A Juneteenth Proclamation

In honor of the Juneteenth federal holiday today, the National Archives will add the Emancipation Proclamation to the Rotunda display for the American public to see.

 

The National Archives plans to place the Emancipation Proclamation on permanent public display in its Rotunda alongside the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, the agency announced on Saturday.

“I am proud that the National Archives will enshrine this seminal document for public display adjacent to our nation’s founding documents. Together, they tell a more comprehensive story of the history of all Americans and document progress in our nation’s continuous growth toward a more perfect Union,” said Archivist Dr. Colleen Shogan in a statement.

The 1863 Emancipation Proclamation, in which former President Abraham Lincoln wrote that “all persons held as slaves within said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall be free,” will be up for the National Archives Museum’s annual temporary display to mark Juneteenth, from June 17 to 19.

But Shogan announced ahead of the temporary display that the Archives plans to put the double-sided, five-page document on permanent display in the Rotunda that houses other foundational documents.

The Archives says it’s assessing the best display environment to protect the document condition, and may rotate the original pages on display to preserve the material from light exposure. A timeline for the permanent display was not shared in the Saturday announcement.

In the three-day temporary display period for the Archives’ Juneteenth celebration, the Emancipation Proclamation is viewable along with General Order No. 3, an 1865 document that informed the people of Texas that all enslaved persons were free. The issuance of General Order No. 3 on June 19 of that year is now celebrated as the Juneteenth holiday.

 

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation is definitely a "foundational document" of American history.  In an era where states like Texas and Florida are trying to eliminate as much Black history as they can, the National Archives reminding the country that Black history is very much American history is a statement in and of itself.

Will this foundational document even be taught in schools in red states years from now? Will Juneteenth and its history even be mentioned?

 

The fact that we even have to ask is astonishing.

Sunday Long Read: For Christ's Sake

There is a deeply damaged section of evangelical Christianity that is dangerous, political, and violent that is openly preparing for conflict with the nation, and in this week's Sunday Long Read, Frederick Thompson at Salon notes that this brand of "prayer warriors" just so happens to be targeting the biggest swing state that went for Biden in 2020 and where Dems flipped a US Senate seat to boot: Pennsylvania. 

"You've got a friend in Pennsylvania!" was the theme of the state's ad campaign to promote tourism in the 1980s. That was a veiled historical reference to the Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, the liberal Christian sect to which William Penn, for whom Pennsylvania is named, belonged. But since the early 2000s there has been a quiet campaign in the Keystone State and beyond to unfriend anyone outside certain precincts of Christianity — and most Quakers would almost certainly be among the outcasts.

That campaign got a lot less quiet this April, as many leaders of the neo-charismatic movement known as the New Apostolic Reformation, who have been hiding in plain sight for a generation, began ramping up a contest for theocratic power in the nation and the world. Their first target is Pennsylvania.

On April 30, Sean Feucht, a musician and evangelist for conservative Christian dominion, spoke at Life Center Ministries, the Harrisburg megachurch of Apostle Charles Stock. (The honorific "Apostle" designates a leading church office in the NAR. That said, there are many apostles in the movement, and not all of them pastor churches.) During his appearance, Feucht highlighted his national tour of state capitals, called Kingdom to the Capitol, that he was conducting along with Turning Point USA, the far-right youth group led by Charlie Kirk. "[W]e are going to end this 50-state tour here in Harrisburg," he announced.

It will probably be three to four weeks before the general election. This is a state, it's the Keystone State — the seed of a nation — God is not done with this state.

The "seed of a nation" refers to the famous 17th-century words of William Penn. (Much more on this below.)

Sometimes Feucht's tour has ventured into darker terrain. He told an audience in Austin, Texas, that "no one has hope for" their city:

 

Why are we going to all these 50 capitals — because they're amazing cities? … they're actually not. They're the most horrible cities in America.

 

Indeed. Feucht and his movement consider the 50 state capitals to be demon-infested bastions of ungodly government. His tour has openly become a campaign to "unfriend" the nation. He wrote in an "Open Letter to Church Leaders" on April 23:

 

Unfriend? That seems a little harsh for some. Yet [New Testament author] James didn't seem to think so — "Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God."

Feucht's effort to connect young people with what his movement considers William Penn's ancient vision for Pennsylvania is part of the wider, epochal campaign of the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a movement at the cutting edge of Pentecostal and Charismatic evangelicalism, which is now the second largest Christian faction in the world after the Roman Catholic Church and the largest growth sector in American and global Christianity.

This is a central story of our time, and one that has scarcely penetrated our national consciousness. Sean Feucht's ministry, for example, is overseen by NAR apostles — but media coverage does not reflect that context.

The goal here is to capture entire states and then the country as theocratic dominions of a God that sees anyone else as enemies to be exterminated in His name. People like Charlie Kirk and Sean Feucht want not just a Second Civil War, but a Holy Crusade to boot. 

They will do everything they can to get both.

 

Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

As America attempts to deal with racist attacks against Black, Latino, Asian and Native folks, we can't forget that white supremacists have been and continue to target Jewish communities. As one terrorist has been convicted in the Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting this week and faces a possible capital sentence, another potential synagogue attack was stopped by law enforcement in Michigan.

 

A Michigan teenager has been arrested over an alleged plot to carry out a mass shooting at a synagogue, according to a criminal complaint filed against the teen.

The complaint charges 19-year-old Seann Pietila with transmitting in interstate commerce a threat to injure someone. FBI Special Agent Ryan Roskey said in the complaint that Pietila demonstrated through Instagram messages his neo-Nazi ideology, antisemitic beliefs, suicidal ideologies, praise of past mass shooters that have had similar ideologies and intent to copy their actions.

The complaint states Pietila specifically mentioned that he admires Brent Tarrant, who carried out mass shootings at mosques in New Zealand in 2019, killing more than 50 people. The Instagram account that Pietila used sent a message saying they needed a camera for livestreaming, as Tarrant did during his attack, and another saying they planned to mimic “b.t’s” attack, per the complaint.

Investigators also found a Pinterest account from Pietila that included posts containing Nazi imagery and references to mass shooters. They were able to connect the Instagram and Pinterest accounts to Pietila and also found TikTok and Discord accounts tied to him to confirm his identity.

The FBI carried out a search warrant at Pietila’s home on Friday and arrested him. Pietila confirmed during an interview with authorities that he was the Instagram user but said he did not intend to carry out the mass shootings that he referenced, per the complaint.

Officials found a shotgun, rifle, pistol, ammunition, rifle magazines, multiple knives and other instruments, firearm accessories, two tactical vests, a red and white Nazi flag, gas masks and survivor manuals during the search of his home.

Pietila consented to investigators searching his iPhone that was also recovered during the search, and they found a note referring to a synagogue in East Lansing, Mich., according to the complaint. The note lists a date of March 15, 2024, the five-year anniversary of Tarrant’s attacks, and mentions pipe bombs, Molotov cocktails and multiple firearms.

 

Thankfully, it seems like the feds had this clown's number from the start and nobody was hurt. But that date in March of next year seems like something people will want to be paying attention to as we get closer to it, as there's plenty of sick copycat killers out these who want to emulate the slaughter in New Zealand.

 

Last Call For The Original Paper Chase

Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the infamous Pentagon Papers more than 50 years ago, has died at age 92.

 

Mr. Ellsberg, a Harvard-educated Midwesterner with a PhD in economics, was in some respects an unlikely peace activist. He had served in the Marine Corps after college, wanting to prove his mettle, and emerged as a fervent cold warrior while working as an official at the Defense Department, a military analyst at the Rand Corp. and a consultant for the State Department, which dispatched him to Saigon in 1965 to assess counterinsurgency efforts.

Crisscrossing the Vietnamese countryside, where he joined American and South Vietnamese troops on patrol, he became increasingly disillusioned by the war effort, concluding that there was no chance of success.

He went on to embrace a life of advocacy, which extended from his 1971 leak of the Pentagon Papers — a disclosure that led Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s national security adviser, to privately brand him “the most dangerous man in America” — to decades of work advocating for press freedoms and the anti-nuclear movement.

Mr. Ellsberg co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation, a Brooklyn nonprofit, and championed the work of a new generation of digital leakers and whistleblowers, including Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning.

He also continued to release secret government documents, including files about nuclear war that he had copied while working on the military’s “mutually assured destruction” strategy during the Cold War, around the same time he leaked the study that made him perhaps the most famous whistleblower in American history.

“When I copied the Pentagon Papers in 1969,” he wrote in the email announcing his cancer diagnosis, “I had every reason to think I would be spending the rest of my life behind bars. It was a fate I would gladly have accepted if it meant hastening the end of the Vietnam War, unlikely as that seemed.”

Commissioned by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara in June 1967, the Pentagon Papers comprised 7,000 pages of historical analysis and supporting documents, revealing how the U.S. government had secretly expanded its role in Vietnam across four presidential administrations.

The papers showed that government leaders had concealed doubts about the war’s progress and had misled the public about a troop buildup that eventually took half a million Americans to Vietnam, as part of a war that cost the lives of more than 58,000 U.S. service members and millions of Vietnamese.

The study was given a bland official title, “Report of the Office of the Secretary of Defense Vietnam Task Force,” and a classification of “Top Secret — Sensitive,” an informal designation that suggested the contents could cause embarrassment.

Mr. Ellsberg, one of three-dozen analysts who helped prepare the report, had access to a copy at the Rand Corp., an Air Force-affiliated research organization in Santa Monica, Calif. As his opposition to the Vietnam War hardened, he began smuggling the papers out of his office, a full briefcase at a time, and photocopied them with help from a colleague, Anthony J. Russo, whose girlfriend owned a nearby advertising agency with a Xerox machine.

Their efforts got off to a rocky start: On their first night copying papers, they accidentally tripped a burglar alarm in the office, drawing the attention of police who stopped by but saw no sign of trouble.

Hoping to hasten the end of the war, Mr. Ellsberg contacted several U.S. senators and tried to share the documents through official channels. When he found no takers, he contacted New York Times reporter Neil Sheehan, leading to the publication of the first story about the history on June 13, 1971, running above the fold on the front page of the Times.

The disclosures bolstered criticism of the war, horrified Mr. Ellsberg’s former colleagues in the defense establishment and blindsided the White House. After the third day of stories, the Nixon administration won a temporary injunction that muzzled the Times, blocking further publication.

The ruling set up a legal and journalistic showdown, later dramatized in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-nominated film “The Post” (2017). Mr. Ellsberg, who was played on-screen by Matthew Rhys, had by then started sharing material from the study with almost 20 other media organizations, including The Washington Post, which began printing stories of its own. When The Post, too, was ordered to stop publishing, it partnered with the Times in court, and the newspapers won a landmark decision June 30, with the Supreme Court ruling 6 to 3 in favor of allowing publication to continue.

The ruling was hailed as a victory for the First Amendment and an independent press, and seemed to blunt the government’s use of prior restraint as a tool to block the publication of stories it did not want the public to read. The decision meant the Pentagon Papers would continue to find an audience even if Mr. Ellsberg, who turned himself in to the authorities, faced a potential 115-year sentence.

 

Three observations:

 

One, Ellsberg was one of the reasons any budding journalist in my generation went into the field.

 

Two, live a life that causes Henry Kissinger to label you "The most dangerous man in America."

 

Three, a war secretly expanded over the course of four administrations? That's fiction!

Black Lives Still Matter

Once again, in the cities "rocked by Antifa violence" in the wake of the George Floyd protests, the real issue is large urban police departments are racist garbage fires that routinely hunt and punish Black and brown folks with excessive, lethal force.

 

A federal investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department, launched in the wake of the 2020 murder of George Floyd, found that the police department and the city itself engage in a "pattern or practice" of excessive force and racial discrimination that violates both the United States Constitution and federal law.

The so-called pattern-or-practice investigation — like the federal investigations into police departments in cities including Baltimore; Ferguson, Missouri; and, most recently, Louisville, Kentucky — focused on widespread issues within the police department rather than individual incidents.

The Minneapolis Police Department, the probe found, “uses excessive force, including unjustified deadly force and other types of force”; “unlawfully discriminates against Black and Native American people in its enforcement activities”; “violates the rights of people engaged in protected speech”; and discriminates against people with behavioral health issues.

As was the case in several other cities, the DOJ investigation found "persistent deficiencies in MPD’s accountability systems, training, supervision, and officer wellness programs," which contributed to the constitutional violations.

The Trump administration, under then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, backed away from investigations of police departments, saying that such probes harmed law enforcement. Attorney General Merrick Garland rescinded Sessions' memo in early 2021, and the Minneapolis probe was launched in April of that year.

Under Garland and Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta, the Justice Department has worked to forge collaborative relationships with the law enforcement community. Gupta, a former American Civil Liberties Union official, had the backing of major law enforcement leaders when she was nominated in 2021.

The report acknowledges "the considerable daily challenges" of being a police officer who "must often make split-second decisions and risk their lives to keep their communities safe." The report said that officers "work hard to provide vital services" and said that many officers spoke about their "deep connection" to the city and their desire to see the police department do better.

"Still, since the spring of 2020, hundreds of MPD officers have left the force, and the morale of the remaining officers is low. Policing, by its nature, can take a toll on the psychological and emotional health of officers, and the challenges of the last few years have only exacerbated that toll for some MPD officers," the report states.

The report says that the Justice Department anticipates working collaboratively with the city and police department, and said federal officials appreciated the cooperation and candor of the police and city officials during the investigation.

The report noted the particular challenges in Minneapolis, a city with "stark" racial inequality that is known, along with neighboring St. Paul, as the "Twin Cities."

 

As with Louisville, police departments are trained to hurt Black and brown folks. To Merrick Garland's credit, he's at least working to identify the problem, but the fact of the matter is America's police departments need a massive, national overhaul of personnel, training, and leadership.

 

Black Lives Still Matter.

Shutdown Countdown, The Revenge Con't

Republicans didn't get anywhere near what they wanted in the debt ceiling hostage situation they created for themselves earlier this year, so apparently they see a second bite at that poison apple with the raft of government spending bills due in September, complete with trillions in Social Security and Medicare cuts and rollbacks of Biden's infrastructure and environmental bills.

 

After narrowly avoiding a federal default, the Republican-controlled House and the Democratic-led Senate are now on a collision course over spending that could result in a government shutdown this year and automatic spending cuts in early 2025 with severe consequences for the Pentagon and an array of domestic programs.

Far-right Republicans whose votes will be needed to keep the government funded are demanding cuts that go far deeper than what President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to in the bipartisan compromise they reached last month to suspend the debt ceiling, but such reductions are all but certain to be nonstarters in the Senate.

The looming stalemate threatens to further complicate a process that was already going to be extraordinarily difficult, as top members of Congress try for the first time in years to pass individual spending bills to fund all parts of the government in an orderly fashion and avoid the usual year-end pileup. If they cannot, under the terms of the debt limit deal, across-the-board spending cuts will kick in in 2025, a worst-case scenario that lawmakers in both parties want to avoid.

The clashes began this week, when House appropriators began considering their spending bills and, working to appease their ultraconservative wing, said they intended to fund federal agencies at below the levels that Mr. Biden and Mr. McCarthy had agreed to.

Democrats balked, saying the move would wreak havoc with the economy and the smooth functioning of government.

“I fully intend to follow the dictates of what we passed in the Senate and the House and what the president signed,” said Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee. “I am putting them in their box of chaos,” she said of House Republicans.

The approach was particularly unwise, she added, given that many of the right-wing lawmakers it was aimed at appeasing reflexively vote against government spending bills anyway.

“I don’t believe the country wants us to be there; they don’t want chaos,” Ms. Murray said. “They don’t want a small minority of people to dictate where our economy is going to go.”

Facing a rebellion by hard-right Republicans over the debt limit agreement, Mr. McCarthy and his leadership team blindsided Democrats this week by setting allocations for the 12 annual spending bills at 2022 levels, about $119 billion less than the $1.59 trillion allowed for in the agreement to raise the debt ceiling.

The lower spending levels, demanded by Freedom Caucus members who shut down the House last week to register their ire at the debt limit deal, were pushed through the Appropriations Committee on a party-line vote on Thursday after hours of acrimony during which Democrats accused Republicans of backtracking on the compromise.

“The ink is barely dry on the bipartisan budget agreement, yet we are here to consider the Republican majority’s spending agenda that completely reneges on the compromises struck less than two weeks ago,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the Appropriations Committee.

Representative Kay Granger, Republican of Texas and the committee’s chairwoman, said using the lower number would allow the House to “refocus government spending consistent with Republican priorities.” Mr. McCarthy said that he considered the spending caps established in the agreement simply as a maximum, and that the House wanted to push spending lower.

“There is no limit to how low you could go,” he said, asserting that Republicans wanted to show the public that they could “be more efficient in government, that we can save the hardworking taxpayer more, that we can eliminate more Washington waste.”

But the divergent approaches on either side of the Capitol from the two parties are certain to make passing the spending bills extremely difficult. Failure to pass and reconcile the House and Senate bills by Oct. 1 could lead to a government shutdown. And if the individual bills are not approved by the end of the year, a 1 percent automatic cut would take effect that defense hawks say would be devastating for the Pentagon and U.S. support of Ukraine’s military.

 

So the GOP plan is "Our hostage situation failed, what we need is a new hostage situation!"  The thought process is that maybe more Republicans will side with killing fewer hostages this time around, making the cruelty more palatable and targeted instead of scorched earth.

 

It's so bad that the damage would be a near-permanent economic depression caused by a catastrophic $16.3 trillion spending cut over the next ten years.

The Republican Study Committee (RSC), the largest conservative caucus in the House, put a heavy focus on opposing “woke” policies in its annual model federal budget, while proposing $16.3 trillion in spending cuts over a decade.

The model budget for fiscal 2024, first shared with The Hill, includes policies that oppose gender-affirming health care for transgender youth and beyond, boost protections for religious institutions, and take aim at critical race theory — a framework that examines systemic racism in institutions.

“Nearly every major problem facing our nation can be traced back to a failure to budget,” said RSC Chairman Kevin Hern (R-Okla.).

“It all boils down to something we’ve heard the President say quite a few times this year: Show me your budget, and I’ll show you your values. Our values are clearly on display with this budget,” Hern said.

It would balance the federal budget in seven years, according to the caucus, while also cutting spending by $16.3 trillion and taxes by $5 trillion over a decade. It cuts spending slightly less and cuts taxes more than the group’s model budget from last year, which had $16.6 trillion in spending cuts and $3.9 trillion in tax cuts.

“The RSC Budget is a reflection of our commitment to defending our constitutional rights, championing conservative values, and safeguarding the foundational principles that make our country great,” Rep. Ben Cline (R-Va.), chair of the RSC Budget and Spending Task Force, said in a statement.

The Senate doesn't want to go through this again, so we'll see what happens, but yeah, there was no way Kevin McCarthy and his Clown Show were ever going to keep their word in the debt bill.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

Right-wing "Christian" churches are increasingly delivering radical calls to terrorist action, and next time you see Republican lawmakers scream about how the FBI is "targeting" churches, understand that the FBI has every reason to do so.

 

Kent Christmas, the radically right-wing pastor of Regeneration Nashville, used his sermon last Sunday to urge those in his congregation to show the same sort of “passion” that drives radical Islamic terrorists to be willing to “die for their beliefs.”

Christmas, a Trump–loving MAGA pastor and conspiracy theorist who has repeatedly declared that God will soon start killing “wicked” elected officials, got himself worked up during his sermon by falsely asserting that the state of Vermont recently passed legislation declaring that “it is legal, up to 21 days after full-term birth, that you can kill a baby.”

“I am at war with evil!” Christmas ranted. “This is one preacher that is not backing down. I can tell you this: I will give my life for the Gospel.”

“You want to know why the Muslim faith has had its advancements?” he continued. “It’s because the Muslims were willing to die for their beliefs. They were willing to strap bombs to their chest. They believed in the afterlife.”

“God, give us some men and women that will get a hold of some passion in their spirit and say, ‘I will lay down my life for the Gospel!'” Christmas thundered. “This thing was born in blood.”

 

Understand these are Christmas's actual words.

And let's remember that downtown Nashville was hit by a terrorist suicide bombing not more than a few years ago.

So yeah, if I were the FBI, I'd absolutely be keeping an eye on this asshole and everyone attending sermons of suicidal, terrorist hatred like this.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Should Donald Trump (or any Republican who can pass the MAGA primaries for that matter) win the White House in 2024, the notion of an independent Justice Department, rather than one used for arrest and prosecution of Democrats as a matter of course, is gone.

 

When Donald J. Trump responded to his latest indictment by promising to appoint a special prosecutor if he’s re-elected to “go after” President Biden and his family, he signaled that a second Trump term would fully jettison the post-Watergate norm of Justice Department independence.

“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Mr. Trump said at his golf club in Bedminster, N.J., on Tuesday night after his arraignment earlier that day in Miami. “I will totally obliterate the Deep State.”

Mr. Trump’s message was that the Justice Department charged him only because he is Mr. Biden’s political opponent, so he would invert that supposed politicization. In reality, under Attorney General Merrick Garland, two Trump-appointed prosecutors are already investigating Mr. Biden’s handling of classified documents and the financial dealings of his son, Hunter.

But by suggesting the current prosecutors investigating the Bidens were not “real,” Mr. Trump appeared to be promising his supporters that he would appoint an ally who would bring charges against his political enemies regardless of the facts.

The naked politics infusing Mr. Trump’s headline-generating threat underscored something significant. In his first term, Mr. Trump gradually ramped up pressure on the Justice Department, eroding its traditional independence from White House political control. He is now unabashedly saying he will throw that effort into overdrive if he returns to power.

Mr. Trump’s promise fits into a larger movement on the right to gut the F.B.I., overhaul a Justice Department conservatives claim has been “weaponized” against them and abandon the norm — which many Republicans view as a facade — that the department should operate independently from the president.

Two of the most important figures in this effort work at the same Washington-based organization, the Center for Renewing America: Jeffrey B. Clark and Russell T. Vought. During the Trump presidency, Mr. Vought served as the director of the Office of Management and Budget. Mr. Clark, who oversaw the Justice Department’s civil and environmental divisions, was the only senior official at the department who tried to help Mr. Trump overturn the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump wanted to make Mr. Clark attorney general during his final days in office but stopped after the senior leadership of the Justice Department threatened to resign en masse. Mr. Clark is now a figure in one of the Justice Department’s investigations into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.

Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought are promoting a legal rationale that would fundamentally change the way presidents interact with the Justice Department. They argue that U.S. presidents should not keep federal law enforcement at arm’s length but instead should treat the Justice Department no differently than any other cabinet agency. They are condemning Mr. Biden and Democrats for what they claim is the politicization of the justice system, but at the same time pushing an intellectual framework that a future Republican president might use to justify directing individual law enforcement investigations.

Mr. Clark, who is a favorite of Mr. Trump’s and is likely to be in contention for a senior Justice Department position if Mr. Trump wins re-election in 2024, wrote a constitutional analysis, titled “The U.S. Justice Department is not independent,” that will most likely serve as a blueprint for a second Trump administration.

Like other conservatives, Mr. Clark adheres to the so-called unitary executive theory, which holds that the president of the United States has the power to directly control the entire federal bureaucracy and Congress cannot fracture that control by giving some officials independent decision-making authority.

There are debates among conservatives about how far to push that doctrine — and whether some agencies should be allowed to operate independently — but Mr. Clark takes a maximalist view. Mr. Trump does, too, though he’s never been caught reading the Federalist Papers.

In statements to The New York Times, both Mr. Clark and Mr. Vought leaned into their battle against the Justice Department, with Mr. Clark framing it as a fight over the survival of America itself.

“Biden and D.O.J. are baying for Trump’s blood so they can put fear into America,” Mr. Clark wrote in his statement. “The Constitution and our Article IV ‘Republican Form of Government’ cannot survive like this.”

Mr. Vought wrote in his statement that the Justice Department was “ground zero for the weaponization of the government against the American people.” He added, “Conservatives are waking up to the fact that federal law enforcement is weaponized against them and as a result are embracing paradigm-shifting policies to reverse that trend.”

 

You can draw a direct line from the Dubya administration and Dick Cheney and John Woo to this particular theory, where the entire Justice Department would become an extension of the MAGA White House, and Democrats in previous administrations and very possibly current state executives would be rounded up and charged with "crimes" and disposed of.

The DOJ would not only cease to be independent, but by definition would be controlled by the person in the Oval Office, and arrests and prosecutions would be directed by the White House.

You know, secret police, only not exactly secret. To solution to a "politicized" Justice Department is to actually politicize the Justice Department.

Image

Insuring The Worst, Ensuring The Worst, Con't

Just as State Farm stopped writing new homeowners' insurance policies in California, Farmers Insurance will no longer write new policies in Florida.

We are almost two weeks into hurricane season. That means now is the time to make sure your property insurance is taken care of.

But we're learning there is just one less option in the Florida market.

"Over the past 18 months in Florida, we've had 15 companies decide to stop writing new business," Mark Friedlander, the Insurance Information Institute's spokesperson, said.

The Insurance Information Institute's Mark Friedlander says Florida homeowners in search of new coverage have fewer and fewer options, as companies put a pause on new property policies.

That now includes Farmers Insurance Group, who said in a statement:

"With catastrophe costs at historically high levels and reconstruction costs continuing to climb, we implemented a pause on writing new homeowners policies to more effectively manage our risk exposure," Friedlander said.

Even when your insurance bill may be more expensive than ever, Friedlander says insurance companies are now worried they won't profit if they have to pay out on claims.

nd their chances of doing so in Florida are much higher than in many other states.

"The cost of claims for catastrophes is higher than ever before. And we saw this here in Florida play out last year, with Hurricane Ian, we estimate it to be a $60 billion insured loss event," Friedlander said.

The Insurance Information Institute says the replacement cost for homes has increased 55% over three years, outpacing inflation.

But the skyrocketing costs for consumers are real too.

"Floridians are paying more on average for home insurance today, versus the US average homeowner which is paying about $1,700. So $6,000 in Florida, versus $1,700 in U.S., on average, almost four times as much," Friedlander said.

 

To be fair, Florida's insurance market has all but collapsed, with double-digit rate hikes across the state. You can blame Ron DeSantis and the Florida GOP for that, but you also have to blame climate change and the fact that living in Florida will be unsustainable for most people within my lifetime, and certainly within the lifetimes of those born after 2000.

Again, America has no real plan to deal with the fact that most coastal areas, flood plains, and wildfire regions will be devastated within the next few decades, with as much as half the US population having to relocate. Not everyone will be able to, and we're not even beginning to have this conversation or the fact the cost will be in the trillions.

As it is, these some of these areas will be totally uninsurable by the end of the decade. The US government will have to step in, and the cost will be astronomical.

It does not get better from here.

Last Call For Our Little White Supremacist Domestic Terrorism Problem, Con't

The FBI has finally caught up with and arrested two suspects in a Planned Parenthood clinic firebombing that happened in March of last year.

Two California men, one of them a Marine, were arrested Wednesday and accused of firebombing a Planned Parenthood clinic in Costa Mesa last year, federal authorities said.

Tibet Ergul, 21, of Irvine, and Chance Brannon, 23, of San Juan Capistrano, an active-duty Marine stationed at Camp Pendleton, are charged with using an explosive or fire to damage real property affecting interstate commerce, the U.S. attorney’s office for Central California said in a statement.

A criminal complaint alleges they ignited and threw a Molotov cocktail at the clinic’s entrance early March 13, 2022.

Damage was estimated at $1,050, and appointments for about 30 patients had to be rescheduled, the complaint says.

"My office takes very seriously this brazen attack that targeted a facility that provides critical health care services to thousands of people in Orange County," U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada said in the statement. "While it is fortunate that no one was physically harmed and responders were able to prevent the clinic from being destroyed, the defendants’ violent actions are entirely unacceptable.”

Security videos show two people wearing hooded sweatshirts and masks approach the Planned Parenthood around 1 a.m. and throw a flaming device at the front door, federal prosecutors said.

Investigators found burn marks on the entrance door and the adjacent wall, according to the complaint. Prosecutors said an analysis showed that a glass container and other materials collected from the scene contained gasoline.

The FBI in January released a poster announcing a reward of up to $25,000 leading to the identifications, arrests and convictions of the suspects, according to the complaint.

And once again, we have domestic terrorism suspected from someone with a military or law enforcement background, as we have seen so often in the past several years. An entire machine churning out a generation of radical right-wing cultists ready to commit horrific acts in the name of "making the country great again" should surprise no one at this point. I've been documenting this movement for years now.

It will continue until the head of the snake is dealt with. Luckily, we saw the effort to do just that take a huge step forward in the last week.

The New Village Chief

With the firing of Tucker Carlson from FOX News and CEO Chris Licht from CNN, it seems the Villagers have elected a new chief.

 

Fox News's years-long streak of weekly rating dominance has reportedly ended, with new data showing it ceding the top spot to its rival network, MSNBC.

Nielsen data regarding the week ending this past Sunday was shared on Twitter on Tuesday by A.J. Katz, a reporter specializing in the cable news business. According to the data, Fox's primetime 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. ET viewership averaged 1,504,429. The average viewership for the more left-leaning MSNBC over the same time frame averaged 1,520,857, narrowly beating out the conservative network that has long been a leader in cable news viewership.

As Katz noted in a tweet, the data from last week marks the end of a lengthy streak of rating dominance for Fox News.

"Barring a last-second data reporting change, Fox's 120-week-long winning streak in primetime appears to be over," Katz wrote.

This development comes as Fox News continues to bleed viewership after the abrupt firing of host Tucker Carlson, one of its biggest ratings draws, in late April. The network has yet to name a permanent replacement for its 8 p.m. ET primetime slot, opting in the meantime for a rotating cast of guest hosts for the hour. The timeslot has, according to Media Matters, seen viewership drop by half since Carlson departed, with viewership declining across its entire lineup as a whole.

 

You'd think MSNBC would be ready to meet this moment. So far, they are, and even CNN has learned a thing or two. 

As the Trump circus continued into Tuesday evening, so too did anchors’ decisive monitoring of their broadcasts. Neither CNN nor MSNBC carried Trump’s speech live from his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, where he was holding the first fundraiser for his 2024 campaign. MSNBC anticipated that the address would be “essentially a Trump campaign speech,” just as his speech was following his first arraignment in April, Rachel Maddow explained to viewers as Trump began his public remarks. “Because of that, we do not intend to carry these remarks live. As we have said before in these circumstances, there is a cost to us as a news organization to knowingly broadcast untrue things,” said Maddow. “We are here to bring you the news. It hurts our ability to do that if we live broadcast what we fully expect in advance to be a litany of lies and false accusations—no matter who says them.” She added that “this is not a glib decision” and that MSNBC would “monitor the speech…if he says anything newsworthy, we promise we will turn that right around and bring it back to you.” On CNN, Anderson Cooper made a similar point, noting that CNN would monitor the rally for news and share anything noteworthy with viewers. Tapper said that they would not be carrying Trump’s remarks live “because frankly he says a lot of things that are not true and sometimes potentially dangerous.”

CNN’s Oliver Darcy, in his Reliable Sources newsletter, noted that the move “notably represented a departure from how the network handled Trump's post-New York arraignment speech. In that case, under former boss Chris Licht, CNN aired most of Trump's remarks.” I’m told that Licht, who left the network earlier this month following a disastrous Trump town hall and brutal Atlantic profile, saw Trump’s reaction as a key part of the story to cover and had communicated as much to staff. On Tuesday, though, anchors appeared newly empowered to do otherwise.

Meanwhile, Fox News and Newsmax carried Trump’s speech live. A chyron on Fox claimed, “TRUMP’S REMARKS IGNORED BY OTHER NETWORKS,” and, before Trump began speaking, Fox News Tonight host Brian Kilmeade referred to Trump as the “president of the United States.” Later, airing footage of President Joe Biden speaking at the White House side-by-side Trump speaking at Bedminster, a Fox News chyron read: “WANNABE DICTATOR SPEAKS AT THE WHITE HOUSE AFTER HAVING HIS POLITICAL RIVAL ARRESTED.” Asked for comment, a Fox News spokesperson told Vanity Fair, “The chyron was taken down immediately and was addressed.”

 

MSNBC and even CNN are learning.

 

FOX News...is not.

 

Orange Meltdown, Con't

Republicans know Trump is screwed even with Judge Aileen Cannon running interference, and this is before Jack Smith's January 6th case and Fani Willis's Georgia election fraud RICO case land like daisy cutters.

 

It’s long been Republican orthodoxy that no matter what Donald Trump does, the GOP base will stick with him. After his last indictment in New York, the party rallied around him.

But this time, privately, Republicans aren’t so sure.

An operative in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ orbit, who requested anonymity to speak candidly without approval from higher-ups, said that “from an objective standpoint,” the federal charges Trump faces for his post-presidency handling of classified documents are far more serious than the earlier ones around hush money payments before the 2016 election.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen in Georgia,” this person said, referring to the investigation into possible election interference by Trump and his allies. “But the man is going to prison. It’s happening. So at this point, where we are is ‘Who’s going to be the nominee?’ … Donald Trump broke the law, and frankly, I’m not a never-Trumper. I’m really not. But this is too much."

“This is something that if you were to get George Washington, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and sit them down and explain to them what’s happening … they would disagree with what Donald Trump was doing and would agree that he should be prosecuted,” the person added.

That sort of comment is further than where many of Trump’s rivals for the GOP presidential nomination will go publicly. Still, even out in the open, there are indications that they believe this federal indictment is far more serious than the last one. Many of the candidates are criticizing the Justice Department while avoiding giving Trump a bear hug of support.

Still, just what the GOP does about it remains up in the air. Interviews with more than a dozen Republicans associated with the presidential campaigns, allies, donors and aides revealed no cohesive strategy for how to handle a GOP presidential front-runner who is staring down a historic federal indictment.

“Every campaign right now that is not Donald Trump is receiving pressure from donors to go harder against Donald Trump,” an aide to a rival presidential campaign said, adding: “The pressure is there. Is that where the larger Republican [electorate is] as a whole? Look at the comments from these various campaigns. You would see that none of them are taking that advice.”

 

With the exception of 1% also-rans like Asa Hutchinson and Chris Christie, both former federal prosecutors themselves, the GOP field that is running against Trump is also publicly committed to pardoning Trump for all of his crimes if they are elected, with Ron DeSantis and Mike Pence both saying they would purge the Justice Department of the people that investigated Trump.

Meanwhile, President Biden is telling Democrats to never mention the Trump indictments, ever.

President Joe Biden and his top aides have taken a vow of silence on the federal indictment of his predecessor, Donald Trump — and have explicitly ordered the national Democratic Party and his reelection campaign to do the same.

That directive was issued in recent days after Trump was hit with federal charges for his handling of classified documents after he left the White House, according to three people familiar with the instructions. But that decision has some Democrats and allies worried that Biden could miss a chance to underscore the seriousness of the national moment as well as deliver a political blow to his top White House rival.

Biden declared at the start of his presidency that he would not discuss Department of Justice investigations, particularly those about the former president, and he remained tightlipped when Trump was arraigned Tuesday in a Florida courthouse.

Some in his inner circle hope the decision will be revisited if next year’s general election looks like it could be a rematch with Trump, even if the legal fight has not been resolved by then. As the president’s advisers chart a court for the campaign to come, they are aware that continued silence about the charges facing Trump would deprive Biden’s reelection effort of a potent political weapon.

The number of criminal cases Trump faces are growing and could soon include charges of election interference and inciting the Jan. 6 riot. Those acts make up much of Biden’s long standing case that Trump poses unique threats to American democracy, and there could eventually be a move to allow surrogates and leading Democrats, even if not the president himself, to squarely address the criminal charges.

But Biden to this point has been explicit: The entities that the White House controls, which includes the reelection campaign and the Democratic National Committee, are not to publicly discuss any of the criminal investigations into Trump. Those closest to the president are deeply wary of any perception that Biden is trying to influence the investigations.

 

I understand why President Biden feels like he has to take the high road, but it's not going to stop the accusations of "Biden's corrupt Justice Department" one bit, so I'm not sure what the benefit of not attacking Trump now is. Republicans already think Biden is a monster who will be arrested the moment a new GOP President takes office (along with the Clintons and Obamas). On top of that, Republicans are openly accusing Biden of bribery and calling for his immediate resignation.

Having said that, taking the high road has worked so far. The GOP has nothing on Biden, and things will only get worse for Trump. Biden sticking to his morals and doing the job of POTUS that Trump can't do is the right move for Biden.

Now, as far as the rest of Democrats go, burning down Trump when Biden can't is also the right move.

Last Call For Lost Angels And Found Angles

Los Angeles's City Council is almost as corrupt as Cincinnati's these days. What's the country coming to?

Los Angeles City Councilmember Curren Price was charged with 10 counts of embezzlement, perjury and conflict of interest on Tuesday, becoming the latest in a years-long parade of elected city officials to face public corruption allegations from state or federal prosecutors.

Price, a 10-year veteran of the City Council, is accused of having a financial interest in development projects that he voted on, and receiving tens of thousands of dollars in medical benefits from the city for his now wife while he was still married to another woman, according to a news release from the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

He was charged with five counts of grand theft by embezzlement, three counts of perjury and two counts of conflict of interest, according to a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office.

The district attorney’s office alleges that Price’s wife, Del Richardson — founder of the consulting company Del Richardson & Associates — received “payments totaling more than $150,000 between 2019 and 2021 from developers before he voted to approve projects.” Price is also accused of failing to list income Richardson received on government financial disclosure forms, according to the release

“We have not seen the charges filed against Councilmember Curren Price. It’s highly unusual for charges like this to be brought up against a sitting City Council member without any prior notice or discussion,” Price spokesperson Angelina Valencia said Tuesday afternoon. “Curren Price is a long-standing public servant who has given his life to the city of Los Angeles. He looks forward to defending himself once he’s had an opportunity to address these charges.”

Price’s attorney, Dave Willingham, declined to comment, saying he had not seen the complaint. Price left the City Council chamber shortly after Tuesday’s meeting ended around 2 p.m.

The charges are the latest in a series of criminal allegations and scandals that have rocked City Hall. Last year, the leak of a conversation among City Council President Nury Martinez, Councilmembers Kevin de León and Gil Cedillo and L.A. County Federation of Labor President Ron Herrera containing racist remarks ended Martinez’s council career and drove Herrera from his post.

Earlier this year, Councilmember Mark Ridley-Thomas was found guilty of conspiracy, bribery and fraud for extracting benefits for his son from USC while voting on issues that benefited the school.

Councilmembers Mitch Englander and Jose Huizar also pleaded guilty to federal corruption charges in recent years following an FBI probe.

Price was one of several City Hall figures mentioned in the FBI probe that ensnared Huizar and Englander after he was named in a federal search warrant filed in November 2018. Federal prosecutors never brought charges against him.

A date has not been set for Price’s arraignment, and he is not going to be arrested, according to the district attorney’s office spokesperson. No information about the charges against him was available on the L.A. County Superior Court’s website as of Tuesday afternoon.

 

Seems pretty open and shut to me, and L.A.'s leadership has been a garbage fire now for several years, just like Cincinnati under Mayor Cranley. Here in Cincy though, the difference is Mayor Pureval and multiple new City Council members are in place.

We'll see if the City of Angels gets the hint.

BREAKING: Trump Under Arrest

 

Well that's a shame. I wonder what's on Netflix.