Trump’s comments came during an interview with conservative syndicated radio host Hugh Hewitt in which the former president was asked for reassurance that he would not be a dictator if he returned to the White House and whether he would peacefully surrender power at the end of his second term.
The Final Friday Read of 2023: A Plea for American History and Democracy
Posted: December 29, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Donald Trump and Fake Electors, Donald Trump and Primary Ballots, Nikki Haley's History Problem, Rewriting History 9 Comments
Dressing for the Carnival, Winslow Homer, 1877 “In this Reconstruction-era painting, Homer evokes the dislocation and endurance of African American culture that was a legacy of slavery. The central figure represents a character from a Christmas celebration known as Jonkonnu, once observed by enslaved people in North Carolina and, possibly, eastern Virginia. Rooted in the culture of the British West Indies, the festival blended African and European traditions. ” (The Met)
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
I fully admit to having a most unappreciated undergraduate liberal arts degree in what everyone calls Social Studies in primary and secondary education. I have a B.A. in History and economics with a secondary teaching certificate in Social Studies. I also have enough credits for minors in Philosophy, literature, and Political Science because quite a bit of my high school credits applied to remove me from the obligations of freshman classes while still making me meet the prerequisite 125 hours to graduate. So, I went full throttle into studying what I loved. It kills me to see the utter illiteracy and rewriting of nearly every one of those subjects. Needless to say, I silently screamed when I heard Nikki Haley’s attempts to rewrite history for the MAGA crowd at an appearance in Iowa.
My painting choices today come from various American art sources, including The American Wing of The Met and its Gallery portraying American Scenes of Everyday Life, 1840–1910. Many choices also come from The Art Story’s American Art.
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley made a disqualifying series of statements that were basically straight from the mouths of Neo-Confederates and other right-wing racists, and miscreants. It was the old post-Reconstruction Southern rewrite of the Confederacy. It always makes me wonder if we genuinely reunified after the Civil War.
Haley isn’t the only one trying to rewrite our history. For years, we’ve known that the term ‘state’s rights’ was used to keep slavery in the South. It was then used to support segregation. Now, it’s used to control women’s reproductive health, ban books, and deny equality under the law to the LGBTQ+ community while still trying to keep Black Americans on the sidelines. It currently has the additional label “woke” attached to it. The Civil War was, first and foremost, about Slavery. PERIOD. As you can see, it is a central theme running through Black lives and needs to be fully recognized by the rest of us.
Central Park, Winter, William James Glackens, ca. 1905. (The Met)
Capitalism didn’t even exist as a theory or philosophy when our country was founded. There are so many lies circulating these days in Republican speeches and circles it makes my head spin.
This is from The Hill. “Democrats go after GOP’s ‘anti-history record’ with billboard ads.”
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has launched four billboards in Iowa attacking Republican presidential candidates for their “anti-history record” as they spend the weekend campaigning in the Hawkeye state.
The billboards, which will be in Dubuque and Cedar Rapids, come as Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley faces criticism over her remarks at a town hall event in New Hampshire in which she failed to mention slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
The former South Carolina governor suggested the cause of the war was “basically how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do.” She later claimed the voter who asked her the question was a “Democrat plant.”
The ads the DNC is launching target Haley for her comments, as well as the records of her fellow GOP candidates Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and former President Trump. The three currently top the GOP primary field in the state, according to Decision Desk HQ and The Hill’s aggregation of polls.
“We are at a pivotal and dangerous moment for American democracy: Voters are looking on at a GOP primary with three frontrunners who are so subsumed by the MAGA takeover of their party that they are campaigning on an agenda to whitewash slavery, ban books, and tell bold-faced lies about our history,” DNC National Press Secretary Sarafina Chitika said in a statement.
The billboards feature a photo of Haley, DeSantis and Trump and say “MAGA’s America” includes whitewashing slavery, erasing history, banning books and parroting Hitler.
In the first presidential debate in the 2020 election cycle, Trump declined to condemn white supremacists and far-right groups. He later went back on his comments and said he has condemned all white supremacists “many times.”
In separate campaign events this month, Trump claimed migrants were “poisoning the blood of our country.” Critics have said the remark echoes the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler, who wrote in “Mein Kampf” that German blood was being poisoned by Jews. The former president later denied that he intended any racist sentiment with his comments and said he is “not a student of Hitler.”
Under DeSantis’s leadership, Florida became the first in a wave of red states to enact laws that make it easier for parents to challenge what books school libraries carry, a push that has been particularly centered around books that depict race and LGBTQ history and issues.
DeSantis has also faced criticism in response to Florida’s revised educational guidelines on teaching slavery, which tell teachers to instruct students on “how slaves developed skills which, in some instances, could be applied for their personal benefit.” The governor has defended the guidelines, saying the backlash against him is “in bad faith.”
“This dramatic landscape exemplifies the work of the Hudson River School.” A Wild Scene, Artist: Thomas Cole,1831-32, (Baltimore Museum of Art}
More evidence supports the many cases against Trump and his cronies, showing the attempts to overturn the 2020 election. The thought that our tradition of peaceful transitions of power after elections will never be the same after the illegal antics of 2020. This is from CNN. “Exclusive: Recordings, emails show how Trump team flew fake elector ballots to DC in final push to overturn 2020 election.”
Two days before the January 6 insurrection, the Trump campaign’s plan to use fake electors to block President-elect Joe Biden from taking office faced a potentially crippling hiccup: The fake elector certificates from two critical battleground states were stuck in the mail.
So, Trump campaign operatives scrambled to fly copies of the phony certificates from Michigan and Wisconsin to the nation’s capital, relying on a haphazard chain of couriers, as well as help from two Republicans in Congress, to try to get the documents to then-Vice President Mike Pence while he presided over the Electoral College certification.
The operatives even considered chartering a jet to ensure the files reached Washington, DC, in time for the January 6, 2021, proceeding, according to emails and recordings obtained by CNN.
The new details provide a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the chaotic last-minute effort to keep Donald Trump in office. The fake electors scheme features prominently in special counsel Jack Smith’s criminal indictment against the former president, and some of the officials who were involved have spoken to Smith’s investigators.
The emails and recordings also indicate that a top Trump campaign lawyer was part of 11th-hour discussions about delivering the fake elector certificates to Pence, potentially undercutting his testimony to the House select committee that investigated January 6 that he had passed off responsibility and didn’t want to put the former vice president in a difficult spot.
These details largely come from pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro, who was an architect of the fake electors plot and is now a key cooperator in several state probes into the scheme. Chesebro pleaded guilty in October to a felony conspiracy charge in Georgia in connection with the electors’ plan, and has met with prosecutors in Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, who are investigating the sham GOP electors in their own states.
The Steerage, Artist: Alfred Stieglitz, 1907. “This photograph has become famous both as a cultural document of immigration to America and as a pioneering work of American modernism and Straight Photography.” (The Met)
Just so you know, Nikki Haley has also pledged–to a nine-year-old–that she will pardon Donald Trump if elected President. This is yet another thing she’s said that should be disqualifying. No more presidential crooks should get pardons.
If you’re not an indigenous American, you’re from a family of migrants. African slaves did not “migrate,” but everyone else’s families did at one time or another. Many of us still have the tales from our families. This is especially true of those who arrived at Ellis Island. I wonder what the families coming to our border in Texas have to say about the latest stunts pulled by Texas Governor Gregg Abbott. Will it be something like, we came for refuge and asylum and were thrown into barbed wire and shot at by Texas Rangers. I still am appalled at how the US refused Jewish immigrants fleeing Hitler’s Germany.
This is from The Independent. “DOJ threatens to sue Texas governor over law allowing police to arrest migrants. Under the new law, law enforcement officials will be granted powers to arrest and deport migrants who illegally enter Texas.”
The Department of Justice (DOJ) is threatening to sue Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott over new legislation allowing local law enforcement to arrest migrants crossing the southern border into the US.
In a letter from the Biden administration to Mr Abbott’s office, the federal government announced its intention to sue “to enjoin the enforcement of SB 4 unless Texas agrees to refrain from enforcing the law,” CNN reported.
The DOJ claims the new law – Senate Bill 4 – violates the US constitution.
Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, who authored the letter, said the government is “committed to…securing the border” but that the Texas statute is “contrary to these goals”.
“The Biden Admin not only refuses to enforce current US immigration laws, they now want to stop Texas from enforcing laws against illegal immigration,” he said in a post.
“I’ve never seen such hostility to the rule of law in America. Biden is destroying America. Texas is trying to save it.”
Under the new law, law enforcement officials will be granted powers to arrest and deport migrants who illegally enter Texas.
Repeat offenders are punishable by up to 20 years in prison – something that critics have deried as the most draconian anti-immigrant measure passed in more than a decade.
A Railroad Station Waiting Room, Raphael Soyer c. 1940 (National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.)
Another State has disqualified Trump from its ballot. Since I already inkled the name of Crooked Former President Nixon, I might as well go with John Dean’s analysis at The Hill on Crooked Former President Donald Trump. “John Dean: ‘Trump’s in trouble’ after Maine ruling,” All of these things are headed toward the Supreme Court as we’ve not really had a history of having to disqualify Presidents from Public office.
Former President Nixon’s White House attorney John Dean said Thursday he believes the Maine decision to remove former President Trump from the ballot will be difficult to overturn, calling it “very solid.”
Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows (D) determined late Thursday that Trump should be kept off the state’s primary ballot because his conduct surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots violated the 14th Amendment.
Dean denounced criticism by the Trump campaign, which called the decision “election interference.”
“There was ample due process in this proceeding, and they just lost by a straight, honest reading of the 14th Amendment,” Dean said in a CNN interview. “Trump’s in trouble.”
The 14th Amendment bars those who previously took oaths to support the Constitution and “have engaged in insurrection” from holding office. Bellows and a similar Colorado Supreme Court decision last week each found that Trump’s conduct falls under that definition.
Bellows said Trump “used a false narrative of election fraud to inflame his supporters” on Jan. 6 and “was aware of the likelihood for violence and at least initially supported its use given he both encouraged it with incendiary rhetoric and took no timely action to stop it.”
The Trump campaign pledged to appeal the Maine ruling, and the Supreme Court is expected to take up the Colorado case.
Dean said he doesn’t think the Supreme Court would go against either decision, citing a plain reading of the amendment’s text.
A panel from The Great Migration Series, 1941, Jacob Lawrence (MOMA)
CNN has this ominous headline concerning the issues over Trump on various states’ Primary Ballots. “Risks of US electoral chaos deepen after Trump is barred from another state ballot.” The words Trump and chaos are frequently seen together.
The Republican Party in Colorado has already challenged the state Supreme Court’s decision to bar him from the ballot over the 14th Amendment.
In Maine, the Trump campaign said it would quickly file a case in state court to stop the “atrocious” decision from taking effect.
But Bellows argued that she had the authority to disqualify Trump over his conduct.
“The oath I swore to uphold the Constitution comes first above all, and my duty under Maine’s election laws … is to ensure that candidates who appear on the primary ballot are qualified for the office they seek,” she said. Bellows wrote that the challengers presented compelling evidence that the January 6 insurrection “occurred at the behest of” Trump – and that the US Constitution “does not tolerate an assault on the foundations of our government.”
Before Colorado, several other states, like Michigan and Minnesota, rejected similar efforts. And California’s secretary of state released a certified list of candidates Thursday night that included the former president. The fact that different states now have a divergent view of the Constitution and Trump’s eligibility to run again means that it is almost incumbent on the US Supreme Court to step in, even if wading into this political tsunami could further expose an institution that has been battered politically in recent years to further strain.
Two key questions will be before the justices. First, whether the constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office also applies to the president. Second, the top bench will be under pressure to rule on whether a single state can simply decide that a candidate engaged in an insurrection without offering them due process.
“Reclaimed by Snakeweeds,” Shonto Begay, Navajo Tribe, 2008.
I was always in awe of my Nana and Grandad, who lived through the dustbowl, saw siblings die during World War 1, and had sons sent off to fight in World War 2. As I studied history, it seemed that these kinds of huge events hung over past generations. I was young when JFK and MLK were assassinated and when I was duck and covering during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Nixon’s resignation was the only really shocking historical event I recall in detail before becoming an adult. However, I watched many things on a black and white TV before that, including the Vietnam War. Since then, we’ve seen 9/11 and several, long reckless wars. We’ve had a Financial Crisis that bordered on a Depression. We’ve had all these historical events that pale in comparison to the challenges of the present and seem more on the level of years with World Wars and great upheavals.
As we lurch through the 21st century, old lessons appear unlearned. The comparison to 1930s America is disturbing. I listened to Rachel Maddow’s podcast Ultra to understand the parallels between our dance with fascism then and now. The War in Gaza, the lawless Trump, and his army of gun-toting White Christian Nationalists seem present in every state. Is this really a Cold Civil War? American history has an uneven road to forming a more perfect union that we are still on today. These are days that try the people’s souls. I’m beginning to think we need to reignite enthusiasm for the Bachelor of Arts degree so no one forgets history or falls for a fake rewrite.
I get to do the New Year’s Day Reads. I imagine we will see a lot more of this next year. Hopefully, I can land in a more hopeful place during the Election Season.
Take care, my friends!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Wednesday Reads
Posted: December 27, 2023 Filed under: 2022 Elections, 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, Donald Trump, just because | Tags: "presidential immunity", 2024 polls, Congress, Democratic party, fake electors, George Santos, Health care, Joe Biden, Lauren Bobert, Matthew Reum, Simon Rosenberg, Supreme Court, U.S. Economy 7 CommentsGood Day!!
Boston Sunrise this morning, 12-27-2023
I’m going to try to be upbeat today, although I will still have to include Trump-related stories. I can’t handle the war news today, though.
I’ll begin with a post by Simon Rosenberg, who is a very optimistic political commentator. He was one of the few poll-watchers who predicted the Democratic sweep in the 2022 midterms.
According to Wikipedia, Rosenberg is “founder of New Democrat Network and the New Policy Institute, a liberal think tank and advocacy group based in Washington, D.C.” He publishes at his website, Hopium Chronicles. You may have seen him on MSNBC last night.
Rosenberg’s latest post is at MSNBC.com: Biden’s 2024 chances are much stronger than people realize.
As we head into 2024, the conventional wisdom is that Democrats are on the back foot for next year’s elections. But there are three reasons I am optimistic that 2024 is going to be a good year for Democrats:
First, PresidentJoe Biden has kept his central promise in the 2020 election: that he would lead the nation to the other side of Covid, successfully. The pandemic has receded. Our economic recovery has been better than any other G7 nation. GDP grew at an annual rate of 4.9% last quarter, and more than 3% for the Biden presidency. We have the best job market since the 1960s and the lowest uninsured rate in U.S. history. The Dow Jones broke 37,000 this month for the first time. Wage growth, new business formation and prime-age labor participation rates are all at historically elevated levels. Prices fell — yes, fell — last month. Rents are softening, and gas prices and crime rates are falling. Domestic oil and renewable production are at record levels. The annual deficit, which exploded under Trump, is trillions less today.
Consumer sentiment has risen sharply in recent weeks, and measures of life, job and income satisfaction are remarkably high. There is no doubt that recent years have been hard — Covid, an insurrection at the Capitol, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, repeated OPEC price hikes, global and domestic inflation — but it is increasingly clear that America is getting to the other side of this challenging period, and are in a far better place than when President Biden took office.
And the Democratic party is historically strong.
Second, the strength of the president’s record is only matched by the strength of his party. I don’t think it is widely understood how strong the Democratic Party is right now. The party has won more votes in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done in modern American history. Over the last four presidential elections, Democrats have averaged 51% of the popular vote, their best showing over four national elections since the 1930s.
In both 2022 and 2023, Democrats prevented the historical down ballot struggle of the party in power and had two remarkably successful elections. In the 2022 midterms, Democrats’ statewide margins were greater than the 2020 presidential margins in Arizona, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania — all recent battleground states. That showing led the party to pick up a Senate seat, four state legislative chambers and two governorships, and helped keep the House of Representatives close, making it far more likely Republicans lose it in 2024.
What was visible of fog-bound Boston from the air yesterday, 12-26-2023
This year, Democrats flipped a Supreme Court seat in Wisconsin; defeated a six-week abortion ban in Ohio; kept the Virginia state house, debunking the idea that Republicans could hide behind a 15-week abortion ban; and took state legislative seats, municipalities and school board seats across the country. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, grew his margin of victory from 2019, and Republicans lost mayoral elections in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and Jacksonville, Florida, two of the largest GOP-controlled cities in the country. And in over three dozen state legislative special elections around the country, Democrats outperformed 2020– an election we won by 4.5 percentage points — by an average of 5 percentage points.
While in 2022, Republicans could point to gains in New York and California to offset their losses in the battleground states, there were no places in 2023 where they outperformed expectations. A blue wave washed across the U.S. in 2023, and this ongoing strong performance of the Democratic Party in election after election, in all parts of the country, should fill Biden’s supporters with confidence.
Finally, while Democrats keep winning, conventional wisdom continues to overly discount Trump’s historic baggage and MAGA’s repeated electoral failures. Despite these repeated failures, Republicans are on the cusp of nominating Trump again, who this time is an even more degraded and dangerous version of MAGA than he was in 2020.
I hope you’ll read the rest at the MSNBC link. It’s well worth your time.
Next, a couple of stories about House elections:
Sahil Kapur at NBC News: Democratic group makes a $5.9 million bet on flipping George Santos’ House seat.
The Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC is putting down $5.2 million in initial reservations for TV and digital ads to try to win the House special election to replace the expelled Rep. George Santos, R-N.Y., the group told NBC News.
The group said it will spend $3.7 million on TV and $1.5 million on digital platforms, along with $700,000 on mail ads, in the weeks ahead of the Feb. 13 contest in New York’s 3rd Congressional District. The election pits Democrat Tom Suozzi, a former congressman eying a comeback, against Republican nominee Mazi Melesa Pilip, a Nassau County legislator.
The competitive district, which includes parts of Long Island and Queens, voted for President Joe Biden in 2020 before it elected Santos in 2022. But his subsequently unearthed biographical fabrications and sweeping federal indictment prompted the House to expel him on Dec. 1. It is the type of district that will be heavily contested next November, and it could determine which party wins the chamber, which Republicans now narrowly control.
The contest “represents the first step to Democrats taking back the House in 2024,” House Majority PAC President Mike Smith said in response to written questions. “A resurgence in New York represents House Democrats’ best path to the majority.”
The Make Way for Ducklings statues in Christmas attire.
Jake Swearingen at Business Insider: An avalanche of money is coming to kick Lauren Boebert out of Congress.
Lauren Boebert is facing a brutal and very expensive reelection fight in 2024.
Adam Frisch, the main Democratic challenger to the lightning-rod Republican congresswoman from Colorado’s 3rd District, has been raking in jaw-dropping amounts of campaign cash.
According to the Federal Election Commission, Frisch’s campaign has raised over $7.7 million so far, making him one of the top fundraisers in the 2024 House races. As spotted by the Time reporter Mini Racker, that’s enough to put him behind Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy and the Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries in total funds raised.
Frisch came close to unseating Boebert in 2022, falling short by just 546 votes in what was considered a safe Republican district. That electoral performance was before the litany of controversies that have made Boebert a tabloid favorite, including a scandal this summer when she was booted from a Denver theater after vaping and groping her date during a performance of “Beetlejuice.”
Boebert has raised $2.4 million for her campaign this cycle. The money gap becomes even starker when you compare totals for just the third quarter, July 1 to September 30, the latest reporting period available from the FEC: Frisch pulled in $3.4 million, while Boebert managed just $854,000.
There’s a chance Frisch’s fundraising may not even be used against Boebert. She’s facing a substantial primary challenge from the Republican attorney Jeff Hurd, who raised over $412,000 in the third quarter, though his campaign launched only in August.
In Trump-related stories:
Danny Hakim at The New York Times: A Fake Trump Elector in Michigan Told Prosecutors of Regret, Anger.
One of the Republicans in Michigan who acted as a fake elector for Donald J. Trump expressed deep regret about his participation, according to a recording of his interview with the state attorney general’s office that was obtained by The New York Times.
The elector, James Renner, is thus far the only Trump elector who has reached an agreement with the office of Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, which brought criminal charges in July against all 16 of the state’s fake Trump electors. In October, Ms. Nessel’s office dropped all charges against Mr. Renner after he agreed to cooperate.
Newbury Street (a downtown shopping district) on Christmas
Mr. Renner, 77, was a late substitution to the roster of electors in December 2020 after two others dropped out. He told the attorney general’s office that he later realized, after reviewing testimony from the House investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, that he and other electors had acted improperly.
“I can’t overemphasize how once I read the information in the J6 transcripts how upset I was that the legitimate process had not been followed,” he said in the interview. “I felt that I had been walked into a situation that I shouldn’t have ever been involved in.”
Charges have now been brought against fake electors in three states — Georgia, Michigan and Nevada — and investigations are underway in other states, including Arizona and New Mexico. In Georgia, prosecutors in Fulton County, which includes Atlanta, have looked far beyond the electors themselves and charged Mr. Trump, the former president, and many of his key allies over their efforts to keep him in power despite his loss in 2020. Mr. Trump also faces charges over election interference from Jack Smith, the special counsel appointed by U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.
In Michigan, Ms. Nessel, a Democrat, has only charged the electors, but has said her investigation is still open. During their interview of Mr. Renner, her investigators asked about a number of other people involved, including Shawn Flynn, a lawyer who worked with the Trump campaign on the ground in Michigan, and Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer. (Mr. Giuliani is among those charged in Georgia; both he and Mr. Trump have pleaded not guilty.)
Jose Pagliery at The Daily Beast: Trump Is Testing the Bounds of Presidential Immunity—and Losing.
For years, Donald Trump has hid behind the presidential seal—a claim of immunity that he continues to make to this day to avoid legal jeopardy. But as Trump’s cases proceed, he’s increasingly finding that the protections he was afforded as president don’t exist for a former president.
In criminal and civil cases across the country this month, judges have issued critical opinions chipping away at Trump’s attempt to shield himself. Their rulings are leaving him exposed to potential prison time and massive financial penalties, potentially ruining his 2024 re-election campaign and destroying the billionaire’s famed wealth.
And the most definitive answer could be just weeks away.
Boston official Christmas tree, 2023
The legal maelstrom underway in the District of Columbia, Georgia, Florida, New York and elsewhere will be settled at the Supreme Court, which earlier this month agreed to review the immunity issue raised in Department of Justice Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against the former president for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The question is seemingly simple: Can an American president commit crimes while in office without ever facing criminal charges?
“It’s kind of ridiculous,” said Paul Saputo, a Texas defense lawyer. “We’re not even going to have a 5-4 decision. I don’t think it’s going to be a close call. They realize that in order for them to really keep the country together, it’s got to be pretty unanimous.”
The growing consensus by legal scholars is that the Supreme Court will lean conservative—in the traditional American sense, not a political one—starkly setting limits on executive power that will leave Trump in the cold. And that’s despite the liberal public’s concerns that Trump will benefit from the current roster at the nation’s highest court, where a third of the nine justices were appointed by the man himself.
Read more at The Daily Beast.
A Guest essay at The New York Times, by Norman Eisen, Celinda Lake and A Trump Conviction Could Cost Him Enough Voters to Tip the Election.
Recent general-election polling has generally shown Donald Trump maintaining a slight lead over President Biden. Yet many of those polls also reveal an Achilles’ heel for Mr. Trump that has the potential to change the shape of the race.
It relates to Mr. Trump’s legal troubles: If he is criminally convicted by a jury of his peers, voters say they are likely to punish him for it.
A trial on criminal charges is not guaranteed, and if there is a trial, neither is a conviction. But if Mr. Trump is tried and convicted, a mountain of public opinion data suggests voters would turn away from the former president.
Still likely to be completed before Election Day remains the special counsel Jack Smith’s federal prosecution of Mr. Trump for allegedly scheming to overturn the 2020 election. That trial had been set to start on March 4, 2024, but that date has been put on hold, pending appellate review of the trial court’s rejection of Mr. Trump‘s presidential immunity. On Friday the Supreme Court declined Mr. Smith’s request for immediate review of the question, but the appeal is still headed to the high court on a rocket docket. That is because the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia will hear oral argument on Jan. 9 and will probably issue a decision within days of that, setting up a prompt return to the Supreme Court. Moreover, with three other criminal cases also set for trial in 2024, it is entirely possible that Mr. Trump will have at least one criminal conviction before November 2024.
“Jingle Bells Composed Here”
The authors look at the polls:
The negative impact of conviction has emerged in polling as a consistent through line over the past six months nationally and in key states. We are not aware of a poll that offers evidence to the contrary. The swing in this data away from Mr. Trump varies — but in a close election, as 2024 promises to be, any movement can be decisive.
To be clear, we should always be cautious of polls this early in the race posing hypothetical questions, about conviction or anything else. Voters can know only what they think they will think about something that has yet to happen.
Yet we have seen the effect in several national surveys, like a recent Wall Street Journal poll. In a hypothetical matchup between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump leads by four percentage points. But if Mr. Trump is convicted, there is a five-point swing, putting Mr. Biden ahead, 47 percent to 46 percent.
In another new poll by Yahoo News and YouGov, the swing is seven points. In a December New York Times/Siena College poll, almost a third of Republican primary voters believe that Mr. Trump shouldn’t be the party’s nominee if he is convicted even after winning the primary.
The damage to Mr. Trump is even more pronounced when we look at an important subgroup: swing-state voters. In recent CNN polls from Michigan and Georgia, Mr. Trump holds solid leads. The polls don’t report head-to-head numbers if Mr. Trump is convicted, but if he is, 46 percent of voters in Michigan and 47 percent in Georgia agree that he should be disqualified from the presidency.
Those are often places where a greater number of conflicted — and therefore persuadable — voters reside. An October Times/Siena poll shows that voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada and Pennsylvania favored Mr. Trump, with Mr. Biden narrowly winning Wisconsin. But if Mr. Trump is convicted and sentenced, Mr. Biden would win each of these states, according to the poll. In fact, the poll found the race in these six states would seismically shift in the aggregate: a 14-point swing, with Mr. Biden winning by 10 rather than losing by four percentage points.
There’s more interesting number crunching at the NYT link.
I’ll end with one more positive story about a man in a desperate situation, rescued by good Samaritans. Fox News: Indiana man found by good Samaritans rescued from car wreck after 6 days trapped in vehicle: ‘A miracle.’
An Indiana man who crashed his truck and had been trapped inside it for nearly a week was found alive on Tuesday by two fishermen who happened to spot the wrecked vehicle.
The fishermen – Nivardo Delatorre and his father-in-law Mario Garcia – noticed the crashed truck under an overpass on Interstate 94 as they were walking along Salt Creek in Portage, Indiana, looking for fishing holes. They initially believed they had seen a dead person inside the vehicle until one of them touched the body and the man turned his head and spoke to them.
Christmas in Boston
“I went to touch it, and he turned around,” Garcia said at a press conference. “And it almost killed me there because it was kind of shocking.”
“He was alive, and he was very happy to see us — I’ve never seen a relief like that,” he added. “He says that he tried yelling and screaming, but nobody would hear him. It just was quiet, just the sound of the water.”
The two good Samaritans called 911 and first responders rushed to the scene at about 3:45 p.m. Tuesday. The driver told the fisherman he had been stranded and paralyzed in place since Dec. 20.
The driver, identified as 27-year-old Matthew Reum, was heading westbound on Interstate 94 when his truck left the roadway for unknown reasons, Indiana State Police said in a news release.
The vehicle was driven into a ditch before making it into a creek and stopping under the bridge. Reum was pinned inside the vehicle and was unable to reach his cellphone to call for help.
The Portage Fire Department and Burns Harbor Fire Department were able to cut Reum from the vehicle using heavy machinery. He was then flown to a hospital in critical condition for treatment of severe, life-threatening injuries.
I hope he recovers.
That’s all I have for you today. What stories are you following?
Again, with the Monday Reads! Peace on Earth! Good will to all Living Things!
Posted: December 25, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: 2023 Xmas Hit List 8 CommentsGood Day, Sky Dancers!
And now for something completely different … A holiday hit list.
Oh, Little Town of Bethlehem… are you still there?
Pope Francis said in a Christmas message on Monday that children dying in wars, including in Gaza, are the “little Jesuses of today” and that Israeli strikes were reaping an “appalling harvest” of innocent civilians.
Some of Gaza’s small Christian community took a break from the conflict and suffering to celebrate Christmas.
Several residents made pleas on social media for people to give them shelter as they have become homeless after leaving their homes in Bureij.
“I have 60 people in the house, people who arrived at my house believing that central Gaza area was safe. Now we are searching for a place to get to,” said Odeh, a resident of the refugee camps.
The Israeli army said it was reviewing the report of a Maghazi incident and was committed to minimising harm to civilians. Israeli says Hamas operates in densely populated areas and uses civilians as human shields, which Hamas denies.
The Palestinian Red Crescent said Israeli warplanes were bombing main roads, hindering the passage of ambulances and emergency vehicles.
Christian clergy cancelled celebrations in Bethlehem, the Israeli-occupied Palestinian West Bank city where Christian tradition says Jesus was born in a stable 2,000 years ago.
Palestinian Christians held a candle-lit Christmas vigil in Bethlehem with hymns and prayers for peace in Gaza, instead of the usual celebrations.
In addition to the civilian deaths, three Israeli hostages were found dead. (Note: they changed the headline overnight, but the picture shows the one from yesterday. That’s not a double star in the sky.)
This photo of polar bears feeding at a garbage dump near the Russian village of Belushya Guba was taken on October 31, 2018. A state of emergency was declared later in February once dozens of polar bears were seen entering the villagers’ homes and public buildings. Melting Arctic ice has forced these bears to spend more time on land competing for food. 02 of 23 Heat Is On
Joy to the World! Let heaven and nature sing!
A scientist reckons with climate grief. Climate scientist Peter Kalmus visits a fossil-fuel-free homestead in Maine, looking not for solutions to climate change, but for a better way to survive it and make peace with his grief.
He has grown increasingly frustrated with President Joe Biden, who signed the Inflation Reduction Act as his signature climate bill. Kalmus thinks it does too little to shut out the fossil fuel industry.
(Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan think tank, estimates greenhouse gas emissions will drop 32%-42% below 2005 levels by 2030, well short of Biden’s own benchmark for progress. The inflation bill is responsible for about a quarter of that projected decrease.)
“He brags about how he thinks we should consider him a climate champion because he reentered the Paris accord. That Paris Agreement will take us to about 3 degrees Celsius of global heating,” Kalmus said. “I don’t think we’ll have a civilization at 3 degrees Celsius.”
(A 2022 United Nations report estimated global temperatures would rise between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100 if countries held to their climate commitments. Many countries remain off that pace.)
Climate change is weighing on scientists, but also everyday Americans.
A 2022 poll found almost two-thirds of Americans say they have been affected by extreme weather they believe was at least partially due to climate change.
About 27% of Americans say they are “very worried” about climate change; another 27% just avoid the subject as best they can. One in 10 reported feeling symptoms of anxiety or depression over climate change.
No place is safe
Away in a manger, No crib for a bed
Drastic border restrictions considered by Biden and the Senate reflect seismic political shift on immigration
Nearly three years into his tenure, Mr. Biden now finds himself entertaining drastic and permanent restrictions on asylum — including an extraordinary authority first invoked by former President Donald Trump to summarily expel migrants during spikes in illegal crossings — in order to convince congressional Republicans to support more military aid to Ukraine.
In many ways, the president’s willingness to support strict border policies similar to those employed by his predecessor — and loathed by progressives and human rights advocates — reflects a seismic shift in the politics of immigration over the past several years.
It’s a shift fueled by a convergence of factors. Record levels of migrant apprehensions along the southern border have strained federal and local resources. Democratic-led cities like New York and Chicago have struggled to house new arrivals, with local officials loudly voicing their concerns about overwhelmed services. Public polling shows a majority of Americans view Mr. Biden’s immigration agenda unfavorably.
With a follow-up from the Vermin King,
Fact-Checking Trump’s Recent Immigration Claims
As President Biden grapples with an unwieldy crisis at the southern border, his likely 2024 rival has leveled many criticisms — including some baseless and misleading claims.
WHAT WAS SAID
“I read an article recently in a paper … about a man who runs a mental institution in South America, and by the way they’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, from Asia, all over, but this happened to be in South America. And he was sitting, the picture was — sitting, reading a newspaper, sort of leisurely, and they were asking him, what are you doing? He goes, I was very busy all my life. I was very proud. I worked 24 hours a day. I was so busy all the time. But now I’m in this mental institution — where he’s been for years — and I’m in the mental institution and I worked very hard on my patients but now we don’t have any patients. They’ve all been brought to the United States.”
— during a rally in Nevada this monthThis lacks evidence. Mr. Trump has repeatedly claimed that immigrants crossing the border are coming from “mental institutions” and jails. This particular story would seem to offer specific facts behind that assertion, but there is no evidence that such a report exists.
The New York Times could not find any such news account from the start of Mr. Biden’s tenure in January 2021 to March, when Mr. Trump told the same story at a Texas rally.
The Trump campaign did not respond when repeatedly asked about the source of this claim. But pressed this year by CNN for factual support for the tale, the campaign provided links that did not corroborate it.
Likewise, there is no support for Mr. Trump’s broader claim that countries are “dumping” their prisoners and psychiatric patients in the United States.
God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen, Let nothing you dismay
Donald Trump urges federal appeals court to grant him immunity from criminal prosecution in election subversion case
Donald Trump urged a federal appeals court to throw out the federal election subversion criminal case in Washington, DC, again arguing in a filing late Saturday that he is protected under presidential immunity.
Trump wants the DC Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a lower-court ruling rejecting his claims of immunity in special counsel Jack Smith’s election subversion case. The appeals panel is weighing Trump’s request, which the Supreme Court on Friday refused to take up on an expedited basis, as Smith requested.
The filing reiterates what the former president’s lawyers have repeatedly asserted – that Trump was working in his official capacity as president to “ensure election integrity” when he allegedly undermined the 2020 election results and therefore has immunity, and that his indictment is unconstitutional because presidents cannot be criminally prosecuted for “official acts” unless they are impeached and convicted by the Senate.
“The Constitution establishes a powerful structural check to prevent political factions from abusing the formidable threat of criminal prosecution to disable the President and attack their political enemies,” Trump’s attorneys wrote Saturday.
“Before any single prosecutor can ask a court to sit in judgment of the President’s conduct, Congress must have approved of it by impeaching and convicting the President,” they wrote. “That did not happen here, and so President Trump has absolute immunity.”
Well, DeSantos is trying to look merry, isn’t he? Casey is sure not letting him dismay anything!
These are just a few headlines for you to chew on today.
Season’s greetings and Happy New Year!
A shout-out to the Yule Cat, too!!!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Lazy Caturday Reads
Posted: December 23, 2023 Filed under: 2024 Elections, 2024 presidential Campaign, cat art, caturday, Donald Trump | Tags: Christmas, Covid-19, George Conway, israel, Jack Smith, January 6 insurrection, Joyce Vance, Mein Kampf, NASA, peaceful transfer of power, Supreme Court, Trump and HItler, Wisconsin legislative boundaries, Wisconsin Supreme Court 6 CommentsGood Day!!
It’s a fairly quiet news day today, since we are fast approaching Christmas and the New Year. I’m just going to post a mixed bag of stories that caught my eye this morning.
Before we get into any bad news, here’s a cat story from ScienceAlert: NASA Has Beamed The First High-Def Video Across 19 Million Miles. Featuring a Cat.
NASA on Monday announced it had used a state-of-the-art laser communication system on a spaceship 19 million miles (31 million kilometers) away from Earth – to send a high-definition cat video.
The 15-second meow-vie featuring an orange tabby named Taters is the first to be streamed from deep space, and demonstrates it’s possible to transmit the higher-data-rate communications needed to support complex missions such as sending humans to Mars.
The video was beamed to Earth using a laser transceiver on the Psyche probe, which is journeying to the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter to explore a mysterious metal-rich object. When it sent the video, the spaceship was 80 times the distance between the Earth and Moon.
The encoded near-infrared signal was received by the Hale Telescope at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory in San Diego County, and from there sent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
“One of the goals is to demonstrate the ability to transmit broadband video across millions of miles. Nothing on Psyche generates video data, so we usually send packets of randomly generated test data,” said Bill Klipstein, the tech demo’s project manager at JPL.
“But to make this significant event more memorable, we decided to work with designers at JPL to create a fun video, which captures the essence of the demo as part of the Psyche mission.”
Space missions have traditionally relied on radio waves to send and receive data, but working with lasers can increase the data rate by 10 to 100 times….
The ultra-HD video took 101 seconds to send to Earth at the system’s maximum bit rate of 267 megabits per second – faster than most home broadband connections.
”In fact, after receiving the video at Palomar, it was sent to JPL over the internet, and that connection was slower than the signal coming from deep space,” said Ryan Rogalin, the project’s receiver electronics lead at JPL.
The big news yesterday was that the Supreme Court rejected Jack Smith’s request that they immediately decide the question of whether Trump has complete immunity from prosecution for anything he did in office.
Adam Liptak at The New York Times: Supreme Court Won’t Hear Case on Trump’s Immunity Defense for Now.
The Supreme Court declined on Friday to decide for now whether former President Donald J. Trump is immune from prosecution on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.
The decision to defer consideration of a central issue in the case was a major practical victory for Mr. Trump, whose lawyers have consistently sought to delay criminal cases against him around the country.
It is unclear what the court’s order will mean for the timing of the trial, which is scheduled to start on March 4, though it makes postponement more likely. The case will now move forward in an appeals court, which has put it on a fast track, and most likely return to the Supreme Court in the coming weeks or months.
In denying review, the justices gave no reasons, which is typical, and there were no noted dissents.
Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting Mr. Trump, had asked the justices to move with extraordinary speed, bypassing the appeals court.
Any significant delays could plunge the trial into the heart of the 2024 campaign season or push it past the election, when Mr. Trump could order the charges be dropped if he wins the presidency.
A speedy decision by the justices was of the essence, Mr. Smith said in his petition seeking immediate Supreme Court review, because Mr. Trump’s appeal of a trial judge’s ruling rejecting his claim of immunity suspended the criminal trial.
Mr. Smith wrote that the case “presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin.”
“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” Mr. Smith added. “This is an extraordinary case.”
The appeals court has already put the cast on a fast track with argument beginning January 9. Trump celebrated the SCOTUS decision as a huge win, but legal experts beg to differ.
Count George Conway among those who are less than impressed by the Supreme Court’s decision Friday to pass on an expedited request to decide whether Donald Trump is protected by immunity in the Jan. 6-related federal case against him….
Christmas Kitty Cat, by Stella Sherman
“I think today’s order is not a big deal,” Conway told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in an interview you can watch above. “I see a lot of people with their hair on fire. They can just douse their hair in water, because this isn’t a big deal. I don’t think it’s going to affect the trial date that much. Worst case is, the trial gets pushed to the summer.
“The reason is, I think this order shows the weakness of Trump’s immunity case,” Conway added. “And I think the court realizes it’s got the D.C. Circuit that’s going to hear arguments January 9th. It’s not a hard case. I think they’re going to move very quickly. If I was the presiding judge on the panel I’d already be writing the opinion. And once they rule, they can lift the stay, they can issue a mandate and lift the stay, which means, then you’re going to have Donald Trump saying ‘Oh, we need expedition, we need expedition.’”
Conway went on to repeat he thinks the timeline for a trial will be April, May or June and that “Donald Trump is not going to be able to stop it.”
“And the Supreme Court could grant that and hear it in May, hear it in June, and you could still have a summer trial,” Conway continued, regarding a possible post-conviction appeal. “Or better yet they could deny it because he’s already had his argument at a court of appeals before a very distinguished panel. Donald Trump should be frankly treated like every other criminal who’s been convicted in a federal district court and be forced to litigate his arguments after his conviction.”
Joyce Vance also weighed in on her Substack, Civil Discourse: Let’s Debunk This.
This afternoon, the Supreme Court declined Jack Smith’s request to hear Trump’s appeal on presidential immunity, bypassing the court of appeals. Trump’s immunity motion is important because if he wins, it’s game over. The entire indictment would get dismissed if he were immune from prosecution. And while my assessment is in line with Judge Chutkan’s—she denied Trump’s motion—we don’t know for certain what the Supreme Court will do.
Logically, Trump’s motion lacks merit.
To grant it, the Court would have to hold that presidents are above the law. All presidents, not just Trump. Anything they do while they’re president is protected. We’ve seen that same argument rejected repeatedly in a civil context: E. Jean Carroll’s case and the civil suit over January 6 in Washington, D.C., for instance. There’s no analytical reason to believe criminal conduct is any more deserving of protection than civil violations are, once a president is out of office.
Trump claims that even absent total immunity for presidential conduct, the conduct he’s been charged with falls within the “outer perimeter” of a president’s duties, so he’s entitled to immunity. To credit that, the courts would have to believe that the steps Trump took to interfere with multiple states’ votes, elections a president has no role in, are somehow a part of his job. Elections are run by secretaries of state and county officials. The president has no say in the final vote count and no duties, core or outer perimeter, to interfere in those counts or the final report of the Electoral College.
If the Supreme Court granted Trump’s motion, what would prevent Joe Biden or any future president from doing precisely what Trump did in 2020, but with more skill—and succeeding? Nothing. The Supreme Court would have ruled they could do no wrong. And that’s why the Supreme Court has to deny Trump’s motion to dismiss the charges, unless it wants to end democracy by giving a license to the next president to do whatever it takes to stay in power.
Vance goes on to destroy Trump’s claims that this was huge victory for him. Read the details at the link.
A few more Trump stories:
Josh Fiallo at The Daily Beast: Trump Blames His Own Ignorance for Hitleresque Rhetoric.
Donald Trump claimed Friday that his recent comments about immigrants “poisoning the blood” of the U.S. weren’t inspired by similar statements made by Adolf Hitler about Jewish people, saying he’s merely ignorant to the specifics of Hitler’s hateful rhetoric.
To drive home his point, Trump insisted in an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that he really doesn’t “know anything about Hitler.”
Christmas Cat, by Daniel Rodgers
“I’m not a student of Hitler,” Trump said, defending his comments. “I never read his works. They say that he said something about blood, he didn’t say it the way I said it either, by the way, it’s a very different kind of a statement.”
When Hewitt pressed Trump about his rhetoric, Trump insisted again that immigrants are poisoning the blood of Americans.
“They’re coming from mental institutions and insane asylums,” Trump said of immigrants. “They’re terrorists, absolutely, that’s poisoning our country, that’s poisoning the blood of our country.”
Later in that rant, after complaining about immigrant children going to U.S. schools without having learned English already, Trump said again, “We are poisoning our country; we’re poisoning the blood of our country.”
Hewitt informed Trump that Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf that German blood was being poisoned by Jews, and suggested that his comments didn’t sound all that different from the Nazi leader.
Trump said he didn’t mean any racist sentiment with his “poisoning the blood” comments, and insisted he’s “doing incredibly” with Black and Hispanic voters.
As I have noted previously, Trump doesn’t need to read or study Hitler. He has Stephen Miller to write his speeches, which he then reads on a teleprompter.
This is pretty funny, from Amy B. Wang and Isaac Arnsdorf at The Washington Post: Trump claims he peacefully surrendered power, ignoring Jan. 6 attack.
Former president Donald Trump claimed Friday that he peacefully surrendered power at the end of his term in office, despite having urged a crowd of his supporters to converge on the U.S. Capitol, where some staged a deadly attack that interrupted Congress’s certification of Joe Biden’s election on Jan. 6, 2021.
“Of course — and I did that this time,” Trump said, before repeating his false claims that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. “But I did. I did it anyway.”
Trump’s response omits the fact that he urged his supporters to converge on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, while Congress was certifying Biden’s electoral win. Many in the pro-Trump mob that overran the Capitol that day had chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” in the misguided belief — pushed by Trump — that the then-Vice President Pence could have stopped Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.
In video of the Jan. 6 attack, law enforcement officers outside the Capitol were shown being harassed, beaten and sprayed with noxious liquids by members of the mob. In one video from the attack, a rioter can be seen bashing a fallen police officer with a pole flying the American flag. The unprecedented attack left five people dead, including a police officer and a woman shot by police. Two other officers who were on duty that day later died by suicide, and more than 100 officers were injured.
Trump and his supporters have consistently downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6 attack, but the former president’s insistence that he engaged in a peaceful transfer of power in 2021 has sparked new alarm in light of his recent authoritarian rhetoric.
Christmas Cat by Daniella Vasileva
And from Kierra Frazier at Politico: Trump vows a peaceful transfer of power if reelected. [This story is also based on the Hugh Hewitt interview.]
If reelected president in 2024, Donald Trump vowed Friday that he would turn over power peacefully to the next president after him….
Trump has been indicted for his role in trying to overturn the results of that contest, and he repeated his false claims on Friday that the last election was rigged.
“Of course,” Trump responded to Hewitt when asked if he would hand over power peacefully if reelected. “And I did that this time. And I’ll tell you what. The election was rigged, and we have plenty of evidence of it. But I did it anyway.”
I think the more important question is whether he will step aside peacefully if he loses the 2024 election, and I’m absolutely certain that he wouldn’t.
More stories you might find interesting:
As the holiday season approaches, family gatherings are set to transform homes into microcosms of the national political landscape. In these reunions, conversations can quickly turn from benign banter about sports to the divisive topic of politics. With an election cycle upon us the name “Trump” can be as contentious as it is inescapable, turning a festive gathering of lights and eggnog into an ideological battleground.
This is the challenge many of us face this Christmas: How do we, armed with our morals and convictions, navigate the treacherous terrain of political discourse with those we love — without the feast turning into a fracas?
If you are a lone liberal leaf in a staunchly conservative family tree, you may be dreading the holiday. If you are not alone, and the family is more-or-less divided on political topics, it can be even worse — all holy hell can break loose. It is not an exaggeration to say that families can be — and sometimes are — torn apart in the highly polarized political climate we find ourselves in.
The solution to this problem lies in developing strategies based on an understanding of neuroscience and psychology that can calm the storm within, ensuring that our physiological responses do not commandeer our interactions.
But what if I told you that an understanding of the relevant concepts holds the key to not just surviving these encounters, but potentially bridging family divides? The goal isn’t to convert but to converse, and to plant seeds of thought that might, in time, bear fruit.
Let this article serve as a guide to navigating political discussions with grace and the subtle powers of persuasion.
The first thing we need to know is that two distinct yet interdependent cognitive systems govern our decision-making processes.
If any of this applies to you, read all the details at Raw Story. I’m fortunate that I don’t know and Trump supporters.
Carolyn Kee at Yahoo News: A new COVID variant is dominant in the US: Know these symptoms.
As holiday travel peaks in the United States, a heavily mutated new COVID-19 variant called JN.1 is spreading rapidly and fueling an increasing number of infections. The highly contagious omicron subvariant is now the dominant strain nationwide and accounts for nearly half of all cases.
JN.1 is currently the fastest-growing variant in the country, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
During a two-week period ending on Dec. 23, JN.1 made up an estimated 44% of cases in the U.S., per the CDC’s latest data. After JN.1, the next most common strain was the HV.1 subvariant, which accounted for about 22% of cases nationwide. At the end of November, JN.1 only made up about 8% of cases.
Respiratory virus season has yet to peak in the U.S., which means COVID-19 cases are expected to rise in the coming weeks.
JN.1 is also gaining speed in many other countries. Earlier this week, the World Health Organization classified JN.1 as a “variant of interest” due to its “rapidly increasing spread” globally.
Scientists around the world are closely monitoring JN.1, which has sparked some concern due to its rapid growth rate and large number of mutations. However, the new variant is closely related to a strain we’ve seen before. It’s a direct offshoot of BA.2.86, aka “Pirola,” which has been spreading in the U.S. since the summer.
JN.1 has one extra mutation compared to BA.2.86, which has more than 30 mutations that set it apart from the omicron XBB.1.5 variant. XBB.1.5 was the dominant strain for most of 2023 and it’s the variant targeted in the updated COVID-19 vaccines, TODAY.com previously reported.
All of the most prevalent COVID-19 variants in the U.S. right now are descendants of omicron, which began circulating in late 2021.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Supreme Court rules legislative maps unconstitutional, orders new boundaries for 2024 vote.
MADISON – The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday ordered the Republican-controlled state Legislature to draw new legislative boundaries ahead of the 2024 election, arguing their GOP advantage is unconstitutional — delivering a long-sought win for Democrats who have stayed deep in the Legislature’s minority for more than a decade.
The court in a 4-3 decision said the court is also prepared to replace the state’s heavily gerrymandered maps if the Legislature and Democratic governor cannot agree on a new plan.
“Wisconsin is a purple state, and I look forward to submitting maps to the Court to consider and review that reflect and represent the makeup of our state,” Gov. Tony Evers said in a statement.Law Forward, a Madison-based liberal-leaning law firm focused on voting issues, brought the legal challenge straight to the Supreme Court in August — bypassing lower courts in an expedited effort to put new maps in place before the fall.
The court ordered lawmakers to have new maps adopted for the August legislative primary. Wisconsin Elections Commission officials have said new maps must be in place by March 15.
The ruling forces half of the state Senate and the full Assembly to run in new legislative districts. Republicans currently hold 64 of 99 seats in the state Assembly and a supermajority in the state Senate, with 22 of 33 seats.
The ruling delivers a political landmine ahead of the 2024 presidential cycle that will all but certainly focus on the battleground state of Wisconsin. It’s the latest chink in Republican power since GOP dominance in Wisconsin state government began diminishing in 2016, when Donald Trump became president.
Since then, Republicans have lost the governor’s office and control of the state Supreme Court.
Read more at the link.
Cats in Christmas Hats, Ruth Sanderson
Finally, from Nicole Narea at Vox: The US may be flouting its own laws by sending unrestricted aid to Israel.
The recent high-profile killings of three Israeli hostages, two women in a Gaza church, and 11 unarmed Palestinian men in front of their family members have raised new global alarm at Israel’s targeting of civilians amid its war in Gaza. The deaths came as part of its ground assault, and as it continues a bombing campaign that even staunch Israel ally President Joe Biden has called “indiscriminate.” Yet, he continues to push for additional, essentially unconditional aid to Israel — despite the fact that some foreign affairs experts say existing US laws meant to safeguard human rights should have long restricted the flow of such assistance.
“We always treat Israel with kid gloves when it comes to potential human rights violations of any kind,” said Josh Paul, who has become a prominent critic of the Biden administration’s Israel policy since resigning from his post as the director of congressional and public affairs at the State Department bureau overseeing American arms sales over concerns about the Israeli response to the October 7 attack by Hamas, a Palestinian militant group designated as a terrorist organization by many countries. “When it comes to suspending or curtailing lethal military assistance, there’s no sign of anyone willing to take any actual steps.”
The US provides more aid to Israel than to any other country, about $3.8 billion annually in recognition of the two states’ “special relationship” that dates back decades. Now, Biden wants Congress to approve an additional $14.3 billion in aid to Israel as part of a broader package that also includes aid for Ukraine and that has been held up over immigration policy negotiations. He also recently circumvented Congress to sell Israel $106 million worth of tank ammunition.
Biden administration officials told CNN that they are not currently considering placing conditions on aid beyond those that already exist in federal law, saying that the US expects Israel to abide by international humanitarian law and that the Israel Defense Forces conducts internal legal reviews of its strikes beforehand.
“We’re not going to do a damn thing other than protect Israel in the process. Not a single thing,” Biden recently told Democratic donors.
Read the rest at Vox.
Best wishes for a peaceful and relaxing long weekend, regardless of whether or not you are celebrating a religious holiday.
Finally Friday Reads
Posted: December 22, 2023 Filed under: just because | Tags: Douche of Hazard, Trump Celebrities in the Hall of Who the fuck is that again?, Trump Election Tampering, Winter Solstice 9 Comments
People watch the sunrise at the winter solstice celebration at Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, in this photo from Dec. 22, 2011.
TIM IRELAND/PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
Let me put up a beautiful reminder of the reason for the season. Solstice came on time yesterday, and there were celebrations around the world. Axial tilt has defined life on the planet for longer than we’ve been around to mess it up.
So, JJ found this calligraphy art on Instagram, and I had to share it since Tashi Mannox is the artist for the cloud artwork on that decks the blog! I’m unsure if you’ve ever read about the work, but you can see a lot more if you go to the sidebar and indulge in the luscious linkiness that will take you to his site. JJ also has a tattoo design created by Tashi for her.
Along with my watercolor brushes, I have a variety of styluses and pots of ink for my own indulgences. I sent my granddaughters a ‘scribes desk’. It’s an upscale Etch-a-sketch on legs that uses a stylus. Like my daughters and me, they get started early with piano and tools of the arts. Their little benches were delivered today. I sent the delivery notice to their parents, along with this beautiful look at Tashi and his stylus scripting Winter Solstice in Tibetan. It’s beautiful and restful to watch.
For those who don’t recognize an ol’ Bo Duke, a revised version. Thanks, Rick Haffey! @repeat1968, John Buss
So, take a deep breath while I post something that points out the existence of the stupid season upon us. This election year is going to make me chew nails and spit rust. Whenever there are American entertainers who are the least talented or enduring in this country, they prove everything I ever thought about them back when they had a moment of relevance.
You’ll see just exactly how much JJ inspired me today because, so far, all this news comes from her. I never watched “The Dukes of Hazard” because I was a budding teenage feminist who hated even seeing the Daisy Duke character. But it’s John Schneider that piqued my interest today. He also captured the pen of John Buss, a fellow graduate of Westside High School, and equally appalled we shared that experience with Ginnie Thomas.
I am sincerely sorry to harsh your mellow. John, Dayne and I are all down here in the Dirty South. None of us like what’s going on in our country. Dayne is a professor of Library Science at South Eastern University of Louisiana, where I taught for a few years during grad school before finishing my doctorate. He’s the author of many seriously good books, plays guitar, and restores saddles to their former glory. JJ lives in the Georgia Mountains. All of us are Biden Supporters.
“Just a good ol’ boy, never meaning no harm…:” John Buss, @repeat1968
This is from our local Fox News, New Orleans. “‘Dukes of Hazzard’ star calls for Biden’s hanging in social media post; prompts Secret Service probe.” He joins Chachi in the Trump Hall of “Who is That Again?” He specializes in Red Neck drag and funky accents, kind of like my Senator John Neely Kennedy.
The United States Secret Service is investigating a now-deleted social media post made by “Dukes of Hazzard” star John Schneider.
In a reply to President Joe Biden’s post on Wed., Dec. 20, Schneider suggested he be “publicly hung.”
“Trump poses many threats to our country: The right to choose, civil rights, voting rights, and America’s standing in the world,” Biden posted at 6:26 p.m. “But the greatest threat he poses is to our democracy. If we lose that, we lose everything.”
In a now-deleted reply, Schneider accused the president of treason.
“The Secret Service is aware of the comments made by Mr. Schneider, and as a matter of practice, we do not comment on matters involving protective intelligence,” a spokesperson for the Secret Service confirmed to Fox 8. “We can say, however, that the Secret Service investigates all threats related to our protectees.”
Fox 8 has reached out to Schneider for a comment and is awaiting a reply.
People look towards the sun as druids, pagans, and revelers gather at Stonehenge for a winter solstice ceremony on Dec. 21, 2016.
But, of course, no one sees this as unusual at all. From The Detroit News, we get more evidence of real crimes by the former guy. “Trump recorded pressuring Wayne County canvassers not to certify 2020 vote.” The Republican Party contains nothing but enablers and fascist idiots these days.
Then-President Donald Trump personally pressured two Republican members of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers not to sign the certification of the 2020 presidential election, according to recordings reviewed by The Detroit News and revealed publicly for the first time.
On a Nov. 17, 2020, phone call, which also involved Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel, Trump told Monica Palmer and William Hartmann, the two GOP Wayne County canvassers, they’d look “terrible” if they signed the documents after they first voted in opposition and then later in the same meeting voted to approve certification of the county’s election results, according to the recordings.
“We’ve got to fight for our country,” said Trump on the recordings, made by a person who was present for the call with Palmer and Hartmann. “We can’t let these people take our country away from us.”
McDaniel, a Michigan native and the leader of the Republican Party nationally, said at another point in the call, “If you can go home tonight, do not sign it. … We will get you attorneys.”
To which Trump added: “We’ll take care of that.”
Palmer and Hartmann left the canvassers meeting without signing the official statement of votes for Wayne County, and the following day, they unsuccessfully attempted to rescind their votes in favor of certification, filing legal affidavits claiming they were pressured.
The moves from Palmer, Hartmann and Trump, had they been successful, threatened to throw the statewide certification of Michigan’s 2020 election into doubt.
People gather wearing costumes for Brighton’s annual “Burning The Clocks” lantern parade for the winter solstice on Dec. 21, 2018.
I can never figure out if they are all doing some kind of performance to be as stupid as the Orange Kool-Aid Kult or if they really all are that stupid. “Joe Rogan Corrected On-Air for Blaming Trump Gaffe on Biden.” Probably, it’s a lot of both.
Joe Rogan has done it again. But this time, even his own producers couldn’t help but correct him during a live podcast taping.
In a clip from Thursday’s episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” (first reported by Mediaite), Rogan attempted to argue that comments made by President Joe Biden essentially disqualify him from running in 2024. The only problem? It was Trump who made the original gaffe.
Rogan and his guest, MMA fighter Bo Nickal, were accusing Biden of making “no sense at all” when the host asked, “Did you hear what he said yesterday, or a couple of days ago?” He then claimed that Biden recently said in earnest that America “lost” the Revolutionary War because “we didn’t have en0ugh airports.”
“Pull him!” Rogan said. “If you had any other job, and you were talking like that, they would go, ‘Hey, you’re done.’”
The two men continued to denigrate Biden and defend Trump for several minutes before one of Rogan’s producers found the video in question, in which Biden says of Trump, “The same ‘stable genius’ said the biggest problem we had during the Revolutionary War is we didn’t have enough airports!”
“It’s not fake,” they told Rogan, “but he was referencing Trump saying that.”
Then, viewers of Rogan’s video podcast were treated to watching his face fall as the team played him a clip of a speech Trump gave in 2019, in which he said that Revolutionary forces “took over the airports” in their victorious fight against the British—despite the fact that planes would not be invented for another couple of centuries.
I remember that gaffe well since I wrote the blog post about it here. The memes were splendid that week, and I didn’t waste a minute crowding all of them onto the post.
Well, I’ve got a dentist’s appointment in about 45 minutes. It’s probably easier for me than writing all the nonsense coming out due to the election nonsense. I’ll leave you to add stuff to the thread, and I’ll be back to add more to that.
We made it through the longest night of the year! Now, on to what may seem like the longest damned election in U.S. History!
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
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