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

The vast majority of white supremacist domestic terrorists fall into one of two categories: active/former military, and active/former cops. Understand that there's a vast network of people armed and trained to kill who swear to white supremacist dogma, and my biggest fear remains them all going active at the same time.

 

A retired Boise police captain — one of multiple officers who brought forward allegations about former Chief Ryan Lee — was scheduled to speak at a conference this weekend held by an organization known for white supremacist views.

Matthew Bryngelson, who retired in August after nearly 24 years with the Boise Police Department, appeared on the American Renaissance Conference speaker list under the apparent pseudonym Daniel Vinyard.

American Renaissance is a website and former print magazine that founder Jared Taylor characterizes as “race realist.” Posts on the site focus on white superiority and arguments that people of color are inherently less intelligent than white people and contribute more to crime and other societal ills.

The conference was held in person in Burns, Tennessee, where local faith leaders denounced the gathering.

Blog posts that appear to be authored by Bryngelson include him recounting the point in his police career when he “became aware of the violent tendencies of Blacks.” Bryngelson did not return a phone call or text from the Idaho Statesman.

This comes nearly two months after Boise Mayor Lauren McLean asked Lee to resign in light of multiple complaints from officers, along with an investigation into allegations that Lee injured a subordinate officer in a neck restraints demonstration last year. Lee is Chinese-American.

Bryngelson’s involvement in the conference sparked backlash online, when Twitter user Molly Conger posted a thread Saturday depicting the speaker list and other ties to American Renaissance. The thread, which has garnered over 1,000 retweets and 4,000 likes, brought Bryngelson’s involvement with the white supremacist group to the Idaho Statesman’s attention.

On the conference webpage, he’s described as “a retired, race-realist police officer with 30 years of experience, including gang enforcement, SWAT, and narcotics detective.” An accompanying photo of Bryngelson, who appears to be wearing his Boise Police Department uniform, is on the webpage. According to a tweet his photo appeared blacked out when the conference was first announced prior to his retirement.

In a statement Sunday afternoon, Boise Mayor Lauren McLean called Bryngelson’s participation in the conference and contributions to American Renaissance “racist, dehumanizing propaganda.”

This weekend, I learned of retired Boise Police Department officer Matt Bryngelson's participation in a white nationalist conference and his ongoing contributions to racist, dehumanizing propaganda.— Mayor McLean (@boisemayor) November 20, 2022

“The fact that such an individual could serve in the department for two decades is appalling,” McLean said. “The people of Boise deserve a police department worthy of their investment and trust, and we are launching a full investigation accordingly.”

 

White supremacist terrorist network members serving in places of power like police departments and the US military is a massive issue. They've been in power for a very long time. These terrorist networks are heavily entrenched and ludicrously difficult to root out.

They're not going away anytime soon, either.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The Russian response to grievous military losses in Ukraine is "If we cannot have Ukraine, then nobody will."

 

After just six weeks of intense bombing of energy infrastructure, Russia has battered Ukraine to the brink of a humanitarian disaster this winter as millions of people potentially face life-threatening conditions without electricity, heat or running water.

As the scope of damage to Ukraine’s energy systems has come into focus in recent days, Ukrainian and Western officials have begun sounding the alarm but are also realizing they have limited recourse. Ukraine’s Soviet-era power system cannot be fixed quickly or easily. In some of the worst-hit cities, there is little officials can do other than to urge residents to flee — raising the risk of economic collapse in Ukraine and a spillover refugee crisis in neighboring European countries.

“Put simply, this winter will be about survival,” Dr. Hans Henri P. Kluge, regional director for the World Health Organization, told reporters on Monday in Kyiv, saying the next months could be “life-threatening for millions of Ukrainians.”

Already, snow has fallen across much of Ukraine and temperatures are dipping below freezing in many parts of the country. Dr. Kluge said that 2 million to 3 million Ukrainians were expected to leave their homes “in search of warmth and safety,” though it was unclear how many would remain inside the country.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said that about half of the country’s energy infrastructure was “out of order” following the bombardment.

The dire warnings indicate that despite a string of losses on the battlefield, Russia’s airstrikes have wrought destruction that will severely test Ukrainians’ national resolve and sharply raise the costs for Kyiv’s Western allies, who are struggling with spiking energy prices in their own countries.

Military experts said that Russian President Vladimir Putin was trying to compensate for territorial losses, and to create a sense of war fatigue among Ukraine’s European NATO allies in hopes that they will eventually pressure Kyiv to make concessions and slow arms shipments that enabled Ukraine’s victories.

“This is all about the weaponization of refugees,” retired U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army Europe, said in a phone interview.

“By making Ukraine uninhabitable in the winter time, they are potentially sending millions more Ukrainians to Europe,” Hodges said. “That would put pressure on European governments. The hope is that Europe, in turn, would pressure Kyiv.”

 

No power, no water, no heat, no food. By freezing Ukrainians out of Ukraine, Putin doesn't have to fire a shot on the ground with green Russian conscripts, he can just flatten the rest of the power infrastructure and then offer to help turn back the lights on if Kyiv would just surrender completely. 

Putin, in creating a massive humanitarian and refugee crisis, knows exactly what he's doing. The pressure on Kyiv to fold will be immense, because already the European Union is facing a power crisis this winter thanks to Putin. Telling people in Berlin, Prague and Krakow that they have to go without in order to save Kyiv will only work for so long, and it's not like here in the States that the GOP will even want to lift a finger to help.

Putin is counting on support for Ukraine in the EU and the US to crumble under the stress of millions of more refugees, and frankly, I fear the plan will work.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida Republicans are going to change the rules for the third time in fifteen years so that GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis doesn't have to resign from the position when running for President.

 

Florida’s top Republican leaders say they are willing to change state law to smooth the way for Gov. Ron DeSantis to run for president in 2024.

Both House Speaker Paul Renner (R-Palm Coast) and Senate President Kathleen Passidomo (R-Naples), both of whom were sworn into their new posts on Tuesday, agreed it would be a “good idea” to make it clear that DeSantis would not have to resign if he wound up becoming the GOP nominee.

DeSantis was reelected to a second four-year term earlier this month after he defeated his Democratic rival by roughly 20 points.

“If an individual who is Florida governor is running for president, I think he should be allowed to do it,” Passidomo told reporters. “I really do. That’s a big honor and a privilege, so it is a good idea.”

While DeSantis has not yet said he will definitely run in 2024, he has emerged as a top potential contender for the job. Some are pressing him to run even though former President Donald Trump has already announced his third bid for the White House. Recent polls have shown support for DeSantis is rising among Republican voters.

Florida law requires anyone running for a new office to put in an irrevocable letter of resignation ahead of qualifying if the terms of the two offices overlap. The law was changed in 2008 to open the door for then-Gov. Charlie Crist to seek the vice presidency, but legislators reversed course four years ago and put back in a place a requirement that someone seeking federal office would have to resign ahead of the actual election.

The 2008 law did include a carve-out for someone whose term is about to end, but that would not apply to DeSantis. The carve-out allowed then-Gov. Rick Scott, who defeated incumbent Sen. Bill Nelson that year, to remain in office until the day DeSantis was inaugurated.

Renner said that proved state legislators had been “inconsistent” about the state’s resign-to-run law, and that was one reason he was open to changing it again.

POLITICO reported earlier this month that those close to DeSantis say he has not made a final decision about running for president, but that if he does, he would likely wait until after the 2023 session that starts in March.

That would also be the time the Florida Legislature, which now has a GOP supermajority in both chambers, would consider changes to state election law. Florida legislators routinely pass election law changes in non-election years.

 

So yeah, just in case he crashes and burns against Trump, he gets to keep his current job.

Laws are for those people and Democrats.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

Not that the House Ways and Means Committee will have more than a few weeks to do anything with them, but the Roberts Court, surprisingly, did not completely run out the clock on Trump's tax returns, clearing the committee to have them.

 

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected former President Donald Trump's last-ditch plea to block the release of his tax records to House Democrats, paving the way for their possible disclosure to the lawmakers.

The decision by the court in a brief order noting no dissenting votes means the committee can try to access the documents ahead of the Republican take-over of the House in January. The committee, however, has not said how quickly it expects to get the documents. Upon taking control, Republicans are expected to withdraw the request.


Earlier this month, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily blocked the Ways and Means panel from accessing Trump’s tax records while the court decided how to act on Trump’s request.

Trump, who, unlike other recent presidents, refused to make his tax returns public amid scrutiny of his business affairs, turned to the justices after an appeals court in Washington refused to intervene. The court has recently rejected similar requests from Trump.

The former president's lawyers contested the House Ways and Means Committee’s assertion that it needed the information to probe how the IRS conducts the auditing process for presidents, saying it did not stand up to scrutiny.

House Democrats, as well as the Biden administration, urged the court to reject Trump's request, saying their demand for the tax documents reflected a valid legislative purpose.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit declined last month to reconsider a three-judge panel’s ruling in August that the Ways and Means Committee could obtain the tax returns.

 

So after nearly four years, SCOTUS punted, but it's irrelevant now. House Republicans will make sure this information is sealed and discarded as soon as they get control in January.

We'll never see this info unless there's a miraculous leak, and anyone involved in that will be exterminated by the GOP.

It was a good fight, but a better legal maneuver by the courts. Running out 98% of the clock is still enough to win.

Getting An Education On Politics In Ohio

I've been telling you about how corrupt Ohio Republicans are ever since they gained a supermajority in the state legislature, and gerrymandered Democrats almost out of existence. Nobody was more surprised than I was when Democrats still managed to flip two US House seats a few weeks ago, despite every effort by the Ohio GOP and Gov. Mike DeWine to put an elephant on the scales in order to tip them towards permanent GOP control. 

So when the GOP's plan to create a permanent supermajority on the State Board of Education actually backfired, the state legislature decided to strip the Board of its power and take it for themselves.

 

For the first time in years, progressive candidates will control the elected seats on the executive agency, regulating if a resolution is able to pass or not. Candidates are voted on as nonpartisan candidates, however, each leans conservative or progressive and will be endorsed by a party. School board candidates tend to share their beliefs publically.

Three of the five seats up for grabs were taken by liberal candidates. Tom Jackson, of Solon, beat out incumbent Tim Miller by about 50,000 votes. Teresa Fedor, a now-former state senator from Toledo, beat opponent Sarah McGervey by more than 30,000 votes. Katie Hofmann, of Cincinnati, beat out incumbent Jenny Kilgore by around 30,000 votes.

“We’re just looking forward to getting back to Columbus and doing the people’s work,” Jackson told News 5.

Now, seven of the 11 elected seats are held by Democrats. The elected seats ensure that the total board can’t pass all resolutions it wants, since it needs a 2/3 majority. Of the 19 total seats, eight were appointed by Gov. DeWine. Now, with 12 GOP seats, a Democrat would need to switch over for policy to pass. This could change depending on attendance.

This excitement of winning was short-lived for Jackson. Right now, the board is currently responsible for what K-12 public education looks like in the state. But a newly-revived bill would strip the members from developing education policy, establishing financial standards and implementing programs.

“They’re looking for solutions to a problem in the wrong place,” the member-elect said.

Republican state Sen. Bill Reineke (R-Tiffin) says the department of education needs a massive overhaul to improve student success, such as combatting the struggling remediation rate and offering more workforce development opportunities. The lawmaker was unavailable to speak Friday.

“Senate Bill 178 addresses this need by refocusing our system at the state level on what matters most: our children and their future,” Reineke said in his testimony.

The only responsibilities left for the board would be selecting the state superintendent, licensing teachers, handling staff disciplinary issues and making school territory transfer decisions.

If Reineke is really concerned with student achievement, he should talk to his GOP colleagues, since they create the education laws, Jackson argued.

“The Republicans have controlled for years, so they really need to look at their own actions and stop scapegoating the state board,” he said. “The timing is just too curious.”

Senate President Matt Huffman (R-Lima) said this has been an ongoing proposal for years.

“We have an isolated bureaucracy with no oversight, that’s the problem,” Huffman told reporters. “It’s not who’s on the board.”

Huffman and fellow lawmakers have been frustrated by the board of years now. This isn’t the first attempt to take power away. For the senate president, the board either takes too long to implement new laws or just ignores lawmakers.

“That system as it has grown through the decades in the state of Ohio essentially has an isolated Ohio Department of Education, who has no responsibility to the state legislature,” he said. “They don’t have any responsibility to the governor either because they’re not his employees.”

Ohio was left without a state superintendent of public instruction following Steve Dackin’s tumultuous hiring-then-resigning by the board in June.

Still, what this bill is proposing is clearly government overreach, Jackson said.

“It doesn’t address the needs of the students today, but it is in lockstep with not only the state legislature, but the state’s attorney general’s office,” he said.

The bill was introduced close to two years ago, so Jackson wants to know why it only got its first hearing once the Democrats took over.

“When you ask the people of the state of Ohio to vote for school board members, they’ve chosen majority of school board members that are affiliated with the Democratic Party,” Jackson said. “I absolutely think that that’s part of their calculus.”

 

Of course there was no effort to strip the Board of power in a one-party rule state until that power was threatened by Democrats. You'd have to be out of your gourd to believe otherwise. And now, Ohio Republicans will take that power for themsleves.

All the talk about independent councils and board above political influence, a state Supreme Court that's impartial and just, fair bipartisan redistricting, and hearing from the people on ballot measures were all lies by the most corrupt state party in the nation.

That's how the Buckeye State works now.

Klain Up At The White House

Both President Biden and lefty folks want White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain to stay on, a big signal that Biden's midterm shakeup may not be as dramatic as the pundits warned us. It also means that left-wing groups understand just how important Klain was to the major progressive steps Biden took on student loan debt, marijuana legalization, and climate change. 

 

President Joe Biden is enjoying an extended period of peacetime with the progressive wing of his party. But keeping it that way may depend on whether he can keep hold of his chief of staff.

Energized by the White House’s actions on key priorities such as climate, student debt and marijuana, progressives are openly rooting for Ron Klain to stay on as Biden’s top aide. And they view better-than-expected midterms as vindication of the president’s decision to pursue an expansive agenda.

“A lot of people see him as one of the few avenues they have to have a glimpse into the dynamics and considerations of what’s happening in the White House,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) said of Klain. “When I think about some of the conversations that build trust, build the sense of open communication, he’s usually part of that.”

An around-the-clock communicator who courted Democrats’ grassroots groups even before Biden took office, Klain has become a critical conduit between liberal leaders and the administration’s upper echelon, according to interviews with more than a dozen leaders and lawmakers on the left. He offers a level of access the left has rarely enjoyed — and that progressives now say will be crucial to maintaining a united Democratic front in the face of divided government.

The outpouring of support comes amid growing speculation over whether Klain will exit the White House, triggering a West Wing shakeup that could reshape the remainder of Biden’s presidency and reverberate through the Democratic Party. Biden has asked Klain to stay, a person familiar with the matter told POLITICO.

Progressives credit Klain with helping inject their proposals into the White House policy debate and building out an apparatus that’s put liberal allies in positions of power across government. Perhaps just as importantly, they said, he’s served as a high-level sounding board for the wing traditionally treated by the Democratic establishment with suspicion or outright derision — and won over liberals who once perceived Biden as out of touch with the progressive base.

“He was not my first or second choice for president, but I am a convert,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said of Biden. “I never thought I would say this, but I believe he should run for another term and finish this agenda we laid out.”

Klain, who is in frequent touch with Jayapal, has served as lead ambassador to a wide array of progressive groups and lawmakers, with many saying they can count on him returning their emails and texts within 15 minutes — no matter the time of day. He often solicits feedback and ideas, readily walking advocates through Biden’s policy stances.

Of course, not all Democrats want Klain to stay.

That relentless engagement has at times unsettled more moderate Democrats, who question if Klain should focus more on broadening Biden’s appeal with swing voters — and boosting his approval ratings. In particular, Klain and Sen. Joe Manchin have found themselves at loggerheads on occasion, including when the West Virginia Democrat said he could not support Biden’s more ambitious domestic policy agenda, Build Back Better. The White House released a scorching statement about Manchin shortly thereafter, which set back talks on a scaled down bill and colored relations between the senator and the chief of staff.

 

So other than Joe Manchin and the GOP, yeah, Klain should stay. I think he should too.

 

 

Last Call For Long Train Runnin'

The railroad union strike narrowly averted before the midterms has now festered into a mess as several rail unions have voted down the measure and could go on strike, completely shutting down the nation's railroads in as early as two weeks.

One of the largest railroad unions narrowly voted to reject a contract deal brokered by the White House, bringing the country once again closer to a rail strike that could paralyze much of the economy ahead of the holidays, union officials announced on Monday.

The union representing roughly 28,000 rail conductors, SMART Transportation Division, voted the deal down by 50.9 percent, the union said. The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen, which represents engineers, announced on Monday that 53.5 percent of members voted to ratify the deal. These unions represent 57,000 workers and are the largest and most politically powerful of the 12 rail unions in contract discussions.

A national rail strike, which could happen as early as Dec. 5, could threaten the nation’s coal shipments, its supply of drinking water, and shut down passenger rail. The U.S. economy could lose $2 billion a day if railroad workers strike, according to the Association of American Railroads.

Already seven of 12 unions have voted to approve their contracts. But in recent weeks, three of the smaller unions, including the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen, have also rejected their contracts and are back in negotiations.

The main sticking points for rank-and-file members have been over attendance and sick leave policies that penalize workers for taking time off.

“Honestly, this vote is about the frustration that the railroads have created with [their attendance policies] and the deterioration of quality of life as a result for our conductors,” Jared Cassity, the national legislative director at SMART Transportation and a conductor. “It’s about attendance policies, sick time, fatigue, and the lack of family time. A lot of these things that cannot be seen but are felt by our membership. It’s destroying their livelihoods.”

The Association of American Railroads did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Cassity said the union would likely immediately resume negotiations with rail carriers as their strike deadline looms on Dec. 8

But unless Congress intervenes or a new deal is reached, workers at the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees and the Brotherhood of Railroad Signalmen would be allowed to strike and companies would be able to impose a lockout even sooner, right after midnight Dec. 5.

If those unions strike on Dec. 5, all of the unions would likely move in solidarity, provoking an industry-wide work stoppage.

After reaching an impasse in negotiations earlier this year, the White House appointed an emergency board in July to mediate the dispute between six major rail carriers and 12 unions that represent 115,000 railroad workers. But unions voted down that agreement.

Attendance policies have been at the heart of the dramatic showdown between the nation’s largest rail carriers and railroad workers, who did not strike after President Biden and other top administration officials brokered a last-minute agreement in late September.

 

That deal is, well, now a train wreck. The US economy will be badly damaged by even a short strike, and that $2 billion per day figure is going to be a ludicrously low estimate if it happens in the middle of the holiday shopping season.

The unions know they have a lot of leverage here, and I hope there's an agreement soon, because busting the unions right before Christmas is not going to be a good look for Congress, lame duck or not.

The real bad guys, as they have been throughout American history, are the railroad companies. Let's not forget that, either.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

In Arizona, Maricopa County's top election official has been moved to a secret location with a security detail because of all the credible death threats against him thanks to GOP loser Kari Lake.

Maricopa County Supervisor Bill Gates has confirmed that he moved to an undisclosed location for his safety after security concerns connected to the 2022 midterm elections.

Deputies from the sheriff's office are also providing a security detail, officials said.

Gates, a Republican and one of the leaders of the Maricopa County Elections Department, has been a fierce defender of the county's election system and an outspoken critic of false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.

In a similar vein, Gates has continued to defend the county against continued claims of fraud during the midterms. Some have focused on an issue with printers on Election Day that led to numerous tabulation machines being unable to read some ballots.

His stance has caused a slew of backlash online and in person. Some people were seen launching verbal attacks on Gates during a meeting with the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors earlier this week.

Other county officials have reported receiving calls they considered threatening from campaign volunteers.

 

Needless to say, while the annulment scenario of a Republican loss in 2022 (and the odds of that happening in 2024) was largely avoided due to 2020 election deniers largely getting crushed at the polls, the danger to election officials is still very much real in the months ahead because there are multiple states where election deniers are already in power.

Besides, Kari Lake is still openly trying to steal her election, and the only question is how much help she's going to get from Arizona Republicans, who are already calling for new elections now.

A Chandler Republican recently elected to the Arizona House of Representatives says that she will not cast her vote on any bill unless the 2022 election is redone.

Liz Harris, recently elected to represent Legislative District 13 which encompasses much of Chandler, issued the statement on Instagram and her campaign website saying in part "it has become obvious that we need to hold a new election immediately."

Despite winning her own election, Harris alleges that there were "clear signs of foul play" which necessitated her demands. There has been no evidence of this.

"Machine malfunctions" were cited as one such sign. On election day, 60 of the 223 polling places in Maricopa County saw issues with their ballot printers, leading to some ballots not being counted immediately.

The issue was resolved within a few hours, and election officials say that they were able to ensure that every legal ballot was successfully counted.

Harris also questioned the fact that Treasurer Kimberly Yee (R) won her election with a greater count of votes than any other candidate.

"How can a Republican State Treasurer receive more votes than a Republican Gubernatorial or Senate candidate?" Harris asked.

In Arizona, voters are allowed to cast a split ticket. This means that they don't have to vote exclusively along party lines. Yee also received more votes than any Democratic candidate running for office.

It's not the first time that Harris has been involved in trying to overturn the results of an election.

After losing to incumbents Jennifer Pawlik (D) and Jeff Weninger (R) in the 2020 general election, Harris began a "Grassroots Canvass Report" to investigate baseless allegations of voting errors in order to decertify the results of both the state legislature and presidential elections.

The report falsely claimed to have uncovered some 173,000 “lost” votes and 96,000 “ghost votes” in a private door-to-door canvassing effort, supposedly rendering the 2020 election in Maricopa County “uncertifiable.”

Maricopa County election officials and outside experts said Liz Harris used “quasi-science" in her canvas of the 2020 election and her findings were "inaccurate."

Harris's canvassing report initially appeared in the Cyber Ninjas 'audit' draft report but was later removed from the final version after it was revealed that the DOJ had warned Harris against door-knocking.

 

If Arizona's Republican party wants to destroy themselves, great. The problem is they want to take the rest of us with them.

The Road To Gilead, Con't

Everyone who told you that either "Republicans will stop at Dobbs" or "The Right learned their lessons from the 2022 midterms" (or both!) really don't deserve to be listened to, because they are either liars or chumps.

 

Abortion foes sued the Food and Drug Administration in federal court in Texas on Friday in an effort to reverse the agency’s decades-old approval of mifepristone, the drug used in medication abortions.

Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative group that has been involved in antiabortion litigation, filed the suit in Amarillo on behalf of four antiabortion medical organizations and four doctors who had treated patients with the drug. The suit also named the Health and Human Services Department as a defendant.

The suit claims that the FDA lacked the authority to approve the drug, did not adequately study the medication and that the drug is unsafe. More than half the abortions in the United States are performed using mifepristone.

The “FDA failed America’s women and girls when it chose politics over science and approved chemical abortion drugs for use in the United States,” the lawsuit said. The suit said the agency erred in approving the drug under an expedited process that is intended to speed consideration of therapies for life-threatening illnesses, not a condition like pregnancy.

“Pregnancy is not an illness, and chemical abortion drugs don’t provide a therapeutic benefit — they end a baby’s life and they pose serious and life-threatening complications to the mother,” Julie Marie Blake, Alliance Defending Freedom senior counsel, said in a statement.

Attorneys for Alliance Defending Freedom served on the legal team that helped defend Mississippi in the case that led the Supreme Court in June to strike down Roe v. Wade, which guaranteed the right to abortion.

The Biden administration and abortion rights advocates denounced the suit.

“For decades, women in this country have had access to FDA-approved medication abortion as a safe and effective option,” HHS said. “As [HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra] said, denying women access to any essential care they need is downright dangerous and extreme.”

The FDA said it does not comment on pending litigation.

Mifepristone blocks the hormone progesterone, which is needed to sustain a pregnancy. The FDA approved the medication as safe and effective through the first seven weeks of pregnancy about two decades ago, then later extended it to 10 weeks. The drug is sometimes used “off label” after that. Patients follow the use of mifepristone with misoprostol, which causes the uterus to empty.

Greer Donley, an associate professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law who has written extensively about the abortion pill, denounced the group’s safety claims as “ridiculous.”

“Mifepristone is one of the safest drugs on the market, safer than Viagra and penicillin,” Donley said. “We have a lot of studies and a lot of data on it.”

Donley said the legal claims in the suit were “really weak.” She said the agency approved the drug under the expedited procedure because it allowed the FDA to impose restrictions on its use — restrictions that she and other abortion rights advocates think should be eliminated.

Donley said she didn’t know of any other suit that has tried to undo the FDA’s approval of abortion medication.

Loren Colson, a family medicine physician in Idaho and fellow with Physicians for Reproductive Health, said mifepristone is “an incredibly safe medication.”

“It’s been well-studied and much safer than a lot of things you can find over the counter,” Colson said. “If they are trying to argue the safety, they have very little ground to stand on. It’s just a clear and blatant attack on abortion.”

 

The same Trump federal judge that tossed the Biden administration's LGBTQ+ protections under the Affordable Care Act a week ago now has this case.

 

They got Kacsmaryk.

The likelihood that this crank Trump judge will declare half of all abortions in the United States illegal, and issue a nationwide injunction because that’s what crank Trump judges do, is frighteningly high. https://t.co/b8XGX6MGB4

— Ian Millhiser (@imillhiser) November 20, 2022

 

A national injunction on these drugs would end half the abortions in this country overnight, even in states where abortion is still legal.  They can also choose to tie up the case in the courts and leave the injunction standing into 2023 or even 2024. By then, irreversible damage will have been done to millions of women in America, the kind only voting Democratic in massive numbers can even begin to fix.

 

That's the point.

Last Call For Biden, Still Ridin'

Joey Aviators is the Big Eight Oh today.

Join us in wishing President @JoeBiden a happy birthday! 😎 pic.twitter.com/GCswAnfE4q

— The Democrats (@TheDemocrats) November 20, 2022

 

Biden is the oldest President in US history, however you want to think about that.

People in their 80s lead countries, create majestic art and perform feats of endurance. One entered the record books for scaling Mount Everest. It’s soon time for Joe Biden, 80 on Sunday, to decide whether he has one more mountain to climb — the one to a second term as president.

Questions swirl now, in his own party as well as broadly in the country, about whether he’s got what it takes to go for the summit again.

The oldest president in U.S. history, Biden hits his milestone birthday at a personal crossroads as he and his family face a decision in the coming months on whether he should announce for reelection. He’d be 86 at the end of a potential second term.

Biden aides and allies all say he intends to run — and his team has begun quiet preparations for a campaign — but it has often been the president himself who has sounded the most equivocal. “My intention is that I run again,” he said at a news conference this month. ”But I’m a great respecter of fate.”

“We’re going to have discussions about it,” he said. Aides expect those conversations to pick up in earnest over Thanksgiving and Christmas, with a decision not until well after New Year’s.

Biden planned to celebrate his birthday at a family brunch in the White House on Sunday.

 

It's up to other Democrats to make the case that Biden, or if he does decline, the first female VP in history, Kamala Harris, shouldn't be the standard-bearer in 2024. And so far, I've seen absolutely nothing compelling in that regard.

Nothing. Even if you believe Biden is too old, Harris is the veep, and we beat Trump with that ticket, handily. Stop pretending the Democrats didn't have the best midterm defense in decades under them, either. If they are so very unpopular, why, if it wasn't for Supreme Court interference in gerrymandering in Southern states, did we keep the Senate and almost retained the House?

Let's remember who the real enemy is here.  It's not Joe.

Welcome To Gunmerica, GOP House Edition

Less than two weeks after GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert was barely reelected by the thinnest of margins, her hateful homophobic rhetoric has resulted in a deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in her Colorado Springs district.

 

A 22-year-old gunman opened fire in a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs, killing five people and injuring 18 before he was subdued by “heroic” patrons and arrested by police who were on the scene within minutes, authorities said Sunday.

Two firearms, including a “long rifle,” were found at Club Q after the Saturday night shooting, said Police Chief Adrian Vasquez.

Investigators were still determining a motive, and the attack was being investigated to see if it rises to the level of a hate crime, said El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen.

Police identified the gunman as Anderson Lee Aldrich, who was in custody and being treated for injuries. A man with the same name and age was arrested in 2021 after his mother reported he threatened her with “a homemade bomb, multiple weapons and ammunition,” according to authorities.

Police did not confirm whether it was the same person, saying they were investigating whether the suspect had been arrested before.

Authorities were called to the Club Q at 11:57 p.m. Saturday with a report of a shooting, and the first officer arrived at midnight.

“At least two heroic people” confronted the gunman and stopped the shooting, Vasquez said, adding: “We owe them a great debt of thanks.”

Attorney General Merrick Garland was briefed on the shooting, Justice Department spokesman Anthony Coley said. The FBI said it was assisting but said the police department was leading the investigation.

The violence is the sixth mass killing this month and comes in a year when the nation was shaken by the deaths of 21 in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas.

 

Yet another example of how a mass shooter's deadly rampage was prefaced by known violence against a woman in his life. 

And while America debates whether or not Boebert's previously homophobic and hateful statements are responsible for the shooting, at least one right-wing social media star is absolutely taking credit for inciting murder of LGBTQ+ Americans.

This is 9 hours apart. Chaya Raichik (@LibsofTikTok) is bragging about inciting the attack. She knows she’ll get away with it. The last time she posted about Colorado was weeks ago. This is not a coincidence but open gloating that she’ll never face accountability for her actions. pic.twitter.com/okio0zoBQE

— Eli Erlick (@EliErlick) November 20, 2022

 

The violence I've been predicting would come after the 2022 midterms is already here.

 

More will follow.

Sunday Long Read: You've Got To Be Kid-ding Her

This week's Sunday Long Read from Business Insider's Julia Black is even more evidence that Elon Musk is a wealthy multi-billionaire James Bond supervillain, engaging in white supremacist eugenics with a thin veneer of techno-futurist bullshit.

Court documents obtained by Insider show that the tech mogul Elon Musk quietly had twins last November with one of his top executives, Shivon Zilis. Musk, who has been an outspoken advocate of bringing more babies into the world, now has nine known children.

In April, Musk, 51, and Zilis, 36, filed a petition to change the twins' names in order to "have their father's last name and contain their mother's last name as part of their middle name." The order was approved by a judge in Austin, Texas, this May. (Insider is withholding the children's names to protect their privacy.) The twins were born weeks before Musk and Claire Boucher, the musician who performs as Grimes, had their second child via surrogate in December.

Musk and Zilis did not respond to requests for comment.

Musk is the wealthiest person in the world, with an estimated net worth of about $220 billion. He's at the helm of four companies: the electric-vehicle maker Tesla, the spacecraft manufacturer SpaceX, the tunnel-construction startup The Boring Company, and the brain-machine-interface implant company Neuralink, where Zilis works. This year he announced plans to purchase Twitter for $44 billion, though the deal has been held up over what the Tesla CEO has described as several unresolved matters. In May, Insider reported that SpaceX had paid a company flight attendant $250,000 to stay quiet after she alleged that Musk exposed himself and propositioned her for sex.

Zilis is a rising star in Musk's empire. Born in Markham, Ontario, Zilis received her bachelor's degree in economics and philosophy in 2008 from Yale, where she also played goalie on the women's ice-hockey team. A lifelong athlete, she has been pictured on social media surfing, zip-lining, and ice climbing. After beginning her career at IBM, she joined the early-stage venture-capital fund Bloomberg Beta, where she led investment efforts in data and machine learning. She was on Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in the venture-capital category in 2015.

Zilis met Musk through her work with OpenAI, the artificial-intelligence research-and-deployment nonprofit Musk cofounded in 2015. She serves as the youngest member of OpenAI's board of directors. In 2017, Zilis moved to Tesla, where she was a project director, deploying her AI expertise on the Autopilot and chip-design teams. Today she holds the title of director of operations and special projects for Neuralink, where Musk is a co-CEO. She previously worked as a project director in the CEO's office. She's recently been floated as one of the people Musk could tap to run Twitter after his acquisition.

During Zilis' tenure at Neuralink, the company has conducted surgical trials of its Bluetooth-enabled brain chips on monkeys and pigs and enabled a nine-year-old macaque to play the video game Pong using its brain. Musk has suggested human trials could start by the end of 2022.

Zilis lived in San Francisco before buying a home in a gated community in Austin in August, about three months before the twins were born. The real-estate website Zillow estimates the home is worth more than $4 million. Musk has said his primary residence is a $50,000 modular house in Boca Chica, near SpaceX's launch facility in South Texas, but in the court documents Musk and Zilis listed the same address — the multimillion-dollar home — in Austin. Musk has been spending more time in Austin after opening Tesla's new Gigafactory Texas on the outskirts of the city.

Zilis shares many of Musk's intellectual passions, including space travel, transportation, and, most of all, artificial intelligence. They appear to have a similar sense of humor — they've both tweeted AI puns and tongue-in-cheek references to Musk's favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin.

She has been an ardent defender of Musk in the face of criticism. In 2020, when a California State Assembly member, Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher, tweeted "F*ck Elon Musk" after Musk tweeted about moving Tesla out of California over COVID-19 restrictions, Zilis responded: "This makes me sad. No one's perfect but I've never met anyone who goes through more personal pain to fight for an inspiring future for humanity - and has done so tirelessly for decades. Everyone's entitled to their opinion but mine is that there's no one I respect and admire more."

 

If this all sounds like Musk is selectively breeding babies with the "right" white women in order to "save humanity", it's because he is absolutely doing that, and he thinks other "right" people should be doing the same in order to "advance" the human race.

The guy is basically terrible.

A Supreme Clue To A Supreme Mystery

Reporters Jodi Kantor and Jo Becker at the NY Times drop this account from a major player in right-wing religious conservative circles that the Supreme Court leaked the Hobby Lobby decision several years ago and strongly suggests that the decision, authored by Justice Samuel Alito as with the leaked Dobbs decision, may have been leaked by Alito himself.

 

As the Supreme Court investigates the extraordinary leak this spring of a draft opinion of the decision overturning Roe v. Wade, a former anti-abortion leader has come forward claiming that another breach occurred in a 2014 landmark case involving contraception and religious rights.

In a letter to Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and in interviews with The New York Times, the Rev. Rob Schenck said he was told the outcome of the 2014 case weeks before it was announced. He used that information to prepare a public relations push, records show, and he said that at the last minute he tipped off the president of Hobby Lobby, the craft store chain owned by Christian evangelicals that was the winning party in the case.

Both court decisions were triumphs for conservatives and the religious right. Both majority opinions were written by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. But the leak of the draft opinion overturning the constitutional right to abortion was disclosed in the news media by Politico, setting off a national uproar. With Hobby Lobby, according to Mr. Schenck, the outcome was shared with only a handful of advocates.

Mr. Schenck’s allegation creates an unusual, contentious situation: a minister who spent years at the center of the anti-abortion movement, now turned whistle-blower; a denial by a sitting justice; and an institution that shows little outward sign of getting to the bottom of the recent leak of the abortion ruling or of following up on Mr. Schenck’s allegation.

The evidence for Mr. Schenck’s account of the breach has gaps. But in months of examining Mr. Schenck’s claims, The Times found a trail of contemporaneous emails and conversations that strongly suggested he knew the outcome and the author of the Hobby Lobby decision before it was made public.

Mr. Schenck, who used to lead an evangelical nonprofit in Washington, said he learned about the Hobby Lobby opinion because he had worked for years to exploit the court’s permeability. He gained access through faith, through favors traded with gatekeepers and through wealthy donors to his organization, abortion opponents whom he called “stealth missionaries.”

The minister’s account comes at a time of rising concerns about the court’s legitimacy. A majority of Americans are losing confidence in the institution, polls show, and its approval ratings are at a historic low. Critics charge that the court has become increasingly politicized, especially as a new conservative supermajority holds sway.

In May, after the draft opinion in the abortion case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, was leaked in what Justice Alito recently called “a grave betrayal,” the chief justice took the unusual step of ordering an investigation by the Supreme Court’s marshal. Two months later, Mr. Schenck sent his letter to Chief Justice Roberts, saying he believed his information about the Hobby Lobby case was relevant to the inquiry. He said he has not gotten any response.

In early June 2014, an Ohio couple who were Mr. Schenck’s star donors shared a meal with Justice Alito and his wife, Martha-Ann. A day later, Gayle Wright, one of the pair, contacted Mr. Schenck, according to an email reviewed by The Times. “Rob, if you want some interesting news please call. No emails,” she wrote.

Mr. Schenck said Mrs. Wright told him that the decision would be favorable to Hobby Lobby, and that Justice Alito had written the majority opinion. Three weeks later, that’s exactly what happened. The court ruled, in a 5-4 vote, that requiring family-owned corporations to pay for insurance covering contraception violated their religious freedoms. The decision would have major implications for birth control access, President Barack Obama’s new health care law and corporations’ ability to claim religious rights.

Justice Alito, in a statement issued through the court’s spokeswoman, denied disclosing the decision. He said that he and his wife shared a “casual and purely social relationship” with the Wrights, and did not dispute that the two couples ate together on June 3, 2014. But the justice said that the “allegation that the Wrights were told the outcome of the decision in the Hobby Lobby case, or the authorship of the opinion of the Court, by me or my wife, is completely false.”

 

Now, someone's obviously lying here, either Justice Alito or Rev. Schenck. The Times piece has a fair amount of evidence saying Alito is the one lying. Schenck has turned over a lot of documents to the Times showing his efforts to influence Justices Alito, Thomas, and at the time Scalia.

In other words, the Roberts Court is just as corrupt as I've been saying for years. What's very clear is that conservative justices on the court have been manipulated for a long time, and the campaign to do so has been successful beyond their wildest dreams, successful enough to begin the rollback of the entire last 60 years in civil rights.

THis is the real battle in America, and by and large it's already been lost.

The Propaganda Arm Of The GOP

As WaPo's Phillip Bump notes, now that the House GOP will be taking over, it's time for FOX News to settle back in as the party's official media outlet as it did 10 years ago.

There’s a pattern to the investigatory process here. Back in 2013 and 2014, with Republicans in control of the House, there were a slew of investigations into the terrorist attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in September 2012. That story drew a lot of attention on Fox News itself; there was an often-explicit feedback loop between the network and the focus of the investigations.

Those investigations got lucky: They discovered that Hillary Clinton, secretary of state at the time of the attacks, had been using a private email server while serving in the Cabinet. That spawned its own obsessive coverage, up until the day that Clinton lost her 2016 presidential bid to Trump.

This wasn’t a coincidence.

“Everybody thought Hillary Clinton was unbeatable, right?” Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) — probably the next speaker — said in 2015. “But we put together a Benghazi special committee, a select committee. What are her numbers today? Her numbers are dropping.”

Republicans were out of power in the House from 2019 to the present. But Fox News continued hammering themes that were picked up by GOP representatives.

One was that the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election was contrived or dishonest, something that prompted Fox News to spend a great deal of time talking about special counsel John Durham, tasked with investigating the investigation and proving rot in the Justice Department. He was unable to do so, but gave Fox News plenty to talk about.

The other theme was Hunter Biden and his laptop. (There was also a blip of Hunter Biden coverage back in 2019. This is when Fox News and Republicans — including Jordan — were trying to deflect the impeachment investigation into Trump by suggesting that his demand for Ukraine to investigate the Bidens was valid.) If you are a politician looking to make an appearance on Fox News or get the attention of a Fox News-watching audience, these are subjects that will probably do the trick.

It should go without saying that it is good for Congress to conduct investigations into presidents and other officials. That’s true even if the investigations are nakedly partisan; sometimes the sort of assumption of guilt that accompanies such probes unearths real wrongdoing that might otherwise have been overlooked. And there are legitimate questions about Hunter Biden’s business activities — though the Justice Department is currently looking at his actions, too.

The House Republican effort, though, can’t be separated from the eagerness with which members of the party’s caucus are explicitly appealing to the Fox News/right-wing-media echo chamber. After Thursday’s news conference, numerous observers scratched their heads about the timing: The party had just had that electoral underperformance thanks in part to a universe of rhetoric that mirrored what was being amplified at the news conference. In response, the party was pledging to use its power to double down on the claims from that universe?

Yes. In part because it fits with the pre-2016 and pre-2020 pattern of targeting a presidential opponent. And in part because doing so guarantees that Republican officials will get retweets and Fox News hits and coverage on the network that keeps them at the center of attention.

If they discover something nefarious along the way? Even better.

 

The real issue is how much the rest of the "liberal media" goes along to reinforce the narrative. If you remember the coverage of Hillay Clinton's email server for two years, you understand why she lost, and why Bump's own Washington Post assisted in that loss.

 

Trump was and is good for business for the media. Never forget that.

 

 

Last Call For The Ol' Special Treatment Again

With Donald Trump announcing his 2024 candidacy, US Attorney General Merrick Garland is declining to fall into Trump's "You can't lay a finger on me, I'm a presidential candidate!" trap and is naming a Special Counsel to handle the federal investigations into Trump.

 

Attorney General Merrick Garland named a special counsel on Friday to oversee the Justice Department’s investigation into the presence of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s Florida estate as well as key aspects of a separate probe involving the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection and efforts to undo the 2020 election.

The move, being announced just three days after Trump formally launched his 2024 candidacy, is a recognition of the unmistakable political implications of two investigations that involve not only a former president but also a current White House hopeful.

Though the appointment installs a new supervisor atop the probes — both of which are expected to accelerate now that the midterm elections are over — the special counsel will still report to Garland, who has ultimate say of whether to bring charges.

The role will be filled by Jack Smith, a veteran prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s public integrity section in Washington and who later served as the acting chief federal prosecutor in Nashville, Tennessee, during the Obama administration. More recently, he has been the chief prosecutor for the special court in the Hague that is tasked with investigating international war crimes.

The Justice Department described Smith as a registered independent, an effort to blunt any attack of perceived political bias.

Representatives for Trump, a Republican, did not immediately return messages seeking comment.

There was no immediate reason provided for the decision or for its timing. Garland has spoken repeatedly of his singular focus on the facts, the evidence and the law in the Justice Department’s decision-making and of his determination to restore political independence to the agency following the tumultuous years of the Trump administration.

And there does not seem to be an obvious conflict like the one that prompted the last appointment of a special counsel to handle Trump-related investigations. The Trump Justice Department named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the investigation into potential coordination between Russia and the Trump 2016 presidential campaign.

 

So, Merick Garland is crossing his t's and dotting his i's while the House GOP will almost certainly be summoning him to Capitol Hill next year to "answer" for why the investigation into Trump is ongoing anyway. He can refer to the special counsel.

 

Worked for Bill Barr.

 

We'll see if indictments happen, that decision will be Garland's and Garland's alone to make.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The federal seditious conspiracy trial of Stewart Rhodes and his Oath Keepers January 6th domestic terrorists wraps up today with closing arguments.

 

Stewart Rhodes and the leaders of the Oath Keepers repeatedly called on then-President Donald Trump to deploy the military to prevent ceding the Oval Office to Joe Biden. When he didn’t, prosecutors said Friday, they decided to do it themselves.

After a grinding eight-week trial, the most significant to emerge from the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, prosecutors pleaded with jurors to consider the weight of Rhodes’ words in the lead-up to Jan. 6, 2021.

“These defendants repeatedly called for the violent overthrow of the United States government and they followed those words with action,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Rakoczy said in her closing statements. “Please do not become numb to these statements. Think about what is actually being called for in these statements.”

To prosecutors, the case is clear: Rhodes was the “architect” of a plan to overthrow the government by force unless Trump took direct action to seize a second term he didn’t win. As Jan. 6 approached, Rhodes grew increasingly frustrated at Trump’s inaction and assembled a team — including co-defendants Kelly Meggs and Kenneth Harrelson of Florida, Jessica Watkins of Ohio and Thomas Caldwell of Virginia. They coordinated to amass an arsenal of heavy weapons at a Comfort Inn in nearby Arlington, Va., and developed land and water routes to ferry them to Oath Keepers if violence erupted.

Two dozen Oath Keepers entered the Capitol after other rioters breached it and migrated toward the House and Senate chambers before they were repelled by police. Later, they met Rhodes outside the Capitol. Prosecutors say the group celebrated their actions and prepared to continue their efforts to oppose the government even after authorities regained control of the Capitol.

After closing arguments Friday, jurors will begin deliberating on the most significant charge — seditious conspiracy — as well as a slew of other charges lodged against the Oath Keeper leaders, including obstruction of an official proceeding and destruction of property at the Capitol.

Oath Keepers have contended that their conversation leading up to Jan. 6 was merely a lot of overheated talk and their actions amid the insurrection were relatively harmless. They came to Washington, they argued, to help perform security details for VIPs attending Trump’s Jan. 6 “Stop the Steal” rally. Their weapons cache, which they described as a “quick reaction force,” was meant to guard against an outbreak of street violence, not to target the Capitol, they contended.

In his closing argument, Rhodes’ attorney Lee Bright said that the Oath Keepers were fearful in 2020, as the country was largely in lockdown amid the Covid pandemic. Then, riots erupted amid the protests that accompanied the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer — including in Portland, Seattle and Washington, D.C.

“They saw their country burning,” Bright said.

What resulted, he said, was “horribly heated rhetoric” and “bombast” — not a genuine intention to topple the government. He emphasized that no one had any idea that Jan. 6 was going to be a major event until just two weeks before when Trump called for a rally and protest.

Bright also mocked prosecutors’ contention that the Oath Keepers’ arsenal of firearms was an effort to bring “weapons of war” into Washington, D.C. He described it as a routine function of the Oath Keepers’ protocols when they performed security details at major events.

 

Rhodes and his merry crew of dipshits need to be spending decades in prison for their terrorism, to stand as a warning to the rest of the MAGA trolls waiting for their own chance to harm or kill Americans over Trump losing the 2020 election.

 

How many 2024 GOP presidential hopefuls will commit to pardoning Rhodes and his co-conspirators if they are convicted? My guess is "anyone who wants to actually win the nomination". For all the lousy pretending that the GOP took back the House on "kitchen issues" understand that all of them are anti-American terrorists, and their voters are more than happy to scream LOCK THEM UP at every Democrat they can find.

 

We're possibly only a few years from that happening, along with the roundup of political enemies as payback.

Fight For Every Seat

Neither party fields candidates for every House seat, but seeing Lauren Boebert headed for a likely recount gives me hope that Dems can pull this one seat off.

 

Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert, a renowned conservative firebrand whose combative style helped define the new right, is likely headed to an automatic recount in her bid to fend off a surprisingly difficult challenge by a Democratic businessman from the ritzy ski town of Aspen.

The Associated Press has declared the election in Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District too close to call. AP will await the results of a potential recount to call the race. With nearly all votes counted, the incumbent Boebert leads Democrat Adam Frisch by 0.16 percentage points, or 551 votes out of nearly 327,000 votes counted.

A margin that small qualifies for an automatic recount under Colorado law, in a race that has garnered national attention as Republicans try to bolster their advantage in the U.S. House after clinching a narrow majority Wednesday night.

As counties finalized unofficial results on Thursday, Boebert’s already slim lead was cut in half. All but one of the 27 counties in the district had reported final results by Thursday evening. Otero County plans to finalize its numbers on Friday.

In Colorado, a mandatory recount is triggered when the margin of votes between the top two candidates is at or below 0.5% of the leading candidate’s vote total. On Thursday night, that margin was around .34%.

 

It's extremely unlikely that Frisch will be able to win, maybe he can shave 50 votes off with a recount, but likely not 500+. Curing votes, the process of correcting errors on the ballot in order to make them count, has a far likelier chance of moving the needle.

The updated results follow a hectic few days for both campaigns as they scrambled to “cure” ballots — the process of confirming voters’ choices if their ballots had been rejected in the initial count. Both the Republican and Democratic national campaign committees had boots on the ground in Colorado to support the efforts.

Spokespeople for Frisch’s and Boebert’s campaigns declined to comment.

 

Boebert has declared victory already and most likely she's correct. But the race never should have been this close in the first place. There's zero chance that Boebert moderates her disgusting nonsense with the GOP taking control of the House, so maybe she can put herself out of a job in two years.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Remember, Trump's Russian collusion has always been true, and now it's a legal and criminal fact.

A Republican political strategist was convicted of illegally helping a Russian businessman contribute to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016.

Jesse Benton, 44, was pardoned by Trump in 2020 for a different campaign finance crime, months before he was indicted again on six counts related to facilitating an illegal foreign campaign donation. He was found guilty Thursday on all six counts.

Elections “reflect the values and the priorities and the beliefs of American citizens,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Parikh said in her closing argument this week. “Jesse Benton by his actions did damage to those principles.”

The evidence at trial showed that Benton bought a $25,000 ticket to a September 2016 Republican National Committee (RNC) event on behalf of Roman Vasilenko, a Russian naval officer turned multilevel marketer. (Vasilenko is under investigation in Russia for allegedly running a pyramid scheme, according to the Kommersant newspaper; he could not be reached for comment.) The donation got Vasilenko a picture with Trump and entrance to a “business roundtable” with the future president.

Vasilenko connected with Benton through Doug Wead, an evangelical ally of the Bush family who was also involved in multilevel marketing. Vasilenko sent $100,000 to Benton, who was working for a pro-Trump super PAC at the time, supposedly for consulting services. Benton subsequently donated $25,000 to the RNC by credit card to cover the ticket.

Witnesses from the RNC and the firm hired to organize the event said they weren’t told Vasilenko was a Russian citizen. Benton said in an email to his RNC contact that Vasilenko was “a friend who spends most of his time in the Caribbean”; he described Vasilenko’s interpreter as “a body gal.” In fact, according to the testimony, Benton and Vasilenko had never met.

Benton argued that he followed the advice of his previous counsel, David A. Warrington, who has also represented Trump. Warrington testified that Benton contacted him at the time to ask if he could give a ticket to a political fundraiser to a Russian citizen. Warrington said he told Benton “there is no prohibition on a Russian citizen receiving a ticket to an event” and that “you can give your ticket that you purchased to a fundraiser to anybody.”

Prosecutors said Benton failed to tell Warrington that he was getting reimbursed by the Russian citizen for the donation. Benton asked for the advice only “to cover his tracks,” Parikh said.

Benton also claimed that he earned the $100,000 acting as a tour guide in Washington for Vasilenko, whose interest was not politics but self-promotion.

Wead — who died at age 75 last December after he was indicted with Benton — had previously discussed with Vasilenko the possibility of a photograph with Oprah Winfrey, Michelle Obama or Steven Seagal before suggesting Trump.

“If Oprah was available,” defense attorney Brian Stolarz said in his closing argument, “we wouldn’t even be here.”

 

Oprah of course isn't subject to campaign finance laws involving illegal money from Russian oligarchs buying political access to the Oval Office.

 

Again, the Russian collusion was always real. Trump should be disqualified from office, indicted, tried, convicted, and sentenced.

Nancy, Steny, Jim, Hakeem And The Animal House Remake

Republicans have secured 218 House seats to secure control of the lower chamber of Congress, and will probably end up at 221 or 222 (in a dark mirror of the Dems' current 222-213 margin) when the smoke clears and the dust settles. As such, current House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced she's stepping down from Democratic leadership.

 

Nancy Pelosi, the first female speaker of the House, who helped shape many of the most consequential laws of the early 21st century, said Thursday that she will step down after two decades as the Democratic Party’s leader in the chamber.

“With great confidence in our caucus I will not seek re-election to Democratic leadership in the next Congress," Pelosi said in a speech on the House floor.


Pelosi was speaker from 2007 to 2011 and returned to the top job in 2019. She announced her decision just a day after NBC News and other news outlets projected that Republicans had flipped control of the House in last week’s midterm election, sending Pelosi and the Democrats back to the minority.

More personally, just weeks ago, her husband of nearly 60 years, Paul Pelosi, survived an assault by a hammer-wielding intruder at the family’s home in San Francisco.

Pelosi won't be leaving Congress after winning her 19th term last week. She is expected to remain, at least temporarily, given the GOP’s razor-thin majority.

As Pelosi took the mic, the chamber was packed with Democratic lawmakers, while the Republican side of the aisle was largely empty — a symbol of how politics have changed over Pelosi’s three and a half decades in the House. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., did not attend the speech in person, but House Minority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., was present. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., crossed the Capitol to watch Pelosi speak, while the front row on the Democratic side of the chamber was filled with fellow female lawmakers from California.

 

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer is bowing out along with Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, meaning that Rep. Hakeem Jeffries is the favorite to take control of the House Democrats. 

 

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) and Democratic Whip Jim Clyburn (S.C.) announced Thursday they will remain in Congress next year but won’t seek a leadership position, joining Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) who had announced the same decision moments before.

The surprise development clears the way for Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (N.Y.), the current chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, to jump several rungs up the leadership ladder to replace Pelosi in the next Congress, when Republicans will take control of the lower chamber.

In a letter to fellow Democrats, Hoyer said he’s proud of his work in leadership, but “now is the time for a new generation of leaders.” He quickly endorsed Jeffries, who faces no other challenger.

“I look forward to serving as a resource to him, to the rest of our Democratic leadership team, and to our entire Caucus in whatever capacity I can best be of assistance as we move forward together to address the nation’s challenges,” Hoyer wrote.

Hoyer, a 42-year veteran of Capitol Hill, said he intends to return to the powerful Appropriations Committee — a post he had held before joining leadership — to work on issues including education, health care and efforts to boost domestic manufacturing.

“I also look forward to continuing my focus on voting rights, civil rights, and human rights which I have made priorities throughout my public life,” he wrote. 

 

The torch is being passed to a new generation in the House Democratic caucus.

 

But voters having handed control of the House over to the GOP, Republicans are focusing on the important issues to the American voter, like Hunter Biden's laptop and shutting the government down in order to force Medicare and Social Security cuts.

Although House Republicans will still face a Democratic White House and Senate aimed at blocking their legislative aims, McCarthy — who is working feverishly to cement his ascension to speaker despite growing discontent in his ranks — has already made it clear the party plans to launch investigations into the Biden administration and at least one of the president’s family members.

But McCarthy and other leaders will have their hands full as they try to keep their wafer-thin majority united and corral conservative bomb throwers who are clamoring to shut down the government and impeach President Joe Biden and his top allies.

"The era of one-party Democrat rule in Washington is over. Washington now has a check and balance. The American people have a say in their government," McCarthy, flanked by his new leadership team, said Tuesday after he won his race to be the party's nominee for speaker.

Here’s what the new 118th Congress will look like under House GOP rule:

Investigations will dominate the new Congress, from the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic and allegations of politicization at the Justice Department to America's botched withdrawal from Afghanistan. But none will attract as much attention as the GOP’s planned investigation into the business dealings of the president’s son Hunter two years before a potential Biden re-election bid.

Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., the incoming Oversight Committee chairman, has said an investigation into Hunter Biden and other Biden family members and associates will be a priority as Republicans try to determine whether the family’s business activities “compromise U.S. national security and President Biden’s ability to lead with impartiality.”

Republicans allege that Hunter Biden has used his father’s successful political career to enrich himself: He joined the board of a Ukrainian natural gas company in 2019, and an investment firm he co-founded helped a Chinese firm buy a Congolese cobalt mine from a U.S. company in 2016, among other financial endeavors. 

 

Get used to James Comer making Kentuckians look like fools, America.

The Marriage Of Church And State

The good news is that the Senate easily beat a Republican filibuster on a federal same-sex marriage bill. The bad news it easily passed a filbuster because the Senate GOP knows that when the Roberts Court inevitably reverses Obergefell v. Hodges, same-sex marriages will be left up to the states like abortion is in a post-Dobbs era. Slate's Mark Joseph Stern:

Congress is on the brink of enshrining marriage equality into federal law by passing the most consequential gay rights measure in history. On the brink of this victory, however, there’s still a great deal of confusion over what, exactly, the bill does—and some debate among progressives about whether it’s even worth supporting. The short answer is that this measure, the Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA), is worthy of not just support but celebration: It repeals a bigoted federal statute while creating a crucial backstop for marriage equality in the states if the Supreme Court overturns Obergefell v. Hodges. As recently as 2015, it would’ve been unthinkable that such a sweeping bill could pass into law.

What the RFMA does not do is “codify” Obergefell, as many media outlets have inaccurately reported. So it’s worth delving into the details to understand precisely how this landmark legislation operates. Keep in mind that its central provisions will only become relevant if the Supreme Court overturns its marriage equality decisions. The RFMA will benefit same-sex couples if, and only if, SCOTUS overrules the right to equal marriage.

Start with the easy part: The RFMA repeals the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), a 1996 law that bars the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages. It replaces DOMA with a requirement that the federal government recognize any marriage that was “valid in the place where entered into.” So if a same-sex couple obtains a valid marriage license from any state, the federal government must recognize their union.

The Supreme Court found DOMA unconstitutional in 2013’s U.S. v. Windsor, but that decision is on thin ice today. It relied on an expansive definition of “liberty” that the Supreme Court largely repudiated when overturning Roe v. Wade. Right now, Windsor would also be vulnerable to a Republican president eager to roll back gay rights. More than 1,000 federal laws grant rights and privileges to married couples, and the Obama administration aggressively applied Windsor to as many of them as possible. That means important benefits involving health care, immigration, labor, military service, taxes, Social Security—pretty much everything—are currently extended to same-sex couples by executive mandate.

It would be all too easy for a future Republican president (say, a hypothetical President Josh Hawley) to direct his administration to withdraw this mandate. A Hawley administration could purport to limit Windsor to its facts, refusing to apply its reasoning to the entire federal code—just like Republican judges are currently refusing to apply the Supreme Court’s reasoning in Bostock beyond the Civil Rights Act. In the process, a President Hawley could test Windsor’s continued vitality at our hard-right Supreme Court. (The Trump administration provided a preview of this tactic when it unsuccessfully tried to discriminate against the children of binational same-sex couples.) Far better for Congress to preempt such backsliding by wiping DOMA off the books for good, declaring that same-sex couples must receive every right and privilege of marriage granted by the federal government. And that’s precisely what the RFMA does.

Turn now to the second prong of the bill: Its requirement that every state recognize a valid same-sex marriage. It’s this provision that has upset some progressives, because it does not go as far as Obergefell. In that decision, the Supreme Court directed every state to license same-sex marriages—that is, to issue a marriage certificate to same-sex couples. The RFMA does not codify this component of Obergefell. Instead, it directs every state to recognize every same-sex marriage that “is valid in the State where the marriage was entered into.”

So the RFMA does not force Texas to issue a marriage certificate to a same-sex couple. But it does force Texas to recognize a marriage certificate issued to a same-sex couple by New Mexico. In a post-Obergefell world, a same-sex couple in Texas could drive to New Mexico, obtain a certificate, and force Texas to respect their marriage like any other.

Why did Congress draw a distinction between licensing and recognizing marriages? Because it wanted to remain on firm constitutional ground, and that’s is as far as the Supreme Court could plausibly let it go. Time and again, the court has ruled that the federal government cannot “commandeer” states to enforce federal laws or pass specific statutes. If Congress compelled states to license same-sex marriages, the judiciary would invalidate the law as a violation of this anti-commandeering doctrine.

The federal government’s authority to make states recognize same-sex marriages, by contrast, is extremely well-established, and very likely to be upheld. That’s because the Constitution’s full faith and credit clause gives Congress the power to make states grant “full faith and credit” to the “public acts, records, and judicial proceedings” of other states. As I explained in July, Congress has repeatedly used this authority to command nationwide uniformity in family law. For instance, it has ordered every state to grant full faith and credit to custody determinations and child support orders issued by another state. There is no constitutional reason why Congress could not also order each state to grant full faith and credit to a valid marriage license held by a same-sex couple. Even a Supreme Court willing to overturn Windsor and Obergefell would probably affirm this power.

Making states recognize same-sex marriages from out of state will "probably" be upheld when the Roberts Court trashes Obergefell. That's as good as we're going to get in this shameful era of SCOTUS.