Sunday Long Read: The Monkey Business

Among the myriad shortages in the global supply chain thanks to the pandemic are stocks of monkeys and other primates for biomedical research, and the problem has gotten so bad that as Mother Jones reporter Jackie Flynn Mogenson tells us in this week's Sunday Long Read, the fight for primates is being waged around the world in a sort of secret, clandestine battle.

On May 15, 2020, a US-bound cargo plane was scheduled to depart Mauritius, an island about the size of Maui that’s just east of Madagascar. There were four key things I knew about the flight:

1. It involved the transportation of monkeys.
2. The monkeys were intended for Covid research.
3. The cost—to cover the fuel, crew, insurance, and other expenses—totaled nearly half a million dollars.
4. The public was never supposed to find out about it.
   

In a backward sort of way, the only reason I can tell you anything about the flight is because it never happened.

The deal involved two companies, both of which could not have sounded more unimportant: an air carrier called Skybus Jet Cargo and a Delaware-based firm, International Logistics Support, which had arranged the flight. But, ultimately, the deal between the two companies fell through. The plane never took off. And shortly after, International Logistics Support sued Skybus for damages in a Miami court. With the resulting 300-plus pages of court documents, I was able to piece together these basics.

Still, there were big holes in the picture. For instance, who purchased the animals? How many were there? What species? (My best guess was long-tailed macaques, which are commonly sourced from Mauritius.) Where—which lab or labs—were the monkeys supposed to end up? And why, exactly, didn’t the flight take off as planned?

So I kept digging. I read everything I could find about the case. I submitted public records requests to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Fish and Wildlife Service, and the United States Department of Agriculture, all of which oversee nonhuman primate trade, transport, and research. I asked animal rights groups, government officials, and academics if they had any information about the case. I reached out to the companies involved, only to conduct a series of fairly fruitless interviews with the owner of International Logistics Support, a guy named Matthew Block, who, it turns out, is something of an infamous character among animal rights groups. From nearly everyone else? Crickets.

Navigating the monkey business, I learned the hard way, is a bit like navigating a, well, jungle.

But my digging took me far beyond this singular flight. The Skybus case, in fact, offers a rare glimpse into the wider trade of monkeys—a famously secretive industry—during the worst health crisis in a century. In the records I was able to find, in the conversations with the few people who were willing to talk, and in the history I was able to mine, the details surrounding the flight pointed to a much bigger story: Primate research is in trouble. And the dilemma it is facing has very real, very urgent, very human stakes.

Due to a combination of factors—including a complete shutdown of primates being exported from China, an insufficient monkey reserve in the US, ongoing opposition from animal rights groups, and, of course, the Covid pandemic—the country is in the midst of a years-long monkey shortage. To put it simply, researchers say the supply of animals can’t keep up with the demand. In 2019, the US imported nearly 34,000 monkeys, about 60 percent of which came from China. After China closed off primate exports the following year, the total number dropped to less than 27,000—a 21 percent decline—and the price for a single macaque reportedly doubled to nearly $10,000 in early 2020, and has since risen to as much as $20,000. Without a reliable supply of monkeys, researchers are going to greater lengths to advance their work—paying more for primates, importing younger animals, “recycling” monkeys more often, and sourcing them more heavily from other locations, like Mauritius. For years, Block tells me, the US largely ignored calls to expand its own monkey colonies: “Now we’re paying the price.”

Believe me, I wish biomedical research had a better substitute for testing on our closest animal relatives. And one day, it might. But no matter how you or I feel about it, it’s clear the practice has saved—and is saving—human lives. If you received a shot of the Covid vaccine, for instance, you have monkeys to thank for it; before their vaccines were released to the masses, Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson trialed them in monkeys first. The same is true for Covid treatments like monoclonal antibodies or the antiviral remdesivir. Monkeys were also instrumental in testing vaccines that can protect against monkeypox.

And so the monkey shortage is putting human lives at risk. Scientists say vital medical and scientific studies have been delayed or prevented entirely, leaving us ill-prepared to keep fighting this pandemic, not to mention future ones. “It’s a threat for bio defense. It’s a threat for our economy. It’s a threat for our standing in research,” says Joyce Cohen, the associate director of the Division of Animal Resources at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center housed at Emory University. “All these things are hugely important.”

Nevertheless, much like the individuals involved with the flight, many of the people affected by the shortage—breeders, pharma employees, scientists—were hesitant to talk about it, ignored my interview requests, asked to remain anonymous, or were generally cautious about how they described their work. Some cited fear of retaliation from animal rights groups, others had concerns about confidentiality. The irony is, talking about the problem—and educating the public about primate research more broadly—may be exactly what’s needed to help address the shortage itself.

It’s these factors that make the May 2020 flight more complicated—and more intriguing—than a simple contract dispute. According to Block, he and his unnamed client eventually got their shipment of monkeys delivered to the US, though it “slightly delayed research programs for COVID,” he tells me in an email. So while I can’t tell you the lab ID numbers of those monkeys, or the trials they likely participated in, I can tell you the history and context of the environment to which they arrived, and what the hell a plane full of monkeys set to fly across the Atlantic says about the state of science in America.

 

The monkey business is worth reading about, because the drugs we depend on depend on this business, and the business is coming apart for multiple reasons. A key component of protecting the world from the next pandemic depends on it, and there's not much reason to believe it will be in any better shape when that next disease comes. 

Monkey business, indeed.

Indepen-Dunce Week Returns

Taking a break this week after a repugnant mess of a SCOTUS term, and the perverse notion that America is a land of freedom and liberty. I'll be having limited posting this week in order to try to recharge the batteries for the fight ahead.

Have a safe and happy 4th holiday, at least.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Texas's state Supreme Court is allowing the state's law banning abortion from a century ago to go into effect immediately, ending legal abortions in the state.

Texas can enforce its abortion ban from 1925, the state Supreme Court ruled late Friday evening, a decision that exposes abortion providers to lawsuits and financial penalties if they continue to perform the procedure.

The court overruled a district judge in Houston, who on Tuesday had temporarily blocked the state’s old abortion law from going into effect. That law made performing an abortion, by any method, punishable by two to 10 years in prison.

Friday’s decision does not permit prosecutors to bring criminal cases against abortion providers, but it exposes anyone who assists in the procurement of an abortion to fines and lawsuits.

The federal Supreme Court on June 24 overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that asserted that access to abortion is protected under the constitution. The Texas Legislature last year passed a “trigger law” that would automatically ban abortion from the moment of fertilization 30 days after a judgment from the Supreme Court, which typically comes about a month after the initial opinion.

Abortion rights groups filed a lawsuit Monday in hopes of extending the period the procedure remains legal in Texas. They argued the 1925 ban was effectively repealed when the Supreme Court rendered its decision in Roe v. Wade, and thus cannot be enforced now.

“These laws are confusing, unnecessary, and cruel,” Marc Hearron, Senior Counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is not part of the lawsuit, said in a statement. “Texas’s trigger ban is not scheduled to take effect for another two months, if not longer. This law from nearly one hundred years ago is banning essential health care prematurely, despite clearly being long repealed.”

Since the Legislature never repealed its pre-Roe statute banning abortion, however, some conservative lawmakers and legal scholars argued abortion again became illegal in Texas the moment the Supreme Court announced its ruling.

 

And again, the next step is to criminalize crossing state lines for an abortion, and then finally criminalizing failure to give live birth.

Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, a man with a wiry, squared-off beard and a metal cross around his neck celebrated with his team at a Brazilian steakhouse. He pulled out his phone to livestream to his followers.

“We have delivered a huge blow to the enemy and to this industry,” the man, Jeff Durbin, said. But, he explained, “our work has just really begun.”

“Even the states that have trigger laws,” which ban abortion at conception without exceptions for rape or incest, did not go far enough, Mr. Durbin, a pastor in the greater Phoenix area, said. “They do not believe that the woman should ever be punished.”

Resistance to “the question of whether or not people who murder their children in the wombs are guilty,” he said, “is going to have to be something we have to overcome, because women are still going to be killing their children in the womb.”

Even as those in the anti-abortion movement celebrate their nation-changing Supreme Court victory, there are divisions over where to go next. The most extreme, like Mr. Durbin, want to pursue what they call “abortion abolition,” a move to criminalize abortion from conception as homicide, and hold women who have the procedure responsible — a position that in some states could make those women eligible for the death penalty. That position is at odds with the anti-abortion mainstream, which opposes criminalizing women and focuses on prosecuting providers.

Many people who oppose abortion believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. Abolitionists follow that thinking to what they believe is the logical, and uncompromising, conclusion: From the moment of conception, abolitionists want to give the fetus equal protection as a person under the 14th Amendment.

States like Texas are going to start sending women who miscarry to death row very soon.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump has apparently decided that moving up the timetable for a possible 2024 presidential bid is the only way to stop the twin threats of the January 6th investigation and his primary problems with Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former VP Mike Pence.

Republicans are bracing for Donald J. Trump to announce an unusually early bid for the White House, a move designed in part to shield the former president from a stream of damaging revelations emerging from investigations into his attempts to cling to power after losing the 2020 election.

While many Republicans would welcome Mr. Trump’s entry into the race, his move would also exacerbate persistent divisions over whether the former president is the party’s best hope to win back the White House. The party is also divided over whether his candidacy would be an unnecessary distraction from midterm elections or even a direct threat to democracy.

Mr. Trump has long hinted at a third consecutive White House bid and has campaigned for much of the past year. He has accelerated his planning in recent weeks just as a pair of investigations have intensified and congressional testimony has revealed new details about Mr. Trump’s indifference to the threat of violence on Jan. 6 and his refusal to act to stop an insurrection.

Mr. Trump has also watched as some of his preferred candidates have lost recent primary elections, raising hopes among his potential Republican competitors that voters may be drifting from a politician long thought to have an iron grip on the party.

Rather than humble Mr. Trump, the developments have emboldened him to try to reassert himself as the head of the party, eclipse damaging headlines and steal attention from potential rivals, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a rising favorite of donors and voters. Republicans close to Mr. Trump have said he believes a formal announcement would bolster his claims that the investigations are politically motivated.

Mr. Trump would enter the race as the clear front-runner, with an approval rating among Republicans around 80 percent, but there are signs that a growing number of the party’s voters are exploring other options.

“I don’t think anyone is inevitable,” said Haley Barbour, a former Republican National Committee chairman who also served eight years as Mississippi’s governor.

The timing of a formal announcement from Mr. Trump remains uncertain. But he recently surprised some advisers by saying he might declare his candidacy on social media without warning even his own team, and aides are scrambling to build out basic campaign infrastructure in time for an announcement as early as this month.

That timing would be extraordinary — presidential candidates typically announce their candidacies in the year before the election — and could have immediate implications for Republicans seeking to take control of Congress in November. Mr. Trump’s presence as an active candidate would make it easier for Democrats to turn midterm races into a referendum on the former president, who since losing in 2020 has relentlessly spread lies about the legitimacy of the election. Some Republicans fear that would distract from pocketbook issues that have given their party a strong advantage in congressional races.

“Republicans want to win badly in 2022, and it is dawning on many of them that relitigating the 2020 election with Trump’s daily conspiracy diatribes are sure losers,” said Dick Wadhams, a Republican strategist and former chairman of the Colorado Republican Party.

 

It's not going to save him.

 

He has to be indicted, and on a wide variety of crimes.

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Last Call For Deal With The Devil, Con't

Republicans want Democrats to hate Joe Biden, and this is a really good way to motivate that hatred, especially for us Kentucky Dems.

 

A longtime Kentucky federal judge has announced she will step down, clearing a path for President Joe Biden's controversial nomination of an anti-abortion Republican to replace her.

U.S. District Judge Karen K. Caldwell of Kentucky's Eastern District is taking senior status, according to the official listing of federal judge vacancies.

The vacancies listing shows Caldwell submitted her notice to move to senior status June 22, but the date hasn't been determined for when that vacancy will begin. The vacancy didn't appear on the federal website until Friday, July 1.

This move would free up a spot for Biden to nominate Chad Meredith, which the White House recently told Democratic officials in Kentucky the president planned to do.

The Courier Journal broke the story Wednesday.

Those Kentucky Democratic officials have blasted Biden for readying the nomination of the Federalist Society member, including Gov. Andy Beshear and U.S. Rep. John Yarmuth of Louisville, the only Democrat in Kentucky's congressional delegation.

At his press conference Thursday, Beshear said it is his understanding that Biden has not yet submitted Meredith's nomination, “which I hope means in the very least it's on pause."

"If the president makes that nomination, it is indefensible,” he said.

Spokespeople for the White House have repeatedly declined to answer questions about the status of Meredith's potential nomination, only saying "we do not comment on vacancies."

Yarmuth and other officials have said they believe Biden's move is part of a deal cut with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell so he won't hold up future federal nominations by the White House.

 

The one, singular, actually unarguable thing about President Biden's term so far is that he is kicking ass on federal judges and getting then through the Senate at a record pace, beating out even Trump and McConnell's larding of the judicial. 

Turns out that comes at a price though. Mitch still gets to decide which federal judges Biden appoints here in Kentucky.

I'm thrilled of course that the man who destroyed the Senate "blue slip" process where senators get to block judicial appointments in their state as a courtesy gets that courtesy extended to him.

Republicans ruin everything.

 

 

 

Hearing Aides For America, Con't

One of the crimes lost in the shuffle of the January 6th Committee hearings last month was the outright, mobster-level witness tampering by Trump's cronies by offering to pay for legal fees in exchange for those testifying in front of the House to "do the right thing" for Trump. More attention is being paid to that evidence these days.

Former President Donald J. Trump's political organization and his allies have paid for or promised to finance the legal fees of more than a dozen witnesses called in the congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack, raising legal and ethical questions about whether the former president may be influencing testimony with a direct bearing on him.

The arrangement drew new scrutiny this week after Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide in his White House, made an explosive appearance before the House panel, providing damning new details about Mr. Trump’s actions and statements on the day of the deadly riot.

She did so after firing a lawyer who had been recommended to her by two of Mr. Trump’s former aides and paid for by his political action committee, and hiring new counsel. Under the representation of the new lawyer, Jody Hunt, Ms. Hutchinson sat for a fourth interview with the committee in which she divulged more revelations and agreed to come forward publicly to testify to them.

It is not known whether Ms. Hutchinson’s change in counsel led directly to her willingness to appear at a televised hearing and provide a more detailed, wide-ranging account of what she witnessed, but some members of the panel believe that it played a role, according to two people familiar with the committee’s work.

Mr. Trump claimed that Ms. Hutchinson’s new lawyer could have prompted her to make false statements. “Her story totally changed!” he complained on his social media site, Truth Social.

The episode raised questions about whether Mr. Trump and his allies may, implicitly or explicitly, be pressuring witnesses to hold back crucial information that might incriminate or cast a negative light on the former president. Mr. Trump and his advisers have been accused before of trying to influence witnesses in past investigations involving him. The committee is known to ask witnesses frequently during closed-door interviews whether anyone has tried to influence their testimony.

Ms. Hutchinson has told the Jan. 6 committee that she was among the witnesses who have been contacted by people around Mr. Trump suggesting that they would be better off if they remained loyal to the former president. Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming and the vice chairwoman of the panel, quoted two witnesses making such claims on Tuesday and suggested that the committee was looking into the possibility that the former president or his allies were trying to obstruct its inquiry, saying that, “most people know that attempting to influence witnesses to testify untruthfully presents very serious concerns.”

Unlike witness tampering, which is a crime, there is nothing illegal about a third party covering legal fees for a witness. Aides to former President Bill Clinton reported being overwhelmed with legal bills because of the various inquiries into his and his family’s personal and business affairs, and were dismayed when a legal-defense fund set up by Mr. Clinton’s allies to help the first family pay its multimillion-dollar legal debts did not help them. Mr. Clinton later pledged to help raise money to cover his former aides’ legal expenses, but did not make any major effort to do so.

In the case of Mr. Trump, several former aides have requested that he pay their lawyers’ fees, many of them citing financial hardship and the exorbitant cost of representation in connection with a major congressional investigation. Still, given Mr. Trump’s potential criminal exposure and interest in the inquiry’s outcome, the practice has come under added scrutiny.

According to financial disclosures, in May alone, Mr. Trump’s “Save America” political action committee paid about $200,000 to law firms. That including $75,000 to JPRowley Law, which represents Cleta Mitchell, a pro-Trump lawyer who has filed suit to try to block the committee’s subpoena, and $50,000 to Silverman, Thompson, Slutkin & White, which has represented Stephen K. Bannon, a close ally of the former president who refused to meet with the panel and has been charged with criminal contempt. The managing partner at the firm representing Mr. Bannon declined to comment.

It was not immediately clear whether those payments were for covering legal fees connected to the Jan. 6 inquiry, but people familiar with the matter said the PAC has paid for the representation of several former officials and aides in the investigation, including some high-profile ones such as Stephen Miller, who served as a senior adviser to Mr. Trump. Mr. Trump’s PAC paid a portion of Mr. Miller’s legal bills.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump also declined to comment.

 

Paying for legal fees isn't illegal, paying for legal fees with the expectation that it will affect your testimony as a quid pro quo very much is illegal, and these idiots put that in writing.

Meanwhile, actually illegal witness tampering is going on as well.

Former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson received at least one message tacitly warning her not to cooperate with the House January 6 select committee from an associate of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The message in question was the second of the two warnings that the select committee disclosed at the end of its special hearing when Hutchinson testified about how Donald Trump directed a crowd he knew was armed to march on the Capitol, the sources said.

“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow. He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition,” read the message. The redaction was Meadows, the sources said.

The message was presented during closing remarks at the special hearing with Hutchinson by the panel’s vice-chair, Liz Cheney, who characterized the missive as improper pressure on a crucial witness that could extend to illegal witness tampering or intimidation.

The exact identity of the person who sent Hutchinson the message – beyond the fact that they were an associate of Meadows – could not be confirmed on Thursday, but that may be in part because the select committee may wish to interview that person, the sources said.

 

So yes, take your picke from Trump's Cavalcade of Crime, Merrick Garland.

Pick and prosecute.

The Coming Supreme Storm

I have to admit, 2022 was the worst Supreme Court term of my lifetime, a historic destruction of rights in order to serve white supremacy and to put the nation's non-white folk at a lethal disadvantage in the years ahead.

And I am telling you now, 2023 may be worse.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Thursday to hear a North Carolina case with nationwide implications — on whether state legislatures should be immune from judicial oversight in state court when it comes to setting election rules. 

The arguments put forth by North Carolina’s Republican-led legislature concerned a controversial topic known as the “independent state legislature doctrine.” While the matter before the Supreme Court stems from a gerrymandering lawsuit in North Carolina, critics said the argument could be used in any state, for a variety of purposes — like overturning the results of future presidential elections. 

“This case is not only critical to election integrity in North Carolina, but has implications for the security of elections nationwide,” N.C. House Speaker Tim Moore said in a news release. He’s a main party in the case, called Moore v. Harper, which will likely be argued in late 2022 or early 2023. 

The basic premise is that there should be few checks and balances when it comes to election law. State legislatures should have near-total control over the rules, the theory says, without state courts being allowed to decide if a state’s elections laws are constitutional. 

The N.C. Supreme Court harshly shot down the argument earlier this year, in its ruling in the gerrymandering case. “It is also repugnant to the sovereignty of states, the authority of state constitutions, and the independence of state courts, and would produce absurd and dangerous consequences,” the state’s highest court wrote. 

The N.C Supreme Court has a Democratic majority. But the U.S. Supreme Court has a conservative majority which could see things differently, GOP leaders in North Carolina hoped — even though previous versions of the U.S. Supreme Court have also shot down the argument over the decades, and as recently as 2015. 

Republican lawmakers told the U.S. Supreme Court that they believe the Constitution intends for legislative leaders, not the courts, to have the final say over elections law — “and this Court should intervene to protect the Constitution’s allocation of power over this matter of fundamental importance to our democratic system of government.”

 

Understand that if there are five SCOTUS votes for this -- and there are already four -- we are looking at permanent control of the country by Republicans. State legislatures will simply declare Republicans winners with no recourse. Democratic wins will be simply annulled by a simple majority of Republicans in Republican-controlled legislatures.

The election laws in a couple dozen states will mean whatever the Republicans want it to mean. And in 2024, Republicans will simply give the state's electoral votes to the Republican. Vote totals won't matter. As bad as things are right now, if the Roberts Court decides that only state legislatures can ever run elections, then no Democrats will ever be elected from those states again.

At that point, history tells us massive violence follows.

This one's the end of democracy, folks.

Voting now may be the only way to stop it.

A Supreme Extreme Green Dream, Machine Cleaned

As largely expected, the Roberts Court has obliterated the EPA's authority over power plant emissions, saying that even the Trump Regime's industry-friendly measures went too far, let alone the old Obama power plant regs that were nuked in 2016.

The Supreme Court on Thursday sharply cut back the Environmental Protection Agency’s ability to reduce the carbon output of existing power plants, a blow to the nation’s chances of averting catastrophic climate change.

The vote was 6 to 3, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the court’s conservatives.

“Capping carbon dioxide emissions at a level that will force a nationwide transition away from the use of coal to generate electricity may be a sensible ‘solution to the crisis of the day,’ ” Roberts wrote, referring to a court precedent. “But it is not plausible that Congress gave EPA the authority to adopt on its own such a regulatory scheme.”

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for the dissenters, countered: “The Court appoints itself — instead of Congress or the expert agency — the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of many things more frightening.”

The decision risks putting the United States even further off track from President Biden’s goal of running the U.S. power grid on clean energy by 2035 — and making the entire economy carbon-neutral by 2050.

With higher seas, fiercer wildfires and other consequences of climate change apparent, the world is already in unprecedented territory. Biden hoped to lead by example to convince other countries to cut emissions and help the world keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit).

Now such diplomacy has become more difficult for Biden, especially as countries scramble for new sources of oil and gas after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

In a statement, White House spokesman Abdullah Hasan called Thursday’s ruling “another devastating decision from the court that aims to take our country backwards.” Biden, he added, “will not relent in using the authorities that he has under law to protect public health and tackle the climate change crisis.”

“Our lawyers will study the ruling carefully and we will find ways to move forward under federal law,” Hasan said. “At the same time, Congress must also act to accelerate America’s path to a clean, healthy, secure energy future.”

The court was considering the powers granted by the Clean Air Act, which was written decades ago, before climate change was widely recognized as a worldwide crisis.

Environmentalists were alarmed by the court’s decision.

Richard Lazarus, a Harvard environmental law professor, said that by insisting that an agency “can promulgate an important and significant climate rule only by showing ‘clear congressional authorization’ at a time when the Court knows that Congress is effectively dysfunctional, the Court threatens to upend the national government’s ability to safeguard the public health and welfare at the very moment when the United States, and all nations, are facing our greatest environmental challenge of all: climate change.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) praised the ruling.

“The Court has undone illegal regulations issued by the EPA without any clear congressional authorization and confirmed that only the people’s representatives in Congress — not unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats — may write our nation’s laws,” McConnell said in a statement.

The United States is the world’s second-biggest annual emitter of greenhouse gases, and is responsible for a greater portion of historical emissions than any other nation.

 

The Roberts Court basically doesn't believe in climate change and will block efforts to stop it from the Executive Branch, and Mith McConnell will block any legislative efforts, along with WV Democrat Joe Manchin.

 

Unless the Court is reformed and reconfigured, we're a theocratic failed state by the end of the decade, and the world, seeing the effects of climate change on their populace, will not stand idly by as we destroy the planet.

Things get catastrophic after that point.

The State Of Church And State, Con't

 GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert is greatly disappointed that SCOTUS hasn't ruled that the United States is a "Christian" theocracy yet, and she wants that the change as soon as they can do it.

 

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) says she is “tired” of the long-standing separation between church and state in the U.S., adding that she believes “the church is supposed to direct the government.”

In a Sunday speech at the Cornerstone Christian Center in Basalt, Colo., ahead of her primary election on Tuesday, Boebert argued that “the government is not supposed to direct the church,” saying that dividing religion from the system of government was not what the Founding Fathers intended.

“I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk — that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like they say it does,” Boebert said, earning a round of applause from the audience.

Boebert faces a GOP primary challenge from state Sen. Don Coram in Colorado’s 3rd District but has far outraised her opponent in the campaign and is expected to triumph on Tuesday, according to the election watcher FiveThirtyEight.

The concept of a separation between church and state is derived from the establishment clause in the Bill of Rights, which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Roger Williams, who founded Rhode Island, was the first to decipher the clause as “a wall or hedge of separation” between the “wilderness of the world” and “the garden of the church.”

In 1802, then-President Thomas Jefferson penned a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut, in which he wrote the American public had built “a wall of separation between Church and State.”

States have long adhered to the principle since Jefferson’s letter. The Supreme Court applied the clause to states with the 14th Amendment and has used the doctrine to uphold such a wall.

However, the current high court, which has a conservative majority, has recently ruled increasingly in support of religion in public spaces.

The Supreme Court this month struck down a Maine policy that prohibited religious schools from receiving taxpayer-funded tuition aid and ruled in favor of a football coach in Washington state who prayed at the 50-yard line after public school games.

Conservative justices also ruled in May that the city of Boston violated the Constitution by declining a request from a religious organization to fly its flag at city hall.

After the Maine ruling, liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor said the court “continues to dismantle the wall of separation between church and state that the Framers fought to build.”

 

"The church is supposed to direct the government" is the very definition of theocracy. 

They're going to find a way to do it and both the state and eventually federal level unless we can fix the Roberets Court, but gas is $5 so we're going to give Republicans control again.

I know getting voters to care is nearly impossible, especially when they are being convinced that the new coming Christian fascist state will be better than what we have now, but my god, Sinclair Lewis was right. He may have never actually said the quote about fascism coming the American wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross, but he did say:

"But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty."

 

"Befogged" is a good word, it's what we really mean by "gaslighting" in most senses. The Great Befogging has been on for decades.

We're all about to choke on these particular particulates.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

As I have been telling everyone for months now, the next step is to stop women in forced birth states from crossing state lines to get an abortion by using the Texas "bounty" system to sue women in civil court, and that's now in the works in multiple states. 

Several national antiabortion groups and their allies in Republican-led state legislatures are advancing plans to stop people in states where abortion is banned from seeking the procedure elsewhere, according to people involved in the discussions.

The idea has gained momentum in some corners of the antiabortion movement in the days since the Supreme Court struck down its 49-year-old precedent protecting abortion rights nationwide, triggering abortion bans across much of the Southeast and Midwest.

The Thomas More Society, a conservative legal organization, is drafting model legislation for state lawmakers that would allow private citizens to sue anyone who helps a resident of a state that has banned abortion from terminating a pregnancy outside of that state. The draft language will borrow from the novel legal strategy behind a Texas abortion ban enacted last year in which private citizens were empowered to enforce the law through civil litigation.

The subject was much discussed at two national antiabortion conferences last weekend, with several lawmakers interested in introducing these kinds of bills in their own states.

The National Association of Christian Lawmakers, an antiabortion organization led by Republican state legislators, has begun working with the authors of the Texas abortion ban to explore model legislation that would restrict people from crossing state lines for abortions, said Texas state representative Tom Oliverson (R), the charter chair of the group’s national legislative council.

“Just because you jump across a state line doesn’t mean your home state doesn’t have jurisdiction,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel for the Thomas More Society. “It’s not a free abortion card when you drive across the state line.”

The Biden Justice Department has already warned states that it would fight such laws, saying they violate the right to interstate commerce.

In relying on private citizens to enforce civil litigation, rather than attempting to impose a state-enforced ban on receiving abortions across state lines, such a law is more difficult to challenge in court because abortion rights groups don’t have a clear person to sue.

Like the Texas abortion ban, the proposal itself could have a chilling effect, where doctors in surrounding states stop performing abortions before courts have an opportunity to intervene, worried that they may face lawsuits if they violate the law. 

 

I guarantee you that this SCOTUS will find a way to gut the Interstate Commerce clause to allow this garbage, and at some point, turning in your neighbor, wife, niece or daughter and collecting whatever the bounty is set at will be a regular occurrence in a couple of SCOTUS terms or two.

Expect Ron DeSantis and/or Greg Abbott to call a apecial session of their respective state legislatures in order to enact this ASAP, and for the law to be challenged legally, and for the SCOTUS shadow docket to refuse to stay the law.

Watch.

 

 

A Supreme Sovereign Betrayal

Two years ago, Justice Neil Gorsuch was the deciding vote in a 5-4 opinion that declared the Creek Nations reservations in Eastern Oklahoma to be sovereign tribal land for the purposes of land administration and law enforcement.

That was of course before the death of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and replacing her with Racist PTA Karen, and today with personnel change, that declaration is now gone, and the state of Oklahoma now has control of these lands back when it comes to prosecuting crimes of non-Native suspects.

 

The Supreme Court on Wednesday narrowed the sweep of its landmark 2020 decision declaring that much of eastern Oklahoma falls within Indian reservation lands, allowing state authorities to prosecute non-Indians who commit crimes against Indians on the reservations.

The ruling left in place the basic holding of the 2020 decision, McGirt v. Oklahoma, which said that Native Americans who commit crimes on the reservations, which include much of the city of Tulsa, cannot be prosecuted by state or local law enforcement and must instead face justice in tribal or federal courts.

The vote on Wednesday was 5 to 4, with Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who was not on the court when the McGirt case was decided, casting the decisive vote.

The new case concerned Victor Manuel Castro-Huerta, who was convicted of severely neglecting his 5-year-old stepdaughter, a member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians who has cerebral palsy and is legally blind. In 2015, she was found dehydrated, emaciated and covered in lice and excrement, weighing just 19 pounds.

Mr. Castro-Huerta, who is not an Indian, was prosecuted by state authorities, convicted in state court and sentenced to 35 years in prison.

After the McGirt decision, an Oklahoma appeals court vacated his conviction on the ground that the crime had taken place in Indian Country. The appeals court relied on earlier rulings that crimes committed on reservations by or against Indians could not be prosecuted by state authorities.

Federal prosecutors then pursued charges against Mr. Castro-Huerta, and he pleaded guilty to child neglect in federal court and entered a plea agreement calling for a seven-year sentence. His sentencing is scheduled for August.

Prosecution in a tribal court was not an option in the case, as tribal courts generally lack authority to try non-Indians for crimes against Indians.

In asking the Supreme Court to weigh in on the case, Oklahoma v. Castro-Huerta, No. 21-429, John M. O’Connor, Oklahoma’s attorney general, said the justices had “never squarely held that states do not have concurrent authority to prosecute non-Indians for state-law crimes committed against Indians in Indian Country.”

Lawyers for Mr. Castro-Huerta responded that the Supreme Court, lower courts and Congress had all said that crimes committed on reservations by or against Indians could not be prosecuted by state authorities.

In his petition seeking review, Mr. O’Connor had also asked the Supreme Court to address a second question: whether the McGirt decision should be overruled. In its order granting review, however, the Supreme Court said it would only consider the narrower question of whether states can prosecute non-Indians for crimes against Indians on reservations.

Writing for the majority in McGirt, which was decided by a 5-to-4 vote, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch said the court was vindicating a commitment that grew out of an ugly history of forced removals and broken treaties.

“On the far end of the Trail of Tears was a promise,” he wrote, joined by what was then the court’s four-member liberal wing. “Forced to leave their ancestral lands in Georgia and Alabama, the Creek Nation received assurances that their new lands in the West would be secure forever.”

 

Oklahoma Republicans demanded control over these lands again for non-Native folks, and SCOTUS gave it to them. The assurances Justice Gorsuch said the US Government gave the Creek Nations, assurances that his ruling remedied, were all but reversed in just two years.

When I say the Roberts Court is coming for the entire Civil Rights era, what Justice Thomas calls "wrongly decided substantive due process decisions", I mean everything is on the table, and everything will be gone unless this court is stopped.

The Coming Supreme Battlefield

In the wake of the death of Roe, Justice Clarence Thomas all but begged red states to send the Roberts Court more civil rights cases so that he can personally dismantle them and return America to the violent depths of Reconstruction. Texas GOP AG Ken Paxton seems more than happy to do just that.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton last week seemingly expressed support for the Supreme Court potentially overturning past rulings on cases involving the LGBTQ community following the downfall of Roe v. Wade on Friday.

In a separate concurring opinion Friday, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas questioned a number of the high court's past rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, which established the right of same-sex couples to marry, and Lawrence vs. Texas—a 2003 decision in which the court ruled against the state of Texas regarding a 1973 law criminalizing the act of sodomy.

Thomas also mentioned Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right of married couples to use contraception without government interference. "In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court's substantive due process precedents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell. Because any substantive due process decision is 'demonstrably erroneous,'" Thomas wrote. "We have a duty to 'correct the error' regarding these established in those precedents."

During a Friday appearance on News Nation's "On Balance with Leland Vittert," Paxton said he would support the Supreme Court revisiting the cases mentioned by Thomas and defend Texas' long-unenforced law against sodomy.

"I'm sure you read Justice Thomas's concurrence where he said there were a number of other of these issues, Griswold, Lawrence and Obergefell he felt needs to be looked at again," Vittert told Paxton. "Obviously the Lawrence case came from Texas... would you as attorney general be comfortable defending a law that once again outlawed sodomy? That questioned Lawrence again or Griswold or gay marriage? That came from the state legislature to put to the test what Justice Thomas said?"

"Yeah, I mean there's all kinds of issues here, but certainly the Supreme Court has stepped into issues that I don't think there's any constitutional provision dealing with," Paxton responded. "They were legislative issues and this is one of those issues and there may be more. So it would depend on the issue and dependent on what state law had said at the time."

 

They are coming for it all, folks. Your rights will be solely determined by which state you live in. Federal protections of civil rights will be gone by the end of the decade at this rate, and if Republicans get control of the WH and Congress in 2024, it'll be sooner than that. 

We are headed for a violent theocratic splintering that will criminalize the existence of and immiserate tens of millions of us, if not openly threaten our lives.

We are almost out of chances to stop it.

Last Call For The State Of Church And State, Con't

Why yes, Republicans are absolutely going for the dark, theocratic future previously reserved for the tabletop RPGs and sci-fi scenarios from my college days.

 

America First Legal (AFL), a right-wing group whose team includes several former Trump administration officials, is urging the Supreme Court to do even more to shatter what’s left of the wall between church and state.

On Tuesday, June 28, the group issued a statement essentially calling for a total overhaul of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, a key provision separating church and state. The statement arrived one day after the Supreme Court cracked part of the clause’s foundation with its ruling in Kennedy v. Bremerton. In that case, the court’s far-right majority ruled that public school officials in Bremerton, Washington, violated the First Amendment rights of high school football coach Joseph Kennedy when they fired him following a controversy stemming from his ritual of praying at the 50-yard line during football games. The 6-3 decision effectively overruled a 1971 precedent for interpreting the First Amendment’s establishment clause.

While the establishment clause exists to keep the government from establishing an official religion in the United States, or doing anything that might favor one religion over another, the AFL is now hopeful that the Supreme Court will “eventually disincorporate” the establishment clause in a future case. Doing so, the AFL suggests, would allow states to “decide whether and to what extent they will establish religion within their borders.”

The AFL’s vice president and general counsel Gene Hamilton — a former Trump official in the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security, whose hits include axing DACA and helping create the infamous family separation policy — argued in a statement that the original intent of the establishment clause was to let the states decide just how much they want to separate church and state.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court decided in Coach Kennedy’s favor,” Hamilton said. “Perhaps the Court will, in a future case, finally restore the original meaning of the Establishment Clause and disincorporate it as to the states. But for today, we celebrate with Coach Kennedy and all Americans who value religious freedom.”

Allowing individual states to establish their own official religions is just one possible tidal wave-sized ripple that could follow Kennedy v. Bremerton. Considering the current Court’s apparent disdain for established precedent, it could also pave the way for overturning the landmark 1962 case that ruled prayer in public schools was unconstitutional.

 

I don't know how many more alarm bells can be run, but we're one very broad or two or three smaller rulings taken together from states being able to establish official religions, and laws and regulations based on those religions, and by "religions" I mean "the shitty white nationalist version of Christianity" where anyone who isn't a white, straight male "Christian" will at best be a second or third class citizen, and probably much, much worse.

They really are going for the Christian Kingdom of Red States, folks, complete with Christian Police to enforce Christian theocracy.

We have got to stop these assholes before they murder anyone darker than a paper bag.

Hearing Aides For America, Surprise Edition

After scheduling the next hearing for July, the H=January 6th Committee sprung a surprise hearing today to hear the testimony of former Trump WH administrative staffer Cassidy Hutchinson, assistant to then WH Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, who like any good administrative assistant, knew wehre all the proverbial (and almost very literal) bodies were all buried on January 6th planning.

And yes, as Hutchinson's testimony made very clear, the January 6th insurrection was very much planned by the Trump regime.

Aides to former President Donald Trump were left speechless amid the first half of Cassidy Hutchinson's testimony on Tuesday, acknowledging to CNN that her testimony was "a bombshell" with potentially huge repercussions for Trump.

Trump was already bracing for an explosive day of testimony from Hutchinson, who previously told the House select committee that the former President approved of rioters chanting violent threats against Vice President Mike Pence on January 6, 2021.

"This is a bombshell. It's stunning. It's shocking. The story about 'The Beast' -- I don't have words. It's just stunning," said one Trump adviser, referring to the presidential limousine.

"This paints a picture of Trump completely unhinged and completely losing all control which, for his base, they think of him as someone who is in command at all times. This completely flies in the face of that," the adviser added.

The Trump adviser, who was in a group text chat with several other Trump aides and allies as the hearing played out, said that "no one is taking this lightly."

"For the first time since the hearings started, no one is dismissing this," the adviser said.

Another Trump ally told CNN the testimony from Hutchinson, a former top aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, would seal Meadows' fate as "persona non grata" to the former President.

"This is one of the reasons [Trump] is furious with Meadows. He was already iced out but now he will be persona non grata," this person said.

The startling revelations from Hutchinson's testimony about Trump's erratic behavior and state of mind on January 6 could make it easier for Republican presidential hopefuls to challenge the former President in a primary should he run, the Trump ally added.

"This is basically a campaign commercial for (Florida Gov.) Ron DeSantis 2024," said the Trump ally.

 

It's starting to sink in that Trump may not be the 2024 GOP candidate for the White House because of this.

 

He's going to be otherwise occupied.

Minutes before Donald Trump took the stage at an Ellipse rally on Jan. 6, 2021, he urged the Secret Service to remove security magnetometers to let in people with weapons because “they’re not here to hurt me,” a former top White House aide told investigators on Tuesday.

Cassidy Hutchinson also testified to the Jan. 6 select panel that Trump intended to travel with his supporters at the rally to the Capitol, a progression that quickly became a violent mob. She also recalled hearing from two security officials — including Robert Engel, the head of the then-president’s Secret Service detail — that when Trump was told he’d be returning to the White House instead of going to the Capitol on Jan. 6, he lunged for the steering wheel of his vehicle and was physically restrained by Engel.

Hutchinson also said she heard firsthand worries about Trump potentially traveling to the Capitol to disrupt the certification of his loss from Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone. She testified that Cipollone warned against letting Trump travel to the Capitol that day in stark terms: If Trump did so, his White House counsel said, “we’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable,” from obstruction to fraud.

The former White House aide’s remarks portrayed Trump as spiraling into an increasingly manic rage as he continued his last-ditch effort to seize a second term he didn’t win. Hutchinson offered some of the gravest evidence yet of Trump’s awareness of the violent elements within his base that were ultimately unleashed against Congress — and his indifference to the ultimate result. And her testimony landed hard on the Hill, where some Republican lawmakers immediately pushed back.

Signs of Trump’s fury had been emerging for weeks, Hutchinson said, recalling that Trump once hurled a plate of food at the wall after his Justice Department batted down claims of widespread election fraud.

Hutchinson’s comments came in an explosive public hearing of the Jan. 6 select committee focused on her insights into the machinations by Trump, Meadows and their allies in the runup to Jan. 6. Her knowledge, informed by being present in nearly every meeting involving Meadows during the post-election period, have quickly propelled Hutchinson into a prominent role for Capitol riot investigators.

 

Trump's own people are saying that he went way beyond any "Nixon in the bunker" moments.  But yes, you'd be forgiven for thinking the big winner here was not America, but Ron DeSantis's 2024 run, looking more and more likely by the day.

A Border Line Tragedy

Some 50 migrant workers were found dead in the back of a semitruck in San Antonio, and Republicans are falling all over themselves blaming Biden.

Fifty migrants are dead after they and others were found in sweltering conditions in a semitruck in San Antonio, a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson said Tuesday.

The death toll, which the city's fire chief had given Monday as 46, includes migrants from Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras, according to a federal law enforcement official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. The discovery came as US federal authorities have launched what they described as an "unprecedented" operation to disrupt human smuggling networks amid an influx of migrants at the US-Mexico border.

"An alleged human smuggling event" was alerted by San Antonio police to the US Department of Homeland Security's investigation unit, which is leading the probe, an ICE spokesperson said Monday. The incident appears to be among the most deadly in recent years for migrants near the southern border.
Three people detained away from the trailer site are in police custody, though their connection to the situation is unclear, Police Chief Bill McManus said at a news conference Monday night.

Authorities were alerted to the scene just before 6 p.m., when a worker in a nearby building heard a cry for help, McManus said. The worker found a trailer with doors partially opened and saw people deceased inside, he said.

Forty-eight people died on the scene, and two died at hospitals, the federal law enforcement official told CNN on Tuesday, noting the toll is preliminary.

Sixteen people -- 12 adults and four children -- were taken alive and conscious to medical facilities, San Antonio Fire Chief Charles Hood said at Monday night's news conference.

 

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott could barely contain his glee at being handed a new campaign commercial. 

 

Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday night quickly blamed President Biden for the deaths of at least 46 people found in the back of an 18-wheeler in San Antonio.

“These deaths are on Biden,” Abbott tweeted. “They are a result of his deadly open border policies. They show the deadly consequences of his refusal to enforce the law.”

Reaction to the tweet was fast and furious.

“We don’t need your partisan political bs,” tweeted the Rev. Chuck Currie, a minister in the United Church of Christ (UCC). “What the United States needs is comprehensive immigration reform. But the GOP keeps standing in the way.”

The abandoned tractor-trailer was found near Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, and three people were taken into custody, authorities said.

Abbott has made immigration a focal point of his reelection campaign; the Republican Party has long blamed Biden for the nation’s immigration ills.

 

It's always the same. Republicans break things, Democrats draft legislation to fix it, Republicans block any and all legislation that might improve anything, and then blame Democrats for it. Immigration and border enforcement is no different.

 

And that's not accounting for the decades of Republicans looking the other way on exploiting immigrants as unpaid and underpaid labor.

 

Pendejos.