Election Projection, Con't

CNN's Harry Enten posits that if Joe Biden can remain broadly popular like he is now, that the Democrats have a decent shot at keeping both the House and Senate in the 2022 midterms.

Democrats have to defy history to hold onto the House in the 2022 midterms. As I've noted before, the president's party almost always loses House seats in the midterms. History, though, is a guide, not a fortune teller. 

This week's special election in New Mexico's 1st congressional district is part of a larger trend that shows us that if President Joe Biden remains as popular as he is now, Democrats have a fighting chance to maintain House control. 

Democrat Melanie Stansbury beat Republican Mark Moores by 26 points in the special election to replace Deb Haaland, who represented the district until she joined the Biden administration as interior secretary earlier this year. She did so in a district that Biden won by 23 points in 2020, Haaland took it by 16 points that same year and Hillary Clinton won by 17 points in 2016. In other words, Stansbury didn't just match but slightly exceeded the baseline Democratic performance in the district. 

Of course, this was just one special election. But there have been a slew of special elections, mostly on the state legislative level since Biden became president, that seem to indicate something similar. Look at these specials using the past two presidential elections (giving more weight to 2020) as a baseline. 

Democrats seem to be doing 2 points to 5 points better than you'd expect in a neutral political environment, depending on whether you look at all special elections involving at least one Democrat and Republican or those taking place with only one Democrat and one Republican. 

This 2 to 5 point Democratic advantage matches pretty much what we saw in the national congressional generic ballot. It is also pretty much identical to the results we witnessed in last year's election. Biden won by 4.5 points nationally, and Democrats were victorious in the national House vote by about 3 points. 

The common thread through these special elections is that Biden is popular. His approval rating has been north of 50% throughout his entire presidency. When we limit ourselves to only polling that asked voters (i.e. not all adults), Biden's approval rating is still above 50%. 

Presidential approval ratings aren't all that matter during midterm elections -- but they do matter. There have been six presidents who have lost House majorities during a midterm in the polling era. All but Dwight Eisenhower (a war hero who always seemed to do worse politically than his approval rating indicated) had an approval rating below 50%.

 

In other words,  Biden being Teflon is what the Dems need in this polarized era. Worked for Reagan after all.

 

I think the Dems can pull it off, but either way, it's going to be generally as close a margin in the House as it is now. Where the Dems might actually pick up seats is in the Senate.  We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• Britain's Prince Harry and wife Meghan, Duke and Duchess of Sussex, have announced the birth of their second child, daughter Lilibet Diana, on Sunday. 
• Wildfires in Arizona have already scorched nearly 65,000 acres as residents in the town of Superior were evacuated Sunday out of the path of the oncoming blaze.
• More than 30 are reported dead as two trains carrying passengers collided in southern Pakistan early Monday, with scores of injured.
• Vice President Kamala Harris has reached Guatemala for a scheduled regional meeting of American states on immigration after her plane was forced to turn back and land due to a technical issue.
• The US Air Force wants to use advances in commercial spaceflight rocket technology to deliver military cargo from point to point anywhere on earth using rockets.

Last Call For Israeli A Problem, Con't

As the clock runs out on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's top security official is warning of domestic terrorist attacks against Israeli lawmakers, in what would almost certainly be the Israeli version of our January 6th terrorist attacks.

 

The head of Israel's internal security service said that "extremely violent and inciting discourse" targeting the lawmakers who are seeking to end Benjamin Netanyahu's 12-year tenure as prime minister could take a potentially lethal form — a grim echo of the warnings ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

Shin Bet chief Nadav Argeman said Saturday that the spike in vitriol targeting Netanyahu’s opponents online and in public demonstrations “may be interpreted by certain groups or individuals as one that allows for violent and illegal activities that may even, God forbid, become lethal.”

He called on public officials to rein in the groups that have vowed to do “anything possible” to prevent the swearing in of a new power-sharing government that has been spearheaded by centrist politician Yair Lapid.

Netanyahu has said he condemns any incitement and violence, but he said at a meeting with his Likud party on Sunday that “incitement against us is also raging.” He called on lawmakers to vote against the formation of the “fraudulent” alternative government.

“Mr. Netanyahu, don’t leave scorched earth behind you,” Naftali Bennett, the right-wing religious nationalist politician who is poised to unseat him, said Sunday. “We, the entire nation, want to remember the good that you did in your service for the country.”

The new government, in which Bennett is to serve as prime minister for two years before handing the job off to Lapid, is expected to come to a vote in the Knesset this week. It’s composed of eight ideologically divergent political parties, including leftists, centrists, former right-wing Netanyahu allies, and, for the first time in Israel’s history, Arab-Islamists.

“With his brother-in-arms Trump out-of-power, consumed by incoherent ranting and mumbling in Mar-a-Lago about how the election was stolen from him by Democrats and the media, Netanyahu has one last page to copy from Trump’s playbook: creating his own ‘January 6,’” Alon Pinkas wrote in the left-leaning daily Haaretz. “As a result of incitement and disinformation, judges, prosecutors and now also the leaders of the opposition are receiving extra protection after Netanyahu’s cultlike supporters threatened their lives.”

After the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol left five dead and more than 140 people injured, Netanyahu said he would leave office if voted out of power. He called the storming of the Capitol by thousands of pro-Trump supporters “disgraceful” and “the stark opposite of the values that Americans and Israelis uphold.” In the following days, Netanyahu removed a picture of him with Donald Trump from his Twitter banner. He continued to boast of policy achievements such as the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem that took place during the Trump presidency.

But since Lapid’s “change coalition” announced last week they were able to achieve a parliamentary majority, Netanyahu has launched a fierce, multi-fronted campaign to keep the it from assuming power. He has uploaded social media posts including old videos of Bennett and his partners pledging to never allow Lapid to become prime minister and called on right-wing lawmakers “to oppose this dangerous, left-wing government.”

 

Needless to say, things could quite possibly go as bad as things did here in the US on January 6th. The real problem is that there's entirely reason to believe that things could go much, much worse. I have a bad feeling about all this, so keep a weather eye on things in Tel Aviv.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

President Joe Manchin says he will personally kill the For The People Act, because it's too partisan and that's icky.

The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics. Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner.

During my time as West Virginia’s secretary of state, I was determined to protect this right and ensure our elections are fair, accessible and secure. Not to benefit my party but all the people of West Virginia. For example, as secretary of state I took specific actions to establish early voting for the first time in West Virginia in order to provide expanded options for those whose work or family schedule made it difficult for them to vote on Election Day. Throughout my tenure in politics, I have been guided by this simple philosophy — our party labels can’t prevent us from doing what is right.

Unfortunately, we now are witnessing that the fundamental right to vote has itself become overtly politicized. Today’s debate about how to best protect our right to vote and to hold elections, however, is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage. Whether it is state laws that seek to needlessly restrict voting or politicians who ignore the need to secure our elections, partisan policymaking won’t instill confidence in our democracy — it will destroy it.

As such, congressional action on federal voting rights legislation must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together to find a pathway forward or we risk further dividing and destroying the republic we swore to protect and defend as elected officials.

Democrats in Congress have proposed a sweeping election reform bill called the For the People Act. This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support. Why? Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy? Are these same senators, whom many in my party applauded for their courage, now threats to the very democracy we seek to protect?

The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen.

With that in mind, some Democrats have again proposed eliminating the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act with only Democratic support. They’ve attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.

As a reminder, just four short years ago, in 2017 when Republicans held control of the White House and Congress, President Donald Trump was publicly urging Senate Republicans to eliminate the filibuster. Then, it was Senate Democrats who were proudly defending the filibuster. Thirty-three Senate Democrats penned a letter to Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y. and Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., warning of the perils of eliminating the filibuster.

It has been said by much wiser people than me that absolute power corrupts absolutely. Well, what I’ve seen during my time in Washington is that every party in power will always want to exercise absolute power, absolutely. Our founders were wise to see the temptation of absolute power and built in specific checks and balances to force compromise that serves to preserve our fragile democracy. The Senate, its processes and rules, have evolved over time to make absolute power difficult while still delivering solutions to the issues facing our country and I believe that’s the Senate’s best quality.

Yes, this process can be frustrating and slow. It will force compromises that are not always ideal. But consider the alternative. Do we really want to live in an America where one party can dictate and demand everything and anything it wants, whenever it wants? I have always said, “If I can’t go home and explain it, I can’t vote for it.” And I cannot explain strictly partisan election reform or blowing up the Senate rules to expedite one party’s agenda.

The truth is there is a better way – if we seek to find it together.

 

President Manchin has decided to bet America's future on bipartisanship with a party openly embracing white supremacist fascism, and declares his own party as bad as the GOP. I don't know what to say anymore to convince anyone that Manchin only cares about staying in power, and will never help Democrats. achieve anything more than what McConnell allows them to have.

 

President Manchin has consigned us Republican rule.

And what will will have is white supremacist fascism.

Sunday Long Read: The Cubicle Farm

Our Sunday Long Read this week from Outside Magazine almost sounds like the next guaranteed sitcom trope of the 2020's: Silicon Valley techsters, freed from the commute to Redmond, Palo Alto, and Mountain View by the Age of Social Distancing, invade sleepy small-town Mountain West communities by the score. The locals want them gone and do everything they can to get rid of them, but both sides realize that they love the area, and the new folks are here to stay.

"Absolutely bananas.” That’s how Truckee-based realtor Kaili Sanchez of Sierra Sotheby’s described real estate activity in 2020. And, she added with an air of disbelief when we spoke in mid-January, it’s still going strong.

The bulk of Sanchez’s clients come from the Bay Area and L.A. “They’ll say, ‘I want all the screens out of the house,’” she says. “‘I just want to hear the birds! See the stars!’” But much of the activity is also represented by locals capitalizing on the frenzy and cashing out, she says. They’re heading to Reno, Nevada. To Montana. Back east, to the ice, to get two houses for the price of the Tahoe one. Year-over-year stats from Sierra Sotheby’s are staggering: In November 2019, the agency had 67 pending sales, totaling $38.2 million. In November 2020, it had 94 pending sales, totaling $127.6 million.

According to Zillow, Truckee (population 16,735) saw 193 home sales in December 2020 alone, an 88 percent increase over December 2019. Home values were way up, too—December’s median sale price in Truckee was $833,000, an almost 30 percent increase compared with the same month the year before. Sales have soared as high as the Sierra Nevada’s snow-covered peaks, especially for properties with views of them. In wealthy Incline Village, the median home price hit $2.2 million in February 2021. And even on the relatively humble, less developed west shore, the median sales price in 2020 was $756,000. Inventory is at a historic low, while demand is at an all-time high. For example, Truckee’s Tahoe-Donner neighborhood typically has 80 to 100 homes for sale at any given time during the summer. In the first week of 2021, it had six. Buyers are signing contracts after Zoom walk-throughs, or even sight unseen, says Sanchez, and multiple offers over the asking price are now standard, as are all-cash bids. More than one Tahoe local has gotten a knock on their door, accompanied by an unsolicited offer: “I’ll give you $2 million for your house.”


“It’s the wildest time,” says realtor Katey Brandenburg, who works on Tahoe’s Nevada side. For her and other realtors around the lake, the autumn of 2020 felt like winning the lottery. “I paid off a lifetime of debt—28 years of loans, college, credit cards, and cars—in three months.”

All told, 2020 saw more than 2,350 homes sold across the Tahoe Basin, for a boggling $3.28 billion, up from $1.76 billion in 2019, according to data analyzed by Sierra Sotheby’s. That $3 billion stat is on a par with 2020 home-sales revenues in Aspen, Colorado (albeit there, the latest average home-sale price came in at $11 million). The trend is in line with real estate records being shattered from Sun Valley, Idaho, to Stowe, Vermont. And according to a just-released market update, it hasn’t stopped: in the first quarter of 2021, median prices for single-family homes increased by an astronomical 70 percent year over year in Truckee, 72 percent in South Lake, and 81 percent in Incline Village.

With Tahoe just a four-hour drive (well, without traffic) from a Silicon Valley–funded tech city, San Francisco, the Zoom-town effect here embodies all of the cultural and economic tensions fueling the mountain edition of the Great COVID Migration. “It’s the white-collar flight,” says Colleen Dalton, CEO of Visit Truckee-Tahoe. Urban professionals are trading in the proverbial button-downs—or rather their Silicon Valley hoodies—for puffy jackets.

“I’ve had several California clients tell me, ‘I don’t care if it’s Jackson or Park City,’” says star realtor Katherine Rixon from Ketchum, Idaho. “They just wanted a mountain town.”

According to U.S. Postal Service data analyzed by the San Francisco Chronicle, Truckee alone saw a 1,082 percent increase in San Francisco transplants between August 2019 and August 2020. More San Francisco households requested a change of address to that greater area’s 96161 zip code than to any other zip code in the country. And notably: “A disproportionate number of people who purchased homes in Tahoe in 2020 are employees of some of the largest tech companies in the Bay Area,” says Deniz Kahramaner, founder of Atlasa, a real estate brokerage firm that specializes in data analytics. Of the 2,280 new-home buyers Atlasa identified throughout the Tahoe region in 2020, roughly 30 percent worked at software companies. The top three employers were Google (54 buyers), Apple (46), and Facebook (34).

Prior to the pandemic, most people who moved to the mountains would probably consider themselves the type to prioritize place over career: where you live comes first, what you do to support yourself while living there is a distant second. Jobs in the mountains rarely came with Slack accounts or stock options or even, very often, full-time salaries. You were either employed by the mountain or the restaurants, shops, and hotels surrounding it, or you carved your own path as a free agent and Lived the Dream, making bank and riding bumps. But in Zoom town, you can work for Pinterest and ski powder. The Dream has become a reality, and with it, the potential for a kind of culture clash that inherently follows all that cash: when those who have it and those who don’t begin living side by side.

We'll see how this goes, but I'm seeing this as one of the main differences between East Coast and West in the decade ahead. New Yorkers and Bostonians, Atlantans and Charlotteans,  Miamians and Charlestonians will be back in the office by Labor Day, working for companies that will do everything they can to pretend that the work from home era was a one-time thing and will never happen again, even though it will. It'll be ugly, corporate overlords realizing they will lose good people to cubicle farms, and won't get them back.

Anywhere west of Texas, it'll be the new normal, maybe even to the detriment of people who want to come in five days a week.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

We're going to be dealing with the fallout of Trump appointing more than a quarter of all federal judges for decades, and the latest sign that our side is pretty much screwed no matter what comes from California, where a Trump judge overturned the state's more than 30 year old assault rifle ban. 

In a ruling that compared the AR-15 to a Swiss Army knife, a federal judge overturned California's longtime ban on assault weapons on Friday, ruling it violates the Second Amendment's right to bear arms. 

Assault weapons have been banned in California since 1989, according to the ruling. The law has been updated several times since it was originally passed. 

According to the ruling by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego, the assault weapons ban deprives Californians from owning assault-style weapons commonly allowed in other states. Benitez issued a permanent injunction Friday so the law cannot be enforced. 

"Like the Swiss Army Knife, the popular AR-15 rifle is a perfect combination of home defense weapon and homeland defense equipment," Benitez said in the ruling. "Firearms deemed as 'assault weapons' are fairly ordinary, popular, modern rifles." 

In his ruling, the judge also criticized the news media, writing, "One is to be forgiven if one is persuaded by news media and others that the nation is awash with murderous AR-15 assault rifles. The facts, however, do not support this hyperbole, and facts matter." 

However, as CNN has previously reported, AR-15 style rifles have been the weapon of choice for numerous mass shooters, including in a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the Route 91 Harvest musical festival in Las Vegas, a massacre at a church in Texas, the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the high school in Parkland, Florida, and the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, among others. 

Last year, Benitez ruled California's ban on high-capacity magazines was unconstitutional. He also struck down the state's restriction on remote purchases of gun ammunition.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the ruling Friday, calling AR-15's a "weapon of war." 

He said in a statement that the comparison made by the judge between a Swiss Army Knife and the AR-15 "completely undermines the credibility of this decision and is a slap in the face to the families who've lost loved ones to this weapon." 

Newsom added: "We're not backing down from this fight, and we'll continue pushing for common sense gun laws that will save lives." 

The ruling and injunction are stayed for 30 days, during which time the Attorney General may appeal and seek a stay from the Court of Appeals. 

California Attorney General Rob Bonta said he will be appealing the ruling. "Today's decision is fundamentally flawed, and we will be appealing it," Bonta said in a news release. 

 

Judge Benitez is a complete clown who shouldn't be managing a Dairy Queen, let alone issuing federal judicial rulings, but that's what America voted for in 2016 because the alternative was an evil bitch, right?

In all seriousness, it will take the rest of my natural life to deal with Trump judges, and if the GOP gets another crack at this in 2024, it'll take the rest of your grandkids' lives too.

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Election Selection, Texas Edition

Democrats, coming off a huge special election win in New Mexico earlier this week to replace Rep. Deb Halaand as she became Biden's Interior Secretary, are looking to strike a major blow in Texas today as Fort Worth has its mayoral runoff election.

Republican mayors are close to extinct in big-city America. And there might be one fewer after Saturday’s mayoral runoff in Fort Worth, Texas.

While Democrats hold City Hall in Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin, the fifth-largest city in Texas — Fort Worth — is a holdout. Retiring GOP Mayor Betsy Price has held office through a decade of explosive growth that has seen the city’s population add more than 200,000 new residents, bringing it to nearly 1 million people.

The race to succeed her is officially nonpartisan, but the political backdrop is hard to miss: Fort Worth is not only one of the few remaining big cities with a GOP mayor, it’s part of the last major urban county in Texas — Tarrant County — that remains Republican.

What happens in Tarrant County is closely watched, both inside and outside the state. Once a Republican stronghold, Tarrant has seen its GOP margins decline in recent years — President Joe Biden’s narrow victory there in November marked the first time in over a half-century that a Democratic presidential nominee carried the county. If the county continues to move leftward, it stands to affect the balance of power in statewide elections.

“We've never had a race that was this partisan,” said Kenneth Barr, the former Democratic mayor of Fort Worth who led the city from 1996 to 2003. “In Texas, you're not allowed, for city governments, to hold partisan primaries. And this particular election has moved as far in the partisan direction as any we've ever had.”

The runoff features Republican Mattie Parker, a former chief of staff to Price, and Democrat Deborah Peoples, a retired AT&T executive, both of whom insist they are running nonpartisan campaigns.

To some extent, it’s true: Parker declined any GOP endorsements in her general election campaign and Peoples backed away from joint events with the national Democratic groups backing her campaign. Central to the contest are questions related to how Fort Worth will change as the city continues to grow — it’s currently the 12th largest city in the nation. The population influx has increased the need for more city infrastructure, and brought public safety issues into sharper focus for voters in light of a rise in violent crime in 2020.

Yet the county Republican Party continues to make calls and knock doors on Parker’s behalf. And Texas GOP Gov. Greg Abbott endorsed her on Wednesday, specifically underlining her support for law enforcement — and contrasting it with Peoples’ record.

For her part, Peoples, a former Tarrant County Democratic chair, has been endorsed by a slew of national Democratic groups and prominent state and national Democrats including former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke, former San Antonio Mayor Julián Castro, and Democratic National Committee chair Jaime Harrison.

The Collective PAC — which helps elect Black candidates to office — poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into the race in an effort to turn out the city’s Black voters in support of Peoples, who would be the city’s first Black mayor.

Republicans worry that Fort Worth’s rapid growth is not only altering the city’s traditional character and politics but moving it in the same direction as the state’s four largest cities — Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin. Those cities typically power Democratic candidates in statewide elections.

“There's a great concern here that if you end up with a Democrat mayor, it will change what people know Fort Worth to be,” said Rick Barnes, chair of the Tarrant County Republican Party.

 

I'd say something like "Republican racism aside at Fort Worth having a Black mayor" except that's the entire point of the GOP campaign here to help Parker. Fort Worth and Tarrant County is to Texas what Cincinnati and Hamilton County is to Ohio, the bellwether urban/exurban red/blue dividing line in the state. In Ohio and Texas, that line has favored the GOP for years now.

Unlike Ohio, in Texas that may actually change, and we'll get a good sense of that in today's runoff election.

(Un)Vaccination Nation, Con't

As Kentucky becomes the latest state to offer lottery incentives for getting vaccinated against COVID-19, getting the rest of the country vaccinated is becoming more difficult each day. Getting to 50% was easy. Getting past that is going to be grueling challenge, and we may not even get to 70% before the end of the year.

 

The partisan divide in Covid-19 vaccinations is becoming starker as the nation inches toward President Joe Biden’s goal of providing at least one shot to 70 percent of adults by July 4, complicating efforts to reach the unvaccinated in areas still vulnerable to virus outbreaks.

All but one of the 39 congressional districts where at least 60 percent of residents have received a coronavirus shot are represented by Democrats, according to a Harvard University analysis that presents one of the most detailed looks yet at the partisan split behind the nation’s diverging vaccination drive. By contrast, Republicans represent all but two of the 30 districts where fewer than one-third of residents have received a shot.

The data underscore how vaccinating the holdouts has become the latest political fault line in a nation that throughout the pandemic has been divided over mask-wearing, business restrictions and even the severity of a virus that’s killed nearly 600,000 Americans.

House members representing districts with low vaccination rates and public health experts, discussing their efforts to reach the unvaccinated, described what essentially has become two distinct conversations. One is aimed at chipping away at vaccine hesitancy among conservative white Republicans, while the other is centered around reducing socioeconomic barriers to vaccination for poorer populations and communities of color.

Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio), the leader of Congress’ GOP Doctors Caucus, said he has focused on understanding and responding to vaccine hesitancy in conservative communities across the country and his Cincinnati district, where 42 percent of residents have received at least a first shot — about 9 percentage points behind the national pace. He has sat in on focus groups with Donald Trump supporters and has cut a public service announcement with fellow Republican physicians in Congress.

“People say, ‘We don’t know what [the vaccine] will do long term,’” he told POLITICO, listing off concerns he’s heard from people resisting vaccination. “There are people in the lower age group who are saying: ‘I’m young and don’t have other comorbidities and I just haven’t felt like it.’ Some people are just afraid of needles. I can tell you that as a doctor — some people pass out when they see one. And I’ve heard everything all the way down to: ‘They’re putting a chip in me.’”

But Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said the struggle to ramp up vaccinations looks much different in districts with large low-income and minority populations, like his own in Tucson that until recently had one of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates. The same barriers that prevented his constituents from getting tested when the virus emerged — poor transportation, lack of child care, little familiarity with the health care system — hampered their ability to get vaccinated, despite federal efforts like mass vaccination sites the government prioritized to get as many shots in arms as quickly as possible. His district has made up ground over the past few weeks — 44 percent have now received at least one shot — after the county health department boosted outreach, particularly in Hispanic communities, Grijalva said.

“For people who have traditionally limited-to-no access to health care, the revelation that they have to go to the vaccine does not come easily,” he said.

In fact, the magnitude of the struggle to broadly vaccinate low-income, minority communities that have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic is obscured by the high levels of vaccine resistance among white conservatives. The stark racial disparities in vaccination would otherwise be far worse.

“Among the remaining unvaccinated people, white people are much more likely to say they are definitely not going to get the vaccine, whereas Black and Hispanic people are more likely to say they haven't gotten it yet but are hoping to get it soon,” said Liz Hamel, vice president and director of public opinion and survey research at the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Hamel said Black and Hispanic adults, according to surveys, are more likely to be concerned about taking time off from work, having to get a ride to get a shot or the cost of vaccination, even though the Covid vaccines are free. Lotteries and prize giveaways recently embraced by numerous governors to boost vaccination rates would do little to address these access barriers, said Brian Castrucci, president of the de Beaumont Foundation.

So yes, we know that the majority of Trump voters will never get the vaccine. But in red states run by Republicans, there's little effort to get the vaccine to Black and brown folks that want and need it, and these states certainly won't make any effort to help those who can't afford to miss work.

Yes, there are still systemic racism barriers to vaccines. It must be nice to not want it. That's privilege, full stop.

Trump Cards, Con't

Facebook has extended its ban for Donald Trump until January 2023 after deliberation by its oversight board. 

Facebook announced today that former president Donald Trump will be suspended for two years after his Facebook and Instagram accounts made posts that praised the violent insurrection at the US Capitol that sought to overturn his loss in the presidential election.

“Given the gravity of the circumstances that led to Mr. Trump’s suspension, we believe his actions constituted a severe violation of our rules which merit the highest penalty available under the new enforcement protocols,” the company said in the announcement.

Nick Clegg, Facebook's vice president of global affairs, said when the ban expires on Jan. 7, 2023, the company will “look to experts to assess whether the risk to public safety has receded,” which means that civil unrest or violence would be considered in allowing Trump back on Facebook.

The former president called the two-year ban an “insult” in a statement, adding, “They shouldn’t be allowed to get away with this censoring and silencing.”

Facebook did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

After two years, if Facebook thinks there's a "serious risk to public safety" by letting Trump back on, the restriction will be renewed for another period of time, after which it would again be reevaluated.

When — or if — Trump is allowed back on Facebook and Instagram, any infractions against the platform’s community standards would result in “a set of rapidly escalating sanctions” that could include the “permanent removal of his pages and accounts,” according to the post.

Facebook also admitted fault in how it handled Trump's posts in January 2020. It noted that the social network “did not have enforcement protocols in place adequate to respond to such unusual events,” but said that they were in place now.

On May 5, the Oversight Board, a Facebook-administered advisory committee, upheld the suspension but asked the company to revisit the penalty. The ruling included 19 recommendations, and Facebook said that it would fully implement 15 of them. These included a mandate to "act quickly on posts made by influential users that pose a high probability of imminent harm" and consider the context when making assessments about harm. 

 

Don't get me wrong, Facebook is still an evil social media cancer that should be broken up, but it did the right thing here. Of course, Trump will get his revenge in 2023 just in time for the 2024 campaign season to start up after the midterms, which is of course, the point.

 

And Trump will play the aggrieved victim for months, if not years, and he'll love every minute of it.

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, DeJoy

Liberals have (rightfully!) been grumbling about when Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will be replaced before he can do any more damage to the US Postal Service. New USPS board members have been named by Biden, and the process should be underway.

It turns out though what was actually underway is a federal investigation into DeJoy possibly misusing campaign finance funds.

The FBI is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy in connection with campaign fundraising activity involving his former business, according to people familiar with the matter and a spokesman for DeJoy.

FBI agents in recent weeks interviewed current and former employees of DeJoy and the business, asking questions about political contributions and company activities, these people said. Prosecutors also issued a subpoena to DeJoy himself for information, one of the people said.

That person, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing and politically sensitive investigation.

Mark Corallo, a DeJoy spokesman, confirmed the investigation in a statement but insisted DeJoy had not knowingly violated any laws.

“Mr. DeJoy has learned that the Department of Justice is investigating campaign contributions made by employees who worked for him when he was in the private sector,” Corallo said. “He has always been scrupulous in his adherence to the campaign contribution laws and has never knowingly violated them.”

The inquiries could signal impending legal peril for the controversial head of the nation’s mail service — though DeJoy has not been charged with any crimes and has previously asserted that he and his company followed the law in their campaign fundraising activity.

Spokesmen for the FBI, Justice Department and Postal Service declined to comment.

DeJoy — who was appointed to run the Postal Service by its board of governors last May — has been dogged by controversy for almost his entire time in office. Soon after starting in the job, he imposed cost-cutting moves that led to a reduction in overtime and limits on mail trips that mail carriers blamed for creating backlogs across the country.

Democrats accused the prominent GOP fundraiser, who personally gave more than $1.1 million to the joint fundraising vehicle of President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign and the Republican Party, of trying to undermine his own organization because of Trump’s distrust of mail-in voting. Two Democratic lawmakers, Reps. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) sent a letter to the FBI asking agents to investigate whether DeJoy or the Postal Service’s governing board “committed any crimes” in stalling mail.

In a congressional hearing last year, DeJoy disputed he was trying to affect the vote.

“I am not engaged in sabotaging the election,” DeJoy said at the time. “We will do everything in our power and structure to deliver the ballots on time.”

In early September, The Washington Post published an extensive examination of how employees at DeJoy’s former company, North Carolina-based New Breed Logistics, alleged they were pressured by DeJoy or his aides to attend political fundraisers or make contributions to Republican candidates, and then were paid back through bonuses.

Such reimbursements could run afoul of state or federal laws, which prohibit “straw-donor” schemes meant to allow wealthy donors to evade individual contribution limits and obscure the source of a candidate’s money. In April, though, Wake County, N.C., District Attorney Lorrin Freeman (D) said that she would not pursue an investigation of DeJoy and that the matter was better left to federal authorities. 

 

And that's exactly what the federal authorities are apparently doing.

Bye, Louie.

Last Call For Meathead Matt's #MeToo Moment, Con't

Florida Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz is already facing a federal investigation into sexual abuse of a minor, now the other shoe has fallen as Gaetz is now reportedly under investigation for obstruction of the investigation itself through witness tampering.

 

Federal prosecutors are examining whether Rep. Matt Gaetz obstructed justice during a phone call he had with a witness in the sex-crimes investigation of the Florida congressman, according to two sources familiar with the case.

The witness in question was one of a handful of women who entered Gaetz’s orbit via his one-time “wingman,” former Seminole County, Fla., tax collector Joel Greenberg, who pleaded guilty last month to a host of crimes, including sex-trafficking a 17-year-old in 2017.

The obstruction inquiry stems from a phone call the witness had with Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend. At some point during the conversation, the ex-girlfriend patched Gaetz into the call, sources said. While it’s unknown exactly what was said, the discussion on that call is central to whether prosecutors can charge Gaetz with obstructing justice, which makes it illegal to suggest that a witness in a criminal case lie or give misleading testimony.

The witness later spoke with prosecutors, the sources said.

Gaetz has denied all wrongdoing, including obstructing justice or having sex with the trafficked 17-year-old, who was a friend of both Gaetz’s ex-girlfriend and the witness prosecutors interviewed.

The obstruction probe is the latest development in the ongoing federal investigation into Gaetz, a top ally of former President Donald Trump who has come under increasing scrutiny due to his relationship with Greenberg — now a cooperating witness. The obstruction inquiry signals how wide a net federal prosecutors are casting to possibly ensnare the congressman.

A spokesman for Gaetz provided a written statement that stated the congressman — who is an attorney — broke no laws and characterized the federal government’s investigation as a politically motivated fishing expedition.

“Congressman Gaetz pursues justice, he doesn’t obstruct it,” the statement said. “The anonymous allegations have thus far amounted to lies, wrapped in leaks, rooted in an extortion plot by a former DOJ official. After two months, there is still not a single on-record accusation of misconduct, and now the 'story' is changing yet again.”

Gaetz’s statement also said his lawyers are simultaneously investigating an alleged shakedown scheme that was purportedly organized by a former federal prosecutor in reaction to the case.

Brian Tannebaum, a veteran federal defense attorney briefed by POLITICO on the investigation, said that obstruction of justice is “widely used by prosecutors in various forms” and can even ensnare witnesses who lie on the stand at trial. He said that, if authorities recorded the call involving Gaetz, prosecutors will listen for signs that he’s trying to get the woman to “get her story straight” by shading the truth.

“If there’s any indication he was trying to influence her testimony, that can be obstruction,” Tannebaum said. “If it’s determined that what he said obstructed the investigation — ‘did what he tell you have any influence on your testimony before the grand jury?’ — it can be real problem.”

 

Gaetz had better hope his lawyers are better at actual criminal law then they are press statements, because the guy is facing multiple witnesses cooperating with the feds, and odds are an indictment is coming soon. And this time, there's no Trump to save him.

Finally Some Good News On COVID

With the majority of US adults now being vaccinated and the weekly number of new COVID-19 cases having dropped into the thousands rather than the hundreds of thousands, America has finally turned the corner on the virus, thanks to the vaccine rollout by the Biden administration.

The U.S. has brought new coronavirus infections down to the lowest level since March 2020, when the pandemic began.

The big picture: Nearly every week for the past 56 weeks, Axios has tracked the change — more often than not, the increase — in new COVID-19 infections. Those case counts are now so low, the virus is so well contained, that this will be our final weekly map.

By the numbers: The U.S. averaged roughly 16,500 new cases per day over the past week, a 30% improvement over the week before. New cases declined in 43 states and held steady in the other seven. The official case counts haven’t been this low since Americans went into lockdown in March last year — when the pandemic was still new, no one knew how long this would go on, and inadequate testing meant that cases were undercounted.

Overall, roughly 33 million Americans — about 10% of the population — have tested positive for COVID-19. About 595,000 people have died from the virus in the U.S., making it deadlier for Americans than the past 80 years of wars and other armed military conflicts combined, including World War II.

The U.S. largely failed to contain the virus until the vaccines arrived. Cities and businesses began shutting down last March. From there, the virus rolled into a second wave last summer, when cases climbed to over 65,000 per day, on average, and hospitals in many parts of the country said they were overwhelmed. That failure was then eclipsed in the winter, when hundreds of thousands of people per day were contracting the virus and deaths climbed over 3,000 per day for about a month.

But now, the virus really is under control, nationwide and in every state, thanks almost entirely to the vaccines. Just over half of American adults are now fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

 

But that still leaves 100 million US adults unvaccinated and at risk, and the globe is suffering from another major outbreak of the disease as vaccine rollouts have not gone anywhere nearly as smoothly as in the US.

 

We've turned the corner, but the road out of the woods is still long and dangerous.

The Great Debate Debate, Con't

GOP chair Ronna Romney McDaniel is already laying down the rules of any 2024 presidential debates, instead of just working the refs like Republicans do, McDaniel is all but demanding they be replaced by Trump campaign officials.

Writing to the CPD “on behalf of the Republican Party and 74 million Americans who voted for” Trump, McDaniel warned the nonpartisan organization that the “RNC will have no choice but to advise its future nominees against participating in CPD-hosted debates” unless the commission enact certain changes “to restore the faith and legitimacy it has lost” through “repeated missteps” during last year’s race. Such missteps, according to McDaniel, include a “surprising and awkward” reflection problem that the CPD almost caused by erecting acrylic glass shields, an “amateur” and “unforced error” that “nearly derailed the debate itself” but that Trump, “thanks to his background in television,” was able to prevent.

McDaniel’s gripes, which Axios notes are largely an extension of perceived slights Trump voiced last year, included the CPD’s selected moderators, adoption of a virtual format for the would-be second debate in light of Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis (an event eventually scrapped due to Trump’s refusal to attend), and decision to mute candidates’ microphones during the final debate following an interruption-filled premiere. She specifically took issue with the selection of C-SPAN’s Steve Scully as a 2020 moderator because the veteran Washington journalist interned in Joe Biden's Senate office for about six weeks in 1978.

Before the first face-off last September, Tom Kludt reported for Vanity Fair on concerns about Trump’s willingness to cooperate with the CPD, how the commission was contending with the pandemic, and what one could expect from an incumbent who in 2016 baselessly accused his opponent of “trying to rig the debates.” The Trump campaign proposed mainstream news anchors as moderators, such as ABC News’s David Muir and CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell, as well as pro-Trump voices like Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo and conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt.

Now McDaniel appears to be working the refs ahead of 2024, putting pressure on the CPD to make concessions in the interest of her party—and perhaps Trump, himself, if he’s again the nominee. Her request for changes, which she has asked the CPD to respond to by July 31, include holding at least one debate before early voting begins, barring members from publicly commenting on candidates and punishing them if they do, and restricting who is eligible to be a moderator. McDaniel also suggested the CPD impose term limits on its ten-member Board of Directors, six of which “have gone on record making disparaging comments about President Trump while serving,” she wrote, claiming the forum’s “tolerance of this behavior undermines any legitimacy it claims as a nonpartisan organization,” despite the fact that half the Trump-critical members she listed are also Republicans. Yet the GOP represented on the CPD’s board—establishment types Trump would likely dub “RINOs”—no longer represents today’s GOP, as evidenced by McDaniel’s complaints and demands.

 

Of course there's a 100% chance the commission folds and gives in to the GOP's demands here, which will make it all the more fun when the GOP makes more demands in another few months or so. By the time the actually 2024 debates are supposed to begin, they'll either be moderated by Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon or Sebastian Gorka.

Last Call For A Meatier Strike On The Net

Another week, another major cyberattack on US infrastructure, this time with the operations of the world's largest meat processor, JBS, being the target, shutting down all of its US plants.

A cyberattack on JBS SA, the largest meat producer globally, forced the shutdown of all its U.S. beef plants, wiping out output from facilities that supply almost a quarter of American supplies.

All of the company’s fed-beef and regional beef plants were forced to shutter, and all other JBS meatpacking facilities in the country experienced some level of disruption to operations, according to an official with the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union.

JBS didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The union represents workers at the company’s plants in the U.S.

Slaughter operations across Australia were also down, according to a trade group, and one of Canada’s largest beef plants was idled. That comes after a weekend attack on the Brazilian company’s computer networks, according to JBS posts on Facebook, labor unions and employees.

It’s unclear exactly how many plants globally have been affected by the ransomware attack as Sao Paulo-based JBS has yet to release those details. The prospect of more extensive shutdowns worldwide is already upending agricultural markets and raising concerns about food security as hackers increasingly target critical infrastructure. Livestock futures slumped, while pork prices rose.

Hackers now have the commodities industry in their crosshairs with the JBS attack coming just three weeks after Colonial Pipeline Co., operator of the biggest U.S. gasoline pipeline, was targeted in a ransomware attack. It also happened as the global meat industry battles lingering Covid-19 absenteeism after recovering from outbreaks last year that saw plants shut and supplies disrupted.

The White House offered assistance to JBS after the company notified the Biden administration on Sunday of a cyberattack from a criminal organization likely based in Russia, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Tuesday.

There have been more than 40 publicly reported ransomware attacks against food companies since May 2020, said Allan Liska, senior security architect at cybersecurity analytics firm Recorded Future.

 

Expect meat prices to skyrocket as we head into summer grilling season, and that's the point: to hang higher prices at the pump, at the grocery store, and at restaurants around the neck of President Biden.

 

Ask cui bono, who benefits from the crime the most, and you'll find your perps. 

Hint, one is orange, and the other is very, very red.

Trump Cards, Con't

With his Second Civil War Tour 2021 kicking off this weekend in North Carolina, Trump is dropping his blog page.

Former President Donald Trump’s blog — a webpage where he shared statements after larger social media companies banned him from their platforms — has been permanently shut down, his spokesman said Wednesday.

The page, “From the Desk of Donald J. Trump,” has been scrubbed from Trump’s website after going live less than a month earlier.

It “will not be returning,” his senior aide Jason Miller told CNBC.

“It was just auxiliary to the broader efforts we have and are working on,” Miller said in email correspondence.

 

The blog wasn't sufficiently feeding the dark, cavernous maw of his eternal narcissistic hunger. His event tour will get him on the news as much or more so than President Biden though, because our media is broken, and everyone knows it. It's what Trump needs to survive, it's what the media outlets have been craving, and the whole thing will be an utter mess.

Trump wants to be shadow president, and everything is there for that to happen.