Last Call For The Coming Supreme Blow

Republicans are staring to line up behind next summer's most destructive Supreme Court case that could spell the end of democracy in America and the advent of permanent, one-party rule in red states.

 

Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft has lined up behind a U.S. Supreme Court case legal experts believe could radically reshape how federal elections are conducted by handing more power to state legislatures and blocking state courts from intervening.

Ashcroft announced last week that his office had filed an amicus brief in support of Republicans in North Carolina who are asking the nation’s highest court to restore a Congressional map that was rejected as a partisan gerrymander by that state’s Supreme Court.

The North Carolina Republicans argue the state court had no authority to throw out the map under the so-called independent state legislature doctrine.

“Secretary Ashcroft is the first elected official to file an amicus brief in the US Supreme Court in support of state legislatures in historic elections case,” the Missouri Secretary of State’s Office tweeted last week.

The independent state legislature doctrine would give state lawmakers the power to set election rules and draw congressional maps without any review by state courts.

Some legal experts contend the doctrine could also be interpreted as allowing a legislature to refuse to certify the results of a pres­id­en­tial elec­tion and instead select its own slate of elect­ors.

A version of the theory was pushed in 2020 by allies of then-President Donald Trump in their effort to toss out legitimate election results in swing states won by Joe Biden and have electors appointed by Trump-friendly legislators.

The North Carolina case concerns the U.S. Constitution’s Elections Clause, which says: “The times, places and manner of holding elections for senators and representatives, shall be prescribed in each state by the legislature thereof.”

Proponents of the independent state legislature doctrine argue the Election Clause clearly gives legislatures sole responsibility for drawing congressional districts — and state courts have no role to play.

In his amicus brief, Ashcroft argues that interpretation of the Elections Clause would not “leave individuals affected by redistricting without a remedy to complain about all kinds of map drawing.”

Courts would still have a role, Ashcroft’s brief argues, in certain areas such as “one-person, one-vote and racial gerrymandering.”

Henry Chambers Jr., a professor at the University of Richmond School of Law, wrote last month that if the U.S. Supreme Court adopts the independent state legislature doctrine, it would “leave partisan gerrymandering unregulated.”

“State legislatures, unconstrained by state law, could then create aggressively gerrymandered congressional districts,” Chambers said, “possibly leading to an ever more partisan Congress with accompanying gridlock and policy failures.”

 

We're already seeing the future of this in Ohio, where the GOP-dominated state legislature is simply ignoring the state Supreme Court's multiple rulings that the Republican-controlled gerrymander committee's maps are unconstitutional, but the federal courts have ruled that 2022 elections must proceed anyway under these broken, unconstitutional maps.

 

The real problem is that under the most extreme version of this doctrine, state legislatures would have the final say on every single election in the state, and could theoretically reverse any state or local election result they wanted to.

One-party rule forever. The legislature would simply overturn any election result that would put Democrats in power, everywhere. If you don't think SCOTUS would do this, I point you to the jurisprudence garbage fire that is Alito's Dobbs decision.

Just saying.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Why yes, Donald Trump had classified nuclear secrets lying around his pool closet, and they weren't just our nuclear secrets apparently.

A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found by FBI agents who searched former president Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and private club last month, according to people familiar with the matter, underscoring concerns among U.S. intelligence officials about classified material stashed in the Florida property.

Some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations so closely guarded that many senior national security officials are kept in the dark about them. Only the president, some members of his Cabinet or a near-Cabinet level official could authorize other government officials to know details of these special access programs, according to people familiar with the search, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive details of an ongoing investigation.

Documents about such highly classified operations require special clearances on a need-to-know basis, not just top-secret clearance. Some special-access programs can have as few as a couple dozen government personnel authorized to know of an operation’s existence. Records that deal with such programs are kept under lock and key, almost always in a secure compartmented information facility, with a designated control officer to keep careful tabs on their location.

But such documents were stored at Mar-a-Lago, with uncertain security, more than 18 months after Trump left the White House.

After months of trying, according to government court filings, the FBI has recovered more than 300 classified documents from Mar-a-Lago this year: 184 in a set of 15 boxes sent to the National Archives and Records Administration in January, 38 more handed over by a Trump lawyer to investigators in June, and more than 100 additional documents unearthed in a court-approved search on Aug. 8.

It was in this last batch of government secrets, the people familiar with the matter said, that the information about a foreign government’s nuclear-defense readiness was found. These people did not identify the foreign government in question, say where at Mar-a-Lago the document was found or offer additional details about one of the Justice Department’s most sensitive national security investigations.

 

This alone should warrant, well, a warrant. If you had this document lying around your house, you would already be serving decades in jail.

 

The damage from all of this will be catastrophic, and that's before factoring in the very real possibility that Trump and his family saw these classified documents and that they may have been deliberately exposed to foreign governments in exchange for favors, money, or both.

 

Lock. Him. Up.

The Jackson, Hole, Con't

Jackson, Mississippi's water continues to remain under a boil notice as GOP Gov. Tate Reeves says that water pressure has been restored for now, but any future solutions for the city's ageing water plant don't seem to include using any of the $4.5 billion the state got from the Biden infrastructure bill in replacing it.

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves announced “significant” improvements in the Jackson water system on Labor Day while telling reporters he is open to numerous long-term solutions, including leasing its management to a private company.

“One week ago today I stood on this podium and I told you the state was going to take historic and unprecedented steps to intervene in Jackson’s water system because it had reached a crisis level,” the governor said at a Monday morning press conference in the capital city. “Not only were there issues with the quality of the water, but with the quantity of the water. The city could not produce enough running water for Jacksonians.”

The Republican governor said health officials told him this morning that the beleaguered O.B. Curtis Water Treatment Plant is now “pumping out cleaner water than we’ve seen for a very, very long time.” He said he is hopeful that “we will be able to measure potential for clean water and the removal of the boil water notice” within “days, not weeks or months.”

“We know that it is always possible that there will be more severe challenges. This water system broke over several years and it would be inaccurate to claim it is totally solved in the matter of less than a week,” he said. “… There may be more bad days in the future. We have however reached a place where people in Jackson can trust that water will come out of the faucet, toilets can be flushed and fires can be put out.”

Despite his optimism, the governor cautioned that while “the risk with respect to quantity of water has not been eliminated, it has been significantly reduced.” Jackson currently remains under the boil water notice that began on July 29, 2022.

Water distribution sites remain available in the City, he said, but school locations will no longer provide distribution tomorrow as Jackson Public School students return to classes. Schools went virtual last week due to the lack of water.

“As we turn to long-term problems in the future, I want to clarify a few things: There are indeed problems in Jackson that are decades old, on the order of $1 billion to fix,” Reeves said. “The crisis we intervened to solve is not one of those problems.”

When it comes to addressing the water system’s troubles beyond the immediate crisis, he said he is “open” to all ideas.

“Privatization is on the table,” the governor said. “Having a commission that oversees failed water systems as they have in many states is on the table. I’m open to ideas.”

 

No private utility company is going to take on Jackson's water system unless they can profit from it. A billion-dollar history of neglect means the any company that does take it on will be charging residents astonishing rates for water service, and who knows when the city's water will be drinkable again?

 

But actually spending infrastructure money on a Black city? That's the last thing that will happen in this state. Jackson remains one of the most obvious examples of American structural environmental racism today, and it will for a long time.

I doubt it'll ever be taught in the state's history books though.

 

Being All Judge Mental, Con't

As I told you after last week's hearing, the failure of Trump-appointed federal Judge Aileen Cannon in not immediately throwing out Team Trump's "special master" argument was a vile portent:

Here's the hysterically obvious problem with this "executive privilege" argument: Trump is not President. Legally, this should be tossed into the nearest chipper/shredder. It's the current president who gets to decide what executive privilege means here, and the Biden administration has the final say. Trump doesn't get to determine what executive privilege is any more than you or I do.

 

But where Trump is winning here is the fact that he's successfully slowing the investigation into his mishandling of the documents. It could take "months" for the special master to complete their work, you see, and surely no indictments can be "legally" issued while this is going on. 

It's a solid stalling tactic that could buy Trump quite some time to both get the search warrant out of the news ahead of campaign season going into full swing next month, and to come up with more tactics to keep the feds off his case.

Nobody should then be surprised that Judge Cannon did exactly what I predicted she would do.

A federal judge on Monday granted a request by former President Donald Trump’s legal team to appoint a special master to review documents seized by the FBI from his Florida home last month and also temporarily halted the Justice Department’s use of the records for investigative purposes.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon came despite the objections of the Justice Department, which said an outside legal expert was not necessary in part because officials had already completed their review of potentially privileged documents. The judge had previously signaled her inclination to approve a special master, asking a department lawyer during arguments this month, “What is the harm?”

The appointment is likely to slow the pace of the department’s investigation into the presence of top-secret information at Mar-a-Lago given the judge’s directive that the Justice Department may not for the moment use any of the seized materials for investigative purposes. But it is not clear that it will have any significant effect on any investigative decisions or the ultimate outcome of the probe.

Cannon, who was nominated to the bench by Trump in 2020, said she would permit the continuation of a risk assessment of the documents being conducted by the U.S. intelligence community.

Trump’s lawyers had argued that a special master — usually an outside lawyer or former judge — was necessary to ensure an independent review of records taken during the Aug. 8 search. Such a review was necessary, they have said, so that any personal information or documents recovered by the FBI could be filtered out and returned to Trump and so that any documents protected by attorney-client privilege or executive privilege could also be segregated from the rest of the investigation.

The Justice Department had argued against the appointment, saying it was unnecessary since it had already reviewed potentially privileged documents and identified a limited subset of materials that could be covered by attorney-client privilege.

 

This assures that Trump won't be indicted until after the midterms, giving him months to get his defenses in place, months for Trump to prepare to announce his 2024 candidacy, and months to rally the MAGA CHUDs to violence if the DoJ dares to indict. What Trump needed most was time, and his judge gave it to him.

And Cannon has pretty much destroyed the notion that Trump can even be held accountable in the first place. Trump has magical powers that prevent him from having to even pay attention to any criminal statue if Cannon's legal theories are correct, stating that even the investigation itself into his criminality threatens "incalculable harm" that supersedes national security itself.

 

Frankly I'm not even 100% sure this gets reversed on appeal. What Trump wants is for the special Master argument to be tied up in the courts and delayed as long as possible, delayed into next year with a Trump-friendly House or Senate, and definitely delayed into 2025 where the Roberts Court will toss the suit as moot and/or Trump hopes to be in the Oval Office again and have the entire investigation shut down.  

 

So, the DoJ either has to accept this terrible precedent of Trump's legal immunity, or risk losing the entire case to this special master idiocy. Yes, Merrick Garland has other evidence, and there are other case open against Trump. While Trump will unleash his terrorists on America if an indictment happens anyway, the cover of the special master argument will be the fig leaf of "legitimacy" that Republicans will use to demand any indictment at all be thrown out, if not directly interfere with the courts to do just that.

 

You only have to go as far as Trump's own social media grievance service, Pravda Truth Social, to see him demand regularly that he be instated now as POTUS and Biden thrown out of office, if you're still somehow confused as to what Trump's endgame is. He continues to expect enough of his people to rise up enough to make that happen. He still expects the rest of the GOP to declare the 2020 election as a mistrial or something in order to protect him from prison.

 

People still think the rule of law means anything when it comes to holding Trump accountable, and while I still think his indictment is inevitable, so is the lethal, nationwide terrorist violence that will follow charges in an attempt to disrupt any attempt to bring this case or any other case against him to trial. The DoJ will be well-versed on such terrorist threats, but making that decision will have consequences either way.

 

As I've said on numerous occasions, we're not even close to being ready to even start the conversation involving prosecuting Trump and the risks involved. The one thing you can absolutely count on though is that most marginalized among us will pay the highest price.

Last Call For A Trussed-Up Turkey

 Meet the UK's new boss, who will almost certainly be worse than the old boss.

 

Liz Truss got 57.4% of the vote, and Rishi Sunak received 42.6%. That means, of the four Conservative party leaders elected after a ballot of the whole membership, she is the only one to have secured less than 60% of the vote.

At 82.6%, the turnout was lower than it was in the ballot that saw Boris Johnson elected in 2019. But it was higher than in 2001 and in 2005 (when the party was in opposition, and the result counted for less.)

In 2001 Iain Duncan Smith beat Ken Clarke in the final ballot with 60.7% of the vote over Clarke’s 39.3%. Turnout was 78.3%.

In 2005 David Cameron beat David Davis in the final ballot with 67.6% of the vote over Davis’s 32.3%. Turnout was 78.4%.

And in 2019 Boris Johnson beat Jeremy Hunt in the final ballot with 66.4% of the vote over Hunt’s 33.6%. Turnout was 87.4%.

 

I don't expect Truss to last long. The disastrous Brexit mistake under Boris Johnson has led to the UK economy facing the brink of recession.

Liz Truss will become the UK’s next prime minister with the economy on the brink of recession, according to figures that show private sector activity fell last month as businesses struggle with soaring costs.

The latest snapshot from S&P Global and the Chartered Institute of Procurement and Supply (Cips) revealed a “severe and accelerated” decline in manufacturing output in August, alongside weaker activity in the UK’s dominant service sector.

The monthly business survey, which is closely watched by the government and the Bank of England for early warning signs from the economy, found growing worries over soaring inflation and a marked reduction in confidence among firms.

Cost pressures remained extremely elevated, linked to rising prices for energy and fuel as Russia’s war in Ukraine further drives up costs on the wholesale market. Unlike households, businesses do not benefit from an energy price cap.

“The incoming prime minister will be dealing with an economy that is facing a heightened risk of recession,” said Chris Williamson, the chief business economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence, with the British economy facing a “deteriorating labour market and persistent elevated price pressures linked to the soaring cost of energy”.

The monthly purchasing managers’ index from S&P/Cips fell to 49.6 in August, down from 52.1 in July. Any reading above 50 suggests growth in private sector activity.

The figures come as some economists suggested Britain’s economy slipped into recession this summer as households tightened their belts amid the cost of living crisis. The Bank of England has forecast inflation will peak above 13%, the highest level since the early 1980s, and projects a lengthy recession starting in the final quarter of the year.

Economists at Goldman Sachs said last week that inflation could peak above 22%, close to matching the postwar record set in 1975, if current high wholesale energy prices are sustained into the new year.

In her acceptance speech after beating Rishi Sunak in the Conservative leadership race, Truss pledged to “deliver a bold plan to cut taxes and grow the economy”, and also “deal with people’s energy bills” ahead of a tough winter for households and businesses.

 

The return of Thatcherite hell for the UK seems assured at this point. It's going to be a very long winter...or if things get as bad as they seem to be headed towards, a very short winter for Truss's government.

 

Laboring Daily

This Labor Day, Gallup finds support for labor unions to not only be the highest in my lifetime, but the highest dating back to 1965.

Seventy-one percent of Americans now approve of labor unions. Although statistically similar to last year's 68%, it is up from 64% before the pandemic and is the highest Gallup has recorded on this measure since 1965.

These data are from Gallup's annual Work and Education survey, collected Aug. 1-23.

The latest approval figure comes amid a burst of 2022 union victories across the country, with high-profile successes at major American corporations such as Amazon and Starbucks. The National Labor Relations Board reported a 57% increase in union election petitions filed during the first six months of fiscal year 2021.

Support for labor unions was highest in the 1950s, when three in four Americans said they approved. Support only dipped below the 50% mark once, in 2009, but has improved in the 13 years since and now sits at a level last seen nearly 60 years ago.

Sixteen percent of Americans live in a household where at least one resident is a union member. This includes U.S. adults who report that they themselves are a union member (6%), those who say someone else in their home is a member (7%), and those who say they and someone else in their household belong to unions (3%).

The net 16% union household figure is within the 14% to 21% range Gallup has recorded since 2001.

Gallup also polled union members and nonunion members June 13-23 in a separate online Gallup Panel survey about union membership.

Membership is highest among front-line and production workers, of whom one in five (20%) are union members.

About one in 10 workers in healthcare and social assistance (13%), white-collar positions (11%), and administrative and clerical roles (10%) are union members.

Workers in managerial roles (6%) are the least likely to be members of unions.

 

That sharp drop for union support in 2009 was from the auto bailout battle, when Republicans like Mitt Romney demonized the $17.4 billion bailout of the industry that saved a million jobs, and blamed the UAW.

Some 13 years later, unions have more than recovered their reputation, and today they are more important than ever.

Support for unions needs to be matched by union participation, though. The problem remains that the majority of non-unionized workers say they have no interest whatsoever in joining a union.

That needs to change.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

While we've seen years worth of white supremacist secession movements in western states like Idaho, rural California, Oregon, Utah and Montana, we also have to pay attention to the growing secessionist movement in New Hampshire, where the Free State movement is trying to take over local governments so that they can reach the goal of dismantling things like public schools and eventually seceding from the US.

The doormat outside Carla Gericke’s house carries the warning “Come back with a warrant.” It’s a stark reflection of her broad distrust of government bureaucracy, an attitude that is the driving force behind the Free State movement, which has led thousands of like-minded people to move to New Hampshire on a quixotic quest — to build a libertarian utopia.

Gericke helps lead that movement, and her agenda is broad and unapologetically radical. More than 6,000 people have relocated to New Hampshire since the effort was launched 21 years ago, according to its organizers. And while some dispute that claim, legislators on both sides of the aisle in Concord agree that Free Staters have come to wield outsize political influence.

Inside her home, Gericke explained why an independent New Hampshire is a good idea, why its public schools are hopelessly broken, why Washington, D.C., is pervasively corrupt, and why Free Staters who believe big government is the enemy of personal freedom are determined to turn society upside down.

“I’m a problem-solver, I’m a solutionist, I am an innovator, I’m a visionary,” said Gericke, a former corporate attorney who moved to New Hampshire from New York in 2008 as part of the Free State movement. “I want to take a swing at making one place better, and this is the place I picked.”

But where Gericke and other “porcupines” — a nickname Free Staters have adopted — see a blueprint for shrinking government and protecting the rights to privacy and private property, critics see a back-door assault on democracy itself.

Their end game, detractors say, is to infiltrate New Hampshire government at all levels — from select boards to the State House — with the aim of dismantling it. State support for public schools is a priority target.

“Their whole mission is to take over state government and to use the threat of secession as leverage” against the federal government, said Zandra Rice Hawkins, executive director of Granite State Progress, a progressive advocacy group.

Jeremy Kauffman, a Free State Project board member, describes democracy itself as a threat.

“Democracy is a soft form of communism that basically assures bad and dangerous people will be in power,” Kauffman said by e-mail. The Manchester resident, a tech entrepreneur, is running for US Senate as a Libertarian.

The movement began with a 2001 essay by Jason Sorens, then a Yale graduate student and now director of the Center for Ethics in Society at St. Anselm College in Manchester. The goal was at once simple and sweeping: attract 20,000 libertarians to a single state with a small population, get elected to public office, concentrate power, and enact change from the inside out.

In 2003, Free Staters chose New Hampshire, with its deep vein of conservatism and “Live Free or Die” motto, as their prospective homeland, and more than 19,000 people have since signed a pledge to move to the state, organizers said. Only a third of that number are estimated to have relocated so far, but Sorens said they have made a major impact.

“There’s been the emergence of a significant group of libertarian legislators, and some of them are in leadership” in Concord, the state capital, Sorens said. “I’ve been pleased overall with what we’ve achieved. I may have hoped that we would reach 20,000, but I’m not sure I ever expected we would.”

House majority leader Jason Osborne, for example, moved to New Hampshire from Ohio in 2010 as part of the Free State Project. Like many Free Staters, Osborne belongs to the Republican Party, something critics say masks the true intentions of many in the movement — using a major party as a Trojan horse to gain election.

Sorens estimated that as many as 40 percent of Free Staters favor secession.

The porcupines, so called because they portray themselves as harmless until provoked, have built a statewide support network for newcomers and member families already here.

Porcupine real-estate agents help find housing for the arrivals, others steer them to jobs, and weekly meetups, from pub gatherings to knitting circles, have sprung up across the state. The Free State Project also organizes PorcFest each summer, a weeklong celebration featuring a plethora of lectures and family activities.

In the recent past, “those not so misguided by the winning government’s indoctrination camps” have heard about the War for Southern Independence, according to a PorcFest schedule. That’s the epic, bloody conflict better known as the Civil War. Parents also have been invited to a discussion on the “Battle Over Raising Your Child.”

“Your rulers would like to do you the ‘favor’ of taking your children off your hands to ‘educate’ them (with a heavy dose of learning to revere their authority),” its summary read.

While the group often avoids the spotlight, it gained notoriety this year when a Free State legislator sponsored a bill seeking a constitutional amendment to allow New Hampshire to secede. The effort was resoundingly defeated.

Free Stater influence also played a role in the controversial two-week shutdown of the Gunstock ski resort, a popular recreational area in conservative Belknap County. Antigovernment activists briefly took control of the commission that runs the county-owned attraction; chaos ensued.

And a Free Stater who served as select board chair in rural Croydon succeeded in cutting that town’s school budget in half with a startling motion at a sparsely attended town meeting. When they learned what had happened, hundreds of voters rallied to restore the funding.

 

So far there's enough sane people to stop these local government takeovers.  But in the MAGA era, these groups are gaining more and more disaffected members, and Trump keeps calling for stochastic violence against America again and again.

Eventually these groups are going to answer that call.

Press The Meat, Con't

Missouri GOP Attorney General and US Senate candidate Eric Schmitt is going after the University of Missouri's college newspaper for printing fact checking articles, to see if the paper and its faculty advisers are in violation of the state's law banning "critical race theory" in public education.

 

Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt has filed an open records request seeking correspondence between two journalism professors connected to the University of Missouri and the executive director of a fact-checking group.

In a move that appears to be unprecedented in Missouri, Schmitt, a Republican running for U.S. Senate, filed a request in June asking for three years of emails sent and received by the professors while they worked at the Columbia Missourian.

Most correspondence generated at private media firms is not subject to the state’s open records law, but the Missourian could be because it is attached to the University of Missouri, which is a public entity.

The Missourian is not overseen by university officials, but most of its staff are students who are working for credits toward a journalism degree. The professional editors work as university faculty members.

David Kurpius, dean of the Missouri School of Journalism, said the school has hired outside legal counsel to determine which emails could be released to the attorney general. Some records, such as those that identify students’ personal information, are protected by federal law.

Jean Maneke, an attorney with the Missouri Press Association, said the request puts the university in “unchartered territory” because most public institutions do not have journalists attached. She was unaware of any similar requests in the past.

“There’s no clear instructions for what they should do when faced with these kind of parameters,” Maneke said.

The request was first reported by the Missourian, which discovered it after filing an unrelated open records request.

Schmitt’s spokesman, Chris Nuelle, said in a statement that the attorney general is “simply trying to get to the bottom of the fact checking process.” He declined to answer further questions.

Schmitt previously used open-records laws to seek copies of handouts, emails and other resources that address race from school districts as part of a push targeting “critical race theory.” He also opened a “transparency portal” to allow parents to see his efforts.

In the latest request, Schmitt is seeking any email correspondence starting June 15, 2018, sent to or from Mike Jenner, Tom Warhover, who previously worked with the Missourian, and Aaron Sharockman, the executive director of PolitiFact.

 

Schmitt wants to destroy the paper and almost certainly imprison the former faculty advisers.

I repeat, Schmitt wants to throw people in jail for fact-checking the GOP.

He will not be the last to start imprisioning journalists, and journalism school faculty.

This is what fascists do, of course. President Biden was correct in his assessment.

And even worse, here in America, journalists are being murdered.

Las Vegas Review-Journal investigative reporter Jeff German, one of Nevada’s most accomplished and trusted journalists, was found dead with stab wounds outside his home Saturday morning.

German, whose work in Las Vegas spanned more than three decades, made a career of breaking big stories about everything from organized crime and government malfeasance to political scandals and the Oct. 1 mass shooting.

“The Review-Journal family is devastated to lose Jeff,” Executive Editor Glenn Cook said. “He was the gold standard of the news business. It’s hard to imagine what Las Vegas would be like today without his many years of shining a bright light on dark places.”

Las Vegas police responded to the 7200 block of Bronze Circle, near North Tenaya Way, around 10:30 a.m. Saturday after a person called 911 saying a neighbor was dead on the side of the victim’s house, according to Metropolitan Police Department Capt. Dori Koren.

Police found German, 69, with stab wounds outside of his home. Police believe he was in an altercation with another person on Friday in the late morning that led to him being stabbed.

“We believe the altercation took place outside of the home,” Koren said.

“We do have some leads. We are pursuing a suspect but the suspect is outstanding,” Koren said.

Koren said the stabbing is believed to be an isolated incident and that there is no threat to the public.

Cook said German had not communicated any concerns about his personal safety or any threats made against him to anyone in the Review-Journal’s leadership.

 

MAGA fascists have spent years calling journalists "Enemies of the State".

 

Now journalists are being murdered.

 

Again, this is what fascists do.

Sunday Long Read: Mauled Of America

This week's Sunday Long Read is Jillian Steinhauer's exploration at TNR of the American Mall, symbol of capitalism and local meeting place for teens, and whether it can -- or should -- survive the pandemic era at all.

 

In the days before the pandemic, when I visited the Museum of Modern Art, I would stop at Mrs. Fields. Mrs. Fields does not have the best cookies, especially in a city teeming with boutique bakeries. But getting a snack there was never about the quality of the food itself. A Mrs. Fields cookie summons up a weekend in the early 1990s when my parents would pack me and my siblings into our Volvo station wagon and drive us half an hour over state lines to the mall in Stamford, Connecticut. There, my mom would peruse high-end stores that didn’t have locations in our hometown, while my dad would take us kids to buy cookies and eat them on the steps that formed the mall’s gathering spot.

You could tell the story of many suburban childhoods through a progression of visits to such anodyne shopping centers. Once I was old enough to go to malls on my own, I met up with friends at the two main ones in White Plains, the New York City suburb where I grew up: the Galleria, where I got my ears pierced at Claire’s, and the Westchester, a shiny new beacon whose upscale nature was reflected in the fact that it had carpeting. By the time I moved away for college, I was over the world I left behind. When people asked where I was from, I’d answer, “a soulless suburb of New York City with no culture but lots of malls.”

I haven’t spent much time in shopping centers since—partly by choice, partly through circumstance. Malls have been struggling in one way or another since the 1990s, thanks to a slew of factors: a glut of such shopping centers, the replacement of department stores with big-box ones, recessions, the rise of the internet, and a new generation of mega-developer owners who are more cutthroat about their bottom lines. Even before the pandemic, which made gathering indoors dangerous, fewer Americans were whiling away their weekends and after-school hours at the mall. Yet for so many of us, the image of a sunlit atrium crossed by steadily gliding escalators, with a Bath & Body Works looming in the background, evokes a deep nostalgia. Like how, the minute I walk by a Mrs. Fields and smell that intoxicating scent of butter, sugar, and chocolate, my defenses drop.

The mall is “ubiquitous and underexamined and potentially a little bit embarrassing,” the design critic Alexandra Lange notes in the introduction to her new book, Meet Me by the Fountain: An Inside History of the Mall. Shopping is part of our daily lives, as are the spaces where we do it. Malls are fixtures of our physical and psychic landscapes, embedded with social and personal histories. They’re loaded symbols within our culture, inspiring feelings of allegiance or contempt. In George Romero’s famous 1978 movie, Dawn of the Dead, the mall is a home for humans and zombies alike. In the third season of the ’80s-nostalgic TV show Stranger Things, it’s simultaneously a place of teenage possibility and a Russian front for a sci-fi lab. In contemporary “ruin porn” photography, the empty shells of malls represent the just deserts of late-stage capitalism.

What makes malls the object of both longing and disdain? The civic purpose of the mall—unlike libraries, schools, and museums—has never been entirely clear. “In contrast to many other forms of public architecture, which embody fear, power, and knowledge, the mall is personal,” Lange writes. It’s not an institution, officially speaking, but it is social, a rare type of place intended to encourage hanging out. “At their best, malls create community through shared experience,” Lange says; at their worst, they’re temples to consumerism. They offer freedom—from parents, strict rules, the weather—even as they’re policed. They’re public, sort of, but also private, providing convenience at a price. Malls are not necessarily the communal spaces we would design for ourselves, but in a country short on alternatives, they’re the ones we’ve been given. Is it any surprise that we want them to be so much more?

 

Even in the small North Carolina city I grew up in, we had malls, as did the surrounding small cities.  I remember the smaller, older mall from the 70s with an Orange Julius and a Big Lots, presently a large furniture showcase, and the "newer" 80's mall, renovated in the early 2000s and now with a carousel, the mall was the place where I spent many a weekend with my dad and brothers, from the arcade to the Radio Shack to the food court to the WaldenBooks.

And yet living across the road from where the major mall is now, I don't think I've been in there since well before the pandemic, it's been years.

Cincinnati is turning a bunch of closed malls into mixed user properties, which is good.

More of this needs to happen as malls vanish from the landscape.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

President Biden's Thursday night anti-fascism speech has already been turned into a casus belli from the MAGA terrorists as experts are warning of a stark increase in threat chatter online even above the elevated level that last month's search of Trump's compound in Florida rated.

President Biden’s fiery speech in Philadelphia denouncing former President Donald Trump and what he described as “extreme MAGA ideology” has sparked online calls for violence, including death threats against the president, according to documents obtained by Yahoo News.

Biden’s remarks also prompted immediate concerns from senior counterterrorism officials who said they fear that calling Trump supporters extremists would be viewed as a call to arms and would only inflame an already volatile threat environment.

“Too much of what’s happening in our country today is not normal,” Biden said Thursday night at Independence Hall, flanked by two U.S. Marines. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.”

By Friday afternoon, posts on forums popular among white supremacists and far-right extremists called for the assassination of Biden, and named Jewish administration officials including Attorney General Merrick Garland, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as potential targets. Declarations of civil war were also appearing, according to documents detailing some of the threats.

“On Gab, one user posted a series of violent threats accusing Biden of stealing the election,” according to a threat alert from Site Intelligence Group sent to law enforcement agencies and others on Friday. Trump and many of his supporters have long claimed, without evidence, that the 2020 presidential election won by Biden was stolen from Trump due to widespread voter fraud.

Site Intelligence Group, which tracks online extremism activity, issued several threat alerts detailing calls for violence in response to Biden’s speech. The potential threats were posted in online forums tied to the Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and other extremist groups.

“Users on several far-right and ultranationalist venues made violent threats against President Joe Biden following his speech addressing political extremism on September 1, 2022,” said one of the alerts. “Users advocated for Biden to be murdered and predicted violence if he continues speaking about the topic.”

 

We're already seeing Republicans and others blame Biden's speech for the uptick in the chance of real violence in the months ahead.

Amid criticism, the White House has defended Biden's language, saying that the president is standing up for democracy and denouncing political violence. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre singled out specific Republicans who’ve espoused extremist rhetoric.

During Biden's speech, four current U.S. domestic counterterrorism officials told Yahoo News they were concerned the president’s words would further divide the nation and lead to increased threats against government and law enforcement officials.

“I fear he is lighting a fuse that is not going to go well,” one senior Biden counterterrorism official said. “Sadly this is not a united speech but a very divisive one.”

On Friday, this official said their fears appear to have been confirmed by what they described as an uptick in threats of potential violence. A different counterterrorism official said they were concerned that fringe right-wing and extremist groups will use Biden’s speech to recruit and fundraise, potentially increasing the longer-term threat from these groups.

The officials requested anonymity because they are not authorized to speak to the media. Some said they also didn’t want to be seen as criticizing the president. The Department of Homeland Security referred Yahoo News’ request for comment to the White House National Security Council.

 

Pearl-clutching "counterterroism officials" aside, the threat of recruiting and fundraising sounds exactly like what the GOP is doing this week, does it not?

 

No better proof that Biden's words were truthful, and that they hit the mark.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

The Biden Administration is directly taking on Red State abortion bans as the Department of Veterans Affairs says it will begin offering some abortion services at VA hospitals in all states to some 9 million military vets and their immediate family members.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, in a historic shift, will provide abortion counseling and abortions in cases of rape, incest or if the pregnancy threatens the health of the pregnant veteran, at its federal health facilities throughout the country, including in states that ban or severely restrict the practice, the department announced Friday.

According to a draft of the rule change, the new policy overhauls health-care service provided to 9 million veterans and eligible family members; VA previously did not provide abortions of any kind or offer abortion counseling to patients considering the procedure.

There are 2 million female veterans in the United States, according to VA data, and about a quarter of them are enrolled in VA care.

“VA serves roughly 300k women of childbearing age, and women Veterans are VA’s fastest growing cohort,” VA spokesman Terrence Hayes said in an email. Once the rule is published, Hayes said VA will “immediately prepare to provide these services in as many locations as possible.”

VA Secretary Denis McDonough in a statement called the change “a patient safety decision.”

“Pregnant Veterans and VA beneficiaries deserve to have access to world-class reproductive care when they need it most. That’s what our nation owes them, and that’s what we at VA will deliver,” McDonough said.

Veteran advocates welcomed the change as an expansion on veterans’ health-care options.

“Increasing access to timely and quality health care for veterans should always be a top priority for the VA,” Jeremy Butler, the chief executive of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans for America, said in an email.

Other advocates, such as Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), who sits on the Senate’s Veterans’ Affairs Committee, praised the VA change while criticizing Republican lawmakers for shaping the restrictive reproductive rights landscape many Americans now face.

“For the first time ever, the Veterans Health Administration will finally be able to provide abortion care to ensure none of our veterans or their eligible dependents will have to face medical emergencies — or stay pregnant after a rape or incest — simply because Republican politicians think they know what’s best for them,” Murray said in a statement.

 

It's a start, and it's limited to veterans and their families, and only in cases where the woman's life is at risk...but there are now a dozen states where even that is illegal. 

I fully expect Republicans to block any funding bills for the VA until the policy is rescinded, and that's where things are going to get very ugly. The PACT Act passed the Senate for sick veterans exposed to toxic burn pits after massive pressure last month, but the entire shutdown fight will certainly start up again soon.

Keep an eye on this fight.

Another Supreme Disaster, Con't

While the Roberts Court has destroyed womens' rights, climate change regulations, gun safety laws and a whole hell of a lot of other things in the last year, a case on the 2023 docket could end up impoverishing tens of millions of Americans, put an end to welfare and SNAP and all but destroy the Medicaid social safety net.

 

There’s a sleeper case on the Supreme Court’s docket that could blow a gaping hole in the social safety net and give states leeway to neglect or end care for tens of millions of the most vulnerable Americans.

“This case is to Medicaid what Dobbs was to abortion,” Sara Rosenbaum, professor of health law and policy at George Washington University’s school of public health, told TPM.

And it’s not just Medicaid, though the program enrolling nearly 90 million Americans is the biggest one at risk. This case could leave all of those who depend on federally funded, state-administered programs — think SNAP (formerly known as food stamps) or WIC, which helps low-income pregnant women and mothers with young children buy food — without any recourse, should states stop providing the benefits they’re required to give.

The echoes of Dobbs are eerie.

Here too, the Court’s decision to take up the case surprised and alarmed experts in equal measure. There was no circuit court split, no raging lower court controversy to settle. It was a fairly run-of-the-mill case, not unlike hundreds that had come before. A county in a red state, eyeing the right-wing composition of the Court, calculated that the time was ripe to lodge a bigger ask, to use a pedestrian vehicle to do away with a broader right it opposes. And the justices quietly took it up — dragging behind them a paper trail peppered with their inclination to overturn 50 years of precedent.

The case comes from a nursing home run by a municipal corporation owned by Marion County, Indiana. That’s key: while many nursing homes are privately owned, this one is state-run.

The family of a patient who was suffering from dementia alleges that he was given a slew of unnecessary medications and improperly transferred to different facilities hours away. So they sued, arguing that his treatment violated the Federal Nursing Home Reform Act, which establishes the rights of residents of nursing homes that receive Medicaid and Medicare funding.

But the case, Health and Hospital Corp. of Marion County, Indiana v. Talevski, quickly became much bigger than the allegedly poor treatment of the late Gorgi Talevski.

The county-run corporation, sensing an opportunity, tacked on a bigger ask than the initial dispute over nursing home protections. It asked the Supreme Court to reexamine and nix altogether the pathway that people participating in these federal spending programs can use to sue when their rights are violated.

If the Supreme Court’s conservative majority bites, experts warn, it could have implications far beyond nursing homes.

If a state decided to, say, keep pocketing Medicaid funding but to abruptly stop providing coverage without any due process, those neglected beneficiaries would have recourse. They could sue in federal court under Section 1983, part of a civil rights statute passed in 1871. At the time, it was enacted as a federal remedy against officials who terrorized newly freed slaves under the color of state law. It remains a critical pathway for enforcing constitutional rights, and is frequently used in cases of police brutality.

A century after its passage, Section 1983 protections were interpreted to apply to rights under laws too — not just constitutional ones. In the next two decades, a body of court cases squarely applied it to Medicaid.

“For 50 years now, the Supreme Court has recognized that people can sue under 1983 if their rights are violated under federal law, including spending clause statutes like Medicaid or food stamps,” Tim Jost, professor of law, emeritus, at the Washington and Lee University School of Law, told TPM. “This goes back even beyond Roe.”

“The way the state is arguing Talevski is that 1983 rights of action should not be available in any spending program … well, that’s our social safety net!” Nicole Huberfeld, professor of health law, ethics and human rights at Boston University’s school of public health, told TPM.

 

In other words, if this case goes as badly as I think it might, states would be able to stop providing any federal social and health programs, but still take every dime of funding.  They wouldn't have to replace it with anything.

Red states could simply eliminate Medicaid and unemployment insurance, SNAP and WIC, Head Start and CHIP. Hell, maybe even federal programs, period. They would be able to keep every dime, and they wouldn't have to spend it on anything.

 

Imagine a state like Mississippi being able to opt out of not just Medicare regulations, but federal education, transportation, and environmental regulations, while taking billions in federal school, road, and climate change money. Imagine them doing that with federal prison money, police money, and water and power money.

 

All hoarded, the poorest left with absolutely nothing.

 

It would destroy tens of millions of lives.  

Get ready. This one will be the battle of next year.

The Big Lie, Local Edition

Here in Kentucky, Republican Secretary of State Michael Adams is under heavy fire for not being part of The Big Lie that Trump won the 2020 election.

 

Months ahead of the midterm election in Kentucky, Secretary of State Michael Adams continues to find himself combating election conspiracy fallout from the 2020 election and the primary in May.

That is some of what he shared with an audience Wednesday as guest speaker at Paducah Rotary Club's weekly meeting at the Carson Center.

Over recent weeks, Adams has been vocal on social media to shut down false claims of violations to voter integrity in Kentucky.

"I am really concerned about these conspiracy theorists making it harder for us to get poll workers. I don't want poll workers to feel like they're having to sit there, it's a long day as it is, and then have angry people come up and accuse them of fraud. It's ridiculous," Adams said.

Adams himself has been the target of baseless claims accusing him of overseeing voter fraud. Just last week he reported another death threat he had received to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Adams also voiced concern at an up-tick in demands for a recount following an election.

"What I don't want to have is abusive process for people who lost by a landslides demand recounts. Recounts are far more demanding on our county clerks and our election officials. They put a great strain on our process. They mean that we can't use the machines for voting because they're locked down. We've had five county clerks in the state resign in the last month alone, because, it's not just one thing, but in part it's the abuse they're getting from people and the absurd demands that they're getting from people," Adams said.

He said one of the ways he can thwart disinformation about alleged election irregularities is by traveling the state and talking with people one on one.

"All I can do is handle Kentucky. All I can do is talk to Kentuckians about what Kentucky does right. We've got a great record. We've made enormous strides improving our process that last few years making it more accessible, making it more secure, banning practices that have led to fraud in our state and other states, requiring an ID to vote, but also expanding access for our voters so they can go vote more easily. Not just having one arbitrary day but multiple days to pick to go vote," Adams said.

 

Which is true. 

Despite the famous quote attributed to Mark Twain about "When the end of the world comes, I'd rather be in Kentucky because it's 20 years behind" (which, by the way, Twain never actually said) it really does seem like the Commonwealth really is 20 years behind, back in the 2002 era of merely evil, greedy Republicans like McConnell instead of the full-on fascist election deniers like we're seeing in several other Secretary of State races in 2022.

To his credit, Adams is merely an evil, enabling Republican in a state where Republicans win by 15-20 points.

But I expect Adams is going to face a fierce primary challenge from a Trumpian election denier next year.

And as far as 2022 elections go, well, expect the goofballs in the state legislature to interfere with more "voter integrity" legislation should any Democrats actually win in November.

 

Ridin' With Biden, Con't

In a primetime speech to America last night, President Biden made it very clear what the stakes are this November and what Trump's cultists will do if we fail to defend democracy from them.

President Joe Biden delivered a sober assessment of American democracy during a rare prime-time address in Philadelphia on Thursday, warning that Donald Trump and his closest political allies are threatening to take the country backward. 

"As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault," Biden said in front of Independence Hall. 

"We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise. So tonight, I've come to this place where it all began. To speak as plainly as I can, to the nation, about the threats we face. About the power we have in our own hands to meet these threats." 

After tearing into Republicans for what he calls "MAGA extremism" and "semi-fascism," administration officials say Biden determined the time was right to provide a more serious, sober reckoning on what he regards as growing anti-democratic forces building across the country. 

"We must be honest with each other and with ourselves: Too much of what's happening in our country today is not normal," Biden said. "Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic." 

He said the Republican Party of 2022 was partly "dominated, driven and intimidated" by Trump and his acolytes. 

It's a topic Biden has come to embrace more publicly in recent months after initially attempting to ignore the after-effects of his predecessor and focus instead on national unity. At its core, the speech represents the same overarching theme that defined the launch of his presidential campaign in 2019 as he set out to defeat Trump. 

It remained a constant through high profile speeches in locations rife with historical symbolism, including Warm Springs, Georgia, and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. The prime-time remarks was no different, this time with the site of the nation's revolutionary beginning as the backdrop. 

A crowd of about 300 invited guests -- a mix of elected officials and dignitaries, along with Democratic supporters -- watched Biden speak from behind panes of bulletproof glass. It was a short distance away from where Biden formally announced his bid for the presidency in 2019, striking similar themes about the "battle for the soul of the nation." 

Thursday's speech served as an implicit acknowledgment that Biden's efforts to move past the divisiveness and chaos of former President Donald Trump have been harder than he might have imagined. Trump continues to dominate headlines, especially in recent weeks after federal agents searched his Florida home, revealing an investigation into the former President's possession of classified documents after he left office. 

White House officials emphasized ahead of time that when Biden warns of the threat to democracy, he is not talking about Republicans as a whole, but those who style themselves after Trump: the "MAGA Republicans," as the administration has deemed them.

 

 In my opinion, this is Joe Biden preparing the nation for Donald Trump's eventual indictment. I don't think it will happen before the Sept. 10 deadline of 60 days before the election that Merrick Garland confirmed will be DoJ non-interference, and besides, there's a very good chance the investigation into Trump involving materials recovered by the FBI last month at Mar-a Lago will be tied up in the courts for a very long time.

A federal judge indicated Thursday that she’s giving serious consideration to temporarily barring Justice Department investigators from reviewing material seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon suggested that she’s mulling imposing that restriction, while potentially allowing an exception for the intelligence community to continue reviewing national security risks from the potential exposure of the slew of sensitive documents the FBI found at Trump’s compound last month.

Cannon’s willingness to consider restraints — even for a period of time — on prosecutors and investigators in the politically explosive inquiry is some of the first positive news for Trump and his attorneys in a saga that presents an acute legal threat and has caused new strains with Republican elected officials.

Justice Department attorneys pushed back sharply against any such limits, warning against disruption of their ongoing criminal investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents. Cannon, who previously said she was inclined to order an outside review of the materials seized from Trump’s estate, appeared undeterred during a 90-minute hearing that featured arguments from DOJ counterintelligence officials and Trump’s legal team.

Senior Justice Department attorney Jay Bratt repeatedly pleaded with Cannon, a Trump appointee, not to interrupt their ongoing criminal probe, emphasizing that the search warrant executed Aug. 8 was clearly valid and lawfully authorized to obtain “evidence of three significant federal crimes.”

“He is no longer the president and because he is no longer the president he did not have the right to take those documents,” said Bratt, the chief of the counterintelligence section in the Justice Department’s National Security Division. “He was unlawfully in possession of them…This plaintiff does not have an interest in the classified and other presidential records.”

Cannon signaled concern about a couple of instances in which the investigative team had flagged potentially privileged material that was not screened out during the initial review of records by the DOJ “filter team” assigned to prevent such occurrences.

The judge gave no indication she planned to limit the privilege claims Trump could lodge in a still-to-be-determined review process. That suggested she could impose a special master with broad purview to screen documents for any potentially subject to executive privilege claims by Trump — despite DOJ’s argument that no such claim could ever be upheld in this context.

“It would be unprecedented for the executive to be able to successfully assert privilege against the executive branch,” said Julie Edelstein, a Bratt deputy.

 

It's very possible that this Trump appointed judge buys Trump the week and change he needs to bog the investigation down until past September 10, in hope of the GOP winning one or more chambers of Congress so that they can force Garland out and end the investigation completely. If you don't think Kevin McCarthy would order the arrest of Merrick Garland by the House Sergeant-at-Arms, understand this is already a party that tried a violent terrorist coup and conspiracy to overthrow the 2020 election with McCarthy's active participation.

Which would leave a lame duck indictment with McCarthy all but promising impeachment and arrests and oversight (an more importantly and damaging, leaks to the press in an effort to wreck the case against him.

Of course, we avoid all that if we listen to President Biden's words, and turn those into action in November.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Meanwhile, in one of the several other extremely illegal activities of the Trump regime...

 

A lawyer with close ties to the right-wing militia group the Oath Keepers has been charged with four counts related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack, including conspiracy to obstruct the certification of the electoral college vote that day. 

Kellye SoRelle, an attorney who volunteered for Lawyers for Trump during efforts to challenge the 2020 election results and says she's general counsel for the Oath Keepers, also faces obstruction of justice and obstruction of an official proceeding charges. 

The 43-year-old attorney was arrested Thursday in Junction, Texas, following an indictment in Washington, DC, on Wednesday, a spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office in DC, Bill Miller, told CNN. Miller added that the Justice Department currently has no additional comments on the case. 

She is scheduled to appear in an Austin, Texas, courtroom Thursday afternoon. 

In May, SoRelle told CNN that she was cooperating with the Justice Department. 

"I've done interviews. I've done everything. I'm helping them," SoRelle told CNN about her cooperation, adding that she also handed over phones to investigators. SoRelle does not represent any Oath Keepers in their criminal proceedings.

 

Oath Keepers are a white supremacist militia who stormed the Capitol because they were instructed to do so by Trump. 

Speaking of the US Capitol building...

Two former top Trump White House lawyers are expected to appear Friday before a federal grand jury investigating the events surrounding Jan. 6, sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone and former deputy White House counsel Pat Philbin were subpoenaed by a federal grand jury investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 election, ABC News reported last month.

The move to subpoena the two men has signaled an even more dramatic escalation in the Justice Department's investigation into the Jan. 6 attack than previously known. Members of former Vice President Mike Pence's staff have also appeared before a grand jury.

Officials with the Department of Justice declined to comment when reached by ABC News. A representative for Cipollone and Philbin also declined to comment.

Sources previously told ABC News that attorneys for Cipollone and Philbin were expected to engage in negotiations around any grand jury appearance, while weighing concerns regarding potential claims of executive privilege.

 

Season 2 of the January 6th Hearings will be riveting TV.

 

Everything I've seen in the last six weeks or so has been part of the public case for indicting Trump.

 

More will follow.