Retribution Execution, Con't

In order for Donald Trump to continue his rule of the GOP, he has to not just stop the opposition to him among Republicans, has has to burn it to the ground and salt the ashes. The top targets are the handful of House Republicans who voted for his impeachment, apparently starting with Ohio GOP Rep. Anthony Gonzalez.

The crowd crammed into an indoor-outdoor bar at a sprawling mall in this teeming suburb south of Cleveland. The head of the local Republican club took to the mic on a small stage—and pledged vengeance.

“Sign the petition to ask Congressman Anthony Gonzalez to resign,” Shannon Burns said to a burst of cheers. “If you’re looking at your neighbor right now and saying, ‘What’s he talking about?’ … get with it!”

The second-term representative “betrayed his constituents,” in Burns’ assessment, when he voted in January with nine other House Republicans and every Democrat to impeach Donald Trump.

“He thinks a year from now when it’s election time for the primary you’re all going to forget and he’s going to get reelected,” Burns went on, eliciting snickers and jeers. “And I’m telling you right now: We’re going to make sure you don’t forget.”

In a normal political world and in a normal political time, a second-generation Cuban-American former NFL player from the Rust Belt with an MBA from Stanford would be considered practically by definition a rising GOP star. But Gonzalez’s impeachment decision made him a traitor in the eyes of the man who is manifestly the unofficial leader of the party. It’s the reason Trump wasted no time endorsing Max Miller—a former aide with next to no name ID plus an arrest record—to try to take out Gonzalez. And it’s why the 16th District of Ohio is now a singular early battlefield in the former president’s intensifying intraparty war.

“Anthony Gonzalez should not be representing the people of the 16th District because he does not represent their interest or their heart,” Trump said in a statement barely more than a month after he left office. “Max Miller has my Complete and Total Endorsement!”

A 32-year-old Cleveland native, Miller has been endorsed, too, by the Club for Growth, which commissioned a poll that suggests he has a wide lead at this early stage. “If the election was today, Anthony Gonzalez would lose,” Jim Renacci, the pre-Gonzalez Republican congressman here, told me last month. “He’s done,” said Harlan Hill, a Trump-aligned consultant who’s done work in the district. “Max is going to beat the hell out of Anthony.”

 

I'm actually looking forward to this fight on one level, but at this point it's clear that Gonzales is going to be obliterated. There's not going to be a lot of soul-searching either for Ohio Republicans, who are most likely going to eliminate three of the four remaining Democratic House members in the state through gerrymandering and the loss of a House seat through the Census.

By the time 2023 rolls around, Ohio will be as red as Indiana or Kentucky, and it will be as Trumpy. No dissent will be tolerated in red states.

It's not going to be a fun time around here.

Last Call For Eat The Rich, Con't

GOP (and more than a few Democratic) governors across the nation have declared restaurants and hotels open for business again, and want to get tourist and diner dollars back into the economy.  Only one problem: nobody wants to work for crap wages and COVID-19 for a tip.

"After a whole year of waiting, guests are clamoring to come back. And restaurants have invested in these expanded outdoor areas, and they need people right now," says Alice Cheng, founder of Culinary Agents, a hospitality job search site. "But they’re not finding them."

Charlotte, North Carolina restauranteur Jon Dressler remembers being short one part-time dishwasher before the pandemic, and now he's looking for four kitchen workers and 10 servers, Axios Charlotte's Katie Peralta Soloff reports.

As travel starts up again, advance vacation bookings are spiking on Martha's Vineyard, but restaurant and hotel owners are struggling to hire enough employees, per the Martha's Vineyard Times.

One McDonald's in Tampa Bay, Florida is offering applicants $50 just to show up for an interview, Business Insider reports. In fact, according to a recent survey of employers by Culinary Agents, the top reason roles aren't getting filled is no-shows at interviews.

What's happening: The hospitality industry was among the hardest hit during the pandemic, and that's making its recovery even tougher. "Everybody is reopening at the same time" and that means everybody is hiring at the same time, which makes it harder to find workers, says Cheng. 

On top of that, restaurant work — especially customer-facing roles like server and host — is still seen as hazardous. "Some people are still concerned about getting the virus at an in-person job," says Jed Kolko, chief economist at the jobs site Indeed. And many Americans who worked in hospitality have simply left the industry amid the pandemic. Anecdotally, there are plenty of servers and bartenders joining training programs to get new jobs in tech or finance. 

There's also a shortage of foreign workers, due to former President Donald Trump's ban on temporary foreign workers and pandemic travel restrictions. The Trump ban lapsed on March 31, but employers fear there's not enough time to fill jobs by the busy summer. Some employers are saying they can't compete with unemployment insurance checks and that workers would rather collect benefits than go back to work. But a 2020 study by Yale economists found that unemployment benefits don't create a disincentive for job seekers.

 

Only at the end do we arrive at the "free market" solution: A labor shortage means pay workers more.

Silver linings: Service employees have long been treated as disposable workers. Now, with restaurants desperate to hire, the power is finally in the hands of workers — and that's a good thing, Cheng says. Restaurants are already starting to offer referral and retention bonuses to attract talent. And workers can be pickier and seek out more pay or robust health benefits, she says.

What to watch: The latest COVID-19 relief package includes a $28.6 billion fund to help restaurants get back up and running. And congressional Democrats' proposed legislation to raise the federal minimum wage would also help restaurant workers by boosting the minimum tipped wage, which currently sits at $2.13 an hour, to $4.95 an hour.

 

Nobody wants to work bonkers hours for $2.13 an hour plus tips from maskless, grouchy wingnut Trump voters who are already terrible tippers. Trust me, I've been in food service and the wages haven't changed since I was slinging pizzas in college 25 years ago. No way I'd go back to it.

If these are "essential workers" then you'd better start paying them like it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The message from police, from the right, and even from some Democrats is the same: Ma'Khia Bryant had a knife, and so she had to be executed.

 

An Ohio criminal-justice professor who studies the fatal use of force by law-enforcement officers didn't hesitate to render an opinion after watching body-camera video of a Columbus police officer fatally shooting a 16-year-old girl Tuesday afternoon on the city's Southeast Side.

"My first impression is that the officer was legally justified in using deadly force," said Philip Stinson, a Bowling Green State University professor who has compiled nationwide statistics on fatal shootings that have led to criminal charges against officers.

"It's a terribly tragic situation, and my heart goes out to the girl and her family and friends," he told The Dispatch Wednesday. "But from looking at the video, it appears to me that a reasonable police officer would have had a reasonable apprehension of an imminent threat of serious bodily injury or death being imposed against an officer or someone else. That's the legal standard."

The body-camera video, which the city first showed during a news conference late Tuesday night, captured the perspective of Officer Nicholas Reardon, who shot Ma’Khia Bryant seconds after he arrived outside a home on the 3100 block of Legion Lane on a report of an attempted stabbing.

The video shows Bryant, who is holding a knife, push a female who is falling down backwards at the officer's feet, then turn and charge at another female dressed in a pink outfit. The female in pink is pinned against a car in the driveway while Bryant appears to swing the knife at her, prompting Reardon to fire what sounds like four shots.

James Scanlon, a retired Columbus Division of Police SWAT officer who spent 33 years with the division, has since trained officers, and served as an expert witness at trials in use-of-force cases, agreed with Stinson's assessment of the video.

"An officer is justified in using deadly force if his life or the life of someone else is at risk," Scanlon said Wednesday. "Few would argue that there weren't at least two lives there that were at serious risk."

In this case, Scanlon said, Reardon wasn't trying to protect himself, "but to save the life of someone he doesn't even know. ... It's a shame that no one has recognized that that officer, in all likelihood, saved one or more lives."

 

No attempt made to deescalate. Just summary execution of a 15-year -old Black girl.

Four bullets in the chest and dead.

 

Due process isn't for us, you see. We're not human. The penalty for having a knife and being Black is death, and then, later, America justifies it.

Just another dead Black girl.

 

But her life mattered.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

The Return Of Austerity Hysteria, Con't

 The national debt and debt ceiling are back, because they only matter if the President is a Democrat.

Senate Republicans on Wednesday signaled they might oppose any future increase to the debt ceiling unless Congress also couples it with comparable federal spending cuts, raising the specter of a political showdown between GOP leaders and the White House this summer.

Republican lawmakers staked their position after a private gathering to consider the conference’s operating rules this session, issuing what GOP leaders described later as an important yet symbolic statement in response to the large-scale spending increases proposed by President Biden in recent months.

“I think that is a step in the right direction in terms of reining in out-of-control spending,” Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) told reporters after the meeting.

The debt ceiling is the maximum amount the U.S. government is allowed borrow to meet its financial obligations. Congress previously agreed to suspend the limit through July 2021, at which point the Treasury Department has only a few months of “extraordinary measures” it can take before lawmakers must either raise the amount — or face the unprecedented consequences of default.

Republicans raised hardly any complaints about the debt ceiling during the Trump administration, voting frequently to increase it without requiring any spending cuts in return. Over that period, the federal debt increased by roughly $7 trillion as Trump pushed for large levels of military spending and slashed taxes for U.S. corporations.

But Republicans quickly revived their calls for austerity once Biden entered the White House, much as they had done in the past when Democrats took control in Washington. The spending concerns also contributed to GOP lawmakers’ unanimous opposition to Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan earlier this year, on top of the party’s more recent apprehension about the White House’s roughly $2 trillion stimulus package.

On Wednesday, Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) on Wednesday put forward the initial proposal targeting the debt ceiling, which his office described as an attempt to battle back Democrats who have sought to “spend recklessly, driving up inflation,” in recent months. It finds the conference should consider either budget cuts or “meaningful structural reform” to spending in exchange for the debt ceiling increase.

It is not clear how the policy might apply in the event Democrats seek to suspend the debt limit, rather than raise the amount. It also is not binding on the party, in keeping with the Republican conference’s other rules. Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.) later described it as “aspirational,” and Sen. Mike Rounds (S.D.) acknowledged that all of the resolutions party leaders considered Wednesday are “just resolutions,” adding: “The rules themselves are something we strive to follow.”

 

Republicans are betting that Democrats won't or can't use reconciliation on the debt ceiling bill this summer, and will be forced to come to the table and make trillions in immediate austerity cuts or face default, which would in fact crater the economy. Either way, Senate Republicans are hoping voters blame Biden and the Dems and give them the Senate back.

The solution of course is to scrap the filibuster and raise the debt ceiling, but that's not an option it seems thanks to Sinema and Manchin.

So we'll see.

Last Call For The Foxconn Flees The Chicken Coop

The biggest "deal" of Tangerine Tyrant's unfortunate era was the $10 billion Foxconn electronics plant in Wisconsin that was supposed to generate thousands of jobs, and prove that Republican economic policies were the key to American competitiveness in a global future. Instead, as I pointed out in October, the plant was all but abandoned before Trump lost the 2020 election, and now that Joe Biden is President, the massive tax boondoggle legacy of Gov. Scott Walker is a complete bust now, and Wisconsin taxpayers are stuck with billions in bills and a handful of jobs.

Taiwan electronics manufacturer Foxconn is drastically scaling back a planned $10 billion factory in Wisconsin, confirming its retreat from a project that former U.S. President Donald Trump once called “the eighth wonder of the world.”

Under a deal with the state of Wisconsin announced on Tuesday, Foxconn will reduce its planned investment to $672 million from $10 billion and cut the number of new jobs to 1,454 from 13,000.

The Foxconn-Wisconsin deal was first announced to great fanfare at the White House in July 2017, with Trump boasting of it as an example of how his “America first” agenda could revive U.S. tech manufacturing.

For Foxconn, the investment promise was an opportunity for its charismatic founder and then-chairman, Terry Gou, to build goodwill at a moment when Trump’s trade policies threatened the company’s cash cow: building Apple Inc’s iPhones in China for export to America.

Foxconn, the world’s largest contract manufacturer of electronic devices, proposed a 20-million-square-foot manufacturing campus in Wisconsin that would have been the largest investment in U.S. history for a new location by a foreign-based company.

It was supposed to build cutting-edge flat-panel display screens for TVs and other devices and instantly establish Wisconsin as a destination for tech firms.

But industry executives, including some at Foxconn, were highly skeptical of the plan from the start, pointing out that none of the crucial suppliers needed for flat-panel display production were located anywhere near Wisconsin.

The plan faced local opposition too, with critics denouncing a taxpayer giveaway to a foreign company and provisions of the deal that granted extensive water rights and allowed for the acquisition and demolition of houses through eminent domain.

As of 2019, the village where the plant is located had paid just over $152 million for 132 properties to make way for Foxconn, plus $7.9 million in relocation costs, according to village records obtained by Wisconsin Public Radio and analyzed by Wisconsin Watch.

Foxconn, formally called Hon Hai Precision Industry Co Ltd, said the new agreement gives it “flexibility to pursue business opportunities in response to changing global market conditions.” The company said “original projections used during negotiations in 2017 have at this time changed due to unanticipated market fluctuations.”

After abandoning its plans for advanced displays, Foxconn later said it would build smaller, earlier-generation displays in Wisconsin, but that plan never came to fruition either.

Prior to Tuesday’s announcement, Foxconn Chairman Liu Young-way told reporters in Taipei that the company currently makes servers, communications technology products and medical devices in Wisconsin, adding that electric vehicles (EVs) have a “promising future” there. He did not elaborate.

Liu had previously said the infrastructure was there in Wisconsin to make EVs because of its proximity to the traditional heartland of U.S. automaking, but the company could also could decide on Mexico.

Hon Hai shares fell as much as 1.6% on Wednesday morning, underperforming the broader Taiwan market which was down 0.7%.

 

So the Foxconn failure will at most produce 10% of the promised jobs, and still end up costing the state billions in tax incentives.

Hoocoodanode?!?

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

As the verdict in the Derek Chauvin murder trial was being announced, another Black girl was being shot to death by police in Columbus.

In an unprecedented move, Columbus police showed body camera footage of the shooting of a 16-year-old girl by a Columbus police officer just hours after the incident on the Southeast Side.

The shooting, which happened about 20 minutes before a guilty verdict was announced in the trial of Derek Chauvin, a former Minneapolis police officer who killed George Floyd, prompted hundreds to protest at the shooting site and Downtown.

Ma’Khia Bryant: What we know about the 16-year-old girl fatally shot by Columbus police

The video shows an officer approaching a driveway with a group of young people standing there. In the video, it appears that the 16-year-old, identified now as Ma’Khia Bryant, who was moments later shot by police, pushes or swings at a person, who falls to the ground.

Bryant then appears to swing a knife at a girl who is on the hood of a car, and the officer fires his weapon what sounds like four times, striking Bryant, who died a short time later.

"It's a tragic day in the city of Columbus. It's a horrible, heartbreaking situation," Mayor Andrew J. Ginther. "We felt transparency in sharing this footage, as incomplete as it is at this time" was critical.

 

Ma'Khia Bryant called the police for protection, because girls were fighting outside her house. When they showed up, the girls were still fighting, she got involved, and the police made no effort to deescalate the situation, they just put four bullets in her chest and executed her. 

The officers at the scene then chanted "Blue Lives Matter" as they walked away from the slaughter.

One guilty verdict won't change the system. It will take thousands of cops imprisoned for murder to do so. And that means thousands of more deaths like George Floyd and Ma'Khia Bryant before America does anything about it.

But Black Lives Still Matter.

 

Steny Hoyer Versus The Stupid

House Democratic Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is finally laying down the law when it comes to dealing with endless House GOP sedition caucus idiocy.

 

House Democratic leaders believe they've found a workaround to defuse weeks of delay tactics used by hard-line Republicans that have irked lawmakers in both parties and brought much of the chamber's floor action to a halt. At least temporarily.

The conservative firebrands have sought to make life difficult for Democrats in protest against what they say are efforts to shut out the minority party. But their tactics have made it virtually impossible for Democrats and Republicans to fast-track so-called suspension bills — noncontroversial measures that are critical to running the House — and instead created a legislative slog.

Under the response shaped by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, leaders of the far-right Freedom Caucus would no longer be able to effectively seize control of the floor by demanding individual votes on dozens of suspension bills and forcing members to vote late into the night, at least for the rest of this week.

Instead, Hoyer plans to package much of that broadly palatable suspension legislation into a single block on the floor, which he said would “save us somewhere in the neighborhood of seven-and-a-half hours” of voting time.

“What we have seen in the past few weeks has been an unfortunate example of extreme partisanship getting in the way of even the most bipartisan legislation there is," Hoyer said in a statement, confirming POLITICO’s reporting on the planning.

In total, Hoyer said, the conservatives' tactics have cost at least 15 hours of votes on bills that otherwise could have been approved with little fanfare in a voice vote.

"There are Democrats and Republicans who want to get things done, and we will work around those who do not,” added House Rules Committee Chairman Jim McGovern.

The Freedom Caucus has wrestled over how far to push its rebellion. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy stopped by the group’s weekly meeting on Monday evening, where he encouraged members to fine-tune their strategy and focus on achievable goals. McCarthy also warned Freedom Caucus members that they could face potential consequences from Democratic leaders if they keep disrupting the floor.

One of the ultimate goals driving the Freedom Caucus' floor tactics is getting controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) back on her committees after a bipartisan vote to strip her of those assignments. But Democrats are ruling out that demand.

“I’ve been meeting with Steny and I went to the Freedom Caucus last night. We had a good discussion,” McCarthy told POLITICO in a brief interview. “They want to fight. They’re frustrated with everything that’s happening, and I get all that. But my point is: What’s the goal, what’s the strategy?”

 

Even Kevin McCarthy is tired of Marjorie Taylor Greene and her merry band of neo-Nazis. Hoyer reining them in gives McCarthy more juice too, so he'll play along.

Of course, the House GOP sedition caucus will only resort to more extreme measures in the future...

StupidiNews!

• Vice President Kamala Harris says that the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial was "but a piece" of the healing necessary to resolve "generations of trauma" suffered by Black America.
• After months of being declared free of the COVID-19 virus, a New Zealand airport worker has tested positive for the disease, prompting New Zealand to reconsider opening its air borders.
• Chad President Idriss Deby was killed on the front lines in the country's battle with Islamist militants, after 30 years of rule, Deby's son Mahamat Kaka has been named interim president.
• House Democrats in New York and New Jersey could sink President Biden's infrastructure bill if the legislation doesn't include a repeal of the Trump-era SALT cap on state tax deductions.
• Apple is allowing social platform Parler back into the App Store after the network known for white supremacist Trump supporters agreed to new moderation standards.
  

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The jury in the trial of the former police officer who killed George Floyd came to a verdict on all three counts in roughly 24 hours, and Derek Chauvin was found guilty on all three.

Former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin has been convicted on all charges by a jury in the Hennepin County court.

The 12 jurors found him guilty of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter in George Floyd's death in May 2020.

The maximum sentence for second-degree unintentional murder is imprisonment of not more than 40 years. The maximum sentence for third-degree murder is imprisonment of not more than 25 years. The maximum sentence for second-degree manslaughter is 10 years and/or $20,000.

 

Chauvin was handcuffed and remanded into custody.

Like the convicted murderer he is. 

Black Lives Still Matter.

25,000 Posts And Counting

The Big Blogger Machine here informs me that this this Post number #25000 on ZVTS, and again I wanted to say that none of this would be possible without the readers and commenters that interact with the blog daily.

 

Thanks again for keeping me motivated and shouting into the abyss. It needs to be shouted at.

Walter Mondale Dead at 93

Former Carter Vice President Walter "Fritz" Mondale died this week at age 93.

Walter Mondale, who transformed the role of U.S. vice president while serving under Jimmy Carter and was the Democratic nominee for president in 1984, died Monday at 93, according to a family spokesperson.

The big picture: President Biden, who was mentored by Mondale through the years, said in 2015 that the former vice president gave him a "roadmap" to successfully take on the job. 

He was the first vice president to have an office in the White House and was deeply engaged in both U.S. and foreign policy, working closely with the president. 

"I took Fritz's roadmap. He actually gave me a memo, classic Fritz, gave me a memo, as to what I should be looking for and what kind of commitments I should get to be able to do the job the way Fritz thought it should be done," Biden said at an event honoring Mondale in 2015.

Backstory: Mondale spoke by phone on Sunday with President Biden and former Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, as well as Vice President Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, said his friend and former campaign staffer Tom Cosgrove. While he and his family believed his death was imminent, after those calls he “perked up.” 

In a final goodbye email to 320 staffers spanning four decades, Mondale told his staffers how much they meant to him, adding he knew that they’d keep up “the good fight” and “Joe in the White House certainly helps.” The email, which was shared with Axios, was prepared to be sent upon his death. 

Cosgrove said Mondale had been deeply worried about the impact of a potential second Donald Trump term on American democracy. "There was a difference after the inauguration - a letting go,” Cosgrove said. “There was a big exhale of relief.”

Mondale and Carter were the longest-living post-presidential team in U.S. history.

 

Mondale got the short end of the historical stick, frankly. He basically invented the job of the modern VP more than forty years ago, the President's right-hand person and on occasions, attack dog and lightning rod, saying the things the President could not.  He nominated Geraldine Ferarro in 1984 when he ran against Reagan, and history only really remembers him for the absolute asskicking Reagan gave him, with Mondale winning only his home state of Minnesota (barely) and DC. Reagan's 525-13 destruction of Mondale represented the high-point of GOP politics and shaped the country for decades.

Democrats have been afraid of losing like that ever since, even when they win. And there's a reason why it took 36 years for another woman to be nominated as VP. Hillary Clinton of course ran for President and lost to a cartoon character, so it makes what Joe Biden and Kamala Harris did even more historic.

America eventually gets to the right place, but it takes a long time for it to happen.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter

As closing arguments in the trial of the former police officer who killed George Floyd wrapped up in Minneapolis and the case heads to a jury, a new USA Today/Ipsos poll finds support for BLM back to its pre-June 2020 levels, and even lower among white Americans than it was last year, while support for police is back up to all-time highs. As FiveThirtyEight's Alex Samuels points out, that makes police reform difficult to impossible right now politically.

Daunte Wright was driving in his car through Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, two days ago when police officers pulled him over and later fatally shot him. This isn’t the first time cops have used excessive or fatal force against a Black person. In fact, just 10 miles away from where Wright died, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was on trial for murder after kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes last year.

Floyd’s death sparked a massive movement against police brutality and a sweeping shift in public opinion. And while it’s possible that in the wake of the latest tragedy, public support for reforming policing might increase again, new calls for change face a significant obstacle in public opinion. Gains in support for reform, especially among white Americans, tend to be fleeting, and there’s no consensus on what type of reforms the public wants.

Eleven months after Floyd’s death, support for the Black Lives Matter movement has fallen, while America’s trust in law enforcement has risen. Sixty-nine percent of Americans, according to a USA Today/Ipsos survey from March, now trust local police and law enforcement to promote justice and equal treatment of all races versus 56 percent who felt the same way last June. 

 

Meanwhile, in the almost four years Civiqs has been asking about support for the Black Lives Matter movement, a majority of white people have never supported the movement.1 Support peaked at 43 percent last June, just days after Floyd’s death. Since then, white Americans’ support for the movement has dipped back down to roughly where it was before Floyd’s death and is currently at 37 percent.

 

Some of the biggest drops in support among white Americans occurred among older people (between the ages of 50 and 64), Republicans and men. Black Americans, meanwhile, have remained steady in their support of the movement. Overall, 85 percent of Black Americans say they support Black Lives Matter, compared to 88 percent last year. And that cuts across age, education and gender.

The reasons for the decline in support among white Americans are myriad. Some experts have chalked it up to a decline in protests and less media coverage of ongoing calls for police reform, making it easier for white people to tune out issues of police brutality. It’s also worth noting, of course, that many protests for Black and civil rights start off unpopular, and people’s perception of the current movement might change over time; white Americans have gradually become more liberal on issues of race, for instance. (Public opinion tends to ebb and flow with tragedy, too, a trend we’ve seen in recent years with the debate over gun control.)

It’s a stark reminder, though, that despite the heavy media coverage the Chauvin trial has received in its first three weeks, its outcome is anything but certain. As we’ve written before, it’s uncommon for police officers to face legal consequences for excessive force. While a majority of Americans (57 percent) think Chauvin should be found guilty, according to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, 56 percent of registered voters told Morning Consult in a separate poll that they’re not following the trial closely. Twenty-one percent said it was because they didn’t think anything will change.

But even if Chauvin is convicted, it’s unlikely policing will fundamentally change in the U.S. Not only is public opinion variable, leading lawmakers to back off reform, law enforcement is often reluctant to admit wrongdoing toward Black people.

 

Police reform isn't popular. People like cops. They're supposed to protect you. But as with firearms, race, and gender the conversations have been mutated and deflected so many times that they are watered down to meaninglessness.

And we muddle through until the next police killing.

Cleaning Up Trump's Mess, Con't

The Biden administration continues to clean up the Trump toxic waste swamp, ending one dehumanizing, barbaric Trump policy at a time, this time around starting with getting rid of the term "illegal immigrant".

The Biden administration has directed immigration enforcement agencies to stop using references to immigrants that were commonplace under the Trump administration, according to the Washington Post on Monday.

In copies of memos sent to department heads at Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection on Monday that were obtained by the Post, the Biden administration details the change in rhetoric that aims to reverse former President Trump’s hardline immigration policies.

The Post reported that changes include “noncitizen or migrant” instead of “alien,” “undocumented” or “illegal,” and “integration” in lieu of “assimilation” when referring to immigrants.

Top officials in CBP and ICE make clear in the memos that under the Biden administration, language that is more inclusive is a top priority.

“As the nation’s premier law enforcement agency, we set a tone and example for our country and partners across the world,” CBP’s top official, Troy Miller, said in his memo, according to the Post. “We enforce our nation’s laws while also maintaining the dignity of every individual with whom we interact. The words we use matter and will serve to further confer that dignity to those in our custody.”

In a separate memo, ICE acting director Tae Johnson expressed a similar sentiment, saying that the agency will ensure “agency communications use the preferred terminology and inclusive language” in response the guidance set by the Biden administration.

The changes in rhetoric regarding immigrants take effect immediately.

The new guidance follows a similar directive from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes green cards and citizenship applications, regarding agency communications such as internal correspondence and public information.

The use of “alien” and “illegal” has commonly been used by Border Patrol agents and ICE in news releases, social media and memos to refer to immigrants taken into custody after entering the country illegally.

 

There's still a lot of mess to clean up though, as evidenced by Biden's latest move taking out the trash on climate change.

The White House has reportedly removed and reassigned a scientist chosen by a Trump administration appointee to oversee the government’s definitive report on the effects of climate change.

Citing two sources close to the matter, The Washington Post reports that Betsy Weatherhead, an experienced atmospheric scientist, has been removed from her position as lead of the National Climate Assessment and been reassigned to U.S. Geological Survey.

According to the Post, officials at the White House Office of Science Technology Policy (OSTP) ultimately made the decision to reassign Weatherhead. The OSTP confirmed Weatherhead’s removal.

Weatherhead's selection was praised by the scientific community at the time, the Post notes, due to her decades of experience as a climate scientist in both academic and private sectors. She once served on the board of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and is considered to be an expert on Earth observations, ozone depletion and the intersection of weather and climate.

Individuals close to the situation told the Post there was friction between Weatherhead and officials from the 13 agencies participating in the research program.

Despite her career as a respected climate scientist, the Post notes that Weatherhead has placed importance on communicating scientific uncertainty, which may have been what made her unpopular with the Biden administration.

Weatherhead's ideas for the assessment reportedly clashed with federal officials as she sought to bring in more authors from the private sector and increase the amount of chapters on climate change mitigation.

 

Another Trump bitter clinger, sticking to the ass of the regime like poop, but Biden's more than willing to clean up all the crap.

 

We'll be cleaning up Trump's mess for the rest of my lifetime, I figure.

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

After news broke over the weekend of GOP Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar's odious "America First Caucus"neo-Nazi manifesto, everyone's scrambling to get away from the political barrel of gunpowder in the GOP living room, and nobody's scrambling faster than Green and Gosar themselves.

 

Two far-right House Republicans linked to a document calling for the protection of "Anglo-Saxon political traditions" distanced themselves from what they said was a draft of prescriptions for an "America First Caucus."

Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., said in a Saturday statement that he "did not author" the document and that he became aware of it only after it was reported by the news media, saying he "will continue to work on America First issues in the House Freedom Caucus."

"Let me be perfectly clear. I did not author this paper," he said. "In fact, I first became aware of it by reading about it in the news yesterday, like everyone else."

In addition, Nick Dyer, a spokesperson for Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said in a statement that the document was merely "an early planning proposal and nothing was agreed to or approved."

When the document surfaced Friday, Dyer assailed "dirty backstabbing swamp creatures" for sharing it with Punchbowl News, which first reported on its contents and said the effort was linked to Gosar and Greene. "Be on the look out for the release of the America First Caucus platform when it's announced to the public very soon," he said.

Greene released a statement Saturday saying the platform was "a staff level draft proposal from an outside group that I hadn't read."

 

 In the words of Bart Simpson:

 

Don't nobody know who it was that wrote that, but it wasn't us, man!

Greene is meanwhile trying an immediate headfake by going after Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters. 

 

GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.) announced on Sunday that she plans to introduce a resolution to expel Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters (Calif.) from Congress.

Greene in a statement on Sunday said that she will "be introducing a resolution to expel Rep. Maxine Waters from Congress for her continual incitement of violence."

The Republican lawmaker specifically targeted Waters for speaking to protesters at a demonstration in Brooklyn Center, Minn., on Saturday. Protests broke out in the city last week after police fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright during a traffic stop on April 11.

Waters told reporters on Saturday that she is "going to fight with all of the people who stand for justice," adding, "We’ve got to get justice in this country, and we cannot allow these killings to continue," Fox News reported.

The killing of Daunte Wright comes as former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is on trial on murder charges in the death of George Floyd last year. Floyd died after Chauvin knelt on his neck for several minutes during an arrest.

Asked about Chauvin’s trial, Waters told reporters that if Chauvin is not found guilty, "we've got to stay on the street, and we've got to get more active. We've got to get more confrontational. We've got to make sure that they know that we mean business," according to Fox News, in addition to making other comments on the trial and police brutality in the U.S.

Greene on Sunday claimed that Waters’s comments “led to more violence and a drive by shooting on National Guardsmen in Minnesota early this morning.”

 

It's moronic, racist, and vile, but Greene knows that if the press is focused on her little Mein Kampf tribute to "Anglo-Saxon culture" she's the one in dire trouble. If instead people are talking about how "Maxine Waters is just as bad" then Greene wins completely. 

She's counting on it. Better than even odds that the press is still talking about Waters than Greene by this time next week, and that's exactly what she's hoping for.

We'll see if the media bites, but...

StupidiNews!

• A manhunt is underway in Texas for a shooting suspect after three were killed in Austin, police believe the suspect is armed and dangerous.
• Allies of jailed Russian dissident Alexey Navalny are expected to stage protests this week across the country as reports of the opposition leader's health are grim. 
• Major hedge fund and asset investors are calling on world banks to set tougher global emissions limits ahead of a meeting of world leaders on climate change later this year.
• Talks between Iran and Group of Six nations continue in Vienna as the Biden Administration works to reset the nuclear deal with Tehran scrapped by the Trump regime.
• Three out of eight Americans are now vaccinated against COVID-19, but public health officials worry as resistance to getting the vaccine among the rest of America increases.