police officer who is the bill's lead sponsor. Following publication of this story, he wrote in an email, "After looking at you're headline, I don't think I have anything to say to you. I miss the time when we actually had unbiased journalists!!" [SIC]

CBS News also reached out to the staff of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, a Democrat.

Carroll told the Louisville Courier-Journal that the bill is a response to riots that broke out in many cities across the country last summer. Louisville was an epicenter for racial justice protests due to the death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman killed in March 2020 during a raid of her home by Louisville police officers.

"This country was built on lawful protest, and it's something that we must maintain — our citizens' right to do so," Carroll told the Courier-Journal. "What this deals with are those who cross the line and commit criminal acts."

The ACLU of Kentucky called the legislation "an extreme bill to stifle dissent" and said it would criminalize free speech.

 

I mean this is almost certainly going to pass, and almost certainly going to be tied up in the courts for years, and maybe that's the point. It's definitely designed to punish Black Kentuckians specifically in response to the Breonna Taylor protests, criminalizing them at the pleasure of police and allowing the state to kick people off "public assistance" for three months to put us in our place, I guess. 

When I say Republicans are white supremacist fascist assholes, this is what I mean.

Unfair And Definitely Unbalanced

After years of effectively being the propaganda arm of the Republican party pretending to be "news", FOX News is making it official, with CEO Lachlan Murdoch declaring the network's sole purpose to be the "loyal opposition" to the Biden administration.

Fox Corp. CEO Lachlan Murdoch said Thursday it is the job of Fox News to serve as the opposition to the Biden administration, stating clearly the political biases of a network that until 2017 billed itself as "fair and balanced."

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference, Murdoch said Fox News stood to benefit from Biden's presidency because the network would act as "the loyal opposition" to his administration.

"The main beneficiary of the Trump administration from a ratings point of view was MSNBC... and that’s because they were the loyal opposition," Murdoch said of the rival cable network. "That’s what our job is now with the Biden administration, and you’ll see our ratings really improve from here."

A spokesperson for NBCUniversal News Group, which includes both NBC News and MSNBC, said in response that "our role, and the role of any legitimate news organization — whether it includes an 'opinion section' or not — is to hold power to account, regardless of party." NBCUniversal is the parent company of NBC News.

Murdoch's remark is an on-the-record acknowledgement of something that has long been obvious to fans and critics but never stated so publicly by the executive leadership itself — that Fox News is firmly aligned with Republicans and the right and intends to use its platform to fight against Democrats.

Fox News has sought to cater to a conservative audience since Lachlan's father Rupert Murdoch launched the cable channel in 1996 under the leadership of Roger Ailes, the network's CEO for two decades. But up until 2017, even as its opinion hosts showed a clear bias against Democrats, Fox News billed itself as a "fair and balanced" news organization.

Fox News became an unapologetic bastion of pro-Trump rhetoric over the last five years and often downplayed negative news about Trump, choosing instead to attack his critics or stoke conservative angst about progressivism.

Many of the most notable hosts of Fox News and Fox Business Network also embraced the president's lies and conspiracy theories. Three of those individuals -- Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Jeanine Pirro -- have been named in a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit brought by voting technology company Smartmatic over false statements they made while trying to cast doubt on the integrity of the 2020 election. All three of them have filed motions to dismiss the lawsuit.

Murdoch made the remark after being asked about the network's ratings, which took a hit following the 2020 election. "Our audience was disappointed with the election results," he acknowledged, adding that the ratings had already started to normalize and would continue to go up.

 

Saves him the trouble of defending the place as a news outlet. It's propaganda, and it should be treated as such.

Last Call For Block This Tweet

Apparently, Republicans are such bastions of freedom that they want to legislate that the final word on banning social media accounts for violating terms of service through violent rhetoric or racist/sexist language would solely be up to...let me check my notes here..."The Attorney General of the Great State of Arkansas."

Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge announced legislation on Thursday that would limit who social media platforms can block from their platforms. This comes as GOP lawmakers across the country rally against big tech platforms.

The AR Voices: Combating Cancel Culture and Protecting Freedom of Speech bill states that social media sites, like Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and others would be held liable for damages when they unfairly censoring or banning someone. The bill goes on to say if the websites do not act in “good faith” they will have violated the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act (ADTPA) and can be held accountable by the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office.

“Cancel culture cannot become the norm in Arkansas, especially when our Freedom of Speech in rural America is in jeopardy,” said Attorney General Rutledge. “This legislation would allow everyone, no matter the circumstances to have an equal and fair opportunity to post online and if a social media giant does not comply, the company can be held accountable.”

In Arkansas, each violation of the Arkansas Deceptive Trade Practices Act could result in injunctions and civil penalties of up to $10,000.

Sen. Ricky Hill, R-Cabot, and Rep. Brian Evans, R- Cabot are cosponsoring HB 1647.

Republicans have called out social media platforms for censoring conservatives and showing bias in taking accounts down; especially after Facebook and Twitter suspended former President Donald Trump's accounts in January after he was accused of invoking an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

In 2018, a Republican Arkansas representative proposed a bill that would allow social media websites to be sued for removing certain religious and political posts, whether or not the platforms deem the posts to be hate speech. But the bill was withdrawn days later.

So if the Attorney General of Arkansas determines a Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, etc. account was disabled without acting in "good faith", whatever that means is apparently solely up to the AG under this statute, then a $10,000 fine per account blocked, because as we all know the Republican party only exists in 2021 to serve Donald Trump's white supremacist cult of violence. 

This is really all about revenge, with enough red states passing legislation like this, social media companies would be liable for millions in civil damages for blocking racist Republicans...but only Republicans. I'm betting Leslie Rutledge here wouldn't mind a bit if anyone left of Susan Collins was banned from Twitter or yanked from Facebook.

In the end, the GOP want to make sure their voices are heard...and ours are silenced. It's what fascists do, folks.

A Supreme Disappointment, Con't

Supreme Court Justice Amy Comey Barrett is going to be handing down decisions for decades, and nobody should be surprised that her first missive is substantially rolling back what can be disclosed under the Freedom of Information Act, because apparently the First Amendment isn't goddamn Constitutional enough.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett penned her first Supreme Court majority opinion on Thursday, writing a 7-2 decision that will shield federal agencies from having to disclose certain materials under an exception to the Freedom of Information Act. 

Barrett's debut majority opinion came in a case that was the first she heard as a justice, back on November 2. 

The case at hand concerned FOIA, a law designed to allow the public greater access to records from the government. It mandates the disclosure of documents held by a federal agency unless they fall within certain exceptions. 

On Thursday, the court narrowed the category of documents subject to release, dealing a loss to those seeking more government transparency and who argue that FOIA was meant to lift the curtain and give the public insight into a government's decision-making process. 

The Sierra Club and other groups had brought the challenge, seeking more information about an Environmental Protection Agency 2014 rule concerning the operation of cooling water intake structures and whether they would hurt protected species. 

Specifically, the groups sought records related to the US Fish and Wildlife Service's and National Marine Fisheries Service's consultations with the EPA. Although the services turned over thousands of documents, they invoked the "deliberative process privilege" for some draft opinions. 

"The deliberative process privilege protects the draft biological opinions at issue here because they reflect a preliminary view -- not a final decision -- about the likely effect of the EPA's proposed rule on endangered species," Barrett wrote. She said the drafts by the agencies never had final approval, hadn't been sent to the EPA and were "predecisional and deliberative."

 

Never ask how the sausage is made, it's "predecisional and deliberative". Disappointed in Elena Kagan, too, as she joined the six conservatives.

 

Still, expect decades of this from Barrett.