Another Supreme Disaster, Con't

While the Roberts Court has destroyed womens' rights, climate change regulations, gun safety laws and a whole hell of a lot of other things in the last year, a case on the 2023 docket could end up impoverishing tens of millions of Americans, put an end to welfare and SNAP and all but destroy the Medicaid social safety net.

 

There’s a sleeper case on the Supreme Court’s docket that could blow a gaping hole in the social safety net and give states leeway to neglect or end care for tens of millions of the most vulnerable Americans.

“This case is to Medicaid what Dobbs was to abortion,” Sara Rosenbaum, professor of health law and policy at George Washington University’s school of public health, told TPM.

And it’s not just Medicaid, though the program enrolling nearly 90 million Americans is the biggest one at risk. This case could leave all of those who depend on federally funded, state-administered programs — think SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) or WIC, which helps low-income pregnant women and mothers with young children buy food — without any recourse, should states stop providing the benefits they’re required to give.

The echoes of Dobbs are eerie.

Here too, the Court’s decision to take up the case surprised and alarmed experts in equal measure. There was no circuit court split, no raging lower court controversy to settle. It was a fairly run-of-the-mill case, not unlike hundreds that had come before. A county in a red state, eyeing the right-wing composition of the Court, calculated that the time was ripe to lodge a bigger ask, to use a pedestrian vehicle to do away with a broader right it opposes. And the justices quietly took it up — dragging behind them a paper trail peppered with their inclination to overturn 50 years of precedent.

The case comes from a nursing home run by a municipal corporation owned by Marion County, Indiana. That’s key: while many nursing homes are privately owned, this one is state-run.

The family of a patient who was suffering from dementia alleges that he was given a slew of unnecessary medications and improperly transferred to different facilities hours away. So they sued, arguing that his treatment violated the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, which establishes the rights of residents of nursing homes that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding.

But the case, Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County, Indiana v. Talevski, quickly became much bigger than the allegedly poor treatment of the late Gorgi Talevski.

The county-run corporation, sensing an opportunity, tacked on a bigger ask than the initial dispute over nursing home protections. It asked the Supreme Court to reexamine and nix altogether the pathway that people participating in these federal spending programs can use to sue when their rights are violated.

If the Supreme Court’s conservative majority bites, experts warn, it could have implications far beyond nursing homes.

If a state decided to, say, keep pocketing Medicaid funding but to abruptly stop providing coverage without any due process, those neglected beneficiaries would have recourse. They could sue in federal court under Section 1983, part of a civil rights statute passed in 1871. At the time, it was enacted as a federal remedy against officials who terrorized newly freed slaves under the color of state law. It remains a critical pathway for enforcing constitutional rights, and is frequently used in cases of police brutality.

A century after its passage, Section 1983 protections were interpreted to apply to rights under laws too — not just constitutional ones. In the next two decades, a body of court cases squarely applied it to Medicaid.

“For 50 years now, the Supreme Court has recognized that people can sue under 1983 if their rights are violated under federal law, including spending clause statutes like Medicaid or food stamps,” Tim Jost, professor of law, emeritus, at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, told TPM. “This goes back even beyond Roe.”

“The way the state is arguing Talevski is that 1983 rights of action should not be available in any spending program … well, that’s our social safety net!” Nicole Huberfeld, professor of health law, ethics and human rights at Boston University’s school of public health, told TPM.

 

In other words, if this case goes as badly as I think it might, states would be able to stop providing any federal social and health programs, but still take every dime of funding.  They wouldn't have to replace it with anything.

Red states could simply eliminate Medicaid and unemployment insurance, SNAP and WIC, Head Start and CHIP. Hell, maybe even federal programs, period. They would be able to keep every dime, and they wouldn't have to spend it on anything.

 

Imagine a state like Mississippi being able to opt out of not just Medicare regulations, but federal education, transportation, and environmental regulations, while taking billions in federal school, road, and climate change money. Imagine them doing that with federal prison money, police money, and water and power money.

 

All hoarded, the poorest left with absolutely nothing.

 

It would destroy tens of millions of lives.  

Get ready. This one will be the battle of next year.

The Big Lie, Local Edition

Here in Kentucky, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams is under heavy fire for not being part of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

 

Months ahead of the midterm election in Kentucky, Secretary of State Michael Adams continues to find himself combating election conspiracy fallout from the 2020 election and the primary in May.

That is some of what he shared with an audience Wednesday as guest speaker at Paducah Rotary Club's weekly meeting at the Carson Center.

Over recent weeks, Adams has been vocal on social media to shut down false claims of violations to voter integrity in Kentucky.

"I am really concerned about these conspiracy theorists making it harder for us to get poll workers. I don't want poll workers to feel like they're having to sit there, it's a long day as it is, and then have angry people come up and accuse them of fraud. It's ridiculous," Adams said.

Adams himself has been the target of baseless claims accusing him of overseeing voter fraud. Just last week he reported another death threat he had received to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Adams also voiced concern at an up-tick in demands for a recount following an election.

"What I don't want to have is abusive process for people who lost by a landslides demand recounts. Recounts are far more demanding on our county clerks and our election officials. They put a great strain on our process. They mean that we can't use the machines for voting because they're locked down. We've had five county clerks in the state resign in the last month alone, because, it's not just one thing, but in part it's the abuse they're getting from people and the absurd demands that they're getting from people," Adams said.

He said one of the ways he can thwart disinformation about alleged election irregularities is by traveling the state and talking with people one on one.

"All I can do is handle Kentucky. All I can do is talk to Kentuckians about what Kentucky does right. We've got a great record. We've made enormous strides improving our process that last few years making it more accessible, making it more secure, banning practices that have led to fraud in our state and other states, requiring an ID to vote, but also expanding access for our voters so they can go vote more easily. Not just having one arbitrary day but multiple days to pick to go vote," Adams said.

 

Which is true. 

Despite the famous quote attributed to Mark Twain about "When the end of the world comes, I'd rather be in Kentucky because it's 20 years behind" (which, by the way, Twain never actually said) it really does seem like the Commonwealth really is 20 years behind, back in the 2002 era of merely evil, greedy Republicans like McConnell instead of the full-on fascist election deniers like we're seeing in several other Secretary of State races in 2022.

To his credit, Adams is merely an evil, enabling Republican in a state where Republicans win by 15-20 points.

But I expect Adams is going to face a fierce primary challenge from a Trumpian election denier next year.

And as far as 2022 elections go, well, expect the goofballs in the state legislature to interfere with more "voter integrity" legislation should any Democrats actually win in November.

 

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

In a primetime speech to America last night, President Biden made it very clear what the stakes are this November and what Trump's cultists will do if we fail to defend democracy from them.

President Joe Biden delivered a sober assessment of American democracy during a rare prime-time address in Philadelphia on Thursday, warning that Donald Trump and his closest political allies are threatening to take the country backward. 

"As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault," Biden said in front of Independence Hall. 

"We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. So tonight, I've come to this place where it all began. To speak as plainly as I can, to the nation, about the threats we face. About the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats." 

After tearing into Republicans for what he calls "MAGA extremism" and "semi-fascism," administration officials say Biden determined the time was right to provide a more serious, sober reckoning on what he regards as growing anti-democratic forces building across the country. 

"We must be honest with each other and with ourselves: Too much of what's happening in our country today is not normal," Biden said. "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic." 

He said the Republican Party of 2022 was partly "dominated, driven and intimidated" by Trump and his acolytes. 

It's a topic Biden has come to embrace more publicly in recent months after initially attempting to ignore the after-effects of his predecessor and focus instead on national unity. At its core, the speech represents the same overarching theme that defined the launch of his presidential campaign in 2019 as he set out to defeat Trump. 

It remained a constant through high profile speeches in locations rife with historical symbolism, including Warm Springs, Georgia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The prime-time remarks was no different, this time with the site of the nation's revolutionary beginning as the backdrop. 

A crowd of about 300 invited guests -- a mix of elected officials and dignitaries, along with Democratic supporters -- watched Biden speak from behind panes of bulletproof glass. It was a short distance away from where Biden formally announced his bid for the presidency in 2019, striking similar themes about the "battle for the soul of the nation." 

Thursday's speech served as an implicit acknowledgment that Biden's efforts to move past the divisiveness and chaos of former President Donald Trump have been harder than he might have imagined. Trump continues to dominate headlines, especially in recent weeks after federal agents searched his Florida home, revealing an investigation into the former President's possession of classified documents after he left office. 

White House officials emphasized ahead of time that when Biden warns of the threat to democracy, he is not talking about Republicans as a whole, but those who style themselves after Trump: the "MAGA Republicans," as the administration has deemed them.

 

 In my opinion, this is Joe Biden preparing the nation for Donald Trump's eventual indictment. I don't think it will happen before the Sept. 10 deadline of 60 days before the election that Merrick Garland confirmed will be DoJ non-interference, and besides, there's a very good chance the investigation into Trump involving materials recovered by the FBI last month at Mar-a Lago will be tied up in the courts for a very long time.

A federal judge indicated Thursday that she’s giving serious consideration to temporarily barring Justice Department investigators from reviewing material seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon suggested that she’s mulling imposing that restriction, while potentially allowing an exception for the intelligence community to continue reviewing national security risks from the potential exposure of the slew of sensitive documents the FBI found at Trump’s compound last month.

Cannon’s willingness to consider restraints — even for a period of time — on prosecutors and investigators in the politically explosive inquiry is some of the first positive news for Trump and his attorneys in a saga that presents an acute legal threat and has caused new strains with Republican elected officials.

Justice Department attorneys pushed back sharply against any such limits, warning against disruption of their ongoing criminal investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents. Cannon, who previously said she was inclined to order an outside review of the materials seized from Trump’s estate, appeared undeterred during a 90-minute hearing that featured arguments from DOJ counterintelligence officials and Trump’s legal team.

Senior Justice Department attorney Jay Bratt repeatedly pleaded with Cannon, a Trump appointee, not to interrupt their ongoing criminal probe, emphasizing that the search warrant executed Aug. 8 was clearly valid and lawfully authorized to obtain “evidence of three significant federal crimes.”

“He is no longer the president and because he is no longer the president he did not have the right to take those documents,” said Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence section in the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “He was unlawfully in possession of them…This plaintiff does not have an interest in the classified and other presidential records.”

Cannon signaled concern about a couple of instances in which the investigative team had flagged potentially privileged material that was not screened out during the initial review of records by the DOJ “filter team” assigned to prevent such occurrences.

The judge gave no indication she planned to limit the privilege claims Trump could lodge in a still-to-be-determined review process. That suggested she could impose a special master with broad purview to screen documents for any potentially subject to executive privilege claims by Trump — despite DOJ’s argument that no such claim could ever be upheld in this context.

“It would be unprecedented for the executive to be able to successfully assert privilege against the executive branch,” said Julie Edelstein, a Bratt deputy.

 

It's very possible that this Trump appointed judge buys Trump the week and change he needs to bog the investigation down until past September 10, in hope of the GOP winning one or more chambers of Congress so that they can force Garland out and end the investigation completely. If you don't think Kevin McCarthy would order the arrest of Merrick Garland by the House Sergeant-at-Arms, understand this is already a party that tried a violent terrorist coup and conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election with McCarthy's active participation.

Which would leave a lame duck indictment with McCarthy all but promising impeachment and arrests and oversight (an more importantly and damaging, leaks to the press in an effort to wreck the case against him.

Of course, we avoid all that if we listen to President Biden's words, and turn those into action in November.

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

Meanwhile, in one of the several other extremely illegal activities of the Trump regime...

 

A lawyer with close ties to the right-wing militia group the Oath Keepers has been charged with four counts related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, including conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the electoral college vote that day. 

Kellye SoRelle, an attorney who volunteered for Lawyers for Trump during efforts to challenge the 2020 election results and says she's general counsel for the Oath Keepers, also faces obstruction of justice and obstruction of an official proceeding charges. 

The 43-year-old attorney was arrested Thursday in Junction, Texas, following an indictment in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office in DC, Bill Miller, told CNN. Miller added that the Justice Department currently has no additional comments on the case. 

She is scheduled to appear in an Austin, Texas, courtroom Thursday afternoon. 

In May, SoRelle told CNN that she was cooperating with the Justice Department. 

"I've done interviews. I've done everything. I'm helping them," SoRelle told CNN about her cooperation, adding that she also handed over phones to investigators. SoRelle does not represent any Oath Keepers in their criminal proceedings.

 

Oath Keepers are a white supremacist militia who stormed the Capitol because they were instructed to do so by Trump. 

Speaking of the US Capitol building...

Two former top Trump White House lawyers are expected to appear Friday before a federal grand jury investigating the events surrounding Jan. 6, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, ABC News reported last month.

The move to subpoena the two men has signaled an even more dramatic escalation in the Justice Department's investigation into the Jan. 6 attack than previously known. Members of former Vice President Mike Pence's staff have also appeared before a grand jury.

Officials with the Department of Justice declined to comment when reached by ABC News. A representative for Cipollone and Philbin also declined to comment.

Sources previously told ABC News that attorneys for Cipollone and Philbin were expected to engage in negotiations around any grand jury appearance, while weighing concerns regarding potential claims of executive privilege.

 

Season 2 of the January 6th Hearings will be riveting TV.

 

Everything I've seen in the last six weeks or so has been part of the public case for indicting Trump.

 

More will follow.

 

Russian To Judgment, Con't

It seems that Putin's oligarchs are suffering from a contagious round of fatal defenestration again.

A senior Russian oil executive has died after falling from the window of a Moscow hospital, months after his company criticised the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Ravil Maganov, the chair of the board of directors of Lukoil, Russia’s largest private oil company, “fell from a window at Central clinical hospital,” the Interfax news agency wrote on Thursday, citing a source. “He died from injuries sustained.”

Lukoil said Maganov had “passed away following a severe illness”. The company did not say what Maganov was being treated for.

It was not immediately clear whether his death was an accident, a suicide, or could be tied to foul play. Russian state media agencies citing an unnamed source reported that Maganov had been admitted to the hospital with a heart condition and had been on antidepressants.

Baza, a Russian news site with close ties to the police, suggested he may have slipped from a balcony while smoking.

Half a dozen businesspeople with ties to the Russian energy industry have died in apparent suicides or in mysterious circumstances since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. None of the deaths have been classified as murders.

Maganov’s death has attracted scrutiny because Lukoil was rare among Russian energy companies in criticising the invasion of Ukraine, publicly calling for a ceasefire just one week after Vladimir Putin announced the beginning of Moscow’s “special military operation”.

“Calling for the soonest termination of the armed conflict, we express our sincere empathy for all victims who are affected by this tragedy,” the board of directors of Lukoil said. “We strongly support a lasting ceasefire and a settlement of problems through serious negotiations and diplomacy.”

 

Maganov got his lasting peace, delivered at a very personal level.

 

While Russia continues to get quagmired inside Ukraine, outside of it, their retaliation to EU sanctions by cutting off the continent from natural gas and the personal war against "enemies of the state" like Maganov are both going brilliantly. 

Still an extremely dangerous situation in Europe.

The Posse Comes For The Loan Arranger

Not that it was a particularly difficult call to make, but I did warn you that Republicans were going to challenge Biden's student loan debt forgiveness in court in order to tie it up for years, hurting the people who need it the most so that they turn on Biden's "failure to deliver" with the ultimate goal of getting it struck down by SCOTUS and using it as a cudgel in 2024.

Republican state attorneys general and other leading conservatives are quietly exploring a slew of potential lawsuits targeting President Biden’s plan to cancel some student debt — challenges that could limit or invalidate the policy before it takes full effect.

In recent days, a number of GOP attorneys general from states including Arizona, Missouri and Texas have met privately to discuss a strategy that could see multiple cases filed in different courts around the country, according to a person familiar with their thinking who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the confidential talks.

Other influential conservatives — including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) and allies of the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank — are mulling their own options as they ratchet up criticism of Biden’s debt-relief plan, two additional people familiar with the matter said. And a conservative advocacy group founded by a major Trump donor said it would file a lawsuit against the policy.

“The conservative public interest law firms in our network are exploring filing lawsuits against this. They are doing background legal research, trying to find out who might be the most suitable clients for them,” John Malcolm, director of the Meese Center at the Heritage Foundation, said in an interview. “They have to find a client with the standing and the gumption to take on a lawsuit. There are several groups in our network who are exploring that right now.”

All of the sources cautioned that no decisions have been made — and as of Thursday morning, no lawsuits appeared to have been filed. But a legal battle could carry stark financial consequences for millions of student borrowers, who rejoiced last week after Democrats delivered on a long-standing promise to erase some of their debt.

The possible litigation also raises the prospect of a broader, precedent-setting courtroom tussle over the scope of the president’s economic authority. Such a lawsuit could reach the Supreme Court, thrusting it back into the spotlight after it infuriated Democrats by stripping abortion protections and limiting the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to respond to climate change.

 

Republicans have to tie up Biden's victories in court and slay them or you know, people might actually think Biden accomplished things during his first term with a 50-50 Senate. A Roberts Court that struck down Roe and the EPA's emissions regulations will have the votes to kill this law. They will find a Trump judge in the Fifth or Eleventh Circuit to deliver a national injunction, and there's a good chance that given the stakes, it'll remain blocked until SCOTUS can kill it off just in time for the 2024 elections.

 

Republicans will say "Our lawsuit stopped a trillion in taxpayer theft! Vote for us!" 

And there will be tens of millions who will.

Last Call For Moose Lady Is Not Loose, Con't

With the recent death of Alaska GOP Rep. Don Young, the state's at-large Congressman for basically my entire lifespan, the seat went to a highly contested primary (for November) and special election (for the rest of Young's term) with ranked choice voting. Our old friend Sarah Palin threw her hat into the ring, along with Nick Begich III, the Republican nephew of former Democratic Sen. Mark Begich and grandson of former Democratic Rep. Nick Begich. Two of Alaska's most powerful political families clashed in a battle for the ages.

 

And when the smoke cleared this week, the race went to the Democrat.

Democrat Mary Peltola was the apparent winner of Alaska’s special U.S. House race and is set to become the first Alaska Native in Congress, after votes were tabulated Wednesday in the state’s first ranked choice election.

Peltola led Republican former Gov. Sarah Palin after ballots were tallied and votes for third-place GOP candidate Nick Begich III were redistributed to his supporters’ second choices. Peltola, a Yup’ik former state lawmaker who calls Bethel home, is now slated to be the first woman to hold Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat.

If results are confirmed as expected by the state review board later this week, she will succeed U.S. Rep. Don Young, the Republican who held the office for nearly five decades — since before Peltola was born. The special election was triggered by Young’s death in March.

“I feel like I need to catch my breath for a minute,” Peltola said in the moment after results were announced in a live video by state election officials in Juneau. Peltola was surrounded by family and campaign staff at an Anchorage office.

“What’s most important is that I’m an Alaskan being sent to represent all Alaskans. Yes, being Alaska Native is part of my ethnicity, but I’m much more than my ethnicity,” she said.

It is an outcome largely seen as an upset. Peltola would be the first Democrat to join Alaska’s three-person congressional delegation since U.S. Sen. Mark Begich lost reelection in 2014. And she defeated two Republicans to do so. Combined, Palin and Nick Begich III, nephew of Mark Begich and grandson of former U.S. Rep. Nick Begich, commanded nearly 60% of first-place votes.

Begich was the first candidate eliminated, after no other candidate exceeded the 50% threshold needed to win under Alaska’s ranked choice voting system. The second-place votes of Begich’s supporters were then tallied in what is called an instant runoff. Only half of Begich’s voters ranked Palin second — not enough for her to overtake Peltola.

Peltola had 39.7% of the first-place votes to Palin’s 30.9%. In the instant runoff, Peltola ended up with 91,206 votes to Palin’s 85,987, or 51.47% to 48.53%. A small number of additional ballots have not yet been counted by election officials, likely not enough to change results.

Peltola ran a largely positive campaign as Begich and Palin traded barbs in the final weeks before the Aug. 16 special election, emerging as the victor with a platform that highlighted her position as the only candidate on the ballot who supports abortion access — an issue that has become important to voters with the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision removing federal protections for access to the procedure (the procedure remains protected under the Alaska Constitution).

Peltola has also said she is “pro-fish” and emphasized her plans to protect subsistence fisheries in Alaska as salmon stocks decline in the region where she has fished throughout her life.

 

And Moose Lady?

 

She lost again. Not by much, and Peltola will have to immediately start campaigning as Palin almost certainly will be her top opponent in November. But Begich will be back too. We could see this all over again in a couple of months.

 

But for now, an Alaskan Native Democrat represents The Last Frontier.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

 Yes, Trump had piles of classified documents lying around his desk at Mar-a-Lago.

 

The Justice Department sought a search warrant for former President Donald J. Trump’s residence in Florida after obtaining evidence that highly classified documents were likely concealed and that Mr. Trump’s representatives had falsely claimed all sensitive material had been returned, according to a court filing by the department on Tuesday.

The filing came in response to Mr. Trump’s request for an independent review of materials seized from his home, Mar-a-Lago. But it went far beyond that, painting the clearest picture yet of the department’s efforts to retrieve the documents before taking the extraordinary step of searching a former president’s private property on Aug. 8.

Among the new disclosures in the 36-page filing were that the search yielded three classified documents in desks inside Mr. Trump’s office, with more than 100 documents in 13 boxes or containers with classification markings in the residence, including some at the most restrictive levels.

That was twice the number of classified documents the former president’s lawyers turned over voluntarily while swearing an oath that they had returned all the material demanded by the government.

The investigation into Mr. Trump’s retention of government documents began as a relatively straightforward attempt to recover materials that officials with the National Archives had spent much of 2021 trying to retrieve. The filing on Tuesday made clear that prosecutors are now unmistakably focused on the possibility that Mr. Trump and those around him took criminal steps to obstruct their investigation.

Investigators developed evidence that “government records were likely concealed and removed” from the storage room at Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department sent Mr. Trump’s office a subpoena for any remaining documents with classified markings. That led prosecutors to conclude that “efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation,” the government filing said.

The filing included one striking visual aid — a photograph of at least five yellow folders recovered from Mr. Trump’s resort and residence marked “Top Secret” and another red one labeled “Secret.”

But department officials are not expected to file charges imminently, if they ever do. And the specific contents of the materials the government recovered in the search remain unclear — as does what risk to national security Mr. Trump’s decision to retain the materials posed.

While the filing provided important new information about the timeline of the investigation, much of the information was mentioned, in less detail, in the affidavit used to obtain the warrant, which a federal magistrate judge unsealed last week.

 

Again, understand that the FBI has Trump dead to rights. His team materially lied about keeping unsecured classified documents in his home. Mar-a-Lago was rife with foreign agents looking for just such material, which was kept out in the open. The CIA screamed from the rooftops that assets were being compromised.

 

Trump damaged national security, he obstructed the investigation into the documents that he illegally kept, and if you or I did even a fraction of this, we'd already be in prison.

 

The issue is whether or not America is ready for the violent, nationwide backlash of lethal violence that will follow Trump's indictment.  We're not, we haven't even thought about it as a nation, and in a situation like this, we'll be told that quiet is better than justice.

At the very least, there will be no indictments before November, and if Republicans win the House, Senate, or both, promising to destroy the lives of everyone involved in this investigation while simultaneously impeaching every member of the Biden administration they can get their hands on, the indictments will most likely never happen.

Again, we've had Trump dead to rights before. Nothing came of it. I want to see him indicted, but understand that it will cost the country dearly.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through...Republican Candidates' Websites?

Congressional Republicans and candidates are running for the hills away from the carnage of the end of Roe, suddenly removing their complete and total support for reducing women to second-class citizens whose reproductive systems belong to the state, and pretending they've never heard of Dobbs, abortion, or the Supreme Court.

Yesli Vega, a Republican running for the U.S. House in a competitive Virginia district, no longer mentions her connection to former president Donald Trump in the bio section at the top of her Twitter page.

Colorado state Sen. Barbara Kirkmeyer, also running in a battleground House race, has stopped promoting language defending “The Sanctity of Life” on her campaign website. Now, there is no mention of abortion at all, a review of the website showed.

And the campaign of Blake Masters, Republican nominee for U.S. Senate in Arizona, has removed from his campaign website references to strict antiabortion positions he once championed, along with references to false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

At least nine Republican congressional candidates have scrubbed or amended references to Trump or abortion from their online profiles in recent months, distancing themselves from divisive subjects that some GOP strategists say are two of the biggest liabilities for the party ahead of the post-Labor Day sprint to Election Day.

“The Dobbs decision has clearly energized Democratic voters to the point where they have closed the enthusiasm gap with Republicans,” said Whit Ayres, a longtime GOP pollster, referencing the Supreme Court ruling that ended the constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy. Asked whether it hurts the GOP to have Trump back in the news, Ayres replied, “The best case for Republican candidates in the midterms is making the upcoming election a referendum on the Biden administration.”

He added: “Anything that distracts from that focus weakens the Republican position.”

Tracking back to the political middle after a primary is common practice long used by candidates of both parties. But the attempts by Republicans in competitive contests to pivot away from abortion and Trump have emboldened Democrats to mount an aggressive offense on those issues, which they see as key to their efforts to outperform once dim expectations in congressional races.

A Pew Research Center survey earlier this summer found 57 percent of Americans disapproved of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, while a Washington Post-Schar School poll found 65 percent saying the court’s decision represents a major loss of rights for women in America. Some states do not allow abortion when the pregnancy is a result of rape or incest; a Washington Post-ABC News poll this spring found 79 percent of Americans said abortion should be legal in such cases, a consistent finding in polls for more than three decades.

Both President Biden and Trump, who has received renewed attention recently after the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago estate, are unpopular, making them targets for the opposing party in the midterms. Trump’s favorability rating was just 38 percent and Biden’s was just 43 percent, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

But during the primaries, Trump was a big draw, as he remains popular among many Republicans. Many Republicans ran as candidates aligned with him, a dynamic that has caused some discomfort as the pivot to the general election started.

Vega, who is trying to unseat Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in one of the key seats Republicans hope to flip to win back control of the House, used to say in her Twitter bio that she was a “Pres. Trump appointee,” a reference to her appointment in December 2020 to the President’s Advisory Commission on Hispanic Prosperity. Several weeks ago, after Vega secured the GOP nomination, it disappeared.

Asked about the change, Vega’s campaign consultant Sean Brown ignored the question and responded with an apparent reference to Biden’s recent announcement that he would cancel a portion of student loan debt held by many Americans. “Safe to say the story of Democrat candidates refusing to say whether they support Biden’s blatantly political tuition giveaway next?” Brown wrote.

 

I guess Republicans figure if enough doctors are imprisoned and enough women die from ectopic and other unviable pregnancies, there won't be anyone left to vote against them on Dobbs.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

Last Call For Going After Joe

In order to take the public's eye off of Trump's pending indictment, House Republicans are screaming at the top of their lungs to anyone in earshot that not only are they assured taking back the House, they plan to impeach President Joe Biden on multiple charges of "high crimes" starting in January.

Republicans hoping to seize control of the House in November are already setting their sights on what is, for many of them, a top priority next year: impeaching President Biden.

A number of rank-and-file conservatives have already introduced impeachment articles in the current Congress against the president. They accuse Biden of committing “high crimes” in his approach to a range of issues touching on border enforcement, the coronavirus pandemic and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan.

Those resolutions never had a chance of seeing the light of day, with Democrats holding a narrow control of the lower chamber. But with Republicans widely expected to win the House majority in the midterms, many of those same conservatives want to tap their new potential powers to oust a president they deem unfit. Some would like to make it a first order of business.

“I have consistently said President Biden should be impeached for intentionally opening our border and making Americans less safe,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.). “Congress has a duty to hold the President accountable for this and any other failures of his Constitutional responsibilities, so a new Republican majority must be prepared to aggressively conduct oversight on day one.”

The conservative impeachment drive is reminiscent of that orchestrated by liberals four years ago, as Democrats took control of the House in 2019 under then-President Trump. At the time, a small handful of vocal progressives wanted to impeach Trump, largely over accusations that he’d obstructed a Justice Department probe into Russian ties to his 2016 campaign. The idea was repeatedly rejected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), not least out of fear that it would alienate voters in tough battleground districts.

The tide turned when a whistleblower accused Trump of pressuring a foreign power to find dirt on his political opponent — a charge that brought centrist Democrats onto the impeachment train. With moderates on board, Pelosi launched a formal impeachment inquiry in September of 2019, eight months after taking the Speaker’s gavel. Three months later, the House impeached Trump on two counts related to abusing power.

The difference between then and now is that liberals, in early 2019, were fighting a lonely battle with scant support. This year, heading into the midterms, dozens of conservatives have either endorsed Biden’s impeachment formally, or have suggested they’re ready to support it.

At least eight resolutions to impeach Biden have been offered since he took office: Three related to his handling of the migrant surge at the southern border; three targeting his management of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan last year; one denouncing the eviction moratorium designed to help renters during the pandemic; and still another connected to the overseas business dealings of his son, Hunter Biden.

Those proposals will expire with the end of this Congress. But some of the sponsors are already vowing to revisit them quickly next year. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), the lead sponsor of four of the impeachment resolutions, is among them.

“She believes Joe Biden should have been impeached as soon as he was sworn in, so of course she wants it to happen as soon as possible,” Nick Dyer, a Greene spokesman, said Monday in an email.

 

Remember, "high crimes and misdemeanors" are "whatever 218 House members decide it means" should Kevin McCarthy's motley mess get control. We certainly won't have any reasonable or even logical response to the nation's problems for years to come, nothing but impeachment hearings, committee hearings, subcommittee hearings, oversight hearings, and in the meantime Americans will just have to sit around while these idiots masturbate in public.

We have to keep the House and Senate or nothing gets done, another two years of worthless gridlock, and Americans suffering under Republican stupidity.

Vote like your country depends on it, because it does.

Secret Squirrels, Con't

Deputy Secret Service Director Tony Ornato, who was also an aide to the Trump White House, is stepping down from his office as the January 6th investigation focuses on Trump's USSS detail, deleted (and now recovered) text messages from the day and the agency's role in the attempted electoral coup last year.

 

Tony Ornato, the senior Secret Service official who served as a top aide in Donald Trump’s White House and faced scrutiny from the Jan. 6 select committee earlier this summer, announced his retirement Monday.

The agency confirmed Ornato’s retirement, which was announced internally earlier in the day. He’s the latest high-level official in the Secret Service to announce his departure in recent weeks. Spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said Ornato — who joined the Secret Service in 1997 — became eligible for retirement earlier this year and leaves the agency in good standing.

Ornato’s role in the Trump White House made national headlines after explosive testimony by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who said he had briefed Trump and other White House officials about armed elements within Trump’s rally crowd on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021.

Although Ornato quickly signaled he was willing to testify in response to Hutchinson’s account, he has yet to appear for a new interview with the select committee, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Asked about the status of those discussion, Guglielmi said “We have continuously made Tony Ornato available.” He noted, however, that Ornato is now a private citizen and no longer a federal employee.

In a statement, Ornato said he retired today “to pursue a career in the private sector.”

“I retired from the U.S. Secret Service after more than 25 years of faithful service to my country, including serving the past five presidents,” he said. “ I long-planned to retire and have been planning this transition for more than a year.”

Ornato’s departure comes shortly after the director of the Secret Service, James Murray, announced his own intention to retire but put it on hold amid expanding investigations into the agency’s conduct in the days surrounding the Capitol attack.

 

I think Ornato was given a choice, given his decades of service: retire or else. As far as his cooperation with the January 6th investigation, I would think things are too late for him. We know House Democrats (and Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger) plan more primetime hearings next month.

We'll see if all of that is true.

The Jackson, Hole

Jackson, Mississippi's water system has been coming apart since deadly flooding last month, and this week the municipal water plant has completely failed, leaving some 200,000 residents without any water to drink, bathe, or flush as GOP Gov Tate Reeves scrambles to contain the disaster in the state's capital city, created solely by Republican "governance".

 

Jackson’s water system is failing and water across the city is entirely unsafe to drink, officials said at an emergency briefing Monday night. State leadership have warned all residents of Mississippi’s capital city to boil water before drinking or even brushing their teeth.

“We need to provide water for up to 180,000 people for an unknown period of time,” Reeves said tonight.

“Please stay safe,” Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves said at the evening briefing. “Do not drink the water. In too many cases, it is raw water from the reservoir being pushed through the pipes. Be smart, protect yourself, protect your family, preserve water, look out for your fellow man and look out for your neighbors.”

Reeves declared a state of emergency over the Jackson water crisis tonight, ordering the state to step in to prop up the failing O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant and to deliver potable water to Jackson residents beginning tomorrow.

“This is a very different situation from a boil water notice,” Reeves said at a press event tonight. “Until it is fixed, we do not have reliable running water at scale. The city cannot produce enough water to fight fires, to flush toilets and to meet other critical needs. The Mississippi Emergency Management Agency will take the state’s lead on distributing drinking water and non-drinking water to residents of the City of Jackson.”

Following a month without clean, drinkable water, Jackson has now mostly lost water pressure, with operational collapses at O.B. Curtis reducing the flow of water through the city’s distribution system to the degree that residences and businesses across the city have little or no water at all.

While the city highlighted the potential flooding of structures at O.B. Curtis due to the high crest of the Pearl River over the weekend, officials have yet to firmly establish the direct causes of the plant failures at the water treatment plant.

“The main pumps had recently been damaged severely,” Reeves said, “about the same time as the prolonged boil water notice began. The facility is now operating on smaller backup pumps.”

Whatever the cause, Reeves said that the State will be intervening to prop up the water plant on the brink.

“The state has created an incident command structure, is surging our resources to the city’s water treatment facility and beginning emergency maintenance, repairs, and improvements,” Reeves said. “We will do everything in our power to restore water pressure and get water flowing back to the people of Jackson.”

A lack of visibility at O.B. Curtis has Mississippi State Department of Health leadership unable to answer how much water is currently flowing out of the plant and into Jackson’s pipes. Tomorrow, leadership warned, they may discover that O.B. Curtis is not producing any water at all.

Operational failures at O.B. Curtis are downstream from the facility’s most pressing issue—a near complete lack of qualified personnel. Class A water operators and regular maintenance staff are sorely needed at O.B. Curtis. The governor said tonight that the State would be acquiring the operators necessary, and would split the cost with the City of Jackson.

“We will cash flow the operation and the City will be responsible for half of the cost of the emergency improvements that we make,” Reeves said. “I want to make something very clear to those operators we have been and will be reaching out to: You will be paid for your work. The state is owning that guarantee.”

 

Jackson's water crisis has been years in the making, for the simple reason that five out of six city residents are Black in a state where white Republicans have run the show for decades. Jackson has begged for help from the state, and has been told time and time again that the problem is not enough federal dollars to replace the city's aging infrastructure.

 

The city's main water treatment plant has come close to collapse several times in the last 24 months, and EPA chief Michael Regan has visited the city several times in order to bring attention to the city's plight and to promise help.  President Biden's infrastructure bill has provided some money, but fixing decades of neglect will cost at least $1 billion, and the state sure as hell isn't going to spend that kind of money on Black folk.

But this week, after record flooding in 2020 and again over the weekend, now has seen that infrastructure collapse entirely.

This doesn't happen without deliberate choices by state Republicans.

Last Call For Climate Of Emergency, Con't

Earth is on course to lose at least 3% of the Greenland ice sheet by the end of the century, contributing at least a foot in sea level rise.

Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn’t be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, according to a study published Monday.

The findings in the journal Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt — equal to 110 trillion tons of ice, the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise.

The predictions are more dire than other forecasts, though they use different assumptions. While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggested much of it can play out between now and the year 2100.

“The point is, we need to plan for that ice as if it weren’t on the ice sheet in the near future, within a century or so,” William Colgan, a study co-author who studies the ice sheet from its surface with his colleagues at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said in a video interview.

“Every study has bigger numbers than the last. It’s always faster than forecast,” Colgan said.

One reason that new research appears worse than other findings may just be that it is simpler. It tries to calculate how much ice Greenland must lose as it recalibrates to a warmer climate. In contrast, sophisticated computer simulations of how the ice sheet will behave under future scenarios for global emissions have produced less alarming predictions.

A one-foot rise in global sea levels would have severe consequences. If the sea level along the U.S. coasts rose by an average of 10 to 12 inches by 2050, a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found, the most destructive floods would take place five times as often, and moderate floods would become 10 times as frequent.

 

The race to stop global climate change has been lost. Now the race is survival, and the fact we're going to have to relocate 20% of America's population out of flood zones. $180 billion in relocation now would save $1 trillion decades from now, but we'll never do it. New Orleans, Miami, NYC, San Francisco, a lot of cities are going to be gone in the years ahead.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Sen. Lindsey Graham is a terrorist who wants terrorist attacks if Trump is charged.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Sunday warned of “riots in the streets” if former President Trump is prosecuted for his handling of classified materials found when the FBI searched his Mar-a-Lago home.

“If there’s a prosecution of Donald Trump for mishandling classified information, after the Clinton debacle … there’ll be riots in the streets,” Graham told former South Carolina congressman Trey Gowdy, who now hosts Fox News’s “Sunday Night in America.”

Trump shared a clip of the interview on Truth Social later Sunday evening.

Gowdy was chairman of the House Select Committee on Benghazi, which probed the 2012 terror attacks in Libya that left four Americans dead and uncovered a private email server used by Clinton.

Graham expressed concern that Trump is treated with “a double standard” and repeated his warning of riots regarding the Georgia special grand jury investigating attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.

Graham himself has been subpoenaed in that probe in connection with phone calls made to Georgia election officials seeking to change the election results in the state.

 

The party of January 6th wants every day to be January 6th until all Democrats and their voters are gone. They want us to fear them, they want us to change political policy for them in order to stop them from killing us.

That's terrorism.

Graham is a terrorist.

The GOP is the party of white supremacist domestic terrorism.

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...