Good Morning!!
The employee said he’d heard about the incident multiple times as far back as February 2021 from other agents, including some who were part of the presidential protective detail during that time period but none of whom were involved in the incident.The Justice Department has subpoenaed two Republican Arizona state senators for information tied to possible correspondence with President Donald Trump’s attorneys as attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were underway.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Sen. Kelly Townsend received subpoenas last week, according to Kim Quintero, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans in Arizona. The subpoenas came as the Justice Department deepened its investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to include key Republican players in battleground states. Fann and Townsend are the first state legislators known to have received subpoenas as part of that push.
The Yellow Sheet Report, a political tip sheet, first reported the news. The legislators received the subpoenas while at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. Federal agents tried to deliver Townsend’s at her home, she said; she invited them to the statehouse, where she was working.
The subpoenas came the same week Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R) testified before the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bowers testified about efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the former president’s loss in Arizona.
Bowers told The Washington Post on Friday that he has not been subpoenaed and that he is not aware of any members of the Arizona House who have been subpoenaed.
Fann and Townsend are complying with the request, Quintero said, and staff members have already identified tens of thousands of records from constituents and others that could fit what is being broadly requested. The subpoenas are identical and request emails and text messages, Quintero said.
“They’re requesting text messages and emails from a list of people, which I can’t disclose who those people are, because they told us not to speak with the media about this,” she said.
Fallout from SCOTUS Overturning Roe v. Wade
The Cincinnati Enquirer: As Ohio restricts abortions, 10-year-old girl travels to Indiana for procedure.
On Monday three days after the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, took a call from a colleague, a child abuse doctor in Ohio.
Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.
Could Bernard help?
Indiana lawmakers are poised to further restrict or ban abortion in mere weeks. The Indiana General Assembly will convene in a special session July 25 when it will discuss restrictio ns to abortion policy along with inflation relief.
But for now, the procedure still is legal in Indiana. And so the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care.
While Indiana law did not change last week when the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking Dobbs decision, abortion providers here have felt an effect, experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of patients coming to their clinics from neighboring states with more restrictive policies.
Click the link to read the rest.
Elizabeth Dias at The New York Times: Inside the Extreme Effort to Punish Women for Abortion.
Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, a man with a wiry, squared-off beard and a metal cross around his neck celebrated with his team at a Brazilian steakhouse. He pulled out his phone to livestream to his followers.
“We have delivered a huge blow to the enemy and to this industry,” the man, Jeff Durbin, said. But, he explained, “our work has just really begun.”
“Even the states that have trigger laws,” which ban abortion at conception without exceptions for rape or incest, did not go far enough, Mr. Durbin, a pastor in the greater Phoenix area, said. “They do not believe that the woman should ever be punished.”
Resistance to “the question of whether or not people who murder their children in the wombs are guilty,” he said, “is going to have to be something we have to overcome, because women are still going to be killing their children in the womb.”
Even as those in the anti-abortion movement celebrate their nation-changing Supreme Court victory, there are divisions over where to go next. The most extreme, like Mr. Durbin, want to pursue what they call “abortion abolition,” a move to criminalize abortion from conception as homicide, and hold women who have the procedure responsible — a position that in some states could make those women eligible for the death penalty. That position is at odds with the anti-abortion mainstream, which opposes criminalizing women and focuses on prosecuting providers.
Many people who oppose abortion believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. Abolitionists follow that thinking to what they believe is the logical, and uncompromising, conclusion: From the moment of conception, abolitionists want to give the fetus equal protection as a person under the 14th Amendment.
No equal rights for the pregnant woman though–she’s just a broodmare now.
State legislatures have already introduced or enacted laws in a number of GOP-controlled states that voting rights groups say make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Experts say if the Supreme Court adopts the independent legislature theory, it would give state lawmakers ultimate control over election-related decisions like redistricting, as well as issues such as
peej
Carissa
ecocatwoman
grayslady
mablue2
JJ Lopez aka Minkoff Minx
peggysue22
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Have a nice long weekend!!
That looks like Kristal on top! It’s a Van calico!!!
I would NOT trust McConnell.
I don’t believe this is just about prosecuting abortion providers. For example, if a woman is shown to have had an abortion, could this be a factor in custody battles? Where is the statute of limitations on the trigger laws? With the loss of the right to privacy, if you had an abortion in one state and moved to an anti abortion state could you be prosecuted? What is the position on retroactivity?
Yeah, and what about tax deductions for this young “person”? Or, for that matter, what about if you’re having IVF? It’s no longer legal to not to implant excess embryos. So if you implant, say, nine, you take nine deductions that year, plus whatever actual kids you already have, right?
Of course, most of them, probably all of them, won’t survive. Except for the stunning wear and tear of a pregnancy like that, this would be a whole new way to, for instance, cancel out capital gains that year. Cool.
Can’t you just see it? Head Mofo Of The Family: “Honey, time to go to Dr. Strange for IVF. Get on with it. We need to get this done by March or it won’t count for April 15th.”
uh uh, though I heard from a tax consultant that “preborns” aren’t a tax deduction, yet.
I know. I’m wondering how big the explosion of their heads is going to be when they realize that there are financial consequences to this personhood bullshit.
Of course, in the real world it’s not so funny. (“Funny”) They have no problem with 100% inconsistency. They’ll just declare it a person for the purposes of making women broodmares, but not a person when it costs them money.
If “life” begins at conception — well, first of all, ova and sperm are alive before they get together for conception. So menstruating women literally “kill” a life monthly, and men “kill” zillions of lives monthly (I’m guessing).
Dictionary definition, but only #2 is the medical definition:
Oftentimes the blastocyst doesn’t implant into the endometrium. Also, up to 50% of fertilizations and conceptions end in spontaneous abortions (miscarriages in lay language). If early, this may be only a heavier-than-usual menses.
It’s going to be really hard to figure out the tax deductions for all the lives involved.
That poor cat, having to live with Oz.
Hope everyone has a safe and pleasant holiday weekend!
I’m consoling myself with the thought of Dump, in the back seat fuming with his jaw squared off – mouth open, while the Secret Service drives him BACK TO THE WHITE HOUSE. HAHAHAHAHA. What a jerk amirite?
I get a lot of hollow laughter out of the image of that bargain basement Mussolini unable to fulfill his Best TV Role Evah because he’s too much of a shambling lump of triglycerides to walk fifty feet.
Indeed. Didn’t even enter his tiny brain that he could walk there.
I feel violated.
I feel the same way! (I grew up there, and I still feel like it’s ‘my town.’) How dare they!
Me too. So much of the news is awful. I dread what might happen in the next few years. I want to see if the “both parties are the same,” Berniebrats, iGen and GenZ actually vote this November.
BB, I love the beach kitties!