Now that Trump has been indicted and arrested 3 times, the 4th arrest on Thursday seems sort of old hat. Ho hum . . . Trump will surrender at Fulton County Jail in Georgia on Thursday; his bail has been set at $200,000.
“Can you believe it? I’ll be going to Atlanta, Georgia, on Thursday to be ARRESTED,” Trump wrote on his social media network Monday night, hours after his bond was set at $200,000.
It will be Trump’s fourth arrest since April, when he became the first former president in U.S. history to face indictment. Since then, Trump, who remains the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, has had what has seemed like an endless procession of bookings and arraignments in jurisdictions across the country. His appearances in New York, Florida and Washington, D.C., have drawn enormous media attention, with news helicopters tracking his every move.
Trump’s announcement came hours after his attorneys met with prosecutors in Atlanta to discuss the details of his release on bond. The former president is barred from intimidating co-defendants, witnesses or victims in the case — including on social media — according to the bond agreement signed by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, Trump’s defense attorneys and the judge. It explicitly includes “posts on social media or reposts of posts” made by others.
This morning, two of Trump’s co-defendants surrendered in the Georgia election interference case.
The first co-defendants in a sweeping indictment out of Fulton County, Georgia, has surrendered to the jail.
Shortly before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, former President Donald Trump’s attorney John Eastman turned himself in. A bond agreement for $100,000 was reached Monday in his case.
Eastman, prosecutors say, was deeply involved in some of his efforts to remain in power after the 2020 election. He wrote a memo arguing that Trump could remain in power if then-Vice President Mike Pence overturned the results of the election during a joint session of Congress where electoral votes would be counted. That plan included putting in place a slate of “alternate” electors in seven battleground states, including Georgia, who would falsely certify that Trump had won their states.
In a social media statement, Eastman said he was surrendering “to an indictment that should never have been brought.”
“It represents a crossing of the Rubicon for our country, implicating the fundamental First Amendment right to petition the government for redress of grievances,” Eastman said. “As troubling, it targets attorneys for their zealous advocacy on behalf of their clients, something attorneys are ethically bound to provide and which was attempting here by ‘formally challeng[ing] the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means.’ An opportunity never afforded them in the Fulton County Superior Court.”
A $10,000 bond agreement was reached Monday for Scott Hall, the Atlanta-area bail bondsman who was allegedly involved in commandeering voting information that was the property of Dominion Voting Systems from Coffee County in south Georgia.
On Tuesday, just before 9 a.m., Hall surrendered to authorities, and was booked and processed on charges that include conspiracy to commit a felony, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the state of political subdivision, and violation of the Georgia Racketeer Influenced And Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO).
Jeff Clark, the DOJ official who wanted to send letters to the swing states saying that the DOJ believed there was significant voter fraud in their states, is trying to avoid going to Atlanta to be booked.
This winter, after receiving a subpoena from a grand jury investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election, Mark Meadows commenced a delicate dance with federal prosecutors.
He had no choice but to show up and, eventually, to testify. Yet Mr. Meadows — Mr. Trump’s final White House chief of staff — initially declined to answer certain questions, sticking to his former boss’s position that they were shielded by executive privilege.
But when prosecutors working for the special counsel, Jack Smith, challenged Mr. Trump’s executive privilege claims before a judge, Mr. Meadows pivoted. Even though he risked enraging Mr. Trump, he decided to trust Mr. Smith’s team, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Meadows quietly arranged to talk with them not only about the steps the former president took to stay in office, but also about his handling of classified documents after he left.
The episode illustrated the wary steps Mr. Meadows took to navigate legal and political peril as prosecutors in Washington and Georgia closed in on Mr. Trump, seeking to avoid being charged himself while also sidestepping the career risks of being seen as cooperating with what his Republican allies had cast as partisan persecution of the former president.
His high-wire legal act hit a new challenge this month. While Mr. Meadows’s strategy of targeted assistance to federal prosecutors and sphinxlike public silence largely kept him out of the 45-page election interference indictment that Mr. Smith filed against Mr. Trump in Washington, it did not help him avoid similar charges in Fulton County, Ga. Mr. Meadows was named last week as one of Mr. Trump’s co-conspirators in a sprawling racketeering indictment filed by the local district attorney in Georgia.
Interviews and a review of the cases show how Mr. Meadows’s tactics reflected to some degree his tendency to avoid conflict and leave different people believing that he agreed with them. They were also dictated by his unique position in Mr. Trump’s world and the legal jeopardy this presented.
Read all the juicy, gossipy details at the NYT link.
Mark Meadows 'decided to trust' Jack Smith and cooperate against Trump: NYT https://t.co/V8uYh7GYJ4
The Justice Department pushed back Monday on former president Donald Trump’s claims that he cannot be ready to go to trial in January on charges that he illegally sought to subvert the results of the 2020 election.
A trial in D.C. federal court in April 2026, which Trump’s attorneys requested, “would deny the public its right to a speedy trial,” attorneys working for special counsel Jack Smith wrote in Monday’s filing. In arguing for its preferred Jan. 2, 2024, date, the office said they do not intend to use classified information against Trump in this case….
In arguing for more time, Trump also made misleading comparisons to trials that were delayed by the coronavirus pandemic, superseding indictments adding defendants, and disputes over incarceration, the government said.
Trump’s legal team argued in a court filing last week that it needs years to prepare for the “unprecedented case” and that the January date proposed by the government would create conflicts with the five other criminal and civil trials Trump faces in the next nine months. They told the court that the 11.5 million pages of material already handed over by the special counsel took over two days to download and if printed out would be eight times taller than the Washington Monument. To read it all before the government’s proposed jury selection date of Dec. 11 would be like reading “Tolstoy’s War and Peace, cover to cover, 78 times a day, every day,” they said.
Smith’s office called those comparisons “neither helpful nor insightful,” because attorneys don’t read evidence cover to cover — they review it online using electronic keyword searches. Much of what was shared with Trump is already in the public domain, the special counsel said, including social media posts, transcripts of interviews with the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 attack, and court records from legal challenges to the election results. Other documents came from the National Archives, meaning they were already known to Trump. There are also duplicates of documents within the production, the Justice Department said, and likely irrelevant papers handed over “in an abundance of caution and transparency.”
ON THURSDAY, DONALD TRUMP FIRED his first shot in Judge Tanya Chutkan’s courtroom—straight into his own foot. His lawyers proposed to the district court judge that his federal trial on conspiracy and obstruction charges related to the aftermath of the 2020 election and the events of January 6th should not occur until April 2026.
“I’ll eat my hat if Judge Chutkan agrees with Trump to start this trial in 2026,” tweeted Neal Katyal, the former acting solicitor general of the United States. “He’s just afraid to stand trial. Nothing more.”
Judge Tanya Chutkan
Katyal’s hat is safe. Trump’s proposal on the all-important trial date sends an unintended message: that Trump is pressing his lawyers to take legal positions so extreme that they will be entirely disregarded.
Credibility with judges is the coin of the realm for trial lawyers. Squander it early and it’s hard to retrieve.
Trump’s past pattern is that his lawyers lose credibility by kowtowing to his absurd, uninformed demands. Then he tosses them like bad pennies. Sooner or later, it’s tough attracting the gold standard in the legal profession.
The Trump team’s tissue-thin pretext for their ludicrous trial date request was the volume of discovery materials they need to read.
They wrote that reviewing millions of documents and electronic communications that the government already gave them would be like reading “the entirety of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, cover to cover, 78 times a day” in order to finish by the January trial date proposed by Special Counsel Jack Smith.
The authors explain why that is bullshit:
Sounds daunting. But in the modern litigation world, a high-tech industry has grown up specializing in managing big-document cases. Entire firms exist to tackle discovery jobs like this.
Huge volumes of documents can be scanned rapidly, and put in a single database alongside digital communications and other information. The database is then “deduped” (that is, duplication is reduced) and organized to allow instant retrieval of any important piece of evidence. A lawyer need only search for specified keywords, dates, subjects, titles, witnesses, senders, receivers, contact information, and so on. For example, a search for documents or data related to “January 6/electors/certification” will quickly bring up the relevant items for review, highlighting, organizing, and sharing with team members.
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, speaking on MSNBC on Friday, mocked the misleading analogy to Tolstoy’s 1,200-page epic. “You don’t need to read War and Peace 78 times a day. You simply search for ‘Natasha,’” Vance said, referring to the novel’s lead female character.
As the US Circuit Court of Appeals in Washington, DC, gets ready to begin its new term next month, the next two weeks could usher in several consequential rulings from the federal appeals court, often called the second most powerful court in the country, that could bear on the federal investigation into and prosecution of former President Donald Trump for his 2020 election reversal schemes.
At least three court cases touching legal issues that could affect special counsel Jack Smith’s approach are ripe for rulings from the DC Circuit. The rulings, once they come, will likely shape how US District Judge Tanya Chutkan may view the law and the charges against the former president in the criminal election subversion proceedings over which she is presiding.
In one case, Trump ally and Republican Rep. Scott Perry is challenging the access federal investigators can have to his phone in the 2020 election subversion probe. Another dispute is over Trump’s sweeping immunity claims in the civil lawsuits that have sought to hold him accountable for his actions and leading up to the January 6, 2021, Capitol assault. The third matter relates to the obstruction statute that has been a central charge in the Capitol riot prosecutions; Smith’s indictment of the former president in the election case includes two charges based on the provision in question.
There’s no guarantee that the rulings will come out in the coming weeks. But the start of the new DC Circuit term in early September puts additional pressure on the circuit judges to clear out their opinions in lingering cases. Regardless, the cases highlight the ongoing uncertainty in the legal terrain the special counsel is navigating as he advances toward a historic trial of the former president while wrapping up the rest of the federal criminal election subversion investigation, which Smith says is ongoing. No matter what the ruling is in each of the cases, the losing party will have the option to appeal it, setting up that the US Supreme Court might ultimately get involved.
Read details of the cases at the CNN link.
That’s it for me today. I guess I’m still mainly obsessed with seeing Trump tried, convicted, and imprisoned. I’ll add more links in the comment thread.
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New Orleans got some much-needed rain this morning! It was too late for several homeless folks in the city who were overcome by heat exhaustion and stroke. They are not alone, as there are victims throughout the Southern United States with similar fates.
President Biden will visit the site of the Maui Fires, which will take unprecedented federal resources to return many people to a new normal situation. Having been part of a diaspora and major disaster–Hurricane Katrina–I can attest to the remaining devastation here and the impact on the psyche of its victims that never entirely goes away. We’re just beginning to get information on the flooding and storms that have damaged cities like Palm Springs. National resources, Charitable funds, and ordinary citizens will come to the rescue with basic needs as well as much-needed hugs and comfort.
Prairie Meadows Burning, on the Missouri, George Catlin, 1852
These climate-change-related disasters are on the minds of concerned Americans who are reaching out with grace and resources to make their fellow citizens whole again. Scanning the headlines, I notice that a specific group of Americans doesn’t appear to be part of the massive acts of neighborly love that will begin so many paths to healing and restoration. Hurricane Ida is still an issue down here. Resources are still finding their way to those just trying to get back to some kind of routine. The only thing I can find on the Maui fires and Trump is a fake video telling his acolytes he visited there during the fires. This was obviously not true. The other headline is him lambasting President Biden for a “disgraceful” response. This after his response to Puerto Rico’s American citizens after a hurricane was to toss paper towels at them and appear surprised they were actually tax-paying and voting U.S. Citizens. Trump delayed $2 billion in aid. No word about the California Hurriquake from His Orange Assholines yet.
Even more than during the gripping performance of his various indictments, the theatre of his trials will subsume politics. There will not be another campaign, some semblance of a normal campaign of the past, a fantasy campaign, separate from Trump’s trials. The scenes from courtroom to courtroom will overlap with the primaries – the final ones taking place on 4 June 2024 – only intensifying the zeal of his base. And then Trump’s battle with the law will engulf the general election.
The trials are a continuous spectacle, featuring an all-star cast in far-flung locations. Political reporters are barely heard from, while legal analysts fill the airwaves. Every twist and turn, every motion, every argument is the breathless lead story. Everyone, from prosecutors to co-conspirators, named and unnamed, indicted and unindicted, are characters in Trump’s new reality show – part violent action movie (the insurrection), part sleazy porn flick (Stormy Daniels), part conspiracy thriller (Mar-a-Lago), and part mafia drama (the fake elector racket).
But the Trump trials are more than his means; they are his ends. The trials are not the sideshow, but the heart and soul of Trump’s campaign. They have become his essential fundraising tool to finance his defense, his platform for whipping up his followers into a constant state of excitement, and his instrument for dominating the media to make himself the center of attention and blot out coverage of anyone else.
The trials are the message. They are the drama around which Trump plays his role as the unjustly accused victim, whose rights are trampled and who is the martyr for his oppressed “deplorables”. He is taking the slings and arrows for them. The narcissist is the self-sacrificing saint. The criminal is the angel. The liar is the truth-teller. If any Republican lapses in faithfulness, they are more than a mere doubter or skeptic, but a betrayer and traitor. Trump’s trials are the rigorous trial of his followers’ faith. Rejection of temptation in an encounter with an impertinent fact that might raise a qualm shows purity of heart. Seduction by fact must be resisted. The siren song of critical thinking must be cast out as sin. Trump’s convictions are the supreme test of his followers’ strength of conviction.
Republicans are not prisoners of Trump’s narcissistic rage. They don’t reject it. They don’t regret it. They don’t apologize. They mirror it. They mimic it. They exult in it. It is the gratification they receive for passing through the ordeal of belief. His rage is their reward. It is their cheap vicarious defiance of the evil-doers: the establishment, the globalists, the Fauciists, the FBI, the Barbie movie. As Trump has received target letters, so judges, district attorneys, the special counsel, and their wives, too, must be targets. Fair game is fair play. Hallelujah!
If Vivek Ramaswamy wants to appear on Newsmax, he should pay to do it.
That was the message that network chief Chris Ruddy delivered to the Republican presidential candidate during a private call earlier this summer, according to two people to whom the candidate described the conversation. Ramaswamy had complained that the right-leaning network was sticking him in little-watched midday slots or ignoring him outright.
Ruddy also suggested a solution, Ramaswamy told associates: buy more television ads on the network. Ruddy, Ramaswamy told them, noted that such a transaction had helped Republican businessman Perry Johnson, a gadfly candidate who has thus far garnered only passing attention among mainstream and even conservative outlets covering the 2024 presidential cycle.
In a statement, Newsmax spokesperson Bill Daddi told Semafor that the insinuation “that Newsmax is asking candidates to advertise in order to ensure coverage as some quid pro quo … is categorically untrue and incorrect. Newsmax would take an assertion such as that very seriously. There is no correlation between advertising and editorial visibility for any candidate on Newsmax.”
“If candidates want to reach our audience outside of our programming, then, of course, advertising would be a good way for them to do this. That is the basis of all political advertising,” he said.
Tornado over Kansas, John Steuart Curry.1929
And all that time, the League of Woman Voters could’ve been collecting booty for the Voter’s Guides. But wait, there’s the House of Representatives that’s supposed to really care about the people, right? This is from Axios. “House Freedom Caucus fires warning shot over government shutdown.” Just as we need Federal resources to handle all these natural disasters, why shouldn’t we just close all of it down? What could be more important than helping our citizens in desperate need?
Members of the House Freedom Caucus are making it harder for leadership to avoid a government shutdown, announcing on Monday that they’ll oppose a stopgap funding bill unless it caves to their terms.
Driving the news: The HFC is demanding more funding for border enforcement, cuts to the Department of Justice and FBI, and an end to “woke” policies at the Department of Defense.
“We refuse to support any such measure that continues Democrats’ bloated COVID-era spending and simultaneously fails to force the Biden Administration to follow the law and fulfill its most basic responsibilities,” they said in a statement.
“Any support for a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution would be an affirmation of the current FY 2023 spending level grossly increased by the lame-duck December 2022 omnibus spending bill that we all vehemently opposed just seven months ago.”
The big picture: Congress is unlikely to complete its work on appropriations bills by the deadline on Sept. 30, with leadership calling for a continuing resolution to provide themselves with more time.
“If you think we’re going to come in and in three weeks, three partial weeks in September and get the appropriations bills done — that seems unlikely, given the extent to which there was a total failure in settings, spending levels where they needed to be set in order to get to 218,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) told Axios.
What’s next: Some members have discussed potentially attempting to block a continuing resolution on legislation from reaching the House floor unless it meets their criteria, upping the likelihood of a government shutdown if Democrats don’t vote for the measure.
In a statement Monday, the Freedom Caucus said its official position was that the group’s members would oppose any bill unless it includes their preferred language on border security, new laws to address what they call the “weaponization” of the Justice Department and FBI and a shift in some of the Pentagon’s policies — although they didn’t detail all the changes they want.
More than a third of Americans are under heat alert early this week as a monster heat dome stifles a huge swath of territory across the central United States, threatening the hottest temperatures of summer. As officials warn of “life-threatening” conditions, numerous records in parts of the Midwest could be reached as the heat continues to pummel the South.
Excessive-heat warnings stretch from Texas and Louisiana to Wisconsin and Minnesota, including the entire states of Iowa and Missouri. Cities under excessive-heat warnings include Des Moines, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Dallas and Little Rock. Combinations of heat and humidity will lead to feels-like values of 110 to 120 degrees across much of the Midwest and South, with some spots even surpassing those marks.
That already happened Sunday, with heat indexes in numerous locations topping 120, focused on Kansas, Iowa and Missouri.
More than 200 long-period record highs were set since Friday alone, including an all-time high of 112 degrees in College Station, Tex. Another all-time high was reached in Alexandria, La., where it reached 110 on Saturday. August records were set in Abilene, Tex., at 111, and in Stephenville, Tex., at 110.
But, hey, the majority party in the House of Representatives believes we need to stop responding to public health emergencies and start paying more attention to making Trump’s indictments about politics and not his crime spree. That sounds about right. It’s their idea of our priorities.
What’s on your blogging and reading lists today?
Let us know how you’re making out from the heat, the hurriquake, the fires, and the overall Republican plan to turn us into victims of their shame and plunder policies.
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Hurricane Hilary swirls near Baja California, Mexico, on Friday. (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration)
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The stress from extreme weather should be sending a huge wake-up call to the community of humans sharing the planet. Relentless heat here is setting records week after week. Now we’re staring down a map of disturbances in the Atlantic and the Gulf that reminds me of Multiball mode in pinball. We’re still receiving unsettling news from Maui after fires destroyed a historic town. Now, we’re watching a Hurricane threatening a good portion of the west coast. I’m still worried about the koala population decimated by fires in Australia in 2020.
As the federal government prepares its response to the tropical storm expected to hit parts of Southern California on Sunday afternoon, FEMA is bracing for potentially devastating flooding.“Hurricane Hilary is going to produce some really significant impacts to Southern California,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said Sunday during an interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
Though the total amount of rain appears unlikely to exceed that of similar storms that more frequently make landfall on the East Coast, people should not downplay this threat, Criswell said.
“People really need to take this storm in California serious,” she said on ABC’s “This Week.” “I think it’s interesting that the total rain amounts aren’t like what we see in some of our Atlantic storms and Gulf storms, but it’s going to really be potentially devastating for them in these desert areas.
The emergency management agency already has a team embedded in California, and is moving additional resources into the state, Criswell said, as the storm moves north toward Mexico and the southwest United States, where it’s expected to cause “catastrophic” flooding.
“They’re a very capable state as well and they have a lot of resources,” Criswell said of California Sunday. But if it does exceed what their capability is, “we’re going to have additional search-and-rescue teams, commodities on hand to be able to go in and support anything that they might ask for.”
The storm is the latest in a series of natural disasters and extreme weather that left communities in need of federal assistance. Wildfires in Hawaii recently raged across a historic Maui town, leaving more than 100 dead and even more without shelter. President Joe Biden will visit Lahaina on Monday to see the devastation first-hand and “reassure” residents “that the federal government is there,” Criswell said.
Volunteers from the West Orange County Community Emergency Response Team load sandbags for local residents as the hurricane approaches. Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images
The obscure federal agency that oversees the nation’s immense tangle of pipelines, power lines, and transfer stations is unfamiliar to most Americans. But it has very much been on Sen. Joe Manchin III’s mind.
By the end of last year, the West Virginia Democrat had become deeply displeased with how the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission was helping the Biden administration advance its aggressive climate goals. Manchin, a staunch ally of fossil fuel interests, was particularly critical of the agency’s efforts to write regulations that more fully consider climate impact when it reviews new natural gas infrastructure.
So he kneecapped the agency. The chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin refused to hold a confirmation hearing for the reappointment of Richard Glick, the agency’s chair and a key ally of President Biden, after Glick’s term expired at the end of the year. That has effectively stripped the board of its Democratic majority, leaving it deadlocked and limiting its ability to advance renewable energy projects.
Manchin isn’t the essential tiebreaking vote for Democrats in the Senate anymore, but a year after the enactment of the Inflation Reduction Act — which wouldn’t have passed without his support — he’s irate at the way Biden is implementing the law. And he’s fighting back: Besides his pressure on FERC, Manchin has vowed to oppose appointments to the Environmental Protection Agency and the Interior Department. He is even publicly flirting with running for president in 2024, an unlikely prospect but one that could be devastating for Biden — and a situation that senior White House officials are closely monitoring.
In this photo provided by Tiffany Kidder Winn, burned-out cars sit after a wildfire raged through Lahaina, Hawaii, on Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023. The scene at one of Maui’s tourist hubs on Thursday looked like a wasteland, with homes and entire blocks reduced to ashes as firefighters as firefighters battled the deadliest blaze in the U.S. in recent years. (Tiffany Kidder Winn via AP)
The cause of Maui’s wildfires has been attributed to multiple factors. When the blazes first began raging, experts pointed to drought conditions, dry vegetation, and strong winds caused by Hurricane Dora, which was several hundred miles away from Hawaii at the time. Media reports suggested the island’s first fire was likely caused by a power line in the woods of the Maui Bird Conservation Center. Hawaiian Electric, which services 95% of Hawaii’s residents, is facing several negligence lawsuits from residents alleging failure to maintain their equipment and clear vegetation located near utility poles. However, the power company told Forbes this week a cause for the fire had yet to be determined.
Believe me, it’s odd to live in a tropical zone, experiencing basically desert conditions week after week after week. It’s not normal. I haven’t opened my curtains in days, and I judge the heat by how many cold baths I take. Early in the morning, Temples panting worried me, and I put her in a cold bath. The relentless heat has been the most significant weather topic we’ve had since Hurricane Katrina. The biggest question is, “Will this be the new normal?
The summer of extremes continues. July was the hottest month ever recorded. The high-impact weather is continuing through August.
“This is the new normal and does not come as a surprise,” said Alvaro Silva, a climate expert with WMO. “The frequency and intensity of many extremes, such as heatwaves and heavy precipitation, have increased in recent decades. There is high confidence that human induced climate change from greenhouse emissions is the main driver,” he told a regular media briefing in Geneva.
WMO stresses the need to follow authoritative warnings from national meteorological and hydrological services to stay safe.
During the weekend of 19-20 August, maximum temperatures may reach up to 40 °C in parts of southern France, according to Meteo-France. It said it would be the most intense heatwave of the summer of 2023. This situation is due to a strong high pressure and subtropical warm air from North Africa. Meteo-Suisse has issued level 3 amber alerts for most of the country, with maximum daytime temperatures between 33 and 35 °C and high nighttime temperatures.
Spain, including Canary Islands and Portugal, also experienced extreme heat, fuelling an extremely severe fire risk. As of 17 August, the Tenerife wildfire continued out of control, with more than 2600 ha burnt area and people evacuated in some sites. Dry conditions, maximum temperatures above 30 °C, night temperatures above 20 °C, peak wind gusts above 50 km/h were observed on 16 and 17 in some AEMET weather stations of Tenerife.
Japan has also suffered a prolonged heatwave, with many station records broken, according to the Japanese Meteorological Agency, which issued concurrent warnings for torrential rain and typhoon-related floods.
While climate change is controversial to interests aligned with the oil, coal, and gas industries, data shows that America’s voters aren’t as skeptical as some would have you believe. “Climate change issues have a reputation for being divisive. Data show it’s not quite true. The majority of the country believes climate change is happening and is worried for the future. But experts say real change won’t happen until the beliefs are more personal.” This is reported by Grace Manthey.
Climate perspectives vary across the country, but by smaller margins than political leanings.
Yale’s program produces Climate Opinion Maps based on a large national survey dataset with more than 28,000 respondents collected between 2008 and 2021. And, the strong majorities nationwide don’t just apply to believing climate change is impacting the weather and might harm people. The data show widespread support for government intervention:
77% of Americans support funding research into renewable energy sources and tax credits for electric vehicles and solar panels
72% believe the government should regulate CO2 as a pollutant
66% support imposing strict limits on coal power plants and taxing fossil fuel companies
For context, the largest popular vote percentage in a presidential election in American history was in 1964, when President Lyndon B. Johnson won 61% of the popular vote.
President Ronald Reagan’s 1984 win was considered a landslide when he nearly swept electoral votes. But Reagan only won about 59% of the popular vote.
These climate change opinions vary by geography with some resemblance to political trends, and democrats are more likely to have pro-climate leanings, a recent Pew survey found.
But the issue isn’t black and white: republicans are not completely against climate-friendly changes and geographic trends on climate opinions aren’t as extreme as political ones.
Here’s something that seems contradictory.
In 92% of counties in the country, more than half of residents are worried about global warming.
That includes Mobile County, AL – the county surrounding the city of Mobile – where 58% of residents are worried about global warming and 59% believe it will harm people.
Meanwhile, Donald Trump received 55% of the 2020 presidential vote in Mobile County.
Lipsky is a contributor to the Rolling Stone. “How Sun Myung Moon ‘Digested the Scientists’ and Fueled Climate-Change Denial. In an excerpt from his new book The Parrot and Igloo, Rolling Stone contributor David Lipsky reveals a forgotten chapter in the climate crisis — when two once-respected scientists became merchants of doubt and mouthpieces for the Unification Church’s controversial leader.
IF THERE WERE A DENIAL Mt. Rushmore the two biggest heads would be S. Fred Singer and Frederick Seitz. Dishonesty’s Lincoln, lying’s Washington. Together, the two graybeard prophets launched a movement.
Frederick Seitz’s slab would be the larger and more solemn. Most decorated scientist ever to slip over to the dark side, the non-truth side. With just about the grandest possible resume entry: former President of the National Academy of Sciences.
He did it for the old man reasons. Because the new politics made him nervous. Because the new generation made him feel vulnerable and defensive, rickety. (Seitz called students “the youth.”) There are accomplished people who fear any change to the order that once promoted them is really a portent of chaos and doomsday. When Seitz was a university president, one student said hello — and he coolly explained college presidents are not people you say hello to. Fifty years later, climate denial’s most coveted honor is the Frederick Seitz Memorial Award. Its first statuette was delivered by Dr. S. Fred Singer.
Singer’s Rushmore head would smaller, sneakier, giving visible side-eye. He is the man responsible for all of it. There was a big denier convention a decade ago. (Held in Las Vegas; because denial is classy.) The president of a denial think tank raked his eyes across the denial ballroom, took in the denial faces at the denial tables making up his denial audience. “Fred Singer is the most amazing and wonderful person participating in the global warming debate today,” this president explained. “If there’s any person in the world responsible for the development of a skeptics movement on global warming, it’s Dr. S. Fred Singer… Fred is a giant. He is a hero.” Singer is the origin of denial. And here is his origin as a denier.
At this stage of the denial story — end of the eighties, that John Hughes decade — Frederick Seitz is already a denier. This is a story about how and where S. Fred Singer joined him. Singer began as a straight scientist — an environmentalist. Did not attain promotion at the EPA. (HR Departments: be careful who you disappoint.) So he quit. And came back changed. Served briefly in Washington as the Department of Transportation’s chief scientist. And then the surprising part, the historical part of Fred Singer’s journey — his real travels and adventures — began.
The thing this story shows about deniers: they will accept money from . . . anyone. (And once you deny — once your lips break that truth barrier — the succeeding denials become easier and easier. In a sense, you become deaf to the sound made by your own life. As you must.) That openness is what this story is also about. And about how everybody, even people with the most powerful friends, can eventually require the services of a professional denier.
Our friend @repeat1968 (John Buss) gets the last word.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today? And please stay safe wherever you are!
I had the pleasure of meeting, setting up her microphone, and listening close up to Etta James at Jazz Fest. Believe me, it’s one of the performances I’ve witnessed that I will never forget.
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It’s difficult for me to focus on anything except the legal news about Trump’s crimes; but before I get to the latest on that, I want to call attention to Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy efforts. I admit I really that I originally was not at all enthused about a Biden presidency, but he has turned out to be very good at his job. His age and experience have prepared him for this moment in history.
CAMP DAVID, Maryland, Aug 18 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed at Camp David on Friday to deepen military and economic cooperation and made their strongest joint condemnation yet of “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by China in the South China Sea.
The Biden administration held the summit with the leaders of the main U.S. allies in Asia, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a bid to project unity in the face of China’s growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.
In a summit statement the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other during crises and to coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting common interests.
They also agreed to hold military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023. The countries promised to hold trilateral summits annually.
While the political commitments fall short of a formal three-way alliance, they represent a bold move for Seoul and Tokyo, which have a long history of mutual acrimony stemming from Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
The summit at the Maryland presidential retreat was the first standalone meeting between the U.S. and Japan and South Korea and came about thanks to a rapprochement launched by Yoon and driven by shared perceptions of threats posed by China and North Korea, as well as Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
The leaders’ language on China stood out as stronger than expected, and is likely to provoke a response from Beijing, which is a vital trading partner for both South Korea and Japan.
“Regarding the dangerous and aggressive behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims that we have recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea, we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.
President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing.
Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal’s planning. They were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about the agreement.
The agreement will allow for new bilateral collaboration that will boost Vietnam’s efforts to develop its high technology sector in areas including semiconductor production and artificial intelligence….
The deal adds to Biden’s string of successful diplomatic initiatives aimed to reassert U.S. influence in Asia in the face of China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military muscle in the region. They include a historic Camp David summit Friday with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — aimed at addressing regional threats from North Korea and China.
The Vietnam agreement coincides with an uptick in tension between Hanoi and Beijing over long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam — along with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — has long protested Beijing’s claim of authority over parts of the South China Sea that extend 1,200 miles from China’s coastline. Hanoi banned the Barbie movie last month due to a scene that appeared to reference the nine-dash line Beijing says marks its territorial waters. Satellite imagery released this week indicates China is building an airfield on an island that Hanoi says is Vietnamese territory.
But the agreement doesn’t necessarily signal that Vietnam is moving away from its giant neighbor China in favor of better ties with Washington.
“Vietnam is not aligning with the U.S. against China. … They’re happy to improve relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t mean they’re moving against China — they’re going to continue to calibrate very carefully,” said Scot Marciel, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department who opened the first State Department office in Hanoi in 1993.
Prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and his ally Joe Biggs, who they say aimed to foment a revolution on Jan. 6 to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
The proposed jail sentences would nearly double the lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence handed down to date — 18 years for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — a decision prosecutors say reflects the pivotal role that Proud Boys leaders played in stoking and exacerbating the violence at the Capitol that day.
“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,’” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo released Thursday night. “They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”
Both Tarrio and Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May by a jury who also found allies Philadelphia Proud Boy leader Zachary Rehl and Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean guilty of the grave offense. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for Rehl and 27 years for Nordean.
A fifth Proud Boy tried alongside the others, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other serious offenses. Pezzola may be the best known of the group, however. He shattered a Senate-wing window with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the breach of the Capitol itself. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term for him.
I always have a hard time excerpting Marcy’s posts, but I hope you’ll go read it at the link. The gist is that the FBI used Biggs to target “Antifa.” They were focused on radical left groups and ignored the violent extremist on the right. Here’s the summary at the end of the post:
The FBI claims it had no notice of the terrorist attack on the nation’s Capitol, not even with an FBI agent “speaking often” with one of its leaders and an DC intelligence cop speaking often with the other one.
So now, DOJ wants to hold Joe Biggs accountable for the lies he told to the FBI agent who thought a key leader of the Proud Boys would make an appropriate informant targeting Antifa. But thus far, his handler has not been held accountable for missing the planning of a terrorist attack in DC when while speaking “often” with one of its key leaders.
Notably, the Daytona FBI office is the same one where, after fake whistleblower Stephen Friend refused to participate in a SWAT arrest of a Three Percenter known to own an assault rifle, his supervisor said “he wished I just ‘called in sick’ for this warrant,” before taking disciplinary action against him (though Friend didn’t start in Daytona Beach until after Biggs had already been arrested).
The second of these interviews (but not the first) interview was mentioned in Biggs’ arrest affidavit. It’s possible that investigating agents didn’t even know about what occurred in the first one.
Indeed, it’s really hard to credit the reliability of a 302 written two days after Biggs described his chummy relationship but not this interview in an attempt to stay out of jail.
This is why the FBI didn’t warn against January 6. Because these terrorists were the FBI’s people.
Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday.
Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years.
The sentencing was canceled and a bench warrant for his arrest issued under seal on Tuesday, according to court records. The U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., encouraged the public to share any information about his whereabouts.
Worrell had been on house arrest in Florida since his release from jail in Washington in November 2021, less than a month after a judge substantiated his civil-rights complaints about his treatment in the jail.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found Worrell’s medical care for a broken hand had been delayed, and held D.C. jail officials in contempt of court.
The big topic of conversation in the media and Twitter yesterday was a Trump ally who has previously passed under the radar–Kenneth Chesebro, who appears to be one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Georgia election interference case. It turns out this guy was integral to what happened on January 6. Chesboro was also the originator of the scheme to use “fake electors” to overthrow the 2020 election.
When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red “Trump 2020” hat conspicuously tagged along.
Videos and photographs reviewed by CNN show the man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters eventually broke in.
While the man’s actions outside the Capitol that day have drawn little scrutiny, his alleged connections to a plot to overthrow the 2020 election have recently come into sharp focus: He is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states.
When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it.
There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol.
Chesebro is the only one of the unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s recent federal indictment and only member of Trump’s legal efforts who is now known to have been on the Capitol grounds on January 6.
CNN was able to place Chesebro at the protest through publicly available databases with photos and videos from that day. Interviews with his acquaintances also confirmed his identity. Chesebro declined CNN’s requests for comment, citing ongoing litigation.
It was unclear why Chesebro was following Jones on January 6.
“Even if Chesebro is simply a diehard Infowars fan, I think that would further illustrate how thin the line was between the serious, credentialed people who sought to undermine election results and the extremist figures who sought to unleash havoc was in that period, to the extent it meaningfully existed at all,” said Jared Holt, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue which investigates extremism, hate and disinformation.
VEGA ALTA, Puerto Rico — The blinds were drawn at a handsome villa in an oceanfront gated community on the northern coast of this Caribbean island. Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard calling out “Ken” — but no one answered the door.
Records show this isthe tropical refuge of Kenneth J. Chesebro, a lawyer who allegedly marshaled supporters of President Donald Trump to pose as electors in states won by Joe Biden in 2020, creating a pretext for Vice President Mike Pence to delay counting or disregard valid electoral college votes on Jan. 6, 2021.
Since then, Chesebro, 62, has kept a low profile. He decamped to Puerto Rico from New York last year, and some friends said he’d fallen out of touch. A prominent law firm issued no public announcement last year when it tapped him to run a new department and added no mention of him to its website.
Lawyers handling a case against him in Wisconsin have told a judge they were unable to locate him. Even the House select committee that investigated the pro-Trump attack on the Capitol did not depose him until last fall — after it had interviewed more than a thousand others and conducted public hearings — because it had trouble finding him, according to a person familiar with the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly.
Chesebro was among 19 people charged Monday in Georgia with a raft of crimes related to alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. A 98-page indictment secured by Atlanta-area prosecutors portrays Chesebro as central not just to the convening of sham electors but also to the “strategy for disrupting and delaying the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021.” He faces seven felony charges, including conspiracy to commit forgery and conspiracy to file false documents, as well as violation of an anti-racketeering act originally aimed at dismantling organized crime groups.
Background information on Chesebro:
A Harvard-trained lawyer once keen on liberal causes, and registered as a Democrat as recently as 2016, Chesebro may be the least well knownof the small set of figures key to both indictments. His retreat from public life since Jan. 6 has deepened the mystery for former classmates and colleagues puzzling over how he became a central player in plansto reverse the outcome of a democratic election.
“The Ken I knew would not have been involved with that,” said Holly Hostrop, a lawyer who worked with Chesebro about 20 years ago on litigation against the tobacco industry that extracted millions in punitive damages for ailing smokers. “I have great respect for his legal skills and felt we were on the side of angels in that litigation. It makes me wonder how he got sucked into this.”
The successful appellate lawyer studied at Harvard University under Laurence Tribe, the preeminent legal scholar who advised congressional Democrats on both of Trump’s impeachments. Chesebro continued working with Tribe for about 20 years, on wide-ranging litigation involving class-action claims and punitive damages.
But friends said his politics seemed to shift after he reaped sizable returns from his investments in cryptocurrency in the past half-decade. He began to stake out more-libertarian positions in legal briefs, especially in his home state of Wisconsin, where he started donating to Republicans and working with a former judge, Jim Troupis, who Chesebro would later testify under oath had brought him into Trump’s orbit.
“He was not making good-faith legal arguments for his client,” said Tribe, who expressed dismay over his former mentee’s emergence as an architect of Trump’s plans to cling to power. “He was inventing legal fiction that paid no attention to the law and creating a pretext for a conspiracy to steal an election.”
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice Caturday!
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Another day of Trump news. I’m so sick of it. On Monday, Hillary Clinton was on Rachel Maddow’s show. She looks great, she’s as mentally sharp as ever, she’s dignified, and she’s a true patriot. She could have been president today if Trump hadn’t gotten help from Vladimir Putin in 2016. Imagine how different things could have been. Instead, we had to deal with four years of chaos and crime with a would-be dictator supposedly in charge, but actually just enriching himself in every corrupt way he could dream up.
“She is likely to be under investigation for many years, and also it will probably end up—in my opinion—in a criminal trial." –Donald Trump on Hillary Clinton, November 3, 2016 pic.twitter.com/2VRvnyefTu
Less than an hour after a grand jury in Atlanta returned indictments in the 2020 election interference case in Georgia, Hillary Clinton on Monday called the developments “a terrible moment for our country.”
The indictment, released late on Monday evening, charges former President Donald J. Trump in a sprawling case. Before the charges were made public, Mrs. Clinton gave a previously scheduled late-night interview on MSNBC. She said that she felt “great profound sadness” that the former president had already been indicted on so many other charges that “went right to the heart of whether or not our democracy would survive.”
“Do you feel satisfaction in that you warned the country, essentially, that he was going to try to end democracy?” the anchor, Rachel Maddow, asked Mrs. Clinton, a former secretary of state and former first lady.
“I don’t feel any satisfaction,” Mrs. Clinton responded, adding that she did not know whether “anybody should be satisfied.” “The only satisfaction may be that the system is working, that all of the efforts by Donald Trump, his allies and his enablers to try to silence the truth, to try to undermine democracy have been brought into the light.”
Meanwhile Trump and his crazy cult are still dominating the headlines.
HOUSTON — A Texas woman was arrested and has been charged with threatening to kill the federal judge overseeing the criminal case against former President Donald Trump in Washington and a member of Congress.
Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, called the federal courthouse in Washington and left the threatening message — using a racist term for U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan — on Aug. 5, court records show. Investigators traced her phone number and she later admitted to making the threatening call, according to a criminal complaint.
In the call, Shry told the judge, who is overseeing the election conspiracy case against Trump, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” the documents said. Prosecutors allege Shry also said, “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you,” and she threatened to kill U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat running for mayor of Houston, according to court documents.
A judge earlier this week ordered Shry jailed. Court records show Shry is represented by the Houston public defender’s office, which did not immediately return a message seeking comment on Wednesday.
Trump has publicly assailed Chutkan, a former assistant public defender who was nominated to the bench by President Barack Obama, calling her “highly partisan” and “VERY BIASED & UNFAIR!” because of her past comments in a separate case overseeing the sentencing of one of the defendants charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Trump supporter, Abigail Jo Shry of Alvin, Texas, has been arrested for threatening to kill Judge Tanya Chutkan. Anyone surprised this is happening? pic.twitter.com/SGUlH0PzrL
A Texas woman is facing federal charges after allegedly threatening to kill the judge overseeing Donald Trump’s criminal case in Washington, D.C., in which he’s accused of conspiring to reverse his defeat in the 2020 presidential election.
A criminal complaint filed Friday outlines how Abigail Jo Shry, 48, called U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan’s chambers on Aug. 5, leaving “a threatening voicemail message.”
The caller began: “Hey, you stupid slave n—–,” according to the complaint. They then went on to threaten the lives of “anyone who went after former President Trump,” name-dropping ” Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX), “all Democrats in Washington, D.C.,” and “all people” in the LGBTQ+ community.
To Chutkan, the caller continued, “You are in our sights, we want to kill you,” and “If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” the complaint alleges. They threatened to target her “personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”
Investigators quickly traced the cell phone used to Shry. When Department of Homeland Security agents knocked on her door in Alvin, Texas, three days later, Shry admitted that she’d made the call to Chutkan. She told the agents that she had no plans to go to D.C. or carry out any of her threats, but added ominously that “if Sheila Jackson Lee comes to Alvin, then we need to worry,” the complaint states.
Shry is charged with transmitting a communication containing a threat to injure the person of another–a felony with a maximum prison term of up to five years.
NBC News is choosing not to name the website featuring the addresses to avoid further spreading the information.
The Fulton County District Attorney’s Office declined to comment. District Attorney Fani Willis faced racist threats ahead of the return of the indictment, and additional security measures were put in place, with some employees being allowed to work from home.
The grand jurors’ purported addresses were spotted by Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan research group founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former FBI investigator and staffer for the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee.
“It’s becoming all too commonplace to see everyday citizens performing necessary functions for our democracy being targeted with violent threats by Trump-supporting extremists,” Jones said. “The lack of political leadership on the right to denounce these threats — which serve to inspire real-world political violence — is shameful.”
Advance Democracy also noted that users were posting the names and images of people believed to have been grand jurors on other social media sites. The posts asserted that the jurors had posted on social media in support of Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., former President Barack Obama and the Black Lives Matter movement.
The indictment issued Monday lists the names of the grand jury members but not their addresses or other personal information.
Jeffrey Clark, a former top Justice Department official under Donald Trump, is posting online about supernatural beings in the wake of his racketeering indictment in Georgia, and everybody’s confused.
“Today witches, spiritists, mediums, those with spirit animals, and Ukrainian NPCs resumed their attacks on me,” Clark wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday.
Clark was indicted along with Trump and 17 others on Monday on racketeering and conspiracy charges in an alleged scheme to change Georgia’s 2020 election results following Trump’s loss.
Clark served in the Trump administration as an assistant attorney general in the environment and natural resources division, and then as acting head of the Justice Department’s civil division.
He became a key figure championing the former president’s push to overturn the 2020 election. According to former administration officials, Trump at one point considered elevating him to acting attorney general following the departure of William Barr, who resigned after refusing to back Trump’s voter fraud claims.
X users weren’t sure what to make of Clark’s paranormal paranoia ― but of course they had jokes:
One more from Trump himself. He was supposedly planning a “major announcement” at Bedminster on Monday, but his lawyers are trying to talk him out of it.
Former President Donald Trump’s promised press conference to refute the allegations in the indictment handed up by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office is now very much in doubt, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News.
Sources tell ABC News that Trump’s legal advisers have told him that holding such a press conference with dubious claims of voter fraud will only complicate his legal problems and some of his attorneys have advised him to cancel it.
Trump announced the planned press conference with a social media post shortly after he and 18 co-defendants were indicted late Monday in Georgia. He said he would present, “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.”
Georgia’s Republican governor responded to that with his own social media post declaring, “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward — under oath — and prove anything in a court of law.”
What a moron Trump is. If only he would STFU.
Appeals court embraces abortion-pill limits, sets up Supreme Court review – The Washington Post https://t.co/DaB7TVyNJG
A federal appeals court said Wednesday that it would restrict access to a widely used abortion medication after finding that the federal government did not follow the proper process when it loosened regulations in 2016 to make the pill more easily available.
Food and Drug Administration decisions to allow the drug mifepristone to be taken later in pregnancy, be mailed directly to patients and be prescribed by a medical professional other than a doctor were not lawful, a three-judge panel of the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit ruled.
Mifepristone will remain available for now under existing regulations while the litigation continues, in accordance with a Supreme Court order this spring. The Justice Department said it will go backto the Supreme Court to appeal Wednesday’s decision, which only partially upheld a lower-court judge’s ruling in favor of a coalition of antiabortion challengers.
If the Supreme Court allows the appeals court’s ruling to stand, the abortion pill would still be available in the United States, but it would be more difficult for patients to get it.
I’m going to end there for now. I’ll add more reads in the comment thread. Take care everyone!
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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.
Now that Trump has been indicted and arrested 3 times, the 4th arrest on Thursday seems sort of old hat. Ho hum . . . Trump will surrender at Fulton County Jail in Georgia on Thursday; his bail has been set at $200,000.
Happy Caturday!!
Next Biden plans to build closer ties with Vietnam. Politico: 
Now some legal news.
Read more details at the Politico link.
Another Proud Boy, Christopher Worrell, was supposed to be sentenced soon, but yesterday, news broke that he has disappeared. Associated Press: 
The big topic of conversation in the media and Twitter yesterday was a Trump ally who has previously passed under the radar–Kenneth Chesebro, who appears to be one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Georgia election interference case. It turns out this guy was integral to what happened on January 6. Chesboro was also the originator of the scheme to use “fake electors” to overthrow the 2020 election.
More on Cheseboro from The Washington Post: 
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