Last Call For A Buckeye Constitutional

The Ohio GOP's effort to make constitutional amendment ballot measures exponentially more difficult to pass -- in a blatant effort to sink a November ballot measure to guarantee abortion rights in the state -- went down in flames in tonight's special election.

Issue 1 was projected to fail on Tuesday, dealing a blow to Ohio Republicans who wanted to hamstring a November ballot question on abortion rights.

Decision Desk HQ, an election results reporting agency providing results and race calls for the USA TODAY Network Ohio, called the race around 8:09 p.m. The Associated Press projected that Issue 1 had failed around 9 p.m.

The no vote was leading 57% to 43% with more than 80% of the vote counted, according to unofficial results.

Results showed voters in urban counties voting overwhelmingly against Issue 1. The no side had more than 80% support in Cuyahoga County, more than 70% support in Franklin, Summit and Lucas counties and more than 60% of the vote in Hamilton and Montgomery counties.

Tuesday’s election was the culmination of a months-long fight that began last year, when Secretary of State Frank LaRose and Rep. Brian Stewart, R-Ashville, first introduced a plan to tighten the rules for constitutional amendments. The debate played out in the halls of the Ohio Statehouse, on the campaign trail and even in the courtroom as opponents tried to stop GOP lawmakers in their tracks.

Proponents of the measure said they wanted to keep controversial policies out of the constitution and reserve it for the state's fundamental rights and values. Critics argued the ballot measure was a power grab that would hamstring the rights of citizens to place an issue on the ballot.

Ohioans appeared to buy the message opponents were selling.

"Tonight, Ohioans claimed a victory over out-of-touch, corrupt politicians who bet against majority rule, who bet against democracy," Ohio Democratic Party Chair Liz Walters told reporters at an election night gathering in Columbus. "Tonight, Ohioans everywhere have claimed a victory for the kind of state we want to see."

 

The ludicrously corrupt Ohio GOP lost when they took their policy to the people in order to vote on it.  And remember, nullifying a 57%-43% ballot measure vote like tonight is exactly what this measure was designed to do in November to prevent abortion rights in the state from being enshrined in the state constitution.

November here is going to be a hell of a fight, but it's a winnable fight now.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Biden is designating nearly a million acres in Arizona around the Grand Canyon as a National Monument, protecting the area from mining while preserving hunting, fishing, and grazing rights for Native American use.

 

The designation would protect the area from potential uranium mining. It also protects existing grazing permits and leases, existing mining claims and will support area hunting and fishing, officials said. It encompasses approximately 917,000 acres of public land, officials said.

The president’s trip to battleground Arizona is part of a three-stop Western swing to highlight his economic agenda and legislative accomplishments this week ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act, a sweeping climate, tax, and health care law. The monument’s designation makes good on longtime calls from tribal leaders and environmental activists, as well as Arizona lawmakers, including Democratic Rep. Raùl Grijalva and independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who have advocated for the lands surrounding the Grand Canyon to be protected.

Biden will designate Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni – Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon National Monument, a move aimed at conserving “nearly 1 million acres of greater Grand Canyon landscape,” Council on Environmental Quality Chair Brenda Mallory told reporters.

“This land is sacred to tribal nations and indigenous peoples. Its sweeping plateaus and deep canyons share many of the features of the Grand Canyon. The land includes some of the most biodiverse habitats in the region, providing refuge for wildlife like bighorn sheep, bison, bald eagles and songbirds. And the area’s meandering creeks and streams flow into the mighty Colorado River, a critical water supply to millions of people across the Southwest,” Mallory said.

“Many of us have worked for decades to safeguard our Grand Canyon homelands from desecration at the hands of extractive, harmful operations like uranium mining, and today, with the designation of Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni, we see these lands permanently protected at last,” Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition coordinator Carletta Tilousi said in a statement.

The Biden administration has been gathering public input on the designation for months, and Interior Secretary Deb Haaland – the first Native American Cabinet secretary – visited the area in May and met with tribal leaders. Haaland and her staff hiked 10 miles into the canyon to visit Supai Village, a small village that is the capital of the Havasupai Indian Reservation.

Haaland described the visit as “one of the most meaningful trips of my life,” as she detailed the importance of the lands that make up Tuesday’s designation.

The Havasupai people’s ancestors, Haaland said, “lived, farmed, and prayed among the canyons and plateaus far beyond the borders of the reservation they occupied today.” She added that the Havasupai people “were driven out of their homelands” after the establishment of the Grand Canyon National Park in 1919.

“Their story is one shared by many tribes in the southwest who trace their origins to the Grand Canyon, and the plateaus and tributaries that surround it and who have persevered by continuing their longstanding practices on sacred homelands just outside the boundaries of the park,” she said.

The designation will help ensure that the lands can be used by indigenous peoples for religious ceremonies, as well as for hunting and gathering. But it also sends an important signal to native people, Haaland said.

Native American history, she said, “is American history. And that’s what tomorrow is all about: This president and this administration see Indian country. I’m speaking to you as the first Native American Cabinet secretary as a testament to that. Feeling seen means being appreciated for who we are: The original stewards of our shared lands and waters.”

Haaland continued, “These special places are not a pass-through on the way to the Grand Canyon. They are sacred and significant unto their own right. They should not be open to new mining claims and developed beyond recognition. We are in a new era, one in which we honor tribally led conservation, advanced co-stewardship and care about the well-being of native people.”

Native American history is American history, good and bad. We absolutely need to remember that, and the lessons gained from it. Sadly, judging from the rate that we're wrecking the environment, we haven't learned much at all.

But we have to start somewhere, and this is a good act. $44 million will be invested in our national parks and monuments thanks to the Inflation Reduction Act.  Would that it was ten or even a hundred times as much, but it's better than the cuts Republicans (and some Democrats, looking at you, Manchin) wanted in order to turn our national lands into strip mines.

Record heat will only get worse in states like Arizona, and all we can do now is try to control the damage. Of course, that could start with breaking up energy giants, but that's not going to happen.

Fusion News You Can Use

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory have repeated their fusion power experiment from December, only with an even better energy yield.

 

A group of U.S. scientists say they have repeated their landmark energy feat — a nuclear fusion reaction that produces more energy than is put into it. But this time, they say the experiment produced an even higher energy yield than one in December that got international attention for making a major step forward toward the long elusive goal of producing energy through fusion.

This second achievement by researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California is another crucial step — albeit in a journey that may still take decades to complete — in the quest for an unlimited source of cheap and clean power. The successful effort was initially reported by the Financial Times on Sunday.

“We have continued to perform experiments to study this exciting new scientific regime. In an experiment conducted on July 30, we repeated ignition at (the National Ignition Facility),” Paul Rhien, a spokesman for the federal laboratory, said in a emailed statement. “Analysis of those results is underway, but we can confirm the experiment produced a higher yield than the December test.”

Rhien said the lab “won’t be discussing further details” of the July experiment until after more analysis. But the team plans to “share the results at scientific conferences and peer-reviewed publications as part of our normal process for communicating scientific results.”

 

That positive net energy yield is the key to fusion power, and the better we get at it, the closer we get to sustainable clean energy for everyone.

You know, if we don't barbecue humans off the face of the earth first.

Last Call For Talking It Out

With Niger's military junta now firmly in control of the country, US diplomacy is springing into action to try to limit the volatility in the region.

Acting Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland met with some of the members of the military junta in Niger Monday – a significant diplomatic push to restore democratic rule in what has been a key US partner nation.

Nuland met with Gen. Moussa Salaou Barmou, the self-proclaimed chief of defense, and three colonels supporting him for more than two hours for “extremely frank and at times quite difficult” conversations, she said.

Nuland is the highest level US official to meet in person with the military putschists. Her trip to the capital city of Niamey – made at the request of Secretary of State Antony Blinken – comes less than two weeks after members of Niger’s presidential guard seized power and a day after the deadline set by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) for the military junta to restore democratically elected President Mohamed Bazoum to power or risk a military intervention.

Nuland told reporters Monday that the US “kept open the door to continue talking” and urged Barmou and his allies “to hear our offer to try to work with them to solve this diplomatically and return to constitutional order.”

“I hope they will keep the door open to diplomacy. We made that proposal,” Nuland said. “Their ideas do not comport with the Constitution. And that would be difficult in terms of our relationship if that’s the path they take, but we gave them a number of options to keep talking and we hope they take us up on that.”

Nuland noted that she was not granted a meeting with the self-proclaimed new leader of Niger, General Abdourahmane Tiani, “so we were left to have to depend on Mr. Barmou to make clear again what is at stake.”

The US was pushing for a negotiated solution in Niger, Nuland explained, but “it was not easy to get traction there” because the putschists “are quite firm in their view of how they want to proceed.”

Nuland said she was frank about what is at risk if they do not reverse course and that she explained “very clearly” the US’ legal responsibilities if the military takeover is formally declared a coup, telling them that “it is not our desire to go there, but they may push us to that point.”

The US is required under law to cut foreign and military assistance to the Nigerien government if a formal coup designation is made. On Friday, Blinken announced the US had paused certain assistance.

“That assistance will affect development aid to the government, security aid to the government. It’s a significant amount,” State Department spokesperson Matt Miller said Monday.

 

The last thing we need is another forest fire to try to put out with US troops, so I'm hoping very much that Nuland can find the price for the Niger junta to accept. Something tells me however that the US doesn't have nearly as much leverage right now than it did, say, in January 2021 before Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

 

We'll see.

 

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

On Sunday, Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis rejected the notion that Donald Trump "won" in 2020, and if he wasn't somehow toast before in the GOP primary race, he's definitely finished now.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday rejected Donald Trump's claim that he was the true winner of the 2020 presidential election in his most forceful comments to date on the matter.

"Whoever puts their hand on the Bible on Jan. 20 every four years is the winner," DeSantis told NBC News correspondent Dasha Burns in his first broadcast network interview since he launched his presidential campaign.

DeSantis continued to discuss all the ways he believed the previous presidential election was not perfect. But pressed further, he clearly stated that Trump lost.

"But respectfully, you did not clearly answer that question," Burns said. "And if you can’t give a 'yes' or 'no' on whether or not he lost —"

"No, of course he lost," DeSantis said, adding, "Joe Biden’s the president."

"Ron DeSantis should really stop being Joe Biden’s biggest cheerleader," Trump spokesman Steve Cheung told NBC News.

DeSantis' comments come just days after Trump pleaded not guilty to charges that he broke the law by trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And at a campaign stop in Iowa on Friday, DeSantis also strongly dismissed theories that the election was stolen, saying they "did not prove to be true."

Still, DeSantis made sure to point out in Sunday's interview that he saw a number of problems with the 2020 election, including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s grants for election administration, the widespread availability of mail-in ballots, state laws that allow third parties to collect and return voters' ballots, and how social media outlets de-emphasized a story about the laptop of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter Biden.

"I think what people in the media and elsewhere, they want to act like somehow this was just like the perfect election. ... I don’t think it was a good-run election," DeSantis said. "But I also think Republicans didn’t fight back. You’ve got to fight back when that is happening."

 

Even when Ron's gone right a bit, he can't help being wrong. Trying to have his cake and eating it too is just going to piss off Republican primary voters even further.  MAGA is a Trump cult and has been for years now, and DeSantis just doesn't know how to play the game. He's sliding into Jeb Bush territory here.

Questioning election integrity, but rejecting Trump's "win" is the middle of the road that DeSantis is walking, and eventually he's gonna get flattened by a truck if he stays out there.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Since Judge Tanya Chutkan wasn't appointed by Donald Trump to the federal bench, there's no way he can get a fair trial if the case stays in her hands, he whines.

 

Former President Donald Trump on Sunday called for recusal of the judge presiding over the federal case that alleges he illegally conspired to overturn his election loss to President Joe Biden in 2020.

The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, according to the docket in federal court in Washington, D.C. Chutkan, 61, was appointed to the district in 2014 by then-President Barack Obama. She is one of the only federal judges in D.C. who has delivered sentences against defendants in cases related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot that are longer than the sentences that the DOJ asked for, according to NBC News.

On Saturday, Chutkan gave Trump's team until 5 p.m. ET on Monday to respond to prosecutors' request for a protective order. The order would prevent the former president and his legal team from sharing discovery materials with the public. Trump's attorneys asked for more time to prepare their response, which Chutkan swiftly denied.

"THERE IS NO WAY I CAN GET A FAIR TRIAL WITH THE JUDGE 'ASSIGNED' TO THE REDICULOUS FREEDOM OF SPEECH/FAIR ELECTIONS CASE. EVERYBODY KNOWS THIS, AND SO DOES SHE," Trump wrote on his social media site Truth Social Sunday morning.

 

Trump lawyer John Lauro went on the Sunday shows to predict an easy acquittal.

 

Donald Trump’s lawyer, John Lauro, will welcome testimony from former Vice President Mike Pence in the federal case Trump is facing for his alleged efforts to undermine the results of the 2020 presidential election.

“Mike Pence will be one of our best witnesses at trial,” Lauro said Sunday during an interview on ABC’s “This Week.” “I read his book very carefully, and if he testifies consistent with his book, then President Trump will be acquitted,” Lauro added.

Trump is currently facing 78 felony charges across three criminal cases. In the latest indictment unveiled Tuesday, federal prosecutors charged Trump with four felony counts, including conspiracy to defraud the United States and conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding.

The 45-page document revealed key details from Pence’s testimony to the grand jury, including that Pence took contemporaneous notes of some conversations he had with Trump in the days leading up to Jan. 6. In one conversation, Pence recalled Trump falsely telling him that the Justice Department was finding “major infractions” related to election fraud.

Despite the revelations in the indictment, Lauro said Sunday that he does not believe Pence’s testimony would be enough to prove that what Trump did in the days leading up to the violent riot on the Capitol was criminal.

“I cannot wait until I have the opportunity to cross-examine Mr. Pence, because what he will do is completely eliminate any doubt that Mr. Trump, President Trump firmly believed that the election irregularities had led to inappropriate results,” Lauro said.

 

Tauro also agrees with congressional Democrats that the trial needs to be televised, which should be a gigantic alarm against doing that. Trump and Tauro want this case tried the court of public opinion for a distinct reason.

America's response to this week's indictment of Donald Trump is providing a window into more than just how Americans view his alleged actions per se — but also into what they think it means for democracy itself.

 

• Half the nation believes Trump tried to stay in office beyond his term through illegal and unconstitutional means.
• To most Americans, such an effort would mean undermining democracy.
• For them and for a majority of Americans overall, the series of indictments and ongoing investigations against Trump are seen as "defending democracy" and "upholding the rule of law."
• Just under a third of the country thinks Trump was trying to stay in office through legal, constitutional means — legal, in part because most of them (and including most Republicans) believe Trump's claim that the election was illegitimate in the first place.
•  For most Republicans, the series of indictments are also personal, seeing them as "an attack" on people like them — echoing some of Trump's rhetoric on the campaign trail. 
• And big majorities of Republicans think the indictments are an attempt to stop Trump's 2024 presidential campaign.

 

In fact more than 85% of Republicans in this CBS News poll believe the indictments are meant to stop Trump's campaign, and more than 55% believe these indictments are "an attack on people like us". There's no way these charges are going to result in anything other than a Trump landslide in the primaries. Oh, and two thirds of Republicans don't believe Biden won in 2020.

We'll see where this goes, but it's not going to be pretty, and we have tens of millions cheering the cancer on.

 

 

 

 

Sunday Long Read: Professional Chow Hounds

Our Sunday Long Read this week is Jaime Loftus's profile in The Takeout of two world-class competitive eaters: Mary Bowers and "Megabyte" Ronnie Hartman, as they talk about everything from hot dogs to horseshoes to human trafficking.

“You know how many times of the day I answer questions about poop?” an absolutely jacked professional eater asks me. “Every single interview.”

I look down at my notes. Shit, why didn’t I think of that?

It’s mid-July, and by now, the professional eating world is well into its 51 weeks of annual obscurity. The Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest held annually on the Fourth of July has come and gone on Coney Island, its usual winners declared in Joey Chestnut (62 hot dogs and buns) and Miki Sudo (39 ½ hot dogs and buns). Brothers George and Richard Shea, the founders of Major League Eating, were there to promote and announce every contestant with typical gusto. The contest aired on ESPN2 this year—Wimbledon took up the main station—and very few competitors outside of Sudo, Chestnut, and their immediate rivals got any airtime outside a passing mention.

So who are these other people?

Their introductions are carefully crafted WWE-grade nightmare fuel, announced as if each competitor is a god come down from the heavens to vacuum meat tubes down their gullets. The intros for these lesser known eaters are largely drowned out by color commentary about the main competitors—still, there they are, forming the outer edges of a Last Supper–style tableau, each with their own stats and training processes and very specific traumas.

What if I were to tell you these are, by far, the most interesting characters in the professional eating world?

Mary Bowers and “Megabyte” Ronnie Hartman, both decade-long veterans of Major League Eating, are unlikely to agree with me on that, since the stars who take center stage are their friends. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve fallen under the spell of Chestnut and Sudo, too—my book Raw Dog: A Naked History of Hot Dogs focuses mainly on the careers of the country’s best known eaters.

Still, there’s so much to navigate beyond each year’s winners. There’s Joey Chestnut’s rivalry with Takeru Kobayashi, the original Nathan’s breakthrough celebrity, and there’s the industry-wide undercurrent of racism and xenophobia Kobayashi was subjected to. There’s Korean American women’s champion Sonya “The Black Widow” Thomas, who was forced to navigate the 2011 split of the contest into distinct men’s and women’s contests, something no other professional eating event is subjected to. There’s the unceremonious way the women’s contest has been obscured, shoved onto lesser ESPN stations, even as Sudo has risen through the ranks. There’s a guy named Crazy Legs Conti who I don’t have time to get into right now. There’s a lot.

Ronnie and Mary, by contrast, don’t have eating careers defined by high-profile rivalries—they’ve got something better. The Nathan’s Contest isn’t just their chance to achieve their own personal bests, it’s an opportunity to represent causes you don’t expect to hear about on a major sports network: veteran’s affairs and international human trafficking, respectively.

Stay with me.

 

Do it, this is a fun story and these folks are a lot more complex and interesting than most athletes.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Trump and his MAGA cronies are working on formalizing plans to investigate, charge, and arrest hundreds, maybe thousands of Democratic politicians, Justice Department lawyers, FBI investigators, staffers, and analysts involved in the federal probes of Donald Trump criminal activities starting with Jack Smith, Merrick Garland, and Joe Biden.

 

DONALD TRUMP IS a long, long way from winning the GOP primary, let alone retaking the White House. But he always has revenge on his mind, and his allies are preparing to use a future administration to not only undo all of Special Counsel Jack Smith’s work — but to take vengeance on Smith, and on virtually everyone else, who dared investigate Trump during his time out of power.

Rosters full of MAGAfied lawyers are being assembled. Plans are being laid for an entire new office of the Justice Department dedicated to “election integrity.” An assembly line is being prepared of revenge-focused “special counsels” and “special prosecutors.” Gameplans for making Smith’s life hell, starting in Jan. 2025, have already been discussed with Trump himself. And a fresh wave of pardons is under consideration for Trump associates, election deniers, and — the former president boasts — for Jan. 6 rioters.

The preparations have been underway since at least last year, with Trump being briefed on the designs by an array of attorneys, political and policy advisers, former administration officials, and other allies. The aim is to build a government-in-waiting with the hard-right infrastructure needed to turn the Justice Department into an instrument of Trump’s agenda, according to five sources familiar with these matters and another two people briefed on them.

Trump’s spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment on this story.

One idea that has caught thrice-indicted former president’s attention in recent months is the creation of the so-called “Office of Election Integrity,” which would be a new unit inside the Justice Department. It would be tasked not only with relitigating Trump’s lies about his 2020 election loss, but also with aggressively pursuing baseless allegations of election “fraud” (including in Democratic strongholds) in ways that Trumpist partisans believe the department has only flirted with in the past.

This idea was recently pitched to Trump by a longtime Republican activist and an attorney who’s known the ex-president for years, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. (Republican officials have also begun voicing their own support for state-level offices of election integrity. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made the proposal a reality in his state. Officials in Tennessee, Missouri, and Wisconsin have proposed the offices, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, proposed a similarly named office.)

And when it comes to Special Counsel Smith’s office — which just handed Trump his third indictment, this one related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election — the former president and his fellow travelers already know what they want: They want the FBI and DOJ to name names.

This year, close advisers to Trump have begun the process of assembling lists of the names of federal personnel who have investigated the former president and his circle for years, and are attempting to unmask the identities of all the DOJ attorneys and others connected to Smith’s office. The obvious purpose of this, according to one source close to Trump, is to “show them the door on Day 1 [if Trump’s reelected]” — and so “we know who should receive a subpoena” in the future.

Such subpoenas would of course be instrumental in Trumpland’s vows to its voters that, should he return to power, Trump and his new attorney general will launch a raft of their own retaliatory “special counsel” and “special prosecutor” probes to investigate-the-investigator, and to go after their key enemies. As it were, Jeffrey Clark, a former DOJ official and a central figure in Trump’s efforts to subvert the legitimate 2020 presidential election results, has been on Trump’s informal shortlist for plum assignments, including even attorney general, in a potential second administration.

Sources familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone that Trump and his close ideological allies — working at an assortment of MAGA-prone think tanks, advocacy organizations, and legal groups — are formulating plans for a wide slate of “special prosecutors.” In this vision, such prosecutors would go after the usual targets: Smith, Smith’s team, President Joe Biden, Biden’s family, Attorney General Merrick Garland, FBI director Christopher Wray. But they’d also go after smaller targets, from members of the Biden 2020 campaign to more obscure government offices.

“There are almost too many targets to keep track of,” says one Trump adviser familiar with the discussions. Trump and members of his inner orbit have already outlined possible legal strategies, examining specific federal statutes they could wield in a Republican-controlled Justice Department to go after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, who delivered Trump’s first indictment of this year.

 

People should treat this seriously. A second Trump term will be an authoritarian nightmare, and we have to prevent it.  There will be no guardrails and countermeasures next time. As it is, Trump is already vowing retribution and intimidation against the people involved in his legal cases.

Prosecutors on Friday night called a judge’s attention to a social media post from Donald Trump — issued hours earlier — in which they say the former president appeared to declare that he’s “coming after” those he sees as responsible for the series of formidable legal challenges he is facing.

Attorneys from special counsel Jack Smith’s team said the post from Trump “specifically or by implication” referenced those involved in his criminal case for seeking to subvert the 2020 election.

In a court filing just before 10 p.m. Friday, Senior Assistant Special Counsels Molly Gaston and Thomas Windom alerted the judge in Trump’s latest criminal case — U.S. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan — to a combative post Trump sent earlier in the day.

“If you go after me, I’m coming after you!” Trump wrote in all caps Friday afternoon on Truth Social, which is run by a media company he co-owns.

The prosecutors said Trump’s post raised concerns that he might improperly share evidence in the case on his social media account and they urged that he be ordered to keep any evidence prosecutors turn over to his defense team from public view.

“All the proposed order seeks to prevent is the improper dissemination or use of discovery materials, including to the public,” Gaston and Windom wrote. “Such a restriction is particularly important in this case because the defendant has previously issued public statements on social media regarding witnesses, judges, attorneys, and others associated with legal matters pending against him. … And in recent days, regarding this case, the defendant has issued multiple posts—either specifically or by implication—including the following, which the defendant posted just hours ago.”

We'll see what Judge Chutkan does, ordering a response from the Trump legal team by Monday evening.

Denying Trump bail would be a choice fraught with its own dangers, but if you or I posted on social media that we were coming for people after being arraigned on federal charges, you'd better believe there would be consequences. The real "two-tiered justice system" the right keeps squawking about applies to Trump far more than it does Biden.

That's The Sound Of The Police, Con't

The sound of these six white former Mississippi sheriff's deputies who tortured two Black men and shot one in the mouth is a guilty plea deal on federal civil rights charges.

 

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the torture of two Black men, US Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Darren LaMarca said in a Thursday news conference.

The announcement comes after federal charges were filed against the former law enforcement officers, who “called themselves ‘The Goon Squad’ because of their willingness to use excessive force and not to report it,” according to a federal charging document.

“The people of Mississippi and those of Rankin County expect those who enforce the laws to follow the law, clearly these men did not – they held themselves above the law,” LaMarca said.

The charges include conspiracy against rights, deprivation of rights under color of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice, according to online federal court records.

Former Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputy Hunter Elward faces the most serious of charges – discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. Court documents name the other officers charged as Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield.

The incident occurred on January 24 in Braxton, Mississippi, just southeast of Jackson. It came to light after two men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, filed a federal civil lawsuit. Many of the claims in the lawsuit were reflected in the federal charging document.

The two men, who are Black, say six White law enforcement officers entered the home they were in and tortured them for nearly two hours, culminating with Jenkins being shot in the mouth.

“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect, and shamefully betrayed the oath they swore as law enforcement officers,” US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said in a statement.

FBI Special Agent in Charge Jermicha Fomby described the alleged actions as “horrific.” He added, “I did not expect this to be the actions that we would have subjected upon our citizens in the year 2023.”

“On behalf of our clients Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, Black Lawyers for Justice thanks the United States Department of Justice for the historic legal results choices achieved today,” Malik Shabazz, the lead attorney for the victims, said in a statement.

In an interview last month, Parker told CNN: “Justice is what it all boils down to. I’m just like them, you know, whether they in uniform or not.”

 

These assholes are still facing state charges to boot and a plea deal on those charges is expected later this month, and I guarantee you that nothing would have happened to these bastard cops if Trump's "Justice Department" had been the ones in charge still. Merrick Garland got this done in seven months.

 

And yes, in 2023 we're still having to turn to Reconstruction-era anti-Klan laws to prosecute white supremacist bastard cops. Not a hell of a lot has changed for us Black folk, either.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Both Black Tennessee state lawmakers expelled from the state legislature earlier this year by angry, overwhelmingly white Republicans have easily won their special elections to be returned to Nashville, in time for a scheduled special session by GOP Gov. Bill Lee on gun safety measures.

The two Democratic state representatives in Tennessee who were expelled by Republicans in April for protesting in support of gun safety on the chamber floor won elections Thursday night for their old seats, The Associated Press projected.

Justin Jones won his election for his state House seat in Nashville, and Justin J. Pearson won his race in Memphis, according to AP projections.

Jones defeated Republican Laura Nelson, while Pearson won his race against independent candidate Jeff Johnston.

Both lawmakers had been reinstated by local government officials shortly after their expulsion in April, but they still had to run for their old seats — both in primary elections in June and in Thursday’s general elections.

While Jones and Pearson were heavily favored to win — each of their districts comprise heavily Democratic areas — their electoral success nevertheless delivered a resounding message to Republicans in the state Legislature that the lawmakers continue to enjoy robust support.

Their return may also provide momentum for Democrats and other lawmakers who support gun measures, ahead of a special legislative session scheduled later this month that Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican, called specifically to address gun reform.

Jones, in a tweet shortly after the AP projected his victory, addressed Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton, who led the expulsion hearings, and signaled that he would continue pushing for gun legislation during the special session.

"Well, Mr. Speaker, the People have spoken. The FIND OUT era of politics is just beginning. See you August 21st for special session," Jones tweeted.

Pearson, too, signaled he would work to organize further protests supporting gun reform, as well as efforts to advance the issue, during the upcoming special session.

“This is only the beginning for this Movement. We will organize, mobilize and activate to work tirelessly for the day when there are no more calls to respond to mass shootings and gun violence," he said in a statement. "I look forward to heading back to the Tennessee state capitol Aug. 21 for the special session on gun legislation. We, the People, will march, rally and work to pass legislation."

The question is do Sexton and the TN GOP have the balls to try this again, proving to America and the world just how racist they are? It's been a PR disaster for them for months and these Black lawmakers are showing everyone that even in deep red Tennessee that there's a future for Democrats and the people who voted for them.

We'll see. They tried to martyr them once.

But Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Jobapalooza, Con't

July's jobs numbers are a slight miss, but we should have seen the last interest rate hike in a while, so there's that.

The US job market has returned to pre-pandemic form.

Employers added just 187,000 jobs in July, slightly above the monthly average seen in the decade before the pandemic, according to new data released Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Economists were expecting a net gain of 200,000 jobs last month. June’s job growth was revised down to 185,000 jobs from 209,000.

July’s headline number and the downward revisions to the monthly job total for May and June (down 25,000 jobs and 24,000 jobs, respectively), are further indications that the nation’s labor market is gradually cooling off. Moreover, it further fuels the notion that the Federal Reserve can achieve a “soft landing” of reining in inflation without massive layoffs.

The July unemployment rate ticked down to 3.5%, from 3.6%.

 

Yes, the downward revisions from May and June mean the economy added fewer than 140,000 jobs this month, but we also seem to have hit the sweet spot as far as inflation reduction without companies laying off millions of workers too.

It really does look like we're on the glide path for the rest of the year.

Pity if the Republicans get control of things and we lose another 20 million jobs like the last guy did, right?

What? that same clown is running a second time in 2024 and he's been indicted on multiple state and federal counts in New York, with more pending in Georgia and maybe even Michigan?

He doesn't have much of a chance then, right?

Right?

 

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

A double creature feature from Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis this week, first, DeSantis has no problem repeatedly using violent rhetoric against the hundreds of thousands of "deep state" federal government employees he wants to get rid of if elected president.

 

The two largest federal employee unions on Thursday denounced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s recent vow that as president he would “start slitting throats” in the federal bureaucracy — the latest escalation in intensifying Republican attacks on government operations they want to slash or eliminate.

DeSantis, whose campaign for the GOP nomination has included promises to downsize agencies and fire bureaucrats, made the comments this weekend in New Hampshire while criticizing the “deep state,” echoing a term regularly used by former president Donald Trump to deride Washington.

“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day One and be ready to go,” DeSantis said at a barbecue in Rye, N.H., on Sunday hosted by former senator Scott Brown (R-Mass.). “You’re going to see a huge, huge outcry because Washington wants to protect its own.”

The governor also mused last week about the possible need for the Defense Secretary to “slit some throats” while discussing changes he’d make at the Pentagon as president.

On Thursday, as those comments drew more attention, two prominent unions representing tens of thousands of federal workers called on DeSantis to retract his words. Tony Reardon, national president of the National Treasury Employees Union — which represents about 150,000 employees at the Internal Revenue Service and 30 other federal agencies — called the comments “repulsive and unworthy of the presidential campaign trail” in a statement.

Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, said in a statement that “violent anti-government rhetoric from politicians has deadly consequences,” pointing to a pro-Trump’s mob’s storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Any candidate who positions themselves within that shameful tradition has no place in public office,” said Kelley, whose union represents 750,000 civil servants across the federal workforce of 2.1 million. Both labor organizations are closely allied with President Biden.

DeSantis’s campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday, but some of his allies embraced the rhetoric. “Hell yes,” tweeted Matt Wolking, an official with the super PAC supporting DeSantis’s presidential bid.

 

DeSantis has to out-Trump Trump when it comes to stochastic terrorist violence if he wants to get Trump voters to notice him. Violence against the voluminous GOP enemies list can never fail, it can only be failed.

 

It would make a fascinating psychological study if it wasn't for the fact that there are going to be a lot fewer psychologists coming out of Florida in the years ahead.

Florida "effectively banned" Advanced Placement Psychology classes in the state due to the course's content on sexual orientation and gender identity, the College Board said Thursday.

The state's Department of Education informed the College Board that its AP Psychology class is in violation of state law, the higher education nonprofit said in a statement. Florida's Parental Rights in Education Act, or what critics have dubbed the "Don't Say Gay" law, restricts the instruction of sexual orientation and gender identity in the state's classrooms.

“The state’s ban of this content removes choice from parents and students,” the College Board said in a statement. “Coming just days from the start of school, it derails the college readiness and affordability plans of tens of thousands of Florida students currently registered for AP Psychology, one of the most popular AP classes in the state.“

The state's move to restrict the AP Psychology course comes several months after its decision to block AP African American Studies courses was widely condemned by academics and civil rights activists.

The College Board added that Florida will allow superintendents to offer the college-level psychology class for high schoolers if they exclude LGBTQ topics.

However, the College Board argued that excluding the lessons — which it describes as teachings on "how sex and gender influence socialization and other aspects of development" — "would censor college-level standards."

It added that lessons regarding sexual orientation and gender identity have been included in AP Psychology since the course was created 30 years ago.

The group said that more than 28,000 Florida students took AP Psychology in the prior academic year.

 

Remember, admitting that LGBTQ+ folks exist is illegal in Florida. And when you criminalize a group, you can eliminate them, too. These are also the throats DeSantis wants to see slit by the thousands. 

Never forget that.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

With Donald Trump being indicted in multiple legal venues now for election fraud, classified document theft and corporate tax fraud, the Republican Big Lie that Biden stole the 2020 election has moved from commiseration of sour grapes to justification for revenge against Democrats nationwide.

 

The share of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who believe that President Joe Biden’s 2020 election win was not legitimate has ticked back up, according to a new CNN poll fielded throughout July. All told, 69% of Republicans and Republican-leaners say Biden’s win was not legitimate, up from 63% earlier this year and through last fall, even as there is no evidence of election fraud that would have altered the outcome of the contest.

The new poll, conducted in the run-up to former President Donald Trump’s indictment on Tuesday over efforts to overturn the 2020 election, suggests the share of election deniers among his partisans has climbed to a level last seen before hearings held last year by the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack. In January of 2022, 67% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents said they thought Biden’s win was not legitimate; that had been as high as 72% in CNN polling in the summer of 2021.

Among Republican-aligned adults, the share who believe there is solid evidence proving the election was not legitimate stands at 39%, while 30% say it is merely their suspicion that Biden did not win legitimately, and 29% say Biden’s election was legitimate. The 39% of Republicans and Republican-leaners saying that Biden’s win was not legitimate and that there is evidence for it is not much changed from May, when 36% said the same, and it is well below the high point for that belief, which was 54% shortly after the attack on the US Capitol in January 2021.

Overall, 61% of Americans say Biden did legitimately win enough votes to win the presidency, and 38% believe that he did not. Among registered voters who say they cast a ballot for Trump in 2020, 75% say they have doubts about Biden’s legitimacy.

But those who supported Trump in 2020 are actually less likely than those who backed Biden to say that a shared view on that year’s election is a must for them to support candidates for federal office next year. Overall, 30% of Americans say they would only vote for a candidate who shares their view on the 2020 election, 49% would consider it just one of many important factors, and 20% say it wouldn’t be a major issue for them. Those who say they voted for Biden in 2020 are more likely to see it as an essential shared view (48%) than are those who voted for Trump (20%).

About half of Americans continue to feel that it is at least somewhat likely that elected officials will successfully overturn the results of a US election if their party does not win (50%). That view has been fairly stable since CNN began polling on the question in summer 2021. There has been an uptick in the share of political independents who feel that it’s at least somewhat likely, though, from 42% who felt that way last summer to 53% now.

And most Americans lack confidence that elections in the US today reflect the will of the people. Overall, 58% say they are just a little or not at all confident that elections reflect the public’s will, while 42% say they are at least somewhat confident they do. Only 13% are “very confident” that elections reflect the will of the people, the lowest share to say so in CNN polling since 2021. That deep confidence has declined somewhat among Democrats (from 26% last year to 21% now), and about half of Republicans say they have no confidence at all (48%), similar to last year.

Biden’s approval rating for protecting democracy in the US has dipped into negative territory: 44% approve and 55% disapprove. That stood at a near even 50% approve to 49% disapprove in December. That shift has come fairly evenly across party lines, and in the new poll, 84% for Democrats, 42% of independents and 7% of Republicans approve of his handling of the issue.

With 40% of Republicans believing the 2020 presidential election was actually stolen (complete with non-existent evidence) and 30% merely suspecting it was, Trump and the GOP will have plenty of fertile ground to plant whatever stochastic terrorism roots they want in order to grow into violence in the months ahead.

We'll see.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's hand-picked Disney control board has abolished diversity, equality, and inclusiveness (DEI) programs for the district and ordered the firing of all employees involved, calling the programs unconstitutional, illegal, and wasteful of taxpayer dollars.

In the ongoing battle between Walt Disney World and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Disney’s governing district – whose current board was hand-picked by DeSantis and took control of the district in February – abolished all of its diversity, equity and inclusion programs, the district said in a Tuesday news release.

The statement from the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District cited an internal investigation into the Reedy Creek Improvement District’s policies, claiming the district “implemented hiring and contracting programs that discriminated against Americans based on gender and race, costing taxpayers millions of dollars.”

“The so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives were advanced during the tenure of the previous board and they were illegal and simply un-American,” district administrator Glenton Gilzean said. “Our district will no longer participate in any attempt to divide us by race or advance the notion that we are not created equal.”

CFTOD will dissolve the district’s DEI committee and eliminate any job duties relating to DEI. District employees will also be prohibited from using staff time to pursue DEI initiatives, the statement said. However, this change affects only the government and not the companies that operate inside the district (i.e. Disney) and would seem to eliminate contracting protocols that in the past gave special consideration of women and minority owned businesses during the procurement processes.

According to the new oversight district, Reedy Creek “wasted taxpayer dollars” by entering into contracts based on race- and gender-driven goals and “aggressively” monitoring contractors’ race and gender practices under its Minority/Women Business Enterprise and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise programs. CFTOD said it estimates the previous district spent millions of dollars finding businesses who helped meet these DEI quotas.

 

Once again the plan here is for Republicans to make diversity, equality, and inclusiveness illegal across the country for not just government, but private employers as well. Hiring anyone who isn't a buttery male will leave your company open to being sued for discrimination, so companies will basically stop hiring anyone other than white guys.

 

Anyone left who isn't will have to constantly defend their job when it comes to performance reviews, promotions, and new initiatives. Having to work twice as hard to get half the recognition will be codified into law. 

You didn't think ending affirmative action would stop with universities, did you?

Fani, Flagged In Georgia

Four Georgia County District Attorneys are filing a lawsuit challenging Senate Bill 89, a measure passed in May by GOP Gov. Brian Kemp and state Republican lawmakers to form an independent commission to review and remove County prosecutors and District Attorneys for "misconduct".

 

Four district attorneys filed a legal challenge to block a Georgia law championed by Gov. Brian Kemp that gives the state new powers to punish local prosecutors who don’t enforce tough-on-crime crackdowns.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday challenges one of Kemp’s signature achievements this year — a Prosecuting Attorneys Qualifications Commission to sanction “rogue prosecutors” accused of neglecting their duties.

The opponents of the law, which took effect in July, say it’s a power grab that threatens the independence of the judiciary, infringes on free speech rights and forces prosecutors to hide their stances from voters.

They framed the urgent GOP drive for the measure as backlash against district attorneys who promised not to charge low-level drug offenders, enforce the state’s anti-abortion law or take “punitive approaches” to criminal justice.

“From the moment they started drafting this legislation it was clear to me they had crossed constitutional lines,” DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston said in an interview.

“It’s of vital importance for district attorneys to have both independence and discretion,” Boston said. “This commission attacks our abilities as the ministers of justice to do that.”

Boston is among four district attorneys who brought the lawsuit, which was filed in Fulton County Superior Court. The others are Jonathan Adams, the top prosecutor in Butts, Lamar and Monroe counties; Cobb County District Attorney Flynn Broady; and Augusta District Attorney Jared Williams.

While the legislation passed along party lines — the sole Democrat to vote for the law has since switched to the GOP — the complaint shows the new commission remains divisive in the legal community. Adams is among several Republican prosecutors who have raised concerns about the law.

It’s one of a spate of measures Republicans adopted after a midterm campaign that focused on public safety, a theme Kemp reinforced when he declared that “far-left prosecutors are making our communities less safe” as he signed the law in May.

“Georgians in every community deserve to be safe,” Kemp, flanked by law enforcement officers, said at the ceremony. “Brave men and women in uniform are doing their part. District attorneys and prosecutors need to do theirs as well.”

 

It's bad enough that Kemp and Georgia Republicans are directly interfering in legal cases brought in the state, but the real alarm bells should be ringing over the one DA not mentioned in the lawsuit or the article: the DA for the most populous county in Georgia, Fulton County DA Fani Willis.

You know, the one currently conducting a grand jury investigation into Donald Trump's 2020 election fraud, involving several members of the Georgia GOP leadership, and possibly even Kemp himself.

Understand that I expect this "independent commission" will be used against Willis, with intent of removing her from office for bringing any charges against Trump in the state.

So yes, seeing this coming from a Georgia country mile away, her fellow DAs, some Republican, some Democratic, brought a lawsuit.

We'll see where all this goes, but keep this in the back of your mind if/when Willis brings charges as many observers expect.