Seeing Red For Walgreens

In the wake of national pharmacy chain Walgreens saying it will no longer carry abortion medication where red state abortion bans prohibit the sale or use of it, despite federal law allowing it, California is scrapping the state's $54 million contract with the company.

 

California Governor Gavin Newsom on Wednesday withdrew a $54m contract with Walgreens after the pharmacy giant indicated it would not sell an abortion pill by mail in some conservative-led states.

Newsom ordered state officials to not renew a contract with Walgreens to purchase specialty pharmacy prescription drugs for California’s prison healthcare system, including antiviral and antifungal drugs and medication used for congestive heart failure. Walgreens has received about $54m from the contract, which expires 30 April.

Newsom’s office said the state will buy the drugs elsewhere.

“California will not stand by as corporations cave to extremists and cut off critical access to reproductive care and freedom,” Newsom said in a news release. “California is on track to be the fourth largest economy in the world and we will leverage our market power to defend the right to choose.”

A representative from Walgreens, based in the northern Chicago suburb of Deerfield, Illinois, did not respond to an email from the Associated Press seeking comment. But earlier this week, the company said in a statement it plans to dispense the drug, called mifepristone, “in any jurisdiction where it is legally permissible to do so”.

“Providing legally approved medications to patients is what pharmacies do, and is rooted in our commitment to the communities in which we operate,” according to a statement posted onto the company’s website.

Mifepristone is a medication that when combined with another drug will end a pregnancy. The US Food and Drug Administration approved it in 2000 for use up to the 10th week of pregnancy. Today, more than half of all abortions in the US are drug-induced, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports abortion rights.

After the US supreme court last year overturned the federal right to an abortion, more than a dozen states restricted the use of abortion pills. But those restrictions are being challenged in court.

Attorneys general in 20 states, mostly with Republican governors, have warned Walgreens and CVS that the companies could face legal consequences if they sell abortion pills in their states. Last week, Walgreens confirmed it sent a response to each attorney general saying it would not dispense the drug in their states.

Newsom responded to that news on Monday, posting in a message on Twitter that California will not be doing business with Walgreens “or any company that cowers to the extremists and puts women’s lives at risk”.

“We’re done,” Newsom said.

Losing the California contract will have a small impact on Walgreens’ revenues, as the company reported $132.7bn in sales for the fiscal year that ended 31 August.

 

Walgreens could care less about California's contract, it's literally 0.04% of the company's yearly revenues. The bigger problem is that the parent company's stock after it purchased UK-based pharmacy chain Boots has dropped by more than 50% in the last four years. Avoiding getting sued out of existence by Red states is far more damaging than Gavin Newsom.

 

On the other hand, a Trump judge's possible nationwide injunction on the sale of abortion medication is expected any day now, so it may all be moot. 

 

Of course, the real reason why red states want to make abortion impossible nationwide remains very, very simple. 

 

Single women — who are postponing marriage or forgoing it altogether — are a growing economic force, accounting for a larger share of growth in the job market, homeownership and college degrees, according to an analysis of federal data.

The majority of women in the United States — a record 52 percent — were unmarried in 2021, according to a report released Wednesday by Wells Fargo. The census bureau has been tracking Americans’ marital status since at least 1900, when just 7 percent of surveyed women were single. Among the factors driving the rapid rise in single-women households over the last decade: A 20 percent increase in the number of women who have never married.

But while decades of changing norms around marriage and work have empowered women to carve their own paths, a stubborn wage gap continues to keep many women, especially single mothers, from enjoying the same economic gains as single men and married couples. Never-married women earned just 92 percent of what never-married men did last year, and have 29 percent less wealth, Wells Fargo economists found.

More and more Millennial women aren't getting married, and they don't have a reason to economically. Punishing them for not being married, or for having sex out of wedlock at all, is being done deliberately. Putting women back under the economic, social, and legal control of men has always been the key factor in the crusade to end abortion.

Remember that.

Border Line Insanity, Con't

Republicans got the judge and the ruling they wanted on President Biden's immigration policies as the White House's "catch and release" program has now been blocked by a Trump judge.

 

A federal judge on Wednesday handed a victory to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and Attorney General Ashley Moody as he delivered a blistering rebuke to the Biden administration’s immigration policies.

U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell ordered federal immigration authorities to revamp one key policy that he says runs counter to federal law while at the same time castigated the Biden administration for its handling of what he called an “unsustainable” crisis on the nation’s southern border.

“For the most part, the court finds in favor of Florida because, as detailed below, the evidence establishes that defendants have effectively turned the Southwest border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country,” wrote Wetherell, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump.

Wetherell added that the Biden immigration policies were “akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border. The unprecedented ‘surge’ of aliens that started arriving at the Southwest Border almost immediately after President Biden took office and that has continued unabated over the past two years was a predictable consequence of these actions.”

The ruling comes amid reports that the Biden administration is considering reopening previously shuttered detention centers to house migrant families.

Moody, whose office first filed the lawsuit against Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other federal officials in March 2021, hailed the ruling.

“Today’s ruling affirms what we have known all along, President Biden is responsible for the border crisis and his unlawful immigration policies make this country less safe,” Moody said in a statement. “A federal judge is now ordering Biden to follow the law, and his administration should immediately begin securing the border to protect the American people.”

Jeremy Redfern, deputy press secretary for DeSantis, said in an email that “Judge Wetherell vindicated the governor’s actions and ruled that the Biden Administration is breaking federal immigration law by failing to fulfill the duties of his office and secure the nation’s border.”

The Department of Justice declined to comment on the ruling.

Florida, along with other Republican-led states such as Texas, has been sharply critical of immigration policies pursued by the Biden administration. DeSantis, who is expected to run for president, pushed for the creation of a contentious migrant relocation program that resulted in the state flying nearly 50 migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard last September.

The state’s lawsuit took aim at immigration policies put in place right after Biden entered office, asserting that federal authorities were ignoring a federal law that requires those entering the country illegally to be detained and that undocumented migrants coming into Florida were costing the state.

 

Republicans don't want any immigration. Corporate interests who fund Republicans need cheap labor. Increasingly, the "solution" to the problem pushed by both groups is eliminating child labor laws in states.

 

But most of all, Republicans are trying to make immigration impossible, and they're winning.  Can't have a white supremacist theocracy if America keeps accepting the tired, poor huddled masses from those places.

Last Call For The Huckster's Daughter

I guarantee you that Arkansas GOP Governor (and former Trumpian Mouth of Sauron) Sarah Huckabee Sanders is going to try to resolve the problems that her public education reform bill creates with her new law shredding child labor laws in the state.

 

Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R) signed into law this week legislation that rolls back significant portions of the state’s child labor protections.

The law eliminates requirements for the state to verify the age of children younger than 16 before they can take a job.

Sanders believes the provision was “burdensome and obsolete,” spokeswoman Alexa Henning said in an emailed statement. Remaining state and federal regulations are still in effect, she said. Sanders signed the Republican-backed bill on Tuesday.

Federal officials have pledged to crack down on child labor law offenses after regulators discovered hundreds of violations in meatpacking plants and after press reports emerged of children working in hazardous occupations around the country.

The Labor Department fined Packers Sanitation Services, a subcontractor for meatpacking plants, $1.5 million in February for illegally hiring children, some of whom sustained chemical burns after working with caustic cleaning agents.

Other states are also considering loosening child labor protections. A bill advancing in Iowa would allow 14- and 15-year-olds to work certain jobs in meatpacking plants and would shield businesses from civil liability if a youth worker is sickened, injured or killed on the job.

 

As red state "education reforms" close down more and more schools and leave kids without an education, more and more of them are going to end up in meatpacking plants, factories, farms, construction work and more doing, as Dubya famously put it, "The jobs Americans don't want to do." 

Republicans understand full well that "school choice" means not everyone will get into the local magnate school with the swimming pool and media lab and the best teachers.  They understand full well that school funding will be decimated, and "failing" schools closed.

This will leave thousands of kids with no schools to attend. Eliminating child labor laws is the proposed solution. The school to prison pipeline is so 2016.

It's the school to meatpacking plant now.

Are there no workhouses?

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

US Attorney General Merrick Garland arrived in Louisville this morning, along with DoJ Civil Rights Division Director Vanita Gupta, to make it very clear that the culture of intense racism inside of Louisville Metro PD has resulted in multiple civil rights violations of Black Kentuckians and absolutely contributed to the death of Breonna Taylor.

 

The Louisville Metro Police Department engaged in systemic civil rights abuses and excessive-force misconduct in the years leading up to the 2020 police killing of Breonna Taylor, according to the findings of a federal investigation released Wednesday that is likely to force the department to undergo sweeping changes.

The Justice Department’s probe found that officers committed unlawful and unconstitutional policing, including conducting searches based on invalid warrants, executing search warrants without knocking and announcing their presence, making unlawful stops and violating the rights of people engaging in protected free speech that is critical of the police department.

The report said that the Louisville police department has for years “practiced an aggressive style of policing that it deploys selectively, especially against Black people, but also against vulnerable people throughout the city. ... Failures of leadership and accountability have allowed unlawful conduct to continue unchecked. Even when city and police leaders announced solutions, they failed to follow through.”

The exhaustive and damning report also said that the police and the Louisville city government discriminated against people who have behavior health disabilities when responding to crisis situations.

At a news conference in Louisville, Attorney General Merrick Garland called the misconduct “heart-breaking” and said it “erodes the community trust that is needed for effective community policing.”

The report took nearly two years and was released just days before the third anniversary of Taylor’s death on March 13. It starts the clock on negotiations between the federal authorities and Louisville city and police leaders that is expected to result in a court-approved consent decree outlining what could amount to hundreds of specific changes within the department overseen by a federal monitor.

Although Louisville community leaders have decried reported abuses from officers for years, the Justice Department’s findings could spark new anger and distrust in the city’s police force.

Local residents protested for weeks after Taylor, 26, a Black emergency-room technician, was killed when plainclothes police officers burst into her apartment to carry out a search warrant in a drug probe. Her death, along with the police killing weeks later of George Floyd, a Black man, in Minneapolis sparked months of social justice demonstrations across the country.

Garland announced the pattern or practice probes into the police forces in both cities within his first days on the job in April 2021. The investigations involved a deep forensic review of nearly all aspects of each department, including reviews of data and body-camera footage, training methods, accountability structures, facilities and equipment, and management. The Minneapolis investigation is ongoing.

The lengthy review also weighed heavily on the Louisville police force as it attempted to repair trust with local residents while also combating a rise in violent crime that tracked national trends.

Erika Shields, hired by the city as chief in early 2021, struggled to balance her own push for greater accountability within the department with the ongoing specter of the federal probe. She resigned late last year after the voters elected a new mayor, Craig Greenberg (D), who named a Shield deputy, Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, to take over as interim police chief.

“I’ve met with several officers and divisions from across the police force and there is a renewed sense of optimism about new leadership in terms of the interim chief and mayor. That’s important,” Marcus Winkler, who took over in January as the chairman of the Louisville Metro Council, said in an interview Tuesday. “What would be interesting to see is how bad is the report from the DOJ? Is there some healing that will have to happen first in the community?”

The Justice Department has sought to demonstrate to local residents that it will seek accountability in Taylor’s killing. Last August, prosecutors filed federal civil rights charges against four current and former Louisville police officers, amid an outcry from civil rights activists and Taylor’s family that no one has been convicted of a crime in her death.

 

The report on LMPD is brutal, detailing massive, rampant, institutionalized and systemic racism that will take years to fix.  Louisville cops called Black folk "monkeys" and "animals" and used excessive, sometimes lethal force. Dozens of lawsuits have been settled, and dozens more will come, I'm sure. 

But even consent decrees aren't a panacea fix, Cincy PD has been under a consent degree for decades. You can't fix a systemic and institutionalized issue like policing without wholesale changes in every facet of interaction with the community they serve.

 

And let's remember, LMPD put in "changes" after Breonna Taylor was killed almost three years ago. The DoJ found those measures to be 100% ineffective.

Black Lives Still Matter, though.

LMPD officers killed Breonna Taylor.

 

Don't forget that.

The New Nullification Crisis

As I've mentioned before, one of the contributing factors to the US Civil War was the Nullification Crisis of 1832, where South Carolina refused to enforce federal tariff laws. Andrew Jackson eventually threatened military force against the state and South Carolina folded, but not until Jackson renegotiated tariff laws.

Today, Missouri's similar nullification law to refuse to enforce federal gun laws met a roadblock in the federal courts this week.

 

A Missouri law banning local police from enforcing federal gun laws is unconstitutional and void, a federal judge ruled Tuesday.

U.S. District Judge Brian Wimes ruled the 2021 law is preempted by the federal government under the U.S. Constitution’s supremacy clause.

“At best, this statute causes confusion among state law enforcement officials who are deputized for federal task force operations, and at worst, is unconstitutional on its face,” Wimes wrote.

Missouri’s Republican Attorney General Andrew Bailey in a statement said he will appeal the ruling.

“As Attorney General, I will protect the Constitution, which includes defending Missourians’ fundamental right to bear arms,” Bailey said. “We are prepared to defend this statute to the highest court, and we anticipate a better result at the Eighth Circuit.”

The Missouri law had subjected law enforcement agencies with officers who knowingly enforced federal gun laws without equivalent state laws to a fine of $50,000 per violating officer.

Federal laws without similar Missouri laws include statutes covering weapons registration and tracking, and possession of firearms by some domestic violence offenders.

Conflict over Missouri’s law wrecked a crime-fighting partnership with U.S. attorneys that Missouri’s former Republican attorney general, now-Sen. Eric Schmitt, touted for years. Under Schmitt’s Safer Streets Initiative, attorneys from his office were deputized as assistant U.S. attorneys to help prosecute violent crimes.

The Justice Department, which last year sued to overturn the Missouri law, said the Missouri state crime lab, operated by the Highway Patrol, refused to process evidence that would help federal firearms prosecutions after the law took effect.

The city of St. Louis, St. Louis County and Jackson County also filed a separate lawsuit over the gun law, which is pending.

They said in a joint statement that they were “encouraged” by the ruling and complained about the passage of “dangerous bills that make it more difficult to prevent gun violence in our communities.”

Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas, meanwhile, described the decision in a tweet as a “monumental defense of the safety of our families, our police, and our neighborhoods” The city is planning to file a brief in support of the pending lawsuit, detailing its opposition to the law.

 

This could be a massive case in 2024, needless to say. Any semblance of keeping the United States united would be predicated on Missouri being shut down by SCOTUS here. A ruling in the state's favor, one that would broadly allow states to ignore whatever federal laws they like, would rapidly accelerate the disintegration of the country.

We'll see about this, but understand that Missouri had this law on the books for well over a year before any legal action against it happened.

 

Last Call For The Manchin On The Hill

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin still hasn't gotten the energy "red-tape" bill that Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer promised him in exchange for not killing the Biden Climate Bill last year, so his petty campaign of revenge will continue until further notice.

 

President Joe Biden’s candidate for the Federal Communications Commission, Gigi Sohn, has withdrawn her nomination after West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin announced he’d vote against her confirmation.

In a statement, Sohn says she’d asked Biden to withdraw her nomination Monday evening, blasting what she detailed as “unrelenting, dishonest and cruel attacks on my character and my career as an advocate for the public interest.”

“It is a sad day for our country and our democracy when dominant industries, with assistance from unlimited dark money, get to choose their regulators. And with the help of their friends in the Senate, the powerful cable and media companies have done just that,” Sohn wrote.

The Washington Post first reported Tuesday that Sohn was withdrawing her nomination after Manchin announced he would oppose her confirmation, citing what he called “her years of partisan activism, inflammatory statements online, and partisan alliances with far-left groups.”

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre declined to detail who, if anyone, the White House was considering to replace Sohn’s nomination.

“We appreciate Gigi Sohn’s candidacy for this important role. She would have brought tremendous talent, intellect and experience, which is why the President nominated her in the first place,” Jean-Pierre told reporters during Tuesday’s press briefing. “We also appreciate her dedication to public service, her talent, and her years of work as one of the nation’s leading public advocates on behalf of American consumers and competition.”

 

Biden's been trying to replace Trump-era FCC head Ajit Pai for two years now, and Manchin has been blocking the vote for months now. This week, Manchin made it clear that Sohn would never be confirmed (Kyrsten Sinema has already said she'd not confirm her) so it's back to square one for the Biden administration, especially since John Fetterman isn't available for tough votes.

You know, having a functioning FCC would mean that they could pay attention to FOX News and its propaganda, and Joe Manchin doesn't want that either. 

So here we are, with Joe Manchin still reminding Democrats that he can certainly cause trouble for Joe Biden whenever he wants to.

Expect that to continue.

Phantasma Santos, Con't

New York GOP Rep. "George Santos" has become an enduring headache for his fellow Empire State Republicans, and increasingly they want him gone from Congress entirely.

 

New York’s House Republicans are racing away from the walking political grenade known as George Santos.

Six of Santos’ New York colleagues, particularly the four who flipped tight battleground districts last fall, are working — out in the open and behind the scenes — to contain the blowback from the embattled lawmaker’s deceptions about his past. The first-term foursome started by breaking from the vast majority of their party by calling for Santos to resign, a move that would hurt the GOP’s already tiny majority.

And the newly elected New York Republicans are only growing louder: They’re pushing legislation aimed at hitting Santos financially, hoping to prevent the now-notorious fabulist from profiting off book or TV deals on his story. And they’re firing off fighting words on social media and local airwaves.

But their public criticisms haven’t insulated them from daily questions about his record, particularly as Democrats look to tie them to him. Their frustration, simmering for two months as negative Santos headlines build up, is close to boiling over.

“He is a bludgeoning tool the Democrats are using without regard for truth. They’re lying about us in relationship to him,” Rep. Marc Molinaro (R-N.Y.) said in an interview. “And he’s caused us every day to have to respond to his very existence in the House of Representatives, instead of giving 100 percent of our time to the important issues that Americans and the people who sent us to Washington care about.”

“Every time that we’re having a conversation we seem to be talking about George Santos,” echoed Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-N.Y.).

The anti-Santos Republicans’ stand is a lonely one. Most others in their conference prefer to spurn Santos in more subtle ways that don’t call for forcing him out, which would tee up a special election in a battleground district that could chip at their four-vote majority. But New York’s newest House Republicans assumed war footing for a reason: Mere months after the Empire State gave the GOP its fattest gains of an otherwise lackluster midterms, they say Santos is making their own donors squeamish and their voters suspicious.

 

Republicans in New York are afraid Santos will cause them to lose in 2024, and worse, cause voters to take a look at their own records of being Republican cheats and scoundrels. 

They couldn't care less about the damage Santos is doing to his constituents. They're worried about their own asses, and nothing more.

 

They should be worried.  They should be terrified, actually.

Insurrection Eradication

Having been given full access to thousands of hours of January 6th security footage, Tucker Carlson and the GOP propagandists at FOX have created a gaslighting masterpiece that even Goebbels would appreciate.

 

Fox News host Tucker Carlson on Monday released security video from the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, using footage provided exclusively to him by Speaker Kevin McCarthy to portray the riot as a peaceful gathering.

Carlson acquired the tapes as part of a deal for McCarthy, R-Calif., to win the speaker’s gavel. When McCarthy was struggling to gather the votes to lead the House, Carlson used his program to list two “concessions” he could make to win over far-right Republicans.

“First, release the January 6 files. Not some of the January 6 files and video — all of it,” Carlson, the most-watched host on cable news, said after McCarthy faced three failed votes. “So that the rest of us can finally know what actually happened on January 6, 2021.”

In the two months since McCarthy won the gavel, he has granted both. Carlson announced in late February that McCarthy had given him exclusive access to 44,000 hours of security video from the deadly riot before he unveiled some clips of the video on his show Monday night.

Carlson focused Monday’s segment on promoting former President Donald Trump’s narrative by showing video of his supporters walking calmly around the U.S. Capitol. He asserted that other media accounts lied about the attack, proclaiming that while there were some bad apples, most of the rioters were peaceful and calling them "sightseers," not "insurrectionists."

“The footage does not show an insurrection or a riot in progress,” Carlson told his audience Monday. “Instead it shows police escorting people through the building, including the now-infamous ‘QAnon Shaman.’”

He continued: "More than 44,000 hours of surveillance footage from in and around the Capitol have been withheld from the public, and once you see the video, you’ll understand why. Taken as a whole, the video does not support the claim that Jan. 6 was an insurrection. In fact, it demolishes that claim."

Video that Carlson didn’t air shows police and rioters engaged in hours of violent combat that resulted in injuries to hundreds of police officers. Two pipe bombs were also planted nearby but were not detonated.

Nearly 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack. About 140 officers were assaulted that day, and about 326 people have been charged with assaulting, resisting or impeding officers or employees, including 106 assaults that happened with deadly or dangerous weapons. About 60 people pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement.

Carlson also said on his show Monday that Democrats lied about the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick. He played video that he said showed Sicknick walking around inside the Capitol after the mob attacked him. “They knew he was not murdered by the mob, but they claimed it anyway,” he said.

Sicknick died of natural causes on Jan. 7, the day after he engaged with rioters outside the Capitol. An autopsy report determined that he died of a stroke at the base of the brain stem caused by a blood clot. Capitol Police have said Sicknick returned to his office after the riot and collapsed. Two men have been sentenced to prison for spraying him with a chemical irritant during the melee, and Sicknick’s family has contended that the fighting with rioters contributed directly to his stroke.

 

Tucker Carlson's job is to create a false narrative in order for Trump to run on pardoning all the insurrectionists, and he will if he ever gets back into office.  The're no doubt left that in the wake of the Dominion Voting Systems defamation lawsuit, that FOX News is truly the propaganda arm of the GOP and they no longer care who knows.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Republicans know full well they are the party of white supremacist domestic terrorism, and openly the party of eliminating the Civil Rights era in a return to "making America great again" so when Republicans say posing with actual neo-Nazis is a "mistake" they are lying to you and they damn well know it.

 

U.S. Rep. Matt Rosendale said he unwittingly posed for a photo with high profile members of the neo-Nazi movement last week walking between congressional hearings.

The photo taken March 1 in front of the Capitol, shows Rosendale posing with Ryan Sanchez, formerly of the white supremacist street-fighting gang Rise Above Movement and Greyson Arnold, a Nazi sympathizer and podcaster present at the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Arnold has called Adolf Hitler a “complicated historical figure.”

By week's end, the image was being widely circulated on social media, both on Twitter and Mastodon. The post was most often attributed to Vishal P. Singh, publisher of the website "VPS Reports, Civil Rights and Anti-Fascist News."

"I absolutely condemn and have zero tolerance for hate groups, hate speech, and violence. I did not take a meeting with these individuals,” Rosendale said in an email. “I was asked for a photo while walking between hearings, accommodating as I do for all photo requests, and was not aware of the individuals' identity or affiliation with these hate groups that stand in stark contrast to my personal beliefs."

In the photo, Sanchez appears to be wearing a WW-II era German officer trench coat.

The men posing aren’t low-profile. Arnold was the host of “Pure Politics” a YouTube program that interviewed GOP candidates and officials in the Pacific Northwest during the 2022 election.

 

This is a lie.

 

Rosendale knew perfectly well who he was dealing with, because Montana is a state with openly neo-Nazi assholes running for office, as is neighboring Idaho and Wyoming. Rosendale needs these votes, because voters in Montana, especially Republican ones, expect him to be sympathetic to their views, if not openly helping them achieve them with his votes.

I bet Sen. Jon Tester wouldn't make this "mistake." Just saying.

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Jose Pagliery at the Daily Beast points out a largely unheralded Justice Department memo earlier this month that leaves the door open for federal indictments of Donald Trump.

 

When the Department of Justice took the position this week that former President Donald Trump acted improperly by urging his followers to attack Congress in 2021, prosecutors did more than open the door to a potential flood of civil lawsuits from police officers who were injured on Jan. 6.

What they actually did, according to legal scholars, is lay the groundwork for a potential criminal indictment against Trump for inciting the insurrection.

“If they took the position that the president was absolutely immune, then they wouldn’t be able to bring a criminal prosecution,” said one person familiar with the DOJ’s ongoing investigation who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Legal scholars have come to the same conclusion.

“Had DOJ concluded that incitement unprotected by the First Amendment could nevertheless be within the president’s official functions, that could conceivably have impacted criminal charging decisions related to the same speech,” said Mary B. McCord, a former federal prosecutor now teaching at Georgetown University Law Center.

At the behest of the District of Columbia’s federal appellate court, the DOJ last week submitted a legal memo weighing in on a civil dispute by injured police officers. The department clarified that Trump’s speech, full of vitriol and fury, was not protected by presidential immunity, nor was it protected by his own free speech rights under the First Amendment.

“Such incitement of imminent private violence would not be within the outer perimeter of the Office of the President of the United States,” the DOJ wrote.

The department went out of its way to say it doesn’t necessarily support officer lawsuits against Trump, noting that it “expresses no view on that conclusion, or on the truth of the allegations in plaintiffs’ complaints.” But by making clear that Trump’s speech was outside the norms of his office, it stripped the former president of virtually any defense he could make.

“If they’re saying it’s outside the scope of immunity of civil suits, and outside the scope of protected speech, there really isn’t anything else out there protecting Trump,” said one attorney, who asked to remain anonymous to avoid rattling DOJ leadership.

The two indictments Trump could face are for his incitement of the Jan. 6 riot—a federal crime—and his attempts to overturn the election results in Georgia, a state case there.

So far, the Justice Department has not indicated its legal analysis of the looming federal case against Trump, which concerns the effort his campaign led to undermine the electoral vote by Congress. However, its new legal memo draws a clear red line on his actions during the lead up to the actual attack on Congress.

 

This is a necessary step, but this is a determination that should have been made two years ago.  Does it finally mean that Special Counsel Jack Smith is moving forward? At this point, the Trump regime seems to think so. They're already planning to go after DA Fani Willis in Atlanta, and the New York cases brought by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg and New York AG Tish James still exist, but everyone's running out of time.

We'll see.

The Circus Of The Damned Hits The Road

House Republicans are requesting millions in order to bring their prime-time propaganda to the people in an effort to stoke rage and resentment against President Biden and the Democrats...and oh yeah, to reward rich megadonors and to spread grift around the nation too.

 

When the House Ways and Means Committee traveled to Petersburg, W.Va., last month for its inaugural field hearing on “the state of the economy in Appalachia,” it met at the headquarters of a hardwood lumber manufacturer whose chief executive has donated the maximum campaign contribution allowed to a Republican member of the panel.

The logo of his company was on prominent display during the event.

When the committee descends on Yukon, Okla., this week for its second field hearing, this one on “the state of the economy in the heartland,” it will convene at Express Clydesdales, a restored barn and event space owned by a major donor to the super PAC aligned with Speaker Kevin McCarthy, the Republican National Committee, Senate Republicans’ campaign committee and former President Donald J. Trump.

The owner, the business magnate Robert Funk, has also given the maximum campaign donation allowable to another member of the panel, Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, for the past three cycles.

Determined to take their message directly to voters at a time when they are hard-pressed to get anything concrete done on Capitol Hill, House Republicans are increasing the budgets of their congressional committees and going out on the road, planning a busy schedule of field hearings in all corners of the country aimed at promoting their agenda outside the Beltway.

The Judiciary Committee, for example, which has held one field hearing at the U.S. border with Mexico to criticize the Biden administration’s immigration policies and is planning more, requested a travel budget of $262,000 for this year. That is more than 30 times what the panel spent on travel last year. (In 2019, before the coronavirus pandemic significantly curtailed travel, the Judiciary Committee spent about $85,000 on travel costs, according to a public disclosure form, one-third of what Republicans are planning this year.)

It is part of a well-worn political strategy to reach voters where they live and generate local media attention for activity that would most likely draw little notice in Washington.

Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, said last week that he had “made it a priority” to take the committee’s work “outside the halls of Congress, away from the politically connected voices of Washington lobbyists and into the communities of the American people whose voices have for too long been ignored.”

But it also has a direct payoff for Republicans, allowing them to reward major donors with publicity and exposure for their businesses.

In West Virginia, the chief executive of Allegheny Wood Products, John Crites, whose company hosted the first Ways and Means field hearing, gave the maximum contribution allowed to Representative Carol Miller, Republican of West Virginia and a member of the panel, for the past two cycles.

A spokesman for the committee declined to comment on the choice of venues. Staff aides noted that some of the witnesses who they can hear from in remote locations may not have the time or resources to travel to Washington to testify.

 

Expect a lot more of this in the months ahead. The traveling Circus of the Damned is coming to a wealthy Republican donor magnate near you, to shower them with money. Gotta spread the grift around, you know.

Last Call For The Devils Already Down In Georgia

As I have been predicting for months now, Fulton County, Georgia DA Fani Willis is going to find indicting Donald Trump or any of his minions nearly impossible because she almost certainly will be stopped by Georgia Republicans under GOP Gov. Brian Kemp.

 

To Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Atlanta, several bills in the Georgia legislature that would make it easier to remove local prosecutors are racist and perhaps retaliatory for her ongoing investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.

To the Republican sponsors of the bills, they are simply a way to ensure that prosecutors enforce the laws of the state, whether they agree with them or not.

Two of the measures under consideration would create a new state oversight board that could punish or remove prosecutors for loosely defined reasons, including “willful misconduct.” A third would sharply reduce the number of signatures required to seek a recall of a district attorney.

The proposals are part of a broader push by conservative lawmakers around the country to rein in prosecutors whom they consider too liberal, and who in some cases are refusing to prosecute low-level drug crimes or enforce strict new anti-abortion laws.

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida last year suspended a Democratic prosecutor in the Tampa area, Andrew Warren, after Mr. Warren said, among other things, that he would not prosecute anyone seeking abortions. The Republican-controlled Pennsylvania House voted in November to impeach Larry Krasner, the liberal district attorney in Philadelphia. And a Republican-backed bill currently under consideration in the Indiana legislature would allow a special prosecuting attorney, appointed by the state attorney general, to step in if a local prosecutor is “categorically refusing to prosecute certain crimes.”

The debate in Georgia is unfolding amid mounting concerns over urban crime, particularly in Atlanta. But Ms. Willis has been a centrist law-and-order prosecutor who has targeted some prominent local rappers in a sprawling gang case. She is also part of the changing face of justice in Georgia: The state now has a record number of minority prosecutors — 14 of them — up from five in 2020, the year Ms. Willis, who is Black, was voted into office.

And of course, there is the Trump inquiry, the latest accelerant to the partisan conflagrations that have consumed the increasingly divided state for years. The subject of Ms. Willis’s investigation is whether Mr. Trump and his allies tried to flout Georgia’s democratic process with numerous instances of interference after his narrow 2020 election loss in the state.

Ms. Willis has said she is considering building a racketeering or conspiracy case. Anticipation is rising, particularly since the forewoman of a special grand jury charged with looking into the matter spoke publicly last month, saying that the jury’s final report, which is still largely under wraps, recommended indictments for more than a dozen people.

Ms. Willis must now decide whether to bring a case to a regular grand jury, which can issue indictments. A decision ‌could come as early as ‌May.

In the Republican-controlled legislature, as of Friday afternoon, the prospects seemed favorable for the bills creating an oversight committee. They were dimmer for the recall election bill, which would lower the number of registered voters required to sign a petition to prompt a recall of prosecutors from the current 30 percent, which is standard for local elected offices, to just 2 percent. The measure was introduced after some high-profile Trump supporters in Georgia promoted the idea of a recall campaign against Ms. Willis, even though such an effort would be unlikely to succeed in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold.

Those supporters include United States Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tweeted in August that Ms. Willis was using taxpayer funds “for her personal political witch hunt against Pres Trump, but will NOT prosecute crime plaguing Atlanta!”

Ms. Willis, who first described the bills as racist in a State Senate hearing last month, repeated the accusation in an interview at her downtown Atlanta office this week, pointing out that the majority of Georgians now live within the jurisdictions of the 14 minority prosecutors.

“For the hundreds of years we’ve had prosecutors, this has been unnecessary,” Ms. Willis said, referring to the bills. “But now all of a sudden this is a priority. And it is racist.”

Lawmakers have fired back. At the hearing last month, State Senator Bill Cowsert, a Republican who is the brother-in-law of Gov. Brian Kemp, said, “For you to come in here and try to make this about racism, that this bill is directed at any district attorney or solicitor because of racism, is absurd, and it’s offensive, and it’s a racist statement on its own.”

Senator Brian Strickland, a Republican who was presiding over the meeting, told Ms. Willis, “You’re being emotional.”

Lawmakers have insisted the new legislative push is unrelated to the Trump investigation. In an interview this week, State Senator Randy Robertson, a Republican sponsoring one of the oversight panel bills, said the legislation was inspired by the case of Mark Jones, a prosecutor from Mr. Robertson’s district who was imprisoned in 2021 for public corruption.

“Leading up to that, everybody was kind of scrambling around, saying, ‘How do we — you know, this guy’s doing a terrible job, how do we get rid of him?’” said Mr. Robertson, adding that existing remedies were insufficient. “There was really no avenue for individuals to go to.”

 

I nearly guarantee these measures will be passed and signed into law by Gov. Deal, and I guarantee you that Georgia Republicans will attempt to remove DA Willis from office. They will have to in order to stop Trump from going to state prison.

Willis will have to be disposed of. in some way, and this is the route they will take in the weeks and months ahead. The oversight board that I expect will be created later this spring will have one emergent goal, to remove Willis from office before she can indict Trump. Even if she does press charges, "willful misconduct" will be found and the case dropped.

I told you this was coming, and now the plan is pretty clear. Fani Willis's days as DA are numbered.

Wacky Fascism Round-Up, Con't

The fascists are at it again this week, folks. 

First, at the CPAC Shindig From Hell, Ben Shapiro minion Michael Knowles causally called for the "eradication' of transgender folks "from public life'.

 

THE RIGHT’S WAR on queer and trans people took center stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference as Daily Wire host Michael Knowles openly called for the public eradication of transgenderism. During his speech on Saturday, Knowles told the crowd, “For the good of society… transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”

A number of people on Twitter, including Media Matters’ John Knefel and Harvard Law Cyber Clinic’s Alejandra Caraballo, called his remarks genocidal. Tragically, Knowles’ ideology is right in line with Republican politicians who have enacted or introduced bans on drag performances, restrictions on transgender health care, bills that would ban trans people from using the bathroom corresponding with their gender identity, and laws like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” that bars teachers from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. The Movement Advancement Project (MAP), a group that tracks LGBTQ legislation, described these efforts as an ongoing “war against LGBTQ people in America and their very right and ability to openly exist.”

In his speech, Knowles used a convoluted line of thinking and false logic while trying to prove his horrifying point that trans people should not exist. “There can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. It can be all or nothing,” he said. “If transgenderism is true, if men really can become women, then it’s true for everybody of all ages. If transgenderism is false — as it is — if men really can’t become women — as they cannot — then it’s false for everybody too. And if it’s false, then we should not indulge it, especially when that indulgence requires taking away the rights and customs of many people. It if is false, then for the good of society — and especially for the good of the poor people who have fallen prey to this confusion — then transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely — the whole preposterous ideology, at every level.”

 

And if you think "But federal law protects people from discrimination" like this, I have news for you from Alaska, that's now optional too.

In June 2020, after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that workplace discrimination against people based on their sexual orientation or gender identity was illegal, Alaska quickly moved to follow suit.

It published new guidelines in 2021 saying Alaska’s LGBTQ protections now extended beyond the workplace to housing, government practices, finance and “public accommodation.” It updated the website of the Alaska State Commission for Human Rights to explicitly say it was illegal to discriminate against someone because of that person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The executive director for the state commission co-wrote an essay describing the ruling as a “sea change under Alaska law for LGBTQ+ individuals’ rights to be free from discrimination.”

But a year later, the commission quietly reversed that position. It deleted language from the state website promising equal protections for transgender and gay Alaskans against most categories of discrimination, and it began refusing to investigate complaints. Only employment-related complaints would now be accepted, and investigators dropped any non-employment LGBTQ civil rights cases they had been working on.

An investigation by the Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica found the decision had been requested by a conservative Christian group and was made the week of the Republican primary for governor, in which Gov. Mike Dunleavy was criticized for not being conservative enough. The commission made the change on the advice of Attorney General Treg Taylor and announced it publicly via its Twitter feed — which currently has 31 followers — on Election Day.

The LGBTQ advocacy nonprofit Identity Alaska called the reversal “state-sponsored discrimination.”

The group noted that discrimination against LGBTQ people can occur in a variety of domains, including housing, financing and other decisions by the state. “The real-world consequences of these policies are harms to LGBTQIA+ Alaskans,” Identity Alaska’s board said in a written statement to the Daily News and ProPublica.

 

In Florida, GOP Gov. Ron Desantis is openly expanding the state's "Don't Say Gay' laws that would make pronouns illegal.

 

Florida legislators have proposed a spate of new laws that would reshape K-12 and higher education in the state, from requiring teachers to use pronouns matching children’s sex as assigned at birth to establishing a universal school choice voucher program.

The half-dozen bills, filed by a cast of GOP state representatives and senators, come shortly before the launch of Florida’s legislative session Tuesday. Other proposals in the mix include eliminating college majors in gender studies, nixing diversity efforts at universities and job protections for tenured faculty, strengthening parents’ ability to veto K-12 class materials and extending a ban on teaching about gender and sexuality — from third grade up to eighth grade.

The legislation has already drawn protest from Democratic politicians, education associations, free speech groups and LGBTQ advocates, who say the bills will restrict educators’ ability to instruct children honestly, harm transgender and nonbinary students and strip funding from public schools.

“It really is further and further isolating LGBTQ students,” said Sarah Warbelow, legal director for LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign. “It’s making it hard for them to receive the full support that schools should be giving every child.”

Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, warned that the legislation — especially the bill that would prevent students from majoring in certain topics — threatens to undermine academic freedom.

“The state telling you what you can and cannot learn, that is inconsistent with democracy,” Mulvey said. “It silences debate, stifles ideas and limits the autonomy of educational institutions which … made American higher education the envy of the world.”

 

They're not stopping at making trans kids illegal in schools, either. 

A proposed bill making its way through the Florida State Senate would allow the state "emergency jurisdiction" over children who receive or are "at risk of" receiving gender-affirming care — or if their parent receives it themselves.

Senate Bill 254, introduced Friday by State Senator Clay Yarborough, would grant the court authority to take emergency custody of kids under the same statute that protects them from domestic violence and abuse.

The state could take temporary custody of children if "it is necessary in an emergency to protect the child because the child, or a sibling or parent of the child" is "at risk of or is being subjected to the provision of sex reassignment prescriptions or procedures," according to the proposed bill text.

The proposed bill defines sex reassignment prescriptions or procedures as hormone therapy, puberty blockers, and surgeries or procedures that "affirm a person's perception of his or her sex if that perception is inconsistent with the person's sex" at birth.

The court would also be granted "jurisdiction to vacate, stay, or modify a child custody determination of a court of another state to protect the child from the risk of being subjected to the provision of sex-reassignment prescriptions or procedures," according to the proposed bill text. "The court must vacate, stay, or modify the child custody determination to the extent necessary to protect the child from the provision of such prescriptions or procedures."

 

We're getting to the point where Florida and other fascist regimes are trying to make LGBTQ+ kids illegal, and trans kids specifically, like Texas is trying to do to all trans folks, no matter what age.

When they screech about 'eradicating' trans folks from public life, this is what they mean. Lives will be lost, and that's exactly what these monsters want.

 

Sunday Long Read: The Suck, 20 Years Later

Our Sunday Long Read this week has Rolling Stone's Spencer Ackerman taking a brutally honest look at the Iraq War, which began 20 years ago this month and defined the entire Millennial generation. How we got here, what we did, and where we're going all comes back to America's disastrous response to invading the wrong country over September 11th, and how we live in the Age of Gruft today.

THE QUOTE THAT would secure Jim Mattis’ reputation as the most celebrated Marine general of his generation came during meetings he hadn’t wanted to attend. It was April 2004, a half-mile east of the Iraqi city of Fallujah, which had exploded in an insurrection that threatened to doom the American occupation after barely a year. Mattis hadn’t wanted to take Fallujah, recognizing that flattening the City of Mosques would throw gasoline on a smoldering nationwide insurrection. But he followed White House-pushed orders to invade, and after roughly a week of intense urban fighting — leaving 39 U.S. troops dead, an estimated 616 Iraqi civilians killed, and Fallujah untaken — he followed orders to stop.

The first order was stupid, he thought, but combining it with the second was risible. It sent the message that America was not only idiotic during a crucial moment of challenge but also weak. Still, no matter how disastrous the order, no Marine general would ever resign his command as his Marines went through such a crucible, so Mattis reached for a different kind of weapon: his mouth.

In his 2019 memoir, Call Sign Chaos, Mattis recounts sitting down to discuss the future of Fallujah with local notables enlisted to guarantee its security. One of the sheikhs, evidently frustrated, “demanded” to know when the Americans would leave. Mattis replied that he had bought property on the Euphrates River, where he would “marry one of your daughters and retire there.” Then he warned the Iraqis: “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I’ll kill you all.”

It was quintessential Mattis: a threat of ultra-violence wrapped in a wit quick enough to make him as quotatious as Shaquille O’Neal. As reports of the comment spread, Mattis became something of a folk hero in American military circles and back home. One of his nicknames, much promoted by journalists, was “Warrior Monk,” emphasizing not only his martial expertise but also his devotion to his craft. Years later, the “kill you all” line would take pride of place in an adoring Twitter hashtag, #Mattisisms, celebrating not so much his deeds as his attitude.

The adulation obscured the fact that Mattis’ swagger didn’t really work. “The sheikhs did not act on my warning,” Mattis writes in Call Sign Chaos. “They were allowing their sons to be recruited by the insurgents while they were talking to me — unwittingly abrogating their own authority.” Maybe. Or perhaps they didn’t like a foreign invader pledging to fuck their daughters and kill everyone they know.

The Iraq War was supposed to showcase American potency after 9/11. But the fuck-around stage gave way within months to a finding-out stage that lasted for years. A war partially predicated on dealing a lethal blow to terrorism instead prompted the creation of the Al Qaeda affiliate that would become the so-called Islamic State. America’s 100-plus years of experience with imperial policing were no match for widespread Iraqi rejectionism. At home, the humiliations of the War on Terror were political fuel for those who said America needed to be made great again. As we approach the 20th anniversary of one of the most unjust and calamitous wars the U.S. ever waged, #Mattisisms read like a way for Americans to save face amid self-inflicted disasters that revealed their weakness.

Mattis, who through a spokesperson declined an interview request, doesn’t even crack the top 30 list of people culpable for the Iraq War. As a division commander, he was several rungs down from the decision-makers of George W. Bush’s administration. Mattis’ tour ended months before the Marines began another operation to take Fallujah — a grueling, bloody, urban battle that has passed into Corps legend. Yet his example is illustrative of an age of American hubris. Even when Mattis saw through the pretexts of the war — he suggests in his memoir that Saddam Hussein was “boxed in” before the offensive even began — he, like most officers, chose to serve rather than walk away, and expressed greater displeasure at the prospect of withdrawal from the war than the initial invasion. Ten years later, he was no more an obstacle when he joined the board of another doomed-to-fail enterprise based on deception.

That company was the now infamous Theranos, of con artist Elizabeth Holmes fame, and later still, Mattis became Trump's Pentagon chief. 

The biggest con operation in US history, leading to two more historic cons, all with Mad Dog Mattis involved.

It was always about the grift. We trained a generation to do it. Is it any wonder then why America is just one or two more con artist circus shows away from military state fascism?

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

Donald Trump closed out CPAC tonight with the one true thing he's ever said in a political speech so far in 2023.

 

Donald Trump returned to a Conservative Political Action Conference recast in his image Saturday, capping a three-day agenda heavy with adoration for the coup-attempting former president but considerably less-well attended by activists and presidential contenders alike.

Trump, within minutes of taking the stage at the Gaylord National Resort, went into his typical remarks, disparaging the United States as a “filthy communist country” and attacking Democrats and the news media.

“They’re not coming after me. They’re coming after you. I’m just standing in their way,” he said. “We will drive out the globalists. We will kick out the communists.”

And even though dozens of rows in the back remained empty, Trump thanked the fire marshal for letting in so many of his supporters. “Look at all these people. They’re up to the rafters,” he said.

Trump called prosecutors investigating him “racist” — the ones in New York and Georgia are Black — and claimed they only went after him because he is likely to win the presidency again. He continued lying about the 2020 election having been stolen from him: “We did much better in 2020 than we did in 2016.” He added later, “I won that second election, and I won it by a lot.”

He relitigated, at length, his two impeachments: The first for his attempted extortion of Ukraine and the second for his incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol that capped off his coup attempt to remain in office.

And he promised that if he won reelection, he would take revenge on those who didn’t respect his followers. “I am your retribution,” he said.

 

Absolutely believe him on this.

 

To a frightening degree, if this man ends up back in the White House, he will imprison, immiserate, and even kill millions of us. He will be assisted by a complicit Supreme Court and Republican congress and he will build a federal bureaucracy that will be a nightmare, with dozens of states and hundreds of thousands of law enforcement officers and US military troops being used against anyone Trump can think of.

He is 100% telling the truth here.