Last Call For The Vax Of Life, Con't

Republicans, in their never-ending quest to kill poor Black people before they become Medicaid "burdens", are now refusing to pay for any more vaccine doses until the Biden Administration comes up with a plan to "take responsibility and wind down" COVID-fighting efforts heading into the 2022 midterms.

Congressional Republicans' concerns about wasting COVID vaccines are colliding with the Biden administration's commitment to making the shots as widely accessible as possible, adding another wrinkle to the stalled COVID funding negotiations.

The intrigue: Some Republicans are growing skeptical of the currently available vaccines' ability to contain the Omicron variant, and don't want to allocate money for more doses without a firmer plan in place for the fall.

The big picture: Democrats stripped more than $15 billion of funding for more COVID countermeasures from a spending bill in March due to internal divisions over how the package would be paid for.Democrats and Republicans have been at loggerheads since then, and the administration has warned that the country won't have critical tools for managing the virus this fall without new funding. But two senior GOP Senate aides say that Republicans are also raising broader questions about the administration's vaccine strategy.

State of play: COVID vaccines are packaged and distributed in multi-dose vials. Once a vial of Pfizer or Moderna's mRNA vaccine is opened, it must be used the same day, because the vaccines don't contain preservatives.In practice, that forces a choice between throwing out unused doses and limiting the number of places offering vaccines at any given time to concentrate demand.

Yes, but: Republicans say the current strategy is wasteful, and it would be better to rein in accessibility so that more doses are likely to be used.Although the administration is working with vaccine makers on updated vial sizes, including single-use vials, these aren't expected to be ready until late this year or early next year, according to a senior Biden administration official. 

"If someone arrives at a rural or urban site and they're the only one who shows up that day, they can get a vaccine," the official said. "From a public health policy, we want to ensure that everyone has easy access, no matter where they live."

By the numbers: As of now, 79% of available vaccine doses distributed in the U.S. have been administered to patients, according to Department of Health and Human Services officials.That figure is an average over the last year and a half, but there have been fluctuations. The administration didn't specify how many doses are currently going unused or how the rate has changed over time. 

"Vaccine utilization was very high in the early months of the vaccination campaign and has decreased in recent months; however, our commitment to providing vaccine, and now boosters, to anyone who wants one remains unchanged," the HHS officials wrote in an email.

The other thing: It's no secret that Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines don't work as well against the Omicron variant, although they remain highly effective preventing hospitalizations and deaths. Pfizer and Moderna are testing updated vaccines that are target Omicron as well as the original COVID-19 strain.Some Republicans want to prioritize buying therapeutics, given the vaccines' reduced effectiveness and the evolution of the virus. 

"Republicans are skeptical of using federal money to buy more vaccines that are proving not to last very long and questions remain if they will work against future variants," one senior GOP Senate aide told Axios. "We're not saying don't get vaccinated. We're saying that the current shot and boosters are reducing in effectiveness. New vax isn't ready and it's unclear where they are in the plan," the aide added. "Since there is no plan, we don't want to give them blank check."

The other side: The administration says it has a plan, and the problem is lawmakers haven't authorized the money to implement it.

 

So, by accepting the Republican framing ("The pandemic is over, it's time to start winding down COVID-fighting efforts") the White House and blue state Dems are now stuck in a Catch-22: Republicans are refusing to pay for more COVID vaccines because the vaccines are "ineffective", and the White House vaccine campaigns have been sabotaged for 16 months by Republicans every step of the way to make it so.

 

That sabotage is continuing now.

Pennsylvania's May Surprise

With Pennsylvania's Senate primaries just days away, the front-runner on the Republican side is another Trump MAGA nutjob, just not the rich MAGA nutjob Trump has endorsed.

Wearing a bright smile, Kathy Barnette shook hands and introduced herself around the patio of a Montgomery County country club: “I’m Kathy, and I’m running for United States Senate,” she said.

But many already knew that. ”People are hearing my story,” she told one voter Monday. “The momentum has been amazing.”

Few would disagree.

Running on a shoestring budget and with a personal story that begins on an Alabama pig farm, Barnette has rocketed to the forefront of Pennsylvania’s crucial Republican Senate primary, according to both public and private polling. She’s picked up late momentum as she challenges her big-spending rivals Mehmet Oz and David McCormick.

Her rise in the final days before Tuesday’s primary has stunned operatives in both parties, upending a Senate race that could decide control of the chamber.

“Everyone knows Oz is running for this race. Everyone knows McCormick is running in this race, and they’re holding their nose,” Barnette said in an interview Monday. “When they break, the undecideds, they’re gonna break in my direction. There’s nothing [Oz and McCormick] can possibly say to these people... that they haven’t already said, because they’ve spent such an insane amount of money.”

» READ MORE: From last year: She lost big in the Philly suburbs. She went hunting for voter fraud. Now Kathy Barnette is a rising GOP star.

Rival campaigns, along with news outlets, were scrambling this week to vet Barnette and her backstory. Top Senate operatives in both parties are so unfamiliar with her that they were at a loss about whether she’d make a strong general election candidate.

Questions are starting to simmer about some of Barnette’s links to fringe elements on the right, her false claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election, and some of her past incendiary comments — including a 2017 tweet about banning Islam and a 2010 opinion piece claiming that the “homosexual AGENDA” was seeking “domination.”

But with less than a week to go, it was also unclear if any of that would sink in with voters.

“She’s a gigantic question mark,” said one Washington Republican closely following the race.

And she’s gaining steam.

Wednesday brought her a major endorsement from the political arm of the fiscally conservative Club for Growth, which also announced a $2 million TV ad buy to boost her. A day earlier, the anti-abortion Susan B. Anthony List backed Barnette, and a Fox News survey showed her effectively tied with Oz and McCormick, with all three polling within the margin of error of one another.

Barnette, of Montgomery County, argues that undecided Republicans are looking for a more authentic alternative after hearing so much from Oz and McCormick on TV. Despite spending tens of millions of dollars on the race, the two men who have sucked up most of the attention have failed, so far, to win over a decisive share of the electorate.

“What [supporters] find in me is a sense of authenticity,” Barnette told The Inquirer. “They see me as one of them. And if our leadership is listening, then they would pay attention to that.”

McCormick and two super PACs funded by his wealthy allies have poured more than $35 million into the contest, while Oz and his supporters have spent more than $18 million. Each man put in at least $11 million of his own money.

Barnette’s campaign had spent less than $2 million as of April 27, according to the latest financial filings.

But Oz and McCormick often skipped smaller public forums and relied on big-name support (including former President Donald Trump for Oz and Sen. Ted Cruz, of Texas, for McCormick), Barnette has kept a relentless campaign schedule, crisscrossing the state with a sharp-edged message and pugilistic debate performances. She would be the first Black person and the first woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Pennsylvania.

“I knew I would not be able to compete dollar for dollar with these people, but I believe I have a better message,” Barnette said. “And all I’ve done is just walk outside of my home to deliver that message.”

 

It would be a heartwarming tale of a Black woman beating not one but two millionaire men who focused on each other instead of her and knocked each other out, leaving Barnette to take the nomination, except for the fact that we're talking about which awful Republican is going to try to destroy our country.

 

And Barnette is just as awful as the rest, as Steve M. reminds us.

In the race for the GOP Senate nomination in Pennsylvania, another extremist zealot -- also an election truther -- might be poised for an upset win, and again, party regulars are panicking.

Influential Republicans in Washington and among the nationwide party elite are having a belated "oh s--t" moment over the previously unimaginable prospect that Kathy Barnette could win their party's nomination for the open Senate seat in Pennsylvania....

Trump ally Steve Bannon described Barnette as an "audience favorite" for his "War Room" podcast....

He's praised her for having never stopped talking about decertifying the 2020 Biden election and for refusing to concede her own loss in a 2020 House race.

 (Barnette refused to concede even though she lost that race by 19 points.)

Barnette's also close to the pillow entrepreneur and "Stop the Steal" leader Mike Lindell. And she's effectively running on a ticket with the leading Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, state Sen. Doug Mastriano. 

She's surged in the polls from mid-single digits as recently as April to around 20% now.

She's only 2 points behind front-runner Mehmet Oz in the latest Fox poll.

Barnette has a social media history that could cause her problems in a general election.
She has also written that "the homosexual movement" seeks "domination" over the culture.

So if she wins the nomination, maybe she'll have a harder time winning the votes of center-right upscale suburbanites than Oz or David McCormick would.

 

Republican racism, Islamophobia, and homophobia aren't a dealbreaker for a Black woman running for Senate in the Republican party. Think about that.

Oh, and what if these Trump "election fraud" Big Liars loses in 2022 in a close race in a GOP state?

Steve M. again:

So what happens if one or both of these passionate election truthers loses by a few points in November? What happens if election truthers lose in other purple states -- Michigan, Arizona, Georgia, Wisconsin? An NBC story about Mastriano focuses on his possible role in the 2024 election if he's elected ("Should Mastriano win in the fall, he would have broad authority in overseeing elections by appointing a secretary of state") -- but what happens this year if he isn't elected, or if Barnette is the nominee and she isn't? Do you think the right will quietly accept any losses outside deep-blue states?

All the states I've named have Republican-dominated legislatures. I think there'll be demands for legislative intervention in any purple state where Democrats manage a statewide victory. There could be deomnstrations and violence. We could be looking at January 6-style insurrections all over the country, if the expected GOP wave doesn't happen.

When the media talks about threats to democracy, it focuses only on presidential elections. But democracy happens in the states, too. And that's where it might break down this year.

 

In a state like Michigan where jurors refused to accept the kidnapping plot against Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer?  Yes, I absolutely believe we're going to see violence over Republican losses in red states, and I fully expect those races to be overturned on "evidence of fraud". 

It will get worse.

The Big Lie, Con't

Former Trump White House legal adviser John Eastman has been fighting long and hard to conceal his emails involving the January 6th conspiracy to defraud the United States and declare Trump the "winner" of the 2020 presidential election, and with Eastman losing that fight, we now see exactly why.

Attorney John Eastman urged Republican legislators in Pennsylvania to retabulate the state’s popular vote — and throw out tens of thousands of absentee ballots — in order to show Donald Trump with a lead, according to newly unearthed emails sent in December 2020, as Trump pressured GOP lawmakers to subvert his defeat.

This recalculation, he posited in an exchange with one GOP state lawmaker, “would help provide some cover” for Republicans to replace Joe Biden’s electors from the state with a slate of pro-Trump electors, part of a last-ditch bid to overturn the election results.

Per the exchange, Eastman suggested that GOP legislators could simply cite their concerns with Pennsylvania’s absentee ballot procedures and then use historical data to “discount each candidates’ totals by a prorated amount based on the absentee percentage those candidates otherwise received.”

“Having done that math, you’d be left with a significant Trump lead that would bolster the argument for the Legislature adopting a slate of Trump electors — perfectly within your authority to do anyway, but now bolstered by the untainted popular vote,” Eastman wrote in a Dec. 4, 2020 email to Pennsylvania Rep. Russ Diamond. “That would help provide some cover.”

Biden ultimately won Pennsylvania by more than 80,000 votes.

The exchange was part of a batch of emails obtained from the University of Colorado, where Eastman worked as a visiting professor at the time he was helping Trump strategize ways to remain in power. The emails were obtained via public records requests by the Colorado Ethics Institute, which sent them along to the Jan. 6 select committee last month. It’s unclear whether the select committee had previously obtained these emails — which are available via public records requests — or whether they are in receipt of the Colorado group’s files.

The Denver Post first reported on the existence of the emails.

The Jan. 6 select committee is fighting a legal battle with Eastman in federal court in California to obtain hundreds of emails Eastman sent and received via his other previous employer, Chapman University. The panel has already won several rounds in this case, obtaining key emails Eastman sent from Jan. 4 to Jan. 7, 2021, but the panel is still fighting to receive thousands of pages sent in the run-up to Jan. 6.

The select committee and Eastman’s attorney did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Simply throw out enough Biden votes until you had enough Trump votes to win. 

That was the solution.

At some point these bastards have to go to jail.  I'm hoping that next month's public hearings on January 6th will help, but referring Eastman and others to the Justice Department still means Merrick Garland has to build the case and prosecute it, and I've made the point that this won't happen at the very least until 2023.

We're running out of time.

Last Call For Ending The Fed's Blackout

The first Black woman to serve on the Federal Reserve Board will be Biden nominee Lisa Cook, a Michigan State economist, after Kamala Harris broke the tie in a 50-50 Senate vote where of course, just as with Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, every single Republican voted against the extremely qualified Black woman.

The economist Lisa Cook was confirmed Tuesday as the first Black woman on the Federal Reserve Board in a historic moment for the central bank as it tries to stabilize a recovery that serves all Americans.

Cook was confirmed by a 51-to-50 vote in the Senate, with Vice President Harris casting the tiebreaking vote. No Republicans voted for Cook, and Democrats, who hold a razor-thin majority, had delayed moving forward on her nomination until they could assemble all 50 of their members to back her.

Cook is among the country’s preeminent economists and teaches at Michigan State University. Her research has focused on macroeconomics, economic history, international finance and innovation, particularly on how hate-related violence has harmed U.S. economic growth. Her work has analyzed how patent records show that the riots, lynchings and Jim Crow laws that targeted African American communities in the late 1800s and early 1900s hurt Black people’s ability to pursue inventions and discoveries at the time.

“If there is something that impedes the rate of arrival of ideas, you’re going to slow down the economy,” Cook said on the “Planet Money” podcast in 2020. “It’s not just for that period. And it’s not just for Black people. This is a cautionary tale for all economies.”

Cook also worked on the White House’s Council of Economic Advisers during the Obama administration and has held visiting appointments at the National Bureau of Economic Research, the University of Michigan and the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, Chicago, Minneapolis and Philadelphia.

President Biden has sought to assemble the most diverse Fed board in the agency’s 108-year history. And Fed experts say the package of nominees the White House recently named goes a long way toward fulfilling Biden’s promise to make the Fed more reflective of the country it serves.

 

Republicans lost their shit over this, to the point where Mitch McConnell held a press conference and  warned President Biden that he should pull Cook's nomination as a Black woman on the Federal Reserve or else. Republicans were able to stall the vote for three months, in fact.

But it's Cook's historic macroeconomics work on the billions lost through racism that Republicans can never tolerate. It's too bad though, Cook will be on the Fed anyway.

Biden did that.

You'd Better Watch Yourself

Senate Republicans want the the government to specifically warn parents about LGBTQ+ characters on television and streaming shows "aimed at children", because making sure kids know treating queer folk as something to be warned against is totally not indoctrination, Jesus hell.

 

A group of Republican senators is calling for the country's television ratings system to warn parents about "sexual orientation and gender identity content" on children's TV shows.

In a two-page letter dated May 4, Sens. Mike Braun, R-Ind., Roger Marshall, R-Kan., Mike Lee, R-Utah, Kevin Cramer, R-N.D., and Steve Daines, R-Mont., made the request to the chairman of the TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board.


The TV Parental Guidelines is a television and film content rating system that Congress, the broadcast industry and the Federal Communications Commission created in 1996 “to give parents more information about the content and age-appropriateness of TV program.” The rating icons — including TV-G, TV-PG and TV-MA — are typically displayed at the top of a screen as a program begins.

“In recent years, concerning topics of a sexual nature have become aggressively politicized and promoted in children’s programming, including irreversible and harmful experimental treatments for mental disorders like gender dysphoria,” the letter reads. "To this end, we strongly urge you to update the TV Parental Guidelines and ensure they are up-to-date on best practices that help inform parents on this disturbing content."

The TV Parental Guidelines Monitoring Board confirmed to NBC News that it had received the senators' letter, but it declined to comment further.

The senators' request comes amid a nationwide discussion over how and when children should learn about LGBTQ issues or identities, as well as an uptick in charged rhetoric surrounding the lesbian, bisexual, transgender and queer community.

 

Because we can't for a second have anyone under 18 see any positive image of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, pansexual, aromatic, asexual, queer, non-binary or any non heterosexual person at all.

Republicans are going to take power and regulate all non-white non-Christian, and non-straight people out of existence, especially in media.  They've been playing the long game on this all my life, and they are absolutely winning.

Unless we stop them.

Be Preg, Do Crimes

Steve M. makes a lot of sense here with his recent post on the extremely possible future of Prohibition-era abortion.

I'm thinking about it in connection with something else I'm reading that wouldn't seem to be related at all -- the 2010 memoir by Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. He was a junkie for years, and he makes the point that he began using heroin at a time when the Stones were hugely successful and hobnobbing with swells. He writes: 

And the reason I'm here is probably that we only ever took, as much as possible, the real suff, the top-quality stuff. Cocaine I only got into because it was pure pharmaceutical -- boom. When I was introduced to dope, it was all pure, pure, pure. You didn't have to worry about what's it cut with and go through all that street shit. 

This was also a time when Britain registered heroin addicts and provided them the drugs. Richards says junkies claimed they needed twice as much as they were actually using, then sold the rest. Users like Richards bought it -- but it was unadulterated.

For abortion, I'm imagining a future when the medical procedure will be very difficult to obtain -- pursuing doctors who perform abortions will be a moral crusade, conducted with more righteous zeal than it was in the immediate pre-Roe era. And the same will be true for anyone who provides abortion drugs. And I think eventually abortion will be banned nationwide, by a Republican Party with full control in D.C.

Most recreational drugs are illegal in America, yet we get them. How? Thanks to organized crime. Organized crime is also how gay bars managed to stay in business before the gay liberation movement -- the Stonewall Inn was a Mob bar.

I'm imagining a future in which obtaining abortion drugs will be like buying cocaine or meth -- you'll be able to make the purchase because shady characters make it possible. If you have the money and the right connection, you'll get the pure abortion pills imported from Europe or Canada; if not, well, good luck. Probably you'll get something that's not (or not very) adulterated, but it'll come with no guarantees. It'll be "street shit."

Doctors who perform abortions might need organized crime protections, too. When a group of pre-Roe feminists known as the Janes began providing abortions in Chicago in the late 1960s, "it was rumored that many Chicago abortion services paid for Mob protection," according to Chicago magazine. One history of the group says that "Mike, the man who taught the first Jane volunteers how to perform abortions, had learned from a Mafia doctor." All this could be our future.

Depressing that health care would then become something like this, but while it wouldn't necessarily be back alley abortions, it would be back alley mifepristone, and it may not be the pure shit. "Women finding a way to have abortions" is basically the story of women  throughout the history of humanity, but I honestly didn't expect this chapter to be written until maybe ten years ago when the backlash to Obama really started.

I know better now. I hate that we have to prepare for this future, but we'd be nuts not to because federal ban or not, abortion will be illegal in states like Kentucky in the coming weeks.

This future is now.

Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is saving kids from imaginary indoctrination in schools by government edict with actual school indoctrination edicts handed down by Florida Republicans.

Public school teachers in Florida will soon be required to dedicate at least 45 minutes of instruction on “Victims of Communism Day” to teach students about communist leaders around the world and how people suffered under those regimes. 

Speaking at Miami’s Freedom Tower before a crowd of local lawmakers and supporters, Gov. Ron DeSantis signed House Bill 395, which designates Nov. 7 as the state’s official “Victims of Communism Day,” making Florida one of a handful of states to adopt the designation. 

It is, however, the first state to mandate school instruction on that day, as Florida Republicans continue to seize on education policy while placing school curriculum at the forefront of their political priorities ahead of the 2022 midterms. The bill, which DeSantis signed along with two street designations in honor of Cuban exiles, would require the instruction to begin in the 2023-2024 school year. 

It would require teaching of Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro, as well as “poverty, starvation, migration, systemic lethal violence, and suppression of speech” endured under those regimes. 

“That body count of Mao is something that everybody needs to understand because it is a direct result of this communist ideology,” DeSantis said, noting that tens of millions of people died in China under his rule. “I know we don’t need legislation here to do this but I think it’s our responsibility to make sure people know about the atrocities committed by people like Fidel Castro and even more recently people like Nicolas Maduro.”

To recap, teaching Florida kids about authoritarian fascist slavery in other countries is mandated. Teaching Florida kids about authoritarian fascist slavery in this country is divisive critical race theory that makes white kids feel bad and must never, ever be mentioned.

Do you see why this is a problem?

The US Chamber Of Culture Combat

Republicans are making it clear that Disney will only be the first target in bringing corporate America to heel should voter but them back in charge of Congress in November, with the GOP introducing the Non-Woke Chamber Of Non-Diverse Commerce for approved, right-thinking businesses to join (and to donate billions to Republican candidates through) or risk having those billions taken through vengeance politics.

 

A new business lobby backed by Republican heavyweights is looking to build clout with GOP leaders amid high-profile splits between the party's policymakers and key segments of corporate America, Axios has learned.

Why it matters: The American Free Enterprise Chamber of Commerce is positioning itself as an alternative to groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The new group's backers complain the Chamber has lurched left from its onetime post at the vanguard of a Republican-aligned political apparatus.The chairman of the AmFree chamber, as it's known internally, is Terry Branstad — the former Republican governor of Iowa and President Trump's ambassador to China. 

Its CEO is Gentry Collins, a former political director of the Republican National Committee. The AmFree Chamber will provide an avenue for American businesses looking to influence Republicans, who appear poised to retake congressional majorities next year.

What's happening: The new chamber's formation comes as corporate America grapples with increasing pressure to engage on issues such as voting rights, racial justice and abortion — and the potential political fallout from doing so."I hope to make the case to our policymakers at all levels that we must move away from the trend towards socialism and back to a pro-business, pro-growth posture," Branstad told business leaders during a conference call last Thursday, which Axios also attended. 

In a memo pitching the group to potential members, a copy of which was obtained by Axios, the AmFree Chamber offers "tools for American businesses to maintain access to the marketplace in the face of 'woke capital' and 'cancel-culture' threats," among other benefits.

The big picture: A high-profile split last year between the U.S. Chamber and congressional Republicans — including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the potential next Speaker — provides a lane for a group that can effectively wield influence among GOP leaders, say sources close to the project."The void that is filled is [the AmFree Chamber] isn’t dead to Hill Republicans who will likely control the floor of both House and Senate" next year, one Republican lobbyist told Axios. 

A senior House leadership aide told Axios the U.S. Chamber has "become more interested in electing so-called pro-business Democrats who vote for their party’s decidedly anti-business, woke agenda. It’s no surprise Governor Branstad and others have recognized this and are stepping in to fill this void," the aide said.

What they're saying: "[W]e warmly welcome anyone who joins our agenda, advocating for businesses and their workers. We need the pro-business voices to be heard loud and clear," a U.S. Chamber spokesperson told Axios.The group "has worked with our network of state and local chambers across the country to secure important legislation, benefiting businesses of all sizes and our country as a whole," the spokesperson said, citing its work on trade, inflation, infrastructure and "the threat of government overreach." "To find viable solutions, we need to collaborate and work with all stakeholders."

Between the lines: Multiple sources close to the new Branstad group used the term "woke" to describe the U.S. Chamber, a social-justice buzzword that's been relegated largely to the domain of conservative critics.One source pointed to the group's engagement on ESG, or environmental, social and corporate governance business practices, and positions on tech sector regulation at odds with Republican critics of the industry. 

Another brought up its preservation of scaffolding on its Lafayette Square headquarters covered by graffiti and artwork during 2020's Black Lives Matter protests. While candidates still regularly tout the endorsements from the chamber and its state affiliates, it's become a political epithet in some high-profile Republican primary contests.

 

Look, I'm no fan of trillion-dollar companies like Apple, Alphabet or Amazon. I actually do think these companies should be ground into anti-trust dust by the government and either broken into pieces or put out of business for good. 

But that has nothing to do with "free speech" practices like the GOP is tossing around here.

 

Republicans are now openly threatening any business they deem as "woke" for being targeted by mobs, boycotts, lawsuits and legislation until there is capitulation...or else. Bad press, conservative boycotts, legislation targeting the company specifically, whatever it takes to get 100% of donations given to the GOP machine.

 

The shakedown is one thing, but the implications are strong here that Republicans will target and criminalize corporate diversity practices, inclusiveness, and hiring until companies are hiring nothing but white men again.

 

You will be made to comply, corporate citizen...

Folding Like A Lawn Chair

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (and I know what I said) wasted no time Monday giving Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell his biggest win of the not-quite post-Roe era so far.

Members of the US Senate passed a bipartisan bill Monday that would expand security protection to the immediate family members of Supreme Court justices, following protests at some justices' homes over the weekend. 

The Supreme Court Police Parity Act was approved by unanimous consent, meaning no senators objected to its quick passage. The legislation must also be passed by the House before going to President Joe Biden's desk for his signature. 

The push in Congress comes one week after Politico's bombshell leaked draft of an opinion, which indicated the Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade as soon as next month. 

Sens. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas, and Chris Coons, a Democrat from Delaware, introduced the bipartisan bill called the Supreme Court Police Parity Act. 

"The events of the past week have intensified the focus on Supreme Court Justices' families, who are unfortunately facing threats to their safety in today's increasingly polarized political climate," said Cornyn in a news release ahead of the bill's passage Monday evening. "We must act to ensure Justices and their families are protected from those who wish to cause them harm by extending Supreme Court police security to family members." 

Coons added in the release: "If the families of Supreme Court Justices have the same profile and exposure as the highest ranking officials in our government, they deserve the same level of protection. We must take threats that come from extremes on both sides of the political spectrum against Supreme Court Justices seriously, and that makes this bill an unfortunate necessity." 

Over the weekend, pro-abortion rights protesters gathered outside the private homes of Justice Brett Kavanaugh and Chief Justice John Roberts in Chevy Chase, Maryland, outside Washington, DC. 

While protests around the country have been largely peaceful, law enforcement officials in the nation's capital have been bracing for potential security risks. Last week, an 8-foot-tall, non-scalable fence was installed around parts of the Supreme Court building, and crews set up concrete Jersey barriers blocking the street in front of the court. 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell slammed the protests outside some justices' homes, saying they may be "flat-out illegal," citing a federal law that criminalizes pickets with the intent of influencing a judge. 

"Trying to scare federal judges into ruling a certain way is far outside the bounds of First Amendment speech or protest; it's an attempt to replace the rule of law with the rule of mobs," the Kentucky Republican said in remarks on the Senate floor on Monday. 

 

So in a unanimous, bipartisan, historic vote, Schumer and all 50 Senate Dems agreed to the Republican framing that picketing Justices Kegstand and Alito is the liberal January 6th insurrection and that we have to protect judges from A N T I F A, and protesting peacefully is just as bad and probably even worse than the actual January 6th domestic terrorist seditious insurrection. On top of that, the unanimity of the Senate Democratic vote means Pelosi has no choice but to put this on the floor before the end of the week.

We can't kill the filibuster and pass a federal abortion law, but 100% of the US Senate agrees that pro-choice protesters need to go to fucking prison. In fact, the Biden Administration has scrambled to bash peaceful protesters.

 

.@POTUS strongly believes in the Constitutional right to protest. But that should never include violence, threats, or vandalism. Judges perform an incredibly important function in our society, and they must be able to do their jobs without concern for their personal safety.

— Jen Psaki (@PressSec) May 9, 2022

 

The judges decided that noone of child-bearing capability has any right to personal safety, folks. Protesting outside Kavanaugh's house is literally the least that needs to be done right now. 

If the Dems are trying to purposefully depress voting turnout over the end of Roe, I couldn't have asked for a more effective plan if I was Mitch himself. Remember, this wasn't a problem until Democrats actually used their free speech. Republicans can "threaten judges" all day.

Jackasses.

Last Call For A Premature Autopsy, Con't

The latest CBS News poll on the end of Roe finds substantial support for keeping the decision in place, support from nearly two-thirds of Americans. The remaining third wants a national ban on the procedure and to imprison women and doctors. 

There's no middle ground.

 

The nearly two-thirds of Americans who want Roe v. Wade kept in place say they feel angry and discouraged about the prospect that it may be overturned, describing that as "a danger to women" and as a threat to rights more generally. Most Americans, and particularly younger women, think it would also lead to restrictions on birth control and family planning choices. Going forward, most would like to see a federal law passed that protects abortion and in their own states, two-thirds want it to be legal, at least in most cases.

For the one-third who do want Roe overturned, they'd describe it as "a protection for the unborn" and call it a victory for the anti-abortion rights movement Most of them would like to see a national ban on abortions now. The minority who now want abortions illegal in their states also think those providing any illegal abortions and the women who have them should be subject to criminal punishment or penalties.

A majority, 58%, would also like Congress to pass a federal law making abortion legal nationwide.

That's especially true among those who want Roe kept in place, 82% of who overwhelmingly want a federal law.

In fact, in reaction to the news of Roe's possible overturning, the percentage who say abortion should be generally available has now increased a bit, to its highest level.

 

In other words, the two-thirds of America that wants to keep Roe want a federal law on abortion (58%), and the third that opposes Roe wan a federal law banning abortion (57%).  

And again, two-thirds of Americans want their own states to allow abortions in all (33%) or most (32%) cases.

Only 12% want a total ban on abortion in their state.

This should be a dealbreaker for the GOP, but as with Trump's racism, we know white voters will side with the GOP again and again because they believe their families won't be really punished for abortion, only "those people" will be.

Looking at the crosstabs details of the poll, 61% of white voters want to keep Roe as it is, with 56% of white non-college voters agreeing with that. 61% of white voters also want to keep abortion legal in their own state if Roe is overturned, with 55% of non-college white voters agreeing.

But again, only 33% of Trump voters want abortion to be legal in all (11%) or most (22%) cases, with 20% wanting a total ban.

Understand this is a spectacular loser for Republicans politically, but only if voters decide to make them pay the price.

The Big Lie, Big Screen Edition

Trump propagandist Dinesh D'Souza is back with his latest "film", the subject this time being Trumpist fan fiction about how "Democrats stole the election" through illegally "stuffing ballot drop boxes" and his "proof" is just as shoddy as his premise.

 

“Ballot harvesting” is a pejorative term for dropping off completed ballots for people besides yourself. The practice is legal in several states but largely illegal in the states True the Vote focused on, with some exceptions for family, household members and people with disabilities.

True the Vote has said it found some 2,000 ballot harvesters by purchasing $2 million worth of anonymized cellphone geolocation data — the “pings” that track a person’s location based on app activity — in various swing counties across five states. Then, by drawing a virtual boundary around a county’s ballot drop boxes and various unnamed nonprofits, it identified cellphones that repeatedly went near both ahead of the 2020 election.

If a cellphone went near a drop box more than 10 times and a nonprofit more than five times from Oct. 1 to Election Day, True the Vote assumed its owner was a “mule” — its name for someone engaged in an illegal ballot collection scheme in cahoots with a nonprofit.

The group’s claims of a paid ballot harvesting scheme are supported in the film only by one unidentified whistleblower said to be from San Luis, Arizona, who said she saw people picking up what she “assumed” to be payments for ballot collection. The film contains no evidence of such payments in other states in 2020.

Plus, experts say cellphone location data, even at its most advanced, can only reliably track a smartphone within a few meters — not close enough to know whether someone actually dropped off a ballot or just walked or drove nearby.

“You could use cellular evidence to say this person was in that area, but to say they were at the ballot box, you’re stretching it a lot,” said Aaron Striegel, a professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Notre Dame. “There’s always a pretty healthy amount of uncertainty that comes with this.”

What’s more, ballot drop boxes are often intentionally placed in busy areas, such as college campuses, libraries, government buildings and apartment complexes — increasing the likelihood that innocent citizens got caught in the group’s dragnet, Striegel said.

Similarly, there are plenty of legitimate reasons why someone might be visiting both a nonprofit’s office and one of those busy areas. Delivery drivers, postal workers, cab drivers, poll workers and elected officials all have legitimate reasons to cross paths with numerous drop boxes or nonprofits in a given day.

True the Vote has said it filtered out people whose “pattern of life” before the election season included frequenting nonprofit and drop box locations. But that strategy wouldn’t filter out election workers who spend more time at drop boxes during the election season, cab drivers whose daily paths don’t follow a pattern, or people whose routines recently changed.

In some states, in an attempt to bolster its claims, True the Vote also highlighted drop box surveillance footage that showed voters depositing multiple ballots into the boxes. However, there was no way to tell whether those voters were the same people as the ones whose cellphones were anonymously tracked.

A video of a voter dropping off a stack of ballots at a drop box is not itself proof of any wrongdoing, since most states have legal exceptions that let people drop off ballots on behalf of family members and household members.

For example, Larry Campbell, a voter in Michigan who was not featured in the film, told The Associated Press he legally dropped off six ballots in a local drop box in 2020 — one for himself, his wife, and his four adult children. And in Georgia, Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s office investigated one of the surveillance videos circulated by True the Vote and said it found the man was dropping off ballots for himself and his family.

 

And of course the follow-up is that the information about people whose cell phones were being tracked will be given to law enforcement to "investigate" these obscene claims, if they haven't been already. I haven't hard of anyone actually being arrested for, you know, voting...other than Republican megadonors who deliberately tried to commit mass voter fraud or GOP voters who tried to do it on a smaller scale in state after state after state.

You won't see any of those folks in D'Souza's "film".

It's all 100% lies and they know it.

Unions From A To Z, Con't

Last month, workers at an Amazon warehouse on Staten Island scored a major victory by unionizing, the first such union in the company's history. This month, Amazon fired and replaced nearly all of the senior managers at the warehouse for "performance reasons".

On Thursday, Amazon informed more than half a dozen senior managers involved with the Staten Island warehouse that they were being fired, said four current and former employees with knowledge of the situation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of retaliation.

The firings, which occurred outside the company’s typical employee review cycle, were seen by the managers and other people who work at the facility as a response to the victory by the Amazon Labor Union, three of the people said. Workers at the warehouse voted by a wide margin to form the first union at the company in the United States, in one of the biggest victories for organized labor in at least a generation.

Word of the shake-up spread through the warehouse on Thursday. Many of the managers had been responsible for carrying out the company’s response to the unionization effort. Several were veterans of the company, with more than six years of experience, according to their LinkedIn profiles.

Workers who supported the union complained that the company’s health and safety protocols were too lax, particularly as they related to Covid-19 and repetitive strain injuries, and that the company pushed them too hard to meet performance targets, often at the expense of sufficient breaks. Many also said pay at the warehouse, which starts at over $18 per hour for full-time workers, was too low to live on in New York City.

An Amazon spokeswoman said the company had made the management changes after spending several weeks evaluating aspects of the “operations and leadership” at JFK8, which is the company’s name for the warehouse. “Part of our culture at Amazon is to continually improve, and we believe it’s important to take time to review whether or not we’re doing the best we could be for our team,” said Kelly Nantel, the spokeswoman.

The managers were told they were being fired as part of an “organizational change,” two people said. One of the people said some of the managers were strong performers who recently received positive reviews.

The Staten Island facility is Amazon’s only fulfillment center in New York City, and for a year current and former workers at the facility organized to form an upstart, independent union.

The company is challenging the election, saying that the union’s unconventional tactics were coercive and that the National Labor Relations Board was biased in the union’s favor. And the union is working to maintain the pressure on Amazon so it will negotiate a contract.

 

The managers had one real job, to keep the warehouse running without unionizing. They failed, and Amazon shitcanned them. The replacements will then have the job of crushing the union to make a nationwide example of them.

 

The NLRB still has to play by the rules. Amazon does not. Keep that in mind.  It's all about greed and exploitation and this union has to die or companies like Amazon may actually have to take care of their workers, and they'll never do that unless forced to, kicking and screaming by multiple union chapters and their combined power.

Amazon will do everything to destroy this union in the months ahead.  Watch.

Last Call For You Know Who

The BBC has announced the 14th Doctor Who this weekend, Netflix's Sex Education star Ncuti Gatwa will carry on the role from the departing Jodie Whittaker.

Actor Ncuti Gatwa will take over from Jodie Whittaker as the star of Doctor Who, the BBC has announced.

The 29-year-old will become the 14th Time Lord on the popular science fiction show, and the first non-white performer to play the lead role.

Scottish actor Gatwa, who was born in Rwanda, is best known for starring in Netflix's sitcom Sex Education.

He told BBC News: "It feels really amazing. It's a true honour. This role is an institution and it's so iconic."

Speaking on the red carpet before Sunday's Bafta TV Awards, where he is nominated for Sex Education, Gatwa said the role of the Doctor "means a lot to so many people, including myself".

He added: "I feel very grateful to have had the baton handed over and I'm going to try to do my best."

Gatwa will make his debut as the Time Lord in 2023.

Showrunner Russell T Davies said Gatwa had impressed him in a "blazing" audition.

"It was our last audition. It was our very last one," the writer and producer said. "We thought we had someone, and then in he came and stole it.

"I'm properly, properly thrilled. It's going to be a blazing future."

 

First, if you haven't seen Gatwa and the excellent Gillian Anderson in Sex Education on Netflix, do it. It's hysterical, even Ender's Game star Asa Butterfield has serious comedic chops as a British private school chap whose mother (Anderson) is a famous sex therapist. Three seasons with a fourth on the way means there's a nice bit to binge.

 

Second, I liked Jodie Whittaker at the 13th Doctor a lot, and while the writers were about to make some excellent use of Doctors 11 (Matt Smith) and 12 (Peter Capaldi) with Stephen Moffat as showrunner and head writer, Whittaker as the 13th Doctor really had some stinker episodes over the last three seasons and the show suffered dramatically as a result under showrunner and writer Chris Chibnall.

The return of Davies will hopefully be a course correction, even though he left the show in 2009 because he was basically done after four seasons (and I'd rather have Moffat back, dammit.)

We'll see next year.

An Infrastructure Of Losing

Old Conventional Wisdom: President Joe Biden needs to be making a far bigger deal about Democratic party successes in order to convince voters to show up in November and he needs to visit red states to win back white working-class voters NOW!

Biden: I'll go on tour and make a big deal about our successes leading up to November midterms to sell our historic infrastructure bill in red states and I'll do it now!

New Conventional wisdom: Why is Joe Biden wasting everyone's time touting Democratic successes when nobody cares?

As President Joe Biden ramps up his efforts to help Democrats in the midterm elections, he’s focused on a selling point that, so far, voters aren’t: his plan to rebuild the county’s infrastructure.

Standing in an industrial building near the Port of New Hampshire last month, flanked by construction and boating equipment, Biden talked dredging, bridges and lead pipes.

“Folks, this matters. It matters to our safety, our security, our health," Biden told the crowd there as he promoted the $550 billion infrastructure package he shepherded through Congress last year.

The president's second trip in six months to New Hampshire, where Democratic Sen. Maggie Hassan is expected to face a tough re-election fight, was just the latest in a steady string of stops designed to highlight the legislation.

But yet again that day, by most objective measures, much of the country’s focus lay elsewhere — on a court order lifting the mask requirement on airplanes, on the impact of surging inflation, and on Russia’s renewed assault on Ukraine.

The infrastructure bill has been Biden's biggest policy accomplishment so far, and is generally seen by voters as a positive. But while they may like the idea of new roads and bridges, it isn’t to be found on the list of top issues they say they care about most.

Instead, inflation, the war in Ukraine, and, as of last week, abortion are top of mind for voters — and, say political strategists and candidates, those areas are where candidates in tough re-election battles are focusing their energy. While Biden and the White House have not avoided the topics, and acknowledge they stand to be major issues this fall, the president has so far continued to devote the bulk of his public message to infrastructure.

“Infrastructure is so far down the list of concerns that if I were the president, I wouldn’t be selling infrastructure,” said Andy Smith, director of the University of New Hampshire Survey Center, of the message to voters. “Yeah, it’s great there’s going to be a bridge, but we’re not going to see that bridge built for five years. They’re not gonna see anything in the short term that is going to impact their lives because of the passage of infrastructure.”

Last month, Biden made stops in New Hampshire, Washington, Oregon, North Carolina, and Iowa where his primary message was the way those states stood to benefit from the infrastructure law. The White House also sent Cabinet members and other top officials on trips to 25 states last month to talk infrastructure.

"We’re talking about billions of dollars modernizing roads, bridges, airports, delivering clean water, high speed internet," Biden said Friday in Ohio, where he also pushed for legislation to bolster the U.S. semiconductor industry.

But Democrats in competitive races this cycle say they are focusing more on bread-and-butter issues — efforts to lower housing, child care and insulin costs — when they talk to voters back in their districts.

“People are understanding of the issues around infrastructure, but until we see shovels in the ground, I’m not sure people are going to fully see what that investment means,” said Rep. Andy Kim, D-N.J., who called roads, bridges and tunnels the “lifeblood” of his state.

Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., one of the most vulnerable Democrats this cycle, has been touting the infrastructure package in constituent meetings and local media interviews, pointing to how it stands to help repair rural roads and upgrade water systems.

In a paid ad, Kelly touted it as a success story for Arizona that would improve commuting, trade and border security, a message other vulnerable Democrats in swing states are highlighting.

But asked Tuesday what voters care about most, Kelly said they’re “focused on costs of things which are really expensive: gasoline, prescription drugs, food.” And with the Supreme Court’s leaked majority opinion this week, he added that voters also will be focused on abortion rights.

 

Why, it's almost like the media wants Republicans back in charge so they can cover the chaos and get better ratings like they did in the Trump era. Nothing Biden does can work, you see. The Midterms are already over and there's nothing Democrats can do about it. 

You and I know that's hogwash, but don't expect Democrats to even be able to tout what they did right when the media shits all over it on a daily basis.

Sunday Long Read: A Premature Autopsy

Roe v. Wade is effectively a walking corpse who will soon be put down, which is fitting because thousands and thousands of women every year will join Roe in the Great Beyond. Our Sunday Long Read this week is the apropos tale of the nearly 50-year crusade to kill Roe by forced-birth revenants documented by the Washington Post.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell still remembers the shock he felt when Donald Trump won the 2016 election. He also recalls what happened next.

“The first thing that came to my mind was the Supreme Court,” McConnell said in an interview this past week, remembering his reaction that night as he watched results from a basement office at the National Republican Senatorial Committee. He soon called Donald McGahn, campaign counsel to the president-elect, who was slated to become the top White House lawyer.

A week later, Leonard Leo, the head of the conservative Federalist Society and a McConnell ally, was sitting with the president-elect and his advisers in Trump Tower in New York with a list of six potential conservative nominees alphabetically typed onto a piece of personalized stationery, according to people familiar with the meeting, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal discussions.

As incoming chief of staff Reince Priebus and Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, came in and out of the room, Leo laid out a road map for Trump on the federal court system, potentially transforming the foundational understanding of rights in America.

It was a moment antiabortion activists had been working toward for decades: The highest reaches of Republican power finally focused, in unison, on achieving the once implausible goal of revisiting the jurisprudence of the 1960s and 1970s, including Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.

The leak of a draft Supreme Court opinion on abortion this past week showed that a majority of the court is now poised to do just that, with three of the five potential votes for overturning Roe coming from justices recommended by Leo, appointed by Trump and confirmed under the leadership of McConnell.

For the activists who have fought against enormous odds to elevate the issues of abortion and judicial selection, the sudden turnabout is nearly as shocking as Trump’s election was for McConnell. Interviews with more than two dozen movement leaders, Republican officials and operatives describe a half-century journey that began to settle only over the last decade, as the politics of abortion finally polarized itself as a partisan issue and emerged as a top-tier Republican priority.

“I think even until earlier this week most pro-life leaders were holding their breath,” said Charles Donovan, a former Reagan White House aide, who began working as legislative director for National Right to Life in the late 1970s. “I do think it’s pretty stunning.”

Abortion rights advocates have also been stunned by the transformation, accusing Republicans of hijacking the courts for partisan and unpopular ends.

“This is exactly what we feared was coming,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, chief executive of Whole Woman’s Health, a network of abortion clinics. “Republicans just do this and all the gloves are off.”

With almost no change in national public opinion over the past five decades, and as a majority of Americans remain opposed to overturning Roe, the movement succeeded by mobilizing a determined minority of Americans and adopting the protest tactics and sometimes the language of the left. They transformed religious interpretations of prenatal life, embraced medical advancements that gave new understanding of the fetus and helped to build an academic legal movement in the Ivy League universities that railed against the evolution of American jurisprudence.

Most importantly, they nurtured a generation of political and legal leaders who saw in the setbacks of the 1970s to 1990s a defining cause. As a young man in the 1970s, McConnell, 80, had worked with the late Justice Antonin Scalia, an avowed opponent of Roe, in the Justice Department. A photograph of the two men from that time still hangs in McConnell’s office.

“If I was looking at ways to have an impact on the country that I thought would be good and positive, this would be the way to do it,” McConnell said in the interview this past week at his office on Capitol Hill.

“Majorities change. Taxes go up. Taxes go down,” he continued. “If you prefer America right of center, which I do, and you’re looking around at what you can do to have the longest possible impact on the kind of America you want, it seems to me you look at the courts.”

 

The loss was sealed by the 2016 election, and for those of you reading who didn't vote for Hillary or worse, voted for Trump, behold the consequences of your actions.

 

Now the first is to preserve what rights we have left before those are stripped as well.  History tells us that's going to be a grueling, ugly fight. When I said time and time over the last five years that we will be dealing with the aftermath of the Trump regime for the rest of my lifetime, this is only the beginning of what I warned was coming.

Should Trump or someone like him win and get control of Congress in 2024, it will take the rest of your children's lifetimes, maybe your grandchildren's lifetimes that we'll have to try to wrest back women's bodily autonomy from these assholes. If a Republican is able to trade in Alito and Thomas for younger models like Barrett and Gorsuch, it will take generations to fix this mess. The damage will be incalculable, and that's just on the civil rights side.

Imagine what these monsters will do in the years ahead on climate change, worker safety, clean air and water, and everything else. We've got to give Biden 53 or more senators and keep the House just to have a shot at this. We can do it. 

We have to.