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

A Provo, Utah man who made multiple online threats against President Biden was shot and killed by FBI agents trying to serve a warrant for those threats.

 

A suspect shot and killed by FBI agents early Wednesday in Provo was connected to alleged threats against President Joe Biden and other officials.

The FBI says its agents were attempting to serve arrest and search warrants in Provo when they shot and killed a suspect, now identified as Craig Deleeuw Robertson, at around 6:15 a.m.

Court documents show Robertson threatened to "inflict bodily harm" on Biden during his visit to Utah in a social media message sent on or about Aug. 7.

"I hear Biden is coming to Utah. Digging out my old Ghille suit and cleaning the dust off the M24 sniper rifle," Robertson allegedly wrote.

President Biden is scheduled to arrive in Salt Lake City on Wednesday afternoon for an overnight stay.

In March, Robertson had also claimed he was heading to New York to kill New York County District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who was overseeing the criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump.

"I’ll be waiting in the courthouse parking garage with my suppressed Smith & Wesson M&P 9mm to smoke a radical fool prosecutor that should never have been elected," he posted. "BYE, BYE, TO ANOTHER CORRUPT B______!!!”

While conducting surveillance on Robertson's home on March 19, a special agent attempted to speak with Robertson about his posts, to which Robertson replied, "I said it was a dream!"

Robertson then told the agent that they shouldn't return without a warrant.

 

They came back with the warrant, and apparently a gunfight ensued. It's tragic, but the MAGA terrorists are apparently willing to die for their master.

As I said all during the Obama administration and the thousands of threats he got as President: the bad guys only have to get lucky once.

 

Burning Lake Of Fire, Con't

Arizona Republican and professional election denier Lari Lake is stepping in to the 2024 US Senate race against Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, and the primary field just got a whole lot more interesting.

 

Former Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake is staffing up for a Senate campaign in anticipation of an October launch, making Arizona ground zero to replay — and relitigate — GOP losses in the last two elections.

Why it matters: A potential three-way battle, with Sen. Kyrsten Sinema running as an independent, will expose deep divisions in both parties on whether to appeal to their bases or independents in a critical 2024 battleground state.The race will have implications in the presidential campaign and give President Biden an opportunity to run against the "ultra MAGA" mindset that Lake represents, even if former President Trump isn't Biden's opponent in November 2024.

Lake, who has not conceded her gubernatorial loss in 2022, is one of Trump's most ardent defenders and frequently amplifies the false election claims at the heart of the former president's most recent indictment.

Between the lines: The race also offers a state-level experiment on the implication of a possible three-way presidential contest, with Sinema playing the role of a No Labels candidate.

Driving the news: Lake is expected to spend most of September in Arizona interviewing potential staff and consultants, a source familiar told Axios.The former TV news anchor has hit the campaign trail with Ohio GOP Senate candidate Bernie Moreno in recent days, drawing a crowd of more than 650 people in a rural area.

"I'm really, really excited about [Sen. J.D. Vance], I'm super excited that Bernie Moreno's going to be in the Senate. And if they're in the Senate, I just might have to join them," she said during a Monday fundraiser in Cleveland with Vance and Moreno.

What they're saying: "When President Trump gets back in the White House he's going to need fighters like Kari Lake in Washington, DC to help enact his Agenda 47," Caroline Wren, a senior adviser to Lake, told Axios. "Kari Lake is seriously considering a run for the United States Senate and will be making a final decision this fall."

 

We'll see if Lake entering the race makes it easier to split the Democratic vote, but as awful as Sinema's poll numbers are right now, Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego could benefit greatly.

Voters were presented with a potential list of candidates for the 2024 Republican U.S. Senate Primary. A plurality of Republican state primary voters, 42%, support former gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake. Eleven percent support Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb, 7% support former Senate candidate Blake Masters, 2% support Brian Wright and Jim Lamon respectively. Twenty-eight percent are undecided.

In the Democratic US Senate Primary, a plurality of Democratic primary voters (48%) plan to support Rep. Ruben Gallego, while 40% are undecided.

In a head-to-head matchup between Gallego (D), independent Senator Kyrsten Sinema, and Mark Lamb (R), 36% support Gallego, 29% support Lamb, 21% support Sinema, and 15% are undecided. Without Sinema on the ballot, 42% support both Gallego and Lamb, while 16% are undecided.

In the same two ballot tests with Brian Wright, 37% support Gallego, 26% support Sinema, and 25% Wright, and 12% are undecided. Without Sinema on the ballot, 41% support Gallego, 38% Wright, and 21% are undecided.

“It appears Senator Sinema pulls more support from Republican voters than Democrats on the ballot. About 21% of Republicans would vote for Sinema with Lamb on the ballot, and 34% of Republicans would support Sinema with Wright on the ballot,” Kimball said. “By contrast, Sinema only pulls about 8% of Democratic support from Gallego.” 

 

 I'll take a Gallego win any day of the week here.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

So it turnes out that the Trump legal brain trust were indeed dumb as hog shit, because yes, they were, in fact, taking notes on the criminal fuckin' conspiracy.

A lawyer allied with President Donald J. Trump first laid out a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election in a previously unknown internal campaign memo that prosecutors are portraying as a crucial link in how the Trump team’s efforts evolved into a criminal conspiracy.

The existence of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo came to light in last week’s indictment of Mr. Trump, though its details remained unclear. But a copy obtained by The New York Times shows for the first time that the lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, acknowledged from the start that he was proposing “a bold, controversial strategy” that the Supreme Court “likely” would reject in the end.

But even if the plan did not ultimately pass legal muster at the highest level, Mr. Chesebro argued that it would achieve two goals. It would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”

The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Mr. Biden’s victory. In mid-December, the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Joseph R. Biden Jr.

While that basic plan itself was already known, the document, described by prosecutors as the “fraudulent elector memo,” provides new details about how it originated and was discussed behind the scenes. Among those details is Mr. Chesebro’s proposed “messaging” strategy to explain why pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Mr. Biden was declared the winner. The campaign would present that step as “a routine measure that is necessary to ensure” that the correct electoral slate could be counted by Congress if courts or legislatures later concluded that Mr. Trump had actually won the states.

It was not the first time Mr. Chesebro had raised the notion of creating alternate electors. In November, he had suggested doing so in Wisconsin, although for a different reason: to safeguard Mr. Trump’s rights in case he later won a court battle and was declared that state’s certified winner by Jan. 6, as had happened with Hawaii in 1960.

But the indictment portrayed the Dec. 6 memo as a “sharp departure” from that proposal, becoming what prosecutors say was a criminal plot to engineer “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.”

“I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Mr. Chesebro wrote. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

Three days later, Mr. Chesebro drew up specific instructions to create fraudulent electors in multiple states — in another memo whose existence, along with the one in November, was first reported by The Times last year. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot also cited them in its December report, but it apparently did not learn of the Dec. 6 memo.

“I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes,” Mr. Chesebro wrote in the newly disclosed memo. “It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes.”

As an American, I demand that our national political conspiracies are held to the standards of terrifyingly powerful evil seen in Mission Impossible and James Bond films and Tom Clancy novels, not this middle school class "And I'll put soda vending machines in all the homerooms" president bullshit.

We nearly lost the country to magical thinking cartoon evil.  We may still lose it unless this blunderfuck ends up in prison, for the love of God.  The trials cannot come quickly enough, and the convictions and sentencings require even more alacrity.

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.