Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida's abortion ban supposedly has an exception for non-viable fetal abnormalities, but in practice, doctors and hospitals in the state won't provide that type of care because Republican have made the guidelines for what constitutes such a condition so vague that no medical professionals will risk penalties that include prison and permanent loss of medical license.

So we have forced-birth nightmares like the story of Milo, who lived for 99 minutes after being born without kidneys.

 

Milo Evan Dorbert drew his first and last breath on the evening of March 3. The unusual complications in his mother’s pregnancy tested the interpretation of Florida’s new abortion law.

Deborah Dorbert discovered she was pregnant in August. Her early appointments suggested the baby was thriving, and she looked forward to welcoming a fourth member to the family. It didn’t occur to her that fallout from the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to overturn a half-century constitutional right to abortion would affect them.

A routine ultrasound halfway through her pregnancy changed all that.

Deborah and her husband, Lee, learned in late November that their baby had Potter syndrome, a rare and lethal condition that plunged them into an unsettled legal landscape.

The state’s ban on abortion after 15 weeks of gestation has an exception for fatal fetal abnormalities. But as long as their baby’s heart kept beating, the Dorberts say, doctors would not honor their request to terminate the pregnancy. The doctors would not say how they reached their decision, but the new law carries severe penalties, including prison time, for medical practitioners who run afoul of it. The hospital system declined to discuss the case.

Instead, the Dorberts would have to wait for labor to be induced at 37 weeks.

For the next three months, the Dorberts did their best to prepare for their second son’s short life. They consulted with palliative care experts and decided against trying to prolong his life with high-tech interventions.

“The most important thing for us was to let him know he was loved,” Deborah said.

The day before Milo was born, the Dorberts sat down with their son Kaiden to explain that the baby’s body had stopped working and that he would not come home. Instead, someday, they told Kaiden, they would all meet as angels. The 4-year-old burst into tears, telling them that he did not want to be an angel.

Without functioning kidneys, a fetus with Potter syndrome cannot produce the amniotic fluid that allows the lungs to expand and that cushions the growing body. The babies who survive until birth typically have contracted limbs, club feet and flattened features from being compressed against the uterus wall.

But after Deborah’s 12-hour labor, Milo turned out to be 4 pounds and 12 ounces of perfection, with tiny, flawlessly formed hands and feet and a head of brown hair.

“I thought I had my miracle,” said Peter Rogell, the baby’s grandfather, who attended the delivery. He allowed himself a moment of hope until the obstetrician cut the umbilical cord that for 37 weeks had performed the functions Milo’s underdeveloped lungs and missing kidneys would now take over.

Milo remained blue, swaddled in a blanket hand-knit by his great-grandmother.

He never cried or tried to nurse or even opened his eyes, investing every ounce of energy in intermittent gasps for air.

“That was the beginning of the end,” Rogell said, recalling the persistent gulps that he thought at first were hiccups but turned out to be his grandson’s labored efforts to inhale.

Lee read a book to his dying son — “I’ll Love You Forever,” a family favorite that the Dorberts had given Kaiden for Valentine’s Day — and sang Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds.”

For 99 minutes that lasted a lifetime, they cuddled and comforted their newborn.

 

The entire point of this is to torture women, of course. 

 

The entire point is to punish them for having sex without the specific goal of birthing and raising a child for the following 18 years and nine months.

 

The point is to force a woman to do that instead of getting medical abortion treatment.

 

The point is to control what women do with their bodies and to make them wards of the state, subject to carceral punishment. 

To make them accept that they risk this now in states like Florida.

Republicans have already decreed this will happen. They own your vagina and what you are allowed to do with it.

That's the entire point.

The GOP Mask Slips Again...

...and we see that they will do anything to service the cause of white supremacy.

Seven homeless men have come forward to say they were part of a group of men recruited at a Poughkeepsie homeless shelter to act as veterans that had been displaced from a Newburgh hotel in order for a non-profit organization to perpetrate a fraud on the public.

The men told Mid-Hudson News on Thursday night that they were part of a group of 15 men that were supposed to pretend they were veterans that had been kicked out of the Crossroads Hotel in the Town of Newburgh last Friday, in advance of the arrival of migrants brought up from New York City.

The saga of the displaced veterans received national attention when Assemblyman Brian Maher stepped in to denounce the hotel’s actions and grabbed headlines along with an appearance on a conservative tv network to raise money for the YIT Foundation, which claims had housed the homeless veterans at the hotel.

The foundation and its director, Sharon Toney-Finch, appear to have fabricated the entire story, causing Maher to admit yesterday that he had been duped by Finch and her lies.

“When Sharon and sevceral veterans explained to me their situation, I believed them at their word,” Maher said Friday. “I had absolutely no knowledge of any wrongdoing and believed that their stories were real until a phone conversation with Sharon yesterday afternoon when she explained to me that this did not happen the way she purported it to.”

Finch’s story began to unravel last Monday after Mid-Hudson News began looking into the plight of the displaced veterans. An investigation by Mid-Hudson News uncovered a series of lies that led to the belief that the veterans Finch claimed were displaced, did not even exist.

On Thursday night he met with a group of seven men at a homeless shelter. The men said that on Wednesday, two people came into the shelter saying they had work and needed 15 men between the ages of 40 and 60, to take a trip to meet with an elected official for a discussion on homelessness. They were each promised $200 along with food and alcohol. They were familiar with one of the recruiters, Diana, claiming she had previously stayed at the shelter.

Andrew O’Grady, president and CEO of Mental Health America of Dutchess County (MHA Dutchess) also attended the roundtable conversation. O’Grady said “It was brought to my attention that two people came to the homeless shelter in Poughkeepsie and recruited 15 of our homeless guests under the guise of meeting a politician in Connecticut about homeless issues.” He was summoned there to offer assistance to the group and said he attended because the incident “concerned me greatly as vulnerable homeless individuals were bribed to pretend to be Veterans. I was asked to speak to them because they were distraught that they never received payment.”

Once recruited, the men were loaded in vehicles and transported to the Daily Planet Diner in LaGrange where they were joined by a third person, now identified as Sharon Toney-Finch. Finch told the men they could order anything they wanted from the menu and their drinks were also being paid for.

“We ate like kings,” said one of the men who asked to remain nameless. “Sharon introduced herself and told us we could have whatever we wanted and she would pick up the tab.” After eating and drinking, Finch gathered the men in the parking lot to explain the actual “work” they were about to perform.

One of the men said Finch told them they were going to a meeting where she would be explaining how they had been kicked out of a hotel to make room for migrants. “She told us to act like we were the veterans that had been displaced. And she told us that if asked, we were supposed to say we had been kicked out and Sharon found us rooms in Fishkill.” He also noted that men who were unwilling to answer were told to respond with “I am too traumatized to talk about it,” if asked.

 

This is why Republicans want to dismantle local news outlets, or drown them in fake local news outlets controlled by right-wing outfits. This is why they attack local, investigative journalists, so they can manufacture lies like this, and make them go national to feed the perpetual right-wing noise machine, to keep white voters hating immigrants, Black folk, Asian folk, LGBTQ+ folk, and everyone who isn't a white voter. They did this to make military vets hate immigrants.

They did this because they fully expected to get away with this, without being challenged in any way. They did this to use this "event" as propaganda for months and years to come. They did this to keep the population misinformed and angry, and to not think for themselves. They did this to keep the few remaining local news sources silent and afraid until they are eliminated.

This is what authoritarian fascism looks like, folks.

Orange Meltdown, Hotlanta Edition

Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is asking staff and county court officers to clear the first half of August for some important work.

 

The Georgia prosecutor leading an investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his allies has taken the unusual step of announcing remote work days for most of her staff during the first three weeks of August, asking judges in a downtown Atlanta courthouse not to schedule trials for part of that time as she prepares to bring charges in the inquiry.

The moves suggest that Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, is expecting a grand jury to unseal indictments during that time period. Ms. Willis outlined the remote work plan and made the request to judges in a letter sent on Thursday to 21 Fulton County officials, including the chief county judge, Ural Glanville, and the sheriff, Pat Labat.

“Thank you for your consideration and assistance in keeping the Fulton County Judicial Complex safe during this time,” wrote Ms. Willis, who has already asked the F.B.I. to help with security in and around the courthouse.

Ms. Willis had said in a previous letter that any charges related to the Trump investigation would come in the grand jury term that runs from July 11 to Sept. 1. Her letter on Thursday appears to offer more specificity on timing.

Her timetable, however, has already been pushed back as she has sought to hammer out cooperation deals with some potential defendants.

Mr. Trump’s legal team is trying to scuttle the case with a motion, filed in March, seeking to quash much of the collected evidence and throw Ms. Willis off the case before any charges are filed.

Ms. Willis’s office has spent more than two years investigating whether the former president and his allies illegally meddled in the 2020 election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump narrowly lost to President Biden. A special grand jury that heard evidence in the case for roughly seven months recommended more than a dozen people for indictments, and its forewoman strongly hinted in an interview with The New York Times in February that Mr. Trump was among them.

Ms. Willis must now seek approval from a regular grand jury for any charges she plans to bring.

With security concerns about the looming indictments in such a high-profile investigation weighing on county officials, Ms. Willis said that she would reduce staffing in her office by about 70 percent and rely on remote work on days when grand juries were in session from July 31 to Aug. 18.

She said that there would be exceptions to the remote work plan, including “my leadership team” and “all armed investigators.”

Ms. Willis noted in the letter that most judges would be attending a judicial conference during the week of July 31. She added: “I respectfully request that judges not schedule trials and in-person hearings during the weeks beginning Monday, Aug. 7 and Monday, Aug. 14.”

 

The dog days of summer are about to get their big orange dog.

 

I can't wait for August in Atlanta...

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has signed a number of awful anti-trans bills into law, including one measure that would allow the state to take custody of a trans child from a Florida parent.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a slate of legislation Wednesday targeting the LGBTQ community, including restrictions on transgender health care, content on LGBTQ identities in schools, transgender bathroom use and drag performances in the state.

The news comes on the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, May 17.

Florida state bill DB 254 will restrict gender-affirming healthcare for transgender people under the age of 18, allowing the state to take temporary custody over any child who receives such treatment.

"Sex-reassignment prescriptions and procedures are prohibited for patients younger than 18 years of age," the legislation reads.

Gender-affirming care has been found to be associated with improved mental health of transgender adolescents and teenagers, according to research in the New England Journal of Medicine and JAMA Pediatrics.

House Bill 1069 will expand the Parental Rights in Education law, dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" law by critics. The new measure will restrict classroom instruction on gender identity or sexual orientation from prekindergarten through grade 8. From grades 9 through 12, such content must be "age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards." However, the Florida Board of Education had already voted to expand the restriction from kindergarten through 12th grade.

House Bill 1521 will require transgender people to use the bathrooms that correspond with their gender assigned at birth.

A 2018 study from the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law found no evidence that laws requiring transgender people to use the bathroom of their gender at birth lead to decreases in safety or privacy violations.

Senate Bill 1438 prohibits minors from attending any "adult live performances," which may impact drag performances.

The legislation defines "adult live performance" as "any show, exhibition, or other presentation in front of a live audience which ... depicts or simulates nudity, sexual conduct, sexual excitement, or specific sexual activities ... lewd conduct, or the lewd exposure of prosthetic or imitation genitals or breasts," as well as other stipulations concerning the interest, conduct and value of the performance.

 

The vague laws are punitive, certainly, but they could apply to a number of situations and we'll see what the courts have to say, although I'm not to hopeful at this point.

 

I am somewhat more hopeful that Disney can keep landing blows that will cost DeSantis and the Florida GOP dearly, however. 

In March, Disney called Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida “anti-business” for his scorched-earth attempt to tighten oversight of the company’s theme park resort near Orlando. Last month, when Disney sued the governor and his allies for what it called “a targeted campaign of government retaliation,” the company made clear that $17 billion in planned investment in Walt Disney World was on the line.

“Does the state want us to invest more, employ more people, and pay more taxes, or not?” Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, said on an earnings-related conference call with analysts last week.

On Thursday, Mr. Iger and Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s theme park and consumer products chairman, showed that they were not bluffing, pulling the plug on a nearly $1 billion office complex that was scheduled for construction in Orlando. It would have brought more than 2,000 jobs to the region, with $120,000 as the average salary, according to an estimate from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

The project, known as the Lake Nona Town Center, was supposed to involve the relocation of more than 1,000 employees from Southern California, including most of a department known as Imagineering, which works with Disney’s movie studios to develop theme park attractions. Most of the affected employees complained bitterly about having to move — some quit — but Disney largely held firm, partly because of a Florida tax credit that would have allowed the company to recoup as much as $570 million over 20 years for building and occupying the complex.

When he announced the project in 2021, Mr. D’Amaro cited “Florida’s business-friendly climate” as justification.

Mr. D’Amaro’s tone in an email to employees on Thursday was notably different. He cited “changing business conditions” as a reason for canceling the Lake Nona project. “I remain optimistic about the direction of our Walt Disney World business,” Mr. D’Amaro said in the memo. He noted that $17 billion was still earmarked for construction at Disney World over the next decade — growth that would create an estimated 13,000 jobs. “I hope we’re able to,” he said.

 

I mean in the fight between the multi-billion dollar entertainment conglomerate that owns a major American network and the fascist Republican state, I'm hoping for a meteor or six to win. But as long as DeSantis loses, America wins.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

Senate Dems are calling on President Biden to take the debt ceiling default time bomb and unilaterally disarm it using the 14th Amendment's Public Debt Clause.

 

A group of Senate Democrats is circulating a letter urging President Biden to prepare to invoke the 14th Amendment to unilaterally resolve the debt ceiling standoff without involving Congress, according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post ahead of its release.

The letter, signed by five senators so far, reflects building unease among White House allies over the direction of negotiations between the president and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) on an agreement expected to cut the deficit and raise the debt limit. Liberal lawmakers have balked as Biden entertains spending cuts and new work requirements on federal aid programs — fueling interest in a solution to the standoff that does not require a deal with McCarthy. The effort comes as House Democrats start to collect signatures for a discharge petition to move legislation that would raise the debt ceiling without any other policy changes, a long-shot procedural move aimed at bypassing the chamber’s Republican leaders.

The senators’ letter reminds Biden that the 14th Amendment says “the validity of the public debt, authorized by law … shall not be questioned.” Lawmakers have just days before a possible June 1 deadline to raise the nation’s borrowing limit. If the cap isn’t raised by the time the Treasury Department runs out of available cash, the nation risks default, which would likely prompt a global economic shock that could send the U.S. into a recession.

“Republicans have made it clear that they are prepared to hold our entire economy hostage unless you accede to their demands to reduce the deficit on the backs of working families. That is simply unacceptable,” the letter states. “We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe.”

The letter has been signed thus far by Democratic Sens. Tina Smith (Minn.), Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Edward J. Markey (Mass.), Bernie Sanders (Vt.) and Jeff Merkley (Oregon). Those lawmakers met in the Capitol Tuesday to discuss their plans. More signatures are expected before its release, with Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), for instance, also calling for the president to invoke the 14th Amendment on Twitter.

“We are in a situation where these extreme Republicans in the House are demanding completely untenable policies in exchange for not driving the country’s economy off a cliff,” Smith said. “I think it’s important we understand there is another option.”

Despite growing support among Democrats, any attempt to solve the problem without GOP involvement faces enormous obstacles. The Biden administration appears eager for a deal with House Republicans, and White House aides believe there could be huge economic and legal risks in pursuing the 14th Amendment strategy of ignoring Congress. It’s also unclear that the discharge process, which is cumbersome, could be completed before the nation defaults.

 

To his enduring credit, President Biden has already pushed back on those work requirements, once again demanding a clean debt ceiling bill like the GOP voted for three times under Trump.

It's good to see the Senate Dems in the Bernie camp agreeing with Biden on this. More of actually treating the President and leader of the Democratic party as such, thanks.

 

 

Last Call For The (Red) State Of (Blue) Cities

Texas Republicans have passed legislation that all but eliminates home rule for Texas cities, making nearly all municipal laws void in Democratic controlled cities and subject to GOP state legislative control instead.

A sweeping Texas bill stripping authority from cities passed the state Senate on Tuesday and is now headed to the governor’s desk.

House Bill 2127 takes large domains of municipal governing — from payday lending laws to regulations on rest breaks for construction workers to laws determining whether women can be discriminated against based on their hair — out of the hands of the state’s largely Democratic-run cities and shifts them to its Republican-controlled legislature.

According to the Austin American Statesman, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) has been a vocal supporter of the bill.

Progressive critics argue the legislation — which one lawyer for Texas cities called “the Death Star” for local control — represents a new phase in the campaign by conservative state legislatures to curtail the power of blue-leaning cities.

Opponents of the bill include civil society groups like the AFL-CIO — and representatives of every major urban area in Texas, along with several minor ones.

They argue the shift in power it would enable would hamstring cities’ abilities to make policies to fit their unique circumstances.

“Where the state is silent, and it is silent on a lot — local governments step into that breach, to act on behalf of our shared constituents,” state Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (D) told the Senate on Tuesday.

“We should be doing our job rather than micromanaging theirs.”

But the bill’s Senate sponsor, state Sen. Brandon Creighton (R), said it was necessary to protect “job creators” from “cities and counties acting as lawmakers outside of their jurisdiction.”

Both the legislation’s sponsors and the principal trade group that backed it — the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB) — have argued local regulation poses an existential threat to Texas businesses.

“As prices escalate, property taxes increase, and workers remain in short supply, small business owners are continuing to struggle in this economic environment,” said Annie Spilman, state director of the NFIB, in a statement earlier this month. “Arduous local ordinances, no matter how well-intended, exacerbate these challenges.”

 

And once again it's that businesses don't want to be forced to pay higher wages or to supply better benefits in larger cities.  They want to buy labor at well below the going rate and force workers to be miserable because there's no competitors willing to pay more and forcing even anything close to a living wage or standard benefits found in every other western country is an "arduous challenge" for the corporate class. 

In Texas, the second-biggest border state, the supply of cheap labor cannot be curtailed for any reason, either. Stripping protections provided by cities for workers has to go, you see.

We all float down here, Billy.

Trump Cards, Con't

CNN's Kaitlan Collins is being rewarded with her own 9 PM show on the network after her performance in last week's Trump town hall production, where she played her role as frustrated moderator to a T against Trump's lunatic ride. 

 

CNN has selected Kaitlan Collins to host a new weeknight show at 9 p.m., elevating her to one of the most coveted time slots in cable news a week after she moderated a contentious town hall with former President Donald J. Trump.

The new role for Ms. Collins was announced by CNN’s chairman, Chris Licht, on Wednesday, just ahead of a presentation to advertisers in Midtown Manhattan hosted by Warner Bros. Discovery, CNN’s parent company.

Her show, which does not yet have a title, is set to begin in June. “She is a smart and gifted journalist who we’ve all seen hold lawmakers and newsmakers accountable,” Mr. Licht wrote in a newsroom memo. “Kaitlan will expose uncovered angles and challenge conventional wisdom to make sure viewers are seeing a story from every side.”

The promotion of Ms. Collins, 31, a co-host of the network’s morning show, amounts to a major bet by CNN leadership on a rising star who has impressed colleagues with her interviewing and reporting chops, but remains relatively untested as a solo anchor.

It is also Mr. Licht’s latest attempt to revive his network’s sagging ratings.

The 9 p.m. hour at CNN — once its highest-rated time slot — has effectively been vacant since Chris Cuomo was fired in December 2021. Mr. Licht’s recent attempt to fill the hour with a variety of interviews and news specials fizzled with viewers. On weeknights, CNN lags behind Fox News and MSNBC, and on Friday, two days after the Trump town hall, it even lost to Newsmax, a fledgling conservative network that is available in fewer homes.

Ms. Collins, who joined CNN in 2017 as a reporter covering the Trump White House, brings a youthful jolt to a programming block that for years has been hosted by middle-aged male anchors.

An Alabama native who cut her teeth at the conservative news site The Daily Caller, Ms. Collins is prized by Mr. Licht for her perceived ability to connect with viewers outside of coastal liberal enclaves. She became the network’s chief White House correspondent in 2021 at age 28, the youngest person to hold the role, and covered President Biden before moving to New York last year as a co-host of “CNN This Morning.”

She is also well respected in the political media and had been slated to serve as president of the White House Correspondents’ Association beginning in 2024. (She had to forgo the role after relocating from Washington.)

In April, Ms. Collins did a weeklong stint as temporary host of CNN’s 9 p.m. hour. She drew favorable ratings, with executives taking notice that she was able to retain much of Anderson Cooper’s lead-in audience from 8 p.m.

Last week, she was in the national spotlight as the moderator of the New Hampshire town hall with Mr. Trump. Ms. Collins remained composed in the face of Mr. Trump’s barrage of falsehoods, repeatedly interrupting to correct baseless claims. Mr. Trump mostly talked over her and was applauded by some audience members when he derided Ms. Collins as a “nasty person.”

 

There's no better proof that the supposedly "disastrous" town hall wasn't planned meticulously from the start, and than CNN boss Chris Licht wasn't counting on this from the beginning. He now has a reliable right-wing face for the network's shift towards the Republicans they want to both cover and watch, and returning them to power is not the network's number one goal.

Expect more normalization of authoritarian fascism through political kayfabe for years to come.

The Battle Of Jacksonville

Last night we had several primaries and municipal elections across the country, and the biggest was Jacksonville, Florida's mayoral race, pitting Republican Daniel Davis against Democratic candidate Donna Deegan. Jacksonville has long been the harbinger of Florida's red shift, it was the largest Republican-led city in the nation going into last night with two-term GOP Mayor Lenny Curry at the helm.

And Donna Deegan won, becoming the first female mayor in the city's history.

 

Democrat Donna Deegan will serve as the first female mayor of Jacksonville.

After months of hard campaigning and millions of dollars spent between both sides, Deegan won the highly contested election against Republican Daniel Davis with nearly 52% of the vote.

“We made history tonight,” Deegan told supporters at what became her election night celebration in Downtown Jacksonville. “It’s a brand new day in Jacksonville.”

Turnout ended at 33%, which was higher than primary turnout of just over 25%. Democrats finished early voting with over a 4-point lead – leaving the race open for either candidate on Tuesday.

Republicans closed the gap quickly at 12:10 Tuesday afternoon, but Deegan said she knew there would be a large amount of crossover voting from Republicans and Independent voters.

“When we were out the last several weeks, I mean, I can’t tell you how many people from across the political spectrum reached out to me and said ‘We want you to know, I’ve never voted for a Democrat before. I’m going to vote for you,’” Deegan said.

The win is the first for Democrats after Republican Lenny Curry’s win against Democratic Mayor Alvin Brown in 2015. Brown had a high approval rating among voters but lost to Curry by less than a 3-point margin.

Curry won re-election in 2019 and could not run again because of term limits. He became one of Davis’ Florida republican endorsements, including Gov. Ron DeSantis, Senator Rick Scott and Rep. John Rutherford.

Davis’ high-profile campaign, fueled with more money than any campaign for local office in Jacksonville history, brought criticism and praise from Republicans.

Deegan received support from Florida Democratic Chair Nikki Fried but relied primarily on local bipartisan endorsements, including current Republican council members Matt Carlucci and Randy DeFoor and local activists and pastors.

Davis told his supporters the result wasn’t what he had been expecting 24 hours ago, but he pledged to help Deegan and urged his supporters to also come together to back her. He also turned during the concession speech to thank his wife Rebekah for her support during the grueling campaign.

 

All politics are local, as they say.  But you have to admit Ron DeSantis and the GOP had this state locked up just six months ago. Now, Jacksonville is the largest crack in that lock. And just as we've seen before, Democrats have outperformed in special elections in response to GOP extremism as they have since the Dobbs decision.

That's some good news, at least.

Last Call For Justice Served, Con't

US Attorney Rachael Rollins is out, resigning before a Justice Department watchdog report on an ethics investigation into her political fundraising appearances drops the hammer on her.

 

Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins will resign following a monthslong investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general into her appearance at a political fundraiser and other potential ethics issues, her attorney said Tuesday.

The Justice Department’s watchdog has yet to release its report detailing the findings of its investigation, but an attorney for Rollins told The Associated Press that she will be submitting a letter of resignation to President Joe Biden by close of business Friday.

The resignation of a U.S. attorney amid ethics concerns is an exceedingly rare phenomenon and is especially notable for a Justice Department that under Attorney General Merrick Garland has sought to restore a sense of normalcy and good governance following the turbulent four years of the Trump administration.

Rollins’ attorney said she has been “profoundly honored” to have serve as U.S. attorney and proud of her office’s work but “understands that her presence has become a distraction.” Attorney Michael Bromwich — a former Justice Department inspector general — said Rollins will make herself available to answer questions “after the dust settles and she resigns.”

“The work of the office and the Department of Justice is far too important to be overshadowed by anything else,” Bromwich said.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately comment Tuesday. The inspector general’s office declined to comment.

Rollins was a controversial pick to be Massachusetts’ top federal law enforcer and twice needed Vice President Kamala Harris to break a tie for her nomination to move forward in the Senate amid fierce opposition from Republicans, who painted her as a radical.

Before taking the high-profile U.S. attorney job, she was the top prosecutor for Suffolk County, which includes Boston. In her role there, sparred with Boston’s largest police union and pushed ambitious criminal justice changes, most notably a policy not to prosecute certain low-level crimes such as shoplifting.

She was the first woman of color to serve as a district attorney in Massachusetts and the first Black woman to become U.S. attorney for the state.

The Associated Press was the first to report in November that the inspector general’s office had opened an investigation into Rollins over her appearance last year at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser featuring first lady Jill Biden. The inspector general’s office generally investigates allegations of fraud, abuse or violation of other Justice Department policies.

People familiar with the investigation told the AP at the time that the probe had expanded into other areas, including Rollins’ use of her personal cellphone to conduct Justice Department business and a trip she took to California that was paid for by an outside group.

 

Calling Rollins's confirmation "controversial" is being generous. Senate Republicans wanted her gone from moment one, and now Rollins gave them the opening needed to take herself out of the game.

 

Not everyone is cut out to be a US attorney, it seems.

 

What really bothers me is that GOP Sen. Tom Cotton was right. Rollins was "uniquely unfit" for the position, not because of her criminal justice reform positions, but because she wasn't able to follow the goddamn rules.

Good riddance.

A Case Of Information Insecurity

Heads are set to roll after a suspect entered Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan's home, having gotten past his Secret Service detail undetected.

 

The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how a man entered the home of President Biden’s national security adviser in the middle of the night roughly two weeks ago without being detected by agents guarding his house, according to three government officials.

The unknown man walked into Jake Sullivan’s home at about 3 a.m. one day in late April and Sullivan confronted the individual, instructing him to leave, two of the people briefed on the incident said. There were no signs of forced entry at the home, according to one of the people.

Sullivan has a round-the-clock Secret Service detail. But agents stationed outside the house were unaware that an intruder had gotten inside the home, located in the West End neighborhood of Washington, until the man had already left and Sullivan came outside to alert the agents, the two people said.

The intruder appeared to be intoxicated and confused about where he was, according to people briefed on the incident. There is no evidence the person knew Sullivan or sought to harm him, they said.

In a statement, the Secret Service said it has launched an investigation into the incident and how the intruder accessed Sullivan’s home undetected.

The agency said that it considered the security breach a matter of significant concern.

“While the protectee was unharmed, we are taking this matter seriously and have opened a comprehensive mission assurance investigation to review all facets of what occurred,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in the statement, in response to an inquiry from The Washington Post. “Any deviation from our protective protocols is unacceptable and if discovered, personnel will be held accountable.”

Guglielmi said the Secret Service has deployed additional security precautions for Sullivan and around his home, pending the completion of the investigation.

The White House declined to comment.

 

Pretty scary moment there and I'm glad nobody was hurt, but yes, the results of the investigation need to include the agents who allowed this to be put somewhere else. This is not a job you say "Well, oops" on especially when National Security Advisers have been targeted in the past.

Hopefully the investigation will offer improvements and better operational guideline for the next team.

Durham's Disastrous Dead End Dud

After more than four years, Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham has finally release the findings of his extensive investigation into the FBI's pursuit of Donald Trump and found...absolutely nothing actionable.

 

Special counsel John Durham concluded that the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, according to a report compiled over three years by the Trump-administration appointee and released on Monday.

Durham’s 300-plus page report also states that the FBI used “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence,” to launch the “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation into Trump and Russia but used a different standard when weighing concerns about alleged election interference regarding Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The special counsel, however, did not recommend any new charges against individuals or “wholesale changes” about how the FBI handles politically charged investigations, despite strongly criticizing the agency’s behavior.

“Based on the review of Crossfire Hurricane and related intelligence activities, we conclude that the (Justice) Department and FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report,” Durham wrote.

The report also concludes that “at least on the part of certain personnel intimately involved in the matter” there was “a predisposition to open an investigation into Trump.”

Durham’s findings that the FBI’s investigation into the Trump campaign should not have happened are at odds with a previous Justice Department inspector general investigation into the FBI’s Russia probe, which identified problems with the investigation but concluded in December 2019 there was sufficient justification to open the inquiry.

Attorney General Merrick Garland sent Durham’s report to congressional lawmakers and released the report on Monday.

In a letter to Congress accompanying the report, Garland said, “Special Counsel Durham’s unclassified report is attached in full as submitted to me, without any additions, redactions, or other modifications.”

Durham’s conclusions condemning the FBI’s investigation into Trump is sure to fuel the debate about Russia, Trump, the FBI and the 2016 presidential election that is still swirling more than six years after and as Trump is campaigning once again for the White House.

House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan announced that he has reached out to the Department of Justice to have Durham testify next week.

 

Unlike Robert Mueller, John Durham came up completely empty on the cases he brought to trial, getting laughed out of court by juries, If the absolute best he can do is to say "Maybe the FBI shouldn't have looked into Trump-Russia because the feds played it fast and loose" and then not to bring up recommended individuals for charges and without any operational improvement suggestions at all, then it's Durham who was wasting everyone's time, not the FBI. 

Yes, Crossfire Hurricane had problems. No, the fashion in which it was carried out did not rise to criminal violations.

The Clown Circus will try to have hearings next week about it, but they'll be about a successful as the current Clown Circus hearing have been, which is "not at all."

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

A man showed up at the Fairfax, Virginia office of Democratic Rep. Jerry Connolly and when the office staff told him Connolly wasn't there, the man proceeded to beat the tar out of two staffers with a baseball bat, putting both of them in the hospital.

 

A person armed with a baseball bat attacked two congressional staff members at a district office in Representative Gerald E. Connolly, the congressman said in a statement.

Mr. Connolly, a Democrat, said the individual committed “an act of violence” at his Fairfax, Va., office against two members of his staff, who were taken to a hospital with non-life threatening injuries.

Sgt. Lisa Gardner, a spokeswoman for the Fairfax City Police, said at a news conference on Monday afternoon that the assailant, a man who is believed to be a constituent of Mr. Connolly’s, walked into the office around 10:30 a.m. with what appeared to be a metal baseball bat and struck two staff members in the upper body.

Sergeant Gardner said that a motive was not immediately known, and that charges against the suspect, whose name was not immediately released, would be forthcoming.

Both staff members were conscious when the police arrived about five minutes after a 911 call, she said.

“You could absolutely tell that the people inside were scared, they were hiding,” she said.

“It’s quite frankly scary that someone can walk up to an office with a baseball bat and just start swinging at innocent victims,” she added.

Mr. Connolly represents a swath of the Northern Virginia suburbs west of Washington, D.C. He was first elected to Congress in 2008. In a statement after the attack, he said he has “the best team in Congress.”

“My district office staff make themselves available to constituents and members of the public every day,” Mr. Connolly said in the statement. “The thought that someone would take advantage of my staff’s accessibility to commit an act of violence is unconscionable and devastating.”

The attack comes amid a rise in threats and violent political speech against members of Congress in recent years. In October, an intruder bludgeoned Representative Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, inside their San Francisco home after he shouted “Where is Nancy?”

The most-watched network in America regularly calls Democrats frauds, crooks, and much worse on a regular basis, and the last guy in the Oval Office continues to do much the same and has for years. Somebody once again took up the right-wing stochastic terrorism noise machine on their call to cause violence to Democrats.

The violence will continue and only get worse, and the main thought I have is "If the suspect had brought an AR-15 instead of a baseball bat, we'd be having a far different conversation right now."

Back To The Water Cooler

It's 2023 now, and as predicted, after millions of us got remote jobs and work from home shifts over the last three years, the great Return To Office isn't much of a return.

The so-called “return to the office” has been underway for a while now, and it’s a bit of a mess. Sure, more people are going to the office more often than they were a year ago, but we’re still eons away from where we were before the pandemic. And despite the gains in office attendance, many office buildings themselves are in big trouble — some of which goes beyond remote work and started long before the pandemic.

So despite what you’re hearing from some bosses, things will likely never go back to the way they were.

First off, the push to return to the office is not that robust. For every high-profile company forcing workers to return to the office, another lets them work where they wish. Companies that have instituted return-to-office policies have backpedaled or failed to enforce them. Even New York City’s mayor, who’s been bullish on the return to the office and who mandated a five-day-a-week return-to-office policy last June, is reconsidering as the city struggles to fill empty jobs.

The pain this is causing in the commercial real estate world is already visible. As office owners struggle to lease space or fail to secure more financing, delinquency rates for office loans are at their highest rate — 2.8 percent — since the pandemic began, according to data from finance analytics firm Trepp. That’s partly due to rising interest rates and trouble at regional banks, which account for most commercial real estate lending. Some fear that the recent failures of Silicon Valley Bank, Signature Bank, and First Republic could spread to other regional banks and further hurt the office market. Converting offices to other uses is expensive, and the credit to do so is hard to come by. So as more office leases come up for renewal or more loans need refinancing, the number of delinquencies will continue to jump.

And that pain will not be isolated to office building owners. Big cities like New York are heavily reliant on property taxes, which fund a huge chunk of the city’s budget, so losses there affect everyone in the city. Then there are the many businesses and people who were reliant on daily traffic to and from offices for their own livelihoods. Some have predicted an “urban doom loop” in which fewer people and less money coming in means fewer amenities and poorer quality of life, which leads to even fewer people and less money and so on and so forth.

Some people will certainly still go into offices in the future. It just won’t be as many people or as often, which means the amount of office space needed will go down. And the office space they go to will generally need to be nicer. The continued availability of open office space as office owners struggle to rent it out makes it a tenants’ market, where companies in a “flight to quality” are able to be choosier about the offices they pick.

As of now, the data shows that a majority of workers who were able to work from home still do some (46 percent) or all (19 percent) of the time, according to the latest data from WFH Research. Before the pandemic, these numbers were in the single digits. Stanford economics professor Nick Bloom, who helps run the project, thinks the number of workers in hybrid situations might actually climb to around 60 percent, with most of the gains coming at the expense of people currently in the office full time. That outcome is already showing up in survey data, as companies who said their workers would be fully on-site last year are now switching to hybrid work.

The weak return-to-office movement means that a lot of office space is being left empty. In North America, office utilization — the number of spaces that are used as a percentage of all spaces available — is currently at about 21 percent, less than half what it was pre-pandemic, according to XY Sense, a company that uses sensors to track office occupancy. That’s consistent with data from key card swipe company Kastle, which shows US office occupancy levels to be at 50 percent of its pre-pandemic levels.

 

Now, that's not stopping business media from publishing scare stories about how if you don't return to the office now, you'll lose that promotion, or lose your job to AI or get fired for using at home and sure, some of that may happen, but at this point there's a permanent shift to a much larger percentage of workers working in remote work than before the pandemic.

More and more Americans want remote positions, and they are getting them.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Turns out part of those Discord leaks from last month where an Air Force reservist allegedly blabbed US military documents on Ukraine to his right-wing gaming buddies included information on PMC outfit Wagner Group offering to help Ukrainian forces because the Russians left the Wagner mercs they bought  high and dry to die in Bakhmut.

 

In late January, with his mercenary forces dying by the thousands in a fight for the ruined city of Bakhmut, Wagner Group owner Yevgeniy Prigozhin made Ukraine an extraordinary offer.

Prigozhin said that if Ukraine’s commanders withdrew their soldiers from the area around Bakhmut, he would give Kyiv information on Russian troop positions, which Ukraine could use to attack them. Prigozhin conveyed the proposal to his contacts in Ukraine’s military intelligence directorate, with whom he has maintained secret communications during the course of the war, according to previously unreported U.S. intelligence documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord.

Prigozhin has publicly feuded with Russian military commanders, who he furiously claims have failed to equip and resupply his forces, which have provided vital support to Moscow’s war effort. But he is also an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who might well regard Prigozhin’s offer to trade the lives of Wagner fighters for Russian soldiers as a treasonous betrayal.

The leaked document does not make clear which Russian troop positions Prigozhin offered to disclose.

Two Ukrainian officials confirmed that Prigozhin has spoken several times to the Ukrainian intelligence directorate, known as HUR. One official said that Prigozhin extended the offer regarding Bakhmut more than once, but that Kyiv rejected it because officials don’t trust Prigozhin and thought his proposals could have been disingenuous.

A U.S. official also cautioned that there are similar doubts in Washington about Prigozhin’s intentions. The Ukrainian and U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

In an interview with The Washington Post this month, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would not confirm the contacts with Prigozhin. “This is a matter of [military] intelligence,” he said. The Ukrainian leader also objected to airing classified information publicly and said he believed that the leaks had benefited Russia.

But there is no debating Prigozhin’s bitter frustration with the grinding fight in Bakhmut. He has complained, publicly and privately, that the Russian Defense Ministry has not given his fighters the ammunition and other resources they need to succeed. Bakhmut, in eastern Ukraine, has seen some of the bloodiest fighting of the war. Over the past few months, in a grinding back and forth measured by city blocks, Ukrainian and Russian forces have taken steep casualties.

Prigozhin, who promised to take control of the city by May 9, in time for Russia’s Victory Day celebrations, has recently threatened publicly to pull his forces out of the fight.

Other leaked documents reveal Russian Defense Ministry officials privately wondering how to respond to Prigozhin’s criticism of the military’s performance and his demands for more resources, which they apparently conceded were not illegitimate grievances. The documents also speak to a power struggle between Prigozhin and top officials, including Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.

Against that tense backdrop, Prigohzin has carried on a secret relationship with Ukrainian intelligence that, in addition to phone calls, includes in-person meetings with HUR officers in an unspecified country in Africa, one document states. Wagner forces provide security to several governments on the continent.

The leaked U.S. intelligence shows Prigozhin bemoaning the heavy toll that fighting has taken on his own forces and urging Ukraine to strike harder against Russian troops.

 

Now, don't get me wrong, using mercenary groups composed of veterans in wars to bolster troops is a military strategy as old as human warfare itself. But so is turning on your employer when you leave the mercs in a hole to sacrifice themselves to save your own men.

War, war never changes, as the man once said.

Last Call For Comer Chameleon, Con't

Republican Rep. James Comer is rapidly advancing in the "dimmest bulb in the House GOP leadership" contest, and it's not even close.

 

Rep. James Comer (R-KY) revealed on Sunday that Republicans had lost track of a top witness in the investigation of President Joe Biden and his family.

During an interview on Fox News, host Maria Bartiromo asked Comer about evidence he had of Biden's alleged corruption.

"You have spoken with whistleblowers," she noted. "You also spoke with an informant who gave you all of this information. Where is that informant today? Where are these whistleblowers?"

"Well, unfortunately, we can't track down the informant," Comer replied. "We're hopeful that the informant is still there. The whistleblower knows the informant. The whistleblower is very credible."

"Hold on a second, Congressman," Bartiromo said. "Did you just say that the whistleblower or the informant is now missing?"

"Well, we we're hopeful that we can find the informant," Comer said, explaining the informant was in the "spy business" and "they don't make a habit of being seen a lot."

"The nine of the ten people that we've identified that have very good knowledge with respect to the Bidens," he added, "they're one of three things, Maria, they're either currently in court, they're currently in jail, or they're currently missing.

 

Oopsie. We misplaced the whistleblower that doesn't actually exist for the Biden "crime" that also doesn't exist because this was all investigated by these same Republican three years ago!

 

Comer wasn't chosen as House Oversight chair because of his brains, he was chosen because he's good on TV and better at fundraising and McCarthy owed him a favor.

 

He has nothing on Biden. None of them do. But they are going to bluff it again like they did three years ago and somehow they are guessing it will work now when it failed last time because...people forgot?

I don't know. Seems like a crap-ass plan to me.