Orange Meltdown, Con't

Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges by Special Counsel Jack Smith on Thursday, but it just wasn't for January 6th charges, as that grand jury is still proceeding.

 

Special counsel Jack Smith on Thursday brought additional charges against former President Donald Trump in the case alleging mishandling of classified documents from his time in the White House.

Prosecutors allege in the updated indictment that two Trump employees – Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira – attempted to delete security camera footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after the Justice Department issued a subpoena for the footage.

De Oliveira told the director of IT at the resort, “that ‘the boss’ wanted the server deleted,” according to the indictment.

Trump, who is already facing 37 criminal charges, was charged with one additional count of willful retention of national defense information and two additional obstruction counts.

Trump was charged with willfully retaining a top-secret document about possible Iran attack plans, which he discussed with biographers during a taped meeting at Bedminster, New Jersey, in July 2021, according to the indictment.

The indictment says the document was a “presentation concerning military activity in a foreign country” and that Trump “showed” it to the biographers during the meeting.

New charges were also filed against Trump’s aide Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago maintenance worker De Oliveira was also added to the case. De Oliveira, 56, was charged with lying to the FBI about moving boxes with classified documents.

Trump and Nauta were previously charged last month and have pleaded not guilty.

De Oliveira was the maintenance worker who helped Nauta move boxes of classified documents around Mar-a-Lago after the Justice Department first subpoenaed Trump for classified documents last May.

CNN has previously reported that surveillance footage turned over to the Justice Department showed Nauta and De Oliveira, moving document boxes around the resort, including into a storage room just before Trump lawyer Evan Corcoran searched it for classified documents.

 

So we've reached the cover-up portion of the proceedings, and I wouldn't be surprised if more charges were brought in the weeks ahead against Trump and his Mar-a-Lago staff that assisted in efforts to hide the documents from investigators.

And while the hammer didn't drop on January 6th charges on Thursday, I would surmise that those charges are coming in the weeks ahead too, along with whatever Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis has coming later this summer.

The additional charge involving a document discussed at Trump's Bedminster property now brings that location into play, too.

Expect more legal trouble for Trump, is what I'm saying. As Marcy Wheeler documents, this is big:

While all the journalists were in Prettyman Courthouse in DC, Jack Smith superseded the Florida stolen documents indictment to add Trump employee Carlos De Oliveira — the property manager — to the indictment.

He’s the guy who helped Walt Nauta move boxes around, including loading them to go to Bedminster. Nauta also allegedly asked him to help destroy surveillance footage.

The superseding indictment adds another stolen document count — the Iran document he showed others, which is classified Top Secret — and another obstruction count for attempting to destroy the video footage.

This passage describes how Nauta flew to Florida to attempt to destroy security footage.

This is a key paragraph of the superseding indictment. It shows how Trump uses legal representation to secure loyalty. It’s a fact pattern that crosses both of Trump’s crimes, and may well be in the expected January 6 indictment. It may help to break down the omerta currently protecting Trump.

Just over two weeks after the FBI discovered classified documents in the Storage Room and TRUMP’s office, on August 26, 2022, NAUTA called Trump Employee 5 and said words to the effect of, “someone just wants to make sure Carlos is good.” In response, Trump Employee 5 told NAUTA that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal and that DE OLIVEIRA would not do anything to affect his relationship with TRUMP. That same day, at NAUTA’s request, Trump Employee 5 confirmed in a Signal chat group with NAUTA and the PAC Representative that DE OLIVEIRA was loyal. That same day, TRUMP called DE OLIVEIRA and told DE OLIVEIRA that TRUMP would get DE OLIVEIRA an attorney.

Several uncharged Trump employees have been added to the indictment.

• Trump Employee 3, who simply passed on the information that Trump wanted to speak to Nauta on the day Trump Organization received a subpoena
• Trump Employee 4, who is the Director of IT who had control of the surveillance footage; according to some reports, he had received a target letter
• Trump Employee 5, who is a valet, but from whom DOJ seems to have firsthand testimony

The passage above seems to rely on testimony from Trump Employee 5 and the final exploitation of Walt Nauta’s phone.

 

Trump's discount organized crime family operation in Florida is about to be taken apart. And in order to avoid doing decades of time for their boss, they're going to talk. Trump knows he has to now do everything he can to keep them loyal and that means buying them legal representation. "Don't worry," he says. "I'll take care of you."

And he will. He'll make sure they are sacrificed for him. It's worked for him for decades.

Will it still work now?

Last Call For Climate of Destruction, Con't

Understand that if Trump wins in 2024, the environment is toast, and most of America is along with it.

 

A coalition of conservative groups has assembled a plan to systematically target most of the federal government’s work on climate and clean energy.

It proposes a sweeping deconstruction of government programs that goes far beyond what former President Donald Trump attempted to do by targeting “deep state” employees in federal agencies. And it’s designed to be implemented on the first day of a Republican presidency.

Called Project 2025, it would block the expansion of the electrical grid for wind and solar energy; slash funding for the EPA environmental justice office; shutter the Energy Department’s renewable energy offices; prevent states from adopting California’s electric car standards; and give Republican state officials more power to regulate polluting industries.

It was written by hundreds of conservative policy experts, energy lobbyists, industry consultants and former Trump administration officials. If enacted, it could decimate the federal government’s climate work, stymie the clean energy transition and shift agencies toward servicing and nurturing the fossil fuel industry rather than regulating it.

“Project 2025 is not a white paper. We are not tinkering at the edges. We are writing a battle plan, and we are marshaling our forces,” said Paul Dans, director of Project 2025 at the Heritage Foundation. “Never before has the whole conservative movement banded together to systematically prepare to take power day one and deconstruct the administrative state.”

The comprehensive plan — which runs 920 pages and covers virtually all operations of the federal government, not just energy and climate programs — was compiled by the Heritage Foundation as a road map for the first 180 days of the next GOP administration.

Its details were crafted by more than 400 people, including former Trump officials who could earn top spots in his next administration, if he is reelected.

Republican primary candidates all pledged to go after President Joe Biden’s signature piece of climate legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act. Biden’s climate executive orders would also likely be rolled back the day he leaves office.

But the ideas laid out in Project 2025 show that conservative organizations want to move federal agencies away from public health protections and environmental regulations in order to help the industries they have been tasked with overseeing, said Andrew Rosenberg, a senior NOAA official in the Clinton administration and a senior fellow at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy.

“What this does is it basically undermines not only society but the economic capacity of the country at the same time as it’s doing gross violence to the environment,” Rosenberg said.

 

Exploitation of the environment for corporate profits is all that matters. None of these folks believe they'll be around to see the worst of climate change, and they don't care if you'll be around either.

I still say that Gen Z is going to start suing companies and winning n climate change, right up until Congress and SCOTUS immunizes corporations from lawsuits the way gun manufacturers are immune to lawsuits.

The Turtle's Long Road

Senate GOP minority leader Mitch McConnell has been having a rough time of it as of late.

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell tripped and fell disembarking from a plane at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport this month, two sources familiar with the incident said.

McConnell, 81, was not seriously hurt, and he was seen later that day at the Capitol, where he interacted with at least one reporter.

The fall, which has not been previously reported, occurred July 14 after the flight out of Washington was canceled while everyone was on board. McConnell, R-Ky., who was a passenger, had a “face plant,” someone who was on the plane at the time but did not witness the fall told NBC News. That passenger also said they spoke to another passenger who helped tend to McConnell.

McConnell has also recently been using a wheelchair as a precaution when he navigates crowded airports, said a source familiar with his practices.

McConnell, a polio survivor who has long struggled to navigate stairs and other obstacles, has had a difficult recent history with falls. He sustained a concussion and a cracked rib in a fall in Washington this year, and he spent six weeks away from the Senate. He fractured a shoulder in a fall in Kentucky in 2019, requiring surgery.

McConnell’s nearly 20-second freeze during a news conference Wednesday renewed concerns about his overall health after the concussion.

“He’s definitely slower with his gait,” said a Republican senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue. In closed-door GOP meetings, “he doesn’t address it,” the senator said, referring to health issues.

McConnell’s office declined to comment for this article Wednesday night.

McConnell, who told reporters he was “fine” after his freeze-up Wednesday, spoke with President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after the incident.

“The president called to check on me. I told him I got sandbagged,” McConnell joked to reporters, an apparent reference to Biden’s fall last month.

 

I remind folks that the KY GOP changed the rules for appointing a US Senator should the need arise, while Gov. Beshear would get to make the ultimate choice, tit's the GOP-dominated General Assembly that chooses the list of candidates. 

 

I can't help but think if anything happened to Mitch now, that the GOP may decide Daniel Cameron would make a good Senator even though he's running for Beshear's job this year, as it's ultimately where he's headed. I don't know if Cameron can be replaced on the gubernatorial ticket this late in the game, but the KY GOP will just change the rules anyway and force Beshear to accept it.

Besides, if Mitch wasn't Senate minority leader, Tom Cotton or Rick Scott would be.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

President Biden plans to appoint former Maryland Democratic Gov. Martin O'Malley to head the Social Security Administration, and we'll see if Biden can keep all Dems on board, including Sens. Manchin and Sinema.

 

O’Malley, a Democrat, will require Senate confirmation to take over at the agency, which oversees a $1 trillion budget and is responsible for distributing benefits to older adults and disabled people.

The Social Security Administration has been run by acting Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi since President Joe Biden fired then-Commissioner Andrew Saul, a Trump holdover, in 2021. Saul’s ouster set off a partisan backlash, with members of each party accusing the other of politicizing the independent federal agency. Saul, who refused to resign, was just two years into a six-year term.

Beyond political infighting, O’Malley will also have to reckon with questions around the long-term financing of the Social Security Administration. Funds for its key social safety nets programs are expected to be depleted by 2035, mainly due to the country’s aging populating. Congress has struggled to agree on a fix.

O’Malley served as governor of Maryland from 2007 to 2015, and was the mayor of Baltimore before that.

Biden said in a statement that those experiences made him a strong pick for the job.

“Governor O’Malley is a lifelong public servant who has spent his career making government more accessible and transparent, while keeping the American people at the heart of his work,” Biden said.

Democrats in Congress also welcomed his nomination.

“Governor Martin O’Malley’s commitment to expanding and protecting Americans’ earned benefits as well as his record of public service will not only safeguard the future of Social Security but also modernize the agency and value its dedicated workforce,” Rep. Richard Neal (D-Mass.), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said in a statement.

 

If Manchin wanted to make trouble (or Sinema for that matter) they could very well do so here. Especially if Manchin's making good on his threat to run as the No Labels 2024 spoiler candidate, putting down a marker on how Social Security is run would get his name in the papers and noticed by older Americans counting on government checks.  The same goes for Sinema, who is trying to save her own seat in 2024.

We'll see who objects to O'Malley, but if it goes the way Julie Su's nomination at Labor is going, it could be months before this moves forward, if at all.

Biden is sticking by Su, but business groups are already saying they will challenge any regulatory changes as invalid because she hasn't been confirmed yet.

A trade group that has opposed Julie Su’s nomination to lead the Labor Department is demanding the Biden administration refrain from issuing a high-profile rule on gig workers until a Senate-confirmed secretary heads the department.

Flex, the trade group for app-based companies including DoorDash, GrubHub, Lyft and Uber, argued in a letter on Monday that any rules and regulations issued while Su is acting secretary don’t have political legitimacy or constitutional authority.

It’s an early hint at the challenges likely to be raised to the legitimacy of Su’s tenure as she serves as an indefinite acting secretary. And it echoes Republican arguments that any regulations issued by the Labor Department without a Senate-confirmed secretary in place could be subject to legal challenge.

“Any action taken to finalize the proposed worker classification regulation under Ms. Su’s current leadership as Acting Secretary would circumvent the Senate’s constitutional role of providing advice and consent on nominees,” Flex CEO Kristin Sharp said in the letter addressed to President Joe Biden. It mirrored language others have used to forecast legal challenges to Su’s regulations. “The Department should not finalize its worker classification proposal before having a permanent Secretary.”

Though it is publicly encouraging senators to support the nomination, the Biden administration has determined that Su doesn’t currently have enough votes to be confirmed in the Senate. The president plans to keep her in the role as acting secretary.

 

Remember, Su is in limbo because of Manchin and Sinema right now, along with blanket opposition signaled by all Republicans.  I don't think O'Malley's nomination will be as contentious, but we'll see.

Last Call For Hunting The Hunter, Con't

All of a sudden, Hunter Biden's plea deal is coming apart at the seams.

A proposed plea deal for Hunter Biden was on the brink of falling apart Wednesday, when the two sides could not agree on whether admitting to two tax crimes would immunize the president’s son from possible additional charges.

U.S. District Court Judge Maryellen Noreika pressed federal prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers to come to some “meeting of the minds.” But that appeared unlikely, as the two sides said they did not see eye to eye about the precise terms of their own plea agreement.

At one point in the hearing, Biden’s lawyer declared there was no deal — meaning that a long-running criminal investigation that Republicans have used to accuse both the president and his son of corruption might lead to a trial after all.

“As far as I’m concerned, the plea agreement is null and void,” Biden lawyer Chris Clark said.

The confusion over what, exactly, Biden would get or not get by pleading guilty stems in part from the unusual way his plea deal was structured — with a guilty plea to two tax misdemeanors and a diversion program, not a guilty plea, for an illegal gun possession charge.

That arrangement allowed Biden to admit the facts of the gun case without technically pleading guilty to the charge. It also created a bifurcated deal in which the assurances Biden wants that he won’t be pursued for other tax or foreign lobbying charges were not part of the tax case, but part of the gun diversion agreement, lawyers said in court.

Deals to plead guilty can sometimes fall apart under closer scrutiny from a federal judge, but even when that happens, the two sides often find a way to eventually resolve the issue and enter a deal acceptable to the court.

On Wednesday, the judge urged the prosecutors and defense lawyers to spend some more time talking, in the hopes that the guilty plea hearing might be salvaged. As the two sides spoke to each other, it became more clear how far apart they were.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to accomplish by blowing this up,” Clark told prosecutors. One of those prosecutors, Leo Wise, pointed to papers related to the case and said he was bound by the terms in them.

Clark shot back: “Then we misunderstood, we’re ripping it up.”

At the start of Wednesday’s hearing, Biden said he was prepared to enter the plea, which according to the deal he struck in June meant he would likely stay out of jail if he stays drug-free for two years.

Then Noreika asked whether he would still enter the plea if it was possible additional charges might be filed against him in the future. When Biden answered no, he would not, the judge ordered a break in the proceeding.

 

I'm not sure what the hell is going on here: that Hunter Biden's lawyers took a plea deal that didn't indemnify their client to future charges, that the DoJ sandbagged the offer, that the judge is crusading against Biden, or a combination of one or more of those.

 

But if this deal is truly sunk, and I have to believe politics is involved here, then things are going to get ugly.

 

Of course, they're going to get far uglier for Donald Trump. Let's keep that in mind, too.

 

Climate Of Destruction, Con't

Florida may have just set an all time global seawater temperature high this week.

 

The water temperature around the tip of Florida has hit triple digits — hot tub levels — two days in a row. Meteorologists say it could be the hottest seawater ever measured, although some questions about the reading remain.

Scientists are already seeing devastating effects from prolonged hot water surrounding Florida — coral bleaching and even the death of some corals in what had been one of the Florida Keys’ most resilient reefs. Climate change has set temperature records across the globe this month.

The warmer water is also fuel for hurricanes.

Scientists were careful to say there is some uncertainty with the reading. But the buoy at Manatee Bay hit 101.1 degrees Fahrenheit (38.4 degrees Celsius) Monday evening, according to National Weather Service meteorologist George Rizzuto. The night before, that buoy showed an online reading of 100.2 F (37.9 C).

“That is a potential record,” Rizzuto said.

“This is a hot tub. I like my hot tub around 100, 101, (37.8, 38.3 C). That’s what was recorded yesterday,” said Yale Climate Connections meteorologist Jeff Masters.

If verified, the Monday reading would be nearly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit higher than what is regarded as the prior record, set in the waters off Kuwait three summers ago, 99.7 degrees Fahrenheit (37.6 degrees Celsius).

“We’ve never seen a record-breaking event like this before,” Masters said.

The consequences for sea corals are serious. NOAA researcher Andrew Ibarra, who took his kayak out to the area, “found that the entire reef was bleached out. Every single coral colony was exhibiting some form of paling, partial bleaching or full out bleaching.”

Some coral even had died, he said. This comes on top of bleaching seen last week by the University of Miami, when NOAA increased the alert level for coral earlier this month.

 

The lights on the climate dashboard are blinking red, and the machinery of climate is breaking down as we speak.

A vital system of ocean currents could collapse within a few decades if the world continues to pump out planet-heating pollution, scientists are warning – an event that would be catastrophic for global weather and “affect every person on the planet.”

A new study published Tuesday in the journal Nature, found that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current – of which the Gulf Stream is a part – could collapse around the middle of the century, or even as early as 2025.

Scientists uninvolved with this study told CNN the exact tipping point for the critical system is uncertain, and that measurements of the currents have so far showed little trend or change. But they agreed these results are alarming and provide new evidence that the tipping point could occur sooner than previously thought.


The AMOC is a complex tangle of currents that works like a giant global conveyor belt. It transports warm water from the tropics toward the North Atlantic, where the water cools, becomes saltier and sinks deep into the ocean, before spreading southwards.

It plays a crucial role in the climate system, helping regulate global weather patterns. Its collapse would have enormous implications, including much more extreme winters and sea level rises affecting parts of Europe and the US, and a shifting of the monsoon in the tropics. 

 

We're already well into seeing years of evidence of positive feedback loops in climate systems. Now the only question is when we hit those tipping points and break those systems, leading to mass extinction for humans and a lot of other species. Food and water become far more scarce, and the survivors will battle over what's left.

 

The time to fix this was of course 30 years ago with the Kyoto Protocols, when the US Senate refused to ratify the treaty because of "economic damage".

We're about to see what "economic damage" really looks like in the years ahead.

The Brown And The Union Crown

The Teamsters Union, representing hundreds of thousands of UPS workers, has reached a tentative five-year deal with the logistics carrier and for now has averted an economy-crippling strike.

United Parcel Service announced Tuesday that it had reached a tentative deal on a five-year contract with the union representing more than 325,000 of its U.S. workers, a key step in averting a potential strike.

The union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, reported in June that its UPS members had voted to authorize a walkout after the expiration of the current agreement on Aug. 1, with 97 percent of those who took part in the vote endorsing the move.

UPS handles about one-quarter of the tens of millions of packages that are shipped daily in the United States, and the strike prospect has threatened to dent economic activity, particularly the e-commerce industry.

Representatives from more than 150 Teamster locals will meet on Monday to review the agreement, and rank-and-file members will vote on it from Aug. 3 to Aug. 22, according to the union.

Negotiations had broken down in early July, largely over the issue of part-time pay, before resuming Tuesday morning.

“We demanded the best contract in the history of UPS, and we got it,” the Teamsters president, Sean M. O’Brien, said in a statement. “UPS has put $30 billion in new money on the table as a direct result of these negotiations.”

The company said it could not comment on the dollar value of the deal ahead of its second-quarter earnings call in early August.

The Teamsters said that under the tentative agreement, current full- and part-time UPS employees represented by the union would receive a $2.75-an-hour raise this year, and $7.50 an hour in raises over the course of the contract.

The minimum pay for part-timers will rise to $21 an hour — far above the current minimum starting pay of $16.20 — and the top rate for full-time delivery drivers will rise to $49 an hour. Full-time drivers currently make $42 an hour on average after four years.

The company has also pledged to create 7,500 new full-time union jobs and to fill 22,500 open positions, for which part-time workers will be eligible. The company has said that part-time workers are essential to navigating bursts of activity over the course of a day and during busy months, and that many part-timers graduate to full-time jobs.

“Together we reached a win-win-win agreement on the issues that are important to Teamsters leadership, our employees and to UPS and our customers,” Carol Tomé, the company’s chief executive, said in a statement. “This agreement continues to reward UPS’s full- and part-time employees with industry-leading pay and benefits while retaining the flexibility we need to stay competitive.”

The union had cited the company’s strong pandemic-era performance, with net adjusted income up more than 70 percent last year from 2019, as a reason that workers deserved substantial raises.

It had especially emphasized the need to improve pay for part-timers, who account for more than half the U.S. employees represented by the Teamsters, and who the union said earn “near-minimum wage” in many areas.

The path to the agreement appeared to be paved weeks ago after the two sides resolved what was arguably their most contentious issue, a new class of worker created under the previous contract.

We'll of course see if the rank and file UPS employees sign on to the deal. It looks like a pretty good one. I know being a driver is a hard job. I applied for it some 20 years ago and they told me no.

 

Good for the drivers. I wish we all had a union 300,000 strong.

Last Call For An Education In Fascism

If you want to know what fascism in America looks like, visit a red state public university's purge of faculty over thought crimes.

 

Joy Alonzo, a respected opioid expert, was in a panic.

The Texas A&M University professor had just returned home from giving a routine lecture on the opioid crisis at the University of Texas Medical Branch when she learned a student had accused her of disparaging Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick during the talk.

In the few hours it took to drive from Galveston, the complaint had made its way to her supervisors, and Alonzo’s job was suddenly at risk.

“I am in a ton of trouble. Please call me!” she wrote to Chandler Self, the UTMB professor who invited her to speak.

Alonzo was right to be afraid. Not only were her supervisors involved, but so was Chancellor John Sharp, a former state comptroller who now holds the highest-ranking position in the Texas A&M University System, which includes 11 public universities and 153,000 students. And Sharp was communicating directly with the lieutenant governor’s office about the incident, promising swift action.

Less than two hours after the lecture ended, Patrick’s chief of staff had sent Sharp a link to Alonzo’s professional bio.

Shortly after, Sharp sent a text directly to the lieutenant governor: “Joy Alonzo has been placed on administrative leave pending investigation re firing her. shud [sic] be finished by end of week.”

The text message was signed “jsharp.”

 

Now, Joy Alonzo got to keep her job after the school's investigation found that she did nothing wrong, but the bigger issue is that what college students are being taught is that learning something that they don't agree with is wrong, being exposed to those ideas is actually making them victims, and that they have the power to remove that thought from the school so that they never have to deal with it.

 

They will expect to be able to do that going forward in life. The removal of people unlike them, not the thinking part, that is.

 

In the America that Republicans are setting up, where everything is a culture war battle and fighting that battle so that your side is the only one left standing in the battle of "ideas", that will be the new norm. 

Welcome to the GOP "education initiative".

Where On Earth Is Qin Gang?

Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has been AWOL for the last month or so, and now he's officially been replaced in the post by his predecessor, Wang Yi.

 

China’s foreign minister Qin Gang was dramatically ousted on Tuesday after a prolonged absence from public view and replaced by his predecessor in a surprising and highly unusual shake-up of the country’s foreign policy leadership.

The sudden move, approved by the top decision-making body of China’s rubber-stamp parliament, comes as mystery has swirled around the fate of Qin, who has not been seen in public for a month.

Qin, 57, a career diplomat and trusted aide of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, had only been appointed foreign minister in December after serving as China’s ambassador to Washington.

No reason has yet been given for Qin’s departure but his predecessor Wang Yi will now step back into the role, authorities confirmed.

Wang, who was foreign minister from 2013 to 2022, now serves as director of the foreign affairs arm of the ruling Communist Party, a position which makes him China’s top diplomat.

The appointment of the new foreign minister occurred during a meeting of the China’s National People’s Congress Standing Committee meeting on Tuesday. The meeting was abruptly announced on Monday in a deviation from usual precedent.

The sudden move comes in the middle of a busy and important diplomatic period for China following its emergence from its pandemic isolation earlier this year and as Beijing tries to mend strained relationships with international partners.

The high-profile diplomat has not been seen in public since June 25, after he met with officials from Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Russia in Beijing.

In his last public appearance, a smiling Qin was seen walking side by side with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko, who flew to Beijing to meet with Chinese officials after a short-lived insurrection by the Wagner mercenary group in Russia.

 

That last paragraph is the real story, "Chinese Foreign Minister Goes Missing After Meeting With Russians." Whatever Qin's fate actually was, the Chinese aren't saying and neither are the Russians.

Just another reminder that for all the fiction about BRICS taking over as the new economic and military supergroup, the reality is that both China and Russia are in economic tatters right now, and the rest of BRICS is in even worse shape.

That of course includes their diplomatic corps.

The House GOP Circus Of The Damned, Con't

House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarthy has to get the Village from Trump's growing list of criminal indictments by impeaching Joe Biden, no matter what it takes.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said that he expects the House GOP’s investigations into the foreign business activities of President Biden’s family to rise to the level of an impeachment inquiry

“When Biden was running for office, he told the public he has never talked about business. He said his family has never received a dollar from China, which we prove is not true,” McCarthy told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night, referencing Biden’s previous statements that he did not talk to his son Hunter Biden about his foreign business activities.

McCarthy also mentioned two IRS whistleblowers who alleged that prosecutors slow-walked an investigation into Hunter Biden tax crimes, and House GOP investigations finding that millions of foreign funds traveled through shell companies to Biden family members and associates.

“We’ve only followed where the information has taken us. But Hannity, this is rising to the level of impeachment inquiry, which provides Congress the strongest power to get the rest of the knowledge and information needed,” McCarthy told Fox News host Sean Hannity on Monday night.

“Because this president has also used something we have not seen since Richard Nixon: Use the weaponization of government to benefit his family and deny Congress the ability to have the oversight,” McCarthy said.

There's enough projection, gaslighting, and historical revanchism there to make me wonder if McCarthy is writing terrible steampunk-era America fiction the way Newt Gingrich has. Seriously, has anyone actually heard of Donald Trump? Does McCarthy carry a grounded lightning rod with him at all times to prevent getting struck by a bolt every time he says crap like this?

Christ on a triscuit.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

One of the actually correct, legal, and constitutional Supreme Court decisions handed down last month was the determination that Alabama's gerrymander was so racist that it actually violated the Voting Rights Act that Chief Justice Roberts has spent more than a decade gutting. Alabama Republicans of course don't give a damn, and are simply submitting a 99% as racist gerrymander eliminating Black voting power in the state and daring anyone to do anything about it.

 

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey, a Republican, seemed to defend the legislature’s insolence in the face of the federal courts’ orders when it approved the new map Friday.

“The Legislature knows our state, our people and our districts better than the federal courts or activist groups,” she said in a statement.

CNN’s Dianne Gallagher noted in her report that the old congressional map was invalidated by a three-judge federal district court panel that included two judges nominated to the bench by former President Donald Trump.

They concluded the plan by which Alabamians selected their congressional delegation in 2022 likely violated the Voting Rights Act because Black voters have “less opportunity than other Alabamians to elect candidates of their choice to Congress.”

Before the 2022 midterm election, the US Supreme Court had tabled action on Alabama’s map, which helped Republicans win the barely there four-seat House majority they currently hold.

Gallagher and CNN’s Tierney Sneed wrote last month that the Allen v. Milligan decision could have consequences for other states and reignite a series of lawsuits in multiple states.

“Outright defiance of the Supreme Court’s order,” is how Janai Nelson, president of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, described the new map to CNN’s Dana Bash Monday.

In this moment, it is up to our federal courts to protect Black voters and also to protect their own authority here,” she later added.

The background here is that Alabama’s population is about 27% Black, but the Black population in the state is focused on a number of counties that are overwhelmingly African American – an area known as the state’s Black Belt, although it is named for the area’s fertile soil. The interest of giving the voters of the Black Belt, many of whom are Black, representation in Congress, is all over the Supreme Court’s decision.

Coincidentally, earlier this year, President Joe Biden named Alabama’s Black Belt, site of many key moments in the Civil Rights Movement, as a National Heritage Area.

o Nelson, the math suggests that since Black Alabamians represent about a quarter of the state’s population, they should get representation from more than one of the seven lawmakers representing Alabama in Congress.

But the issue is larger than simple math since Alabama, both historically and currently, is marked by polarized voting conditions.

“This is a mandate by civil rights laws to make sure that there’s fairness in our systems, that Black voters and other voters who have been historically discriminated against have an opportunity to have representatives who will speak to their interests and give voice to their concerns,” she said.

 

Alabama's solution is a near majority Black congressional district that Republicans will win by just 20 points instead of 40. The state will still have six Republicans in the US House and one Democrat, but of course now it's more fair! 

Like Ohio Republicans, who ran out the clock on gerrymandering until a federal judge ordered the state to allow voting with districts that are unconstitutional under state law, Alabama will just do the same. Republicans don't care. They will control the state forever and will change the rules to assure they always will.

No matter how many Black voters they have to permanently disenfranchise.

 

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Beshear Audacity Of It All

Kentucky Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear continues to be broadly popular in 2023 heading into his reelection race against GOP Attorney General Daniel Cameron later this year. 

 

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear — a Democrat running for re-election this year in a deep-red state — remains among America’s most popular governors ahead of the November contest. His approval rating among GOP voters is stronger than any other Democratic governor, resisting drag from President Joe Biden’s poor standing in the Bluegrass State and setting up a formidable challenge for Republicans hoping to unseat him.

The other incumbent governor up for re-election this fall, Republican Tate Reeves of Mississippi, is among the country’s least popular, according to our latest quarterly data. His state’s partisan bent and the power of incumbency are likely to be enough to push him across the finish line in November, though strengthened antipathy from the state’s large share of Black voters could make him sweat.

A strong 64% majority of Kentucky voters approve of Beshear’s job performance, while 32% disapprove, according to our second quarter surveys conducted April 1-June 30. This marks Beshear’s highest approval rating since Biden took office in January 2021.

Along with receiving solid marks from Kentucky Democrats and independents, Beshear wins approval from roughly half of the state’s Republicans, making him the country’s most popular Democratic governor with GOP voters.

Even with his father’s esteemed name in state politics, Beshear’s current standing is remarkable given Kentucky’s partisan bent. While he defeated Republican Gov. Matt Bevin in 2019 by a razor-thin margin due largely to the incumbent’s deep unpopularity, Trump would go on to win the state by 26 percentage points in 2020.

Despite that wide presidential margin, Cook Political Report and Sabato’s Crystal Ball have rated the race as leaning Democratic, with Cook citing Beshear’s approval rating in Morning Consult surveys, buoyed by his handling of natural disasters and Kentucky’s economic performance. (Another race-rater, Inside Elections, currently sees the contest as a toss-up.)

Beshear is entering the heat of the campaign with strong popularity despite voters’ deep dislike of Biden in his state. Kentucky voters are 37 points more likely to disapprove than approve of Biden’s job performance (30% to 67%). But to Beshear’s credit, even those who dislike the president more often than not give the governor positive marks.

 

Cameron keeps attacking Beshear as a liberal, but even half of Republicans here say he's doing a good job. We'll see what polling looks like after Labor Day, but Beshear has a really good shot.

Trump Cards, Con't

Congrats to Team WIN THE MORNING who have finally figured out what any ZVTS reader could have told you a decade ago: the only thing that matters to Republican voters is owning the libs.

 

The mesh trucker hats, “Bud Right” koozies and “Abolish the FBI” yard signs Republican presidential candidates are feverishly hawking are, on the surface, all about amassing enough small-dollar donors to qualify for the first debate.

But there’s something else revealing about the candidates’ emporiums of red meat. In the modern GOP, owning the libs is what sells.

“Forty years ago, it would’ve been ‘Free Ukraine,’ next to Reagan’s picture,” said Rob Stutzman, a Republican strategist. “Freedom and liberty for all is not … the incentive structure in our politics, unfortunately.”

In the merchandising arms race of today, it’s not the economy, stupid. It’s Ron DeSantis’ $37.47 “Build the Wall” trucker hat, Nikki Haley’s “Strong & Proud, Not Weak & Woke” t-shirt or a Perry Johnson “I identify as non-Bidenary” sticker.

Once the “party of new ideas,” the culture wars are the new platform, not simply a plank.

“We’re kind of anti-woke,” said Johnson, the businessperson and longshot presidential contender from Michigan who is selling a mug with the promise to “keep kids off socialism.” “In fact, I think the whole party is pretty much anti-woke.”

It’s not hard to understand why Republicans are emphasizing cultural issues — not Reagan’s image — in their sales. They’re following the example of a more recent president, who seven years ago turned his red MAGA hat into a ubiquitous symbol of the right. Whole wardrobes materialized in homage to his Hillary Clinton-inspired chants of “Lock her up!”

 

The difference as to why Trump is winning by 20 points in Florida over DeSantis in Florida, 30 points in South Carolina over Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and 30 points in Iowa is very simple. Trump's the guy who won't just own the libs, he'll destroy them using the power of the US government.

Trump voters want "those people" destroyed to the point where the Obama/Biden coalition never dares to lift a voice to speak, a hand to vote, or eyes to see. They're voting for Trump so that happens. They want revenge, retaliation, and revanchism. and Trump will give it to them. A war is coming and they want to be on the winning side.

Politico seems to think it's just about merchandising.

It is not.

Last Call For Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

According to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Ukraine forces have now retaken half of the territory claimed by Russia as the counteroffensive continues.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Sunday that Ukraine has already retaken about 50 percent of the territory seized by Russia and that the counteroffensive is still in its “relatively early days.”

“In terms of what Russia sought to achieve, what Putin sought to achieve, they’ve already failed. They’ve already lost. The objective was to erase Ukraine from the map, to eliminate its independence, its sovereignty, to subsume it into Russia. That failed a long time ago,” Blinken told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria in an interview on “GPS.”

“Now Ukraine is in a battle to get back more of the land that Russia seized from it. It’s already taken back about 50 percent of what was initially seized. Now they’re in a very hard fight to take back more,” Blinken said. “These are still relatively early days of the counteroffensive. It is tough.”

Blinken projected optimism about Ukraine’s prospects in the counteroffensive attack, which it launched after months of preparation to retake land that Russia seized. 

 

There's still a long way to go however.

 

While the counteroffensive started off strong, Ukraine’s progress has slowed as it has quickly gone through its munitions and has had to navigate Russian minefields.

“The Russians have put in place strong defenses, but I’m convinced that with the equipment and support they’ve received now from more than 50 countries, with the training that their forces have gotten, and many of the forces who’ve gotten that training have not yet been put fully into this fight — and maybe more than anything else, with the fact that unlike the Russians, Ukrainians are fighting for their land, for their future, for their country, for their freedom. I think that is the decisive element, and that’s going to play out,” Blinken said.

“But it will not play out over the next week or two. We’re still looking, I think, at several months,” he added. 

 

Remember that the EU has basically given Ukraine until September to show progress. This is definitely progress if Kyiv can keep and hold it. Besides, the EU has no choice if Moscow is blocking grain shipments out of Ukraine, and Putin this weekend all but threatened to invade Poland next.

President Vladimir Putin on Friday accused NATO member Poland of having territorial ambitions in the former Soviet Union, and said any aggression against Russia's neighbour and close ally Belarus would be considered an attack on Russia.

Moscow would react to any aggression against Belarus, which forms a loose "Union State" with Russia, "with all the means at our disposal", Putin told a meeting of his Security Council in televised remarks.

Warsaw's Security Committee decided on Wednesday to move military units to eastern Poland after members of the Russian Wagner mercenary force arrived in Belarus, the state-run news agency PAP quoted its secretary as saying on Friday.

Poland denies any territorial ambitions in Belarus.

In his remarks Putin had also stated that the western part of Poland was a gift from Soviet leader Joseph Stalin to the country and that Russia would remind Poles about it.

In apparent reference to that, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki tweeted on Friday evening that "Stalin was a war criminal, guilty of the death of hundreds of thousands of Poles. Historical truth is not debatable."

"The ambassador of the Russian Federation will be summoned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs", he said.

On Thursday, Belarus said Wagner mercenaries had started to train Belarusian special forces at a military range just a few miles from the Polish border.

 

No wonder Putin is trying to distract everyone from how bad he's losing in Ukraine this summer.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

President Biden will announce the designation of three historical sites as part of the Emmett Till National Monument this week, marking what would have been Till's 82nd birthday on Tuesday.

 

The new monument will be established across three locations in Illinois and Mississippi in an effort to protect places that tell Till's story, as well as reflect the activism of his mother, who was instrumental in keeping the story of Till's murder alive.

In August 1955, two white men abducted, tortured and killed Till, a 14-year-old Black boy, after he whistled at a white shopkeeper's wife in a grocery store in Mississippi. Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam were acquitted but later confessed to the killing in a magazine. Fifty years after the crime, the shopkeeper's wife, Carolyn Bryant Donham, also admitted to lying about Till touching her.

Among the sites that will be honored is Roberts Temple Church of God in Christ in Chicago, where Till's funeral service was held in September 1955.

About 1,700 people filled the church to its capacity, while 10,000 more stood outside and listened to the service over loudspeakers. The ceremony was also remembered for Till-Mobley's brave decision to keep the casket open, showing Till's mutilated body.

In Mississippi, Graball Landing will become a monument. Locals believe it is the spot where Till's body was recovered from the Tallahatchie River. In 2008, a memorial sign dedicated to Till was installed near the site.

But over the years, the sign was routinely stolen, vandalized or shot at and forced to be replaced. A fourth edition now stands at the site — this time bulletproof and details the history of vandalism.

The third monument location will be the Tallahatchie County Second District Courthouse, also in Mississippi, where Till's killers were acquitted by an all-white jury. In October 2007, Till's family visited the courthouse to receive an apology from the town's leaders.

 

The million-dollar question in a country where one party is dedicated to erasing the entire civil rights era of the last 60-plus years: Will the existence of this monument, the history of the events being marked, and the reasons why the monument is being created be taught in states like Florida at all, or is that illegal? 

Someone in our national media should ask Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump, and the rest of the GOP field if they agree with the national monument designation and if it's appropriate to teach this history in schools.

 

Even ten years ago this wouldn't have been controversial at all. Teaching that a Black man was lynched by white folk on the word of a white girl in the lifetimes of even some of you reading this right now should absolutely be taught as a lesson, and a national monument marking this tragedy, serving as a solemn reminder of America's dark past, would be universally agreed upon as necessary to prevent it from ever happening again.

But of course one political party doesn't see it that way, and the people running for president in that party should be made to answer about why that is, and why that history is being erased under penalty of law.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.