Cat Cary Grant in North by Northwest, by Susan Herbert, British artist
Good Afternoon!!
Yesterday, Trump’s former White House counsel Pat Cipollone, met behind closed doors with the House January 6 Committee for more than 8 hours. Naturally reporters are trying to find out what he had to say. Here’s what we know so far, mostly based on an interview on CNN with Rep. Zoe Lofgren.
Cipollone, who panel vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has repeatedly described as a critical witness, joined the committee for a videotaped and transcribed closed-door interview around 8:45 a.m. ET, and left shortly before 5:30 p.m., taking numerous breaks with his attorneys throughout the day. He was in the deposition room for about seven-and-a-half hours.
“He’s been a cooperative witness within the parameters of his desire to protect executive privilege for the office of general counsel,” a sourcefamiliar with the first part of his testimony said earlier Friday.
After the interview, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, told CNN it was “a grueling day for all involved” but “well worth it.” The California Democrat said Cipollone “did answer a whole variety of questions” and “did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses.”
“I think we did learn a few things, which we will be rolling out in hearings to come,” Lofgren said.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), a member of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, on Friday said former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone did not contradict the testimony of previous witnesses when he met with the panel Friday.
Cat James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause, by Susan Herbert
The meeting took place behind closed doors and came after explosive public testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, that placed Cipollone as a central player in the behind-the-scenes drama at the White House on Jan. 6.
“Mr. Cipollone did appear voluntarily and answer a whole variety of questions. He did not contradict the testimony of other witnesses. And I think we did learn a few things, which we will be rolling out in the hearings to come,” Lofgren told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer….
Blizter asked if people could be assume that Cipollone confirmed the testimony offered by Hutchinson.
“Not contradicting is not the same as confirming,” Lofgren said.
“He could say so and so was wrong, which he did not say. There were things that he might not be present for, or, in some cases, couldn’t recall with precision. My sense was that he, as I say, he did appear voluntarily. I think he was candid with the committee. He was careful in his answers, and I believe that he was honest in his answers,” she said.
Two people familiar with former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone’s testimony Friday told CNN that the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, did not ask him if he told then-White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson the day of the attack that they would “get charged with every crime imaginable” if they went to the US Capitol.
If asked, he would not have confirmed that particular statement, the sources said.
A separate source familiar with the committee told CNN, “The select committee sought information about Cipollone’s views on Trump going to the Capitol on January 6,” implying that the committee’s questions were focused on Cipollone’s perspective as opposed to his take on other witness’ testimony.
“Mr. Cipollone provided a great deal of new information relevant to the select committee’s investigation, which further underscores President Trump’s supreme dereliction of duty,” the source said. “The committee will show much of this to the American people in the days ahead.”
The source also added that no one has refuted any of Hutchinson’s testimony under oath.
Cat Julie Andrews in Sound of Music, by Susan Herbert
Three different sources familiar with Cipollone’s testimony characterized it as very important and extremely helpful and told CNN it will become evident in upcoming public committee hearings.
Cipollone told the committee on Friday that he wasn’t giving legal advice to staff regarding movements on January 6. This came up during his testimony as part of a question not relating to the specific anecdote from Hutchinson.
It is unclear if Cipollone corroborated other parts of Hutchinson’s testimony, such as telling former chief of staff Mark Meadows he would have blood on his hands if he didn’t help stop the riot.
Both Hutchinson and Cipollone testified under oath.
I heard yesterday that the committee is considering hold more hearings in August.
Appearing on MSNBC with host Ali Velshi early Saturday morning, the Democrat’s chief counsel during Donald Trump’s first impeachment trial claimed the 8-hour testimony given by former White House counsel Pat Cipollone will likely provoke a rush of members of Donald Trump’s inner circle to talk to investigators out of fear they might have been implicated in the Jan 6th insurrection….
“They don’t know what each other has said, now they are now starting to see what the committee understands, what the other witnesses have said,” he explained. “It is almost like a sprint to get in first to tell the story in your own terms. That is always more beneficial than being the last one nd having to have a bit more of a target on your back.”
“This is what happens often in criminal investigations,” he elaborated. “I am very interested to see whether and to what extent any of these witnesses go marching into the Department of Justice to cooperate with them. Because what everybody is realizing now is that there was a crime spree as Cipollone indicated to Cassidy Hutchinson. The question now, who is going to have a target on his or her back as a part of the criminal investigation? You don’t want to be the last one standing. You want to be the first one to cooperate and gave your information and get on the right side of the investigation.”
“That is why Cipollone came in,” he suggested. “I expect that others have realized, ‘oh boy, we better get in’.”
Cat Gene Kelly Cat in Singing In The Rain, by Susan Herbert
Next week the committee plans hearings on Tuesday at 10AM and Thursday at 8PM. Here’s what they plan to cover.
Kyle Cheney at Politico:
A federal judge noted in February that there’s no evidence former President Donald Trump ever met or plotted with a Proud Boy or an Oath Keeper. But some conspiracies, he added, can be “tacit.”
The Jan. 6 select committee’s next hearing is expected to delve deeply into that relationship, exploring all the subtle signaling between Trump’s orbit and the seamy underworld of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers that prosecutors and congressional investigators have been probing….
On Tuesday, the committee will…plunge into conspiracy-driven fever swamp, where groups like the Proud Boys flourished and strategized openly ahead of Jan. 6.
The hearing is unlikely to produce explicit evidence of Trump’s approval of the groups’ tactics or plans, but the more important concept, according to Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), is “convergence.”
“Our investigation shows that there was a tremendous convergence of interests between the domestic violent extremist groups and the broader MAGA movement,” Raskin, who will lead next week’s hearing, told Nightly in an interview. “This hearing will be the moment when one sees both the convergence of efforts at a political coup with the insurrectionary mob violence. We see how these two streams of activity become one.”
The select committee only recently obtained one of its most potent pieces of evidence on the nexus between Trump and the Jan. 6 violence from former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who testified that Trump was informed early on that members of his rally crowd were armed. Hutchinson also testified that she heard the words “Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys” when Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani was around.
According to Cheney, the DOJ will be closely watching the next week’s hearings since their investigation of the January 6 insurrection has revealed a great deal of information about these groups and their involvement with Trump world.
Towards the end of her testimony to the House January 6 select committee, former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson raised for the first time the prospect that Donald Trump might have had a line of communication to the leaders of the extremist groups that stormed the Capitol.
Cat Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, by Susan Herbert
The potential connection from the former US president to the extremist right-wing groups came through her account of Trump’s order to his White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to call Roger Stone and Mike Flynn – which Meadows did – the evening before the Capitol attack.
Trump’s order to Meadows, even though Hutchinson said she did not know what was discussed, is significant because it shows the former president seeking to have a channel to two figures with close ties to the leaders of the far-right Proud Boys and Oath Keepers groups.
The directive is doubly notable since it was Trump himself who initiated the outreach to Stone and Flynn, suggesting it was not an instance of far-right political operatives freelancing, for instance, potential strategies to overturn the 2020 election results….
Now next Tuesday, at its seventh public hearing led by congressman Jamie Raskin, the select committee is expected to examine the connections between Trump and the extremist groups in closer detail, according to a source familiar with the investigation. There seems to be a lot to go after.
The account of Trump’s order was not the only link from the White House to the extremist groups. Hutchinson also testified that she recalled hearing the terms “Oath Keepers” and “Proud Boys” whenever former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was around at the White House.
Read the rest of the article to learn why Stone and Flynn could have given Trump information about what the Oathkeepers and Proud Boys were planning for January 6.
If you’re interested, you can also check out Bernard Gellman’s deep dive into Michael Flynn’s fall from grace at The Atlantic: What Happened to Michael Flynn?
The Justice Department released new details Friday evening of the alleged extensive planning by the Oath Keepers to prepare for violence in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, including lessons to conduct “hasty ambushes,” a “death list” of Georgia election officials and attempts to acquire homemade firearms.
The details, many of which have not been alleged publicly before, were revealed in a court filing from the government, which includes a list of evidence that prosecutors intend to use against the Oath Keepers during their trial in September.
Cat Vivian Leigh and Cat Clark Gable in Gone With The Wind
Prosecutors will attempt to prove that nine Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy — Stewart Rhodes, Kelly Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, David Moerschel, Thomas Caldwell, and Edward Vallejo — extensively prepared for violence and plotted to stop Joe Biden from assuming the presidency.
All nine have pleaded not guilty and have denied allegations of preparing for or participating in violence on January 6. CNN has reached out to their attorneys for comment.
The Justice Department has also secured at least seven cooperation agreements from members of the Oath Keepers, three of whom pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy. A number of the cooperators are named in the new filing and had close contacts with the Oath Keepers heading to trial….
Among the new details in the government’s allegations is a document with the words “DEATH LIST” that the government says it found in Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell’s home through a search warrant in the weeks after January 6.
The handwritten list included the name of a Georgia 2020 election official and their family member who, according to the new court filing, were both targets of “unfounded conspiracy theories that they were involved in voter fraud.”
Read the rest at CNN.
Can you tell I’m looking forward to next week’s hearings? I know there’s plenty of other news, so please feel free to post about any topic in the comment thread. Have a great weekend!
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Utagawa Hiroshige, Autumn flowers in front of full moon, 1853
Good Day Sky Dancers!
I want to spend some time today talking about Trump’s latest grifts. One is basically a Trump traveling circus where you pay the Trump Family Crime Syndicate Members for access and seats to crazy talk. There’s also that matter of Trump’s worst droogies parked out in an institute that rivals Trump University. It is a way for Trump to funnel funds to the likes of Mark Meadows and Stephen Miller and is aptly named the Insurrectionists’ Club House.
Abe, 67, was stumping for a fellow politician from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in Nara, near Osaka, on Friday morning when a gunman opened fire with what police described as an improvised weapon.
Hidetada Fukushima, head of the emergency center at the Nara Medical University Hospital, said Abe had no vital signs when he arrived there at 12:20 p.m. Friday. Despite efforts to save him, including a transfusion, Abe died of blood loss less than five hours later.
The assassination of Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, and a staunch U.S. ally, sent shock waves throughout the country ahead of elections for the upper house of parliament on Sunday.
Police arrested a suspect, a 41-year-old man from Nara named Tetsuya Yamagami, and seized a gun. Yamagami was a member of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force for three years, defense officials told Japanese media.
Footage of the event showed Abe giving a speech, then a plume of smoke forming behind him as he collapsed. Officials ran to apprehend the shooter, who appeared to be positioned behind Abe.Videos showed a chaotic scene with Abe, unmoving, lying on the ground as attendees yelled for an ambulance.
There’s a bit more detail from the press conference on what police have found at the suspect’s home.
Officials say that in addition to the handmade weapons, they also discovered a number of explosives. As a result, nearby residents have been asked to evacuate until the area can be declared safe.
On the gun, police said it was made using a mix of materials such as metal and wood, but they are unable to say whether it was made using a 3D printer.
Investigations are ongoing into whether he acted alone, they said.
And on the unnamed organisation the suspect told police he has an issue with, police say they are still establishing whether Abe has any connection to it.
The election is expected to be held as scheduled. No other election is scheduled for at least six years. The Japanese Upper House of Parliament is somewhat akin to the U.S. Senate. There are major initiatives at stake in the election.
The ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has pledged to revise the constitution in this election. This includes revision of Article 9, the pacifist clause that bans Japan from having a military and taking part in warfare. Other proposed LDP changes are ones liberals fear will violate and undermine basic human rights in this country.
All the washed-up Trumpers and Tea partiers are now part of Mark Meadows’s “Conservative Partnership Institute” which has received a substantial amount of funds from Donald Trump’s Stop the Steal efforts. Jim DeMint is the Chairman of the Board. Steven Miller lurks there in a key position. It’s nicknamed the Insurrectionists Clubhouse. I watched The ReidOut last night and got my first glimpse into what may be the next big thing in right-wing propaganda and election interference. It appears to be a source of malfeasance already.
Last summer, while most of official Washington was still reeling from the historic assault on the Capitol, a clubhouse for Trump White House exiles hosted a bash that all but toasted the insurrectionists and plotters responsible.
“Hot Gulag Summer,” held at the nondescript Capitol Hill town house leased by the Conservative Partnership Institute, advertised Jan. 6, 2021-themed cocktails, including the “Capitol Attaquiri,” “Insurrection on the Beach” and the “Mostly Peaceful Mojito.”
“We’re all going to be sent to the gulag eventually,” the invitation read. “We might as well party and get to know each other before we are all ‘reeducated.’”
Founded in 2017, CPI is little-known outside Trump circles, yet it has quickly become among the most powerful political messaging forces in the MAGA universe.The group did not respond to questions submitted by Grid for this article.
Kawarazaki SHÔDÔ (1869 – 1973) Peonies
Yes, we hope they do go to the Gulag but right now they’re just getting into bad trouble. More from the Grid piece.
CPI raised $20 million last year alone, and its network of nearly a dozen affiliate groups, several headed by ex-Trump aides, likely raised more. Donald Trump himself has endorsed the group’s work, boosted its fundraising and even donated $1 million to the group from his PAC in 2021.
The network has broad reach and keeps an eye on future elections:CPI helped found and support the election monitoring nonprofit run by ex-Trump lawyer Cleta Mitchell, along with roughly a dozen other dark money and advocacy groups, virtually all of which share the address of the CPI town house on official reporting. Mitchell did not respond to inquiries from Grid for this story.
These organizations employ or assist at least 20 key operatives, reportedly involved in Trump’s failed effort to subvert the 2020 election, including Mitchell, ex-Trump chief of staff Mark Meadows, and former Justice Department lawyer Jeffrey Clark, who was the subject of both a recent Jan. 6 hearing and an FBI raid. And they help raise millions for Trump-aligned members of Congress — more than $38 million over the 2020 and 2022 election cycles, according to the nonprofit OpenSecrets.
The House Freedom Caucus, whose members were allegedly involved in planning and executing strategies to derail the certification of 2020 election results to help Trump retain power, keeps its PAC at CPI’s headquarters andholds meetings at the brownstone. The Senate Conservatives Fund also calls the building home. Thegroup has backed Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, who, according to text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 congressional committee, was involved in a pressure campaign directed by Trump attorney John Eastman to get state legislators to change election results in key states. When the effort failed, Lee voted to certify the election. The fund also supports Sens. Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, who both promotedvote fraud lies and voted against certifying the election results.
Caroline Wren, a key organizer for the “Stop the Steal” rally preceding the Capitol riot, was invited by CPI to speak at an event last year. The group made Dan Scavino, Trump’s social media guru, a CPI digital fellow and asked him to speak about “Winning Communications Strategy” at a recent conference. According to the Jan. 6 committee, Scavino wrote many of Trump’s postelection posts falsely alleging vote fraud and promoting his rally on Jan. 6.Jenna Ellis, a Trump lawyer who wrote memos attempting to justify overturning the election, records her podcast, “The Jenna Ellis podcast,” at CPI. Requests for comment to Wren, Scavino and Ellis went unanswered.
One Hundred Flower Series, Japanese Woodblock, Kono Bairei (1844-1895)
Republicans and other conservative groups are undertaking a huge effort to recruit election workers, a push that could install people with unfounded doubts about the 2020 election in key positions in voting precincts where they could exert considerable power over elections.
The effort, called the Election Integrity Network, underscores how Trump and allies are capitalizing on now deeply seeded Republican doubt about Joe Biden’s victory and are targeting key election offices and jobs that play a considerable role in determining how ballots are cast and counted. The summits are a project of the Conservative Partnership Institute (CPI), a group with close ties to Trump’s political operation, and where Mitchell is a senior legal fellow. Mark Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, is a senior partner at CPI.
Mitchell has described the effort as a way to take control of the apparatus of local elections, according to ABC News. CPI did not return a request for comment.
At the forefront of this push is Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who was on Donald Trump’s legal team in 2020 and played a key role in his effort to overturn the election. Over the last few months, Mitchell has held “election integrity summits” in several battleground states, convening groups and citizens who continue to believe the 2020 election was stolen. The summits offer in-depth training on how to monitor election offices and how to work elections. At a mid-June summit in North Carolina, Mitchell mocked the term “election denier” and said “whether the outcome was correct, that’s all I deny”. Voter fraud is extremely rare and there was no evidence of widespread fraud in 2020.
Republicans and other conservative groups are undertaking a huge effort to recruit election workers, a push that could install people with unfounded doubts about the 2020 election in key positions in voting precincts where they could exert considerable power over elections.
I certainly hope both the January 6th Committee and the DOJ are following this closely. Mitchell has been subpoenaed by the Fulton County, Georgia DA for her work there to find votes for Trump.
Former President Donald Trump is reportedly planning a stop in Milwaukee on August 20 as part of the “American Freedom Tour.” In 2020, Trump lost to President Joe Biden in Wisconsin by about 21,000 votes. pic.twitter.com/EtalsZcmJf
On a Saturday morning at an arena outside Memphis, Terri Owens joined the crowd streaming in to see former president Donald Trump.
They lined up according to how much they’d paid.
At the far end of a white entrance tent, near a bus wrapped with a photo of Trump’s head on a muscular, shirtless body, were attendees who paid $55 for a pair of tickets as “citizens,” a general admittance option. At the front, closest to the doors guarded by Secret Service agents, stood a “presidential” tier who shelled out $3,995 each.
Owens, a 53-year-old nurse, bought a pair of VIP tickets for $800. She wasn’t clear on where the money was going — nor did she care.
“I really wanted to do my part in contributing to where he can keep doing what he’s doing, traveling around,” Owens said. “I know he probably doesn’t need financial help by any means, but just to do my part in supporting him because I believe in what he’s doing.”
In fact, the fees aren’t going to Trump’s political action committee, his $100 million war chest. This event was not a Trump rally, where attendance is free.
Instead, it was a for-profit show, more like a rock concert. The proceeds benefit Trump personally as part of a multimillion-dollar deal to speak at the events, according to two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.
The program, the “American Freedom Tour,” is the work of a longtime motivational-speaker promoter with a trail of bankruptcy filings and business disputes across the country. A Trump adviser said very little vetting was done on the organizers.
A spokesman for the tour, Republican media consultant Larry Ward, said the 2020 election inspired the new business venture. “The tour was inspired by a nation of disappointed voters and a love for President Donald J. Trump,” he said. Ward declined to discuss Trump’s financial deal.
Utagawa Hiroshige (Japanese, 1797–1858) Spring Morning at the New Yoshiwara, from the Famous Places in Edo series, 1843–1853
You can also pay to get access to Trump Celebrities who also get huge fees.
The speaker series has attracted more than two dozen Republican luminaries, such as former secretary of state Mike Pompeo, talk radio host Dan Bongino and right-wing influencer Candace Owens. One speaker who has participated in the program said they negotiated a deal through a speakers bureau and agreed to do the speech because it was so lucrative.
Those who pay more are granted access to backstage events, such as photos and private Q&As. Top dollar garners a “patriot” experience with a private after-party and access to Trump — though the site doesn’t list how much this costs. The group declined to specify the rate, only that it was more than $4,000.
So, let’s hope next week’s Public Hearings from the January 6 Committee out the activities of the Insurrectionist’s Club and the Trump Family Crime Syndicate Tour. Just remember, Abe warned us.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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This is going to be a quick post, because I’m having a pain flareup, and it’s difficult to use my computer. There is quite a bit of news today; here are some stories that caught my attention.
“In the past few weeks, I have been trying to convince my colleagues it would be eccentric to change governments when we have achieved so much,” he said in his speech outside No. 10 Downing St. amid loud booing from the crowd nearby. “I regret not to be successful in those arguments and, of course, it’s painful not to be able to see through those projects myself.”
Johnson also said he planned to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen — a move that may face opposition from others in an increasingly hostile Parliament.
In his speech, he hailed his government’s achievements, including supporting Ukraine after the Russian invasion and weathering the Covid pandemic.
He becomes the third consecutive British prime minister to resign before their term in recent years, following in the footsteps of Theresa May and David Cameron.
While Johnson was met by applause from colleagues on Downing Street, boos from a crowd nearby threatened to drown out his speech. Meanwhile, a loudspeaker blasted a reworked version of the Bay City Rollers song “Bye Bye Baby” with the lyrics changed to “Bye bye Boris.”
Among tax lawyers, the most invasive type of random audit carried out by the I.R.S. is known, only partly jokingly, as “an autopsy without the benefit of death.”
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau, Garden
The odds of being selected for that audit in any given year are tiny — out of nearly 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, for example, the I.R.S. targeted about 5,000, or roughly one out of 30,600.
One of the few who received a bureaucratic letter with the news that his 2017 return would be under intensive scrutiny was James B. Comey, who had been fired as F.B.I. director that year by President Donald J. Trump. Furious over what he saw as Mr. Comey’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump had continued to rail against him even after his dismissal, accusing him of treason, calling for his prosecution and publicly complaining about the money Mr. Comey received for a book after his dismissal.
Mr. Comey was informed of the audit in 2019. Two years later, the I.R.S., still under the leadership of a Trump appointee after President Biden took office, picked about 8,000 returns for the same type of audit Mr. Comey had undergone from the 154 million individual returns filed in 2019, or about one in 19,250.
Among those who were chosen to have their 2019 returns scrutinized was the man who had been Mr. Comey’s deputy at the bureau: Andrew G. McCabe, who served several months as acting F.B.I. director after Mr. Comey’s firing.
Trump is probably getting very nervous today, because his last White House Counsel Pat Cippilone is expected to testify tomorrow in a private hearing of the January 6 Committee.
Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel under former President Donald Trump, has reached an agreement to appear Friday before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, two sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News.
Woman with a parasol in a garden, Pierre Auguste Renoir
The panel issued a subpoena for Cipollone’s testimony last week after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Cipollone strongly opposed Trump’s efforts to travel to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Other witnesses have testified that Cipollone was one of the main White House officials opposed to attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He previously sat for an informal interview with the committee.\Hutchinson testified that Cipollone said a trip to the Capitol would present “serious legal concerns” and urged her multiple times to work to make sure such a trip didn’t happen.
“Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone telling her.
Hutchinson also recounted an exchange between White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was her boss, and Cipollone as rioters breached the Capitol on Jan. 6. Cipollone urged Meadows to speak to the president, Hutchinson said. She testified that Cipollone told Meadows that “something needs to be done or people are going to die, and the blood is going to be on your effing hands.”
A right-wing activist whose organization wrote a brief that was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade also posted a video in which she boasted of praying with the justices.
Rolling Stone is reporting that Peggy Nienaber, who serves as the executive director of a ministry that falls under Liberty Counsel’s umbrella organization, boasted that she and her associates are “the only people” who get an opportunity to pray with sitting Supreme Court justices.
A video obtained by the publication shows that Nienaber made the admission to a live streamer who was filming outside the court during a celebration of its decision to overturn 50 years of precedent on abortion rights.
Paul Cézanne, Poplars
“You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” the live streamer asked her at one point.
“I do,” Nienaber replied. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.”
Rolling Stone notes that this could be a conflict of interest for the justices who chose to pray with Nienaber.
“Such an arrangement presents a problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag,” the publication writes.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. – The dad of the accused Fourth of July parade killer told The Post on Wednesday that his son talked about a mass shooting in Denmark the night before allegedly launching his own massacre — and the dad washed his hands of any guilt over how the suspect got his gun.
“He goes, ‘Yeah, that guy is an idiot.’ That’s what he said!” the dad recalled his son saying of the Denmark shooter.
Irises in the artist’s garden at giverny, Claude Monet, 1900
The father said his son added, “People like that … [commit mass shootings] to amp up the people that want to ban all guns.”
“I talked to him 13 hours before [Monday’s massacre]. That’s why I guess I’m in such shock. … Like, did he have a psychiatric break or something?” the father said of his son.
On Tuesday, Steven Greenberg, who previously represented R. Kelly in the fallen singing superstar’s federal sex-trafficking case out of Brooklyn, announced that Crimo Jr. and his estranged wife, Denise, had retained him in the wake of their son’s arrest.
Congratulations are apparently in order for Elon Musk: The Tesla chief executive had twins in November with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. The news of the twins’ arrival, first reported Wednesday by Insider, brings Musk’s total brood count to nine.
Court filings obtained by the outlet showed that Musk and Zilis filed a petition to change their children’s names to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name” in April. One month later, a Texas judge approved the petition.
The twins were reportedly born just “weeks” before the SpaceX founder and musician Grimes had a baby daughter via surrogate. The girl is the couple’s second child. Her existence was also kept secret until March this year, when a Vanity Fairreporter sent to profile Grimes heard the “lone cry” of a baby upstairs.
Pierre Bonnard, The Small Garden
Zilis, 36, is identified on her LinkedIn as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a neurotechnology firm co-founded and chaired by Musk. She began working at the company in May 2017, the same month she was named a project director in artificial intelligence at Tesla, where she remained until 2019.
An expert in artificial intelligence, Zilis met Musk, 51, in 2015. Insider reported that her work at OpenAI, a research laboratory co-founded by Musk. He exited his leadership role there in 2019 to focus on “a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems” at other companies under his umbrella, including Tesla and SpaceX, Bloomberg News reported at the time.
Zilis has “been floated” as a potential pick to run Twitter should Musk’s $44 billion deal go through, Insider said. She often publicly engages with Musk on Twitter, replying to his tweets and in at least one instance defending him from critics.
That’s all I have for you today. I wish you all a peaceful Thursday.
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Here’s hoping you’re safe where you are today. Thanks to the NRA, Republican lawmakers, and the “Supreme” Court we might as well be living in the wild west before law and order arrived. Yesterday, we supposedly celebrated the birthday of the “United” States of America, and at least two celebrations provided opportunities for angry young men with guns to kill people. In some states it’s no longer safe to go to a grocery store, a Walmart, a movie theater, a nightclub, a music festival, a school, or even a church, mosque, or synagogue. And with the most recent SCOTUS decision on guns, even blue states will see their gun laws weakened.
First there was the horrific mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, IL and later last night another shooting during a fireworks display in Philadelphia.
At least six people were killed in a shooting in downtown Highland Park, Illinois, during a Fourth of July parade, and dozens have been injured, officials said.
The suspected gunman, who has not been charged, was taken into custody Monday evening. He used a “high-powered rifle” in the attack, police said.
Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III, the person of interest identified by police after Monday’s shooting in a Chicago suburb that killed six people and wounded 38 others, left a long trail of tributes to mass shootings and public killings on social media platforms, according to numerous profiles that appear to belong to him.
Crimo performed as a rapper who went by the name “Awake,” whose recent music videos included depictions of mass murder.
Crimo’s most recent video posted to YouTube showed him in the aftermath of a school shooting. It ends with Crimo draping himself in an American flag. Another music video showed a cartoon depiction of a man wearing a shirt with his YouTube channel’s logo on it, holding a long gun and being shot by police….
Crimo had his own Discord server, where fans and people who knew him would chat. The community featured a politics board filled with nihilistic political memes. The most recent post before the shooting, which was posted in March, was a picture of Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer who shot and killed himself on live television in the late 1980s, along with the caption “I wish politicians still gave speeches like this.”
On Discord, fans would share posts that Crimo had made of himself. One apparent selfie Crimo took in March reads: “Cursed image screenshot and send to everyone or commit not alive anymore,” a reference to suicide….
Crimo also posted frequently to a message board that discussed graphic depictions of murder, suicide and death. His most recent post to that message board came last week, when he posted a video of a beheading.
The suspected shooter posted music on several major streaming platforms under the pseudonym Awake the Rapper, and he apparently made and posted music videos online featuring ominous lyrics and animated scenes of gun violence.
In one video titled “Are you Awake,” a cartoon animation of a stick-figure shooter resembling the suspect’s appearance is seen wearing tactical gear and carrying out an attack with a rifle. Crimo, seen with multicolored hair and face tattoos, narrates, “I need to just do it. It is my destiny.”
In another video titled “Toy Soldier, a similar stick-figure resembling the suspect is depicted lying face down on the floor in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by police officers with their guns drawn.
"The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire. Blown up.
…Those [injuries] are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade."
Among them was David Baum, a local physician, who was standing with members of his family just 200 feet from the majority of the casualties, he said.
“All of a sudden, you heard these Howitzer-type noises going off. Immediately people started screaming ‘Bodies down, shooter,’ and they all started scattering,” he recalled.
“I told my family to run,” Baum said. He remained briefly in a location that was sheltered from the gunfire. “Then I kind of just stuck around until I thought maybe, maybe there was no longer the threat.”
After the shooting stopped, “there were a lot of people screaming,” he said.
“There were six bodies that were immediately assessed to be dead. Those bodies were literally blown up by these bullets.”
Other victims were hit in the arms or legs, Baum said. “I saw horrific, devastating injuries, the kind that you normally see in a war.”
As emergency responders tended to victims, Baum said he pitched in with other healthcare professionals, including a nurse, a nurse practitioner, an emergency room doctor, and a plastic surgeon.[….]
“I don’t think I need to describe the horrific nature of what the bullets did to those bodies, but it was horrific,” said Baum of Monday’s attack. “As a physician for 33 years, blood doesn’t bother me. But seeing people’s heads blown up, and bodies eviscerated, would be disturbing to anyone who was there besides maybe a physician.
As I wrote above, there was another shooting in Philadelphia last night.
Two police officers were shot near Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway as thousands attended a Fourth of July concert and fireworks show Monday night, leading to crowds scattering from the scene.
One officer sustained a graze wound to the head and the other a gunshot wound to the right shoulder, Philadelphia Police Department Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said just after midnight Tuesday. Both were treated and released from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, she said.
A photo supplied to NBC10 by John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5 union, showed a bullet lodged in an officer’s cap. Inside the cap was a memorial card for a Philadelphia police chaplain who recently died.
“It is miraculous the fact that the round stopped in his hat,” Outlaw said.
The officer grazed in the head is a 36-year-old PPD highway patrol officer and the other is a 44-year-old Montgomery County Sheriffs’ deputy, the commissioner said. Both were part of the security detail for the festival, she said.
The gunman was not immediately arrested or identified. It was unclear if the officers were targeted or if they were struck during “celebratory gunfire” amid Fourth of July festivities, Outlaw said….
The gunfire broke out around 9:47 p.m. near the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the finale of the 16-day Wawa Welcome America festival as throngs of people watched a fireworks show following a concert headlined by Jason Derulo on the parkway, police said.
Not surprisingly, the crowd panicked and people ran to find safety.
This is the scene in Philadelphia during reported active shooter during firework show tonight.
We need to stop debating and start acting on gun safety. All Americans- left and right do not want gun violence to continue. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Communities across the United States were left shaken after fireworks were mistaken for gunfire during multiple July Fourth celebrations, causing scenes of chaos.
In a sign of heightened alert after the shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, where six people were killed and 38 injured on Monday morning, crowds ran for cover at separate events in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Orlando, Florida.
Police said about 12 people were injured in a stampede in Orlando caused by the crowd mistaking fireworks for gunfire. Reporters said hundreds of people ran away from the display, taking cover where they could.
“We believe this was fireworks that were going off in the crowd at the same time the main fireworks display was going off,” Orlando Deputy Police Chief Eric Smith told CBS affiliate WKMG.
“People started running, believing it was gunshots, of course, with everything that’s going on.”
This year’s Fourth of July weekend, a time when Americans gather for barbecues, parades and fireworks, was marred by violence, rattling a nation already on edge in the wake of multiple mass shootings.
The Highland Park tragedy marked the 309th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter.
It also occurred during a weekend that saw at least 57 people shot in the Windy City, nine fatally, NBC Chicago reported.
In the neighboring state of Wisconsin, one person was killed and four others were injured in Kenosha when gunfire erupted around 10:20 p.m. in the 6300 block of 25th Avenue, according to the Kenosha Police Department….
“There are no suspects in custody and no known motive,” police said, as the investigation in ongoing.
On the East Coast, two Philadelphia-area law enforcement officers were injured in a shooting that erupted as tens of thousands of people celebrated July Fourth, gathering for fireworks and live music Monday at and near the city’s famed Museum of Art….
The gunfire broke out before 2 a.m. in the 1500 block of L Street as people were leaving the club, Sacramento police said. The victim was identified as 31-year-old Gregory Grimes.
There were also shooting incidents in New York City, Kansas City, MO, Richmond, VA, and Haltom City, TX. Read more details at the link.
This is what easy access to dangerous weapons has done to our country. America not so beautiful.
Again, please stay safe and take care of yourselves today.
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Patriot Front, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center classified as a white nationalist hate group that broke off from Vanguard America after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, march down South Michigan Avenue in the Loop as anti-abortion activists march across the street during a March for Life rally, Saturday afternoon, Jan. 8, 2022.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Freedom’s Ring is faint and disappearing in the USA!
Guns have more rights in this country than women and children. The Supreme Court is rewriting law after law with little more justification than they were put there by the Federalist Society to get the job done, they now hold a supermajority and their misguided religious fervor will rule every decision. Police can overlook stating Miranda Rights. The EPA can’t oversee pollution releases in carbon-producing companies This is what the post-2016 election era has brought us. We are living in a Republican dystopia and it’s getting worse.
Every American officeholder should announce that they will never appoint anyone recommended by the extremist group funded by the Koch brothers and others to any judicial appointment. Every candidate needs to announce their intent.
I would suggest you read a compelling book about Germany called The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic published in 2018 and written by Benjamin Carter Hett. As you ask yourselves what Germans in the years of 1933-1934 should’ve, would’ve, could’ve been doing finish by asking yourselves what should we be doing now?
To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.
Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.
Realize that Republicans at all levels are using these same techniques. We have “spates” of right-wing insurgencies and they appear only helpless and enabling to stop the rise of White Nationalism. Patriot Front marched around the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston this weekend. The Patriot Front also showed up around Independence day in Philadelphia in 2021. The group was run off by residents. They were arrested in Idaho last month. They are a radical white Christian nationalist group. This is not normal. They’re showing up everywhere.
Driving the news: Police received a call around 12:30 p.m. that a group of protesters were marching through the city, though their route was unknown, CNN reported.
Many of the marchers wore khaki pants and dark-colored polo shirts, with cloth coverings over their lower faces, along with sunglasses and caps.
State of play: The group approached a rental truck parked near the Haymarket metro stop and unloaded shields and a number of different flags, according to the Boston Herald.
Among them were U.S. flags, with some being flown upside down and others showing just the 13 stars of the original U.S. colonies. Other flags displayed versions of the symbol used by Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, per the Herald.
Patriot Front flags were also flown, per CNN.
Boston police received a report around 1:25 p.m. of a Black man being injured in a confrontation with Patriot Front marchers.
The man told police that he was pushed around, knocked to the ground, and assaulted by members of the group, suffering several lacerations. He was later taken to Tufts Medical Center, the Herald reported.
Around 1:30 p.m. the group left the scene via the metro system after packing their materials into a rental truck, per the Herald.
The big picture: City Council President Ed Flynn wrote in a letter Saturday that members of neo-Nazi groups have “continued to make their presence known” in Boston in recent months.
In February they targeted doctors working to address racial disparities in healthcare at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and appeared at the city’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade in March, Flynn wrote.
What to watch: The Boston Police Department is conducting a civil rights investigation into the incident and no arrests have yet been made, per the Herald.
What they’re saying: “The disgusting hate of white supremacists has no place here. [Especially] when so many of our rights are under attack, we will not normalize intimidation by bigots,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu tweeted on Saturday.
I will never go to Florida again. It’s become the fascist cookbook for laws that could be enforced by the White Nationalist Inquisition. They’ve come for me again. Every student and especially professor at any legitimate university or college has what is called Academic Freedom. It no longer exists in Florida
The concept of academic freedom is based on the idea that the free exchange of ideas on campus is essential to good education. Specifically, academic freedom is the right of faculty members, acting both as individuals and as a collective, to determine without outside interference: (1) the college curriculum; (2) course content; (3) teaching; (4) student evaluation; and (5) the conduct of scholarly inquiry. These rights are supported by two institutional practices—shared governance and tenure (see below.) Academic freedom ensures that colleges and universities are “safe havens” for inquiry, places where students and scholars can challenge the conventional wisdom of any field—art, science, politics or others.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday signed legislation mandating public colleges and universities survey students and faculty about their beliefs in an effort to promote intellectual diversity on campuses.
“We obviously want our universities to be focused on critical thinking, academic rigor,” DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday, according to the Naples Daily News.
“We do not want them as basically hotbeds for stale ideology,” he said.
“It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where you’d be exposed to a lot of different ideas,” DeSantis said. “Unfortunately, now the norm is, these are more intellectually repressive environments,” he added.
Under House Bill 233, surveys would be conducted annually on campuses to assess viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom, and determine “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented,” and whether students and faculty “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom.”
I would hate to hear what DeSantis thinks is “stale ideology”. Academic freedom supports the free exchange of ideas but basically ensuring your faculty has an agenda you approve of is just about as fascist as you can get. Throw out theory and replace it with whatever. Does this mean Med Schools must teach that a clump of vibrating cells is a heartbeat when there are no valves present in a fetus at that point in development? How about me? We all live in mixed market economies. Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, whatever are political ideologies and are discussed just as philosophical takes on how to apply data and theory. They’re abstracts only. There, I just got in trouble because I use market economies and dump the philosophical vantages for the idea of doing what works for each individual market. Capitalism is a Marxist Construct. Are my views stale or is he just plain ignorant?
Last month, Major League Baseball and its partners again released Independence Day-themed baseball hats that each of the 30 teams will wear. This year’s version features a flush of stars across the front against a blue and white backdrop, offset with a shaggy shock of red. The Toronto Blue Jays, located in a country that does not celebrate American independence, were also issued the caps — even though the Canadian flag does not contain stars nor the color blue. Public outrage prompted a redesign of the Toronto caps. Next is the USA-themed socks, the marketing, the freedom-inspired spikes, gloves, wristbands, the inevitable paeans to the armed forces.
By now, we’re all numb to the spectacle. At least publicly, the emphasis on the Fourth of July shifted from family to symbols years ago — Sept. 11 did that. Two decades of paid patriotism has made it ever harder to center the Fourth on reconnecting with your favorite aunts and uncles. No backyard barbecue and badminton game could compete with 20 years of military tributes and unquestioned nationalism. You think back to Righetti. Cosmetically, there was nothing about that July 4, 1983, that said patriotism. All Yankee Stadium said that day 39 years ago was baseball. Ninety-four degrees. Sox-Yankees. The Stadium looked as it did every other day. The crowd came because it was July 4, a Monday day game — a great day for baseball and family — and, along with Bat Day, the biggest giveaway day of the year: Yankee Cap Day. You smile a little at the victory in that, because only a few decades earlier, the Yankees were most resistant to a brilliant piece of marketing. In the 1950s, the Yankees did not want fans wearing Yankees caps. George Weiss, the Yankees’ general manager at the time, thought a million New York kids wearing the team cap cheapened the brand. Yankees hats were a piece of a professional uniform. They were for players, not fans.
Grilling, baseball and fireworks, first replaced by symbols — and now by a country tearing itself completely apart. July 4, 2022, falls in the midst of devastation. It is Independence Day in America with independence under current and relentless assault. From Miranda rights to the environment, to the separation of church and state, to guns — so many guns — people are reeling. The U.S. Supreme Court has run a chain saw through what two generations of Americans had known to be the legal baselines of their lives. Tens of millions of women today do not feel freedom and certainly are not celebrating independence. The people who can become pregnant who feel celebratory toward the Court may do so from the victory of their position, but it nevertheless remains true that the power of choice — and the right to privacy — has been taken from all of them.
He was not speaking metaphorically. It was not an offhand comment. President Donald J. Trump had every intention of joining a mob of supporters he knew to be armed and dangerous as it marched to the Capitol. And there had even been talk of marching into the House chamber himself to disrupt Congress from ratifying his election defeat.
For a year and a half, Mr. Trump has been shielded by obfuscations and mischaracterizations, benefiting from uncertainty about what he was thinking on Jan. 6, 2021. If he truly believed the election had been stolen, if he genuinely expected the gathering at the Capitol would be a peaceful protest, the argument went, then could he be held accountable, much less indicted, for the mayhem that ensued?
But for a man who famously avoids leaving emails or other trails of evidence of his unspoken motives, any doubts about what was really going through Mr. Trump’s mind on that day of violence seemed to have been eviscerated by testimony presented in recent weeks by the House committee investigating the Capitol attack — especially the dramatic appearance last week of a 26-year-old former White House aide who offered a chilling portrait of a president willing to do almost anything to hang onto power.
So, this is not a drill. This is real. I think it’s time we dig into a little Weimar Republic History and see where the Germans got it wrong and then vow to get it right.
Happy Independence Day even though we are less independent today than we were when Hillary told us during her campaign that all of this was bound to happen.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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