Last Call For The Romneybot Exits Program, Or, Halt And Catch Liar

Utah Sen. Mitt Romney is retiring after the end of his term, and it's BOTH SIDES, you guys.

 

Sen. Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 and the only member of his party to twice vote to convict former president Donald Trump in politically charged impeachment trials, announced Wednesday that he will not seek a second term in the Senate representing Utah, saying in an interview that it is time for a new generation to “step up” and “shape the world they’re going to live in.”
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Romney, 76, said his decision not to run again was heavily influenced by his belief that a second term, which would take him into his 80s, probably would be less productive and less satisfying than the current term has been. He blamed that both on the disarray he sees among House Republicans and on his own lack of confidence in the leadership of President Biden and Trump.

“It’s very difficult for the House to operate, from what I can tell,” he said in a lengthy telephone interview previewing his formal announcement, “and two, and perhaps more importantly, we’re probably going to have either Trump or Biden as our next president. And Biden is unable to lead on important matters and Trump is unwilling to lead on important matters.”

Romney, elected to the Senate in 2018 with 63 percent of the vote, said he will serve out the duration of his term, which ends in January 2025. His decision not to seek reelection next year is likely to mark the end of a political career that has been notable, especially in the Trump era, for independence and a willingness to stand up against the base of his party that has shifted dramatically in Trump’s direction in the decade since Romney was its standard-bearer.

From the time Trump first became a candidate until today, Romney has been among his most outspoken critics, and nothing about his departure is expected to change that. In the weeks before Trump’s 2017 inauguration, Romney publicly acquiesced, expressing hope for the president-elect’s leadership while he was under consideration to be secretary of state. But his turnabout was short-lived.

Romney was the only Republican to vote to convict Trump in the 2020 impeachment trial, which involved Trump’s efforts to persuade Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to dig up dirt on Biden ahead of the 2020 presidential campaign and withholding aid to that country. Romney was one of seven Republican senators to vote to convict in the second trial, which came weeks after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Both votes, but especially the first, cost Romney politically, at home in Utah and more broadly within a party that Trump has come to dominate. He acknowledged the damage he had sustained, but said, “If there were no cost to doing what’s right, there’d be no such thing as courage. … I think it’s fair to say that the support I get in Utah is because people respect someone who does what they believe is right, even if they disagree with me.”

Republicans have speculated that because of his opposition to Trump, Romney could face a difficult battle to win a second term if he decided to run again. But the senator said fear of losing had nothing to do with his decision. In fact, he said, he was confident that, had he decided to run again, he would prevail. He pointed to a recent poll in Utah that showed his approval rebounding to 56 percent, a sharp rise from the 40 percent recorded in May and numbers showing him well ahead of potential rivals.

The highest-achieving Mormon politician of his time, Romney twice sought the presidency and served as governor of Massachusetts before moving to Utah and being elected to the Senate. His father, George, was a governor of Michigan, ran unsuccessfully for president in 1968 and served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Richard M. Nixon.

 

And as just about every other Republican in my lifetime has done, is doing, and will do in the future, Romney's choice was do nothing to fix the problems their party created over that lifetime, and blame the Democrats for it while holding the blowtorch and kicking over the 55-gallon drum of flammable accelerant.

 

Romney had 20 years in government to do better, and at every opportunity he chose not to, and now he's choosing to bail out of the plane he's helped to crash again and again, failing his father's legacy whenever he could.

Most of all, wherever Romney did the right thing, like MassCare when he was Governor there two decades ago, he just disavowed it later.

What a failure of a career. Even when he won, he lost.

Florida Goes Viral, Con't

The FDA has new guidance on the latest Covid booster vaccine, approving and recommending the booster for all Americans over six months in age, and once again, Florida's MAGA nutjob Surgeon General David Ladapo is telling Florida residents under 65 not to get vaccinated at all.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis’ hand-picked surgeon general on Wednesday warned healthy adults under the age of 65 against taking a new Covid-19 booster, contradicting the Centers for Disease Control and Food and Drug Administration.

Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo, speaking during a roundtable that DeSantis hosted, said that after three years of Covid, most healthy people don’t need to worry about getting infected from a virus that has killed more than 1 million people across the country. Ladapo is a well-known vaccine skeptic who has claimed some shots pose risks to healthy young men.

“With the amount of immunity that’s in the community — with virtually every walking human being having some degree of immunity, and with the questions we have about safety and about effectiveness, especially about safety, my judgment is that it’s not a good decision for young people and for people who are not at high risk at this point in the pandemic,” he said.

Previous guidance by Ladapo about Covid-19 vaccine safety has been widely rejected by the medical community. Daniel Salmon, director of the Institute for Vaccine Safety at Johns Hopkins University, said Wednesday it appeared that Ladapo and the others at the roundtable were selectively highlighting data to show problems with the new boosters.

“In general, they’re cherry-picking data and facts and science,” Salmon said. “And I think that they’re there, because they don’t want to recommend this vaccine for Florida.”

Jason Salemi, an epidemiology professor at the University of South Florida College of Public Health, said there are plenty of credible studies showing that healthy people under the age of 65 are still at risk of death from Covid-19.

“Equipping ourselves with and implementing mitigation measures can result in considerably less severe illness, less long Covid, and less mortality, all with little impact on our day-to-day lives,” Salemi wrote in an email. “So, there is clearly a need.”

The CDC and FDA this week gave the green light for two new vaccine boosters from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, which are recommended for people ages 6 months and up.

 

Remember, the only person here who manipulated the science on vaccines is Ladapo himself.

Ladapo, a well-known vaccine skeptic, has gone even further. Last year, he warned young men against taking the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines, suggesting that they increase the risk of cardiac-related deaths. POLITICO later revealed that Ladapo personally altered a state study to imply that the vaccines pose a health risk to young men. He highlighted that study when asserting that some Covid vaccines are dangerous for young men. 

He lied to make the Covid vaccines look more dangerous than they were, got caught, and nothing happened. And now, he's lying again, and putting thousands of Floridians at risk of dying from Covid.

This is what I mean when I say Republicans will kill everyone you know if it means they can "own the libs."

Shutdown Countdown, Clown Town Edition

Usually as we head into the last half of September, we have the annual spending bill battle where Republicans and Democrats work it out and fund the government for another year. Only one problem this time around, and that's because House GOP Speaker Kevin McCarty is such an absolute paperweight of uselessness that the House GOP hasn't managed to pass any spending bills at all, and that the country is headed for an economic nightmare again.

 

House GOP leaders have abandoned efforts to pass an agriculture funding bill amid an intraparty row over abortion policy. Now, Speaker Kevin McCarthy is left without critical leverage as the Democratic-majority Senate advances its own plans and Congress hurtles toward a federal shutdown Oct. 1.

House GOP leaders had hoped that inserting abortion policy into every major piece of their government spending plans would help win over conservative members and placate influential outside groups agitating for more aggressive action on the issue. But so far, the move has helped to seal the demise of what is usually among the easiest appropriations bills for Congress to pass, drawing fierce and rare pushback from more than a dozen moderate Republicans.

At the center of the battle: a GOP provision in the agriculture funding bill to ban mail delivery of abortion pills nationwide. Divisions over the move, along with disagreement over the total spending levels, forced senior Republicans to scuttle a planned House vote on the bill that funds the USDA and Food and Drug Administration at the end of July. Discussions to revive the bill over the August recess failed, according to three people who were granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Now, Republican leaders have no plans to bring the bill to the floor vote amid the time crunch, the three people familiar with the talks confirmed. That leaves the Democratic-controlled Senate — which is advancing its own, very different version of the Agriculture and FDA funding bill as part of a “minibus” spending package this week — in a far stronger negotiating position when it comes time to hammer out a compromise spending bill to fund the government.

“It’s dead, dead,” one of the people familiar with the talks said, describing the fate of the House USDA and FDA funding bill, and, for now, the ban on mail delivery of abortion pills House Republicans have been pushing.

Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.), a member of the Appropriations Committee, said agriculture was important “on both sides of the aisle” but that Agriculture Department and FDA funding will likely be hammered out in talks with the Senate. The focus now, the Montana Republican said, should be elsewhere.

“We gotta get the border done,” Zinke said.

While GOP leaders anticipated pushback on the spending proposals from their right flank — including pressure for deeper spending cuts and tougher border security measures — they’ve also faced rare public pushback from moderate Republicans, who have dug in against their abortion strategy. In particular, those moderates have objected to the provision in the Agriculture and FDA spending bill to ban mail delivery of abortion pills, which have become a major flashpoint since the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Approved for use up to 10 weeks of pregnancy, the pills have become the most common method of abortion in the U.S. but battles over the drugs continuing to play out in courts, state legislatures and on Capitol Hill.

Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.), who represents a district President Joe Biden won in 2020, said in an interview earlier this summer that he “cannot vote for the bill” as long as it includes the abortion pill rider. Fellow New York Republican Mike Lawler, who also hails from a Biden district, told POLITICO the abortion pill policy “should be dealt with at the state level.”

Those GOP moderates are eager to see controversial abortion provisions and other divisive provisions included the House’s other spending bills tossed out as House GOP leaders turn to crafting a larger funding package and reconciling it with the Senate.

In other areas of the spending fight, House Republicans’ Financial Services draft funding bill would block Washington, D.C., from using its own money to support abortion services and ban insurance coverage of either abortion or gender-affirming care for federal employees. Their Labor-HHS-Education spending bill would ban federal funding for medical research using fetal tissue and bar Planned Parenthood from participating in any federal programs. And their State-Foreign Operations spending bill would ban funding to any group overseas that provides abortions or information about the procedure.

The House’s Defense spending bill, which recently drew a veto threat from the White House over its anti-abortion provisions among other measures, is also in trouble. A floor vote on the GOP bill, which would block funding for service members to travel for an abortion if they’re stationed in a state where the procedure is banned, is now in jeopardy.

“A number of us would like to see the stickier social issues presented as individual amendments,” said Rep. John Duarte, a Republican who represents a blue district in California.

The fight comes as Republicans continue to struggle to unite around a strategy and message on abortion more than a year after the fall of Roe v. Wade. And Democrats plan to lean heavily on the issue in the 2024 campaign.

 

In other words, the House GOP can't even pass its own bills at this point, which means the Senate is in charge, the deals will be made with the Democrats, and McCarthy will have to eat bowl after bowl of turd flakes, resulting in his eventual ouster next month as he gets the Boehner Special. 

 

And note it's not the right-wing MAGA trolls dropping out of this bill, it's the House Republicans in Blue and purple states who know if they vote to end shipping of abortion meds by mail that they're done.

Who knows who will replace him, but I don't see him surviving as Speaker for much longer. Maybe Gaetz or Stefanik? Steve Scalise? 

We'll see.

Last Call For Gunmerica: The Battle Of New Mexico, Con't

If you had "Wednesday" down for the federal court injunction blocking New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham's emergency order rolling back open carry in Albuquerque and surrounding environs, please collect your fabulous ZVTS no-prize.

 

A federal judge in New Mexico on Wednesday issued a temporary restraining order against the state governor's ban on carrying guns in Albuquerque and its surrounding county, a move which threw the state into the center of the U.S. gun-rights debate.

U.S. District Court Judge David Urias said Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham's 30-day suspension of concealed and open firearm carry rights went against a landmark U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that people had a right to carry a gun outside their homes for self defense.

“They just want the right to carry their guns,” Urias said of the several plaintiffs who requested restraining orders against Lujan Grisham's Sept. 8 emergency public health order.

The Democratic governor issued the suspension on firearm carry laws to offer a "cooling-off period" in which authorities could address solutions to the state's high rates of gun crime after several children were fatally shot.

Lujan Grisham's order outraged gun-rights advocates and drew backlash from fellow Democrats and law enforcement officials, also Democrats, who called it unconstitutional.

Gun control campaigners called the move "courageous" and the Catholic Archbishop of Santa Fe feared more value was being given to gun rights than the life of an 11-year-old boy shot dead last week in an apparent Albuquerque road rage incident.

Albuquerque's mayor and Bernalillo County's sheriff, both Democrats, have urged Lujan Grisham to call a special state legislative session on gun crime after the gun ban.

Mayor Tim Keller said that, in order to fight gun crime, he needed legislation to fix a broken criminal justice system, regulate assault weapons and provide addiction and mental health services, among other measures.

"Albuquerque families can't afford political debates that distract us from fighting violent crime," Keller wrote in a letter to the governor.

Gun violence kills around 500 people a year in New Mexico, which ranks sixth among U.S. states for gun deaths per capita, according to gun violence prevention group Everytown for Gun Safety. Albuquerque is among the 10 most dangerous U.S. cities, based on FBI violent crime data.

 

We'll see how much Gov. Grisham wants to fight this, but there's approximately zero chance this wins on appeal and negative zero chance it wins on SCOTUS appeal.  In fact, zero is the number of SCOTUS justices that would side with Grisham on this.

I applaud the effort, but it's futile one here in Gunmerica.

 

 

 

The Greene Monster Gets Her Due

Once again, Republican Congressmonster Marjorie Taylor Greene is openly calling for secession from the US.

 

IN FEBRUARY, GEORGIA Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene called for a “national divorce” between red and blue states. Now, she’s taking her call for a schism even further by encouraging states to outright “consider seceding from the union.”

On Monday, Greene (R-Ga.) wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that “if the Biden admin refuses to stop the invasion of cartel led human and drug trafficking into our country, states should consider seceding from the union.”

“From Texas to New York City to every town in America, we are drowning from Biden’s traitorous America last border policies,” Greene added.

Months ago, Greene suggested that a “national divorce,” rather than, say, a democratic form of governance, was needed to remedy the disputes between Republican and Democratic states. “From the sick and disgusting woke culture issues shoved down our throats to the Democrat’s traitorous America Last policies, we are done,” Greene said at the time.

 

Once again, the problem isn't Greene. The problem is the party she represents allows her to stay in the House., and there's no reason to believe they will change that, nor the voters in her district. She is allowed to make statements like that as a sitting member of Congress because she is enabled to by the House GOP and the people of Georgia.

And Greene is more than happy to take credit for House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's decision on Tuesday to bring an impeachment inquiry into President Biden to a vote on the House floor. 

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wants it to be known that she was the first to push for impeaching President Joe Biden, chiding fellow Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz for trying to steal some of the credit.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Tuesday announced that he was directing his committees to open a formal impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden over allegations that the now-president profited off of the business activities of his son, Hunter Biden.

The decision comes as the California Republican has faced mounting pressure over the issue from many members of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, who hold immense sway in the narrow Republican House majority. Greene, a Georgia Republican and key McCarthy ally, was previously ousted from the caucus.

Just minutes before McCarthy made his announcement on Capitol Hill, Gaetz remarked on the Biden impeachment inquiry debate, writing on X that he "pushed" for the Speaker to act on the issue. The Florida Republican is close with the caucus, but he is not a member.

"When @SpeakerMcCarthy makes his announcement in moments, remember that as I pushed him for weeks, @kilmeade said I was: 'Speaking into the wind' on impeachment. Turns out, the wind may be listening!," he said.

But Greene, who has pushed for Biden's impeachment since he first took office, countered Gaetz's argument on X by accusing the lawmaker of being late to the game in seeking going after the president and his son.

"Correction my friend. I introduced articles of impeachment against Joe Biden for his corrupt business dealings in Ukraine & China while he was Vice President on his very first day in office," she said. "You wouldn't cosponsor those and I had to drag you kicking and screaming to get you to cosponsor my articles on the border. Who's really been making the push?

—Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) September 12, 2023

Earlier on Tuesday, Greene said that the impeachment inquiry "isn't a tall order," contending that the House Oversight Committee has "uncovered mountains of evidence of crimes and corruption committed by the Biden family."

The White House on Tuesday immediately pushed back against GOP efforts to start an impeachment inquiry.

"McCarthy is being told by Marjorie Taylor Greene to do impeachment, or else she'll shut down the government," Ian Sams, the White House spokesman for oversight and investigations, wrote on X.

"Opening impeachment despite zero evidence of wrongdoing by POTUS is simply red meat for the extreme rightwing so they can keep baselessly attacking him," he added.

Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, on Sunday told MSNBC's Jen Psaki that the "time for impeachment is the time when there's evidence linking President Biden to a high crime or misdemeanor."

"That doesn't exist right now," he said.

Greene in a recent CNN interview slammed Buck over his stance, remarking that there was an "unbelievable" degree of frustration with the former prosecutor.

"This is the same guy that wrote a book called 'Drain the Swamp', who is now arguing against an impeachment inquiry," she told the network. "I really don't see how we can have a member on Judiciary that is flat out refusing to impeach. … It seems like, can he even be trusted to do his job at this point?"

 

The White House has the right of this, and they're ready to play defense while pointing out the GOP is willing to wreck the economy over nonsense like this, reminding everyone exactly why Trump lost in 2020 and why the GOP lost the Senate...and needs to lose the House again.

Greene wants to take credit? Let her, as loudly and as often as possible.

A Bunch Of Block Heads, Con't

Social media outlets don't want to piss off Republicans in any way, so they're now specifically targeting Democratic, liberal topics, outlets, and constituencies. First up: Elongated Muskrat is specifically blocking NY Times articles.

 

X, Elon Musk’s social media platform formerly known as Twitter, appears to be attempting to limit its users’ access to The New York Times.

Since late July, engagement on X posts linking to the New York Times has dropped dramatically. The drop in shares and other engagement on tweets with Times links is abrupt, and is not reflected in links to similar news organizations including CNN, the Washington Post, and the BBC, according to NewsWhip’s data on 300,000 influential users of X.

The drop in engagement in Times posts seems isolated to X: NewsWhip data showed that engagement with Times links shared on Facebook remained consistent relative to other outlets.

“There was a drop off in engagement for NYT compared to the other sites in late July/early August,” NewsWhip spokesperson Benedict Nicholson told Semafor.

 

Indeed, article engagement by X posters has dropped by 90% over the last six weeks.  Oh, and before we think that Zuckerbot and his Facebook/Threads/Instagram empire are the good guys, well, they're not.

Instagram’s text-based social platform Threads last week rolled out its new search function, a crucial step toward the platform’s expansion and one that would give it more parity with X, formerly known as Twitter.

Not even 24 hours later, the company was embroiled in controversy. When users went to Threads to search for content related to “covid” and “long covid,” they were met with a blank screen that showed no search results and a pop-up linking to the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Meta acknowledged in a statement to The Washington Post that Threads is intentionally blocking the search terms and said that other terms are being blocked, but the company declined to provide a list of them. A search by The Post discovered that the words “sex,” “nude,” “gore,” “porn,” “coronavirus,” “vaccines” and “vaccination” are also among blocked words.

“The search functionality temporarily doesn’t provide results for keywords that may show potentially sensitive content,” the statement said, adding that the company will add search functionality for terms only “once we are confident in the quality of the results.”

Lucky Tran, director of science communication at Columbia University, discovered this himself when he attempted to use Threads to seek out research related to covid, something he says he does every day. “I was excited by search [on Threads],” he said. “When I typed in covid, I came up with no search results.”

Other public health workers criticized the company’s decision and said its timing was especially poor, given the current coronavirus uptick. Hospitalizations jumped nearly 16 percent in the United States last week and have been rising steadily since July, according to CDC data, though they remain less than what they were for the comparable week a year ago. Deaths are less than a quarter of what they were year to year, CDC statistics show. 

 

Yes, that's right, Covid is just as bad as porn and gets blocked by Threads in searches. Americans will just have to go to independent social media like TikTok to search for...never mind. 

TIKTOK HAS FIXED a mistake that temporarily prevented users from searching for videos related to the Writers Guild of America strike — saying the phrase was accidentally flagged by the app’s filters against QAnon.

News of the block was first reported by Media Matters. When the phrase WGA was put into the search bar, viewers were instead shown a warning that the search “may be associated with behavior or content that violates our guidelines.” The hashtag WGA also did not bring up any videos.

A spokesperson for TikTok told Rolling Stone on Monday that the search term was inadvertently blocked as part of existing protections against QAnon conspiracy theories, which violate community guidelines against disinformation. In 2020, the app banned several large hashtags related to the conspiracy theory and told Rolling Stone in a statement that the company would be developing a way to make QAnon-related content harder to find with TikTok’s search function.

The spokesperson also noted that searching WGA fully written out as Writers Guild strike or “Writers’ Guild of America” would show related videos.

 

Just a mistake, you see. Until they got caught.

 

Blockheads, all of them.

Last Call For Reparation Nation, Con't

A new LA Times poll finds that Californians are massively opposed to cash reparations for Black citizens in the state as Oakland and other municipalities are suggesting be looked into.

 

California voters oppose the idea of the state offering cash payments to the descendants of enslaved African Americans by a 2-to-1 margin, according to the results of a new poll that foreshadows the political difficulty ahead next year when state lawmakers begin to consider reparations for slavery.

The UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll, co-sponsored by The Times, found that 59% of voters oppose cash payments compared with 28% who support the idea. The lack of support for cash reparations was resounding, with more than 4 in 10 voters “strongly” opposed.

“It has a steep uphill climb, at least from the public’s point of view,” said Mark DiCamillo, director of the IGS poll.

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and state lawmakers created California’s Reparations Task Force in 2020 with the goal of establishing a path to reparations that could serve as a model for the nation. After two years of deliberations, the task force sent a final report and recommendations this summer to the state Capitol, where Newsom and the Democratic-led Legislature will ultimately decide how the state should atone for slavery.

The group suggested providing cash payments to all descendants based on health disparities, mass incarceration and over-policing and housing discrimination that have adversely affected Black residents compared with white Californians.

The remedies recommended in the report also go far beyond cash payments and include policies to end the death penalty, pay fair market value for jail and prison labor, restore voting rights to all formerly and currently incarcerated people and apply rent caps to historically redlined ZIP Codes that disadvantaged Black residents, among dozens of other suggestions.

 

This will never happen, of course. The closer California actually got to reparations, to resolving the core causes of the egregious economic imbalance between Black and white folks in even a state as liberal as the Golden State, the easier it becomes for Republicans and other opposition groups to kill any reparation measures at all. 

There's no faster way to get white, Asian, and Hispanic voters back on the GOP train, enough so to turn Cali back into the Pete Wilson/Arnold Schwarzenegger red state that it was 15, 20 years ago than meaningful reparations. Republicans would be crazy not to drive that wedge into everything from school boards to the Governor's mansion.

Reparations are still the moral thing to do, but there will be consequences to the point where I can see California Republicans taking every dime back and charging Black folk for interest.

Just to be assholes.

Redistricting Rodeo, Con't

Democrats are feeling good about recent court decisions that could mean enough redistricting going into the 2024 election that the Dems could regain control of the House.

 

In the past nine days, state and federal judges threw out two congressional maps — and helped Democrats avoid a worst-case scenario in Ohio — kicking off an unusually busy redistricting calendar heading into the election year.

All told, a dozen or more seats across at least six states could be redrawn, increasing the likelihood Democrats could chip away the five-seat GOP House majority through redistricting alone.

Democrats could pick up an extra seat in each of a handful of states, including Florida, Alabama and Louisiana, and perhaps several more in New York. Republicans could still pick up as many as four seats in North Carolina, but the recent rulings put Democrats in a position to offset those losses — and then some.

Redistricting could not only give Democrats a slight edge in their bid to reclaim the majority they lost in 2022 but also increase the number of Black members in their conference. Prospective Democratic candidates in several key states are already eagerly eyeing a rare chance to run for a federal office, and the party is brimming with hope about growing its footprint in the South.

“It’s an incredible win,” Marina Jenkins, executive director of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, said of Alabama. “It’s an incredibly important moment.”

The court rulings and new maps coming in the next four months, she said, could determine the 2024 House map.

None of the new maps are final. Higher courts could reverse lower court rulings, especially in Florida. But the recent spate of decisions have swung the momentum toward Democrats, and party operatives have grown far more optimistic about their House map after the recent rulings.

A change in the composition of even just a few districts could have a huge effect. With Republicans’ majority resting on such a narrow margin, the fight to control the House is expected to once again be highly competitive next year, and Democrats are searching for every possible toehold to climb back to the top.

The most notable movement for Democrats has been in a region that’s fallen away from them: the South. Over the past week, courts overturned Republican-drawn maps in Alabama and Florida for weakening the power of Black voters.

Alabama Republicans had thumbed their noses at the federal court’s instructions to redraw a map that it ruled likely violated the Voting Rights Act. They drew a new map this summer with just one majority-Black district — in spite of the court’s instructions to draw a second. The judges threw out the new map last week.

The three-judge panel ruled that the Alabama legislature does not get “a second bite at the apple” and appointed an independent expert to draw new lines by Sept. 25. Alabama Republicans said they will appeal the ruling.

Southern Democrats are thrilled by the prospect of a new majority-Black seat.

The court-appointed expert could draw a new district uniting Montgomery and Mobile — something that has sparked interest from local legislators in both cities. State Rep. Napoleon Bracy Jr., state Sen. Vivian Davis Figures and state Sen. Kirk Hatcher are high on the list of potential contenders.

Another name to watch: Steven Reed, who was just reelected as Montgomery’s first Black mayor. During his mayoral run, he remained pointedly noncommittal on whether he would be interested in running for a new majority-Black district.

 

This would be phenomenal if it panned out. There's every reason however to believe SCOTUS will step in and sink all of these redistricting efforts (except NC, or course). If anything I see Republicans gaining seats after the Roberts Court gets done.

 

I'll be thrilled if I'm wrong, but the conservatives on the court know who is paying them millions to side with the GOP, and they'll deliver.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

In response to his dozens of criminal indictments in federal court and in Georgia, Trump continues to openly campaign on eliminating the people who indicted him, and Saturday's authoritarian rally in North Dakota was the most ominous rhetoric so far.

Donald Trump is conjuring his most foreboding vision yet of a possible second term, telling supporters in language resonant of the run-up to the January 6 mob attack on the US Capitol that they need to “fight like hell” or they will lose their country.

The rhetorical escalation from the four-times-indicted ex-president came at a rally in South Dakota on Friday night where he accused his possible 2024 opponent, President Joe Biden, of ordering his indictment on 91 charges across four criminal cases as a form of election interference.

“I don’t think there’s ever been a darkness around our nation like there is now,” Trump said, in a dystopian speech in which he accused Democrats of allowing an “invasion” of migrants over the southern border and of trying to restart Covid “hysteria.”

The Republican front-runner’s stark speech raised the prospect of a second presidency that would be even more extreme and challenging to the rule of law than his first. His view that the Oval Office confers unfettered powers suggests Trump would indulge in similar conduct as that for which he is awaiting trial, including intimidating local officials in an alleged bid to overturn his 2020 defeat.

Characteristically, Trump also turned criticism of his behavior against his political foes, implicitly arguing that the true peril for America’s political freedoms did not spring from his attempt to invalidate a free and fair election, but from efforts to make him face legal accountability for doing so. “It’s really a threat to democracy while they trample our rights and liberties every single day of the year,” he said.

“This is a big moment in our country because we’re either going to go one way or the other, and if we go the other, we’re not going to have a country left,” he told supporters in South Dakota. “We will fight together, we will win together and then we will seek justice together,” he added. This followed a March rally in which he billed his 2024 campaign and potential second term as a vessel of “retribution” for supporters who believe they’ve been wronged.

Alarm bells, airhorns, large stacks of guitar amps, all of these need to be going off around the country. This is the language authoritarians use when they promise to annihilate their political enemies. Trump isn't running on anything other than putting Democrats in jail or worse.

Trump isn't seeking justice at all. He's seeking revenge, and he's giving his tens of millions of followers permission to seek that revenge along with him in a blood-soaked pogrom crusade. He's giving them the justification they need to do it, and tens of millions of Trump supporters are looking forward to the carnage.

It'll only get worse as we get closer to the election. 

Meanwhile, speaking of those dozens of indictments against Donald Trump, his lawyers are trying to get Judge Tanya Chutkan thrown off the January 6th case.

 

In a filing Monday, they argued that Judge Tanya Chutkan should recuse herself from the case for previous statements they say give the appearance of bias. They did not outright accuse Chutkan of being biased against Trump, but highlighted statements they claimed "create a perception of prejudgment incompatible with our justice system."

"Judge Chutkan has, in connection with other cases, suggested that President Trump should be prosecuted and imprisoned. Such statements, made before this case began and without due process, are inherently disqualifying," Trump's attorneys wrote in the filing.

Trump has entered a not guilty plea in the case, filed by special counsel Jack Smith, in which he is charged with four felony counts relating to an alleged scheme to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power after he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden.

Trump's filing highlights several instances during hearings related to defendants in Jan. 6 riot cases in which Trump's attorneys say Chutkan appeared critical of the former president.

"This was nothing less than an attempt to violently overthrow the government, the legally, lawfully, peacefully elected government, by individuals who were mad that their guy lost," Chutkan said during one October 2022 hearing, later adding, "it's blind loyalty to one person who, by the way, remains free to this day."

Trump's attorneys called that statement "an apparent prejudgment of guilt."

"The public meaning of this statement is inescapable — President Trump is free, but should not be," they wrote.

The filing also highlights statements Chutkan made to rioter Robert Palmer, who was sentenced to more than five years in prison for using a wooden plank and a fire extinguisher to attack police.

"The people who exhorted you and encouraged you and rallied you to go and take action and to fight have not been charged," Chutkan said during Palmer's December 2021 sentencing hearing.

Ultimately, it is up to Chutkan to decide if these past statements create a perception of bias. If she does, a new judge would be assigned to the case. If she disagrees with Trump's attorneys, she will continue to preside over the matter. If the recusal is denied, Trump's attorneys could petition an appeals court for a writ of mandamus, essentially an order requiring her to recuse. These efforts are not often successful.

 

It's all bullshit of course, but Trump's playing winning on a SCOTUS appeal down the road, if not pardoning himself with a successful 2024 election. I still have massive doubts that he'll spend a single day in prison for anything.

 

We can hope however.

Last Call For Twenty-Two Years Later

As the country marks the 22nd anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, NYC officials are confirming that the total number of first responders who have died to 9/11 related illnesses has now equaled the number of FDNY firefighters who were lost that day.

 

The number of first responders who have died from 9/11-related illnesses now almost equals the number of firefighters who died during the terror attacks themselves.

A total of 341 New York City Fire Department firefighters, paramedics and civilian support staff who died from post-911 illnesses are now memorialized at the FDNY World Trade Center Memorial Wall, according to the Uniformed Firefighters Association. The memorial commemorates both first responders who died during the attacks and those who died from related illnesses in the years since.

That count almost equals the 343 New York firefighters who died during the 2001 attacks.

The fire department added 43 names to the memorial on September 6, according to a news release.

“As we approach the 22nd anniversary of 9/11, the FDNY continues to feel the impact of that day. Each year, this memorial wall grows as we honor of those who gave their lives in service of others,” said Fire Commissioner Laura Kavanagh in the release. “These brave men and women showed up that day, and in the days and months following the attacks to participate in the rescue and recovery efforts at the World Trade Center site. We will never forget them.”

Exposure to the dust at the World Trade Center has been tied to heightened risk of cardiovascular disease among firefighters who responded to the scene. Additionally, respiratory disease and thousands of cancer diagnoses have been linked to the toxic pollutants released during the attacks.

More than 71,000 people are currently enrolled in the World Trade Center Health Registry, a long-term study seeking to understand the physical and mental health effects of the terror attacks. In addition to first responders, the attacks have left lasting health impacts on workers in the World Trade Center who evacuated their workplaces, passersby, residents of the surrounding buildings and volunteers who spent time at Ground Zero in the weeks after.

Lt. Joseph Brosi was one of the dozens of firefighters added to the memorial last week. The FDNY veteran died in February after a long battle with lung cancer.

His son Jim Brosi said not a day has gone by where he has not thought about his father.

“We just miss him,” he told CNN. “He was just always present in everything we did.”

 

As with everything 9/11 related, it's all complex and complicated. 9/11 was one of the watershed moments in global history, one that shifted the axis of billions over the last two-plus decades. But there are those who have lost their lives as a direct result of the attack even now, and that list continues to grow.

Another year passes, and more are lost. Maybe an entire country lost their way, too. I know many of you have been around for far longer, and that like many of my generation, you remember exactly where you were when the towers fell.

Everything changed after that, and very little of it for the better.

 

The Return Of The Revenge Of The Ghost Of Shutdown Countdown

With the House back in session this week ahead of the September 30th deadline for spending bills, Republicans are giving GOP House Spearker Kevin McCarthy an ultimatum: crash the Biden economy, or we crash you.

Kevin McCarthy is facing the greatest peril to his speakership since he clawed his way into the job eight months ago, with multiple factions of his party feuding and a looming revolt ahead during the battle to fund the government.

Ultra-conservative members of the House GOP are talking in unsubtle terms about turning on McCarthy if he does not take a hard line in negotiations with the Senate and the Biden administration.

More centrist Republicans, too, are increasingly fed up with McCarthy’s efforts to placate the far right. They want him to stop giving ground to lawmakers they see as holding the party hostage to unrealistic demands.

McCarthy is a political survivor — even his critics cannot deny that his skilled nature as an accommodator, his persistence in winning over even his most dogged critics and his deep bench of allies have kept him alive in this highly fractured Republican Party.

But interviews with more than two dozen GOP members and aides reveal that it would take only a few rogue lawmakers hell-bent on his downfall to risk McCarthy’s fate in an entirely new way, sending their party spiraling into a new period of chaos. And even if those defectors fail to actually eject McCarthy, some of the speaker’s confidantes privately concede there may be no way to recover.

Those volatile, competing forces of McCarthy’s conference will collide this month, and could drive the nation to a government shutdown, while reshaping the Republican agenda for the rest of the Congress.

“The speaker faces two choices,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va), a vocal McCarthy detractor who says the party shouldn’t fear a shutdown. “[He] stares down the Senate, stares down the White House, forces them to cave and is a transformational historic speaker ... Or he can choose to make a deal with Democrats.”

If McCarthy chooses the latter option, Good warned, “I don’t think that’s a sustainable thing for him as speaker.”

House Republicans will face all that drama with an attendance strain: At least four of their own may be sidelined from Washington for health or family reasons, including Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.). That’s on top of a looming resignation on Friday that could put McCarthy’s margin for error at just a couple of votes.

The last time a GOP speaker faced this intense level of fall spending pressure with a Democrat in the White House, it was September 2015. And while John Boehner avoided a shutdown, he didn’t survive the month.

 

Utah Republican Chris Stewart is resigning on Friday over his wife's health issues, and he won't be replaced until June's special election, so McCarthy's margin will be down to three votes. I expect things to go like they did with Boehner in 2015, only with a lot bigger of a mess after McCarthy is driven out for making a deal with the Dems.

Of course, McCarthy may fold completely and shut down the government for weeks or months and crater the economy, but the voters are going to remember, or maybe he gets deposed before the 30th. At this point, all bets are off.

We'll see. But any outcome will be the GOP's fault.

The GOP Legal Eagles, Con't

The Washington Post's Jackie Alemany on the Capitol Hill beat is at least dispensing with the pretense and is rightfully calling out the GOP efforts to derail the prosecutors trying to bring Trump to justice as the darkness that democracy is dying in.

 

Investigate the investigator.

That has been the operating thesis of the GOP’s playbook to counter the myriad criminal investigations into Donald Trump, the de facto leader of the Republican Party. Interrogating investigators’ methods and scruples is a strategy that has been utilized by both parties during tumultuous moments, and is a well-worn tool for lawmakers seeking to appease constituents hungry for the appearance of oversight on polarizing issues.

The strategy has been effective in shaping public opinion of the investigations after years of sustained broadsides against the judicial system by Trump and his top allies. A Washington Post-FiveThirtyEight-Ipsos poll last month showed 75 percent of potential Republican primary voters said charges against the former president across various investigations were politically motivated.

But in the wake of 91 criminal charges against Trump, the party’s blitz of attacks on prosecutors threatens to degrade an important precedent that protects prosecutorial independence and the ability to fairly root out wrongdoing without partisan influence or gain, according to legal experts.

“Big picture, this does seem incredibly troubling,” said Caren Morrison, a former federal prosecutor who is an associate professor at Georgia State University College of Law. “For years I’ve told my students that one principle we can always rely on is the principle of prosecutorial discretion — it is unassailable and that is the essence of their power: They can choose which cases to pursue and which cases not to pursue. … We are kind of at a point where nobody agrees on what the rules are.”

So far, congressional investigations have been launched against Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, special counsel Jack Smith, and most recently, Fulton County, Ga., District Attorney Fani Willis — all of whom have charged Trump with crimes. And state lawmakers have begun discussions to remove Willis from her seat through a disciplinary commission in Georgia — one of several states that have recently adopted laws aimed at reining in the power of locally elected prosecutors.

Republican House committee chairmen initiated an investigation into Bragg earlier this year seeking communications, documents and testimony related to his investigation of a $130,000 hush money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Trump was indicted in the case by a Manhattan grand jury for allegedly falsifying business records in New York.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (Ohio), one of the three GOP chairmen who targeted Bragg, announced an investigation into Willis after an Atlanta-area grand jury indicted Trump and 18 of his associates on charges related to attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. Jordan requested information regarding any federal funding the office receives, along with any correspondence between Willis’s office and the Justice Department. Republican lawmakers have also gone after David Weiss, the newly appointed special counsel tasked with prosecuting President Biden’s son Hunter after his plea deal collapsed in July. Weiss filed court papers on Wednesday saying he intends to seek an indictment against Hunter Biden by the end of this month.

Jordan and others have drawn sharp criticism from Democrats for what they view as attempts to undermine active and ongoing criminal investigations. In a nine-page letter to Jordan sent on Thursday, Willis blasted the chairman for what she called an unconstitutional attempt “to interfere with a state criminal matter” and transgression of the separation of powers. She also warned Jordan that if House Republicans followed through on threats to deny federal funding to Willis’s office, that “such vengeful, uncalled-for legislative action would impose serious harm on the citizens we serve, including the fact that it will make them less safe.”

Few officials have voluntarily cooperated with the investigations so far, but House Republicans scored a win in the courts after a federal judge declined to block a subpoena issued by the House Judiciary Committee. That ruling forced a former prosecutor who investigated Trump in the Manhattan district attorney’s office, Mark Pomerantz, to appear before the committee for a deposition.

“It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection,” U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil wrote in her opinion. She added that Jordan had identified other valid legislative purposes in deposing Pomerantz, including scrutinizing the use of federal funds in the investigation. The judge also questioned how Bragg could claim that information that had already been published in a tell-all about the investigation into Trump written by Pomerantz could be considered privileged information. Jordan’s office declined a request for comment.

It remains to be seen whether House Republicans will ultimately issue subpoenas to any of the current prosecutors overseeing investigations into Trump, but legal experts and former U.S. government officials say the action would mark a significant escalation that would cross the line separating politics and the criminal justice system.

“Whomever is the accused deserves an adjudication which is, as much as possible, the application of law to facts, and you do everything you can to shield that inquiry from the rough-and-tumble of constituent politics,” said Robert Raben, the former Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legislative Affairs under President Bill Clinton. “There are important lines of division that should not be penetrated — and we can squabble about where those lines are — but hauling up an investigator while something is pending to influence something to which you are not a party is inappropriate,” he added.

 

Amazingly enough, the Post's Alemany seems to agree that the GOP is wildly overstepping its bounds and that the next step in the war will be subpoenas of those directing ongoing investigations and prosecutions of Dnald Trump by House Republicans.

But of course we've gotten to this point precisely because Republicans don't care about destroying the norms of democracy, and they will continue to ignore these norms until they have to pay a price that they can no longer afford.

America, it seems, has little to no appetite for that.

Last Call For Old News From Newsom

As California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, has said on several occasions, he's absolutely not running for Joe Biden's job, and if he has to choose a successor for Dianne Feinstein between now and November of next year, it will be an interim choice from people not currently running for her seat in 2024.

 

As three high-profile California Democrats vie to replace retiring Sen. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom said in an interview with NBC's "Meet the Press" that he would not appoint any of them to the seat, should it become vacant sooner than expected.

That decision could be a blow to Rep. Barbara Lee, since her allies had reason to believe she was Newsom’s first choice to fill a potential vacancy. But that was before she entered the Senate race, where she is currently trailing in polls behind better-known and better-funded fellow Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Katie Porter.

In his most direct comments on the matter yet, Newsom said in the interview with Chuck Todd for NBC News' "Meet the Press" that airs Sunday that he would instead make an “interim appointment” to replace Feinstein if necessary.

“Yes. Interim appointment. I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” Newsom said. “It would be completely unfair to the Democrats that have worked their tail off. That primary is just a matter of months away. I don’t want to tip the balance of that.”

Lee, Schiff and Porter are locked in a high-profile battle ahead of the March 5 all-party primary, when the top two vote-getters of any party will advance to the November general election. Both may end up being Democrats, given California’s partisan tilt.

A poll released Thursday from the Institute of Government Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, found Schiff and Porter running neck and neck at 20% and 17%, respectively, while Lee trailed at 7%. A third are still undecided.

Feinstein, 90, has resisted calls to resign and said she intends to serve out the remainder of her term, which ends in January 2025.

But her declining health and an ugly family dispute over her late husband’s multi-million-dollar estate has renewed questions about her ability to do her job.

Newsom is openly dreading the prospect of having to fill another Senate vacancy, having already hand-picked his state’s other senator, Alex Padilla, to fill the seat vacated by now-Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I don’t want to make another appointment, and I don’t think the people of California want me to make another appointment,” Newsom told Todd.

 

Newsom also reiterated that he has no 2024 plans for the presidency. It's so weird that literally the only people who think Newsom has designs on the Oval Office next year are Republicans who are 100% Newsom is lying and will stab Joe Biden in the front and the back, which I guess tells you everything you need to know about right-wing pundits.

 

Meanwhile, left-wing pundits like myself are telling everyone in blogshot, postshot, and earshot that Trump's going to win the 2024 GOP primary but nobody on the right wants to believe that for a second.

 

Now, do I expect Newsom has 2028 plans to run against Kamala Harris, absolutely. I think that's going to be wide open and messy as hell, not because VP Harris isn't qualified, but that history assures us that approximately every non-Black, non-female Democrat will figure they can do that job too.

 

That's a tale for another time, and five years in presidential politics is an eternity. But as for Newsom in 2024, that's not happening, and Republcians are in as much denial there as they are over the GOP being Trump's party of white Christian Dominionist supremacy.

Gunmerica: The Battle Of New Mexico

New Mexico's Democratic Governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, has issued an emergency public safety executive order blocking Albuquerque's open and concealed carry ordnance for 30 days in response to several shootings in the city, and Republicans are gearing up for the mother of all court battles.

New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham on Friday issued an emergency order suspending the right to carry firearms in public across Albuquerque and the surrounding county for at least 30 days in response to a spate of gun violence.

The Democratic governor said she expects legal challenges but was compelled to act because of recent shootings, including the death of an 11-year-old boy outside a minor league baseball stadium this week.

Lujan Grisham said state police would be responsible for enforcing what amount to civil violations. Albuquerque police Chief Harold Medina said he won’t enforce it, and Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen said he’s uneasy about it because it raises too many questions about constitutional rights.

The firearms suspension, classified as an emergency public health order, applies to open and concealed carry in most public places, from city sidewalks to urban recreational parks. The restriction is tied to a threshold for violent crime rates currently only met by the metropolitan Albuquerque. Police and licensed security guards are exempt from the temporary ban.

Violators could face civil penalties and a fine of up to $5,000, gubernatorial spokeswoman Caroline Sweeney said. Under the order, residents still can transport guns to some private locations, such as a gun range or gun store, provided the firearm has a trigger lock or some other container or mechanism making it impossible to discharge.

Lujan Grisham acknowledged not all law enforcement officials were on board with her decision.

“I welcome the debate and fight about how to make New Mexicans safer,” she said at a news conference, flanked by law enforcement officials, including the district attorney for the Albuquerque area.

John Allen said in a statement late Friday that he has reservations about the order but is ready to cooperate to tackle gun violence.

“While I understand and appreciate the urgency, the temporary ban challenges the foundation of our constitution, which I swore an oath to uphold,” Allen said. “I am wary of placing my deputies in positions that could lead to civil liability conflicts, as well as the potential risks posed by prohibiting law-abiding citizens from their constitutional right to self-defense.”

Enforcing the governor’s order also could put Albuquerque police in a difficult position with the U.S. Department of Justice regarding a police reform settlement, said police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos.

“All of those are unsettled questions,” he said late Friday. 

 

 Needless to say, Republicans have completely lost their shit over this.

Its legality and enforceability have already proven to be roadblocks, with Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina saying the city’s police department will not be responsible for enforcing it, and Bernalillo County Sheriff John Allen cautioning the order “challenges the foundation of our Constitution” (New Mexico State Police is tasked with enforcing the order).

Republican lawmakers, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a 2024 presidential candidate, quickly capitalized on the furor, with DeSantis declaring: “Your 2nd Amendment rights SHALL NOT BE INFRINGED.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), also criticized the ban in a post on X, calling the decision “flawed” and asking: “If a governor felt like declaring an emergency right before an election they’d be to suspend the 19th Amendment and stop women from voting [sic]
?”

According to the ban, which is classified as a public health order and took effect immediately, open and concealed carry will be banned on public property for 30 days “with certain exceptions,” including for security guards and law enforcement agents—with violators facing fines up to $5,000.

New Mexico law requires a permit for concealed carry but not open carry, making it one of 38 states that allow unpermitted open carry—which is prohibited in five states (California, Florida, Illinois, New Jersey and New York), while it’s allowed with a permit in Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Rhode Island and South Carolina.

Regardless of how effective the ban will be having to depend on state cops to enforce what is effectively a county-wide ban, it's difficult to see how this order survives a court challenge. I fully expect a federal injunction by Monday or by a few days at the latest and for the GOP to run with this all the way to SCOTUS, demanding an end to all gun safety regs.

Lujan Grisham may have just given them the exact case they needed.

Sunday Long Read: One Hell Of A Racket

Our Sunday Long Read this week is Kevin Sieff's deep dive into pro tennis match fixer Grigor Sargsyan for the Washington Post. Sargsyan, known as the Maestro, had at one point at least 180 pro tennis players, men and women, working for his fixing ring, throwing individual points, service games, whole sets and even entire matches in order to get a piece of the $50 billion tennis betting bonanza in the late 2010's.

 

BRUSSELS

On the morning of his arrest, Grigor Sargsyan was still fixing matches. Four cellphones buzzed on his nightstand with calls and messages from around the world.

Sargsyan was sprawled on a bed in his parents’ apartment, making deals between snatches of sleep. It was 3 a.m. in Brussels, which meant it was 8 a.m. in Thailand. The W25 Hua Hin tournament was about to start.

Sargsyan was negotiating with professional tennis players preparing for their matches, athletes he had assiduously recruited over years. He needed them to throw a game or a set — or even just a point — so he and a global network of associates could place bets on the outcomes.

That’s how Sargsyan had become rich. As gambling on tennis exploded into a $50 billion industry, he had infiltrated the sport, paying pros more to lose matches, or parts of matches, than they could make by winning tournaments.

Sargsyan had crisscrossed the globe building his roster, which had grown to include more than 180 professional players across five continents. It was one of the biggest match-fixing rings in modern sports, large enough to earn Sargsyan a nickname whispered throughout the tennis world: the Maestro.

This Washington Post investigation of Sargsyan’s criminal enterprise, and how the changing nature of gambling has corrupted tennis, is based on dozens of interviews with players, coaches, investigators, tennis officials and match fixers. The Post obtained tens of thousands of Sargsyan’s text messages, hundreds of pages of internal European law-enforcement documents, and the interrogation transcripts of players.

By the time he was communicating with the players in Thailand, Sargsyan had honed his tactics. He had learned to nurture the ones who were nervous. He knew when to be businesslike and direct, communicating his offers like an auctioneer.

That was Sargsyan’s approach on the night in June 2018 that would be his last as a match fixer. He explained to Aleksandrina Naydenova, a Bulgarian player struggling to break into the world’s top 200, that she could choose how severely she wanted to tank a set. He sent the texts in English:

If she lost her first service game, she would make 1,000 euros, he wrote. If she lost the second one, she would make 1,200 euros. It didn’t matter if she won the match, only that she lost those games.

Naydenova seemed willing.

“Give me some time to confirm,” she wrote.

As Sargsyan waited, a Belgian police SWAT team was on its way to his parents’ house. The team had been planning the raid for months, the culmination of a two-year investigation that spanned Western Europe.

Sargsyan placed the phone on his bedside table next to the others he used to message players and associates. He sprawled on his mattress, trying not to fall asleep. Then, from downstairs, he heard hushed voices speaking over walkie-talkies. He cracked open the door to his room and saw several police officers and a Belgian Malinois. The officers spotted their target: a short, chubby man in pajamas. They sprinted up the stairs and into Sargsyan’s room.

Sargsyan lunged for his phones, but the officers got to them first. They put him in handcuffs and listed the charges against him: money laundering and fraud.

“I know what this is about,” Sargsyan said.

The information on his devices would provide a remarkable window into what has become the world’s most manipulated sport, according to betting regulators. Thousands of texts, gambling receipts and bank transfers laid out Sargsyan’s ascent in remarkable detail, showing how an Armenian immigrant in Belgium with no background in tennis had managed to corrupt a sport with a refined, moneyed image.

 

This guy basically owned tennis last decade, and the Post has identified more than two-thirds of the Maestro's marks. He didn't have to approach the big names in tennis, he had plenty of success with the mid and low-level circuits where players would be lucky to make a couple hundred euros in prize money.

Sargsyan paid them a lot more to lose, and lose they did.  Tennis, by the way, is still using Swiss betting company Sportsradar to this day, including the top ATP and WTA Tours. Sargsyan made hundreds of millions using Sportsradar to monitor untelevised matches and to place bets in real time. So yeah, pro tennis? Crooked as hell.

We'll have part two of this story on how Sargsyan was caught next week.