Last Call For The Gaetz Of Hell, Con't

GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz is currently facing a number of criminal investigations for sex trafficking of minors, campaign finance issues, January 6th insurrection involvement, and brokering pardons for people like Roger Stone. But now we learn on top of all that, he wanted Trump to preemptively pardon him specifically on the sex trafficking stuff before he left office.

Congressman Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) told a former White House aide that he was seeking a preemptive pardon from President Donald Trump regarding an investigation in which he is a target, according to testimony given to the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Johnny McEntee, according to people familiar with his testimony, told investigators that Gaetz told him during a brief meeting “that they are launching an investigation into him or that there’s an investigation into him,” without specifying who was investigating Gaetz.

McEntee added that Gaetz told him “he did not do anything wrong but they are trying to make his life hell, and you know, if the president could give him a pardon, that would be great.” Gaetz told McEntee that he had asked White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows for a pardon.

Asked by investigators if Gaetz’s request for a pardon was in the context of the Justice Department investigation into whether Gaetz violated federal sex trafficking laws, McEntee replied, “I think that was the context, yes,” according to people familiar with the testimony who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The testimony is the first indication that Gaetz was specifically seeking a pardon for his own exposure related to the Justice Department inquiry into whether he violated sex trafficking laws. His public posture in the final months of the Trump administration was much less specific, repeatedly calling for broad preemptive pardons to fend off possible Democratic investigations.

McEntee testified that Gaetz met him briefly one evening and discussed the issue of a pardon but McEntee could not recall whether their conversation happened before or after the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection, according to people familiar with the testimony.

The Justice Department investigation into whether Gaetz paid for sex, paid for women to travel across state lines to have sex, and had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old, was opened in the final months of the Trump administration with approval from Attorney General William P. Barr. The probe stemmed from a federal investigation of Gaetz’s friend who is now a convicted sex trafficker. Gaetz has denied paying for sex or having sex with a minor as an adult.

 

With both McEntee and Mark Meadows both fully cooperating with the Justice Department, Gaetz's indictment is probably a lot closer than people think.

 

Then again, this has dragged on for over 3 years now.  That makes me believe the opposite. Gaetz has already won reelection with these allegations once, and there's no reason whatsoever to believe that he won't win by 20-30 points again in November.

Gaetz ia guilty as sin, but it doesn't matter if he's no indicted. He certainly won't be tossed out by the voters in his FL-1 district.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through West Virginia

West Virginia's near total abortion ban bill was signed into law on Friday by GOP Gov. Jim Justice.

 

West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice on Friday signed a bill that bans nearly all abortions in the state, days after legislators approved the ban. This makes West Virginia the second state to pass an abortion ban after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

"I said from the beginning that if WV legislators brought me a bill that protected life and included reasonable and logical exceptions I would sign it, and that's what I did today," Justice said in a tweet.

Known as HB 302, the bill approved by state legislators on Tuesday prohibits the procedure at virtually every stage of pregnancy.

There are exceptions to the ban; one is an ectopic pregnancy, which is when a fertilized egg implants and grows outside of the uterus.

Physicians who perform unlawful abortions could lose their license to practice medicine and face criminal charges.

Additionally, the bill states that miscarriages and stillbirths are not considered abortions.

The Women's Health Center of West Virginia, the last clinic in the state, had already halted abortion services after the bill was passed by the state legislature. In a statement, the clinic's executive director said the ban "unfortunately comes as no surprise" and that it follows years of limited abortion access in the state.

"We provided abortion care for nearly 50 years, and while we have been forced to pause this care right now, we will continue providing the many other essential services we offer," Katie Quinonez, the clinic's executive director, said, adding, "We won’t stop fighting for your right to access comprehensive reproductive healthcare, and we remain committed to providing the care our community needs."

This is part of a calculated, decades-long effort by the forced birth movement to dismantle access to abortion and contraception so they can maintain power and control,"

The bill passed both chambers last week, but returned to the House for a vote after an amendment by the Senate stripped a section of the bill that would see doctors imprisoned for up to 10 years if they perform abortions outside of the exceptions.

The Senate also changed the bill's exceptions for rape and incest. In the House-backed version, rape and incest were excluded from the ban until about 14 weeks' gestation and as long as a report is filed with a "qualified law enforcement officer." In the Senate, the exceptions are until eight weeks' gestation.

The bill passed by legislators requires physicians to report any abortions they perform to the commissioner of the state's Bureau for Public Health within 15 days, including a justification for why the care was provided.

 

To recap, the "reasonable compromise position" becoming law in WV is "You cannot have an abortion unless it's rape, incest, or the pregnancy is killing you and for now, we won't imprison women and doctors over miscarriages."

Women lose the rights to their own bodies, but at least they aren't being jailed for infanticide.  You know, until SCOTUS makes abortions and miscarriages alike illegal because of "fetal personhood" and women are rounded up and jailed by the millions.

For profit.

Realize the current situation of abortions being legal in some states and criminalized in others is untenable. We're going to get a nationwide federal law or SCOTUS decision as a de facto nationwide law within the next few years. It will not be "left up to the states" for much longer.

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

Virginia Is For Haters, Con't

Checking in on the far-right administration of Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, we find that "freedom" in the state means transgender kids -- and college-age adults -- will no longer be recognized by the state without legal documentation by parents.

In a major rollback of LGBTQ rights, the administration of Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) will require that transgender students in Virginia access school facilities and programs that match the sex they were assigned at birth and is making it more difficult for students to change their names and genders at school.

Under new “model policies” for schools’ treatment of transgender students released Friday evening, the Department of Education is requiring that families submit legal documentation to earn their children the right to change names and genders at school. The guidelines also say teachers cannot be compelled to refer to transgender students by their names and genders if it goes against “their constitutionally protected” free speech rights.

And the guidelines say schools cannot “encourage or instruct teachers to conceal material information about a student from the student’s parent, including information related to gender” — raising the prospect that teachers could be forced to out transgender students to their parents.

School districts must adopt the new state guidelines or “policies that are more comprehensive,” after a 30-day comment period that will begin on Sept. 26, the Education Department said. The Board of Education will not have to vote to adopt the policies.

“These 2022 Model Policies reflect the Department’s confidence in parents to prudently exercise their fundamental right under the Fourteenth Amendment and the Virginia Constitution to direct the upbringing, education, and control of their children,” the guidelines state. “This primary role of parents is well established and beyond debate. Empowering parents is essential to improving outcomes for children.”

The model policies reverse guidelines published in 2021 by the administration of Gov. Ralph Northam (D). Those guidelines mandated that transgender students be allowed to access restrooms, locker rooms and changing facilities that match their gender identities, stipulated that schools let students participate in sports and programs matching their gender identities and required that school districts and teachers accept and use students’ gender pronouns and identities without question.

In their own guidelines, Youngkin administration officials wrote that Northam’s guidance sought “cultural and social transformation in schools” and “disregarded the rights of parents.” The Youngkin guidelines state the Northam-era policies are dead: they “have no further force and effect.”

The Northam guidelines were developed in accordance with a 2020 law, proposed by Democratic legislators, that required the Virginia Education Department to develop model policies — and later required all school districts to adopt them — for the protection of transgender students. The law does not define the specific nature of these policies but says they should “address common issues regarding transgender students in accordance with evidence-based best practices” and says they should be designed to prevent bullying and harassment of transgender students.

But — in a move that is likely to draw legal challenges — the Youngkin administration has used that same law to issue its own version of the Education Department guidelines. The 20-page document released Friday states it is being issued “as required under” the 2020 legislation.

 

So even if you submit legal documentation -- name change, a new birth certificate, etc --  the state is not compelled to recognize it in any way because of the "religious freedoms" of teachers and instructors. The right to self-identify as transgender means nothing because the state can simply ignore it.

Understand that the GOP wants transgender folk gone, period. Erased. Destroyed. Eliminated.

They are well on their way.

Last Call For Socially Awkward Laws, Con't

So the last time we talked about Texas's insanely unconstitutional social media bounty law in May, the 5th Circuit was about to let the law take effect on June 1 pending its ruling, when it was blocked by SCOTUS on May 31 because it was bonkers as hell.

Tonight, the 5th Circuit handed down its full decision on the law and of course the conservatives crapped out one of the most insane decisions in modern jurisprudence.

The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday upheld a controversial Texas social media law that bars companies from removing posts based on a person’s political ideology, overturning a lower court’s decision to block the law and likely setting up a Supreme Court showdown over the future of online speech.

The ruling could have wide-ranging effects on the future of tech regulation, giving fresh ammunition to conservative politicians who have alleged that major tech companies are silencing their political speech.

But the decision diverges from precedent and recent rulings from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeal and lower courts, and tech industry groups are likely they would appeal.

Friday’s opinion was written by Judge Andrew Stephen Oldham, who was nominated to the 5th Circuit by former president Trump. He was joined by Judge Edith Jones, a Reagan appointee. Judge Leslie H. Southwick, a George W. Bush appointee, concurred in part and dissented in part.

In the opinion, Oldham wrote that while the First Amendment guarantees every person’s right to free speech, it doesn’t guarantee corporations the right to “muzzle speech.” The Texas law, he wrote, “does not chill speech; if anything, it chills censorship.”

The ruling criticized the tech industry’s arguments against the law, saying that under the companies’ logic, "email providers, mobile phone companies, and banks could cancel the accounts of anyone who sends an email, makes a phone call, or spends money in support of a disfavored political party, candidate, or business.”

An appeal of the decision could force the Supreme Court, where conservatives have a majority, to weigh in on internet regulation, which has become an increasingly politicized issue since the 2016 election. Democrats have called for new limits on the companies that would block the proliferation of harmful content and misinformation on the platforms, while conservatives have argued that the companies have gone too far in policing their sites, especially after the companies’ 2021 decision to ban Trump following the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol.

In an analysis shared with The Washington Post in July, the industry group Computer & Communications Industry Association, one of the groups that challenged the Texas law, identified more than 100 bills in state legislatures aimed at regulating social media content moderation policies. Many state legislatures have adjourned for the year, so tech lobbyists are bracing for more activity in 2023.

Earlier this week, California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) signed a bill into law that forces large social networks to make public their policies for how posts are treated, responding to criticism that posts glorifying violence and hatred are being amplified by the platforms.

“If the Supreme Court doesn’t weigh in, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to operate a nationwide social media company because it could be navigating state rules that differ or even conflict,” said Jeff Kosseff, a cybersecurity law professor at the United States Naval Academy.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court stopped the Texas law from taking effect in a 5-4 decision, responding to an emergency request from tech industry trade groups. However, the judges did not explain the reasoning for their decision, which is common in such requests.

In their ruling, the 5th Circuit judges agreed with Texas that social media companies are “common carriers,” like phone companies, that are subject to government regulations because they provide essential services. Conservatives have long made this argument, which has resonated with at least one Supreme Court justice, Clarence Thomas, who has written that there are parallels between social media companies and phone companies.

Tech industry groups and legal experts warned that the 5th Circuit’s decision runs counter to First Amendment precedent and warned that it could result in harmful posts staying on social networks.

“Little could be more Orwellian than the government purporting to protect speech by dictating what businesses must say,” said Matt Schruers, president of the Computer & Communications Industry Association. “The Texas law compels private enterprises to distribute dangerous content ranging from foreign propaganda to terrorist incitement, and places Americans at risk.”

 

Understand that right now, under this law, any Texan who has had a post on any major social media account removed can sue that platform for $10,000 per post taken down.  It would be the end of social media as we know it, reducing platforms to spouting unlimited vile harassment and freely without consequence, making social media platforms into common carriers and subject to regulation by the FCC.

The Roberts Court would have to step in, and given a broad enough ruling affirming the law from SCOTUS, it would shut down Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, WhatsApp, all of it.

Of course, since the Texas law would only affect the largest social media platforms, those specifically over 50 million users, smaller ones like, say, Gab, Parler, and Truth Social would be the only game in town, and I'm betting Truth Social would love nothing more than to limit their users accounts to 49,999,999 and sell those accounts to corporations, news outlets, and celebrities for a pretty penny.

Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram, probably TikTok too, would be done for. There's no way these companies could stay in business without ridding themselves of tens of millions of users *and* having to adopt a pay-to-play model to limit users to an unregulated cesspool of racist vomit. At the very least, a publicly traded company suddenly forced to shed tens of millions of users would die screaming in the stock market.

Which is the point.

Doing The Immigration Shuffle

As Steve M. points out, the cruelty *is* the point in GOP governors like Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott illegally kidnapping undocumented immigrants from their states and shipping them to blue state sanctuary cities as a wildly awful MAGA campaign stunt version of "reverse freedom rides", it's just not directly being cruel to the immigrants.

 

DeSantis, and Greg Abbott before him, haven't been separating parents from children. They haven't been shooting or beating or caging the immigrants. (They aren't legally allowed to, obviously, but I'm not sure they're allowed to do what they're doing, either.) They haven't sent them to parts of the country that are full of armed white supremacists who might terrorize them and kill them.

I'm not saying that DeSantis and Abbott are nice people. They're terrible people. But while forcibly relocating the immigrants is cruel, it's not maximally cruel. And they're being sent to places where they're greeted with compassion and provided with some social services.

Why aren't DeSantis and Abbott being maximally cruel to these immigrants? Because to them, and to their national audience of right-wing rage monsters, this isn't about the immigrants.

It's about us.

Every time DeSantis, Abbott, and their rooting section talk about these stunt shipment of human beings, what makes them slaver is not the idea that the immigrants will suffer, but that we will suffer, in our posh liberal enclaves. They exult every time a mayor or governor expresses resentment or declares a state of emergency. We're the ones DeSantis and Abbott want to treat with cruelty. We're the ones they want to hear howl.

This means, obviously that the immigrants themselves are reduced to weapons used against us. DeSantis and Abbott care no more about them than a rock thrower cares about the feelings of a rock. This is sociopathic indifference to the humanity of the immigrants. But we're the enemy they really want to hurt right now.

 

You have to remember that MAGA jackasses like DeSantis and Abbott and the FOX News Cargo Cult believe that undocumented immigrants are the primary source of crime, drugs, and disease in their states. On top of all that, dealing with immigrants also cost gigantic amounts of state taxpayer dollars over decades, and that immigrants are a huge drain on resources.

There a few better wins in the MAGA playbook than shipping "filthy criminal junkie illegals" to "rich, liberal enclaves" in blue states.  Enough of these busloads and planeloads and these sanctuary cities will collapse into misery, you see. That's what the MAGA CHUDs want to see. Sending immigrants to blue states will eventually cause liberals to turn against immigrants and start adopting Republican immigration policies.

Enough of this, and they get blue states to agree to Build The Wall, and these states will become newly converted red states, and MAGA forever.

At the very least, FOX News will cover every bus, plane, train, dirigible, catapult, and caravan of this behavior where immigration is "weaponized" like this. So they'll keep doing it, with more immigrants, and more often.

"But isn't this illegal?"

Yes, it is. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is leading that charge, and believe me, while it's necessary to do, it also means DeSantis and Abbott will have a national fight over immigration right before midterms, which is what they want. They want voters to focus on that, and not abortion, Trump's coming indictments, or Biden's rapidly improving numbers.

This is the plan to put Republicans in charge of Congress.

It may very well work.

In A Pickled Herring

Members of Sweden's nationalist right-wing coalition are claiming victory as PM Magdalena Andersson has conceded defeat in this week's national elections, and it's not looking good for the future of the country.

The leader of Sweden’s incumbent Social Democrats conceded defeat in the country’s knife-edge election on Wednesday, handing victory to a loose bloc of rightwing parties that includes the far-right Sweden Democrats (SD).

The prime minister, Magdalena Andersson, called a press conference at which she accepted defeat, while pointing out that the Social Democrats remained Sweden’s largest party with more than 30% of the vote – and that the majority in parliament for the right bloc was very slim.

When postal votes and those of citizens living abroad were counted on Wednesday, a loose coalition of the SD and the three centre-right parties edged ahead to win a majority of three in the parliament of 349 seats.

There is no formal agreement between the SD and the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals about how they will govern together, although the centre-right parties have said they will not countenance ministerial positions for the far right.

However, the SD’s strong showing, making it Sweden’s second largest party – and the largest on the right with more than 20% of the poll – puts it in a strong position to extract concessions in return for its support in parliament.

“Now the work begins to make Sweden good again,” the SD leader, Jimmie Åkesson, wrote on Facebook.

“We have had enough of failed social democratic policies that for eight years have continued to lead the country in the wrong direction. It is time to start rebuilding security, welfare and cohesion. It is time to put Sweden first,” he wrote.

Ulf Kristersson, whose Moderate party came third with 19% of the poll and who is now in line to become the new prime minister, thanked voters for their trust and said: “Now we will have order in Sweden.”

The final tally showed that the right bloc won 49.6% of votes, while the left bloc secured 48.9%

Given the closeness of the vote and the uncertainty over the final outcome, all the parties had refrained from making statements about a possible new government since polling stations closed on Sunday night. However, some of the key battlegrounds for a future rightwing coalition government with SD influence have already become clear.

Swedish television’s flagship news magazine on Tuesday night aired a short interview with the head of the Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism, who expressed concern that the result might encourage racists and repeated earlier accusations that the SD are ambiguous over whether Jews can be Swedes. Björn Söder, formerly party secretary for the SD and a central figure in the party’s leadership, subsequently accused the broadcaster of bias and propaganda and demanded that public service broadcasting should be “fundamentally reformed”. A former Moderate party MP compared public service to “a cancerous tumour” in a tweet.

 

The Sweden Democrats are right-wing nationalists, with a heavy emphasis on "Sweden for Swedes".  They've long been a problem in the country.

The most electorally successful far-right party in Sweden, the Sweden Democrats (SD, Sverigedemokraterna), have been represented in the national legislature since 2010 and the European Parliament since 2014. Rooted in Nazism and founded by white supremacists in the 1980s, the Sweden Democrats have attempted to rebrand by shifting to rhetoric and policies that stigmatize Islam, Muslims, and Muslim immigration in Sweden. SD members have a history of promoting anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and racist statements and conspiracy theories.

Established in 1988, founding members of Sweden Democrats (SD) have roots in Nazism and Swedish fascist and white nationalist groups, including Bevara Sverige Svenskt (Keep Sweden Swedish). This includes the party’s first treasurer, Gustaf Ekström (d. 1995), who in 1941 left Sweden to join the Nazis and worked for the notorious Waffen-SS as a translator and propagandist. Anders Klarström, the first elected SD party chairman in 1989, has connections to the neo-Nazi Nordic Realm Party (Nordiska rikspartiet).

After photos came to light of SD members wearing Nazi uniforms in the mid-1990s, the party instituted a ban on uniforms and adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The Brookings Institute argues that these decisions were an “attempt to present a more respectable image.” Reporting in The Telegraph describes the shift of SD and other parties across Europe, in which white nationalists traded in skinheads and jackboots for “sharp suits and ties,” as the “new far Right.” The Telegraph argues, “Claiming to have left racism and anti-Semitism behind, these parties now concentrate on immigration and ‘the Islamisation of Europe’, disillusionment with the European Union, and undermining the political elite.”

In 2006, then party leader Jimmie Åkesson, Åkesson changed the SD’s logo from “a National Front-style torch to a baby-blue daisy,” furthering the party’s “programme of modernisation.” SD policies have also been “sanitised,” including a shift from “a preoccupation with Nordic ethnicity” to a concept of “open Swedishness” which The Telegraph argues “implies that immigrants are welcome so long as they renounce their other identities and take on ‘Swedish ways’.”

According to a former party member and whistleblower, the softening of SD’s image and policies is “largely PR-driven and meretricious,” and the party “has different ways of talking in public and backstage.” While the party has a record of expelling party members for white nationalism, expelled members have stated that party leadership were aware of their past fascist affiliations.

  

I don't expect Sweden to go the full Viktor Orban route just yet, but a few more years of this and the SD party will be calling all the Aryan shots in the country. This is bad news for sure, and if Italy goes the same way, the EU is going to be in dire trouble.

Last Call For Insurrection Investigation, Con't

If you're wondering why former Trump WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows hasn't been indicted yet, even after telling the January 6th Commission to piss off last December and then getting hit with a contempt charge for refusing a subpoena, the answer is he's been cooperating with the Justice Department and yes, he showed up for their subpoena after all. 

 

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has complied with a subpoena from the Justice Department's investigation into events surrounding January 6, 2021, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN, making him the highest-ranking Trump official known to have responded to a subpoena in the federal investigation. 

Meadows turned over the same materials he provided to the House select committee investigating the US Capitol attack, one source said, meeting the obligations of the Justice Department subpoena, which has not been previously reported. 

Last year, Meadows turned over thousands of text messages and emails to the House committee, before he stopped cooperating. The texts he handed over between Election Day 2020 and Joe Biden's inauguration, which CNN previously obtained, provided a window into his dealings at the White House, though he withheld hundreds of messages, citing executive privilege. 

In addition to Trump's former chief of staff, one of Meadows' top deputies in the White House, Ben Williamson, also recently received a grand jury subpoena, another source familiar with the matter tells CNN. That subpoena was similar to what others in Trump's orbit received. It asked for testimony and records relating to January 6 and efforts to overturn the 2020 election. Williamson previously cooperated with the January 6 committee. He declined to comment to CNN. 

Meadows' compliance with the subpoena comes as the Justice Department has ramped up its investigation related to January 6, which now touches nearly every aspect of former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss -- including the fraudulent electors plot, efforts to push baseless election fraud claims and how money flowed to support these various efforts, CNN reported this week. 

An attorney for Meadows declined comment. The Justice Department did not respond to CNN requests for comment.

 

Getting a subpoena from the January 6th Committee is something that Meadows could fight, or delay. Meadows folded on that fight anyway earlier this year. But a subpoena from the Justice Department, with the investigations into Trump well into the multiple grand jury stage and dozens of subpoenas issued for his lackeys?

Meadows knows he can cooperate now or go to prison, and that Trump won't save him even if he could. Turning over all his January 6th evidence to the DoJ directly is pretty huge, which means whatever the DoJ told him was coming was serious enough to make him stop playing games.

We're after the 60 days before the election deadline, meaning indictments won't be going out until after the midterms. But I guarantee you they are coming.

Again, everything that has been made public about the Trump regime's criminality has been done in order to prepare the American public for Trump's indictment, and Meadows fully cooperating and turning over material evidence means we're a lot closer to that happening in mid-November.

Enter your email to subscribe to the CNN Five Things Newsletter.

close dialog

You give us five minutes, we’ll give you five things you must know for the day.

By subscribing you agree to our

priva

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

When I say that there are parts of red state America where being a large Black man means I take my own life and safety in my hands if I go there, I mean places like "a couple miles north of Oklahoma City" where white supremacist prison gangs ruthlessly control the meth trade and kill everyone who gets in their way.

The caller had news but warned LaVonne Harris not to get her hopes up.

Harris’s son, 33-year-old Nathan Smith, had vanished along a dirt road in Oklahoma one freezing night more than two years earlier. Detectives had long stopped checking in with her, and Harris could feel her search growing lonelier with each passing month.

The call in April, from an advocate for families of the missing, wasn’t encouraging, but it was a lead: Authorities in rural Logan County, just north of here, had discovered human remains belonging to more than one person. Also, the caller added delicately, the remains weren’t intact.

Harris, 58, sat down to steady herself. She listened, then hung up to tell her daughter.

“I said, ‘Lou, they found these bodies,’ ” Harris recalled. “ ‘They’ve been burned and cut.’ ” 

Smith is among a dozen or more people who have disappeared in recent years from the wooded, unincorporated terrain outside the Oklahoma City metro area, a rural haven for drug traffickers. Some families said they’re scared to call police or even to put up “missing person” signs because they suspect the involvement of violent white-supremacist prison gangs.

In April, authorities acting on a tip said they found charred piles of wood and bone on a five-acre patch of Logan County, opening one of the grisliest and most sensitive criminal investigations in Oklahoma’s recent history.

Behind the 10-foot metal walls of a compound with links to the Universal Aryan Brotherhood, a white-supremacist prison gang, officers found what they believe to be a body dumping ground where multiple people ended up dismembered and burned, according to four Oklahoma officials with knowledge of the investigation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the extraordinary security precautions around the case.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, or OSBI, which is leading the multiagency state and federal probe, confirms that remains have been found but will not say how many. An April 29 report in the Oklahoman newspaper — the first news of the discovery — quoted the state medical examiner and other sources as saying agents were investigating “whether a white supremacist prison gang is behind nine or more disappearances” after the discovery of “the comingled remains of possibly three people.” The report said remains also were found at a second site, near an oil well about 18 miles away in the tiny town of Luther.

Four months later, the scope of the case remains murky. A law enforcement official, who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation, said they were informed the count was up to “12 different DNA profiles.” One family of a missing person said they were told of eight; another heard about three.

The OSBI has taken significant steps to keep the investigation opaque, including advising families of the missing to stay quiet.

“We’re just trying to keep some people alive at this point,” a second official said, describing the struggle to protect potential witnesses.

That level of danger is a jarring reminder of the unseen threat of white-supremacist prison gangs, whose leaders run crime syndicates from behind bars through a network of “enforcers” on the outside, according to extremism monitors and Justice Department court filings.

The gangs have carried out hate-fueled attacks both in and out of prison, with the bulk of their free-world violence targeting rivals and informants, authorities say. Because the gangs typically keep their business within the criminal underground, the attacks go largely undiscussed in the broader national conversation about rising violence by far-right groups.

Oklahoma is a “problem state,” with at least five significant white-supremacist prison gangs, said Mark Pitcavage, an Anti-Defamation League researcher who has monitored the groups for decades. He co-authored a 2016 study that called prison gangs the fastest-growing and deadliest sector of the U.S. white-supremacist movement, noting that they “combine the criminal intent and know-how of organized crime with the racism and hate of white supremacy, making them twice as dangerous.”

This, by the way, is why Republicans are always screaming about THE BLACKS in Detroit, Chicago, Baltimore, etc. and portraying cities that had BLM protests as having been "completely destroyed" by crime and looting.

It helps them cover up the stench of the armed Aryan killers in their own backyards.

Ridin' With Biden, Railroad Edition

President Biden has announced a tentative deal to avoid a crippling national rail strike that would devastate the economy...and to be perfectly honest, any chance the Democrats would have had in November along with it.

 

President Joe Biden said Thursday a tentative railway labor agreement has been reached, averting a potentially devastating strike before the pivotal midterm elections.

He said the tentative deal “will keep our critical rail system working and avoid disruption of our economy.”

The Democratic president believes unions built the middle class, but he also knew a rail worker strike could have badly damaged the nation’s economy. That left him in the awkward position of espousing the virtues of unionization in Detroit, a stalwart of the labor movement, while members of his administration went all-out to keep talks going in Washington between the railroads and unionized workers in hopes of averting a shutdown.

But after a long night, the talks succeeded and Biden announced Thursday that the parties had reached a tentative agreement to avoid a shutdown that would go to union members for a vote. He hailed the deal in a statement for avoiding a shutdown and as a win for all sides.

“These rail workers will get better pay, improved working conditions, and peace of mind around their health care costs: all hard-earned,” Biden said. “The agreement is also a victory for railway companies who will be able to retain and recruit more workers for an industry that will continue to be part of the backbone of the American economy for decades to come.

It looked far more tenuous for the president just a day earlier.

United Auto Workers Local 598 member Ryan Buchalski introduced Biden at the Detroit auto show on Wednesday as “the most union- and labor-friendly president in American history” and someone who was “kickin’ ass for the working class.” Buchalski harked back to the pivotal sitdown strikes by autoworkers in the 1930s.

In the speech that followed, Biden recognized that he wouldn’t be in the White House without the support of unions such as the UAW and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, saying autoworkers “brung me to the dance.”

But back in Washington, officials in his administration at the Labor Department were in tense negotiations to prevent a strike — one of the most powerful sources of leverage that unions have to bring about change and improve working conditions.

Without the deal that was reached among the 12 unions, a stoppage could have begun as early as Friday that could halt shipments of food and fuel at a cost of $2 billion a day.

 

Needless to say, food and gas prices skyrocketing as long lines, shortages, and suffering among those who could least afford the price hikes spreading nationwide would have most likely been the end of the Dems' chances in November.

But Biden got the deal done, and averting this rail strike and getting rail workers whet they deserved for keeping America running is a complete win for this administration, bar none.

Former Boston Mayor Marty Walsh, as Labor Secretary, just earned himself a StupidiTag™ with this one. He was instrumental in brokering the deal over a 20-hour session that was a total success.

I was a young kid when Reagan broke the air traffic controller's strike in 1981 in a move that almost completely crushed unions in the US. Now four decades later, Biden's successful treatment of rail workers may herald in a new era of union growth.

That's the Joe Biden I voted for.

Last Call For A Texas-Sized Burial

The release of several years' worth of Texas health data on maternal mortality and the effects of the state's "bounty hunter" abortion ban will be pushed back until 2025, well after both midterm and presidential elections.

 

Texas health officials have missed a key window to complete the state’s first major updated count of pregnancy related deaths in nearly a decade, saying the findings will now be released next summer, most likely after the Legislature’s biennial session.

The delay, disclosed earlier this month by the Department of State Health Services, means lawmakers won’t likely be able to use the analysis, covering deaths from 2019, until the 2025 legislative cycle. The most recent state-level data available is nine years old.

In a hearing this month with the state’s Maternal Mortality and Morbidity Review Committee, DSHS commissioner Dr. John Hellerstedt said the agency wanted to better align its methodology with that of other states, and that there hadn’t been enough staff and money to finish the review for a scheduled Sept. 1 release.

“The information we provide is not easily understood, and not easily and readily comparable to what goes on in other states,” Hellerstedt told the committee. “And the fact it isn’t easily understood or easily comparable in my mind leaves room for a great deal of misunderstanding about what the data really means.”

In a statement, DSHS spokesman Chris Van Deusen said the agency is reviewing its “internal processes” to try to develop more timely data.

“I expect we’ll be having conversations with legislators about what could be done to speed up the lengthy review process,” he said.

The setback comes four months before the start of the legislative session and two months before the midterm election, which has been dominated in part by the state’s new Republican-led abortion ban. Those restrictions have placed more scrutiny on the state’s maternal mortality rate, which is among the 10 highest in the country, according to national estimates that track pregnancy-related complications while pregnant or within a year of giving birth.

“There are a lot of us that want to know whether or not pregnancy in Texas is a death sentence,” said state Rep. Ann Johnson, a Houston Democrat and member of the Texas Women’s Health Caucus. “If we’ve got a higher rate of maternal mortality, we sure want to figure it out. You can’t figure it out if somebody’s sitting on the numbers, and that’s my worry.” 

Like in other states, maternal outcomes in Texas are worse for Black women, who have died at about three times the rate of non-black women. This year’s findings were expected to drill further into the causes behind those disparities.

Rep. Shawn Thierry, a Houston Democrat who has described going through her own dangerous birthing experience, said the data is critical for understanding the role cesarean sections play in maternal deaths and whether implicit bias is playing a factor in the quality of maternal care for Black women.

“There is so much to unpack from the data,” Thierry said, adding that “no woman who chooses life should have to do so in exchange for their own.”

Members of the state’s maternal mortality committee, which compiles the official report, said they were disappointed by the decision to hold the preliminary findings.

“(We) do the work to honor the lives of women who lost their lives, and families that are forever impacted by the loss of a mother,” said Dr. Carla Ortique, the committee chair. “So there’s disappointment on both fronts: that we’re not honoring those women and families, and that we may be negatively impacting efforts to improve maternal health outcomes in our state.”

 

Texas won't release this data because a preliminary study earlier this year found the state's abortion ban means twice as many women are dying in childbirth. 

This is happening all over the Gilead states.

For women of color, the mortality rate is most likely far higher than just doubling.

Texas Republicans want Black and brown women dead.

Full stop.

Durham Dud Down, Duration Disappearing

While the mutliple Justice Department investigations and Georgia and New York state investigations of Donald Trump move towards indictments, the Durham probe into the FBI's "misconduct in the Russian collusion hoax"is coming to a sad, pathetic end as the grand jury is expiring with nothing to show for it.

When John H. Durham was assigned by the Justice Department in 2019 to examine the origins of the investigation into the 2016 Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, President Donald J. Trump and his supporters expressed a belief that the inquiry would prove that a “deep state” conspiracy including top Obama-era officials had worked to sabotage him.

Now Mr. Durham appears to be winding down his three-year inquiry without anything close to the results Mr. Trump was seeking. The grand jury that Mr. Durham has recently used to hear evidence has expired, and while he could convene another, there are currently no plans to do so, three people familiar with the matter said.

Mr. Durham and his team are working to complete a final report by the end of the year, they said, and one of the lead prosecutors on his team is leaving for a job with a prominent law firm.

Over the course of his inquiry, Mr. Durham has developed cases against two people accused of lying to the F.B.I. in relation to outside efforts to investigate purported Trump-Russia ties, but he has not charged any conspiracy or put any high-level officials on trial. The recent developments suggest that the chances of any more indictments are remote.

After Mr. Durham’s team completes its report, it will be up to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland to decide whether to make its findings public. The report will be Mr. Durham’s opportunity to present any evidence or conclusions that challenge the Justice Department’s basis for opening the investigation in 2016 into the links between Mr. Trump and Russia.

The Justice Department declined to comment.

Mr. Durham and his team used a grand jury in Washington to indict Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. Mr. Sussmann was indicted last year on a charge of making a false statement to the F.B.I. at a meeting in which he shared a tip about potential connections between computers associated with Mr. Trump and a Kremlin-linked Russian bank.

Mr. Sussmann was acquitted of that charge at trial in May.

A grand jury based in the Eastern District of Virginia last year indicted a Russia analyst who had worked with Christopher Steele, a former British spy who was the author of a dossier of rumors and unproven assertions about Mr. Trump. The dossier played no role in the F.B.I.’s decision to begin examining the ties between Russia and the Trump campaign. It was used in an application to obtain a warrant to surveil a Trump campaign associate.

The analyst, Igor Danchenko, who is accused of lying to federal investigators, goes on trial next month in Alexandria, Va.

In the third case, Mr. Durham’s team negotiated a plea deal with an F.B.I. lawyer whom an inspector general had accused of doctoring an email used in preparation for a wiretap renewal application. The plea deal resulted in no prison time.

Mr. Trump and his allies have long hoped that Mr. Durham would prosecute former F.B.I. and intelligence officials responsible for the Russia investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane. Mr. Trump has described the investigation as a witch hunt and accused the F.B.I. of spying on his presidential campaign.

 

The arrests are not coming. The Durham probe went to trial and failed, got a plea bargain on a wiretap screwup, and the third charge is going to result in another whiff...or actually getting charges against a Russian analyst to stick.

 

A failure all across the board. Three years of trying to prove that Trump's documented involvement with Russian agents in 2016 was a massive hoax, and there's not one shred of evidence to support it.

Remember that.

Here (Doesn't) Come The Judge

Racist, sexist Senate Republicans never let an opportunity to screw over Senate Dems go to waste when it comes to petty procedural stuff to urt Black women, and they delivered again today in blocking the 3rd Circuit's first Black woman judge.

President Biden’s nominee to serve as the first Black woman judge on the 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals failed to win confirmation in the Senate Tuesday after two Democratic senators missed the vote: Sens. Maggie Hassan (N.H.) and Tammy Duckworth (Ill.).

Public defender Arianna Freeman’s nomination to the appeals court failed by a vote of 47 to 50. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) voted “no” to give him the procedural flexibility to bring her nomination back to the floor at a future date.

Hassan and Duckworth were absent, as was Republican Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.).

Every Republican present voted against the nominee.

If both absent Democrats had been present and voted “yes” along with Schumer, Freeman would have won confirmation in a 50-49 vote. Democrats also could have won Freeman’s confirmation in a 49-49 vote, with Vice President Harris breaking the tie because of Young’s absence.

Hassan is in New Hampshire, where voters are taking part in primary elections on Tuesday. Hassan also cast her vote in New Hampshire on Tuesday morning.

A senior GOP aide said Freeman’s confirmation failed because of Democrats’ “attendance problems,” while a senior Democratic aide downplayed the setback as something that happens from time to time in a narrowly divided Senate.

Freeman’s nomination to serve on the Philadelphia-based 3rd Circuit divided the Judiciary Committee along partisan lines earlier this year. Democrats and Republicans deadlocked 11-11 on a vote to discharge her to the floor.

A graduate of Yale Law school, Freeman has worked as a public defender for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, representing state and federal inmates in challenging their convictions and sentences.

 

Republicans don't want Black women on the federal bench, they've made that clear over the last 21 months. They especially don't want female Black public defenders on the federal bench, because the federal bench is primarily the domain of rich white Federalist Society men who want to dismantle democracy and replace it with a white supremacist theocratic police state. 

So yes, they blocked her, forcing Schumer to bring her vote back up later, in case a red state Democratic senator dies or something and they can take over the Senate in the meantime.

Racism never stops being petty or hateful.

Last Call For The Jackson, Hole, Con't

The Biden administration is now investigating the Jackson water crisis and looking a possible criminal probe like the one in Flint, Michigan.

The Environmental Protection Agency has launched a review of the water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, which left thousands of residents without water for days, an official confirmed to CBS News Saturday.

Jennifer Kaplan, spokesperson for the EPA's Office of Inspector General (OIG), told CBS News that the agency had launched a "multidisciplinary review" of the crisis.

The OIG has sent personnel to Jackson who are currently on the ground collecting date and conducting interviews surrounding work related to the city's water system.

"We're going to be talking to as many people as we can and see what kind of work we can do," Kaplan said. "It is all hands on deck."

Kaplan also told CBS News that she had notified the office of Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba of the EPA's inquiry.

Kaplan explained there are three divisions involved in the review: audits, evaluations and investigations.

She would not specify which divisions were deployed by the OIG.

The work is similar to the investigations in Flint, Michigan, and Red Hill, Hawaii, Kaplan said.

The Flint investigation resulted in nine indictments. Kaplan explained that if there is evidence of criminal activity, the information will be referred to Justice Department. The OIG personnel will also be interviewing state and local officials and their employees.

 

And now it's time for the other massive scandal in Mississippi politics that's under federal investigation as former GOP Gov. Phil Bryant and NFL star QB Brett Farve are looking at federal investigators closing in.

Text messages entered Monday into the state’s ongoing civil lawsuit over the welfare scandal reveal that former Gov. Phil Bryant pushed to make NFL legend Brett Favre’s volleyball idea a reality.

The texts show that the then-governor even guided Favre on how to write a funding proposal so that it could be accepted by the Mississippi Department of Human Services – even after Bryant ousted the former welfare agency director John Davis for suspected fraud.

“Just left Brett Favre,” Bryant texted nonprofit founder Nancy New in July of 2019, within weeks of Davis’ departure. “Can we help him with his project. We should meet soon to see how I can make sure we keep your projects on course.”

When Favre asked Bryant how the new agency director might affect their plans to fund the volleyball stadium, Bryant assured him, “I will handle that… long story but had to make a change. But I will call Nancy and see what it will take,” according to the filing and a text Favre forwarded to New.

The newly released texts, filed Monday by an attorney representing Nancy New’s nonprofit, show that Bryant, Favre, New, Davis and others worked together to channel at least $5 million of the state’s welfare funds to build a new volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, where Favre’s daughter played the sport. Favre received most of the credit for raising funds to construct the facility.

Bryant has for years denied any close involvement in the steering of welfare funds to the volleyball stadium, though plans for the project even included naming the building after him, one text shows.

New, a friend of Bryant’s wife Deborah, ran a nonprofit that was in charge of spending tens of millions of flexible federal welfare dollars outside of public view. What followed was the biggest public fraud case in state history, according to the state auditor’s office. Nonprofit leaders had misspent at least $77 million in funds that were supposed to help the needy, forensic auditors found.

New pleaded guilty to 13 felony counts related to the scheme, and Davis awaits trial. But neither Bryant nor Favre have been charged with any crime.

And while the state-of-the-art facility represents the single largest known fraudulent purchase within the scheme, according to one of the criminal defendant’s plea agreement, the state is not pursuing the matter in its ongoing civil complaint. Current Gov. Tate Reeves abruptly fired the attorney bringing the state’s case when he tried to subpoena documents related to the volleyball stadium.

The messages also show that a separate $1.1 million welfare contract Favre received to promote the program – the subject of many national headlines – was simply a way to get more funding to the volleyball project.

“I could record a few radio spots,” Favre texted New, according to the new filing. “…and whatever compensation could go to USM.”

So current GOP Gov. Tate Reeves killed the prosecution, but the embezzled welfare money came from the federal government. I guarantee you the DoJ is looking at all of this too. They turned millions in welfare money into a slush fund for the GOP, and let some of the poorest people in the country continue to suffer rather than help them.

That's corruption and racism, and it's a tale as old as America itself.

Huckle-barrier Graham And The Road To Gilead

Just when the Village idiots were getting comfortable disappearing Republican opposition to abortion down the memory hole while women are dying on the operating table because of lack of heathcare access, along comes SC GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham to remind everyone that the goal is to eliminate abortion access for all with a national 15-week abortion ban bill.

The South Carolina senator chose a uniquely tense moment to unveil his party’s first bill limiting abortion access since this summer’s watershed reversal of Roe v. Wade. It was designed as a nod to anti-abortion activists who have never felt more emboldened. Yet Graham’s bill also attempted to skate past a Republican Party that’s divided over whether Congress should even be legislating on abortion after the Supreme Court struck down a nationwide right to terminate pregnancies.

And some fellow Republicans said they were highly perplexed at Graham’s decision to introduce a new abortion ban — more conservative than his previous proposals — at a precarious moment for the party.

“I don’t think there’s an appetite for a national platform here. My state, today, is working on this. I’m not sure what he’s thinking here. But I don’t think there will be a rallying around that concept,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.). “I don’t think there’s much of an appetite to go that direction.”

Graham’s past pitches for a 20-week abortion ban attracted most Republicans’ support and even the votes of some Senate Democrats. His latest effort would leave in place state laws that are even more restrictive while also imposing new limits in blue states that currently have none. Coming less than 60 days before the midterms, it’s riled some Republicans, who are watching their once-dominant polling advantage shrink since the Roe reversal.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that questions about the bill should be directed to Graham and that most Republican senators “prefer this be handled at the state level.” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) suggested Graham had gone a bit rogue with his latest legislation: “That wasn’t a conference decision. It was an individual senator’s decision.”

“There’s obviously a split of opinion in terms of whether abortion law should be decided by the states … and those who want to set some sort of minimum standard,” Cornyn said of the 50-member Senate GOP conference. “I would keep an open mind on this but my preference would be for those decisions to be made on a state-by-state basis.”

Graham’s bill bans the procedure nationwide after 15 weeks of pregnancy, a priority of many prominent anti-abortion activists who have been demanding a far more aggressive response from the GOP. It includes exceptions for rape, incest and pregnancies that threaten maternal health.

While public polling shows majority opposition to the Supreme Court’s decision in June, it also shows support for some limits on abortion. Republicans have often parried questions about their positions by turning the spotlight onto Democrats, who generally support no legislative limits on terminating pregnancy.

“There is a consensus view by the most prominent pro-life groups in America that this is where America should be at the federal level,” Graham said. “I don’t think this is going to hurt us. I think it will more likely hurt [Democrats] when they try to explain to some reasonable person why it’s OK to be more like Iran and less like France on abortion.”

Senate Republicans did not broach the subject at their Tuesday strategy lunch, according to attendees.

Nonetheless, the bill could cause especially acute problems for the party’s Senate hopefuls. McConnell said he trusted each individual candidate to calibrate their own positions.

Several Republican campaigns did not immediately respond to questions about Graham’s bill, but Herschel Walker, the GOP Senate nominee in Georgia, said he’d back the legislation.

“Raphael Warnock wants to protect the killing of babies right up to the moment of birth. We need to do better,” Walker said in a statement to POLITICO. “I am a proud pro-life Christian, and I will always stand up for our unborn children. I believe the issue should be decided at the state level, but I WOULD support this policy.”

Others, however, are steering clear. A spokesperson for Washington GOP Senate nominee Tiffany Smiley said that she opposes the Graham bill and believes that states should decide their abortion laws. And Colorado GOP Senate nominee Joe O’Dea made clear he too doesn’t support the bill as he faces Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) in the Democratic-leaning state.

“A Republican ban is as reckless and tone deaf as is Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer’s hostility to” compromise, said O’Dea, who said he supports protecting abortion access early in pregnancies and applying “sensible limits” to late-term procedures.

 

A 15-week national ban on abortion is the GOP compromise position, after both Republicans and the Supreme Court basically destroyed a woman's right to her own body and  the GOP called it a "states' rights issue".

They were going to get away with it too, except now Graham has made that impossible. Every single Democrat up for a House or Senate race needs to plaster Graham's mug all over the TV along with his decree that yes, Republicans want to eliminate safe abortion across the country.

Better see some ads about the Republican's national abortion ban and soon, folks.

The Nice Italian Fascist

Seeing the Washington Post treat far-right Italian fascist Giorgia Meloni's "meteoric rise" towards Prime Minister as a good thing is bad enough, but it's pretty obvious that like Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin, Meloni is lying about being an authoritarian, and the Post is falling for the lie yet another time. 

 

The favorite to be Italy’s next prime minister has rocketed almost from out of nowhere.

Her party, until recently, was on the fringes. She was overlooked for years by Italy’s male-dominated political class. She is an unmarried mother with a heavy Roman accent, always casual and blunt, gesturing with hands to the sky, lambasting “woke ideology” and cancel culture.

By any account, Giorgia Meloni’s rise is astonishing. In a matter of weeks, if all goes as expected, she stands to become Italy’s first female leader. She’s also set a benchmark for a far-right politician in Western Europe, earning a level of power that’s been out of reach for her counterparts in Germany and France, and doing so even after the forces propelling nationalism on the continent — a migration backlash and Euroskepticism — have waned.

But Meloni’s profile is distinctive, as is the path she’s found for political success.

Amid war in Europe, she has notably avoided the pitfalls of nationalist figures elsewhere. She’s a strong NATO supporter and shows no affinity for Russian President Vladimir Putin. She has pledged not to disrupt Italy’s stability and Atlantic alliances. The country, she says, won’t take some authoritarian turn.

What will surely change, though, is Italy’s tone. Meloni takes shots at the “LGBT lobby” and the “globalist” left. She highlights anecdotes about immigrant crime. She has said that “everything we stand for is under attack” — Christian values, gender norms. Some of her stances — like opposition to gay adoptions, for instance — don’t get much traction among Italian voters, but she cites them as evidence that she cares more about principles than popularity.

“In a political world where everyone’s saying one thing and doing another, our [party’s] system of values is pretty clear,” Meloni said in an interview with The Washington Post. “You may like it or not, but we aren’t misleading.”

If Meloni, 45, prevails, she’ll wind up with a hard job: running a country in a generation-long economic decline that is somewhat wary of her powers.

Those on the left have sounded the alarm, saying that Meloni could push Italy into Europe’s illiberal bloc, alongside Hungary and Poland, fighting against diversity and agitating against Brussels. Her opponents argue that her views can veer into the extreme. They cite past remarks — such as a speech from 2017 — in which Meloni said mass-scale illegal immigration to Italy was “planned and deliberate,” carried out by unnamed powerful forces to import low-wage labor and drive out Italians. “It’s called ethnic substitution,” Meloni said at the time, echoing the far-right “great replacement” conspiracy theory.

Her allies, on the other hand, say Meloni has the kind of serious plans her predecessors have lacked, and that she chiefly wants to address Italy’s economic woes. Her stump speech is theatrical, but it deals mostly with ideas about boosting investment and curbing welfare. Her party’s recently released platform has 25 proposals — everything from extending high-speed rail lines to jump-starting university research. Voters inclined toward Meloni tended to cite, in interviews with The Post, her perceived honesty and coherence as the reasons for their support.

For now, Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia party — the Brothers of Italy, a name that echoes lyrics in the national anthem — is the most popular in the country, favored by roughly one-quarter of voters. It has a coalition agreement with other parties on the right, giving it overwhelming odds to prevail against a fractured and reeling left. The right-wing bloc has said that the premier job should go to the leader of the party with the most votes. Still, following the Sept. 25 general election, the president, Sergio Mattarella, has final say on who gets the mandate. 

 

The bad news, Italy is about to get a hell of a lot more hostile toward immigrants, Muslims, and of course, Jewish Italians. Meloni cozying up to Viktor Orban is inevitable if she takes power, and she's already letting everyone know her government is going to target LGBTQ+ folks from day one.

Sounds like every GOP politician in America, and the Post is like "But she's different!"

No, she's not.