Indepen-Dunce Week: Shinzo Abe Assassinated

Former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was shot in the back at a political rally for his party yesterday and succumbed to his injuries.

Former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe, a towering political figure at home and abroad, died after being shot at a campaign event Friday, doctors said, shocking a nation where firearms laws are among the world’s strictest and gun violence is rare.

Abe, 67, was stumping for a fellow politician from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Nara, near Osaka, on Friday morning when a gunman opened fire with what police described as an improvised weapon.

Hidetada Fukushima, head of the emergency center at the Nara Medical University Hospital, said Abe had no vital signs when he arrived there at 12:20 p.m. Friday. Doctors found two gunshot wounds to his neck, and one of the bullets had reached his heart, Fukushima said. Despite efforts to save him, including a transfusion, Abe died of blood loss less than five hours later.

The assassination of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and a staunch U.S. ally, sent shock waves throughout the country ahead of elections for the upper house of parliament on Sunday.

Police arrested a suspect, a man from Nara in his 40s named Tetsuya Yamagami, and seized a gun. Yamagami was a member of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years, defense officials told Japanese media.

Footage of the event showed Abe giving a speech, then a plume of smoke forming behind him as he collapsed. Officials ran to apprehend the shooter, who appeared to be positioned behind Abe. Videos showed a chaotic scene with Abe, unmoving, lying on the ground as attendees yelled for an ambulance. The bullet wounds were found in the front of Abe’s body, Fukushima said.

Abe, who came from a prominent political family, was the youngest person to become prime minister of postwar Japan. His popularity soared after he resigned from office in 2020, and he remained a power broker who frequented campaign events to support other LDP politicians.

At an emotional news conference after Abe’s death, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida praised his former colleague as “a dear friend who loved this country.”

“To lose such a figure in this manner is absolutely devastating,” he said.

Kishida said Sunday’s upper house election would continue as planned but with enhanced safety measures, saying it was important to protect the democratic process and not allow violence to change its course.

“Elections are the foundation of democracy, which we must defend. We cannot give in to violence. For this reason, we will continue to fight the election campaign until the very end. I hope the people of Japan will think about and work hard to protect this democracy,” Kishida said.

 

It's nearly incomprehensible for this to happen in a country like Japan, it's like the start of a particularly cynical and depressing anime series where things only get worse in the country. Japan doesn't have nearly the amount of reactionary fascist types that America or Europe does, and Abe was still killed, the equivalent of America losing President Obama or Clinton to a bullet, or German Chancellor Angela Merkel falling to an assassin.

If this is happening in a country like Japan, the world is in real trouble.

Indepen-Dunce Week: Bye=Bye Boris

After a three-year rule plagued by scandal and stupidity, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is finally headed out after the majority of his own cabinet resigned over the last 36 hours. BBC Political Editor Chris Mason:

Boris Johnson is to stand down as Conservative Party leader, but intends to carry on as prime minister until the autumn.

He plans to stay in Downing Street until a new Tory leader has been elected to replace him as PM.

And he has begun appointing new ministers to replace the ones that quit in protest at his leadership.

But some Tory MPs are urging him to leave as soon as possible to avoid government paralysis.

Former minister Sir Bob Neill told MPs there was a "serious question mark" over how long a "caretaker" prime minister could stay in place. 

"Might it not be in everybody's interest to speed up the transition as much as possible?" he added.

Sir Keir Starmer said that if the Conservative Party did not "get rid" of Mr Johnson immediately then Labour would bring a vote of no confidence "in the national interest".

"We can't go on with this prime minister clinging on for months," said the Labour leader, adding: "He needs to go completely... he's inflicted lies, fraud, and chaos in the country."

A vote of no confidence would be held in Parliament - if the government lost the vote that could lead to a general election, but this would require a significant rebellion from Conservative MPs to back a Labour motion.

It follows a dramatic 48 hours which saw dozens of ministers - including chancellor Rishi Sunak - resigning in protest at his leadership.

Mr Sunak's replacement as chancellor Nadhim Zahawi was among the ministers urging the PM to quit.

Mr Johnson resisted the calls until Thursday morning, when it became clear that he had lost the confidence of his MPs and that the government could no longer function.

Attorney General Suella Braverman and leading backbencher Steve Baker are the first Tory MPs to declare a leadership bid, with others expected to follow.

Less than three years ago, Mr Johnson won an historic landslide victory in a general election - but he has been dogged by controversy in recent months, including a fine for breaking his own lockdown laws.

The revolt this week was triggered by revelations about the prime minister's handling of sexual misconduct allegations against former Deputy Chief Whip Chris Pincher.

BBC political editor Chris Mason said Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs, has met the prime minister to tell him he has lost the confidence of the party. 

 

I'm fairly sure the cowards in Toryland aren't going to go along with Starmer's no confidence vote this time because they'd actually lose a general election, so expect months of infighting about a new Tory leader who would then become PM. Some 18 Tories want to be the next Boris.

Still, it's possible in a world where enough of the government has resigned to the point of "no longer being a going concern" as the Brits say.

Now the race begins to see how fast Boris Bad Enough can get gone good enough.

Indepen-Dunce Week: The State Of Church And State

White supremacist "Christian" nationalists are openly telling us what's coming next: a theocratic police state where anyone who isn't a white, straight male "Christian" will have their rights stripped until nothing is left but their lives, and even those will be taken in violent fashion, as journalist Katerine Stewart reports from the front lines.

A good place to gauge the spirit and intentions of the movement that brought us the radical majority on the Supreme Court is the annual Road to Majority Policy Conference. At this year’s event, which took place last month in Nashville, three clear trends were in evidence. First, the rhetoric of violence among movement leaders appeared to have increased significantly from the already alarming levels I had observed in previous years. Second, the theology of dominionism — that is, the belief that “right-thinking” Christians have a biblically derived mandate to take control of all aspects of government and society — is now explicitly embraced. And third, the movement’s key strategists were giddy about the legal arsenal that the Supreme Court had laid at their feet as they anticipated the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

They intend to use that arsenal — together with additional weaponry collected in cases like Carson v. Makin, which requires state funding of religious schools if private, secular schools are also being funded; and Kennedy v. Bremerton School District, which licenses religious proselytizing by public school officials — to prosecute a war on individual rights, not merely in so-called red state legislatures but throughout the nation.

Although metaphors of battle are common enough in political gatherings, this year’s rhetoric appeared more violent, more graphic and more tightly focused on fellow Americans, rather than on geopolitical foes.

“The greatest danger to America is not our enemies from the outside, as powerful as they may be,” said former President Donald Trump, who delivered the keynote address at the event. “The greatest danger to America is the destruction of our nation from the people from within. And you know the people I’m talking about.”

Speakers at the conference vied to outdo one another in their denigration of the people that Mr. Trump was evidently talking about. Democrats, they said, are “evil,” “tyrannical” and “the enemy within,” engaged in “a war against the truth.”

“The backlash is coming,” warned Senator Rick Scott of Florida. “Just mount up and ride to the sounds of the guns, and they are all over this country. It is time to take this country back.”

Citing the fight against Nazi Germany during the Battle of the Bulge, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson of North Carolina said, “We find ourselves in a pitched battle to literally save this nation.” Referencing a passage from Ephesians that Christian nationalists often use to signal their militancy, he added, “I don’t know about you, but I got my pack on, I got my boots on, I got my helmet on, I’ve got on the whole armor.”

It is not a stretch to link this rise in verbal aggression to the disinformation campaign to indoctrinate the Christian nationalist base in the lie that the 2020 election was stolen, along with what we’re learning from the Jan. 6 hearings. The movement is preparing “patriots” for the continuation of the assault on democracy in 2022 and 2024.

The intensification of verbal warfare is connected to shifts in the Christian nationalist movement’s messaging and outreach, which were very much in evidence at the Nashville conference. Seven Mountains Dominionism — the belief that “biblical” Christians should seek to dominate the seven key “mountains” or “molders” of American society, including the government — was once considered a fringe doctrine, even among representatives of the religious right. At last year’s Road to Majority conference, however, there was a breakout session devoted to the topic. This year, there were two sessions, and the once arcane language of the Seven Mountains creed was on multiple speakers’ lips.

The hunger for dominion that appears to motivate the leadership of the movement is the essential context for making sense of its strategy and intentions in the post-Roe world. The end of abortion rights is the beginning of a new and much more personal attack on individual rights.

And indeed it is personal. Much of the rhetoric on the right invokes visions of vigilante justice. This is about “good guys with guns” — or neighbors with good eavesdropping skills — heroically taking on the pernicious behavior of their fellow citizens. Among the principal battlefields will be the fallopian tubes and uteruses of women.

At a breakout session called “Life Is on the Line: What Does the Future of the Pro-Life Movement Look Like From Here?” Chelsey Youman, the Texas state director and national legislative adviser to Human Coalition Action, a Texas-based anti-abortion organization with a national strategic focus, described the connection between vigilantes and abortion rights.

Instead of the state regulating abortion providers, she explained, “You and me as citizens of Texas or this country or wherever we can pass this bill, can instead sue the abortion provider.” Mrs. Youman, as it happens, played a role in promoting the Texas law Senate Bill 8, which passed in May 2021 and allows private citizens to sue abortion providers and anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion. She was exultant over the likely passage of similar laws across the nation. “We have legislation ready to roll out for every single state you live in to protect life regardless of the Supreme Court, regardless of your circuit court.” To be sure, Christian nationalists are also pushing for a federal ban. But the struggle for the present will center on state-level enforcement mechanisms.

Movement leaders have also made it clear that the target of their ongoing offensive is not just in-state abortion providers, but what they call “abortion trafficking” — that is, women crossing state lines to access legal abortions, along with people who provide those women with services or support, like cars and taxis. Mrs. Youman hailed the development of a new “long-arm jurisdiction” bill that offers a mechanism for targeting out-of-state abortion providers. “It creates a wrongful death cause of action,” she said, “so we’re excited about that.”

The National Right to Life Committee’s model legislation for the post-Roe era includes broad criminal enforcement as well as civil enforcement mechanisms. “The model law also reaches well beyond the actual performance of an illegal abortion,” according to text on the organization’s website. It also includes “aiding or abetting an illegal abortion,” targeting people who provide “instructions over the telephone, the internet, or any other medium of communication.”

 

The goal will be statewide pogroms, with the Roberts Court conservatives weakening civil rights to the point that they can attain national power again and turn the federal government against "those people" in a massive, national purge, complete with privately-run prisons in every state to round up dissidents and to strip them of their voting rights by making them felons.

I understand that this sounds absolutely bonkers, and it is. But I just don't know how many more times I can ring this alarm bell, folks.

They are coming for us with guns blazing, in some contexts, quite literally.

The fight will be decades long, but the alternative is hell where many of us don't make it.

Indepen-Dunce Week: We're The Kids In America

The big question in November is if the record number of voters under 30 that powered Democrats to wins in 2018 and 2020 will bother even showing up in 2022, and they demand that Biden and the Democratic leadership be as passionate about defending abortion rights as they are, or else they will stay home and the country over to the GOP.

A debate is raging inside the Democratic Party about whether it’s giving its base — especially those under 30, the generation that most strongly supports abortion rights — enough motivation to keep voting for the party, as federal Democrats struggle to meaningfully push back against the overturning of Roe v. Wade.

The fear is that an already deflated Democratic base won’t show up in November, particularly the youngest voters, who smashed participation records in the last two elections and backed President Joe Biden by a 25-point margin in 2020. Some Democrats stress that the Biden administration and Congress need to do more to show their rage — and willingness to take significant action — to mirror the passion seen among young people, three-quarters of whom support abortion being generally legal.

“There’s a fine line between the recent events pushing someone to never vote again or pushing someone to vote with that righteous anger and bring friends with them,” said Maxwell Frost, a 25-year-old Democrat who is running for a Florida congressional seat. “It’s up to our leaders to decide which direction that’s going to go in. When they show they’re in the fight, using all the resources to fight for the most vulnerable in our community … but we need more right now.”

That sentiment was echoed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who tweeted that Democrats “cannot make promises, hector people to vote, and then refuse to use our full power,” ticking through a list of potential actions the party could take, including moving to expand the Supreme Court, opening abortion clinics on federal lands and repealing the Hyde Amendment.

Days later, Vice President Kamala Harris pushed back on that frustration in front of a room full of donors, defending Biden’s urging to vote in November: “I know some people are saying, ‘stop talking to us about the elections. We know.’ Don’t trivialize the significance. We can’t afford to,” because Democrats’ margins in Congress are razor-thin.

A big step in defusing the disagreement came when Biden confirmed last week that he would support a carveout to the Senate filibuster rules in order to codify in federal law the same access to abortion that was previously protected by Roe v. Wade. That move was a “step in the right direction,” said Carmel Pryor, senior communications director of the Alliance for Youth Action.

“However, ensuring momentum in the fight for control of Congress requires more action,” Pryor continued. “There’s a lot of talk about Roe strengthening the multigenerational coalition and, sure, there’s potential, but we need to see action taken now. This is an emergency that can’t wait until November.”

To be clear, the chances of a filibuster exception actually coming to pass are slim. Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) both indicated they don’t plan on backing such a carveout.

Even so, Democrats said this kind of “political theater” is what voters, especially Gen Z, need to see to “value signal” that they’re “willing to fight for them,” said Terrance Woodbury, a Democratic pollster. He cited Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s effort to bus migrants from the Texas border to Washington, D.C., in the absence of federal action on immigration, calling it an example of a vivid action that effectively riles up the Republican base. Democrats, Woodbury continued, could be considering their own version of such attention-grabbing actions now.

“Can you imagine seeing hundreds of mobile clinics deployed from Washington to [the] states?” Woodbury added.

Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who focuses on Latino voters, a demographic group that skews far younger than most racial groups, echoed those concerns, noting that he’s “found in focus groups that just saying, ‘[I’m] fighting for it,’ is not enough any more.”

“They are tired of us saying, ‘we’re fighting,’ but not delivering shit. What can you do tangibly to make a difference to do something about this?” Rocha continued. “We are good at bringing a policy book to a fist fight, and I worry about young people not showing up to vote because of it.”

 

If there is anything that the "DO SOMETHING" kids have learned from the GOP, it's that those who are willing to burn down the country in order to play the long game usually end up winning, no matter how many folks get hurt in the process. If you're 25, you figure you have time to wait out the 70+ something Dem leadership and the 70+ something Republicans and then take over when they're gone.

They figure they have time for a 20+ year fight on civil rights, abortion, and climate change, but sacrifices have to me made. The article basically asks if these kids are already so cynical that they're willing to let the GOP go literally scorched earth for the rest of the decade, and then try to fight them when they can gather a coalition of survivors.

It sure looks like it. If AOC's performative, legislation-free approach is what under-30 voters demand, and that they won't lift a finger otherwise at the voting booth, then maybe it's time for a dog and pony show to rally the troops.

If everything Biden tries from an executive order standpoint is immediately shot down by the Roberts Court, and it will be, the Biden White House still has to, you know, try, is the argument.

Is it better to go down swinging, even if you keep hitting foul balls into the crowd and take a few folks in the crowd out and that's the best you can hope for?

I don't know. All I know is I still plan on voting, in a red state without abortion, in order to try to change things. Maybe that's the real foul ball analogy, swinging in the vain hope you connect and hit a home run, but at long as I get a chance at the plate every November, I'm taking it.

Indepen-Dunce Week: Deflater Meister

The Wall Street Journal notes that commodity prices that spiked in April and May have actually dropped all the way below March numbers now that the Fed is putting on the brakes.

A slide in all manner of raw-materials prices—corn, wheat, copper and more—is stirring hopes that a significant source of inflationary pressure might be starting to ease.

Natural-gas prices shot up more than 60% before falling back to close the quarter 3.9% lower. U.S. crude slipped from highs above $120 a barrel to end around $106. Wheat, corn and soybeans all wound up cheaper than they were at the end of March. Cotton unraveled, losing more than a third of its price since early May. Benchmark prices for building materials copper and lumber dropped 22% and 31%, respectively, while a basket of industrial metals that trade in London had its worst quarter since the 2008 financial crisis.

Many raw materials remain historically high-price, to be sure. And there are matters of supply and demand behind the declines, from a fire at a Texas gas-export terminal to better crop-growing weather. Yet some investors are starting to view the reversals as a sign that the Federal Reserve’s efforts to slow the economy are reducing demand.

“Moderating commodity prices are clear evidence that inflation is cooling,” said Louis Navellier, chief investment officer at Reno, Nev., money manager Navellier & Associates.

 

Now, whether or not that means inflation is cooling or the entire economy is cooling is the question.  The Atlanta Fed clearly seems to indicate that the answer is the latter.

A Federal Reserve tracker of economic growth is pointing to an increased chance that the U.S. economy has entered a recession.

Most Wall Street economists have been pointing to an increased chance of negative growth ahead, but figure it won’t come until at least 2023.

However, the Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow measure, which tracks economic data in real time and adjusts continuously, sees second-quarter output contracting by 2.1%. Coupled with the first-quarter’s decline of 1.6%, that would fit the technical definition of recession.

“GDPNow has a strong track record, and the closer we get to July 28th’s release [of the initial Q2 GDP estimate] the more accurate it becomes,” wrote Nicholas Colas, co-founder of DataTrek Research.

The tracker took a fairly precipitous fall from its last estimate of 0.3% growth on June 27. Data this week showing further weakness in consumer spending and inflation-adjusted domestic investment prompted the cut that put the April-through-June period into negative territory.

One big change in the quarter has been rising interest rates. In an effort to curb surging inflation, the Fed has jacked up its benchmark borrowing rate by 1.5 percentage points since March, with more increases likely to come through the remainder of the year and perhaps into 2023.

 

If the Atlanta Fed tracker is right, we're in a recession now, Jerome Powell and the Fed have already overreacted, and further rate hikes are only going to make things worse. 

Just in time for the actual Biden Boom to become the "Biden Recession" all over the TV, heading into 2022 campaign season.

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.