Isaac Levitan, Golden Autumn, Slobodka, 1889
Meteorological Autumn has begun, even though most of the country is still experiencing hot weather. Here in New England, it looks like we will have summer weather for at least the first half of September. It has been in the high 80’s lately, and later this week it will hit 92 for a couple of days. Of course it’s still comfortable here in my cozy apartment with my heat pump keeping things cool.
I was thinking this morning that I’m an orphan now. My Mom and Dad are both gone, along with all of their siblings. I’m in the older generation now. How does time go by so quickly? I can really tell that I’m old now. People my age (75) are dying every day. I come from long-lived stock on both sides, so I probably have a few years left, but you never know. I just hope I don’t live to see fascism take over the U.S.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. Maybe you learned about his theory in school. I’ve always liked it.
— Infancy – Basic trust versus mistrust
— Toddler – Autonomy versus shame and doubt
— Preschool-age – Initiative versus guilt
— School-age – Industry versus inferiority
— Adolescence – Identity versus identity confusion
— Young adulthood – Intimacy versus isolation
— Middle age – Generativity versus stagnation
— Older adulthood – Integrity versus despair
I guess I’m finally moving into the 8th stage; but I still care a lot about what happens to the next generation, so I’m still partly in stage 7, generativity–when you care more about giving to the next generation than satisfying yourself.
When I was in grad school, my mentor, Richard, (who is gone now, too, sadly) used to teach that Erikson’s states are flexible. You can go back and repair the damage that happened in an earlier stage and you can be in more than one stage at a time. Because people live longer than in Erikson’s day, it can take longer to get into that last stage, where you are supposed to look back on your life and come to terms with all you have experienced, good and bad.
I do find myself looking back at times, reevaluating things that happened to me and reaching acceptance. I believe that I did repair damage from the past over the 40+ years since I’ve been sober, and I’ve learned to accept my life as it is most of the time.
Now back to the present moment, where we are up in the air as to whether our country will be a democracy or a dictatorship ruled over by an insane idiot. Today is a slow news day, but here is some news:
CNN: Capitol Hill doctor: McConnell did not have a stroke or seizure when freezing before cameras.
The Capitol’s attending physician, Brian Monahan, said in a new letter that Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell did not suffer a stroke or seizure – and is not suffering from Parkinson’s disease – after the 81-year-old Kentuckian was evaluated by a group of neurologists following two recent health scares in front of TV cameras.
Vincen Van Gogh, The Garden of St. Paul’s Hospital Leaf Fall
The new letter, released by McConnell’s office Tuesday, comes after he froze in front of cameras for the second time in as many months, raising questions about whether the GOP leader could continue to hold his powerful position atop the Senate GOP Conference. After he froze last week in Covington, Kentucky, McConnell was evaluated by four neurologists, according to a person familiar with the matter.
Monahan said in the Tuesday letter that he consulted with McConnell’s neurologists and conducted several evaluations, including brain MRI imaging and a test that measures electrical imaging in the brain.
“There is no evidence that you have a seizure disorder or that you experienced a stroke, TIA or movement disorder such as Parkinson’s disease,” the letter said.
So what did happen, then? No one knows.
It’s still unclear exactly why McConnell froze up for roughly 30 seconds each time.
The Republican leader’s office had attributed the two frozen moments to “lightheadedness,” and Monahan had indicated in a previous letter that it’s “not uncommon” for victims of concussion to feel lightheaded. McConnell suffered a concussion and broken ribs after falling at a Washington hotel and hitting his head in March, sidelining him from the Senate for nearly six weeks.
I still say he should retire. He’s 81, for heaven’s sake!
The media keeps telling us that Republicans are going to force a government shutdown. Politico claims to know what Democrats are going to do about it: How Democrats are bracing for a ‘MAGA shutdown.’
There’s still a month to go, but Capitol Hill is girding for an appropriations breakdown — and Democrats are already strategizing over how to make Republicans pay for what some have already started calling a “MAGA shutdown.”
Their challenge: Maximizing the GOP political pain while avoiding blame themselves. After all, it has been a full 10 years since the government has shut down with a Democrat in the White House. And this time, the president needs to win reelection in 14 months.
The Birch Wood, Gustav Klimt
“This is really going to be driven by the House,” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) told reporters in the Capitol on Friday. “They’re the ones that are going to bring [a shutdown] upon the country.”
To be sure, top House Democrats are still hoping to avoid a shutdown, and the party’s rank-and-file stands ready to approve a bipartisan deal — preferably a clean stopgap with some amount of Ukraine and disaster aid attached, likely sent over from the Senate.
But the key funding decisions lie with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his capricious Republican conference, and putting a deal along those lines up for a vote could prove disastrous to McCarthy’s standing as leader.
With members of the hard-right Freedom Caucus escalating their threats, Democratic leaders want their members to stay unified around a message decrying GOP hostage-taking and accusing Republicans of reneging on a bipartisan deal on spending caps reached in May.
A solid Democratic front, the thinking goes, will squeeze Republicans from districts won by President Joe Biden and force McCarthy to the negotiating table. Absent that pressure, “I don’t think there’s a lot of hope that Kevin McCarthy for once will actually stand up to the far right,” said Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.).
The House comes back next week, so I guess we’ll learn more about their idiotic plans then.
CNN: First lady Jill Biden tests positive for Covid-19.
First lady Jill Biden tested positive for Covid-19 on Monday and is experiencing “mild symptoms,” the White House said. President Joe Biden has tested negative.
The diagnosis has upended the first lady’s plans to begin teaching the fall semester at Northern Virginia Community College on Tuesday. She is working with the school to “ensure her classes are covered by a substitute,” Vanessa Valdivia, the first lady’s spokesperson, said.
Dr. Biden, 72, who remains at the family’s home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, typically teaches on Tuesday and Thursdays.
Biden will be “monitored by the White House medical team” after her diagnosis and follow the team’s advice about when to return the White House, Valdivia said. In addition to starting school on Tuesday, Biden was supposed to speak in the evening in Fort Belvoir, Virginia, at a send-off dinner for the US team competing in the Invictus Games in Düsseldorf, Germany next week, but now she will not participate, Valdivia said.
An administration official told CNN Monday that there are no changes to White House Covid protocols or to the president’s schedule at this time.
I just hope the president doesn’t come down with it.
Claude Monet, Autumn on the Seine at Argenteuil, 1873
George Conway diagnosed the underlying problem that’s causing Republicans to undermine military readiness and attack law enforcement.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) continues to block military promotions to force the reversal of a Pentagon policy granting leave and travel expenses for military personnel stationed in states where they cannot obtain an abortion, but the conservative Conway told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” the political stunt was emblematic of the GOP’s attitude toward the U.S. government at large.
“They hate the United States military because it’s a part of the United States government,” Conway said. “This is basically, the Republicans have become anti-American, anti-government, anti-the United States. That’s their shtick now. That’s why they’re attacking the State Department, FBI, prosecutors, and they attack the institutions that normally Republicans were very, very supportive of — now, it’s just this nihilistic attack on American institutions.”
More Conway from HuffPost via Yahoo News: ‘Beyond Question’: George Conway Hits Trump With Dire Prison Prediction.
Conservative attorney George Conway said Donald Trump should be locked away for good if he’s found guilty in the two federal cases currently pending against him.
The former president has been charged in Washington for his attempts to cling to power after the 2020 election, and in Florida over his retention of classified documents.
Conway shared a tweet from former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega, who wrote that Trump should be given a prison sentence “equal to or greater than” the sentences handed down in other key Jan. 6 cases if convicted in Washington.
That would make 18 years a starting point ― but Conway said the 77-year-old former president’s potential prison time could be much longer than that if he’s convicted in the classified documents case.
“It’s beyond question he should spend the rest of his natural life in prison,” Conway wrote on X, the site formerly known as Twitter….
Conway has called the Florida case against Trump “airtight,” and said “he should and he will” go to jail over it “because the obstruction case is just so strong.”
If only . . .
Cresheim Glen, Wissahickon, Autumn, 1964
The Guardian: Elon Musk threatens to sue Anti-Defamation League over lost X revenue.
Elon Musk has threatened to sue the Anti-Defamation League after accusing the civil rights group that campaigns against antisemitism and bigotry of trying to “kill” his X social media platform.
The owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, said the ADL was trying to shut down his company by “falsely accusing it and me of being antisemitic”.
In a series of posts on X, Musk said advertising sales for the business were down 60% and “based on what we’ve heard from advertisers, ADL seems to be responsible for most of our revenue loss”.
The world’s richest man also indicated that he would sue the group for defamation, posting on X that “it looks like we have no choice but to file a defamation lawsuit against the Anti-Defamation League … oh the irony!”
Musk recently sued another anti-hate speech group, the Center for Countering Digital Hate, in a lawsuit accusing it of damaging X’s relationship with advertisers. CCDH has said it will fight the lawsuit and keep holding “Twitter’s feet to the fire”.
In his posts on Tuesday, Musk added that to be “super clear” he was in favour of free speech “but against antisemitism of any kind”.
Yeah, right. If Musk sues, the ADL will be able to get discovery of all the anti-Semites and Nazis Musk let back on Twitter, so he’s unlikely to do it, but you never know. The guy is really stupid, as far as I can tell.
This is from Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo: Musk’s Epic, Antic Labor Day Weekend Against The Jews.
Because Twitter is no longer a publicly traded company with a public stock price there’s no straightforward way to assess its current value. But most market analysts estimate the company is now worth no more than a third of the $44 billion Musk paid for it a year ago. To be fair, Musk clearly overpaid for the company. He paid a premium over the company’s current stock price and even that price was probably inflated. But there’s no question Musk’s erratic and destructive reign has dramatically damaged the company, torching its public reputation and leading to a catastrophic decline in ad revenues which Musk and independent press reports have pegged at between 50% and 60%.
Gustave Courbet, Forest in Autumn, 1841
But Musk has found a new scapegoat: the Jews. Or rather, the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish community’s largest and oldest organization dedicated to fighting not only anti-Semitism but all forms of racial and religious bigotry and other forms of discrimination. But I suspect the “rather” or the distinction in general might be lost on Musk’s 155 million Twitter followers. Over the past several days Musk has gone on a tear claiming that the catastrophic decline in his company’s value since he purchased it is mostly or entirely the fault of the ADL and churning up Twitter debates that at least big time anti-Semitic accounts think is clearly boosting their cause.
As is often the case, Musk’s attacks have evolved out of tag teaming with notorious anti-Semitic accounts on the platform. It kicked off on Friday when Musk responded to a tweet by Keith Woods, an Irish white nationalist and self-described “raging anti-Semite.”
“ADL has tried very hard to strangle X/Twitter,” Musk told Woods.
From here, Musk went on to gin up support for the #BanTheADL hashtag while alternately claiming that he should ban the group but might not, before rolling into claims that the ADL was responsible for tens of billions of dollars of Twitter losses. This all culminated with Musk announcing he was being forced to sue the ADL “to clear our platform’s name on the matter of anti-Semitism.”
Discussing the defamation suit, Musk claimed the ADL could “potentially be on the hook for destroying half the value of the company, so roughly $22 billion.” Later he said that “giving them the maximum benefit of the doubt,” the ADL might only be responsible for $4 billion in damages.
Read the rest at TPM.
So that’s today’s news as I see it. Please share your thoughts and any other stories that interest you.
Christabel with cat by Camilla Dickerson
We’ve lost another musician from my generation. Jimmy Buffett has died last night at age 76. He was very popular in Boston and played outdoor concerts on the Boston Common many times.
From Kelly McClure at Salon: Jimmy Buffett got in one last summer before shipping off to the big Margaritaville in the sky.
There’s a poetry to Jimmy Buffett checking out just prior to a holiday that celebrates working. As a musician who built a reputation for himself as someone who encouraged grabbing on to leisure — and a frosty margarita — whenever possible, you can almost hear him saying, “Labor? Hard pass,” before kicking up his heels in a swaying hammock one last time.
According to an official statement posted to his website, “Jimmy passed away peacefully on the night of September 1st surrounded by his family, friends, music and dogs. He lived his life like a song till the very last breath and will be missed beyond measure by so many.” He was 76-years-old. No cause of death has been given at this time.
Throughout his career, Buffett shrugged off pressure to seem “cool” or insert himself as a cog in the machine of industry or publicity. His best known song, “Margaritaville” (released in 1977) was his only Top 10 hit. “What seems like a simple ditty about getting blotto and mending a broken heart turns out to be a profound meditation on the often painful inertia of beach dwelling,” Spin magazine wrote in 2021. “The tourists come and go, one group indistinguishable from the other. Waves crest and break whether somebody is there to witness it or not. Everything that means anything has already happened and you’re not even sure when.” Buffett broke the mold, and the world is a little less chill with him gone.
The New York Times’ take by Jimmy Buffett, Roguish Bard of Island Escapism, Is Dead at 76.
Jimmy Buffett, the singer, songwriter, author, sailor and entrepreneur whose roguish brand of island escapism on hits like “Margaritaville” and “Cheeseburger in Paradise” made him something of a latter-day folk hero, especially among his devoted following of so-called Parrot Heads, died on Friday. He was 76.
His death was announced in a statement on his website. It did not say where he died or specify a cause. Mr. Buffett had rescheduled a series of concerts this spring, saying he had been hospitalized, although he offered no details.
Peopled with pirates, smugglers, beach bums and barflies, Mr. Buffett’s genial, self-deprecating songs conjured a world of sun, salt water and nonstop parties animated by the calypso country-rock of his limber Coral Reefer Band. His live shows abounded with singalong anthems and festive tropical iconography, making him a perennial draw on the summer concert circuit, where he built an ardent fan base akin to the Grateful Dead’s Deadheads.
Mr. Buffett found success primarily with albums. He enjoyed only a few years on the pop singles chart, and “Margaritaville,” his 1977 breakthrough hit, was his only single to reach the pop Top 10.
By Noeline Mostert
“I blew out my flip-flop/Stepped on a pop-top/Cut my heel, had to cruise on back home,” he sang woozily to the song’s lilting Caribbean rhythms. “But there’s booze in the blender/And soon it will render/That frozen concoction that helps me hang on.”
Mr. Buffett’s music was often described as “Gulf and western” — a play on the name of the conglomerate Gulf & Western, the former parent of Paramount Pictures, as well as a nod to his fusion of laid-back twang and island-themed lyrics.
His songs tended to be of two main types: wistful ballads like “Come Monday” and “A Pirate Looks at Forty” and clever up-tempo numbers like “Cheeseburger in Paradise.” Some were both, like “Son of a Son of a Sailor,” a 1978 homage to Mr. Buffett’s seafaring grandfather, written with the producer Norbert Putnam.
“I’m just a son of a son, son of a son/
Son of a son of a sailor,” he sang. “The sea’s in my veins, my tradition remains/I’m just glad I don’t live in a trailer.”The Caribbean and the Gulf Coast were Mr. Buffett’s muses, and no place was more important than Key West, Fla. He first visited the island at the urging of Jerry Jeff Walker, his sometime songwriting and drinking partner, after a gig fell through in Miami in the early 1970s.
“When I found Key West and the Caribbean, I wasn’t really successful yet,” Mr. Buffett said in a 1989 interview with The Washington Post. “But I found a lifestyle, and I knew that whatever I did would have to work around my lifestyle.”
Read more at the NYT.
I’m really in a vacation frame of mind right now. Even though I’m retired and don’t have to keep a rigid schedule, I seem to get this laid back feeling on holidays and long weekends. I don’t have to be anywhere or worry about anyone knocking on my door for three days. I just want to read a good book or watch a movie on TV and hang out. I just started reading Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, and it’s very good. Anyway, I don’t feel much like focusing on politics today. And I especially don’t want to read anything about Donald Trump.
There’s a very interesting non-political opinion piece in The New York Times today by Astrophysicist Adam Frank and theoretical physicist Marcelo Gleiser: The Story of Our Universe May Be Starting to Unravel.
Not long after the James Webb Space Telescope began beaming back from outer space its stunning images of planets and nebulae last year, astronomers, though dazzled, had to admit that something was amiss. Eight months later, based in part on what the telescope has revealed, it’s beginning to look as if we may need to rethink key features of the origin and development of the universe.
Launched at the end of 2021 as a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, the Webb, a tool with unmatched powers of observation, is on an exciting mission to look back in time, in effect, at the first stars and galaxies. But one of the Webb’s first major findings was exciting in an uncomfortable sense: It discovered the existence of fully formed galaxies far earlier than should have been possible according to the so-called standard model of cosmology.
According to the standard model, which is the basis for essentially all research in the field, there is a fixed and precise sequence of events that followed the Big Bang: First, the force of gravity pulled together denser regions in the cooling cosmic gas, which grew to become stars and black holes; then, the force of gravity pulled together the stars into galaxies.
Helena Wagenaar, South Africa
The Webb data, though, revealed that some very large galaxies formed really fast, in too short a time, at least according to the standard model. This was no minor discrepancy. The finding is akin to parents and their children appearing in a story when the grandparents are still children themselves.
It was not, unfortunately, an isolated incident. There have been other recent occasions in which the evidence behind science’s basic understanding of the universe has been found to be alarmingly inconsistent.
Take the matter of how fast the universe is expanding. This is a foundational fact in cosmological science — the so-called Hubble constant — yet scientists have not been able to settle on a number. There are two main ways to calculate it: One involves measurements of the early universe (such as the sort that the Webb is providing); the other involves measurements of nearby stars in the modern universe. Despite decades of effort, these two methods continue to yield different answers.
At first, scientists expected this discrepancy to resolve as the data got better. But the problem has stubbornly persisted even as the data have gotten far more precise. And now new data from the Webb have exacerbated the problem. This trend suggests a flaw in the model, not in the data.
Two serious issues with the standard model of cosmology would be concerning enough. But the model has already been patched up numerous times over the past half century to better conform with the best available data — alterations that may well be necessary and correct, but which, in light of the problems we are now confronting, could strike a skeptic as a bit too convenient.
Physicists and astronomers are starting to get the sense that something may be really wrong. It’s not just that some of us believe we might have to rethink the standard model of cosmology; we might also have to change the way we think about some of the most basic features of our universe — a conceptual revolution that would have implications far beyond the world of science.
Keep reading at the NYT link.
A few political stories:
CNN has an important article on Georgia’s Coffee County, where some Republicans are charged by Fani Willis with illegally accessing election data. Elle Reed and Samantha Guff at CNN: ‘Crooked Coffee’: The alleged election office breach in the Trump indictment was part of a years-long pattern, some locals say.
The breach of the Coffee County elections office can seem almost out of place in the 97-page Georgia indictment of former President Donald Trump and associates.
The sprawling racketeering allegations spread from centers of power with pressure on the vice president to ignore the Constitution, reported calls to secretaries of state to change vote counts, and the creation of slates of fake electors for Congress. They also include the invitation of a tech team to a non-public area of a small-town administration building.
But to some people in Coffee County, deep in southern Georgia and far from interstates, the alleged crimes were merely the latest chapter in a local history of failing to secure the rights and votes of residents. And they worry it’s a history that will repeat.
Among the 19 mugshots that flowed from the charges brought 200 miles north in Atlanta were faces that were familiar in Douglas, the seat of Coffee County.
By Virginia Di Savarino, Italy
Prosecutors allege that former county Republican Party chair Cathy Latham and former elections supervisor Misty Hampton helped to facilitate employees from a firm hired by Trump attorneys to access and copy sensitive voter data and election software. Surveillance video captured Latham waving the visitors inside, and Hampton in the office as they allegedly accessed the data. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Mike Clark, owner of some small businesses in Douglas, said he was struck by the way the surveillance footage showed the election officials entering the building in broad daylight. “You walk inside the voter registration office with no mask on, and they just give you the votes. They just give them to you! Why? Why would that be?” Clark said. “That shows you right there it ain’t just started. It’s always been just like that.”
Douglas City Commissioner Kentaiwon Durham agreed. “That’s what power and privilege do. It makes you feel as if you can do anything you want to do,” he said. “They thought they were above the law and above the Constitution.” Durham, who like Clark is Black, thought it would be “a whole different ballgame” if it were his face in the surveillance footage.
Douglas is a majority Black city, and the surrounding Coffee County is about 68% White and 29% Black. Like many places in the South, Black citizens have had to fight for democratic rights in court – repeatedly suing for representative districts for the election of local officials since the 1970s. In the late summer, it’s unbearably hot – so hot that if you sit outside too long people ask if you’re crazy. If you have a latent southern accent, the town will draw it out.
When CNN asked local people how to put the alleged election office breach in the broader context of voting rights in the county, nearly everyone suggested we speak to “Miss Livvy.” Olivia Coley-Pearson is a Douglas city commissioner, the first Black woman elected to the position. She’s a tall woman who wore a Barbie-pink blazer when we met, and like many others CNN spoke with in Coffee County, she saw the involvement of her county in the alleged Trump scheme as part of a long local pattern of voter suppression and intimidation.
“There’s power – a certain amount of power and control when you’re in certain offices,” Coley-Pearson told CNN. “Some people will do whatever it takes to maintain it. … And if it takes voter intimidation to do it, some people willing to intimidate to maintain that power and control.”
More details at the link.
Ron De Santis is such an asshole. Politico: DeSantis will not meet with Biden in Florida on Saturday.
Ron DeSantis will not meet Joe Biden on Saturday when the president comes to Florida to survey damage from Hurricane Idalia, the governor’s administration said Friday.
The governor’s office, in a statement, said the visit will disrupt recovery efforts.
Erzhena, the cat and the mobile phone. 2020, by Indira Baldano
“We don’t have any plans for the Governor to meet with the President tomorrow,” said Jeremy Redfern, DeSantis’ spokesperson, in a statement. “In these rural communities, and so soon after impact, the security preparations alone that would go into setting up such a meeting would shut down ongoing recovery efforts.”
The White House on Friday night said the president and first lady Jill Biden will still travel to Florida Saturday, along with Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. It remains unclear where and what time they will be in Florida.
“Their visit to Florida has been planned in close coordination with FEMA as well as state and local leaders to ensure there is no impact on response operations,” the White House said in a statement.
A White House official, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the trip, said Biden informed DeSantis Thursday and the governor “did not express concerns at that time.”
As he was leaving Washington for Florida on Saturday morning, Biden said that he did not know what happened to the meeting, adding that “we are going to take care of Florida,” according to a pool report.
And Elon Musk is an even bigger asshole. Joseph Menn at The Washington Post: Musk’s new Twitter policies helped spread Russian propaganda, E.U. says.
Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) has played a major role in allowing Russian propaganda about Ukraine to reach more people than before the war began, according to a study released this week by the European Commission, the governing body of the European Union.
The research found that, despite voluntary commitments to take action against Russian propaganda by the largest social media companies, including Meta, Russian disinformation against Ukraine, thrived. Allowing the disinformation and hate speech to spread without limits would have violated the Digital Services Act, the E.U.’s social media law, had it been in force last year, the year-long commission study concluded.
Vera and Lola, by Alberto Morrocco
“Over the course of 2022, the audience and reach of Kremlin-aligned social media accounts increased substantially all over Europe,” the study found. “Preliminary analysis suggests that the reach and influence of Kremlin-backed accounts has grown further in the first half of 2023, driven in particular by the dismantling of Twitter’s safety standards.” The social media platform was recently renamed X.
The E.U. has taken a far more aggressive regulatory approach to government-backed disinformation than the United States has. The Digital Services Act, which went into effect for the biggest social media companies Aug. 25, requires them to assess the risk of false information,stop the worst from being boosted by algorithms and subject their performance to auditing. Separately, European sanctions on Russian state media have prompted YouTube and other platforms to ban the likes of RT, the Russian news outlet formerly known as Russia Today that was once one of the most-followed channels.
The study is the starkest indication yet that the legal and voluntary measures are not getting the job done, following June warnings from E.U. Commissioner Thierry Breton that X had work to do to avoid potentially massive fines under the DSA. The research was conducted by nonprofit analysis group Reset, which advocates for greater oversight of digital platforms.
Musk has also been retweeting white supremacist posts and actually allowed a white supremacist ad on the platform. Read more here:
Mashable: Elon Musk ‘likes’ trending #BanTheADL posts as white supremacist ad runs on platform.
Over the past 24 hours, the hashtag #BanTheADL has been trending on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. The trending hashtag refers to the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish anti-extremism civil rights organization.
Even more concerning is that X owner Elon Musk has signaled support for the attacks against the ADL on the platform.
Within the same time frame, numerous X users have also reported being served an X-approved advertisement on the platform that promotes white supremacy.
Media Matters: Elon Musk again undermines X CEO Linda Yaccarino, reinforcing why advertisers can’t trust her promises about addressing hate speech.
After the Anti-Defamation League spoke with X’s new CEO about hate speech, Musk boosts anti-ADL posts from an antisemite he reinstated to the platform.
Elon Musk, the owner of the social media platform X (formerly Twitter), “liked” and responded to posts from a known antisemite with ties to white nationalist Richard Spencer demanding that the Anti-Defamation League be banned from the platform after its CEO spoke with X’s Linda Yaccarino.
On August 30, ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt posted that he had “a very frank + productive conversation” with Yaccarino and discussed what the platform needs to do “to address hate effectively on the platform.”
Following Greenblatt’s announcement, Keith Woods — an antisemitic YouTuber who has associated with Spencer and who was seemingly reinstated to the platform under Musk after previously being banned — posted that “the ADL is an anti-White organisation which waged financial terrorism against this platform as soon as Elon Musk took over in an attempt to stifle free speech. It’s time to #BanTheADL.”
In response, other right-wing figures and far-right accounts, including white nationalist and Holocaust denier Nick Fuentes, promoted the hashtag, contributing to “#BanTheADL” trending nationally on the platform.
Musk was among those who interacted with the hashtag, “liking” one of Woods’ tweets claiming the ADL is “financially blackmailing social media companies into removing free speech.” Woods subsequently bragged that “Elon Musk likes my call to #BanTheADL” and appeared to take credit for the hashtag trending.
You can read lots more on Twitter (I will never call it X) if you’re interested.
That’s it for me. Have a great Labor Day weekend!!
As a lapsed Catholic, I was surprised and heartened yesterday to read that Pope Francis has criticized right wing American Catholics–several of whom sit on the Supreme Court.
From the AP via Yahoo News: Pope says some ‘backward’ conservatives in US Catholic Church have replaced faith with ideology.
Pope Francis has blasted the “backwardness” of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church, saying they have replaced faith with ideology and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time.
Francis’ comments were an acknowledgment of the divisions in the U.S. Catholic Church, which has been split between progressives and conservatives who long found support in the doctrinaire papacies of St. John Paul II and Benedict XVI, particularly on issues of abortion and same-sex marriage.
Many conservatives have blasted Francis’ emphasis instead on social justice issues such as the environment and the poor, while also branding as heretical his opening to letting divorced and civilly remarried Catholics receive the sacraments.
Francis made the comments in a private meeting with Portuguese members of his Jesuit religious order while visiting Lisbon on Aug. 5; the Jesuit journal La Civilta Cattolica, which is vetted by the Vatican secretariat of state, published a transcript of the encounter Monday.
More details:
During the meeting, a Portuguese Jesuit told Francis that he had suffered during a recent sabbatical year in the United States because he came across many Catholics, including some U.S. bishops, who criticized Francis’ 10-year papacy as well as today’s Jesuits.
The 86-year-old Argentine acknowledged his point, saying there was “a very strong, organized, reactionary attitude” in the U.S. church, which he called “backward.” He warned that such an attitude leads to a climate of closure, which was erroneous.
“Doing this, you lose the true tradition and you turn to ideologies to have support. In other words, ideologies replace faith,” he said.
“The vision of the doctrine of the church as a monolith is wrong,” he added. “When you go backward, you make something closed off, disconnected from the roots of the church,” which then has devastating effects on morality.
“I want to remind these people that backwardness is useless, and they must understand that there’s a correct evolution in the understanding of questions of faith and morals,” that allows for doctrine to progress and consolidate over time.
I’m surprised this pope has lasted this long. I hope he has supporters in the hierarchy.
The Daily News added more specifics:
He said it was an “error” to consider the Church’s stances on issues a “monolith,” citing how it had changed positions in the past on issues like slavery.
“In other words, doctrine also progresses, expands, and consolidates with time and becomes firmer but is always progressing,” he said.
In regards to LGBTQ issues, he said, “It is apparent that perception of this issue has changed in the course of history.”
Well, that’s a breath of fresh air. Unfortunately, I doubt if the reactionaries in the Supreme Court and the Federalist Society will be swayed by Francis’ arguments.
NBC News has some specifics on the shooting at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill yesterday.
NBC News: UNC-Chapel Hill graduate student charged with murder in fatal shooting of faculty member.
A graduate student at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill was charged with first-degree murder after the fatal shooting of a professor in his research department.
Tailei Qi, an applied physical sciences major, was apprehended Monday afternoon following the shooting at Caudill Labs, a science building on the UNC campus, which prompted an hourslong lockdown that forced students and faculty to barricade themselves in classrooms and dorms as authorities searched for a suspect.
Qi, 34, was booked Tuesday in the Orange County Detention Center in Hillsborough and also charged with possession of a gun on an educational property, a felony.
The incident, which occurred in the second week of the fall semester at UNC, began when students were alerted to an armed and dangerous person after 1 p.m. The university issued another alert at 2:24 p.m. that the suspect remained at large. A photo of an unnamed person was released, and the suspect was later apprehended in a residential neighborhood near campus.
It sounds like the victim–a faculty member–might have been targeted, but that’s just my speculation.
The victim was initially described as a university faculty member, and was not immediately identified pending notification of family. The arrest warrant names the shooting victim as Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the applied physical sciences department.
A university department web page that has since been removed had listed Qi as being a member of Yan’s lab group.
On his LinkedIn profile, Qi says he enrolled at UNC’s flagship campus in January 2022 as a graduate student and research assistant, and shared links to papers on his research. One paper published last month
in the journal Advanced Optical Materials was co-authored by Yan.
So the two were well known to each other. We’ll probably learn more in the coming days.
At The Daily Beast, attorney Shan Wu has a piece on Mark Meadows’ choice to testify under oath yesterday: Mark Meadows Just Took an Enormous Risk. Will It Pay Off?
Meadows wants out of the Fulton County court so badly that on Monday, he took the enormous risk of testifying in his own criminal trial and subjecting himself to cross-examination by the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office.
Meadows’ longing for federal court may seem puzzling because switching is but a change of courthouses. In federal court, Meadows will face the same charges, under the same state laws (including the Georgia RICO Act), brought by the same prosecutor.
However, Meadows may be counting on the fact that a federal trial would give him a broader geographic jury pool which might be more favorable to him. He also may think that a federal court would be more sympathetic to his argument that his position as a federal official should automatically make him immune from a state criminal prosecution.
Theoretically, Meadows’ removal argument under 28 U.S. code § 1442 doesn’t look that hard to make, since he only needs to show that he was a federal official at the time and that he can raise a “colorable legal defense.” Meadows was a federal official at the time as Trump’s White House chief of staff, so he can meet that part of the legal standard.
He also has a “federal defense” to raise based on so-called “Supremacy Clause Immunity,” meaning that as a federal officer he cannot be criminally prosecuted by a state for actions performed in his official federal capacity. The question though is whether that defense is a “colorable one” in these circumstances. In plain English, a “colorable defense” is just one that passes the smell test. That may prove challenging for Meadows.
The problem for Meadows is that he needs to convince federal judge Steve C. Jones–a former state judge appointed to the U.S. District Court by President Obama–that his actions in allegedly conspiring with Trump and 18 other co-defendants to overturn the election results in Georgia were part of his job description as White House chief of staff.
Holding aside the fact that the Hatch Act bars a federal official from using their office to engage in partisan political activity, Meadows must prove that his involvement in such acts as the phone call to Brad Raffensberger, in which Trump pressured the Georgia secretary of state to find votes for Trump, were just part of doing his job.
The federal government does not have the power to regulate presidential elections. A strict reading of Article II, Section 1, clause 4 of the Constitution would allow only regulation of the “time” of choosing presidential electors and certainly there is no known precedent for a White House chief of staff overseeing any aspect of a state election process.
Read more at the link.
Republicans are trying to find a way to shut down the prosecutions of Trump by any means necessary.
WASHINGTON — Four criminal indictments of Donald Trump have ignited his followers and spurred his House Republican allies to try to use the upcoming government funding deadline of Sept. 30 as leverage to undermine the prosecutions.
The bad news for them: A government shutdown wouldn’t halt the criminal proceedings against the former president.
Trump’s indictments in New York and Georgia would not be affected, while his federal indictments — for allegedly mishandling classified documents and for his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection — are criminal matters that have been exempted from shutdowns in the past. The Justice Department said in a 2021 memo that in a shutdown, “Criminal litigation will continue without interruption as an activity essential to the safety of human life and the protection of property.” The Justice Department’s plans assume that the judicial branch remains fully operational, which it has said in the past can carry on for weeks in the event of a funding lapse.
Special counsel Jack Smith’s office is funded by a “permanent, indefinite appropriation for independent counsels,” the department said in its statement of expenditures. Given its separate funding source, the special counsel would not be affected by a shutdown and could run off of allocations from previous years.
So how are these idiots planning to stop the prosecutions?
As a result, Republicans are looking at ways to insert provisions in government funding legislation that would hinder federal and state prosecutors who have secured indictments of Trump, based on unproven claims that he’s being politically targeted.
It won’t be easy to achieve. The demands, spearheaded by hard-right Republicans, have sparked internal party divisions over reining in law enforcement power and will struggle to pass the House. The Justice bill is one of two appropriations measures the House GOP hasn’t yet passed, out of 12 total, a Democratic aide noted, which could signify splits about how to proceed. And Democrats, who control the Senate and the White House, are pushing back on those calls to derail law enforcement as interference in Trump’s cases….
Rep. Andrew Clyde, R-Ga., a Trump ally who sits on the Appropriations Committee, said Monday he will introduce two amendments to eliminate federal funding for all three of Trump’s prosecutors — Smith, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg. His office said the measures would block their prosecutorial authority over “any major presidential candidate prior to” the 2024 election.
“Due to my serious concerns about these witch hunt indictments against President Trump, I intend to offer two amendments to prohibit any federal funds from being used in federal or state courts to prosecute major presidential candidates prior to the 2024 election,” Clyde said in a statement.
These so-called legislators have done nothing this session except “investigate” Hunter and Joe Biden and try to protect Trump.
A new book on the Biden administration by Franklin Foer is coming out on September 5. You can read an excerpt that focuses on the withdrawal from Afghanistan at The Atlantic.
This is from today’s Politico Playbook: A first look at the big new Biden book.
Atlantic staff writer FRANKLIN FOER originally set out to write an account of Biden’s first one hundred days in office, focusing on the Biden team’s response to the pandemic and the undoing of Trump’s major policies. But Foer kept reporting as the story of the American Rescue Plan, the Inflation Reduction Act, the Afghanistan withdrawal, Ukraine and ultimately the midterm elections unfolded.
Along the way he conducted nearly 300 interviews from November 2020 to February 2023. The result is his eagerly anticipated 407-page tome about Biden world: “The Last Politician: Inside Joe Biden’s White House and the Struggle for America’s Future” ($30).
In recent days Biden aides have been scrambling to secure a password-protected PDF of the book that has been sent to select journalists and reviewers, some of whom were required to sign nondisclosure agreements and promise not to share the contents with newsroom colleagues.
A major media rollout of the book is set to kick off this week. (In fact, we’ll be recording a conversation with Foer this afternoon for next week’s episode of the Playbook Deep Dive podcast.)
In the publishing world, “The Last Politician” is seen as a test of the market for political books about figures other than DONALD TRUMP. In Washington, the book will be a test for how a generally leak-proof White House grapples with the first detailed excavation of its successes and failures from the Inaugural through the midterms.
Minutes ago, the first excerpt of the Foer book was posted at the Atlantic and will appear across 13 pages in the magazine’s October issue. The piece — “The Final Days” — is a gripping history of America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan during August 2021, a month that marks one of the low points for a team that was elected for its competence. Foer’s account is notable both for his deep reporting as well as his shrewd insights into how Biden thinks, including the president’s unsentimental views on his decision to end America’s longest war.
Read more Politico-style analysis at the link.
That’s all I have for you today. Here’s hoping that Hurricane headed for Florida won’t cause too much damage. Take care everyone.
Happy Caturday!!It’s difficult for me to focus on anything except the legal news about Trump’s crimes; but before I get to the latest on that, I want to call attention to Joe Biden’s latest foreign policy efforts. I admit I really that I originally was not at all enthused about a Biden presidency, but he has turned out to be very good at his job. His age and experience have prepared him for this moment in history.
Reuters: US, South Korea and Japan condemn China, agree to deepen military ties.
CAMP DAVID, Maryland, Aug 18 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden and the leaders of South Korea and Japan agreed at Camp David on Friday to deepen military and economic cooperation and made their strongest joint condemnation yet of “dangerous and aggressive behavior” by China in the South China Sea.
The Biden administration held the summit with the leaders of the main U.S. allies in Asia, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, in a bid to project unity in the face of China’s growing power and nuclear threats from North Korea.
In a summit statement the three countries committed to consult promptly with each other during crises and to coordinate responses to regional challenges, provocations and threats affecting common interests.
They also agreed to hold military training exercises annually and to share real-time information on North Korean missile launches by the end of 2023. The countries promised to hold trilateral summits annually.
While the political commitments fall short of a formal three-way alliance, they represent a bold move for Seoul and Tokyo, which have a long history of mutual acrimony stemming from Japan’s harsh 1910-1945 colonial rule of Korea.
The summit at the Maryland presidential retreat was the first standalone meeting between the U.S. and Japan and South Korea and came about thanks to a rapprochement launched by Yoon and driven by shared perceptions of threats posed by China and North Korea, as well as Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
The leaders’ language on China stood out as stronger than expected, and is likely to provoke a response from Beijing, which is a vital trading partner for both South Korea and Japan.
“Regarding the dangerous and aggressive behavior supporting unlawful maritime claims that we have recently witnessed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the South China Sea, we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific,” the statement said.
Next Biden plans to build closer ties with Vietnam. Politico: Biden to sign strategic partnership deal with Vietnam in latest bid to counter China in the region.
President Joe Biden will chalk up a fresh victory in his campaign to boost U.S. influence in the Indo-Pacific by sealing a deal with Vietnam next month aimed to draw Hanoi closer to Washington at a time of rising tensions with Beijing.
Biden will sign a strategic partnership agreement with Vietnam during a state visit to the Southeast Asian country in mid-September, according to three people with knowledge of the deal’s planning. They were granted anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak on the record about the agreement.
The agreement will allow for new bilateral collaboration that will boost Vietnam’s efforts to develop its high technology sector in areas including semiconductor production and artificial intelligence….
The deal adds to Biden’s string of successful diplomatic initiatives aimed to reassert U.S. influence in Asia in the face of China’s growing economic, diplomatic and military muscle in the region. They include a historic Camp David summit Friday with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — aimed at addressing regional threats from North Korea and China.
The Vietnam agreement coincides with an uptick in tension between Hanoi and Beijing over long-standing territorial disputes in the South China Sea. Vietnam — along with the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei — has long protested Beijing’s claim of authority over parts of the South China Sea that extend 1,200 miles from China’s coastline. Hanoi banned the Barbie movie last month due to a scene that appeared to reference the nine-dash line Beijing says marks its territorial waters. Satellite imagery released this week indicates China is building an airfield on an island that Hanoi says is Vietnamese territory.
But the agreement doesn’t necessarily signal that Vietnam is moving away from its giant neighbor China in favor of better ties with Washington.
“Vietnam is not aligning with the U.S. against China. … They’re happy to improve relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t mean they’re moving against China — they’re going to continue to calibrate very carefully,” said Scot Marciel, a former principal deputy assistant secretary for East Asia and the Pacific at the State Department who opened the first State Department office in Hanoi in 1993.
Now some legal news.
In the January 6th prosecutions, the DOJ has asked for 33 years in prison for Proud Boy leaders Enrique Tarrio and Joe Biggs. Kyle Cheney at Politico: Prosecutors seek 30-year sentences for Proud Boys leaders in Jan. 6 case.
Prosecutors are seeking 33-year prison sentences for former Proud Boys chair Enrique Tarrio and his ally Joe Biggs, who they say aimed to foment a revolution on Jan. 6 to keep former President Donald Trump in power.
The proposed jail sentences would nearly double the lengthiest Jan. 6 sentence handed down to date — 18 years for Oath Keepers leader Stewart Rhodes — a decision prosecutors say reflects the pivotal role that Proud Boys leaders played in stoking and exacerbating the violence at the Capitol that day.
“The defendants understood the stakes, and they embraced their role in bringing about a ‘revolution,’” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memo released Thursday night. “They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election. The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”
Both Tarrio and Biggs were convicted of seditious conspiracy in May by a jury who also found allies Philadelphia Proud Boy leader Zachary Rehl and Seattle Proud Boy leader Ethan Nordean guilty of the grave offense. Prosecutors are seeking 30 years for Rehl and 27 years for Nordean.
A fifth Proud Boy tried alongside the others, Dominic Pezzola, was acquitted of seditious conspiracy but convicted on other serious offenses. Pezzola may be the best known of the group, however. He shattered a Senate-wing window with a stolen police riot shield, triggering the breach of the Capitol itself. Prosecutors are seeking a 20-year jail term for him.
Read more details at the Politico link.
Marcy Wheeler has an interesting story about Proud Boy Joe Biggs, who used to be an informant for the FBI. If you’ve wondered why the FBI failed to warn people about the terrorists who were working to overthrow the government on January 6, here’s one answer. Emptywheel: “They Spoke Often:” It Took the Fash-Friendly FBI Over Two Months to Document the Lies their Informant, Joe Biggs, Told Them.
I always have a hard time excerpting Marcy’s posts, but I hope you’ll go read it at the link. The gist is that the FBI used Biggs to target “Antifa.” They were focused on radical left groups and ignored the violent extremist on the right. Here’s the summary at the end of the post:
The FBI claims it had no notice of the terrorist attack on the nation’s Capitol, not even with an FBI agent “speaking often” with one of its leaders and an DC intelligence cop speaking often with the other one.
So now, DOJ wants to hold Joe Biggs accountable for the lies he told to the FBI agent who thought a key leader of the Proud Boys would make an appropriate informant targeting Antifa. But thus far, his handler has not been held accountable for missing the planning of a terrorist attack in DC when while speaking “often” with one of its key leaders.
Notably, the Daytona FBI office is the same one where, after fake whistleblower Stephen Friend refused to participate in a SWAT arrest of a Three Percenter known to own an assault rifle, his supervisor said “he wished I just ‘called in sick’ for this warrant,” before taking disciplinary action against him (though Friend didn’t start in Daytona Beach until after Biggs had already been arrested).
The second of these interviews (but not the first) interview was mentioned in Biggs’ arrest affidavit. It’s possible that investigating agents didn’t even know about what occurred in the first one.
Indeed, it’s really hard to credit the reliability of a 302 written two days after Biggs described his chummy relationship but not this interview in an attempt to stay out of jail.
This is why the FBI didn’t warn against January 6. Because these terrorists were the FBI’s people.
Another Proud Boy, Christopher Worrell, was supposed to be sentenced soon, but yesterday, news broke that he has disappeared. Associated Press: Proud Boy on house arrest in Jan. 6 case disappears ahead of sentencing.
Authorities are searching for a member of the Proud Boys extremist group who disappeared days before his sentencing in a U.S. Capitol riot case, where prosecutors are seeking more than a decade in prison, according to a warrant made public Friday.
Christopher Worrell, 52, of Naples, Florida, was supposed to be sentenced Friday after being found guilty of spraying pepper spray gel on police officers, as part of the mob storming the Capitol as Congress was certifying Joe Biden’s presidential victory on Jan. 6, 2021. Prosecutors had asked a judge to sentence him to 14 years.
The sentencing was canceled and a bench warrant for his arrest issued under seal on Tuesday, according to court records. The U.S. attorney’s office for Washington, D.C., encouraged the public to share any information about his whereabouts.
Worrell had been on house arrest in Florida since his release from jail in Washington in November 2021, less than a month after a judge substantiated his civil-rights complaints about his treatment in the jail.
U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth found Worrell’s medical care for a broken hand had been delayed, and held D.C. jail officials in contempt of court.
The big topic of conversation in the media and Twitter yesterday was a Trump ally who has previously passed under the radar–Kenneth Chesebro, who appears to be one of the unindicted co-conspirators in the Georgia election interference case. It turns out this guy was integral to what happened on January 6. Chesboro was also the originator of the scheme to use “fake electors” to overthrow the 2020 election.
When conspiracy theorist Alex Jones marched his way to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, riling up his legion of supporters, an unassuming middle-aged man in a red “Trump 2020” hat conspicuously tagged along.
Videos and photographs reviewed by CNN show the man dutifully recording Jones with his phone as the bombastic media personality ascended to the restricted area of the Capitol grounds where mobs of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters eventually broke in.
While the man’s actions outside the Capitol that day have drawn little scrutiny, his alleged connections to a plot to overthrow the 2020 election have recently come into sharp focus: He is attorney Kenneth Chesebro, the alleged architect of the scheme to subvert the 2020 Electoral College process by using fake GOP electors in multiple states.
When asked by the House select committee where he was the first week of January 2021 and on January 6, Chesebro invoked his Fifth Amendment rights. But a CNN investigation has placed him outside of the Capitol at the same time as his alleged plot to keep Trump in office unraveled inside it.
There is no indication Chesebro entered the Capitol Building or was violent. Jones did not enter the Capitol on January 6, 2021, or engage in violence, but he had warned of a coming battle the day before and urged his supporters to converge on the Capitol.
Chesebro is the only one of the unindicted co-conspirators in Trump’s recent federal indictment and only member of Trump’s legal efforts who is now known to have been on the Capitol grounds on January 6.
CNN was able to place Chesebro at the protest through publicly available databases with photos and videos from that day. Interviews with his acquaintances also confirmed his identity. Chesebro declined CNN’s requests for comment, citing ongoing litigation.
It was unclear why Chesebro was following Jones on January 6.
“Even if Chesebro is simply a diehard Infowars fan, I think that would further illustrate how thin the line was between the serious, credentialed people who sought to undermine election results and the extremist figures who sought to unleash havoc was in that period, to the extent it meaningfully existed at all,” said Jared Holt, an expert at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue which investigates extremism, hate and disinformation.
Read the rest at CNN.
More on Cheseboro from The Washington Post: The ‘brains’ behind fake Trump electors was once a liberal Democrat.
VEGA ALTA, Puerto Rico — The blinds were drawn at a handsome villa in an oceanfront gated community on the northern coast of this Caribbean island. Inside, a woman’s voice could be heard calling out “Ken” — but no one answered the door.
That’s all I have for you today. Have a nice Caturday!
Breaking News: Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed a special counsel to oversee the Hunter Biden investigation.
Associated Press: Attorney General Garland appoints a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Friday he is appointing a special counsel in the Hunter Biden probe, deepening the investigation of the president’s son ahead of the 2024 election.
Garland said he is naming David Weiss, the U.S. attorney in Delaware who has been probing the financial and business dealings of the president’s son, as the special counsel.
Garland said on Tuesday that Weiss told him that “in his judgment, his investigation has reached a stage at which he should continue his work as a Special Counsel, and he asked to be appointed.”
“Upon considering his request, as well as the extraordinary circumstances relating to this matter, I have concluded it is in the public interest to appoint him as special counsel,” Garland said.
The move is a momentous development from the typically cautious Garland and comes amid a pair of sweeping Justice Department probes into Donald Trump, the former president, and President Joe Biden’s chief rival in next year’s election. It comes as House Republicans are mounting their own investigation into Hunter Biden’s business dealings.
Jim Jordan must be celebrating.
Also Breaking News: The hearing with Judge Tanya Chutkan on the prosecution’s request for a protective order in January 6 case has just wrapped up. Chutkan made it pretty clear that Trump had better not intimidate witnesses or pollute the jury pool, or he will be in big trouble. She alsBo told the defense to stop talking about politics. This is a criminal case, and she will not allow the politics to interfere with her decisions. Trump must follow the conditions he was given at his arraignment. If that causes him to have to keep his big fat mouth shut in some instances, that’s just too bad (my words). If you want a good, detailed thread on the hearing, I recommend this one by Brandi Buchman:
Read it on Twitter. And here is Buchman’s story at Law and Crime: Trump lawyers, special counsel square off in court on limits for pretrial evidence in Jan. 6 indictment.
A report from CNN: Judge Chutkan says Trump’s right to free speech in January 6 case is ‘not absolute.’
US District Judge Tanya Chutkan said that she plans to put serious limits over how sensitive evidence is handled in the Donald Trump 2020 election interference case, in a dramatic hearing Friday in Washington, DC, that could set the tone for the upcoming trial.
The former president has a right to free speech, but that right is “not absolute,” Chutkan said. “Mr. Trump, like every American, has a First Amendment right to free speech, but that right is not absolute. In a criminal case such as this one, the defendant’s free speech is subject to the rules.” [….]
Whether or not Trump’s public statements are covered by the protective order that’s issued, she said, if they result in the intimidation of a witness or the obstruction of justice, “I will be scrutinizing them very carefully.”
Trump’s lawyer John Lauro said: “President Trump will scrupulously abide by his conditions of release.”
Chutkan adopted restrictions proposed by prosecutors that would bar Trump from publicly disclosing information from interview transcripts and recordings from the investigation, including from witness interviews with investigators that took place outside of the grand jury….
Chutkan and Lauro had several pointed exchanges about what the 2024 presidential contender should be allowed to say about the evidence that is turned over to him in the case.
“No one disagrees that any speech that intimidates a witness would be prohibited, what we are talking about is fair use of information,” Lauro said at one point, putting forward a hypothetical that Trump is publicly remarking on something from his personal memory that is also evidence in the case.
“The fact that he is running a political campaign currently has to yield to the administration of justice,” the judge said. “And if that means he can’t say exactly what he wants to say in a political speech, that is just how it’s going to have to be.”
Lauro put forward a hypothetical of Trump making a statement while debating his former Vice President Mike Pence – who is also running for the White House now and is a key witness in the criminal case – that overlapped with what’s in discovery.
The judge wasn’t sold.
“He is a criminal defendant. He is going to have constraints the same as any defendant. This case is going to proceed in a normal order,” Chutkan said.
From The Daily Beast: Jack Smith Wants Trump Convicted by Super Tuesday.
Special Counsel Jack Smith’s office wants to put former President Donald Trump on trial for his attempted coup in January next year—a move that, if approved by a judge, could brand him a felon before the biggest GOP presidential primaries.
In a filing on Thursday, the special counsel’s office proposed a trial date of January 2, 2024, which they say would take “no longer than four to six weeks.”
Should U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila A. Upadhyaya approve that date, Trump’s trial could be done and dusted before the GOP’s primaries in South Carolina and Michigan, with plenty of time before the delegate-rich slate of Super Tuesday states in March.
Trump already faces two other separate criminal trials in March and May in New York and Florida, respectively. However, those trials have been delayed enough that Trump still managed to snag key elections before risking the embarrassing reality of being convicted of felonies while asking voters to make him the Republican nominee.
Prosecutors working on these different cases all wanted earlier dates, but judges gave into Trump’s demands for more time. While his lawyers cited the sheer amount of overwhelming work required to sort through millions of pages of evidence, the former president has used political rallies and online posts to accuse prosecutors of trying to derail his re-election campaign. In the end, judges gave Trump a little extra time.
Also at The Daily Beast, Jose Pagliery has a story on Judge “loose” Cannon and another big mistake: Inside One ‘Egregious’ Mistake From Trump’s Florida Judge Aileen Cannon.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, whose pro-Trump bias and head-turning errors have raised questions about whether she should be overseeing former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in Florida, made what appears to be another surprising mistake last year.
Now, a defense lawyer is seizing on her misstep to try freeing his client from prison—even though he was caught on tape violently throwing a courtroom chair at a prosecutor and threatening to kill him.
The blunder was simple and entirely avoidable. The federal judge told jurors they could find the man, Christopher Wilkins, “guilty or not guilty.” But then she handed jurors a verdict form that didn’t even have those options.
“How far does somebody have to go to school to say that a verdict form is supposed to say guilty and not guilty?” asked defense lawyer Jeffrey Garland. “That would be one of the more egregious versions of jury instruction error… it’s such a rare error.”
Garland formally filed an appeal on Thursday and hopes to overturn a case that’s as black-and-white as they come—on a technicality.
“This is the judge’s deal. This is nobody else’s deal. I’m gonna tell ya, I’ve done a lot of appeals, and I’ve got a pretty good winning record. This is a great issue,” he said. “For a guy who’s on tape throwing a chair in court, it’s pretty ‘not good’ behavior. It would have been simple. You have a trial, properly instruct a jury, give them a form, and the jury’s gonna do what the jury’s gonna do.”
Cannon’s short and controversial history on the bench is under a microscope, given that she is presiding over such an historic criminal trial: that of a former president facing prison time for mishandling classified records at Mar-a-Lago and lying to the feds in a coverup. Trump himself appointed her in his final months in office, yet she has not recused herself from the case.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
Trump allies face potential charges in Georgia over voting machine breaches.
The Fulton county district attorney investigating Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia has evidence to charge multiple allies of the former president involved in breaching voting machines in the state, according to two people briefed on the matter.
The potential charges at issue are computer trespass felonies, the people said, though the final list of defendants and whether they will be brought as part of a racketeering case when prosecutors are expected to present evidence to the grand jury next week remain unclear.
To bring a racketeering case under Georgia state law, prosecutors need to show the existence of an “enterprise” predicated on at least two “qualifying” crimes, of which computer trespass is one. The Guardian has reported that prosecutors believe they have sufficient evidence for a racketeering case.
The statute itself prohibits the intentional use of a computer or computer network without authorization in order to remove data, either temporarily or permanently. It also prohibits interrupting or interfering with the use of a computer, as well as altering or damaging a computer.
Prosecutors have taken a special interest in the breach of voting machines in Coffee county, Georgia, by Trump allies because of the brazen nature of the operation and the possibility that Trump was aware that his allies intended to covertly gain access to the machines.
In a series of particularly notable incidents, forensics experts hired by Trump allies copied data from virtually every part of the voting system, which is used statewide in Georgia, before uploading them to a password-protected website that could be accessed by 2020 election deniers.
Read the rest at the link above.
I’m going to end there. This post is mostly breaking news. I’ll update in the comments if I hear more about these stories.
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The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.
You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.
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