Fare Thee Well, by Elisheva Nesis
Democrats, meanwhile, are devising their own ways to get around the blockade, and are hoping the GOP frustration they see will push Republicans to support their idea.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: November 4, 2023 Filed under: abortion rights, Afternoon Reads, cat art, Cats, caturday, just because, LGBTQIA+ | Tags: Brian Karam, conversion therapy, House Speaker Mike Johnson, israel, Mark Meadows, Massachusetts Witch Hunt Justice Project, Michael T. James, Mike Johnson's adopted son, military promotions, people accused of witchcraft, Tommy Tuberville, Ukraine 4 Comments
By Daniel Ryan
Happy Caturday!!
It’s the weekend, and I don’t feel like getting down in the weeds about all the bad stuff that’s happening; so I’m going to share a mixed bag of recent stories that caught my fancy. Since it’s Caturday, I’m going to begin with a story about cats.
Margaret Osborne at Smithsonian Magazine: Cats Make Nearly 300 Different Facial Expressions.
…[R]esearchers have discovered that cats use nearly 300 distinct facial expressions to communicate with one another, according to a study published in October in the journal Behavioral Processes.
“Many people still consider cats—erroneously—to be a largely nonsocial species,” Daniel Mills, a veterinary behaviorist at the University of Lincoln who was not involved in the study, tells Science’s Christa Lesté-Lasserre. “There is clearly a lot going on that we are not aware of.”
To collect data on these furry subjects, researcher Lauren Scott of the University of Kansas Medical Center frequented a cat cafe located in Los Angeles for about a year and recorded video footage of interactions between 53 cats. All were adult domestic shorthairs, and the group included males and females, per the study.
In total, Scott gathered 194 minutes of feline footage that contained 186 interactions. With the help of her co-author, evolutionary psychologist Brittany N. Florkiewicz of Lyon College, she analyzed the cats’ facial signals.
By Michael Bridges
The pair discovered 276 expressions made up of a combination of 26 facial movements, including shifts in ear position, blinks, nose licks and whisker and mouth movements. (In comparison, humans make about 44 facial movements, and dogs have 27.) Of all expressions, about 45 percent—or 126—were categorized as friendly, 37 percent were aggressive and 18 percent were ambiguous, writes Jennifer Nalewicki for Live Science.
“These findings show it is good to look at a cat’s ears, eyes and whiskers to understand if they are feeling friendly,” Florkiewicz tells Earth.com’sAndrei Ionescu. “Their mouth provides a lot of information about whether a cat fight is likely. People may think that cats’ facial expressions are all about warning other cats and people off, but this shows just how social and tolerant pet cats can actually be.”
The team also identified a “common play face” among cats, which was characterized by a dropped jaw and drawn back corners of the mouth, per Live Science. People, dogs and monkeys share similar expressions in playful scenarios.
There’s a bit more at the link.
NBC News published an interesting AP story from Massachusetts: Group seeks to clear names of all accused, convicted or executed for witchcraft in Massachusetts.
In 1648, Margaret Jones, a midwife, became the first person in Massachusetts — the second in New England — to be executed for witchcraft, decades before the infamous Salem witch trials.
Nearly four centuries later, the state and region are still working to come to grips with the scope of its witch trial legacy.
The latest effort comes from a group dedicated to clearing the names of all those accused, arrested or indicted for witchcraft in Massachusetts, whether or not the accusations ended in hanging.
The Massachusetts Witch-Hunt Justice Project, made up of history buffs and descendants, is hoping to persuade the state to take a fuller reckoning of its early history, according to Josh Hutchinson, the group’s leader.
Hundreds of individuals were accused of witchcraft in what would become the Commonwealth of Massachusetts between 1638 and 1693. Most escaped execution.
While much attention has focused on clearing the names of those put to death in Salem, most of those caught up in witch trials throughout the 1600s have largely been ignored, including five women hanged for witchcraft in Boston between 1648 and 1688.
“It’s important that we correct the injustices of the past,” said Hutchinson, who noted he counts both accusers and victims among his ancestors. “We’d like an apology for all of the accused or indicted or arrested.”
For now, the group has been collecting signatures for a petition but hopes to take their case to the Statehouse.Among those accused of witchcraft in Boston was Ann Hibbins, sister-in-law to Massachusetts Gov. Richard Bellingham, who was executed in 1656. A character based on Hibbins would later appear in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter,” published in 1850.
Another accused Boston witch, known as Goodwife Ann Glover or Goody Glover, was hanged in the city in 1688. A plaque dedicated to her is located on the front of a Catholic church in the city’s North End neighborhood, describing her as “the first Catholic martyr in Massachusetts.” It’s one of the few physical reminders of the city’s witch trial history.
The group has also encouraged Connecticut to clear the names of accused witches in their state. Read more at the NBC News link.
Mark Meadows is in more trouble–his book publisher is suing him. The Daily Beast: Mark Meadows’ Publisher Sues Him for Millions Over Election Lies in Book.
The publisher of Mark Meadows’ book The Chief’s Chief has filed suit against the former White House chief of staff, seeking millions in damages after he reportedly copped to lying in the book about the 2020 election being “rigged” and “stolen.”
Meadows reportedly met repeatedly with Jack Smith’s team in its investigation into election interference and had admitted the 2020 election was the most secure in U.S. history—contradicting much of what he’d claimed in his book and allegedly breaking his agreement with the publisher.
“Meadows’ reported statements to the Special Prosecutor and/or his staff [sic] and his reported grand jury testimony squarely contradict the statements in his Book, one central theme of which is that President Trump was the true winner of the 2020 Presidential Election and that election was ‘stolen’ and ‘rigged’ with the help from ‘allies in the liberal media,’ who ignored actual evidence of fraud, right there in plain sight for anyone to access and analyze,” the lawsuit from All Seasons Press states.
ABC News, citing unnamed sources, reported that Meadows negotiated an immunity agreement with the special counsel’s office and in the process admitted to his lies about the 2020 election. Meadows’ lawyer later disputed the accuracy of the report….
The lawsuit claims that Meadows agreed that “all statements contained in the Work are true and based on reasonable research for accuracy,” and that he claimed to have “not made any misrepresentations to the Publisher about the Work.”
The book weighs heavily on Meadows’ claims that the election was “rigged” —debunked claims that All Seasons Press was happy to run at the time, but that now come under renewed scrutiny with Meadows’ reported admission that he propagated falsehoods.
More details at the link.
Some Senate Republicans have finally had it with Tommy Tuberville’s antics. Politico: Republicans, fed up with Tuberville, plot ways to bust his military blockade.
Republicans have had it with Sen. Tommy Tuberville’s nine-month blockade of military promotions. And after publicly putting pressure on the Alabama Republican to lift his hold on hundreds of officers, GOP senators are plotting new ways to break the impasse.
During a special meeting planned for next week, some will ask Tuberville to focus his obstruction on only the Pentagon’s civilian nominees and not uniformed officers who have nothing to do with the policy he’s protesting. Others want to shift the fight to the courts to challenge the policy at the center of the hold, which reimburses troops who have to travel to obtain abortions and other reproductive services.
The deadlock reached a dramatic and very public phase when a cadre of GOP senators confronted Tuberville on the Senate floor Wednesday night, blaming the Alabama lawmaker’s blanket hold for weakening the military at a precarious moment for the world.
The four-hour-plus event, which forced Tuberville to object to votes on 61 nominees, marked a pivotal moment for Republicans as their private frustrations with the freshman lawmaker spilled over onto live TV for all to see.
“I think what it says about where things are is Tommy’s losing support,” Sen. Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said of the Republican-on-Republican fight. “And you’re seeing the frustration build up because the consequences are building up.”
And while the attempt was doomed — those Republicans knew Tuberville wouldn’t budge — it’s also made some Senate Democrats optimistic that enough GOP members will join their push to confirm most of the promotions in one big bloc.
What an idiot. Alabama should be ashamed. Tuberville doesn’t even live there. He’s reportedly lived in Florida for decades.
Rolling Stone’s Cameron Joseph on Tuberville: Is Tommy Tuberville the Most Ignorant Man in D.C.?
Tommy Tuberville’s Republican colleagues had finally had it with him.
For months, the Alabama senator and former college football coach has blocked the confirmation of hundreds of senior military officers because he’s mad about a Pentagon policy that ensures soldiers have abortion access.
The group of anti-abortion Republicans had worked with him since February to try to find a solution. They’d flattered his ego. They’d mostly defended him in public as his game of chicken stretched nine months, punishing hundreds of senior service members who have no say over the policy and hurting U.S. military readiness at a time of global chaos.
But on Wednesday, their patience had worn out.
Five of Tuberville’s GOP colleagues took to the Senate floor to lambast his positions, begging him to relent and forcing him to object over and over again to allow a vote on more than 60 nominations that he’s blocked. The senators read off the sterling biographies of dozens of service members with increasing frustration.
Alaska Sen. Dan Sullivan, a colonel in the Marine reserves who served as assistant secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, was particularly irate.
“Xi Jinping is watching this right now,” Sullivan, at times yelling, declared on the Senate floor as Tuberville looked on from his desk. “He’s loving this. So is Putin. They’re loving this! How dumb can we be, man?”
“We’re going to look back at this episode and just be stunned at what a national-security suicide mission this became,” Sullivan exclaimed later on during the hours-long standoff. He later mocked Tuberville’s repeated claim that his holds weren’t hurting the military’s preparedness: “That this is not impacting readiness is patently absurd.”
On Tuberville’s history:
Tuberville spent most of his career coaching football — most notably at Auburn University, which made him a household name in the state he now represents. He still prefers being called “coach” instead of by his current job title — his official Senate website calls him “Coach Tommy Tuberville.” But his old nickname from his sideline days may be more appropriate: “The Riverboat Gambler.”
Back then, Tuberville was known to ignore the odds and pick the most aggressive play. It’s a habit that’s stuck now that he’s in the Senate.
That policy that triggered Tuberville’s anger was put in place by the Biden administration after the Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion. Fifteen states, including Tuberville’s Alabama, have banned the procedure. Enlisted service members don’t get to choose where they and their families live — they’re stationed wherever they’re needed, many of them in ruby-red states where abortion access no longer exists and other reproductive care is severely limited. The Pentagon’s fix was to offer soldiers and their families time off and funds to travel to states where abortion remains legal.
Tuberville was irate when he found out about the workaround. His obstructionist response has hamstrung the Pentagon and forced officers who have nothing to do with the policy to serve as pawns in his policy fight….
There’s some irony that Tuberville, who frequently says he ran for office so he could give back to America in the same way his own father did with his years of military service, has almost single-handedly paralyzed the entire leadership of the U.S military — in a time of global conflagration, no less. (Tuberville reiterated that he won’t budge even after Hamas attacked Israel.)
In some ways, Tuberville is a mustache away from being the bizzarro Ted Lasso of the Senate — a folksy and affable former college football coach who makes a radical career change, then makes things up as he goes along while blithely ignoring the status quo. But instead of an aw-shucks success story, he’s a testament and a cautionary tale for those who wing it.
There’s still more at the link.
Speaking of idiots, a couple of stories on the new House Speaker Mike Johnson.
Andrew Kaczynski at CNN: Before he became a politician, House Speaker Mike Johnson partnered with an anti-gay conversion therapy group.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson closely collaborated with a group in the mid-to-late 2000s that promoted “conversion therapy,” a discredited practice that asserted it could change the sexual orientation of gay and lesbian individuals.
Prior to launching his political career, Johnson, a lawyer, gave legal advice to an organization called Exodus International and partnered with the group to put on an annual anti-gay event aimed at teens, according to a CNN KFile review of more than a dozen of Johnson’s media appearances from that timespan.
Founded in 1976, Exodus International was a leader in the so-called “ex-gay” movement, which aimed to make gay individuals straight through conversion therapy programs using religious and counseling methods. Exodus International connected ministries across the world using these controversial approaches.
Hug Needed, by Anita Zotkina
The group shut down in 2013, with its founder posting a public apology for the “pain and hurt” his organization caused. Conversion therapy has been widely condemned by most major medical institutions and has been shown to be harmful to struggling LGBTQ people.
At the time, Johnson worked as an attorney for the socially conservative legal advocacy group, Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). He and his group collaborated with Exodus from 2006 to 2010.
For years, Johnson and Exodus worked on an event started by ADF in 2005 known as the “Day of Truth” – a counterprotest to the “Day of Silence,” a day in schools in which students stayed silent to bring awareness to bullying faced by LGBTQ youth.
The Day of Truth sought to counter that silence by distributing information about what Johnson described as the “dangerous” gay lifestyle.
“I mean, our race, the size of our feet, the color of our eyes, these are things we’re born with and we cannot change,” Johnson told one radio host in 2008 promoting the event. “What these adult advocacy groups like the Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network are promoting is a type of behavior. Homosexual behavior is something you do, it’s not something that you are.”
Sigh . . .
The New York Post got the goods on Johnson’s so-called “adopted son.”: Mike Johnson’s adopted son says he’s thankful to the House Speaker’s family after his troubled past is revealed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson’s adopted son has had a string of run-ins with law enforcement for crimes ranging from drug possession to theft since leaving the care of the Louisiana Republican congressman and his wife Kelly, records show, but he’s since turned his life around.
The Johnsons met Michael T. James, now 40, when he was a teenager while the couple were doing charity work for a Christian ministry in Baton Rouge, La., in 1996.
The newlyweds took the troubled then-14-year-old into their home and filed court papers to become his legal guardians in 1999 after James became homeless.
However, once the Johnsons moved from Baton Rouge to Mike’s hometown of Shreveport in 2002, James stayed behind and struck out on his own, as he was then legally an adult.
Since 2003, James has been arrested more than a dozen times, according to records reviewed by The Post.
Charges against him in Florida ranged from marijuana and cocaine possession, theft, possession of a concealed weapon, violating a protective order, and possession of drug paraphernalia.
On two occasions he was sentenced to prison time, serving 37 days on the cocaine possession rap in 2003 and a 30-day term in 2007 on a retail theft charge.
He was also ordered by a court to take an anger management class in 2017.
James is understood to have moved around to a number of places during this time period, at times living with his biological mother and older brother, moving to both Florida and Texas.
Additional court documents seen by The Post indicated James was indicted on a theft charge in 2003 while living in Houston.
One more read before I wrap this up. This is the best thing I read this week.
Brian Karam at Salon: Far-right MAGA theocrats: Most dangerous threat to America.
The world inches closer to a war that only psychopaths want to see.
On Tuesday the FBI issued a warning that the chance of staged terrorist attacks in the United States has grown since the war began in Gaza. In the White House briefing later that day, Fox News reporter Peter Doocy asked National Security Council spokesman John Kirby: “Has the White House considered the possibility that a terrorist could be in the country right now after crossing the southern border?”
Obviously they have, or the FBI wouldn’t have issued the warning. The question remains, however, what our government response would be to such an attack. That has already been discussed at the highest levels in our government, and the public has a right to know what that reaction would be.
So, although I wasn’t called on, as Kirby left the stage I interrupted to ask the only question I thought mattered: “John, wait a minute. Before you leave: If Hamas terrorists attack the U.S., would the U.S. put boots on the ground in the Middle East?”
Cat Messenger, by Elisheva Nesis
Kirby stopped his retreat from the stage, and press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre let him answer. Kirby was succinct: “I won’t speculate about that, Brian. We’ll obviously do what we have to do to protect our troops and our people.”
On that same day, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer showed up at the White House with a bipartisan group — Sens. Todd Young, R-Ind., Mike Rounds, R-S.D. and Martin Heinrich, D-N.M. — to talk to President Biden and help steer a congressional response to the threat posed by SKYNET … sorry, I mean AI. It’s a bipartisan effort, but there are both Republicans and Democrats who remain opposed.
Bipartisanship, once seen as a laudable goal on many issues, is now sneered at by most remaining members of the Republican Party. Working with Democrats, for them, is like choosing death over a slice of cake. (Apologies to Eddie Izzard.)
Most Republicans are so dismayed at the prospect of working with Democrats that they want to scuttle efforts to fund the war in Ukraine, virtually isolating Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who seems to be nearly alone on an island calling for aid to continue. It’s a rare display of common sense from the 81-year-old Kentuckian, whose primary focus is on political power.
“No Americans are getting killed in Ukraine,” McConnell said. “We’re rebuilding our industrial base. The Ukrainians are destroying the army of one of our biggest rivals. I have a hard time finding anything wrong with that. I think it’s wonderful that they’re defending themselves — and also the notion that the Europeans are not doing enough. They’ve done almost $90 billion, they’re housing a bunch of refugees who escaped. I think that our NATO allies in Europe have done quite a lot.”
Few Democrats have said it any better, and it spelled out exactly what the stakes are for the U.S. in the ongoing war in Ukraine. Remember that Vlad “The Impaler” Putin has clearly suggested that he wants to get the old Soviet Union band back together — Ukraine is just the first stop in a quest for global hegemony.
Karam on Mike Johnson:
Fellow Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said that McConnell was “out of touch” with his party’s base while Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley chided McConnell for siding with Democrats — and that was before Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas gave Hawley a tongue-lashing on border issues later that afternoon. It looks like Putin still has a few fans in the GOP.
In the House, those would likely include newly-minted House Speaker Mike Johnson (and that still sounds like a Bart Simpson prank call to Moe’s Bar), who took on McConnell directly, pushing to unlink aid to Israel from aid to Ukraine.
While the world burns, Johnson and the MAGA wing of the Republican Party — which seems to have swallowed the evangelical movement while also embracing it (a T-1000 morphing into Sarah Connor is just about the right image) — is embracing the darkest verses of the Bible, apparently pushing for apocalypse with an enthusiasm only rivaled by Saul’s slaughter of Christians before he changed his name to Paul.
I’m waiting for Mel Brooks to break out into song: “Let all those who wish to confess their evil ways and accept and embrace the true church convert now or forever burn in hell — for now begins the Inquisition!”
The House of Representatives, now run by Johnson, offers a discount version of the apocalyptic orgasm the holy rollers have dreamed of for years. They’ve renewed the Inquisition and seem determined to convert the U.S. into a theocracy run by people who will thump you with the Bible, but haven’t read much of it.
Lord, how they love to preach fire and brimstone. But the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes? Forget it. Matthew 25:40: “Whatever you did it for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me”? Not a chance. They’ve embraced only the Old Testament angry God and the apocalyptic parts of Revelation brought on by ergot poisoning.
I know I’ve quoted too much, but there’s still a lot more to read at the link.
That’s my contribution for today. Let me know what you think. And have a great weekend!!
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: June 3, 2023 Filed under: abortion rights, cat art, Cats, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: Amazon, anti-abortion laws, bible, book banning, Chris Licht, Citizens United, CNN, Evan Corcoran, Google, India train crash, North Carolina abortion ban, political contributions, stolen documents case, Utah 8 CommentsHappy Caturday!!
Since it’s Caturday, I decided to share this funny video I found on Twitter before I get started with today’s news. It shows how intelligent cats really are.
Cats prove that there are good things in this world, even though the news people make can be so depressing.
Here’s what’s happening today.
There’s been a terrible train crash in India. The New York Times reports: More Than 260 Dead and 900 Injured in Train Crash in India.
More than 260 people were killed and hundreds more injured when a passenger train derailed and struck two other trains in eastern India on Friday, officials said, a rail disaster whose toll was exceptionally large even by the standards of a nation with a long history of deadly crashes.
The crash, in the state of Odisha, shocked India, now the world’s most populous country, and renewed longstanding questions about safety problems in a system that transports more than eight billion passengers a year. The country has invested heavily in the system in recent years, but that has not been enough to overcome decades of neglect.
The crash killed 261 people, according to Indian railway officials. Odisha’s chief secretary, Pradeep Jena, said that an additional 900 had been injured. Officials said they expected the toll to rise.
As daylight broke, teams of rescue workers with dogs and cutting equipment were laboring to free injured people trapped in the wreckage of twisted train carriages. Officials said that 115 ambulances had been mobilized and that all nearby hospitals were on standby.
The government in the state, home to about 45 million people, declared a day of mourning after India’s worst rail disaster in two decades. Dozens of trains were canceled. Teams from the Army, Air Force and National Disaster Response Force were mobilized to help. And people near the site of the crash were lining up to donate blood.
Of course the death toll is rising. The Washington Post: India train crash toll passes 280; rescue operation ends.
About 1,000 people were injured in the collision Friday night in the state of Odisha, the government said in a preliminary incident report obtained by The Washington Post. Rescue operations were “completed” Saturday afternoon local time, India’s Railways Ministry said on Twitter, adding that “restoration work” was underway.
Pagan Cats, by Cécile Berrubé
The crash involved high-speed trains that collided “head-on,” Odisha’s director of fire and emergency services, Sudhanshu Sarangi, said, calling it “a major, major tragedy.”
“Psychologically, we were not prepared to see so many dead bodies,” said Sarangi, who was supervising the rescue operation. More than 300 rescue workers were involved in the search, “but then as our evening progressed … we were not really hopeful of finding survivors,” he said.
The disaster unfolded around 7 p.m. local time Friday, when the Coromandel Express, which was ferrying passengers from Howrah to Chennai on India’s eastern coast, derailed and hit a freight train near the Bahanaga Bazar station in Balasore, a district in Odisha. Soon after the initial crash, the Superfast Express running from Bangalore to Howrah with roughly 1,000 passengers crashed into the other two trains, according to Aditya Kumar Chaudhary, a spokesman for the South Eastern Railway zone.
By Saturday evening local time, the death toll had reached 288, Chaudhary said, adding that 17 passenger compartments had derailed and were severely damaged.
Photographs and video from the wreckage site showed overturned train cars. Witnesses said people converged at the scene and tried to pull survivors from the mounds of mangled steel as emergency alarms sounded and the injured cried out for help.
A medical officer at Balasore District Hospital said Saturday afternoon that 1,053 people had been brought to the facility, 183 of them already dead. Fifty-five died at the hospital, he said.
“I have never seen something like this in my life. This is the first time we have received so many patients,” D. Jagatdeo said by phone from his office, where he had been stationed since the previous night.
By Martine Coppens
Chris Licht has been demoted at CNN. He’s the moron who decided to give a platform to Donald Trump at a so-called “town hall” with an audience of MAGA fanatics. It was a disaster. CNN got great ratings for the “town hall,” but after that the MAGA folks went back to Fox News, and normal people turned off CNN.
There’s a very long article at The Atlantic by Tim Alberta about this: Inside the Meltdown at CNN: CEO Chris Licht felt he was on a mission to restore the network’s reputation for serious journalism. How did it all go wrong?
I stopped reading after awhile, because I felt I didn’t need to know all the details. You can read it at the Atlantic, or you can just read this summary of the situation at Mediaite: CNN’s Licht Faces Wave of Tough Reporting in Wake of Executive Shakeup.
A series of tough headlines are hitting CNN CEO Chris Licht. First, Mediaite reported Thursday on the appointment of a new executive to take over business operations at CNN in a move seen as a rescue operation for the network leader. Then, The Atlantic dropped a tough cover story on the network chief, and Dylan Byers of Puck News reported Licht faces serious headwinds.
Byers, who used to work for CNN, said in the Puck newsletter on Friday that confidence in Licht has “wavered considerably” following the appointing of David Leavy – chief corporate affairs officer at Warner Bros. Discovery – to now handle the business side.
The revelation of Leavy’s appointment as COO was first reported by Mediaite’s Colby Hall, who followed up with a piece spelling out what this means for Licht and CNN.
“There’s no way they would put David Leavy down into CNN to work for Chris Licht,” one industry insider told Mediaite. “He’s too important to Zaslav to take what on paper sounds like a demotion. It sure sounds like he’s taking one for the team.”
The Puck reporting came hours after The Atlantic also published a lengthy and not exactly flattering profile of Licht’s tenure at CNN, which has seen precipitous ratings declines since Licht replaced former chief Jeff Zucker.
I hope CNN will get back on track, but they’ve lost a lot of viewers. The simple truth is that CNN is never going to be able to compete with Fox News for the Republican audience.
Cats Dancing, Headstand, by Louis Wain
Daknikat sent me this creepy story from The Guardian: Amazon and Google fund anti-abortion lawmakers through complex shell game.
As North Carolina’s 12-week abortion ban is due to come into effect on 1 July, an analysis from the non-profit Center for Political Accountability (CPA) shows several major corporations donated large sums to a Republican political organization which in turn funded groups working to elect anti-abortion state legislators.
The Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC) received donations of tens of thousands of dollars each from corporations including Comcast, Intuit, Wells Fargo, Amazon, Bank of America and Google last year, the CPA’s analysis of IRS filings shows. The contributions were made in the months after Politico published a leaked supreme court decision indicating that the court would end the right to nationwide abortion access.
Google contributed $45,000 to the RSLC after the leak of the draft decision, according to the CPA’s review of the tax filings. Others contributed even more in the months after the leak, including Amazon ($50,000), Intuit ($100,000) and Comcast ($147,000).
Google, Amazon, Comcast, Wells Fargo and Bank of America did not respond to requests for comment. An Intuit spokesperson pointed out that the company also donates to Democratic political organizations, and that “our financial support does not indicate a full endorsement of every position taken by an individual policymaker or organization.
That is sickening. I guess this all goes back to the SCOTUS’ Citizens United decision.
By Martine Coppens
Here’s an interesting development in the book banning craze. Now they are banning the Bible in Utah. Associated Press: Utah district bans Bible in elementary and middle schools ‘due to vulgarity or violence.’
The Good Book is being treated like a bad book in Utah after a parent frustrated by efforts to ban materials from schools convinced a suburban district that some Bible verses were too vulgar or violent for younger children.
And the Book of Mormon could be next.
The 72,000-student Davis School District north of Salt Lake City removed the Bible from its elementary and middle schools while keeping it in high schools after a committee reviewed the scripture in response to a parental complaint. The district has removed other titles, including Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian” and John Green’s “Looking for Alaska,” following a 2022 state law requiring districts to include parents in decisions over what constitutes “sensitive material.”
On Friday, a complaint was submitted about the signature scripture of the predominant faith in Utah, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, widely known as the Mormon church. District spokesperson Chris Williams confirmed that someone filed a review request for the Book of Mormon but would not say what reasons were listed. Citing a school board privacy policy, he also would not say whether it was from the same person who complained about the Bible….
Williams said the district doesn’t differentiate between requests to review books and doesn’t consider whether complaints may be submitted as satire. The reviews are handled by a committee made up of teachers, parents and administrators in the largely conservative community.
The committee published its decision about the Bible in an online database of review requests and did not elaborate on its reasoning or which passages it found overly violent or vulgar.
The decision comes as conservative parent activists, including state-based chapters of the group Parents United, descend on school boards and statehouses throughout the United States, sowing alarm about how sex and violence are talked about in schools.
Cat Dance, artist unknown
Finally, The New York Times has a new story on the Trump stolen documents investigation: Trump Lawyer’s Notes Could Be a Key in the Classified Documents Inquiry.
Turning on his iPhone one day last year, the lawyer M. Evan Corcoran recorded his reflections about a high-profile new job: representing former President Donald J. Trump inst an investigation into his handling of classified documents.
In complete sentences and a narrative tone that sounded as if it had been ripped from a novel, Mr. Corcoran recounted in detail a nearly monthlong period of the documents investigation, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Mr. Corcoran’s narration of his recollections covered his initial meeting with Mr. Trump in May last year to discuss a subpoena from the Justice Department seeking the return of all classified materials in the former president’s possession, the people said.
It also encompassed a search that Mr. Corcoran undertook last June in response to the subpoena for any relevant records being kept at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s private club and residence in Florida. He carried out the search in preparation for a visit by prosecutors, who were on their way to enforce the subpoena and collect any sensitive material found remaining there.
Government investigators almost never obtain a clear lens into a lawyer’s private dealings with their clients, let alone with such a prominent one as Mr. Trump. A recording like the voice memo Mr. Corcoran made last year — during a long drive to a family event, according to two people briefed on the recording — is typically shielded by attorney-client or work-product privilege.
But in March, a federal judge ordered Mr. Corcoran’s recorded recollections — now transcribed onto dozens of pages — to be given to the office of the special counsel Jack Smith, who is leading the documents investigation.
The decision by the judge, Beryl A. Howell, pierced the privilege that would have normally protected Mr. Corcoran’s musings about his interactions with Mr. Trump. Those protections were set aside under what is known as the crime-fraud exception, a provision that allows prosecutors to work around attorney-client privilege if they have reason to believe that legal advice or legal services were used in furthering a crime.
Read more details at the link.
That’s it for me today. I hope you have a peaceful Caturday.
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: May 27, 2023 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, abortion rights, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: abortion, Caitlin Bernard, debt ceiling crisis, Janet Yellen, Kevin McCarthy, Kyrsten Sinema, Ron DeSantis, Trump Manhattan criminal case, work requirements for social programs 12 Comments
Sleeping Cat, by Guzel Min, 2021
Happy Caturday!!
The folks in DC are still arguing about whether the U.S. government should pay its bills or not. Republicans think it’s much more important to make poor, disabled, and elderly Americans, as well as federal employees–including the military–suffer than to simply write those checks and then sit down and work on the next budget. If Congress doesn’t get its act together, millions of people in those categories will be unable to pay their rent and bills and buy food. I suppose this will go down to the wire and then be worked out, but I think the whole mess is getting dangerous.
Here’s what’s happening as of this morning.
NBC News: The U.S. now has until June 5 to act on the debt ceiling, Yellen says.
The United States has a few more days than expected before it runs out of money, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a letter Friday afternoon.
The new deadline to act or risk breaching the debt ceiling is June 5, Yellen said, setting a hard deadline for the first time. She had previously been less specific, saying the breach could occur “potentially as early as June 1.”
The Treasury Department hit the statutory borrowing limit in January and has since been using “extraordinary measures” to pay the country’s bills.
“Based on the most recent available data, we now estimate that Treasury will have insufficient resources to satisfy the government’s obligations if Congress has not raised or suspended the debt limit by June 5,” Yellen wrote to congressional leaders.
This is just about paying the bills that we’ve already run up, but Republicans want hold the funds hostage so they can punish people who need help from the government.
The two parties have been sorting through their differences on spending levels. But a major hangup is the Republican demand to impose tougher work requirements for Americans to receive federal benefits like SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, two sources familiar with the talks said.
Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, who is leading negotiations for House Republicans, said it’s “totally appropriate” for an older group of able-bodied Americans without dependents to be subject to work requirements in order to get federal aid….
Democrats say work requirements already exist for federal programs and argue that stricter policies would create more red tape and throw eligible Americans who don’t complete the paperwork correctly off the rolls, and that work requirements have little impact on unemployment.
Painting by Quint Bucholz
Republicans know they’d never win this argument without holding the full faith and credit of our country hostage, so that is what they are doing. If only Democrats had listened to Yellen when they still held a majority in both houses for a brief time after the midterms, this wouldn’t be happening now.
The New York Times: Yellen’s Debt Limit Warnings Went Unheeded, Leaving Her to Face Fallout.
In the days after November’s midterm elections, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen was feeling upbeat about the fact that Democrats had performed better than expected and maintained control of the Senate.
But as she traveled to the Group of 20 leaders summit in Indonesia that month, she said Republicans taking control of the House posed a new threat to the U.S. economy.
“I always worry about the debt ceiling,” Ms. Yellen told The New York Times in an interview on her flight from New Delhi to Bali, Indonesia, in which she urged Democrats to use their remaining time in control of Washington to lift the debt limit beyond the 2024 elections. “Any way that Congress can find to get it done, I’m all for.”
Democrats did not heed Ms. Yellen’s advice. Instead, the United States has spent most of this year inching toward the brink of default as Republicans refused to raise or suspend the nation’s $31.4 trillion borrowing limit without capping spending and rolling back parts of President Biden’s agenda.
So what will Yellen do in the worst case scenario?
Ms. Yellen has held her contingency plans close to the vest but signaled this week that she had been thinking about how to prepare for the worst. Speaking at a WSJ CEO Council event, the Treasury secretary laid out the difficult decisions she would face if the Treasury was forced to choose which bills to prioritize.
Most market watchers expect that the Treasury Department would opt to make interest and principal payments to bondholders before paying other bills, yet Ms. Yellen would say only that she would face “very tough choices.”
White House officials have refused to say if any contingency planning is underway. Early this year, Biden administration officials said they were not planning for how to prioritize payments. As the U.S. edges closer to default, the Treasury Department declined to say whether that has changed.
Yet former Treasury and Federal Reserve officials said it was nearly certain that emergency plans were being devised.
Read more at the NYT.
Cat on a windowsill, artist unknown
My eyes bugged out when I read this one at Axios: Scoop: Sinema enters debt ceiling negotiations. Just what we don’t need.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) has inserted herself into the debt ceiling negotiations, working with both sides to try to bridge differences on permitting reform, according to people familiar with the matter.
Why it matters: Her late entrance is a sign that negotiators are willing to explore new avenues to resolve thorny issues before June 5, the new deadline from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen for when the U.S. government will run out of money.
— Permitting reform — a catch-all category that includes both Republican and Democratic plans to improve energy production and transmission — is emerging as a tough-to-resolve disagreement between the White House and congressional negotiators.
— Republicans want to change the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) with the goal of cutting red tape for oil and gas companies when they develop new projects. Democrats want to make it easier for solar and wind farms to access transmission lines.
Negotiators also are at an impasse on a demand from House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to add new work requirements to welfare benefits, according to Biden administration officials.
— But the two sides are making progress on overall spending levels, with the goal of capping spending for two years at lower levels. In exchange, the debt ceiling would be raised past the 2024 elections.
Ugh!
Here’s a bit of dark humor on the debt ceiling crisis by Dana Millbank at The Washington Post: Save the world economy or his own job? McCarthy can’t decide.
After a debt limit negotiating session at the White House this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy returned to the Capitol and offered reporters an update.
Filippo Corelli, Cat in a Doorway, early 20th century
This might be the most worrying aspect of the default standoff: The full faith and credit of the United States hangs in the balance, and the man sitting across the negotiating table from the president seems to be genuinely off-kilter.
Whipsawed by public pressure from the far-right House Freedom Caucus and from former president Donald Trump, McCarthy has at one moment praised the “honesty” and “professionalism” of White House negotiators and the next moment attacked the other side as “socialist.” He gives daily (sometimes hourly) updates packed with fake statistics, nonsense anecdotes and malapropisms. His negotiators have walked out of talks only to resume them hours later. This week, at a meeting of the House Republican Conference during the height of negotiations, he decided it was the right moment to auction off a stick of his used lip balm as a fundraiser for House Republicans’ political campaigns. (Rep. Marjorie Taylor “Jewish Space Lasers” Greene won the bidding at $100,000.)
The speaker’s erraticism has an obvious origin. As usual, he isn’t leading. He’s being buffeted by crosscurrents. If he bends too much in talks, he’ll lose his GOP hardliners and could therefore lose his job. If he pleases the hardliners, he keeps his job but throws the country and perhaps the world into economic calamity. His job security or the world economy? McCarthy just can’t decide.
Read the rest at the WaPo.
Moving on to other topics….
CBS has a tidbit about the criminal case against Trump in Manhattan: Prosecutors in Trump’s criminal case say they have recording of Trump and a witness.
Prosecutors in former President Donald Trump’s Manhattan criminal case have released to his attorneys a recording of Trump and a witness, whose identity was not disclosed, according to a document the office made public Friday.
The document, called an automatic discovery form, describes the nature of the charges against a defendant and a broad overview of the evidence that prosecutors will present at Trump’s preliminary hearing or at trial. Trump’s attorneys and media organizations, including CBS News, had repeatedly requested that such a form be made public in the weeks since Trump’s arrest on April 4….
The document lists the dates of 34 instances between Feb. 14, 2017 and Dec. 5, 2017 when he allegedly falsified records.
In a section devoted to electronic evidence that will be turned over, a prosecutor for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office indicated they have disclosed to the defense a “recording of a conversation between defendant and a witness.”
The section also indicates prosecutors intend to disclose recordings of calls between witnesses and others.
That could be interesting.
Three Cats, by Ann Hewson
“National experts” are responding to the treatment of Indiana doctor Caitlin Bernard who treated a 10-year-old Ohio girl who had been impregnated through rape. Indy Star: ‘Chilling effect’: National experts decry decision against abortion doctor Caitlin Bernard.
Dressed in white coats, Drs. Tracey Wilkinson and Caroline Rouse were among the first to arrive at Caitlin Bernard’s Thursday hearing in front of the Indiana medical licensing board. When the hearing ended nearly 15 hours later, they were among the last to leave.
Six months after Indiana’s Republican attorney general filed a complaint against the Indianapolis obstetrician-gynecologist, the board voted to reprimand and fine Bernard on Thursday, finding that she violated privacy laws in giving a reporter information about a 10-year-old rape victim.
But representatives of the medical community nationwide – from individual doctors to the American Medical Association to an author of HIPAA – don’t think Bernard did anything wrong. Further, they say, the decision will have a chilling effect on those involved with patient care.
“This sends a message to all doctors everywhere that political persecution can be happening to you next for providing health care to your patients,” Wilkinson said.
“It’s terrible,” Rouse said. They’d just spent hours “listening to our friend and our colleague be put on trial for taking care of her patient and providing evidence-based health care, and that is incredibly demoralizing as a physician.”
Guess what? Republicans don’t care.
Ron DeSantis has been announcing some of the things he would do if he were elected president in 2024.
The Hill: DeSantis says he’ll consider pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, including Trump.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Thursday that if elected president, he will consider pardoning all the Jan. 6 defendants — including former President Trump — on his first day in office.
“On day one, I will have folks that will get together and look at all these cases, who people are victims of weaponization or political targeting, and we will be aggressive in issuing pardons,” DeSantis said on “The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show” podcast when asked about whether he will consider pardoning Jan. 6 defendants, including Trump, who is currently facing a federal investigation over his role on Jan. 6.
Nineteenth Century cat in doorway, Boston School, artist unknown
“I would say any example of disfavored treatment based on politics, or weaponization would be included in that review, no matter how small or how big,” he added.
DeSantis also accused the Justice Department and the FBI of weaponizing its authority by pursuing ongoing investigations into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The Justice Department said earlier this month that 1,033 arrests have been made in connection to the Capitol attacks and about 485 people have been sentenced due to criminal activity conducted that day.
DeSantis also claimed that the FBI is targeting anti-abortion groups, as well as parents who want to attend school board meetings. He said that if elected, his administration would determine on a “case-by-case” basis if the government was weaponized against certain groups.
“We’re going to find examples where the government’s been weaponized against disfavored groups, and we will apply relief as appropriate, but it will be done on a case-by-case basis,” he said.
Also from The Hill: DeSantis says he would push to repeal Trump criminal justice reform if elected.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) said Friday that if elected president, he would call on Congress to repeal the criminal justice reform bill signed into law by then-President Trump, his latest attack on Trump from the right.
DeSantis, appearing on “The Ben Shapiro Show,” criticized the First Step Act, a bipartisan bill passed in 2018 that reduced mandatory minimum sentences, expanded credits for well-behaved prisoners looking for shorter sentences and aimed to reduce recidivism.
The Florida governor, who officially entered the 2024 White House race on Wednesday, called the legislation “basically a jailbreak bill.”
“So one of the things I would want to do as president is go to Congress and seek the repeal of the First Step Act,” he said. “If you are in jail, you should serve your time. And the idea that they’re releasing people who have not been rehabilitated early, so that they can prey on people in our society is a huge, huge mistake.”
DeSantis voted for the initial House version of the bill while serving as a congressman in 2018, something Trump’s team has highlighted.
If you didn’t already know that DeSantis is corrupt, there’s this from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune: GOP officials: Top aides in governor’s office asked lawmakers to endorse DeSantis.
Top aides to Gov. Ron DeSantis were involved in rounding up endorsements for his presidential campaign from members of the Florida Legislature during a time when lawmaker’s bills and budget priorities were at the mercy of the governor’s office, according to three GOP sources with knowledge of the conversations.
A Republican lawmaker says DeSantis’ top budget official called earlier this month to discuss the lawmaker endorsing DeSantis’ presidential campaign.
The lawmaker and a GOP consultant who was told about the endorsement conversation with DeSantis’ budget chief Chris Spencer immediately after it happened said the call was inappropriate and raised ethical questions.
Blinking in the Sun, by Ralph Hedley, 1881
Having state employees in the governor’s office, instead of staff on the governor’s political team, asking for endorsements raises concerns about whether the governor’s staff was improperly leveraging state resources to help his campaign.
That includes using taxpayer-funded employees for political purposes, which is allowed if it’s not during work hours but still inappropriate in this circumstance in the mind of the lawmaker contacted by Spencer. It also relates to what some saw as an implied threat that lawmakers’ bills and state budget items could be vetoed if they didn’t back DeSantis.
The lawmaker who spoke to Spencer said budget priorities didn’t come up during the call, but the fact that DeSantis’ budget director was calling about an endorsement implicitly tied the budget items to the political ask….
Another top DeSantis aide — legislative affairs director Stephanie Kopelousos — did discuss budget items during calls with multiple lawmakers that included Kopelousos asking them to endorse DeSantis, according to the GOP lawmaker who spoke with Spencer.
That lawmaker later spoke with at least five legislators who were asked by Kopelousos to endorse DeSantis. Another prominent GOP leader in Florida said he spoke to a lawmaker who relayed that he repeatedly was contacted by Kopelousos about endorsing DeSantis.
This guy should never get anywhere near the presidency.
That’s it for me today. What stories have captured your interest lately?
Fabulous Friday Reads
Posted: May 26, 2023 Filed under: abortion rights, Donald Trump, SCOTUS | Tags: abortion, books and reading, Caitlin Bernard, Clean Water Act, Espionage Act, Indiana, rape, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court, Trump stolen documents case, wetlands 13 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!!
I am addicted to books. In my adult years, I have bought so many books that I could never read them all; but I can’t stop myself–or maybe I don’t want to. When I moved into the apartment I live in now, I had to leave hundreds of books behind, because I simply didn’t have room for them. I tell myself an addiction to buying books is at least better than addictions to alcohol and drugs. I do much of my reading on my Kindle now, and at least those books don’t take up space. But I still love physical books and I still buy more than I can read. I’m 75 years old now, and I don’t have that much time left; but I still want to read as many books as I can before I “shuffle off this mortal coil.”
Could this be a solution?
Okay, probably not; but it’s an interesting fantasy. And now for some news.
Yesterday The Washington Post broke a story on the investigation into Trump’s theft of, and refusal to return, government documents. A short time later, The New York Times followed up with more details.
Devlin Barrett, Josh Dawsey, Spencer S. Hsu, and Perry Stein at The Washington Post: Trump workers moved Mar-a-Lago boxes a day before FBI came for documents.book
Two of Donald Trump’s employees moved boxes of papers the day before an early June visit byFBI agents and a prosecutor to the former president’s Florida home to retrieve classified documents in response to a subpoena — timing that investigators have come to view as suspicious and an indication of possible obstruction, according to people familiar with the matter.
Trump and his aides also allegedly carried out a “dress rehearsal” for moving sensitive papers even before his office received the May 2022 subpoena, according to the people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe a sensitive ongoing investigation.
Prosecutors in addition have gathered evidence indicating that Trump at times kept classified documents in his office in a place where they were visible and sometimes showed them to others, these people said.
Taken together, the new details of the classified-documents investigation suggest a greater breadth and specificity to the instances of possible obstruction found by the FBI and Justice Department than have been previously reported. It also broadens the timeline of possible obstruction episodes that investigators are examining — a period stretching from events at Mar-a-Lago before the subpoena to the period after the FBI search there on Aug. 8.
That timeline may prove crucial as prosecutors seek to determine Trump’s intent in keeping hundreds of classified documents after he left the White House, a key factor in deciding whether to file charges, possibly for obstruction, mishandling national security secrets or both. The Washington Post has previously reported that the boxes were moved out of the storage area after Trump’s office received a subpoena. But the precise timing of that activity is a significant element in the investigation, the people familiar with the matter said.
The WaPo writers focus on obstruction, but if Trump showed documents to other people, that could be espionage. Remember, espionage was one of the crimes listed on the warrant for the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago.
More details from the WaPo story:
Of particular importance to investigators in the classified-documents case, according to people familiar with the probe, is evidence showing that boxes of documents were moved into a storage area on June 2, just before senior Justice Department lawyer Jay Bratt arrived at Mar-a-Lago with agents. The June 3 visit by law enforcement officialswas to collect material in response to the May 2022grand jury subpoena demanding the return of all documents with classified markings.
John Irving, a lawyer representing one of the two employees who moved the boxes, said the worker did not know what was in them and was only trying to help Trump valet Walt Nauta, who was using a dolly or hand truck to move a number of boxes.
“He was seen on Mar-a-Lago security video helping Walt Nauta move boxes into a storage area on June 2, 2022. My client saw Mr. Nauta moving the boxes and volunteered to help him,” Irving said. The next day, he added, the employee helped Nauta pack an SUV “when former president Trump left for Bedminster for the summer.”
The lawyer said his client, a longtime Mar-a-Lago employee whom he declined to identify, has cooperated with the government and did not have “any reason to think that helping to move boxes was at all significant.” Other people familiar with the investigation confirmed the employee’s role and said he has been questioned multiple times by authorities.
Awhile back there was a video circulating on Twitter of people moving boxes out of Mar-a-Lago and loading them onto a truck to be taken to Bedminster. This happened the day before Trump left to spend the summer at his New Jersey golf club. Now it’s being posted again.
This is from Alan Feuer and Maggie Haberman at The New York Times: Mar-a-Lago Worker Provided Prosecutors New Details in Trump Documents Case.
The day before a key meeting last year between a lawyer for former President Donald J. Trump and officials seeking the return of classified documents in Mr. Trump’s possession, a maintenance worker at the former president’s private club saw an aide moving boxes into a storage room, according to a person familiar with the matter.
The maintenance worker offered to help the aide — Walt Nauta, who was Mr. Trump’s valet in the White House — move the boxes and ended up lending him a hand. But the worker had no idea what was inside the boxes, the person familiar with the matter said. The maintenance worker has shared that account with federal prosecutors, the person said….
Mr. Trump was found to have been keeping some of the documents in the storage room where Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker were moving boxes on the day before the Justice Department’s top counterintelligence official, Jay Bratt, traveled to Mar-a-Lago last June to seek the return of any government materials being held by the former president.
Mr. Nauta and the worker moved the boxes into the room before a search of the storage room that same day by M. Evan Corcoran, a lawyer for Mr. Trump who was in discussions with Mr. Bratt. Mr. Corcoran called Justice Department officials that night to set up a meeting for the next day. He believed that he did not have a security clearance to transport documents with classified markings, a person briefed on his decision said.
Weeks earlier, the Justice Department had issued a subpoena demanding the return of the documents. Prosecutors have been trying to determine whether Mr. Trump had documents moved around Mar-a-Lago or sought to conceal some of them after the subpoena.
Part of their interest is in trying to determine whether documents were moved before Mr. Corcoran went through the boxes himself ahead of a meeting with Justice Department officials looking to retrieve them. Prosecutors have been asking witnesses about the roles of Mr. Nauta and the maintenance worker, whose name has not been publicly disclosed, in moving documents around that time.
During his trip to Mar-a-Lago on June 3, Mr. Bratt was given a packet of roughly three dozen documents with classified markings by a lawyer for Mr. Trump. Mr. Bratt was also given a letter, drafted by Mr. Corcoran but signed by another lawyer for the former president, attesting that a diligent search had been carried out for any additional material in response to the subpoena and that none had been found. Mr. Bratt was not given access to search the storage room at that point.
The obvious inference is that Trump may have gone through the boxes and removed items that he wanted to keep, concealing them in his private quarters. Remember that classified documents were later found in his office desk and in his bedroom.
Like the WaPo writers, Feuer and Haberman focus their discussion on possible obstruction charges, and ignore the obvious possibility of espionage charges based on the fact that Trump showed documents to people at his private club and left them lying around in plain sight.
The penalties for violating the espionage act are 20 years in prison and a $10,000 fine.
In other news, the Supreme Court yesterday announced another horrific decision. This time they’ve gutted the Clean Water Act.
Timothy Puko and Robert Barnes at The Washington Post: How Supreme Court’s EPA ruling will affect U.S. wetlands, clean water.
Bogs. Marshes. Swamps. Fens. All are examples of wetlands.
But the type of wetland that gets protection under federal law is a matter of wide dispute, one reset by a sweeping ruling Thursday from the U.S. Supreme Court.
At issue is the reach of the 51-year-old Clean Water Act and how courts should determine what count as “waters of the United States” under that law. Nearly two decades ago, the court ruled that wetlands are protected by the Clean Water Act if they have a “significant nexus” to regulated waters.
The Supreme Court decided that rule no longer applies and said the Environmental Protection Agency’s interpretation of its powers went too far, giving it regulatory power beyond what Congress had authorized….
Writing for five justices of the court, Justice Samuel A. Alito ruled that the Clean Water Act extends only to “those wetlands with a continuous surface connection to bodies that are ‘waters of the United States’ in their own right, so that they are ‘indistinguishable’ from those waters.” He was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett….
Some environmental groups and legal experts estimate that the decision will remove federal protection from half of all wetlands in the continental United States. According to estimates from Earthjustice, an environmental law firm, the decision will prevent the EPA from placing federal protections on as many as 118 million acres of wetlands, an area larger than the landmass of California. Those estimates could not be immediately confirmed, but the ruling is expected to give farmers, home builders and other developers far more latitude to disturb lands previously regulated under the Clean Water Act….
The ruling affects one of the EPA’s most fundamental authorities — its ability to protect upstream waters in order to protect downstream water quality for drinking supplies and wildlife. Experts say greater development upstream could result in silt and pollutants damaging downstream waters and habitat, and reduce the flood control and groundwater-recharge benefits of protected wetlands.
Read all the gory details at the WaPo link.
Commentary by Mark Joseph Stern at Slate: Samuel Alito’s Assault on Wetlands Is So Indefensible That He Lost Brett Kavanaugh.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court dealt a devastating blow to the nation’s wetlands by rewriting a statute the court does not like to mean something it does not mean. The court’s decision in Sackett v. EPAis one of the its most egregious betrayals of textualism in memory. Put simply: The Clean Water Act protects wetlands that are “adjacent” to larger bodies of water. Five justices, however, do not think the federal government should be able to stop landowners from destroying wetlands on their property. To close this gap between what the majority wants and what the statute says, the majority crossed through the word “adjacent” and replaced it with a new test that’s designed to give landowners maximum latitude to fill in, build upon, or otherwise obliterate some of the most valuable ecosystems on earth.
Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion for the court is remarkably brazen about this approach—so brazen that Justice Brett Kavanaugh (of all people!) authored a sharp opinion accusing him of failing to “stick to the text.” Alito began with a long history of the Supreme Court’s struggles to identify the “outer boundaries” of the Clean Water Act, as if to explain why the time had come for the court to give up wrestling with the text and just impose whatever standard it prefers. The law expressly protects “waters of the United States” (like rivers and lakes) as well as “wetlands adjacent” to these waters. Congress added the wetlands provision in 1977 to codify the EPA’s definition of “adjacent,” which also happens to be the actual definition: “bordering, contiguous, or neighboring.” Under that interpretation—the one Congress adopted—wetlands that neighbor a larger body of water remain protected, even if they aren’t directly connected.
Why did Congress make that choice? Because wetlands provide immense environmental benefits: They filter and purify water draining into nearby streams, rivers, and lakes. They slow down runoff into these larger bodies. And they serve as vital flood control. In other words, the Clean Water Act has to protect “adjacent” wetlands to serve its overarching goal of safeguarding the broader “waters of the United States” from pollution.
Too bad, Alito wrote: We don’t like the definition that Congress used. It could lead to “crushing” fines for landowners and interfere with “mundane” activities like “moving dirt.” It interferes with “traditional state authority.” And it could give the EPA “truly staggering” regulatory authority. Five justices on the Supreme Court think all of that is very bad. So they declared that, instead of applying the statute’s words, the court would impose a different standard: Only wetlands with “a continuous surface connection” to larger bodies of water merit protection under the Clean Water Act.
This definition—which, it just can’t be stressed enough, appears nowhere in the law—is a crushing defeat for wetlands and their protectors. These ecosystems, as Kavanaugh pointed out, are frequently separated from larger bodies of water by “man-made dikes or barriers” as well as “natural river berms, beach dunes, or the like.” Such wetlands “play an important role in protecting neighboring and downstream waters,” which is why Congress included them in the statute. But under the majority’s new test, they are stripped of federal protection.
Sam Alito: the same asshole who overturned Roe v. Wade while citing a 17th century judge who presided over a witch trial.
I’ll wrap up this post with an abortion horror story at The Washington Post: Indiana board fines doctor for discussing rape victim’s abortion.
https://twitter.com/donmoyn/status/1662078210518007813?s=20
Indiana’s medical licensing board decided late Thursday to discipline a doctor who made headlines last year for performing an abortion for a 10-year-old Ohio rape victim. The board gave the doctor a letter of reprimand and ordered her to pay a $3,000 fine for violating ethical standards and state laws by discussing the case with a reporter.
For nearly a year, Indiana’s Attorney General Todd Rokita (R) pursued punishment for Caitlin Bernard, an OB/GYN and an assistant professor at the Indiana University School of Medicine who carried out the abortion in June 2022, less than a week after Roe v. Wade was struck down, enacting trigger laws.
Bernard broke patient privacy laws by telling an Indianapolis Star reporter about the patient’s care, the board decided Thursday night after a roughly 14-hour hearing that ended shortly after 11:30 p.m. Bernard’s lawyers argued she properly reported the incident to an Indiana University Health social worker and did not run afoul of privacy laws when she discussed the patient’s case in a general and “deidentified” manner that is typical for doctors.
Records obtained by The Washington Post last year show that Bernard reported the girl’s abortion to the relevant state agencies ahead of the legally mandated deadline, which the board agreed with Thursday night, clearing her of a charge related to that issue.
These assholes are supposedly doing this in order to “protect” the patient–a 10-year-old child who was impregnated by a rapist in Ohio and had to travel to Indiana because her Ohio politicians determined that she should be forced to bear her rapist’s child even though that could be life-threatening for her.
Bernard’s lawyers rejected Rokita’s allegations as baseless and politically motivated. The seven-member board of governor appointees could, by a majority vote, have either taken no action against Bernard or imposed a range of disciplinary measures up to and including the immediate termination of Bernard’s medical license.
Throughout the lengthy hearing, Bernard faced at times pointed questions about her decisions.
She explained how, as a doctor, she felt she had “an obligation” to ensure Hoosiers understood how abortion bans were affecting people across the country — and could eventually affect them.
Bernard was also asked whether she thought she would have “gotten as much attention” if she had not mentioned the 10-year-old patient’s case to a reporter.
“I don’t think that anybody would have been looking into this story as any different than any other interview that I’ve ever given if it was not politicized the way that it was by public figures in our state and in Ohio,” Bernard said.
That’s my contribution for today. What stories have you been following lately?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: May 20, 2023 Filed under: abortion rights, cat art, caturday, Democratic Politics, Donald Trump, Republican politics, SCOTUS | Tags: 14th amendment, abortion, debt limit, default, Gov. Roy Cooper, Joe Biden, media, North Carolina, recession, Ron DeSantis, Russia, shadow docket, Steve Vladeck, Supreme Court 22 Comments
The Cat by an open Window (Aix-en-Provence) Charles Camoin
Happy Caturday!!
It is just me, or is the political news getting so complex and frightening as to be overwhelming? I’ve been looking around the internet for stories to post today, and it seems to me there is way too much going wrong. Is it my own anxiety and depression interfering with my judgment? Or is the country really on the brink of disaster? I hope it’s just me.
Let’s see, there is the most immediate crisis: the debt ceiling impasse. Then there’s frightening long-term threat of Donald Trump and his followers. There’s the building threat of Ron DeSantis. And there are more frightening issues: the Supreme Court and the effects of their recent decisions on women–abortion bans in many states, and the possibility of limits on birth control. There’s also Russia’s war on Ukraine–which I’ve pretty much given up on following–and the danger to our country posed by Republicans who support Russia in that conflict. And of course, for the longer-term, there are the threats to the environment and to humans from climate change. Have our lives always been this complicated?
I’m going to start by recommending a very long essay by Michael Tomasky at The New Republic: Donald Trump Against America. The subhead is, “He loves an America of his twisted imagination. He hates—and fears—the America that actually exists. And if he gets back to the White House … look out.” I haven’t actually finished reading this article–it’s practically book-length, but I’ve read quite a bit and plan to go back and finish it. It’s a look at the modern history of U.S. politics and an analysis of the current negativity of the Republican party as opposed to what Americans actually believe and want today. Republicans are completely out of step with modern American attitudes, and yet they have outsize power to affect our reality because of their control of the Supreme Court, Congress, and state governments.
Now for the most immediate issue–the debt ceiling fight.
Talking Points Memo: Growing List Of Dems Urge Biden To Cite 14th Amendment To Sidestep McCarthy’s Debt-Ceiling Hostage Crisis.
A growing group of Senate Democrats is urging President Joe Biden to seriously consider invoking the 14th Amendment to declare the debt ceiling unconstitutional, a strategy that — if upheld by the courts — could avert a looming default without any concessions to House Republicans, who have used their slim majority to take the debt ceiling hostage.
Sens. Tina Smith (D-MN), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Jeff Merkley (D-OR), Ed Markey (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT) have been circulating a letter amongst their colleagues this week to collect support for Biden to invoke the 14th Amendment and lift the debt ceiling without any help from House Republicans.
By Suellen Ross
“We write to urgently request that you prepare to exercise your authority under the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, which clearly states: ‘the validity of the public debt of the United States … shall not be questioned,’” the draft letter reads. “Using this authority would allow the United States to continue to pay its bills on-time, without delay, preventing a global economic catastrophe.”
As the so-called “x-date” — when House Republicans may push the country to default on its debts — draws closer, legal scholars have pointed out that the 14th Amendment seemingly declares the debt ceiling unconstitutional. It’s an argument that also gained traction during the Obama-era debt-ceiling standoffs, though that Democratic administration ultimately chose not to embrace it.
Now, some Democrats are saying the Biden White House should give it a hard look, arguing that the Civil War-era amendment requires the administration to continue to pay the U.S.’s bills regardless of the early 20th century debt ceiling statute, and Republicans’ 21st century attempts to take it hostage. A list of demands passed by the Republican-controlled House last month includes spending cuts to some of Democrats’ most prized priorities.
At Politico, Adam Cancryn claims that’s not likely: Biden’s 14th Amendment message to progressives: It ain’t gonna happen.
Progressive lawmakers renewed their call for President Joe Biden to bypass Congress to avert a default after the abrupt cancellation of debt ceiling talks on Friday.
But the White House remains resistant. It issued a subdued statement indicating it sees no reason to pull the plug on talks. And privately, its message has been even blunter.
Senior Biden officials have told progressive activists and lawmakers in recent days that they do not see the 14th Amendment — which says the “validity of the public debt” cannot be questioned — as a viable means of circumventing debt ceiling negotiations. They have argued that doing so would be risky and destabilizing, according to three people familiar with the discussions.
The White House has studied the issue for months, with some aides concluding that Biden would likely have the authority to declare the debt limit unconstitutional as a last-ditch way to sidestep default. But Biden advisers have told progressives that they see it as a poor option overall, fearing such a move would trigger a pitched legal battle, undermine global faith in U.S. creditworthiness and damage the economy. Officials have warned that even the appearance of more seriously considering the 14th Amendment could blow up talks that are already quite delicate.
“They have not ruled it out,” said one adviser to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly about discussions. “But it is not currently part of the plan.”
Well, at least they haven’t completely ruled it out.
A Cat Basking in the Sun, Bruno Lijefors
Sara Chaney Cambon at The Wall Street Journal: Debt-Ceiling Standoff Could Start a Recession, But Default Would Be Worse.
Prolonged debt-ceiling squabbling could push the U.S. economy into recession, while a government default on its obligations might touch off a severe financial crisis.
U.S. lawmakers are negotiating over raising the federal government’s borrowing limit and may have just days to act before the standoff reverberates through the economy.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said that the government could become unable to pay bills on time by June 1. In that case, the Treasury Department could halt payments, such as to federal employees or veterans.
In a worst-case scenario, a failure to pay holders of U.S. government debt, a linchpin of the global financial system, could trigger severe recession and send stock prices plummeting and borrowing costs soaring.
Many economists don’t expect a default for the first time in U.S. history. But they outline three potential ways the standoff could affect the economy and financial system, ranging from not great to extremely scary.
Camon discusses the likely results of three scenarios:
1) Last minute deal
The economy is already slowing due to rising interest rates, with many forecasters expecting a recession this year. While lawmakers haggle, uncertainty could cause consumers, investors and businesses to retrench, increasing the chances of a recession, said Joel Prakken, chief U.S. economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Workers aren’t likely to lose their jobs, but the unpredictability of the economic outlook could cause them to put off purchases.
Stock prices could start to decline as June 1 nears….“Even if we get an agreement before we run out of resources there still could be a legacy effect of the uncertainty that restrains economic growth,” Prakken said.
2) Deal after deadline
If negotiations extend beyond Thursday June 1, economists expect a more severe reaction from financial markets, as the possibility for default looks more real.
“The shock would tend to accelerate quite rapidly” on June 1, said Gregory Daco, chief economist at Ernst & Young.
If consumers’ retirement and investment accounts suddenly shrink, they could sharply curtail their spending, the lifeblood of the U.S. economy. Businesses could pause hiring and investment plans.
3) No deal
If no deal is reached and the government can’t pay all its bills for days or weeks, repercussions would be enormous.
“There would be chaos in the global financial system because Treasurys are so important,” said Wendy Edelberg, an economist at the Brookings Institution. “What happens when that thing that everybody is benchmarking themselves to proves to be one of the riskiest things out there?”
Ernst & Young’s Daco said a default would trigger a recession more severe than the 2007-09 downturn.
Read more details at the WSJ link. If you can’t get in with my link, try using the one at Memeorandum.
A couple more stories on the debt limit impasse:
Jason Linkins at The New Republic: The Beltway Media Is Spreading Debt Limit Misinformation. The political press bears a share of the blame for the fact we are once again on the precipice of default.
Carl Hulse at The Washington Post: Finger-Pointing Won’t Save Anyone if Default Leads to Economic Collapse.
Jacobus van Looy, White Cat at an Open Window, 1895
In other news, if Biden manages to win the debt ceiling war, will Republican missteps on the abortion issue help him win in 2024?
CNN: ‘Reap the whirlwind’: Biden and North Carolina Democrats see 2024 edge in GOP abortion ban.
North Carolina Republicans jumped out on a limb this week when they passed a controversial new abortion ban. Democrats are now rushing to saw it off.
The state GOP legislative supermajority’s decision to override Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto of the measure sharpened the stakes for next year’s elections – and gave Democrats new impetus to invest up and down the North Carolina ballot.
At the top of the ticket, President Joe Biden’s campaign is already drawing up plans to focus on the ban, which outlaws most abortions after 12 weeks, in its bid to win a state last captured by a Democratic presidential candidate in 2008. Former President Donald Trump’s victory there in 2020 was his narrowest of the election, and North Carolina is critical to any Republican’s path to the White House.
The shock waves from the brief but fierce abortion fight – 12 days that saw the bill pass, get vetoed by Cooper, then resurrected by Republican lawmakers – are also expected to reach into next year’s races for governor, state attorney general and both legislative chambers. With Cooper term-limited, the campaign to succeed him is expected to be the most competitive governor’s race of 2024, potentially pitting far-right GOP Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson against Democratic Attorney General and Cooper protégé Josh Stein.
The race to succeed Cooper, who has for years beat back the Republican agenda in North Carolina with his veto pen, will be especially heated if Robinson wins the Republican nomination. Democrats are already highlighting his absence from the legislature during the abortion votes – arguing that he is trying to distance himself from the ban. The Republican had tried to avoid publicly commenting on the issue in recent weeks – a reversal from his usual posture – though he told a conservative radio host the day after Republicans overrode Cooper’s veto that North Carolina continued to “move the ball” on abortion.
Read more at CNN.
People have been asking where Ron DeSantis got the money to pay for his round the world and cross country political tour, and The New York Times’ Alexandra Berzon and Rebecca Davis O’Brient got the goods: Air DeSantis: The Private Jets and Secret Donors Flying Him Around.
For Ron DeSantis, Sunday, Feb. 19, was the start of another busy week of not officially running for president.
That night, he left Tallahassee on a Florida hotelier’s private jet, heading to Newark before a meet-and-greet with police officers on Staten Island on Monday morning. Next, he boarded a twin-jet Bombardier to get to a speech in the Philadelphia suburbs, before flying to a Knights of Columbus hall outside Chicago, and then home to his day job as governor of Florida.
Rapp and Johan, Bruno Liljefors, 1886
The tour and others like it were made possible by the convenience of private air travel — and by the largess of wealthy and in some cases secret donors footing the bill.
Ahead of an expected White House bid, Mr. DeSantis has relied heavily on his rich allies to ferry him around the country to test his message and raise his profile. Many of these donors are familiar boosters from Florida, some with business interests before the state, according to a New York Times review of Mr. DeSantis’s travel. Others have been shielded from the public by a new nonprofit, The Times found, in an arrangement that drew criticism from ethics experts.
Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to formally announce his candidacy next week, is hardly the first politician to take advantage of the speed and comfort of a Gulfstream jet. Candidates and officeholders in both parties have long accepted the benefits of a donor’s plane as worth the political risk of appearing indebted to special interests or out of touch with voters.
But ethics experts said the travel — and specifically the role of the nonprofit — shows how Mr. DeSantis’s prolonged candidate-in-limbo status has allowed him to work around rules intended to keep donors from wielding secret influence. As a declared federal candidate, he would face far stricter requirements for accepting and reporting such donations.
“Voters deserve this information because they have a right to know who is trying to influence their elected officials and whether their leaders are prioritizing public good over the interests of their big-money benefactors,” said Trevor Potter, the president of Campaign Legal Center and a Republican who led the Federal Election Commission. “Governor DeSantis, whether he intends to run for president or not, should be clearly and fully disclosing who is providing support to his political efforts.”
Read the rest at the NYT.
One more important story on one of our huge problems–the Supreme Court.
Ian Ward at Politico Magazine: The Supreme Court Is Hiding Important Decisions From You.
As the Supreme Court begins to release its written opinions from its most recent term, much of the public’s attention is focused on high-profile cases on affirmative action, election law and environmental regulation. But according to Stephen Vladeck, a professor at the University of Texas Law School, this narrow focus on the most headline-grabbing decisions overlooks a more troubling change in the High Court’s behavior: The justices are conducting more and more of the court’s most important business out of the public eye, through a procedural mechanism known as “the shadow docket.”
Quantitatively speaking, cases arising from the shadow docket — which include everything apart from the court’s annual average of 60 to 70 signed decisions — have long made up a majority of the justices’ work. But as Vladeck documents in his new book, The Shadow Docket, published this week, the court’s use of the shadow docket changed dramatically during the Trump years, when the court’s conservative majority used a flurry of emergency orders — unsigned, unexplained and frequently released in the middle of the night — to greenlight some of the Trump administration’s most controversial policies.
“What’s remarkable is that the court repeatedly acquiesced and acquiesced [to the Trump administration], and almost always without any explanation,” Vladeck said when I spoke with him. “And they did it in ways that marked a pretty sharp break from how the court would have handled those applications in the past.”
It wasn’t just the frequency of the court’s shadow docket decisions that changed during the Trump years; it was also the scope of those decisions. Whereas the justices have traditionally used emergency orders as temporary measures to pause a case until they can rule on its merits, the current court has increasingly used emergency orders to alter the basic contours of election law, immigration policy, religious liberty protections and abortion rights — all without an extended explanation or legal justification. To illustrate this shift, Vladeck points to the court’s emergency order in September 2021 that allowed Texas’s six-week abortion ban to take effect — a move that effectively undermined Roe v. Wade nine months before the court officially overturned it in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“It really highlights a problem that’s endemic to how we talk about the court, which is that we fixate on the formality of the court’s decision and explanations and downplay the practical effect of its rulings, whether or not they come with those explanations,” Vladeck explained.
Read the rest at Politico.
That’s it for me today. What stories are you following?
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