Skip navigation

Category Archives: postings from others

Shades of 1880’s? or 1980’s


HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

APR 12, 2023

The dramatic events in Nashville last week, when Republican legislators expelled state representatives Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, two young Black men, for speaking out of turn when they joined protesters calling for gun safety, highlighted a demographic problem facing the Republican Party.

Members of Gen Z, the generation born between 1997 and 2012, grew up doing active shooter drills in their schools, and they want gun safety legislation. And yet, Republicans are so wedded to the gun industry and guns as part of party members’ identity that today, one day after five people died in a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky—including a close friend of Kentucky governor Andrew Beshear—the Indiana Senate Republicans passed a resolution honoring the National Rifle Association (NRA).

Later this week, Republican leaders will speak at the NRA’s annual convention in Indianapolis, where firearms, as well as backpacks, glass containers, signs, and umbrellas, are prohibited. Those speakers will include former president Trump and former vice president Mike Pence.

The resolution and the speeches at the NRA convention seem an unfortunate juxtaposition to the recent mass shootings.

Abortion rights are also a place where the Republican Party is out of step with the majority of Americans and especially with people of childbearing age. Last Tuesday, Janet Protasiewicz, who promised to protect reproductive rights, won the election for the Wisconsin Supreme Court by an astonishing 11 points in a state where elections are often decided by less than a point. Victor Shi of Voters of Tomorrow reported that the youth turnout of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, increased 240% since the last spring general election in 2019. Youth turnout at the University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, increased 232%. Almost 90% of those young people voted for Protasiewicz.

And yet the party needs to grapple with last Friday’s ruling by Trump-appointed Texas federal judge Matthew J. Kacsmaryk that the Food and Drug Administration improperly approved mifepristone, a drug used for more than 50% of medically induced abortions, and that it must be removed from the market. The party also must grapple with a new Idaho law that makes it illegal for minors to leave the state to get an abortion without the consent of their parents.

In New York today, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg pushed back against Republican overreach of a different sort when he filed a lawsuit in federal court against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) in his official role as chair of the House Judiciary Committee, the committee itself, and Mark Pomerantz, whom the committee recently subpoenaed, in response to a “brazen and unconstitutional attack by members of Congress on an ongoing New York State criminal prosecution and investigation of former President Donald J. Trump.”

The lawsuit accuses Jordan of engaging in “a transparent campaign to intimidate and attack District Attorney Bragg” and to use congressional powers to intervene improperly in a state criminal prosecution. Like any defendant, the lawsuit says, Trump had every right to challenge his indictment in court. But rather than let that process play out, Jordan and the Republican-dominated Judiciary Committee “are participating in a campaign of intimidation, retaliation, and obstruction” that has led to multiple death threats against Bragg. Bragg’s office “has received more than 1,000 calls and emails from Mr. Trump’s supporters,“ the complaint reads, “many of which are threatening and racially charged.”

“Members of Congress are not free to invade New York’s sovereign authority for their or Mr. Trump’s political aims,” the document says. “Congress has no authority to ‘conduct oversight’ into District Attorney Bragg’s exercise of his duties under New York Law in a single case involving a single defendant.”

While Jordan and the Republicans defend Trump, there is a mounting crisis in the West, where two decades of drought have brought water levels in the region’s rivers to dangerously low levels. According to Benji Jones of Vox, who interviewed the former director of the Water Resources Program at the University of New Mexico, John Fleck, last year about the crisis, the problem has deep roots.

One hundred years ago, government officials significantly overestimated the water available in the Colorado River System when they divided it among Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming through the Colorado River Compact of 1922. The compact provided a formula for dividing up the water in the 1450 miles of the Colorado River. It was designed to stop the states from fighting over the resource, although an Arizona challenge to the system was not resolved until the 1960s. On the basis of the water promised by the compact, the region filled with people—40 million—and with farms that grow much of the country’s supply of winter vegetables.

Now, after decades of drought exacerbated by the overuse permitted by the Colorado River Compact and by climate change, Lake Powell and Lake Mead have fallen to critical levels. Something must be done before the river water disappears not only from the U.S., but also from Mexico, which in 1944 was also guaranteed a cut of the water from the Colorado River. The seven states in the compact have been unable to reach an agreement about cutting water use.

Today the Interior Department released an environmental review of the situation that offered three possible solutions. One is to continue to follow established water rights, which would prioritize the California farmland that produces food. This would largely shut off water to Phoenix and Los Angeles. Another option is to cut water distribution evenly across Arizona, California, and Nevada. The third option, doing nothing, risks destroying the water supply entirely, as well as cutting the hydropower produced by the Glen Canyon and Hoover dams.

There is a 45-day period for public comment on the plans, and it appears that the threat of the federal government to impose a solution may light a fire under the states to come up with their own agreement, but it is unlikely they will worry much about Mexico’s share of the water. Historically, states have been unable to agree on how to divide a precious resource, and the federal government has had to step in to create a fair agreement.

Meanwhile, back in Tennessee, the fallout from last week’s events continues. Judd Legum has reported in Popular Information that Tennessee House speaker Cameron Sexton, a Republican, doesn’t live in his district as state law requires. And Tennessee investigative reporter Phil Williams of News Channel 5 reports that state representative Paul Sherrell, “who recently suggested bringing back lynching as a form of capital punishment, has been removed from the House Criminal Justice Committee.”

—

Notes:

​​https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3815975-state-legislatures-need-more-young-people-but-most-cant-afford-to-run/

https://fox59.com/indiana-news/indiana-senate-republicans-honor-nra-one-day-after-louisville-mass-shooting/

https://fox59.com/indiana-news/former-pres-trump-former-vp-pence-gov-holcomb-to-speak-at-nra-convention-in-indy/

https://fox59.com/news/national-world/louisville-bank-employee-livestreamed-attack-that-killed-5/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/04/11/republicans-face-reckoning-young-voters-00091453

https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/11/politics/alvin-bragg-lawsuit-jim-jordan-trump/index.html

Adam’s Legal Newsletter

Mifepristone and the rule of law, part II

On April 7, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas issued an order overturning the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. The order will take effect within seven days unless it is stayed or reversed by a higher court. In my prior post…

Read more

2 days ago · 32 likes · 26 comments · Adam Unikowsky

https://www.vox.com/2022/9/23/23357093/colorado-river-drought-cuts

Click to access crcompct.pdf

https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1960/supreme_court_AZ_vs_CA.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/01/31/colorado-river-states-water-cuts-agreement/

https://www.usbr.gov/ColoradoRiverBasin/SEIS.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/04/11/colorado-river-biden-review/

https://www.usbr.gov/lc/phoenix/AZ100/1940/mexican_water_treaty.html

Popular Information

UPDATE: Tennessee Speaker admits his family lives hours away from the district he represents

Yesterday, Popular Information published an article that posed this question: Where does the Tennessee House Speaker actually live? The issue is that Speaker Cameron Sexton (R) represents District 25, which encompasses the community of Crossville, about two hours outside of Nashville. Under the…

Read more

a day ago · 599 likes · 104 comments · Judd Legum

Advertisement

JUSTICE PREVAILS


Heather Cox Richardson

April 10,2023

6 hr ago

“Justin Jones is reentering the chamber at the Tennessee State Legislature to tremendous applause.”

So said an MSNBC commentator today, after the Nashville Metro Council voted to return Democratic state representative Justin J. Jones to the Tennessee General Assembly. Last week, Republicans expelled Jones and his colleague Justin Pearson, who represents parts of Memphis, for breaches of decorum after they joined with protesters to call for gun safety legislation in the wake of a school shooting last week that left six people, including three 9-years-olds, dead. The colleague who protested with them, Gloria Johnson, survived a motion to expel her, too, by a single vote.

The vote to reinstate Jones to the legislature in an interim seat, until a new election can be held, was 36 to 0.

After the vote, Jones led a march of thousands of people—mostly young people, from the look of the video—back to the Tennessee Capitol building where he was sworn back into office on the Capitol steps.

Once sworn back into office, Jones reentered the legislative chamber arm in arm with Representative Johnson. To great applause, he walked through the chamber, fist held high, past Republican representatives who sat silent and pretended not to see him, as the galleries cheered.

The Shelby County Commission will vote on a replacement for Representative Justin J. Pearson on Wednesday. It can, if it chooses, return Pearson to his former seat until a special election can be held.

In a statement yesterday, Chair Mickell Lowery of the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, a Democrat, said, “The protests at the State Capitol by citizens recently impacted by the senseless deaths of three 9-year-old children and three adults entrusted with their care at their school was understandable given the fact that the gun laws in the State of Tennessee are becoming nearly non-existent. It is equally understandable that the leadership of the State House of Representatives felt a strong message had to be sent to those who transgressed the rules.” Lowery went on to say: “However, I believe the expulsion of State Representative Justin Pearson was conducted in a hasty manner without consideration of other corrective action methods.“

Mickell noted that he was one of the more than 68,000 citizens stripped of their state representation by the state legislature and said he was “certain that the leaders in the State Capitol understand the importance of this action on behalf of the affected citizens here in Shelby County, Tennessee, and that we stand ready to work in concert with them to assist with only positive outcomes going forward.”

Yesterday, representatives Jones and Johnson flew from Nashville to Newark, and it happened that Joan Baez, the folk music legend, was on the same airplane. In the Newark airport, Jones asked Baez to sing with him. As Johnson filmed them, together they sang two spiritual-based freedom songs that became anthems in the Civil Rights Era: “Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me ‘Round” and “We Shall Overcome.”

—

Notes:

Nashville Council Sends Rep. Justin Jones Back to Tennessee House

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/10/1169154500/tennessee-rep-justin-jones-unanimously-reappointed-to-house-by-nashville-council

https://www.wkrn.com/news/tennessee-politics/justin-pearson-reinstatement-vote/

Joan Baez Sang Two Songs At The Newark Airport With Rep. Justin Jones Of The Tennessee Three

https://www.wkrn.com/news/tennessee-politics/justin-pearson-reinstatement-vote/

Share

‘The stupidity, it burns’


‘The stupidity, it burns’: Charlie Sykes warns Tennessee expulsions will hurt GOP everywhere

Story by Travis Gettys • Yesterday 6:08 AM

Tennessee Republicans voted to expel two Black lawmakers \– but not a white Democratic woman — for a protest on the statehouse floor, and conservative Charlie Sykes denounced the move as “political malpractice.”

The GOP supermajority expelled Democratic state Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, while an attempt to expel state Rep. Gloria Johnson failed by one vote, and Sykes condemned the partisan stunt as “vindictive retaliation.”

“My problem with this whole story is the stupidity, it burns,” Sykes said. “What were the Republicans in Tennessee hoping to accomplish here? They look horrible. They have made superstars out of the Tennessee three. These are three extraordinarily impressive and eloquent figures that you never would have heard of if it weren’t for this vindictive retaliation by the Republicans, who decided, ‘We have a supermajority and we can do this.'”

He said state legislatures in other Republican-dominated states could be emboldened to undertake similar moves.

“Of course, that’s the same story in Wisconsin, where the Republicans have a supermajority and why they’re quietly talking about, ‘Hey, we could impeach liberal Supreme Court justices if they make rulings we don’t like,'” Sykes said. “Legislators I talked to say, ‘We’re not going to do that, it would be chaotic, futile and stupid.'”

However, former president Donald Trump has been pressuring Republicans to punish his enemies, and that seems to be what the GOP base wants.

“We’ve seen this pattern before, where the base demands this kind of action all you need is one tweet or bleat out of Mar-a-Lago where Donald Trump says, ‘Why aren’t the RINOs in Wisconsin expelling members of the legislature? Why aren’t they impeaching justices?'” Sykes said. “What happens they cave in this story out of Tennessee is extraordinary to me because it is such a case of political malpractice.”

It Is Unfortunate That GOP Members Benefit From the Measures They Want to Cut-For Politics



Heather Cox Richardson

5 hr ago

On Saturday, April 1, the emergency measures Congress put in place to extend medical coverage at the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic expired. This means that states can end Medicaid coverage for people who do not meet the pre-pandemic eligibility requirements, which are based primarily on income. As many as 15 million of the 85 million people covered by Medicaid could lose coverage, although most will be eligible for other coverage either through employers or through the Affordable Care Act. The 383,000 who will fall through the cracks are in the 10 states that have refused to expand Medicaid. 

The pandemic prompted the United States to reverse 40 years of cutbacks to the social safety net. These cuts were prescribed by Republican politicians who argued that concentrating money upward would promote economic growth by enabling private investment in the economy. That “supply side” economic policy, they said, would expand the economy so effectively that everyone would prosper. In 2017, Republicans passed yet another tax cut, primarily for the wealthy and for corporations, to advance this policy.

As the economy fell apart during the coronavirus pandemic, though, it was clear the government must do something to shore up the tattered social safety net, and even Republicans got on board fast. On March 6, 2020, Trump signed the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act, allocating $8.3 billion to fund vaccine research and give money to states and local governments to try to stop the spread of the virus. On March 18, he signed the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, which provided food assistance, sick leave, $1 billion in unemployment insurance, and Covid testing. On the same day, the Federal Housing Administration put moratoriums on foreclosure and eviction for people with government-backed loans.

On March 27, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES), which appropriated $2.3 trillion, including $500 billion for companies, $349 billion for small businesses, $175 billion for hospitals, $150 billion to state and local government, $30.75 billion for schools and universities, individual one-time cash payments, and expanded unemployment benefits.

Trump signed another stimulus package on April 24, 2020, which appropriated another $484 billion. And on December 27, 2020, he signed another $900 billion stimulus and relief package.

When he took office, President Joe Biden promised to rebuild the American middle class. He and the Democratic Congress began to shift the government’s investment from shoring up the social safety net to repairing the economy. On March 19, 2021, he signed the American Rescue Plan into law, putting $1.9 trillion behind economic stimulus and relief proposals.

Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Law, also known as the Bipartisan infrastructure Act, on November 15, 2021, putting $1.2 trillion into so-called hard infrastructure projects: roads and bridges and broadband. 

On August 9, 2022, he signed the CHIPS and Science Act, putting about $280 billion in new funding behind scientific research and the manufacturing of semiconductors. And days later, on August 16, Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Law, putting billions behind addressing climate change and energy security while also raising money to pay for new policies and to reduce the deficit by raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy, funding the Internal Revenue Service to stop cheating, and permitting Medicare to negotiate with pharmaceutical companies over drug prices.

This dramatic investment in the demand side, rather than the supply side, of the economy helped to spark record inflation, compounded by supply chain issues that created shortages and encouraged price gouging. To combat that inflation, the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates. Numbers released Friday show that inflation cooled in February, suggesting that the Federal Reserve is seeing the downward trend it has been hoping for, although there is concern that the sudden decision of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) this weekend to slash production of crude oil might drive the price of oil back up, dragging prices with it. 

That investment in the demand side of the economy also meant that the child poverty rate in the U.S. fell almost 30%, while food insufficiency fell by 26% in households that received the expanded child tax credit. The U.S. economy recovered faster than that of any other G7 nation after the worst of the pandemic. Wages for low-paid workers grew at their fastest rate in 40 years, with real income growing by 9%. MIddle-income workers’ wages grew by only between 2.4% and 3.9% after inflation, but that, too, was the biggest jump in 40 years. Unemployment has fallen to its lowest level since 1969, and a record 10 million people have applied to start small businesses.

This public investment in the economy has attracted billions in private-sector investment—chipmakers have planned almost $200 billion of investments in 17 states—while it has also pressured certain companies to act in the public interest: the three major insulin producers in the U.S., making up 90% of the market, have all capped prices at $35 a month.  

As the economy begins to smooth out, Biden and members of his administration are touting the benefits of investing in the economy “from the bottom up and the middle out.” They have emphasized that they are working to support unions and the rights of consumers, taking on “junk fees,” noncompete agreements, and nondisparagement clauses. After the collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank, the administration has suggested that deregulation of banking institutions went too far, and Biden has continued to push increased support for child care and health care. 

A recent Associated Press–NORC poll shows that while 60% of Americans say the federal government spends too much money, they actually want increased investment in specific programs: 65% want more on education (12% want less); 63% want more on health care (16% want less); 62% want more on Social Security (7% want less); 58% want more spending on Medicare (10% want less); 53% want more on border security (23% want less); and 35% want more spending on the military (29% want less). 

This puts the political parties in an odd spot. A week ago, Biden and members of the administration began barnstorming the country to highlight how their policy of “Investing in America” has been building the economy: “unleashing a manufacturing boom, helping rebuild our infrastructure and bring back supply chains, lowering costs for hardworking families, and creating jobs that don’t require a four-year degree across the country,” as the White House puts it.

Meanwhile,  the Republicans are doubling down on the idea that such investments are a waste of money, and are forcing a fight over the debt ceiling to try to slash the very programs that the administration is celebrating. Ignoring that the 2017 Trump tax cuts and spending under Trump added about 25% to the debt, they are focusing on Biden’s policies and demanding  that the government balance the budget in 10 years without raising taxes and without cutting defense, veterans benefits, Social Security, or Medicare, which would require slashing everything else by an impossible 85%, at least (some estimates say even 100% cuts wouldn’t do it). 

As David Firestone put it today in the New York Times: “Cutting spending…might sound attractive to many voters until you explain what you’re actually cutting and what effect it would have.” Republicans cut taxes and then complain about deficits “but don’t want to discuss how many veterans won’t get care or whose damaged homes won’t get rebuilt or which dangerous products won’t get recalled.” Firestone noted that this disconnect is why the House Republicans cannot come up with a budget. “The details of austerity are unpopular,” Firestone notes, “and it’s easier to just issue fiery news releases.”

—

Notes:

Click to access ERP-2023.pdf

https://www.cnn.com/2023/03/31/economy/pce-inflation-february/index.html

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/medicaid-millions-to-lose-coverage-as-covid-safety-net-dismantled.html

https://www.investopedia.com/government-stimulus-efforts-to-fight-the-covid-19-crisis-4799723

https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/20/politics/biden-laws-passed-priorities-to-get-done-executive-orders/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2021/11/15/politics/biden-signing-ceremony-infrastructure-bill-white-house/index.html

A most unusual recovery: How the US rebound from COVID differs from rest of G7
A Look at the Economic Effects of the Pandemic for Children

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/wages-surged-lowest-paid-americans-pandemic-covid-19/

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/02/03/us-unemployment-hit-a-historic-low-economists-arent-sure-itll-stick.html

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gas-prices-opec-output-cut/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/n7ewy7/non-disparagement-clauses-are-retroactively-voided-nlrbs-top-cop-clarifies

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/sanofi-insulin-price-cap-rcna75346

https://www.washingtonpost.com/us-policy/2023/03/06/biden-industrial-policy-business-government/

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/yellen-says-bank-deregulation-may-have-gone-too-far

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/03/19/biden-fdr-clinton-center-triangulation/

https://apnews.com/article/spending-budget-poll-biden-cd55f1c3859b62a861cdbdc0cd23bd79

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/03/24/president-biden-to-kick-off-investing-in-america-tour-in-north-carolina/

0.https://www.norc.org/About/Departments/Pages/the-associated-press-norc-center-for-public-affairs-research.aspx

Same Fast Shuffle- Bad results


March 30, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

4 hr ago

The New York grand jury investigating Trump’s 2016 hush-money payments to adult film actor Stormy Daniels has voted to indict the former president. While we don’t know the full range of charges, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg’s office confirmed that they were forthcoming tonight when it released a statement saying, “This evening we contacted Mr. Trump’s attorney to coordinate his surrender to the Manhattan D.A.’s office for arraignment on a Supreme Court indictment, which remains under seal.”

This is the first time in history a former United States president has been indicted, although it is worth remembering that it is not new for our justice system to hold elected officials accountable. Mayors have been indicted and convicted. So have governors: in fact, four of the past ten Illinois governors have gone to prison. Vice presidents, too, have been charged with crimes: Aaron Burr was indicted on two counts of murder in 1804 while still in office and was tried for treason afterward. And in 1973, Richard Nixon’s vice president Spiro Agnew resigned after pleading no contest to tax evasion to avoid prison time.

That Trump’s indictment is happening in New York has likely made it harder for Trump to drum up the mobs he has been inciting to defend him. New York City notoriously dislikes the former real estate man. Voters of Tomorrow official Victor Shi was at the Manhattan district attorney’s office this evening and found no one protesting. When people did show up, he tweeted, they were not Trump supporters. They were women carrying signs that said, “‘Trump is guilty’ and ‘The Time Is Now,’” he wrote. “People in the background are chanting, ‘Way to go, ladies!’ NYC is rejoicing.”

New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman, to whom Trump people feel comfortable talking, said that the Trump camp at Mar-a-Lago is “in…shock” at the news. They thought yesterday’s announcement that the grand jury will go on a break in early April indicated that nothing would happen before the jury reconvened. As Haberman points out, Trump has been afraid of indictments for many years, and while some speculate this indictment might help his political profile (I disagree with that, by the way), he is unhappy to see it finally arrive. He did, though, immediately start fundraising off it.

Trump also released quite a long, antisemitic statement blaming “Radical Left Democrats” for a “Witch-Hunt” and saying this is “blatant Election interference.” House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) also quickly reinforced Trump’s argument, saying that Bragg had “irreparably damaged our country in an attempt to interfere in our Presidential election,” and a number of other Republican officials reinforced that sentiment.

That is quite a position to take. The vote to indict came not from Bragg himself, but from a grand jury made up of ordinary Americans, and none of us knows what’s in the indictment, so one can hardly object to it in good faith.

CNN reporter Melanie Zanona reports that Trump has been working the phones tonight, reaching out to Republican allies to shore up support. Some of them, of course, are trying to discredit Bragg’s work by investigating him.

Trump is at his company’s property in Florida, Mar-a-Lago. Florida governor Ron DeSantis echoed Trump’s antisemitism and accusations, tweeting that Florida would “not assist in an extradition request.” But Article IV, Section 2, of the United States Constitution says, “A Person charged in any State with Treason, Felony, or other Crime, who shall flee from Justice, and be found in another State, shall on Demand of the executive Authority of the State from which he fled, be delivered up, to be removed to the State having Jurisdiction of the Crime.”

So either DeSantis is planning to violate the Constitution, or he recognizes that Trump will probably return to New York voluntarily, or—and this is the most likely—he is posturing to pick up Trump voters while secretly rejoicing that this will likely make it harder for Trump to win the Republican presidential nomination. While all eyes were on Trump this evening, paperwork was filed in the Florida Senate to begin the process of revising election laws, possibly so that DeSantis can run for president without resigning as governor, as under current Florida law he must.

But there was something striking about Trump’s statement. In blaming the “Radical Left Democrats” for their “Witch-Hunt to destroy the Make America Great Again movement,” he wrote, “You remember it just like I do: Russia, Russia, Russia; the Mueller Hoax; Ukraine, Ukraine, Ukraine; Impeachment Hoax 1; Impeachment Hoax 2; the illegal and unconstitutional Mar-a-Lago raid; and now this.”

It’s not a list to be proud of, but that wording—“you remember it just like I do”—jumped out. Trump always goes back to what he calls the Russia hoax, his second attempt to rewrite the way people thought about his presidency (the first was the size of the crowd at his inauguration).

From the very start of his presidency, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation caught Trump’s then–national security advisor Michael Flynn lying about his contact with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, more and more information has come out tying the Trump campaign to Russian operatives. As it did, Trump insisted that his followers must believe that all that information was a lie. If they believed his lies rather than the truth over the Russia scandal, they would trust him rather than believe the truth about everything.

The 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine has given a new frame to Russia’s attempts to interfere in the 2016 election. A piece by Jim Rutenberg in the New York Times Magazine in November 2022 pulled together testimony given both to the Mueller investigation and the Republican-dominated Senate Intelligence Committee, transcripts from the impeachment hearings, and recent memoirs. Rutenberg showed that in 2016, Russian operatives had presented to Trump advisor and later campaign manager Paul Manafort a plan “for the creation of an autonomous republic in Ukraine’s east, giving Putin effective control of the country’s industrial heartland, where Kremlin-armed, -funded, and -directed “separatists” were waging a two-year-old shadow war that had left nearly 10,000 dead.”

In exchange for weakening the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), undermining the U.S. stance in favor of Ukraine in its attempt to throw off the Russians who had invaded in 2014, and removing U.S. sanctions from Russian entities, Russian operatives were willing to put their finger on the scale to help Trump win the White House.

Rutenberg notes that Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine looks a lot like a way to achieve the plan it suggested in 2016 but, thanks to a different president in the U.S., that invasion did not yield the results Russian president Vladimir Putin expected. The Russian economy is crumbling, and Tuesday, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Milley told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia’s Wagner group of mercenaries is “suffering an enormous amount of casualties in the Bakhmut area.” He called it a “slaughter-fest” for the Russians. Today, Putin issued an order to conscript another 147,000 soldiers by July 15.

Pressure on Putin continues to mount. The International Criminal Court’s March 17 arrest warrant against him and his children’s rights commissioner, Maria Lvova-Belova, for war crimes apparently caught Russian leadership by surprise. It isolates Russia and worries other Russian lawmakers that they will be charged as well, weakening their support for Putin. “Now proximity to the president isn’t just talk,” one political strategist said, “it’s a real step towards being prosecuted by international law enforcement.”

And President of the European Commission (which is the executive of the European Union) Ursula von der Leyen today warned that as the European Union rethinks its trade policies, China could find itself isolated as well if it continues to support Russia. “How China continues to interact with Putin’s war will be a determining factor for EU-China relations going forward,” she said.

Meanwhile, Turkey today dropped its opposition to Finland’s membership in NATO, a membership Finland has pursued in the wake of Russia’s recent aggression. Finland shares an 830-mile border with Russia, and now it will be part of NATO.

Under such pressure, Russia today took the extraordinary step of detaining American journalist Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal, accusing him of spying. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed deep concern and urged U.S. citizens living or traveling in Russia to “leave immediately.”

Yesterday, another study of the Russian invasion of Ukraine invited us to look backward as well as forward. Britain’s Royal United Services Institute, a government-affiliated think tank, released a report on Russia’s “covert and clandestine operations, psychological operations, subversion, sabotage, special operations and intelligence and counterintelligence activities” designed to destabilize Ukraine and take it over. The report’s focus was on the current war in Ukraine, but as Josh Kovensky of Talking Points Memo notes, it establishes that some of the same people behind the destabilization of Ukrainian politics were part of Trump’s world. Notably, Russian operative Andrii Derkach not only worked to grab Ukraine for Russia, but also escorted Trump ally Rudy Giuliani around Ukraine in 2019 to dig up dirt on Biden.

In the end, as legal dominoes begin to fall, it might be that Americans do not, in fact, remember the history of his presidency from “Russia, Russia, Russia” forward the same way Trump does.

—

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/03/30/trump-ny-indictment/

https://www.kcra.com/article/what-are-grand-jury-indictments/43380155#

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2023/03/30/trump-indictment-manhattan-grand-jury-haberman-reaction-vpx.cnn

https://www.cnn.com/lo europe/live-news/russia-ukraine-war-news-03-30-23/h_7232bfde62d50e029e99d2a389bf8e46

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-30/putin-orders-to-draft-147-000-conscripts-by-july-15-kremlin

4 of Illinois’ past 10 governors went to prison

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trump-falls-under-the-shadow-of-spiro-agnew

https://www.flsenate.gov/Session/Bill/2023/7050/?Tab=BillText

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2023/03/23/like-a-slap-in-the-face

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/31/turkey-formally-approves-finlands-nato-membership.html

https://www.politico.eu/article/eus-ursula-von-der-leyen-xi-jinping-calls-for pop-tougher-policy-on-china-ahead-of-beijing-visit/

Click to access 202303-SR-Unconventional-Operations-Russo-Ukrainian-War-web-final.pdf.pdf

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/prime/the-same-russian-agents-who-meddled-in-us-politics-set-the-stage-for-ukraine-invasion

https://www.wsj.com/articles/russias-economy-is-starting-to-come-undone-431a2878

https://www.state.gov/russias-arrest-of-a-u-s-citizen/

Too much breaking news on Twitter; I’ve gone over my space limit. So, on Twitter: 

SecBlinken/status/1641479253874159635

MZanona/status/1641636032939433985

JoyceWhiteVance/status/1641278615122767875

Victorshi2020/status/1641567835448016896

GovRonDeSantis/status/1641575007552778243

ManhattanDA/status/1641579988360019968

meridithmcgraw/status/1641576453333499906

FLVoiceNews/status/1641597435725094912

Nefarious Deeds In Israel!


March 27, 2023

Heather Cox Richardson

4 hr ago

  • Seven people died today in a school shooting in Nashville. Three of them were nine-year-olds. Three were staffers. One was the shooter. In the aftermath of the shooting, President Joe Biden once again urged Congress to pass a ban on assault weapons, to which today’s Republican lawmakers will never agree because gun ownership has become a key element of social identity for their supporters, who resent the idea that the legal system could regulate their ownership of firearms.

In the wake of the shooting, Representative Andrew Ogles (R-TN), who represents Nashville thanks to redistricting by the Republican legislature that cut up a Democratic district, said he was “utterly heartbroken” by the shooting and offered “thoughts and prayers to the families of those lost.” 

In 2021, Ogles, his wife, and two of his three children held guns as they posed for a Christmas card with a caption that read: “The very atmosphere of firearms anywhere and everywhere restrains evil interference—they deserve a place of honor with all that’s good.”

Meanwhile, protests continue in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to hamstring his country’s Supreme Court and put the legislature in charge of judicial review has sparked fierce opposition. 

Netanyahu regained power last November while he was facing criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust, and bribery. His far-right coalition put together a government and elevated two critics of the Israeli judiciary, who promptly put forward a plan of “legal reforms.” 

According to Amichai Cohen and Yuval Shany in Lawfare, supporters of those changes claim that unelected judges who are part of a “liberal deep state” have too much power, often using it to pursue criminal proceedings against senior politicians, prohibit Israeli settlements on Palestinian land in the West Bank, or to refuse religious exemptions from military service for ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students.  

On January 4, 2023, Netanyahu’s minister of justice Yariv Levin proposed an overhaul of the judicial system that would put Netanyahu’s slim majority—just 64 seats in the 120-member Knesset—in complete control of the country’s laws, enabling the far-right majority to avoid any checks on its power (as well as enabling Netanyahu to evade the criminal trials he faces). 

But Netanyahu did not campaign on remaking the judiciary; it is the far-right members of his coalition who have made it their signature issue. Protests against the measures began almost immediately as alarmed Israelis realized the move would destroy their democracy.

The protests continued until this Saturday, when Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant warned that the massive backlash against the judicial overhaul, including more and more military members who are boycotting their training missions, threatened the nation’s military readiness. He called for a halt to the attempt to force through the changes. Two members of the coalition backed Gallant and one appeared to be wavering, thus threatening Netanyahu’s majority. The next day, Netanyahu fired Gallant.

The firing sparked massive demonstrations and widespread strikes. At first, the far-right members of Netanyahu’s coalition refused to stop their plans to overhaul the judiciary and called for their supporters to turn out to oppose the protesters, but Netanyahu apparently cut a deal with them. He has announced that the judicial reforms will be postponed while the two sides look for a compromise, and that he has agreed to the formation of a civil “national guard” the right will control. While Bethan McKernan of The Guardian called this move an empty gesture, Zach Beauchamp of Vox noted that the new paramilitary unit will be under the control of the extremist minister of national security, Itamar Ben-Gvir, who in 2008 was convicted of supporting a terrorist organization and who used to keep a photograph of a mass murderer in his living room. 

Still, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo notes, the halt is “pretty transparently a stalling tactic,” launched in the hope that the protests will die down and the package can go forward later, although, as Marshall points out, polls show that the so-called reforms are very unpopular. 

The crisis in Israel threatens the country’s relationship with the United States. During the Trump administration, Netanyahu cozied up to Trump and his Republican allies, and Israel’s continued rightward shift has alarmed foreign observers. In early March, Israel’s finance minister Bezalel Smotrich called for the state to “erase” a Palestinian town, and he has called himself a “proud homophobe” and a “fascist.” In Israel, Netanyahu’s son tweeted that the U.S. State Department is behind the protests, hoping to overthrow Netanyahu, a sentiment to which Netanyahu himself has nodded.

When Smotrich visited Washington, D.C., earlier this month, White House officials declined to meet with him, and more than ninety Democratic lawmakers wrote to Biden asking him to use “all diplomatic tools available to prevent Israel’s current government from further damaging the nation’s democratic institutions and undermining the potential for two states for two peoples.” According to Josh Lederman of NBC News, more than 300 rabbis last year said that members of Netanyahu’s coalition were not welcome to speak at their synagogues. 

The threats to the Israeli judiciary threaten the nation’s economy, as billionaire and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg pointed out in a New York Times op-ed earlier this month. “Companies and investors place enormous value on strong and independent judicial systems because courts help protect them — not only against crime and corruption but also government overreach. Just as important, they protect what their employees value most: individual rights and freedoms,” he wrote. 

In case anyone missed the obvious comparison between what is happening in Israel and what might transpire in the U.S., Bloomberg continued: “In the United States, our founding fathers’ insistence on checks and balances to control the tyrannical tendencies of majorities was part of their genius. Our Constitution is not perfect—no law is—but its many checks and balances have been essential to protecting and advancing fundamental rights and maintaining national stability. It was only through those safeguards that the United States has managed to withstand extreme shocks to our democracy in recent years—including a disgraceful attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power—without a catastrophic fracturing.”

—

Notes:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/03/27/tennessee-congressman-mass-shooting-school/

Ali Velshi @AliVelshi

Americans should watch developments in Israel, in which a sitting prime minister, facing criminal charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery, was returned to office, and is now attempting to pass laws that would, among other things, limit the ways in which he can be declared… https://t.co/YQ62Kh1Sm11:22 PM ∙ Mar 27, 202330,221Likes8,984Retweets

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/israel-crisis-palestinian-violence-judiciary-protests-biden-support-rcna73504

https://www.dw.com/en/benjamin-netanyahu-wins-majority-in-israeli-election/a-63643822

Israel’s majoritarian nightmare should be a US concern

https://www.lawfareblog.com/new-israeli-governments-constitutional-law-reforms-why-now-what-do-they-mean-and-what-will-happen

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/25/israel-defense-minister-yoav-gallant-netanyahu/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/03/26/israel-judicial-reform-netanyahu-protests/

https://www.npr.org/2023/03/26/1166134644/benjamin-netanyahu-fires-defense-minister-yoav-gallant

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-65083776

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/more-observations-on-the-unfolding-crisis-in-israel

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-03-13/ty-article/.premium/smotrich-heads-to-paris-after-chilly-u-s-trip-but-not-at-frances-invitation/00000186-da57-d9b0-a3af-db7f4bf60000

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/ben-gvir-responds-to-bennett-fine-ill-take-down-baruch-goldsteins-picture/

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/mar/27/israel-netanyahu-judiciary-plans-halt

https://www.vox.com/2023/3/27/23658430/israel-protests-netanyahu-judicial-overhaul-general-strike-democracy

https://www.timesofisrael.com/gallant-calls-to-pause-judicial-overhaul-citing-tangible-danger-to-state-security/

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2023-02-19/ty-article/.premium/ben-gvir-to-head-team-that-will-fight-terror-incitement-by-palestinians/00000186-6a21-dba0-a5c6-7a7dec6a0000

Drezner’s World

Israel is Going Through It Right Now.

The hard-working staff here at Drezner’s World has been reluctant to write about developments in Israel for quite a long time. That was particularly true after Benjamin Netanyahu’s far-right coalition won last November’s election. Netanyahu’s cabinet elevated some…

Read more

a day ago · 28 likes · 2 comments · Daniel W. Drezner

GOP-Still Crazy After All These Years?


Heather Cox Richardson

March 24, 2023

A follow-up to last night’s examination of the confusion among the Republicans about their budget plans: today when a reporter said to House speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) that the chair of the House Budget Committee, Jodey Arrington (R-TX), had said that he and McCarthy were finalizing a list of proposals to give to President Biden about spending cuts, McCarthy answered: “I don’t know what he’s talking about.”

Noise also continues from former president Donald Trump, who early this morning posted on social media that his indictment could lead to “potential death & destruction”; hours later, Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg received a death threat in an envelope with white powder in it. For three days this week, Russian accounts have emailed bomb threats to the court buildings where the grand jury is meeting.  

Tomorrow, Trump will hold a rally in Waco, Texas, where a 1993 government siege to extricate the leader of a religious cult who witnesses said was stockpiling weapons led to a gun battle and a fire that left seventy-six people dead.  

Although a Republican investigation cited “overwhelming evidence” that exonerated the government of wrongdoing, right-wing talk radio hosts jumped on the events at Waco to attack the administration of Democratic president Bill Clinton. Rush Limbaugh stoked his listeners’ anger with talk of the government’s “murder” of citizens, and Alex Jones dropped out of community college to start a talk show on which he warned that the government had “murdered” the people at Waco and was about to impose martial law.

After the Waco siege the modern militia movement took off, and Trump is clearly using the anniversary to tap into domestic violence against the government to defend him in advance of possible indictments.

But will it work? His supporters turned out on January 6, 2021, when he was president and had the power—they thought—to command the army to back him. In the end, that didn’t happen. Since then, Trump’s foot soldiers have been going to prison while he dines at Mar-a-Lago and rails about how unfairly he has been treated.

Trump is also in more trouble today, as Judge Beryl Howell ruled last week that Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, former director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe, former top Department of Homeland Security official Ken Cuccinelli, former national security advisor Robert O’Brien, former top aide Stephen Miller, former deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan Scavino, and former Trump aides Nick Luna and John McEntee all have to testify before the federal grand jury investigating Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. 

Special counsel Jack Smith had subpoenaed these members of the Trump administration, and Trump had tried to stop their testimony by claiming it was covered by executive privilege. Howell rejected that claim. In the past, she rejected a similar claim by arguing that only the current president has the right to claim executive privilege and Biden had declined to do so. Meadows is the key witness to Trump’s involvement in the events of January 6.

Also today, Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer signed a repeal of so-called right-to-work legislation passed in 2012 by a Republican-controlled legislature, whose members pushed it through in a lame-duck session without hearings.  

That legislation had a long history. U.S. employers had opposed workers’ unions since the organization of the National Labor Union in 1866, but the rise of international communism in the early twentieth century provoked a new level of violence against organized workers. In 1935, as part of the New Deal, Democrats passed the National Labor Relations Act, popularly known as the Wagner Act, and President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed it into law. 

The Wagner Act confirmed workers’ right to organize and to bargain with employers collectively (although to appease southern Democrats, it exempted domestic and agricultural workers, who in the South were mostly Black). It also defined unfair labor practices and established a new National Labor Relations Board that could issue cease and desist orders if workers testified that employers were engaging in them. 

The Wagner Act gave workers a unified voice in American politics and leveled the playing field between them and employers. But while most Americans of both parties liked the Wagner Act, right-wing Republicans hated it because it put large sums of money into the hands of labor officials, who used the money to influence politics. And organized workers had backed Democrats since the 1860s.

So, in 1947, a Republican-led Congress pushed back against the Wagner Act. The previous year, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had launched “Operation Dixie” to organize Black workers, which seemed a threat to segregation as well as white employers. Together, business Republicans and segregationist Democrats passed the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, better known as the Taft-Hartley Act. Ohio Senator Robert Taft (who was the son of President William Howard Taft) claimed that the Taft-Hartley Act would simply equalize power between workers and employers after the “completely one-sided” Wagner Act gave all the power to labor leaders. 

The Taft-Hartley Act limited the ways in which workers could organize; it also went after unions’ money. Although the Wagner Act had established that if a majority of a company’s workers voted to join a union, that union would represent all the workers in the company, it didn’t require all the workers to join that union. That presented a problem: if workers were going to get the benefits of union representation without joining, why should they bother to pay dues? 

So labor leaders began to require that everyone employed in a unionized company must pay into the union to cover the cost of bargaining, whether or not they joined the union.

The Taft-Hartley Act undermined this workaround by permitting states to get rid of the requirement that employees who didn’t join a union that represented them must pay fees to the union. 

Immediately, states began to pass so-called right-to-work laws. Their supporters argued that every man should have the right to bargain for his work on whatever terms he wanted, without oversight by a union. But lawmakers like Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ), who pushed a right-to-work law in his own state, were clear that they were intent on breaking the power of organized workers. He was determined to destroy the political power of unions because, he said, their leaders were stealing American freedom. They were, he said, “more dangerous than Soviet Russia.” 

Michigan had been known as a pro-union state, but in 2012, Republicans there pushed through two right-to-work laws over waves of protest. Repealing the laws has been a priority for Democrats, and now that they are in control of state government, they have made it happen.  

Joey Cappelletti of the Associated Press notes that twenty-six states currently have right to work laws, and although Missouri voters overwhelmingly rejected a right-to-work law in 2017, it has been 58 years since a state repealed one. Indiana voters repealed theirs in 1965; Republicans put it back into place in 2012.  

Republicans say that since the neighboring states of Indiana and Wisconsin have right-to-work laws—although there were huge protests when those laws went into place in 2012 and 2015—Michigan’s repeal of right to work will make that state less attractive to employers. 

But after signing the law today, Governor Whitmer embraced a different vision for the state, saying: “Today, we are coming together to restore workers’ rights, protect Michiganders on the job, and grow Michigan’s middle class.”

—

Notes:

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/whitmer-signs-repeal-of-right-to-work-bill-as-michigan-rolls-back-union-restricting-law

Acyn @Acyn

Reporter: Arrington said you were finalizing a list of proposals to give to Biden about spending cuts McCarthy: I don’t know what he’s talking about

3:45 PM ∙ Mar 24, 2023

481Likes104Retweets

Trump warns of ‘potential death and destruction’ if he’s indicted

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/03/24/death-threat-to-manhattan-da-bragg-after-trump-warning.html

https://abcnews.go.com/US/meadows-top-trump-aides-ordered-testify-jan-6/story?id=98101813

https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/national-labor-relations-act#transcript

https://hotelworkers.org/article/michigan-becomes-a-so-called-right-to-work-state

https://www.law360.com/articles/1589920

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2012/12/11/166946294/michigan-lawmakers-poised-to-pass-right-to-work-bill-outraging-union-protesters

https://www.fox2detroit.com/news/michigans-right-to-work-law-could-be-overturned-by-states-democrat-leadership

https://www.mlive.com/news/2012/12/gov_snyder_signs_right-to-work.html

The Orange Bully



Heather Cox Richardson 03/18/2023

7 hr ago

Rumors that he is about to be indicted in New York in connection with the $130,000 hush-money payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels have prompted former president Donald Trump to pepper his alternative social media site with requests for money and to double down on the idea that any attack on him is an attack on the United States.

The picture of America in his posts reflects the extreme version of the virtual reality the Republicans have created since the 1980s. The United States is “THIRD WORLD & DYING,” he wrote. “THE AMERICAN DREAM IS DEAD.” He went on to describe a country held captive by “CRIMINALS & LEFTIST THUGS,” in which immigrants are “FLOODING THROUGH OUR OPEN BOARDERS [sic], MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS,” and where the president is “SURROUNDED BY EVIL & SINISTER PEOPLE.” He told his supporters to “SAVE AMERICA” by protesting the arrest he—but no one else—says is coming on Tuesday.

Trump’s false and dystopian portrait of the nation takes to its logical conclusion the narrative Republicans have pushed since the 1980s. Since the days of Reagan, Republicans have argued that people who believe that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, protect civil rights, and promote infrastructure are destroying the country by trying to redistribute wealth from hardworking white Americans to undeserving minorities and women. Now Trump has taken that argument to its logical conclusion: the country has been destroyed by women, Black Americans, Indigenous people, and people of color, who have taken it over and are persecuting people like him.

This old Republican narrative created a false image of the nation and of its politics, an image pushed to a generation of Americans by right-wing media, a vision that MAGA Republicans have now absorbed as part of their identity. It reflects a manipulation of politics that Russian political theorists called “political technology.”

Russian “political technologists” developed a series of techniques to pervert democracy by creating a virtual political reality through modern media. They blackmailed opponents, abused state power to help favored candidates, sponsored “double” candidates with names similar to those of opponents in order to split their voters and thus open the way for their own candidates, created false parties to create opposition, and, finally, created a false narrative around an election or other event that enabled them to control public debate.

Essentially, they perverted democracy, turning it from the concept of voters choosing their leaders into the concept of voters rubber-stamping the leaders they had been manipulated into backing.

This system made sense in former Soviet republics, where it enabled leaders to avoid the censorship that voters would recoil from by instead creating a firehose of news until people became overwhelmed by the task of trying to figure out what was real and simply tuned out.

But it also fit nicely into American politics, where there is a long history of manipulating voters far beyond the usual political spin. As far back as 1972, Nixon’s operatives engaged in what they called “ratf*cking,” dirty tricks that amounted to political sabotage of their opponents. The different elements of that system became a fundamental part of Republican operations in the 1990s, especially the use of a false narrative spread through talk radio and right-wing television.

More recently, we have seen blackmail (former representative Madison Cawthorn [R-NC] blamed his own party for the release of compromising photos); the use of state power to help candidates (through investigations, for example); double candidates (a Florida Republican won a seat in the state legislature in 2020 after a sham candidate with the same name as the Democratic candidate siphoned voters); and the deliberate creation of a false political reality.

Indeed, David Klepper at AP News reported just yesterday that Russian social media accounts are up to their old tricks in the U.S., pushing the idea that federal authorities have been lying about the true impact of the East Palestine, Ohio, train derailment because they want to divert U.S. money from problems at home to Ukraine. “Biden offers food, water, medicine, shelter, payouts of pension and social services to Ukraine! Ohio first! Offer and deliver to Ohio!” one of those accounts posted.

So the United States has had its own version of political technology that overlaps with the Russian version, and it has led to the grim picture Trump is portraying in his attempt to rile up his supporters to protect him.

But here’s what I wonder: What happens when people who have embraced a virtual world begin to figure out it’s fake?

Russians are having to come to grips with their failing economy, world isolation, and rising death rates as President Vladimir Putin throws Russian soldiers into the maw of battle without training or equipment. Now they have to deal with the fact that the International Criminal Court has indicted their president for war crimes. Will they rally around their leader, slide away, or turn against him?

In the United States, MAGA Republicans have been faced with evidence released in the Dominion Voting Systems defamation case against the Fox News Corporation that shows Fox News Channel personalities lied to them. Now those who have cleaved to Trump have to face that he is asking them to risk their freedom to oppose his arrest for paying $130,000 to an adult film actress to keep quiet about their sexual encounter, hardly a noble cause. And the last time he asked people to defend him, more than 1,000 of them—so far—faced arrest and conviction, while he went back to playing golf and asking people for money.

Tonight, Erica Orden of Politico reported that Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg emailed his employees to say “we do not tolerate attempts to intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York.” He told them: “Our law enforcement partners will ensure that any specific or credible threats against the office will be fully investigated and that the proper safeguards are in place so all 1,600 of us have a secure work environment.” He also noted, without mentioning specific cases, that his office has been coordinating with the New York Police Department and with the New York court system during certain ongoing investigations.

Some of Trump’s radical supporters have taken to social media to make a plan for surrounding Mar-a-Lago and protecting Trump with firearms, but others appear to be more eager for someone else to show up than to do so themselves.

Ali Alexander, who helped to organize “Stop the Steal” rallies to try to overturn the 2020 presidential election, wrote to his supporters today: “Previously, I had said if Trump was arrested or under the threat of a perp walk, 100,000 patriots should shut down all routes to Mar-a-Lago…. Now I’m retired. I’ll pray for him though!”

—

Notes:

I’m not going to link to Trump’s Truth Social postings. But that’s where they are if you want to seek them out. 

https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a25090/donald-segretti-ratfking-100413/

https://apnews.com/article/florida-5343b101e96d5c7f42d1ee54da7cc0ce

https://apnews.com/article/trump-arrested-indicted-hush-money-manhattan-prosecutor-a48428984cf99d23f46b4157b34160ae

https://apnews.com/article/ohio-train-derailment-russia-disinformation-twitter-musk-49af27699727d6f4157a5d6d5f35819b

Adam Kinzinger #fella @AdamKinzinger

Whether this ends up violent or not, these were the type of comments i was seeing pre Jan 6

LeGate🤠 @williamlegate

Trump’s radical supporters are planning on surrounding Mar-a-Lago and using rifles to shoot law enforcement on scene to arrest Trump https://t.co/A8DBJ2B53I12:04 AM ∙ Mar 19, 20235,592Likes1,292Retweets

https://www.wilsoncenter.org/publication/virtual-politics-and-the-corruption-post-soviet-democracy

Gleb Pavlovsky

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/03/18/manhattan-da-bragg-privately-warns-on-intimidation-threats-to-rule-of-law-00087745

FOR REAL????



Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s ‘Washing Machine’ Claim Sparks Avalanche of Jokes

Story by Ewan Palmer • 1h ago

Republican Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn has been mocked online over a video in which she attacked the Biden administration’s proposal to make washing machines more efficient.

U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-WV) questions Peiter “Mudge” Zatko, former head of security at Twitter, during a Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on data security at Twitter, on Capitol Hill, September 13, 2022 in Washington, DC.© Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

On Wednesday, Blackburn uploaded a video on Twitter speaking out against the Department of Energy’s plans to ensure new washing machines use less water to help battle against climate change.

The DoE has said that changes to appliances such as clothes washers and refrigerators could save American consumers $3.5 billion per year on their energy and water bills.

Manufacturers have said that the changes would mean each cycle will take longer, the detergent will cost more, and clothes would be less clean, reported The Washington Free Beacon.

However, others have suggested the outrage is manufactured, including Blackburn’s claim that people will not be able to use the washing machine they have. Critics say it is misleading, like the previous Republican claim that the Biden administration was coming for people’s gas stoves.

“I think if you like your washing machine, you should be able to keep your washing machine,” Blackburn said. “Now we are hearing the Biden administration are wanting to make washing machines less efficient, use a different detergent that’s new, gonna cost you more, and your clothes won’t be as clean.”

In response, a number of Twitter users have criticized Blackburn for attacking the appliance-efficiency proposals.

“Democrats want to take away your laundry soap so that you’ll be stinky and then they can call you stinky. Sign my bill,” wrote Twitter user @possessher.

Social-media user @Woofkoof posted in reply to Blackburn’s tweet: “Yes, Marsha! The washing machine confiscation squad and clean clothes prohibition laws have been keeping me awake too, Marsha.”

Another Twitter user mockingly wrote that Blackburn is “stuck on the spin cycle” over her washing-machine comments.

Others questioned why Blackburn is trying to drum up anger about washing-machine efficiency rather than focus on other issues.

“This Senator of the United States of America has nothing better to do than to attack POTUS about the efficiency of washing machines,” one Twitter user wrote. “‘The World’s Greatest Deliberative Body’ is being disgraced and demeaned. Is this the America you want to live in? America First? Humiliating.

Twitter user @estein101 added: “Marsha, good to see you’re on the important stuff that really matters to Americans right now.”

Travis Fisher is a senior research fellow at Heritage Foundation’s Center for Energy, Climate, and Environment. He queried whether the DoE’s plans to raise the efficiency standard would help the average American have money on their bills if they need to put more cycles on because of it.

“When you’re squeezing all you can out of efficiency in terms of electricity use and water … you by definition either make the appliance worse or slower,” Fisher told the Free Beacon. “Why are we so focused on the energy output, as opposed to if it’s helping me wash my clothes?

“That standard has kind of gone off the rails,” Fisher added.

A DoE spokesperson has dismissed the criticism that its proposals have received.

“Despite misleading claims to the contrary, these proposals are intended for nothing more than promoting innovation and keeping money in the pockets of Americans everywhere without sacrificing the reliability and performance that consumers expect and rely on,” a DoE spokesperson told Fox News Digital.

“As evidenced in the Department’s testing and analysis, the proposed standards would not reduce product performance or negatively impact cleaning ability or cycle time.”

Newsweek has emailed Blackburn for comment.

OUT OF TOUCH?


Minnesota Republican votes against free school meals bill because ‘I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry’

Joshua Zitser 

Mar 15, 2023, 6:00 AM

Minnesota State Senator Steve Drazkowski speaks on the floor of the Minnesota State Capitol in St Paul on March 14, 2023. Minnesota State media Services

Sen. Steve Drazkowski made the remarks on the floor of the Minnesota State Capitol on Tuesday before voting on HF 5, which would provide free school lunch and breakfast for students in the state.

“I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that is hungry,” said Drazkowski. “I have yet to meet a person in Minnesota that says they don’t have access to enough food to eat.”

The bill passed despite his opposition, and is now headed to the state’s governor to be signed into law.

According to Feeding America, a national hunger relief nonprofit, around 340,000 Minnesotans are facing hunger, just under a third of them children. 

More than 13% of children in Minnesota live in “food insecure” homes, per the anti-childhood-hunger campaign No Kid Hungry.

Drazkowsksi said in his floor speech that hunger is “relative,” complaining that it was not well-defined in the bill.

“I had a cereal bar for breakfast,” he said. “I guess I’m hungry now.”

Drazkowski also described the bill as “pure socialism,” arguing that state money should instead be going toward reading, writing, and arithmetic in Minnesota.

Though Drazkowski voted against the bill, it passed 38-26 in the Senate. Four Republicans joined the Democratic majority in voting for it.

A video of Drazkowski’s remarks was shared widely on social media, with the Democrat author of the bill highlighting that there is indeed hunger in Drazkowski’s district.

Drazkowski represents District 20 in the southeast of the state.

“1 in 5 students in Sen. Drazkowski’s district qualifies for free and reduced lunch,” said Sen. Heather Gustafson in a tweet.

Colleen Moriarty, the executive director of nonprofit Hunger Solutions Minnesota, told The Washington Post that Drazkowski’s “eyes may not be open” if he’s not met somebody in the state who is hungry. 

There were 5.5 million visits to Minnesotan food pantries in 2022, a record high, according to the nonprofit. Visits increased in 2022 on the year before across all age groups, with the total number of visits by under-18s increasing by more than 50%, per the nonprofit’s data.

%d bloggers like this: