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

The Boogaloo Boys got their first cop kill in May in the effort to start a race war.

As protests gripped Oakland on May 29, a white van pulled up outside a federal courthouse. A door slid open, and a man peppered the two security officers outside with bullets, killing one and wounding the other.

For a little over a week, the crime was a mystery. Was it tied to the protests just blocks away? Even after the suspected killer was dramatically caught in the nearby mountains eight days later, his motive was murky.

Now, federal authorities say the man, identified as Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo, 32, was an adherent of the “boogaloo boys,” a growing online extremist movement that has sought to use peaceful protests against police brutality to spread fringe views and ignite a race war. Federal investigators allege that’s exactly what Carrillo was trying to do last month.

Federal prosecutors on Tuesday charged Carrillo with murder and attempted murder, and leveled aiding and abetting charges against Robert Alvin Justus Jr., who has admitted to serving as a getaway driver during the courthouse ambush, according to the FBI. Protective Security Officer David Patrick Underwood was killed and a second officer, who officials have not named, was critically wounded in the ambush. Inside the three vehicles Carrillo used, police found a boogaloo patch, ammunition, firearms, bombmaking equipment and three messages scrawled in blood: “I became unreasonable,” “Boog” and “Stop the duopoly.”

“The assassination and injury of federal officers who swore an oath to protect the American public will not be tolerated,” Chad Wolf, the acting secretary for homeland security, said in a statement announcing the charges. “The Department of Homeland Security will continue its mission to end violent extremism in any form.”
Carrillo’s attorney, Jeffrey Stotter, told NBC News that investigators’ claims are “accusations and allegations,” and said his client was “left deeply shaken” by his wife’s suicide in 2018. He also told the Santa Cruz Sentinel that Carrillo, who was an active-duty Air Force staff sergeant at the time of the attack, suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2009.

“All I can ask is that we avoid a rush to judgment as to what occurred,” Stotter told the Sentinel.

The newly detailed alleged motive behind the attack at the Oakland courthouse comes as concerns rise about right-wing violence at Black Lives Matter protests. On Monday, a counterdemonstrator shot a protester during a scuffle in Albuquerque, after a militia group in military-style garb and armed with semiautomatic rifles stood menacingly in the crowd throughout the afternoon. Other boogaloo boys have been charged recently with fomenting violence at other protests.

The actual domestic terrorists are out there killing cops at BLM protests in order to start a larger war that kills thousands, maybe millions of Black folks. They're out there, killing.

At some point, they're going to go all the way.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

We've had Black Lives Matter protests before, and they fell upon deaf ears. Systemic racism was dismissed completely as impossible because "We elected a Black president". It was always followed by white rage and "What more do you people want from us about something that happened 400 years ago?"

This time is different.

The Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix will get a new name and image, Quaker Oats announced Wednesday, saying the company recognizes that "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype."

The 130-year-old brand features a Black woman named Aunt Jemima, who was originally dressed as a minstrel character.

The picture has changed over time, and in recent years Quaker removed the “mammy” kerchief from the character to blunt growing criticism that the brand perpetuated a racist stereotype that dated to the days of slavery. But Quaker, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, said removing the image and name is part of an effort by the company “to make progress toward racial equality.”

“We recognize Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype," Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and chief marketing officer of Quaker Foods North America, said in a press release. “As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers’ expectations."

Kroepfl said the company has worked to "update" the brand to be "appropriate and respectful" but it realized the changes were insufficient.

Aunt Jemima has faced renewed criticism recently amid protests across the nation and around the world sparked by the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody.

People on social media called out the brand for continuing to use the image and discussed its racist history, with the topic trending on Twitter. In one viral TikTok, a woman named Kirby discussed the history of the brand, saying "Black lives matter, people, even over breakfast."

Aunt Jemima is “a retrograde image of Black womanhood on store shelves," Riché Richardson, an associate professor at Cornell University, told the “TODAY” show on Wednesday. “It’s an image that harkens back to the antebellum plantation ... Aunt Jemima is that kind of stereotype is premised on this idea of Black inferiority and otherness.”

“It is urgent to expunge our public spaces of a lot of these symbols that for some people are triggering and represent terror and abuse," Richardson said.

In a 2015 piece for The New York Times, Richardson wrote that the inspiration for the brand's name came from a minstrel song, “Old Aunt Jemima,” in which white actors in blackface mocked and derided Black people.

The logo, Richardson wrote, was grounded in the stereotype of the “mammy ... a devoted and submissive servant who eagerly nurtured the children of her white master and mistress while neglecting her own.”

Aunt Jemima is a one hundred thirty-year old brand based literally on a black house slave and America happily continued to use it for decades because everyone was used to it.

Y'all only noticed now that maybe, just maybe, it was insulting to millions of Americans, and Quaker Oats, owned by PepsiCo, owned by Yum Brands, based right here in Kentucky, finally did the right thing.

One hundred thirty years.

Taken down in a less than a month of protests.

Black Lives Matter.

Retribution Execution, Con't

As the Trump regime continues to eliminate federal inspectors general and replace them with loyalists who will do nothing as far as oversight, the last bastion of the IG community is warning that the two trillion dollars in CARES funds being spent by the regime is ripe for massive abuse by Trump and his cronies.

The Trump administration’s intensifying efforts to block oversight of its coronavirus-related rescue programs are raising new alarms with government watchdogs and lawmakers from both parties amid concerns about the anonymity of companies receiving unprecedented levels of taxpayer funds.

Government watchdogs warned members of Congress last week that previously unknown Trump administration legal decisions could substantially block their ability to oversee more than $1 trillion in spending related to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a letter to four congressional committee chairs Thursday, two officials in charge of a new government watchdog entity revealed that the Trump administration had issued legal rulings curtailing independent oversight of Cares Act funding.
The letter surfaced amid growing bipartisan frustration over the administration’s decision not to disclose how it is spending hundreds of billions in aid for businesses. On Monday, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin appeared to bow to that pressure, saying he would work with Congress on new oversight measures. But some Democrats have said the White House is not taking disclosure requests seriously enough.

“They seem to be saying one thing while doing exactly the opposite,” said Rep. Carolyn B. Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee. “If the Trump administration is committed to full cooperation and transparency with taxpayer dollars, it is unclear why it is manufacturing legal loopholes to avoid responding to legitimate oversight requests.”

According to the previously undisclosed letter, Treasury Department attorneys concluded that the administration is not required to provide the watchdogs with information about the beneficiaries of programs created by the Cares Act’s “Division A.” That section includes some of the most controversial and expensive programs in the coronavirus response efforts, including the administration’s massive bailout for small businesses and nearly $500 billion in loans for corporations.

Mnuchin surprised many lawmakers last week when he announced he would not allow the names of Paycheck Protection Program recipients to become public after the Trump administration had said for months that the data would eventually be disclosed. 

The letter from the inspectors general and Mnuchin’s insistence that the PPP data will not be released come after the White House has repeatedly rebuffed efforts to scrutinize where the taxpayer funding is going.

In their letter, the inspectors general leading the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC), an independent panel created to oversee implementation of the Cares Act, expressed concern about the administration’s legal opinions and their impact on oversight.

“If this interpretation of the CARES Act were correct, it would raise questions about PRAC’s authority to conduct oversight of Division A funds,” Michael E. Horowitz and Robert Westbrooks, the acting chair and executive director of the PRAC, said in a letter obtained by The Washington Post. “This would present potentially significant transparency and oversight issues because Division A of the CARES Act includes over $1 trillion in funding.”

Again, the inspectors general council is flat-out saying "Hey, the Trump regime refuses to let us monitor 12 digits worth of cash here, guys."

When we find out Trump and his gang stole the money, don't say you weren't warned.

StupidiNews!

• An internal Justice Department report on the CIA's suite of top-secret cyber tools falling into the hands of WikiLeaks in 2016 blames "woefully lax security" at the agency for the theft.
• Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis says there will be "no rollback" of planned opening of public areas even as the state's number of new COVID-19 cases are reaching new daily highs.
• North Korea is rejecting envoys from South Korea and is vowing to redeploy border troops as tensions are rising after Pyongyang blew up a joint liaison office established in 2018 this week.
• The Trump regime has filed a civil lawsuit against former Trump National Security Adviser John Bolton to prevent the publishing of his White House memoirs next week.
• Vice-President Mike Pence is blaming increased testing for the recent rise of COVID-19 cases and is claiming that spikes in multiple states are a sign that data is catching up to the pandemic being over.

Last Call For The Sad, Sad State Of Statehood, Con't

Back in July I noted that a Gallup poll had the country overwhelmingly against DC statehood, even a majority of Democrats opposed it eleven months ago.

No major subgroups of Americans voice support for D.C. statehood. However, support is higher among left-leaning political groups than right-leaning ones. Self-described liberals (40%) and Democrats (39%) are among the groups showing higher support. Republicans (15%) and conservatives (14%) are among the subgroups least supportive. Thirty percent of independents approve of making D.C. a separate state.

Given Washington's strong Democratic leanings, making it the 51st state would almost certainly add one voting Democrat to the House and two to the Senate, and that likelihood may underpin Republicans' reluctance to make it a state.

There were modest party differences in 1992, when 24% of Democrats and 16% of Republicans favored making Washington a state, according to the Yankelovich survey.

Steny Hoyer and the Democrats figure striking while the iron is hot is a good idea, and the bill might even pass the House this time.

It will never get any further.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) has chosen June 26 to hold the first floor vote in a generation on D.C. statehood, hoping to harness a national reckoning on race and capitalize on widespread outrage over the federal response to street protests in the nation’s capital.

Officials expect legislation making the District the 51st state to pass the House of Representatives with an overwhelming majority of Democrats, which would be a watershed moment for pro-statehood activists and the first time in U.S. history that either chamber of Congress has advanced a statehood bill.

Forty of 100 senators have announced they support D.C. statehood. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) strongly opposes the legislation, and has said it would not get a vote in the Senate as long as he’s in charge.
“Statehood is the only way,” D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) said at a news conference Tuesday morning, where she was joined by Hoyer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D), the District’s nonvoting representative in the House.

Making the District a state would not only give the 700,000 citizens of the nation’s capital a vote in Congress, Bowser said, it would prevent National Guard troops from other states coming into the city without the city’s consent and could prevent the federalization of local law enforcement.

Pelosi called the political situation in the District “unjust, unequal, undemocratic and unacceptable.” Norton said statehood would “put an end to our oldest slogan: Taxation without representation.”

The officials insisted that the effort is not about partisanship but about citizenship. At the same time, however, Hoyer and others said “some” opposition to statehood over the years has stemmed from the perception of the District as “too Democratic, too black and too liberal” — an old shibboleth referring to the city’s voting patterns and its racial makeup.

There is no way Mitch McConnell is going to add two permanent Democratic Senate seats under any circumstances, and even if McConnell was somehow defeated and the Democrats had a Filibuster-proof 60 seats in January, Democrats can't even get more than 40 votes for it in the Senate right now.

DC statehood may happen in may lifetime, but not anytime soon.

Still, getting such a bill passed in the House would be a significant accomplishment, so there's that, but as with Donald Trump's impeachment, not a whole hell of a lot is going to result from it.

It's another ultimately futile Pelosi and Hoyer gesture that will be sadly forgotten in a matter of weeks.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

The Biden Machine rolls on in Michigan to a huge lead in the latest Detroit Free Press poll.

The damage done to President Donald Trump's standing in Michigan following recent protests outside the White House and in cities across the U.S. may have been even greater than originally believed, a new poll released to the Free Press said Tuesday.

Two weeks ago, EPIC-MRA of Lansing, a polling firm that does work for the Free Press, released a survey showing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, leading Trump 53%-41% in Michigan, a 12-point edge.

But a second poll, started on May 31, a day after the first poll began, and concluded a day later than the first poll, on June 4, showed Biden leading Trump 55%-39% in Michigan, a 16-point margin. As it did for the first poll, EPIC-MRA surveyed 600 randomly selected likely voters for the second one, which had a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The second poll also showed: 

The percentage of Michiganders surveyed who believe the country is headed in the wrong direction increased from 63% in the first survey to 70% in the second. The percentage who believe the U.S. is headed in the right direction fell from 30% to 22%.
The percentage of those with a negative view of Trump as president rose from 56% to 61%, as the percentage of those with a positive view fell from 42% to 38%. 

While the same number, 51%, said they would vote to replace Trump in November, the percentage saying they would vote to reelect him fell, from 38% to 33%. The percentage of those saying they would consider voting for someone other than the president rose from 8% to 13%. 

While it's not known for certain what caused the change, the second survey added a day of polling in the immediate aftermath of law enforcement and military personnel on June 1 forcefully clearing peaceful protesters from a public square outside the White House. They used pepper spray and smoke canisters to move the crowd so Trump could have his photo takenholding a Bible outside St. John's Church, which had been damaged in another protest. 

If Trump is truly behind 12-16 points in battleground Michigan, he is done, toast, kaput.

If the election were held today.

It won't be.  We have a long way to go and everything could change in the space of a day, let alone five months.

But Trump is losing.  We have to make sure that remains the case.

This Biden Ad, featuring Lindsey Graham, is one of the best. pic.twitter.com/A8BhnfTaXJ

— F*ck All Of Y'all Racist B*tches (@KHiveQueenBee) June 16, 2020

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Here in the Cincinnati/NKY area, there have been Black Lives Matter protests in places I never thought I would see, places like Hazard, KY and even right here in Florence and Fort Mitchell.  But as peaceful protests continue nationwide, armed counter-protesters are starting to show up in smaller towns like Bethel, Ohio making sure that Black Lives are not only going unrecognized as worthy, but as human.

Clashes erupted between groups during a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Bethel on Sunday afternoon when counter-protesters rushed the demonstrators on Sunday afternoon. 

Multiple people captured the events in videos that were later posted to Facebook.

Village officials say motorcycle gangs, back the blue organizations, and Second Amendment advocates tried disrupting the Black Lives Matter protest. 

Alicia Gee, a 36-year-old substitute teacher, was inspired to hold the demonstration after seeing an Instagram post about a similar event in Hazard, Kentucky. 

"I guess in my mind, we only think about protests happening in the city. I've always gone to cities to protest. And then to see that something was happening in Hazard – I was like, if Hazard, Kentucky can have a protest, Bethel can have something," Gee said. 

Gee, who has lived in Bethel her whole life, is a member of an artist collective, with 15 other people that became her co-organizers for the demonstration. 

Gee is adamant that the event was not about protesting anything, but rather a demonstration of solidarity with the Black community. This was her first time planning a demonstration, though she had experience with event planning as a former children's minister.

Gee created an event page on Facebook on Tuesday, thinking she'd be pleased if 50 people showed up. 

On Saturday night, she went out to the Plane Street to draw X's on the sidewalk so that demonstrators could remain six feet apart and follow federal social distancing guidelines.

It started out pleasant enough.

Then the assholes with the guns showed up.

The Bethel Police Department is investigating about 10 incidents that stemmed from a clash between counter-protesters and a Black Lives Matter march on Sunday including a protester being punched in the back of the head. 

Police officials said the group Bethel’s Solidarity with Black Lives Demonstration worked with police for several days to coordinate the event on Plane Street. According to a statement, police said they expected 20 to 25 people. 

More protesters than expected showed up bringing the total to between 80 and 100 people, then counter-protesters began making their way to Bethel as well. 

"These groups included several motorcycle gangs, back the blue groups, and second amendment advocates," Bethel officials said in the statement. 

The crowd swelled to around 800 people, police estimated, included about 250 on motorcycles. 

The entirety of Bethel's police force, six officers, were at the event monitoring the situation and attempting to keep the groups separated and peaceful. A group of Clermont County Sheriff Deputies who planned to staff the event as well were called away, leaving only one additional deputy to help. 

More sheriff's deputies would arrive later as the conflicts escalated. 

"Towards the latter part of the event, the various other groups began to move toward the Bethel’s Solidarity with Black Lives Demonstration area," the statement said. "This resulted in approximately 10 incidents. Those involved were removed from the scene and there are ongoing investigations concerning those incidents." 

Anyone who can possibly identify suspects or was a victim during the incidents on Sunday is being encouraged to contact the Bethel Police Department.

The more things change...

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Tuesday that modestly calls for a national certification standard and database for police reform, but critics say it's far too little, too late.
• Police have arrested several members of an armed militia calling itself the "New Mexico Civil Guard" after the group confronted Black Lives Matter protesters at Tiguex Park in Albuquerque.
• Former National Security Adviser John Bolton will be facing federal criminal charges if he publishes his White House memoirs next week, according to Donald Trump's open threats on Monday.
• A Black Lives Matter banner has been taken down from the US Embassy in Seoul, South Korea, after news of the display reached the White House. 
• China has reinstated lockdowns across the country as COVID-19 cases have re-emerged in several provinces, US officials are warning that America is rapidly headed for the same outcome.

Last Call For Trump Goes Viral, Con't

As the US closes in on 120,000 COVID-19 deaths and growing spikes in a dozen-plus states, the FDA is quietly pulling emergency use of hydroxychroloquine because it's not an effective treatment of the virus.

The Food and Drug Administration on Monday withdrew emergency use authorizations for two coronavirus treatments that President Donald Trump promoted despite concerns about their safety and effectiveness.

The agency revoked the authorizations for hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine after a request from Gary Disbrow, acting director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

After reviewing new information from large clinical trials the agency now believes that the suggested dosing regimens "are unlikely to produce an antiviral effect," FDA chief scientist Denise Hinton said in a letter announcing the decision.

Critics have accused the agency of caving to political pressure when it authorized use of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine in hospitalized Covid-19 patients in late March despite thin evidence. More recent randomized controlled trials have found the drugs do not benefit coronavirus patients, and doctors have reported that hydroxychloroquine can cause heart problems.

Because hydroxychloroquine is approved for other uses — treating lupus and arthritis — doctors could still use it "off label" to treat coronavirus patients, and clinical trials examining their use against Covid-19 can continue. The FDA noted that the version of chloroquine that had been authorized for emergency use is not approved in the U.S. so all use of that drug, donated by Bayer, will now end.

The administration’s focus on the malaria medicines in the early months of the pandemic deepened a divide between the White House and its health agencies. Several administration officials told POLITICO they felt the drugs got outsized attention while FDA scrambled for solutions in March. Other current and former Health and Human Services officials later said that the emergency authorities and White House demands cast a shadow on FDA as it struggled to remain independent.

Rick Bright, the former BARDA director whom Disbrow replaced, has accused health officials of removing him from his role overseeing millions of dollars to develop treatments and vaccines because he raised health concerns about hydroxychloroquine and resisted its widespread use.

Trump pushed the drug as a treatment and the right latched onto it, declaring the pandemic over in dozens of states and ending social distancing.  Bright was fired for raising questions.  Now, Bright's replacement has done the same thing, and I fully expect Trump to fire him as well and to demand the FDA reinstate the drug's emergency use status from the FDA before the end of the week.

If he doesn't, Trump admits defeat and that he utterly failed on COVID-19 in every concievable way. The micron-thin hope that hydroxycholroquine actually was effective was the last hope Trump had politically to salvage this disaster, not to mention a path to actually helping sick Americans.

It's gone now.

Trump should resign, for the 419th time, but he won't.

A Supreme Day All Around

Mondays in June mean that the US Supreme Court hands down major case decisions, and today was one of the biggest in history. The Roberts Court ruled 6-3 that the Civil Rights Act of 1964's protected classes against job discrimination does indeed include LGBTQ Americans.

The Supreme Court ruled Monday that a landmark civil rights law protects LGBT people from discrimination in employment, a resounding victory for LGBT rights from a conservative court.

The court decided by a 6-3 vote that a key provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII that bars job discrimination because of sex, among other reasons, encompasses bias against LGBT workers.

“An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids,” Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote for the court.
Justices Samuel Alito, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The Court tries to convince readers that it is merely enforcing the terms of the statute, but that is preposterous. Even as understood today, the concept of discrimination because of ‘sex’ is different from discrimination because of ‘sexual orientation’ or ‘gender identity,’” Alito wrote in a dissent that was joined by Thomas.

The outcome is expected to have a big impact for the estimated 8.1 million LGBT workers across the country because most states don’t protect them from workplace discrimination. An estimated 11.3 million LGBT people live in the U.S., according to the Williams Institute at the UCLA law school.
The cases were the court’s first on LGBT rights since Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement and replacement by Kavanaugh. Kennedy was a voice for gay rights and the author of the landmark ruling in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal throughout the United States. Kavanaugh generally is regarded as more conservative.

The Trump administration had changed course from the Obama administration, which supported LGBT workers in their discrimination claims under Title VII.

And yeah, Neil Gorsuch wrote this opinion playing the role of the late Justice Antonin Scalia saying "Sorry conservatives, technically this is correct if we look at the law" and Chief Justice Roberts signed on along the right side of history with the four liberals.

So yeah, this is a huge, huge decision. You can no longer be fired for being gay.

And that brings us to the other major decision of the Court, the decision to reject taking up any of the major gun control cases next term.

The Supreme Court on Monday turned away a host of challenges to state laws placing restrictions on firearms, declining to take up the contentious matter of gun rights in the U.S. after sidestepping the issue in April.

In declining to take up the appeals, the justices leave intact laws from several states that gun rights supporters said violated their Second Amendment rights. Among the cases turned away were legal battles over laws in at least four states — Massachusetts, Maryland, Illinois and New Jersey — that require residents to meet certain criteria in order to get a permit, including demonstrating a specific need, to carry a handgun outside the home.

In one of the cases out of Massachusetts, the justices declined to weigh in on the state's ban on certain semiautomatic firearms and high-capacity magazines. A dispute over a similar rule in Cook County, Illinois, was also rejected by the Supreme Court. In the case from California, the justices turned away a challenge to a state law that requires handguns sold in the state to use microstamping technology and meet specific design requirements.

The legal battle from New Jersey involved a state law that requires residents to demonstrate they have a "justifiable need" to carry a firearm, which can be satisfied if a private citizen can "specify in detail the urgent necessity for self-protection, as evidenced by specific threats or previous attacks which demonstrate a special danger to the applicant's life that cannot be avoided by other means other than by issuance of a permit to carry a handgun."

Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh, dissented from the court's denial of certiorari in the New Jersey case, writing it is time for the Supreme Court should not prolong its "decade-long failure to protect the Second Amendment."

"This Court would almost certainly review the constitutionality of a law requiring citizens to establish a justifiable need before exercising their free speech rights. And it seems highly unlikely that the Court would allow a State to enforce a law requiring a woman to provide a justifiable need before seeking an abortion," Thomas wrote. "But today, faced with a petition challenging just such a restriction on citizens' Second Amendment rights, the Court simply looks the other way."

The cases presented the Supreme Court with the chance to expand the scope of the Second Amendment, which it has declined to do since its last major ruling in a gun rights case in 2010.

You only need four justices to agree to hear a case, which means the four conservatives (note that Alito and Gorsuch did not sign on the Thomas and Kavanaugh's dissent) don't think they would win in a 5-4 Roberts decision, and that the four liberals were happy enough to leave the laws in Massachusetts and New Jersey alone.

That means that for now, SCOTUS won't go after striking down firearms safety laws in states, and it means that Roberts probably isn't willing to be the fifth justice to strike down those laws in the future.  Yet.

We'll see.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump's personal executive agency axe man, John McEntee, is making major hiring and firing decisions by going over the heads of agencies and even cabinet heads to ensure 100% loyalty to Dear Leader.

President Trump, in a highly unusual new effort, has begun making significant staffing changes inside top federal agencies without the consent — and, in at least one case, without even the knowledge — of the agency head, according to officials familiar with the effort.

Why it matters: This campaign — helmed by Trump's loyalty enforcer, a 30-year-old former body man who now runs hiring for the government — is part of the systematic purging or reassigning of those deemed insufficiently supportive of Trump. 

The effort's pace has alarmed top officials, according to 11 current and former officials with direct knowledge of the situation.

Behind the scenes: Trump has empowered John McEntee, director of the Presidential Personnel Office, in a way his predecessors never were. In his short time on the job, McEntee has flexed this power, steamrolling Cabinet officials and agency heads to install his chosen candidates. 

An extraordinary scene played out late in the morning on March 26, according to two administration officials with direct knowledge of the events, when Chad Wolf, the acting secretary of homeland security, learned he would have a new head of public affairs at his agency. 

A crucial position such as this would normally be appointed only with the agency head’s support. But Wolf learned about his new public affairs chief, Alexei Woltornist, by reading the White House's public press release. 

Wolf was furious, according to these sources. He called the White House Situation Room to try to reach McEntee to find out how this could happen without his knowledge, let alone consent. And he complained privately to colleagues about how PPO treated him.
McEntee's PPO has also clashed with the acting chief of immigration and customs enforcement over personnel, as Politico first reported.

The other side: Wolf is an acting Cabinet secretary, so McEntee can overrule him on staffing in a way he wouldn’t do with a favored Cabinet official like Mike Pompeo. And given the importance that both the president and his conservative allies place on immigration, they are determined to install their preferred political appointees at the Department of Homeland Security.

If all of this seems very, very Soviet Politburo to anyone my age or older, that's because it is.  Trump is compelling ongoing loyalty tests and those who fail get removed.

Who would want to work for the guy in the first place though?

Why, the people who think Soviet-style governance in America is a good idea.

StupidiNews!

• South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott is casting doubt on a federal police use of force law, saying legislation would be too difficult to codify given the "millions of scenarios" police face.
• Philippines journalist Maria Ressa has been convicted for cyber libel under a recent law demanded by President Rodrigo Dueterte, Ressa faces up to six years in prison for her criticism of Dueterte.
• The death of Rayshard Brooks on Friday, killed by Atlanta police, was ruled a homocide, Brooks was shot twice in the back by a police officer, sparking major protests in Atlanta.
• Boko Haram militants are being blamed for the deaths of at least 50 people in Northeast Nigeria, three towns were attacked by militants on Sunday.
• A challenge by Facebook for coders to beat deepfake videos wasn't very successful, the winning algorithm still missed one-third of altered videos.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

President Barack Obama's support of Black Lives Matter during his second term was absolutely the right thing to do, but there's no question that it cost the Democrats dearly with white voters in 2014 and 2016. Now, in 2020, things have changed so rapidly that Democrats across the board look to be gaining massive support heading into November, in one of the biggest political shift of our era. CNN's Harry Enten:

The Iowa Poll released Saturday night showed Democratic Senate candidate Theresa Greenfield with major momentum. 

Forty-six percent of likely voters would vote for Greenfield if the election were held today compared to 43% who would vote for Republican Sen. Joni Ernst -- a within the margin of error advantage for the challenger. 

While it's still early and things could change, this Iowa poll, conducted by Selzer & Co., is the latest state survey for either the race for the White House or Senate to show a clear shift toward Democrats since protests began nationwide following the death of George Floyd at the hands of a white police officer. 

These state polls in aggregate suggest that the movement toward former Vice President Joe Biden seen in the national polls is funneling down to the state level. 

As previously done, I gathered all the telephone state polling that called cellphones. This time I limited my data set to surveys conducted after the protests began. Then I compared the result of those questions to the 2016 presidential vote in the state. In total, we're looking at 11 questions that asked about either the presidential or the Senate race in any particular state. 

The Democratic candidate is running ahead of Hillary Clinton's margin by an average of 10 points. Although the sample size is small, the average overperformances were within a point of the 10 point average when examining the Senate and presidential races as distinct groups. When a similar calculation was made about a month ago, Biden was doing about 5 or 6 points better than Clinton on average in the state polling. 

The latest state polls imply that Biden has a double-digit advantage nationally given that Clinton won the popular vote by 2 points. These state polls are in sync with the national polls that show Biden's lead at 10 points. 

Importantly, many of these polls have been conducted across states that are the heart of the 2020 battleground. States like Arizona and Wisconsin are included in this group. Polls have also been conducted in states that Biden would like to win, but aren't must wins for him, such as Ohio and Texas. Crucially, these are demographically distinct states in different regions of the country indicating that Trump is losing ground in a lot of different places. 

All together, it's the latest evidence that Trump cannot count on the electoral college to save him. The leads that Biden is earning right now are well outside any potential polling miscue like the one that occurred on the state level in 2016. The former vice president, simply put, is well ahead of Trump at this time.

It's finally settling with voters that Donald Trump considers everyone expendable as far as maintaining his grip on power, the elderly and immuno-compromised with COVID-19, the working class and tens of millions of unemployed with the Trump Depression, and anyone who disagrees with him on racism as shown by his willing to use the military against Black Lives Matter demonstrations across the country.

Nearly everyone falls into at least one of these three categories, and they are finally, finally realizing that the problem is the Republicans who continue to enable Trump's immorality time and time again.

They want them all gone.

Four years ago the last-minute break of "I hate both of them but I have to vote for one of them" voters to Trump sealed the fate of the country.  This time that choice has been made months in advance, and it's to see the GOP wiped out.

Trump's people know the 2018 blue wave is a 2020 blue tsunami this time, and very few Republicans will survive.

In the characterization of one source close to the president, a chunk of the re-election team focuses on proving to the president that his “dumpster-fire numbers” aren’t as bad as they seem, or reinforcing Trump’s conviction that pollsters get it wrong “all the time. 

But not everyone on Team Trump is buying the spin. In fact, efforts to pacify the president about the polls and his campaign’s position ahead of November have been undercut from within, with several key advisers making personal entreaties to Trump in the past few weeks to try to convince him that he should not brush off the numbers, even unpleasant ones that comes from news organizations such as CNN.

“I have told the president that the numbers are real and that I believe he can and will win, but that right now it looks bad,” said a Republican who recently spoke to Trump. “He said, ‘Come on, don’t you know that’s all fake?’ But in a lot of these internal numbers [that I’ve seen], we’re way down right now.” 

“Something needs to change,” the Trump ally added.

This person wasn’t the only one sounding the alarm over the past month. Two other sources who’ve spoken to the president lately—one of whom is a senior administration official—said that when the topic of polls came up they advised Trump that the surveys on swing states and key demographics seemed bleak. Both said they were concerned the president wasn’t taking them as seriously as they had wished.

Outside the campaign, a belief has grown that the Pollyannaish advisers surrounding the president—and who are feeding him news that won’t puncture his feel-good bubble—are doing a disservice to both their clients and their professions.

“There are a few pollsters who are bought and paid for, and they will tell you [the client] what you want to hear,” Frank Luntz, a famed-GOP pollster and Trump-skeptical conservative, said, without naming names. “There are pollsters [for whom] if the check is big enough, the lie will be big enough.” 

“I don’t envy those who have to tell Donald Trump what he doesn’t want to hear,” Luntz continued. “I’ve met him several times, I’ve met Biden several times. I would rather present bad [polling] information to Biden than Donald Trump. Presenting bad information or tough information to Joe Biden, you’ll break his heart, if you present tough information to Donald Trump, he breaks your arm.”

I'm perfectly fine with this arrangement.  Biden has to win by double-digits to keep Trump from doing something catastrophic and to keep his dirty tricks from being enough to steal the election.  But I worry about what Trump's October Surprise this time around will be.  He won in large part thanks to James Comey in the last two weeks.

What will happen this time around and what will the sheer scope of it have to be to overcome a pandemic that has killed 115,000, an economic depression, and the largest civil rights movement since the 60's?

Sunday Long Read: War-Weary Of COVID

America has all but given up on fighting COVID-19, and the consequences are going to be catastrophic, as Alexis Madrigal and Robinson Meyer at The Altantic warn.

After months of deserted public spaces and empty roads, Americans have returned to the streets. But they have come not for a joyous reopening to celebrate the country’s victory over the coronavirus. Instead, tens of thousands of people have ventured out to protest the killing of George Floyd by police.

Demonstrators have closely gathered all over the country, and in blocks-long crowds in large cities, singing and chanting and demanding justice. Police officers have dealt with them roughly, crowding protesters together, blasting them with lung and eye irritants, and cramming them into paddy wagons and jails.

There’s no point in denying the obvious: Standing in a crowd for long periods raises the risk of increased transmission of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. This particular form of mass, in-person protest—and the corresponding police response—is a “perfect set-up” for transmission of the virus, Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in a radio interview on Friday. Some police-brutality activists (such as Black Lives Matter Seattle) have issued statements about the risk involved in the protests. Others have organized less risky forms of protests, such as Oakland’s Anti Police-Terror Project’s massive “caravan for justice.”

The risk of transmission is complicated by, and intertwined with, the urgent moral stakes: Systemic racism suffuses the United States. The mortality gap between black and white people persists. People born in zip codes mere miles from one another might have life-expectancy gaps of 10 or even 20 years. Two racial inequities meet in this week’s protests: one, a pandemic in which black people are dying at nearly twice their proportion of the population, according to racial data compiled by the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic; and two, antiblack police brutality, with its long American history and intensifying militarization. Floyd, 46, survived COVID-19 in April, but was killed under the knee of a police officer in May.

Americans may wish the virus to be gone, but it is not. While the outbreak has eased in the Northeast, driving down the overall national numbers, cases have only plateaued in the rest of the country, and they appear to be on the rise in recent days in COVID Tracking Project data. Twenty-two states reported 400 or more new cases Friday, and 14 other states and Puerto Rico reported cases in the triple digits. Several states—including Arizona, North Carolina, and California—are now seeing their highest numbers of known cases.

These numbers all reflect infections that likely began before this week of protest. An even larger spike now seems likely. Put another way: If the country doesn’t see a substantial increase in new COVID-19 cases after this week, it should prompt a rethinking of what epidemiologists believe about how the virus spreads.

But as the pandemic persists, more and more states are pulling back on the measures they’d instituted to slow the virus. The Trump administration’s Coronavirus Task Force is winding down its activities. Its testing czar is returning to his day job at the Department of Health and Human Services. As the long, hot summer of 2020 begins, the facts suggest that the U.S. is not going to beat the coronavirus. Collectively, we slowly seem to be giving up. It is a bitter and unmistakably American cruelty that the people who might suffer most are also fighting for justice in a way that almost certainly increases their risk of being infected.

The protests have led to unusually agonized public-health communication. They have not been met with the stern admonition to stay home that has greeted earlier mass gatherings. Given the long-standing health inequities that black Americans have experienced, hundreds of public-health professionals signed a letter this week declining to oppose the protests “as risky for COVID-19 transmission”: “We support them as vital to the national public health and to the threatened health specifically of Black people in the United States,” they wrote. Yet the protests are indisputably risky, and officials at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have warned that the gatherings might “seed” new outbreaks.

Protesters themselves are not necessarily ignoring the pandemic. In videos of marches taken this week, many if not most of the demonstrators appeared to be wearing masks. Photos and videos of protests show both large, tightly packed crowds and some demonstrators attempting to adhere to some form of social distancing. Protesters carrying hand sanitizer and water pass through the crowd in many cities.

But the evidence does not reveal universal compliance with public-health guidelines. Protesters lay close together on the ground in many cities for nearly nine-minute-long “die-ins,” evoking the length of time that Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis police officer, knelt on Floyd’s neck. Many protests have involved some form of shouting, chanting, or singing, which research suggests can be especially effective modes of transmission for the virus. Earlier this week, near the White House, a mostly masked crowd loudly sang “Lean on Me.”
Protesters and public-health officials alike may be taking into account what The New York Times called “a growing consensus” that being outdoors mitigates some risk of transmission. The virus appears to perish quickly in a sunny, humid environment, even at room temperature, according to research conducted in April by the Department of Homeland Security. (Viral particles may survive for hours longer in drier conditions, and epidemiologists do not believe that these climatic effects alone will dampen the outbreak.) The virus also seems to be more difficult to transmit outside, especially during the day, though scientists still do not know enough about the virus to say confidently that large outdoor gatherings are completely safe. The number of protests over the past week means that researchers will soon have a much better understanding of the risks of outdoor transmission.

So we'll see.  It's possible that things won't be as bad as previously thought.  But it's also possible that the country will see a massive spike in new COVID-19 cases that will quickly overwhelm places without the resources of a New York City or Los Angeles.

And then?

Then things get really awful.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Another black life taken, another black person shot and killed by police, this time in Atlanta. Remember the name Rayshard Brooks. But unlike the times before it, accountability of those in charge of the police was taken with a swiftness.

Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms announced Saturday that police Chief Erika Shields is stepping down after an officer shot and killed a black man during an arrest attempt the night before.

Bottoms said Shields made the decision to resign her top post, which the mayor accepted. The city will launch a national search for her replacement.

“Chief Erika Shields has been a solid member of APD for over two decades and has a deep and abiding love for the people of Atlanta. And because of her desire that Atlanta be a model of what meaningful reform should look like across this country, Chief Shields has offered to immediately step aside as police chief so that the city may move forward with urgency in rebuilding the trust so desperately needed throughout our community,” Bottoms said.

Assistant police Chief Rodney Bryant will serve as the interim chief. Bottoms said Shields “will continue in a role, to be determined.”

Bottoms also called for the termination of the police officer who shot and killed Rayshard Brooks on Friday. Brooks took a Taser from an arresting officer, officials said. As Brooks ran away, Bottoms said he turned over his shoulder and appeared to fire the Taser at one of the officers. The officer shot Brooks.

“While there may be debate as to whether this was an appropriate use of deadly force, I firmly believe that there is a clear distinction between what you can do and what you should do. I do not believe that this was a justified use of deadly force and have called for the immediate termination of the officer,” Bottoms said.

Another officer at the scene has been placed on administrative duty, Bottoms said.

Atlanta protesters took to the streets Saturday for the third weekend with added outrage after Brooks, a 27-year-old black man,was shot and killed at a Wendy’s amid a struggle with police.

Video footage of the incident has been posted on social media and shared widely. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation is investigating the incident.

There was no way Shields could have continued as Chief of Police after this, not in Atlanta.  While I expect the now terminated officer to face legal charges, it's also extremely positive to see Shields step down on her own accord.

The problem isn't just the officers, it's the administration.  And Shields doing the right thing and making way for someone else should be an example to police departments across the country.

Black Lives Matter is having an impact.  Before, Shields would have remained, maybe the officer would have been put on leave pending investigation, then cleared to go back to work while the city settled out of court.

No longer. It's a new era.

The police chief on a Lake Erie resort island has been placed on leave and two officers have resigned following the arrests of a group of black tourists riding on a golf cart, the mayor said.
Police body cameras showed Put-in-Bay officers used stun guns on at least two people during the stop last weekend that began when two white officers said the golf cart’s operator was driving recklessly.

In all, nine people were arrested on charges including assault, aggravated rioting and resisting arrest. A county prosecutor dismissed the charges against six and told the Sandusky Register that charges against the others also would likely be dropped.

Eight of the nine arrested were black, the newspaper said. Some of their family members said the arrests were racially motivated.

Village Mayor Jessica Dress said Thursday there will be a thorough review of what happened, and that Police Chief Steve Riddle was being placed on administrative leave during the investigation.

Two officers also resigned, Dress said, without explaining why. Several other officers were involved in the arrests.

“As a community, we hold our police department accountable for any and all of its decisions,” the mayor said in a statement.

I would say that we need more of this, but we don't need any more racism and any more killings and injuries.  We need racist cops to be let go and more importantly the police unions and administration that enable these assholes need to be gone as well.

Black Lives Matter.