Trump Cards, Con't

Facebook, to my great surprise, is upholding Trump's account perma-ban.

Facebook Inc (FB.O)'s oversight board on Wednesday upheld the company's suspension of former U.S. President Donald Trump in a much-awaited verdict that may signal how the company will treat rule-breaking world leaders in the future.

Facebook indefinitely blocked Trump's access to his Facebook and Instagram accounts over concerns of further violent unrest following the Jan. 6 storming of the U.S. Capitol by supporters of the former president.

At the time of the suspension, Facebook Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg said in a post that "the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great." The company later referred the case to its recently established board, which includes academics, lawyers and rights activists, to decide whether to uphold the ban or restore Trump.

"Both of those decisions are no-win decisions for Facebook," said Kate Klonick, an assistant law professor at St. John's University who embedded at Facebook to follow the board's creation. "So, offloading those to a third party, the Oversight Board, is a win for them no matter what."

The binding verdict marks a major decision for the board, which rules on a small slice of challenging content decisions and which Facebook created as an independent body as a response to criticism over how it handles problematic material. Facebook has also asked the board to provide recommendations on how it should handle political leaders' accounts.

 

Meanwhile, Trump is getting his own social media platform. A blog! Wow, what loser still uses blogs in 2021?

Former President Trump has rolled out a new tool to communicate with his supporters in lieu of platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, which banned his accounts.

Trump's platform, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” features videos from the former president and statements from his leadership PAC, which have been sent out over email for several weeks.

Supporters can sign up to get notified when Trump sends out a message from his site, similar to functions on other social media platforms.

While users do not have the ability to reply to Trump’s posts, they can like them and share them on their own Twitter or Facebook accounts.

"This is just a one-way communication," one source familiar with the space told Fox News, which was the first to report on the platform. "This system allows Trump to communicate with his followers."

The website’s “About” page also includes a statement touting Trump’s administration and a slew of mission statements, including “We are committed to defending innocent life and to upholding the Judeo-Christian values of our founding” and “We believe in FREE SPEECH and Fair Elections. We must ensure fair, honest, transparent, and secure elections going forward – where every LEGAL VOTE counts.”

“Over the past four years, my administration delivered for Americans of all backgrounds like never before. Save America is about building on those accomplishments, supporting the brave conservatives who will define the future of the America First Movement, the future of our party, and the future of our beloved country. Save America is also about ensuring that we always keep America First, in our foreign and domestic policy,” the website says.

The website says it is run by Campaign Nucleus, a digital firm founded by Brad Parscale, Trump’s former campaign manager.

The platform could provide a way for Trump to reach out to his supporters online while he is kicked off of Twitter and Facebook, two vehicles he used to get his message out during his 2016 and 2020 campaigns.

 

I mean I at least have a comment section so you guys can yell back at me. 

Seriously though, this is Trump rolling out marching orders to his army, tens of millions strong. expect daily (if not hourly) attacks on biden and the Democrats, and on everyone else who doesn't toe the Trumpist line, and his posts will end up on millions of Facebook accounts anyway, so the ban is useless.

Now, if Facebook polices this and if news outlets ignore Trump's awful two-minute hate missives, we'll be okay. What I fear though is a rush to cover his posts on a regular basis, repeated verbatim not just on FOX (of course) but on every other news, cable, and web political outlet as well so that Trump dominates all coverage again. Our news ecosystem can't handle Trump.

It's what he wants.

It's what he'll most likely get.

Last Call For Israeli A Mess, Con't

The Netanyahu debacle continues in Israel, as the PM is on trial for corruption and in the fifth round of trying to form a government, meaning tat Israel has now gone two years without an actual elected leadership.

In less than a week, Netanyahu has twice attempted to subvert the rule of law to his advantage and pivoted, at the speed of light, to deflect responsibility for the nation’s worst civilian disaster — the fatal stampede at a Galilean religious pilgrimage in which 100,000 worshipers gathered, with no permit but with the permission of Netanyahu’s government, in a spot the size of a small park.

Israel has been without a functional government for more than two years. During this time, the country was dragged through four general election campaigns in which Netanyahu failed to win enough votes to form a stable governing coalition — but succeeded in preventing anyone else from doing so each time.

Stuck in political purgatory, Israel has no budget, and it’s at risk of losing its international credit ratings. The Knesset is not operational, with the prime minister’s allies scrambling to reshape every rule and motion into a parachute that will save his political life. And the cabinet is incapacitated.

The crux of the problem for Netanyahu is that he is on trial, accused of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. On April 5, the first day of witness testimony, Netanyahu slammed Israel’s judiciary, calling the proceedings “an abuse of the destructive power held by the prosecution.”

“This is what the illegitimate use of power looks like,” the prime minister thundered. “This is how you try to topple a strong right-wing prime minister! This is what an attempted coup looks like!”

But it is Netanyahu who seeks to perpetrate a coup — even as he has effectively given up on governing.

By coincidence, his trial started on the same day President Reuven Rivlin invited Netanyahu, whose Likud party won 30 of 120 Knesset seats in the most recent election, to establish a government. The math meant Rivlin had no choice, but he didn’t hide his disgust.

Netanyahu has until Tuesday to come up with a coalition. If he fails, Rivlin may call on the opposition leader to try, but Netanyahu is attempting to stymie that possibility and lead Israel to a fifth round of elections, entrenching Israel’s leadership crisis — and, crucially, preserving his position as caretaker prime minister for a few months more.

With that goal still out of reach, he is instead floating an outlandish proposal — to partially cancel the results of the March 23 election, detaching the party vote for Knesset from the vote for prime minister. This would allow him, personally, to run again for reelection with no parliamentary majority, in an alternative Israel in which he can change election laws on a whim. Mid-game, he’s asking for a mulligan.

Meanwhile, spooked by his trial and by the looming deadline, Netanyahu last week forced an illegal vote through his cabinet, “appointing” a political lackey justice minister. The point of this maneuver was to enable Ofir Akunis, currently the minister for regional cooperation, to control the appointment of a new state prosecutor, one of many essential jobs left empty by Israel’s political limbo. Netanyahu’s interest in imposing his will on the state prosecution needs no explanation. The full slate of Likud ministers, who like their leader no longer pretend to govern, ignored the attorney general’s exclamations about the illegality of the stunt and voted like automatons to confirm Akunis.

Among the state affairs that fell through the cracks was an urgently needed overhaul of services provided to wounded military veterans. The issue gained prominence after Itzik Saidian, a 26-year-old disabled veteran who fought in the 2014 war in Gaza, set himself on fire outside Israeli army headquarters April 13, the day before Israel’s Memorial Day.

No resolution is on the horizon. The cabinet was due to discuss the proposal last week, when the cabinet meeting was hijacked by Netanyahu’s unlawful attempt to install a vassal justice minister. It was rescheduled for a vote at Sunday’s cabinet meeting, but instead of leading his cabinet in mourning, Netanyahu canceled the meeting, saying he did it out of respect for those killed in the stampede.

 

Netanyahu is essentially pulling Trump's staying in power coup in a parliamentarian-style democracy, and it's working. As long as Netanyahu has enough allies to keep the opposition from ever forming a government, then he can stay in power semi-permanently.

The major wrench in the works is the trial. That's the one thing that he hasn't been able to stop so far and if he's convicted, all hell will break loose.

We'll see where this goes.

Retribution Execution, Con't

At this point House Republicans are now openly plotting the ouster of Liz Cheney, the one Republican willing to risk her party leadership to say that Trump's Big Lie is full of crap.

House Republicans are moving closer to ousting Conference Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) from leadership, and are already considering replacements — including Reps. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), Ann Wagner (R-Mo.) and Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.), congressional aides tell Axios.

What we're hearing: Most members recognize Cheney can't be succeeded by a white man, given their top two leaders — House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) — fill that demographic. Selling such a team in a midterm year would compound the GOP's challenges with suburban women. 

The conference meets next Wednesday, May 12. Most members expect the process to oust Cheney to begin then, whether formally or informally, after some of McCarthy's top lieutenants broadened their complaints against her. It would take up to a two-thirds vote of the 212 caucus members to replace her — a relatively high bar if a secret ballot is held.

Behind the scenes: When Cheney faced an uprising within the party in February over her vote to impeach former President Trump, McCarthy supported her and told his colleagues he wanted her to remain as GOP conference chair. But leadership and many in the rank and file were angry last week when Cheney's criticism of Trump dominated coverage of the House Republican conference in Orlando, Florida.

 

Both Walorski and Stefanik voted to throw out the Presidential election results to validate the Big Lie, while Wagner and former House #3 Cathy McMorris Rodgers did not, so my money is on Stefanik. And when people are openly talking about who will be replacing you and why rather than could, the writing's on the wall for both Cheney and the GOP.

We'll see next week just how long Cheney may have left.

And reminder: Cheney is still an awful, repugnant human being who would support 99% of what Trump did, especially if she was doing it herself.

Florida Definitely Goes VIral, Con't

GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis has lifted all COVID-19 restrictions and has declared the pandemic "over" in the state of Florida, saying "We are no longer in a state of emergency".

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed an executive order Monday that immediately suspends all outstanding local Covid-19 emergency orders and related public health restrictions.

“The fact is, we are no longer in a state of emergency,” DeSantis said during a news conference. He acknowledged that Florida was still not done with its fight against the coronavirus but reiterated the nation’s decline in Covid-19 cases and deaths.

“I think that’s the evidence-based thing to do,” DeSantis said, adding that asking vaccinated individuals to continue to wear masks would undermine confidence in the coronavirus vaccines.

Private businesses can still require masks and enforce social distancing and other protective measures.

DeSantis signed a bill Monday that codifies the executive order into law, effective July 1. The executive order, he said, was designed to “bridge the gap” until then. The measure, which effectively ends all local pandemic-related restrictions, also bans vaccine passports.

 

So no more COVID health measures, local, state or otherwise.  We're back to "suggestions" that everyone is free to ignore and that the vast majority will do so. And this is an absolute recipe for disaster:

 

Florida has reported the third-most Covid-19 cases in the U.S. at more than 2.2 million since the beginning of the pandemic and the fourth-highest death toll at more than 35,000 fatalities, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Average new cases there, however, have fallen by more than 13% over the last week, dropping to 4,885 as of Sunday, according to the data.

 

And by July 4th, expect to see an "unexpected" spike in new cases. Biden will be blamed of course. We'll be right back to where we were this time last year, with red states refusing new restrictions and a big summer swell in cases and deaths.

As I said earlier, get used to the new normal.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The backlash against the idea that America is structurally racist is now in full force, with white Republicans going to the mats to destroy any hint of critical race theory being taught to anyone.

 

Nine months after officials in the affluent Carroll Independent School District introduced a proposal to combat racial and cultural intolerance in schools, voters delivered a resounding victory Saturday to a slate of school board and City Council candidates who opposed the plan.

In an unusually bitter campaign that echoed a growing national divide over how to address issues of race, gender and sexuality in schools, candidates in the city of Southlake were split between two camps: those who supported new diversity and inclusion training requirements for Carroll students and teachers and those backed by a political action committee that was formed last year to defeat the plan.

On one side, progressives argued that curriculum and disciplinary changes were needed to make all children feel safe and welcome in Carroll, a mostly white but quickly diversifying school district. On the other, conservatives in Southlake rejected the school diversity plan as an effort to indoctrinate students with a far-left ideology that, according to some, would institutionalize discrimination against white children and those with conservative Christian values.

Candidates and voters on both sides described the election as a "fork in the road" for Southlake, a wealthy suburb 30 miles northwest of Dallas. "So goes Southlake," a local conservative commentator warned in the weeks leading up to the election, "so goes the rest of America."

In the end, the contest was not close. Candidates backed by the conservative Southlake Families PAC, which has raised more than $200,000 since last summer, won every race by about 70 percent to 30 percent, including those for two school board positions, two City Council seats and mayor. More than 9,000 voters cast ballots, three times as many as in similar contests in the past.

Hannah Smith, a prominent Southlake lawyer who clerked for Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, defeated Ed Hernandez, a business consultant, to win a seat on the Carroll school board. In a statement to NBC News on Sunday, Smith, who is white, said the election "was a referendum on those who put personal politics and divisive philosophies ahead of Carroll ISD students and families, and their common American heritage and Texas values."

"The voters have come together in record-breaking numbers to restore unity," Smith said. "By a landslide vote, they don't want racially divisive critical race theory taught to their children or forced on their teachers. Voters agreed with my positive vision of our community and its future."

Hernandez and other candidates running in support of new diversity and inclusion programs said they were not particularly surprised by the outcome in a historically conservative city where about two-thirds of voters backed President Donald Trump last year, but they were dismayed by the margin of their defeat.

Hernandez, an immigrant from Mexico, said he worries about the signal the outcome sends to dozens of Carroll high school students and recent graduates who came forward with stories about racist and anti-gay bullying over the past two years. To demonstrate the need for change, members of the student-led Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition collected more than 300 accounts from current and former Carroll students last year who said they had been mistreated because of their race, religion or sexual orientation.

"I don't want to think about all these kids that shared their stories, their testimonies," Hernandez said, growing emotional Saturday moments after having learned the election results. "I don't want to think about that right now, because it's really, really hard for me. I feel really bad for all those kids, every single one of them that shared a story. I don't have any words for them."

The fight in Southlake dates to the fall of 2018, when a video of white Carroll high school students chanting the N-word went viral, making national headlines. In the aftermath, school leaders hosted listening sessions with students and parents and appointed a committee of 63 community volunteers to come up with a plan to make Carroll more welcoming for students from diverse backgrounds.

 

Declaring war on "Critical Race Theory" is the new in thing for the GOP, and it will be attacked, denigrated, and criminalized until us Blacks back down and shut up, I guess. Black Lives Matter, but only if it's convenient for white folks to say so. 

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said Monday he doesn’t think 1619 is one of the most important points in U.S. history.

That's the year the first enslaved Africans were brought to and sold in the Virginia colony, a point often considered as the beginning of American slavery.

“I think this is about American history and the most important dates in American history. And my view — and I think most Americans think — dates like 1776, the Declaration of Independence; 1787, the Constitution; 1861-1865, the Civil War, are sort of the basic tenets of American history,” McConnell said during an appearance at the University of Louisville.

“There are a lot of exotic notions about what are the most important points in American history. I simply disagree with the notion that The New York Times laid out there that the year 1619 was one of those years.

“I think that issue that we all are concerned about — racial discrimination — it was our original sin. We’ve been working for 200-and-some-odd years to get past it,” he continued. “We’re still working on it, and I just simply don’t think that’s part of the core underpinning of what American civic education ought to be about.”

 

Black lives matter only if white folk give us permission to matter. Same goes for Black history, Black culture, Black labor, Black pain, Black everything. Otherwise, we should just "get past it" and "Lose the victim mentality" and "Be grateful we're in America".

 

You know, while they kill us.

 

We should be grateful for that, because it could be worse.

 

Worse than killing us.

 

Think about that.

 

 

A Herd Of Toddlers With Immunity To Reason

The CDC no longer believes COVID-19 herd immunity is possible here in the US, given the fact that 40% of American adults refuse to take the vaccine and never will. What it means is we'll be living with yearly variants of the virus for years to come, and infection spikes that will kill tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands annually.

 

Early in the pandemic, when vaccines for the coronavirus were still just a glimmer on the horizon, the term “herd immunity” came to signify the endgame: the point when enough Americans would be protected from the virus so we could be rid of the pathogen and reclaim our lives.

Now, more than half of adults in the United States have been inoculated with at least one dose of a vaccine. But daily vaccination rates are slipping, and there is widespread consensus among scientists and public health experts that the herd immunity threshold is not attainable — at least not in the foreseeable future, and perhaps not ever.

Instead, they are coming to the conclusion that rather than making a long-promised exit, the virus will most likely become a manageable threat that will continue to circulate in the United States for years to come, still causing hospitalizations and deaths but in much smaller numbers.

How much smaller is uncertain and depends in part on how much of the nation, and the world, becomes vaccinated and how the coronavirus evolves. It is already clear, however, that the virus is changing too quickly, new variants are spreading too easily and vaccination is proceeding too slowly for herd immunity to be within reach anytime soon.

Continued immunizations, especially for people at highest risk because of age, exposure or health status, will be crucial to limiting the severity of outbreaks, if not their frequency, experts believe.

“The virus is unlikely to go away,” said Rustom Antia, an evolutionary biologist at Emory University in Atlanta. “But we want to do all we can to check that it’s likely to become a mild infection.”

The shift in outlook presents a new challenge for public health authorities. The drive for herd immunity — by the summer, some experts once thought possible — captured the imagination of large segments of the public. To say the goal will not be attained adds another “why bother” to the list of reasons that vaccine skeptics use to avoid being inoculated.

Yet vaccinations remain the key to transforming the virus into a controllable threat, experts said.

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the Biden administration’s top adviser on Covid-19, acknowledged the shift in experts’ thinking.

“People were getting confused and thinking you’re never going to get the infections down until you reach this mystical level of herd immunity, whatever that number is,” he said.

“That’s why we stopped using herd immunity in the classic sense,” he added. “I’m saying: Forget that for a second. You vaccinate enough people, the infections are going to go down.” 

 

The shift now is to triage, and to your annual COVID vaccinations for this year's variants in the years ahead, because Americans are petulant, selfish kids. Meanwhile, people will end up in hospitals and die from the disease, and tens of millions of us will still refuse the yearly variant as well. Some of them will get sick. Some will end up in the hospital on a respirator. And some will end up on a morgue slab.

The new normal, indeed.

The Mess In Texas

Democrats better figure out what's wrong in Texas and fast, because they are basically at the point of not even being able to field a primary runoff candidate in Texas's 6th District special election.

Republicans Susan Wright and Jake Ellzey will advance to a runoff in the special election for Texas' 6th Congressional District.

CNN projected Wright would take the first spot in the runoff, but Ellzey and Democrat Jana Lynne Sanchez had been locked in a tight race for second.

Sanchez conceded the race on Sunday, thanking volunteers, staff and supporters in a statement posted on social media.

"Democrats have come a long way toward competing in Texas but we still have a long way to go. Unfortunately, tonight we came up short, and two Republicans will be competing to represent this Congressional district," Sanchez wrote. "We'll keep fighting for a healthier, equitable and prosperous Texas and to elect leaders who care about meeting the needs of Texans, although it won't happen in this district immediately."

It won't happen in 2022 either. Another round of GOP-controlled Census redistricting in states like Texas, Georgia, Florida and Ohio will put dozens of House seats out of play for the Democrats come 18 months from now, and it will take a miracle for the Dems to hold on to the House in a second half of a Biden term.

And at this point, before that's all even happened, we can't even bother to bring enough voters to the table to get a candidate on the ballot. Trump waltzed right into the race and locked it down.

I know Democrats are busy governing, but they can't govern if they don't win, and they can't win if they can't even get on the goddamn ballot.

I expect to see that level of Democratic party incompetence here in the OH/IN/KY Tri-State, but in Texas it's a threat to the entire country.

Do better, guys.

StupidiNews!

• San Diego rescue officials say at least three people are dead and another 20 have been hospitalized after a tour boat capsized off the Pacific Coast Sunday.
• UK PM Boris Johnson is facing more questions from Parliament about personal spending on the Queen's shilling, including refurbishing his personal apartment and paying for child care.
• The Biden Administration is denying Iran state media reports of a prisoner swap deal as part of a revamped nuclear treaty, saying no such arrangement has been reached.
• Maine GOP Sen. Susan Collins is joining a growing number of Republicans who are saying DC should join Maryland if its citizens want House and Senate representation, rather than statehood.
• The Biden Administration will keep the current Trump-revived National Space Council, with VP Kamala Harris set to join as the group's chair.

The Big Lie, Con't

Kansas GOP Sen. Roger Marshall is one of the Republican Party's chief insurrectionists, and told CNN's Pamela Brown on Saturday that the country is "so ready to move on" from January 6th. Of course, that's a complete lie, as the Kansas City Star takes Marshall to task for.

All Roger Marshall wants is for Americans to put his role in that little insurrection thing in the rearview mirror.

On Saturday, CNN’s Pamela Brown pressed the freshman U.S. senator from Kansas about his vote to toss out millions of Americans’ ballots in Arizona and Pennsylvania, and about his joining Texas’ lawsuit to invalidate President Joe Biden’s decisive victory. Marshall was one of only six GOP senators who voted against certifying the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, just hours after a berserk mob invaded the U.S. Capitol, killing at least five people, including one police officer. (Marshall had company in the vote with his Missouri neighbor, Sen. Josh Hawley, natch.)

So does he have any regrets, or concerns that his actions contributed to the fact that fully 70% of Republican voters think the election was illegitimate, Brown asked?

Of course not. “Look, Pamela, it’s, we’re just so ready to move on,” he said, beaming his TV smile. “I made a decision based upon the facts that I knew at that point in time. … But it’s time to move on. It’s time for this country to heal. It’s time for a spirit of forgiveness to be happening.”

Normally, saying “I’m sorry” precedes the expectation of forgiveness.

And he isn’t sorry, since he still didn’t back down from his vague claims about nonexistent voter fraud. “I was concerned then,” he told Brown, “and still am today,” that the election wasn’t aboveboard. (Just the presidential part of it, of course — he’s raised no objection to Republicans’ strong down-ballot showing around the country.)

This isn’t the first time Marshall has urged America to “move on.” In late January, he insisted that a second impeachment trial for Donald Trump would divide us too much, and that “this country has to heal.”

That’s an odd prescription from a doctor-turned-politician who makes it a regular practice to pick at the country’s culture war wounds. His Twitter feed and official press releases often read like a MAGA “Mad Libs.”

Biden’s address last week was “the lowest energy speech I have ever personally heard on the House floor,” he said. “Dem Senators” want to “enact their radical agenda & tip the scales of power in their favor,” he tweeted. He joined fellow firebrand Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa introducing the eye-rollingly named TASTEE Act, or Telling Agencies to Stop Tweaking What Employees Eat Act of 2021, “pushing back against the Left’s ‘War on Meat’ and ‘Meatless Mondays.’”

Marshall certainly has meat on his mind — red meat for his Breitbart sound bite base. But if he really thinks it’s “time for this country to work together and focus on the goals that we can solve together,” as he said to Brown, he could start by apologizing for being one of the leading proponents of the Big Lie about the election.

 

Of course no Republican is going to do this, because there are no good Republicans. Arizona's "election audit" farce continues with actual January 6th terrorists participating in the vote recounting and CNN found 70% of Republicans still believing that the election was stolen.

To believe Marshall's additional lie about the GOP wanting to move on is even more harmful than believing the Big Lie he helped to spread 100 days ago, because it clearly shows that Marshall doesn't want to be linked to the inevitable violence he knows is coming.

Also, someone should ask Sen. Marshall about the murder of Aviva Okeson-Haberman, a 24-year-old KC radio journalist who was killed last week in her apartment. She covered social justice for NPR station KCUR.

Someone needs to hold Marshall and his fellow insurrectionists accountable, because otherwise the Big Lie is here to stay.

Debra Ell, a Republican organizer in Michigan and fervent supporter of former president Donald Trump, said she has good reason to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

“I think I speak for many people in that Trump has never actually been wrong, and so we’ve learned to trust when he says something, that he’s not just going to spew something out there that’s wrong and not verified,” she said, referring to Trump’s baseless claims that widespread electoral fraud caused his loss to President Biden in November.

In fact, there is no evidence to support Trump’s false assertions, which culminated in a deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. But Ell, a Republican precinct delegate in her state, said the 2020 election is one of the reasons she’s working to censure and remove Jason Roe from his role as the Michigan Republican Party’s executive director — specifically that Roe accepted the 2020 results, telling Politico that “the election wasn’t stolen” and that “there is no one to blame but Trump.”

“He said the election was not rigged, as Donald Trump had said, so we didn’t agree with that, and then he didn’t blame the Democrats for any election fraud,” said Ell, explaining her frustration with Roe. “He said there was no fraud — again, that’s something that doesn’t line up with what we think really happened — and then he said it’s all Donald Trump’s fault.”

Nearly six months after Trump lost to Biden, rejection of the 2020 election results — dubbed the “Big Lie” by many Democrats — has increasingly become an unofficial litmus test for acceptance in the Republican Party. In January, 147 GOP lawmakers — eight senators and 139 House members — voted in support of objections to the election results, and since then, Republicans from Congress to statehouses to local party organizations have fervently embraced the falsehood.

In Washington, normally chatty senators scramble to skirt the question, and internal feuding over who is to blame for the Jan. 6 insurrection has riven the House Republican leadership, with tensions between House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, spilling into public view. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) is facing a Trump-aligned primary challenger in her 2022 race, inspired by her call for Trump to resign after the Jan. 6 attack and her later vote to convict him over his role in inciting the insurrection.

Local officials, too, are facing censure and threats — in states from Iowa to Michigan to Missouri — for publicly accepting the election results. And in Arizona’s largest county, a hand recount of 2.1 million votes cast in November is underway by Republicans who dispute the results, in yet another effort to overturn the results of the November contest.

The issue also could reverberate through the 2022 midterms and the 2024 election, with Trump already slamming Republicans who did not resist the election results. For Republicans, fealty to the falsehood could pull the party further to the right during the primaries, providing challenges during the general election when wooing more moderate voters is crucial. And for Democrats, the continued existence of the claim threatens to undermine Biden’s agenda.

 

The longer this goes on, the more another deadly insurrectionist terrorist attack -- or worse -- becomes likely, if not inevitable.

Sunday Long Read: A Plain Story About Being Black

The CBC's Omarya Issa and Ify Chiwetelu explore not just being Black in Canada, but being Black in the Prairie provinces and the history, culture, and future of being Black in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba in this week's Sunday Long Read.

 

What does it mean to be Black in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba? It is impossible to limit more than 200 years of recorded Black presence on the Prairies to a single definition.

The CBC project Black on the Prairies began with a conversation among colleagues in the spring of 2020. The Prairies, like the rest of the country, were gripped by the rallying cry of “Black Lives Matter.”

That conversation revealed a mutual desire to share the fullness of Black life on the Prairies. These stories are vital and urgent, especially during what the United Nations has labelled the International Decade for People of African Descent.

This project does not position the Prairies as Black ancestral territory or homelands. To be Black on the Prairies is to be part of a colonial legacy that begins on the ancestral lands of the First Nations and Métis people of this region. We aim to recognize Black and Indigenous peoples’ shared histories and affirm our ongoing relationships.

Through five themes — Migration, Putting in Work, Black and Indigenous Relations, Politics and Resistance, and Black to the Future — this project places Black people's experiences at the centre of the Prairie narrative.

These stories explore the richness, complexity, depth and multiplicity of Black Prairie life — past, present and future. They highlight achievements and histories that affirm the influence of Black life on the Prairies and challenge assumptions about its newness.

Bringing this project to life involved contributions from a 10-person community advisory board. They shared insights, curiosities and perspectives, ensuring that Black on the Prairies authentically represents a diversity of experiences and histories. To them, we are incredibly grateful.

In this project, you will find personal essays, articles, audio stories, images and more. We invite you to enter through any door.

Welcome to Black on the Prairies.

Having been born in a Great Plains state myself, I discovered a lot of similarities and some important differences in this journey, but it's definitely a history lesson worth taking in here.

Pull up a chair, as this is a good one.

It's About Suppression, Con't

Trump wants an army of "poll watchers" to discredit elections, and GOP state legislatures are delivering in nearly 20 states.

 

Voting rights activists are sounding alarms about Republican efforts in key states to empower partisan poll watchers and expand voter challenges – arguing it could lead to voter intimidation that recalls dark chapters in US history.

Bills in several states would grant new authority to poll watchers – who work on behalf of candidates and political parties – to observe voters and election workers. Critics say it could lead to conflict and chaos at polling places and an improper targeting of voters of color.

In Texas, a measure under consideration by the Republican-controlled legislature would grant partisan poll watchers the right to videotape voters as they receive assistance casting their ballots.

And in Florida, a sweeping election bill passed Thursday by Republicans in the state legislature specifies that partisan observers must be able see the ballots as canvassing boards work to authenticate voters’ signatures on absentee ballots. There are no limits on how many ballots poll watchers can challenge. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has indicated he will sign the law.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, the state’s controversial new voting law makes it explicit that any Georgian can challenge the qualifications of an unlimited number of their fellow voters. The new law comes after a Texas group, True the Vote, teamed up with Georgia activists last year to question the qualifications of more than 360,000 voters ahead of two Senate runoff elections.

Most counties dismissed True the Vote’s challenges, but Georgia’s new statute requires local election administrators to consider these challenges, threatening them with state sanctions if they don’t.

“If you believe that these challenges aren’t going to be racially targeted, then you are crazy,” said Marc Elias, a leading Democratic election lawyer who has sued on behalf of voting rights groups to stop the Georgia law from taking effect. “This is going to become a tool of voter suppression by Republicans in the state of Georgia.”

The moves to empower partisan actors come after record numbers of voters turned out in 2020. States relaxed election rules to allow more voting by mail and the use of drop boxes to avoid spreading Covid-19. That turnout surge in states such as Georgia helped Democrats seize the White House and the majority in the US Senate.

As part of their failed efforts to overturn the election results, former President Donald Trump and his allies repeatedly argued fraud could have occurred because Trump-aligned poll watchers lacked sufficient access to the voting and counting process in several states. There is no evidence of widespread fraud in the 2020 election.

Around the country, Republican legislators have responded with measures that grant more authority to poll watchers. A new analysis by the liberal-leaning Brennan Center for Justice found that, as of April 15, lawmakers in 20 states had introduced at least 40 bills to expand poll watchers’ powers.

 

There is a long, brutally racist history of "poll watchers" challenging Black voters in this nation, and we're headed back to an era where every vote cast by a Black person is challenged and disenfranchised. It won't be pretty.

And that's the point.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Republicans are taking another shot at ending Rep. Liz Cheney's career, confident this time that they have the numbers to remover her from the House GOP's number 3 post.

Top Republicans are turning on Rep. Liz Cheney, the party’s highest-ranking woman in Congress, with one conservative leader suggesting she could be ousted from her GOP post within a month.

Why it matters: The comments by Reps. Steve Scalise, the minority whip, and Jim Banks, chairman of the Republican Study Committee, carry weight because of their close relationship with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — who is openly feuding with Cheney. 

Banks (R-Ind.), leader of the largest conservative caucus in the House, told Axios Friday that Cheney's continued criticisms are "an unwelcome distraction," and he questioned whether she would retain her leadership role in a month. 

Banks' comments were echoed more diplomatically by Scalise (R-La.), the No. 2 Republican in the House. 

During an interview with Axios on Friday, he said of Cheney: "This idea that you just disregard President Trump is not where we are, and, frankly, he has a lot to offer still.”
Earlier in the week, McCarthy himself told reporters: "If you're sitting here at a retreat that's focused on policy, focused on the future of making American next-century, and you're talking about something else, you're not being productive."

Cheney (R-Wyo.) told reporters during several interviews at a GOP retreat in Orlando, Florida, that anyone challenging the 2020 election results should be disqualified from a presidential campaign in 2024, and that she herself would not rule out a run. 

She also said a commission to examine the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection should be narrowly focused — not the wide-ranging probe McCarthy favors. 

In addition, Cheney characterized a memo Banks wrote about how the party could retain working-class voters as "neo-Marxist."

What they're saying: Banks said such comments detracted from a unified focus about how to beat the Democrats in the 2022 midterms. 

"That’s what we got out of Liz Cheney, which doesn’t help us remain focused on that single goal," the congressman said during an interview he offered to Axios. 

"Her lack of focus on that, while being focused on other things, and proving her point, was an unwelcome distraction." 

“The sort of sideline distractions at the GOP retreat will only serve to hold us back from being focused on that nearly unanimous goal we have as a conference," Banks added.

Asked whether he thought Cheney, who serves in the No. 3 party role as GOP conference chair, will retain that position in a month, Banks said, "I don't know."

 

So what's different now as opposed to when Republicans failed to oust her in February and failed miserably?

Two words: Donald Trump. Trump has gotten through to Steve Scalise, and Scalise and his crew want Cheney gone after her comments on 2024. Expect this time for Cheney to actually be removed from her post.

The purge continues. The only thing that matters to the GOP is loyalty to Dear Leader Trump.

The Worst-Case COVID Scenario

India has now reached the cascade failure stage of "reopening too early" as daily new cases of COVID-19 have gone from 15k to 400k in the matter of weeks.

India recorded more than 400,000 new COVID-19 cases for the first time on Saturday as it battles a devastating second wave, and the country's massive new vaccination drive was hampered in some areas by shortages of the shots.

Authorities reported 401,993 new cases in the previous 24 hours, after 10 consecutive days of more than 300,000 daily cases. Deaths jumped by 3,523, taking the country's total toll to 211,853, according to the federal health ministry.

The surge in infections has overwhelmed hospitals, morgues and crematoriums and left families scrambling for scarce medicines and oxygen. And while India is the world's biggest producer of COVID-19 vaccines, shortages of the shots in some states hindered the opening of vaccinations for all adults.

West Bengal state was unable to start a drive aimed at adults aged between 18 and 45 due to a shortage of shots and urged the federal government to provide more supplies, a senior state health official said, declining to be named as he was not authorised to speak with media.

Arvind Kejriwal, the chief minister of the hard-hit state of Delhi on Friday urged people not to queue at vaccination centres, promising more vaccines would arrive "tomorrow or the day after".

Eastern Odisha state said on Friday it had received a consignment of 150,000 shots but would only allow a few people to get shots due to lockdown restrictions preventing movement.

In Ahmedabad, the main commercial city in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's home state of Gujarat, hundreds of people lined up for their shots.

"I took my first dose and I am appealing to all students to take the vaccine and be safe," said Raj Shah, a 27-year-old student in the city.

India has received 150,000 Sputnik-V vaccine doses from Russia and millions more doses will follow, an Indian foreign ministry spokesman said on Saturday.

 

When I said we were in for the long haul against COVID, I meant it. The Biden Administration is getting supplies to India, but the reality is this is now a runaway train. Lockdowns until the fire is out may stop the spread, but it also prevents people from getting vaccinated. This is the worst-case scenario that would have happened here under a second Trump term, and it's happening in a country with four times our population.

 

The curve has gone exponential.

What's happening in India now is prima facie evidence of what this virus can do to a susceptible population when there is premature breakdown of social distancing and universal masks. (Rise of variants doesn't help this cause either). Vaccinate first. Relax next. pic.twitter.com/9j6dniriMg

— Vincent Rajkumar (@VincentRK) April 30, 2021

 

Unless President Modi can contain this disaster, we could see a million daily new cases at this rate. The death toll could be catastrophic. We lost 500,000 plus people in this country and the death toll isn't done here. India in 2021 could dwarf that number.

Get vaccinated, is all I'm saying.

Going Postal, Con't

Republicans are VERY ANGRY that the US Post Office was monitoring right-wing online threats to federal post office building and postal workers after January 6th, and they DEMANDED HEARINGS about this OUTRAGE.

The only problem is that in the hearing, the Chief Postal Inspector of the post office testified the USPS was given authority to monitor Americans in 2017. By Trump and the GOP. Who used this power for years secretly, including to monitor Black Lives Matter protesters after George Floyd's death last summer.

 

The U.S. Postal Service’s law enforcement arm began monitoring social media posts following the Black Lives Matter protests that erupted in Minnesota and across the nation after George Floyd was killed in police custody in May 2020, according to congressional aides and lawmakers who attended a briefing this week on the program.

Last week, Yahoo News revealed that analysts with the U.S. Postal Inspection Service have been trawling Americans’ social media posts to track political protests as part of its Internet Covert Operations Program, known as iCOP. The news prompted more than two dozen Republican lawmakers to demand that the USPS provide information on the program.

 

Then the GOP found out something they probably wish they had left alone.

During a Wednesday briefing before the House Oversight Committee, Chief Postal Inspector Gary Barksdale told lawmakers that iCOP began in 2017 to investigate potential crimes, such as drug and firearms trafficking transported by the mail system, but then moved into monitoring protests last spring because of the potential threat to Postal Service workers and buildings. An uptick in threats against Postmaster General Louis DeJoy was also a factor in iCOP’s continued focus on monitoring protests, according to a GOP aide who attended the briefing.

A leaked intelligence bulletin from March about iCOP’s work largely focused on social media posts on the right-leaning Parler platform, as well as Facebook and other sites. According to those who attended the hearing, Barksdale would say only that the work was “incident-specific,” but did not provide further details.

“The chief postal inspector was unprepared to the point of incompetence,” Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., told Yahoo News. “He couldn’t tell me when this program started, how much money is spent on it or where the authority to spy on Americans came from.

“The complete inability to give us answers to basic questions was unacceptable,” Mace added.

Still, new details about iCOP’s work did emerge, according to several people who attended the briefing. Barksdale began his testimony with a dramatic video of a mail truck engulfed in flames during the protests that erupted in Minnesota after Floyd's death.

The footage was intended to illustrate why iCOP resources were dedicated to tracking protests on social media, according to a GOP aide.

Concerns about the USPS’s social media surveillance comes amid a series of controversies surrounding the agency. During the 2020 presidential campaign, Democrats accused DeJoy, who was appointed by President Donald Trump, of removing mailboxes and sorting machines to influence the November election, which had a record number of mail-in ballots.

Yet now it’s Republicans leading the charge against the USPS, after it emerged that iCOP was monitoring right-wing social media accounts following the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. It’s unclear if news that the program was also tracking protests related to Black Lives Matter will prompt Democratic lawmakers, who have so far been silent about the program, to join their GOP colleagues in asking for more answers.

Barksdale’s appearance Wednesday did not appease Republican lawmakers. “I was not satisfied with their answers,” Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., told Yahoo News.

“Their theory of the case is, they’ve got to protect their workers and properties,” Biggs said. “I asked, 'If you already have engagement with other agencies like FBI, Homeland Security, NSA, whatever, then why aren’t you asking them for help?'

“Why not just call the agencies whose job it is, who are probably already surveilling American citizens?” he said.

The chief postal inspector told lawmakers those agencies “would not cooperate,” so the USPS “made an executive decision” to have iCOP patrol social media, searching for potential threats from upcoming protests, Biggs told Yahoo News.

 

And I remind you, the decision to monitor American's social media posts were all made under the Trump regime, with the blessing of Regime officials.  If GOP lawmakers are just now finding this out, well. Once again, it was Louis DeJoy who made this decision to boot.

Sowing, awesome, reaping, man reaping sucks though.

Last Call For No Mas On The Wall

President Biden is scrapping the Trump regime's Pentagon plans to use the US military to build Trump's wall, canceling the contracts, and recovering $14 billion in wasted taxpayer funds.

The Biden administration is returning to the Pentagon billions in funds diverted by President Donald Trump to build the wall at the southwestern border, and plans to cancel all related construction contracts, an administration official told ABC News on Friday.

"Border wall construction under the previous administration tied up more than $14 billion in taxpayer funds, shortchanged our military, and diverted attention away from genuine security challenges, like human traffickers. Rushed and haphazard wall construction also resulted in serious life, safety, and environmental issues," the official said.

Amid its ongoing review to determine the fate of Trump's border wall, the Biden administration also said it would launch two new projects along the 1,900-mile U.S.-Mexico border: one to fill holes in the Rio Grande Valley levee system left by the wall construction project, and another to address soil erosion in a 14-mile stretch of barrier construction by the Trump administration near San Diego, California.

Neither project would involve building new border fencing, the administration official told ABC News. It's not yet clear when the Biden administration will complete its review of the overall Trump-era project.

"As Federal agencies continue to review the problems created by the prior Administration’s border wall construction and develop their plans, today they will start taking initial steps consistent with the President’s Proclamation to reaffirm our commitment to the military and protect border communities," the official said in a statement.

 

That's the good news: the border wall grift is dead. The bad news is that Trump's wasteful grifting has turned the Rio Grande into a potential death trap in the era of climate change.

Lawmakers from both parties, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, and Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, D-Texas, have called on the Biden administration to address the gaps left in the federal levee system in southern Texas ahead of hurricane season, to help prevent flooding. Angry local officials threatened to plug the gaps themselves and seek reimbursement from the federal government down the line.

The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement later Friday afternoon it was acting to "protect border communities."

"Construction under the prior administration blew large holes into the Rio Grande Valley’s flood barrier system to make way for a border wall. The flood barrier system had long provided low-lying regions of Hidalgo County, Texas, protection from catastrophic flooding, and these breaches have threatened local communities. DHS will start work to quickly repair the flood barrier system to protect border communities. This work will not involve expanding the border barrier," the DHS statement said.

 

So yes, another multi-billion dollar mess to clean up thanks to Trump.