Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

As I said last month, the Supreme Court deciding that state legislatures, not courts, were the final word over elections would end our democracy overnight. For now at least, that fatal bullet has been dodged.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday allowed North Carolina and Pennsylvania to use electoral maps approved by state courts to replace ones deemed to have given Republicans unfair advantages, improving Democratic chances of retaining control of the U.S. House of Representatives in November.

The justices denied Republican requests to put on hold lower court rulings that adopted court-drawn boundaries for North Carolina's 14 House districts and Pennsylvania's 17 House districts to replace electoral maps devised by Republican-controlled legislatures in the two states.

Republicans are seeking to regain control of the House, which is narrowly controlled by President Joe Biden's fellow Democrats, in the Nov. 8 midterm elections. Party primaries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina are set for May 17.

The court has a 6-3 conservative majority. Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch dissented from the action concerning North Carolina.

 

Justice Kegstand filed a concurring opinion agreeing with Justice Alito, his only quibble was with the NC GOP filing this as an emergency measure.

 

So at this point, there's four Supreme Court justices willing to eliminate Democracy by allowing state legislatures to conduct elections however they want to for both state and federal elections, with zero oversight by state or federal courts.

In other words, once Republicans get control of a state legislature, they could make whatever election redistricting and voting laws that they want.

All they need is one more Justice.

Máquina De Ruido Conservadora

The right-wing noise machine, Spanish edition, is launching this week just in time for wrecking Democrats' chances among Hispanic voters in the 2022 midterms.

 

The nation’s first Spanish-language conservative network launches Tuesday morning on satellite radio, opening a new front in the political information wars targeting Latinos in the United States and beyond.

The network, called Americano, arrives during a crucial inflection point in U.S. politics, as more Hispanic voters show signs of drifting right and Democrats continue to sound the alarm about Spanish-language right-wing disinformation on social media and local radio, particularly in Miami, which is also Americano’s home base.

It's scheduled to launch first on SiriusXM radio, then on streaming TV this summer, offering a mix of news programming and commentary. The network has close ties to former President Donald Trump's campaign, as well as to former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who now represents the more moderate wing of the Republican Party. Ahead of the Tuesday broadcast, Democrats in Florida raised concerns publicly and privately that the programming would contribute to the spread of misleading claims targeted at Spanish-speakers that skyrocketed during the pandemic and the 2020 campaign.

Americano’s founder and CEO, Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo, bristled at the notion that the privately funded network is going to purvey disinformation or misinformation, and accused Democrats of trying to cancel speech they don’t like.

"They’re scared. And they should be,” Garcia-Hidalgo said of Democrats in an interview. "Democrats took Hispanics for granted for too long, and no one thought to create a home for us in conservative media. There is an appetite for this. You see it on social media. You see it in elections."

Nowhere is that more apparent in the United States than in Miami-Dade County, home to a large and dynamic population with roots throughout Latin America, and a location where Trump dramatically improved his performance between the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections. The former president’s support was fueled by support from exile communities of those who fled leftist regimes or violence in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Colombia.

Aside from tapping into strong anti-socialist sentiment, Trump also broadened his Latino support nationwide with an emphasis on blue-collar, pro-business and anti-Covid lockdown messages that played better with Hispanic voters — from Florida to Philadelphia to Wisconsin to the Texas border.

Democrats, meanwhile, have attributed Trump’s gains in part to a deluge of Spanish-language disinformation in the lead-up to the 2020 election, and point out that he nevertheless lost Hispanic voters by double-digit margins nationwide. About a third of Latinos consistently vote Republican nationally.

Pollster Fernand Amandi, a Miami-based consultant who oversaw Barack Obama’s successful national Hispanic outreach, fretted that Americano could be a success — at least politically — even if it doesn’t spread falsehoods or conspiracies.

“For those concerned about the disinformation problem harming Democrats' chances with Hispanics, this is a Defcon 1 moment. We should worry,” Amandi said. “The Democrats’ response to all of this Hispanic outreach from Republicans — whether it's disinformation or conventional campaigning — is to do the bare minimum. Unfortunately, some Democrats are deluding themselves. The ultimate act of disinformation is to pretend that this is not a big problem.”

 

But as Steve M. reminds us, it's very much going to be wall-to-wall disinformation.

A great deal of Spanish-language disinformation made its way to Hispanic voters in the U.S. in 2020. It's not clear whether Americano plans to spread lies or simply rely on the usual anti-liberal bile. But buried in paragraph 26 of this story is one name -- a non-Hispanic name -- that should give us pause.
 

Americano’s chief strategy officer, former Trump campaign and White House adviser Michael Caputo, said the company “has investors, not donors.” ...

“I’m doing this because it’s going to be a profitable business. I could use some money after the Russia investigation,” he said, joking.

Though never charged with wrongdoing, Caputo was swept up in former special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 election because of his past work involving Kremlin-linked Russian propaganda and his aid to the 2016 Trump campaign. This has led to a whisper campaign among Miami Democrats, who said his involvement with Americano was evidence that it would be a breeding ground for disinformation.

 

 It's not a whisper campaign at all, it's reality. Caputo is Trump's former HHS spokesman, largely responsible for pushing wild and dangerous conspiracy theories about the CDC, theories so wacko that he was forced to quit. Since then, he has publicly said that he believes the January 6th sedition was a false flag attack to cover up "Biden's election theft".

Of course it's going to be a massive outlet for direct disinformation, and it's going to be a key player in GOP control of Texas, Florida, Arizona and more. Democrats have no real long-term plan to counter it, either.

If Republicans get the majority of the Hispanic vote in November, you'll know why.

But It's For The Children

Florida Republicans are expected to pass and GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign new legislation this week that would effectively outlaw LGBTQ+ references in any classroom under the 3rd grade, and DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw is demonstrating exactly why the bill actually exists: to label opponents as pedophiles.

Gov. Ron DeSantis‘ press secretary Christina Pushaw tweeted accusations that people who oppose a sex education bill working its way through the Legislature are “groomers” or those who would not denounce “groomers” — references to pedophilia and people who help “groom” children for pedophiles and other abusers.

Her tweets drew angry condemnation Sunday from the bill’s opponents. They expressed disbelief that the Governor’s Office would characterize political opponents of a highly-controversial piece of legislation as groomers or pedophiles.

They’re talking about HB 1557, a bill passed by the House on party lines and ready for the Senate‘s special order calendar Monday. The bill officially is entitled “Parental Rights in Education.” Opponents dub it the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, because it bans discussions of homosexuality in lower grade levels.

The bill would ban Kindergarten through third grade classroom “instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity,” or “in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards.”

The legislation does not restrict the topics from being barred across all ages if the school district deems the instruction age-appropriate. Nor does it broadly restrict sex education for younger students.

Attempts by St. Petersburg Republican Sen. Jeff Brandes and Democrats to amend the bill to explicitly ban sex education in those lower grade levels — instead of making references only to sexual orientation or gender identity — were shot down. That helped fuel opponents’ assertions that the bill is not really about banning sex education, but about banning any classroom references to gay.

Pushaw provided the pedophilia inferences from the Governor’s Office first on Friday night.

“The bill that liberals inaccurately call “Don’t Say Gay” would be more accurately described as Anti-Grooming Bill,” Pushaw tweeted.

She followed that up with: “If you’re against the anti-Grooming bill, you are probably a groomer or at least you don’t denounce the grooming of 4- to 8-year-old children. Silence is complicity. This is how it works, Democrats, and I didn’t make the rules.”

By Sunday those being called groomers were firing back.

“They’re saying we’re all pedophiles. It’s unhinged, unreal,” said Democrat Rep. Anna Eskamani of Orlando. “And coming out of the Governor’s Office, it’s so ridiculous.”

“#DeSantis’ spokesperson openly accused opponents of #DontSayGay of being ‘groomers’— aka PEDOPHILES. Bigoted attacks like this against LGBTQ people are the worst of the worst. They’re disgusting and dangerous and have NO PLACE in the Guv’s office,” tweeted Democratic Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith of Orlando.

West Park Democratic Sen. Shevrin Jones said in a statement: “Gov. DeSantis personally owes millions of Floridians an explanation as to why his spokesperson — whose salary is paid wholly with tax dollars — believes it is acceptable to label opponents to this bigoted bill as ‘groomers,’ a code word for pedophiles. It is outrageous that the Governor’s Office continues to use taxpayer resources to advance a radical, partisan agenda. Students, educators, and families across the state overwhelmingly agree: enough of the intimidation and targeted assaults on Florida’s most vulnerable.”

Democratic Rep. Angie Nixon of Jacksonville called for Pushaw’s resignation.

“@ChristinaPushaw has shown us she’s anti-Semitic and now that she’s openly homophobic. She definitely needs to resign,” Nixon tweeted.

The anti-Semitic accusation arose from Pushaw’s tweets in January questioning whether real Nazis were to blame for a Nazi demonstration in Orlando. She made that challenge instead of denouncing the demonstration.

Equality Florida, the state’s largest LGBTQ rights advocacy organization, called her new tweets a “bigoted anti-LGBTQ rant.”

“Governor DeSantis’ spokesperson said the quiet part out loud: that this bill is grounded in a belief that LGBTQ people, simply by existing, are a threat to children and must be erased. He chose Pushaw to speak his mind to the public. He owns this unbridled hatred,” reads an Equality Florida statement released Sunday.

 

Criminalizing LGBTQ+ people as "pedophiles" is the one of the oldest, most vile attacks that the right has in its arsenal, and this "we're protecting the children" idiocy is meant to draw rabid, violent support from Q-ball types and conspiracy theorists. DeSantis is sending a very loud and clear message that should he aspire to higher office, he will work to criminalize LGBTQ references in schools across the country.

 

And as always, it won't stop there.

Last Call For It's A Gas Gas Gas, Con't

The hard reality of the economic cost of world politics is hitting home at the pump.

U.S. gasoline prices at the pump jumped 11% over the past week to the highest since late July 2008 as global sanctions cripple Russia's ability to export crude oil after its invasion of Ukraine, automobile club AAA said on Sunday.

AAA said average U.S. regular grade gasoline prices hit $4.009 per gallon on Sunday, up 11% from $3.604 a week ago and up 45% from $2.760 a year ago.

The automobile club, which has data going back to 2000, said U.S. retail gasoline prices hit a record $4.114 a gallon on July 17, 2008, which was around the same time U.S. crude futures soared to a record $147.27 a barrel.

The most expensive gas in the country is in California at $5.288 a gallon, followed by Hawaii ($4.695), Nevada ($4.526) and Oregon ($4.466), according to AAA.

U.S. gasoline futures , meanwhile, soared to a record $3.890 per gallon on Sunday.

Gasoline price provider GasBuddy said the average price of U.S. gasoline spiked nearly 41 cents per gallon, topping $4 for the first time in almost 14 years, and stands just 10 cents below the all-time record of $4.103 per gallon.

GasBuddy said that weekly increase was the second largest ever, following a jump of 49 cents per gallon during the week of Sept. 3, 2005, after Hurricane Katrina tore through the U.S. Gulf Coast.

"Increasing oil prices continue to play a leading role in pushing prices higher," AAA said in a release, noting "pump prices will likely continue to rise as crude prices continue to climb."

U.S. crude futures soared more than 12% to $130.50 per barrel late Sunday, their highest since July 2008, as the United States and its European allies consider banning imports of Russian oil. read more

 

Gas prices around here went from $3.29 to $3.69 this week.  I expect it's going to get a lot worse before it gets better in the weeks and months ahead, too. The Biden administration is already reaching out to OPEC, who admittedly, would like to cash in on oil prices spiking to record levels.

President Biden’s advisers are discussing a possible visit to Saudi Arabia this spring to help repair relations and convince the Kingdom to pump more oil, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: A hat-in-hand trip would illustrate the gravity of the global energy crisis driven by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Biden has chastised Saudi Arabia, and the CIA believes its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was involved in the dismemberment of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. 

The possibility also shows how Russia's invasion is scrambling world's alliances, forcing the U.S. to reorder its priorities — and potentially recalibrating its emphasis on human rights. 

Biden officials are in Venezuela this weekend to meet with the government of President Nicolás Maduro. Some Republicans and Democrats in Washington suggest Venezuela's oil could replace Russia's, according to the New York Times. 

Any visit to the Persian Gulf would come amid a busy presidential travel schedule during the next few months. 

Biden will likely take trips to Japan, Spain, Germany and, potentially, Israel, Axios has also learned.

 

THat's right, the Biden administration is cozying up to the regimes in both Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, who frankly want to money but would also love to tell Biden to go screw himself.  

Morals take a backseat to realpolitik, and I've run this blog long enough to more than accept that there are time where that will happen.

We'll see how this shakes out, but if this is Biden's Plan A, you probably don't want to know the political fallout of Plans B through whatever.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Texas's unconstitutional abortion "bounty" laws remain in effect pending the Supreme Court's upcoming decision later this spring, and as such we have data on how women in the state are dealing with getting the healthcare they need, either through medication-induced abortion or by going elsewhere.

In the months after Texas banned all but the earliest abortions in September, the number of legal abortions in the state fell by about half. But two new studies suggest the total number among Texas women fell by far less — around 10 percent — because of large increases in the number of Texans who traveled to a clinic in a nearby state or ordered abortion pills online.

Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas at Austin counted the number of women using these alternative options. They found that while the Texas law — which prohibits abortion after fetal cardiac activity can be detected, or around six weeks — lowered the number of abortions, it did so much more modestly than earlier measurements suggested.

Combined, the data points to what may happen to abortion access if the Supreme Court decides to overturn Roe v. Wade when it rules on another abortion law this summer. The data shows the limitations of laws restricting abortion. Yet it also shows how restrictions erect significant obstacles, which will cause some women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term.

“The law has not done anything to change people’s need for abortion care; it has shifted where people are getting their abortion,” said Kari White, principal investigator of the university’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project and the lead researcher on the new out-of-state abortion study. She expressed surprise at how few abortions were prevented by such a sweeping set of restrictions: “The numbers are way bigger than we expected. It’s pretty astounding.”

But for the architects of the Texas law, even a modest reduction in abortions is a success.

“There’s no hesitation from our side to declare this a victory for actually protecting pre-born children from elective abortion,” said John Seago, the legislative director of Texas Right to Life, who was involved in the creation of the law. “We’re realists around here, so the best we can do is incentivize women to have their children.”

Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican who said the bill “ensures that the life of every unborn child who has a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion” when he signed it, declined to comment on the new numbers.

As state legislatures await a Supreme Court ruling and take stock of the Texas experience this year, several have passed new abortion restrictions, even if they conflict with Roe. On Thursday night, the Florida Legislature voted to ban most abortions after 15 weeks. Somewhere between 21 and 26 states are expected to ban or substantially restrict abortion if the Supreme Court permits it. On Monday, an effort by Senate Democrats to codify abortion rights into federal law failed to attract enough votes.

Each month in the period between September 2021, when the Texas law went into effect, and the end of the year, an average of 1,400 women went to one of seven nearby states, according to one of the new studies, released Sunday. That was 12 times as many as typically sought abortions out of state before the law.

The study included seven nearby states: New Mexico, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi and Colorado. Nearly half of Texans who traveled went to Oklahoma, and a quarter to New Mexico. It counted Texans who visited 34 of 44 clinics, so the total was probably higher.

An average of 1,100 women ordered abortion pills online each month from Aid Access, an overseas service that sends pills in the mail while sidestepping U.S. abortion restrictions, by connecting women with European doctors and Indian pharmacies. That is more than triple the number who ordered pills in an average month before the law, according to the second study, published last week in JAMA Network Open.

Before, there was an average of 11 requests a day. Immediately after, that spiked to 138 requests a day, and has leveled out at about 30. The study could not determine if all medication requests resulted in abortions.

“The law is semi-effective; it will not stop all abortions,” said Abigail R.A. Aiken, an author of the study, who teaches public affairs and leads a research group studying self-managed abortion at the University of Texas at Austin.

Those who were unable to get abortions are most likely to be poor, a variety of research has found. It’s expensive to travel to another state and pay for transportation, child care and lodging in addition to the procedure.

 

It's that last paragraph that's the key. Those who can afford it will get abortion as health care. Those who can't will have to either bear the child, or turn to other means. It's these other means that Texas and other red states will target next, including making crossing state lines to get an abortion illegal, as well as outlawing abortion pills.

Should SCOTUS allow states to make their own laws, abortion is restricted severely. Should SCOTUS allow states to outlaw legal abortion entirely, the same thing results. Tens of millions of women will effectively not be able to get safe, effective abortion as health care.

This was always where the Road to Gilead was taking us next.

Sunday Long Read: Bragging Wrongs

In an update, and correction, of my post last month about how the Manhattan DA's criminal case against Donald Trump fell to ashes, the NY Times reports in our Sunday Long Read the detailed story of how DA Alvin Bragg became convinced that charging Trump would lead to an unwinnable trial.

On a late January afternoon, two senior prosecutors stood before the new Manhattan district attorney, hoping to persuade him to criminally charge the former president of the United States.

The prosecutors, Mark F. Pomerantz and Carey R. Dunne, detailed their strategy for proving that Donald J. Trump knew his annual financial statements were works of fiction. Time was running out: The grand jury hearing evidence against Mr. Trump was set to expire in the spring. They needed the district attorney, Alvin Bragg, to decide whether to seek charges.

But Mr. Bragg and his senior aides, masked and gathered around a conference table on the eighth floor of the district attorney’s office in Lower Manhattan, had serious doubts. They hammered Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne about whether they could show that Mr. Trump had intended to break the law by inflating the value of his assets in the annual statements, a necessary element to prove the case.

The questioning was so intense that as the meeting ended, Mr. Dunne, exasperated, used a lawyerly expression that normally refers to a judge’s fiery questioning:

“Wow, this was a really hot bench,” Mr. Dunne said, according to people with knowledge of the meeting. “What I’m hearing is you have great concerns.”

The meeting, on Jan. 24, started a series of events that brought the investigation of Mr. Trump to a sudden halt, and late last month prompted Mr. Pomerantz and Mr. Dunne to resign. It also represented a drastic shift: Mr. Bragg’s predecessor, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., had deliberated for months before deciding to move toward an indictment of Mr. Trump. Mr. Bragg, not two months into his tenure, reversed that decision.

Mr. Bragg has maintained that the three-year inquiry is continuing. But the reversal, for now, has eliminated one of the gravest legal threats facing the former president.

This account of the investigation’s unraveling, drawn from interviews with more than a dozen people knowledgeable about the events, pulls back a curtain on one of the most consequential prosecutorial decisions in U.S. history. Had the district attorney’s office secured an indictment, Mr. Trump would have been the first current or former president to be criminally charged.

Mr. Bragg was not the only one to question the strength of the case, the interviews show. Late last year, three career prosecutors in the district attorney’s office opted to leave the investigation, uncomfortable with the speed at which it was proceeding and with what they maintained were gaps in the evidence. The tension spilled into the new administration, with some career prosecutors raising concerns directly to the new district attorney’s team.

Mr. Bragg, whose office is conducting the investigation along with lawyers working for New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, had not taken issue with Mr. Dunne and Mr. Pomerantz presenting evidence to the grand jury in his first days as district attorney. But as the weeks passed, he developed concerns about the challenge of showing Mr. Trump’s intent — a requirement for proving that he criminally falsified his business records — and about the risks of relying on the former president’s onetime fixer, Michael D. Cohen, as a key witness.

This is why the civil case that state AG Tish James is proceeding. The burden of proof is much lower than in a criminal case, and James's case has much more believable witnesses, depositions, and evidence. Trump was never going to be charged with criminal wrongdoing in a state corporate tax fraud trial. In the civil case, James can recoup the lost tax revenue and levy penalties and fines, but that's about it.

The problem is that both of the prosecutors who resigned say the case was solid enough to go to trial. Bragg's decision to not do so is very much a political one, and I don't like it.

Criminal charges are going to have to come from Merrick Garland, and frankly, he has the same problem that Bragg does: being able to prove Trump's actions as criminal beyond a reasonable doubt, much less bringing a trial to a jury without absolute bloody chaos dogging the proceedings every step of the way.

Or worse.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

Sure was nice of not one, but two GOP senators trying to get Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy killed by sharing pictures of a closed online address by the leader to Congress over social media, pictures that almost certainly gave his location right to the Russian hit squads hunting him and his family down.

Two Republican senators are facing criticism after tweeting photos of a video call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy even though participating lawmakers were told to not share pictures on social media while it was in progress.

Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Steve Daines of Montana posted pictures of Zelenskyy on their Twitter accounts during the Zoom meeting Saturday morning, writing that they were on a call with him.

Democratic Reps. Dean Phillips of Minnesota and Jason Crow of Colorado criticized the senators on Twitter.

Phillips noted that the "Ukrainian ambassador very intentionally asked each of us on the Zoom to NOT share anything on social media during the meeting to protect the security of President Zelenskyy."

"Appalling and reckless ignorance by two U.S. Senators," Phillips wrote.

"The lack of discipline in Congress is truly astounding," Crow wrote. "If an embattled wartime leader asks you to keep quiet about a meeting, you better keep quiet about the meeting. I’m not saying a damn thing. Lives are at stake."

Members were explicitly asked not to tweet or post pictures of the call while it was in progress, multiple aides told NBC News. The embassy coordinated this with the offices of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., as well as the Congressional Ukraine Caucus, said a Democratic leadership aide.

In separate statements, representatives for Rubio and Daines defended the senators' decision to share the photos, calling those who make an issue out of their tweets a "partisan."

"There were over 160 members of Congress on a widely reported Zoom call. There was no identifying information of any kind," said a spokesperson for Rubio.

A spokesperson for Daines said his tweet, which was posted about 23 minutes after the meeting started, was "shared well into the call ... before it was requested not to" and contained "no identifying information."

They were told not to do it, they did it anyway, they don't apologize for it, and they don't care one whit that they potentially put Zelenskyy's life and family at risk, but sure. Rubio is an attention-starved toddler, but Daines should know better, having worked for Proctor & Gamble in China for more than five years. Guy should know something about operational security.

 

The larger point is they don't care about keeping information safe. That's a running theme with these jagoffs.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Turns out the Russians just happen to have been holding WNBA superstar center Britney Griner of the Phoenix Mercury for the last several days (if not weeks) on drug charges, and are now saying it would a shame if she was found guilty of drug smuggling.

The Russian Federal Customs Service said Saturday that its officials had detained an American basketball player after finding vape cartridges that contained hashish oil in her luggage at the Sheremetyevo airport near Moscow.

The Customs Service said in a statement that the player had won two Olympic gold medals with the United States, but it did not release the player’s name. The Russian news agency TASS, citing a law enforcement source, identified the player as Brittney Griner, a seven-time W.N.B.A. All-Star center for the Phoenix Mercury. Griner, 31, won gold medals with the U.S. women’s national basketball team in 2021 and 2016.

The Customs Service released a video of a traveler at the airport who appeared to be Griner, wearing a mask and black sweatshirt, going through security. The video showed an individual removing a package from the traveler’s bag.

The screening at the airport occurred in February, according to the Customs Service, raising the possibility that Griner has been in custody for at least several days.

According to the statement, a criminal case has been opened into the large-scale transportation of drugs, which can carry a sentence of up to 10 years behind bars in Russia. The basketball player was taken into custody while the investigation was ongoing, the officials said.

In a statement, Griner’s agent, Lindsay Kagawa Colas, said: “We are aware of the situation with Brittney Griner in Russia and are in close contact with her, her legal representation in Russia, her family, her teams, and the W.N.B.A. and N.B.A.

“As this is an ongoing legal matter, we are not able to comment further on the specifics of her case but can confirm that as we work to get her home, her mental and physical health remain our primary concern.”

The W.N.B.A. said in a statement that Griner “has the W.N.B.A.’s full support and our main priority is her swift and safe return to the United States.”

The Phoenix Mercury, USA Basketball, which oversees the Olympics teams, and the W.N.B.A. players’ union also released statements expressing support for Griner.

The detainment comes amid the escalating conflict created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and high tensions between Russia and the United States. In recent years, Russia has been detaining and sentencing American citizens on what United States officials often say are trumped-up charges. The arrest of a high-profile American could be seen as Russia’s attempting to create leverage for a potential prisoner exchange with the American government or a reduction in sanctions related to the invasion.

Many W.N.B.A. players compete in Russia, where salaries are more lucrative, during the American league’s off-season. Griner has played for the Russian team UMMC Ekaterinburg for several years.

Griner is set to earn $227,900 with the Mercury in the 2022 season, according to Her Hoop Stats, just shy of the W.N.B.A.’s maximum salary, $228,094. Some players have made substantially more money with Russian teams, like Griner’s Mercury teammate Diana Taurasi, who reports said earned around $1.5 million with UMMC Ekaterinburg in 2015.

Some American players began making plans to leave Russia following the country’s invasion of Ukraine, and a W.N.B.A. spokeswoman said on Saturday that all W.N.B.A. players besides Griner were out of Russia and Ukraine.

The Russians are making it very clear that while Griner is the only WNBA player being held, the rest of the league and American athletes in general are persona non grata, and you know they are implying, as the NY Times does, that Griner wouldn't be in this situation if she could make real money here in the States and didn't have to rely on off-season paychecks.

See how awful late-stage capitalism is, compared to, you know, holding Black female athletes as political prisoners, right?

Orange Meltdown, Con't

According to former Trump national security hand John Bolton's mustache, Trump was very serious about withdrawing from NATO, was actually going to do it in 2018, and when Trump pulled back at the ast moment, he expected he would be able to make leaving the treaty one of the first acts of his second term.

Former national security adviser John Bolton said on Friday that he believes Russian President Vladimir Putin was “waiting” for a possible United States withdrawal from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), claiming former President Trump would have likely made such a move had he been reelected.

Bolton, during a Washington Post Live event, was asked about his memoir, in which he claimed that Trump wanted to leave the military alliance in 2018. The newspaper’s Opinions Editor-at-Large Michael Duffy asked him how close Trump was to withdrawing the United States from NATO.

“Yeah, I had my heart in my throat at that NATO meeting. I didn't know what the president would do. He called me up to his seat seconds before he gave his speech. And I said, 'Look, go right up to the line, but don't go over it',” Bolton replied.

“I sat back down, I had no idea what he’d do. I thought he’d put his foot over it, but at least he didn't withdraw then," he continued. "In a second Trump term, I think he may well have withdrawn from NATO, and I think Putin was waiting for that."

Taylor Budowich, a spokesperson for Trump, knocked Bolton’s comments.

"John Bolton is only happy when America is at war. President Trump led America into one of the most peaceful times in U.S. history, which included growing investment into NATO by $50 billion," he said in a statement. "John Bolton is just mad he was fired before it could be spent."

 

As with everything involving Trump and his cadre of crooks, take this with an entire salt mine.

 

Trump is scrambling to make everyone forget that he was very happy to abandon Europe to his friend Vladimir Putin, and Bolton has a career to salvage so that he can play a role in the next non-Trump GOP administration. 

Both are liars who should be in prison.

Jobapalooza, Con't

The Biden Boom rocketed along with another two-thirds of a million jobs added last month, and another 100,000 jobs added in upwards revisions in January and December's numbers.

Job growth accelerated in February for a U.S. economy wrestling with swelling prices, the potential for higher interest rates and intensifying geopolitical problems.

Nonfarm payrolls for the month grew by 678,000 and the unemployment rate was 3.8%, the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday.

That compared to estimates of 440,000 for payrolls and 3.9% for the jobless rate.

In a sign that inflation could be cooling, wages barely rose for the month, up just 1 cent an hour or 0.03%, compared to estimates for a 0.5% gain. The year-over-year increase was 5.13%, well below the 5.8% Dow Jones estimate.

For the labor market broadly, the report brought the level of employed Americans closer to pre-pandemic levels, though still short by 1.14 million. Labor shortages remain a major obstacle to fill the 10.9 million jobs that were open at the end of 2021, a historically high gap that had left about 1.7 vacancies per available workers.

As has been the case for much of the pandemic era, leisure and hospitality led job gains, adding 179,000 for the month. The job gap for that sector, which was hit most by government-imposed restrictions, is 1.5 million from pre-Covid levels.

Other sectors showing strong gains included professional and business services (95,000), Health care (64,000), construction (60,000), transportation and warehousing (48,000) and retail (37,000). Manufacturing contributed 36,000 and financial activities rose 35,000.

Previous months saw upward revisions. December moved up to 588,000, an increase of 78,000 from the previous estimate, while January’s rose to 481,000. Together, the revisions added 92,000 more than previously recorded and brought the three-month average to 582,000.

The trend for jobs is clearly upward after a wintertime surge of omicron cases, while exacting a large human toll, left little imprint on employment.

The economy also has been wrestling with pernicious inflation pressures running at their highest levels since the early 1980s stagflation days. The Labor Department’s main inflation gauge showed consumer prices rising at a 7.5% clip in January, a number that is expected to climb to close to 8% when February’s report is released next week.

Amid it all, companies continue to hire, filling broad gaps still left in the leisure and hospitality sector as well as multiple other pandemic-struck industries.

 

We still have several million jobs to go to get back to pre-pandemic levels, but we're 750,000 jobs closer than we were last month. 

The bad news is that here on out, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is now a major issue and will be for a very, very long time. How that will affect the U.S. economy is anyone's guess, but if the Fed starts tightening the screws to kill inflation as I expect they will later this month, you can kiss the Biden Boom goodbye.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

We've reached the "Russian military forces wouldn't shell Europe's largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine, would they?" phase of the invasion and I'm just exhausted.

Russian invasion forces seized Europe's biggest nuclear power on Friday in heavy fighting in southeastern Ukraine, triggering global alarm, but a huge blaze in a training building has been extinguished and officials said the facility was now safe.

Combat raged elsewhere in Ukraine as Russian forces surrounded several cities in the second week of the assault launched by Russian President Vladimir Putin.

A presidential advisor said an advance had been halted on the southern city of Mykolayiv after local authorities said Russian troops had entered it. If captured, the city of 500,000 people would be the biggest yet to fall.

The capital Kyiv, in the path of a huge Russian armoured column that has been stalled on a road for days, came under renewed attack, with air raid sirens blaring in the morning and explosions audible from the city centre.

The fire at a training building at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant sent global stock markets plunging.

Although the plant was now said to be safe and the fire out, officials remained worried about the precarious circumstances, with Ukrainian staff operating under Russian control in battlefield conditions beyond the reach of administrators.

International Atomic Energy Agency chief Raphael Grossi described the situation as "normal operations, but in fact there is nothing normal about this".

He paid homage to the plant's Ukrainian staff: "to their bravery, to their courage, to their resilience because they are doing this in very difficult circumstances."

Grossi said the plant was undamaged from what he believed was a Russian projectile. Only one reactor was working, at around 60% of capacity. He was trying to contact Russian and Ukrainian officials to sort out political responsibility.

An official at Energoatom, the Ukrainian state nuclear plant operator, said there was no further fighting and radiation was normal, but his organisation no longer had contact with the plant's management or control over potentially dangerous nuclear material.

"Personnel are on their working places providing normal operation of the station," the official told Reuters.

 

Needless to say, sentences like "Russian forces have captured Europe's largest nuclear plant" have put the world on a knife's edge.

The office of British Prime Minister Boris Johnson says he will seek an emergency U.N. Security Council meeting after Russian troops in Ukraine attacked a nuclear power plant and sparked a fire.

Johnson’s office says he spoke to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the early hours of the morning. He says Britain will raise the issue immediately with Russia and close partners.

Johnson’s office says he and Zelenskyy agree Russia must immediately cease attacking and allow emergency services unfettered access to the plant. The two agree a ceasefire is essential.

“The Prime Minister said the reckless actions of (Russian President Vladimir) Putin could now directly threaten the safety of all of Europe,” Johnson’s office said in a statement. “He said (the United Kingdom) would do everything it could to ensure the situation did not deteriorate further.”

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he also spoke with Zelenskyy about the attacks on the power plant.

 

I understand that it's not, say, St. Louis that's going to be rendered into a nuclear wasteland if things go badly, but yeah, if this is the Russians provoking a NATO fight, it's going to work. 

 

In which case, it's not St. Louis yet. 

In all seriousness though, unless there's a major shift in force posture by NATO to defend Ukraine, the government will fall, be replaced by Russian stooges, and the country's military will shift into insurgency. Let's not sugar-coat this. NATO has already ruled out a no-fly zone, but honestly, what makes anyone think Putin won't go for NATO bases in a member country like Romania, Hungary, Slovaka, the Baltics, or even Poland?

What would NATO and President Biden do then?

That's the big question, isn't it?

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Joe Biden is absolutely on the right side of history when it comes to defending trans kids from Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbot's blood hunt.

President Joe Biden put Texas officials “on notice” in a strongly worded statement Wednesday, calling recent investigations into the families of transgender youth “discriminatory actions” that “put children’s lives at risk.”

The statement, which was released alongside a list of actions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said it would take to protect trans youth and their families in Texas, was the first time Biden directly addressed a recent directive from Gov. Greg Abbott that calls on the general public and “licensed professionals” to report the parents of trans minors if it appears the children are receiving gender-affirming medical care.

The directive also ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, the state’s child protective services agency, to investigate such claims.

Civil rights groups intervened, filing a lawsuit Tuesday after the department opened an investigation last week into one of its own employees who has a transgender child. On Wednesday evening, hours before Biden’s statement, a judge temporarily blocked the state’s investigation into that family, but other similar investigations were unaffected.

Abbott has not returned a request for comment regarding the lawsuit or Biden’s statement, and the Department of Family and Protective Services declined to comment.

In his statement, Biden called Abbott’s directive “government overreach at its worst.” He said that his administration is putting “the state of Texas on notice that their discriminatory actions” risk children’s lives.

“These announcements make clear that rather than weaponizing child protective services against loving families, child welfare agencies should instead expand access to gender-affirming care for transgender children,” he said.

He added that children, their parents and their doctors should “have the freedom to make the medical decisions that are best for each young person — without politicians getting the way.”

“Transgender children bring fulfillment to their parents, joy to their friends, and are made in the image of God,” he said. “Affirming a transgender child’s identity is one of the best things a parent, teacher, or doctor can do to help keep children from harm, and parents who love and affirm their children should be applauded and supported, not threatened, investigated, or stigmatized.”

In a separate statement Wednesday, U.S. Health Secretary Xavier Becerra called the Texas government’s actions “discriminatory and unconscionable.” He urged any individual or family who is targeted by a child welfare investigation due to the governor’s directive to contact the Health and Human Services’ Office of Civil Rights, which enforces civil rights laws that protect people from health care discrimination.

“HHS will take immediate action if needed,” he said. “I know that many youth and their supportive families are feeling scared and isolated because of these attacks. HHS is closely monitoring the situation in Texas, and will use every tool at our disposal to keep Texans safe.”

Becerra’s announcement revealed that the department released guidance to state child welfare agencies that “makes it clear that states should use their child welfare systems to advance safety and support for LGBTQI+ youth, which importantly can include access to gender affirming care” and guidance on patient privacy, which states that, despite the governor’s order, “health care providers are not required to disclose private patient information related to gender affirming care.” His announcement also outlined that denying health care based on gender identity and restricting medical professionals from providing such care due to gender identity are both illegal.

The Biden administration’s announcement has brought welcome relief for the parents of transgender children in Texas, who said the governor’s directive caused fear and anxiety for their families.

 

If you want to know why Republicans and the Roberts Court are doing everything they can to destroy federal protections for civil rights, voting rights, and human rights by "returning powers to the states" this is exactly why. Neutering federal protections means your rights are solely defined by the state you live in, and if you're one of those people, you become a target for the coercive and carceral power of that state.

The reason why it's called eliminationist rhetoric is simply because given this type of power, Republicans show time and again the fervent desire to use it to eliminate entire groups of people as Americans with rights, to criminalize the "other" and to throw them in jail or worse.

Abbott directed Texas child services to investigate the parents of trans kids for felony child abuse. It will not stop there if Republican get more power, and Democratic administrations are increasingly hamstrung.

The entire point is to make rights dependent on where you live in the country, and to force those who do not qualify into a life of criminal servitude. It's fascism 101, folks.

 

Republicans want this power and will never give it up without force, and they've been itching for that fight for decades.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorist Problem, Con't

The January 6th terrorist attack on the US Capitol is officially sedition, folks.

 

Joshua James, one of the 11 Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy alongside the group’s founder Stewart Rhodes, appears poised to plead guilty Wednesday afternoon, a major development in the most serious criminal case to emerge from the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol.

James was a member of the Oath Keeper’s leadership who repeatedly messaged with other Oath Keepers about planning for Jan. 6. Prosecutors say he breached the Capitol’s rotunda doors along with other Oath Keepers in the early part of the mob assault on the building.

The indictment against Rhodes and the others indicated that James described a massive arsenal of weaponry that the group had “on standby” in case violence escalated. Prosecutors have accused the Oath Keepers of stockpiling weapons at a Comfort Inn in Arlington, Va., though they never ultimately deployed it.

James was one of the Oath Keepers who was seen riding in golf carts from the group’s D.C. hotel to the Capitol, breaching the building about 30 minutes after a first wave of Oath Keepers also charged in the attack.

“While entering the Capitol building, JAMES and [Oath Keepr Roberto] MINUTA pushed past Capitol Police officers who placed their hands on JAMES and MINUTA in unsuccessful attempts to stop them from advancing toward the Rotunda,” prosecutors alleged in the indictment.

It’s unclear what the broader impact of James’ plea agreement will be, but other plea agreements from Jan. 6 defendants have typically included agreements to cooperate with federal prosecutors. Cooperation by James could provide prosecutors with valuable insight about the planning and mindset of those organizing the attack.

In addition to the 11 charged with seditious conspiracy, another nine Oath Keepers are facing obstruction charges for breaching the building along with their associates. The charges facing the group are the most serious to emerge from the attack on the Capitol.

 

Repeat after me:

 

Donald Trump orchestrated a terrorist attack as cover for a palace coup, and he would have gotten away with it if his minions had executed their plan more effectively.

 

It was an armed attempt to overthrow the government, and more importantly, as the January 6th committee filed in federal court yesterday, Donald Trump was materially involved.

The Jan. 6 select committee says its evidence has shown that then-President Donald Trump and his campaign tried to illegally obstruct Congress’ counting of electoral votes and “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States.”

In a major release of its findings, filed in federal court late Wednesday, the committee suggested its evidence supported findings that Trump himself violated multiple laws by attempting to prevent Congress from certifying his defeat.

“The Select Committee also has a good-faith basis for concluding that the President and members of his Campaign engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States,” the committee wrote in a filing submitted in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California.

In a major release of the panel’s findings, including excerpts of nearly a dozen depositions from top aides to Trump and former Vice President Mike Pence, the committee described a president who had been informed repeatedly that he lost the election and that his claims of fraud were unfounded — only to reject them and continue to mislead the American public.

He then pushed top advisers to continue strategizing ways to overturn the election results.

 

They tried to steal the election, folks. 

One final note from Marcy Wheeler:

The most important detail from his statement of offense, as I heard it, is they had a plan to surround the White House, with arms, to ensure no one got to Trump.

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) March 2, 2022

 

At this point, the damage to the country from not charging Trump with federal crimes will exceed the backlash from his cultists.

 

 

Up to you, Merrick Garland.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

President Manchin lays out the Build Back Better bill that he "wants", and that he won't actually accept because he's been operating in bad faith for nearly a year now, and surprise, it's a much, much smaller bill than what Biden proposed in December.

 

Hours after President Joe Biden laid out what he hopes to salvage from Democrats’ defunct “Build Back Better” social spending plan, Joe Manchin is quickly assembling his counteroffer.

In a Wednesday afternoon interview, the West Virginia centrist laid out a basic party-line package that could win his vote, lower the deficit and enact some new programs, provided they are permanently funded. It may be Democrats’ best and last chance to get at least some of their biggest domestic priorities done before the midterm elections, but would require everyone in the party — particularly liberals — to concede that what’s possible doesn’t come close to the $1.7 trillion package Manchin spurned in December.

Manchin said that if Democrats want to cut a deal on a party-line bill using the budget process to circumvent a Republican filibuster, they need to start with prescription drug savings and tax reform. He envisions whatever revenue they can wring out of that as split evenly between reducing the federal deficit and inflation, on the one hand, and enacting new climate and social programs, on the other — “to the point where it’s sustainable.”

“If you do that, the revenue producing [measures] would be taxes and drugs. The spending is going to be climate,” Manchin said.

“And the social issues, we basically have to deal with those” afterward, he added.

Though he prefers everything in Congress to be bipartisan, Manchin said he has “come to that conclusion” that changing the tax code to make the rich and corporations pay their fair sure can only be done with Democratic votes. As far as whether he thinks his party finally understands his parameters for joining the talks, he said that Democrats “know where I am. They just basically think that I’m going to change.”

Biden’s State of the Union address called for congressional action on some of the individual portions of the wide-ranging social spending measure that the House passed last year, including drug pricing, child care, tax hikes on the wealthy and climate change. The momentum that Democrats had mustered for their trillion-dollar-plus proposal has mostly evaporated, and some lawmakers are increasingly open to slimmed-down legislation or even standalone bills to address their policy priorities.

And while Manchin said no “formal” talks are happening with the White House, there’s “informal back-and-forth.” He declined to say if he’s spoken to Biden recently about it: “Different White House people reach out, and we talk from time to time.”

 

What Manchin means by "dealing with social issues afterward" is "not at all in this bill, take what I allow you to have and be grateful because you won't get a single Republican vote for it." Then when progressives point out Manchin is being an asshole, he'll leave the table.

 

As I've been saying for months now, Manchin doesn't hold every single card, but he's willing to play every card that he does have, and he remains 100% in control of the process as a direct result. He wins because he lays out what he'll "accept", then refuses to actually do so because he knows he can get away with bad faith negotiations, then shuts down negotiations for a period, then moves the goalposts to a new, much smaller bill.

We'll see what that means, as if the legislation doesn't pass by Labor Day, it's almost certainly done for another decade or two.

Last Call For Biden Goes Viral, Con't

Part of President Biden's State of the Union speech last night was dedicated to the White House's plan on COVID-19 moving forward, and that plan, unlike the Trump "plan" of "deal with it" is "we now have the weapons to fight the virus and we're going to use them".

The White House on Wednesday unveiled a plan to move the nation to a new stage of the pandemic where Covid-19 "does not disrupt our daily lives," while also preparing the nation for any new variants that may emerge.  

The National Covid-19 Preparedness Plan, which will require additional funding from Congress, is focused on spending on treatments for Covid-19, preparing for new variants, keeping schools and businesses open and continuing the effort to vaccinate the nation and the world. 

"Vaccines, treatments, tests, masks -- these tools are how we continue to protect people and enable us to move forward safely and get back to our more normal routines. Going out to eat at a restaurant, taking that trip that's been long delayed, arranging a play date for your kids, attending a sports game, a movie or a concert again," White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients told reporters at a White House briefing. 

A major new part of the plan includes a new "Test to Treat" initiative that President Joe Biden announced during his State of the Union address Tuesday night. He said Americans would be able to get tested for Covid-19 at a pharmacy and receive free antiviral pills "on the spot" if they test positive.  

Zients said hundreds of these "One-Stop Test to Treat" locations will open across the country this month. These sites will be at pharmacy-based clinics, community health centers, long-term care facilities and US Department of Veterans Affairs facilities across the country. 

Pfizer's antiviral pill, Paxlovid, has been shown to significantly reduce hospitalizations and severe illness and was authorized by the US Food and Drug Administration last year. Upon its authorization, Biden announced a purchase of 10 million courses. The President has since said the federal government will double its order from 10 million to 20 million treatment courses.  

Zients said Americans who have already received free at-home Covid-19 tests that they ordered through COVIDtests.gov will be able to place a second order starting next week. He said the administration will continue to make hundreds of millions of high-quality masks available to Americans at pharmacies, grocery stores and community health centers across the country. 

The administration will launch a website later this month, Zients said, to help Americans locate vaccines and masks at convenient locations. 

"This plan lays out the roadmap to help us fight Covid-19 in the future as we move America from crisis to a time when Covid-19 does not disrupt our daily lives and is something we prevent, protect against and treat," a summary of the plan shared with CNN reads. 

"We look to a future when Americans no longer fear lockdowns, shutdowns, and our kids not going to school. It's a future when the country relies on the powerful layers of protection we have built and invests in the next generation of tools to stay ahead of this virus." 

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra told reporters that the administration has distributed more than 270 million N95 masks to local pharmacies and community health centers and that 70 million households have received rapid at-home Covid-19 tests.

 

It's a good start to a plan, but Biden completely fails to address three huge problems:

 

First, the one-quarter to one-third of American adults who still refuse vaccinations aren't going to give a damn about tests, antiviral treatments, N95 masks, or anything. That guaranteed tens of millions of Americans as a fertile ground for further mutations of COVID-19 well past Omicron.

 

Second, immune system compromised Americans who can't vaccinate will still face a populace where COVID is rampant, continuous, and a threat.

Third, the rampant mutations could very well lead to a super-strain of COVID that is not affected by our current arsenal, and all of this goes back to the dumbasses who refuse the damn vaccine.

Still, Katie Mack is right.

Depressing to see Covid denial follow exactly the same trajectory as climate denial:
> It’s not real
> It’s real but not bad
> It’s real & bad but there’s nothing we can do
> We could do something but it would inconvenience us (& mostly help the more vulnerable) so not worth it

— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) February 28, 2022

 

We're definitely into phase four here, moving on from a preventable disease that killed roughly 60,000 Americans in February. We're still in the part where we're averaging 2,000 dead per day.

 

COVID death denial is like climate denial at this point, she absolutely right.