Last Call For The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

Kentucky Republican Rep. James Comer's debut as Chief Clown of the "Weaponization of Government" subcommittee's first televised hearing did not go as the House GOP planned.

WHEN THE WHITE House called up Twitter in the early morning hours of September 9, 2019, officials had what they believed was a serious issue to report: Famous model Chrissy Teigen had just called President Donald Trump “a pussy ass bitch” on Twitter — and the White House wanted the tweet to come down.

That exchange — revealed during Wednesday’s House Oversight Committee hearing on Twitter by Rep. Gerry Connolly — and others like it are nowhere to be found in Elon Musk’s “Twitter Files” releases, which have focused almost exclusively on requests from Democrats and the feds to the social media company. The newly empowered Republican majority in the House of Representatives is now devoting significant resources and time to investigating this supposed “collusion” between liberal politicians and Twitter. Some Republicans even believe the release of the “Twitter Files” is the “tip of the spear” of their crusade against the alleged liberal bias of Big Tech.

But former Trump administration officials and Twitter employees tell Rolling Stone that the White House’s Teigen tweet demand was hardly an isolated incident: The Trump administration and its allied Republicans in Congress routinely asked Twitter to take down posts they objected to — the exact behavior that they’re claiming makes President Biden, the Democrats, and Twitter complicit in an anti-free speech conspiracy to muzzle conservatives online.

“It was strange to me when all of these investigations were announced because it was all about the exact same stuff that we had done [when Donald Trump was in office],” one former top aide to a senior Trump administration official tells Rolling Stone. “It was normal.”

In interviews with former Twitter personnel, onetime Trump administration officials, and other people familiar with the matter, each source recalled what could be described as a “hotline,” “tipline,” or large Twitter “database” of moderation and removal requests that was frequently pinged by the offices of powerful Democrats and Republicans alike.

The voluminous requests often came from high-ranking political appointees working in different departments, offices, and agencies in the Trump administration. But during both the Trump and Biden presidencies, these types of moderation requests or demands were routinely sent to Twitter by the staff of influential GOP lawmakers — ones with names like Kevin McCarthy and Elise Stefanik.

Oftentimes, requests would demand Twitter stop “shadowbanning” certain conservative accounts, or that the company reinstate banned or suspended right-wing personas. Other times, offices of senior Trump administration officials would send emails seeking to remove tweets that they believed to be “hate speech” or death threats aimed at their principals. And over the years, the knowledgeable sources say, staffers for Republican officials would regularly flag to Twitter content that they believed violated the app’s terms of service or other policies, including on spreading “misinformation” or “disinformation.”

That sentiment was shared by those who’ve worked for Twitter. “Everybody worked the refs,” one source familiar with congressional requests to the social media company said. “Usually with the Republicans, most of the time rather than saying, ‘Why are you taking things down?’ it was, ‘You need to put things back up.’ It was, ‘Put me back, put me back.’ ”

In Teigen’s case, the White House’s attempt to get Twitter to remove criticism of the president was sparked by a late night exchange initiated by Trump. The then-president blasted musician “@johnlegend, and his filthy mouthed wife” for being insufficiently grateful to him for signing the criminal justice reform First Step Act. The White House’s removal request landed on the desk of Anika Collier Navaroli, who testified that her supervisors had informed her the White House wanted Twitter to evaluate the post. ”They wanted it to come down because it was a derogatory statement,” told the House Oversight Committee on Wednesday.

It was obvious that the Trump regime worked the Twitter refs time and time again from 2016 to 2020, both before and after Trump got himself banned from social media after using it to foment the January 6th insurrection in 2021. Anybody who looked at this would have known that Twitter would have gotten requests from Republican lawmakers for years, and yet Comer's Clown Crew walked right into this jet intake anyway, on live television.

Worse, the Trump regime demands were not because of dangerous disinformation or potential terrorism issues, it was because it hurt Trump's tender feelings by making him look like the orange buffoon he is.

So yeah, Comer found out the hard way that the Trump regime and his own House GOP colleagues are just as "guilty" of "using government pressure to manipulate free speech".

Oops.

The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

The next step after Republicans end affirmative action programs in colleges and universities with an expected Supreme Court ruling this summer is to end diversity in hiring and gutting the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, as Texas is not only ending diversity hiring in state government agencies, it's declaring diversity programs to be illegal, almost certainly giving SCOTUS the future case they'll need to destroy the EEOC for good. 

 

Gov. Greg Abbott’s office is warning state agency and public university leaders this week that the use of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives — policies that support groups who have been historically underrepresented or discriminated against — is illegal in hiring.

In a memo written Monday and obtained by The Texas Tribune, Abbott’s chief of staff Gardner Pate told agency leaders that using DEI policies violates federal and state employment laws, and hiring cannot be based on factors “other than merit.”

Pate said DEI initiatives illegally discriminate against certain demographic groups — though he did not specify which ones he was talking about.

“The innocuous sounding notion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others,” Pate wrote.

Diversity, equity and inclusion is a moniker used for policies developed to provide guidance in workplaces, government offices and college campuses intended to increase representation and foster an environment that emphasizes fair treatment to groups that have historically faced discrimination. DEI policies can include resources for underrepresented groups, which can include people with disabilities, LGBTQ people and veterans. In hiring, it can include setting diversity goals or setting thresholds to ensure that a certain number of diverse candidates are interviewed. At universities, DEI offices are often focused on helping students of color or nontraditional students stay in school and graduate.

The governor’s directive represents the latest effort by Republican leaders fighting back against policies and academic disciplines that Republicans nationwide have deemed “woke.” DEI, along with critical race theory, has become a target of conservatives who argue that white people are being unfairly treated or characterized in schools and workplaces.

“Rebranding this employment discrimination as ‘DEI’ doesn’t make the practice any less illegal,” Pate wrote. “Further, when a state agency spends taxpayer dollars to fund offices, departments, or employee positions dedicated to promoting forbidden DEI initiatives, such actions are also inconsistent with the law.”

 

Texas is certainly going to get the pants sued off them over this, and that's exactly what they want. I expect other red states to do the same in the months ahead, ending diversity and inclusion efforts for private employers as well.

They're going to gut the Equal Employment Opportunity Act, just like they have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. And once again, doing this during Black History Month sends a clear message to everyone.

We Don't Need No Education, Con't

Kentucky Republicans are jumping on the assault on public education pain train in a big way as the General Assembly returns this week, with new legislation that would allow individual parents of schoolkids to sue school districts if they object to any part of their child's curriculum and the district doesn't change it.

 

HB 173 states parents should have the right to make decisions for their child “without obstruction or interference from a public school.” As long as the student meets the compulsory attendance rules under state law, that student should be educated how the parent sees fit, the measure asserts.

Guardians should have the “high duty and right to nurture and direct their children's destiny, including their upbringing and education; mental, emotional, and physical health care; and moral and religious development,” the bill continues.

HB 173 outlines a system for local school boards to receive complaints about violations of parents’ rights. If districts don’t respond according to the process, the parent can sue.

Parents would also be able to review any student well-being surveys, curriculum, books or course syllabi. They would also have the right to consent on their child’s behalf to participate in a number of things, including surveys and regular classroom interactions where a journalist may be present.

Almost every non-emergency health procedure, including mental health sessions with school counselors, would need a parent’s blessing.

Under HB 173, school staff would be required to inform parents if their child starts dressing in a way that doesn’t correspond with their gender or asks to use different pronouns or a name other than their assigned name ― a move that goes against state education guidance on how to best work with transgender students.

Districts would be required to prohibit trainings where teachers would be encouraged to use a student’s chosen name or pronouns, or touch on “critical race theory” topics such as white supremacy.

Schools would also no longer be allowed to require masks or any type of vaccination.

HB 173 also includes language to a previously filed “bathroom ban,” barring trans students from using the restrooms aligned with their gender identity.

Under the measure, which is 27-pages-long, parents would also have the right to have their child spend their day learning the assigned curriculum with “no time spent being indoctrinated into any partisan political position.”

It bars any discussion of gender expression inconsistent with biological sex, sexual orientation or sexual expression, including in classes and from teachers’ and speakers’ personal experiences. Teachers also could not display LGBTQ pride flags.

The bill clarifies teachers can talk about their legal spouse but should not discuss their sex lives with students.

 

I remind you that this bill was introduced, along with a state Constitutional referendum allowing charter schools to get state education money at the direct expense of public schools, at a meeting of the Kentucky House Education Committee which was discussing the state's existing critical teacher shortage. 

The bill doesn't exist to "put the power in the hands of parents, it's there to end public education by making it so litigious to operate a public school district that they can't actually educate kids, instead all your education tax dollars going to constant legal battles and defending parental lawsuits.

Florida's gutting of public education is only the beginning. Kentucky Republicans may actually dismantle the system entirely and surpass even Ron DeSantis.

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

As I've said many times in this series, 2022 was a test run for massive voter nullification and disenfranchisement of tens of millions of voters in hundreds of races where Republicans control the levers of elections coming in 2024. In Texas, for example, Republicans like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick are now calling for the entirety of Harris County and Houston to vote again, without any actual evidence of election fraud.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick this week joined other GOP state officials in calling for Harris County to redo its November 2022 election based on claims that voters were turned away due to alleged paper ballot shortages, though Patrick said he has no idea if any voters were actually disenfranchised.

Patrick's comments at a Magic Circle Republican Women's Club event on Monday were first reported by the Texas Tribune.

“How many people went to go vote that didn’t go back? We don’t know,” Patrick said at the event. “So we do need to have a new election.”

Now, let's dissect this.

According to Patrick, actual evidence of election malfeasance is not only non-existent, it's not even necessary for forcing Harris County and its 4.2 million residents to have an entirely new election because the theoretical hypothesis that someone in the county may have not gotten to vote is enough to nullify the entire actual, non-fraudulent vote that already took place.

This is like the Powerball or Mega Millions jackpot people saying "Well, your lottery ticket may be worth a billion dollars, but we're not going to pay out because someone out there may have been prevented from buying that winning lottery ticket with the same numbers and it's not fair to them. We have to have a new lottery drawing. Better luck next time!"

Keep in mind Harris County has 4.7 million people in it, roughly the same number of folks as the entire state of Kentucky. Imagine Kentucky saying "Well, we didn't like the way people voted, we have to hold new elections."

It would be absolute chaos. Which brings us to the next paragraph in the story as we resume.

 

A spokesperson for the Secretary of State’s office told the Texas Tribune only a court order could force a redo of an election.

Starting to dawn on you just how bad this is going to get, right? 

Asked how many voters Patrick believes were turned away and based on what evidence, Patrick's office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Harris County Precinct 1 Commissioner Rodney Ellis on Tuesday issued a response to Patrick's comments. "Election deniers will stop at nothing to stay in power, even if it costs us our democracy," he said. "The ongoing attacks on Harris County come from the same playbook that drove extremists to storm the Capitol."

Patrick's comments come a week after Gov. Greg Abbott tweeted a similar assertion. Abbott, without citing any evidence or estimate of disenfranchised voters, said a Harris County ballot paper shortage was "so big it may have altered the outcome of elections" and "may necessitate new elections."

In response to Abbott's claim, the Harris County elections office repeated the response it has offered since election night: that while some voting locations did run low on their initial allotment of ballot paper, "supplies of additional paper ballots were delivered to locations throughout Harris County on Election Day."

An election post-mortem report from Tatum's office found that 68 voting locations reported running out of paper, 61 of which received additional deliveries. At nearly one-third of the locations with reported shortages, election workers gave the county conflicting accounts with some saying they did not run out of paper.

According to the report, "many of them provided confusing answers and some declined to speak after reportedly being advised not to do so by the Harris County Republican Party."

Harris County Republican Party Chair Cindy Siegel denied that claim, saying the party told its election workers: "If they call you, our advice is to talk to them. There's no reason not to."

Siegel added Republican precinct chairs may have discouraged election judges from talking to the county, but the party did not.

Harris County has had a countywide voting system in place since 2019. In the November election, residents were able to vote at any of the county's 782 voting locations on Election Day.

 

Like I said, a test run for stealing 2024.  These assholes are normalizing the notion that the only possible "fair and just remedy" is making millions of Texans vote again because elections where Democrats actually win have to be fraudulent.

Twenty-two Republican candidates who lost their races have filed election contest lawsuits seeking new elections, including County Judge Lina Hidalgo's Republican challenger, Alexandra del Moral Mealer, who lost her race by 18,183 votes.

In November, Mealer quickly accepted the loss, tweeting a concession statement the morning after Election Day.

Mealer then reversed her position, filing an election contest petition on Jan. 6 that included no evidence or estimate of voters she said were disenfranchised. She went on to claim Harris County Elections Administrator Cliff Tatum "suppressed the voting rights of a not statistically insignificant number of Harris County residents residing or voting in high Republican turn-out locations" and "prevented eligible voters from voting.

What these assholes want is a roadmap to getting that court order in 2024 to redo elections in the most populous county in red state America, just ahead in population of Maricopa County in Arizona, and to provide that roadmap to other red states with large blue urban counties.

They're setting the table for massive vote nullification in 2024. Even if the corrupt Roberts Court somehow doesn't buy the legal theory that state legislatures, not voters, should determine presidential electors and elections, GOP-controlled states are going to do whatever it takes to disenfranchise their largest urban counties and cities in order to control local and state races too.

Oh, and the 2024 presidential race too.

To recap, the GOP Governor and Lt. Governor of Texas are calling for new elections in Harris County in order to normalize having the courts step in and nullify the 2024 elections in order to "redo" Democratic candidate wins, and to normalize the idea that "election fraud" doesn't need any actual evidence of fraud.

Imagine a twisted mirror of the Voting Rights Act, where a state like Texas decides that Harris County's election results (and Dallas County, and Bexar County, and...) are considered fraudulent until audited and "cleared" by the state, and that statewide elections (and local County elections) would not be determined until months after the actual election.

Imagine the impact that would have on turnout in those counties.

Again, are you starting to see where all this is headed in 2024 and beyond?

I hope you do. I really do.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

Washington Monthy's Bill Scher sums up President Biden's excellent State of the Union speech last night, and it was one of the best SOTU speeches I've seen in my lifetime.

When Democratic President Bill Clinton delivered his 1995 State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, right after Republicans took control of Congress and his approval rating was languishing in the 40s, he pledged to cut spending: “We propose to cut $130 billion in spending by shrinking departments, extending our freeze on domestic spending, cutting 60 public housing programs down to three, getting rid of over 100 programs we do not need.”

When Democratic President Barack Obama delivered his 2011 State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, right after Republicans took control of the House and his approval rating was languishing in the 40s, he pledged to cut spending: “I am proposing that starting this year, we freeze annual domestic spending for the next five years. Now, this would reduce the deficit by more than $400 billion over the next decade and will bring discretionary spending to the lowest share of our economy since Dwight Eisenhower was President.”

When Democratic President Joe Biden delivered his State of the Union address at the beginning of his third year in office, right after Republicans took control of the House and his approval rating was languishing in the 40s, he did not pledge to cut spending.

Sure, Biden nodded toward the center—praising bipartisanship, offering more border security, delivering an ode to former President George W. Bush for his work to combat HIV/AIDS. But the president did not act like a worried politician looking to make an ideological pivot. A quintessentially confident Biden delivered this address, proudly defending his record and conceding nothing. He even managed to lock in a key concession from Republicans.

After Biden pointed to unnamed Republicans who “want Medicare and Social Security to sunset” (a reference to Senator Rick Scott’s plan to sunset every federal law and program every five years), Republicans interrupted with howls. Unrattled, Biden seized the opportunity. “As we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right? They’re not to be touched.” Republicans applauded, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy from behind the podium. Surely Biden was aware that McCarthy had already said he would leave Social Security and Medicare out of budget negotiations, but his deft ad-lib made it look like he extracted the concession from the entire GOP conference.

We can’t definitively say whether Biden’s defiance is politically wise until the 2024 election. Say what you will about the strategic retreats on spending offered by Clinton and Obama, but they got themselves handily re-elected. And despite his unwillingness to offer concessions before negotiations, Biden may end up walking a path similar to his Democratic predecessors. It’s extremely hard to envision a budget agreement with the Republican-controlled House that doesn’t trim spending.

But in the short run, Biden’s easygoing confidence is precisely what he needs to keep the naysayers at bay. Thanks to a better-than-expected midterm performance, Biden avoided drawing an early primary challenge. However, murmurs of concern about his advanced age among Democrats are everywhere. You can feel the Democratic panic every time a poll crops up with Biden trailing Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis. Following this month’s ABC/Washington Post poll showing Donald Trump beating Biden by three points, Julián Castro, the former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, who ran against Biden for the Democratic nomination in 2020, posted on Twitter, “this poll undermines Biden’s central argument for re-nomination.” A desperate and disjointed State of the Union address could have shaken the Democratic base and ignited a wave of ageist calls for a new nominee.

That’s not what happened. Biden didn’t just give a solid speech. He demonstrated agility, went off script, and ran circles around his hecklers. It echoed Ronald Reagan’s masterful moment during the second 1984 general election presidential debate when the 73-year-old president was questioned about his stamina. The Gipper cheekily responded, “I want you to know that also I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.”

 

As any dynasty-spanning coach will tell you after a championship win, "We played the game that we needed to play." President Biden gave the speech that he needed to give last night, and it was one for the history books. 

He put one over on the GOP on live TV, hit all the points he needed to, and then he stuck around congratulating his Democratic colleagues by name for more than an hour. In the end, Joe Biden really is the kind of gifted politician that gets things done. He doesn't have the raw charisma of Bill Clinton, nor the shining presence of Barack Obama (especially when he's in Preacher Mode™), but he does have the likeability of Joey from Scranton, and people respond to it.

He's also put in the work for the last four decades. He's earned it, and he's put things on the board that neither Clinton nor Obama could do on climate change, infrastructure, and jobs.

Having said that, it's ridiculous to not believe Americans when we say we can do better, and that GOP blocking everything they can doesn't have real world consequences.

Reflecting on their personal financial situations, 35% of Americans say they are better off now than they were a year ago, while 50% are worse off. Since Gallup first asked this question in 1976, it has been rare for half or more of Americans to say they are worse off. The only other times this occurred was during the Great Recession era in 2008 and 2009.

On the other hand, today’s “better off” percentage is not unusually low, having descended to 35% or lower during other challenging economic times. This includes the late 1970s and early 1980s, the early 1990s, and from 2008 through 2012. In those periods, a higher percentage than today’s 14% volunteered that their finances were “the same” as last year.

I'm better off than I was a year ago, but times are still tough. Luckily, Biden gets that.

The last guy certainly didn't.

Might want to keep that in mind.

The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

WaPo's Greg Sargent convincingly argues that the Democrats have to go on the offensive against House Republicans led by Kevin McCarthy and his Circus of the Damned, with Rep. Jim Jordan's "hearings" getting underway starting this week.

House Republicans are planning a long-running extravaganza of hearings designed to dramatize the notion that the “deep state” is persecuting conservatives. In one sense, this will find a receptive audience: A new Post-ABC News poll finds that 55 percent of conservative respondents believe federal agencies are “biased against conservatives.”

But among all American adults, only a measly 28 percent believe this, and solid majorities of independents and moderates do not. Therein lies a trap that could prove dangerous for Republicans — if Democrats properly exploit it.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, has subpoenaed top Justice Department officials, supposedly to investigate the department’s suppression of information about the persecution of conservative parents. Republicans have long alleged that federal jackboots have terrorized parents for protesting at school board meetings about covid-19 restrictions and teachings about race and sex.

Democrats will no doubt respond by noting that this claim has been decisively debunked. But Democrats should use these hearings not just defensively but also affirmatively: to show that GOP rhetoric, much of it degenerate nonsense, has helped fuel a toxic atmosphere of threats and violence toward educators that has no business anywhere near your child’s school.

I asked Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, how far Democrats might go in this regard. Swalwell suggested they would treat such GOP oversight as a “committee to obstruct justice,” in that it seems designed to chill law enforcement efforts to deal with actual threats made against educators.

“They don’t want the FBI to investigate people on their side who they’ve spun up over frankly bulls--- claims,” Swalwell told me of Republicans. “You have a right to say just about anything you want, but you don’t have a right to threaten violence.” Swalwell added that under the circumstances it was reasonable to want the FBI or local police to investigate genuine threats.

Republicans appear determined to bury this aspect of the story. Their subpoenas seek documents related to “alleged threats posed by concerned parents at school board meetings.” Note the word “alleged,” as if threats didn’t actually happen.

Republicans also want documents relating to a 2021 letter by the National School Boards Association to President Biden, which detailed numerous specific threats against school officials and referred to them as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism.” This led Attorney General Merrick Garland to direct the FBI to work with those officials on strategies to address threats, which Republicans magically transformed into proof of FBI persecution of parents.

The Post fact-checking team has exhaustively demonstrated that this reading is nonsense. While the school boards association did use language that would be indefensible if applied to parents, many threats actually did happen, and lurid claims about FBI overreach haven’t been borne out: The FBI focused on those threats, not on conservative speech.

Regardless, if Republicans think they can prove FBI harassment of conservatives, let’s air this out. But Democrats can’t function just as fact-checkers, accusing Republicans of “conspiracy theories” and complaining they are “stoking the culture wars.” That could make Democrats seem defensive and responsive, which isn’t sufficient in an environment that’s increasingly shaped by full-blown information warfare.

 

Democrats will get the opportunity to fight back, and fight back they should, using every minute that they get to go after Republicans here. Making it clear that Democrats stand for something is just as important as what the GOP is against.

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

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis is making it clear this that he considers the media is his enemy, and that in a DeSantis America, anything resembling a free press will be destroyed. 

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis raised the possibility Tuesday of passing legislation that could lower the bar for prominent people to successfully sue news outlets for defamation.

In a roundtable discussion that featured complaints about the unfair “narrative” of the news media, DeSantis sat behind a desk similar to one of a news anchor with the backdrop of the word “Truth” on a screen. DeSantis spoke with six panelists including attorneys who litigate libel cases, libertarian journalist Michael Moynihan and Nicholas Sandmann, a conservative activist who has spoken extensively about his mistreatment by mainstream media outlets.

 

Hey look, it's our old friend Nick Sandmann, the pride of CovCath!

 

While the governor and the panelists weighed various policy options, the event concluded without DeSantis announcing any specific bill or action to be taken, only telling viewers to “stay tuned.”

Since he first ran for governor in 2018, DeSantis has kept traditional news outlets at a distance, preferring instead to grant interviews to conservative broadcasters while framing the general media as a political opponent. His reelection team included clips in campaign ads of him sparring with reporters at news conferences. More recently, DeSantis’ lawyers have argued in court that he possesses executive privilege, similar to a U.S. president, that allows him to shield records of his choosing from the public.

On Tuesday, DeSantis mentioned a 2021 60 Minutes story that focused on Publix’s campaign donations to the governor ahead of the grocery chain getting the right to distribute COVID-19 vaccines in Palm Beach County. DeSantis has previously railed against that report, saying clips were selectively edited and the story was inaccurate. At the time, he held an official event at the Capitol to refute it.

DeSantis said Tuesday that any potential legislation would not be for his benefit. Instead, he and other panelists implied that private citizens are often the victims of inaccurate reporting.

“They come after me — and they do do a lot of slander — but I fight back. I have a platform to fight back … I got thick skin,” he said during Tuesday’s Hialeah Gardens event. “But you have some of these other folks who are just run-of-the-mill citizens, their only possible way of recourse would be to be able to bring an action (in court).”

Although the governor did not offer legislative details, it’s not the first time his office has considered a challenge to the current legal understanding of the First Amendment. Before the 2022 legislative session, his office shared a draft of a bill with a lawmaker that would have, among other things, required the courts to presume statements by anonymous sources are false in a defamation claim.

 

Pay attention to this. DeSantis wants the ability to have "private citizens" sue news outlets for damages to the point they're all tied up in courts and don't have any resources left to report on DeSantis and his friends being corrupt.  That's the major blow, any news story that mentions somebody who's not covered by public figure laws would then be able to sue the pants of the news outlet for reporting the truth.

 

DeSantis also wants to bury whistleblowers against his administration, making anonymous sources into targets who can be retaliated against by both civil and criminal actions.

 

It's Fascism 101 here.

 

Will anyone from the news industry stick up for themselves against him?

PAC Man Adventures, or, The Mandela Effect

Wisconsin Democrat Mandela Barnes almost toppled GOP Sen. Ron Johnson in November, but his complaints were that the DNC and Michigan Dem Sen. Gary Peters and the DSCC abandoned him just short of the finish line. No more excuses, Barnes says, as he's creating a Super PAC to step in where the national Dems are leaving Black candidates like himself high and dry.

 

The backdrop: The Long Run PAC hopes to support women, people of color, LGBTQ, and working-class candidates across the country, Barnes told Axios, as they're most likely to face negative "assumptions" about their candidacy because they don't "fit the mold" that Democrats think can win in statewide, competitive races.The Long Run PAC is launching Tuesday and will announce an initial slate of candidates it will support later this summer.
"Too often, fairly or unfairly, the questions of ‘Can this person win?’ and ‘Does this person have what it takes?’ come up,” Barnes said in a phone interview.

“Sometimes those questions aren’t always asked in good faith,” he added.

Between the lines: Barnes refused to take donations from corporate PACs during his 2022 race, and after raising over $40 million from grassroots supporters, he said he wants to take the same approach with The Long Run PAC.“Our campaign was built by grassroots support and we’re going to lean on those supporters” and build “a people-powered national fundraising operation,” Barnes said.

He also plans to host events with and fundraisers for the candidates backed the PAC, and help campaigns with hiring and training.

Don't forget: Barnes' Wisconsin Senate race in 2022 was always going to be a challenge for Democrats, but the party and outside groups failed to invest in his campaign after Labor Day at the same rate as Republicans.Republicans outspent Democrats by $1.6 million in mid-September, with crime a main focus.

Exit polling found 49% of Wisconsin voters viewed Sen. Ron Johnson as too extreme, but nearly as many (46%) viewed Barnes the same way. Barnes ended up losing by a single percentage point.

Yes, but: The November election results showed that a historic barrier to Black representation in Congress — namely white voters refusing to support African-American candidates — is rapidly declining, Axios' Josh Kraushaar reports.

Of the 60 Black lawmakers elected to Congress this year, 30 now represent states or districts with a plurality of white voters, according to an Axios analysis. In 2014, only eight (of 43) elected Black lawmakers were from plurality-white states or districts.

 

Observations:

This is a good idea, and the $40 million Barnes raised for his own race proved he can fundraise for a project this big. The concept is sound and badly needed. There were Black/LGBTQ+/Latino candidates that the Dems left out in the cold in 2022, namely Barnes, Cheri Beasley in NC, and Charles Booker in KY.

Money doesn't always help. Beasley outraised now GOP Sen. Ted Budd by 2.5 times and she still lost handily. On the other hand, Rand Paul raised $27 million to Charles Booker's $7 million and was crushed. Would money have helped? Probably not.  Barnes himself outraised Ron Johnson $41 to $36 million and still lost.

Dems don't always lose on race of the candidate issues, as Josh Kraushaar is actually right for once. Remember here in KY. Amy McGrath outraised Mitch McConnell in 2020 $94 million to $71 million and she got stomped by a nearly identical 14-point margin then as Booker did in 2022. Money, being a white woman, and being an Air Force veteran pilot didn't help her one bit.

 

Having said all that, I absolutely want to see Barnes succeed here, because there are races where money could have helped, especially at the House level.

We'll see.

The Great Carolina Vote Robbery

North Carolina Republican are about to quite possibly:

• ...invalidate their own SCOTUS case against the NC Supreme Court 
• ...over a ruling blocking a state law 
• ...that would give the GOP-controlled legislature final say over electors in presidential elections
• ... rather than voters 
• ...just so they can have the now Republican-controlled state Supreme Court 
• ...overrule itself
• ...just in case SCOTUS rules against them.

It's bizarre, strange, legally ridiculous, and dangerous as hell. And if NC Republicans actually pull it off, it won't matter who you vote for in 2024 for president in The Old North State because the electors will be awarded to the Republican candidate. Slate's Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern explain:

Republican legislators in North Carolina who attacked the state Supreme Court ruling took that ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, arguing that the state Supreme Court had violated the U.S. Constitution. Under the legislators’ radical “independent state legislature” theory, only state legislatures, and not state courts, would have any power to regulate congressional elections. Never mind that the U.S. Supreme Court in Rucho expressly pointed to state supreme courts applying state constitutions as a proper means of policing gerrymandering.

This ISL theory is a dangerous one, as many of us have long said. It would push power to state legislatures to engage in even more egregious gerrymandering, unchecked by state constitutions. It would, as Nat Bach and I argued in an amicus brief and at Slate, lead to a flood of election litigation in federal courts, giving unhappy litigants a second bite at the apple, undermining the legitimacy of both the political process and the courts. And it would leave the Supreme Court in the driver’s seat, ultimately in a position to second-guess any state Supreme Court interpretation of a state constitution that it believes goes too far.

Now, after a ton of briefing and a lengthy oral argument, the whole dispute could be moot. Republicans took control of the North Carolina Supreme Court after November’s elections, and as soon as that happened I immediately wondered if the state’s Republican legislators would try to get the partisan gerrymandering issue back before the state Supreme Court in a new case.

But the legislators did one better. Rather than filing a new case for the next round of elections, they filed a petition for rehearing in the state Supreme Court in the original case while the U.S. Supreme Court case is pending, arguing explicitly that the new justices should overturn the partisan gerrymandering standard under the state constitution.

This past Friday, on a 5-2 party line vote, the North Carolina Supreme Court agreed to hear the case and rejected Common Cause’s petition to dismiss the rehearing request. Justice Anita Earls, an elected Democrat and former election law litigator, dissented: “Not only does today’s display of raw partisanship call into question the impartiality of the courts, but it erodes the notion that the judicial branch has the institutional capacity to be a principled check on legislation that violates constitutional and human rights.” She called the decision “an affront to the jurisprudence of this State and to the citizens it has sworn an oath to serve ‘impartially,’ ‘without favoritism to anyone or to the State.’ ”

The decision to seek rehearing is a curious one, and indicates some doubts on the part of Republicans that the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Moore would be a favorable one. After all, if you think there is a chance of getting a good ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court, why moot your case? And if you lose in the Supreme Court, you could always go back to the state Supreme Court in a new case to get the state court to reverse course.

Likely the calculation was that the legal arguments raised by the legislators in Moore are so weak that it would not lead to a decision guaranteeing the kind of legislative supremacy that they seek. Maybe kill this case, the argument could be, and hope that a better version of the arguments could be made next time.

Common Cause, too, may have reasons to argue for the case’s mootness. After all, a bad decision in North Carolina rejecting a partisan gerrymandering claim under the state constitution would only affect that state. In contrast, an embrace of the independent state legislature doctrine by the U.S. Supreme Court would have negative effects around the country.

But there is a cost here of throwing out the Moore case at this stage, and it is not just all of the lost effort on the part of lawyers, justices, and clerks. The ISL theory is not going away. It has come up in numerous cases over the last few years, and it is going to keep arising until the Supreme Court resolves it. Given the weaknesses of the legislators’ arguments in Moore, it seems like a pretty good case in which to get some clarity.

Moreover, it is far better for this ISL theory to be resolved when it is not in the context of a disputed presidential election. It is far worse when the Supreme Court’s involvement in election cases is outcome determinative, casting new doubts on the legitimacy of the courts and the electoral process. In this case, there is no individual outcome being threatened, but rather a group of future maps. And better to have rules set and understood in advance than figured out after the fact.

People may give a cheer if this new power grab by the state supreme court deprives the U.S. Supreme Court of its own possible power grab in Moore v. Harper. But postponing the inevitable will not necessarily lead to better results down the line.

In other words, the nightmare scenario isn't "SCOTUS buys the ridiculous ISL theory in June 2023", it's "SCOTUS buys the ridiculous ISL theory in June 2024 and throws the presidential election into a complete tailspin." If it does happen in June, we'd at least have 17 months to do something about it. But if that becomes five months, in the middle of the campaign, it's complete chaos.

Worse, there's a real chance that if the presidential electors are determined solely by state legislatures, Republicans would have enough of those state legislatures under control to win the White House regardless of the actual vote.

Imagine the 2020 contest, only electors Wisconsin, Arizona, Georgia and New Hampshire all went to Trump because that's what the GOP-controlled state legislatures decided, regardless of the actual vote in those states. It would have cracked the country in half. and Trump would have had enough electors to win despite losing the election and the Electoral College.

Now imagine SCOTUS rules in June 2024 that state legislatures can overrule the voters, and the Republicans in enough state legislatures declare they will award more than 270 electors to vote for the Republican months before the actual vote in November.

The country wouldn't survive.

Yeah, this is 100% worst-case scenario, but it's not totally out of the question when it should be. With the stakes this high, this SCOTUS should have tossed the case immediately.

But it didn't.

Remember that.

Last Call For Corporation Obliteration

The party of "freedom of speech" and "Money is speech" sure is doing everything they can to silence corporations when they take positions that Republicans don't like. In Florida, Ron DeSantis is set to take over Disney's special Reedy Creek tax district in order to force the company to cough up $1 billion in debt.

 

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis may soon get to pick the people who govern Disney’s Orlando-area theme parks, a move that would give the Republican leader new authority over the state’s largest employer and a recent political foe.

Republican lawmakers on Monday unveiled a bill to turn over control of Disney’s special taxing district, called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, to a five-member board chosen by DeSantis. The proposal also comes with a rebrand; Reedy Creek would become the “Central Florida Tourism Oversight District.”

The move to take over Reedy Creek is the latest step in a yearlong spat between DeSantis and Disney over a bill to restrict certain classroom instruction about sexual orientation and gender identity. DeSantis signed the bill into law over the objections of Disney’s then-CEO Bob Chapek.

In an act opponents decried as political retribution, DeSantis then pushed lawmakers to dissolve the Reedy Creek Improvement District, which for 55 years effectively gave Disney control of the land around its Florida properties. Republicans, who control the seats of legislative power, complied, and the district was scheduled to be sunset on June 1.

But the bill proposed Monday breathed new life into the taxing district and kept many of its special powers. Indeed, the final page of the 189-page bill states clearly: “The Reedy Creek Improvement District is not dissolved as of June 1, 2023, but continues in full force and effect under its new name.”

 

Why dissolve Disney's special tax status when you can take it over and use it to extort billions out of the company and parkgoers?

 

Not to be outdone, House GOP Circus of the Damned Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy and his sidekick Steve Scalise are set to banish the US Chamber of Commerce from Capitol Hill entirely for the crime of endorsing Democrats in some House races.    

 

The two highest-ranking Republican leaders in the House of Representatives are going to war with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as the new Congress takes shape.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise are both refusing to meet with the the Chamber after the lobbying group endorsed a handful of Democrats in the past two elections, clearly making an enemy of the powerful congressional leaders.

"The priorities of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have not aligned with the priorities of House Republicans or the interests of their own members, and they should not expect a meeting with Speaker McCarthy as long as that's the case," Mark Bednar, a chief spokesman for McCarthy, told CNBC in a statement.

Scalise also won't meet with the Chamber, according to spokeswoman Lauren Fine.

"Washington has radically shifted away from the pro-business philosophy of most local Chambers across America," she said. Fine also took aim at the Chamber's move to endorse Democrats running for House seats and said that "unless the Chamber gets back to their traditional pro-business roots, they should not expect to have any engagement with Majority Leader Scalise's office."

Denying the Chamber access could also prompt other House Republicans to block the nation's largest business organization.

The Chamber has continued to actively lobby Capitol Hill despite the ongoing battle with top Republicans. The group spent just under $21 million on lobbying in the fourth quarter of last year alone, according to its latest disclosure report. The form shows they lobbied lawmakers in the House and Senate, as well as Biden White House officials, on a wide variety of bills, including new tax proposals as well as U.S. aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. 

 

Look, American corporations are pretty terrile, ut forcing them to give their money to Republicans or else in order to hurt Democratic candidates is a new low, even for these jackasses.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Hopefully this asshole spends the next two decades in jail, but neo-Nazi hate group Atomwaffen founder Brandon Russell and his girlfriend are facing federal charges after being picked up in a plot to destroy power substations around Baltimore in order to "completely destroy the whole city." 

A neo-Nazi leader recently released from prison has been arrested again and accused of plotting an attack on the Maryland power grid with a woman he met while incarcerated.

Brandon Russell, 27, and Sarah Clendaniel, 34, are expected to make their first appearance Monday in Baltimore federal court on a charge of conspiring to destroy an energy facility, which carries up to 20 years in prison.

“If we can pull off what I’m hoping … this would be legendary,” Clendaniel said on Jan. 29, according to the court record. She was speaking to a federal informant, who was having similar discussions with Russell.

According to prosecutors, their plan was to attack with gunfire five substations that serve the Baltimore area. The charges come after similar attacks on the power grid in North Carolina and Oregon that remain unsolved; the Department of Homeland Security recently warned that the United States is in a “heightened threat environment” and that critical infrastructure is among the “targets of potential violence.”

In conversations about the plot, according to court documents, one defendant “described how there was a ‘ring’ around Baltimore and if they hit a number of them all in the same day, they ‘would completely destroy this whole city.’”

Clendaniel and Russell met while incarcerated at separate prisons, according to the court documents — Russell in federal custody for possessing bombmaking materials and Clendaniel in a Maryland facility for robbing convenience stores with a machete.

“Going to prison was worth it because I might not have met you otherwise,” Russell said in one text.

Both are on probation. It was not immediately clear whether they had attorneys representing them in this matter. Attempts to reach family for Clendaniel and Russell was not immediately successful.

Russell, a former Florida National Guard member, is the founder of the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, which attempted to use violent attacks to spark a race war in the United States. Experts say the group, while small, is dangerous because of its influence on the broader far-right movement to eschew politics and spill blood.

Proud Boys and Oath Keeper terrorists are one thing, but these Atomwaffen assholes put the Nazi in neo-Nazi and they specifically targeted Baltimore in order to make Black folk suffer and die. It's 2023 and America is still dealing with shit like this.

And we have an entire major political party playing footsie with these guys, and the people who support them.

Jesus wept.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Will Bunch makes it plain that House GOP Circus of the Damned's latest cackling performance piece kitting out members with AR-15 lapel pins is both making it clear whom the GOP really serves, and acting as an open threat against Democrats and their voters, starting with "George Santos".

In winning election on a completely made-up resume, Santos is the final downward spiral for a Republican Party that has become 100% about the performance and 0% about the policy. So when his new GOP colleague from Georgia handed Santos a lapel pin in the shape of an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle, the New Yorker did what any outrageous showman would do. He pinned it on.

The sight in recent days of Santos and several of his Republican colleagues parading through the hallowed halls of the U.S. Capitol with a mini-celebration of a killing machine that serves no civilian purpose beyond mowing down large numbers of innocent people in the shortest possible time is perhaps the most hideous assault on human decency I’ve seen in more than 40 years of covering U.S. politics.

But that’s the point, isn’t it? The lapel pins — like those Christmas cards of their adorable blond kids armed to the teeth with high-powered weaponry or the right’s new love affair with the toxic fumes of gas stoves — are meant to “trigger the libs” and sustain a career arc that generates prime-time hits on Fox News and fund-raising emails without ever having to get anything done. Yes, you could argue this column, then, is a perfect example of what these cons want. But what a choice: playing along, or remaining silent while America sheds the skin of humanity.

It’s one thing to embrace the more extreme interpretations of what the Second Amendment means around the rights of individual citizens to buy or own a gun, for purposes like hunting or self-defense. It’s something else entirely to worship the AR-15 and similar assault rifles, which were invented in the 1950s for the military and weren’t meant for civilians until the lucrative gun manufacturers who also finance the National Rifle Association saw a gold mine in marketing them to men obsessed with their masculinity in an era of social change.

And so these AR-15 lapel pins appeared on the chests of Santos and his fellow newcomer Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida — even in the same week that back in Luna’s home state four gunmen in a sedan opened fire on a crowd of people in Lakeland, wounding 11. Even as the notorious list of deaths from mass shootings involving AR-15-style weapons — in now-infamous locales like Uvalde, Las Vegas, Orlando, Sutherland Springs, Parkland and Newtown — grows longer and longer.

Imagine members strutting around the corridors of Congress in late 2001 with a Boeing 747 lapel pin, or wearing a spiky replica of the coronavirus when New York City’s morgues were overflowing in the spring of 2020. Explain to me how worshiping an AR-15 — when the blood stains are still being scrubbed off a dance studio in Monterey Park, Club Q in Colorado Springs, or a bus in Charlottesville — is any different, really?

Yet while it’s about “owning the libs,” the GOP’s performance art is also about much more than that. It’s instructive to look at who has been handing out the AR-15 lapel pins: Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia. In the you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up department, Clyde was born on Nov. 22, 1963 — the exact day that someone with a rifle gunned down President John F. Kennedy — and he has built his political career around the cult of firearms.

A Navy combat vet who before this week was best known for his declaration that the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was like “a normal tourist visit,” Clyde was first elected in 2020 largely on his high profile in the north Georgia exurbs as the owner of the Clyde Armory gun store. He grew that operation from his garage into a $25 million business, marketing AR-15-style guns in the heart of Trump country. That’s because in the Donald Trump/George Santos GOP, grievance is highly profitable — and often a grift.

But Clyde’s career is also a tribute to the ways that today’s GOP has inherited the flag that Southern segregationists like Georgia’s Lester Maddox waved in the 1960s. The Georgia freshman was one of only three House members to vote against the Emmett Till Anti-Lynching Act and 14 who opposed the creation of the Juneteenth holiday. In doling out his AR-15 pins, Clyde reminds us that the NRA’s radical interpretation of the Second Amendment arose only after Black civil rights gains in the 1960s, and that for its true believers gun ownership is a surrogate for their core value, which is white supremacy.

For much of America’s history, white supremacy — enforced by everything from the bias baked into our laws and codes to the terror of lynching — has dominated. When the swings of social change and a more enlightened government advanced the rights of Blacks, women, the LGBTQ community and others, Republicans competed as the anti-government party backed by the new terror of their unbridled gun cult, but even that increasingly is a losing hand in a more diverse and better educated America. If the white supremacy-soaked far right can no longer rule our nation, today’s Republicans are all too happy to blow it all up, in a world of mass shootings, insurrections, and unchecked pandemics. Their nihilism — wittingly or not — has turned them into a death cult.

 

There's really no coming back for the GOP. Either they gain de facto permanent rule, or they'll make however many millions suffer until they get the votes to do so.

Last Call For Fantasma Santos, Con't

"George Santos" claims to be many things he's not: a volleyball champ, an investment guru, a human being, but he's never claimed that he wan't a Republican, and we know that's the one thing that's true here, because six weeks in and he's already facing sexual harassment charges while in office.

A prospective congressional aide has accused Representative George Santos of ethics violations and sexual harassment, according to a letter the man sent to the House Committee on Ethics and posted to Twitter on Friday.

The man, Derek Myers, briefly worked in Mr. Santos’s office before his job offer was rescinded earlier this week, according to the letter.

Mr. Myers said in the letter that he was alone with Mr. Santos in his office on Jan. 25 when the congressman asked him whether he had a profile on Grindr, a popular gay dating app. Then, he said, Mr. Santos invited him to karaoke and touched his groin, assuring him that his husband was out of town.

Mr. Myers’s account could not be corroborated, but a spokeswoman for Representative Susan Wild, ranking member of the House Ethics Committee, acknowledged that his letter had been received by her office.

Mr. Myers said in an interview that he also filed a report with the Capitol Police, speaking to an officer over the phone. On Twitter, he said that he was making his complaint public for the sake of transparency.

“They are serious offenses and the evidence and facts will speak for themselves if the committee takes up the matter,” he wrote.

A day before making his complaint public, Mr. Myers received attention following the release of recordings he had secretly made of Mr. Santos and his chief of staff, Charley Lovett.

Mr. Myers was charged last year with wiretapping in Ohio, after a small newspaper he ran published audio of courtroom testimony that someone else recorded and sent to him. Journalism organizations rallied around him, calling for the charges to be dropped in the name of press freedom.

Mr. Santos told the news start-up Semafor on Thursday that his office had been in the process of hiring Mr. Myers, but had decided against it because of concerns over the wiretapping charges. Mr. Lovett confirmed the same to Talking Points Memo.

 

The ace part of this is that the House Ethics Committee has all but been dismantled under Kevin McCarthy's Circus of the Damned, so there's literally nobody there to hear Myers's complaint. 

Santos isn't going anywhere, even if he's indicted. McCarthy can't afford to lose his vote. The only way Santos goes out is by election loss, and even then I'd expect he'd accuse whoever beats him of fraud. He'll run again, just like I expect Madison Cawthorn will. Well, once he gets out of jail.

Have A Koch And A Vile

Billionaire right-wing corporate magnate Charles Koch is willing to buy the remaining souls of any Republican who isn't Donald Trump in order to get his agenda into power in 2024, which I find deeply weird because Trump gave Koch and his ilk the largest corporate tax cut in history four years ago, but there you are.

The deep-pocketed network associated with billionaire Charles Koch is preparing to throw its money and weight behind a single Republican candidate in the 2024 presidential primary – in a move that could significantly reshape the GOP field.

Americans for Prosperity Action, the main political arm of the Koch network, “is prepared to support a candidate in the Republican presidential primary who can lead our country forward, and who can win,” Emily Seidel, the CEO of Americans for Prosperity and a top adviser at AFP Action, wrote in a memo released Sunday.

The memo does not mention Donald Trump, but an official with AFP Action confirmed to CNN that the network is not planning to support the former president’s White House bid.

“To write a new chapter for our county, we need to turn the page on the past,” Seidel wrote to AFP’s staff and activists. “So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.”

The Koch decision to engage in the GOP primary – after sitting on the sidelines for the two most recent White House nomination fights – is likely to set off a scramble among Republican presidential contenders to win over the Kansas-based industrialist and the hundreds of wealthy donors who help finance his influential, free-market network.

During his White House tenure, Trump, often sparred with Koch officials, who sharply criticized his administration’s trade and hard-line immigration policies.

AFP Action has not announced a budget for its 2024 political activity, but the network has spent hundreds of millions of dollars in previous election cycles, rivaling the financial reach of the Republican National Committee. Americans for Prosperity has permanent staff in 36 states and touts millions of grassroots activists across the country.

Its political wing also plans to engage earlier and more aggressively in congressional and state-level primaries, both to influence more contests and to find new voters to participate in primaries, AFP Action officials said.

Seidel said the network is stepping up its activity to help address “the broken politics” that she said has created a “toxic situation” in the nation’s capital and blocked policy progress.

 

I certainly expect Koch's AFP network to back Ron DeSantis, meaning that while it will take billions to buy the kind of campaign advertising that Trump will get in kind (again) from the "liberal" media that absolutely wants him back in the White House to rule over the airwaves, DeSantis will have the money he needs to compete.

We'll see how the battle plays out. All the money in the world couldn't stop Trump in 2016, and didn't. Counting Trump out of 2024 is a mistake I won't make again.

Sunday Long Read: The Telegram Files

If you're still wondering why Elon Musk and Team Kremlin are breathlessly weaving fiction about how the CIA is reading every tweet looking for "enemies of the Biden regime", it's because they are distracting the world from the fact Putin is actually using "secure" social media app Telegram to hunt down and destroy dissidents.

ON THE CHILLY, clear afternoon of February 24, 2022—the day Vladimir Putin’s forces launched their full-scale invasion of Ukraine—a handful of Russian opposition politicians gathered in front of Saint Petersburg’s palatial Law, Order, and Security building. They had come to officially request permission to hold a rally opposing the war, which they knew would be denied. Among the group was Marina Matsapulina, the 30-year-old vice chair of Russia’s Libertarian Party. Matsapulina understood that the gathering was a symbolic gesture—and that it posed serious risks.

Nine days later, Matsapulina was awoken around 7 am by someone banging at her apartment door. She crept up to the entrance but was too frightened to look through the peephole, and she retreated back to her bedroom. The pounding continued for two hours, as Matsapulina kept seven friends from her party apprised in a private Telegram group chat. “They’re unlikely to bust it down,” she wrote, wishfully.

But at 9:22 am, she heard a much louder noise. She had just enough time to lock her phone before the door caved in. Eight people surrounded Matsapulina’s bed. They included, she recalls, two city police officers, a two-person SWAT team wielding guns and shining flashlights in her face, and two agents from either the Center for Combating Extremism or the Federal Security Service or the FSB—the successor to the KGB. The officers told her to lie on the floor facedown.

They told Matsapulina she was suspected of emailing a police station with a false bomb threat. But when she was taken into the Ministry of Internal Affairs’ investigation department, she says, a police officer asked whether she knew the real reason she’d been arrested. She guessed that it was for her “political activities.” He nodded and asked, “Do you know how we knew you were home?”

“How?”

She says the officer told her that investigators had been following along with her private Telegram chats as she wrote them. “There you were, sitting there, writing to your friends in the chat room,” she recalls him saying. He proceeded to dispassionately quote word for word several Telegram messages she had written from her bed. “‘They’re unlikely to bust it down,’” he recited.

“And so,” he said, “we knew that you were there.”

Matsapulina was speechless. She tried to hide her shock, hoping to learn more about how they’d accessed her messages. But the officer didn’t elaborate.

When she was released two days later, Matsapulina learned from her lawyer that on the morning she was arrested, police had searched the houses of some 80 other people with opposition ties and had arrested 20, charging each with terrorism related to the alleged bomb threat. A few days later, Matsapulina gathered her belongings and boarded a flight to Istanbul.

In April, after having made it safely to Armenia, Matsapulina recounted the episode in a Twitter thread. She ruled out the chance that anyone in her close-knit group had been cooperating with security forces (they’d all also left Russia by then), which left two conceivable explanations for how the officers had read her private Telegram messages. One was that they had installed some kind of malware, like the NSO Group’s infamous Pegasus tool, on her phone. Based on what she’d gathered, the expensive software was reserved for high-level targets and was not likely to have been turned on a mid-level figure in an unregistered party with about 1,000 members nationwide.

The other “unpleasant” explanation, she wrote, “is, I think, obvious to everyone.” Russians needed to consider the possibility that Telegram, the supposedly antiauthoritarian app cofounded by the mercurial Saint Petersburg native Pavel Durov, was now complying with the Kremlin’s legal requests.

As we come upon the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, with all evidence pointing towards a major escalation and new offensive from Moscow happening within the next few weeks or even days, it's important to remember that another war is being fought in the streets of Russian cities, one where Putin has all the advantages, and a people live in fear of their government.

Putin had everything ready to go in order to win that war. We're entering a very dangerous timeframe in world history now. The next few weeks, months, years may determine the path of the planet for decades to come.

The path Putin went down was obvious. The only question now is whether he takes Russia -- and the world -- down that dark channel.