Orange Meltdown, Con't

Trump is at this point telling his people that he needs to announce his candidacy for President now so that he can avoid charges and then hold out on the legal front until winning a second term and appointing an Attorney General who will dismiss the investigation.

When Donald Trump formally declares his 2024 candidacy, he won’t just be running for another term in the White House. He’ll be running away from legal troubles, possible criminal charges, and even the specter of prison time.

In recent months, Trump has made clear to associates that the legal protections of occupying the Oval Office are front-of-mind for him, four people with knowledge of the situation tell Rolling Stone.

Trump has “spoken about how when you are the president of the United States, it is tough for politically motivated prosecutors to ‘get to you,” says one of the sources, who has discussed the issue with Trump this summer. “He says when [not if] he is president again, a new Republican administration will put a stop to the [Justice Department] investigation that he views as the Biden administration working to hit him with criminal charges — or even put him and his people in prison.”

Presidential immunity and picking his own attorney general aren’t Trump’s only reasons for running again. And as he works on another run, Trump is in a tug-of-war with leaders and operatives of his own party about when to announce, according to multiple people with knowledge of the matter.

The former president is motivated to announce early — even before Election Day 2022 — in the hopes of clearing the field of primary rivals. But GOP leaders, including some of Trump’s closest advisors, don’t want him to declare his intentions until after the midterm elections. The GOP wants to keep voters focused on President Joe Biden, rather than transforming the contest into a referendum on Trump. In recent months, Trump has reluctantly agreed to hold off, only to return shortly thereafter with threats to make an early announcement, either out of self-interest, spite, or some combination of the two.

But as Trump talks about running, the four sources say, he’s leaving confidants with the impression that, as his criminal exposure has increased, so has his focus on the legal protections of the executive branch.

It’s not just liberal wish-casters or Trump critics who are acknowledging the former president’s legal jeopardy. Trump’s teams of lawyers and former senior administration officials speak about it commonly. “I do think criminal prosecutions are possible…for Trump and [former White House chief of staff Mark] Meadows certainly,” Ty Cobb, a former top lawyer in Trump’s White House, bluntly told Rolling Stone late last month.

Trump himself seems to acknowledge potential problems. He “said something like, ‘[prosecutors] couldn’t get away with this while I was president,’” another one of the four sources recalls. “It was during a larger discussion about the investigations, other possible 2024 [primary] candidates, and what people were saying about the Jan. 6 hearings … He went on for a couple minutes about how ‘some very corrupt’ people want to ‘put me in jail.’”

The powers of the presidency would offer a welcome pause to the various civil suits and criminal investigations now hanging over Trump. It’s unclear whether the Justice Department will charge Trump in connection with fomenting the January 6 insurrection, but winning the White House would be extremely helpful to him. Department policy forbids the prosecution of a sitting president, effectively insulating Trump from any federal charges for another four years.

 

Trump is absolutely planning to do this as soon as he can line up the donors and the rest of the GOP to fall in line behind him.  It's a race now to see who acts first, Trump, or the people prosecuting him.

Hearing Aides For America, Con't

This week's primetime hearing has been moved to Thursday for the January 6th Committee, and WIN THE MORNING 2.0 has actually found that the hearings have changed some Trump voters' minds in swing states like Wisconsin.

The House select committee's Jan. 6 hearings are cementing the views of some voters who once backed former Predident Trump and now believe he should face criminal prosecution, according to our latest Axios Engagious/Schlesinger focus groups.

Driving the news: 10 of 14 Wisconsin swing voters last week said Trump should be prosecuted for trying to overturn the 2020 election and his role in the attack on the Capitol; 10 of 13 Arizona swing voters in panels last month said the same.

Why it matters: The findings follow bombshell testimony by former White House aides and lawyers. Committee members have previewed forthcoming revelations about potential witness tampering.The focus groups track with national polling showing more than half of Americans believe Trump should face criminal charges.

How it works: Engagious/Schlesinger conducted two online focus groups on Tuesday with 14 Wisconsinites who voted for Trump in 2016 then Joe Biden in 2020. They included 12 independents, one Democrat and one Republican.While a focus group is not a statistically significant sample like a poll, the responses show how some voters are thinking and talking about current events.

Details: Eight participants said they've watched at least part of the Jan. 6 hearings so far. Several said the hearings were helpful for "accountability" but that the committee already has "their proof" of what happened that day.Those who thought Trump should face criminal prosecution didn't relent even when the moderator pushed back and said doing so would be unprecedented, potentially putting future presidents at risk of being prosecuted for political reasons.

Voters were adamant that such a move would help deter similar attempts by anyone else in the future to "overthrow the government."

What they're saying: "He's our president and a president should have never done anything to provoke what happened. Many people were injured. Look at how many lives you put at stake because you were allowing this to happen. And he was happy about it," said Samantha O., 39.Andrew R., 59, said: "We have to show other people that this just can't be done in the future. [Prosecution] is going to be the price to pay if you try to do a coup again — and that's exactly what it was, a coup."
 

Others likened what happened that day to the politics of "third-world countries."
 

36-year-old Jaime M. said what happened on Jan. 6 "was too extreme, and something needs to be done about it to prevent it from ever happening again," otherwise "it just opens a floodgate for what anybody else is allowed to do."
 

Another voter said criminally prosecuting Trump would ensure that “the credibility of the justice system is upheld."
 

“Ironically, most of these Wisconsin swing voters think the president who led chants of ‘lock her up’ should himself be locked up for his actions on Jan. 6,” said Rich Thau, president of Engagious, who moderated the focus groups.

 

Again, if the point of the January 6th Hearings are to make the case for Trump's prosecution, a majority of Americans now agree, and that wasn't true before the hearings started. Minds have been changed.

 

It would be a shame to not do so, Merrick Garland.

Last Call For Another Day In Gumerica, Con't

The Texas state House committee looking into the Uvalde shooting two months ago is expected to release a blistering report on Monday finding that everything that could go wrong with the system that should have prevented the massacre did go wrong, from parental failures to school safety laxity to not just the ridiculous response from local Uvalde cops, but the failures of state and federal law enforcement as well.

The 77-page report, reviewed by The Texas Tribune, provides a damning portrayal of a family unable to recognize warning signs, a school district that had strayed from strict adherence to its safety plan and a police response that disregarded its own active-shooter training.

It explains how the gunman, who investigators believe had never fired a gun before May 24, was able to stockpile military-style rifles, accessories and ammunition without arousing suspicion from authorities, enter a supposedly secure school unimpeded and indiscriminately kill children and adults.

In total, 376 law enforcement officers — a force larger than the garrison that defended the Alamo — descended upon the school in a chaotic, uncoordinated scene that lasted for more than an hour. The group was devoid of clear leadership, basic communications and sufficient urgency to take down the gunman, the report says.

Notably, the investigation is the first so far to criticize the inaction of state and federal law enforcement, while other reports and public accounts by officials have placed the blame squarely on Uvalde school police Chief Pete Arredondo, for his role as incident commander, and other local police who were among the first to arrive.

The report also reveals for the first time that the overwhelming majority of responders were federal and state law enforcement: 149 were U.S. Border Patrol, and 91 were state police — whose responsibilities include responding to “mass attacks in public places.” There were 25 Uvalde police officers and 16 sheriff’s deputies. Arredondo’s school police force accounted for five of the officers on the scene. The rest of the force was made up of neighboring county law enforcement, U.S. Marshals, and federal Drug Enforcement Agency officers.

The investigators said that in the absence of a strong incident commander, another officer could have — and should have — stepped up to the task.

“These local officials were not the only ones expected to supply the leadership needed during this tragedy,” the report said. “Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies — many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police — quickly arrived on the scene.”

The other responders “could have helped to address the unfolding chaos.”

 

No blame for Republican state lawmakers who made it criminally east to get an AR-15 to kill 20 with, however. You won't find a word of that here. 

Just another day of finger-pointing in Gunmerica.

Being All Judge Mental, Con't

 A federal judge in Tennessee has blocked the Biden administration's Title IX transgender directives on bathrooms, sports teams, and more, saying that the federal government cannot punish states for enforcing state laws "protecting women".

A federal judge in Tennessee has temporarily blocked Biden administration directives allowing transgender workers and students to use bathrooms and locker rooms and join sports teams that correspond with their gender identity.

Judge Charles Atchley Jr. of the Eastern District of Tennessee ruled on Friday that the administration's directives would make it impossible for some states to enforce their own laws on transgender athletes' participation in girls' sports and access to bathrooms.

A coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general brought a lawsuit last year against the federal government, noting that they stood to lose significant federal funding as the Biden directives were in conflict with their own state laws.

Atchley agreed with that, writing in his order that the states "cannot continue regulating pursuant to their state laws while simultaneously complying with Defendants' guidance."

Oklahoma Attorney General John O'Connor, one of the plaintiffs, said in a written statement on Saturday that Atchley's order "is a major victory for women's sports and for the privacy and safety of girls and women in their school bathrooms and locker rooms."

The Justice Department, the Department of Education and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission are named as defendants in the lawsuit. None immediately replied to requests for comment on Saturday. The three had earlier requested that Atchley dismiss the states' lawsuit, a motion the judge denied in his Friday ruling.

The coalition of Republican states argued the Biden administration directives improperly expanded on a 2020 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that extended anti-discrimination protections to transgender workers.

The top court in Bostock v. Clayton County said employers cannot terminate workers because of their gender identity or sexuality. The justices expressly declined to decide if the ruling applied to sex-segregated bathrooms and locker rooms.

The Supreme Court in Bostock held that the bar on workplace sex discrimination in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 extended to bias based on sexual orientation and gender identity.

The Department of Education in its guidance issued last year concluded that because Title IX, which bars sex bias in federally funded educational programs, borrowed language from Title VII, Bostock also applied to schools.

The department said, for example, that preventing a transgender high school girl from using the girls' restroom or trying out for the girls' cheerleading team would violate Title IX.

Atchley on Friday agreed with the states, writing in his ruling that the Supreme Court in Bostock "explicitly refused to decide whether 'sex-segregated bathrooms, locker rooms, and dress codes' violate Title VII."

 

This fight is of course going back to the US Supreme Court, where I expect that not only will there be five vote for Judge Atchley's bigoted views, but that Bostock was wrongly decided and should be eliminated...along with the rest of the Civil Rights Act. 

 

Let me repeat that. In just a few weeks, doctors in dozens of states are now facing felony imprisonment for treating women with pregnancy issues. Look at how fast that fell apart after Roe's demise. They didn't stop with women, either. 

 

If you think they're going to magically stop at criminalizing the existence of trans folk, I guarantee you that it won't be too long before the entire concept of a "protected class" is struck down by the Roberts Court, and the Civil Rights Act along with it.

We're heading back to Jim Crow, folks, an era where your rights to work, go to school, buy a house, or even exist will depend solely on which state you live in. It won't take long to get there, either, a bifurcated America that cannot survive without falling into brutal, bloody violence.

Hell, on women's bodies, we're already there. Buckle up, because we're going straight into the crucible of history, and not all of us are going to see the other side.

Sunday Long Read: No Vacancy In Paradise

We often cite San Francisco or New York City as far as America's affordable housing crisis goes, but the worst by far is Hawaii and cities like Honolulu and Hilo, as our Sunday Long Read from Eric Stinton at Dwell details.

If you’re thinking about moving to Hawaii, you’re not alone. But transplants shouldn’t necessarily expect a warm welcome. Long simmering tensions about who gets to live on the islands have flared over the past couple of years into a full-blown crisis.

When the pandemic began in 2020, Hawaii’s economy reeled. Tourism crashed, and joblessness skyrocketed. Soon after, remote work combined with the state’s low infection rate beckoned people with means from across the country to move to the islands, while sprawling estates owned by the likes of Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Mark Zuckerberg continued to metastasize. From the end of 2019 to the start of 2022, the median cost of a single-family home on O‘ahu, where most of the population lives, ballooned from $789,000 to $1.15 million. A quarter of all homes sold in 2021 were purchased by out-of-state buyers, who routinely bid well above the listing price, often without seeing the property in person. Homes are on the market for an average of just 10 days.

But the local housing crisis is nothing new; in many ways, the pandemic merely accelerated trends that started when Hawaii became a state in 1959. The cost of real estate has steadily increased since then, fueled by tropical allure and increased accessibility, with only brief and mild downturns. During the Great Recession, Hawaii’s prices dropped less and rebounded faster than those in most of the rest of the country, the whole thing just a hiccup in the state’s ever-hot housing market.

Behind the economic statistics are human tolls. Hawaii continues to have one of the highest per capita rates of homelessness in America while also experiencing five consecutive years of population decline. There’s a growing class of people who have called Hawaii home for generations but can no longer live there. Those who can afford to leave usually do; those who can’t end up on the streets.

These trends disproportionately impact Kānaka Maoli, or Native Hawaiians. (One may be a Californian for living in California, but living in Hawaii makes someone a Hawaii resident, not a Hawaiian.) Native Hawaiians account for about 10 percent of the state’s total population but more than a third of the people without permanent housing. Now, roughly three times as many Hawaiians live outside their ancestral homeland than in it, a cruel legacy of colonialism.

The roots of the crisis are familiar to other parts of the country—not enough supply, too much demand—but on these islands, what are elsewhere surging issues have been whipped up into an economic storm.

As a hilly, isolated archipelago with less total land than Maryland, Hawaii is tightly limited by geography. Try to build out and you’ll run into eroding shorelines or steep mountainsides; try to build up and you’ll hit ordinances limiting building height and intended to protect scenic views. And then there’s the cost: Since most building materials are imported, expenses are not only higher than elsewhere in the country but also especially sensitive to supply-chain conditions, international tariffs, and market variables like rising inflation and oil prices. Myriad state and county land-use restrictions complicate projects, and since Hawaii uses a general excise tax instead of a sales tax, transactions at every stage of development add costs.

"We’re the state with the most regulations and hoops that you have to jump through in order to provide housing," says Cassandra Abdul, executive director of the Maui-based housing nonprofit Nā Hale O Maui. "Navigating them is time-consuming, and time truly is money."

These days, new developments are built at one-tenth the rate of the peak of the post-statehood boom periods in the 1960s and ’70s, the last time housing was broadly affordable.

And while supply is almost nonexistent, demand is seemingly infinite. Some of it is driven by locals trying to hold on, but Hawaii real estate is also popular purely for investment. The state has the lowest property taxes in the nation, and real estate appreciation dependably beats inflation. Investors can capitalize on some of the highest rents in the country or simply hold their property and flip it later for almost guaranteed profits. It’s a perfect place to park money. Some estimates show that more than 76,000 units are unoccupied and that 30,000 to 60,000 units have been converted to short-term rentals.

"When you stack all these things together, you get a climate where there’s not going to be much housing at a price point that local people can afford," says Sterling Higa, executive director of the nonprofit Housing Hawaii’s Future.

 

In other words, Hawaii represents an entire state deep in the housing bubble. The human toll continues to get worse, and this time, when the housing bubble pops, it's going to burn this place down. Keep an eye on this bird of paradise, it's the canary in the coal mine. 

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Women's Medicine, Con't

One of the immediate effects of the death of Roe v. Wade and Casey v. Planned Parenthood, plus the onslaught of red state abortion bans is that modern OB/GYN medical care for women in those states -- here in Kentucky included -- has now effectively collapsed for millions of women in just a few weeks.

 

A sexual assault survivor chooses sterilization so that if she is ever attacked again, she won’t be forced to give birth to a rapist’s baby. An obstetrician delays inducing a miscarriage until a woman with severe pregnancy complications seems “sick enough.” A lupus patient must stop taking medication that controls her illness because it can also cause miscarriages.

Abortion restrictions in a number of states and the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade are having profound repercussions in reproductive medicine as well as in other areas of medical care.

“For physicians and patients alike, this is a frightening and fraught time, with new, unprecedented concerns about data privacy, access to contraception, and even when to begin lifesaving care,’’ said Dr. Jack Resneck, president of the American Medical Association.

Even in medical emergencies, doctors are sometimes declining immediate treatment. In the past week, an Ohio abortion clinic received calls from two women with ectopic pregnancies — when an embryo grows outside the uterus and can’t be saved — who said their doctors wouldn’t treat them. Ectopic pregnancies often become life-threatening emergencies and abortion clinics aren’t set up to treat them.

It's just one example of "the horrible downstream effects of criminalizing abortion care,'' said Dr. Catherine Romanos, who works at the Dayton clinic.

MEDICAL DILEMMAS

Dr. Jessian Munoz, an OB-GYN in San Antonio, Texas, who treats high-risk pregnancies, said medical decisions used to be clear cut.

“It was like, the mom’s life is in danger, we must evacuate the uterus by whatever means that may be,” he said. "Whether it’s surgical or medical — that’s the treatment.’’

Now, he said, doctors whose patients develop pregnancy complications are struggling to determine whether a woman is “sick enough" to justify an abortion.

With the fall of Roe v. Wade, “the art of medicine is lost and actually has been replaced by fear,’’ Munoz said.

Munoz said he faced an awful predicament with a recent patient who had started to miscarry and developed a dangerous womb infection. The fetus still had signs of a heartbeat, so an immediate abortion — the usual standard of care — would have been illegal under Texas law.

“We physically watched her get sicker and sicker and sicker” until the fetal heartbeat stopped the next day, “and then we could intervene,’’ he said. The patient developed complications, required surgery, lost multiple liters of blood and had to be put on a breathing machine “all because we were essentially 24 hours behind.’’

In a study published this month in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, doctors at two Texas hospitals cited the cases of 28 women less than 23 weeks pregnant who were treated for dangerous pregnancies. The doctors noted that all of the women had recommended abortions delayed by nine days because fetal heart activity was detected. Of those, nearly 60% developed severe complications — nearly double the number of complications experienced by patients in other states who had immediate therapeutic abortions. Of eight live births among the Texas cases, seven died within hours. The eighth, born at 24 weeks, had severe complications including brain bleeding, a heart defect, lung disease and intestinal and liver problems.

Before it overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court never allowed states to ban abortion before the point when a fetus can survive outside the womb — roughly 24 weeks.

Chicago diversity executive Sheena Gray survived a harrowing pregnancy-ending experience last year, when doctors discovered she had an embryo in a fallopian tube and an eight-week fetus in her womb. They removed the embryo along with the affected fallopian tube, and told her they needed to abort the other fetus to save her life.

The decision to proceed with treatment was hers — abortion is still legal in Illinois. In fact, the state provides greater access to abortion than most others, and has been flooded with patients seeking abortions following the recent Supreme Court decision.

Gray said she’s heard about similar care being denied or delayed in other states, and fears the high court ruling will force other patients to face the same fate.

“No one should make these choices for a woman, period,” she said.

 

But the Roberts Court and GOP state legislatures have already made that choice for millions.  It will absolutely lead to a skyrocketing of maternal mortality, already a crisis in the US for Black and Latino women, is expected to rise exponentially.

For Black women in the US, the number is 55 per 100,000, a staggering number that matches countries like Maldives or Cape Verde. You're literally more likely to survive childbirth in Mongolia than being a Black woman in this country.

But almost overnight, that has become far, far worse. How bad will these numbers get, with women dying from ectopic pregnancies and more? Who knows?

What I do know is Republicans could not care less.

Last Call For The Coup-Coup Birds Take Flight, Con't

Yes, January 6th was a white supremacist domestic terrorism attack, in the sense that terrorism is defined by using violence or the threat of violence to change government policy. What Donald Trump did after his loss to Joe Biden was to organize a terrorist attack on the country in order to change the outcome of the election.

Around 5 in the afternoon on Christmas Day in 2020, as many Americans were celebrating with family, President Donald J. Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Fla., on the phone with a little-known conservative lawyer who was encouraging his attempts to overturn the election, according to a memo the lawyer later wrote documenting the call.

The lawyer, William J. Olson, was promoting several extreme ideas to the president that Mr. Olson later conceded could be regarded as tantamount to declaring “martial law” and could even invite comparisons with Watergate. They included tampering with the Justice Department and firing the acting attorney general, according to the Dec. 28 memo by Mr. Olson, titled “Preserving Constitutional Order,” describing their discussions.

“Our little band of lawyers is working on a memorandum that explains exactly what you can do,” Mr. Olson wrote in his memo, obtained by The New York Times, which he marked “privileged and confidential” and sent to the president. “The media will call this martial law,” he wrote, adding that “that is ‘fake news.’”

The document highlights the previously unreported role of Mr. Olson in advising Mr. Trump as the president was increasingly turning to extreme, far-right figures outside the White House to pursue options that many of his official advisers had told him were impossible or unlawful, in an effort to cling to power.

The involvement of a person like Mr. Olson, who now represents the conspiracy theorist and MyPillow chief executive Mike Lindell, underscores how the system that would normally insulate a president from rogue actors operating outside of official channels had broken down within weeks after the 2020 election.

That left Mr. Trump in direct contact with people who promoted conspiracy theories or questionable legal ideas, telling him not only what he wanted to hear, but also that they — not the public servants advising him — were the only ones he could trust.

“In our long conversation earlier this week, I could hear the shameful and dismissive attitude of the lawyer from White House Counsel’s Office toward you personally — but more importantly toward the Office of the President of the United States itself,” Mr. Olson wrote to Mr. Trump. “This is unacceptable.

The memo was written 10 days after one of the most dramatic meetings ever held in the Trump White House, during which three of the president’s White House advisers vied — at one point almost physically — with outside actors to influence Mr. Trump. In that meeting, the lawyer Sidney Powell and Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser, pushed for Mr. Trump to seize voting machines and appoint Ms. Powell special counsel to investigate wild and groundless claims of voter fraud, even as White House lawyers fought back.

But the memo suggests that, even after his aides had won that skirmish in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump continued to seek extreme legal advice that ran counter to the recommendations of the Justice Department and the counsel’s office.

And, the memo suggests, Mr. Trump was acting on the outside advice. At one point, the memo refers to the president urging Mr. Olson to contact the acting attorney general directly about having the Justice Department lend its credibility to Mr. Trump’s legal efforts to invalidate the election results.

A person familiar with the work of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said the committee was aware that Mr. Olson was in contact with Mr. Trump and that it was exploring his role in pushing forward plans to overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Olson, who practices law in Washington, D.C., and Virginia, did not respond to requests for comment.

A spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment about the former president’s relationship with Mr. Olson.

According to his memo, Mr. Olson was discussing with Mr. Trump the notion that the Justice Department would intercede directly with the Supreme Court to reverse his electoral defeat.

The court had declined to hear a case that allies of Mr. Trump in Texas had brought challenging the election results in Pennsylvania, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.

Mr. Olson told Mr. Trump that he believed the Justice Department “will do nothing except continue to run out the clock.”

“While time to act was short when we spoke on Christmas Day, time is about to run out,” he wrote.

It was unclear which White House lawyer Mr. Olson referred to in his memo. At the time, the White House counsel, Pat A. Cipollone; Patrick Philbin, his deputy; and another lawyer who did not work for the counsel’s office, Eric Herschmann, were working in tandem to push back on some of the more outlandish ideas being recommended. Mr. Cipollone and Mr. Herschmann had taken lead roles during the Dec. 18 White House meeting in countering Ms. Powell and Mr. Flynn.

“The feeling I had was that not just was he not offering you any options, but that he was there to make certain you did not consider any,” Mr. Olson wrote, referring to the unnamed White House lawyer. “But you do have options.”

 

The electoral coup was the plan they decided on for January 6th, and that's because the other options failed: the planned Saturday Night Massacre at Main Justice, the SCOTUS takeover of the elections, the planned seizing of voting machines by Homeland Security, and apparently, now, a plan declaring martial law to lock the country down.

Folks, these guys had multiple plans to steal the damn election and keep Trump in power. It wasn't just January 6th. There's a lot Trump has to answer for.

 

 

Saudi Arabia, Coca-Cola

The Saudis are playing real hardball these days, because they know they have President Biden and the West over a barrel (of oil).

 

Saudi Arabia's de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, hit back at Joe Biden after the US President confronted him about the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi during a meeting between the two leaders on Friday. 

In the meeting, Bin Salman, also known as MBS, denied responsibility for the killing of Khashoggi at the kingdom's Istanbul consulate. Biden said he indicated that he disagreed with MBS, based on US intelligence assessments, according to the source. 

In response to Biden bringing up Khashoggi, MBS cited the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison by US military personnel and the May killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in the occupied West Bank as incidents that reflected poorly on the US, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, the Saudi foreign minister, told reporters on Saturday. 

"The Crown Prince responded to President Biden's remarks on ... Khashoggi after quite clearly -- that this crime, while very unfortunate and abhorrent, is something that the kingdom took very seriously (and) acted upon in a way commiserate with its position as a responsible country," bin Farhan said. "These are issues, mistakes that happen in any country, including the US. The Crown Prince pointed out that the US has made its own mistakes and has taken the necessary action to hold those responsible accountable and address these mistakes just as the kingdom has." 

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir echoed the sentiment in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer shortly after the end of the meeting, which Jubeir was part of. 

"We investigated, punished and ensure that this doesn't happen again," Jubeir said when asked about the Khashoggi murder. "This is what countries do. This is what the US did when the mistake of Abu Ghraib was committed."

 

On top of that,  the Saudis are publicly talking about joining China and Russia and the other BRICS nations...according to Russia and China, anyway...

The president of the BRICS International Forum expects Turkey, Egypt and Saudi Arabia to join the group "very soon". In an interview with Russia's Izvestia, Purnima Anand said that China, Russia and India discussed this issue during the 14th BRICS Summit, which was held online last month.

"All these countries have shown an interest in joining and are preparing to apply for membership. I think this is a good step, because expansion is always perceived positively; this will clearly increase the influence of BRICS in the world," explained Anand. "I hope that the accession of countries to BRICS will happen very quickly, because now all representatives of the core of the association are interested in expanding the organisation, so it will be very soon."

She stressed that the accession of Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Turkey may not take place at the same time.

Earlier, Li Kexin, Director-General of the Department of International Economic Affairs of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said that several countries were "knocking on the doors" of the organisation, including Indonesia, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Argentina.

The BRICS forum is a political organisation that began negotiations for its formation in 2006 and held its first summit in 2009. Its members were the countries with emerging economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, and China, operating under the name BRIC, before South Africa joined the organisation in 2010, making it BRICS.

The organisation's countries are characterised as being among the industrialised developing countries with large and emerging economies. Half of the world's population lives in these five countries, and their combined gross domestic product is equivalent to that of the US ($13.6 trillion). Their total foreign exchange reserves are $4 trillion.

 

If the Saudis, Egypt, and Turkey actually did this, it would mean massive chaos in the oil markets and in NATO itself, which is what Russia and China want. But right now, having them pretend that this is possible serves all of those country's individual interests, especially Saudi Arabia and Turkey.

Realpolitik is a bitch at times.

Retribution Execution, Con't

The January 6th hearings with committee co-chair Republican Rep. Liz Cheney all over the news and making the case for Trump's prosecution is landing like a T-Rex turd in the cotillion punchbowl back in Cheney's home state of Wyoming, and with less than a month to go to the state's House GOP primary, Cheney is looking at getting crucified by 20+ points.

Former President Donald Trump’s pick to unseat Rep. Liz Cheney in the race for Wyoming’s lone House seat holds a commanding 22-point lead with a month until the primary, a new Casper Star-Tribune poll shows.

Natural resources attorney Harriet Hageman leads Cheney 52% to 30%, the poll shows. No other challenger received more than 5% support. Only 11% of voters were undecided.

The poll, conducted for the Star-Tribune by Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy, surveyed 1,100 registered Wyoming voters likely to participate in the primary, resulting in a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent, according to Brad Coker, Mason-Dixon managing director.

While the Cheney-Hageman race is one of the nation’s most closely watched, this is the first independent, public in-state poll to be conducted. It was performed from July 7 to July 11 – shortly after early voting began here.

"The big story is Liz Cheney is going to get beat," said Coker. "That's a foregone conclusion."

Cheney’s vote to impeach the former president after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and her relentless criticism of Trump as a threat to democracy and the rule of law have spurred the toughest reelection fight of her career. In September, Trump selected Hageman from several challengers as his pick to take on Cheney, one of his biggest political enemies.

In past elections, Cheney has handily beat her primary opponent. And given that Wyoming is one of the nation’s most conservative states, the Republican House nominee often coasts to victory in the general election. But the Wyoming Republican Party has turned on Cheney, censuring her soon after Trump’s impeachment and voting last fall to no longer recognize her as a member of the GOP.

Among those polled, only 27% approved of Cheney’s job performance. Two-thirds disapproved, with 7% saying they were not sure. Men were especially critical of Cheney’s performance: Only one in five approved of the job she’s doing.

Those results track with interviews conducted by the Star-Tribune this summer. The congresswoman’s critics say she's too distracted by her service on the House Jan. 6 committee and her battles with Trump to properly serve the state, and the poll found 54% of voters were less likely to support her because she’s part of the panel investigating the attack on the Capitol.

Cheney critics complain that she rarely visits, with many of them calling her a "RINO" (Republican in name only) as they air their grievances. Voters also called her a "carpetbagger," an insult she's been hit with since she moved to the state in 2012, a year before her unsuccessful bid for U.S. Senate.

"Liz Cheney betrayed President Trump," said Mark Hladik, who's lived in Wyoming for 42 years. "Ninety-nine point nine percent pure RINO."

 

Cheney's doing the right thing, and it's going to cost her a House seat and her political career. But don't feel too bad, she'll end up in a law firm or lobbyist shop soon enough.

 

A lobbying shop working against Democrats.

 

Last Call For The Big Lie, Con't

Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is letting multiple state Republicans know they could face indictments soon in the state's case against Donald Trump's 2020 electoral fraud.

In the latest sign that she is moving rapidly in her investigation into Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has sent so-called “target” letters to prominent Georgia Republicans informing them they could be indicted for their role in a scheme to appoint alternate electors pledged to the former president despite Joe Biden’s victory in the state, according to legal sources familiar with the matter.

The move by Willis, a Democrat, threatens to have major political implications in a crucial battleground state with high-profile races for governor and the U.S. Senate this fall. Among the recipients of the target letters, the sources said, are GOP state Sen. Burt Jones, Gov. Brian Kemp’s running mate for lieutenant governor, David Shafer, the chairman of the Georgia Republican Party, and state Sen. Brandon Beach.

Jones and Shafer were among those who participate in a closed-door meeting at the state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, in which 16 Georgia Republicans selected themselves as the electors for the state, although they had no legal basis for doing so. Shafer, according to a source who was present, presided over the meeting, conducting it as though it was an official proceeding, in which those present voted themselves as the bona fide electors in Georgia — and then signed their names to a declaration to that effect that was sent to the National Archives.

The offices or spokespersons for Jones, Shafer and Beach did not respond to requests for comment. Willis, in an interview, declined any comment on the target letters. But she confirmed she is considering another potentially controversial move: requesting that Trump himself testify under oath to the special grand jury that is investigating his conduct.

“Yes,” said Willis when asked if there was any chance Trump will be called to testify. “I think it's something that we’re still weighing and evaluating.” She also said she spoke to Dwight Thomas, a veteran local defense lawyer who has been retained to represent Trump, as recently as Thursday. She declined to say what they talked about. Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

 

Willis has previously said that any legal proceedings will be paused during the state's early voting period, but there's months to go before that happens, and she's making every second count.

 

Who's willing to go to prison for Donald Trump?

 

We're about to find out.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Missouri, Con't

Women who are pregnant and married in Missouri cannot get a divorce until the "status of the unborn child is determined". In a post-Roe America, that means women in the state can't get an abortion, either, meaning women in bad relationships are stuck until forced birth and then the custody battle begins.

December 2020 was a turbulent month for Danielle Drake, 32, of Lake of the Ozarks. On December 1, her husband said he was going out with a friend, but he lied. He was actually having an affair. She filed for a divorce less than a week later, on December 7.

Then, not long before Christmas, Drake found out she was pregnant.

Drake knew immediately she had to file a second, amended petition for divorce. She also knew the impact her pregnancy would have on the divorce proceedings. Drake, who earned a law degree from University of Missouri Kansas City has been practicing family law for two years, was well aware that in Missouri, women who are pregnant can't get a divorce.

Missouri law states that a petition for divorce must provide eight pieces of information, things like the residence of each party, the date of separation, and, notably, “whether the wife is pregnant.” If the answer is yes, Drake says, "What that practically does is put your case on hold."

There is a lot of disagreement online about whether pregnant Missouri women can get divorced. The RFT spoke to multiple lawyers who handle divorce proceedings and they all agreed that in Missouri a divorce can't be finalized if either the petitioner (the person who files for divorce) or the respondent (the other party in the divorce) is pregnant.

Dan Mizell, an attorney in Lebanon, Missouri, who has been practicing law since 1997, says that certain aspects of the divorce can proceed, but everything having to do with custody of the unborn child is frozen in place until birth or a pregnancy-ending event like a miscarriage. The court can issue temporary orders related to things like dividing up property, Mizell says. "But they can't do a final decree of divorce until she delivers the baby."

Drake says that this is true even in the case of a divorce that is completely uncontested. "If the couple is not fighting, and they're just saying, ‘Nope, she's gonna take the baby and 100 percent of the things’ they still cannot go before a judge and have that finalized until after there's a baby born," she says.

"It is a shock to some people," Mizell adds. "Sometimes it comes up at the very last minute, because the wife is usually asked to say under oath whether she is pregnant or not, which can be offensive at times, and also a bit ridiculous at others."

Drake also points out what seems to be a double standard in regards to how the state treats an unborn child in a divorce proceeding compared to in abortion law. 

She says that the whole basis for Missouri putting the pause on a divorce proceeding until a child is born is because Missouri divorce law "does not see fetuses as humans."

"You can't have a court order that dictates visitation and child support for a child that doesn't exist," she says. "I have no mechanism as a lawyer to get that support going. There's nothing there because that's not a real person."

This aspect of Missouri divorce law has gotten more attention in the weeks since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, triggering a ban on abortion in Missouri except in cases of medical emergency. Though what is meant by medical emergency is still ambiguous.

So yeah, it's more property law than anything else. The husband effectively has the right to the fetus at this point in the state.

It gets worse.

"This all goes back to the fact that we don't trust women," says Jess Piper, an outspoken advocate for reproductive rights who is running as a Democrat to be the state representative for the 1st District, in the rural northwest corner of the state. "I've heard actual reports of women who have been in domestic violence situations where their husbands withheld birth control from them, purposely creating a pregnancy so that she can't leave."

Piper adds that for some women, the new abortion law in Missouri will be just another obstacle in what can already be a fraught process of leaving a marriage.

Drake and Mizell both say the law is in need of updating.

Mizell says that even if the woman is pregnant by a man other than her husband, the divorce is still on hold.

 

This is all about control, legal control of a woman's body, rights, and future. We'll be fighting this war for decades, along with basically ever other civil rights issue, again and again and again.

The Manchin On The Hill, Con't

President Joe Manchin won't support any new climate initiative spending, nor will he allow the wealthy to be taxed, so basically screw your planet, West Virginia control's the world's largest economy and the world on environmental issues, and the other 8 billion people on the planet have to deal with it.

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) told Democratic leaders Thursday he would not support an economic package that contains new spending on climate change or new tax increases targeting wealthy individuals and corporations, marking a massive setback for party lawmakers who had hoped to advance a central element of their agenda before the midterm elections this fall.

The major shift in negotiations — confirmed by two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe the talks — threatened to upend the delicate process to adopt the party’s signature economic package seven months after Manchin scuttled the original, roughly $2 trillion Build Back Better Act, which President Biden had endorsed.

But Manchin told Democratic leaders he is open to provisions that aim to lower prescription drug costs for seniors, the two people said. And the West Virginia moderate expressed support with Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), the party’s chief negotiator, for extending subsidies that could help keep health insurance costs down for millions of Americans, one of the sources said.

“Political headlines are of no value to the millions of Americans struggling to afford groceries and gas as inflation soars to 9.1 percent,” said Sam Runyon, a spokeswoman for Manchin. “Senator Manchin believes it’s time for leaders to put political agendas aside, reevaluate and adjust to the economic realities the country faces to avoid taking steps that add fuel to the inflation fire.”

A spokesman for Schumer declined to comment.

The stunning setback late Thursday came despite weeks of seemingly promising negotiations between Schumer and Manchin in pursuit of a broader deal that would have delivered on the promises that secured Democrats control of both chambers of Congress and the White House in 2020. Without Manchin, the party cannot proceed in the narrowly divided Senate, since Democrats need all 50 votes in the caucus, plus Vice President Harris’s tiebreaking vote, to use the special process known as budget reconciliation to overcome Republicans’ expected filibuster.

 

So maybe, maybe we'll get prescription drug price relief, but probably we'll get nothing. As I said a few days ago, Manchin was waiting for the opportunity to kill Build Back Better once and for all, and he's essentially signed the death certificate himself.

The only way around Manchin is to pick up at least two senate seats in November, one for Manchin and one for Sinema, rendering the both of them powerless.

We've got a lot of work to do and only a few months to get it done. If we don't hold the line here, the game, and the planet, are both over.

Last Call For Hearing Aides For America, Con't

The Bigger Than Watergate crimes keep being bigger than Watergate.

A government watchdog accused the U.S. Secret Service of erasing texts from Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, after his office requested them as part of an inquiry into the U.S. Capitol attack, according to a letter sent to lawmakers this week.

Joseph V. Cuffari, head of the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General, wrote to the leaders of the House and Senate Homeland Security committees indicating that the text messages have vanished and that efforts to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021, attack were being hindered.

“The Department notified us that many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021 were erased as part of a device-replacement program,” he wrote in a letter dated Wednesday and obtained by The Washington Post. The letter was earlier reported on by CNN.

Cuffari emphasized that the erasures came “after” the Office of Inspector General requested copies of the text messages for its own investigation, and signaled that they were part of a pattern of DHS resistance to his inquiries. Staff members are required by law to surrender records so that he can audit the sprawling national security agency, but he said they have “repeatedly” refused to provide them until an attorney reviews them.

“This review led to weeks-long delays in OIG obtaining records and created confusion over whether all records had been produced,” he wrote, and offered to brief the House and Senate committees on the “access issues.”

The Secret Service’s text messages could provide insight into the agency’s actions on the day of the insurrection and possibly those of former president Donald Trump. A former White House official last month told the House select committee investigating the assault on the Capitol that Trump knew his supporters were armed, wanted to lead the mob to the Capitol and physically assailed the senior Secret Service agent who told him he could not.

 

So, three things:

The January 6th Committee has these texts. The OIG for Homeland Security mentions that all the cover-up did was delay his office getting the texts. Whatever incriminating evidence those texts reveal, the January 6th Committee knows about. My guess is that they involve former VP Mike Pence's detail and the plans that day to remove him from the Capitol to "protect" him, meaning he couldn't certify the electoral ballots, throwing the country into chaos.

Number two, if you wanted to know why Trump-appointed Secret Service director James Murray announced his retirement last week, it's because he knew this was coming. There's no way Murray would have survived this story, Biden would have fired him over the weekend. He was told this was coming and given a choice to retire or get canned.

Three, the Service who participated in this coup need to be expelled from the agency. Murray fell on his sword, but the USSS is clearly still rife with Trumpists. All of them need to go, and then face charges of obstructing justice in the investigation.

This all make's next week's prime time hearing more important. I'm going to bet we hear testimony.involving the plot to take Pence.

We'll see.

The Road To Gilead Goes Through Indiana, Too

Less than 24 hours after a Columbus, Ohio man was arrested for the rape of a ten-year-old girl who had to go to Indiana to get an abortion, a story the right said was a hoax up until yesterday's arrest, mind you, the same right-wing noise machine is now going after the Indiana doctor who performed the abortion, with the intent of prosecution or vigilante, George Tiller-style execution.

Indiana’s Republican attorney general said on Wednesday that his office planned to investigate the Indiana doctor who helped a 10-year-old rape victim who crossed state lines to have an abortion.

Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indianapolis, has told multiple outlets that she provided care to the 10-year-old after a child abuse doctor in Ohio contacted her. The child was six weeks and three days into the pregnancy, Bernard said. After the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last month, a wave of state-level abortion restrictions took effect, including in Ohio, a state that bans abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for rape or incest.

“We’re gathering the evidence as we speak, and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure if she failed to report. And in Indiana it’s a crime … to intentionally not report,” state Attorney General Todd Rokita said on Fox News on Wednesday night. “This is a child, and there’s a strong public interest in understanding if someone under the age of 16 or under the age of 18 or really any woman is having abortion in our state. And then if a child is being sexually abused, of course parents need to know. Authorities need to know. Public policy experts need to know.”

Abortion in Indiana is banned after 22 weeks of pregnancy, with some exceptions for medical emergencies. There are strict reporting requirements in both Ohio and Indiana for abortions and rape allegations.

 

So, problem number one, Ohio has banned all abortions after six weeks. Indiana hasn't had time to institute a similar law yet, but they will.

Two, Indiana AG Todd Rokita is literally saying that the state has a public interest in every abortion performed in the state. 

Three, Rokita is now going to find a way to put Dr. Barnard in jail.

Four, FOX News all but called on people to take Dr. Bernard out if she's not jailed.

This is how Dr. George Tiller was killed in Kansas more than a decade ago, gunned down in his church congregation while attending services, after Bill O'Reilly went after him for performing abortions. Naming and shaming abortion providing doctors in 2022 is a call for assassination. We know because it's happened before.

It's happening now.

The Kids Are Not Alright, Con't

 Voters under 30 want politicians over 70 gone, all of them, in both parties.

Alexandra Chadwick went to the polls in 2020 with the singular goal of ousting Donald J. Trump. A 22-year-old first time voter, she saw Joseph R. Biden Jr. as more of a safeguard than an inspiring political figure, someone who could stave off threats to abortion access, gun control and climate policy.

Two years later, as the Supreme Court has eroded federal protections on all three, Ms. Chadwick now sees President Biden and other Democratic leaders as lacking both the imagination and willpower to fight back. She points to a generational gap — one she once overlooked but now seems cavernous.

“How are you going to accurately lead your country if your mind is still stuck 50, 60 or 70 years ago?” Ms. Chadwick, a customer service representative in Rialto, Calif., said of the many septuagenarian leaders at the helm of her party. “It’s not the same, and people aren’t the same, and your old ideas aren’t going to work as well anymore.”

While voters across the spectrum express rising doubts about the country’s political leadership, few groups are as united in their discontent as the young.

A survey from The New York Times and Siena College found that just 1 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds strongly approve of the way Mr. Biden is handling his job. And 94 percent of Democrats under 30 said they wanted another candidate to run two years from now. Of all age groups, young voters were most likely to say they wouldn’t vote for either Mr. Biden or Mr. Trump in a hypothetical 2024 rematch.

The numbers are a clear warning for Democrats as they struggle to ward off a drubbing in the November midterm elections. Young people, long among the least reliable part of the party’s coalition, marched for gun control, rallied against Mr. Trump and helped fuel a Democratic wave in the 2018 midterm elections. They still side with Democrats on issues that are only rising in prominence.

But four years on, many feel disengaged and deflated, with only 32 percent saying they are “almost certain” to vote in November, according to the poll. Nearly half said they did not think their vote made a difference.

Interviews with these young voters reveal generational tensions driving their frustration. As they have come of age facing racial strife, political conflict, high inflation and a pandemic, they have looked for help from politicians who are more than three times their age.

Those older leaders often talk about upholding institutions and restoring norms, while young voters say they are more interested in results. Many expressed a desire for more sweeping changes like a viable third party and a new crop of younger leaders. They’re eager for innovative action on the problems they stand to inherit, they said, rather than returning to what worked in the past.

“Each member of Congress, every single one of them, has, I’m sure, lived through fairly traumatic times in their lives and also chaos in the country,” said John Della Volpe, who studies young people’s opinions as the director of polling at the Harvard Kennedy School Institute of Politics. “But every member of Congress has also seen America at its best. And that is when we’ve all come together. That is something that Gen Z has not had.”

 

When my generation said the same thing 30 years ago, we got Ross Perot. He got 19% of the vote in 1992, and Bill Clinton won with 43% of the vote for Poppy Bush's 37.5%. Famously, none of the candidates managed to get 50%+ in any of the 50 states.

The youngest candidate in touch with voters my age at the time? Clinton, who was 46 back then and appeared on the Arsenio Hall Show with his saxophone.

But I'm looking at this poll and I still see that folks 18-29 want major change, and half of them say there's no reason to vote.

So guess what? If you vote, you may not get what you want, but you'll make a difference. You don't vote, the people who do decide your fate. My answer to these kids is this: you know who does vote and who does get what they want?

People over 70.

Still hasn't occurred to the kids yet. It might after this midterm, I dunno.

We'll see.