Last Call For The Big Lie Gets Franchised

The ludicrous Arizona "recount again again again again" performative farce has been 100% successful because the goal was never to find "stolen votes", the goal was to declare that Maricopa County Republicans were part of the massive conspiracy and then demand audits everywhere, forever, in an attempt to destroy trust in the system of American elections.

At a public meeting last week in Cheboygan County, Mich., a lawyer from Detroit told county commissioners that the voting machines they used in 2020 could “flip” votes and throw an election. She offered to send in a “forensic team,” at no charge to the county, to inspect ballots and scanners.

In Windham, N.H., supporters of former president Donald Trump showed up to a town meeting this month chanting “Stop the Steal!” and demanding that officials choose their preferred auditor to scrutinize a 400-vote discrepancy in a state representative race.

And at a board of supervisors meeting May 4 in San Luis Obispo County, on California’s Central Coast, scores of residents questioned whether election machines had properly counted their votes, with many demanding a “forensic audit.”

The ramifications of Trump’s ceaseless attacks on the 2020 election are increasingly visible throughout the country: In emails, phone calls and public meetings, his supporters are questioning how their elections are administered and pressing public officials to revisit the vote count — wrongly insisting that Trump won the presidential race.

The most prominent example is playing out in Arizona’s Maricopa County, where Republican state lawmakers have forced a widely pilloried audit of the 2020 vote. That recount is being touted as an inspiration by small but vocal cohorts of angry residents in communities in multiple states.

“I think there is clearly a justification to do that type of audit that they’re doing in Maricopa County. That’s what I wanted to see done here,” said Ken Eyring, a local activist in Windham who recently appeared at a rally with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski. Eyring said his only goal is to make sure Windham’s machines are accurate.

Behind the scenes, a loose network of lawyers, self-styled election experts and political groups is bolstering community efforts by demanding audits, filing lawsuits and pushing unsubstantiated claims that residents are echoing in public meetings. Much of it is playing out in largely Republican communities, where Trump supporters hope to find officials willing to support their inquiries.

The increasingly vocal protests seven months after Trump lost the White House show how deeply the former president has undermined confidence in the nation’s elections, an attack he began early in the 2020 campaign as state and local officials expanded mail voting in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Even as national Republican leaders say they want to move on from the last election — a rationale they used to expel Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), a Trump critic, from her leadership post last week — the widespread echoes of Trump’s lie that the election was stolen show how his supporters are keeping that narrative alive.

Cheering them on is Trump himself, who has been issuing near-daily statements from his private Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida, claiming that a cascade of findings that the election was rigged will appear any day.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if they found thousands and thousands and thousands of votes,” Trump recently told a crowd attending a party at Mar-a-Lago, according to a video posted online by an attendee. “So we’re going to watch that very closely. And after that, you’ll watch Pennsylvania and you’ll watch Georgia and you’re going to watch Michigan and Wisconsin. You’re watching New Hampshire. Because this was a rigged election. Everybody knows it.”

 

The whole point is to delegitimize elections nationally in order to justify nullification of Democratic party wins.

I guarantee you this is coming.

In half the country, it will be impossible for a Democrat to be declared the victor in 2022. History says it gets very dark from there.

Still No Good Republicans

Even the "moderate" and "reasonable" Republicans like Maine's Susan Collins are still Republicans, which means they are 100% corrupt grifters who eventually get caught.

The FBI is investigating what it describes as a massive scheme to illegally finance Sen. Susan Collins' 2020 re-election bid, Axios has learned.

What's happening: A recently unsealed search warrant application shows the FBI believes a Hawaii defense contractor illegally funneled $150,000 to a pro-Collins super PAC and reimbursed donations to Collins' campaign. There's no indication that Collins or her team were aware of any of it. 

Collins helped the contractor at issue, then called Navatek and since renamed the Martin Defense Group, secure an $8 million Navy contract before most of the donations took place. Former Navatek CEO Martin Kao was indicted last year for allegedly bilking the federal government of millions in coronavirus relief loans.

What they're saying: "The Collins for Senator Campaign had absolutely no knowledge of anything alleged in the warrant," Collins spokesperson Annie Clark told Axios in an emailed statement.

The big picture: Federal prosecutors say Kao used a shell company to funnel $150,000 in Navatek funds to a pro-Collins super PAC called 1820 PAC. According to the FBI, Kao and his wife set up a sham LLC called the Society for Young Women Scientists and Engineers. Navatek then wrote the LLC a $150,000 check, investigators say, which was passed on to the super PAC. Government contractors are barred from donating to federal political committees, and investigators suspect the donations were attempts to evade that prohibition.

Investigators say bank records also show that Kao illegally reimbursed family members who donated to Collins' campaign and that Navatek reimbursed some of Kao's colleagues for their contributions. That's known as a "straw" donation, and it's prohibited by law. The Collins campaign's fundraising solicitations also require donors to certify that they are in fact donating their own funds. 

The allegedly reimbursed donations came in clusters, according to federal contribution records, between June and September 2019, and amounted to less than 0.2% of the Collins campaign's total fundraising. The warrant application quotes an email exchange between Kao, who had just maxed out to Collins' campaign, and the senator's Maine finance director: "If you have friends or family members that would be willing to donate please don’t hesitate to send them my way," the Collins staffer wrote.

 

The straw donations are illegal, and the pay-for-play is worse. Collins took the money and got them a contract.  The difference is she doesn't have Trump's ability to cover up all the corruption and got caught.

The Great Decommissioning Of The January 6 Commission

Dear Leader Trump has ordered the GOP to scrap even any hints of bipartisan support for a January 6th commission to hold hearing on what happened during the most dangerous terrorist attack on the US government in years, and the GOP will follow.

Former President Trump called for an immediate end to the debate over a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol riot the night before the House is expected to approve the plan.

“Republicans in the House and Senate should not approve the Democrat trap of the January 6 Commission. It is just more partisan unfairness and unless the murders, riots, and fire bombings in Portland, Minneapolis, Seattle, Chicago, and New York are also going to be studied, this discussion should be ended immediately,” Trump said in a statement Tuesday night.

“Republicans must get much tougher and much smarter, and stop being used by the Radical Left. Hopefully, Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy are listening!” he added.

Trump's statement came shortly after the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus endorsed the creation of a panel, despite opposition from House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and House Minority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.).

 

McCarthy and McConnell have their orders from high command, and they are now scrambling to kill any cooperation. In the House, McCarthy is now actively whipping against the commission vote.

Kevin McCarthy thought his House Republican conference would almost entirely stand behind him in efforts to derail an investigation into the events of Jan. 6.

Now, a last-minute surge of GOP interest is dashing hopes for near-perfect opposition to the independent commission and putting Republican divisions back on full display.

Dozens of Republicans are privately considering voting for the Jan. 6 commission — which McCarthy himself said he opposed earlier Tuesday, even after he deputized one of his allies, Rep. John Katko of New York, to strike a bipartisan agreement on the proposal. In a sign of momentum, the bipartisan House Problem Solvers Caucus, of which Katko is a member, formally voted to endorse the legislation Tuesday evening.

Just days after GOP leaders decided they wouldn’t force their members’ hands either way, McCarthy and his leadership team issued an informal “leadership recommendation” ahead of the Wednesday vote, urging a “no” vote to help contain defections in their party. Former President Donald Trump also sought to shut down the commission on the eve of the floor vote, calling it a "Democrat trap" and urging Republicans to get "much tougher and much smarter."

"This discussion should be ended immediately," he said in a statement, which could help push wavering GOP lawmakers into the "no" camp.

Regardless of how many Republicans buck Trump on this issue, though, the bill is expected to pass the House. It's fate in the 50-50 Senate is less clear.

 

That last part is a lie. The commission's fate in the Senate is 100% clear: it is DOA. In the Senate, Mitch is making sure the commission can't move forward at all without becoming a circus to blame Black Lives Matter and Antifa.

 

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told his fellow Republicans during a closed-door caucus lunch Tuesday he can't support a Jan. 6 commission in its current form, two sources familiar with his remarks tell Axios.

Why it matters: Senate Republicans are bracing for a House vote Wednesday. Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opposes the commission but several Republicans are expected to buck leadership — making it more difficult for Senate Republicans to dismiss it.

What we're hearing: McConnell made comments to his colleagues along the lines of, "There’s 41 of us who could change this, and I think we should,” according to one of the sources. A second source confirmed the nature of the comments. When McConnell finished, Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) — who's retiring in 2023 — also stood up and questioned aspects of the deal. 

The senators did not indicate the deal is DOA in the Senate, the sources said, but made clear they would want to see substantive changes. Such changes being discussed more broadly among some Republicans include ensuring the panel is truly bipartisan. Rep. John Katko (R-N.Y.), who struck the deal with Democrats in the House, voted to impeach Trump — raising concerns among his fellow Republicans.

McConnell spoke publicly following the lunch and said he is "pushing the pause button" on the legislation, adding the GOP conference is “undecided."

 

And of course, the "Republican concerns" will never be addressed to Mitch's liking, so the commission will never happen. Of course, there's a reason as to why it can't happen, a reason so obvious that even CNN's Chris Cillizza gets it on the first try.

McCarthy doesn't want to testify under oath about his phone conversation with former President Donald Trump on January 6. As CNN reported, Trump told McCarthy on that call that the rioters "are more upset about the election than you are" and the GOP leader responded by insisting that the people overrunning the Capitol were backers of the President and that he needed to tell them to stand down.

A week after the riot, here's what McCarthy said on the House floor about Trump and the riot: 

"The President bears responsibility for Wednesday's attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action of President Trump." 

But, as it became increasingly clear that even Trump's role inciting these rioters would not turn the GOP base away from him, McCarthy changed his tune. In late April, in an interview on "Fox News Sunday," McCarthy said this about his January 6 call with Trump: 

"What I talked to President Trump about, I was the first person to contact him when the riots was going on. He didn't see it. What he ended the call was saying -- telling me, he'll put something out to make sure to stop this. And that's what he did, he put a video out later." 

That is, of course, fundamentally inaccurate. Trump waited hours before releasing any sort of statement about the riot. And, when he did call on the rioters to go home, he reiterated the Big Lie about the 2020 election. "We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it," Trump said in a video released by the White House that day. "Especially the other side. But you have to go home now. We have to have peace." 

The broader point here is that McCarthy has been VERY cagey about that January 6 phone call -- and there continues to be questions about whether Trump and McCarthy have spoken about the call since January 6.

"Leader McCarthy has spoken to a number of people in -- in large groups and small groups since the sixth about his exchanges with the President," said Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney (R) on "Fox News Sunday." "I think it's very important that, you know, he clearly has facts about that day, that an investigation into what happened, into the president's actions, ought to get to the bottom of. And I think that he has important information that needs to be part of any investigation, whether it's the FBI, the Department of Justice, or this commission that I -- I hope will be set up."

 

Neither McCarthy nor Trump can allow the commission to go forward, and once again it's Mitch's job to kill it. He will deliver. Anyone who thinks this is going to happen is making a sucker's bet, full stop. I am in total agreement with Steve M on this.

Republicans will block this. And if they can't block it, they'll sabotage it. They'll load up the committee with rhetorical bomb-throwers. They'll use the hearings primarily for anti-Democratic catchphrases and memes. Even if they don't succeed in broadening the scope of the investigation to include violence and property damage in anti-racism demonstrations, they'll find ways to hang all that around the necks of Democrats. They'll say any law enforcement failures were all Nancy Pelosi's fault. They'll never concede that this was a brutal threat to democracy by their party's voters on behalf of a president from their party. And whatever they say will be believed by nearly half the country.

After two Trump impeachments and the early stages of this process, I've had enough. I think Democrats should simply give up on the notion that "accountability" is possible for Republicans. It's not just that they resist it. They pay no price for resisting it. Resisting it endears them to their voters.

Nothing Democrats do and nothing they reveal will lead to second thoughts among Republican voters. We know this because nothing revealed in either of Trump's impeachments disillusioned them. Quite the opposite: It unified them in opposition to the accountability seekers.

When Democrats beg Republicans to put country over party, they reinforce the mistaken notion that the GOP might someday actually do that. That sends a signal that if Democrats can't come to terms with Republicans, then it must be the Democrats' fault -- after all, the Democrats say it's possible to reason with the GOP.

Enough. Better for Democrats to just accept that accountability is impossible, and to tell the public that a real reckoning can't happen because Republicans will always prevent it from happening. The only way to get to the truth is to vote Republicans out.

 

The Big Lie makes this clear. There is nothing that Democrats can do to "win" Republicans over anymore. Bipartisanship is dead as a whole. The GOP doesn't see Democratic politicians and voters as human, let alone Americans with rights in a competing marketplace of ideas. They're ready for authoritarian dictatorship now, if not full-on fascism, where they are the full "citizens" and the rest of us serve them.

They're close to getting it, too, closer than they've been in a century or two.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

The NY Attorney General's investigation into the Trump Organization has officially become a criminal investigation, and things just got real interesting as this means both the federal and state probes are now criminal.

 

New York Attorney General Letitia James is joining the Manhattan district attorney's office in a criminal investigation of the Trump Organization, James' office said Tuesday. 

The attorney general office's investigation into the Trump Organization, which has been underway since 2019, will also continue as an ongoing civil probe, but the office recently informed Trump Organization officials of the criminal component. 

"We have informed the Trump Organization that our investigation into the organization is no longer purely civil in nature. We are now actively investigating the Trump Organization in a criminal capacity, along with the Manhattan DA," James' spokesman Fabien Levy told CNN. "We have no additional comment." 

A lawyer for the Trump Organization declined to comment when reached by CNN. 

James' office is working with Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance's Office, whose wide-sweeping probe into the Trump Organization has looked into whether the company misled lenders and insurance companies about the value of properties and whether it paid the appropriate taxes. 

Vance's office is examining millions of pages of documents that include Trump's tax returns. 

A person familiar with the investigation said a couple of investigators with the New York attorney general's office, who are steeped in knowledge about the Trump Organization, have joined the district attorney's team. A different person familiar with the matter said the New York attorney general is still conducting a civil investigation.

 

I still don't think the probe will result in criminal charges however, or any charges against Trump. Doing so would almost certainly lead to a massive terrorist attack or series of attacks in New York City that would make January 6 and even 9/11 look like a picnic. 

Yes, the Biden administration would quickly restore order, but that would result in lots of other pop-up attacks all over the place, and governors in some states aren't going to cooperate even if charges are filed.

Still, it is one step closer to Trump getting what he deserves, and what America needs to happen.

A Supreme Ruling On Gunmerica

In a unanimous 9-0 opinion from Justice Thomas, the Supreme Court made it very clear that "community caretaking" exception to warrantless Fourth Amendment search and seizure procedures by police in a person's home has limits, and those limits include guns.

 

On Monday, the Supreme Court released its opinion in Caniglia v. Strom, which unanimously held that a lower court’s extension of Cady v. Dombrowski’s “community caretaking” exception into the home defied the logic and holding of Cady, as well as violated the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement. With the court’s unanimity in Caniglia, the home remains the most sacred space under the Fourth Amendment; its sanctity literally houses its privilege. Sans warrant, exigency or consent, governmental search and seizure within it is unconstitutional.

During an August 2015 argument with his wife, Edward Caniglia offered her one of his unloaded guns and requested that she put him out of his misery. Instead, she threatened to call 911. After the couple’s argument continued, she left the marital home to overnight at a hotel. When she returned the next day, she enlisted Cranston, Rhode Island’s police department to perform a wellness check on her husband. They did. They also arranged transportation for Edward to obtain a psychiatric evaluation at a local hospital. He agreed to go, but only after officers purportedly agreed not to confiscate his weapons. However, as soon as he left, officers — apparently by deceiving his wife — entered the Caniglia home and seized Caniglia’s handguns and ammunition. Caniglia sued, alleging that the officers violated his Fourth Amendment rights. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit sided with the officers by relying on Cady, a 1973 decision that upheld the warrantless “caretaking” search of a car that had been in an accident.

The court’s opinion, written by Justice Clarence Thomas, was devoid of the fearsome, compelling specter raised in the briefing and during argument regarding the potential for troubling eventualities — for instance, that Caniglia may have harmed himself or his wife (or, perhaps, other innocent/intervening victims). A pithy four pages “long,” the opinion was unanimous and unambiguous: If police do not have the homeowner’s consent, an “exigent” circumstance, or a judicial warrant authorizing a search, then no version of Cady’s car exception applies to police entry into the home under the Fourth Amendment. “What is reasonable for vehicles is different from what is reasonable for homes,” Thomas wrote.

As always with realty – and, per Caniglia, the court’s Fourth Amendment jurisprudence — location matters. Specifically, the location of Cady’s warrantless search and seizure – a post-accident, routine search of an intoxicated, off-duty officer’s damaged and impounded car — simply cannot compare to a search of and seizure within a home. Governmental searches of vehicles regularly occur via exceptions to the Fourth Amendment’s warrant requirement; a myriad of decisions have constitutionalized warrantless searches of vehicles, their compartments, their containers and even their occupants. Not one of these warrantless exceptions is available for the home.

Accordingly, caretaking under Cady is not carte blanche for police to search or seize within the home, nor do their “caretaking” duties create a “standalone doctrine that justifies warrantless searches and seizures in the home,” Thomas wrote. Cady, itself, he noted, drew an “unmistakable distinction between vehicles and homes,” constitutionally embedding the exception outside the home.

That police may engage in a myriad of “civic” community caretaking functions did not move the court off its jurisprudential bright line. Certainly, such functions give texture to the modern, sometimes complex, role of policing. They do not, however, supplant the constitutional sanctity of the home. Accordingly, the Caniglia court declined the opportunity to expand Cady’s “community caretaking” exception and permit warrantless entry into the home.

 

The overarching theme here is that short of an exigent emergency, cops can't search your home and take your things. None of those things applied in this case, and the court reaffirmed unanimously that this is the case.

It was a simple call, even for Clarence Thomas to make.

The House Republican Performative Caucus, Or Welcome To The Clown Show

Breaking news, the clown show that is the House Republican caucus is in fact full of clowns, and they're too busy being clowns to vote on legislation.

The top five freshman members of Congress who've missed the most votes this year are all House Republicans, according to data collected by Quorum.

By the numbers: Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) led the pack, missing 16.2% of votes. Cawthorn ranks sixth overall among all members — both House and Senate — in terms of missed votes. 

The House Democratic freshman who missed the most votes is Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), No. 14 on the list, at 2.82%. 

Sen. Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), No. 12, missed the most votes in the Senate as a freshman, at 3.14%.

What they're saying: “Rep. Cawthorn married the love of his life on April 3rd of 2021. Due to his honeymoon, he missed House votes occurring between April 13th and April 16th," his spokesman Micah Bock told Axios. 

Four of the votes that Sen. Lummis missed were due to a record-level blizzard that hit Wyoming this year, Lummis's office said.

 

Sure, that's an excuse, because all the House votes took place in four days in April, right? And it's weird, because Wyoming's other senator, John Barasso, made those votes.

Even more so than the House GOP entering freshmen of the last decade, this class seems to think that they'll get reelected by not doing anything in the House except being assholes.

And they will get reelected, because their Republican voters in red districts think the federal government is illegitimate and broken anyway, so why not have a Congressperson dedicated to making sure it stays that way?

They don't want representation. They want entertainment. They want to own the libs. Period.

Welcome to the clown show, rookies.

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

The GOP local government of Maricopa County, Arizona is denouncing the state GOP's "audit" of the 2020 election results as a "grift" and the only question is how quickly the county's local Board of Supervisors is removed, replaced, and charged with election fraud by The Big Liars.

The Republican leaders of Arizona’s most populous county issued a blistering rebuke on Monday to a review of the November election that had been ordered by Republicans in the State Senate, calling it “a grift disguised as an audit” that had spun out of the legislators’ control.

The senior Republican in Maricopa County, Jack Sellers, the chairman of the board of supervisors, said flatly that the county would stop cooperating with the review and suggested that it would challenge in court any of its conclusions that pointed toward improprieties.

“This board is done explaining anything,” Mr. Sellers said at a special meeting of the five-member board, four of whose members are Republicans. “People’s ballots and money are not make-believe. It’s time to be done with this craziness, and get on with this county’s critical business.”

It was an extraordinary pushback to an election review that was supposed to placate voters who insisted that Donald J. Trump’s narrow loss in the state was a result of fraud, but which has mushroomed into a political spectacle with what experts call serious procedural lapses.

The Maricopa supervisors had resisted the audit since its inception in December, asking a court to decide whether the State Senate could legally take control of election records and equipment governed by strict security safeguards. They had insisted throughout that the county’s election — in which Joseph R. Biden Jr. earned a slim majority of 2.1 million total votes — had been among the most secure and smooth in the state’s history.

But they were pushed past the breaking point by a letter last week from State Senator Karen Fann, the Senate president, that implied that someone in the county had illegally removed critical election files from equipment and software that the Senate had subpoenaed for examination.

The supervisors learned of the claim when it was posted on a Twitter feed controlled by the review team. Ms. Fann’s letter asked the supervisors to address that and other concerns in a meeting with state senators and a liaison to the firms conducting the review — a meeting that was to be livestreamed by the far-right cable channel One America News.

“This board was going to be part of a political theater,” one Republican supervisor and former chairman of the board, Bill Gates, said. “The Arizona Senate is better than that. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors is better than that. And I am not going to be a part of that.”

Mr. Trump had seized on the deleted-file claim over the weekend, calling it “devastating” evidence of irregularities in the vote. That led the county’s top election official, Stephen Richer, to call Mr. Trump’s online comment “unhinged.”

 

Of course the Maricopa County GOP government was going to be sacrificed on the altar of the Big Lie, and everyone knows it. It's just a matter of time before state lawmakers move against the county.  Arizona allows for both impeachment and recall ballots against any elected or appointed government official, and I fully expect one or both to happen to the County Board of Directors, County Recorder Steve Richter, and the state's only Democratic statewide officeholder, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs.

 

I will be shocked if that doesn't get underway by July 4th.  Republicans after all have to now justify the Big Lie between now and November 2022, and that means covering their asses.

Top House Republican Kevin McCarthy said Tuesday he opposes a bill to form a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, raising doubts about its passage in Congress.

The chamber plans to vote this week on legislation to set up a 10-member panel — appointed by Democratic and Republican leaders — which would study the events that led to a pro-Trump mob overrunning the Capitol while lawmakers confirmed President Joe Biden’s electoral win. Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and John Katko, R-N.Y., the chair and ranking members of the House Homeland Security Committee, brokered the agreement.

McCarthy, who voted to object to counting Arizona and Pennsylvania’s certified election results after rioters stormed the Capitol, criticized the process of setting up the commission as political. He contended the panel would duplicate efforts by congressional committees and federal authorities to investigate the insurrection, and argued its scope should extend beyond the events of Jan. 6.

“Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the Speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation,” he said in a statement.

 

By "interrelated forms of political violence" McCarthy means rounding up Black Lives Matter as "insurrectionists" too.

 

Understand that the GOP will not allow any investigation of January 6th and the Big Lie move forward unless it does as much or more damage to the Democratic party. Meanwhile, they'll spend the whole time complaining that the "corrupt media and corrupt Democrats" won't let the Big Lie go.

Watch.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

The Roberts Court will hear next fall the case that could effectively end legal abortion in most red states, Mississippi's 15-week abortion ban law, on its Constitutionality.

 

The Supreme Court agreed Monday to consider a major rollback of abortion rights, saying it will decide whether states can ban abortions before a fetus can survive outside the womb.

The court’s order sets up a showdown over abortion, probably in the fall, with a more conservative court seemingly ready to dramatically alter nearly 50 years of rulings on abortion rights.

The court first announced a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion in the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and reaffirmed it 19 years later.

The case involves a Mississippi law that would prohibit abortions after the 15th week of pregnancy. The state’s ban had been blocked by lower courts as inconsistent with Supreme Court precedent that protects a woman’s right to obtain an abortion before the fetus can survive outside her womb.

The justices had put off action on the case for several months. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, an abortion-rights proponent, died just before the court’s new term began in October. Her replacement, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, is the most open opponent of abortion rights to join the court in decades.

Barrett is one of three appointees of former President Donald Trump on the Supreme Court. The other two, Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, voted in dissent last year to allow Louisiana to enforce restrictions on doctors that could have closed two of the state’s three abortion clinics.

Chief Justice John Roberts, joined by Ginsburg and the other three liberal justices, said the restrictions were virtually identical to a Texas law the court struck down in 2016.

But that majority no longer exists, even if Roberts, hardly an abortion-rights supporter in his more than 15 years on the court, sides with the more liberal justices.

The Mississippi law was enacted in 2018, but was blocked after a federal court challenge. The state’s only abortion clinic remains open. The owner has said the clinic does abortions up to 16 weeks.

 

If the Gilead bloc on the court (Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and now Barrett) bands together, they could completely end safe and legal abortion in not just a state-by-state basis, but in all states in a broad enough ruling. I'm not sure how far they'd be willing to go, but the question they are considering, whether the Roe 24-week ban is constitutional or not, is a direct challenge to more than four decades of precedent allowing abortions.

That is now in peril.

At the very least I expect a ruling that allows states to ban abortion on an individual basis, and to allow laws criminalizing crossing state lines to get an abortion procedure, effectively setting up women for a two-tiered reproductive rights citizenship depending on which state they get impregnated in.

I also expect the ruling to be used against trans folks too, because everything eventually is used against trans folks.

This is why Barrett was put on the court by Trump, this is what we've been warning about for years, and the bill comes due most likely in about 12-13 months.

Retribution Execution, Con't

I'm not sure what Republican party Washington Post contributor Katherine Clayton is observing, but the fact she's a Ph.D. Poly Sci student at Stanford shows in this depressingly naive analysis of the Liz Cheney ousting.

 

In new research, I find that this internal battle may push away Republicans who aren’t particularly committed to their party — those who call themselves “not very strong Republicans” or who consider themselves political independents who lean toward the GOP.

From March 14 to 25, I administered a survey experiment to a nationally representative sample of 1,876 Americans, using the Lucid platform. I randomly divided participants into three groups. Before answering questions, I had the first group read a news article excerpt that described prominent Republican and Democratic lawmakers clashing over whether Joe Biden legitimately won in the 2020 presidential election. The second group read about internal conflict among Republican lawmakers over the issue. The third group read no information at all, and simply took the survey.

All three groups then answered questions about their attitudes toward each party; whether they believed the opposing party posed a threat to democracy, and if so, how much; and whether they believed that the U.S. political system needs a major third party.

Does conflict within the party push Republicans away? It depends on their convictions.

When Democrats or strongly committed Republicans read about clashing GOP lawmakers, it had little or no effect on their attitudes. They were no more or less committed to the party, and they felt no more or less strongly about the opposing party’s threat to democracy, than those in a control group.

But Republicans with weaker commitments to the party did lose faith in the party after reading about GOP conflict. I used a measure of overall party opinion that takes into account favorable or unfavorable attitudes toward the party as well as trust in the party to handle U.S. problems. After reading about the GOP’s internal clashes, weak Republicans’ overall opinion of the party dropped by about six percentage points, compared with the control group or the group who read about clashes between the parties.

However, less committed Republicans did not become more interested in a potential third party. That’s bad news for any possible Republican Party offshoot, which probably wouldn’t gain traction among elected officials or voters.

Instead, weaker Republicans who read about GOP conflict over the election started thinking more highly of the Democratic Party, and became less likely to view it as a threat. Their opinion toward the Democratic Party grew six percentage points more favorable, and belief that the Democratic Party threatens democracy dropped by eight percentage points.

In other words, the Republican Party’s internal civil war could push some less committed Republican voters to the Democrats.

 

How do I put this gently?

Bullshit.

What she's describing is the ghostly uncommitted voter, the political independent, the voter that we proved didn't exist in the era of Trump. People like that just don't bother to vote at all. They're turned off by "both sides" and skip the hassle.

 

We know that 80% of Republicans approved of the purge of Liz Cheney, and the majority of Republicans still think the election was stolen by the Democrats.  They're not going to view the Democratic party "more favorably".  This is wrong just like the 2020 polling was wrong in several aspects: Republicans lie to pollsters.

I can tell you now though that anyone who still identifies as a Republican is never, never going to actually vote for the Democrats. That instinct will be brutally purged from them just as easily as Liz Cheney was purged from the GOP by 2022.

The rest will stay home.

That's the best we can hope for.

The remaining Republicans are Authoritarians for Trump. Keep that in mind.

 

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

I honestly have come to the conclusion that the gun-humpers on the right want to refight and win the Civil War and reconstitute slavery, and they keep telling us that this is what they want to do.

Conservative activist Rogan O'Handley argued over the weekend that the government should provide firearm subsidies so that people can protect themselves from "looting, violence and murder" that he blamed on Black Lives Matter.

O'Handley made the remarks while appearing on OAN, a conservative news channel.

"America owns more guns than 50% of the planet," O'Handley said. "There are more guns than people in this country. God bless the Second Amendment and our Founding Fathers. I am absolutely loving seeing these huge, huge gun numbers."

The conservative activist went on to praise first-time gun buyers who fear Black Lives Matter protests..

"People that have never owned a gun in their life are looking around and seeing BLM and antifa burning down courthouses, police stations... looting, violence, murder," he said. "And they're saying, you know what? Maybe I have to look at protecting myself and my family. Maybe I should start exercising my constitutional right to keep and bear arms."

O'Handley added: "And I will say I'm in the camp where I think we should actually have subsidies for gun ownership in this country. You know, we subsidize schools, housing, everything. Why are we not subsidizing guns? That's a constitutional right and one of the most important. Very happy to see these huge numbers."

 

To reiterate, we're at the point now where the white supremacists are openly saying the government should give people guns to stop Black Lives Matter and Antifa. 

 

This is their idea of utopia.

 

Millions of people agree with this lunatic. My "The Second Civil War" tag is not an exaggeration, folks.

 

This will only end in catastrophe.

The Kids Are Alright (And Voting)

The Silent generation and Boomer generation are now well into AARP territory while Millennials, now firmly in their 20's and 30's are becoming the new electoral majority. That's helping to push the country to the left finally, but there are some major caveats, mainly that white Millennials still favor Republicans across the board, and that Boomers are living longer and voting more conservative as they age.

More members of the millennial generation and Generation Z voted in the 2020 presidential election than in any prior election, according to several studies of the electorate that have taken place in recent months.

And for the first time in American history, a majority of eligible voters under the age of 30 cast a ballot in an election.

As the oldest millennials creep toward their 40th birthdays and more members of Generation Z age into the electorate, the data show those two groups became substantially more powerful within the electorate, as occasional voters cast ballots more regularly and first-time voters began their voting careers in greater proportions.

“Basically 40 percent of the electorate are essentially Gen Z and millennials and some young Xers in there,” said John Della Volpe, director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics who helped the Biden campaign survey younger voters. “They are replacing the Silent Generation and the Baby Boomers. For every one of those who are exiting the electorate, they are being replaced by someone more progressive.”

About 21 million voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast a ballot in 2020, up from 18 million in 2016, according to data from the Democratic firm TargetSmart. And 23 million voters between the ages of 30 and 39 cast ballots, an increase of almost 3 million from the last presidential contest.

In both cases, those voters made up a slightly larger share of the overall electorate — up 0.5 percent among 18 to 29-year-olds and up 0.2 percent among 30 to 39-year-olds.

Their gains came as voters between the ages of 40 and 65 declined as an overall share of the electorate. Turnout among 18- to 29-year-olds jumped 9 percent, and by 7 percent among 30- to 39-year-olds. Turnout among those between the ages of 40 and 65 rose 6 percentage points.

“In a pandemic election, where many young Americans found their lives uprooted by college campus closures, the youth vote still expanded over the 2016 benchmark,” said Tom Bonier, TargetSmart’s chief executive.

For the first time, the millennial generation and Generation Z combined to make up a greater share of the electorate than Generation X.

And more of those younger voters are getting more comfortable casting their ballots: Among those between the ages of 30 and 39, almost half are frequent voters, up from just over a third four years ago, a sign that a generation long dismissed for its apathy is engaging in politics more habitually.

There are signs that the emerging younger electorate is likely to provide a windfall for Democratic candidates. In states where voters are allowed to register by party, 52 percent of voters 18 to 29 are registered Democrats, compared with just 35 percent who are registered Republicans. Among 30- to 39-year-olds, the gap is even wider: 53 percent are registered Democrats, while just 34 percent are registered Republicans.

“Young voters were a critical component of the Democratic coalition that formed the Blue Wave in 2018, and will be perhaps even more central to Democratic hopes in the 2022 midterm elections,” Bonier said. “Meanwhile, as the electorate grows increasingly younger and more diverse, Republicans are left clinging to hopes of higher turnout among older and less educated white voters.”

Some Republicans acknowledge the growing generational challenge their party faces.

“The big problem that we have is that we’re not putting forward policy proposals that people are willing to listen to, particularly in those generations,” said Evan Siegfried, the author of "GOP GPS: How to Find the Millennials and Urban Voters the Republican Party Needs to Survive." “Instead of reacting to proposals and statements by Democrats with mockery and memes, which only appeal to the base and voters you already have, it would benefit Republicans to respond with alternatives and thoughtful debate.”

 

But that goes to show you how fragile our country is right now: without record-shattering numbers of voters age 18-45 going to the polls, Biden would have been crushed and we'd be locked in the hell of a Trump second term with Republican dominance of Congress. If those voters don't show up in 2022, we're going to lose the House and Senate.  If they don't show up in 2024, well...

A lot is riding on motivating people to care about voting, and as a whole, we barely give a damn.

Especially younger voters.

We need all of us, folks.

The Village Gets Used Again

One of the main reasons the Israeli/Palestinian conflict has gone on so long, longer than my entire life and nearly as long as the Zandarparents have been alive is that both sides fully understand that the war is being fought in the global public opinion battlefield as well as in Gaza and the West Bank, and always has been. The international press ends up getting drafted in this fight, and it never turns out well for them.

Israel shared intelligence with the US showing how Hamas operated inside the same building with the Associated Press and Al-Jazeera in Gaza, officials in Jerusalem said on Sunday. 

Officials in more than one government office confirmed that US President Joe Biden’s phone call to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday was, in part, about the bombing of the building, and that Israel showed Biden and American officials the intelligence behind the action. 

“We showed them the smoking gun proving Hamas worked out of that building,” a source close to Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi said. “I understand they found the explanation satisfactory.” 

Another senior Israeli official admitted that the fact that the bombing took place two days after a tweet by the IDF misled some foreign media into reporting that ground troops had entered Gaza made the situation more difficult from a public diplomacy perspective.
But in government-to-government diplomacy, Israeli officials felt that the situation was still good. 

The US was the only country to inquire about the IDF strike on the building, which the military said housed Hamas military intelligence offices, as well as AP and Al Jazeera, other news outlets, and other offices and apartments. 

“From an analysis the Foreign Ministry did [on Sunday], 80% of the 90 countries we spoke to in recent days released official statements supporting Israel’s right to defend itself. They aren’t calling to stop the operation,” the ministry source said. 

Ashkenazi also spoke to over 30 foreign ministers around the world. 

“We’re still in a positive place when it comes to our legitimacy to act,” the Foreign Ministry source added. “There is very clear support for the Israeli stance that the terrorism crossed a line.” 

The IAF struck the 12-story tower in Gaza on Saturday, giving a warning an hour in advance. 

“The building housed the offices of civilian media, which the terrorist organization Hamas hides behind and uses as human shields,” the IDF said in a statement. "The terror organization Hamas deliberately places its military assets in the heart of the civilian population in the Gaza Strip. Prior to the attack, the IDF warned the civilians who were in the building and gave them sufficient time to evacuate.”

 

Even if the intelligence is BS, and using the Associated Press as pawns is the IDF's master stroke to evacuate all the international press out of Gaza "for their own safety", or whether Hamas really was running intel operations from the building, betting that Israel wouldn't touch the place, the point is that the Associate Press, Al Jazeera, and other media outfits in Gaza not only allowed themselves to become the story, but to become part of the conflict itself.

That alone necessitates AP CEO and President Gary Pruitt's resignation, and that of the AP's Gaza staff. Maybe that's not fair, but AP's been in that building for 15 years. Perhaps they should have known, being a news-gathering organization in a war zone. Things aren't fair in war, especially this war.

Either the IDF is terrible or Hamas is terrible (and both being terrible is the most likely outcome) but again, the AP allowed themselves to get pulled into this.

We need better media run by better people.

StupidiNews!

• At least one person is dead and four injured after a mass shooting in Toronto on Sunday, the shooting took place near the Pearson International Airport in the Ebitocoke neighborhood.
• Embattled Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu is ruling out a Gaza cease fire, saying the IDF will pursue Hamas terrorists "for as long as necessary" as fighting there enters a second week.
• A new WHO study finds that stroke and heart disease deaths caused by overwork in 2020 rose 30% from 2000, claiming nearly three-quarters of a million people worldwide.
• Ireland's government is confirming a second cyber attack on the country's health system in three days as hackers continue to shut down hospital and heath care computers.
• Archaeologists in Italy believe a naval officer's body found near Mount Vesuvius may have been part of a failed rescue mission 2100 years ago.
  

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

Trump continues to lie to America and the world as his cultists continue to try to manufacture a scandal in Arizona's 2020 vote count, declaring that the entire Maricopa County voter database was deleted ahead of Monday's election board meeting, a lie so laughably false that the county's Republican top election official publicly tweeted that Donald Trump is "unhinged".

"Wow. This is unhinged."

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer's tweet Saturday castigated former President Donald Trump for alleging "election crime" in an email he sent Saturday.

Trump's premature leap to unsubstantiated conclusionsdrew Richer's attention before a scheduled meeting Monday in which Maricopa County officials say they will respond to questions raised by Arizona Senate-hired private contractors auditing the county's general election.

Richer took office in January, after the election, the election count and county accuracy tests and a county-directed audit were conducted.

He and other Republican county officials are sounding alarms as claims about a deleted database such as the one made by Trump — and the audit's own Twitter account — burn across social media like wildfire.

"Wow. This is unhinged. I’m literally looking at our voter registration database on my other screen. Right now," Richer posted on Twitter in response to Trump's claims.

He added: "We can’t indulge these insane lies any longer. As a party. As a state. As a country."

Trump wrote in one of his Saturday emails, "The entire Database of Maricopa County in Arizona has been DELETED!" He called it "illegal" and an "election crime," despite the audit spokesperson walking back such claims two days earlier. Trump also alleged that "seals were broken on the boxes that hold the votes, ballots are missing, and worse."

On Wednesday, the auditors' Twitter account alleged Maricopa County deleted a directory full of election databases before the election equipment was delivered to the audit, claiming spoliation of evidence.

But Ken Bennett, the audit spokesperson, walked back a claim of wrongdoing.

"We didn’t say there was anything malicious," Bennett said Friday of the database in question. "Maybe it was deleted because it was a duplicate of something that was elsewhere."

Bennett said auditors seek an explanation from the county.

 

The explanation is simple: "You're all a bunch of liars, and you most likely will be hearing from our lawyers if not country prosecutors." 

And I don't feel sorry for Stephen Richter at all. The proper thing to do is to resign very publicly, very loudly, and to encourage every other Republican remaining in the party to leave as well, stating very clearly that Donald Trump's Big Lie cannot be allowed to stand. Back up those words with actions.

Leave. The. Party.

Because those who remain will be part and parcel of the violence that will inevitably come.

 

There's no middle ground anymore, because those who are disloyal to Trump are being purged anyway.

When House Republicans ousted Congresswoman Liz Cheney from her leadership post, it spoke to the direction of the Republican Party in at least one specific way: what should happen to those who publicly break with former President Donald Trump? So, we surveyed the nation's self-identified Republicans to learn what they thought of the week's events. They still very much want their party to show loyalty to Mr. Trump and adhere to the idea that President Biden didn't legitimately win.

Their views on Cheney, in turn, now reflect those wishes.

Eighty percent of Republicans who'd heard about the vote agree with Cheney's removal — they feel she was off-message, unsupportive of Mr. Trump, and that she's wrong about the 2020 presidential election. To a third of them, and most particularly for those who place the highest importance on loyalty, Cheney's removal also shows "disloyalty will be punished."

Those Republicans opposed to her removal — just a fifth of the party right now — say it's mainly because there's room for different views in the party, not all need support Mr. Trump and this was a distraction. But when we look down the line to any potential electoral impact, theirs might be even more limited: this group is also less likely to report voting in Republican primaries. 

Republicans say that Mr. Trump himself represents their views just as well as they think the party does; it's a personal connection to him we've seen for years. Today, loyalty also means they specifically want the party to follow more of the former president's examples across a range of items, including economics, issues of race and immigration, how to treat the media, using power and leadership, generally.

 

There is no GOP anymore. There is only the Trump party now. And it will very soon go to war with America itself.

God help me, we're not prepared to win that war, either.

Retrubution Execution, Con't

The Liz Cheney fight is over, and Donald Trump has claimed 100% victory with Elise Stefanik taking Cheney's role as House GOP conference chair. As CNN's Harry Enten notes, Republicans are now moving on to winning back Congress in 2022.

The House GOP's move to remove Rep. Liz Cheney from her leadership position is widely seen as the latest move to placate the base at the risk of alienating the center of the electorate. Cheney had voted to impeach former President Donald Trump and has continued her critiques of him while most other Republicans seem to have a hard time distancing themselves from him. 

But a look at the statistics reveals that Republicans may be playing it right when it comes to Trump. 

The belief that Republicans should not try to placate Trump or his supporters comes down to the fact that he is unpopular and just lost a presidential election. 

That said, there's little sign that Trump is even on the minds' of most voters these days. He's not on Twitter, and Google searches for him are way down. Indeed, there's not much of a sign that the GOP's association with Trump is hurting them at this point. 

Take a look at the generic congressional ballot. Democrats hold a slight lead of about 3 to 4 points in an average of polls. Trump lost the 2020 election by 4.5 points, and House Republicans lost nationally by 3.1 points. 

In other words, Republicans are in no worse position than they were in the 2020 election. In fact, they're actually polling better now on the generic ballot than they were heading into the last election by about 3 to 4 points because polling across the board underestimated Republicans.

 

In other words, without Trump reminding people daily why the GOP is corrupt and terrible, they're actually doing better in the polls, better enough to win back Congress by a healthy margin. Biden's big legislative wins and the COVID vaccine progress aren't enough. People actually like Republicans more now, because they're the "outsider" party and everything is now the Democrats' fault because they're in control.

Unless Democrats find a way to make the GOP pay a price for their continued support of Trump, the Biden admin will be over and done in 2023 when Republicans take over Congress and impeach him three, maybe four times just to make sure Trump is no longer the "most impeached" Oval Office occupant.

You think I'm kidding. I'm being deadly serious.