Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Waco Edition

The fact that Donald Trump is kicking off his 2023 hate rallies in Waco, Texas this weekend is not a coincidence, as the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle notes.

 

When Donald Trump flies into Waco on Saturday evening for the first major campaign event of his 2024 reelection quest, dog ears won’t be the only ones twitching. Trump doesn’t do subtle; dog-whistle messages are not his style. The more apt metaphor is the blaring air horn of a Mack 18-wheeler barreling down I-10.

The former president arrives in Waco during the 30th anniversary of the disastrous Branch Davidian debacle, a two-month-long siege by the ATF, the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies culminating in a fire storm that killed 74 people, including 21 children. What happened at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco on April 19, 1993, was the deadliest day in FBI history. (Additionally, four ATF agents and six Branch Davidians lost their lives on the first day of the 51-day siege.)

The GOP-friendly city of Waco — Trump won McLennan County by more than 20 percentage points in 2020 – has every right, of course, to host a former president, the leading contender for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, but “Waco” the symbol, like “Philadelphia, Miss.,” the symbol, means something else entirely. “Waco” has become an Alamo of sorts, a shrine for the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers and other anti-government extremists and conspiracists.

Waco helped spawn what Fort Worth writer Jeff Guinn calls a “legacy of rage” in his new book about the Branch Davidian siege. The Northeast Texas Regional Militia of Texarkana erected a granite headstone at the site that reads as follows: "On February 28, 1993, a church and its members known as Branch Davidians came under attack by A.T.F. and F.B.I. agents. For 51 days the Davidians and their leader, David Koresh, stood proudly." As Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh put it, “Waco started this war.”

Thirty years later, the anti-government paramilitary groups feeding off lies about the “deep state” and a stolen election periodically visit the modest, little chapel on the site of the sprawling, ramshackle building that burned to the ground. Although the Branch Davidians had nothing to do with anti-government conspiracists, chapel construction was funded by loud-mouthed conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.

Militia members and conspiracists know exactly what Trump’s Waco visit symbolizes. They have heard him castigate the FBI and the “deep state,” particularly after agents searched for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. How they’ll respond to his remarks, particularly if he shows up as the first former president in American history to face criminal charges, has law enforcement in Waco and beyond taking every precaution. What he says will likely set the tone for the presidential campaign to come. Every American should be concerned.

The Trump campaign insists that the candidate’s visit during the Branch Davidian anniversary is purely coincidental. A spokesman said the campaign was looking for a site away from the big cities but close enough to Dallas-Fort Worth, Austin, Houston and San Antonio to draw a crowd. The Waco Regional Airport and an expected crowd of 10,000 or so fit the bill. Of course, Temple or Belton or Killeen (home to Fort Hood) would have fit the bill, as well — without the weight of symbolism.

Trump alerted his followers that the feds were coming to get him with an all-caps alert last Saturday morning on Truth Social, his social-media site: “THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK. PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

His call to arms echoed his “Be there, will be wild,” exhortation a few weeks before January 6, as well as his “fight like hell” screed on the Ellipse, shortly before several thousand insurrectionists took him at his word, marched up Pennsylvania Ave. and sacked the Capitol.

The Proud Boys and other anti-government extremists with a propensity for violence took him seriously on that ignominious day. They might do the same in Waco.

 

The one thing I do know is that Saturday night's calls for stochastic violence and terrorism against Trump's "enemies" will actually be very loud, very clear, and for once, very direct. I expect the event will echo darkly throughout history, and I expect that anyone involved in possible indictments against Donald Trump will be made into direct targets for violence.  

 

We're already at the point where death threats in envelopes containing suspicious powder are being mailed to the Manhattan DA's office.

A powdery substance was found Friday with a threatening letter in a mailroom at the offices of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the latest security scare as the prosecutor weighs a potential historic indictment of former President Donald Trump, authorities said.

New York City police and environmental protection officials isolated and removed the suspicious letter, and testing “determined there was no dangerous substance,” Bragg spokesperson Danielle Filson said. The substance was sent to a city lab for further examination, police said.

“Alvin, I am going to kill you,” the letter said, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person was not authorized to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation and did so on condition of anonymity.

It will get far uglier from here on out as the multiple threats to everyone involved in prosecuting the case means they are now targets for MAGA terrorist violence.

Multiple law enforcement sources told NBC News that there have been discussions about additional security measures for the judge assigned to the Trump case as well as the prosecutors involved. There have been several hundred threats to Bragg, the DA’s office and others in recent weeks, a senior New York law enforcement official said. A few dozen are considered directly threatening serious harm to Bragg.

Trump still has the ability to assemble large crowds at a given location. While Trump has called for supporters to "PROTEST, PROTEST, PROTEST," he has not yet given his followers a time and place to assemble. Security officials worry that if he does, that could spell trouble, just as it did on Jan. 6.

Researchers who monitor the online spaces where far-right groups organize say that while efforts to coordinate a large protest have largely fallen flat so far, users are still calling for the assassination or capture of Democratic political figures.

“I want every traitor hanging from a rope when all this ends. EVERY TRAITOR. They can all die,” one person wrote in an online forum used by Trump supporters.

“Now it’s time we Americans need to go in guns blazing I’m willing to risk my life to show biden crimes are far worse. Civill war is now if he arrested,” a user wrote on Truth Social, the former president’s social media platform.

Daniel J. Jones, head of the nonpartisan, nonprofit online tracking firm Advance Democracy, said that “Trump’s calls to ‘protest’ in response to his reported impending arrest have led to threats of violence against government officials and law enforcement.”

Jones noted that users on the Trump-owned Truth Social and the pro-Trump forum TheDonald, where users shared travel plans and pictures of weapons ahead of the Jan. 6 riot, were posting threats of violence targeting Bragg.

 

 It will get worse tonight, I guarantee it.

Last Call For Orange Meltdown, Con't

As Donald Trump may still yet dodge state-level indictments from Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, and Fani Willis's Georgia election fraud case is facing obliteration from the Georgia GOP, Special Counsel Jack Smith's federal case got a huge boost on Friday.

 

A federal judge has rejected former President Donald Trump's claims of executive privilege and has ordered Mark Meadows and other former top aides to testify before a federal grand jury investigating Trump's efforts to overturn the election leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.

Meadows, Trump's former chief of staff, was subpoenaed along with the other former aides by Special counsel Jack Smith for testimony and documents related to the probe.

Trump's legal team had challenged the subpoenas by asserting executive privilege, which is the right of a president to keep confidential the communications he has with advisers.

In a sealed order last week, Judge Beryl Howell rejected Trump's claim of executive privilege for Meadows and a number of others, including Trump's former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, his former national security adviser Robert O'Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, and former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, according to sources familiar with the matter.

Former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee, along with former top DHS official Ken Cuccinelli, were also included in the order, the sources said.

Trump is likely to appeal the ruling, according to sources briefed on the matter.

"The DOJ is continuously stepping far outside the standard norms in attempting to destroy the long accepted, long held, Constitutionally based standards of attorney-client privilege and executive privilege," a Trump spokesperson said in a statement. "There is no factual or legal basis or substance to any case against President Trump. The deranged Democrats and their comrades in the mainstream media are corrupting the legal process and weaponizing the justice system in order to manipulate public opinion, because they are clearly losing the political battle."

Meadows did not respond to ABC's request for comment and neither did an attorney representing him. Ratcliffe, O'Brien, Miller, Luna, McEntee and Cuccinelli did not respond to ABC's request for comment. An attorney representing Scavino also did not respond.

 

For now, expect the testimony of Trump's inner circle to be blocked as the appeal runs it course. Such an appeals process could take months or years however, and the odds of Smith being forced to abandon the testimony under DoJ non-interference directives will increase as Trump's legal camp gums up the works.  On the other hand, there are plenty of other witnesses, lawyers, and non-executive figures that will be forced to testify in the days and weeks ahead.

We'll see.

The Vax Of Life, Con't

With the never legal theory that President Joe Biden has no actual authority over executive branch employees, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled this week that his executive order mandating the Covid-19 vaccine for government employees is null and void.

 

President Joe Biden’s order that federal employees get vaccinated against COVID-19 has been blocked by a federal appeals court.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, in a decision Thursday, rejected arguments that Biden, as the nation’s chief executive, has the same authority as the CEO of a private corporation to require that employees be vaccinated.

The ruling from the full appeals court, 16 full-time judges at the time the case was argued, reversed an earlier ruling by a three-judge 5th Circuit panel that had upheld the vaccination requirement. Judge Andrew Oldham, nominated to the court by then-President Donald Trump, wrote the opinion for a 10-member majority.

The ruling maintains the status quo for federal employee vaccines. It upholds a preliminary injunction blocking the mandate issued by a federal judge in January 2022. At that point, the administration said nearly 98% of covered employees had been vaccinated.

And, Oldham noted, with the preliminary injunction arguments done, the case will return to that court for further arguments, when “both sides will have to grapple with the White House’s announcement that the COVID emergency will finally end on May 11, 2023.”

 

Since President Biden's authority for the mandate comes from the emergency order, and the emergency order is ending, yeah. that's pretty much ball game.

It's unfortunate, ad thousands of Americans continue to die from COVID-19 each week, nearly all of them unvaccinated.

I expect should the GOP win next year, the COVID vaccine will be outlawed outright, and thousands will continue to die.

The Circus Of The Damned, Wedgie Edition

Kevin McCarthy's clown show has delivered their latest hostage ultimatum: give Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin his energy permit bill or else.

 

A growing bloc of House Republicans is urging Speaker Kevin McCarthy to consider demands beyond the budget — like energy permitting — in the party’s opening offer to Democrats on raising the debt limit.

While many GOP lawmakers say they’ve stayed intentionally mum on how their party leaders should proceed with talks, a growing number are now floating their own ideas to stem the looming fiscal crisis. One idea that’s been gaining traction recently is linking the debt limit debate to the GOP’s proposal to speed up energy permitting, according to interviews with roughly a half dozen lawmakers.

“I think permitting’s got to be part of the debt limit discussion,” said Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.), who chairs the Republican Policy Committee and sits on McCarthy’s leadership team.

House Republicans see plenty of upside in attaching energy permitting to debt talks. In addition to giving them a guaranteed policy win, pushing through a permitting bill that already has keen interest from Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who is preparing for a potentially brutal 2024 reelection bid.

The Republican Study Committee, the House GOP’s biggest group, has gone even further in its advocacy of the move. It recently polled its 175 members about their priorities for the looming debt talks and found that members’ top priority for inclusion was energy permitting.

“It has tons of momentum,” Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), who leads that group, said in a brief interview. “That’s certainly pro-growth to keep our jobs here, and have less dependency on foreign governments and don’t send money elsewhere.”

Most of the conference is working hard to publicly give McCarthy space as the California Republican tries to force President Joe Biden and the Democratic-controlled Senate to come to the table, with the deadline for raising the debt limit drawing ever closer. But privately, Republicans across the conference are clearly interested in landing one of their biggest energy agenda items in return for what many view as an inevitable political reality — that some of them will have to vote to raise the country’s spending limit later this year.

“This is the litmus test of whether we’re serious to get energy independent. I think we will,” said Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), when asked about linking the GOP’s energy permitting bill to its debt offer.

It’s unclear whether Democrats would be willing to engage, Norman added, but “we’re gonna give it a shot.”

The idea has an added political bonus for GOP leadership: While plenty of fiscal fights divide House Republicans’ narrow majority, the idea of attaching speedier energy project approvals to the debt talks creates rare unity among what the speaker has dubbed the conference’s “five families,” from the conservative Freedom Caucus to the more moderate, business-oriented Main Street Caucus.

“That’s certainly something a large number of members would be supportive of,” said Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), chair of the latter of those two groups, when asked about linking permitting with debt discussions.

Now, Manchin's not being specifically mentioned here, but we know that he's wanted energy permit "reform" as his price for signing on the Biden's climate bill. He had to eat that demand last year. But this year, things are different, and McCarthy's cunning enough to see a wedge issue he can use when he sees it.

We'll see what happens, but I guarantee you Republicans are talking to Manchin about this very subject.

Last Call For Do You Know What Your Kids Are Tweeting?

Utah becomes the first US state to require age verification and parental permission for all social media platforms for accounts and profiles made by children under 18.

 

Utah Gov. Spencer Cox signed two pieces of sweeping social media regulation into law Thursday that require social media companies to get parental consent for minors using their services, making Utah the first state to impose such measures in the U.S.

Versions of the regulations are being considered in four other states and in several federal proposals in Congress.

The new Utah laws — H.B. 311 and S.B. 152 — require that social media companies verify the age of any Utah resident who makes a social media profile and get parental consent for any minor who wishes to make a profile. It also forces social media companies to allow parents to access posts and messages from their child’s account.

The laws also prohibit social media companies from displaying ads to minors, showing minor accounts in search results, collecting information about minors, targeting or suggesting content to minors, or knowingly integrating addictive technologies into social media apps used by minors. They also impose a curfew on the use of social media for minors, locking them out of their social media accounts between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m. based on the location of a user’s device, unless adjusted with the consent of a parent.

Utah’s laws come amid ongoing debates about the impact of social media on young people’s mental health, a link that is widely theorized but remains the subject of academic study. Mental health issues among young people have been labeled a crisis, with particular concerns about the mental health of young women.

Social media companies have until March 1, 2024, to comply with the laws, at which point they become punishable with potential civil and criminal penalties.

In interviews with NBC News, sponsors of the legislation said that they were motivated by mental health concerns posed by social media use among young people, and that they hope Utah’s new laws serve as inspiration for other states or for Congress.

 

I think this is going to get tied up in the courts for years, but I suspect more voters than not would support laws like this nationally. What I expect are drastically weakened laws that will emerge from the court battles in five years or so.

 

What I'm saying is, don't expect Utah's social media law to ever take effect as is.

Burning Lake Of Fire, Con't

Professional election loser Kari Lake had nearly all of her "election fraud" case tossed by the Arizona Supreme Court this week. 

 

Arizona's top court has declined to hear Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake's challenge to her election loss, but kept the case alive by sending one of Lake's claims back to a county judge to review.

Lake asked the Arizona Supreme Court to consider her case after a Maricopa County judge and state appeals court rejected her claims that she was the rightful governor, or that a new election should take place.

The former television news anchor made seven legal claims in her case, six of which the state's top court said were properly dismissed by lower courts, according to an opinion released Wednesday written by Chief Justice Robert Brutinel.

Those included claims that tens of thousands of ballots were "injected" into the election, which Lake called an "undisputed fact" in her lawsuit, as well as alleging that problems with tabulation machines disenfranchised "thousands" of voters.

The opinion said Lake's challenges were "insufficient to warrant the requested relief under Arizona or federal law."

But the sixth legal claim, which has to do with Lake's allegation that Maricopa County did not follow signature verification procedures, must receive a second look by a county judge, the court ordered. The county and appeals courts interpreted Lake’s signature-related challenge as applying to the policies themselves, not how the policies were applied in 2022, and dismissed her claim based on grounds that she filed her legal challenge too late.

But that was an error, the Supreme Court said, noting, "Lake could not have brought this challenge before the election."

Lake's claim invokes a section of Arizona law that requires signatures on early ballot envelopes be checked against the signature already in a voter's file, and sets the process and timeline for verifying, or "curing," a ballot if the signature doesn't appear to match. She claimed Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer's office accepted "a material number" of ballots with unmatched signatures last year.

The Supreme Court did not evaluate Lake's signature claim on its merit, only on the legal justifications offered by prior courts. The court's order requires Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson to evaluate that single element of Lake's case again to determine if the claim was properly dismissed previously, or if Lake can prove “votes (were) affected ‘in sufficient numbers to alter the outcome of the election.’”

The Supreme Court quoted the appeals court ruling, saying that to prove her claim, Lake must provide a “competent mathematical basis to conclude that the outcome would plausibly have been different, not simply an untethered assertion of uncertainty.”

In response to the ruling, Richer, who also is a Republican, said, “I of course have the utmost respect for both the people sitting on the court and the court as an institution, and we’ll now proceed and win, again, for about the 30th time."

His office, as well as the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, have defended their work in numerous lawsuits stemming from the November election, and became targets for attack among losing Republican candidates and their allies.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, a defendant in the lawsuit, did not comment Wednesday evening on the court's ruling.

Alex Nicoll, a spokesperson for Lake, declined comment, noting Lake’s longstanding refusal to speak to The Arizona Republic. In a separate statement sent to The Republic and other media outlets, Lake made various claims that cannot be verified and overstated the court’s ruling. She said she was "thrilled" by the court's decision and that the signature issue “alone casts the veracity of Katie Hobb’s victory in serious doubt.”

In addition to further review of the signature verification piece, there is another unresolved issue in the case: whether Lake should face sanctions for filing what Hobbs’ attorneys have dubbed a frivolous and bad-faith lawsuit. Lawyers for Hobbs asked the court to order Lake to cover their costs and attorneys' fees, and Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes’ lawyers sought unspecified sanctions as well.

The Supreme Court said Lake, Hobbs and Fontes could file court arguments on the issue, but restricted those arguments only to Lake’s factual claims, such as that over 35,000 ballots were “added” to affect the outcome of the election.

Brutinel succinctly shot down that claim.

“The record does not reflect that 35,563 unaccounted ballots were added to the total count,” he wrote in the court’s opinion. “The motions for sanctions will be considered in due course.”

 

So Lake may have a legal claim to a small part of her case, which isn't actually something that would have affected the outcome of the election at all. Meanwhile, legal sanctions against her for wasting the state's time are being considered.

 

The bigger picture here is that Lake's claims that the election was stolen from her were laughed out of court completely.  It's ball game, and the only questions left are how badly Lake is going to be made to pay for her farce.

The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

The clown show in the House GOP continues as Jim Jordan's "weaponization of the federal government" subcommittee is weaponizing the federal government to go after colleges and universities for the crime of...working with the Biden administration.

House Republicans have sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank requesting a broad range of documents related to what it says are the institutions' contributions to the Biden administration’s “censorship regime.”

The letters are the latest effort by a House subcommittee set up in January to investigate how the federal government, working with social media companies, has allegedly been “weaponized” to silence conservative and right-wing voices. So far, the committee’s investigations have amplified a variety of dubious, outright false and highly misleading Republican grievances with law enforcement, many of them espoused by former President Donald Trump. Committee members have cited supposed abuses that include the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, its investigations of Jan. 6 rioters and the Biden administration’s purported use of executive powers to shut down conservative viewpoints on social media.

Now, universities and their researchers are coming under the spotlight of the committee, which the Republicans have labeled the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The letters, signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is chair of both the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee, were sent in early March.

They cover an investigation into how “certain third parties, including organizations like yours, may have played a role in this censorship regime by advising on so-called ‘misinformation,’” according to a copy of one of the letters obtained by ProPublica.

The committee requested documents and information dating back to January 2015 between any “employee, contractor, or agent of your organization” and the federal government or social media organizations pertaining to the moderation of social media content. ProPublica confirmed the requests went to Stanford University, the University of Washington, Clemson University and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The letters have prompted a wave of alarm among those in the field that the congressional inquiry itself, no matter what it finds, will lead universities to pull back on this research just as the 2024 election gets underway. “Recent efforts definitely have a chilling effect on the community of experts across academia, civil society and government built up to understand broader online harms like harassment, foreign influence and — yes — disinformation,” Graham Brookie, who leads studies in this area at the Atlantic Council, told ProPublica.

“The ‘weaponization’ committee is being weaponized against us,” another researcher told ProPublica. Like half a dozen others interviewed for this story, this person asked not to be identified because of the ongoing congressional probe.

Democrats have called the committee a modern-day House Un-American Activities Committee, akin to the congressional committee that pursued alleged communists during the McCarthy era.

Since Rep. Jordan took over the gavel of the judiciary committee in January, he has issued more than 80 subpoenas and requests for documents. Recipients have included the CEOs of social media companies, intelligence officials who signed on to a statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 campaign and members of the National School Boards Association who asked the Justice Department to investigate threats of violence against school board officials. Jordan himself refused a subpoena to testify before the Democratic-led House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, prompting that committee to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

Jordan’s missives were sent a day after a committee hearing on the “Twitter files,” leaked internal communications from the company that purported to show how right-wing accounts were sidelined and silenced. In written testimony, a panelist accused a broad swath of organizations and individuals of being members of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” including, he implied, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, Department of Defense and universities. The witness wrote disinformation researchers, working with the government, are “creating blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling, and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, and even ban the people on these blacklists.”

A New York University study concluded in 2021 that social media had not silenced those on the right. “The claim of anti-conservative animus” by social media companies, the study said, “is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it."

A spokesperson for Rep. Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.

 

So the McCarthyism meatheads are at it again, this time making it clear they will target universities and colleges that participate in "unapproved" research that might be communism in disguise, or something.

Everything old is new again.

 

Last Call For Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is planning to expand the state's "Don't Say Gay" laws to high schools, which would mean banning all Florida school classes from discussing or even mentioning sexual orientation or gender in any way.

 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ′ administration is moving to forbid classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity in all grades, expanding the controversial law critics call “Don’t Say Gay” as the Republican governor continues a focus on cultural issues ahead of his expected presidential run.

The proposal, which would not require legislative approval, is scheduled for a vote next month before the state Board of Education and has been put forth by state Education Department, both of which are led by appointees of the governor.

The rule change would ban lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity from grades 4 to 12, unless required by existing state standards or as part of reproductive health instruction that students can choose not to take. The initial law that DeSantis championed last spring bans those lessons in kindergarten through the third grade. The change was first reported by the Orlando Sentinel.

DeSantis has leaned heavily into cultural divides on his path to an anticipated White House bid, with the Republican aggressively pursuing a conservative agenda that targets what he calls the insertion of inappropriate subjects in schools.

Spokespeople for the governor’s office and the Education Department did not immediately return an emailed request for comment.

Last year’s Parental Rights in Education Act drew widespread backlash nationally, with critics saying it marginalizes LGBTQ people and their presence in society.

DeSantis and other Republicans have repeatedly said the measure is reasonable and that parents, not teachers, should be broaching subjects of sexual orientation and gender identity with their children.

Critics of the law say its language — “classroom instruction,” “age appropriate” and “developmentally appropriate” — is overly broad and subject to interpretation. Consequently, teachers might opt to avoid the subjects entirely for fear of being sued, they say.

 

Consequently, banning all Florida school classes from mentioning sexual orientation at any grade level is exactly what critics said would happen when the law was passed originally banning K through 3rd grade classes. 

Of course it means that teachers, principals, guidance counselors, school nurses and coaches can't talk about this either with students for fear of retribution, which means LGBTQ+ kids are on their own in Florida unless their parents are understanding and supportive, and not all parents are.

So yeah, this is going to end up getting LGBTQ+ kids hurt and killed, which I guess is the point of the law.

Putin On The Blitz, Con't

US Secretary of State Tony Blinken is helpfully reminding our European allies that if you see that Vladimir Putin guy, you should give him a free ride to the Hague.

European countries should detain Vladimir Putin and turn him over to the International Criminal Court if the Russian president visits their countries, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told lawmakers Wednesday.

Blinken’s remarks, made in response to a line of questioning, follow the court’s decision last week to issue an arrest warrant for Putin that accuses him of being personally responsible for the abductions of children from Ukraine — the first time the global court has issued a warrant against a leader of one of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council.

“Would you encourage our European allies to turn him over?” Republican Sen. Lindsey O. Graham of South Carolina asked Blinken during a budget hearing.

“Anyone who is a party to the court and has obligations should fulfill their obligations,” Blinken said.

Putin is unlikely to visit hostile European countries any time soon, especially in light of the ICC arrest warrant — a decision that received both praise for standing up against Putin and criticism for potentially closing diplomatic pathways for reaching a political resolution that ends the fighting.

During the hearing, Blinken defended the Biden administration’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal to Congress, saying it was necessary in order for the United States to confront the “acute threat” posed by Russia and the “long-term challenge” from China while also addressing climate change and migration.

President Biden defied Republican demands to reduce the size of government earlier this month with a budget that proposes increasing spending on the Pentagon and social programs while raising taxes on higher earners and corporations.

“The post-Cold War world is over, and there is an intense competition underway to determine what comes next,” Blinken told a Senate panel on appropriations. “This budget will help us advance that vision, and deliver on the issues that matter most to the American people.”

 

Frankly Blinken is doing a hell of a job, given the challenges. I'm not worried about the State Department doing something stupid as with Rex Tillerson or Mike Pompeo.

Having said that, the odds of any non-Russian country besides the US delivering Putin to the ICC is precisely zero, and everyone knows it.  That's diplomacy!

Orange Meltdown, Finally, Maybe Edition

Alvin Bragg's grand jury is meeting today, and word is that they will make a final decision on charging Donald Trump. Rupert Murdoch's squad is reporting that the indictment could come as soon as today's grand jury meeting, with arraignment next week.

 

Donald Trump will likely be indicted on Wednesday but won't appear before a judge in New York until next week, DailyMail.com has learned.

'There will be no arraignment this week,' a source familiar with the proceedings told DailyMail.com exclusively on Tuesday.

The former president, who is currently in Florida, is expected to be formally charged tomorrow, after which the Manhattan District Attorney's office will reach out to Trump and his Secret Service detail to make arrangements for his surrender, according to the insider.

He will then fly to New York where he will be arraigned, finger printed, and pose for his mug shot.

Meanwhile, it's all-hands-on-deck for the New York Police Department and Metro Police Department as all officers on Tuesday are expected to be in uniform, ready for anything in the wake of the potential indictment.

Officials in New York City and Washington, D.C., are preparing for possible unrest and demonstrations following the former president's plea to his supporters to 'protest, protest, protest' in response to a potential indictment handed down by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg over hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels.

Trump, 76, said last week that he expected to be arrested on Tuesday, but a law enforcement official told DailyMail.com that an indictment would likely happen on Wednesday at the earliest.

An NYPD internal memo obtained by CNN shows that all officers are to be in uniform and prepared for deployment on Tuesday.

Meanwhile, Daniels' is also beefing up her security after her attorney said she received concerning messages, including some threatening her life.

Law enforcement officials tell CNN there are currently no credible threats in New York even though Tuesday is a 'high alert day.'

Washington Metro police are also preparing for protests, but the U.S. Capitol Police 'is not currently tracking any direct or credible threats to the US Capitol,' a department intelligence assessment obtained by CNN notes.

 

Republicans are still mostly huddling in wait and see mode, because they are cowards for the most part. They don't want to be held responsible for another January 6th stochastic terrorism event. At the same time, none of them can turn their backs on Trump or their careers will end in days. They have to defend him now, no matter how things get.

Of course, some Republicans are more eager to defend Trump and encourage violence than others.

Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said the Manhattan district attorney leading the investigation into former President Donald Trump's alleged hush-money payments should "be put in jail."

Paul's comments came in a tweet Tuesday and follows the former president's prediction that he would be indicted for his alleged role in making a $130,000 payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just before the 2016 presidential election to silence her about a previous affair.

"A Trump indictment would be a disgusting abuse of power," Paul said in the tweet.

Regardless of the Manhattan proceedings and this "law-enforcement insider", the federal investigations into Trump under Special Counsel Jack Smith are grinding on...

Prosecutors in the special counsel's office have presented compelling preliminary evidence that former President Donald Trump knowingly and deliberately misled his own attorneys about his retention of classified materials after leaving office, a former top federal judge wrote Friday in a sealed filing, according to sources who described its contents to ABC News.

U.S. Judge Beryl Howell, who on Friday stepped down as the D.C. district court's chief judge, wrote last week that prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith's office had made a "prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations," according to the sources, and that attorney-client privileges invoked by two of his lawyers could therefore be pierced.

Trump has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing in his handling of classified documents.

MORE: Trump lawyer ordered to testify in classified documents case in landmark ruling, sources say

In her sealed filing, Howell ordered that Evan Corcoran, an attorney for Trump, should comply with a grand jury subpoena for testimony on six separate lines of inquiry over which he had previously asserted attorney-client privilege.

Sources added that Howell also ordered Corcoran to hand over a number of records tied to what Howell described as Trump's alleged "criminal scheme," echoing prosecutors. Those records include handwritten notes, invoices, and transcriptions of personal audio recordings.

In reaching the so-called prima facie standard to pierce Corcoran's privilege, Howell agreed prosecutors made a sufficient showing that on its face would appear to show Trump committed crimes. The judge made it clear that prosecutors would still need to meet a higher standard of evidence in order to seek charges against Trump, and more still to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

"It is a lower hurdle, but it is an indication that the government had presented some evidence and allegation that they had evidence that met the elements of a crime," Brandon Van Grack, a former top national security official in the Justice Department who is now in private practice, told ABC News.

 

Maybe it's nothing but more smoke and mirrors...or maybe Bragg bringing charges will open the floodgates in the weeks ahead.  If this is true, if Smith and the DoJ have enough evidence to convince a federal judge that Trump committed crimes and that his legal team was misled, then Trump is going to find out that Alvin Bragg is the least of his problems. If it's really criminal intent with his classified document theft, well, we're in a very dangerous game here.

We'll see where history takes us, but things will get deadly serious from here on out.

 

Be careful, folks.

Last Call For It's A Harding Knock Life, Con't

Remember former Florida GOP state lawmaker Joe Harding, who wrote GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis's wildly unconstitutional "Don't Say Gay" bill, when the feds dropped the hammer on him for $150,000 in COVID loan fraud for his construction company back in December?

Turns out ol' Joe here is now a felon, pleading guilty to the charges and is facing up to 35 years in federal prison. 

 

Former Rep. Joe Harding has pleaded guilty to wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements after facing charges related to obtaining COVID-19 relief funds.

The Ocala Republican changed his plea months after federal prosecutors indicted him. U.S. Attorney Jason Coody announced the plea change.

The former politician now awaits sentencing, with a hearing scheduled for July 25 at the federal courthouse in Gainesville. U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor will make the sentence. Harding faces up to 20 years for the wire fraud charge, 10 years for money laundering and five years for making false statements to authorities.

Harding in December resigned his House District 24 seat, a day after prosecutors issued the indictment.

Court documents revealed details of the scheme that led to Harding’s fall. Prosecutors allege Harding lied to the Small Business Administration (SBA) in order to obtain a loan intended for companies impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic. He later similarly filed a fraudulent application for a Economic Injury Disaster Loan in the name of a dormant business he previously owned.

Ultimately, Harding obtained $150,000 in federal assistance to which he was not entitled, prosecutors allege.

He used some of that money for personal reasons, transferring more than $10,000 to his personal checking account, another $10,000-plus for a credit card payment, and then sent another payment of more than $10,000 to a third-party business entity.

He was caught after a joint criminal investigation by the FBI, IRS, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and SBA.

The indictment came in December, after Harding had just won election to a second term in the House without opposition. The conservative lawmaker had developed a national reputation as the author of a parental rights bill derided by critics as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law, which is now being emulated in other state Legislatures.

 

So we'll see how much hard time Harding gets, but the bigger problem is his Republican primary replacement Ryan Chamberlin is also running unopposed, as Florida Dems failed to find anyone to run in Harding's Ocala state district.

 

This should have been a slam dunk, but nobody cared enough even to try.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Expect a lot more of this in the days and weeks ahead as stochastic white supremacist domestic terrorism on behalf of Donald Trump will continue for a long time to come.

 

A bomb threat was called into a lower Manhattan court on Tuesday just before a judge was set to hear a $250 million lawsuit against former President Trump.

The threat was investigated by police and the courthouse was closed and searched, with authorities finding that the threat was unfounded, according to court spokesman Lucian Chalfen, who confirmed the news to Bloomberg.

The civil lawsuit, brought against Trump by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D), alleges that Trump, his company and family inflated the value of their real estate assets. The suit was filed in September.

The Hill reached out to the court for comment.

Trump publicly attacked James on social media on Tuesday following the news of the bomb threat, saying Congress should investigate the New York attorney general and blasting the lawsuit as “completely bogus.”Is Blockbuster coming back?Georgia attorney convicted on Jan. 6 charges

“While Congress is at it, they should look at the Corrupt Attorney General of New York State, Letitia James, who got elected solely on a “I WILL GET TRUMP” platform, without knowing anything about me,” Trump said on his social media site Truth Social. He went on to call the lawsuit “completely bogus.”

 

At no point did Trump address the "completely bogus" bomb threat as wrong, all he did was make it clear that the state's AG, who happens to be a Black woman, needs to be targeted too. 

One of these times, the threat of violence is going to be real, and prosecutors, cops, court officials and judges are going to get hurt or killed.

 

Intelligence sources told CBS News that there's been a "significant increase" in threats and violent rhetoric online from domestic violent extremists as former President Donald Trump claimed he will be indicted by a Manhattan grand jury.

But the sources said they have not identified any credible or direct threats to a person or property and they are continuing to monitor for credible specific threats.

Domestic violent extremists in online postings have warned that prosecutors from the Manhattan District Attorney's Office would cross a red line if Trump is indicted and it would be met with more violence than the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the sources said. There have also been postings calling for civil war.

Sources said the threats are mostly aimed at law enforcement, judges and government officials in New York and elsewhere that domestic violent extremists perceive as participants in what they see as a political persecution of Trump.

 

And the second anyone does get hurt, the pressure from Republicans to drop the investigations into Trump will be overwhelming.

Count on it.

The White House Goes Viral, Con't

President Biden has signed bipartisan legislation directing DNI Avril Haines to declassify "as much intelligence as possible" on the origins of COVID-19.

President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan bill Monday that directs the federal government to declassify as much intelligence as possible about the origins of Covid-19 more than three years after the start of the pandemic.

The legislation, which passed both the House and Senate without dissent, directs the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify intelligence related to China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology. It cites “potential links” between the research that was done there and the outbreak of Covid-19, which the World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020. The law allows for redactions to protect sensitive sources and methods.


U.S. intelligence agencies are divided over whether a lab leak or a spillover from animals is the likely source of the deadly virus. Experts say the true origin of the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed more than 1.1 million in the U.S. and millions more around the globe, may not be known for many years — if ever.

So what does this mean? Both everything and nothing. 

The declassified information must be released within 90 days of the bill being signed into law, although the language in the bill does not establish a mechanism for enforcement. Among other details, the information would include the names, symptoms and roles of any researchers who fell ill at the Wuhan institute in fall 2019, according to the text of the bill.

The theory that the coronavirus, which causes covid-19, may have escaped from the Wuhan institute has been a subject of debate since early in the pandemic.

Biden noted that he had directed the intelligence community in 2021, shortly after he took office, to “use every tool at its disposal” to investigate the origin of the coronavirus and that the work is ongoing.

In a rare show of bipartisanship this month, the House voted 419-0 in favor of the bill, which had already passed the Senate by unanimous consent.

“This is strong on symbolic value,” Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said then, adding that the measure does allow Biden “wide discretion” to withhold information to protect sources and keep methods secret.

The information Americans would see would not be the raw transcripts of intercepted phone calls, Himes said, but rather the finished intelligence reports.

“There are clearly thousands of pages of raw intelligence,” Himes said, but as far as the actual information that would be declassified, “I think we’re probably talking hundreds of pages.”

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio) told Fox News last week that he hoped the rare show of overwhelming bipartisanship would convince Biden to sign the bill into law.

“We’ve seen the intelligence,” Turner said. “The American public deserves to. There’s more information the government knows, and the American public and certainly the world needs to know.”

So we'll see what the White House and DNI Haines believe we should see, and basically all of Congress understands this, so don't expect any smoking guns.

Fox and friends will treat anything as such, but yeah, we'll see. 

Last Call For The Late, Great, Planet Earth, Con't

The latest UN report on climate change gives us a decade at most  to stave off catastrophic global warming that will kill millions, and doing so will require massive changes to current human standards of living, or we will reach a positive feedback loop that will eventually fry most life on this rock.

Earth is likely to cross a critical threshold for global warming within the next decade, and nations will need to make an immediate and drastic shift away from fossil fuels to prevent the planet from overheating dangerously beyond that level, according to a major new report released on Monday.

The report, by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a body of experts convened by the United Nations, offers the most comprehensive understanding to date of ways in which the planet is changing. It says that global average temperatures are estimated to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels sometime around “the first half of the 2030s,” as humans continue to burn coal, oil and natural gas.

That number holds a special significance in global climate politics: Under the 2015 Paris climate agreement, virtually every nation agreed to “pursue efforts” to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. Beyond that point, scientists say, the impacts of catastrophic heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures and species extinction become significantly harder for humanity to handle.

But Earth has already warmed an average of 1.1 degrees Celsius since the industrial age, and, with global fossil-fuel emissions setting records last year, that goal is quickly slipping out of reach.

There is still one last chance to shift course, the new report says. But it would require industrialized nations to join together immediately to slash greenhouse gases roughly in half by 2030 and then stop adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere altogether by the early 2050s. If those two steps were taken, the world would have about a 50 percent chance of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Delays of even a few years would most likely make that goal unattainable, guaranteeing a hotter, more perilous future.

“The pace and scale of what has been done so far and current plans are insufficient to tackle climate change,” said Hoesung Lee, the chair of the climate panel. “We are walking when we should be sprinting.”

The report comes as the world’s two biggest polluters, China and the United States, continue to approve new fossil fuel projects. Last year, China issued permits for 168 coal-fired power plants of various sizes, according to the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air in Finland. Last week, the Biden administration approved an enormous oil drilling project known as Willow that will take place on pristine federal land in Alaska.

 

So no, there doesn't seem to be any chance that countries will act in the next decade, and future generations will curse their ancestors who did nothing.

 

Those that survive, that is. 

Increasingly, we're headed for author William Gibson's "Jackpot Theory", where the odds of compounding climate change, resource shortages, nuclear war, viral pandemics and biological collapse means simply surviving the future will feel like "hitting the jackpot".

Maybe those who do survive will be able to turn the human race around, but there's no reason at all to believe the next several decades will be anything other than abject misery for the vast majority of us.

At the very least, Gen Z and whoever comes after will have every reason to despise those who came before them. I don't want to be right about this, but I don't think I'm wrong.

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The Circus Of The Damned, Con't

House "Speaker" Kevin McCarthy and the GOP Circus of the Damned are sending the flying monkeys after Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, planning to subpoena him and force him under oath to answer questions about his active investigation (and possible indictment) of Donald Trump. Team WIN THE MORNING:

 

This morning, we can report two things:

1. In the short term, Republicans are discussing firing off letters summoning employees of the Manhattan DA’s office for sworn testimony, according to a GOP official familiar with the plans. The potential request comes amid speculation about why the hush-money case was suddenly resurrected after being back-burnered by both state and federal prosecutors.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the plans are not final, noted that McCarthy, a longtime Trump ally and close friend, is “fully supportive and pushing folks to be aggressive here.”

2. Manhattan DA ALVIN BRAGG himself is in the GOP’s crosshairs, though it’s not clear if he’ll be immediately summoned. “He should come testify before Congress,” Rep. MARJORIE TAYLOR GREENE (R-Ga.) told us and other reporters, launching into a lengthy tirade about “fake charges” meant to be “used in Democrat ads” against Trump.

Greene’s not alone: “This is a [GEORGE] SOROS-backed, crazy, left-wing prosecutor … and he is doing this purely political sham,” Jordan told Playbook. (Note that Bragg told his employees over the weekend that he would “not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.”)

Jordan didn’t answer questions about whether he’d subpoena Bragg. Even if he does, it’s almost impossible to imagine Bragg or his subordinates answering questions about an ongoing probe or prosecution. While Republicans could threaten to hold him in contempt of Congress, the Justice Department would be unlikely to press charges in a partisan dispute.

Regardless, Trump’s future will continue to be a major discussion point as House Republicans huddle today on the biggest policy issues facing the country. As GOP lawmakers prepped for sessions on border security, the ongoing banking scare, public safety and the looming debt ceiling deadline, Trump kept venting on Truth Social, calling on Bragg to “BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE CRIME OF ‘INTERFERENCE IN A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION.’”

In a way, it’s a back-to-the-future moment for Republicans who spent years dodging questions about the Trump controversy du jour — and could well be doing so for months or years to come. And yet for many of them, it’s still a bummer. “Yet again, his ego gets in the way and he feels the need to suck the oxygen out of the room,” one senior House GOP aide vented.

 

Bragg's message to his office yesterday that he "would not tolerate" intimidation attempts just got its first major test.  The clown car will demand Bragg stop his case and deal with weeks, maybe months of House subpoena bullshit, even if it's sitting in front of Jim Jordan's committee on national TV and saying "I cannot comment on an ongoing criminal investigation" 371 times. 

 

It does represent however massive, massive interference in Bragg's case, with the plan being running out the clock (and making Bragg and his office targets of MAGA stochastic terrorism). The GOP will do anything and everything they can to protect Trump.

Personally, I hope Bragg absolutely indicts Trump and perp-walks him at 3:30 AM tomorrow, but that's probably why I'm not Manhattan DA.