The Road To Gilead Goes Through Ohio, Con't

Ohio Republicans are so terrified that voters will vote for a referendum to add an abortion rights amendment to the state constitution that they are going to change a century-old rule to keep the referendum from actually passing.

 

Proponents of abortion rights in Ohio have drawn up a proposed constitutional amendment patterned on the one approved in Michigan. They are in the process of gathering enough signatures to qualify the initiative for the November ballot. An Ohio bill banning abortions after six weeks has been blocked in the courts.

If they succeed, they will need the support of 50 percent of voters plus one to make it part of the state constitution. Ohio has recently moved toward the Republicans, but the majority of public opinion appears to favor abortion rights, as is the case nationwide. Still, it is doubtful the abortion ballot measure could achieve a three-fifths majority.

Shortly after last November, Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose and state Rep. Brian Stewart, both Republicans, called for raising the threshold for passage of proposed amendments to the constitution to 60 percent. LaRose did not talk about the issue during his reelection campaign. Nonetheless, he and other proponents recommended the state legislature move swiftly to enact the change during a lame-duck session.

LaRose said the proposal was designed “to help protect the Ohio Constitution from continued abuse by special interests and out-of-state activists.” Later, Stewart said explicitly in a letter to fellow Republicans in the state House that the reason for the new proposal was because the left was trying to do “an end run around us” to put abortion rights into the state constitution and to give “unelected liberals” and allies on the state Supreme Court power to draw legislative districts.

That lame-duck session effort failed. But it has come back during the current legislative session in an even more restrictive fashion. Not only would the measure raise the threshold for passage to a three-fifths majority, it also would put a much heavier burden on the process of gathering signatures to qualify citizen amendments for the ballot.

The current rule is to gather signatures from at least 5 percent of registered voters in 44 counties. The new measure would extend that to all 88 counties in Ohio and would eliminate the curing period, or the time given to correct for faulty signatures. LaRose opposed these signature-related changes, saying they could disadvantage “truly citizen groups” using largely volunteer labor and give an advantage to corporate or other special interests who could afford paid signature gatherers. (The signature gathering changes would not take effect until next year so would not apply to the proposed reproductive rights amendment.)

There is one other wrinkle in all this. Ohio recently did away with its August elections (except in a few cases) on the grounds that they were costly and generally resulted in low turnout. Having failed to enact the rules change measure in the lame-duck session late last year, the first opportunity to take this to the voters would be next November, in which case it would not apply to the reproductive rights amendment.

So now, proponents of raising the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments also want to authorize an August election. State Senate President Matt Huffman (R) said recently that spending $20 million on an August election is worth the money “if we save 30,000 lives as a result.” The Ohio Health Department reported that there were less than 21,820 abortions performed in the state in 2021.

 

So yes, Ohio Republicans will do anything to keep their corrupt supermajority in power so that they can pass any law they want to, and they will do whatever it takes to do it. I remind you that the most corrupt state GOP party in America continues to ignore all rulings from Ohio's state Supreme Court concerning the GOP's unconstitutional gerrymander, you know, the one currently giving them unchecked power in the state.

Ohio Republicans will continue to make new rules and move the goalposts until nobody can ever challenge their power again, and several other state GOP legislatures will follow suit. One-party rule across the country, localized theocratic white supremacist fascism, with tens of millions given little to no voice, recourse, and no rights.

They aren't going to stop until we stop them.

The Big Lie, Con't

Why yes, Republicans in Georgia tried to steal elections, not just the presidential contest but the Senate race in 2020 as well where Jon Ossoff beat David Perdue.

In mid-January 2021, two men hired by former President Donald Trump’s legal team discussed over text message what to do with data obtained from a breached voting machine in a rural county in Georgia, including whether to use it as part of an attempt to decertify the state’s pending Senate runoff results.

The texts, sent two weeks after operatives breached a voting machine in Coffee County, Georgia, reveal for the first time that Trump allies considered using voting data not only to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, but also in an effort to keep a Republican hold on the US Senate. 

“Here’s the plan. Let’s keep this close hold,” Jim Penrose, a former NSA official working with Trump lawyer Sidney Powell to access voting machines in Georgia, wrote in a January 19 text to Doug Logan, CEO of Cyber Ninjas, a firm that purports to run audits of voting systems.

In the text, which was obtained by CNN and has not been previously reported, Penrose references the upcoming certification of Democrat Jon Ossoff’s win over Republican David Perdue.

“We only have until Saturday to decide if we are going to use this report to try to decertify the Senate run-off election or if we hold it for a bigger moment,” Penrose wrote, referring to a potential lawsuit.

The plot to breach voting systems in Coffee County, coordinated by members of Trump’s legal team including Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, is part of a broader criminal investigation into 2020 election interference led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.

Willis’ office is weighing a potential racketeering case against multiple defendants and is actively deciding who to bring charges against, sources tell CNN. Willis has subpoenaed a number of individuals involved in the Coffee County breach, including the two men who carried it out who were in touch with Penrose and Logan.

Willis has also subpoenaed Giuliani and Powell as part of her probe. Giuliani has been told he’s a target in the Fulton County probe, CNN previously reported. The special grand jury convened for the case recommended issuing multiple indictments in its final report completed in February, according to the jury foreperson.    

A source familiar with Willis’ investigation tells CNN that Willis and her team have in their possession evidence that Trump allies planned to use the breached voting data from Georgia to try to decertify the state’s senate runoff election. Emails obtained by CNN show Penrose and Powell arranged upfront payment to a cyber forensics firm that sent a team to Coffee County on January 7, 2021.

The Coffee County breach is also under investigation by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.

 

Alvin Bragg's case in Manhattan is big, but the entire Georgia election racketeering conspiracy is enormous. I fully expect Willis to be removed from office by Georgia Republicans before she can indict them.

Watch.

Last Call For A Supreme Dodge

To my surprise, the Supreme Court ruled to block Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's ruling on mifepristone 7-2, meaning that millions of women will be allowed to continue using the drug.

For now, at least.

 

The Supreme Court on Friday allowed the most commonly used abortion pill in the U.S. to remain widely available.

The court blocked in full a decision by Texas U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk on April 7 that had invalidated the Food and Drug Administration’s longtime approval of mifepristone and handed a sweeping victory to abortion opponents.

Two of the nine justices — conservatives Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito — said they would have let part of Kacsmaryk's ruling take effect.

The Justice Department and Danco Laboratories, which makes the name brand version of mifepristone, Mifeprex, had asked the justices to step in after a federal appeals court kept in place a number of provisions in Kacsmaryk's order that would have imperiled widespread access to the drug, including restrictions on distributing the pill to patients by mail.

The court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, issued a temporary stay of Kacsmaryk's ruling April 14, which was extended for two days Wednesday while the justices considered what steps to take.

Alito said in a brief dissenting opinion Friday that a decision to suspend regulatory changes made since 2016 would not have prevented mifepristone from being available.

"At present, the applicants are not entitled to a stay because they have not shown that they are likely to suffer irreparable harm in the interim," Alito wrote.

"Contrary to the impression that may be held by many, that disposition would not express any view on the merits of the question whether the FDA acted lawfully in any of its actions regarding mifepristone," he added.

The court's decision means women can still obtain mifepristone by mail, take it at home and use it up to 10 weeks into a pregnancy, as litigation continues in the lower court. The generic version of the drug, made by GenBioPro, will also continue to be available.

The case will now go back to the 5th Circuit for oral arguments before a three-judge panel on May 17. Nothing will change mifepristone’s availability in the interim.

 

So the legal fight will continue in the months ahead. I was right about Alito siding with the 5th Circuit, but he only got Clarence Thomas to agree with him, and none of the other four conservatives.

 

That's a good sign for now, but the road is going to be long on this one.

Give Me That Old Time Religion (Whether You Want It Or Not)

You can draw a straight line from the ridiculous Hobby Lobby decision by the Roberts Court seven years ago to this idiocy today in Texas.

 

Public schools in Texas would have to prominently display the Ten Commandments in every classroom starting next school year under a bill the Texas Senate approved Thursday.

Senate Bill 1515 by Sen. Phil King, R-Weatherford, now heads to the House for consideration.

This is the latest attempt from Texas Republicans to inject religion into public schools. In 2021, state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Mineola Republican, authored a bill that became law requiring schools to display donated “In God We Trust” signs.

King said during a committee hearing earlier this month that the Ten Commandments are part of American heritage and it’s time to bring them back into the classroom. He said the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for his bill after it sided with Joe Kennedy, a high school football coach in Washington state who was fired for praying at football games. The court ruled that was praying as a private citizen, not as an employee of the district.

“[The bill] will remind students all across Texas of the importance of the fundamental foundation of America,” King said during that hearing.

The Senate also gave final passage to Senate Bill 1396, authored by Sen. Mayes Middleton, R-Galveston, which would allow public and charter schools to adopt a policy requiring every campus to set aside a time for students and employees to read the Bible or other religious texts and to pray.

Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a statement that both bills are wins for religious freedom in Texas.

“I believe that you cannot change the culture of the country until you change the culture of mankind,” he said. “Bringing the Ten Commandments and prayer back to our public schools will enable our students to become better Texans.”

Matt Krause, a former Texas state representative and attorney with the First Liberty Institute, the organization that represented the Washington coach, said the Kennedy case was a victory in religious freedom and this bill would be protected.

“The Kennedy case for religious liberty was much like the Dobbs case was for the pro-life movement,” he said. “It was a fundamental shift.”

 

As I said years ago, "You people having rights at all is violating my closely held beliefs as a Christian" will be used to roll America back decades and to eliminate the civil rights era entirely. We're going to see a lot more of this in the years ahead, theocratic tyranny used to preserve white supremacy forever.

And yeah, we're locking in a two-tiered America where you may have rights in one state, and absolutely not in another, depending on your sex, religion, who you love, the color of your skin, etc.

It was unsaid before, now it's open oppression, and it's not going to be sustainable. Sadly, with the same states taking rights away also being the states with open carry firearms and little to no restrictions on who can buy them, the odds of mass violence (even more than the mass shootings we already have) are high, only this time when these states lean in on violence, thousands are going to die.

Another #MeToo Moment For The GOP

Turns out the Vice Chair of the Tennessee House Caucus was trying to expel Democrats to cover up his own sexual harassment of interns.

 

A member of GOP leadership in the Tennessee House of Representatives was recently found guilty of sexually harassing at least one legislative intern, likely two, by an ethics subcommittee acting in secret, NewsChannel 5 Investigates has learned.

About six hours after being confronted by NewsChannel 5 Investigates, Rep. Scotty Campbell gave up his seat in the Tennessee General Assembly.

Until now, Campbell, who served as vice chair of the House Republican Caucus and who recently voted to expel three Democrats who engaged in a gun violence protest on the House floor, had suffered no previous consequences as a result of his actions.

Watch full story on NewsChannel 5 at 6

Despite accusations of sometimes extremely vulgar comments and other inappropriate advances, Republicans did not remove the 39-year-old East Tennessee lawmaker from his leadership position nor from his committee assignments.

But taxpayers are paying for his actions.

NewsChannel 5 has learned that potentially thousands of dollars have been spent to protect one victim, relocating her from the downtown apartment building where she and Campbell both had apartments, shipping her furniture back home in another part of the state and placing her in a downtown hotel for the remainder of her internship.

Legislative officials refused to say how much they've paid out, saying that information is confidential.

Confronted with the allegations Thursday as he headed to Capitol Hill, Campbell referenced a second intern who was also involved in the investigation. NewsChannel 5 was previously unaware of that individual's complaint.

"I had consensual, adult conversations with two adults off property," he insisted.

"I think conversations are consensual once that is verbally agreed to. If I choose to talk to any intern in the future, it will be recorded."

But a four-member ethics subcommittee, composed of two Republicans and two Democrats, came to a different conclusion, according to a memorandum dated March 29 that was sent to House Speaker Cameron Sexton.

"Based on the completed staff investigation, the Ethics Subcommittee finds that Representative Campbell violated the Policy" against workplace discrimination and harassment, the memo says.

 

"Can't be expelled on ethics charges if you quit! Later, losers!"

 

Seriously though, nobody should be surprised at this. When you have one-party rule like this for decades, you become corrupt every time.

 

 

Vote Like Your Country Depends On It, Con't

Republicans are well aware that if they limit voting eligibility only to older, white people who can afford to take time off on a Tuesday in November and make it impossible for other people to do so, they'll win every time.

 

A top Republican legal strategist told a roomful of GOP donors over the weekend that conservatives must band together to limit voting on college campuses, same-day voter registration and automatic mailing of ballots to registered voters, according to a copy of her presentation reviewed by The Washington Post.

Cleta Mitchell, a longtime GOP lawyer and fundraiser who worked closely with former president Donald Trump to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, gave the presentation at a Republican National Committee donor retreat in Nashville on Saturday.

The presentation — which had more than 50 slides and was labeled “A Level Playing Field for 2024” — offered a window into a strategy that seems designed to reduce voter access and turnout among certain groups, including students and those who vote by mail, both of which tend to skew Democratic.

Mitchell did not respond to a request for comment, and it is unclear whether she delivered the presentation exactly as it was prepared on her PowerPoint slides. But in addition to the presentation, The Post listened to audio of portions of the presentation obtained by liberal journalist Lauren Windsor in which Mitchell discussed limiting campus and early voting.

“What are these college campus locations?” she asked, according to the audio. “What is this young people effort that they do? They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed.”

The GOP has not formally endorsed Mitchell’s plan but has worked closely with her since Trump left office. The presentation made clear that at least some key figures within the party remain intent on tightening rules for voting and elections. The persistence of the message as the 2024 vote approaches comes despite the fact that candidates who emphasized Trump’s stolen election narrative were repudiated in many key statewide races in the 2022 midterms.

After the presentation, Mitchell was seen at the Four Seasons hotel bar, meeting with donors and Republican strategists.

“As the RNC continues to strengthen our Election Integrity program, we are thankful for leaders like Cleta Mitchell who do important work for the Republican ecosystem. Our guests in Nashville were grateful for her to travel to the event and share her efforts,” said Keith Schipper, an RNC spokesman.

Mitchell told her RNC audience that her organization, the Election Integrity Network, “is NOT about winning campaigns,” according to the text of the presentation. But the slides gave little other rationale for why campus or mail voting should be curtailed. At another point in the presentation, she said the nation’s electoral systems must be saved “for any candidate other than a leftist to have a chance to WIN in 2024.”

 

They don't want you to vote.

 

That's the whole story.

 

Vote.

Here Comes The Judge, Con't

It looks like Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is going to have to face Jim Jordan's circus proceedings whether he wants to or not, because the federal judge in today's hearing made it very clear the House GOP has the right to interfere in his case against Donald Trump.

 

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s legal team lost their bid to block the deposition of his former deputy on Wednesday, as a federal judge appointed by former President Trump quickly rejected the prosecutor’s request for a restraining order after a fiery hearing.

In a 25-page opinion and order issued within two hours of the hearing, U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil deployed a phrase often used against Trump and repackaged it for Bragg’s ex-deputy Mark Pomerantz.

“The subpoena was issued with a ‘valid legislative purpose’ in connection with the
‘broad’ and ‘indispensable’ congressional power to ‘conduct investigations,'” she wrote. “It is not the role of the federal judiciary to dictate what legislation Congress may consider or how it should conduct its deliberations in that connection. Mr. Pomerantz must appear for the congressional deposition. No one is above the law.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Judge Vyskocil interrupted Bragg’s attorney Theodore Boutrous repeatedly throughout the hourlong hearing, accusing him of playing politics.

“There’s politics going on here on both sides here,” Vyskocil said. “Let’s be honest about that.”

When reports emerged that a grand jury was gearing up to indict Trump, House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan started scrutinizing Bragg in a series of letters that capped off in a letter to his former deputy Mark Pomerantz. Bragg accused Jordan of an unprecedented campaign of interference into a local prosecutor’s investigation. The DA eventually sued Jordan and his committee in federal court.

Vyskocil rattled off at length about her view of the political backdrop of the spat toward the end of the opinion, which includes 17 footnotes.

“In our federalist system, elected state and federal actors sometimes engage in political dogfights,” she wrote in her conclusion. “Bragg complains of political interference in the local DANY case, but Bragg does not operate outside of the political arena. Bragg is presumptively acting in good faith. That said, he is an elected prosecutor in New York County with constituents, some of whom wish to see Bragg wield the force of law against the former President and a current candidate for the Republican presidential nomination. Jordan, in turn, has initiated a political response to what he and some of his constituents view as a manifest abuse of power and nakedly political prosecution, funded (in part) with federal money, that has the potential to interfere with the exercise of presidential duties and with an upcoming federal election. The Court does not endorse either side’s agenda. The sole question before the Court at this time is whether Bragg has a legal basis to quash a congressional subpoena that was issued with a valid legislative purpose. He does not.”

 

So, no, Bragg is going to have to answer Jordan's raft of subpoenas, and this judge is going to make sure that Bragg gets investigated, intimidated, delayed, stopped, sabotaged, frustrated and delayed at every single turn.

Jordan and the House GOP couldn't have asked for a better judge if it was Trump himself presiding over the hearings, because "There’s politics going on here on both sides here, Let’s be honest about that.”

So, both sides, yay.

Bragg is quite possibly screwed at this point, and we may not see this case for years, if at all, because this Judge thinks House GOP is operating in good faith, Jesus.

Last Call For Border Line Insanity, Con't

This is, potentially, a real, actual Biden administration scandal involving the Mexico border as DHS has searched the office of the agency's top border intelligence official and carted them off for questioning.

 

THE DEPARTMENT OF Homeland Security intelligence official in charge of tracking cross-border threats was escorted from his office on Monday by federal police and security after an afternoon search that left his office sealed with crime tape, according to four sources with direct knowledge of the events.

The official in question is Brian Sulc, executive director of the Transnational Organized Crime Mission Center at DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis in Washington. Sulc has been placed on administrative leave. He is under investigation for an alleged security violation, bringing a personal electronic device inside the secure office, where phones and electronic devices are prohibited. He has not been arrested nor charged with a crime.

At about 4:15 p.m. on Monday, three squad cars from the Federal Protective Service — a DHS law-enforcement body tasked with protecting the department and federal buildings — drove into DHS’s northwest Washington complex with flashing lights. The FPS officers joined security on the third floor of the secure building to search Sulc’s office. While they were doing the search, Sulc was escorted out of the building flanked by security and FPS and taken to a different location on the DHS campus for questioning, two sources said.

The office has been sealed shut with crime tape, and evidence seals were placed around the door and across the keyhole so no one can enter.

Sulc is in charge of the office that produces intelligence assessments on border security, the opioid epidemic, and other high-stakes policy issues. Those assessments include intelligence on how fentanyl is crossing into the United States, as well as attempts to identify cartel members and human-trafficking operatives on both sides of the border. They’re used to inform policy decisions at the highest levels of DHS and elsewhere in the Biden administration.

“He is a big deal,” one source with direct knowledge of the search of Sulc’s office. “He does the border, all the big issues and crises. This is why this is all so shocking.”

Sulc is a career official who has held the post since March 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile. He has worked for DHS since September 2008.

Sulc did not respond to emails, calls, texts, or voice messages left on his home and cellphone numbers. His work-cellphone voice mailbox was full, and he did not respond to a LinkedIn message.

Asked about Sulc, a DHS official tells Rolling Stone: “DHS is committed to ensuring all operational security protocols are followed and is conducting an inquiry into a reported security incident. DHS will not comment on ongoing internal investigations. DHS conducts its national security mission with adherence to the highest standards.”

 

This of course coming on the heels of San Jose's police union head being arrested on charges of trafficking fentanyl from Mexico's cartels last month.

 

The executive director for a Northern California police union who was charged with attempting to illegally import synthetic opioids from India and other countries has been fired from her job, officials said Friday.

Joanne Marian Segovia, who was the executive director of the San Jose Police Officers’ Association, was arrested last week on charges she attempted to unlawfully import valeryl fentanyl, a synthetic opioid. If convicted, she faces up to 20 years in prison.

Starting in 2015, Segovia had dozens of drug shipments mailed to her San Jose home from India, Hong Kong, Hungary and Singapore with manifests listing their contents as “wedding party favors,” “gift makeup,” “chocolate and sweets” and “food supplement,” according to a federal criminal complaint.

Segovia, 64, at times used her work computer to make the orders and at least once used the union’s UPS account to ship the drugs within the country, federal prosecutors said.

Her attorney, Will Edelman, did not immediately respond Friday to a voicemail seeking comment.

The police association fired her after completing an initial internal investigation, union officials said in a statement.

An outside investigator will be hired to conduct a comprehensive “no-holds-barred” probe of Segovia’s alleged crimes, determine to what extent she utilized union resources and whether that could have been prevented, they said.

“The abhorrent criminal conduct alleged against Ms. Segovia must be the impetus to ensuring our internal controls at the POA are strong and that we enact any changes that could have identified the alleged conduct sooner,” said Sean Pritchard, president of the union.

Federal officials began investigating Segovia last year after finding her name and home address on the cellphone of a suspected drug dealer who is part of a network that ships controlled substances made in India to the San Francisco Bay Area, according to the complaint. That drug trafficking network has distributed hundreds of thousands of pills in 48 states, federal prosecutors said. 

 

We're going to find that these two stories are almost certainly related, and not in a good way.

 

House Republicans could have a real field day with this if they weren't so completely incompetent themselves.

We'll see how big this gets, but the connecting factor here is the Mexican border and drug cartels, and this could be massive.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

The McCurtain County, Oklahoma officials caught on tape talking about hiring a hitman to take out two local reporters and lamenting not being able to lynch Black residents are now openly threatening to throw the reporters in state prison under felony wiretapping charges.

An Oklahoma sheriff’s office says a newspaper’s audio recording in which the sheriff and others are reportedly heard discussing killing two journalists and hanging Black people was illegal and predicted felony charges will be filed.

A post on the sheriff’s office Facebook page — the agency’s first public comment since the comments by Sheriff Kevin Clardy and others were reported by the McCurtain Gazette-News — does not address the recorded discussion, but calls the situation “complex” and one “we regret having to address.”

The threatening comments by the officials that were recorded have sparked outrage and protests. Oklahoma’s GOP Gov. Kevin Stitt and state Rep. Eddy Dempsey, a Republican who represents the area, have called for Clardy and others to resign. NAACP leaders in Oklahoma also called for the FBI and the Department of Justice to investigate.

The sheriff’s statement calls the past 72 hours “amongst the most difficult and disruptive in recent memory” and says the recording was altered and involves many victims.

“There is and has been an ongoing investigation into multiple, significant violation(s) of the Oklahoma Security of Communications Act ... which states that it is illegal to secretly record a conversation in which you are not involved and do not have the consent of at least one of the involved parties,” according to the statement.

Joey Senat, a journalism professor at Oklahoma State University, said under Oklahoma law, the recording would be legal if it were obtained in a place where the officials being recorded did not have a reasonable expectation of privacy.

Bruce Willingham, the longtime publisher of the McCurtain Gazette-News, said the recording was made March 6 when he left a voice-activated recorder inside the room after a county commissioner’s meeting because he suspected the group was continuing to conduct county business after the meeting had ended in violation of the state’s Open Meeting Act.

Willingham said he twice spoke with his attorneys to be sure he was doing nothing illegal.

The newspaper released portions of the recording in which Clardy, sheriff’s Capt. Alicia Manning and District 2 County Commissioner Mark Jennings appear to discuss Bruce and Chris Willingham, a reporter for the newspaper who is Bruce Willingham’s son. Jennings tells Clardy and Manning “I know where two deep holes are dug if you ever need them,” and the sheriff responded, “I’ve got an excavator.”

Jennings also reportedly says he’s known “two or three hit men” in Louisiana, adding “they’re very quiet guys.”

In the recording, Jennings also appears to complain about not being able to hang Black people, saying: “They got more rights than we got.”

Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix was also present during the conversation.

The Associated Press could not immediately verify the authenticity of the recording. None of the four have returned telephone calls or emails from The Associated Press.

A spokesperson for the FBI’s office in Oklahoma City declined to comment on the case. Phil Bacharach, a spokesperson for Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, said the agency had received an audio recording and is investigating the incident, but declined to comment further.

 

I don't think the sheriff has a snowball's chance in hell on this in a fair trial, but this won't be a fair trial, will it?  The sheriff and his county commissioner buddies were openly talking about having these reporters killed, so who knows what's going to happen. How hard is it going to be to find 12 people in a county like this who want to see the local muckrackers thrown in a box should this go to trial? 

It's not an idle threat, I think.

The larger issue is what the FBI's going to do. We'll see what the Justice Department has to say about any civil rights investigations.

Black Lives Still Matter.

Ron's Gone Wrong, Con't

Florida GOP Sen. Ron DeSantis is continuing his war to destroy Disney, making public threats of retaliatory, punitive state action against the entertainment company for the crime of acknowledging LGBTQ+ people exist and are Disney customers.

 

Gov. Ron DeSantis vowed Monday that the Florida Legislature will soon reassert control over Disney World’s Reedy Creek Improvement District, promising to void development agreements and even floating the idea of building a state prison near the world-famous attraction.

Legislation also will be filed to take away Disney’s self-inspection of rides and monorails and allow the state to examine a ride if someone is seriously injured on it, DeSantis said at a news conference at Reedy Creek’s administrative building.

He then mused about potentially selling off the district’s utilities and developing district land that Disney doesn’t own.

“People are like, ‘Well, ... what should we do with this land?” said a smiling DeSantis. “... Maybe create a state park, maybe try to do more amusement parks? Someone even said, ‘Maybe you need another state prison?’ Who knows? I just think that the possibilities are endless.”

DeSantis’ hand-picked oversight board, which will meet on Wednesday, will also consider revoking the development agreement and other measures, he said, citing what he called a “plethora of legal infirmities.”

The governor said lawmakers could move on the bills as soon as next week.

Asked whether the state would take away the ride inspection exemption granted to all major theme parks in the state, including Universal Orlando, SeaWorld, Busch Gardens and Legoland, DeSantis suggested only Disney would be affected

“I think it’s going to be this legislative question,” DeSantis said. “But I think what the Legislature is going to do is apply that to special districts.”

 

And again, don't get me wrong here. Disney is a massive conglomerate worth $180 billion or so, and that's after it has lost half of its stock value in the last two years because of its greed, with the mighty Marvel Studios, Lucasfilms and 20th Century Fox empires being bled dry, Disney Plus losing billions in the streaming wars, and the company bowing to Chinese censorship. I actually do want to see the company suffer.

But I want to see Ron DeSantis lose badly too. And you know what? The more they fight, the more they both cause harm to each other? I'm okay with that. What I'm not okay with are Disney employees and Florida residents paying the price for this war of attrition, and that's where we're headed.

 

Keep that in mind.

Last Call For Dominion Takes The Win-ion

Dominion Voting Services has settled its defamation suit against Fox News for just short of half what the company was asking for, minutes before the trial was scheduled to begin today.

 

Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems reached a $787.5 million settlement agreement Tuesday afternoon, the parties announced, narrowly heading off a trial shortly after the jury was sworn in.

“Fox has admitted to telling lies,” John Poulos, Dominion CEO, said at a news conference after the trial ended.


"Money is accountability," said Stephen Shackelford Jr., the attorney scheduled to give opening statements for Dominion on Tuesday.

Fox News, in a statement, said it acknowledged "the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false."

"This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards,” the network said. “We are hopeful that our decision to resolve this dispute with Dominion amicably, instead of the acrimony of a divisive trial, allows the country to move forward from these issues.”

 

Some observations:

 

One, it's not over yet.  Fox News still faces a similar defamation case from voting machine manufacturer Smartmatic over the same Big Lie claims for an even larger sum, $2.7 billion.

Two, we don't know the full terms of the settlement. It's entirely possible that Fox News personalities may have to say, publicly apologize. We'll see about that. You can bet Fox will drag their feet on that as long as they can and issue an apology at 4:30 AM on a Sunday.

Three, you can bet Fox will quietly raise cable TV fees on providers as it remains the second-most watched cable network behind only ESPN. Your cable bill is going to go up even if you never watch the network. Financially, this isn't going to hurt Rupert Murdoch one bit. Fox News is still a $16 billion company, and it'll make the settlement and more back off of American cable customers in the years ahead.

Four, Fox News will continue to lie about, gaslight and attack Democrats, liberals, Black, Latino and Asian folk, LGBTQ+ folk, Muslims, Jews, and pretty much everything else in the future. That won't change one bit.

So, we'll how how this shakes out, but yeah, both sides are going to claim victory here, and both sides are correct to do so.

Shutdown Countdown, Armageddon Edition, Con't

Ringmaster Kevin McCarthy and the Shutdown Clowns are once again announcing their plans to cut trillions in social spending and crash the economy with the debt ceiling, not caring that the demand is supposed to be "or" not "and".

In his speech Monday, McCarthy sought to lay the blame for any potential market fears of a default at Biden’s feet.

“The longer President Biden waits to be sensible to find an agreement, the more likely it becomes that this administration will bumble into the first default in our nation’s history,” he said.

Biden, meanwhile, has demanded that House Republicans produce their own budget as a starting point to negotiations. But getting his entire caucus — whose members disagree on what to cut and by how much — to sign on to one budget blueprint would be a herculean task for the Republican speaker.

“Let me be clear, defaulting on our debt is not an option. But neither is a future of higher taxes, higher interest rates, more dependency on China and an economy that doesn’t work for working Americans,” said McCarthy. “Addressing the debt requires us to come together, find common ground and reduce spending.”

The fact that McCarthy was roping two unrelated legislative tasks – passing a debt ceiling hike and approving a federal budget – together as one deal remained a nonstarter for the White House.

In statement Monday morning, White House spokesman Andrew Bates accused the California Republican of “holding the full faith and credit of the United States hostage, threatening our economy and hardworking Americans’ retirement.”

Despite McCarthy’s attempt to portray the White House as lagging behind or late to the table, the current state of affairs lines up with what a White House official told CNBC earlier this spring.

The Biden administration planned to pursue negotiations in earnest with Congress only after Tuesday’s tax deadline.

At that point, the official said, the federal government would have a better idea of how much revenue was coming in from taxes, and how far it would go toward paying the country’s bills. This would influence how urgently the White House would need to reach a deal with congressional Republicans.

 

Biden has a budget proposal and a debt ceiling proposal, McCarthy doesn't have the votes for either. That's the difference...and oh yes, the spending cuts the House GOP want would smash a hole in the economy, and the House also wants the ability to take the economy hostage again a year from now so they can do even more damage and blame Biden for it.

It's a pretty horrific situation, but the worst part is, again, McCarthy doesn't have the votes to pass anything without Democratic help. Maybe that forces him to the table, but maybe that leads to default and economic depression.

We'll see. The clock is running out and all sides know it.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black lives still matter, even in small town Oklahoma.

 

GOP officials from McCurtain County, Okla. are being investigated by the FBI after they were caught on tape expressing their frustration about it not being socially acceptable beat up and hang Black people, as well as their desires to hire hitmen to kill newspaper reporters.

The audio was published by print-only newspaper McCurtain Gazette-News, and it released transcript of a recording from a county commissioners meeting last month to the public that allegedly incriminates several public officials after disturbing comments were made. The full audio recording from Gazette-News reporter Bruce Willingham will be released by the newspaper at a later date.

After hundreds came out in protest, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) has called for the resignation of McCurtain County Sheriff Kevin Clardy (R), District 2 Commissioner Mark Jennings (R), Investigator Alicia Manning and Jail Administrator Larry Hendrix for their comments in the meeting. District 3 Commissioner Robert Beck (R) is also cited in the audio.

The transcript suggests that the group first started discussing a recent fire which killed a woman and her two dogs. The group joked about the woman’s body parts falling off her body, and that it is similar to eating barbecue.

“So we get her in the body bag and Kyler goes, ‘You do know what we gotta do right?’ Faith goes, ‘No, what?’ He goes, ‘You gotta pre-heat the oven 350 degrees, leave her in there for 15 minutes,’” said Clardy.

Later in the transcript, Jennings and Clardy had a racist exchange and went back and forth about society making it unacceptable to lynch Black people.

“I’m gonna tell you something. If it was back in the day, when that when Alan Marshton would take a damn Black guy and whoop their ass and throw him in the cell? I’d run for f—ing sheriff,” Jennings said.

After Clardy said things aren’t like that anymore, Jennings continued.

“I know. Take them down to Mud Creek and hang them up with a damn rope. But you can’t do that anymore. They got more rights than we got.”

Jennings supposedly went on to say that he knows of two large pre-dug holes “if you ever need them,” referring to disposing the remains of Bruce Willingham and his son, Chris, also a Gazette-News reporter. Jennings also said that he knows of “two or three hit men, they’re very quiet guys.”

Manning chimed in and claimed nobody would care if two of the Gazette-News’ reporters were harmed. “Yeah, but here’s the reality,” Manning allegedly said. “If a hair on his wife’s head, Chris Willingham’s head, or any of those people that really were behind that, if any hair on their head got touched by anybody, who would be the bad guy?”

 

Gov. Stitt has to at least pretend he wants them gone, but let's face it: It's 2023, and what white supremacist Republicans really want is an America where you can go around and shoot, kill, and/or lynch Black folk just like granpappy used to do back in the Good Ol' Days, cause even if you were an Okie from Muskogee shit-kicker dirt poor asshole, at least you could still take a pipe wrench to one of them ni-CLANGs like God intended and then put a couple of them civil rights reporters in the goddamn ground

The problem isn't what these dirtbags said on tape, it's what millions of white folk say when there's nobody around to record it.

And you know what?  The casual way these assholes talked about lynching and putting reporters in the ground, with total indifference to human life?

That sounds like a confession to me.  It sounds like something they've seen or done before, and more than once. I'm glad the feds are involved, because it sounds like there have been decades of "bad guys" over the years here and no effort to investigate the victims.

But the worst part is that we should realize that in 2023, even discussing this case in a school or college classroom would be illegal in several states, because it would be banned under anti "Critical Race Theory" laws. This is exactly the subject my high school in NC discussed more than 30 years ago during the reaction in LA to the Rodney King verdict, and talking about this story would be illegal in a NC classroom or public university course if NC Republicans have their way.

Black Lives Matter.

 

Do better.

Last Call For Chinese Firing Drill, Con't

As tensions between China and the US continue to worsen, Attorney General Merrick Garland announced today two Chinese nationals operating out of a Chinese police outpost in Chinatown, NYC were arrested for conducting foreign police operations on US soil.

 

Two men were arrested early Monday on federal charges accusing them of conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China in connection with a police outpost operated in Manhattan’s Chinatown, officials announced in a news conference.

The outpost, which court papers say was operated by Chinese security officials, is one of more than 100 Chinese police operations around the world that have unnerved diplomats and intelligence officials. The case represents the first time criminal charges have been brought in connection with such a police outpost, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.

The charges against the men, Lu Jianwang, 61, and Chen Jinping, 59, grew out of an investigation by the F.B.I. and the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn into the Chinatown outpost, which conducted police operations without jurisdiction or diplomatic approval.

“Today’s charges are a crystal clear response to the P.R.C. that we are on to you, we know what you’re doing and we will stop it from happening in the United States of America,” Breon S. Peace, the U.S. attorney in Brooklyn, said in announcing the charges with other officials. “We don’t need or want a secret police station in our great city,” he added.

Last fall, F.B.I. counterintelligence agents searched the outpost’s offices, located on the third floor of a nondescript building at 107 East Broadway, indicating an escalation in the global dispute over China’s efforts to police its diaspora far beyond its borders.

Officials in Ireland, Canada and the Netherlands have called on China to shut down similar operations in their countries. The F.B.I. raid in New York was the first known example of authorities seizing materials from one of the outposts.

It could not be immediately determined whether the men had lawyers. Mr. Lu, who is also known as Harry Lu, lives in the Bronx and maintains a residence in China. Mr. Chen lives in Manhattan. Both men are U.S. citizens.

In 2018 IRS filings, Mr. Lu was listed as the president of a nonprofit organization called the America Changle Association NY, whose offices housed the police outpost. A criminal complaint unsealed Monday said the group was formed in 2013 and lists its charitable mission as a “social gathering place” for people from the Chinese city of Fuzhou. The complaint says Mr. Lu serves as the association’s general adviser and Mr. Chen as its secretary general.

The two men were charged with obstruction of justice and accused of destroying text messages between themselves and their handler at China’s Ministry of Public Security in October 2022, around the time of the F.B.I. search, as well as conspiring to act as agents of the People’s Republic of China without registering with the Justice Department, as the law requires.

The charges were announced later Monday at a news conference in Brooklyn by Mr. Peace; the F.B.I. assistant director who leads the New York office, Michael Driscoll; and the Justice Department’s top national security official in Washington, David Newman.

The complaint accuses the men of assisting the Chinese government. Since 2015, according to the charges, Mr. Lu participated in counter-protests in Washington, D.C., against members of the Falun Gong, a religion prohibited under Chinese law.

More recently, the complaint says, they have helped operate the police outpost for the Fuzhou Municipal Security Bureau, a branch of the nation’s Ministry of Public Security, the nation’s intelligence, security and secret police.

When news of the search in Lower Manhattan was first reported in January, the Chinese Embassy in Washington downplayed the role of the outposts, saying they were staffed by volunteers who helped Chinese nationals perform routine tasks like renewing their driver’s licenses back home.

But The New York Times reviewed Chinese state news media reports in which the police and local Chinese officials described the operations very differently.

The officials, cited by name, trumpeted the effectiveness of the offices, frequently referred to as overseas police service centers. In some of the reports, the outposts were described as “collecting intelligence” and solving crimes abroad without the involvement of local officials.

Those public statements left it murky who exactly was running the offices. In some instances, they were described as being led by volunteers; in others, by staff members.

 

Yeah, these "Help Centers" are straight up Chinese police outposts used to keep tabs on Chinese dissidents living abroad.  The fact that these centers are operating out in the open and conducting intelligence operations in broad daylight might be something of an issue, and it's not just here in the US that these outposts exist, either.

I'm glad that the DoJ is moving to interfere with these outfits. NYC can't be the only one in the US, either.

It's time to shut them all down, frankly.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Black lives, Black History, Black experiences still matter, even when white Republicans try to erase us.

 

Louisiana Republican Party officials want state lawmakers to forbid the study of racism at colleges and universities, arguing in a resolution approved Saturday that classes examining "inglorious aspects" of United States history are too divisive.

The resolution, passed by voice vote with no discernible dissent at the state party's quarterly meeting in Baton Rouge, asks the Legislature to pass laws removing diversity, equity and inclusion departments and agencies "within any institution of higher learning within the state." Without citing evidence, the resolution asserts that these programs have bloated budgets and inflamed political tensions on campuses.

The move comes amid efforts by Republican lawmakers nationwide to exert more control over educational materials and curricula, including books containing LGBTQ+ themes and classes about racism. They hope the effort will endear them to the GOP’s grassroots base as the party recovers from its 2022 midterm losses and prepares for the 2024 presidential election.

The Louisiana GOP chapter has remained mostly aligned with the national party's far-right factions, rallying in support of former President Donald Trump ahead of his arrest this month and endorsing Trump acolyte Jeff Landry, the state attorney general, for governor. That stance has repeatedly stirred controversy for local party leaders.

In approving Saturday's resolution, state party officials urged the Legislature to take steps similar to those of other conservative states that have considered curtailing programs deemed to increase tribalism and hostility on campuses.

The resolution targets both classroom content promulgating critical race theory and efforts to improve diversity in higher education staffing and campus programming. It criticizes LSU and University of Louisiana System programs run by Claire Norris, a UL system administrator, for dedicating money and staff to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, offices.

The measure argues that "DEI bureaucracies" act as "divisive ideological commissariats" and that critical race theory makes students feel less rather than more welcome.

The resolution drew a rebuke from University of Louisiana System President Jim Henderson, who in a written statement called the depiction of life on campuses "so foreign to the reality at our institutions it defies comment."

"We make no statement on the inner workings and platform development of political parties. That is their business," Henderson said. "That said, the naming of an invaluable member of my staff is unnecessary and inappropriate. She is an exemplary professional and an asset to Louisiana and higher education."

Louisiana Commissioner of Higher Education Kim Hunter Reed said in a statement that the Board of Regents stands by its programming.

"Programs that support student success and strengthen a sense of belonging on campus and in the wider community are important and impactful, yielding positive results in student completion," Reed said.

 

As I've said before when you outlaw a culture's history, when you outlaw learning about the dark aspects of that history, when you make teaching about that history illegal, you erase that culture, and you erase that people.

And then the injustices that happened then, happen again.

Black Lives Still Matter.

 

The Long (COVID) War, Con't

Colorado's health department has released devastating estimates of the occurrence of long COVID in the state, and it's affecting as much as 10-11% of the population.

 

State officials have released their first estimate of how many people in Colorado have been hit by long COVID-19. The figure is staggering: Data suggest that between 230,000 and 650,000 Coloradans may have been affected.

With a state population of nearly 6 million, the data suggest as many as one in 10 Coloradans have experienced long COVID, according to the report from The Office of Saving People Money on Healthcare in the Lt. Governor's Office. And many of them have struggled to find treatments and answers about what can be a life-altering illness.

People with post-COVID conditions can have a wide range of symptoms, including fatigue, brain fog and headaches, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Those may be prolonged, lasting weeks, months, or even years after infection.

Some patients described their challenges in a January segment on CPR’s Colorado Matters.

“I think that's what's so unclear about long COVID and potentially concerning about those numbers is that we certainly know some people recover,” but most haven’t, said Dr. Sarah Jolley, a researcher with CU Anshutz. Jolley is also the medical director of the UCHealth Post-COVID Clinic, one site of a national study looking at recovery after COVID.

Jolley said only 30 to 40 percent of long COVID patients have returned to their individual health baseline so far, based on what she’s observed and seen in research.

“There are a number of folks where symptoms persist much longer and so it's hard to estimate what proportion of that 600,000 will have longer-term symptoms versus shorter-term long COVID symptoms,” she said. “I would say the minority of individuals that we've seen have had complete recovery.”

The implications of that are enormous, Jolley said, both in terms of so-called long-haulers’ quality of life as well as Colorado’s workforce, education, health care and other systems.

Jolley said the best protection and prevention against long COVID is getting fully vaccinated, including the latest booster. “We know that vaccination lessens the risk of long COVID, lessens the severity of initial disease,” she said, noting the lagging number of people getting the omicron booster in Colorado. Currently, only about a quarter of eligible people in the state have received the omicron booster, according to the state’s vaccine dashboard, far below the uptake for the initial series of vaccines.

 

When the best case scenario is "two percent of the population is suffering from debilitating, long-term physical and mental symptoms preventing them from being able to function" then again, we're nowhere near ready to deal with the implications. We're talking millions, maybe tens of millions of Americans disabled by COVID in the months and years ahead.

 

We're not going to have the resources to deal with that, let alone the second and third-order effects on the economy, society, and health systems.  

This is going to be the public health challenge of our generation and we've barely even started to acknowledge it.

Last Call For Welcome To Gunmerica, Con't

Another pair of mass shootings over the weekend in Gunmerica, one of them in Louisville, still reeling from another mass shooting earlier last week.

 

At least two people were killed in a shooting at a park in Louisville, Kentucky, over the weekend, less than a week after a mass shooting at a bank in the city left five people dead.

Two people died and four others were injured after shots were fired into a crowd at Chickasaw Park in Louisville on Saturday. Police responded to reports of the shooting around 9 p.m., and two victims were pronounced dead at the scene.

Louisville Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said at a press conference on Saturday night that while there were hundreds of people in the park at the time of the attack, police had no witnesses to the shooting. Humphrey also said it was unclear who opened fire.

“I want to speak directly to whoever the shooter is,” Humphrey said. “Turn yourself in. The best thing for you to do is to turn yourself in. We know that this will not end well. The best-case scenario is for you to turn yourself in and stop this.”

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg (D) also reflected on the gun violence in the city over the past week, saying it had been “an unspeakable week of tragedy.”

“On Monday, we lost five of our fellow citizens to a horrific act of workplace gun violence,” Greenberg said. “And now, five days later, we’re at another scene of a reckless act of gun violence.”

 

Meanwhile, another mass shooting happened last night in Alabama.

A celebration turned violent in downtown Dadeville Saturday night as a shooting left four dead and more than 20 people injured according to investigators on scene.

Witnesses tell WRBL the gathering was a Sweet-16 Birthday celebration at Mahogany Masterpiece Dance Studio, and the shooting happened around 10:30 Saturday night. We are told the majority of those injured are teenagers. That information has not been confirmed by law enforcement. We do not know if a person(s) of interest or suspect(s) is in custody.

Sources tell WRBL multiple law enforcement agencies are working feverishly in multiple jurisdictions on the investigation. Law enforcement’s limited disclosure of information regarding the mass shooting, the victims, and the suspect(s) has left some members of the community feeling increasingly frustrated. WRBL is told ALEA is leading the investigation, not local law enforcement. ALEA releases the following statement Sunday morning around 8:15:

At approximately 11:45 p.m. Saturday, April 15, Special Agents with the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency’s (ALEA) State Bureau of Investigations (SBI) launched a death investigation at the request of the Dadeville Police Chief. The investigation is a result of a shooting which occurred at approximately 10:34 p.m. near the 200 Block of Broadnax Street in Dadeville, located in Tallapoosa County. Currently, there have been four confirmed fatalities and multiple injuries. The following agencies responded to the scene and are currently assisting with the investigation: The Dadeville Police Department, Tallapoosa County Sheriff’s Office, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) and the 5 Circuit District Attorney’s Office. Nothing further is available as the investigation is ongoing.

 

Gunmerica will never stop until we stop the GOP, period. A majority of states are now open carry/permitless carry and more will die.

 

Gunmerica forever!

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

After both of The Justins were returned to the Tennessee House last week after being ejected by state Republicans, at least one Republican had robocalls thanking them for expelling "Antifa terrorists" from the legislature.

 

A new robocall is falsely accusing the three Tennessee Democratstargeted by Republicans for expulsion from the state legislature of being violent "Antifa" radicals.

Audio of the call, which was obtained by the Tennessee Holler, describes Tennessee Democrats Justin Pearson, Justin Jones, and Gloria Johnson as "radical activists posing as elected officials” who purportedly "led an angry mob of Antifa intending violence" to the Tennessee State Capitol building earlier this month.

The robocall also falsely claimed that law enforcement officials confiscated "pipe bombs" from demonstrators protesting against the three Democrats' expulsion.

According to the Tennessee Holler, the calls were funded by right-wing organization Enlighten Tennessee, whose stated goal is to "preserve the Conservative economic principles which make Tennessee the greatest state in the country to live."

Gloria Johnson, the one Tennessee Democrat who survived the expulsion vote, reacted angrily to the robocall, which she decried as "disgusting."

"Antifa? Pipe bombs?" she asked incredulously. "I guess parents brought them in strollers with their babies and toddlers. I didn’t know they made brass knuckles for children. This is disgusting, disgraceful, and it’s going to get someone hurt."

Johnson also hinted at legal action against the call and revealed that she's "already have had my lawyer on the phone" to talk about options.

 

Republicans both inside and outside the state have repeatedly said that the expulsion of Justin Pearson and Justin Jones was justified because of their "terrorist, insurrectionist actions".  Now we see people are trying to get the Justins lynched.

Black Lives Still Matter. Even in Tennessee.

Sunday Long Read: Power Dril Nation

This week's Sunday Long Read is Nate Rogers's profile of legendary Twitter zeitgeist poster Paul "dril" Hochney in The Ringer, the man behind one of the most surreal and witty accounts of the last decade, making the trenchant observations of a digital world one shitpost at a time.

 

Dril is a real person, or so I had been told. Sitting in the House of Pies in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles, I was waiting for him to join me in a booth—but I didn’t know who was actually going to show up.

It was the quiet midafternoon hours at the diner, which is a relic of when the area was less upscale, and it still partially attracts an off-key clientele of misfits and bozos, some of whom are alone and in no hurry to leave. (As I sat, an older man in oversized overalls walked by carrying a seat cushion; it was unclear whether he worked there.) This venue was the most readily available approximation of Dril’s world that I could think of.

While I waited, I pulled up Dril’s Twitter account and looked at a recent post: “The fact is,” he wrote, “people arent doing a good job wiping their ass these days. And its attracting all manner of stray dogs and coyotes to our towns.” The likes were ticking up and up in real time as they moved toward their eventual zenith of almost 17,000. By Dril standards, this wasn’t even a particularly popular—or deranged—post.

With 1.7 million highly engaged followers, Dril is one of the more powerful Twitter users and, by default, one of the more powerful figures on the internet. Active since 2008, the Dril account—simultaneously known by the profile name “Wint”—with its grainy Jack Nicholson avatar, has been responsible for countless viral posts, just as beloved for the vivid scenes they induce as for the baffling grammatical and spelling errors they contain. Many of his tweets have become part of the permanent online lexicon: “‘im not owned! im not owned!!’, i continue to insist as i slowly shrink and transform into a corn cob”; “issuing correction on a previous post of mine, regarding the terror group ISIL. you do not, under any circumstances, ‘gotta hand it to them’”; “i am selling six beautfiul, extremely ill, white horses. they no longer recognize me as their father, and are the Burden of my life.”

To most people, he is nothing; show the unaffiliated some of his posts, and they will likely just generate confusion and possibly anguish. (“Uh, so, I think I’ll stick with gardening. Where bull poop helps good things grow, and the tweets come from birds, not nitwits,” read one of many upset people in the comment section of a recent Washington Post feature about Dril, inadvertently adopting their own Dril-esque cadence in the process.) But to a large sect of the Very Online, he is king—the undisputed poet laureate of shitposting, the architect of a satire so effective that it has become impossible to tell when Dril stopped mocking the way people speak online and when we, instead, started speaking like Dril online.

For almost 10 years, he was entirely anonymous. Like a decent number of the people in the so-called “Weird Twitter” scene that Dril is still vaguely a part of, he doesn’t put his real name on the account—but as time has gone on and his popularity has grown, it’s become nothing short of miraculous that he’s kept up the mystery. He’s a pyramid-obsessed phantom. He’s banky. Still, over the years, some of his digital curtain has begun to part—largely spurred by his being doxxed in 2017, when his identity was revealed to supposedly be that of a man named Paul.

Around the same time, Dril started a Patreon, released a book, Dril Official “Mr. Ten Years” Anniversary Collection, and had an Adult Swim television show, TruthPoint—a surrealist Infowars parody in which he manifested behind a cheap old man mask and bantered with self-professed “manic pixie stream boy” cohost Derek Estevez-Olsen. Dril also began doing an interview here and there, but never anything substantial, and always in character. I reached out to him via email, and when he replied, the name attached to the account was “paul d.” But I still wasn’t totally sure that he wouldn’t walk into House of Pies with his mask on, throw a plate against a wall, and then walk out.

“I’m Paul,” he said, once he found me and after I began by asking whom, exactly, I could say I was speaking to.

Paul Dochney, who is 35, does not, in fact, look like a mutant Jack Nicholson. He has soft features and a gentle disposition and looks something like a young Eugene Mirman. It’s difficult to say what I expected to find sitting across from me, but it wasn’t this. Looking at him, you’d never presume that this was the person who made candle purchasing a matter of financial insecurity.

He opted to stick with water—not a terrible decision at the House of Pies, but also, I worried, a choice that theoretically allowed him a quick exit at any point. For a while, I got the sense that he might have been deciding how much to reveal to me in real time, based on how the conversation went. But one thing he was clear about from the beginning: It was all right to end this game of living in the digital shadows.

“I mean, my name is already out there,” he said, acknowledging the fact that, after the doxxing, he had at separate points confirmed his name on both Twitter and Reddit. “It’s in my Wikipedia article. Maybe people need to grow up. Just accept that I’m not like Santa Claus. I’m not a magic elf who posts.”

In some sense, anonymity has served a creative purpose. “Practically, it’s a good tool,” Estevez-Olsen told me later in a phone interview, “because when you make a post, you don’t want to be like, ‘From Paul Dochney, I fuck flags’ or whatever. You want to have some distance from it.” (He would know: “Estevez-Olsen” is itself a TruthPoint stage name that he asked me to use for reasons of privacy.)

But the secrecy has also lingered because of the types of personalities Dril naturally attracts to his orbit. “Most people are normal,” Dochney explained. “But there’s, like, three or four weirdos who just ruin it for everyone.” Jon Hendren, a fellow titan of Weird Twitter who is known by his subtle handle, @fart, told me that he had seen some disturbing messages people had sent Dochney in the past—that he wasn’t being paranoid or dramatic. “It’s gotta be kind of surreal,” Hendren said. “And it’s got to be kind of difficult to live with.”

 

Before Elon Musk brings Twitter to a grinding halt with pieces of it falling off like a cartoon Ford Pinto, it's nice to know that yeah, social media in the 2010's and early 2020's was pretty good with people like dril in it.

 

Right before, you know, it all went to shit.

Last Call For In Which Zandar Asks Your Burning Questions, Con't

Lauren Gambino of The Guardian asks:

 

‘They created this’: are Republicans willing to lose elections to retain their abortion stance? 

 

Democrats have taken multiple actions in response to what they say is a “draconian” and “dangerous” decision by a federal judge in Texas threatening access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the US.

Several Democratic governors have begun to stockpile doses of the drugs used in medication abortions. Nearly every Democrat in Congress signed onto an amicus brief urging an appeals court to stay the decision, while some called on the Biden administration to simply “ignore” the ruling, should it be allowed to stand. A group of House Democrats introduced a bill that would give the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) final approval over drugs used in medication abortion.

Their fury over the ruling has been met with relative silence from Republicans.

Only a handful of congressional Republicans offered immediate comment on judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision last week to revoke the FDA’s 23-year-old approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. Just a fraction of Republicans on Capitol Hill signed an amicus brief urging an appeals court to uphold the ruling. And among the party’s national field of Republican presidential nominees, just one – the former vice-president, Mike Pence – unabashedly praised the decision.

The starkly different reactions underscores just how dramatically the politics of abortion have shifted since last June, when conservatives achieved their once-unimaginable goal of overturning Roe v Wade.

For decades, Republicans relied on abortion to rally their conservative base, calling for the reversal of Roe v Wade and vowing to outlaw the procedure if given the chance. But since the supreme court’s ruling in Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health, abortion has emerged as a potent issue for Democrats, galvanizing voters furious over the thicket of state bans and restrictions ushered in by the decision.

Republicans have struggled to respond, lacking a unified policy on abortion in the nearly 10 months since the landmark decision.

 

I have to laugh, because the answer to that question is "Elections don't matter if Republicans control enough states to award the Republican 270 electoral votes."

It's possible that abortion costs the GOP some seats, but no Republican will survive a primary with a position to the left of Trump in any way.

Besides, SCOTUS is set to gut nearly all federal civil rights legislation in the next 15 months. The voting landscape in November 2024 is going to absolutely be a world apart from where it is now. And so far, Republicans haven't paid a price for much of anything. People are badly underestimating how much GOP supermajorities, gerrymandering, and SCOTUS being 6-3 conservative will conspire to make sure the GOP doesn't pay a price in my lifetime, either.

Even if you think Ron DeSantis, for example, will pay dearly in his 2024 run over Florida's abortion law, because he changed the rules in Florida, he'll still be Governor of Florida if he runs for the White House and loses. He may not be able to run again for Governor in 2026, but he can run in 2028 for President, and he can run for Governor again in 2030. He's younger than I am by 3 years. He'll only be 50 in 2028 and 52 in 2030. He has a long political career ahead of him, and there's no reason to think the GOP won't remain in total control of the state for decades to come.

So unless Democrats manage to dismantle these permanent gerrymandered walls, nothing will change.

Nothing.