The Red, White, And Blue

Democrats appear to be serious about building on 2020 and 2022's gains among white non-college men in states like Georgia and Pennsylvania, gains that produced Senate wins for John Fetterman and Raphael Warnock, but were nowhere near what was needed for Tim Ryan in Ohio, Mandela Barnes in Wisconsin, or Cheri Beasley in NC.

 

A new Democratic-aligned initiative — dubbed the White Stripe Project — has a novel idea for winning white working class voters back to the Democratic Party: lean more into talk of equity and race.

Organizers say traditional methods in wooing white voters are ineffective, often relying on knee-jerk recommendations from an elite group of Democrats that pushes a race-neutral economic message. White Stripe organizers say this approach is misguided. They are calling for a more targeted and data-driven approach that they argue will be a better return on investment.

The project has plans to build a robust infrastructure to attract white voters who are open to Democratic messaging but who are less likely to vote. Once identified, organizers are betting with targeted messaging and pinpoint engagement that enough of these voters will show up for the party at the ballot box.

“White voters have disproportionate political power,” Erin Heaney, Executive Director of Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) told organizers during the Monday afternoon launch of the project. “We need a strategy for engaging and organizing them alongside communities of color.”

While President Joe Biden’s performance among white voters in 2020 improved over Hillary Clinton’s in 2016, Republicans still dominated this segment of the electorate. According to Pew Research Center, Biden carried 33 percent of this bloc, while then-president Donald Trump carried 65 percent. The caveat, according to Pew, was that the vote total Trump carried with non-college educated white people was “nearly identical” to what he pulled in 2016.

The White Stripe Project believes these voters are gettable.

“We need to have a public, non-defensive, data-driven conversation,” said Steve Phillips, a Democratic political analyst and author who serves as President of the Sandler Phillips Center which studies voting demographics. It’s one of the progressive groups that formed the project.

One group that may not buy the message is Democratic donors. Phillips says far too often Democrats and deep-pocketed donors settle on narratives about past elections that then inform future contests with little empirical data.

As an example, he said he has heard rumblings from those in the party that Stacey Abrams’s two-time loss in Georgia’s gubernatorial contest is proof that race and equity issues do not fare well in close elections.

Phillips doesn’t believe that race-centered issues should be abandoned in favor of a more race-neutral economic message. He is quick to point to another Democratic loss in Ohio last cycle.

“We also don’t talk about Tim Ryan in Ohio, who really did manifest this playbook about downplaying race and leaning into economic issues, and he lost badly,” Phillips said. “So what do we make of that?”

But race as a wedge issue can’t be ignored, say the White Stripe organizers. Instead, it should be tackled head on as Republicans embrace culture-war issues like critical race theory and battling the so-called “woke agenda.”

“We know that race is an incredibly powerful tool to keep people, white people, silent and separated from the multiracial coalitions we need to win,” said Heaney, who leads one of the principal groups spearheading the project.

 

The numbers are hard. In some states, white non-college voters make up a majority of the electorate, and two-thirds to three-quarters voted for Trump/Republicans in the last two elections. 

But a lot of non-college voters sat both elections out. I can understand the plan: targeting white non-college voters with "people are suffering because of these MAGA bastards, and your vote, you choosing to join this fight, can make a real difference." Even a percentage point or two in the right couple of states means the difference between Trump or Biden, and control of Congress.

Even if all it does is counteract the Christofascist recruitment and radicalization efforts to keep us at 2020/2022 numbers, the Dems will prevail.

It's not a panacea. but at this point we can't abandon any bloc to the GOP. We all have to fight, that's what a coalition is.

We'll see if it works.

 

Tales Of The Shattered Rainbow, Con't

Once again, if you legally define away your enemies as entities that have no existence and therefore no rights as human beings, it makes it far easier to destroy them with the power of the state. 

 

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday directed state agencies to use narrow definitions of “female” and “male,” in the latest attack on transgender rights in a state that already has laws targeting bathroom use, health care and sports teams for transgender people.

Stitt signed the executive order flanked by women from the anti-trans group Independent Women’s Voice, including Riley Gaines, a former University of Kentucky swimmer known for criticizing an NCAA decision allowing transgender swimmer Lia Thomas to compete against her in a women’s championship race.

“Today we’re taking a stand against this out-of-control gender ideology that is eroding the very foundation of our society,” Stitt said. “We are going to be safeguarding the very essence of what it means to be a woman.

“Oklahomans are fed up with attempts to confuse the word ‘woman’ and turn it into some kind of ambiguous definition that harms real women.”

In addition to requiring state agencies and boards to define the words “female” and “male” to correspond with the person’s sex assigned at birth, the executive order also includes definitions for the words “man,” “boy,” “woman,” “girl,” “father” and “mother.” The order specifically defines a female as a “person whose biological reproductive system is designed to produce ova” and a male as a “person whose biological reproductive system is designed to fertilize the ova of a female.”

It also directs schools and other state agencies to use these definitions when collecting vital statistics.

Stitt’s order, dubbed “The Women’s Bill of Rights” by its supporters, is the latest Oklahoma policy to attack the rights of transgender people and is part of a growing trend in conservative states. Stitt signed a bill earlier this year that made it a crime for health care workers to provide gender-affirming medical care for minors, and has previously signed measures to prohibit transgender girls and women from playing on female sports teams and prevent transgender children from using school bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity.

“This executive order is neither about rights, nor is it about protecting women,” said Nicole McAfee, executive director of Freedom Oklahoma, which supports the rights of trans people. She called it a “thinly veiled attack” that codifies discrimination against transgender women.

 

There are no trans or non-binary folks in Oklahoma, you see. They don't exist. Everyone is male or female as defined by the state and must be defined as such by all state agencies.

 

It's hogwash, but if you define them away, they'll cease to exist. It's illegal to be trans according to the state.

One way or another, Oklahoma will get rid of trans and non-binary folks. And it's being done to "protect women". Just like banning abortion.

 

That's been the plan now for some time.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown: 3rd Strike Edition

A big, big day in Trump conspiracy fraud legal news today, not one, not two, but three big stories. First, former Georgia Republican state Sen. Jen Jordan is on the list for Fulton County DA Fani Willis's grand jury.

 

Former Georgia Democratic state Sen. Jen Jordan received subpoenas to testify before a Fulton County grand jury later this month, she told CNN.

The subpoenas to Jordan and independent journalist George Chidi are the strongest indication yet that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis intends to seek indictments in her criminal probe into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.

Two grand juries with the power to issue indictments meet regularly in Fulton County, and Willis is expected to go before one of them this month to present her case. The presentment will likely take two days, according to people familiar with the matter.

The witnesses are expected to shed light on different aspects of Willis’ case. While Chidi can share information about the fake GOP electors that convened in Georgia, Jordan witnessed the election presentation Rudy Giuliani and other Trump allies made before Georgia state lawmakers in 2020.

On December 3, 2020, Jordan was at the Georgia Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing about election integrity during which Giuliani, then a Trump lawyer, and other supporters of the former president spread conspiracy theories about widespread irregularities and fraud in the state.

At the hearing, Trump’s team presented a video of what they claimed was evidence of fraud from election night ballot tabulating in Fulton County, allegations that were investigated by the FBI, Department of Justice and state election officials – and proven to be erroneous.

The subpoenas for grand jury testimony call on the witnesses to appear before the grand jury during the month of August and state that witnesses will get 48 hours notice when they are required to appear.

 

As Willis warms up the band in Georgia, the state of Michigan is making its move in its own elector fraud conspiracy case against Mango Mussolini and friends.

A former Republican attorney general candidate and another supporter of former President Donald Trump have been criminally charged in Michigan in connection with accessing and tampering with voting machines after the 2020 election, according to court records.

Matthew DePerno, a Republican lawyer who was endorsed by Trump in an unsuccessful run for Michigan attorney general last year, was charged with undue possession of a voting machine and conspiracy, according to Oakland County court records.

Daire Rendon, a former Republican state representative, was charged with conspiracy to commit undue possession of a voting machine and false pretenses. A lawyer listed on court documents as representing Rendon could not be immediately reached for comment by phone.

Both were arraigned remotely Tuesday afternoon, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s 6th Circuit.

A special prosecutor, D.J. Hilson, has been reviewing the investigation and considering charges since September. He convened a grand jury in March to determine whether criminal indictments should be issued, according to court documents.

In a statement, Hilson said the charges were authorized by “an independent citizens grand jury,” and that his office did not make any recommendations.

Those charged in Michigan are the latest facing legal consequences for alleged crimes committed after embracing Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen.

 

Now, if this was all the bad news Trump's legal team got today, it would still be a hell of a bad way to start the month.

 

But then Jack Smith showed up with the third strike.

A grand jury indicted former president Donald Trump on Tuesday for a raft of alleged crimes in his brazen efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election — the latest legal and political aftershock stemming from the riot at the U.S. Capitol two and a half years ago.

The four-count, 45-page indictment accuses Trump of three distinct conspiracies, charging that he conspired to defraud the U.S., conspired to obstruct an official proceeding and conspired against people’s rights.

“Despite having lost, the Defendant was determined to remain in power,” the indictment charges, saying Trump unleashed a blizzard of lies about purported mass voter fraud, and then tried to get state, local, and federal officials to act to change the vote results.

“These claims were false, and the Defendant knew that they were false. In fact, the Defendant was notified repeatedly that his claims were untrue — often by the people on whom he relied for candid advice on important matters, and who were best positioned to know the facts — and he deliberately disregarded the truth,” the indictment states.

“The attack on our nation’s capitol on Jan. 6 2021 was an unprecedented assault on the seat of American democracy," special counsel Jack Smith said in announcing the indictment. "It was fueled by lies, lies by the defendant.”

Smith also praised the law enforcement officers who defended the U.S. Capitol, saying they “did not just defend a building or the people sheltering in it. They put their lives on the line to defend who we are as a country and a people.”

In broad strokes and particular conversations with officials around the country, the indictment recounts much of what was already known about Trump’s efforts to stay in the White House despite losing the election. But the indictment frames that conduct as a destructive criminal conspiracy that attempted to demolish a bedrock function of American democracy.

While no one else is charged alongside Trump, the indictment describes six unnamed and so far uncharged co-conspirators, who also appear to be in significant legal jeopardy. Some of the individuals are easily identifiable, such as Rudolph W. Giuliani, Trump’s former lawyer.

Giuliani and a number of the other uncharged co-conspirators are identifiable based on details in the indictment and previous reporting by The Washington Post and other outlets. Co-conspirator 2, described as “an attorney who devised an attempted to implement a strategy to leverage the Vice President’s ceremonial role overseeing the certification proceeding” is John Eastman, a law professor.

The indictment describes co-conspirator 3 as an attorney whose unfounded claims of election fraud Trump himself said sounded “crazy” — and the description of that person matches Trump ally Sidney Powell. Co-conspirator 4 is described as a then-Justice Department official who “attempted to use the Justice Department to open sham election crime investigations." Other details of that person’s actions match Jeffrey Clark, whom Trump considered appointing as attorney general in the final days of his administration.

Co-conspirator 5 is described in the indictment as a lawyer who tried to implement a plan "to submit fraudulent slates of presidential electors to obstruct the certification proceeding,” — a reference that appears to match Kenneth Chesebro, a Trump attorney who worked on the scheme to enact false presidential electors.

Lawyers for the uncharged co-conspirators did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

 

All the ketchup just hit the walls at Mar-a-Lago tonight.  Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, and Kenny Chesebro are all going down with him.

It will only get worse for Trump from here.

RIP Sheila Oliver

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, a Democratic stalwart in the state's politics for decades, has died at the age of 71.

New Jersey Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver died Tuesday, one day after she was rushed to the hospital for an undisclosed medical issue.

"It is with incredible sadness and a heavy heart that we announce the passing of the Honorable Sheila Y. Oliver, Lieutenant Governor of the State of New Jersey," the Oliver family said in a statement. "She was not only a distinguished public servant but also our cherished daughter, sister, aunt, friend, and hero."

Oliver was 71 years old.

She had been serving as acting governor with Gov. Phil Murphy on vacation. The Democratic Senate President, Nicholas Scutari, took over as acting governor when Oliver was rushed to the hospital Monday.

Murphy remembered Oliver as a "trailblazer" in announcing her death.

"When I selected her to be my running mate in 2017, Lieutenant Governor Oliver was already a trailblazer in every sense of the word," Murphy said in a statement. "She had already made history as the first Black woman to serve as Speaker of the General Assembly, and just the second Black woman in the nation’s history to lead a house of a state legislature. I knew then that her decades of public service made her the ideal partner for me to lead the State of New Jersey. It was the best decision I ever made."

Former New Jersey governor and 2024 presidential candidate Chris Christie tweeted, "It is a sad day for NJ and for me personally."

"I will miss Sheila. She served as Speaker in my first term and we treated each other with kindness and respect," Christie said. "She was a great person and partner."

 

It's notable in today's age of blisteringly partisan politics that a Republican 2024 candidate like Christie would have anything nice to say about any Democrat in America at all. Again, meeting the absolute minimum standards for human decorum, I guess.

Oliver leaves behind a nearly three-decade legacy of service to the Garden State.

Born and raised in Newark, Oliver graduated from the city’s Weequahic High School before earning a sociology degree from Lincoln University in Pennsylvania and a masters in planning and administration from Columbia University. She was an East Orange resident.

She later worked for a nonprofit social services organization and taught at Essex County College and nearby Caldwell University.

Oliver moved into politics when she was elected to the East Orange Board of Education, an office she held from 1994 to 2000. During that time, she served two years as vice president and ended her time as president of the board.

She concurrently served as an Essex County freeholder from 1996-99. And in between, she lost a bid for East Orange mayor by a mere 51 votes.

A few years later, Oliver moved up to Trenton. She was elected to the Assembly in 2003 and was chosen by her fellow Democrats to become the chamber’s 169th speaker in 2009.

Assemblywoman Shavonda Sumter, D-Passaic and chairwoman of the New Jersey Legislature Black Caucus, described Oliver as a beloved mentor and an inspiration.

“As a freshman entering the New Jersey General Assembly, I was fortunate to work alongside Lt. Governor Oliver. Having the privilege of witnessing her lead as Speaker of the Assembly had a powerful impact on me,” Sumter said. “Representation matters, and I was honored to have Lt. Gov. Oliver be my mentor and educate me on the history of the politics in the state of New Jersey and how to navigate through the Legislature.”

“Lt. Governor Oliver’s influence transcended generations and she paved the way for Black and Brown women to pursue higher office. She taught us the importance of being informed, skilled, and graceful,” Sumter said.

Oliver was the second woman after Marion West Higgins in 1965 and the second Black lawmaker, after S. Howard Woodson in 1974, to ascend to the powerful position. She was also the second Black woman in American history to lead a state legislative chamber, after Karen Bass of California.

 

That it took until 2009 to have just the second Black woman Speaker in a state legislature is ridiculous, but Oliver met that challenge -- and Chris Christie -- head on.

 

Here's to the fighters. Black Lives Still Matter.

Generation X, We Have To Do Better Than Trump

As Steve M. points out, Gen X is firmly the Trump Generation.

 

 

Every other age group favors Biden, but 45-to-64-year-olds favor Trump by 9 points. I'm 64, so I'm at the upper bound of this age range, but I don't think of this group as my people. They're largely Reagan youth. They grew up during the presidency of a controversial former media star who persuaded much of the country that he was just a harmless patriot who loved regular American folks. And now nearly half of them are eager to vote for Donald Trump.

I'm oversimplifying, obviously, but this isn't the first poll I've seen with this skew. It may be more about the life stages these voters are in -- mid- to late career, with an awareness that a comfortable retirement won't be as easy to attain as it was for their elders. (But the generations who are even younger have it worse, and they're mildly or significantly pro-Biden.) It may be that these respondents are old enough to be alienated by race and gender changes in American society that younger people approve of. (But you'd expect senior citizens to be more put off, yet they have a slight preference for the Democrat.)

If these poll numbers suggest enduring Reaganism, it's a mix of economic anxiety and hate for people seen as "others" -- and there's some irony to that, because much of the Reagan generation's economic anxiety is the direct result of the way Reaganism funneled (and still funnels) cash from the poor and middle class to the rich. "Othering" was a Reagan skill, although he substituted a smile and a wink for the scowls of George Wallace and Richard Nixon. (Trump often seems to be having a good time when he's othering people, too.) And Reagan specifically othered Democrats, in a way that GOP politicians and right-wing media outlets have done ever since.

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama embodied at least part of subsequent eras, and their message was inclusive. Reagan's wasn't. So it doesn't surprise me if many of the children of his era are Trumpers now.

 

Folks age 45-60 are pretty much all of Generation X, and 60-65 like Steve are the youngest Boomers. I'd ask what happened to us, but we've always been nihilists. We grew up seeing Saint Ronnie and Poppy Bush turn our world to ash and we said "We can do better!"

 

Then the last 30 years happened and "doing better" got beaten out of us with a sledgehammer by AIDS, the Challenger explosion, DARE, two Gulf Wars, 9/11, the dot-com bust, global warming. the Great Recession and hey, now COVID and AI.  The good times in our lives were running around the neighborhood playing Nintendo, watching actual music videos on MTV, crashing R-Rated movies like Platoon and drinking Hi-C Octo Cooler. Gen X wants that shit back, and that means most of us equated the 80's and Reaganism with "the way things should be".

We gotta do better now. Trump's gonna kill us all if we don't.

 

Last Call For Ukraine On The Membrane, Con't

Once again, Russia is threatening global nuclear holocaust if Ukraine is successful in retaking the Donbas region from Russia's already illegal invasion.

 

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would “have to” use nuclear weapons if Ukrainian forces threaten Russian territory in their ongoing counteroffensive, in a message on his social media accounts Monday.

Medvedev, the deputy chairman of Russia’s Security Council and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons during the war.

“Imagine if the offensive, which is backed by NATO, was a success and they tore off a part of our land, then we would be forced to use a nuclear weapon according to the rules of a decree from the president of Russia,” he said Monday.

“There would simply be no other option. So our enemies should pray for our [warriors’ success]. They are making sure that a global nuclear fire is not ignited,” he added.

Medvedev was apparently referring to Russia’s nuclear weapon use policy, signed by Putin in 2020, that says Moscow may deploy nuclear weapons Russia’s nuclear weapons “when the very existence of the state is put under threat.”

Russia has illegally annexed entire regions of eastern Ukraine amid the war, claiming they are now part of Russia’s homeland. Ukraine has also recently ramped up attacks on Crimea, which Russia has occupied since 2014, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Kyiv would increase attacks within Russia.

Medvedev was vague about what land would risk a nuclear response if lost. He has frequently telegraphed his threats of nuclear warfare, often bolstering actions or declarations from Putin, including when the current Russian president last fall said nuclear weapons were “not a bluff.”

Putin has doubled down on his nuclear blackmail in recent months, transferring tactical nuclear weapons to Belarus. The weapons have a smaller yield upon detonation than larger weapons of mass destruction, but they still have devastating capabilities.

Putin has in part justified the transfer of the tactical weapons because the U.S. holds low-yield nuclear bombs in European allied nations.

This is not the response of a rational nation-state, and it goes well beyond saber-rattling. This is going into the armory, collecting all the one- and two-handed swords, dropping them on a metal floor at the same time and recording the noise for future broadcasting in the same way that requests to Twitter's PR department are returned with the poop emoji.

It's a bluff, but one that should be accompanied with consequences by the global community.

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

Yet another WaPo piece on Black voter turnout, but at least this time we have the Biden administration and the DNC admitting that efforts at getting Black men to vote in 2024 will pay off more than appealing to white voters.

 

Democrats are worried about a potential drop next year in turnout among Black voters, the party’s most loyal constituency, who played a consequential role in delivering the White House to President Biden in 2020 and will be crucial in his bid for reelection.

Their concern stems from a 10 percentage-point decline in Black voter turnout in last year’s midterms compared with 2018, a bigger drop than among any other racial or ethnic group, according to a Washington Post analysis of the Census Bureau’s turnout survey. Such warning signals were initially papered over by other Democratic successes in 2022: The party picked up a U.S. Senate seat in Pennsylvania, Sen. Raphael G. Warnock won reelection in Georgia and anticipated losses in the House were minimal.

But in key states like Georgia, the center of Democrats’ plans to mobilize Black voters in large margins for Biden in 2024, turnout in last year’s midterms was much lower among younger and male Black voters, according to internal party analysis.

The drop in Black turnout has become a focus for Democratic leaders as the party reorients to next year’s presidential contest. Biden’s election in 2020 hinged on narrow victories in states like Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania that former president Donald Trump had won in 2016. Democratic activists are cautioning that the party can’t afford to let support from Black voters slip.

W. Mondale Robinson, founder of the Black Male Voter Project, shared a dire assessment of Democrats’ potential turnout problems with Black men. In many of the battleground states, he said many Black men are “sporadic or non-voters,” meaning they are registered, but have voted in one or none of the past three presidential elections. Robinson said Democrats spend too much time focused on converting “conservative-leaning White women” in the suburbs who they see as swing voters. Instead, he said, they should focus more on turning out Black men, viewing them as swing voters who are debating whether to vote or stay home.

“The Democratic Party has been failing epically at reaching this demographic of Black men — and that’s sad to say,” Robinson said. “Black men are your second-most stable base overwhelmingly, and yet you can’t reach them in a way that makes your work easier.”

Biden’s political team says it has received the message and is taking action, especially among younger Black men.

“We have to meet them where they are and we have to show them why the political process matters and what we have accomplished that benefits them,” said Cedric L. Richmond, a former Biden adviser who is now a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee. He said there will be a clear focus on making Black voters aware of how they have benefited from Biden administration policies, learning from the errors of past Democratic efforts that fell short.

“We will not make the mistake that others made of not drawing all the connections,” he said.

 

Good, because without massive Black turnout, Trump will be in the Oval Office again. We'll need major turnout across the board of course, but we have to have the basics down. Enough white, Asian, and Hispanic voters showed up in 2022 to soften the blow, but I said then that focusing on white, suburban issues would hurt Black turnout and it did. We got lucky that Trump and the GOP did such a bad job, and we still lost the House anyway.

Black voter advocates say the challenge is particularly acute among Black men, many of whom say they feel alienated from the political process and were hurt by policies pushed by both parties that led to increased incarceration and a decline in manufacturing jobs decades ago. Many say their lives haven’t improved regardless of which party was in power, and are dispirited after the country elected Trump, life was upended by a global pandemic and violence worsened in urban areas.

Many Democrats interviewed said they were less worried about Black women, whose voting enthusiasm has historically been more robust than that of Black men. Black women were a huge factor in Biden’s victory in 2020. Advocates expect that trend to continue, particularly with Vice President Harris on the ticket and the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, who both made history as the first Black women in their roles.

Terrance Woodbury, chief executive of HIT Strategies, a polling firm focused on young, non-White voters, has been shopping around a PowerPoint presentation to liberal groups warning of the need to act soon to convince Black voters that they have benefited from Biden’s time in office.

Part of the problem, he argues, is that the party’s focus on Trump and Republican extremism is less likely to motivate younger Black men than arguments focused on policy benefits. The messaging, he has argued, must focus on how Black communities have benefited from specific policies.

His own polling has shown that voters’ belief that their vote doesn’t matter is the greatest barrier to voting among Black Americans.

 

This time around Biden and the Democrats do have a long list of accomplishments. How good at making people see how it will affect their lives for the better through is up to Biden, his party, and his campaign. You'd think "Bet the alternative is Trump" would be enough. It is for me.

 

It's not for other Black men. Recognizing this problem 15 months before the election however is a start.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis says that her two year plus investigation into Donald Trump's 2020 election fraud has been completed, and that a charging decision will be made by September 1.

 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis reaffirmed in a local news interview that she will announce charging decisions by September 1 in her investigation into efforts by Donald Trump and his allies to overturn Georgia’s 2020 presidential election result, while applauding the ramped-up security measures around the local courthouse.

“The work is accomplished,” Willis told CNN affiliate WXIA at a back-to-school event over the weekend. “We’ve been working for two and half years. We’re ready to go.”

Willis has previously signaled in letters to local officials and those providing security that she would make any charging announcements between July 31 and the end of August. She laid out a variety of security provisions her team plans to take beginning Monday.

Willis’ latest commitment to that time frame comes after a judge scheduled an August 10 hearing on the Trump team’s efforts to disqualify Willis, a Democrat, from the case, toss much of the evidence she has collected and remove another judge in Fulton County from presiding over the case.

In the local news interview, Willis also praised the Fulton County sheriff after barricades recently went up around the county courthouse in anticipation of what the sheriff’s office referred to as “high profile legal proceedings.”

“I think that the sheriff is doing something smart in making sure that the courthouse stays safe,” Willis said. “I’m not willing to put any of the employees or the constituents that come to the courthouse in harm’s way.”

 

Indeed, Willis is certainly acting like she has the cards to play with a broad suite of charges against multiple investigation targets, including Trump himself. 

Meanwhile, Trump is lawyering up and getting donors to pay for his rapidly mounting legal bills, to the tune of tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars.

Former President Donald J. Trump’s team is creating a legal-defense fund to handle some of the crush of legal bills stemming from the investigations and criminal indictments involving him and a number of employees and associates, according to two people with knowledge of the matter.

The fund, which is expected to be called the Patriot Legal Defense Fund Inc., will be led by Michael Glassner, a longtime Trump political adviser, according to the people familiar with the planning, who were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Another Trump aide who worked at the Trump Organization and then in Mr. Trump’s administration, Lynne Patton, will also be involved, the people said.

It is unclear how broad a group of people the legal-defense fund will cover, but one person said it was not expected to cover Mr. Trump’s own legal bills. In recent months Mr. Trump’s political action committee has paid legal bills for him and several witnesses, spending over $40 million on lawyers in the first half of 2023.

But a wide swath of people have become entangled in the various Trump-related criminal investigations, both as witnesses — of which there are many who work for Mr. Trump personally or did in the White House — as well as defendants.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said that the Justice Department had “targeted innocent Americans associated with President Trump,” and that “to combat these heinous actions” and “protect these innocent people from financial ruin and prevent their lives from being completely destroyed, a new legal defense fund will help pay for their legal fees to ensure they have representation against unlawful harassment.”

Mr. Trump’s PAC, Save America, has been a focus of one of the investigations by the special counsel Jack Smith, who has had at least two grand juries looking at Mr. Trump and his allies and advisers. Mr. Smith’s team has questioned why some lawyers for specific witnesses are being paid, as well as whether aides to Mr. Trump and Republicans knew Mr. Trump had lost the election but continued to raise money off his debunked claims.

The creation of the legal-defense fund could ease some of the financial pressure on Save America, which was severe enough that it requested a refund of the $60 million it had transferred to a pro-Trump super PAC late last year.

 

Remember, the goal of Trump's legal team is to delay all the legal proceedings against him until he can run out the clock and win the election. At this point, he has to win, or he's spending the rest of his life in prison, so yes, the Laird of Mar-a-Lago is larding the larder with all the money he can get his orange mitts on in order to buy time.

 

How well that plan works, nobody knows, but time gives him options, even the more drastic ones.

 

We'll see.

Last Call For The Loan Arranger Rides Again

The SCOTUS argument as to why President Biden's COVID-era student loan forgiveness program had to die was because the executive didn't have the authority from Congress to run the program under emergency rules. The Biden administration has responded with "We do have explicit authority to modify student loans under the Education Department and we're going to use it."

The SAVE, or Saving on a Valuable Education, plan was finalized after the Supreme Court struck down President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness initiative in June. It marks a significant change to the federal student loan system that could lower monthly loan payments for some borrowers and reduce the amount they pay back over the lifetime of their loans.

“Part of the president’s overall commitment is to improve the student loan system and reduce the burden of student loan debt on American families,” a senior administration official said, previewing the beta website first to CNN. “The SAVE plan is a big part of that. It is important in this moment as borrowers are getting ready to return to repayment.”

Federal student loan borrowers can access the beta website at https://studentaid.gov/idr/. The enrollment process is estimated to take 10 minutes, and many sections can be automatically populated with information the government has on hand, including tax returns from the IRS, administration officials said.

“We will be able to show borrowers their exact monthly payment amount and give them the ability to choose the most affordable repayment plan for them,” one official said.

Borrowers will only need to apply one time, not yearly as past systems require, which officials said would make this plan “much easier to use.” Users will receive a confirmation email once the application is submitted, and the approval process, which can be tracked online, is expected to take a few weeks.

Those already enrolled in the federal government’s REPAYE, or Revised Pay As You Earn, income-driven repayment plan will be automatically switched to the new plan.

The full website launch will occur in August, and applications submitted during the beta period will not need to be resubmitted. The beta period will allow the Department of Education to monitor site performance in real time to identify any issues, and the site may be paused to make any necessary updates, officials said.

The SAVE plan, which applies to current and future federal student loan borrowers, will determine payments based on income and family size, and some monthly payments will be as small as $0. The income threshold to qualify for $0 payments has been increased from 150% to 225% of federal poverty guidelines, which translates to an annual income of $32,805 for a single borrower or $67,500 for a family of four. The Education Department estimates this means more than 1 million additional borrowers will qualify for $0 payments under the plan.

Some borrowers could have their payments cut in half when the program is in full effect next year and see their remaining debt canceled after making at least 10 years of payments, a significant change from previous plans.

With the new plan, unpaid interest will not accrue if a borrower makes their full monthly payments.

But the new plan does come at a cost to the federal government. Estimates of the program’s expense have varied depending on how many borrowers sign up for the new plan, but they range from $138 billion to $361 billion over 10 years. By comparison, Biden’s student loan forgiveness program was expected to cost about $400 billion.

The Education Department has created similar income-driven repayment plans in the past and has not faced a successful legal challenge, officials noted.

The beta site launch comes as borrowers will need to begin making federal student loan payments again in October after a pause of more than three years because of the pandemic.

The question now becomes how quickly Republicans will sue to block the program and send it to the Supreme Court.  They will find their federal judge to block the program, and we'll see how fast they move to get it to SCOTUS to end it. I'm betting they will get it blocked in the next few months, but delay any further legal action until after summer 2024. After the election, if Trump wins, he'll just end the program in 2025 or better yet, just have SCOTUS do it so he can say "Oh well I tried" and blame SCOTUS justices who won't face a lick of accountability. If Biden gets a second term, same thing happens.

The trillion-dollar-plus student loan industry that owns SCOTUS conservatives won't let this stand. This will be blocked before the October deadline and the hundreds of billions in student loan repayments will crash the economy by early next year.

Everyone will blame Biden, and then Trump wins easily.

That'll be the plan. Whether it works, well, you tell me.

Climate Of Destruction, Con't

CNN's Elia Nilsen realizes that Republicans have no solution to the climate crisis, or more specifically, that the Republican solution is to do nothing. House Republicans like Rep. John Curtis and Sen. Mitt Romney, both of Utah, realize their states will be the first to be rendered unsustainable, but they will be shouted down by the rest of the GOP beholden to energy interests and Donald Trump.

While at a recent event at a natural gas drilling site in Ohio, as smoke from Canada’s devastating wildfire season hung thick in the air, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was asked how he would solve the climate crisis. He suggested planting a trillion trees to help offset the pollution created by burning fossil fuels – a bill House Republicans introduced in 2020. The measure has not yet passed the House and has an uncertain future in the Senate.

But the biggest and most enduring difference between the two parties is that Republicans want fossil fuels – which are fueling climate change with their heat-trapping pollution – to be in the energy mix for years to come.

Democrats, meanwhile, have passed legislation to dramatically speed up the clean energy transition and prioritize the development of wind, solar and electrical transmission to get renewables sending electricity into homes faster.

On Wednesday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Democrats want to pass more climate legislation if they take back a full majority in Congress. He later told CNN the GOP is “way behind” on climate and there’s been “too little” progress on the party’s stances.

“I think we’d get a lot more done with a Democratic House, a Democratic president and continuing to have a Democratic Senate,” Schumer told CNN. “Unfortunately, if you look at some of the Republican House and Senate Super PACs, huge amounts of money come from gas, oil and coal.”

Even though Curtis and Romney are aligned on the party needing to talk about climate change, they differ on how to fix it. While Curtis primarily supports carbon capture and increased research and development into new technologies, Romney is one of the few Republicans speaking in favor of a carbon tax – taxing companies for their pollution.

“It’s very unlikely that a price on carbon would be acceptable in the House of Representatives,” Romney said. “I think you might find a few Republican senators that would be supportive, but that’s not enough.”

The idea certainly doesn’t have the support of Trump, or other 2024 candidates for president, and experts predict climate policy will get little to no airtime during the upcoming presidential race.

“Regrettably, the issue of climate change is currently being held hostage to the culture wars in America,” Edward Maibach, a professor of climate communication at George Mason University and a co-founder of a nationwide climate polling project conducted with Yale University, told CNN in an email. “Donald Trump’s climate denial stance will have a chilling effect on the climate positions of his rivals on the right — even those who know better.”

Even if climate-conscious Republicans say Trump won’t be in the party forever, Inglis said even a few more years may not be enough time to counteract the rapid changes already happening.

“That’s still a long way away,” Inglis said. “The scientists are saying we can’t wait, get moving, get moving.”

 

Understand Trump's position will be the party's position, and that is "doing anything about the climate is liberal Democrat 'Green Fascism' where you and your family will be forced to live in third world poverty because gas, meat, electricity and technology are too expensive." 

It's a strawman so huge it should be in a Nick Cage movie, but they'll yell about "EAT THE BUGS" and we'll continue to set the world on fire until that gets stopped., either by the planet, or by other nations who will see us as a threat that has to be dealt with.

Sunday Long Read: The Mountain Of Fear

This week's Sunday Long Read has The Believer's Joshua Hunt take us on a trip to Japan's Osorezan -- Mount Fear -- as he deals with the death of his uncle among the surreal landscape of the ancient temples, trails, and travails.

 

In January 2023, while waiting to board a plane in Stockholm, I saw how swiftly grief can take hold of a person. In a quiet corner of Arlanda Airport, it unfolded before me like a scene from a movie: an older woman answered her cell phone, listened for a few moments to the voice on the other end, then burst into tears. Her anguish was so immediate, and so visceral, that it could only have been the worst kind of news—the end of a marriage, a dream, or a life. Not just any life, though: one so precious to her that its end was immediately comprehensible.

It was this immediacy that struck me as cinematic, because in real life, or at least in my life, death is many other things before it is something I can cry about. Last year, when my uncle Bill died of a heart attack at age fifty-seven, months passed before I could even conceive of his absence. He meant more to me than any other man, including my father, and yet his death was not at once fathomable to me. It landed with no impact I could make sense of; robbed of the clarifying weight of tragedy, I experienced his death first as an inconvenience. An obstacle. A disturbance that immediately complicated my life, or at least my career, which is what I had instead of a life. The instincts that had helped lift me out of poverty had also made it hard to slow down, and so I lived as if on the run. Next stop: Tokyo, where I planned to cement my relationship with a big American magazine by writing the definitive profile of a major Japanese novelist.

These plans started taking shape in May 2022, when the lease on my apartment in Brooklyn, New York, was coming to an end. The rent was going up so much that renewing it seemed like a gamble I wasn’t likely to collect on. Instead, I decided to do the responsible thing: put my stuff in storage, fly to Tokyo, and spend three months living in a modestly priced hotel while I wrote the story. I’d lived in Japan before, and going back after two years away seemed like the best shot I had at shaking off my malaise. It was also my best shot at producing a story that might take my writing career to the next level—a level that would put me in a position to take the occasional rent increase in stride.

By the end of the first week in June, I’d made it only as far as Manhattan, where a friend had invited me to house-sit while his family was on vacation. I was in their downtown apartment when I got the phone call about my uncle Bill. In bed but not yet asleep, I picked up the second of two late-night phone calls from my mom. Crying, and almost certainly a bit drunk, she told me that her little brother was gone, and all I could say was “Oh no.” When our call ended, a little after midnight, I couldn’t sleep, so I listened to old voicemail messages from my uncle. The most recent one was dated December 25, 2021: “Merry Christmas, Josh. I love you. It’s Uncle Bill. Hope you’re having a wonderful day. Talk to you later. Bye.”

I was meant to visit him three weeks after he left that message, but on the morning of my flight to Juneau, Alaska, I tested positive for COVID-19. I’d contracted the virus while working on a story in New Mexico—my first profile for the magazine I hoped to impress by flying halfway around the world to interview a novelist. While listening to old messages from my uncle, I dwelled bitterly on two unfulfilled promises I had made when calling to say I couldn’t make it home in January: the first was that I would get to Alaska and see him again soon; the second was that he was going to love the profile I had been working on in New Mexico. It ended up being published ten days after he died.

With my flight to Japan booked, and my nonrefundable accommodations paid for in advance, I had a narrow window for making it to the potlatch that would serve as my uncle Bill’s memorial. In Tlingit culture—our culture—the memorial potlatch has traditionally served as both a funerary ritual and a proto-capitalist one; for centuries, our departed were sent on their way with singing, dancing, food, and an ostentatious display of the wealth they would leave behind for others. These days, the banquets tend to resemble any other family cookout, and not many of our people have much wealth to leave behind. A few years ago, I met a man who put off his dad’s potlatch long enough for the carving of a large memorial totem, which struck me as the height of Tlingit opulence. My uncle Bill had left nothing behind, though, because he’d had so little, and because he had shared what little he had so freely. His potlatch proceeded as soon as a small wooden box with an image of an orca was carved to receive his ashes. By that time, though, my window of opportunity for attending had closed.

My mom sent me an announcement for the memorial service, which I perused on my phone during a layover on my way to Tokyo. In a quiet corner of Los Angeles International Airport, a dull pain grew sharper as I stared at the photograph they had chosen. It shows my uncle Bill standing on a beach on the outskirts of Juneau, bathed in sunlight passing through the sieve of an overcast sky. It is October 28, 2021, and in a few hours he will drive me to the airport for the last time. First we drive back to town, though, and along the way a double rainbow appears in the distance. He slows the pickup truck, then eases it over to the side of the road. He makes a dumb joke and asks me to take a picture of the two rainbows. When I send it to him later, I include another photo I took just a bit earlier. In it he is standing on the beach, dressed in jeans and a Carhartt shirt, smiling like he can already see the rainbows waiting just up the road.

 

It's a good story. 

And tell the people whom you love that you do love them. Eventually you won't have that chance anymore.

Last Call For Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black Republicans are finding out the hard way what the rest of the party thinks of Black folk, and they're not liking the answer they are getting.

 

Rep. John James (R-Mich.) criticized Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Friday for his response to Republican lawmakers who called him out on his state’s new Black history education standards Friday.

“@RonDeSantis, #1: slavery was not CTE!” James posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Nothing about that 400 years of evil was a ‘net benefit’ to my ancestors. #2: there are only five black Republicans in Congress and you’re attacking two of them.”

Both Rep. Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) and Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) have criticized the new standards, which indicate that American slavery helped enslaved people develop “skills” that benefited them, in the past few days.

Scott rebuked the language during a campaign stop in Iowa on Thursday, claiming “there is no silver lining in slavery.”

“Slavery was really about separating families, about mutilating humans and even raping their wives,” he said. “It was just devastating.”

DeSantis responded to the lawmakers by saying they were falling in line with Vice President Kamala Harris, who called the guidelines “propaganda.”

“They dare to push propaganda to our children,” Harris said earlier this week in Jacksonville, Fla. “Adults know what slavery really involved. It involved rape. It involved torture. It involved taking a baby from their mother.”

James pleaded with DeSantis to change course.

“My brother in Christ… if you find yourself in a deep hole put the shovel down,” he wrote. “You are now so far from the Party of Lincoln that your Ed. board is re-writing history and you’re personally attacking conservatives like [Scott] and [Donalds] on the topic of slavery.”

“You’ve gone too far. Stop,” he added.

 

That was Friday. Today,  it was former GOP Rep. Will Hurd who found out.

A dozen of the Republican White House contenders who want to keep former President Donald Trump from winning the 2024 presidential nomination joined him here Friday for a dinner with hundreds of influential activists in the state that holds the first caucuses.

But as has been the case for months in a race in which Trump polls as the comfortable front-runner, few dared to take even an indirect shot at him. And the one who delivered the night’s most slashing attack, former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, was booed as he left the stage.

“Donald Trump is not running for president to make America great again,” Hurd said, invoking Trump's slogan before bringing up the legal troubles cascading around him, including a superseding indictment approved by a grand jury this week. “Donald Trump is running to stay out of prison.”

The loud jeers that rang out inside the Iowa Events Center ballroom at the state party's Lincoln Dinner were at once illustrative of the power and loyalty Trump still commands and the challenges faced by those trying to beat him.

“Listen, I know the truth,” Hurd said, talking over the crowd as he neared the 10-minute time limit given to all candidates. “The truth is hard. But if we elect Donald Trump, we are willingly giving Joe Biden four more years in the White House and America can’t handle that.”

 

Black Republicans, "My brothers and sisters in Christ", as it were, I have a message for you.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

But not to Republicans. You will never be more than a second-class citizen in the GOP. They want that for the rest of us Black folk, including you. The question is, will you help them destroy the Black community for your own gain?

Not that I expect many Black Republicans to be ZVTS readers, but you still have a choice.

Supreme Crooks, Cads, And Creeps, Con't

Donald Trump isn't the only right-wing fascist who believes he is above the law, and the difference is Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is already in power, and will be for the rest of his life.

 

Justice Samuel Alito said Congress has “no authority” to regulate the Supreme Court in an interview with the Wall Street Journal’s opinion section published Friday, pushing back against Democrats’ attempt to mandate stronger ethics rules.

Alito, one of the high court’s leading conservatives, is just one of multiple justices who have come under recent scrutiny for ethics controversies that have fueled the renewed push.

“I know this is a controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” Alito told the Journal. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period.”

Although the Constitution enables Congress to structure the lower federal courts, it explicitly vests judicial power within a singular Supreme Court.

Alito and some legal observers argue that means Congress can’t prescribe certain regulations for the high court without running afoul of separation of powers issues.

Chief Justice John Roberts has also questioned Congress’s ability to act, but not as definitive as Alito’s new remarks. Many court watchers who disagree with the premise believe that Roberts’ questioning has given fodder to Republican objections.

“I don’t know that any of my colleagues have spoken about it publicly, so I don’t think I should say,” Alito told the paper. “But I think it is something we have all thought about.”

 

Even if the current effort by Democrats in the Senate to regulate SCOTUS ethics, Alito is essentially warning that he won't be the only justice who simply deems any legislation to be unconstitutional. THe law doesn't apply to him because he's the one who says whether it applies or not.

Impeachment and removal of Alito and Thomas can't happen quickly enough, but we all know it never will.

Trump Cards, Con't

Donald Trump's support for 2024 might be going down, but he's still the clear majority favorite as the GOP candidate.

 

The pile-on effect of mounting legal charges against former President Trump may be starting to take a toll, according to the latest NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist poll.

Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they believe Trump has done "nothing wrong" dropped 9 points in the last month, from 50% to 41%.

Trump also dropped 6 points in support with that same group when asked whether they were more likely to support Trump or another candidate, if he continues to run for president.

Still, a solid majority — 58% — continue to say they would support Trump as their standard-bearer, so more polling and time would be necessary to see if this is a trend, if it continues and if it has a real effect on his chances in the GOP primary. He continues to lead the field by wide margins.

At the same time, though, Trump has become increasingly toxic with the political middle, and this survey bears that out. A slim majority — 51% — of respondents overall said they think Trump did something illegal, including 52% of independents.

The findings come as Trump is likely set to face yet another indictment, his third, for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, and potentially a fourth in a Georgia election interference case.

 

The crosstabs show Trump retains majority support among Republican voters, although he's finally losing among Republican-leaning independents. But until that group can coalesce around a single non-Trump candidate, nothing's going to happen. Trump will easily win every primary.

 

This isn't a Bernie vs. Biden moment like in 2020, either. Trump has 20-30 point leads or more in every major primary state, and there's no reason to believe things will be different in SC or Arizona vs. Iowa and New Hampshire, not for the GOP outlook anyway.

 

No, Republican voters are going to put an indicted criminal on the ticket, and if rule of law doesn't matter to them, well, rule of law won't matter when they go after the rest of us, either. The law will offer no protection, and it will mean whatever Trump and his voters say it means.

 

Don't think a conviction will make a difference with tens of millions of Americans.

Voters Aren't Prosecutors, Folks

The stance of most GOP 2024 candidates on the charges faced by Donald Trump is that they should be delayed until after the election or dropped completely, with the "empowering" tagline of "Let the voters decide!" Ron DeSantis is a perfect example of this trope:

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said it's up to voters to decide whether former President Donald Trump's legal woes are disqualifying, as Trump faces the possibility of a third criminal indictment.

DeSantis made the comments in an interview Thursday in Iowa with CBS News senior White House and political correspondent Ed O'Keefe, on the same day Trump's attorneys met with federal prosecutors in the special counsel's office in Washington, D.C.

The Florida governor has staked out a middle ground on the topic of Trump's ongoing legal battles, often accusing federal prosecutors of going forward with politically motivated indictments, though he also stops short of defending Trump.

"At the end of the day, voters make that decision," DeSantis told O'Keefe. "Some people to ask me like, 'Well, if somebody's indicted, should they be able to run?' The problem is we've seen political indictments. I mean, I think Bragg was political. You have these other — these people. So, that would just give any prosecutor the ability to — to render someone ineligible. So, I've not said that. But I also think just at the end of the day, the election's got to be about the future."

 

So yeah, let's talk about this.

 

Let's talk about how Republicans want to leverage the voters in order to dismiss the charges against Trump, increasing in both number and severity as the weeks roll on. The GOP basically is confirming Trump is above the law even when not in the Oval Office. The theory is that being the leading GOP candidate indemnifies Trump despite the serious charges against him.

And since all the charges came from ordinary citizens in grand juries, then it's 100% up to ordinary citizen voters to determine if Trump should face any actual consequences, and that none of those consequences can involve state or federal criminal charges. "The worst is he loses the election, and he should be left alone after that."

But DeSantis also brings up another point when he says "that would just give any prosecutor the ability to — to render someone ineligible". What Republicans doing criminal acts are really worried about is that if Trump can be arraigned, they can too. We'd live in a world where being in political office offers no protection from charges. That worries them, but it also serves as a warning: that Republicans will order Democratic opponents to be arrested and charged in order to disqualify them from office too.

And it's because all these Republicans believe there are no merit to these charges whatsoever, laws are for those people, not national Republicans. Every politician is crooked in their worldview, enriching themselves the way Trump did in office, making billions and taking billions -- that's the point of being a politician. They're all guilty of something, but we look the other way in order to function as a society. That silent agreement has been broken, that's more of an offense than anything Trump could ever be charged with. Just as being called a racist is worse than actual racism to Republicans, charging Trump with crimes is worse than Trump actually being a criminal.

Finally, Republicans want voters to be involved. "You have the power to stop this travesty of justice, but if you elect me instead of Trump because you're worried he'll go too far, well I'll still make sure Joe Biden and Barack Obama and Hillary and Bill Clinton all go through this as well. I'll put them in jail, and I'll punish them and the people who voted for them. And they will never oppose us again." That's the silent agreement they want.

Plenty will use their votes to seal that dark covenant. The other side of that agreement is that the people who vote for the GOP won't be persecuted. Everyone else is fair game. 

 

What these folks really fear is being treated the way they want to treat the rest of us. Everything you're seeing descends from that.