Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The power crisis in Europe, stemming from both major climate change issues and Russian gas holding the continent hostage as part of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, has now reached levels forcing the EU to take drastic action.

 

The European Union is planning urgent steps to push down soaring power prices, Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Monday.

“The skyrocketing electricity prices are now exposing, for different reasons, the limitations of our current electricity market design,” von der Leyen said in a speech at the Bled Strategic Summit in Slovenia. “It was developed under completely different circumstances and completely different purposes.”

She added, “That’s why we are now working on an emergency intervention and a structural reform of the electricity market.”

The unprecedented spike in power prices, which have soared almost 10-fold in the past year, has fueled inflation and increased the economic burden on businesses and households recovering from the pandemic. More and more member states are calling for a price cap and the Czech Republic, which holds the rotating presidency of the EU, plans to convene an extraordinary meeting of energy ministers on Sept. 9.

The exact details of an EU intervention plan are still being developed, and EU diplomats said the EU’s executive arm could offer a detailed plan as soon as this week.

With Russia squeezing gas deliveries and power-plant outages further sapping supply, the pressure is growing on EU leaders to act quickly or risk social unrest and political upheaval. Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala is seeking backing for his price-cap plan and plans to discuss possible limits with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“High energy prices are a Europe-wide problem that we need to tackle at European level,” Fiala said on his Twitter account. “Ahead of the EU Energy Council we want to find a way to help people and businesses that we can agree on with other European leaders.”

Czech officials are proposing to cap prices of natural gas used for power generation, Industry and Trade Minister Jozef Sikela said on Monday.

“We may open the question of emission allowances, as some other member states have done in past, that also present a major part of the total price,” Sikela said. “We may open the question of the overall market regulation, total decoupling of the prices,” adding that the bloc cannot meddle too much with the market or fuel speculation.

 

Russia has successfully leveraged its natural gas resources as both an economic and political weapon against the EU in the continuing Russian war in Ukraine. It's safe to say at this point that while Russian sanctions are hurting Moscow, Russia cutting off the EU from natural gas has also crippled the continent. 

 

All indications are that, while Ukrainian forces with EU/US help have stalled Russia in the Donbas militarily, if even the stodgy EU is talking about emergency measures to prevent widespread riots and worse because of massive power bills and electricity shortages, Russia is absolutely winning this political part of the war.

 

On top of all this, Russian forces continue to hold the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, with growing fears of meltdown in Europe's largest nuclear facility.

The pressure on the EU to surrender Ukraine to Moscow will only increase in the weeks ahead. Imagine what adding an extra zero to your monthly power bill would do here in the US, and you have an idea of what's going on in Europe right now.

It's not good, folks. Putin is risking nuclear disaster and millions of deaths from cold, starvation, or worse in the months ahead in order to force the EU to give up. And if the EU does give up, Putin will do all this again to take his next target, and his net, and his next...

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Even right-leaning pollster Trafalgar Group has Wisconsin Democratic Senate Candidate Mandela Barnes up by 2 over GOP Sen. Ron Johnsom, and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers tied with Republican Tim Michels.

Nate Silver is still giving Johnson a 60-40% shot at winning. Incumbency and being the out-of-the-White House party is still a powerful combination.

And even given that, Silver is also giving Dems a 2/3rds chance of keeping the Senate right now. Right now the polls show the Dems hanging on in rough incumbent races in GA, NV, AZ and NH, and Dems getting the flip they need in PA with Fetterman over Oz in case one of those races goes to the GOP.

The House...well...the House is another story entirely, but not impossible, and Team Blue's chances are getting better daily.

 

Headed into 2022, Republicans were confident that a red wave would sweep them into control of Congress based on the conventional political wisdom that the midterm elections would produce a backlash against President Biden, who has struggled with low approval ratings.

But now some are signaling concern that the referendum they anticipated on Mr. Biden — and the high inflation and gas prices that have bedeviled his administration — is being complicated by all-encompassing attention on the legal exposure of a different president: his predecessor, Donald J. Trump.

Those worries were on display on Sunday morning as few Republicans appeared on the major Washington-focused news shows to defend Mr. Trump two days after a redacted version of the affidavit used to justify the F.B.I. search of his Mar-a-Lago estate revealed that he had retained highly classified material related to the use of “clandestine human sources” in intelligence gathering. And those who did appear indicated that they would rather be talking about almost anything else.

Senator Roy Blunt, Republican of Missouri, acknowledged that Mr. Trump “should have turned the documents over” but quickly pivoted to the timing of the search.

“What I wonder about is why this could go on for almost two years and, less than 100 days before the election, suddenly we’re talking about this rather than the economy or inflation or even the student loan program,” Mr. Blunt lamented on ABC’s “This Week.”

Gov. Chris Sununu, Republican of New Hampshire, also pointed to a fear that Mr. Trump’s legal troubles could hurt his party’s midterm chances.

“Former President Trump has been out of office for going on two years now,” he said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “You think this is a coincidence just happening a few months before the midterm elections?”

The Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago, which followed repeated requests over more than a year and a half for Mr. Trump to turn over sensitive documents he took when he left office, initially prompted most Republicans to rally around the former president, strengthening his grip on the party. Some reacted with fury, attacking the nation’s top law enforcement agencies as they called to “defund” or “destroy” the F.B.I. Others invoked the Nazi secret police, using words like “Gestapo” and “tyrants.”

Polls showed an increase in Republican support for Mr. Trump, and strategists quickly began incorporating the search into the party’s larger anti-big-government messaging. They combined denunciation of the F.B.I.’s actions with criticism of Democrats’ plans to increase the number of I.R.S. agents in hopes of rallying small-government conservatives to the polls.

But as more revelations emerge about Mr. Trump’s handling of some of the government’s most sensitive documents, some of those voices have receded.

“Some of the president’s biggest cheerleaders — Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan — have gone kind of silent,” Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, an anti-Trump Republican, said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “That tells you all you need to know.”

 

And when Republicans do talk about 2022's economic issues, they just end up shooting themselves in the foot. 

When Blake Masters was running for the Republican nomination for Senate in Arizona, he floated what he called a “fresh and innovative” idea.

“Maybe we should privatize Social Security. Right? Private retirement accounts, get the government out of it,” he said at a June forum with the fiscal conservative group FreedomWorks.

Masters subsequently backtracked. “I do not want to privatize Social Security,” he told the Arizona Republic after he won the primary. “I think, in context, I was talking about something very different. We can’t change the system. We can’t pull the rug out from seniors.”

Democrats saw an opening in the key Arizona race. The party's Senate campaign arm rolled out an ominous TV ad highlighting the footage, accusing Masters of seeking to “cut our Social Security and privatize it” to finance tax breaks for the wealthy, while “gambling our life savings on the stock market.”

Asked to clarify his position, Katie Miller, Masters campaign spokesperson, told NBC News: “Blake’s position has always been clear. All he wants to do is incentivize future generations to save through private accounts.” She described his stance as “Social Security-and.”

Ahead of the 2022 election, Masters is one of many Republicans to touch what has been called the “third rail” of American politics — a costly but popular pillar of the safety net that gives monthly cash benefits to those 62 and older, who vote in big numbers. In major Senate and House races across the country, GOP candidates have called for cutting long-term Social Security spending to tackle inflation and resolve the program's finances. Democrats are trying to make them pay a political price, arguing that the same Republicans created a budget hole by cutting taxes for top earners.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Sen. Ron Johnson, a Wisconsin Republican, said at a recent campaign stop that Social Security “was set up improperly” and that it would have been better to invest the money in the stock market. Earlier, Johnson told a radio show that Social Security and Medicare should be axed as "mandatory" programs and be subject to "discretionary" spending, meaning Congress would have to renew them yearly or they'd end.

His Democratic opponent, Mandela Barnes, responded that the two-term incumbent senator “wants to strip seniors of the benefits they’ve worked their entire lives for” and “throw Wisconsin’s middle class overboard” to serve corporate donors.

 

Democrats have a huge opening here: Republicans have taken women's right to bodily autonomy by rendering abortion illegal in state after state, and as Democrats deliver on their promises of climate change legislation and student loan relief (until the courts kill both of those programs anyway) Republicans are busy voting against Medicare drug prescription relief and wanting to privatize Social Security and play the ultimate Big Casino game.

Republicans are basically doing everything they can to lose in November. I'm fine with that.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

The Biden administration says it is conducting a full damage assessment of the nation's intelligence services from Donald Trump's criminal mishandling of classified documents at his non-secure Florida resort, including the possible exposure of identities of sources, spies, and agents.

Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has sent a letter to the House Intelligence and House Oversight committee chairs, saying the intelligence community is conducting a damage assessment of the documents taken from former President Donald Trump's home in Mar-a-Lago, according to a letter obtained by CNN. 

"The Department of Justice (DOJ) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) are working together to facilitate a classification review of relevant materials, including those recovered during the search," Haines wrote in her letter to House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff and House Oversight Chair Carolyn Maloney. 

Several members of Congress have called for an intelligence damage assessment of the documents. 

Politico was first to report on the letter. 

Haines also sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee saying her office would lead an assessment about the risks to national security, according to two sources familiar with the matter. 

In addition, the Justice Department sent a letter to the Senate panel saying that it would be sharing materials with the intelligence agencies while adhering to its longstanding tradition of not disclosing any non-public information during an active investigation, the sources said. 

Maloney and Schiff said in a joint statement that they were "pleased" that Haines has launched the intelligence damage assessment of classified documents found at Trump's home in Florida. 

The two chairs, who had called for the assessment after the FBI searched Trump's home earlier this month, also said that the assessment must move "swiftly." 

On Friday, Senate Intelligence Chairman Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement following the release of the redacted affidavit that his panel had made a bipartisan request for "a damage assessment of any national security threat posed by the mishandling of this information."

 

Trump's team has, in the meanwhile, found a friendly Trump-appointed judge to buy their argument that the documents taken from Mar-a-Lago are protected by executive privilege and must be examined by a "special master" to determine if they must be returned to Trump.

A federal judge in Florida gave notice on Saturday of her “preliminary intent” to appoint an independent arbiter, known as a special master, to conduct a review of the highly sensitive documents that were seized by the F.B.I. this month during a search of Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald J. Trump’s club and residence in Palm Beach.

In an unusual action that fell short of a formal order, the judge, Aileen M. Cannon of the Federal District Court for the Southern District of Florida, signaled that she was inclined to agree with the former president and his lawyers that a special master should be appointed to review the seized documents.

But Judge Cannon, who was appointed by Mr. Trump in 2020, set a hearing for arguments in the matter for Thursday in the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach — not the one in Fort Pierce, Fla., where she typically works.

On Friday night, only hours after a redacted version of the affidavit used to obtain the warrant for the search of Mar-a-Lago was released, Mr. Trump’s lawyers filed court papers to Judge Cannon reiterating their request for a special master to weed out documents taken in the search that could be protected by executive privilege.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers had initially asked Judge Cannon on Monday to appoint a special master, but their filing was so confusing and full of bluster that the judge requested clarifications on several basic legal questions. The notice by Judge Cannon on Saturday was seen as something of a victory in Mr. Trump’s circle.

 

Here's the hysterically obvious problem with this "executive privilege" argument: Trump is not President. Legally, this should be tossed into the nearest chipper/shredder. It's the current president who gets to decide what executive privilege means here, and the Biden administration has the final say. Trump doesn't get to determine what executive privilege is any more than you or I do.

From a legal and constitutional standpoint NARA was not only justified in denying Trump’s assertion of executive privilege, it really had no choice in the matter.

To understand why this is so, it is helpful to break down the question into three questions:

(1) Does a former president ever have the right to successfully assert executive privilege to prevent access to presidential records by the incumbent president or executive agencies acting under the incumbent’s authority?;

(2) If such a right exists, could it be successfully exercised under the current circumstances?; and

(3) Who decides the first two issues?

Executive Privilege by a Former President

First, the PRA makes clear that nothing in its provisions are to be interpreted as expanding or diminishing the former president’s constitutional rights. Indeed, both the statutory language and legislative history make clear that Congress has been extremely skeptical of the notion that a former president can successfully assert executive privilege under any circumstances without the support of the incumbent president. While the executive branch has taken a different view, that argument has never extended so far as to suggest that the former president can successfully assert the privilege in opposition to the incumbent, much less that he can do so when the incumbent himself is seeking access to presidential records for purposes of carrying out the constitutional functions of the executive branch.

For example, when in the 1980s the Office of Legal Counsel issued a much criticized opinion (later rejected by the D.C. Circuit) that an incumbent president should ordinarily defer to a former president’s assertion of executive privilege with regard to the latter’s presidential records, it nonetheless explained that “this principle must yield when it conflicts with the discharge of the incumbent’s constitutional responsibilities;” thus, “if the incumbent President believes that the discharge of his constitutional duties (e.g., investigation and prosecution of alleged crimes) demands the disclosure of documents claimed by the former President to be privileged, it may be necessary for him to oppose a former President’s claim.” (emphasis added). Similarly, the author of the opinion, Assistant Attorney General Charles Cooper, when summoned to defend it before Congress, explained that “an incumbent President need not respect a former President’s claim of privilege if the incumbent feels that it would interfere with his ability to execute his legal and constitutional responsibilities as he, alone, understands and perceives them.”

Whether a former president should ever have the unilateral power to assert executive privilege over the objection of the incumbent remains an unsettled issue, as the Supreme Court recently recognized in Trump v. Thompson. As I have pointed out elsewhere, this notion is in considerable tension with OLC’s general approach to executive privilege. At least one member of the Supreme Court (Justice Kavanaugh) nevertheless believes that “[a] former President must be able to successfully invoke the Presidential communications privilege for communications that occurred during his Presidency, even if the current President does not support the privilege claim.” In Thompson, however, Justice Kavanaugh was writing in the context of a congressional request (from the January 6th Committee) to access presidential records; it is by no means clear that he would maintain the same view where the incumbent president himself was seeking access to the records for purposes of carrying out the executive’s legal and constitutional functions.

Indeed, Kavanaugh, during his tenure in the White House counsel office, famously defended a controversial executive order on presidential records issued by President George W. Bush. That order made it extremely difficult for the public, Congress or the courts to access presidential records over the objection of a former president. However, the order explicitly provided that it did not address access by the incumbent president to those records, a fact somewhat bitterly noted by congressional critics at the time.

In short, the notion that a former president can block his successor from accessing presidential records that the incumbent believes he needs for purposes of carrying out executive functions would be the most extreme manifestation of a doubtful legal theory, and one that has no support in any legal authority to date.

 

But where Trump is winning here is the fact that he's successfully slowing the investigation into his mishandling of the documents. It could take "months" for the special master to complete their work, you see, and surely no indictments can be "legally" issued while this is going on. 

It's a solid stalling tactic that could buy Trump quite some time to both get the search warrant out of the news ahead of campaign season going into full swing next month, and to come up with more tactics to keep the feds off his case.

The problem for Trump is that the case against him here is pretty open and shut.

We'll see how this goes, but it's going to go badly for Trump.

Sunday Long Read: Clip Joint

Our Sunday Long Read this week is Benjamin Cassidy's piece in Seattle Met on the history of everyone's favorite -- and reviled -- Microsoft digital assistant/mascot, Clippy the Paper Clip.

THE BLANK SCREEN was already intimidating enough. Then, out of nowhere, an incorporeal know-it-all popped up to make us feel even worse about the novel notion of word processing in the mid-’90s. “It looks like you’re writing a letter,” a googly-eyed, caterpillar-browed paperclip in Microsoft Word observed when we may or may not have been trying to write a letter. The metallic office supply bounced around the margins of documents and never stopped looking over our shoulders, even as it blinked back at us impatiently. “Would you like help?”

Many users found its polite but presumptuous suggestions invasive, obnoxious, and creepy. Almost immediately, computer geeks and neophytes panned it. Microsoft banished it. Time labeled it one of the 50 worst inventions ever. But nearly three decades after its genesis at the Redmond tech giant, Clippit—better known as Clippy—improbably lives on.

Last year, Microsoft officially revived the Office Assistant that debuted in Office 97. The character replaced a plain old paperclip in Microsoft 365 to help liven up the company’s emojis and indulge a social media outpouring. Clippy can now permanently live in Word files, Outlook emails, or other common workplace apps. In one of the company’s Teams backgrounds, the paperclip hovers above yellow legal pad paper on a pedestal in a cement-walled basement, seemingly exiled to the dungeon of bad tech ideas.

Though coding circles treated Clippy like New Coke, pop culture never quite quit the retired paperclip. When Darryl Philbin needed help with a resume in the season seven finale of The Office, he pined for Clippy. When users couldn’t grasp Pied Piper’s platform in Silicon Valley, the startup begrudgingly turned to a virtual assistant named “Pipey.” When Seth Meyers needed a dash of comic relief amid news that a PowerPoint may have spurred the Capitol insurrection last year, he joked Congress would “have to subpoena Clippy.” Saturday Night Live nodded to this nagging cultural endurance in a sketch six years earlier. As J.K. Simmons tries to type a letter to a friend on Microsoft Word, a shimmying push pin, “Pushie,” prods him with suggestions. Then Simmons’s character discovers a “Murder Pushie” option. Yet, the actor can’t bring himself to click it.

Nerd culture’s attachment to Clippy is even stronger, manifesting most frequently on social media and dark corners of the internet. An erotic short story, “Conquered by Clippy,” reveals perhaps the wildest level of obsession (“‘assist me deeper’”). Viral fan art renders the sentient silver fastener as everything from mildly impressed to pregnant. The assistant’s once-grating command bubble and syntax is basically Mad Libs for passive aggressive memes, including those aimed at the sort of existential conundrums posed by tech today. “It looks like you’re writing unsubstantiated nonsense,” a popular one begins. “Would you like to turn on all-caps?”

These days, an annoying Word creature might seem eminently tolerable compared to the ghouls on Twitter. Now that Alexa’s in our bedroom and Siri’s in our hand, Clippy’s a throwback to what seems like a more benign digital age.

But to those involved, directly and indirectly, with what’s been called one of the worst user interface rollouts in tech history, Clippy’s comeback is varying degrees of bewildering and vindicating. Especially after what happened to Bob.

 

I know I grew up with Clippy in college and later in my first tech support job. People either thought Clippy was great, or like me, that it was the bane of existence and that it needed to burn in hell. Either way, Clippy is back for a new generation, for better or for worse.

The Quiet Fall Of Paris

Black conservative pundit Paris Dennard has been through quite the journey as Trump's "Black voice" in America. After getting fired from CNN in 2018 over sexual misconduct allegations while he was among the faculty as Arizona State University, Dennard remained Trump's loudest Black supporter, joining the RNC in 2020 as national spokesman and Black affairs director.

Thing is, when you're Black and work for racist assholes, eventually you outlive your usefulness.

 

The Republican National Committee has fired Paris Dennard as its national spokesman, according to two people familiar with the move.

Dennard had been serving as a national spokesman and director of Black media affairs for the committee. He started working for the RNC in March 2020.

“Paris Dennard no longer works for the RNC. We don’t comment on personnel matters,” RNC chief of staff Mike Reed said in a statement.

One person familiar with the firing said it took place earlier this week. Dennard did not respond to a request for comment.

Dennard, a veteran of the George W. Bush White House, was a high-profile on-air surrogate for former President Donald Trump. Dennard served on Trump’s commission on White House Fellowships, and during the 2020 campaign he was on the advisory board of Black Voices for Trump, an initiative aimed at helping the former president expand his share of the Black vote.

 

You'd think Dennard would have been a vital tool for Trump right now, as far as coordinating his message through the RNC with campaign season underway, and with the message to Black voters that if Trump can be "targeted by the FBI" then we certainly have a lot to worry about.

 

But the message I'm seeing is Dennard got tossed out like the trash, no reason given, and a passing mention in Politico is all that stands as memorial to him even being employed by the RNC for two years.

There's a lesson here for those who choose to learn it.

.

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

Ohio Republicans sure like their white supremacist domestic terrorism to be plainly visible, so that their symbolism of hatred can be used as both a weapon and a rallying cry.

Two Ohio Republicans want to make it illegal for landlords, homeowner associations and others to ban the flying of "thin blue line" flags after the father of a fallen officer was told to take his down.

House Bill 712, introduced by Reps. Tim Ginter, R-Salem, and Kevin Miller, R-Newark, would add thin blue line flags to the list of flags Ohio prohibits landlords, mobile home park operators, and HOAs from prohibiting. The flags on the current list are the U.S., State of Ohio, service flags belonging to "the immediate family of an individual serving in the armed forces," those honoring prisoners of war and those missing in action.

"For me, it’s about public safety," Miller said. "It’s for those that serve us on a daily basis."

But an HOA in Miller's district saw things differently.

Tom DiSario, the father of Kirkersville Police Chief Steven "Eric" DiSario, told The Newark Advocate in May that his homeowner's association sent him a letter saying his "political sign in the form of a flag" violated neighborhood deed restrictions.

"To be honest, when I saw the letter that people are fighting me over something very valuable to me and personal, I broke down and cried," Tom DiSario said. "That's how much it meant to me."

His son was killed five years ago while responding to a shooting at a nursing home, and he told The Newark Advocate that he sees the black and white American flag with a bright blue stripe as a way to honor his son's sacrifice and those made by other officers across the country.

But the flag has also become controversially associated with white supremacy movements and those who opposed policing reforms. In 2021, University of Wisconsin-Madison's police chief banned officers from displaying the flag while on duty, saying the flag had been "co-opted" by people who perpetuated "hateful ideologies."

Miller, who retired from the Ohio State Highway Patrol when he joined the legislature, said that's not how he sees the thin blue line flags.

"The police protect everybody; Whatever race, whatever nationally, whatever creed," he said.

Sure. They'll protect you. They may have to kill your Black ass in order to do it, but they will protect Ohio, dammit.

Look, I can understand flying a POW-MIA or military flag if you served and the state protecting your right to do it. But there's no positive meaning in the "blue line" flag. It's a deliberate perversion of the American flag, one that puts the police above the rest of the American people, enshrining their right to treat the rest of us as an opposing force that they occasionally have to put a few bullets in to control us.

And it is definitely a symbol of white supremacist hatred and police fascism in Ohio.

In Columbus, embrace of the thin blue line flag by CPD led local attorney Nick Pasquarello to register a complaint with the department in October 2020 after he photographed the flag on display in the window at the substation located at 950 E. Main St. Though Pasquarello, who also worked as a legal observer during last summer’s Black lives matter protests, said he directed his complaint at all instances in which CPD officers displayed the thin blue line flag, when he received a letter earlier this month rendering judgment, it addressed only the flag in the window at the substation in dismissing his claim.

Replying to an interview request from Alive to discuss how CPD views the thin blue line flag, spokesman James Fuqua wrote, “I’m not sure we would be able to comment on a theoretical symbol,” adding, “There is no specific department stance on it.” Asked if not having a specific department stance on the symbol could be interpreted as a tacit endorsement of the flag, since it continues to be displayed by CPD officers, Fuqua wrote, “I must state again that we cannot comment on something that is theory based with no factual background to support it.” Fuqua did not respond to a third email sent in follow-up.

“At some point, there has to be some messaging out that bridges the gap between the police and the community, and the silence [from CPD] on it is worse than saying almost anything at all, whether you say you agree with [critics of the flag], or you say, ‘We’re going to fly this no matter what,’” said Anthony Wilson, who added that he continues to honor law enforcement by lighting his front porch with a blue bulb even as he refuses to fly the thin blue line flag. “I’m going to keep saying this, but you have to find ways to bring people together, because that’s the only way police are going to be truly successful, is to be in real partnership with the community. And the only way you’re going to see a reduction in crime is for the community to be in real partnership with police. So when you have a symbol that has become so divisive, that creates such a gulf, a divide in the community, my hope is the Powers That Be see that and say, ‘Hey, is this something we maybe need to rethink?’”

More recently, the symbol has even spread outside of CPD, with Attorney General Yost making a social media post featuring a photo of the thin blue line flag, which drew a range of critical responses on both Twitter and Facebook. “This flag is not some Rorschach test upon which every person gets to project some imagined meaning,” Yost said in an emailed statement to Alive in which he described the flag as one that “honors those who have died in the line of duty on behalf of the community.” “I embrace both the voices that honor police and those who call for accountability and racial justice — and I reject those who draw their identity from further dividing us.”

“What [Yost’s social media post] shows is just how embedded systemic racism is, because that’s really what we’re talking about,” said attorney Sean Walton. “What we’re talking about is a movement for racial justice, and a movement to put an end to constitutional violations that seem to occur disproportionately against communities of color. And so in pushing for a movement toward simple rights, toward fairness and equity, we again have public officials, elected officials and people who represent systems of government speaking out in opposition to justice. … It shows how intertwined these systems are, and how much of an uphill battle social justice is going to be.”

Both Walton and Jones acknowledged that barring CPD officers from publicly displaying the thin blue line flag wouldn’t solve the larger issues with policing, but both positioned it as an important step in beginning efforts to improve police-community relations.

“Banning the thin blue line flag is low-hanging fruit,” said Jones, who would also like to see CPD address its use-of-force policies, along with providing officers additional training on de-escalation without lethal use of force. “Banning the flag is not going to repair all of the issues in the Columbus Division of Police. It’s not going to completely repair trust, or enhance respect. But what it could do is remove a barrier to engaging in the community. Because people see that flag and they will pause. And it can deter them from even wanting to interact with the police.”

Along with dropping the thin blue line flag, Walton said he would like to see police departments begin to challenge and eradicate the mindset that has helped give rise to the symbol, one in which police view themselves as engaged in a perpetual battle against a community of which they should be a part.

“But they’re making it clear they’re not a part of the community, that they are their own separate entity. And you have to change that culture. You have to change that us-against-them mentality,” said Walton, who saw this mindset on view during the Black lives matter protests that unfolded in the city last summer, where police responded to protesters with such force that a federal judge recently described officers as having “run amok” in a decision restricting future police use of force against peaceful demonstrators. “And part of doing that is making commitments like banning the thin blue line imagery. But then it’s also really challenging that culture and digging into it, because we're not going to get the change that we seek unless officers understand that it's not us against them. We're all in this together.”

 

But now, Ohio Republicans want to make it illegal to ban a symbol of hatred.

 

This is being done for a reason folks.

 

None of those reasons are good ones.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump's camp demanded the release of the affidavit supporting the search warrant served at his Florida resort earlier this month, and a judge agreed to a heavily redacted version of the document being made public. I don't know what Trump was thinking however, because the document absolutely shows that he was an unprecedented national security threat to the nation.

Federal investigators obtained a search warrant for former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate earlier this month by pointing to a raft of highly classified material they’d already obtained from there, according to a legal affidavit unsealed Friday.

Records the FBI obtained from Trump’s Florida home in advance of the Aug. 8 search bore indications they contained human source intelligence, intercepts under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and signals intelligence, as well as other tags indicating high sensitivity. Several of those tightly-controlled documents contained Trump’s “handwritten notes,” the partially-redacted affidavit detailing the Justice Department investigation says.

In those boxes, agents found 184 unique documents, 25 of which were marked “top secret,” 92 of which were marked “secret,” and 67 of which were marked “confidential”–the lowest level of national security classification. According to the affidavit, NARA officials found some of those “highly classified records were unfoldered, intermixed with other records, and otherwise unproperly [sic] identified.”

Prosecutors also added in another court filing unsealed Friday that the ongoing criminal probe into government records stashed at Trump’s Florida home has involved “a significant number of civilian witnesses” whose safety could be jeopardized if their identities were revealed.

The court filings unsealed Friday also revealed that the magistrate judge who issued the warrant for the search of Trump’s residence received legal arguments from Trump’s attorneys before doing so.

Those arguments came in the form of a three-page, May 25 letter from Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran. In the letter, Corcoran sought to discourage the Justice Department from proceeding with a criminal investigation or potential criminal charges over the presence of classified records at Mar-a-Lago.

“Public trust in the government is low. At such times, adherence to the rules and long-standing policies is essential,” Corcoran wrote. “President Donald J. Trump is a leader of the Republican Party. The Department of Justice (DOJ), as part of the Executive Branch, is under the control of a President from the opposite party. It is critical, given that dynamic, that every effort is made to ensure that actions by DOJ that may touch upon the former President, or his close associates, do not involve Politics.”

Notably, the letter came before a June 3 meeting between Trump, his attorneys and DOJ officials at Mar-a-Lago, where the department’s counterintelligence chief Jay Bratt and FBI agents viewed parts of the premises. Trump has repeatedly described his interactions with DOJ as cordial, with aides noting that he shook hands with Bratt during the meeting. But those accounts didn’t mention the heightened tensions reflected in Corcoran’s letter.

Similarly, Trump has described that DOJ asked him to install a lock on his storage facility after the June 3 meeting. But DOJ revealed in the affidavit that this request was delivered with far more alarm than Trump conveyed.

“As I previously indicated to you, Mar-a-Lago does not include a secure location authorized for the storage of classified information,” DOJ wrote in a letter to Corcoran at the time. “As such, it appears that since the time classified documents [redacted] were removed from the secure facilities at the White House and moved to Mar-a-Lago on or around January 20, 2021, they have not been handled in an appropriate manner or stored in an appropriate location.”

Corcoran, in his May 25 letter, also argued that presidents have “absolute authority” to declassify documents, although he did not explicitly say that Trump had done so.

Some Trump allies have asserted that he explicitly or implicitly declassified materials by taking them from the Oval Office to the White House residence or other locations, though no evidence has emerged of a formal declassification order.

Indeed, the affidavit unsealed Friday contains a reference to former Trump adviser Kash Patel — one of Trump’s authorized representatives to the National Archives — claiming in a Breitbart News article that Trump had declassified many of the records at issue.

In a post on his social media site, Trump lashed out shortly after the affidavit was unsealed, complaining of heavy redactions and noting that the word “nuclear” wasn’t mentioned despite reports that documents related to America’s nuclear secrets were among the cache held at Mar-a-Lago. Trump, notably, didn’t say whether or not such documents were in fact among them, only that there was no reference to them.

 

Trump believes that he's won this round too. "See, there's nothing about nuclear secrets in that affidavit! The lying press was giving you FAKE NEWS!" That the documents were stolen by Trump of course isn't the fight Trump's having in the press. He'll shrug this off too. He's been doing it for years now.

Then his supporters in the press will move the goalposts again, and we'll fight this battle again next week, where Trump will invent a battle out of whole cloth and win it too.

 

He'll keep winning those battles that he's allowed to frame, too.

 

Right up until he's indicted and loses everything.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Biden kicked off his midterm campaign schedule this week in Maryland after delivering on his promise to help millions of Americans deal with student loan debt. Gone was bipartisan fetishization Biden, and out came Dark Brandon.

President Biden on Thursday night launched a push toward the midterm elections with a fiery speech in Rockville, Md., in which he cast the Republican Party as one that was dangerously consumed with anti-democratic forces that had turned toward “semi-fascism.”

It was some of the strongest language used by Biden, a politician long known — and at times criticized for — his willingness to work with members of the opposite party.

“The MAGA Republicans don’t just threaten our personal rights and economic security,” Biden said, referencing former president Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again slogan. “They’re a threat to our very democracy. They refuse to accept the will of the people. They embrace — embrace — political violence. They don’t believe in democracy.”

“This is why in this moment, those of you who love this country — Democrats, independents, mainstream Republicans — we must be stronger,” he added.

As if on cue, the rally was interrupted by a heckler yelling, “You stole the election!” The crowd booed as the man was escorted out, holding his two fingers up like President Richard M. Nixon and taking a brief bow.

Earlier in the evening, speaking at a reception that helped raise $1 million for Democratic campaigns, Biden more pointedly raised concerns about American democracy and the Republicans he views as a threat.

“What we’re seeing now is either the beginning or the death knell of an extreme MAGA philosophy,” Biden said. “It’s not just Trump, it’s the entire philosophy that underpins the — I’m going to say something — it’s like semi-fascism.”

Bringing up Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and his frequent interactions with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Biden also criticized his predecessor for weakening the United States on the global stage.

“I underestimated how much damage the previous four years had done in terms of America’s reputation in the world,” the president said.

The rhetoric was an escalation for Biden and an indication that he views the threat as greater than just Trump and an ideology that shows little sign of abating. It marked a transition as well, as the president turned more pointedly toward the midterm elections and attempted not only to tout his own record but to create a sharper contrast with the opposing party.

“I want to be crystal-clear about what’s on the ballot this year,” he said near the start of his remarks, during which he removed his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. “Your right to choose is on the ballot this year. The Social Security you paid for from the time you had a job is on the ballot. The safety of our kids from gun violence is on the ballot.”

“The very survival of our planet is on the ballot,” he added. “Your right to vote is on the ballot. Even democracy. Are you ready to fight for these things now?”

 

Turns out the Biden I voted for in both the primary and in the general was Dark Brandon all along, and the Village Denizens are having collective strokes over him.

Much, much more of this, please.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

We are nothing but sport to be hunted and killed by California cops.

The day after Torrance police shot Christopher DeAndre Mitchell in 2018, his mother and a dozen of his loved ones staged a protest outside the department’s headquarters.

At the same time, a group of officers — including the two who had killed Mitchell — were discussing the situation via text message.

“Was going to tell you all those [N-word] family members are all pissed off in front of the station,” one wrote, according to court documents recently reviewed by The Times.

Court records show the officers later mused about what might happen once the identities of those who shot the 23-year-old became public.

“Gun cleaning Party at my house when they release my name??” one asked.

Yes absolutely let’s all just post in your yard with lawn chairs in a [firing] squad,” another replied.

Eight months ago, a Los Angeles Times investigation revealed portions of racist and homophobic text messages exchanged by at least a dozen Torrance police officers, a scandal that sparked an investigation by the California attorney general’s office.

Criminal cases in which the officers were involved continue to be dismissed, and at least one man has been released from prison. Lawsuits filed against officers involved have already cost Torrance more than $10 million. Still, most of the officers implicated remain employed by the city.

The state attorney general’s office filed a subpoena in May for thousands of pages of Torrance police records, but officials have declined to provide updates on the state investigation. Despite critics’ calls for a civilian board to oversee the Police Department — as Los Angeles has — there’s little evidence that Torrance officials have taken tangible steps toward reform since the scandal exploded.

And earlier this year, another trove of offensive texts came to light.

In response to a court filing from officers implicated in the scandal, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office submitted an exhibit containing all 390 “anti-Semitic, racist, homophobic or transphobic remarks” allegedly made by the officers between 2018 and 2020. The documents, which were heavily redacted, included the comments about Mitchell’s loved ones and contained racist cartoons of Black and Latino residents as well as remarks about lynching suspects and killing Black children.

Officers have long been trying to suppress evidence of the texts, which were found last year shortly before prosecutors charged former Torrance police officers Christopher Tomsic and Cody Weldin with spray-painting a swastika inside a car.

A search warrant executed as part of that case found Tomsic, Weldin and at least 15 other officers had been exchanging racist, violent and homophobic messages for years, court records show. The officers’ attorneys argued the search went way beyond the scope of the criminal investigation, so most of the texts should be barred from use in prosecutions or internal disciplinary hearings.

Ironically, it was that move to suppress the texts that made them available, after the district attorney’s office filed its report on the messages in court.

 

Racist cops cost taxpayer billions in lawsuits and kill thousands every year, and yet we continue to put up with these state-sanctioned murder gangs.

We should do much, much less of that.

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

A Major Case Of Diary Mens Rea

The Florida couple that stole Ashley Biden's diary to use as opposition research against her father Joe Biden in 2020 have plead guilty to a federal charge of interstate trafficking in stolen goods.

 

Two Florida residents pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring to trafficking in stolen goods for selling a diary and other personal effects of President Joe Biden’s daughter Ashley Biden, the Justice Department said.

The criminal charges are the first to emerge from a federal investigation into how, prior to the 2020 presidential election, the journal reached the conservative video outlet, Project Veritas. The group has said it paid for rights to the publish the diary, but never did so because it couldn’t authenticate it. Contents from the diary later emerged on a more obscure right-wing site.

Last November, the FBI carried out search warrants at the home of the founder of Project Veritas, James O’Keefe, and two of his colleagues, in connection with the investigation. None of those individuals have been charged, but O’Keefe has denounced the raids as an attack on press freedom.

In a Manhattan federal court hearing Thursday, Aimee Harris, 40, of Palm Beach and Jonathan Kurlander, 58, of Jupiter each pleaded guilty to a single conspiracy charge stemming from their involvement in selling the journal, the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan said in a statement.

“Harris and Kurlander stole personal property from an immediate family member of a candidate for national political office,” Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, said in a statement. “They sold the property to an organization in New York for $40,000 and even returned to take more of the victim’s property when asked to do so. Harris and Kurlander sought to profit from their theft of another person’s personal property, and they now stand convicted of a federal felony as a result.”

Both defendants pleaded guilty as part of agreements with prosecutors. Kurlander has agreed to cooperate with investigators as part of his deal, Williams’ office said. Details of the plea agreement were not immediately available. Each defendant faces a maximum possible sentence of five years in prison, but defendants are typically sentenced under federal guidelines that usually call for a sentence well below the maximum.

A White House spokesperson referred a request for comment on the charges to the Justice Department. A lawyer for Ashley Biden did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the developments.

 

And while O'Keefe and his merry miscreants at Project Veritas continue to scream about "jounalistic protections" keep in mind that it's not the Biden administration or liberals who want to get rid of those protections.

No, that would be Justice Clarence Thomas and the conservatives on the Roberts Court.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Hair Trumpenfuror wants Mitch McConnell put out to pasture again, but given the half-dozen other times he's called for McConnell's ouster, I really don't think anyone cares.

Former President Trump on Wednesday called on Republicans to boot Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) from his post as Senate minority leader, accusing the senator of being a “pawn for the Democrats.”

In a statement, Trump cited a Wednesday story from The Federalist about McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao’s alleged ties to China in calling for the senator’s ouster from his longtime leadership post.

“Mitch McConnell is not an Opposition Leader, he is a pawn for the Democrats to get whatever they want,” Trump said in his statement. “He is afraid of them, and will not do what has to be done. A new Republican Leader in the Senate should be picked immediately!”

Trump has feuded with McConnell, who he has dubbed “Old Crow,” since the Senate leader denounced the former president in Congress for his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Over the weekend, the former president slammed McConnell for making remarks last week about “candidate quality,” in a reference to Republicans running for Senate, a number of whom were hand-picked by Trump. McConnell has said the race for Senate control in November will be close.

Trump also took a dig at Chao, his former Transportation secretary who resigned from office one day after the Jan. 6 attack, calling her McConnell’s “crazy wife.” In Wednesday’s message, he called her “Coco.”

Last year, Trump also called for Republicans to select a new Senate leader to boost the party’s chances of retaking Congress in 2022.

 

Honestly, McConnell's successfully evil manipulations of federal judiciary nominations during the Trump regime and brazen denial of Merrick Garland's SCOTUS seat are among reasons why the GOP want to keep Mitch in charge. The rest of the Senate GOP are...well...Ted Cruz? Marco Rubio? Nobody actually wants the job.

 

As much as I'd love to see a dipstick like Joni Ernst or Tommy Tuberville get the post and crash into the ground like a Yeager-era USAF test jet with missing bolts, he's not going anywhere, no matter how angry Trump gets at him.

 

You know, unless the underworld comes a-callin' for him.

Last Call For Lowering The Barr, Con't

To my absolute surprise, the Justice Department agreed to the court-ordered release of the Barr memo on the Mueller Report, the document explaining the reasoning behind why former Trump AG Bill Barr refused to act on the Mueller Report's conclusions.

The Justice Department has released a long-sought legal memo arguing that then-President Donald Trump’s actions during special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation did not warrant prosecution for obstruction of justice, even if a president was susceptible to criminal charges while in office.

In the nine-page memo disclosed Wednesday, two of the most senior officials in the Justice Department advised then-Attorney General William Barr that Trump’s threats to fire Mueller and his various public and private outbursts against witnesses he viewed as hostile or unhelpful to him didn’t amount to the sort of case prosecutors would bring under their established standards.

“Having reviewed the Report in light of the governing legal principles, and the Principles of Federal Prosecution, we conclude that none of those instances would warrant a prosecution for obstruction of justice, without regard to the constitutional constraint on bringing such an action against a sitting president,” the assistant attorney general for the Office of Legal Counsel, Steven Engel, and Principal Associate Deputy Attorney General Edward O’Callaghan wrote in the March 24, 2019, memo.

The Justice Department fought release of the memo for years, arguing that it was part of a deliberative process advising Barr on what to do in response to Mueller’s report. However, judges concluded that at the time the memo was written, Barr had already decided not to charge Trump, so the issues hashed out in the memo were theoretical and not linked to any pending decision.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a liberal watchdog group, filed suit under the Freedom of Information Act three years ago in an effort to make the memo public.

The Justice Department lost the first round in the access case in front of a District Court judge, who ruled that the agency’s claims that the memo was part of some kind of charging decision was “disingenuous” because that decision had already been made.

On appeal, department lawyers changed course and argued that the memo helped shape the public statements Barr would give to explain why he concluded the evidence was insufficient to support a criminal charge — even if Trump were not president.

However, a D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ruled last week that argument about the memo being part of deliberations around a communications effort was surfaced too belatedly to be considered.

The Justice Department had the option to ask the full bench of the D.C. Circuit to rehear the case or to seek review at the Supreme Court, but officials indicated Wednesday that they’d decided to pass up those options.

In the memo that triggered the disclosure fight, Engel and O’Callaghan concluded that Trump’s conduct primarily reflected a frustration with the Mueller probe and what he perceived to be the politics behind it, as well as news reports they said Trump genuinely believed were flawed. They also suggested that Trump’s exhortations to some of his top allies against “flipping” were meant to prevent them from delivering false testimony — not to conceal the truth.

The officials repeatedly underscored that Mueller had not found sufficient evidence to charge any underlying crime, which they said weighed against the possibility that Trump had violated the obstruction statutes.

“In the absence of an underlying offense, the most compelling inference in evaluating the President’s conduct is that he reasonably believed that the Special Counsel’s investigation was interfering with his governing agenda,” Engel and O’Callaghan wrote.

Engel would later become a key point of resistance to Trump’s effort to use the Justice Department to help subvert the 2020 election. Engel was one of three Trump-era Justice Department witnesses to testify at a public hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee and discussed his threat to resign, along with other top department officials, if Trump had gone through with a plan to replace the department’s leadership with figures who would support his attempts to stay in power.

 

Engel of course testified before the January 6th Committee publicly in June.

Engel was a key witness at a pivotal meeting on Jan. 3, 2021, at the White House where Trump held a reality TV-show style contest over whether to fire acting attorney general Jeffery Rosen and install someone more amenable to run the Justice Department to support his election fraud claims. Rosen replaced former Attorney General William Barr.

The Senate Judiciary Committee, in an earlier investigation, found Engel told Trump at the meeting that he and other top officials would resign if he fired Rosen.

Some context: In a series of emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee earlier this month, Richard Donoghue, the former deputy attorney general, told Engel that he wanted to meet with him "about some antics that could potentially end up on your radar," signaling there was at least some concern that the Office of Legal Counsel would have to weigh in on potential issues.

The emails also included correspondence with Jeffery Clark, a Justice Department lawyer who tried to convince Trump to remove Rosen and use the DOJ to undo Georgia's election results, which The New York Times reported in January. In the Jan. 1 email, Meadows asked Rosen to have Clark look into the alleged signature issues in Georgia, ahead of a meeting on Jan. 3 in which Trump heard directly from Clark and Rosen before ultimately choosing not to remove Rosen.

 

Given Engel's cooperation with the Committee, for the DoJ to continue to protect the memo Engels wrote declaring that Trump committed no criminal activity as "internal deliberation material" was both legally and morally indefensible.

We'll see.

California's Emissions Mission

California environmental regulators are expected to put into place new vehicle rules that would reduce the sales of gasoline-powered vehicles in the state over the next decade and end sales completely by 2035.

California is expected to put into effect on Thursday its sweeping plan to prohibit the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035, a groundbreaking move that could have major effects on the effort to fight climate change and accelerate a global transition toward electric vehicles.

“This is huge,” said Margo Oge, an electric vehicles expert who headed the Environmental Protection Agency’s transportation emissions program under Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama. “California will now be the only government in the world that mandates zero-emission vehicles. It is unique.”

The rule, issued by the California Air Resources Board, will require that 100 percent of all new cars sold in the state by 2035 be free of the fossil fuel emissions chiefly responsible for warming the planet, up from 12 percent today. It sets interim targets requiring that 35 percent of new passenger vehicles sold in the state by 2026 produce zero emissions. That would climb to 68 percent by 2030.

The restrictions are important because not only is California the largest auto market in the United States, but more than a dozen other states typically follow California’s lead when setting their own auto emissions standards.

“The climate crisis is solvable if we focus on the big, bold steps necessary to stem the tide of carbon pollution,” Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, said in a statement.

California’s action comes on top of an expansive new climate law that President Biden signed last week. The law will invest $370 billion in spending and tax credits on clean energy programs, the largest action ever taken by the federal government to combat climate change. Enactment of that law is projected to help the United States cut its emissions 40 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade. Still, it will not be enough to eliminate U.S. emissions by 2050, the target that climate scientists say all major economies must reach if the world is to avert the most catastrophic and deadly impacts of climate change.

To help close the gap, White House officials have vowed to couple the bill with new regulations, including on automobile tailpipe emissions. They have also said that reducing emissions enough to stay in line with the science also will require aggressive state policies.

Experts said the new California rule, in both its stringency and reach, could stand alongside the Washington law as one of the world’s most important climate change policies, and could help take another significant bite out of the nation’s emissions of carbon dioxide. The new rule is also expected to influence new policies in Washington and around the world to promote electric vehicles and cut auto pollution.

At least 12 other states could potentially adopt the new California zero-emissions vehicle mandate relatively soon; another five states, which follow California’s broader vehicle pollution reduction program, are expected to adopt the rule in a year or so. If those states follow through, the restrictions on gasoline-vehicle sales would apply to about one-third of the United States’ auto market.

That would have a major effect on addressing climate change, since emissions from gasoline-powered vehicles are the nation’s top source of planet-warming greenhouse-gas pollution.

John Bozzella, president of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, which represents large U.S. and foreign automakers, said California’s new electric vehicle sale mandates would be “extremely challenging” to meet. “Whether or not these requirements are realistic or achievable is directly linked to external factors like inflation, charging and fuel infrastructure, supply chains, labor, critical mineral availability and pricing, and the ongoing semiconductor shortage,” Mr. Bozzella said by email.

He said automakers wanted to see more electric vehicles on the roads, but called on the state and the federal government to do more to address issues such as the ability to mine critical minerals like lithium and cobalt in the United States, the affordability of electric vehicles and equitable access to fast charging.

The governments of Canada, Britain and at least nine other European countries — including France, Spain and Denmark — have set goals of phasing out the sale of new gasoline-powered vehicles between 2030 and 2040. But none have concrete mandates or regulations like the California rule.

“This regulation will set the global high-water mark for the accelerated transition to electric vehicles,” said Drew Kodjak, executive director of the International Council on Clean Transportation, a research organization.

 

A reminder then that California is now the fifth largest economy on planet Earth, behind the rest of the US, China, Japan, and Germany. This is a monumental environmental move, and considering a third of America would follow suit, the effects of this would effectively be the end of gas-powered cars and trucks in one-third to one-half of the country.

Sadly, I expect Texas to ban electric vehicles of all types and actually force people to drive coal-burning monster trucks.

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

It was a big night for primaries in New York and Florida, and Dems scored a major upset in NY-19's special election as Democrat Pat Ryan got the win, and it was because of the death of Roe.

 

Pat Ryan, a Democratic county executive in New York’s Hudson Valley, has won a special House election on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press, in a contest that was seen as a potential test of the impact that the recent Supreme Court decision on abortion might have on the midterm elections.

The result in the closely watched race, which was considered a tossup, will keep the swing-district seat, formerly held by Lt. Gov. Antonio Delgado, under Democratic control.

Mr. Ryan was able to keep his early lead, ultimately winning 52 percent of the vote to Mr. Molinaro’s 48 percent, with nearly 95 percent of votes cast.

Mr. Ryan sought to highlight abortion as the predominant issue in his campaign and contrast his support for protecting abortion access nationwide with the position of his Republican opponent, Marc Molinaro, who believes that the decision ought to rest with states.

In speeches and campaign ads, Mr. Ryan, the Ulster County executive and a combat veteran, urged voters in the 19th District to see the election as a crucial opportunity to send a message decrying attacks on abortion access, voting rights and, more broadly, democratic principles.

“Choice was on the ballot. Freedom was on the ballot, and tonight choice and freedom won,” Mr. Ryan said on Twitter early Wednesday. “We voted like our democracy was on the line because it is.”

Though polls show that a majority of voters support some access to abortion, Democrats have been wrestling with how best to translate that into support for the party.

Mr. Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive, largely avoided the topic of abortion, focusing instead on day-to-day voter anxieties, from crime and inflation to the price of baby formula.

 

Molinaro, the Republican, should have won. All the polling showed that he was going to. "Voters don't care about abortion, they care about inflation!"

He lost though, because voters do care.

Vote like your country depends on it.

Last Call For Ridin' With Biden: Loan Arranger Edition

President Joe Biden continues to help average Americans struggling with debt, in this case, onerous student loans for those who can least afford paying them back.

President Biden will announce a decision on Wednesday about his plans for student loan debt relief, a highly anticipated moment that could affect about 45 million borrowers nationwide, according to people familiar with the matter.

Although details of the plan were still being finalized, White House aides have said Mr. Biden was weighing a targeted plan that would provide $10,000 of debt relief for borrowers who make below a certain level of income.

Mr. Biden also is expected to extend a pause on loan payments for all borrowers, a Trump-era program that has been in effect since the start of the pandemic

The federal government, the main lender for Americans who borrow to fund their higher education, holds $1.6 trillion in student debt. Mr. Biden has faced calls throughout his presidency to cancel a chunk of it, driven by borrowers and the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. He backed the idea of some relief on the campaign trail in 2020, saying: “I’m going to make sure that everybody in this generation gets $10,000 knocked off of their student debt as we try to get out of this godawful pandemic.”

But White House aides say the president has agonized over the decision, questioning whether cancellation should apply to students of both public and private universities and saying he does not want the relief to apply to those earning high incomes.

The decision will add fuel to debates raging in Washington — and within the Democratic Party — about economic fairness and the potential to exacerbate an inflation rate that has reached a 40-year high.

Mr. Biden had promised a decision by the end of the month, but he is expected to return to the White House on Wednesday from Delaware, where he is on vacation with his family.

“The president will have more to say on this before Aug. 31,” said Abdullah Hasan, a White House spokesman. “No one with a federally-held loan has had to pay a single dime in student loans since President Biden took office.”

Mr. Hasan also noted that the Biden administration has “already canceled about $32 billion in debt for more than 1.6 million Americans,” a reference to actions to revive and expand targeted relief programs that had all but stopped functioning during the Trump administration.

 

And while this would cancel as much as $450 billion in debt, I don't see how this will survive the Roberts Court. Not that it's actually unconstitutional, it's just that the Roberts Court will deem it so. Expect this to get tied up in the courts immediately before the executive order can take effect, only Congress has the power, etc.

This is a good plan, but don't expect Biden the Loan Arranger to be ridin' for long at all on this horse. Republicans are going to put a storm of lead into the ol' gal.

We'll see. If you get the chance to take advantage of the program before it's blocked by the GOP, do it.