The Night The Lights Went Out In Texas, Con't

With Texans still owing billions to power companies from the record February winter 2021 storm that all but crashed Texas's third world, unregulated power grid, the bankruptcy trial of one such power company, Brazos Electric, continued this week with, if you'll allow the pun, shocking testimony from the former head of the state's power commission.

The former head of the Texas power grid testified in court Wednesday that when he ordered power prices to stay at the maximum price cap for days on end during last year’s frigid winter storm and blackout, running up billions of dollars in bills for power companies, he was following the direction of Governor Greg Abbott.

Bill Magness, the former CEO of the Electric Reliabilty Council of Texas, said even as power plants were starting come back online former Public Utility Commission Chairman DeAnn Walker had told him that Abbott wanted them to do whatever necessary to prevent further rotating blackouts that left millions of Texans without power.

“She told me the governor had conveyed to her if we emerged from rotating outages it was imperative they not resume,” Magness testified. “We needed to do what we needed to do to make it happen.”

Abbott's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Last year the governor's spokesman, Mark Miner said the governor was not “involved in any way” in the decision to keep prices at the maximum of $9,000 per megawatt hour – more than 150 times normal prices. He described a decision to send an aide to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis as based on the feeling the grid operator was spewing “disinformation."

Magness's decision to keep power prices at the maximum cap for more than 24 hours after conditions on the power grid began to improve is now at the center of a bankruptcy trial waged by the Waco-based electric co-op Brazos Electric.

Brazos contends that decision was made recklessly, adding up to a $1.9 billion power bill from ERCOT that forced them into bankruptcy.

“It did nothing at all to cause more generation to come online,” said Lino Mendiola, one of the attorneys representing Brazos. “It was an attempted remedy that didn’t solve any of the problems caused by the winter storm.”

The original order to raise power prices to the cap was made by the Public Utility Commission on Feb. 15, to try to get power plants back online and encourage large power users like factories and petrochemical plants to stay offline. ERCOT elected to keep prices at the cap until Feb. 19, a decision that the Texas Independent Market Monitor criticized in a report last year as having, “exceeded the mandate of the Commission.”

 

So Abbott's office lied, and the decision was made from the Governor's mansion to keep the power on, whatever the cost.

 

That cost of course being billions of dollars in electric bill price gouging, price gouging done by Texas itself.

Magness, who was fired last year, has long defended his and other ERCOT officials actions as necessary to keep the grid from slipping into a total blackout that could take weeks or months to recover from.

But in testimony in federal bankruptcy court in Houston Tuesday and Wednesday, he explained in detail how Walker had come to ERCOT's operations center in the middle of the crisis and relayed to him Abbott's demand that rotating blackouts come to an end.

Magness said he agreed that was still a risk, explaining even as power plants were starting to come back online on February 17, the system was far from secure. Some power plants were still coming offline because of cold or gas supply issues, and there was concern if power prices were allowed to return to normal market conditions, large power users might start coming back online and using crucial power reserves.

“We were still seeing 40,000 megawatts of outages. At the peak we had 52,000 megawatts but 40,000 is still a lot,” Magness said. “We saw the potential for load shed coming again.”

RELATED: All-night ERCOT meeting raises questions about Abbott’s role in power pricing debacle

And he described how after so many hours of power outages, there was risk that Texas's problems could cascade, explaining how water plants that had been relying on backup generation would have soon run out of fuel if rotating blackouts resumed.

“And I don’t know what else,” he said.

The judge overseeing the trial, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge David Jones, responded, “You’re looking into the unknown.”

“I don’t think anyone would say you were not trying to do the right thing,” he said. 

 

And let's remember, nothing has been done to free the state from its power gouging scheme either.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown Meltdown, Con't

A massive setback for the Justice Department's fraud case against the Trump Organization and Donald Trump, as the two lead prosecutors have suddenly resigned, and grand jury proceedings have effectively been halted since the start of the year as new Manhattan US District Attorney Alvin Bragg has all but dropped the case.

The two prosecutors leading the Manhattan district attorney’s investigation into former President Donald J. Trump and his business practices abruptly resigned on Wednesday amid a monthlong pause in their presentation of evidence to a grand jury, according to people with knowledge of the matter. The stunning development comes not long after the high-stakes inquiry appeared to be gaining momentum, and throws its future into serious doubt.

The prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, submitted their resignations after the new Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, indicated to them that he had doubts about moving forward with a case against Mr. Trump, the people said.

Mr. Pomerantz confirmed in a brief interview that he had resigned, but declined to elaborate. Mr. Dunne declined to comment.

Without Mr. Bragg’s commitment to move forward, the prosecutors late last month postponed a plan to question at least one witness before the grand jury, one of the people said. They have not questioned any witnesses in front of the grand jury for more than a month, essentially pausing their investigation into whether Mr. Trump inflated the value of his assets to obtain favorable loan terms from banks.

The precise reasons for Mr. Bragg’s pullback are unknown, and he has made few public statements about the status of the inquiry since taking office. In a statement responding to the resignations of the prosecutors, a spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg said that he was “grateful for their service” and that the investigation was ongoing.

Time is running out for this grand jury, whose term is scheduled to expire in April. Prosecutors can ask jurors to vote to extend their term, but generally avoid doing so. They also are often reluctant to impanel a new grand jury after an earlier one has heard testimony, because witnesses could make conflicting statements if asked to testify again.

And without Mr. Dunne, a high-ranking veteran of the office who has been closely involved with the inquiry for years, and Mr. Pomerantz, a leading figure in New York legal circles who was enlisted to work on it, the yearslong investigation could peter out.

The resignations, following the monthlong pause, mark a reversal after the investigation had recently intensified. Cyrus R. Vance Jr., Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, convened the grand jury in the fall, and prosecutors began questioning witnesses before his term concluded at the end of the year. (Mr. Vance did not seek re-election.)

In mid-January, reporters for The Times observed significant activity related to the investigation at the Lower Manhattan courthouse where the grand jury meets, with at least two witnesses visiting the building and staying inside for hours.

The witnesses were Mr. Trump’s longtime accountant and an expert in the real estate industry, according to people familiar with the appearances, which have not been previously reported. Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz also made regular appearances at the courthouse.

The burst of activity offered a sign that Mr. Bragg was forging ahead with the grand jury phase of the investigation, a final step before seeking charges.

But in recent weeks, that activity has ceased, and Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz have been seen only rarely.

This looks like a case where Bragg said that he wasn't going forward with the case after the previous DA, Cy Vance, empaneled a grand jury.  The lead prosecutors obviously wanted to continue. Whatever the conflict was, it's gotten so bad that both lead prosecutors have resigned.

This reeks. All of it. No wonder then that the NY state case against Trump has moved into a much more aggressive phase. Tish James's office would have been working with the Manhattan DA on this. Surely they got wind that Bragg was going to all but shut the federal case down.

 

I don't know who got to Bragg, or to Justice, but both lead prosecutors resigning means that can't be swept away easily.  There's a lot more to this story.

How much of it we'll ever know, I have no idea.

Ukraine In The Membrane, GOP Edition

Republicans find themselves caught between how much they hate Biden and love being the righteous good guys, how much they love the idea of the American military rolling in to save the day, and how much they've been compromised by Putin over the years, and the lesson of the story is staggering around in the middle of the road only gets you hit by the semi.

While Russia’s reinvasion of Ukraine this week stress-tests the Biden administration, it’s also forcing Republicans to confront their own divisions.

The GOP is all over the map politically, as Russian President Vladimir Putin tries to redraw his own boundaries. Former President Donald Trump privately has signaled a split with more isolationist voices from the MAGA wing of the party who have excused Russia’s aggression, who themselves are at odds with more establishment Republicans over how to confront Russian aggression, if at all.

To an extent, these camps reflect a new evolution of long-standing GOP foreign policy factionalism. But as Putin moves troops into Ukraine, Republicans’ divergent approaches to the crisis are complicating their pushback on President Joe Biden’s response to the crisis.

Trump told an adviser recently that he doesn’t think Putin should be able to take Ukraine — even just from a real estate standpoint — and that he sees the Russian leader’s current actions as an attempt to steamroll Biden, according to a person familiar with the conversation.

Trump said Putin has sized up Biden and decided that he isn’t strong enough to stop Russia from rolling into Kyiv, this person recalled, adding that the former president has also blamed Biden for poking the bear by tying his legacy too closely to expanding NATO and to Russia’s Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline. Publicly and privately, he has described the current standoff as a problem for which he is the lone solution.

“This never would have happened with us had I been in office — not even thinkable,” Trump said in a Tuesday radio interview, describing Putin’s recognition of Ukrainian separatist regions as “savvy.”

Putin “sees this opportunity. I knew that he always wanted Ukraine. I used to talk to him about it. I said, ‘You can’t do it, you’re not going to do it,’” Trump added. “But I could see that he wanted it. … They say, ‘Oh, Trump was nice to Russia.’ I wasn’t nice to Russia.”

Even as Trump portrays himself as better-equipped to counter Putin, the majority of congressional Republicans are backing Biden’s vow to impose crushing sanctions on Russia after its troops entered eastern Ukraine on Tuesday. Some have even praised Biden’s moves, like the deployment of additional U.S. troops to Eastern Europe to boost NATO’s defenses.

But a vocal GOP minority on and off Capitol Hill — represented by Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), Fox News host Tucker Carlson and Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance, among others — has taken a third path, actively arguing against any U.S. involvement in the region while still dinging Biden. They argue that expanding the U.S. commitment to NATO is a mistake, and that the president should instead focus on countering China and securing America’s southern border.

That discordant chorus is making it harder for Republicans to craft a unified message on Russia the way it did during last year’s chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan or during Putin’s invasion of Crimea when Barack Obama was president in 2014.

 

Now this confusion won't last much longer. Now that Daddy Trump has weighed in, Republicans are going to follow his lead and attack Biden mercilessly while praising Putin, or they'll meet the same fate as Liz Cheney and they know it.

Rick Scott's little 11-point plan earlier this week gave that particular game away.

No, by this Sunday and the talking head shows, you'll see a dozen Very Serious Republicans all telling us that Putin invading Ukraine is not our problem, and that the real issue is Them Illegals™.

Of course, if things get significantly worse in Ukraine, all bets are off.

President Joe Biden's administration has informed Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of intelligence assessing that Russia is preparing to conduct a full-scale invasion of the neighboring country within the next 48 hours, U.S. intelligence officials have revealed to Newsweek.

"The President of Ukraine has been warned Russia will highly likely begin an invasion within 48 hours based on U.S. intelligence," a U.S. official with direct knowledge told Newsweek.

"Additionally," the U.S. official added, "reporting from aircraft observers indicates Russia violated Ukrainian airspace earlier today, flying possible reconnaissance aircraft for a short period over Ukraine."

A source close to Zelenskyy's government also confirmed to Newsweek that such a warning was received, but noted that this was the third time in a month Kyiv was told to prepare for imminent large-scale military action order by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

 

We'll see.

School Of Hard-Right Knocks, Con't

It turns out that at least when pollsters ask, Americans are very much against banning books in schools and libraries for political reasons because it's screamingly un-American and all that, but it doesn't mean things are coming up roses.

Americans overwhelmingly reject the idea of banning books about history or race. One reason for that: a big majority also say teaching about the history of race in America makes students understand what others went through.

Large majorities — more than eight in 10 — don't think books should be banned from schools for discussing race and criticizing U.S. history, for depicting slavery in the past or more broadly for political ideas they disagree with.

We see wide agreement across party lines, and between White and Black Americans on this. Parents feel the same as the wider public.

Four in 10 believe teaching about race in America makes people more racially tolerant today, too, well outpacing the few who think it does the opposite. But not everyone sees a direct link between understanding and racial tolerance today, as less than half of those who think it promotes understanding feel it also translates into tolerance now.

And Americans are okay with the broader notion of public schools teaching about ideas and historical events that might make some students uncomfortable. By contrast, the idea that teaching about race makes students feel guilty about past generations or makes them less racially tolerant today gets little traction with most Americans.

Another reason, perhaps, behind these large majorities is that Americans do overwhelmingly believe racism has been a problem in U.S. history.

Big majorities also believe racism continues to be a problem today.

To the extent that this view is voiced by a smaller majority than the one that says racism was a problem in history, we find some who see it having moved from a major problem in the past to a lesser one now. They also believe the U.S. has made progress in dealing with racism. And they also believe teaching about it promotes understanding.

We do, however, start to see differences by race and party over how much history about Black Americans should be taught in schools now. Black Americans overwhelmingly think too little is taught. Political party divides White Americans, with most White Democrats agreeing that it's too little and White Republicans more likely to say it's the right amount.

And when specifically asked about Critical Race Theory, here's where we see very partisan splits, particularly among those who've heard about it, and those who have not.

Only one-third of Americans have heard a lot about it. These numbers are much higher among self-described conservatives, and among Republicans, likely reflecting the emphasis on it from their party members and candidates.

 

More than 80% of Black folk believe that both racism was a problem in the American past, and that the problem still exists today.  Only half of white Americans do as far as today.

Dems have a 81% favorable view of Critical Race Theory as a whole, while just 13% of Republicans do.

Still a long way to go.

Last Call For The Paxton Plan

Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton is declaring gender-affirming health care procedures for children as abuse, and he says his office will prosecute parents, doctors, and caregivers to see the procedures "halted".

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) said in a statement that gender-affirming health care for transgender youth, including hormone therapy, puberty blockers and sex reassignment procedures, are abuse.

Texas state Rep. Matt Krause (R) wrote to Paxton to inquire about whether treatment for transgender youth could be considered child abuse.

In an opinion released Monday, Paxton said, "There is no doubt that these procedures are 'abuse' under Texas law, and thus must be halted."

"The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) has a responsibility to act accordingly. I'll do everything I can to protect against those who take advantage of and harm young Texans."

"While you refer to these procedures as 'sex changes,' it is important to note that it remains medically impossible to truly change the sex of an individual because this is determined biologically at conception," he wrote.

Paxton added that "the prevalence of gender dysphoria in children and adolescents has never been estimated, and there is no scientific consensus that these sterilizing procedures and treatments even serve to benefit minor children dealing with gender dysphoria."

The United States has seen an increase in Republican-led efforts to ban gender-affirming health care for transgender youth. There have also been efforts to prohibit transgender children, specifically transgender girls, from participating on a sports team that corresponds with their gender identity.

Medical professionals, the LGBT community and transgender advocates have stated that if transgender children don't receive gender-affirming health care, they are at higher risk to suffer negative mental health consequences and even suicide.

Some studies have shown access to puberty blockers can decrease the risk of suicide in transgender teens, who are already at higher risk for suicide than their cisgender peers.

A spokespeople for the state Department of Family and Protective Services and Texas Health and Human Services told The Dallas Morning News that the agencies would be reviewing the opinion.

 

So yes, Paxton believes the full power of the state should be brought to bear in order to "save" kids from gender transitioning.

 

Meanwhile, Paxton remains under a federal bribery and corruption investigation, and he's apparently trying to defect attention away from this story this week.

Four former aides who reported Attorney General Ken Paxton to the FBI for alleged bribery are now accusing him of lying about his legal troubles while facing a tough reelection bid.

In a rare public statement on Monday, the ex-employees said “their preference was to remain silent while the wheels of justice turned.”

“However, in recent weeks, Paxton has made numerous false and misleading public statements that we feel obligated to correct,” said the former deputy attorneys general James “Blake” Brickman, J. Mark Penley, and Ryan Vassar and the agency’s former law enforcement director David Maxwell.

As Paxton seeks a third term as the state’s top lawyer, he faces three GOP challengers who are hammering him over the FBI corruption probe spurred by his former staffers.

Paxton has denied any wrongdoing. No federal charges have been filed.

In recent interviews with conservative media, Paxton said he doesn’t know the specific allegations against him and threw the blame back on his former aides, saying they are the ones who broke the law. The Republican also accused the FBI of infiltrating his office.

The former staffers say none of that is true.

“We confronted Ken Paxton about his and his agency’s corrupt and criminal conduct, and, when he would not abide by the law, we reported him to the FBI,” they said. “Paxton is under criminal investigation, not the whistleblowers.”

 

Paxton is trying to dodge bribery charges and wants to stay in office, seeing the governor's mansion in his future. If that road leads over the corpses of young Texan teens who thought it was better to take their own lives than the seek the care they needed because Paxton deemed it illegal, that's okay with this asshole.

 

Remember, Republicans do not care who their policies kill, because dead people can't vote for them anyway.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The three Georgia men convicted by the state in November for the murder of Ahmaud Arbery faced a federal trial this month on hate crime, civil rights violation and kidnapping charges, and all three men were convicted on all counts today by a jury.

A federal jury has found three White men guilty of committing a hate crime and other violations when they chased and killed Ahmaud Arbery two years ago, determining they were motivated by racial animus because he was Black.

The trial focused on a history of racist and offensive statements from Gregory McMichael, 66, Travis McMichael, 36, and William “Roddie” Bryan, 52.

Tuesday’s conviction, after just a couple of hours of jury deliberation, represents a victory for the U.S. Department of Justice, which has vowed to more aggressively prosecute hate crimes, and for civil rights groups that have demanded greater accountability in racially motivated attacks against Blacks and other minorities.

The killings of Arbery, George Floyd in Minneapolis and Breonna Taylor in Louisville, all of whom were Black, prompted mass demonstrations across the country two years ago. The charges against the McMichaels and Bryan marked the first time prosecutors charged anyone with a hate crime in connection with one of those slayings.

The jury began deliberating Monday afternoon, and adjourned after about two hours. Soon after reconvening Tuesday morning, jurors sent word they had a verdict. The found the men guilty of all charges: hate crimes and attempted kidnapping for all three defendants, and a weapons violation for the McMichaels.

All three men already had been convicted of state murder charges and sentenced to life in prison, with Bryan eligible for parole after 30 years. U.S. District Judge Lisa Godbey Wood will determine their federal sentences.

In a case that hinged on proving the defendants’ state of mind, prosecutors argued that the men’s prejudice helped explain why they erroneously viewed Arbery, 25, as a potential criminal when they cut him off in pickup trucks and threatened him with guns in a Georgia neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020.

The government presented evidence from 20 witnesses, many of whom testified about racially derogatory text messages, social media posts and remarks from the three men in which they disparaged Black people.

“All three defendants told you loud and clear, in their own words, how they feel about African Americans,” prosecutor Tara Lyons told the jury, made up of eight White people, three Black people and one Hispanic person. “Yes, race, racism, racial discrimination — those can all be very difficult topics to discuss. But the facts of this case are not difficult.”

Defense lawyers maintained that the men were trying to stop and question Arbery not because of his race, but because the McMichaels suspected him of trespassing at a neighbor’s property in their coastal Georgia subdivision.

Neighbors, including the McMichaels, had seen surveillance videos of a man, later identified as Arbery, exploring the property several times in the weeks leading up to the shooting. Gregory McMichael recognized Arbery as the man in the video as he jogged past McMichael’s house, defense lawyers said, prompting the former police officer and his son to chase Arbery in a pickup truck.

Bryan, a neighbor, joined the chase in his own truck after witnessing the commotion.

“The government hasn’t proved beyond a reasonable doubt that race was a motivating factor,” Amy Lee Copeland, a lawyer for Travis McMichael, said during her closing argument.

 

The jury disagreed and rang all three of these bastards up.

Multiple life sentences with hopefully no hope of parole is alright with me, showing people there is a ruinous cost for taking a Black life because we matter.

Justice cannot be served here, justice would be Ahmaud Arbery still alive. Accountability and punishment is the best we can do here, and it was done.

Black Lives Matter.

The Batboy Manifesto

Since Senate GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell is smart enough to realize that telling the voters all that they stand to lose under a Republican-controlled Senate comes after they bamboozle the bozos at the ballot box, Florida Sen. Rick Scott is there to clue everybody in on the GOP crypto-fascist agenda as head of the Senate GOP re-election campaign, and I can hear Mitch's teeth grinding from here.

Senate Republican leaders have no plans to release an alternative agenda as they try to win back the majority this fall. So Rick Scott is pursuing his own plan.

The Florida Republican senator is devising a conservative blueprint for Republicans to enact should they win Senate and House majorities this fall. Among Scott’s priorities: completing the border wall and naming it after former President Donald Trump, declaring “there are two genders,” ending any reference to ethnicity on government forms and limiting most federal government workers — including members of Congress — to 12 years of service.

It’s a bold move for the first-term senator and National Republican Senatorial Committee chair. But Scott said the 31-page GOP agenda he’s crafted is separate from his work chairing the party’s campaign arm, adding that it’s “important to tell people what we’re gonna do.” It’s a clear break from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has declined to release a GOP agenda heading into the midterms.

“Hopefully, by doing this, we’ll have more of a conversation about what Republicans are going to get done. Because when we get the majority, I want to get something done,” Scott said in an interview. “There’s things that people would rather not talk about. I’m willing to say exactly what I’m going to do. I think it’s fair to the voter.”

The 11-point plan is a mix of longtime Republican positions, such as enacting a national voter ID law and shrinking the federal government, combined with culture war politics that define many GOP voters in the pro-Trump wing of the party. Scott said no one should be surprised that he’s devising his own plans, given his past record.

And the plans carry some risk. It’s not at all clear that the GOP would unify around Scott’s proposals, which include many ideas that would struggle to attract Democratic support, could alienate some independent voters and could even split the GOP. Scott acknowledged as much in introducing his priorities, arguing they may “strike fear in the heart of some Republicans.”

Perhaps even more notable than the plans themselves is that Scott is taking a big gamble just as he enters the most high-profile stretch of his political career. It’s not every day the NRSC chair introduces a policy platform.

Though he comes across as soft-spoken and low-key in person, Scott has thrown himself with zeal into GOP controversy. Most notably, Scott objected last year to certification of President Joe Biden’s win in Pennsylvania. And last week he stymied quick consideration of an overwhelmingly bipartisan postal reform bill.

Scott will be one of the most visible Republicans as he leads the push to take back the majority, and he’s offering a marked contrast from McConnell. When asked in January what the party’s agenda was, McConnell responded: “I’ll let you know when we take it back.”

“There’s things that people would rather not talk about. I’m willing to say exactly what I’m going to do. I think it’s fair to the voter.”

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), chair of the National Republic Senatorial Committee

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy also plans to release his own agenda in the coming weeks. And while Scott did not criticize McConnell and said he maintains “a very good working relationship” with the GOP leader, he clearly believes there is a void to fill in the battle for the upper chamber.

“As a general rule, you know, probably this year’s election is going to be a lot about the Biden agenda. But I do believe we’re going to win,” Scott said. “We ought to have a plan and what we’re trying to get done when we get the majority.”

 

The plan is basically the heart of MAGA white supremacy, literally eliminating race from government forms, declaring that there are "only two genders", finishing the border wall and naming it after Trump, declaring that Americans should "welcome God into all aspects of our lives" and the big one, "eliminate all federal programs that can be done locally, and enact term limits for federal bureaucrats and Congress." 

 

It's a ludicrous platform that  screams white supremacist fascism, an America where anyone who isn't white, "Judeo-Christian", and cisgender literally has no place in the MAGA future of Rick Scott's America. Non-white folk and non-gender conforming folk simply vanish.

And yet the notion that this will split Republicans in any way is laughable. This presentation was designed for one man, Donald Trump, and it's Rick Scott's opening bid to replace McConnell as Senate GOP leader in January with Trump's support. 

For anyone else, the threat is clear: get on our side now, because eventually we'll win and enact this as law...

Ukraine In The Membrane, Now Bracing For Pain

After an alarmingly belligerent speech this evening where Russian Vladimir Putin declared that the "breakaway republics" in Ukraine would be given Russian military support (and throwing years of diplomacy out of the window, he does that a lot) he apparently ordered 150,000 or so Russian troops on the border with Ukraine to come on in and say hi.

 

The Kremlin has ordered Russia’s defense ministry to deploy troops in two Russia-backed separatist territories that have loomed large in the conflict over Ukraine.

Moscow announced that it would carry out “peacekeeping functions” in decrees published late Monday, shortly after President Vladimir V. Putin told his nation that he had decided to recognize Russia-backed separatists in the so-called Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics.

It was not immediately certain whether the Russian troops would remain only on the territory controlled by the separatist republics, or whether they would seek to capture the rest of the two Ukrainian regions whose territory they claim.

And so it was unclear if a long-feared Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine had begun. The separatists might have invited Russian forces in, but neither Ukraine nor the rest of the world views the so-called republics as anything but Ukrainian territory.

While Mr. Putin’s ultimate plans remain a mystery, a full invasion would constitute the largest military action in Europe since World War II.

By seeking to redraw the post-Cold War boundaries of Europe and force Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit, Mr. Putin is attempting nothing less than to upend the security structure that has helped maintain an uneasy peace on the continent for the past three decades.

Now edging toward the twilight of his political career, Mr. Putin, 69, is determined to burnish his legacy and to correct what he has long viewed as one of the greatest catastrophes of the 20th century: the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Asserting Moscow’s power over Ukraine, a country of 44 million people that was previously part of the bloc and shares a 1,200-mile border with Russia, is part of his aim of restoring what he views as Russia’s rightful place among the world’s great powers, the United States and China.

Mr. Putin has increasingly portrayed NATO’s eastward expansion as an existential threat to his country, and insists that Moscow’s military buildup is a reaction to Ukraine’s deepening partnership with the alliance.

Essentially, he appears intent on winding back the clock 30 years, to just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.

 

The US is responding with sanctions on the breakaway groups, but not on Russia. Yet. Still, this is going to get out of hand, very quickly, if things go wrong here, and yeah, we've got Russian troops in Ukraine.

I assume we're going to have a UN Security Council emergency meeting within days, but by then, well. Smart observers will notice that this is a repeat of Putin's 2008 invasion of Georgia.

Of course, maybe Putin doesn't have the adamant hold on everything like he used to.

Putin may hope to provoke an armed response from Ukraine that would provide a pretext for a larger assault. But the initial “peacekeeping” move into Donetsk and Luhansk was limited, and a senior Biden administration official was careful to avoid describing it as an invasion, noting that Russian forces have been operating covertly in the two enclaves for nearly eight years.

The Biden administration seemed to be calibrating its response, reacting less sharply to Putin’s recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk than did some other world leaders. The administration clearly wants to leave the door open for Moscow to stop short of an attack on Ukraine that is opposed not only by a unified NATO alliance but — perhaps more sobering for the Russian leader — by China as well.

Putin is “the ultimate political performance artist,” as Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy put it in a new biography. Monday’s carefully staged events evoked both the majesty of imperial Russia and the pettiness and paranoia of its modern-day leader.

The day’s events began with a televised command performance of Putin’s security council in the ornate Kremlin chamber. Putin asked each of his ministers for their recommendation about recognizing Donetsk and Luhansk. Many responses were dutifully on script, but there were several surprises.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Russia’s demands for security guarantees were “not an ultimatum,” and he seemed ready to meet Thursday with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for more talks. Lavrov also conceded NATO’s unity, advising Putin that at this past weekend’s Munich Security Conference, “every Western representative declared their absolute commitment to a unified approach,” which “confirmed that we need to negotiate with Washington.”

Some of Putin’s other ministers fed his passion to subdue Kyiv. Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said Ukraine could obtain nuclear weapons and pose a greater threat than Iran or North Korea. And Nikolai Patrushev, head of the security council, said Western nations “are hiding their true goal — to destroy the Russian federation,” a favorite Putin theme.

But the big surprise came when Putin quizzed Sergei Naryshkin, head of the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service. Naryshkin advised that threatening to recognize Donetsk and Luhansk would be useful leverage for implementing the 2015 Minsk agreements to settle the conflict in the eastern region. Russia has claimed to support Minsk, but Monday’s recognition of the two breakaway enclaves as independent will probably derail any chance for the agreement. In response to Naryshkin’s answers, Putin got antsy.

What followed was a rare Kremlin moment of quasi-dissent. “Speak clearly, do you support recognition?” demanded Putin. “I will,” answered his spy chief. “You will, or you do?” demanded Putin. When Naryshkin waffled and said he would support “bringing them into Russia,” Putin shot back, “That’s not what we are discussing. Do you support recognizing independence?” To which the vexed spymaster answered, “yes.”

The SVR chief may have been rattled by the astonishing ability of U.S. intelligence to read (and publicize) Russian intelligence plans about Ukraine. Whatever the reason, Max Seddon, Moscow correspondent for the Financial Times who translated the exchange in Twitter posts, noted that the session was “like the finale of the Sopranos.”

 

One thing's for sure, like the seminal HBO drama, we'll be talking about this day for quite some time to come, if not years later, and what it all ultimately meant.

Black Farms Matter, Con't

White farmers, banks, and conservative legal groups have blocked USDA relief to Black farmers for a year now, and it's gotten to the point where Black-owned farms are going under, permanently, unless something changes in the next few months.

For Brandon Smith, a fourth-generation cattle rancher from Texas, the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that President Biden signed into law nearly a year ago was long-awaited relief.

Little did he know how much longer he would have to wait.

The legislation included $4 billion of debt forgiveness for Black and other “socially disadvantaged” farmers, a group that has endured decades of discrimination from banks and the federal government. Mr. Smith, a Black father of four who owes about $200,000 in outstanding loans on his ranch, quickly signed and returned documents to the Agriculture Department last year, formally accepting the debt relief. He then purchased more equipment for his ranch, believing that he had been given a financial lifeline.

Instead, Mr. Smith has fallen deeper into debt. Months after signing the paperwork he received a notice informing him that the federal government intended to “accelerate” foreclosure on his 46-acre property and cattle if he did not start making payments on the loans he believed had been forgiven.

“I trusted the government that we had a deal, and down here at the end of the day, the rug gets pulled out from under me,” Mr. Smith, 43, said in an interview.

Black farmers across the nation have yet to see any of Mr. Biden’s promised relief. While the president has pledged to pursue policies to promote racial equity and correct decades of discrimination, legal issues have complicated that goal.

In May 2021, the Agriculture Department started sending letters to borrowers who were eligible to have their debt cleared, asking them to sign and return forms confirming their balances. The payments, which also are supposed to cover tax liabilities and fees associated with clearing the debt, were expected to come in phases beginning in June.

But the entire initiative has been stymied amid lawsuits from white farmers and groups representing them that questioned whether the government could offer debt relief based on race.

Courts in Wisconsin and Florida have issued preliminary injunctions against the initiative, siding with plaintiffs who argued that the debt relief amounted to discrimination and could therefore be illegal. A class-action lawsuit against the U.S.D.A. is proceeding in Texas this year.

The Biden administration has not appealed the injunctions but a spokeswoman for the Agriculture Department said it was continuing to defend the program in the courts as the cases move forward.


The legal limbo has created new and unexpected financial strains for Black farmers, many of whom have been unable to make investments in their businesses given ongoing uncertainty about their debt loads. It also poses a political problem for Mr. Biden, who was propelled to power by Black voters and now must make good on promises to improve their fortunes.

The law was intended to help remedy years of discrimination that nonwhite farmers have endured, including land theft and the rejection of loan applications by banks and the federal government. The program designated aid to about 15,000 borrowers who receive loans directly from the federal government or have their bank loans guaranteed by the U.S.D.A. Those eligible included farmers and ranchers who have been subject to racial or ethnic prejudice, including those who are Black, Native American, Alaskan Native, Asian American, Pacific Islander or Hispanic.

After the initiative was rolled out last year, it met swift opposition.

Banks were unhappy that the loans would be repaid early, depriving them of interest payments. Groups of white farmers in Wisconsin, North Dakota, Oregon and Illinois sued the Agriculture Department, arguing that offering debt relief on the basis of skin color is discriminatory, suggesting that a successful Black farmer could have his debts cleared while a struggling white farm could go out of business. America First Legal, a group led by the former Trump administration official Stephen Miller, filed a lawsuit making a similar argument in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

Last June, before the money started flowing, a federal judge in Florida blocked the program on the basis that it applied “strictly on racial grounds” irrespective of any other factor.

The delays have angered the Black farmers that the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress were trying to help. They argue that the law was poorly written and that the White House is not defending it forcefully enough in court out of fear that a legal defeat could undermine other policies that are predicated on race.

Those concerns became even more pronounced late last year when the government sent thousands of letters to minority farmers who were behind on their loan payments warning that they faced foreclosure. The letters were sent automatically to any borrowers who were past due on their loans, including about a third of the 15,000 socially disadvantaged farmers who applied for the debt relief, according to the Agriculture Department.

 

Thousands of Black farms are about to disappear, because banks would rather have Black farmers in debt paying interest than for the government to help them pay the loans back. They are using white rage to smokescreen the issue.

Throughout America's history, programs to help Americans have been blocked for those people time an time again. Black folk were never supposed to get Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Black farmers aren't supposed to get debt relief. In the end, the government only helps good white people who only need a little help, not the Black folk crushed by generations of systemic racism.

Fixing that is too expensive, you see. Because if Black farmers get help, then the rest of us might do so.

We can't have that.

 

This is what enrages me about the whole "Democrats are losing rural communities" argument. When Democrats do something to help, they get sued.  Black farms go under, and their white neighbors shrug and go "Well, I know I'll get subsidies and help."

Black Farms Still Matter.

School Of Hard Right Knocks, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis and state Republicans are cutting $200 million from school districts that refused to drop mask mandates for students and staff, setting a major constitutional battle in an election year that the GOP may wish it had avoided.

Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, is backing a controversial proposal to strip $200m in education funding from Democratic counties that defied his executive order last year banning mask mandates in schools.

DeSantis, who is widely seen as a leading heir to Donald Trump in the Republican party, plans to send the money instead to mostly Republican counties that supported him.

The plan, which some analysts believe is almost certainly unconstitutional, was part of a budget bill that passed the Republican-dominated Florida house on Wednesday.

It was immediately attacked by teachers unions, school districts and education advocates, who say the penalties will strip further resources from classrooms in a state already in the bottom four of per-student spending nationally.

“This is retaliation by legislators and the governor,” said Jabari Hosey, president of the advocacy group Families for Safe Schools and a parent of school-age children in Brevard county.

“We are down over 150 teachers in Brevard right now. We need more social workers, there’s a performance gap because of Covid that is still present in our community. We need more funds, more opportunities, more instructors.

“To retaliate and to attack the public school system they are supposed to be promoting is very sad. Frankly, it’s embarrassing.”

Under the proposal by the Republican state congressman Randy Fine, school districts in the 12 Florida counties that implemented mask mandates last summer in defiance of DeSantis’s executive order will forfeit amounts based on their size.

Brevard, where Hosey’s children attend school, and which Fine represents, would forgo $4.5m.

Two-thirds of the money would come from south Florida, which votes overwhelmingly Democratic in local, state and national elections. Miami-Dade, the nation’s fourth largest district with 357,000 students, would lose $72m; Broward, the sixth largest with 270,000 students, would forfeit about $32m; and Palm Beach, the 10th largest with 193,000 would give up $28m.

Of the others, Alachua, Duval, Hillsborough, Indian River, Leon, Orange, Sarasota and Volusia counties, all but three backed Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election in Florida, which was won by Donald Trump.

“Following the law is not optional. These school districts broke the law, and they were broken for nothing,” a visibly angry Fine told fellow legislators on Wednesday.

He insisted during a turbulent session of the Florida house appropriations committee last week that the state would cut the salaries of administrators earning more than $100,000 and not “reduce funding for any direct educational service or resource that impacts the education of kindergarten through grade 12 students”.

He conceded, however, that the policy was intentionally punitive to counties who refused to fall in line with the governor. “It is intended to reward the 55 school districts, the overwhelming majority of which followed our state law and respected the rights of parents over the past year,” he said.

 

Needless to say, DeSantis and the GOP singling out educators making more than $100,000 for financial penalties and only from the school districts that defied his order is straight up bill of attainder territory, strictly forbidden by the US Constitution.  DeSantis knows he'll lose this battle, but he gets free publicity for sticking it to "rich, overpaid teachers" which is all he really wants.

No, don't expect DeSantis to lose a single vote over this.

Last Call For Gavin Takes a Texas Page

California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is backing state legislation that would allow citizens to enforce gun restrictions on assault weapons, the same way Texas is allowing private bounties on abortion providers in the state.

A new bill in California would allow private citizens go after gun makers in the same way Texas lets them target abortion providers, though gun advocates immediately promised a court challenge if it becomes law.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom on Friday backed legislation that would let private citizens enforce the state’s ban on assault weapons. It’s modeled after a Texas law that lets private citizens enforce that state’s ban on abortions once a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Newsom said he hopes the proposal forces the U.S. Supreme Court’s hand on the Texas abortion law. He said it will either expose their “hypocrisy” if they should block California’s proposal that affects the gun industry and not the Texas law on abortion, “or it’ll get them to reconsider the absurdity of their previous decision.”

“There is no principled way the U.S. Supreme Court cannot uphold this California law. None. Period full stop. It is quite literally modeled after the law they just upheld in Texas,” Newsom said.

The Firearms Policy Coalition, an advocacy group, pledged a court challenge should the California bill become law.

The proposed firearm restrictions are “really just modern-day Jim Crow laws designed to suppress the exercise of human rights the tyrants who run California don’t like,” the group said, promising to “litigate wherever needed to protect the rights and property of peaceable gun owners in California.”

The group and Assembly Minority Leader James Gallagher, a Republican, said Newsom is trying to distract from failing policies elsewhere that recently have prompted falling polling numbers.

“California already has the strictest gun laws in the nation, so it’s not clear what Governor Newsom is hoping to accomplish here besides a sad publicity stunt,” Gallagher said in a statement.

Texas and other conservative-led states have tried for years to ban abortions once a heartbeat is detected, at around six weeks of pregnancy, which is sometimes before the person knows they are pregnant. But the states’ attempts have been blocked by the courts.

But Texas’ new abortion law is unique in that it bars the government from enforcing the law. The idea is if the government can’t enforce the law, it can’t be sued to block it in court. That hasn’t stopped abortion providers from trying to block the law. But so far, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority has allowed the abortion law to stay in place pending a legal challenge.

That decision incensed Newsom and his Democratic allies in the state Legislature. California has banned the manufacture and sale of assault weapons for decades. But last year, a federal judge overturned that ban. The law is still in place while the state appeals the decision.

But the decision inspired Newsom and Democrats in the state Legislature to copy Texas’ abortion law, but make it apply to gun makers instead of abortion providers.

“Our message to the United States Supreme Court is as follows: What’s good for the goose is good for the gander,” said Democratic state Sen. Bob Hertzberg, the author of the proposal. “I look forward to rushing a new bill to the governor’s desk to take advantage of that United States Supreme Court guidance.”

 

Personally this is a great idea, and I'd like to see states like New York and Illinois follow up with similar proposals.  Democrats?

More of this, please.

Weekend At Jeffrey's, Paris Edition

Another major Jeffrey Epstein associate has been found dead in a jail cell, this time it's Epstein's former modeling business partner Jean-Luc Brunel, who provided the European connection for the Miami Beach sex predator's "supply" of young girls.

Jeffrey Epstein’s former business partner and alleged accomplice in trafficking and sexually abusing girls, Jean-Luc Brunel, was found dead Saturday in his French jail cell, according to French authorities.

The death of Brunel, once a fixture in Miami Beach’s modeling industry, resembles Epstein’s death by hanging in a New York prison cell in August 2019 that was ruled a suicide. The two men once collaborated in forming a local modeling agency, MC2, that some models said was a pretext for luring girls and young women into Epstein’s orbit.

Brunel, 76, had been arrested in December 2020 and was under investigation on rape and sex trafficking charges.

And just like Epstein, Brunel had also attempted suicide earlier, the Herald and the French daily newspaper 20 Minutes have learned.

Jailed since his 2020 arrest, Jean-Luc Brunel had tried to kill himself several times, according to a source with direct knowledge of the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity. One of Brunel’s, lawyers, Mathias Chichportich, confirmed to the Herald and 20 Minutes that his client committed “several suicide attempts“ over 14 months.

Yet, the modeling agent was not under active suicide watch, known in France as “emergency protection.” These types of cells, with rounded corners, paper clothes and tearable bed sheets, are very rare and only meant to be used for an “imminent risk” for up to 24 hrs, until an inmate can be transferred to a psychiatric facility.

Brunel was, however, held in the “vulnerable people area,” nicknamed “VIP quarters,” for people deemed at risk of facing violence, which is common for sexual assault charges or famous detainees. In these areas, guards generally check on inmates four to six times per night.

After a new appeal from his lawyers, Brunel was briefly released following a suicide attempt last Christmas.

“The custody judge ruled his detention was no longer justified given the status of the prosecution,” Chichportich said.

But the decision was overruled, and Brunel went back to jail a few days later.

Prosecutors in Paris confirmed Brunel was found hanging in his cell in La Santé, in south Paris, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

“I can confirm that Mr. Brunel was discovered at 1:30 a.m. last night dead in his cell. He was alone in the cell. According to the first findings, it is a suicide by hanging. An investigation in search of the causes of death is however opened,” said Antoine Pesme, a spokesperson for the Paris public prosecutor’s office.

British and French media reported that no cameras recorded the alleged suicide at the jail, one of the toughest facilities in France, which has both high security and VIP wings that have housed some of the country’s most infamous prisoners.

Brunel’s death also comes as a judge in New York is weighing the release and unsealing of documents that could shed more light on Epstein’s trafficking operation and who was involved. Several people, labeled as “John Does,” have been fighting for years to keep their names redacted from the documents.

Brunel was being held for investigation into allegations that he and others sexually abused and trafficked young women in France over several decades. He was considered a key part of the case, and had reportedly been cooperating with authorities. He had also been speaking to U.S. authorities.

“It almost seems like the entire ring of people who were doing this that their conscience is getting the better of them now that they are being held accountable for their actions,” said Spencer Kuvin, an attorney who has represented several of Epstein’s victims. “Of course, the alternative conspiracy theory is that it’s like someone is trying to clean up shop.”

Since Brunel’s arrest, many women came forward to French authorities to report abuse, including Thysia Huisman, a Dutch former model who said she was raped by Brunel as a teen.

“It makes me angry, because I’ve been fighting for years,” Huisman told the AP. “For me, the end of this was to be in court. And now that whole ending — which would help form closure — is taken away from me.”

 

I'm not the one who has to judge Brunel for his acts here, but the people who wanted closure are clearly upset with this. Brunel maybe wanted the pain to stop, but so did his many, many alleged victims.

 

Sunday Long Read: Mad Forest

Our Sunday Long Read this week is a scary one, as the thick forests of Romania's Carpathian mountains have been the moody, fog-shrouded backdrop for many a horror story over the centuries. But a new monster roams these lands, devouring all in its wake, and that beast is none other than the world's largest corporate consumer of old-growth forests and their increasingly valuable wood: IKEA. They are now the country's largest landowner, and the Romanian forests they prey upon are far from being models of "sustainable logging".

Logging season in Romania runs seven months, from mid-September through April, a frenzy of chain saws chewing through millions of spruce, pine, oak, maple, beech, fir. Some of the wood is cut legally; most of it is not, and violence between the logging industry and its opponents breaks out often. Early this season, two Bucharest-based documentary filmmakers, working on a project about the illicit wood trade, set out to find a large, treacherous-looking clear-cut in Suceava, a northern county where some of the country’s largest sawmills are based and where Ikea owns thousands of hectares.

The filmmakers—Mihai Dragolea, a director, and Radu Mocanu, a cameraman—were shadowing a local environmentalist, Tiberiu Bosutar. A former wood chipper turned activist, Bosutar was no stranger to illegal timber. Over the course of five years, he had built a reputation as something of a forest vigilante, accosting loggers engaged in questionable activity or following trucks stuffed with wood contraband, then streaming the encounters on Facebook Live. Just a few weeks before, he’d gone viral broadcasting an attempt to detain a truck carrying illegal logs; when his white SUV ran out of gas, he flagged down an ambulance and kept up the chase.

But the filmmakers’ trip wasn’t meant to be a stunt. The group took Bosutar’s personal vehicle, well-known in the area, and lingered for coffee at a nearby gas station to make their presence known and prove that they had not come to antagonize. Then, with Bosutar behind the wheel, the person who’d tipped them off about the cut riding shotgun, and the filmmakers in the back, they took to the highway, turned left up a dirt road, and began to climb.

It didn’t take long before they saw what they came for: stumps. “The forest was fucked up to the bone,” Dragolea told me. “It was really damaged.” No surprise, really, and on any other day, Bosutar might have taken to Facebook. Instead, he chose to call the forest ranger’s office. It was an ideal opportunity, he thought, to showcase the potential for communication between activists, law enforcement, and loggers, and fulfill a New Year’s resolution to try a less combative approach. “It was a good moment to show that we are open to dialogue.”

Not long after, they heard the whinge of engines; soon, two SUVs arrived. Out jumped not local police, but a horde: 15 men armed with bats and axes. The documentary crew broke for Bosutar’s car but couldn’t get the locks in time. The attackers pried the doors open, snapped the key, slashed the tires, and smashed the camera equipment. They beat Mocanu, trapped between the car and the mountainside, unconscious. They clubbed Dragolea in the face. The director dove down the nearby ravine, where he hid under the roots of a fallen tree and called the police, begging them to come with their sirens on. “I said, ‘They’re killing the journalists in the forest, and they are tracking me down,’” he recounted. “I knew cases where people had died in the forest, I saw axes around me. If someone didn’t call, we were going to die for sure.”

Meanwhile, with Bosutar still in the car, the attackers were attempting to push the vehicle off the mountainside, hoisting the chassis up on two wheels. When he agreed to get out, they bludgeoned him, stripped him naked, and posted photos of him online, blood streaming down his face, with the caption, in Romanian: “For the virgin forests, I take my shirt off.” They directed him to walk down the hill until he encountered a second group of attackers.

But the police got there first, along with ambulances, which took all three men, two of whom passed out in transit, to the hospital. Not long after, the incident made international news via an Associated Press wire. The beating was even picked up stateside by The Washington Post.

There wasn’t much more help on the way. A police spokesman told the AP that law enforcement would treat the attack with “the utmost attention”; less than a week later, only four of the 15 assailants had been charged, not with attempted murder but with the lighter charge of brawling. All were out of jail, pending trial. Fearing for his life and his family, Bosutar fled from Suceava to Bucharest. “This is not the first time I’ve had an attempt on my life,” he told me outside the hotel where he was hiding. “It’s been three or four times already that I’ve been attacked. Do I simply admit that this is a failed state, that I don’t have an ally within it?”

“I don’t know what I should do,” he added, and started to cry.

 

It's not that there aren't laws and regulations designed to protect these forests, it's that the corruption, bribery and violence is so prevalent that nobody cares. Ikea says that it is getting 98% of its wood through sustainable forestry, and wants to reach 100% by the end of the year, and yet with the company getting 10% of its wood from Romania and more than half total from former Soviet republics rife with corruption, that's a massive, bald-faced lie.

As wood gets more scarce, furniture becomes more and more expensive and valuable. Ikea isn't hurting their bottom line by looking the other way on logging.

Until the forests are gone completely.

Now that's a horror story worth writing about.

Deputies Of Destruction

In one of the most "astonishingly bad even for the GOP" things I've seen in a while, Tennessee Republicans want to designate all concealed carry permit holders in the state as "law enforcement officers" giving them all the legal protections of police when it comes to where they can carry weapons and how those weapons can be used.

Legislation introduced in the Tennessee state legislature this month is raising alarms from the state's police union and gun control advocates who say it could turn the streets into the "old West."

Two bills in the state assembly and state senate, HB 254 and SB 2523, would amend Tennessee law and designate "a person who has been issued an enhanced handgun carry permit" as a member of law enforcement.

"As introduced, expands the definition of 'law enforcement officer' to include a person who has been issued an enhanced handgun carry permit; provided, that the permit is not suspended, revoked, or expired, for purposes of authority to carry a firearm under certain circumstances," the summary for the bill reads on the Tennessee General Assembly website.

There are currently 686,348 active enhanced handgun carry permit holders in the state, according to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security, which issues the permits. A spokesperson for the department declined to comment about the proposed legislation.

Although the legislation doesn't yet have any hearings scheduled and the assembly version has only one co-sponsor, it's already getting pushback, including from a police union who says it could ultimately lead to more gun violence.

Jonathan Gold, a Michigan-based firearms instructor and member of the non-profit Giffords Gun Owners for Safety, told ABC News the bill would encourage more vigilantism that would ultimately lead to more harm.

"I don't understand our regression to the old West, because this is what it feels like," he told ABC News. "I've studied the old West, and I don't think anyone wants to go back to the murder rate of Tombstone."

Under Tennessee's gun rules, an adult civilian resident can apply for an enhanced gun permit, which allows for both open and concealed carry, by paying a $100 fee and providing an eight-hour handgun safety course certificate.

Several groups of residents can get an exemption to the training, including registered armed guards, members of the military and veterans, according to the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

State Rep. Christopher Hurt, the lead sponsor for the state House bill, didn't immediately respond to messages from ABC News for comment.

State Sen. Joey Hensley, who introduced the state Senate version of the bill, told ABC News that the goal of the bill was to allow enhanced gun permit carriers to carry their weapons into locations where off-duty law enforcement enter, such as a store or restaurant that prohibits guns inside their business. Hensley said the bill would not allow enhanced permit holders to bring their weapons into courts or schools.

"This is trying to open it up so that people who go to the extreme to get this extra permit can have the right to defend themselves in more places," the senator told ABC News Thursday.

 

The legislation is also being heavily opposed by police unions, because they don't want to deal with the hassle of defending 600,000 jackasses with pistols shooting people willy-nilly. Most importantly, giving a specific class of gun owners legal protections when it comes to lethal weapons is a guaranteed recipe for wave after wave of "citizens' arrests" and vigilante-style shootings.

If the purpose of the bill was to expand the number of places concealed carry would be allowed in the state, that's what the bill should say. But the bill doesn't say that, it specifically designates concealed carry holders as law enforcement officers instead.

No, these Republicans know exactly what they are doing here.

A Supreme Liar

As Vox's Ian Millhiser explains, the US Supreme Court is lying to America when it comes to the topic of judicial restraint. Nobody's been a more egregious liar about this than Justice Amy Coney Barrett, as she lied at length during a speech at Notre Dame University this week.

Barrett was at Notre Dame to deliver the keynote address at a symposium on “The Nature of the Federal Equity Power,” a topic that, as Barrett wryly acknowledged in her speech, “sounds like one that only a law professor could love.”

As Barrett explains, “equity” is a legal concept that arose in England as a way of mitigating harsh outcomes that were required by inflexible legal rules. The English system even had a special court, the Court of Chancery, which was a “place for litigants to come” when ordinary legal rules were “too harsh.”

This dual court system, Barrett explained, highlighted a “tension between the demands of the law, which constrains, and the demands of fairness, which is flexible.” Ordinary judges were more akin to mechanical dispensers of legal rules, while judges applying equitable principles had more leeway to reach results they deem fair.

If that tension sounds familiar, Barrett told an audience of mostly law students that it should. “It’s the same dispute that we see in a context that’s probably more familiar to you — the context of constitutional interpretation.”

According to Barrett, there are two opposing sides in this dispute. “Formalists,” such as herself and the late Justice Antonin Scalia, who “favor methods of constitutional interpretation that demand close adherence to the constitutional text, and to history and tradition.” Meanwhile, Barrett claims that “pragmatists” favor a more flexible approach that is less concerned with applying consistent legal rules, and more concerned about the harsh results that can arise from a too-rigid adherence to legal texts.

Most of what Barrett said at Notre Dame is uncontroversial. She fairly summarizes the development of English courts of equity. She is also correct that modern-day judges frequently divide into what she describes as the formalist and pragmatic camps.

But Barrett is wrong to label herself a formalist. In her brief tenure on the Supreme Court, she’s shown extraordinary willingness to join other Republican-appointed justices in opinions that bend the rules of the law in order to achieve results they deem to be just.

Flexibility — what Barrett labels judicial “pragmatism” — is the hallmark of the Roberts Court, and especially the new, proudly conservative majority that Barrett’s confirmation brought into being. The Court’s most high-profile decisions will sometimes ignore the text of the Constitution, or of a major statute, altogether. And the Court frequently applies harsh legal rules to disfavored litigants that it would never apply to political conservatives.

As Scalia once explained, the formalistic demand that legal rules must apply universally to all similarly situated litigants is one of the most important constraints on judicial discretion. “When, in writing for the majority of the Court, I adopt a general rule,” the late justice wrote in 1989, “I not only constrain lower courts, I constrain myself as well.” Because “if the next case should have such different facts that my political or policy preferences regarding the outcome are quite the opposite, I will be unable to indulge those preferences.”

And yet, the current Court doesn’t seem to just indulge such a preference, it revels in it. The most blatant example is the 5-4 decision in Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson (2021), which Barrett joined in full.

Jackson involved Texas’s anti-abortion law SB 8, a law that effectively bans all abortions after six weeks, in violation of the fetal viability standard established in Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992). And SB 8 was, in Justice Sonia Sotomayor’s words, designed to “evade judicial scrutiny.”

Ordinarily, when someone wishes to challenge an unconstitutional state law in federal court, they are not allowed to sue the state directly. Rather, such a plaintiff must sue the state official charged with enforcing that unconstitutional law. But Texas tried to design SB 8 so that no state official would be empowered to enforce its anti-abortion provisions — and thus no one could be sued to block the law.

SB 8 relies on a bounty hunter system. Under SB 8, “any person” except for an employee of the state of Texas may bring a lawsuit against any abortion provider accused of performing an abortion after the sixth week of pregnancy. If an abortion provider loses such a suit, they must pay the plaintiff a bounty of at least $10,000 — and there is no upper limit on this bounty.

SB 8, in other words, terrorizes abortion providers by potentially subjecting them to hundreds or even thousands of lawsuits if they are suspected of violating SB 8’s terms.

As Chief Justice John Roberts explains in a dissenting opinion in Jackson, Texas did not actually succeed in writing a law that is not enforced by state officials — and is therefore immune from federal judicial review. Because “the mere threat of even unsuccessful suits brought under SB 8 chills constitutionally protected conduct,” Roberts wrote, “court clerks who issue citations and docket SB 8 cases are unavoidably enlisted in the scheme to enforce SB 8’s unconstitutional provisions, and thus are sufficiently ‘connect[ed]’ to such enforcement to be proper defendants.”

But the five most conservative justices, including Barrett, all backed Texas’s play. Barrett joined an opinion by Gorsuch that effectively immunized SB 8 from any federal lawsuit challenging Texas’s bounty hunter system. (Technically, Gorsuch’s opinion allowed suits to move forward against state health officials who play a minor role in enforcing the law, but their role in doing so is so small than a hypothetical court order against these officials would be basically useless.)

The implications of this decision are staggering. As Roberts writes in dissent, quoting from an 1809 Supreme Court opinion, “if the legislatures of the several states may, at will, annul the judgments of the courts of the United States, and destroy the rights acquired under those judgments, the constitution itself becomes a solemn mockery.” Jackson provides every state with a roadmap that it can use to neutralize virtually any constitutional right.

 

Conservatives have been complaining about "activists judges" for all my adult life and then some. Now they are in position after decades to rewrite America's laws from the top down to mean whatever they say it means, and we remain at their whim.