Tuesday Reads
Posted: January 18, 2022 Filed under: just because 25 Comments
Rain, by Edvard Munch, 1902
Good Morning!!
Good morning Sky Dancers! I’m sorry to report that I’m having another pain flare-up and so this post will be brief. I think I’m doing better with breathing and relaxing, and that does help the pain somewhat. I’m just hoping this won’t last too long. In the meantime, here’s what I’m seeing in the news today.
This is trending on Twitter, but I haven’t seen any reporting in the mainstream media yet.
https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1483429547295092736?s=20
Read the letter dated December 15, 2021 at the Conservative Action Project. The letter is addressed to Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy and requests that Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger be removed from the GOP caucus and attacks the January 6 committee and claims that those involved with the January 6 insurrection “have done nothing wrong.”
As you are aware, this committee has no formal representation from Republicans. Both Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger serve at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). As part of Pelosi’s team, Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger have deliberately sought to undermine the privacy and due process of their fellow Republicans, and those of private citizens, with improperly issued subpoenas and other investigatory tactics designed not to pursue any valid legislative end, but merely to exploit for the sake of political harassment and demagoguery.
The actions of Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger on behalf of House Democrats have given supposedly bipartisan justification to an overtly partisan political persecution that brings disrespect to our country’s rule of law, legal harassment to private citizens who have done nothing wrong, and which demeans the standing of the House….
We ask that the GOP conference meet immediately to vote on stripping Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger from their membership in the GOP conference. We further inform you that conservative leaders are launching a nationwide movement to add citizens’ voices to this effort.
That’s the gist of it. Here’s the full list of signers.
CNN has the photos from the disaster in Tonga: First images of Tonga volcano damage show entire communities covered in thick ash.
A thick layer of ash covering entire island communities can be seen in the first images of disaster-hit Tonga to emerge following what experts believe to be the world’s biggest volcanic eruption in more than 30 years.
Aerial photos released by the New Zealand Defense Force from Tonga’s central Ha’apai islands show trees, homes and fields coated in gray ash — spewed out by the Hunga-Tonga-Hunga-Ha’apai undersea volcano as it erupted on Saturday, sending tsunami waves crashing across the Pacific.
Satellite images show a similar scene in the capital’s Kolofo’ou district, on Tonga’s main island, with trees and homes completely blanketed by volcanic debris. Some buildings appear to have collapsed and aid workers are now concerned about water contamination and food security in the district.
An Aerial view from a P-3K2 Orion serveillance flight shows heavy ask fall in Nomuka, Tonga,on Jan. 17, 2022
See more photos at CNN.
This is from Jake Tapper at CNN: Former Trump administration officials hold call to strategize against former boss’ efforts in 2022 and 2024.
Around three dozen former Trump administration officials, disillusioned with their former boss and concerned about his impact on the GOP and the nation, held a conference call last Monday to discuss efforts to fend off his efforts to, in their view, erode the democratic process, several participants told CNN.
The only items the group seemed to agree upon in its first meeting, however, were that they’re not sure what their way forward should be, and that they are way behind the efforts of former President Donald Trump and his allies to set the stage for 2022, 2024, and beyond.
The highest-ranking participant was former White House chief of staff and retired Marine Gen. John Kelly, who told CNN that because of a prior commitment he was only able to “monitor” about 10 minutes of the call, which lasted about an hour.
Other participants included former Trump White House communications directors Alyssa Farah Griffin (now a CNN political commentator) and Anthony Scaramucci, former Homeland Security and counterterrorism adviser to Vice President Pence Olivia Troye, former Department of Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann, and former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Chris Krebs, among others. Stephanie Grisham, who first publicly discussed this group a couple of weeks ago on CNN’s “New Day,” was not on the call because she was sick with Covid-19, though she told CNN she is engaged with the group….
Miles Taylor, the former DHS chief of staff who became a leading anti-Trump voice after writing an op-ed and book as “Anonymous,” helped lead the call and described participants as “overflowing with ideas” on how to be most effective. They ranged from “shining a light” on Trump’s corporate contributors to targeting for defeat in the primary or general election each individual Trump has endorsed for state and local races, although Kelly is reluctant to do anything that involves specifically endorsing any candidate.
“We’re still trying to figure out what it is” that we want to do, one participant told CNN. “Outcomes are key.” This individual said there was unanimity on the call, from those who spoke, that “this cannot just be a professional trolling operation, putting out ads like the Lincoln group.” The Lincoln Project was a group of so-called never-Trump GOP consultants who banded together to oppose the 45th President’s reelection, often running ads in the Washington, DC, area targeted to Trump.
From the CBS article:
Prosecutors granted immunity to an ex-girlfriend of Representative Matt Gaetz before she testified last week in front of a federal grand jury hearing evidence in the investigation of the congressman, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Gaetz has been under investigation to determine if he violated sex trafficking laws and obstructed justice in that probe. Gaetz has previously denied all wrongdoing, and has said he has never paid for sex nor had sex with an underage girl.
The woman, who CBS News is not naming to protect her privacy, testified in front of a federal grand jury in Orlando last Wednesday. She is viewed as a potential key witness, according to two sources familiar with the investigation. One of the sources said she has information related to the investigation of both the sex trafficking and obstruction allegations.
“This may be a willing participant who has a smart lawyer who sought an immunity deal from the government,” said former prosecutor and CBS News legal analyst Rikki Kleiman. “The government does not give immunity blindly, they know what they’re getting in exchange.” [….]
A source told CBS News last week that as a part of an obstruction probe, investigators are looking into whether Gaetz had a phone call with the ex-girlfriend, and another woman, who was already a witness in the federal investigation.
Multiple sources told CBS News that the ex-girlfriend and the other woman traveled to the Bahamas with Gaetz in 2018, along with a third woman with whom Gaetz was in a sexual relationship. That third woman was 18 at the time of the Bahamas trip, but investigators are also looking into whether she was 17 when the sexual relationship began.
https://twitter.com/sherrisjoy/status/1483474593444769800?s=20
The Washington Post: Florida governor proposes special police agency to monitor elections.
https://twitter.com/benjaminblouin/status/1483472324825341953?s=20
That’s all the news I have for you today–another insane news day with the ongoing pandemic and GOP coup in the background. What stories are you following?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: January 15, 2022 Filed under: Afternoon Reads | Tags: Donald Trump, fascism, FBI, January 6, Merrick Garland, snowstorm, Tonga, tsunami, volcano eruption, winter weather 17 Comments
By German cartoonist Rudi Herzlmeier
Good Afternoon!!
The temperature here in the Boston area was 1 degree this morning. We had wind chill temperatures around -20 overnight and today will see -11 wind chills. Winter weather this year has been weird everywhere. For the past couple of weeks here, we have been alternating between freezing cold and unseasonably warm days.
Today a massive winter storm is moving from the upper Midwest into the South. Eventually the storm will move up the coast and into New England as a “southeaster.” So far it looks like my area will miss the heavy snow. I hope that prediction holds! I feel for those of you who live down south.
CNN: Where to expect snow in the days ahead as a massive storm system moves south.
A massive storm system that’s dumping several inches of snow on the central US is expected to move toward the southeast Saturday, prompting the governors of Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia to declare states of emergency ahead of a crippling ice and snow event.
More than 65 million people in the affected areas are under winter weather alerts, the National Weather Service said.
“A strong developing storm over the Lower Mississippi Valley will move eastward to the Southeast by Sunday morning, then head northeastward to the northern mid-Atlantic by Monday,” the National Weather Service Prediction Center said early Saturday.
Rain, snow, sleet, and freezing rain — or a combination of all of those — will make travel difficult over the three-day holiday weekend across the Eastern US.
A swath of 8 to 12 inches of snow was recorded across portions of North Dakota on Friday.
From there, the system dove deeper south, heading into Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas where it delivered rain and snowfall.
“How fast surface temperatures fall below freezing, and therefore, how fast rain changes to snow will play a big role in determining just how much snow accumulates,” said the NWS office in Topeka, Kansas.
Throughout Saturday the storm system will bring heavy bands of snowfall to the Mid-South and Tennessee Valley.
Localized areas of Tennessee could see snow totals exceeding 6 inches as the storm continues its eastward track toward the Southern Appalachians.
There’s lots more winter weather news to read at that CNN link.
By Rudi Herzlmeier
Out on the West Coast, there’s another type of natural disaster warning. The New York Times: Tsunami Reported in Tonga After an Underwater Volcano Eruption.
A four-foot tsunami wave was reported to have hit Tonga’s capital, Nuku’alofa, on Saturday, sending people rushing to higher ground. Witnesses said ash had fallen from the sky, after an underwater volcano erupted earlier near the remote Pacific nation.
The volcano, Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, is about 40 miles north of the Pacific archipelago’s main island, Tongatapu.
The Bureau of Meteorology in Australia reported the tsunami on Twitter. But communication with Tonga was disrupted, according to The Associated Press, so there were no immediate official reports of injuries or the extent of the damage.
The Tonga Meteorological Service issued a tsunami warning for the archipelago on Saturday evening. On their Facebook pages, the meteorological services for nearby Fiji and Samoa also issued alerts, advising people to stay away from low-lying coastal areas.
The National Tsunami WarninI g Center in the United States issued a tsunami advisory for the West Coast on Saturday morning Pacific time, including the Washington and Oregon coast, with the National Weather Service in Portland reporting possible one- to three-foot waves in Newport, Ore., Long Beach, Wash., and Seaside, Ore. “First wave may not be the highest,” and later waves may “be larger,” the tweet said.
I think I’d rather have a snowstorm.
Unfortunately, I guess I’ll have to get to the politics news now. I want to recommend three long reads and then I’ll list some links to other interesting stories.
First a piece by Yale philosophy professor and fascism expert Jason Stanley at The Guardian, published last month: America is now in fascism’s legal phase.
Let us be reminded that before there is a final solution, there must be a first solution, a second one, even a third. The move toward a final solution is not a jump. It takes one step, then another, then another.”
So began Toni Morrison’s 1995 address to Howard University, entitled Racism and Fascism, which delineated 10 step-by-step procedures to carry a society from first to last.
Morrison saw, in the history of US racism, fascist practices – ones that could enable a fascist social and political movement in the United States.
Cats out for a walk, Rudi Hurzlmeier
Writing in the era of the “super-predator” myth (a Newsweek headline the next year read, “Superpredators: Should we cage the new breed of vicious kids?”), Morrison unflinchingly read fascism into the practices of US racism. Twenty-five years later, those “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems” are closer than ever to winning a multi-decade national fight.
The contemporary American fascist movement is led by oligarchical interests for whom the public good is an impediment, such as those in the hydrocarbon business, as well as a social, political, and religious movement with roots in the Confederacy. As in all fascist movements, these forces have found a popular leader unconstrained by the rules of democracy, this time in the figure of Donald Trump.
Morrison’s interest was not in fascist demagogues or fascist regimes. It was rather in “forces interested in fascist solutions to national problems”. The procedures she described were methods to normalize such solutions, to “construct an internal enemy”, isolate, demonize and criminalize it and sympathizers to its ideology and their allies, and, using the media, provide the illusion of power and influence to one’s supporters.
Philosophers have always been at the forefront in the analysis of fascist ideology and movements. In keeping with a tradition that includes the philosophers Hannah Arendt and Theodor Adorno, I have been writing for a decade on the way politicians and movement leaders employ propaganda, centrally including fascist propaganda, to win elections and gain power.
Often, those who employ fascist tactics do so cynically – they do not really believe the enemies they target are so malign, or so powerful, as their rhetoric suggests. Nevertheless, there comes a tipping point, where rhetoric becomes policy. Donald Trump and the party that is now in thrall to him have long been exploiting fascist propaganda. They are now inscribing it into fascist policy.
The article is very long, but well worth reading. Remember, Hitler got many of his ideas from the Jim Crow South.
In the lead-up to the Capitol siege, the FBI received at least a dozen warnings about the possibility of violence that day (see timeline below.) When the day came and the Capitol barricades fell, it became evident the FBI largely ignored them all.
The warnings came from all sides: regional law enforcement, social media platforms, Congress (specifically the House and Senate intelligence committees), a top defense official, extremist watchdogs, right-wing experts, journalists and even three different components within the FBI itself.
By Rudi Herzlmeier
Grid reviewed every public statement FBI officials made about the bureau’s intelligence leading up to the siege to understand how the FBI explained its posture on Jan. 6. We read hundreds of pages of FBI briefings and press statements, FBI officials’ testimony before Congress and public comments in news reports.
We found that the FBI has given at least five different explanations for why it failed to heed these warnings and take steps to foil the Capitol attack or help other agencies prepare a sufficient response. Some of them support arguments the FBI should get more money and legal authorities. But given what we now know, none of them holds up.
“They’re following the same blueprint as 9/11,” said Mike German, a former undercover FBI agent and author of “Disrupt, Discredit and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy.” He is a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice. “First they say, ‘We had no intelligence,’ then say, ‘Our authorities prevented us from getting the intelligence,’ which is not true.”
The institutional lack of introspection, while unsurprising, is deeply worrisome, German and others agree. The threat of political violence — particularly from the right, and targeting democratic institutions and political leaders — is higher than at any point in modern history. Many key indicators point in one direction: Extremist violence is reportedly surging, and threats against election officials and members of Congress are increasing. The threat of lethality from domestic violent extremist groups “is higher than it ever was,” Attorney General Merrick Garland told Congress last May.
If the FBI remains blinkered to the most serious and likely threats, Jan. 6 might not be its last major failure. American democracy has largely survived the violence of Jan. 6, and the Department of Justice has undertaken a historic effort to investigate, indict and prosecute hundreds of participants — who might never have stormed the Capitol in the first place if the FBI had heeded clear warnings and taken proper steps to prevent the attack.
Palidino goes on to refute the five main excuses the FBI has given for it’s failure to respond to the many warnings they received before January 6. It appears that the bureau is still focusing more on left wing protestors than on right wing violence, despite the public claims of director Chris Wray.
The final long read is by Jennifer Taub at The Washington Monthly: Merrick Garland’s Trump Problem—and Ours.
Timing is everything. When it comes to free and fair elections and ensuring that Donald Trump and fellow authoritarians do not pull off a successful coup, we are nearly out of time. At least 19 states have added laws that make it more difficult to vote, according to the Brennan Center for Justice, and 49 state legislatures are considering voting restrictions, including, most ominously, measures that would take election management out of the hands of secretaries of state and hand it over to GOP-controlled legislatures. We have until November 8to fix this.
Espresso by rudi Hurzlmeier
The prosecution of the former president is on a slower timeline. This includes not only the criminal investigations being pursued in Georgia by the Fulton County district attorney, and in New York by the state attorney general and the Manhattan district attorney, but also any investigations emanating from the U.S. Department of Justice. But that’s okay; Merrick Garland is no longer the problem or the solution.
I came to this conclusion after Attorney General Garland delivered a much-hyped speech commemorating the anniversary of the January 6 attack on the Capitol. After considering his words, I opened a calendar and did the math. We’ll get to that math in a moment. But first, let’s be clear about what Garland did and didn’t promise.
After watching his talk and then reading the prepared remarks published on the DOJ website, I have this take: I fully trust Garland to prosecute Trump in connection with the events directly leading up to and surrounding the certification of the electoral vote on January 6. But I’m less sure how much Trump mischief that will include.
Why do I believe DOJ is currently investigating the former president? Some doubt it. There have been no leaks to the press. By comparison, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has been less circumspect. Committee members, including Republican Representative Liz Cheney, have made it clear that they are examining Trump’s legal culpability on a number of grounds. Garland will have access to whatever the committee uncovers, including the report they plan to issue as early as this summer. And if the panel, chaired by Representative Bennie Thompson, makes criminal referrals to DOJ, committee staff will turn over the evidence they have gathered.
In such a referral, the committee might reference several statutes that DOJ can use to prosecute the former president and others, including obstruction of an official proceeding, conspiracy, and seditious conspiracy. They might also use the wire fraud statute to charge those who raised funds off the Big Lie.
Read the rest at The Washington Monthly link.
More stories to check out:
Yahoo News: Fake electoral documents under new scrutiny as Trump prepares for Arizona visit.
Emptywheel: The Structure of the January 6 Assault: “I Will Settle With Seeing [Normies] Smash Some Pigs To Dust.
Greg Sargent at The Washington Post: Kevin McCarthy’s coverup for Trump may be hiding knowledge of possible crimes.
Aaron Blake at The Washington Post: The conservative knives come out for Brett Kavanaugh.
The New York Times: Census Memo Cites ‘Unprecedented’ Meddling by Trump Administration.
What’s on your mind today? What stories are you following?
Thursday Reads
Posted: January 13, 2022 Filed under: morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bob Dylan, Chuck Schumer, Donald Trump, Fake Electoral College certificates, Jim Marchant, Mark Meadows, Ronnie Spector, voting rights bill 16 CommentsGood Morning!!
We’ve lost another 1960s icon. Ronnie Spector, lead singer of the Ronettes died yesterday. She was a beloved part of the sound track of my high school years.
https://twitter.com/Sifill_LDF/status/1481457032129560578?s=20
Variety: Ronnie Spector, Girl Group Icon and Leader of the Ronettes, Dies at 78.
Ronnie Spector, whose hard-edged yet tremulous voice soared on the girl-group hits of the early ‘60s, died on Wednesday of cancer. She was 78….
Née Veronica Bennett, she forged an enduring “bad girl” image with her older sister Estelle Bennett and cousin Nedra Talley – towering teased beehive hairdos, canopies of mascara and eyeliner and tight-fitting slit skirts – that rubbed against the aching romanticism of the Ronettes’ Philles Records hits of 1963-66.
Ronnie Spector
Though producer Phil Spector employed other powerful female vocalists like the Crystals’ Darlene Love, La La Brooks and (on the memorable “River Deep Mountain High”) Tina Turner, the Ronettes’ lead singer became the ideal vehicle for the massive-sounding hits he termed “little symphonies for the kids.”
In “Out of His Head,” his biography of the producer, Richard Williams wrote, “Ronnie Bennett’s hugely quavering, massively sexy voice [was] a pure pop instrument the like of which no one had ever heard before. Spector had found his instrument, and she had found her setting.”
Like burning magnesium, the Ronettes flared hot, brightly and quickly: Their string of hits, which began with 1963’s “Be My Baby,” had played out by 1966, as the producer’s interest in the group had run its course.
Ronnie married Phil Spector in 1968. It was an abusive relationship in which Spector “kept his wife a virtual prisoner in their Beverly Hills home for years…” Eventually, Ronnie’s mother rescued her from the marriage in 1972,
In later years, Ronnie Spector recorded fitfully as a solo artist, and was a beneficiary of the rock ‘n’ roll revival of the early ‘70s. She remained an icon among her musician fans: She enjoyed high-profile studio collaborations with Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, Eddie Money and Ramones lead singer Joey Ramone, and Billy Joel penned the single “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” expressly for her. Her second husband and manager Jonathan Greenfield helped renew her reputation as a live performer.
She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Ronettes in 2007.
More music news: Did you see that an old Bob Dylan song has been released after staying hidden for 40 years?
In present day news, the January 6 committee has been very busy. The latest news is about forged 2020 Electoral College certificates that came from states that Biden won. Dakinikat posted about this on Monday, but more keeps coming out. At that time we learned about documents from 4 states; now we know there were at least 7 states involved. You can see the forged documents at American Oversight.
In the weeks after the 2020 election, then-President Donald Trump’s allies sent fake certificates to the National Archives declaring that Trump won seven states that he actually lost. The documents had no impact on the outcome of the election, but they are yet another example of how Team Trump tried to subvert the Electoral College — a key line of inquiry for the January 6 committee.
The fake certificates were created by Trump allies in Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada and New Mexico, who sought to replace valid presidential electors from their states with a pro-Trump slate, according to documents obtained by American Oversight.
The documents contain the signatures of Trump supporters who claimed to be the rightful electors from seven states that President Joe Biden won. But these rogue slates of electors didn’t have the backing of any elected officials in the seven states — like a governor or secretary of state, who are involved in certifying election results — and they served no legitimate purpose.
The documents were first posted online in March by the government watchdog group. But they received renewed attention this week, as the January 6 committee ramps up its investigation into Trump’s attempted coup, including how his allies tried to stop states from certifying Biden’s victory, in part, by installing friendly slates of electors who would overturn the will of the voters.
The real documents are posted on the National Archives website. More details from CNN.
Some of the fake certificates with pro-Trump electors were sent to the National Archives by top officials representing the Republican Party in each state, according to the documents.
They sent these fake certificates after Trump himself failed to block governors from signing the real certificates. Specifically, Trump encouraged Republican governors in states like Georgia and Arizona not to certify the election results, and falsely claimed the elections were fraudulent. But these GOP officials ignored Trump, followed the law, and awarded the electors to Biden.
Installing slates of “alternate electors” was an integral part of the ill-fated plan conceived by Trump allies to usurp power on January 6 by pressuring Vice President Mike Pence to throw out the pro-Biden electors that had been chosen by voters. The idea was promoted by Trump advisers inside and outside the White House, including controversial right-wing lawyer John Eastman.
Rachel Maddow has been reporting on the fake certificate story this week. Here’s her latest:
From Newsweek: Mark Meadows Worked on Creating Fake Electoral College To Overturn Election Results—Report.
Mark Meadows, former chief of staff to Donald Trump, allegedly worked on creating a fake electoral college following the 2020 presidential election. That’s according to a contempt report released Sunday night by the House of Representatives panel investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
The report comes just days after Meadows launched legal proceedings against the panel and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Meadows filed a lawsuit in a Washington, D.C. federal court on December 8 after the committee said it would proceed with a contempt case against him for his refusal to appear for a deposition.
Among other issues, the committee said Meadows sent emails and texts about sending “alternate electors” to Congress in November 2020, allegedly saying “I love it” about the idea to an unidentified member of Congress.
“Mr. Meadows received text messages and emails regarding apparent efforts to encourage Republican legislators in certain States to send alternate slates of electors to Congress, a plan which one Member of Congress acknowledged was ‘highly controversial’ and to which Mr. Meadows responded, ‘I love it,'” the committee report said.
“Mr. Meadows responded to a similar message by saying ‘[w]e are’ and another such message by saying ‘Yes. Have a team on it,'” it said.
The committee also said in its report that Meadows introduced former President Donald Trump to then-Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark as part of efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
“Mr. Clark went on to recommend to Mr. Trump that he be installed as Acting Attorney General and that DOJ should send a letter to State officials urging them to take certain actions that could affect the outcome of the November 2020 election by, among other things, appointing alternate slates of electors to cast electoral votes for Mr. Trump rather than now-President Biden,” the report said.
It sure looks like Mark Meadows is in deep sh&t.
The Trumpist Republicans are now working hard to fix future elections in their favor. Ed Pilkington at The Guardian: Trump loyalists form alliance in bid to take over election process in key states.
Extreme Republicans loyal to Donald Trump and his “big lie” that the 2020 election was rigged have formed a nationwide alliance aiming to take control of the presidential election process in key battleground states that could determine the outcome of the 2024 presidential race.
At least eight Republicans who are currently running to serve as chief election officials in crucial swing states have come together to form the coalition.
Jim Marchant
The group shares conspiracy theories about unfounded election fraud and exchanges ideas on how radically to reconstruct election systems in ways that could overturn the legitimate results of the next presidential race.
All of them backed Trump’s efforts to subvert the 2020 election and cling on to power against the will of American voters. Several of the alliance have been personally endorsed by Trump and have a credible shot at winning the post of secretary of state – the most powerful election officer in each state.
The existence of the “coalition of America First secretary of state candidates” was disclosed by one of the members themselves, Jim Marchant who is running for secretary of state in Nevada. A former business owner and Nevada state assembly member, Marchant has ties with the QAnon conspiracy theory movement….
In an interview with the Guardian, Marchant said that there were currently eight members of the coalition bidding for chief election official posts, with more likely to join soon. He said participants included Jody Hice in Georgia, Mark Finchem in Arizona and Kristina Karamo in Michigan – all three of whom have been endorsed by Trump.
Marchant also named Rachel Hamm in California and David Winney in Colorado, and said that further members were likely to be recruited imminently in Wisconsin and Minnesota. Several in-person “summits” of the candidates had already been held, with the next planned in Wisconsin on 29 January and Nevada on 26 February.
All the candidates named by Marchant have been prominent exponents of false claims that the 2020 election was fraudulent. Finchem attended the “Stop the Steal” rally in Washington on January 6 hours before the US Capitol was stormed.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress are trying to pass voting right legislation. The Washington Post reports that Chuck Schumer has a new strategy: Schumer sets up final Senate confrontation on voting rights and the filibuster.
Tuesday Reads
Posted: January 11, 2022 Filed under: just because 34 CommentsGood Afternoon!!
By German cartoonist Gerhard Gluck
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris are heading to Atlanta today to give speeches on voting rights, but activist groups in Georgia are boycotting the event. Stacey Abrams says she won’t be there because of a scheduling conflict.
According to The New York Times: Biden Will Endorse Changing Senate Rules to Pass Voting Rights Legislation.
President Biden will endorse changing Senate rules to pass new voting rights protections during a speech in Atlanta on Tuesday, the most significant step he will have taken to pressure lawmakers to act on an issue he has called the biggest test of America’s democracy since the Civil War.
Mr. Biden will not go so far as to call for full-scale elimination of the filibuster, a Senate tradition that allows the minority party to kill legislation that fails to garner 60 votes, according to a senior administration official who previewed the speech. But Mr. Biden will say he supports a filibuster “carve-out” in the case of voting rights, the official said.
Citing “repeated obstruction” by Republicans, Mr. Biden will endorse changing the Senate rules, the official said. The president will contend that the filibuster has protected “extreme attacks on the most basic constitutional right.”
“The next few days, when these bills come to a vote, will mark a turning point in this nation,” Mr. Biden will say on Tuesday, according to a preview of his remarks provided by the White House. “Will we choose democracy over autocracy, light over shadow, justice over injustice? I know where I stand.”
That’s apparently not enough for a number of Georgia voting rights groups.
The Guardian: Georgia activists warn Biden against a ‘photo-op’ visit that lacks voting rights plan.
A coalition of influential political activists in Georgia that boosted turnout in a state crucial to Joe Biden’s victory in 2020 is refusing to attend the visit planned on Tuesday by the US president and Kamala Harris to speak on voting rights.
The group had warned the president and vice-president that they needed to announce a specific plan to get national voting rights legislation passed or risk their high-profile trip to Atlanta being dismissed as “a waste of time”….
…[O]n Monday evening, the coalition of activist groups – Black Voters Matter, Galeo Impact Fund, New Georgia Project Action Fund, Asian American Advocacy Fund, Atlanta-North Georgia Labor Council – along with James Woodall, the Georgia NAACP president, announced that “we will not be attending” when Biden and Harris speak.
“Instead of giving a speech tomorrow, the US Senate should be voting tomorrow. What we need now, rather than a visit from the president, vice-president and legislators is for the White House and Senate to remain in DC and act immediately to pass federal legislation to protect our freedom to vote,” the groups said in joint statement.
Illustration by Alessia Turchie
More from CNN: Georgia voting rights groups boycott Biden’s Atlanta speech: ‘We don’t need even more photo ops. We need action.’
Cliff Albright, co-founder of Black Voters Matter, and representatives of several voting rights groups urged Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris to remain in Washington on Tuesday if they don’t have a clear plan to advance voting rights legislation. Some of the groups that urged Biden to skip his Atlanta trip are the Asian American Advocacy Fund, GALEO Impact Fund Inc. and New Georgia Project Action Fund.
“We don’t need even more photo ops. We need action, and that action is in the form of the John Lewis Voting Rights (Advancement) Act as well as the Freedom to Vote Act, and we need that immediately,” Albright told reporters on Monday.
Several major civil rights leaders are scheduled to attend Biden and Harris’ speeches in Atlanta on Tuesday, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson and the Rev. Al Sharpton. Marc Morial, the president of the National Urban League; Derrick Johnson, the head of the NAACP; Melanie Campbell, the chief executive of the National Coalition on Black Civic Participation and many other civil rights and voting rights leaders will also be attending.
At The Washington Post, Jonathan Capehart argues: Opinion: Georgia voting activists want to turn Biden away. They’ve got the wrong guy.
After months of justified complaints that the White House was prioritizing everything except preserving voting rights, President Biden and Vice President Harris will head to Georgia on Tuesday to bring their spotlight to the fight. But a high-profile group of Peach State voting rights organizations is saying, “Don’t come.”
Lazy Caturday Reads: SCOTUS, Covid, and the Right Wing Agenda
Posted: January 8, 2022 Filed under: just because 22 Comments
By Chris Miles
Good Afternoon!!
There’s not a lot of breaking news today, but there are plenty of articles about the the Supreme Court and the pandemic; at the moment those topics are interrelated because of yesterday’s SCOTUS argument on President Biden’s vaccine mandates. The conservative majority on the Court is apparently working to kill Americans in the service of weakening the Federal government.
Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: COVID Is an Emergency. To SCOTUS’s Conservatives, It’s Also an Opportunity.
A majority of the justices on the Supreme Court may not see COVID-19 as an emergency. But they do see it as an opportunity. This unprecedented pandemic, the deadliest in American history, has forced the executive branch to act swiftly and creatively at each stage of the crisis. Facing an often-deadlocked Congress, President Joe Biden has drawn on old statutes to establish new regulations to stop the coronavirus from spreading and killing more people. Yet in so doing, he has given the Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed justices a chance to hobble his whole agenda. And during oral arguments over Biden’s vaccine mandates on Friday, these justices made it painfully clear that they will also seize this moment to grind down the federal government’s ability to perform even its most basic functions as well.
Friday’s arguments revolved around two rules issued by the Biden administration. The first, which we’ll call the employer mandate, was issued by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. It imposes a requirement on companies with 100 or more employees: Workers must either get vaccinated against COVID-19 or wear a mask at work and undergo weekly testing. The second, which we’ll call the health care mandate, was issued by the Department of Health and Human Services. It obligates hospitals and other care facilities that accept Medicare and Medicaid funds, which is most hospitals, to issue a vaccine mandate for workers. This mandate includes medical and religious exemptions. A coalition of red-state attorneys general challenged both rules, and after the lower courts divided, the Supreme Court scheduled a special Friday session to decide their fate.
Cat and Mouse, by Janet Hill
And what a session it was. The nihilism, hypocrisy, and armchair epidemiology on display at times bled into rank anti-vax-ism. The conservative supermajority did not bother to conceal its contempt for the Biden administration’s effort to root new policies in old statutes. As the basis for its employer mandate OSHA cited a federal law that permits it to issue an “emergency temporary standard” when it determines that it’s “necessary” to protect employees from a “grave danger” resulting from “physically harmful” “agents” or “new hazards.” The coronavirus is both an infectious “agent” and a “new hazard” that poses a “grave danger.” So OSHA’s vaccinate-or-test regime fits pretty neatly into Congress’ mandate. But the Republican-appointed justices appeared to begin with the premise that existing law could not possibly authorize this rule, then worked backward to justify their skepticism.
That’s because these justices emerged from a conservative legal movement that has grown obsessed with obliterating “the administrative state”—the hundreds of federal agencies that actually implement laws passed by Congress. Because Congress cannot anticipate every future problem, it has long given these agencies broad mandates to accomplish some overarching goal however their experts see fit. For instance, lawmakers charged the public health experts at OSHA with determining how best to protect Americans from dangers in the workplace. They did not try to predict every hazard that might arise; instead, they simply tasked the agency with deciding how best to confront the most catastrophic risks to American workers.
Please go read the rest at Slate.
Ian Millhiser at Vox: The Supreme Court appears ready to slash Biden’s vaccine mandate for workers.
Benjamin Flowers is Ohio’s solicitor general, and he was supposed to be at the Supreme Court on Friday to ask the justices to nullify a Biden administration rule requiring most workers to either be vaccinated against Covid-19 or to be regularly tested for the disease.
But Flowers had to argue his case over the phone. The reason why? He himself has Covid, and therefore could not enter the justices’ workplace and risk endangering them and their staff.
It’s an elegant metaphor for the kind of see-no-evil approach to Covid-19 that Flowers, and several other lawyers arguing against policies from President Joe Biden’s administration, would impose on the nation. Flowers would have the justices block one of Biden’s most significant efforts to halt a potentially deadly disease that, as Justice Stephen Breyer noted multiple times during Friday’s arguments, is infecting about three-quarters of a million Americans every day this week.
And yet, if Friday’s argument in National Federation of Independent Business v. Department of Labor is any sign, there will almost certainly be at least five votes on the Supreme Court to block the workplace Covid rule, which applies to employers with 100 or more employees.
By Catherine Chauloux
Meanwhile, in separate case Biden v. Missouri, the Court considered a rule requiring health providers that accept Medicare and Medicaid funds to be vaccinated. This oral argument was less of a bloodbath for the government, and it seems possible that this more limited rule for health providers will be upheld.
But the oral argument in the first case, NFIB, suggests that the Court’s 6-3 conservative majority is inclined to hand down a very broad decision — one that won’t simply hobble many of the Biden administration’s efforts to quell a pandemic that has killed nearly 830,000 Americans, but that could also fundamentally rework the balance of power between elected federal officials and an unelected judiciary….
Multiple justices appeared eager to impose new restrictions on Congress’s ability to delegate authority to federal agencies. Indeed, the Court could easily give itself a sweeping new power to veto agency regulations that a majority of the justices disapprove of.
A majority of the Court, in other words, appeared much more bothered by the implications of letting the Biden administration fight the pandemic than they are bothered by the many deaths caused by the pandemic itself.
Ironically, Covid is killing off right wing Republicans who refuse to get vaccinated and wear masks. Kent Sepkowitz at The Daily Beast on January 3: Omicron Shows the Unvaccinated Will Never Be Safe.
The Omicron variant of SARS CoV2 has quickly upended at least three facts we thought we had established about the COVID-19 pandemic.
First, the transmissibility of Omicron has shattered all previous records, including those set by the Delta variant, which briefly had been considered just about worst-in-class due its extreme contagiousness. Second, it has shown us that COVID-19 can be a mild disease—if one considers a three- or four-day bout of fatigue, aches, and fever to be mild.
But it is the third revelation that’s the most alarming. Omicron has scrambled a great deal of what we thought we knew about immunity to the infection in the first place. Witness the ease with which it has infected those with one or two—or even three—vaccinations, a phenomenon referred to as vaccine evasion, or VE. Thankfully, the current vaccines still prevent most lethal infections, despite being less effective at preventing infection itself.
By Emily Olson
However, it is not vaccinated people with breakthrough infections who comprise the most unsettling part of the immunity story, even as that makes headlines and dominates social media. Rather, it is the ease with which Omicron has evaded the immunity provoked by previous infection with the Delta or the Alpha (aka the British or B-117) variants that has ominous implications for what’s ahead—and raises the specter of more mass death.
For those willing to accept vaccines, this type of evasion less than a year after the mRNA products entered widespread use is a serious but surmountable scientific challenge. We have long known we may need to develop just-in-time vaccines for a newly—and suddenly—dominant variant. MRNA technology lends itself to exactly that. The technology is available, and though the product will always lag behind the latest pandemic variants, tricks (like third doses and fourth doses of the old, less-finely tuned vaccine) to buy time or innovative technologic shortcuts surely will be developed.
Vaccinated people will—sooner or later—be able to keep up with the always-changing virus.
But the implacable millions for whom vaccination represents some intolerable intrusion on their personal space—call them the Never Vaxxers—represent a very different problem, one that science, persuasion, or even harsh threats seem unable to resolve. We knew there were anti-vaxxers, and we knew the pandemic would not end easily, but these people will not stop dying any time soon.
One more on yesterday’s SCOTUS session from The Washington Post’s Ruth Marcus: Opinion: Where was Justice Neil Gorsuch’s mask?
Where was Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s mask? If you think this sounds like a trivial question, I dissent. I believe it goes to the heart of our fraying social fabric.
When the Supreme Court justices took their seats Friday morning to hear oral arguments in two cases challenging the Biden administration’s covid rules, seven of the justices wore masks — a change in their previous behavior prompted, no doubt, by the emergence of an new infectious strain.
Miss Mink The Cat Countess. Lesson One, Janet Hill
One justice, Sonia Sotomayor, who had previously been the only justice to wear a mask on the bench, participated remotely from her chambers. Sotomayor has diabetes, which is a risk factor for more severe illness with covid. She also is, or would have been, Gorsuch’s seat mate for the nearly four-hour-long argument session.
The court, having resumed in-person arguments, retains strict limits on who can attend and strict rules for those allowed inside the chamber. Reporters and lawyers must wear masks — N95 masks, not the less-effective cloth variety — and test negative for covid. In fact, two of the lawyers who argued against the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates had to do so remotely after testing positive. And instead of being crammed cheek by jowl in the press section, reporters, along with the justices’ law clerks, are spaced throughout the otherwise-empty chamber.
These rules and practices all make sense for the court (where five justices, including Sotomayor, are over 65) and for the public. Indeed, they offer a model for responsible workplace behavior in an age of omicron.
Which brings me to the question: Where was Gorsuch’s mask?
I put that question to the court’s public information office. No response to that, or to a question about whether Gorsuch’s masklessness had something to do with Sotomayor’s decision to absent herself.
There’s more at the WaPo link.
While we’re discussing the Supreme Court, I want to highlight another article at Slate by Mark Joseph Stern from one year ago: Ginni Thomas, Wife of Clarence, Cheered On the Rally That Turned Into the Capitol Riot.
On Wednesday morning, Ginni Thomas—wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas—endorsed the rally in Washington demanding that Congress overturn the election. She then sent her “LOVE” to the demonstrators, who violently overtook the Capitol several hours later. Two days later, Thomas amended her post with the addendum: “[Note: written before violence in US Capitol].” By that point, five people involved in the insurrection, including a Capitol Police officer, had died.
Thomas, a conservative lobbyist and zealous supporter of Donald Trump, has fervently defended the president over the last four years. On her Facebook page, she frequently promotes baseless conspiracy theories about a “coup” against Trump led by Jewish philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of anti-Semitic hate. Thomas draws many of these theories from fringe corners of the internet, including an anti-vax Facebook group that claimed Bill Gates would use the COVID vaccine to kill people. In recent months, she also amplified unsubstantiated corruption claims against Joe Biden while insisting, falsely, that the Obama administration illegally spied on Trump’s 2016 campaign, then tried to rig the election against him.
By Yana Movchan, 1971
In turn, Trump has rewarded Thomas with an extraordinary amount of access to the Oval Office. Her advocacy group Groundswell got an audience with the president in early 2019. According to the New York Times, the meeting was arranged after Clarence and Ginni Thomas had dinner with the Trumps. (Clarence Thomas and Trump appear to be quite friendly: The justice took his clerks to meet with the president in the Oval Office at least once; Ginni attended as well.) At the White House, Groundswell’s members lobbied Trump against transgender service in the military, which he already prohibited in 2017. The ban took effect in 2019, around the time of Groundswell’s meeting, after the Supreme Court lifted lower court orders blocking it by a 5–4 vote. (Clarence Thomas did not recuse himself from the case; he has never recused from any case because of his wife’s lobbying activities.) The New York Times also reported that Ginni Thomas compiled lists of federal employees whom she deemed insufficiently loyal to the president. She sent her lists to Trump, urging him to fire the disloyal employees, though he seems to have largely ignored her. He has, however, stacked his administration with former Thomas clerks.
Throughout the 2020 campaign, Thomas remained active on Facebook, condemning Black Lives Matter, opposing COVID-19 shutdowns, and touting the “Walk Away” movement, which purports to spotlight Democrats who became Republicans under Trump. (At least two individuals featured in the “Walk Away” series, both Black, were actually models from royalty-free stock photos.) She also campaigned for Trump in person—and, according to the Intercept, spearheaded a dark-money operation to support the president. Cleta Mitchell, the Republican lawyer who participated in Trump’s shakedown of the Georgia secretary of state, led the project.
Chief Justice Roberts claims to be concerned about conflicts of interest in the judiciary. Why isn’t he doing anything about this obvious conflict for Clarence Thomas?
I’ll add more links in the comment thread. What stories are you following today?
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