Bad Religion, Con't

Turns out that Baptists throwing stones at Catholics over that church's considerable history of covering up sexual abuse should probably start examining the structural integrity of their own glass houses.

Leaders in the Southern Baptist Convention on Sunday released a major third-party investigation that found that sex abuse survivors were often ignored, minimized and “even vilified” by top clergy in the nation’s largest Protestant denomination.

The findings of nearly 300 pages include shocking new details about specific abuse cases and shine a light on how denominational leaders for decades actively resisted calls for abuse prevention and reform. They also lied to Southern Baptists over whether they could maintain a database of offenders to prevent more abuse when top leaders were secretly keeping a private list for years.

The report — the first investigation of its kind in a massive Protestant denomination like the SBC — is expected to send shock waves into a conservative Christian community that has had intense internal battles over how to handle sex abuse. The 13 million-member denomination, along with other religious institutions in the United States, has struggled with declining membership for the past 15 years. Its leaders have long resisted comparisons between its sexual abuse crisis and that of the Catholic Church, saying the total number of abuse cases among Southern Bapitists was small.

The investigation finds that for almost two decades, survivors of abuse and other concerned Southern Baptists have been contacting the Southern Baptist Convention’s administrative arm to report child molesters and other abusers who were in the pulpit or employed as church staff members.

The report, compiled by an organization called Guidepost Solutions at the request of Southern Baptists, states that abuse survivors’ calls and emails were “only to be met, time and time again, with resistance, stonewalling, and even outright hostility” by leaders who were concerned more with protecting the institution from liability than from protecting Southern Baptists from further abuse.

“While stories of abuse were minimized, and survivors were ignored or even vilified, revelations came to light in recent years that some senior SBC leaders had protected or even supported alleged abusers, the report states.

While the report focuses primarily on how leaders handled abuse issues when survivors came forward, it also states that a major Southern Baptist leader sexually assaulted a woman just one month after he completed his two-year tenure as president of the convention. The report finds that Johnny Hunt, a beloved Georgia-based Southern Baptist pastor who has been a senior vice president at the SBC’s missions arm, was credibly accused of assaulting a woman during a Panama City Beach vacation in 2010.

The report states that Hunt, in an interview with investigators, denied any physical contact with the woman but acknowledged that he had interactions with her.

Sex abuse survivors, many of whom have been sharing their stories for years, anticipated Sunday’s release would confirm the facts around many of the stories they have already shared, but many were still surprised to see the pattern of coverups by the highest levels of leadership.

“I knew it was rotten, but it’s astonishing and infuriating,” said Jennifer Lyell, a survivor who was once the highest-paid female executive at the SBC and whose story of sexual abuse at a Southern Baptist seminary is detailed in the report. “This is a denomination is through and through about power. It is misappropriated power. It does not in any way reflect the Jesus I see in the scriptures. I am so gutted.”

The report also names several senior SBC leaders who protected and even supported alleged abusers, including three past presidents of the convention, a former vice president and the former head of the SBC’s administrative arm.

The third-party investigation into actions between 2000 and 2021 focused on actions by the SBC’s Executive Committee, which handles financial and administrative duties. Although Southern Baptist churches operate independently from one another, the Nashville-based Executive Committee distributes the $121 million cooperative program budget that funds its missions, seminaries and ministries.

For decades, Southern Baptists were told that the denomination could not put together a registry of sex offenders because it would go against the denomination’s polity — or how it functions. What the report reveals is that leaders maintained a list of offenders while keeping it a secret to avoid the possibility of getting sued. The report also includes private emails showing how longtime leaders such as August Boto were dismissive about sexual abuse concerns, calling them “a satanic scheme to completely distract us from evangelism.”

 

It's so weird how the teachings of Christ keep getting perverted by awful men into excuses for, if anything, being the tools of the devil. I know, I know, flawed sinners and failed leaders, what else is new.  Growing up in the 80's and 90's and seeing the Bakkers, the Swaggarts, and the Grahams turned me off to any sort of organized religion, and a basic understanding of religion in world history over the centuries has cemented that distaste.

I've yet to meet a person who announced themselves as a "follower of Jesus" who actually follows those teachings.

The Pennsylvania Election Insurrection

The GOP Senate primary in Pennsylvania is absolutely headed to a recount as only several hundred votes separate Trump candidate and professional medical fraudster Dr. Mehmet Oz from corporate Republican drone David McCormick and suddenly, mail votes matter to the GOP.

In any close race, the trailing candidate, in this case McCormick, needs to find all possible votes to add to the count.

For the candidate in the lead — Oz, in this instance — the goal is the opposite. Oz wants the count to end with him on top.

McCormick will in particular want to count mail ballots: In-person votes have slightly favored Oz, while mail ballots have helped McCormick. (McCormick has won about seven mail votes for every five that Oz has.)

Campaigns can begin fighting over ballots even before the recount would be officially declared next week.

As the final votes are tallied — counties are required to submit unofficial, as-close-to-final-as-possible results to the Pennsylvania Department of State by 5 p.m. Tuesday — county elections officials will be making decisions as to which ballots to count or reject.

During the vote count, elections workers move as quickly as possible to count all the ballots they know they can, setting aside those with any defects for review. The contested ballots create opportunity for both campaigns when they’re adjudicated by county officials.

After two years of expansive mail voting, many of those decisions are largely settled — counties reject unsigned ballots, for example, or “naked ballots” that arrive without a secrecy envelope — but voters create new questions every election. The campaigns can challenge counties’ decisions to count or reject those ballots, and then appeal them to county courts.

Similarly, the campaigns will be able to challenge decisions during a recount, including arguing that the county is misinterpreting voters’ intent, rejecting legitimate votes, or accepting illegitimate ones.

Outside of the county-by-county fight, the campaigns may also opt for statewide litigation, such as by arguing that a patchwork of county policies violates the U.S. Constitution. And one set of lawyers hired by the Oz campaign is also involved in the Lehigh County case, so they could potentially ask the U.S. Supreme Court to block the appeals court ruling.

Both the McCormick and Oz campaigns have been probing the vote-count process, asking counties questions about how they’ve counted votes and how they made decisions about which to count or reject. In Allegheny County, for example, representatives from both campaigns observed the final stage of tallying in-person and mail ballots Friday, and both asked to examine undated or unsigned ballots when county officials reconvene Monday.

Those undated mail ballots have suddenly taken center stage.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled Friday that undated Lehigh County mail ballots from last November’s election should be counted.

It did not immediately issue an opinion, but the text of the order, several lawyers from both political parties said, meant counties suddenly could — or perhaps even should — count undated mail ballots.

State law’s requirement that voters date their ballots — which state courts had said meant undated ballots should be rejected — isn’t actually used in determining whether a vote is legitimate, the judges ruled. That makes the requirement a technicality that, if used to reject ballots, violates the Civil Rights Act.

Hicks attached a copy of the order in his email to the county solicitors. As he described it: “The Third Circuit determined that the lack of a voter-provided date on the outside of an absentee or mail-in ballot envelope cannot prevent that ballot’s counting because the lack of that date on an indisputably timely ballot is immaterial under federal law.”

On Saturday, Contres countered that “our campaign will oppose the McCormick legal team’s request that election boards ignore both Pennsylvania’s Supreme Court and state election law and accept legally rejected ballots.”

The fight over mail ballots now puts McCormick in the position of being a Republican defending a voting method that the GOP has spent the last two years attacking. Trump’s lies about election rigging and fraud have pushed Republicans to generally avoid voting by mail. 

 

Trump is already screaming about fraud from his little shit-filled social media sandbox, which means this could be the exact ticket to remind everyone why Republicans are 100% batsit crazy racist assholes.

We'll see who survives this.

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

Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans say they will all vote to block a House Democratic bill that would authorize the FBI and Homeland Security to take stronger action against white supremacists, and since white supremacists are the GOP base, the bill will die to the filibuster.

The GOP compares the proposal, which sets up offices in the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice and the FBI to target domestic terrorism, to the recently paused disinformation board set up by the Biden administration.

“It sounds terrible,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) of the House-passed bill, predicting it won’t get 10 Republicans in the Senate.

“It’s like the disinformation board on steroids. Another way to look at is the Patriot Act for American citizens,” he added, referring to the law passed immediately after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that expanded the government’s power to monitor phone and email conversations and collect bank records.

Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) says he will bring the bill to the floor this week as a response to the killings at a Buffalo supermarket in a predominantly Black neighborhood. The bill passed the House 222-203 on a mostly party-line vote, with Rep. Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) casting the only GOP vote in favor.

Democrats increasingly see the need for the government to take more action against the threat of domestic terrorism given a long string of incidents that includes the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and several mass shootings targeting Black, Hispanic and Jewish people.

But the efforts have run into opposition from the GOP.

Senate conservatives say empowering the departments of Homeland Security and Justice with new authority to monitor domestic terrorism could easily morph into federal policing of political speech, and they worry it would be more targeted toward anti-government, anti-immigration activists than extreme left-wing groups.

“I’m completely opposed to this idea that we would be giving the federal government and federal law enforcement power and authority to surveil Americans, to engage in any kind of monitoring of speech that is directed toward censorship. I think it’s extremely frightening and I can’t believe they haven’t learned their lesson from the disinformation board debacle,” Hawley said.

The Biden administration ran into a storm of controversy last month when it announced the creation of the Disinformation Governance Board “to coordinate countering misinformation related to homeland security.” The backlash grew so intense that the Homeland Security Department put the project on pause after three weeks and its executive director, Nina Jankowicz, resigned.

Republican lawmakers argue that bringing the bill to the floor after the shooting in Buffalo is a veiled political attack on conservative critics of illegal immigration.

Some Senate Republicans see the domestic terrorism bill as another attempt to target the right and point to calls that Democrats made in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol to begin monitoring groups on the right as potential domestic terrorism threats.

“That’s exactly what it is,” said Hawley, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security has taken “a very different tone” with groups on the left that have threatened violence against Supreme Court justices after a draft ruling overturning Roe v. Wade leaked.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), a senior member of the Homeland Security Committee, said law enforcement is already supposed to be tracking domestic terrorism threats.

“The Democrats can’t even wait an hour before they blame the Republicans for the Buffalo shooting. I think it’s despicable,” he said.

Johnson said “there’s a huge double standard” between calls by Democrats to authorize federal law enforcement to track extreme speech when it comes from groups on the right compared to groups on the left.

 

The vote will be brought up this week, but if you think blocking the bill will hurt GOP Senate candidates in November at all, you've not been paying attention for the last six years. They're not going to give Homeland Security the power to stop the terrorists they want to use against Democrats across the country. 

I appreciate Democrats trying to do something here, but note that zero Senate Republicans have signed on to the bill, and one Republican in the House voted for the legislation, Adam Kinzinger.

Liz Cheney voted against it.

Republicans need white supremacists in order to win, and everyone knows it.

The Green Thunder Down Under

Conservative, if not Trumpy Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been booted from office by voters over the weekend, and that means that white Labor PM Anthony Albanese will be PM, it also means he's going to have to convince Independents and Greens to form a coalition government as the BBC's Nick Bryant explains.

Tumbling down have come the walls of conservative citadels. Parliamentary seats where Liberals had for generations dominated now look like barren lands.

The shoreline of Sydney Harbour, which is home to the most expensive real estate on the continent, is a case in point. It has been overwhelmed by a "teal" wave, the colour adopted by the swathe of independents who have had such a transformative effect on the country's political geography.

Remarkably, the Liberals no longer control any harbour-side seats that stretch from the Opera House to the ocean. These include Wentworth and Warringah, which were represented up until recently by two former Liberal prime ministers, Malcolm Turnbull and Tony Abbott.

It is akin to San Francisco, another great harbour city, losing all its Democrats.

Nor did the teal wave just wash over the Liberal ramparts of Sydney.

In Melbourne, the party looks to have lost the seat of Kooyong, which was once the fiefdom of Robert Menzies, Australia's longest serving prime minister, and which had remained faithfully conservative since Australia became a federation in 1901.

The same electoral dynamics played out. A party that has become fixated in recent decades with attracting working class battlers in traditional Labor strongholds has lost touch with Tesla-driving professionals in blue-ribbon seats.

For the first time in more than a decade, the electric car nudged out the coal train.

The rise of the teal independents has shattered the main party duopoly in the major cities - urban Australia accounts for 86% of the country's population.

So, too, have the Australian Greens, one of the hitherto under-reported stories of this election.

With votes still to be counted, the Greens are confident of achieving what they are calling a "greenslide" in Queensland.

That is a startling statement, because, if true, it would shatter the conventional wisdom of Australian politics: that green politics is anathema to the country's "Deep North" state.

Labor's phobia of alienating voters in this mining and resources hub has had a paralysing effect on its approach to climate change.

Here, then, the Greens have been beneficiaries of Labor's timidity regarding emissions targets.

If parts of Queensland become "Greensland" then the ground has truly shifted beneath our feet.

 

Understanding that, Albanese has promised a "new green superpower" plan for Australia, but how far that actually gets, we'll see. Independents and green want radical, if not transformative climate action, and they may just very well have enough seats to force Labor to make good on that promise.

Sunday Long Read: A Large Problem In Medicine

Here's a simple truth about getting a diagnosis from a doctor if you're overweight like me: the diagnosis is whatever the problem is, it's because you're fat. Our Sunday Long Read comes from Marquisele Mercedes in Pipe Wrench with her own lifetime of dealing with this, and if you're Black like us, that diagnosis of "Lose weight or die" has been beaten into us by docs every visit.

The first time I was penetrated I was thirteen, almost fourteen. The lights were on and bright. My gray sweatpants sat discarded on a chair with my stretched-out underwear. My mom was a few feet away, on the other side of a locked door.

Moments before it happened, I was asked in a few coded but unsubtle ways if I had ever had sex. I said no. I was reminded, in case I’d forgotten, that I was a “developed girl” and “developed girls” often got “certain kinds” of attention that encouraged them to do “certain things.” But I had not forgotten; it is impossible to be a young fat Black girl and forget.

I had come to the Pediatric Emergency Department at Montefiore’s Children’s Hospital with intense cramps. I’d been sitting with my mom in a tiny room for nine hours before I was wheeled away to see a doctor. A nurse told her to stand outside and instructed me to undress from the waist down and wait. When my doctor—a thin blonde woman—entered the room, she said hello with a big smile but didn’t tell me her name. She asked whether I was sexually active but didn’t seem satisfied with my answers. Then she told me to lay back, scoot my bottom toward the end of the table, and spread my legs so she could “take a look.” She didn’t explain what that meant or what she was doing or what she had done after it was over. I screamed for her to stop, shouted “No!” over and over. The speculum had painfully snapped inside of me a second time when she said “Wow, you really weren’t lying!” I could only sob with so much helplessness it made my throat rattle. When she finished, she said she would come back to discuss things with me, but she didn’t. I was sent home with instructions to take Motrin and “stay out of trouble.” The STI tests all came back negative.

A pediatric emergency physician looked at me, a thirteen-year-old fat Black girl, and was so certain I was sexually active that she performed a pelvic exam while I screamed and cried and repeatedly revoked consent—if you can claim I ever gave it in the first place. An adult looked at a child and saw a corrupted vessel, a body as full of overindulgence and promiscuity and unrighteousness as it was “obese.”

Does this seem like an unfortunate aberration? Maybe a doctor who’d had a long night in the ER? A bad apple? You are not the first to cling to the comfort of denial.

This is medical fatphobia.

Medical fatphobia refers to the specific ways that hatred and denigration of fatness manifest within medicine and the fields that medicine influences, like public health. It is the reason many fat people likely didn’t get or know to ask to have their COVID-19 vaccine administered with an appropriate-length needle, and why the American Academy of Pediatrics supports bariatric surgery for fat kids despite the incredible risks.

Mainstream writing on fatphobia usually gives in to the myth that there is something exceptional about fatphobic violence in healthcare. That fat people, in all our corpulent clumsiness, are just more likely to stumble across the assholes.

This is not true. It is a lie that has been actively propagated with the assistance of the many not-fat people who have shaped our collective understanding of how fatphobia operates. The truth is that fatphobia is a scientific invention. Fatphobia did not penetrate science; it is derived from science. Everything you know about “obesity,” about fatness, about fatphobia, about fat people has been — and is still — wrong.

 

I don't go to medical appointments as a rule because I already know what the diagnosis is: lose weight or die. My COVID vaccinations were the only time I've been to a medical facility in years. I know I'm in bad shape, but any doc is going to tell me "If you don't lose X pounds in the next year, you won't make it to the next one."

This article goes over every reason why.

The Burned Bridges of...Lauren Boebert?

The same GOP activist group that ended Rep.Madison Cawthorn's whole career is now setting its sights on Rep. Lauren Boebert. Get the popcorn.

Is Lauren Boebert about to be “Cawthorn-ized”? We’re going to find out. The same group that posted a nude video of Rep. Madison Cawthorn has now turned their attention to Rep. Boebert, who faces her own primary challenge on June 28 (ballots will start being mailed out on June 6).

But can lightning strike twice? According to David B. Wheeler, head of that group (The American Muckrakers PAC—also known as FireBoebert.com), Boebert’s primary is similar to Cawthorn’s. The districts, he says, are “very similar” demographically. And just as Cawthorn faced a North Carolina state legislator, Boebert’s challenger is Colorado Republican state Sen. Don Coram. There’s also a sense that neither incumbent cares about their district, but are instead more interested in their national profile.

No two races are alike. Cawthorn tried to switch congressional districts—a move that failed and probably hurt his image. And, of course, North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis endorsed Cawthorn’s opponent. Those are two big ingredients that Boebert’s opponent does not yet have (Colorado has two Democratic senators and a Democratic governor). By the same token, Boebert must defend a district that includes the liberal enclave of Aspen, Colorado (a potentially big source of anti-Boebert fundraising). And Wheeler tells me, “The opponent [Boebert] took out last time around is still pretty bitter about how she did it.” (In 2o2o, Boebert defeated a five-term, Trump-endorsed Republican congressman named Scott Tipton.)

Cawthorn and Boebert also share another obvious similarity: “Their own personal lives seem to be an absolute mess,” Wheeler adds.

Indeed, much of the drama has already been reported. Back in 2004, Boebert’s husband was arrested for exposing himself to two women at a bowling alley (Boebert was there). That same year, he was arrested on a domestic violence charge against her, and he served seven days in jail.

A few months later, Boebert was charged with assaulting him.

And then… they got married.

Since then, Boebert has had plenty of brushes with the law, including a 2015 incident where she was handcuffed at a country music festival after allegedly encouraging minors being detained for underage drinking to leave police custody. Boebert reportedly told police that “she had friends at Fox News and that the arrest would be national news.”

So, there are obvious similarities between Cawthorn and Boebert. And there will be no dearth of material to use against Boebert, including things that are yet to emerge (scandals are sort of like cockroaches—for every one you see, there are probably a hundred hiding).

Now, this is Matt Lewis of the Daily Beast, someone who would also like to see this same group going after"other extremists" like AOC or Rep. Ilhan Omar. But hey, Cawthorn actually did lose his primary thanks to these guys.

I'm okay with that if they can take down Boebert too.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

It seems Rudy Giuliani has finally given a deposition before the January 6th Committee, and if the information gleaned makes even one Republican in Congress cough up names, it'll be worth it.

Rudy Giuliani, former President Donald Trump's onetime personal attorney and a lead architect of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election results, on Friday met with the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection, two sources told CNN. 

Giuliani's original deposition with the committee had been postponed after the former New York City mayor asked to record the interview, with both audio and video. At the time, Giuliani's attorney Robert Costello said the committee rejected that request. 

Despite Giuliani backing out of the original deposition, the two sides continued to negotiate an appearance, which led to a virtual appearance Friday that lasted for more than nine hours, sources said. 

Costello declined to comment Friday. A spokesperson for the select committee also declined to comment on Giuliani's deposition. 

A central figure in Trump's failed bid to overturn the 2020 election, Giuliani was subpoenaed by the committee in January and has been engaging with lawmakers, through his lawyer, about the scope of the subpoena and whether he may be able to comply with some requests.
In its subpoena, the committee alleges that Giuliani "actively promoted claims of election fraud on behalf of the former President and sought to convince state legislators to take steps to overturn the election results." The subpoena also states that Giuliani was in contact with Trump and members of Congress "regarding strategies for delaying or overturning the results of the 2020 election." 

Several high-profile individuals from Trump's inner orbit have voluntarily spoken with the committee in recent weeks and months. In early May, Donald Trump Jr. met with the committee. And Trump's daughter and former senior White House adviser, Ivanka Trump, was interviewed for nearly eight hours last month; her husband and former White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, has met with the panel as well.

 

The January 6th committee has heard from Trump's kids and now several of his consiglieres. We know Merrick Garland has requested evidence that the January 6th committee has, and the Justice Department investigation is continuing, even if the Manhattan case is dead and the NY state case is moving very slowly.

I still believe justice is coming, but actual justice has to be delivered by the voters.

Last Call ForThe Big Lie, Con't

Michigan Democratic Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is in a tough re-election fight as Republicans have openly called for months to have her jailed for her role in counting Michigan's ballots correctly. Now Benson says that she was told Donald Trump wanted her executed for treason.

Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s top election official, faced an onslaught of threats after the 2020 presidential election for refusing to overturn results that showed Joe Biden had won the state. In those hectic weeks, she says she also received an especially disturbing piece of information: President Donald Trump suggested in a White House meeting that she should be arrested for treason and executed.

Benson, a Democrat, revealed the alleged remark for the first time in an interview with NBC News. She said she learned of it from a source familiar with Trump’s White House meeting.

“It was surreal and I felt sad,” Benson said, recalling her reaction.

“It certainly amplified the heightened sense of anxiety, stress and uncertainty of that time — which I still feel in many ways — because it showed there was no bottom to how far he (Trump) and his supporters were willing to stoop to overturn or discredit a legitimate election.”

Reached for comment, Trump spokesman Taylor Budowich said: "I have it on good authority that Secretary Benson knowingly lied throughout her interview with NBC News."

Benson, Michigan’s secretary of state, is now locked in an election fight with a Republican candidate who parrots Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election. In speeches and on her podcast, Kristina Karamo has said the election was “rigged and stolen” and “Secretary of State Benson should go to jail.”

A community college instructor, Karamo has secured the endorsement of the state GOP party and, more pivotally, Trump himself.

“She is strong on crime, including the massive crime of election fraud,” Trump said in his endorsement.

 

Part of the Big Lie is to terrorize and drive out good people in government, because Trump and the GOP don't want a government, they want a dictatorship where his political opponents are slaughtered in his name.

Next time, the arrests will happen.

And speaking of the Big Lie, we now know Justice Clarence Thomas's wife, right-wing activist Ginni Thomas, pushed Arizona Republicans to commit fraud with a "clean slate of electors" in 2020.

 

The emails, sent by Ginni Thomas to a pair of lawmakers on Nov. 9, 2020, argued that legislators needed to intervene because the vote had been marred by fraud. Though she did not mention either candidate by name, the context was clear.

Just days after media organizations called the race for Biden in Arizona and nationwide, Thomas urged the lawmakers to “stand strong in the face of political and media pressure.” She told the lawmakers the responsibility to choose electors was “yours and yours alone” and said they have “power to fight back against fraud.”

Thomas sent the messages via an online platform designed to make it easy to send pre-written form emails to multiple elected officials, according to a review of the emails obtained under the state’s public records law.

The messages show that Thomas, a staunch supporter of Donald Trump, was more deeply involved in the effort to overturn Biden’s win than has been previously reported. In sending the emails, Thomas played a role in the extraordinary scheme to keep Trump in office by substituting the will of legislatures for the will of voters.

Thomas’s actions also underline concerns about potential conflicts of interest that her husband has already faced — and may face in the future — in deciding cases related to attempts to overturn the 2020 election. Those questions intensified in March, when The Post and CBS News obtained text messages that Thomas sent in late 2020 to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, pressing him to help reverse the election.

The emails were sent to Russell Bowers, a veteran legislator and speaker of the Arizona House, and Shawnna Bolick, who was first elected to the chamber in 2018 and served on the House elections committee during the 2020 session.

“Article II of the United States Constitution gives you an awesome responsibility: to choose our state’s Electors,” read the Nov. 9 email. “… [P]lease take action to ensure that a clean slate of Electors is chosen.”

Thomas’s name also appears on an email to the two representatives on Dec. 13, the day before members of the electoral college met to cast their votes and seal Biden’s victory. “Before you choose your state’s Electors ... consider what will happen to the nation we all love if you don’t stand up and lead,” the email said.

It included a link to a video of a man delivering a message meant for swing-state lawmakers, urging them to “put things right” and “not give in to cowardice.”

“You have only hours to act,” said the speaker, who is not identified in the video.

By December, the claim that legislators should override the popular vote in key states and appoint Trump’s electors was also being pushed publicly by John C. Eastman, a former law clerk to Clarence Thomas, and Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer.Trump allies argued that pandemic-era changes in election administration and supposedly widespread fraud meant that elections had not been conducted in accordance with state legislatures’ directions, and that under the U.S. Constitution the results therefore could be cast aside. Many legal experts have called those arguments unpersuasive and anti-democratic, and no state legislature complied. Efforts to persuade state lawmakers to name new electors are among the issues under examination by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.

Ginni Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokeswoman for the Supreme Court did not respond to messages seeking comment from Clarence Thomas.

 

The conspiracy rages on, and we have a scant few months to fix it.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

In anticipation of next month's near-certain Supreme Court execution of Roe and Casey, Oklahoma has banned nearly all forms of abortion and is daring anyone to do anything about it.

The Oklahoma Legislature gave final approval on Thursday to a bill that prohibits nearly all abortions starting at fertilization, which would make it the nation’s strictest abortion law.

The bill subjects abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion to civil suits from private individuals. It would take effect immediately if signed by Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican who has pledged to make his state the most anti-abortion in the nation.

“There can be nothing higher or more critical than the defense of innocent, unborn life,” State Representative Jim Olsen, a Republican, said Thursday on the floor of the Oklahoma House, where the bill passed on a 73-16 vote.

The measure is modeled on a law that took effect in Texas in September, which has relied on civilian instead of criminal enforcement to work around court challenges. Because of that provision — the law explicitly says state authorities cannot bring charges — the U.S. Supreme Court and state courts have said they cannot block the ban from taking effect, even if it goes against the constitutional right to abortion established in Roe v. Wade.

The Oklahoma ban goes further than the Texas law, which bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

Supporters of abortion rights said the legislation in Oklahoma, and the ongoing rush to enact new restrictions in other Republican-led states, showed that a new legal reality had set in even before the official release of a Supreme Court opinion that many expect will overturn Roe v. Wade.

“This isn’t a fire drill,” said Emily Wales, the president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which has operations in Oklahoma. “This is not a rehearsal for what’s to come. We are living in this real world right now. The Supreme Court will finalize that this summer.”

 

Again, the leak of the SCOTUS draft decision was absolutely the work of the right, and this is why: to get the framework of the hard new legal reality of women as second-class citizens, with every pregnancy in the state subject to civil and criminal suits if not carried to term. It was to get these laws into place at the state level before the decision was revealed, in order to cause maximum suffering from the day the ruling comes down.

It was done to get the jump on paperwork. They couldn't help themselves, they hate women that much.

Last Call For Giving Them The Business, Con't

Senate Republicans continue to pass (and complain about) billions in aid to Ukraine, but if you try to pass legislation for billions in aid to US small businesses, suddenly it's a deficit problem and Republicans will block it every time.

 

Deficit-concerned senators blocked the Senate from considering a $48 billion aid package for restaurants and other small businesses Thursday, likely dealing a fatal blow to a monthslong effort to provide a final round of relief for industries that suffered major revenue losses during the pandemic.

The Senate did not invoke cloture on the motion to proceed to the small-business aid bill, in a 52-43 procedural vote that was subject to a 60-vote threshold.

All but five of the 50 Senate Republicans voted against cloture, which was more than enough to mount a successful filibuster to prevent the Senate from even considering the measure for debate.

Senate Small Business Chairman Benjamin L. Cardin, D-Md., and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., worked on the small-business aid package for months. The duo drew on past bipartisan proposals in an attempt to spread benefits far and wide, offering relief to stakeholders ranging from stage, lighting and sound providers for live events to minor league sports franchises.

"We must pass this legislation to keep these vital parts of America's economy and America's social and community life going," Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer said on the floor Thursday before the vote. "When minor league teams closed, entire towns have fewer options for coming together. When theaters can't open because businesses they rely on closed down, it disintegrates the fabric of our communities."

Through a period of what Cardin called “fits and starts,” he and Wicker remained optimistic that the bipartisan support needed to pass the bill would materialize once it was brought to the floor.

But as the test vote drew closer, it was apparent they wouldn’t get to 60 votes. So Cardin made a last-ditch offer to cut the size of the package and allow for an open amendment process in hopes of winning over hesitant senators.

“We believe we’ll be able to get the cost of this bill down, but we first need to get on the bill,” Cardin said, citing various offers from senators on both sides of the aisle with ideas on how to more narrowly target the measure.

One of those was an amendment from Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., that he said would limit aid to business owners who incurred debt in order to stay afloat during the pandemic. Manchin said he voted for cloture because of a commitment from Cardin that his amendment would be considered.

Cardin's plea worked on at least one GOP senator. Alaska Republican Lisa Murkowski had said earlier Thursday she was still undecided because while restaurants in her state “are still facing some pretty tough times,” she wanted to see the cost of the package come down. She ended up voting to advance the bill.

But ultimately it wasn't enough. The only Republicans to vote for cloture on the motion to proceed were Wicker, Murkowski, Susan Collins of Maine, Roy Blunt of Missouri and Bill Cassidy of Louisiana.

 

So when thousands of small businesses, restaurants, venues, theaters and event halls go under and take tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of jobs with them later this year due to rising costs and pandemic expenses, remember that Republicans blocked a bill to help save them.

Hungary For Fascism, Con't

Republicans want Viktor Orban's Hungarian single-party fascism so badly here in the US that they took their CPAC show to Orban's home turf in Budapest this week to rally the troops. 

Conservatives in Europe and the United States must fight together to "reconquer" institutions in Washington and Brussels from liberals who threaten Western civilisation ahead of votes in 2024, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Thursday.

Nationalist Orban said the next U.S. presidential election, when Donald Trump suggests he may seek a second term in the White House, and the vote for the European Parliament would make that a vital year. read more

He was addressing the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the United States' most prominent conservative gathering, in Budapest, the first such CPAC event in Europe.

"Progressive liberals, neo-Marxists dazed by the woke dream, people financed by George Soros and promoters of open societies ... want to annihilate the Western way of life that you and us love so much," Orban told the conference.

"We must coordinate the movement of our troops as we face a big test, 2024 will be a decisive year," he said.

His comments were a familiar swipe at Budapest-born billionaire Soros, who he accuses of trying to undermine Europe's cultural identity by supporting immigration. Soros has promoted liberalism since before the 1989 fall of communism, funding education and scholarships.

Orban, who was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term after a landslide election victory in April, is seen by many on the American hard right as a model for his tough policies on immigration and support for families and Christian conservatism.

The EU has accused Orban of curbing media and judicial independence and enriching associates with public funds. He denies any corruption.

Orban laid out 12 points which he said were key to ensuring a dominance of conservativism, including playing by their own rules, standing up for national interests in foreign policy and gaining control over the media.

"We must reconquer the institutions in Washington D.C. and Brussels," Orban said.

 

Expect several Republican politicians to appear with Orban this weekend as they openly plot the overthrow of the US government for all to see.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Republicans are straight up vowing they will take power permanently in state after state and they are telling you exactly how they will do it.

Ohio is essentially lost at this point, as Republicans there simply refuse to obey the state's Supreme Court under any circumstance.

The Republican members of the Ohio Redistricting Commission are asserting that the Ohio Supreme Court does not have the authority to hold them in contempt of court while their Democratic counterparts on the commission argue otherwise.

The Ohio redistricting commissioners filed their motions in court after petitioners – who are objecting to the latest round of state legislative district maps – asked the court to order members to explain why they should not be held in contempt.

On May 6, the commission resubmitted a plan for Ohio House and Ohio Senate district maps that had already been rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court as unconstitutional in March.

Secretary of State Frank LaRose, a Republican, said in his court filing that he cannot be held in contempt when he is acting “in accordance with his solemn duty to ensure orderly and trustworthy elections and to protect the voting rights of Ohioans.”

LaRose said, through attorneys in his court filing, that he laid out for the commission the “logistical realities” of holding a primary for state legislative races in 2022. During commission meetings, LaRose explained his reasoning for why the commission had to choose what’s become known as Map 3, a plan adopted by the commission in February. LaRose said that was the only plan that gave local elections officials a chance to hold a primary on August 2 given certain deadlines they would have to meet.

“Petitioners cannot ignore realities and the established deadlines (that Secretary LaRose does not have the authority to change) that they acknowledged in the Gonidakis Case and take contrary positions calling for contempt in this action,” wrote attorneys representing LaRose in the filing. The “Gonidakis Case” refers to a federal court case where judges have given Ohio until May 28 to adopt a constitutional plan or the federal court will implement the unconstitutional Map 3.

Rep. Jeff LaRe (R-Violet Twp.) and Sen. Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) filed together to echo LaRose’s response and added, “the resubmittal of the plan adopted by the Commission on February 24, 2022 (the “Third Plan”) was not an act of defiance, but an act of necessity under the electoral emergency facing the Secretary of State and Ohio voters.”

The Republican commissioners all made the argument – even Auditor Keith Faber who voted against the maps – that the Ohio Supreme Court does not have the authority to hold the commission in contempt because it is a different branch of government and would result in a separation of powers violation.

 

The Ohio GOP has run out the clock on the redistricting process, and now the federal courts will allow Republicans to simply use whichever unconstitutional map they want to, as I said they would do last year.

In Colorado, Republicans are vowing to disenfranchise 99.99% of Democratic voters in urban counties.

Coloradans have elected just one Republican governor in the last 50 years. A current GOP candidate for governor has an idea that could change that: stop counting each vote equally.

Former Parker Mayor Greg Lopez, who holds the top line on the 2022 Republican primary ballot, says Colorado should create an electoral college system for electing candidates to statewide office.

The plan, which would be the first of its kind on the state level, would give far more voting power to Coloradans in rural, conservative counties and dilute the voting power of Coloradans in more populous urban and suburban areas. Even as turnout numbers vary over time, the sheer number of rural conservative counties would create a built-in advantage for Republicans.

Lopez outlined his proposal at a May 15 campaign stop in Silverton. An audio recording of the event made by a political tracker was provided to 9NEWS.

“One of the things that I’m going to do, and I’ve already put this plan together, is, as governor, I’m going to introduce a conversation about doing away with the popular vote for statewide elected officials and doing an electoral college vote for statewide elected officials,” Lopez said.

Lopez said his electoral college plan would weight counties’ votes based on their voter turnout percentage to encourage turnout.

“I’ve already got the plan in place,” Lopez said. “The most that any county can get is 11 electoral college votes. The least that a county can get is three.”

 

More than 80% of Colorado voters live in just 11 of the state's 64 counties, meaning that the other 15% or so would actually decide the races in this complete scam of an election layout. If turnout is even across the state, the state's least populous county, San Juan (pop. 646) would have the same "electoral college votes" as Denver County or El Paso County (both pop. 700,000+). It's a laughable scam that would ensure Republican victories permanently.

And in Pennsylvania, GOP gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano, January 6th terrorism suspect, is outright saying that Democrats will have their election wins annulled in the state in 2024.

 

As governor, Mastriano would have the opportunity not just to speak, but to act. The Trump-endorsed 58-year-old, who won the Republican nomination for governor on Tuesday, would gain significant influence over the administration of the battleground state’s elections should he prevail in November, worrying experts already fearful of a democratic breakdown around the 2024 presidential contest.

Those concerns are made especially acute in Pennsylvania by the fact that the governor has the unusual authority to directly appoint the secretary of state, who serves as chief elections officer and must sign off on results. If he or she refuses, chaos could follow.

“The biggest risk is a secretary of state just saying, ‘I’m not going to certify the election, despite what the court says and despite what the evidence shows, because I’m concerned about suspicions,’” said Clifford Levine, a Democratic election lawyer in Pennsylvania. “You would start to have a breakdown in the legal system and the whole process.”

Mastriano’s backers appear well aware of the stakes. A video posted to Telegram by election denial activist Ivan Raiklin from Mastriano’s victory party on Tuesday showed the candidate smiling as Raiklin congratulated him on his win and added, with a thumb’s up, “20 electoral votes as well,” a reference to the state’s clout in the electoral college.

“Oh yeahhhh,” Mastriano responded.

Mastriano did not respond to a voice mail or an email sent to a campaign account for media.

But Mastriano told Stephen K. Bannon, a former adviser to Trump who now hosts a podcast popular on the right, that he had already selected the person he would appoint as secretary of state if elected.

“As far as cleaning up the election, I mean, I’m in a good position as governor,” he said in the April 23 appearance on Bannon’s “War Room” podcast. “I have a voting-reform-minded individual who’s been traveling the nation and knows voting reform extremely well. That individual has agreed to be my secretary of state.”

He added that he planned to decertify voting machines in several Pennsylvania counties, a power given under state law to the secretary of state. “It’s going to be a top issue for me,” he said.

 

Mastriano would simply decertify election results from Philly and Pittsburgh completely, and Republicans will win every race from now on.

 

Who will stop people like this? 

I'm hoping it's you folks in November.

Last Call For A Smart Formula

President Biden has invoked the Defense Production Act to get baby formula manufacturers everything they need to immediately ramp up production in response to the national shortage of formula.

The announcement means the federal government will prioritize key ingredients for formula production and compel suppliers to provide the needed resources to formula manufacturers.

In addition to invoking the 1950 law, which allows the government to direct manufacturing production for national defense, Biden also launched a program that will use U.S. military aircraft to import formula from abroad.

The move comes after a bipartisan group of lawmakers called on Biden to invoke the Defense Production Act to bolster formula production amid the worsening shortage and as parents scramble to secure formula.

The Food and Drug Administration in February began warning consumers against purchasing certain baby formula as it investigated a string of bacterial infections in four infants tied to an Abbott Nutrition facility in Sturgis, Michigan.

Abbott Nutrition, which has denied any wrongdoing, said Monday it had agreed to terms set by the FDA to resume operations at the company’s Michigan plant, but the shortage has frenzied parents.

Biden on Wednesday also initiated a program that will use U.S. military aircraft to import formula from abroad. The program, called "Operation Fly Formula," directs the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Agriculture to use Defense Department commercial aircraft to fly in approved formula from other countries.

 

Lawmakers: Hey Joe, do the thing

 

Biden: OK

 

Really is that simple sometimes.  

 

Oh, the reasons there's a shortage are 1) Abbott Nutrition made a crapton of pandemic profit and used those billions in stock buybacks to boost their stock prices and executive bonuses rather than repairing machinery in their Michigan factory that was allowing bacteria to infect formula production lines, 2) pandemic supply chain meltdowns and 3) Donald Trump's trade policies protected Abbott's oligopoly on baby formula.

The argument here is when America's manufacturing is concentrated among a few brands, that indispensable product always becomes an oligopoly as government raises barriers to entry to keep newer, "less trustworthy" companies out. That certainly describes what happened with baby formula.

Now parents are paying the price, quite literally.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Homeland Security is making it very clear that they are expecting violence over the end of Roe and that last week's near light-speed vote to extend protections to SCOTUS justices and their families was an unfortunately necessary call.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's majority draft opinion leak, the U.S. Supreme Court Police reported a "significant increase in violent threats," including a series of social media posts directed at certain sitting justices as well as the Supreme Court building. The Department of Homeland Security said it has registered an uptick in threats against "reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities."

The threats were outlined in an intelligence bulletin the DHS issued to state and local law enforcement agencies nationwide. The memo, titled "Potential for Threats to Public Safety in Response to Abortion Debate" and dated May 13, was published by DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis.

The DHS said federal law enforcement agencies have opened investigations into several of the online threats.

The National Capital Region Threat Intelligence Consortium — the Washington, D.C., regional intelligence hub charged with tracking domestic terrorism threats — has referred at least 25 violent online posts to partner agencies for further investigation. According to the bulletin, some of the social media threats discussed "burning down or storming the U.S. Supreme Court and murdering Justices and their clerks, members of Congress, and lawful demonstrators."

The bulletin warned of an emerging "threat to government, religious, and reproductive healthcare personnel and facilities and ideological opponents" and marks the first intelligence bulletin explicitly issued to state and local law enforcement regarding abortion-related extremism in the wake of the opinion draft leak.

"The volume of violent threats targeting Supreme Court Justices, members of Congress, other public officials, clergy, healthcare officials and providers, and others associated with the abortion debate are likely to persist and may increase leading up to and following the issuing of the Court's official ruling," the bulletin added.

The Supreme Court is expected to issue its final ruling on the Mississippi abortion case next month.

Since July 2021, at least four incidents of violence occurred between "ideological opponents" at abortion-related protests in Oregon and California, where demonstrators deployed "smoke grenades, paintball guns, batons, chemical irritants, and bats, according to press reporting," the memo reads.

Historically, a Justice Department task force has registered at least 10 murders committed by pro-abortion violent extremists, as well as dozens of bombings and arsons, all targeting abortion providers and facilities. However, the Supreme Court leak could lead to threats from both pro and anti-abortion supporters.

The DHS' Office of Intelligence and Analysis said in its bulletin that "grievances related to restricting abortion access could fuel violence by pro-choice abortion-related violent extremists and other [domestic violent extremists.]"

 

Protecting SCOTUS is, frankly, vital.

 

The problem I have is equating and conflating the pro-choice side here to the side that kills abortion providers in their church pews. 

They are not the same, folks. One is much, much more likely to commit actual violence, and it's not the side that wants folks to have bodily autonomy over their own uteri.

God I hate this timeline, I really do. If there were still somehow doubts that the draft decision on Roe was leaked by conservatives (and quite possibly by Ginni Thomas herself) this report should put it to rest.

The (Burned) Bridges Of Madison Cawthorn, Con't

Being a screaming racist, a junior Neo-Nazi youth director, and a horrible boss were all fine wit Republican voters in NC-11. What cost Rep. Madison Cawthorn his primary and his career last night however was spilling the beans on Capitol Hill GOP coke orgies.

 

In 2020, Madison Cawthorn became the youngest Republican elected to Congress in American history. In 2022, he became the youngest Republican to lose reelection to Congress in American history.

A spokesperson for Cawthorn said he conceded the Republican race for his North Carolina congressional seat Tuesday night. The 26-year-old Cawthorn lost after a series of self-imposed scandals, controversies, and gaffes. He was repeatedly pulled over for speeding while driving without a license, twice took a firearm through airport security, faced allegations of sexual misconduct and insider trading, and baselessly accused colleagues of participating in cocaine-fueled orgies, and then there was the weird video of him humping another man.

It didn’t help that Cawthorn had an inflated view of his own political stock. He released his own personal policy program for House Republicans, an unusual step for any individual member let alone a freshman backbencher. And he angered his home state’s Republicans by announcing a bid in a newly drawn district meant for the state House Speaker only to see the gerrymander thrown out in court and forcing him to return, chastened, to run in the district he currently represents.

Cawthorn’s maneuver especially angered Senator Thom Tillis, who had been attacked by Cawthorn. Tillis endorsed State Senator Chuck Edwards, who defeated Cawthorn on Tuesday, and actively campaigned against him. A Tillis-tied super-PAC ran ads explicitly attacking Cawthorn as “a liar.” When asked by a reporter Tuesday whether Cawthorn deserved a second chance, the Republican senator jibed, “I believe everybody deserves second chances. That’s why I voted for a lot of the criminal justice reform bills.”

Republican discontent stretched beyond traditional figures such as Tillis. “No one from the Freedom Caucus guys to people in MAGA world are happy with how he conducted himself,” said one ally of Donald Trump. There is a sense he had behaved even worse than controversial figures such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, who, for all inflammatory rhetoric, was not viewed as “super-conceited and cocky.” Another plugged-in Republican strategist put it more bluntly: “The guy is just a total fuckup and shows the limits of patience and tolerance that the MAGA movement has for complete and utter idiots. It’s breaking laws and recklessness in personal behavior.”

The result was Cawthorn did not get the full and effusive emailed statement of endorsement on the eve of the election that Trump has given to scores of other Republicans. Instead, Trump simply posted a statement on his flailing new social-media platform, Truth Social, where he described Cawthorn as making “some foolish mistakes” but insisted the freshman Republican deserved “a second chance.”

Even such tepid praise marked a major fall from glory for Cawthorn, who took office just four months after his 25th birthday and was an immediate Republican star. On the strength of his youth — and what turned out to be a fabricated backstory about the obstacles he had to overcome after being paralyzed in a car accident at the age of 19 — he had not only won an open Republican primary without Trump’s endorsement but had then gone on to be a featured speaker at the 2020 Republican convention.

 

Sadly, Cawthorn will remain in the House as a lame duck for the next seven months, so there's still a lot of damage he can do to both parties before the inevitable FOX, Newsmax, or OANN job next year. I'd love to say that we'll never hear from this clown again, but he's going to be around for decades. The best outcome would be him naming names on the way out, but we won't be that lucky.

No, by all accounts, this little carbuncle is going to be around long after I'm gone, he's only 26. He's has a half-century long career of riding the Right-Wing Gravy Train ahead of him.

Unless he burns that final bridge too.