The Vaxx Of Life, Con't

The US Energy Department under Secretary Jennifer Granholm say that new information has moved the agency's outlook on the origins of Covid-19 to the lab leak hypothesis, rather than natural occurrence, but this should be taken with grains of large, visible rock salt. 

 

The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress.

The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office.

The new report highlights how different parts of the intelligence community have arrived at disparate judgments about the pandemic’s origin. The Energy Department now joins the Federal Bureau of Investigation in saying the virus likely spread via a mishap at a Chinese laboratory. Four other agencies, along with a national intelligence panel, still judge that it was likely the result of a natural transmission, and two are undecided.

The Energy Department’s conclusion is the result of new intelligence and is significant because the agency has considerable scientific expertise and oversees a network of U.S. national laboratories, some of which conduct advanced biological research.

The Energy Department made its judgment with “low confidence,” according to people who have read the classified report.

The FBI previously came to the conclusion that the pandemic was likely the result of a lab leak in 2021 with “moderate confidence” and still holds to this view.

So the majority of the country's agencies that have looked into Covid-19's origins, and the DNI's office, still are concluding that it's natural spread of the virus, most likely from a Chinese "wet market". It would be nice to know what this new intelligence is, frankly.  The agency that did change its mind still assesses the reality with "low confidence" at best.

Perhaps the House GOP Circus of the Damned will make its own "lab leak" to explain why the DoE changed its mind.

The bigger issue remains though that the majority of the agencies involved still consider the natural occurrence theory to be correct three years later.

That didn't change today.

Sunday Long Read: Training The Coup-Coup Birds

Nobody who has followed ZVTS over the last 14 years and change should be surprised that the US Military has been training African officers to take over their respective countries in military putsches over the last several years, because our chief export is "coups" and has been for longer than my entire lifetime. Rolling Stone's Nick Turse has the details:

 

ONE YEAR AGO, Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba was a military leader on the rise. The 41-year-old officer had just overthrown Burkina Faso’s democratically-elected government and was about to be sworn in as the West Africa’s nation’s new president. Wearing a red beret and military fatigues, he appeared on TV and threw down a gauntlet. “To…gain the upper hand over the enemy, it will be necessary… to rise up and convince ourselves that as a nation we have more than what it takes to win this war,” he said.

Just nine months later, an upstart underling—34-year-old Captain Ibrahim Traore—decided Damiba did not have what it takes to win the war and toppled him. Traore, now the youngest world leader, recently shored up his popularity by ordering a withdrawal of French forces fighting a long-running Islamist insurgency by groups linked to al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Burkina Faso.

When Damiba seized power last year, U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) admitted that the United States had mentored him over many years. Damiba’s putsch was just the latest in a recent spate of coups in West Africa by U.S.-trained officers. But when Rolling Stone asked AFRICOM if Traore was the latest to follow in this tradition, they couldn’t say. “We are looking into this,” said Africa Command spokesperson Kelly Cahalan, noting the command needed to “research” it. “I will let you know when I have an answer.”

Four months later, AFRICOM still hasn’t provided an answer. In fact, the U.S. government appears unwilling to address its role in mentoring military officers who have sown chaos in the region; men who have repeatedly overthrown the governments the U.S. trains them to prop up.

For decades, U.S.-trained officers —from Haiti’s Philippe Biamby and Romeo Vasquez of Honduras to Egypt’s Abdel-Fattah el-Sisi and Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan— have overthrown U.S.-allied governments all over the world. Rarely, however, have so many coups been so concentrated in a region over such a short period of time.

Last fall, after returning from a trip, alongside other top State Department and Pentagon officials to the Sahelian states of Burkina Faso, Mali, Mauritania, and Niger, Ambassador Victoria Nuland was upbeat. “We went to the region in force. We were looking, in particular, at how the U.S. strategy towards the Sahel is working. This is a strategy that we put in place about a year ago to try to bring more coherence to our efforts to support increased security,” she said during an October conference call with reporters.

After Rolling Stone pointed out that U.S.-trained military officers had conducted seven coups in these same countries—Burkina Faso, three times; Mali, three times; and Mauritania, one time—since 2008, Nuland was less sanguine. “Nick, that was a pretty loaded comment that you made,” she replied. “Some folks involved in these coups have received some U.S. training, but far from all of them.”

The fact is the leaders of all of these coups have received significant U.S. training. Before Lt. Col. Paul-Henri Damiba overthrew Burkina Faso’s president last year, for example, he twice participated in an annual U.S. special operations training program known as the Flintlock exercise. He was also previously accepted into a State Department-funded Africa Contingency Operations Training and Assistance course; twice attended the U.S.-sponsored Military Intelligence Basic Officer Course-Africa; and twice participated in engagements with a U.S. Defense Department Civil Military Support Element.

In 2014, another U.S.-trained officer, Lt. Col. Isaac Zida—schooled via a Joint Special Operations University counterterrorism training course at Florida’s MacDill Air Force Base and a military intelligence course that was financed by the U.S. government—seized power, during popular protests against a presidential power-grab, in Burkina Faso. The next year, yet another coup in that country installed Gen. Gilbert Diendéré, another prominent Flintlock attendee.

Col. Assimi Goïta, worked with U.S. Special Operations forces for years, participating in both Flintlock exercises and a Joint Special Operations University seminar at MacDill Air Force Base—and also headed the junta that overthrew Mali’s government in 2020. After staging the coup, Goïta stepped down and took the job of vice president in a transitional government charged with returning Mali to civilian rule. But less than a year later, he carried out his second coup.

Similarly, in 2012, Captain Amadou Sanogo, who learned English in Texas, received infantry-officer basic training in Georgia, and underwent military intelligence schooling in Arizona, and overthrew Mali’s democratically elected government. “America is a great country with a fantastic army,” he said after the coup. “I tried to put all the things I learned there into practice here.” In 2008, the Pentagon-funded Stars and Stripes reported that Gen. Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, the leader of a coup against Mauritania’s elected president, had also “worked with U.S. forces.”

Why did these officers who were trained by the United States to defend their governments topple them instead? If Nuland has any idea, she won’t say. “You need to talk to them about why they are overthrowing their governments,” she told Rolling Stone, referring to the coup-makers.

 

A lot of crazy conspiratorial right-wing trash keeps popping up next to State Department career diplomat Victoria Nuland's name (see Sy Hersh's Nord Stream pipeline fantasy) but I'll be damned if the truth about her isn't actually worse.

She comes off as Julia-Louis Dreyfus's character in the MCU, and if you haven't seen Falcon and the Winter Soldier or Wakanda Forever, know that she's bad, bad news from an evil US career civil service person standpoint.

Still, this remains a huge problem for the Pentagon and the Biden administration.

Last Call For Sam's Club

Indicted billionaire crypto-scammer Sam Bankman-Fried is now facing a second set of federal indictments involving campaign finance violations, as he illegally spent $10 million on midterm campaigns for Democrats...and more than twice that on Republicans in 2022, and there's more hidden.

 

On Thursday prosecutors updated their indictments against former crypto billionaire Sam Bankman-Fried, expanding on allegations the feds initially filed in December. Bankman-Fried ran the now-collapsed FTX crypto-trading platform and made a name for himself as a disheveled, casually dressed boy genius. He made no secret of his desire to use his new wealth to support Democratic candidates. According to campaign finance records, in 2022 he was a prolific donor—the sixth largest overall—who contributed more than $36 million to mostly Democratic candidates and causes. But the indictments on Thursday, which added four new campaign finance charges to the one that was filed last year, seem to support a story that Bankman-Fried began telling after FTX’s collapse. They suggest that Bankman-Fried actually donated far more money than was previously known—to politicians on both sides of the aisle—but that he hid much of it.

According to the new indictments, Bankman-Fried made “over 300 political contributions, totaling tens of millions of dollars,” that were illegal because they were made through another donor giving on his behalf—an arrangement known as a straw donor. The exact total isn’t cited, but the new filing does note that internal bookkeeping records at Alameda Research—an investment firm that Bankman-Fried also operated and which investigators say improperly mixed its assets with FTX’s—suggest that as much as $100 million may have been set aside for political contributions.

One key thing that’s missing from all of this is the names of the recipients of all that money—and, more importantly, whether they were aware of the alleged scheme. Straw donor schemes are not that unusual; during every election cycle, several are discovered and prosecuted. The reasons for using straw donors vary. Sometimes the goal is to exceed the legal limits on how much a donor can give to a candidate, and other times the purpose is to hide from the public eye who a politician’s financial backers really are. According to the new indictment, Bankman-Fried was mostly concerned about the latter and used two different employees to make donations for him—one to give to lefty candidates that Bankman-Fried didn’t want to be publicly associated with, and the other to give money to Republicans.

“All my Republican donations were dark,” Bankman-Fried said in an interview after FTX’s collapse. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the fuck out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super-liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”

Again, according to the indictment, Bankman-Fried’s intentions were to use his donations to influence politicians. At one point, federal prosecutors are alleging, a political consultant working for Bankman-Fried told the FTX executive charged with donating to progressive candidates and groups that they had to donate $1 million to support a candidate who was linked to LGBTQ causes. The consultant wrote in a message to the executive that “in general, you being the center left face of our spending will mean you giving to a lot of woke shit for transactional purposes.” The executive balked, but the indictment says that on Bankman-Fried’s orders, the donations were made.

Donations made for “transactional purposes” could themselves be illegal—campaign finance law says that donations can’t be made in exchange for a quid pro quo. In fact, that’s known as bribery. All the more reason, from Bankman-Fried’s perspective, to keep the donations hidden. But contributions that are so large and so frequent and made for “transactional purposes” also raises the possibility that—unless they were made completely ineptly—the beneficiaries of the donations may well have known who was really supplying the money and why.

Recipients of straw-donor schemes are rarely held accountable when prosecutors file charges. There are a variety of reasons for that, including a general reluctance to charge elected officials and the difficulty of proving their knowledge of the true source of the money. But the schemes also rarely involve such large sums of money—it’s much harder to say a politician didn’t know about donations as large as those Bankman-Fried is alleged to have made, especially when there’s apparent evidence that the donor was so focused on “transactional purposes.”

Of course not all of the money went directly to campaigns—some of the largest donations were apparently to super-PACs, which are not legally allowed to coordinate their activities with candidates. But candidates are often very aware of who the super-PAC donors are. In fact, candidates often fundraise for the super-PACs directly. Whether the money went to a candidate or to a super-PAC supporting candidates, if Bankman-Fried made the donations with “transactional purposes” in mind, it means a lot of politicians likely knew what he was doing.

If Bankman-Fried really did direct as much as $100 million to support politicians across the political spectrum—and everything about Bankman-Fried and his calculations is a big “if” at this point—it’s increasingly difficult to see how those who took the money shouldn’t be held accountable as well.

 

He didn't try to buy off a few politicians.

 

He tried to buy an entire Congress. 

The people in that Congress who took his money knowingly?

They need to go.

Our Little White SUpremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester recently confirmed he's running for a fourth term in 2024, and the response from the Trumpiest state in the union was immediate.

A Kalispell man accused of threatening to injure and murder Montana U.S. Senator Jon Tester was arraigned on Feb. 23 on an indictment, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said Friday in a news release.

Kevin Patrick Smith, 45, pleaded not guilty to an indictment filed on Feb. 22 charging him with two counts of threats to injure and murder a United States senator, the news release said.

If convicted of the most serious crime, Smith faces 10 years in prison, a $250,000 fine and three years of supervised release.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Kathleen L. DeSoto presided. Smith was detained pending further proceedings.

The news release detailed the following, citing court documents:

On Jan. 30, Smith allegedly made numerous threatening calls to Sen. Tester by phone, leaving voicemails at Sen. Tester’s office in Kalispell. In one instance, Smith stated:

“There is nothing I want more than to have you stand toe to toe with me. You stand toe to toe with me. I rip your head off. You die. You stand in a situation where it is physical between you and me. You die.

“I will never stop. … And I would love to destroy you and rip your (obscenity) head from your shoulders. That is no problem. Call that a threat. Send the FBI.

“I would love to (obscenity) kill you. I would love to see your FBI at my door. I would love to see something in the news.”

According to court documents, Smith allegedly acknowledged in the recording that he threatened Sen. Tester, and such threats were “on purpose.”

Court documents further allege that on Feb. 1, the FBI contacted Smith and instructed him not to threaten physical violence toward Sen. Tester. On Feb. 10, Smith again called Sen. Tester, stating in one voice message, “I want you to understand. If I ever pull my trigger, I know what dies.”

As further alleged in the indictment, Smith stated in another voicemail, “It is important for you to understand that I won’t live under your rule.…If it becomes time that I die, I’d take a significant number with me.”

Tester is a Democrat and Montana’s senior senator. He announced this week he will seek a fourth term in 2024.

Tester was reportedly reconsidering running earlier this month and was undecided after the first threat. I'm glad that he wasn't scared off, we need him on the Democratic side.

But we need to be real about the dangers facing Democrats at all levels heading into 2024.

The Vaxx Of Life, Con't

Lee County, Florida Republicans have voted to send a resolution to GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's desk to ban COVID-19 vaccines in the state and uder Florida law, DeSantis can choose to act on the resolution as an executive order. Forbes Magazine's Bruce Y. Lee:

If the Lee County Republican Party has their way, the state of Florida will be banning the use of Covid-19 vaccines. Yes, you heard that correctly. Based on a majority vote, the Party has passed a so-called “Ban the jab” resolution that will now go to the desk of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) for his consideration. And why does the Party want such a ban? Well, an article for WINK News by Michael Hudak and Taylor Wirtz quoted Joe Sansone, the guy who drafted the resolution, as saying, “The Lee County Republican Party is going to be on the vanguard of this campaign to stop the genocide because we have foreign non-governmental entities that are unleashing biological weapons on the American people.”

Stop the genocide? Foreign non-governmental entities unleashing biological weapons? Holy space-laser-operating-lizard-alien-living-on-a-flat-Earth-with-a-5G-transmitter. And here you thought Covid-19 vaccines were meant to protect people from getting hospitalized and dying from severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infections. Silly rabbit. Tricks are for kids.

The WINK article also included another quote from Sansone that really seemed to embrace some conspiracy theory claims: “If you got this shot, you go home and hug your pregnant wife—she can have a miscarriage through skin contact.” Wait, so now, you’ve got to start worrying about hugging people who have gotten Covid-19 vaccines? How exactly is that supposed to work scientifically? Did Sansone provide any peer-reviewed scientific studies to support his assertion? Most likely not, because good luck trying to find any peer-reviewed scientific studies to support such an assertion.

So, let’s get this straight. The Lee County Republican Party resolution is not just about resisting Covid-19 vaccine requirements. This is not just about refusing to get vaccinated themselves. No, members of the Lee County Republican Party want the State Government to prevent everyone else from getting Covid-19 vaccines. Apparently, they want the State Government to restrict the people’s choice and freedom to get a vaccine that’s been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and recommended by the U.S, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Talk about overreach.

 

So, will anyone in FL ask DeSantis directly and on camera if he plans to sign this resolution and ban the vaccine for use in the state? 

Last Call For Greg's Gone Wrong, Too

Not to be outdone by Florida making Black history illegal, Texas is making both Black and Latino history illegal, with new legislation that would ban Black and Latino studies courses and end diversity at Texas universities.

Latino and Black leaders in Texas pushed back on claims that diversity and inclusion hiring programs are illegal as the vast University of Texas System put a hold on such programs at its institutions and campuses.

Kevin Eltife, chairman of the system's board of regents, announced Wednesday that he was delaying new policies on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and launching a review of all of them. The announcement at a board meeting, with no discussion or vote, was reported first by The Austin American-Statesman.

Eltife, a former state senator appointed to the board by Abbott, also a Republican, said that within UT campuses “some DEI efforts have strayed from the original intent to now imposing requirements and actions that rightfully has raised concerns of our policy makers.”

No examples of DEI programs that have strayed were provided at the meeting or in response to an NBC News request.

Eltife’s stop on new policies follows a declaration by Abbott's chief of staff in a letter dated Feb. 4 to state agencies that DEI "has been manipulated to push policies that expressly favor some demographic groups to the detriment of others." The letter, first reported by The Texas Tribune and posted on Twitter by KHOU in Houston, went on to say that a state agency spending tax dollars to pay for DEI initiatives and resources connected with them is illegal.

That declaration from a higher education system of 13 institutions and more than 244,000 students is drawing pushback from Black and Latino lawmakers and organizations.

Gary Bledsoe, president of the Texas National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said DEI programs are set up through legal departments and are conservative in nature so as not to run afoul of federal anti-discrimination laws.

"It is a complete misrepresentation to say that DEI programs are illegal and that they violate the Constitution or any statute, because they don't," said Bledsoe, who also is a founder of the Black and Brown Dialogue on Policy. The multiracial, cultural group seeks to confront what it says is a "growing threat of racism and policies meant to undermine our human dignity and humanity."

 

It's racist to teach Black American and Latino American history, you guys!

 

Of course the real reason is to get Black and Latino folks to leave the state, and destroy the culture and history of those who remain.

 

So that white folks aren't made "uncomfortable".  That's all that really matters.

Ukraine In The Membrane, Con't

The anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine this week marks renewed efforts from the Pentagon to help Kyiv fight back with another round of war-fighting technology.

 

The Pentagon announced a new package of long-term security assistance for Ukraine on Friday, marking the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion with a $2 billion commitment to send more rounds of ammunition and a variety of small, high-tech drones into the fight.

The announcement comes just days after President Joe Biden made an unannounced visit to Kyiv and pledged America’s continuing commitment to Ukraine. Biden told President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his people that “Americans stand with you, and the world stands with you.”

In a statement Friday, the Pentagon said the aid includes weapons to counter Russia’s unmanned systems and several types of drones, including the upgraded Switchblade 600 Kamikaze drone, as well as electronic warfare detection equipment.

It also includes money for additional ammunition for the High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, artillery rounds and munitions for laser-guided rocket systems. But, in an unusual move, the Pentagon provided no details on how many rounds of any kind will be bought. Including this latest package, the U.S. has now committed more than $32 billion in security assistance to Ukraine since Russia’s invasion.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement that the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion is a chance for all who believe in freedom “to recommit ourselves to supporting Ukraine’s brave defenders for the long haul — and to recall that the stakes of Russia’s war stretch far beyond Ukraine.”

 

But increasingly, what Ukrainian officials want, and say they need, is commitment for a major counteroffensive to push Russia out for good.  WaPo's Josh Rogin:

As the Ukraine war enters its second year, the Biden administration is pledging to support Kyiv for “as long as it takes.” That language is calculated to send a message of resolve to Russian President Vladimir Putin, but it’s not what Ukrainians want to hear. Though they’re fighting valiantly, Ukrainians are also suffering greatly — and they are begging the West to help them speed up the war, not settle in for an endless slog.

Just a few days before the anniversary of Putin’s unprovoked invasion last year, Biden visited Kyiv and made a rousing speech in Poland promising that the West “will never waver” in the fight for freedom and democracy. A few days earlier, Vice President Harris took the stage at the Munich Security Conference to declare America’s endless commitment to the Ukraine effort.

“The daily agony of war will persist,” she said. “But if Putin thinks he can wait us out, he is badly mistaken. Time is not on his side.”

Nearly all the Ukrainian officials I met in Munich respectfully disagree. It’s not just about weapons (although they insist that more and better weapons are badly and quickly needed). These Ukrainian officials say they’re worried that the Biden administration’s stance could undermine support for Kyiv’s strategy, which is to accelerate the war effort now and avoid a protracted stalemate.

For them, an endless war means a win for Putin and the loss of their country as they know it.

“We are very grateful for the support that is coming, but there is one phrase that makes us very concerned,” Ukrainian member of parliament Yelyzaveta Yasko told me. “Many leaders right now are saying, ‘We will support you as long as it takes.’ And we feel this phrase is quite dangerous.” 

 

That will be difficult to do though as the GOP Circus of the Damned are increasingly signaling they will block aid on the scale Kyiv needs to win. 

The topic of Ukraine funding will be front and center when both spending fights and presidential politics heat up later this year. Republicans are seeking to rein in spending across the federal government now that they control the House and will have leverage in negotiations to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, while conservatives on the campaign trail are looking to contrast their priorities against Biden’s in the prelude to the 2024 election cycle.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Monday on Fox News that US aid to Ukraine was little more than an “open-ended blank check” – a sentiment shared by a handful of House Republicans who have growing power in a narrowly divided Congress.

For now, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill still view it differently, setting up a clash that could come next fall when the fight over government spending kicks into full gear. Republicans leaders will have to contend with a small but vocal bloc of anti-interventionists within their party who view military support for Ukraine as a prime example of US government waste. In a House of Representatives where Republicans control a razor-thin majority and conservative hardliners have a stranglehold on McCarthy’s speakership, those voices can’t simply be ignored.

 

So we'll see where this goes.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Two Gunmericas Edition

Remember that FOX News being the propaganda arm of the GOP is as much for Republican voters as it is everyone else.

 

So yeah, spend all day screaming about ILLEGALS BRINGING IN DRUGS and that's the main "threat".

Guns? Number one among Democrats, 4% among Republicans. More Republicans consider fat people a threat.

Gunmerica forever.

Last Call For The Road To Gilead, Con't

A major new national poll conducted by PRRI finds a majority of Americans in most states want abortion legalized in most or all cases, and even in Republican states, only a small percentage want it completely illegal.

 

Just under two-thirds of Americans (64%) say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while roughly one-third (34%) say it should be illegal in most or all cases. More granularly, 30% say abortion should be legal in all cases, 34% say it should be legal in most cases, 25% say it should be illegal in most cases, and just 9% say it should be illegal in all cases.

The share of Americans who say abortion should be legal in most or all cases has continued to increase since PRRI began tracking abortion legality in 2010, when it was at 55%. The share of those who say abortion should be illegal in most or all cases has shrunk (from 42% in 2010 to 34% now), with the proportion who say abortion should be illegal in all cases seeing the largest decline (from 15% in 2010 to 9% now).

However, there has been little movement in attitudes about abortion’s legality in the wake of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision in June 2022. In March 2022, 64% of Americans felt that abortion should be legal, as did a similar share in June (65%). After Dobbs, support for abortion’s legality remained fairly constant in August (64%), September (62%), and December (65%).

Looking at the opposing viewpoint, the share of Americans who say abortion should be illegal in most cases has been stable, but the share who say it should be illegal in all cases has declined slightly over the past year: from 11% in September 2021 to 7% in December 2022.

Just under four in ten Republicans say that abortion should be legal in most or all cases (36% across 2022), while 63% say it should be illegal in most or all cases. Support for legal abortion among Republicans has mostly wavered between 30% and 40% since 2010, while support for abortion being illegal has mostly wavered between 60% and 70% since 2010.

Among Republicans, belief that abortion should be illegal in all cases has declined: in September 2021, 21% of Republicans said abortion should be illegal in all cases, compared to 14% who said the same in December 2022, after the Dobbs decision. Prior to 2022, roughly two in ten Republicans opposed abortion in all cases, a share that had held steady since at least 2010.

Republican women (17%) are about as likely as Republican men (14%) to say abortion should be illegal in all cases. However, in March 2022, 20% of Republican women believed abortion should be illegal in all cases, compared to 15% who said the same in December. Republican men’s attitudes did not shift significantly during the same time period (15% in March, 13% in December).

Nearly nine in ten Democrats want abortion to be legal in most or all cases (86% across 2022), including nearly half of Democrats (48%) who say abortion should be legal in all cases. Notably, however, support for abortion’s legality in most or all cases has gone up among Democrats, from 71% in 2010.

Throughout 2022, attitudes among Democrats overall remained relatively steady. However, the share of Democratic women who said abortion should be legal in all cases increased slightly, from 46% in March to 52% in December, while the share of Democratic men who said the same remained steady throughout 2022.

Views on abortion among independents generally mirror those of the country as a whole. Across 2022, 68% of independents said abortion should be legal in most or all cases, while 30% said it should be illegal in most or all cases. Views about abortion legality among both independent men and women remained relatively steady through the year.

 

 Of course the problem remains that red states are making abortion completely illegal, to the point of crinimalizing it for doctors and medical practitioners, and increasingly, women seeking abortions. If the vast majority of Americans, two-thirds, actually want access to abortion, the time to get rid of Republican lawmakers is now.

Sadly, that won't happen. No Republican who votes for one of the religious zealots believe that the women in their lives would ever actually enforce such a ban against them.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis will now only allow events at the state capitol in Tallahassee, including protests and demonstrations, if the goals of groups holding events "align with the state" and the current regime.

 

The new rules specify that organizations must make their requests through DeSantis administration agency heads, the House speaker or any member of the Senate. The chief justice of the Florida Supreme Court can also ask on their behalf.

The DMS letters caught by surprise several groups that have for years requested space in the Capitol to host education events for their particular mission. There are dozens of annual events during the legislative session that include state universities having advocacy days, or specific advocacy groups holding informational and educational days in the Capitol during session to increase awareness of their issues of concern. Most events are uncontroversial and not tied to protesting specific issues being considered, or any specific piece of legislation.

“It seems counterintuitive to our rights that you have to ask an agency to ask on your behalf to use space at the Capitol to simply educate the Legislature,” said a lobbyist who for years has planned Capitol events for clients. “And only if your mission lines up with the agencies’ mission is having space for displays on DMS property potentially allowed.”

“Does this rule really protect the constitutional right to assembly, and the right to petition the governor for a redress of grievances,” added the person, who was granted anonymity because they were concerned about retribution for speaking against the new DeSantis administration policy.

The changes have created concern that any event deemed not in line with a DeSantis administration “mission” could be denied space, a situation that some fear would affect demonstrators who protest controversial pieces of legislation, a common hallmark of Florida’s legislative process.

Each year, protesters have filled the Capitol rotunda, generally in opposition to Republican legislative priorities because that party is in the majority, though recently anti-abortion protesters filled the Capitol to urge the GOP-dominated Legislature to pass legislation that would lessen the period of time a woman can have an abortion from the recently passed 15-week ban.

“It is absolutely absurd and against our First Amendment right,” said state Rep. Anna Eskamani (D-Orlando). “It does not surprise that as GOP bans abortions, attacks LGBTQ+ rights, bans books and passes corporate tax breaks that they want to suppress freedom of speech and First Amendment rights.”

The rule changes also define “demonstration activity,” which covers things like “demonstrating, parading, picketing, speech making, holding of vigils, sit-ins, or other similar activities conducted for the purpose of demonstrating approval or disapproval of government policies ... expressing a view on public issues, or bringing into public notice any issue or other matter.”

Those activities would be less regulated and still allowed outside the Capitol complex. But the new rules include language that allows DMS to request organizers “reduce in size and scope” their event.

 

The fascism is now on open display in the state and will continue for years to come. If we're not careful, this will be nationwide under a DeSantis federal regime, too.

 

Oh, and in DeSantis's Florida, we've now reached the point where journalists covering shootings are getting shot themselves. 

A Florida man suspected of killing a woman Wednesday returned to the scene hours later and shot four other people, killing a 9-year-old girl and a television news journalist, authorities said.

A Spectrum News 13 crew was in Pine Hills shortly after 4 p.m. covering the slaying of a woman in her 20s who had been found shot in the area around 11 a.m., Sheriff John Mina said.

Keith Melvin Moses, 19, the suspect in the woman's killing, returned and fired at the reporter and a photojournalist who were in or near a vehicle, Mina said.

The reporter, identified by Spectrum News 13 early Thursday morning as Dylan Lyons, died from his injuries, Mina said. The photojournalist, who the outlet identified as Jesse Walden, was critically injured.

Moses then went to a nearby home, walked inside and shot a woman and her 9-year-old daughter, the sheriff said. The girl died. The mother was critically injured.

The suspect was arrested in the area and is being charged in the initial slaying, Mina said. Moses will be charged in the four other shootings later, Mina said.

"The suspect is not saying much right now," Mina said. "It is unclear if he knew they were news media or not."

Mina said there is no apparent connection between Moses and the mother and the child who were shot Wednesday afternoon.

The woman killed earlier was an acquaintance of the suspect, he said.

 

This week, Florida Republicans are rushing through permitless concealed carry to make it even easier to have a gun to use when you get angry at someone. More people will die, more mothers, more 9-year-olds, more journalists covering previous shootings. DeSantis, of course, doesn't give a damn.

The Galleria Of Crime, Con't

Jared and Ivanka get to talk to Special Counsel Jack Smith for a bit as the federal criminal investigation(s) into Donald Trump continue.

 

The special counsel overseeing a criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump has issued subpoenas to Trump’s daughter Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner, according to a new report.

The subpoenas by special counsel Jack Smith, which demand the couple’s testimony before a grand jury, are related to his probe of Trump’s efforts to remain in the White House after losing the 2020 election to President Joe Biden and the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, The New York Times reported.

Both Ivanka Trump and Kushner served as senior White House advisors to the former president.

Both of them had testified to the select House committee that investigated the Capitol riot by a mob of Trump supporters whipped up into anger by the former president’s false claims of losing to Biden due to ballot fraud.

Smith previously issued a subpoena to former Vice President Mike Pence, who has said he will oppose the demand for his testimony.

And Smith reportedly subpoenaed Trump’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows in the same probe.

The special counsel’s spokesmen declined to comment on the Times report. Attorneys for Ivanka Trump and Kushner did not immediately respond to CNBC’s requests for comment.

 

So we've got the gang back together here, Meadows, Pence, and now Jared and Ivanka.  Needless to say some six years plus since Trump crapped himself into an Oval Office chair, the fact we're still back at the subpoena stage (and all parties are fighting these still, particularly Pence) doesn't fill me with confidence.

Regardless, Merrick Garland has to get this right, or the country is lost. Period.

Last Call For Trans-Specific Railroading

Sadly, but not unexpectedly, Kentucky is about to quickly join several other red states in making trans kids illegal, and criminalizing anyone who "assists in physical or social transition" in any way with felony charges, loss of license, loss of state funding, and worse.

 

A sweeping new piece of anti-transgender legislation is being fast-tracked through Kentucky’s legislature, quickly being assigned to a committee and racking up 20 co-sponsors after its Tuesday filing.

Under House Bill 470, gender transition services for trans kids would be virtually barred statewide. “Gender transition” is broadly defined in the bill, applying to any service meant to “(assist) a person with a gender transition.” This would include things to help youth transition socially like using the student's correct pronouns or new name.

Physical and mental health care providers found to have helped provide transition-related services, which are backed by major medical organizations, to those under 18 would lose their licenses. If those providers work at a place receiving public money, the funding would be pulled.

Health care providers would be required to report providing any type of gender-affirming care to someone under the age of 18 within 30 days. If they don't, they could face criminal charges. They also would be liable should someone sue over services they provide, while providers who refuse to provide such services would be protected against legal, professional licensing and disciplinary pursuits.

In school, educators would be required to out trans and non-binary kids to their parents if they ask for a new name or pronouns, change their gender expression or there is an “inconsistency” between the sex or gender they were born as and how they feel.

Anyone under 18 could no longer legally change their name if the change appears tied to a “social or physical gender transition.” Documents like birth certificates also couldn’t be amended.

The bill, which is sponsored by Rep. Jennifer Decker, R-Waddy, says it would take effect in January 2024 so any minors currently using puberty blockers would have time for the appropriate medication tapering.

 

We're making being a trans kid in this state 100% illegal and if anyone doesn't report a soon-to-be illegal trans kid to the authorities, they'll go to jail. The bill essentially classifies medical or social transition as felony child abuse and makes failure to report it a crime as well.

Here's the most insidious part:

 

Decker’s bill is dubbed the “Do No Harm Act,” although several trans individuals and their allies have testified already this session that even small acts of affirming trans students’ identities, like using the correct pronouns, are shown to reduce the chances that student will consider suicide.

 

These bastards are going to run this bill through in a matter of days and override a Beshear veto easily even if he does veto it. I'm hoping the bill can be tied up by the Kentucky courts, but I expect it will become law by next year.

 

And then the state will begin hunting down trans kids. "Do No Harm" act my ass. This will get trans kids killed in KY and they damn well know it, because that's the point of the bill. Make a group illegal to exist and they either flee, die, or end up in jail.

Won't stop there, of course...

Orange Meltdown, Peach State Edition

The foreperson in Fulton County, Georgia's special grand jury investigating Trump's election fraud went to NBC and all but told the world that yes, the jury recommended indictments galore for Team Trump.

A special grand jury that investigated election interference by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies in Georgia recommended indictments for multiple people on a range of charges in its final report, most of which remains sealed, the forewoman of the jury said on Tuesday.

“It is not a short list,” the forewoman, Emily Kohrs, said in an interview.

Ms. Kohrs, 30, declined to name the people recommended for indictment, since the judge handling the case decided to keep those details secret when he made public a few sections of the report last week. But seven sections that are still under wraps deal with indictment recommendations, Ms. Kohrs said.

Special grand juries in Georgia do not have indictment powers. Fani T. Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., has led the investigation and will decide what charges to bring before a regular grand jury.

Asked whether the jurors had recommended indicting Mr. Trump, Ms. Kohrs would not answer directly but said: “You’re not going to be shocked. It’s not rocket science.” In the slim portions of the report that were released last week, the jurors said they saw possible evidence of perjury by “one or more” witnesses who testified before them.

“It is not going to be some giant plot twist,” she added. “You probably have a fair idea of what may be in there. I’m trying very hard to say that delicately.”

The investigation in Atlanta has been seen as one of the most significant legal threats to Mr. Trump as he begins another run for the presidency. In November, the Justice Department named a special counsel, Jack Smith, to oversee two Trump-related criminal investigations. And last month, the Manhattan district attorney’s office began presenting evidence to a grand jury on whether Mr. Trump paid hush money to a porn star during his 2016 presidential campaign, laying the groundwork for potential criminal charges against the former president in the coming months.

A focal point of the Atlanta inquiry is a call that Mr. Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, in which he pressed Mr. Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, to recalculate the results and “find” 11,780 votes, or enough to overturn his loss in the state.

Yeah, the special grand jury recommended charges for Trump, I'm convinced of that. Whether DA Willis makes those charges, well, that's up to her and a criminal grand jury, just like it would be for any other criminal case in Fulton County.

Willis wouldn't have waited too long on empaneling that criminal grand jury, if it's not already meeting, it soon will be.

And then we'll see if Willis, Georgia, and America are ready for this fight.

Another Supreme Disappointment, Con't

As true to its nature, the Roberts Court refused to hear a challenge to Mississippi's racially motivated gerrymander of US House districts, as Republicans in the state eliminated one of the state's two majority Black districts completely last year, and the Supreme Court will simply let that stand.

The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear Buck v. Reeves, a case alleging that the state’s congressional maps are racially gerrymandered. The decision affirms that Mississippi is no longer required to get federal preclearance for its congressional maps.

In 2002, a three-judge panel ordered Mississippi to use court-drawn congressional maps “in accordance with the procedures in Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.” However, in 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority struck down Section 5, with Chief Justice John Roberts saying at the time that “things have changed in the South.”

Mississippi is a 38% Black state with four congressional districts; one is majority Black and currently represented by a Black Democrat, U.S. House Rep. Bennie Thompson, while the other three are majority white and represented by white Republicans.

District 1 is 65.8% white and 28% Black; District 2 is 30.2% white and 65.9% Black; District 3 is 58.7% white and 35.6% Black; District 4 is 68.7% white and 23.4% Black.

Despite being the state with the largest Black population per capita, Mississippi has only sent two Black representatives to Congress since the Reconstruction era after the Civil War: Thompson and his predecessor, former U.S. House Rep. Mike Espy. The state has not elected a Black U.S. senator or any other statewide official since Reconstruction.

The lower court's decision that there was no case because of the death of VRA Section 5 means that the rest of the Voting Rights Act is essentially dead as well. States can gerrymander districts down to individual streets in order to assure they can have as many districts favoring one party as they want, even if it means deliberately diluting and disenfranchising Black votes and voters.

This court, led by Chief Justice Roberts, will never allow the VRA to be enforced because racism "no longer exists".

Vote while you still can in red states, folks. 

Last Call For Going Off The Rails, Con't

The massive chemical spill in East Palestine, Ohio due to a Norfolk Southern train derailment has brought all sorts of ire from folks quick to blame Biden for every damn thing when Trump Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao rolled back train braking safety regulations and Republicans like Marco Rubio demanded that the regs be further rolled back in October 2021, but now the EPA has stepped in to make things right.

 

The Environmental Protection Agency announced a sweeping enforcement action against Norfolk Southern on Tuesday, compelling the rail company to conduct and pay for cleanup actions associated with the Feb. 3 derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

“The Norfolk Southern train derailment has upended the lives of East Palestine families, and EPA’s order will ensure the company is held accountable for jeopardizing the health and safety of this community,” said EPA Administrator Michael Regan in remarks prepared for a news conference in East Palestine. “Let me be clear: Norfolk Southern will pay for cleaning up the mess they created and for the trauma they’ve inflicted on this community.”

If the company fails to complete any of the actions ordered by the EPA, the agency will “immediately” conduct the necessary work and then seek to compel Norfolk Southern to pay triple the cost. The order will require the company to identify and clean contaminated soil and water; pay any EPA costs, including reimbursing the agency for cleaning services that it will offer to residents and businesses; and participate in public meetings at EPA’s request and post information on-line.

The rail company already faces multiple class-action suits from members of the East Palestine community over the incident, which forced residents within roughly a mile radius to evacuate their homes.

 

Now, how quickly will Ohio GOP Gov. Mike DeWine find a federal judge friendly enough to block this order, saying the Environmental Protection Agency has no authority to actually protect the environment?

We're going to find out in short order.