Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, having been outsmarted by Disney last week in his fascist efforts to punish the company for defying him on "wokeness", is now trying to retroactively rewrite the rules once again in order to find a way to bring the company down.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the Walt Disney Company clashed anew on Monday, with the governor requesting an investigation into Disney’s effort to sidestep state oversight of its theme parks and Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, blasting Mr. DeSantis as “anti-business” and “anti-Florida.”

Mr. DeSantis and Disney, Florida’s largest private employer and corporate taxpayer, have been sparring for more than a year over a special tax district, enacted in 1967, that has effectively allowed the company to self-govern Disney World as a de facto county. Disney has long been able to control fire protection, policing, road maintenance — and, crucially, development planning — at the 25,000-acre resort.

Mr. DeSantis and the Florida Legislature restricted Disney’s autonomy in February by appointing a handpicked oversight board for the tax district. Previously, Disney selected the board members. But the new appointees — and, apparently, the governor — only realized last week that the Disney-controlled board, as one of its final actions, pushed through a development agreement with the company that would limit the new board’s power for decades to come.

Outraged, the new board hired four law firms to scrutinize the matter and, potentially, take Disney to court.

On Monday morning, shortly before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting, Mr. DeSantis sent a letter to Melinda Miguel, Florida’s chief inspector general, asking for “a thorough review and investigation” into Disney’s effort to circumvent his authority.

“These collusive and self-dealing arrangements aim to nullify the recently passed legislation, undercut Florida’s legislative process and defy the will of Floridians,” Mr. DeSantis wrote. “Any legal or ethical violations should be referred to the proper authorities.” A spokesman for Mr. DeSantis added that “Disney is again fighting to keep its special corporate benefits and dodge Florida law. We are not going to let that happen.”

Speaking at the shareholder meeting, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, denounced Mr. DeSantis for moving to restrict Disney’s tax district autonomy — noting that the governor took action only after the company halted political donations in Florida and criticized a contentious state education law. The legislation, labeled “Don’t Say Gay” by opponents, prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity for students through the third grade and limits it for older ones.

“A company has a right to freedom of speech just like individuals do,” Mr. Iger said. “The governor got very angry over the position Disney took and seems like he’s decided to retaliate against us, including the naming of a new board to oversee the property, in effect to seek to punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right. And that just seems really wrong to me.”

 

It does seem wrong because it is. It's a classic fascist strongman move, to threaten private entities with fines or worse for daring to have an opinion that differs from the local tin pot dictator.

 

Again, Disney is a pretty awful company and controls far too much of the American news and entertainment sector and like several US companies, needs to be broken up and divested of much of its values.

 

But there's a process for that, and this is just DeSantis being a fascist asshole.  

We know that part's true because DeSantis signed a 6-week abortion ban into law, and had the chair of the Florida Dems, Nikki Fried, arrested for protesting it peacefully last night.

 

Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki Fried and Senate Democratic Leader Lauren Book were among about a dozen demonstrators who were handcuffed and arrested at an evening protest for abortion rights outside Tallahassee City Hall.

The protesters, condemning the state's proposed six-week abortion ban, were taken away by police while sitting in a circle and singing "Lean on Me" inside a barricaded area of a park that was closed at sunset.

They were warned by police that if they didn't leave the area, they would be subject to arrest. As a large contingent of police approached, protesters yelled "shame, shame" as everyone was cuffed and walked to the parking garage beneath City Hall and loaded into a Tallahassee Police Department van.

 
In a press release, a police spokesperson wrote that "TPD assisted in ensuring a safe environment" for demonstrators as they "peacefully protested."

"After multiple warnings throughout the day, protestors acknowledged they understood that anyone refusing to leave the premises at sundown would be subject to arrest," the spokesperson wrote. "This evening, after sunset, the majority of the crowd left the property while 11 people refused to leave despite numerous requests. They were subsequently arrested for trespass after warning."

"TPD encourages individuals exercising their First Amendment right of peaceful assembly to do so in accordance with the law. TPD supports non-disruptive demonstrations and works diligently to protect and uphold the rights of citizens every day." 

 

Sure they do.

 

Meanwhile, DeSantis is removing his political enemies left and right.

It's fascism, folks.

Pay attention.

Last Call For Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

The real major story for tomorrow isn't in Manhattan, it's in Madison and Milwaukee, as Ben Jacobs of Vox interviews Wisconsin political reporter Jessie Opoien about Tuesday's critical state supreme court election.

One of the most consequential elections of 2023 will happen on April 4 in Wisconsin. The race for an open state Supreme Court seat will determine the partisan balance of the Badger State’s highest court and either maintain the 4-seats-to-3 hold that conservatives have on the court, or the race will flip it to a liberal majority. The result could not only determine whether abortion is legal in Wisconsin after the Supreme Court last year overturned Roe v. Wade, but it could also lead to a redraw of the state’s heavily gerrymandered legislative and congressional maps. New maps in Wisconsin could flip control not just of the statehouse but even of the US House of Representatives, where Republicans currently only have the slimmest majority.

Jessie Opoien is the capitol bureau chief for the Capital Times and has covered Wisconsin politics for over a decade. We spoke about the race and what it means not just in Wisconsin but nationally.

Ben Jacobs

Who is running in this race, and why is it getting so much attention?

Jessie Opoien

So the two candidates are Janet Protasiewicz, who is a Milwaukee County circuit judge, and Daniel Kelly, who is a former state Supreme Court justice. And although the race is ostensibly nonpartisan, it’s extremely influenced by partisan entities. So, again, Janet Protasiewicz is linked with Democrats and the liberal side of things. And Kelly is linked with Republicans and the conservative side of things. It’s getting so much attention because it’s one of the only huge races on a ballot anywhere this year because the ideological ballot balance of the state Supreme Court could flip in favor of liberals for the first time since 2008.

That could open the door to challenges to a number of policies that were passed by Republicans over the last 10 years. And I think, most notably, it would open the door to the court, looking at a challenge to the state’s abortion ban, which was passed in 1849 and had been unenforceable until the Dobbs decision.

Ben Jacobs

How much does redistricting come into play as well?

Jessie Opoien

Yeah, redistricting is the No. 2 issue on voters’ minds. At this point, I think abortion is definitely driving the race. The state has seen a number of challenges to its electoral map. I think it’s pretty widely agreed throughout the country that Wisconsin’s maps are among the most gerrymandered in the country. Janet Protasiewicz has certainly talked about those maps. She has said outright that they’re rigged. That’s something that the Kelly campaign has hit her on. But I think we could definitely expect, if she were to win, we could expect another challenge or a revival of one of the old challenges to make its way back to the court.

Ben Jacobs

Judicial races are nominally supposed to be nonpartisan. Is there any pretense at this point that this is removed from party politics?

Jessie Opoien

Not really; both of the candidates pretty much acknowledge that this is the way it works at this point. It’s kind of one of those things where, as a reporter, you have to note that it’s nonpartisan, and then explain that it’s really nonpartisan in name only. So I think both candidates are pretty well-linked to their respective political parties. We’re seeing both parties get pretty involved. It’s really just a difference between saying liberal and Democrat or conservative or Republican.
Ben Jacobs

So there’s a lot of money being spent in the race. How much is being spent, and who is doing it?

Jessie Opoien

Yeah, it’s huge. We’ve already surpassed the record for the most expensive judicial race in the country. ... We’ve already passed $20 million, and I’ve been hearing as high as $27 million. We are going to keep seeing that go higher and higher in the final days of the race. The Protasiewicz campaign is spending more than Kelly, who is relying a little bit more on outside groups. But we’re just seeing so much money flooding in from groups that have an interest in this race.

 

There's a very good chance that the 2024 election comes down to Wisconsin. There's a very good chance that this state supreme court election will determine if Joe Biden can win in the state fairly, or if the Republicans in the state legislature can and will declare someone like Trump the winner regardless of the vote, in the most gerrymandered state in the union.

 

On top of that, there's the state's abortion ban, and how the state will repond to a law that's been on the books since before the US Civil War.  Both will be decided by this election.

It's that important.

Orange Meltdown: The Day Before, Con't

With Trump arraignment expected tomorrow, and as many have pointed out, Trump is going to soon have much bigger problems than just Alvin Bragg.

 

Justice Department and FBI investigators have amassed fresh evidence pointing to possible obstruction by former president Donald Trump in the investigation into top-secret documents found at his Mar-a-Lago home, according to people familiar with the matter.

The additional evidence comes as investigators have used emails and text messages from a former Trump aide to help understand key moments last year, said the people, who like others interviewed for this article spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation.

The new details highlight the degree to which special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the potential mishandling of hundreds of classified national security papers at Trump’s Florida home and private club has come to focus on the obstruction elements of the case — whether the former president took or directed actions to impede government efforts to collect all the sensitive records.

The emphasis on obstruction marks a key distinction so far between the Mar-a-Lago investigation and a separate Justice Department probe into how a much smaller number of classified documents ended up in an insecure office of President Biden’s, as well as his Delaware home. The Trump investigation is much further along than the Biden probe, which began in November and is being overseen by a different special counsel, Robert K. Hur. Biden’s lawyers say they have quickly handed over all classified documents found in Biden’s possession.

The Trump investigation team has spent much of its time focusing on events that happened after Trump’s advisers received a subpoena in May demanding the return of all documents with classified markings, the people familiar with the matter said. Smith is trying to determine if Trump or others mishandled national security documents, and if there is enough evidence to ask a grand jury to charge him with obstructing the investigation.

The Mar-a-Lago investigation is one of four separate criminal probes involving Trump, who is campaigning for another term in the White House. Trump has been indicted by a New York grand jury that heard evidence about money paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels during his 2016 presidential campaign. He is set to make his first court appearance in that case Tuesday. He is also being investigated by the Justice Department and a state prosecutor in Georgia over efforts to block Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election.

An FBI spokesman referred questions to a spokesman for the special counsel, who declined to comment.

 

It's not the crime, it's the cover-up that's also criminal.

Court papers filed seeking judicial authorization for the FBI to conduct the search of Trump’s home show agents believed that “evidence of obstruction will be found at the premises.”

The application for court approval for that search said agents were pursuing evidence of violations of statutes including 18 USC 1519, which makes it a crime to alter, destroy, mutilate or conceal a document or tangible object “with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency.”

A key element in most obstruction cases is intent, because to bring such a charge, prosecutors have to be able to show that whatever actions were taken were done to try to hinder or block an investigation. In the Trump case, prosecutors and federal agents are trying to gather any evidence pointing to the motivation for Trump’s actions.

The Washington Post reported in October that Trump’s valet, Walt Nauta, had told investigators that he moved boxes at Mar-a-Lago at the former president’s instruction after the subpoena was issued. Smith’s team has video surveillance footage corroborating that account, The Post reported, and considers the evidence significant.

 

In other words, Trump's intent to purposely impede the investigation into his classified documents at Mar-a-Lago is an even bigger problem then having the documents. That's likely been the case, but now we know that's what Jack Smith and the feds are actively pursuing.

Still, that's not going to stop Trump from screaming at Bragg and demanding that somebody deal with him. 

Donald Trump has told advisers and associates in recent days that he is prepared to escalate attacks against the Manhattan prosecutor who resurrected the criminal prosecution into his hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016 now that a grand jury has indicted him.

The former president has vowed to people close to him that he wants to go on the offensive and – in a private moment over the weekend at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida that demonstrates his gathering resolve – remarked using more colorful language that it was time to politically “rough ’em up”.

Trump had already signaled that he would go after the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, weeks before the grand jury handed up an indictment against him on Thursday, saying in pugilistic posts on Truth Social that the prosecution was purely political and accusing Bragg of being a psychopath.

But the latest charged language reflects Trump’s determination to double down on those attacks as he returns to his time-tested playbook of brawling with prosecutors, especially when faced with legal trouble that he knows he cannot avoid, people close to him said.

The episode at Mar-a-Lago came on the sidelines of strategy meetings Trump had with advisers and associates about how to respond to the indictment from a legal and political standpoint, sessions which were described by two sources close to the former president.

 

Unless the judge in this case is ready to issue a gag order with significant and far-reaching consequences, Trump will simply have others issue his calls to target Bragg and "rough em up". Even if Trump is muzzled in order to stop his attacks, House Republicans are ready to try to tie up the case for months with subpoenas and motions targeting Bragg and his office, if not going so far as to directly interfere with the proceedings themselves.

Tomorrow will be a madhouse, and the madness will only get worse.

 

On the other hand, the vast majority of Americans agree with Bragg's indictment.

Sixty percent of Americans approve of the indictment of former President Donald Trump, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS following the news that a New York grand jury voted to charge him in connection with hush money payments made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. About three-quarters of Americans say politics played at least some role in the decision to indict Trump, including 52% who said it played a major role.

Independents largely line up in support of the indictment – 62% approve of it and 38% disapprove. Democrats are near universal in their support for the indictment (94% approve, including 71% who strongly approve of the indictment), with Republicans less unified in opposition (79% disapprove, with 54% strongly disapproving).

While views on the indictment are split along party lines, the poll finds that majorities across major demographic divides all approve of the decision to indict the former president. That includes gender (62% of women, 58% of men), racial and ethnic groups (82% of Black adults, 71% of Hispanic adults, 51% of White adults), generational lines (69% under age 35; 62% age 35-49; 53% age 50-64; 54% 65 or older) and educational levels (68% with college degrees, 56% with some college or less).

 

Even White voters approve of the indictment (barely).  The goal by Trump and his cronies is to turn voters against the indictment and use that anger to help him politically. So far, that's not happening.

But we have a long way to go.

Losing It At The Finnish Line

Finland's government led by PM Sanna Marin has been ousted in national elections on Sunday, with Marin's Social Democrat party finishing third behind right-wing National Coalition Party and extremely right-wing neo-Nationalist Finns Party.

Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin appears to have lost her bid for a second term on Sunday, with her party headed for defeat by two conservative opponents in an extremely tight three-way race for control of parliament.

The center-right National Coalition Party claimed victory Sunday evening with around 97.7% of the votes counted, coming out on top at 20.7%. They were followed closely by right-wing populist party The Finns with 20.1%, while the Social Democrats garnered 19.9%.

With the top three parties each getting around 20% of the vote, no party is in position to form a government alone. Over 2,400 candidates from 22 parties were vying for the 200 seats in the Nordic country’s parliament.

“Based on this result, talks over forming a new government to Finland will be initiated under the leadership of the National Coalition Party,” said the party’s leader Petteri Orpo, as he claimed victory surrounded by supporters.

Marin, who at age 37 is one of Europe’s youngest leaders, has received praise for her Cabinet’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and for her prominent role, along with President Sauli Niinistö, in advocating for Finland’s successful application to join NATO. Her vocal support of Ukraine in the last year has increased her international visibility.

The problem now is that Finland's bid to join NATO may be in jeopardy. The Finns Party has vowed to pull Finland out of the pact, and the National Coalition Party, and if talks fall apart to form a government, it's possible that the NATO bid fails completely. The NCP has said that Finland "should be prepared militarily" if Russia tries anything on the border, but that's no guarantee that they will stay if the Finns make the case that the easiest spending cuts, which the NCP ran on, would be military.

On the other hand, Finnish President Sauli Niinisto says Finland will officially join NATO tomorrow, so it's a done deal. As to if Finland stays in NATO, well, we'll see. I believe they will, but nothing is 100% in politics these days.

Last Call For Oil's Not Well, Con't

The post-Trump Saudis are at this point trying to do everything they can to get Trump back, because he could (and still can) be bought.

Saudi Arabia and other OPEC+ oil producers on Sunday announced further oil output cuts of around 1.16 million barrels per day, in a surprise move that analysts said would cause an immediate rise in prices and the United States called inadvisable.

The pledges bring the total volume of cuts by OPEC+, which groups the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries with Russia and other allies, to 3.66 million bpd according to Reuters calculations, equal to 3.7% of global demand.

Sunday's development comes a day before a virtual meeting of an OPEC+ ministerial panel, which includes Saudi Arabia and Russia, and which had been expected to stick to 2 million bpd of cuts already in place until the end of 2023.

Oil prices last month fell towards $70 a barrel, the lowest in 15 months, on concern that a global banking crisis would hit demand. Still, further action by OPEC+ to support the market was not expected after sources downplayed this prospect and crude recovered towards $80.

The latest reductions could lift oil prices by $10 per barrel, the head of investment firm Pickering Energy Partners said on Sunday, while oil broker PVM said it expected an immediate jump once trading starts after the weekend.

"I expect the market to open several dollars higher ... possibly as much as $3," said PVM's Tamas Varga. "The step is unreservedly bullish."

Top OPEC producer Saudi Arabia said it would cut output by 500,000 bpd. The Saudi energy ministry said the kingdom's voluntary reduction was a precautionary measure aimed at supporting the stability of the oil market.

"OPEC is taking pre-emptive steps in case of any possible demand reduction," Amrita Sen, founder and director of Energy Aspects, said.

 

Oil was under $70 this time last week, and I fully expect it to hit $100+ again, only this time at the pump you'll see prices well above $5 per gallon, and when that starts breaking the economy along with rising interest rates, the housing bubble, Big Casino banks, and global instability, it could be the move that finally cracks the road.

 

Things get very bad for the US economy after that, and sabotaging it is being done on purpose.

The Return Of A Couple Of Bad Joes

Our old friend for Connecticut is back to hand the 2024 presidential race over to Donald Trump in order to satisfy his well-heeled masters, and I can't see anything good from this effort to destroy both Joe Biden and the country in the name of corporate cash.

 

Former senator Joe Lieberman knows better than most the impact third-party bids can have on presidential elections. His 2000 Democratic campaign for vice president fell just 537 Florida votes short of victory, in a state where Ralph Nader, the liberal activist and Green Party nominee, won more than 97,000 votes.

But that didn’t stop the Connecticut Democrat turned independent from joining a meeting Thursday in support of plans by the centrist group No Labels to get presidential ballot lines in all 50 states for 2024. The group calls its effort an “insurance policy” against the major parties nominating two “unacceptable” candidates next year.

Asked if President Biden, his former Senate colleague, would be unacceptable, Lieberman said the answer was uncertain.

“No decision has been made on any of that. But we’re putting ourselves in a position,” Lieberman said. “You know, it might be that we will take our common-sense, moderate, independent platform to him and the Republican candidate and see which one of them is willing to commit to it. And that could lead to, in my opinion, a No Labels endorsement.”

Uncertainty over the $70 million No Labels ballot effort has set off major alarm bells in Democratic circles and raised concerns among Republican strategists, who have launched their own research projects to figure out the potential impacts. As Lieberman spoke, the Arizona Democratic Party filed a lawsuit to block No Labels from ballot access in that state on procedural grounds. Matt Bennett of the centrist Democratic think tank Third Way has argued that the plot is “going to reelect Trump,” and Adam Green of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee has accused No Labels of wanting “to play the role of spoiler.”

“The only way you can justify this is if you really believe that it doesn’t really matter if it is Joe Biden or Donald Trump,” said Stuart Stevens, a former presidential campaign strategist for George W. Bush, John McCain and Mitt Romney, who now works with the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “So it is sort of a test. If you live in a world where it doesn’t matter, this is kind of harmless. If you live in a world where it does matter, it is dangerous.”

Splits have also emerged inside the organization. William Galston, a Brookings Institution policy scholar, said this week that he would separate himself from No Labels, which he helped found, over its 2024 planning for a third-party campaign to challenge Biden and Trump.

“I am proud of No Labels’ record of bipartisan legislation, and I know its leaders want what is best for the country. But I cannot support the organization’s preparation for a possible independent presidential candidacy,” he said in a statement. “There is no equivalence between President Biden and a former president who threatens the survival of our constitutional order. And most important, in today’s closely divided politics, any division of the anti-Trump vote would open the door to his reelection.”

No Labels chief executive Nancy Jacobson said Galston had added a lot to the No Labels cause. “We’re sad to see him go,” she said in a statement.

 

Of course, the real problem is that one country wrecking Joe knows another.

Among the group’s advisers is former North Carolina governor Pat McCrory, a Republican who just lost a Senate bid in the face of Trump opposition; former director of national intelligence Dennis Blair; and Benjamin Chavis Jr., a former executive director of the NAACP.

“I just wanted to emphasize on the spoiler question: I would not be involved if I thought in any account that we would do something to spoil the election in favor of Donald Trump,” Chavis said at the meeting, which was attended in person or via Zoom by 16 No Labels staff and supporters, including Blair and McCrory. “That’s just not going to happen.”

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.), who has not declared whether he will run for reelection next year, and former Maryland governor Larry Hogan (R) are also supporters of the effort, and both said they have not ruled out participating in a No Labels presidential ticket, if it happens.

“If enough Americans believe there is an option and the option is a threat to the extreme left and extreme right, it will be the greatest contribution to democracy, I believe,” Manchin said in an interview. When asked whether he would participate in a No Labels ticket, he said, “I don’t rule myself in and I don’t rule myself out.”

 

A Manchin/Hogan ticket won't take a single Trump 2024 vote, but in a contest like 2016 or 2020 where the Electoral College race was decided by only thousands of votes in four or five states, this could absolutely hand the nation back to Trump, and everyone knows it. 

Of course we'd get two evil Joes to try to take down the decent one.

By the way, if you're still unclear about the real motive here in the effort to spoil Biden's re-election, understand that Joe Manchin is now firmly on the GOP side of attacking Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg's fraud case against Trump.

 

“It’s just a very, very sad day for America,” said Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, the Democrat, referring to Mr. Trump’s indictment in an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”

“Especially when people are maybe believing that the rule of law or justice is not working the way it’s supposed to and it’s biased — we can’t have that,” Mr. Manchin said. “But on the other hand, no one’s above the law. But no one should be targeted by the law.”

 

At this point Manchin's screaming need for revenge against Joe Biden is going to result in him announcing he will retire from the Senate in 2024 and run as a third party spoiler.

Sunday Long Read: Oh No, Canada

It's been almost two years since Canadian PM Justin Trudeau announced that the country was going to follow more than 80 recommendations from First Nation and Indigenous advocates after hundreds of graves were found at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in BC, with thousands of Indigenous students over decades having been killed from abuse by the Canadian government running these schools, one of the darkest chapters in the country's history.

Sadly, as out Sunday Long Read this week finds, those efforts at reparations and restitution still have a long way to go as more graves, more stories, more horrors are being found in community after community.

JENNY ROSE SPYGLASS was three years old when the men came for her. It was September 1944 in present-day west-central Saskatchewan, where the prairie grass grows wild and the contours of the sky seem infinite. Spyglass’s family home—in Mosquito Grizzly Bear’s Head Lean Man First Nation—lay nestled in the Eagle Hills, surrounded by wheat fields, chokecherry, and willow, land roamed by elk, lynx, and coyotes. She lived in one of several Indigenous communities in the vicinity of the Thunderchild Indian Residential School, run by the Roman Catholic Church, some sixty kilometres away.

As Spyglass recalls, her family lived in poverty—her father had recently been deployed by the Canadian military, leaving her mother to care for six children. That fall day, Spyglass remembers, a black vehicle drove up the gravel road and approached her house. A few men emerged: federally appointed Indian agents—who enforced Ottawa’s policies across First Nations reserves and Indigenous communities in Canada—and two priests. The men pointed at Spyglass as her mother pled. “I hung on to my mom,” she says. The men snatched her from her mother’s grip and tossed her, along with her two elder brothers, Martin and Reggie, into the back of the vehicle. During the drive, Spyglass fell asleep and later awoke to children sobbing and gathered near another vehicle. All of them had been torn from their homes in neighbouring reserves—Moosomin, Poundmaker, Sweetgrass, and Red Pheasant, among others—after their parents were threatened with jail or fines if they resisted their child’s attendance at the Thunderchild school. The children were transported to the school, located in what is now Delmas, a remote hamlet off the Yellowhead Highway.

When Spyglass arrived at the sprawling facility, it housed up to 130 children—the girls were sequestered in the south side and the boys in the north—and they slept in dormitories on the upper level of the main building. “I had long, beautiful braids. My mum used to braid my hair. They chopped my hair and put them in a garbage,” Spyglass recalls. “They took my clothes off my mum made for me and dumped them in a garbage.” Like the other girls, Spyglass was made to wear an apron-like uniform. Children were called savages and punished for speaking their native tongues. Spyglass, who spoke Cree and some Assiniboine, did not understand English. She spent her days hungry and alone, cutting out doll pictures from shopping catalogues. She recalls older girls stealing food from the kitchen, where they worked, to feed her and the younger ones—they ate dry bannock, beans, and porridge, but the food was never enough. At the school, girls were made to do domestic chores, and the boys were forced to farm.

The school had been built on fertile land that was later surrendered to settlers. The 1876 Indian Act, a federal law that was explicitly designed to carry out Canada’s assimilation agenda, had created the reserve system—wherein a plot of land is set aside by the government for a First Nation whose members are wards of the state—and paved the way for the residential school system. Later amendments to the law made it mandatory for “every Indian child between the ages of seven and fifteen years who is physically able” to attend. In the 1940s, Canadian officials discussed elements of the Indian Act with their South African counterparts. That country’s apartheid system, some scholars allege, was later imbued with these elements. Though amended, the Indian Act is still in effect today.

Several parents across Canada physically removed their children from residential schools or refused to send them at all (often forgoing their monthly rations and risking jail), hid their children in basements and forests, and petitioned the federal government and created political organizations. In the 1890s, despite it being illegal for Indigenous peoples to hire a lawyer (and it would remain so until 1951), two sets of parents in Ontario engaged a solicitor to have their children discharged.

The Thunderchild Indian Residential School (originally called St. Henri of Thunderchild and later known as the Delmas school) was run by the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, under the administration of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Prince Albert. By the time Spyglass and her brothers arrived, it had been operating for some four decades. The aim of the entire residential school system, according to deputy superintendent of Indian affairs Duncan Campbell Scott, the civil servant who oversaw the expansion and brutality of the system, was to “get rid of the Indian problem.” As noted in the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC)—a six-year nationwide effort established, in part, to document the legacy of residential schools—the system was built to cause “Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious and racial entities in Canada.” Between the 1880s and late 1990s, at least 139 federally funded residential schools were run by Christian churches—a system that was at the centre of a national policy of cultural genocide. (One of the last schools to close in Canada, in 1997, was in east-central Saskatchewan.) More than 150,000 First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children attended as residential or day students. John A. Macdonald, Canada’s first prime minister, famously said before the House of Commons in 1883: “When the school is on the reserve the child lives with his parents, who are savages; he is surrounded by savages, and though he may learn to read and write, his habits and training and mode of thought are Indian. He is simply a savage who can read and write.”

At the Thunderchild school, the children attended mass at least every Sunday as part of their assimilation. They were also forced to seek repentance for their sins. “In confessional, the priest would ask if I had sex with anybody,” Spyglass recalls. “I didn’t know what that is. I was too small . . . And then he would take my hand and say, ‘Can you touch me in my legs?’” He would then give her a chocolate bar. One priest, she says, “always wanted to kiss the little girls, and we would take turns pushing, ‘Now you go, you go, you go, tell your sins,’” she recounts. “How can we have sins?” In 2007, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement came into effect and included a process for claims of sexual or physical abuse that occurred at residential schools across Canada—it received nearly 40,000 claims.

One day, when she was about four years old, Spyglass learned that her brother Reggie, a year older, had become ill. She and Reggie were close—best friends. Reggie was isolated in a small room, and nobody was permitted to see him. “They just let him suffer,” Spyglass says. “He never made it home.” She didn’t know the cause of his death at the time, but her family later surmised it was tuberculosis, a disease that was then at least five times more likely to infect and kill First Nations people living on reserve and over sixty times more likely to kill children in residential schools.

The school itself was poorly maintained. In 1940, an inspector declared it a fire hazard and advised its closure. It remained open for another eight years. The school was overcrowded, and students suffered from a host of illnesses: scarlet fever, typhoid, jaundice, and pneumonia. Students were alleged to have died by suicide or under suspicious circumstances, including being beaten to death. At least one student went missing and was never seen again, likely freezing to death in the harsh and remote environment after running away. Seven percent of the hundreds of students who attended the school died. According to Jack Funk, a former Department of Indian Affairs superintendent of education in Saskatchewan, death rates were up to five times higher than those for non-native students attending provincial schools. “That’s what hurts the most, is my brother had to die,” Spyglass says.

 

It's going to take a long time to discover everything that needs to be discovered, and a long time for Canada to make good on these horrific acts, and yet as an American I have to admire the fact that Canada wants to do the right thing. Here, I've given up on the US government decades ago. If anything here, we're hurtling back towards the worst parts of that history for Indigenous, Black, Latino and Asian folks.

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

A white supremacist tried to firebomb a church in Ohio on Monday over a drag event, and is now facing federal arson charges.

 

A member of the pro-Nazi group White Lives Matter of Ohio was arrested Friday after he allegedly threw molotov cocktails at a church planning to hold a drag event.

Aimenn Penny threw molotov cocktails at the Community Church of Chesterland, outside Cleveland, on March 25, according to investigators. The attack left scorch marks on the church and broke a sign, but did no significant damage.

Penny was charged with arson and possession of a destructive device.

He was a known figure in the White Lives Matter group, which protested a drag event in Ohio earlier this month with swastika flags, shouting slurs and praising Hitler, according to FBI investigators.

In an interaction with police at that event, Penny, who is white, said that he is awaiting a national race war, and that he believes all other races have to be eliminated for the U.S. to prosper, according to investigators.

Community Church of Chesterland plans to host a drag event on Saturday. The church has claimed to receive numerous complaints and threats about the event, and is anticipating “potentially violent hate groups” to protest, according to a Facebook post by church leadership.

After the attack, investigators were able to track Penny’s phone to the church on the night of the arson. The FBI then searched his home and car on Friday and interviewed Penny, who confessed, according to investigators.

He told investigators that wanted to “protect children and stop the drag show event.”

“Penny stated that night he became more and more angry after watching internet videos of news feeds and drag shows in France and decided to attack the church,” the arresting complaint says. “Penny stated that he would have felt better if the Molotov cocktails were more effective and burned the entire church to the ground.”

 

Local cops are pressuring the church to cancel the event, of course.  This *is* small town Ohio, after all. But the show will go on.

We'll see if the cops can't do their jobs.

Outfoxed And Outnumbered, Con't

Fox News is in dire trouble as the judge in the Dominion Voting Services defamation case will allow the lawsuit to go to trial later this month.

 

A judge denied granting summary judgment to Fox News in its attempt to get Dominion Voting System's $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit thrown out Friday, meaning the case will go to trial in mid-April.

Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis handed Dominion a major win, too, when he agreed that the challenged statements are false.

The ruling spares the voting machine company from having to litigate baseless conspiracy theories about its role in the 2020 election during the upcoming trial on Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News and its parent company, Fox Corp.

“The evidence developed in this civil proceeding demonstrates that is CRYSTAL clear that none of the Statements relating to Dominion about the 2020 election are true,” wrote Judge Eric Davis in his 81-page ruling.

The jury will be asked to consider whether Fox News journalists acted with actual malice — knowing falsity or reckless disregard for the truth — in publishing the claims, and whether damages are due. They will also be asked to weigh the involvement of Fox Corp. in the publication of the alleged defamatory statements.

"We are gratified by the Court’s thorough ruling soundly rejecting all of Fox’s arguments and defenses, and finding as a matter of law that their statements about Dominion are false. We look forward to going to trial," a spokesperson for Dominion said in a statement.

“This case is and always has been about the First Amendment protections of the media’s absolute right to cover the news. FOX will continue to fiercely advocate for the rights of free speech and a free press as we move into the next phase of these proceedings,” a Fox News spokesperson said in a statement.

Dominion alleges Fox damaged its reputation by promoting phony claims that it was tied to the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, paid kickbacks to politicians and “rigged” the presidential election by flipping millions of votes for Donald Trump to Joe Biden.

Jurors will be instructed that those claims are not true — a position Fox News did not challenge in the otherwise hotly contested case.

Dominion argued the claims are defamatory because they accuse the company of “a serious crime” and damaged its reputation, turning it into “one of the most demonized brands in the United States or the world.”

It also contended the claims were made with “actual malice,” which is defined as being made with “knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

The judge said he was leaving that up to the jury to decide.

 

For the defamation case to be allowed to go forward to trial is extremely bad for Fox News. For the judge to then issue a partial summary judgment that Fox News made numerous false statements, and the jurors will be told to consider those statements to be false from the start...

...There's no reason for Dominion to settle. They're going to win.

Sure, Fox News will tie this case up in court for years on appeals, but they are going to lose those appeals too.

It's going to get hideous for the Murdochs, and I can't wait.

Last Call For Retribution Execution, Con't

With Donald Trump facing indictment and arraignment on multiple fraud charges on Tuesday, the Trumpworld response is to flood the zone with House GOP Circus of the Damned sideshows.

 

SOME OF DONALD Trump’s close advisers are calling on top Republicans in Congress to accelerate criminal referrals against President Joe Biden, demanding revenge after Trump became the first former president in history to be indicted.

“Now the House GOP has to continue to investigate the Biden bribes and refer for indictments,” says John McLaughlin, a top Trump pollster. “Just the beginning of the end for the Bidens.”

Michael Caputo, a former Trump official who remains close to the ex-president, says he agrees that the House GOP should accelerate its Biden-related probes — and added a 2025 twist: “In fact, I think President Trump should appoint an attorney general who will arrest Joe Biden for his China corruption on Inauguration Day 2025. There’s a far stronger case against Biden for his crimes and now the precedent is set.” (Trump’s team often speaks as if a 2024 victory is a foregone conclusion.)

Behind the scenes, Trump spent Thursday night on a barrage of phone calls to House Republican leaders and other MAGA lawmakers to confirm they had his back following the indictment, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter. He also, the sources say, vented about Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and his other Democratic foes. CNN first reported on this blitz of evening calls, noting that some of these lawmakers “serve on committees that are trying to investigate the Manhattan DA.”

The demand for revenge against Biden stems from two ideas circulating in Trumpworld. The first is that Bragg is doing Biden’s bidding by pushing an indictment of Trump. The second is an effort to recreate a strategy he successfully used against Hillary Clinton in 2016, repeatedly calling her “crooked” and accusing her of corruption at a time when his own ethical lapses were under scrutiny.

“This is all about Biden through Bragg countering the GOP investigation of the millions in communist Chinese bank wires to the Bidens. Classic political diversion,” claims McLaughlin.

Trump has been baselessly accusing Bragg of doing the new president’s bidding, predicting Bragg’s work will “backfire massively on Joe Biden.” Even before the GOP won back control of the House in last year’s elections, Trump had been calling top allies on Capitol Hill, grilling them on different strategies for investigating Biden, his family, and his administration, people familiar with the matter recall. At times, Trump would ask “how many” times Republicans planned on impeaching Biden.

While Trump’s team publicly demands revenge on Biden, they’ve already drawn up efforts to punish Bragg for his prosecution of the former president. Rolling Stone reported earlier this month that Trump has been demanding his advisers draw up legal plans for how they could punish the DA if they were to retake the White House. And his advisers have already located specific areas of the legal code they could use to take their revenge — including via the Justice Department’s civil rights division.

 

So yes, expect the House GOP investigations into Biden to kick into high gear, resulting in House GOP Committee votes to refer Hunter and Joe Biden for criminal prosecution to the Department of Justice, and for Merrick Garland to hand these over to Special Counsel Jack Smith.

 

What will come of these cases is anyone's guess, but Republicans will be talking about these criminal referrals every time a Trump indictment is brought up.

 

Expect more Trump indictments, too. 

Of course, the more immediate problem is that Trumpworld is calling for supporters to take revenge as well.

Minutes after former President Donald Trump was indicted by a grand jury in New York, his supporters flooded social media and extremist message boards with violent and racist threats against the officials prosecuting Trump, as well as bloody civil war.

“This cannot go unpunished,” one member of the rabidly pro-Trump message board The Donald wrote on Thursday night. “The DA needs to pay dearly.”


“None of this will stop unless there is blood in the streets,” another poster wrote.

In Trump’s own statement, the former president called the indictment a “political persecution” and referred to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg as “hand-picked and funded by George Soros,” and stated that Bragg is “doing Joe Biden’s dirty work.”

His far-right supporters mobilized quickly online to echo these comments. Through their vitriol, and calls for war, some supporters also promoted a narrative where Trump’s indictment was actually going to help him win victory in 2024. In some cases, supporters falsely said the indictment was simply a ruse to distract everyone from the shooter in Nashville earlier this week.

“The whole trans terrorist thing must have been polling badly so they decided to indict Trump based on the testimony of a lying jew and lying whore,” one influential neo-Nazi account on Telegram wrote, alongside an AI-generated image of a tattooed, topless Trump in a prison yard.

While Trump supporters did not publicly make specific plans for protests or violence, there were numerous examples of violent rhetoric in response to Trump’s indictment, including calling for violence against Bragg, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and law enforcement.

On platforms like The Donald, where all five of the top pinned posts on the homepage on Thursday night related to Trump’s indictment, commenters openly called for violence that was largely racist in nature.


Under a post with a photo of Bragg captioned “FAT PIECE OF SHIT!” another user commented: “There once was a time when he would have been lynched for much less.”

“Can’t we put a bounty on Bragg’s head? Time to fight lawlessness with lawlessness,” one user wrote. In response, someone said: “Hey man a lot of us are thinking the same thing, but if I said what should really happen I'd be charged with ‘terroristic threats.’” Another added: “The unjustified prosecution of President Trump is state terrorism. Respond to terrorism with terrorism.”

 

 99.999% chance this is all empty bluster.

But it only takes that .001% for someone to get hurt or worse, and the Feds to win 100% of the time.

Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Florida Man Is Probably Packing Heat, Just Saying.

 

Florida's Republican-supermajority Legislature advanced a bill Thursday that would allow people to carry concealed weapons without licenses, additional training or background checks.

Where it stands: The bill will go to Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has indicated that he'll sign it."A constitutional right should not require a permission slip from the government," the governor said during an address to the state Legislature earlier this month. "It is time we joined 25 other states to enact constitutional carry in the state of Florida."

Details: The measure would allow Floridians to carry concealed weapons without a permit or training.Under current law, residents must undergo firearms training, clear a background check and pay fees when applying for a concealed-carry license.

With the new bill, a person will be allowed to carry a concealed weapon without a license if they meet the current requirements needed to obtain a license, including not having been convicted of a felony or found guilty of a crime relating to controlled substances within a three-year period, Axios' Martin Vassolo reports.

The big picture: About half of the U.S. states already have some form of a permitless carry law.Florida would become the 26th if DeSantis signs the bill. Per the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, other states where permitless concealed carry is legal include:

Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Hampshire, North Dakota (for residents only), Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, West Virginia, Wyoming.

 

So yeah, Randy Rife Range here goes to Shooter's Sports 'n' Shootin' in Jacksonville and buys a gun and sticks it in his pocket and totally won't blast his own dick off.

 

Gunmerica!

 

And yes, the entire tri-state area here around Cincy is now license free concealed carry, along with 22 other states and now Florida, which means of course the next time you cut somebody off in traffic, remember to swerve a bit to avoid incoming fire. 

Cops of course are going to love this.

The Biggest Of Book Bans

Missouri Republicans are eliminating all state funding for public libraries in retaliation for the ACLU suing the state over the state's recent book ban law in school libraries, and the results are going to be dozens of libraries shutting their doors for good.

 

Late Tuesday night, the Missouri House of Representatives voted for a state operating budget with a $0 line for public libraries. While the budget still needs to work its way through the Senate and the governor’s office, state funding for public libraries is very much on the chopping block in Missouri.

This comes after Republican House Budget Chairman Cody Smith proposed a $4.5 million cut to public libraries’ state aid last week in the initial House Budget Committee hearing, where Smith cited a lawsuit filed against Missouri by the American Civil Liberties Union of Missouri (ACLU-MO) as the reason for the cut.


ACLU-MO filed the suit on behalf of the Missouri Association of School Librarians and the Missouri Library Association (MLA) in an effort to overturn a state law passed in 2022 that bans sexually explicit material from schools. Since it was first enacted in August, librarians and other educators have faced misdemeanor charges punishable by up to a year in jail or a $2,000 fine for giving students access to books the state has deemed sexually explicit. The Missouri law defined explicit sexual material as images “showing human masturbation, deviate sexual intercourse,” “sexual intercourse, direct physical stimulation of genitals, sadomasochistic abuse,” or showing human genitals. The lawsuit claims that school districts have been pulling books from their shelves.

“The house budget committee’s choice to retaliate against two private, volunteer-led organizations by punishing the patrons of Missouri’s public libraries is abhorrent,” Tom Bastian, deputy director for communications for ACLU-MO said in a statement to Motherboard.

Like in all ACLU cases, the organization is not charging the two Missouri library groups for services. Both library organizations are also run by volunteers – every state has an equivalent of these two organizations that serve public and school libraries. In other words, a politician either lied or didn’t have his facts straight, and now 160 library districts risk losing state aid in June.

“State Aid helps libraries provide relevant collections, literacy based programming, and technology resources to their communities,” Otter Bowman, president of the MLA told Motherboard in a statement. “Our rural libraries rely the most heavily on this funding to serve their communities, and they will be crippled by this drastic budget cut.”

This is just cruelty and retaliation, but that's who Republicans are. The purpose of government is to punish your political enemies for daring to oppose you at all. And the fact that if this becomes law and the state's public library budget is zeroed out meaning libraries in the reddest, rural counties in Missouri will close, well, that's the point.

Last Call For The Meltdown Of All Orange Meltdowns

The news breaking this evening.

Donald Trump has been indicted in Manhattan.

 

A Manhattan grand jury voted to indict Donald J. Trump on Thursday for his role in paying hush money to a porn star, according to five people with knowledge of the matter, a historic development that will shake up the 2024 presidential race and forever mark him as the nation’s first former president to face criminal charges.

In the coming days, prosecutors working for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, will likely ask Mr. Trump to surrender and to face arraignment. The specific charges will be announced when he is arraigned.

 

Rolling Stone confirming the indictment, under seal for now. 

 

A MANHATTAN GRAND jury has voted to indict Donald Trump on charges related to the former president’s hush-money payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels ahead of the 2016 election, Rolling Stone has confirmed. The New York Times was the first to report the news.

The historic indictment was highly anticipated, as details of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s probe into the former president became public in recent weeks.

Earlier this month, Bragg’s office gave Trump the option to testify before the grand jury, signaling an indictment was forthcoming. Trump declined the invitation. Fox News reported that Manhattan prosecutors had requested a meeting with law enforcement to discuss logistics surrounding the possible indictment, and Trump posted to Truth Social the following morning that he would be getting arrested in the coming days. It took a little longer than Trump anticipated, giving the former president time to bash Bragg and suggest violent action might be the only way to defend him against charges.

The grand jury’s vote is a gut-check for the American legal system, testing the bedrock principle that “no one is above the law.” It is also unprecedented. Trump is the first former president to face criminal prosecution in the history of the United States. (Though culpability was not in doubt, Richard Nixon was pardoned for his Watergate crimes before he could face the justice system.)

The indictment stems from a 2016 payment to Daniels, with whom Trump allegedly had an affair in 2006 and 2007. The pair had met at a celebrity golf tournament near Lake Tahoe during the height of Trump’s celebrity as the star of the reality show The Apprentice.

 

Let this be the first of many, and I'm never so glad to have been wrong in a very long time.

Obamacare In The ER Again

While we were all watching and waiting concerning Trump's indictment and Texas Federal Judge Matt Kacsmaryk ending the FDA approval of abortion medication, another Texas Federal Judge just shot Obamacare in the chest and left potentially tens of millions of Americans without preventative healthcare.

 

A federal judge in Texas said Thursday that some Affordable Care Act mandates cannot be enforced nationwide, including those that require insurers to cover a wide array of preventive care services at no cost to the patient, including some cancer, heart and STD screenings, and smoking cessation programs.

In the new ruling, US District Judge Reed O’Connor said the recommendations that have been issued by the US Preventive Services Task Force, which has been tasked with determining some of the preventive care treatments that Obamacare requires to be covered.

O’Connor’s ruling comes after the judge had already said that the Task Force’s recommendations violated the Constitution’s Appointments Clause. The judge also deemed unlawful the ACA requirement that insurers and employers offer plans that cover HIV-prevention measures such as PrEP for free.

Other preventive care mandates under the ACA remain in effect.

It is likely the case will be appealed, and the Justice Department has the option to ask that O’Connor’s ruling be put on pause while the appeal is litigated.

The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a CNN request for comment, nor did the US Department of Health and Human Services.

The decision, in a case brought by employers and individuals in Texas, represents the latest legal attack on the landmark 2010 health care law. It is unclear what immediate practical effect O’Connor’s new ruling will have for those with job-based and Affordable Care Act policies because insurance companies will likely continue no-cost coverage for the remainder of the contracts even though the Obamacare requirements in question have been blocked.

While the case does not pose the existential threat to the Affordable Care Act that previous legal challenges posed, legal experts say that O’Connor’s ruling nonetheless puts in jeopardy the access some Americans will have to a whole host of preventive treatments.

“We lose a huge chunk of preventive services because health plans can now impose costs,” said Andrew Twinamatsiko, associate director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown University. “People who are sensitive to cost will go without, mostly poor people and marginalized communities.”

 

So unless this gets resolved soon, next year your health care plan won't include preventative screenings, because health insurers won't pay for them anymore. It means screening for cancer, mammograms, pre-natal care, even checkups may become too expensive for millions of us.

 

This is a potential disaster. I'm hoping the Biden administration will move quickly to appeal, but the question of even basic health care is now as uncertain as it was 15 years ago, and it's twice as expensive now as it was then.

 

Republicans just love misery.

 

 

 

Trans Siberian Express, Con't

With the widely expected override of Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear's veto by Republicans in the General Assembly, Kentucky now has the most vile anti-trans laws on the books, and trans kids are going to get hurt or worse.

 

Hundreds of LGBTQ+ youths and their allies, young and old, protested as a last-ditch attempt at convincing Kentucky’s Republican-dominated legislature to let a veto of one of the nation's most extreme anti-trans bills stand.

Their efforts were to no avail.

Shortly after gaveling in Wednesday afternoon, the Kentucky Senate voted to override Gov. Andy Beshear's veto of Senate Bill 150. Around an hour later, the House also voted to override the veto - making SB 150 law.

Kentucky SB 150 is now expected to face legal challenges to block its implementation.

"To all the trans youth who may be affected by this legislation: we stand by you, and we will not stop fighting. You are cherished. You are loved. You belong," the ACLU of Kentucky said in a statement Wednesday afternoon. "To the commonwealth: we will see you in court."

The bill does the following:

• Bans all gender-affirming medical care for trans youths;
• Requires doctors to detransition minors in their care if they’re using any of the restricted treatment options;
• Prohibits conversations around sexual orientation or gender identity in school for students of all grades;
• Requires school districts to forbid trans students from using the bathroom tied to their gender identities;
• Allows teachers to refuse to use the pronouns a student identifies with.

Barring any court injunctions, the sections of the bill allowing teachers to misgender kids, restricting if and when students learn about topics around human sexuality and instituting bathroom bans will go into effect immediately.

Pieces of the bill dealing with gender-affirming medical treatments will go into effect in late June.

So, to the courts we go, where this battle was always going to be headed. I don't know how it will fare in Kentucky courts, but GOP AG Daniel Cameron will certainly make defending this garbage fire his campaign platform for Governor in Kentucky's primary in May, and should he win that, his platform heading into November. Former Trump UN Ambassador Kelly Craft, who is also running in the GOP primary, will be showcasing this mess too, as her running mate state Sen. Max Wise wrote this abomination.

 

Either way, Kentucky will have a clear choice in November.