Welcome to this week’s adventures at As the Trumperz Turn! This week’s installment is Trump Lawyers Bail. Quick, little rats! The ship is sinking! Who thought I could use this many stale metaphors in such a short time!
We’ve had two defections in the Georgia Election Fraud this week. Lawyer Sidney Powell and Advisor Kenneth Cheesebro both pled guilty, worked out a deal, and answered many questions that will undoubtedly make Trump’s jail prospects pretty good. This is from the Washington Post. “Trump co-defendant Kenneth Chesebro pleads guilty in Georgia election case. Chesebro became the second former Trump lawyer to plead guilty in as many days, following Sidney Powell on Thursday. This is reported by Holly Bailey and Amy Gardner.
Kenneth Chesebro, a former lawyer for Donald Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty Friday to illegally conspiring to overturn Trump’s 2020 election loss in Georgia. The plea came in just hours after jury selection began in the highly anticipated case, ahead of an expected trial next month
Chesebro pleaded guilty to a single felony count of conspiracy to file false documents, and accepted a sentence of three to five years of probation, a $1,000 fine, $5,000 in restitution to the state of Georgia, an apology letter, 100 hours of community service and a promise to testify truthfully against any other co-defendants in the case, should they go to trial.
In his plea deal, Chesebro implicated several of those co-defendants as being part of the conspiracy to file false documents — a charge related to his role organizing slates of pro-Trump electors to meet in seven states where Biden had won. They are Trump, four other lawyers including Rudy Giuliani, and one campaign operative.
Chesebro’s guilty plea made him the second former Trump lawyer to plead guilty in as many days, following a plea from Sidney Powell on Thursday, and the third co-defendant to admit guilt in the sweeping criminal racketeering case alleging Trump and 18 allies broke the Georgia law when they sought to overturn Joe Biden’s 2020 victory in the state. In addition to Powell, bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty earlier this month in the conspiracy — with all agreeing to testify against others in the case.
The plea is the latest legal victory for Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis (D), whose office is prosecuting the Georgia case. In addition to flipping one of the key members of the alleged conspiracy, prosecutors now avoid a trial in which they would have had to showcase much of their evidence against Trump and others, which might have offered lawyers for others a legal advantage heading into other trials.
The potential for incriminating testimony from three of Trump’s co-defendants could have far-reaching impact on the former president’s legal fortunes in the case, as well as some of the other high-profile defendants, notably Giuliani, who is alleged to have known about both Powell’s and Chesebro’s efforts to help overturn Trump’s loss.
This makes things very interesting. Powell is a pretty good catch. This is from The Rolling Stone. “Team Trump Never Dreamed Sidney Powell Would Flip on Them.’
She was the ultimate MAGA conspiracy theorist. Then, she got charged with being part of a criminal conspiracy, and her tune started to change.
But few, if any, of Trump’s aides and lawyers had predicted that Powell would cut any deal this soon.
The news of Powell’s plea agreement Thursday morning stunned a number of Trump’s top advisers and attorneys, all of whom thought Powell — the truest of all Trump-backing, election-denying true believers — was among the least likely to take a plea deal ahead of trial, the people familiar with the situation tell Rolling Stone. Some had even told Trump in recent months that they thought Powell would be (foolishly, in their opinion) fighting the so-called “deep state” in court ‘til the bitter end. She even pushed the idea that Trump could “simply be reinstated” in the middle of President Joe Biden’s term.
In the sprawling RICO prosecution of Trump and others, Powell was charged with, among other counts, conspiracy to commit election fraud, conspiracy to defraud the state, and conspiracy to commit computer theft. (Powell was implicated in a bizarre plot to access Coffee County voting data, according to prosecutors, to aid their crusade to keep Trump in power after his 2020 election loss.)
Powell has now agreed to plead guilty to six counts of conspiracy to commit intentional interference with the performance of election duties. As part of her agreement with Fulton County prosecutors, Powell agreed to serve six years on probation, pay a $6,000 fine, and write a letter of apology to Georgia residents.
Powell’s plea agreement raises the possibility that she could testify against the former president although the scope of her cooperation in the case remains unclear. Two other sources with knowledge of Powell’s recent moves say that one of the biggest factors in Powell’s decision was simple. The attorney hasn’t lost faith in her conspiracy theories or the anti-democratic lies about the 2020 election being “stolen” from Trump, the sources say. Rather, the sources say, she has privately conveyed that she’s merely beaten down and tired from the legal odyssey her efforts to overturn the election has wrought.
After nearly three years of being at the center of lawsuits and various investigations stemming from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, according to those with knowledge of her situation, Powell is looking to end her various legal fights. The fact that Trump and most of the Republican elite have essentially abandoned her has also likely sapped Powell’s resolve.
While the Chesebro and Powell Pleans means there will be no October trial, there will be trials later. The Atlantic Journal-Constitution reports that potential jurors have been called in for interviews. Trump is busy up in New York right now.
BREAKING: Judge Says Trump Violated Gag Order, Asked His Lawyers why Trump should not face possible imprisonment over it.
New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron stated:
“I learned that the subject offending post was never removed from donaldjtrump .com and in fact, has… pic.twitter.com/USVJo5VF69
The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial admonished the former president’s attorneys for a “blatant violation” of a gag order and suggested that violations could result in “imprisonment.”
Judge Arthur Engoron said despite his clear order to take down a social media post attacking his clerk, “I learned that the subject post was never removed from the website.”
“And, in fact, had been on that website for the past 17 days. I understand that it was removed late last night but only in response to an email,” Engoron said.
The post was removed from Truth Social right after the gag order was issued but not from Trump’s campaign website, DonaldJTrump.com.
The judge hinted at serious sanctions for the former president.
“I will now provide defendants an opportunity to explain why this blatant violation of this gag order should not result in serious sanctions including financial penalties… and or possibly imprisonment.”
Trump attorney Chris Kise apologized to Engoron, saying it was “inadvertent” that the post was able to live on what he called a “back page” of Trump’s campaign website.
“It appears no one also took down the ICYMI link that’s in the campaign website in the back pages,” Kise said.
“Truly this appears to be inadvertent,” Kise said, adding, “I certainly apologize on behalf of my clients.”
Meanwhile, Trump Toady Gymbo Jordan lost his third vote for speaker. This is from breaking news from the Washington Post. Why are the diehard Trumperz so socially stupid? He’s not gotten any of the hints suggesting he’s never going to get that position.
House Republicans are huddling behind closed doors Friday after Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) failed on a third ballot to be elected House speaker. In their meeting, the Republican conference is voting by secret ballot on whether Jordan should drop out of the race, according to two people familiar with the proceedings who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a closed meeting. Jordan, a conservative firebrand and ally of former president Donald Trump, vowed at a news conference earlier Friday that he would keep fighting for the job.
When Matt Gaetz stepped to the microphones during Thursday’s three-hour private House GOP meeting on the speakership, the speaker he ousted promptly yelled at him to “sit down.”
Kevin McCarthy was not the only Republican to vent fury with Gaetz, the Florida conservative who successfully ousted the House’s leader. The room met Gaetz with booing, profanities and calls to back off, according to multiple lawmakers in the room. When Gaetz refused, Rep. Mike Bost (R-Ill.) stood up and hollered a command at him that one Republican recalled as: “If you don’t sit down, I’ll put you down.”
It seems that every day without a speaker brings a new release of pent-up anger from the House GOP, which is stuck in the bewildering position of technically controlling a chamber of Congress where it can’t even vote on bills. At the moment, their latest pick for speaker, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), cannot win the gavel on the floor and yet still won’t end his campaign — preventing a half-dozen or more other ambitious GOP lawmakers from jumping into the race.
Republicans’ inability to elect a new leader is so acute that by Thursday, they squabbled over whether to empower a colleague who they wouldn’t elect to control the floor, only to jettison that idea hours later. Those talks about elevating Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) quickly grew nasty as conservatives accused fellow Republicans of pursuing a power-sharing arrangement with Democrats.
What went unsaid: Those same conservatives are loath to abandon Jordan’s doomed candidacy lest it underscore that their most influential voice couldn’t get the votes.
After 16 days adrift, it was clear by Thursday evening that House Republicans have hit rock bottom. What began as social media sniping over their failed speakership battle has devolved into real fears for the safety of members whose families are receiving personal threats over their decision to oppose Jordan.
Two American hostages, a mother and her daughter, are being released by Hamas, according to a person familiar with the negotiations and a diplomatic source.
The two have been handed over to the Red Cross and are “on their way out,” the source familiar with negotiations said.
The two are being released on “humanitarian grounds” because the mother is in poor health, the same source said.
It is unclear whether they will leave Gaza into Egypt or Israel. This is the result of the negotiations between Qatar and Hamas that started after Hamas abducted around 200 people from Israel on October 7.
In a statement, Hamas spokesperson Abu Obaida said: “In response to Qatari efforts, Al-Qassam Brigades released two American citizens (a mother and her daughter) for humanitarian reasons, and to prove to the American people and the world that the claims made by Biden and his fascist administration are false and baseless.”
The White House has not commented. The Israeli prime minister’s office has not commented. CNN has reached out to the Red Cross. The United Nations warned on Friday the taking of hostages is prohibited by international law.
At least it’s the weekend.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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I’m getting really sick of the constant TV coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. Yes, it’s an important story, and needs to be covered. But do we really need to see and hear about it 24-7, while the cable networks ignore just about everything else? Dakinikat remarked to me a few days ago that it seems our generation have seen wars play out on TV now for most of our lives, beginning with Vietnam. She’s right. It’s so sad and depressing.
And . . . It appears that the explosion at the hospital in Gaza was caused by a failed Hamas rocket, not a bomb from an Israeli airplane. Meanwhile, the fatally flawed U.S. media reported it as an attack by Israel on civilians. Meanwhile the media blamed it on Israel without waiting for any evidence. I’m sick and tired of the DC media too.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday expressed agreement with Israel in denying that the Israeli military was responsible for a catastrophic explosion at a hospital in Gaza that left hundreds dead.
On Tuesday night Hamas—which rules Gaza—blamed an Israeli airstrike for the disaster at the Al-Ahli al-Arabi hospital, which Gaza health officials said killed 500 people. On Wednesday morning, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) published evidence that it claimed showed that a failed rocket launch from inside the enclave was to blame, with Biden saying U.S. intelligence led him to believe Israel was not at fault.
“Based on what I’ve seen, it appears as though it was done by the other team, not you,” Biden said, speaking alongside Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Biden later said he’d drawn his conclusion based on “the data I was shown by my Defense Department.”
“Like the entire world, I was outraged and saddened by the enormous loss of life yesterday in the hospital in Gaza,” Biden said in a second speech Wednesday, reiterating that the blast “appears the result of an errant rocket fired by a terrorist group in Gaza.” [….]
IDF spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari claimed in a statement early Wednesday that Islamic Jihad, the second-biggest militant group in Gaza, “was responsible” for the hospital explosion. He said that at 6:59 p.m. local time on Tuesday, Islamic Jihad launched a barrage of 10 rockets from a cemetery. Reports of an explosion at the hospital also emerged at the same time, Hagari added.
Vietnam reporting on TV
“According to our intelligence, Hamas checked the reports, understood it was an Islamic Jihad rocket that had misfired—and decided to launch a global media campaign to hide what really happened,” Hagari said. “They went as far as inflating the number of casualties.”
The statement from Hagari did not clarify what the IDF believed the true number of casualties of the hospital explosion to be. He did, however, say aerial footage showed there was “no direct hit of the hospital itself,” with a parking lot outside the facility being “the only location damaged.” Hagari said if the blast had been caused “by an aerial munition,” it would have caused craters and structural damage to buildings—neither of which had been detected.
This story is behind a paywall, so I’m going to give you a bit more:
Hagari went on to criticize media outlets that “immediately reported the unverified claims by Hamas.” “It is impossible to know what happened as quickly as Hamas claimed they knew,” he added. “That should have been an initial warning sign for many.”
He also explained that the IDF confirmed that “there was no IDF fire—by land, sea or air—that hit the hospital.” At the same time, Hagari said, Israeli radar tracked rockets launched from inside Gaza at the time of the explosion. “The trajectory analysis from the barrage of rockets confirms that the rockets were fired in close proximity to the hospital.”
Hagari said “two independent videos” also showed the failure of the rocket launch and its trajectory toward the ground as it fell in the hospital compound. The IDF also released a recording of a conversation “between terrorists talking about the rocket misfiring.”
American officials say they have multiple strands of intelligence — including infrared satellite data — indicating that the deadly blast at a Gaza hospital on Tuesday was caused by Palestinian fighters.
The intelligence includes satellite and other infrared data showing a launch of a rocket or missile from Palestinian fighter positions within Gaza. American intelligence agencies have also analyzed open-source video of the launch showing that it did not come from the direction of Israeli military positions, the officials said. Israeli officials have also provided the United States with intercepts of Hamas officials saying the strike came from forces aligned with Palestinian militant groups.
“While we continue to collect information, our current assessment, based on analysis of overhead imagery, intercepts and open-source information, is that Israel is not responsible for the explosion at the hospital in Gaza yesterday,” said Adrienne Watson, a spokeswoman for the National Security Council.
Other U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive information, cautioned that the analysis was preliminary and that they were continuing to collect and analyze evidence. Multiple officials said the evidence gathered so far refutes claims that Israeli forces were responsible for the blast and was strong enough for President Biden to make comments supporting Israel’s account of events….
A senior Defense Department official said based on the launch data collected by infrared sensors that the United States is “fairly confident” the launch did not come from Israeli forces.
Israel said Wednesday that it will allow Egypt to deliver limited quantities of humanitarian aid to the Gaza Strip, the first crack in a 10-day siege on the territory. Palestinians reeled from a massive blast at a Gaza City hospital that killed hundreds the day before and grew increasingly desperate as food and water supplies ran out.
Israeli-Hamas conflict reported in 2021.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said the decision was approved after a request from visiting U.S. President Joe Biden. It said Israel “will not thwart” deliveries of food, water or medicine, as long as they are limited to civilians in the south of the Gaza Strip and don’t go to Hamas militants. The statement made no mention of badly needed fuel.
It was not clear when the aid would start flowing. At Rafah crossing, Gaza’s only connection to Egypt, truckloads of aid have been waiting for days to enter. But the facility has only a limited capacity, and Egypt says it has been damaged by Israeli airstrikes.
Israel’s announcement came as rage over Tuesday night’s blast at al-Ahli Hospital spread across the Middle East, and just as Biden began his visit to Israel in hopes of preventing a wider conflict in the region. The war started when Hamas militants rampaged across communities in southern Israel on Oct. 7.
Back in Washington, the Republicans are supposedly trying to elect a Speaker of the House, but I have to ask, are they really trying to choose a gang leader?
Jim Jordan’s allies attempted to badger House Republicans into making him speaker. Those tactics backfired on Tuesday, and could soon doom his speakership push outright.
The Ohio Republican’s most vocal GOP defectors during Tuesday’s failed speaker vote said they were pressured to back Jordan by party bosses back home and national conservatives with big megaphones. Most of those skeptics viewed it as a coordinated push with a threatening theme: Vote for Jordan — or else.
The arm-twisting campaign, which in many cases included veiled threats of primary challenges, was meant to help rally support behind Jordan’s candidacy. Instead, it has put the Judiciary chair’s bid on life support and threatened to plunge House Republicans deeper into turmoil with no clear way out.
“Jim’s been nice, one-on-one, but his broader team has been playing hardball,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told POLITICO about Jordan’s network of supporters, adding that he’s been getting calls from party chairs back in Nebraska. He added that his wife even received multiple anonymous emails and texts saying: “your husband better support Jim Jordan.”
He’s not the only one who faced significant pressure. Other Republicans, too, told POLITICO they have received a barrage of calls from local conservative leaders. They blame the onslaught on his backers even though, by all accounts, he isn’t directly involved. Even some of Jordan’s supporters acknowledge that the aggressive moves have set him back ahead of a potential second speaker ballot….
Acknowledging that his speaker bid is in limbo, Jordan punted his plan to hold a second vote on Tuesday after Republicans privately warned he was at risk of seeing his opponents’ numbers grow. Instead, he is expected to huddle with allies and make calls in an attempt to get his bid back on track before a second vote as soon as Wednesday.
“We’re going to keep working, and we’re going to get the votes,” Jordan said on Tuesday night, saying that Republicans were having “great conversations.”
Rep. Don Bacon speaks about the January 6 Capitol attack.
The wife of Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) reportedly received anonymous text messages and emails warning her husband to back Rep. Jim Jordan’s (R-OH) House speakership campaign ahead of Tuesday’s vote….
Bacon — who was one of 20 Republicans who voted against Jordan for speaker — also told the news outlet that his wife had received “multiple anonymous emails and texts” pressuring him to vote for Jordan.
Politico reporter Olivia Beavers shared several screenshots of the text messages sent to Bacon’s wife from anonymous senders who refused to identify themselves.
“Why is your husband causing chaos by not supporting Jim Jordan? I thought he was a team player,” read one text, to which Bacon’s wife responded, “Who is this???”
The anonymous sender then warned, “Your husband will not hold any political office ever again. What a disappoint [sic] and failure he is.
A former Ohio State University wrestler who accused Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, of ignoring sexual abuse at the college criticized Jordan for “turn[ing] his back” on members of the team while a coach.
Former Ohio State wrestler Will Knight said he disagreed with Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., who called the Ohio Republican a “fighter” in a speech Tuesday.
“People always call Jim Jordan a fighter, and I always wonder who he’s fighting for, because he had a real opportunity to fight for us,” Knight said in an interview with CNN. “All he’s done is turn his back on us.”
Hundreds of former athletes and students are suing Ohio State University in a case that alleges the university failed to protect them from a sexual predator who served as the assistant coach on their team during the 1980s and 90s. Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach on the team at the time and has denied knowing what was going on.
Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) tried to make the case for Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) as House speaker on Tuesday, but her comments caused some members of Congress to audibly gasp.
While nominating Jordan for the job, Stefanik claimed that he “is the voice of the American people who have felt voiceless for far too long. Whether as judiciary chair, conservative leader, or representative for his constituents in West Central Ohio, whether on the wrestling mat or in the committee room, Jim Jordan is strategic, scrappy, tough and principled.”
Jim Jordan with a photo insert of him as a College wrestler.
The “wrestling mat” comment may not have left the impression Stefanik intended.
When Jordan was an assistant wrestling coach at Ohio State University between 1986 and 1994, he reportedly ignored molestation allegations against the team’s doctor, Richard Strauss.
Although Jordan has denied that he knew anything about the allegations, Mike DiSabato, a former wrestler and friend of Jordan’s, said in 2018 that the lawmaker “is absolutely lying if he says he doesn’t know what was going on.”
“He doesn’t deserve to be House speaker,” Yetts said. “He still has to answer for what happened to us.”
A 2019 report from the university found that Strauss, who died in 2005, committed nearly 1,500 sexual assaults on student-patients while he worked there.
A couple more stories on the House Speaker search:
Jordan’s missed-it-by-that-much candidacy for the third most powerful position in America is a sobering reminder that however principled some in the GOP might be, far-right extremists are firmly in control of the party — even if they can’t quite elect a Speaker of the House.
Jordan can thank Republicans representing districts Joe Biden won in 2020 for most of his vote-counting woes. Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon, a vocal Jordan critic, represents an area Biden won by 6 points. New York Reps. Mike Lawler and Anthony D’Esposito won areas Biden carried by 20 and 12 points, respectively. Their refusal to support Jordan amounted to an admission that Jordan’s brand of conspiracy-driven politics is poisonous to swing district voters.
In a statement on just how divided the House Republicans truly are, Jordan lost more than twice as many Republicans in his bid for Speaker (20) as Rep. Kevin McCarthy lost in the vote that ultimately ousted him (8). Jordan’s vote breakdown reveals a House Republican Caucus more divided than it was during McCarthy’s fractious 15-round elect-a-thon. GOP leaders hoped two weeks away from office would help mend the party’s festering wounds. Instead, things have only gotten worse.
On Monday, Jordan irritated some of his Freedom Caucus colleagues by assuring skeptical Republicans that he would allow votes on additional Ukrainian military aid. That’s the same Ukrainian spending that Jordan’s Freedom Caucus colleagues cited as a reason for giving McCarthy the boot. As Jordan discovered on Tuesday, the strict fundamentalism of the MAGA movement is totally incompatible with the compromises required in governing.
Signs of the party’s continued fracture were everywhere ahead of Jordan’s ill-fated vote. Earlier on Tuesday, Colorado Rep. Ken Buck had sought assurances from Jordan that the 2020 election was, in fact, legitimate. Judging by Jordan’s stony silence when asked by reporters about his bogus claims of 2020 election fraud, there is still at least one concession Jordan isn’t willing to make in his quest for power. Jordan’s intractability likely cost him as many votes as his abhorrent political views.
But after the House holds another vote on Jordan’s speakership Wednesday morning, Republicans aren’t expected to be any closer to ending their nightmare either. [NOTE: That didn’t happen.]
In fact, they may be further away.
While Jordan was able to flip at least one member who voted against him by Tuesday evening, rumors were flying around the Capitol that more Republicans planned to vote against Jordan on the next ballot—a potential death knell for Jordan’s candidacy and a signal that the archconservative Ohio Republican should perhaps step aside for someone else.
Publicly, however, Jordan—the chief architect of the modern day House GOP’s legislative hardball tactics—showed no signs of bowing out. Instead, he wanted to continue applying pressure on his detractors, with the help of his allies in right-wing media, and even to blame current House GOP leaders for not getting him the votes.
One rift that was already emerging Tuesday involved Jordan and his initial rival for the speakership: Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA).
Last week, Jordan narrowly lost to Scalise in a private vote for the party’s speakership nomination. Afterward, Jordan allegedly told Scalise he would back him as the conference’s pick for one ballot—with the expectation that Scalise would drop out and endorse Jordan if he didn’t get the speakership on the first vote.
And that didn’t happen either.
Scalise chose not to even go to the floor, after it was clear he couldn’t get the near-unanimous GOP support it would take to win.
After winning the nomination himself, Jordan faced the same problem. But he decided to move to a floor vote anyway, hoping that the prospect of putting his colleagues on the record publicly—under the scrutiny of a fired-up conservative base—would deliver him a victory.
The strategy didn’t work.
But instead of stepping aside, Jordan is moving ahead with another vote, and sources indicated to The Daily Beast that Jordan is blaming everyone but himself for his lackluster showing on Tuesday.
“Attacking members and laying the blame anywhere but your own feet when you’re 20 votes down shows you don’t know the first thing about bridging divides,” a senior GOP aide told The Daily Beast. “This is 2013 Jim Jordan all over again and it shows he’s not mature enough to lead the conference.”
Read more at the link.
So those are the top two news events going on today. What other stories have you been following?
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I took this picture of Little Amal resting at a neighbor’s house. The stop showed her taking time to think and pray for a safe home and for her family.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
The world continues to create refugees today. Last night, I saw a performance of “Little Amal” as she led a parade of refugees living in New Orleans in front of my home. Little Amal is a 12-foot puppet. She is based on a real girl who is a refugee from Syria who lost her mother. She is a world Human Rights symbol. She travels the world looking for her mother and praying for a safe home. Her name, in Arabic, means hope. She has visited 35 cities in the United States. Her original performances were around Europe. This is from an interview before her performance in Boston.
Amal was created with Syrian refugee children in mind, but her message resonated in the U.S., too, prompting her creators to launch a month-long tour of 35 U.S. towns and cities this fall. At each stop from Boston to San Diego, Little Amal will be greeted by local artists and performers who will celebrate her arrival and “welcome” her into their communities.
David Lan, one of the founding producers of the Little Amal project along with Tracy Seaward, explained that the giant puppet is meant to humanize refugees and migrants by inviting people to imagine what it would be like for a young child to arrive in an unfamiliar new place.
“She’s not a campaigner, she’s not got any political affiliation,” Lan told Boston.com. “She’s a 10-year old. What she’s interested in is meeting people, and seeing new things, and having a good time.”
Although refugees and asylum-seekers often encounter hardships and even misery, Lan said, “misery is not our subject. Our subject is welcome, and potential. One of the reasons why Amal is a 10-year-old child is because we wanted to focus on the potential that refugees bring — in their imaginations, in their experiences, in their intelligence.”
“What we want to focus on,” Lan continued, “is the ways in which newcomers into a community can enhance everybody’s experience by bringing the particularity of their experience.”
Little Amal in Boston
Our neighborhood needed this lesson in kindness and the importance of community on a bleak day. We had an election on Saturday. Nineteen percent of Louisiana Voters gave us a new Governor who will rival the cruelty of Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis in cruelty and denial of human rights. The Democratic Party in the State failed us on many levels. Attorney General and soon-to-be Governor Jeff Landry is a White Christian Nationalist and a Trump-endorsed Maggot who has a history of outrageous violations into people’s lives. He has focused on attacking the African-American citizens in our state. I have no idea why more did not come out to vote to save women, the GLBT, children, and people of color in our state.
This is from Big John Stanton writing in The Gambit, the local newspaper in edits, in June. “A brief history of Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry mixing racism with criminal justice.” Landry will make the Jindal years look like one long picnic.
Last week Landry was called out for his loathsome and completely racist criminal justice themed campaign ads last week by civil rights activists and Gambit’s own Clancy DuBos. Days later, Landry, who is sadly the state’s top — and arguably least competent — law enforcement official, got the negative campaign ad treatment himself, this time from fellow Republicans.
Of course, as anyone with even a passing familiarity with Landry knows, this isn’t the first time he’s said or done something openly racist. And this also isn’t the first time his record as attorney general has come under scrutiny. After all, who could forget when Landry was accused of not prosecuting an alleged pedophile because of family connections? Or when he protected a friend — who worked for Landry — accused of sexual harassment and then came after the Times-Picayune for reporting on it?
So in honor of Landry’s very bad couple of weeks, here’s a small sampling of the many times he has shown his racism while attorney general!
A lot are listed there, but this one is especially abhorrent to me.
Let’s start with a recent one! Earlier this year, the Louisiana House of Representatives passed a bill that would make public criminal records for juveniles in certain cases — even before they’ve had their day in court. While a bad idea generally since those records would end up haunting kids well into adulthood even if they were innocent, supporters made sure to put an added racist spin on it by limiting it to only East Baton Rouge, Orleans and Caddo parishes, which happen to be home to majority Black populations.
In a May 1 Letter to the Editor published in the Times-Picayune, Landry railed against the media for correctly pointing out the law was, by definition, racist. Hilariously, Landry seemed to confirm the Republican Party is also, by definition, the party of racists, when he noted an opinion piece in the paper “called this legislation ‘racist,’ yet failed to mention it was supported by both Democrats and Republicans.”
Louisiana’s Jeff Landry joined 17 other state attorneys general in signing a letter Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Finch sent last month to the Biden administration saying those states need access to information about residents who obtain abortions or gender-affirming care in other states.
The letter calls on U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to drop a proposed rule change prohibiting states from obtaining data about its residents accessing abortion or gender-affirming healthcare in states where it is legal. The information could be used for criminal, civil or administrative investigations, according to the AGs’ letter
Most of the attorneys general that signed the letter are from states with strict abortion restrictions.
More states, including Louisiana, are seeking to restrict access to gender-affirming healthcare, particularly for transgender youth.
Gender-affirming care is a catch-all term for medical treatments given to people to align their physical bodies with their identified gender. Gender-affirming care is used by transgender people, who identify as a gender different from their assigned sex at birth, as well as cisgender people who identify as their assigned sex.
Treatments are individualized to the patient. Some young patients will be prescribed fully reversible puberty blockers, giving the patient time to consider their options. Later, a patient may be given hormone treatments that can help young people go through puberty in a way that allows their body to change in ways that align with their gender identity. These treatments are partially reversible.
“The Louisiana Department of Justice is opposed to this radical proposal which would block information necessary to investigate the sexual abuse of children,” Landry spokesperson Millard Mule said in a statement to the Illuminator.
Mule has yet to respond to a follow-up request for an explanation on why the information is necessary for child sexual abuse investigations.
As attorney general, Landry has relentlessly targeted New Orleans and other largely Black cities, and shielded its police from reforms. Now he’s bringing that message to his campaign.
In his announcement video, the candidate blasted Louisiana’s “incompetent mayors and woke District Attorneys” for what he sees as their role in allowing crime to proliferate.He doubled down in a series of campaign videos that called out the DAs of Caddo, East Baton Rouge, and Orleans for the three parishes’ crime rates, highlighting images of the two Black prosecutors but omitting any footage of East Baton Rouge DA Hillar Moore, who is white. “When DAs fail to prosecute—when judges fail to act – when police are handcuffed instead of the criminals—enough is enough,” he announces.
In 2022, he assisted a Republican lawmaker in unveiling a bill, House Bill 321, that would have made public the criminal records of young people between ages 13 and 18 who are accused of a violent crime—but only in Caddo, East Baton Rouge, and Orleans, all parishes with some of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the state. Landry made news appearances advocating for the bill and spoke at the press conference announcing it, later using portions of his speech for campaign ads attacking those three parishes’ DAs.
Bruce Reilly, a formerly incarcerated criminal justice reform advocate who testified against the bill at the Capitol, sat behind Landry as he spoke in favor of HB321. “If you think this is a good thing, why wouldn’t you do it in your own town?” he wondered.
It’s not uncommon for Republican candidates to blame Democrats for crime rates in the cities they control as a way of establishing conservative bona fides. But Landry’s campaign rhetoric isn’t just bluster. During his seven-plusyears as attorney general, he has used the power of his office in standard, unorthodox, and at times highly controversial ways to single out New Orleans and the state’s other big cities.
Landry’s actions have ranged from creating a short-lived anti-crime task force that made arrests in New Orleans without clear jurisdiction to to spearheading punitive legislation that only applied to Louisiana’s three major cities. He also tried to strike down a federal consent decree ensuring a majority-Black state supreme court district in Orleans Parish. And he even recently triedto withhold flood protection funds after city officials suggested they wouldn’t prioritize enforcing abortion crimes.
Little Amal in Atlanta
Here’s an analysis of him from the New York Times by Emily Cochran. “Jeff Landry, a Hard-Line Republican, Is Elected Governor of Louisiana. The victory by Mr. Landry, the state’s attorney general, secures Republican control of Louisiana after eight years of divided government..” We are so fucked.
Mr. Landry, a confrontational litigator and politician, had won over much of the Republican base by battling Mr. Edwards and the Biden administration in court over pandemic vaccine mandates, efforts to work with social media companies to limit the spread of misleading or false theories, and environmental regulations.
He served as a sheriff’s deputy and two-term lawmaker in the House of Representatives as the Tea Party took hold in American government. But it was over the last eight years as attorney general where Mr. Landry flexed the power of a political office and his particular style of combative conservatism.
During the coronavirus pandemic, he challenged vaccine and mask mandates on the local and national level for health care workers, students and federal workers, voicing skepticism even as the vaccines were proven to help stem the spread and toll of the virus.
And he has defended some of Louisiana’s more controversial decisions, including a congressional map that Black voters have challenged as a violation of a landmark civil rights law and its abortion law, one of the strictest in the nation. (At one point, Mr. Landry openly said that critics could leave the state.)
During his campaign for governor, Mr. Landry vowed to address crime in the state, though critics observed that countering crime fell under the jurisdiction of the attorney general. He also pledged to stop the “woke agenda” in Louisiana schools and to support the rights of parents to make decisions for their children, a nod to a push he championed to restrict access to gender-affirming care for transgender children and literature deemed to be sexually explicit.
A federal judge is considering whether to issue a gag order against former President Donald Trump in an intense hearing Monday in Washington, DC, that’s included warnings about the limits of Trump’s speech.
Following the two federal indictments against the former president, Trump has lashed out against prosecutors, potential witnesses and the judge overseeing the election subversion case in Washington. Prosecutors with special counsel Jack Smith’s office say these comments are enough to warrant a narrow restriction on Trump’s speech around the case.
District Judge Tanya Chutkan, often the target of Trump’s attacks, warned the former president that comments he or his attorneys make could threaten the case.
“Mr. Trump is a criminal defendant. He is facing four felony charges. He is under the supervision of the criminal justice system and he must follow his conditions of release,” Chutkan said Monday.
“He does not have the right to say and do exactly what he pleases. Do you agree with that?” she asked Trump attorney John Lauro, who responded: “100%.”
Trump’s attorneys have attacked the proposed order as fundamentally antithetical to his First Amendment rights and suggested the order is simply a way for President Joe Biden and the Justice Department to hurt Trump’s ability to campaign.
Lauro accused the special counsel’s office of trying “to prevent President Trump from speaking out about the issues of the day,” adding, “Every single issue that relates to this case also has political issues.”
In social media posts, Trump has attacked Chutkan as a “biased, Trump Hating Judge” and called Smith “deranged” and a “thug” as well as attacked individual members of his team.
“When you start to use a word like ‘thug’ to describe a prosecutor doing their job, that wouldn’t be allowed by any other criminal defendant,” Chutkan said. “Just because the defendant is running a political campaign does not allow him to do whatever he wants.”
The federal judge presiding over Donald Trump’s election interference case imposed a partial gag order Monday against the former president, barring him and all other parties in the case from making statements targeting prosecutors and court personnel as well as inflammatory statements about likely witnesses.
The ruling from U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan marked a partial victory for the Justice Department in its bid to impose additional restrictions on Trump’s extra-judicial statements in the federal election interference case in Washington.
“This is not about whether I like the language Mr. Trump uses. This is about language that presents a danger to the administration of justice,” Chutkan said as she announced her decision from the bench.
Trump’s presidential candidacy, Chutkan said, “does not give him carte blanche” to threaten or vilify “public servants simply doing their job.”
The government was asking the court for a partial gag order because Trump’s comments, prosecutors said, threatened to intimidate witnesses and taint the jury pool.
At Monday’s hearing, Trump’s attorneys vigorously denied any need to place restrictions on the former president’s public comments about the case, and said the effort to do amounted to the Biden administration attempting to silence the president’s chief political rival.
My last story is from NBC Newsabout migrants coming to the US. “Biden admin reaches deal with migrants separated from their families under Trump. The families also sought financial compensation from the U.S. government, but the Biden DOJ walked away from those negotiations two years ago.”
The Biden administration and more than 4,000 migrants who were separated from their families at the U.S.-Mexico border by the Trump administration reached a legal settlement Monday that allows the families to live and work in the U.S. for three years while receiving housing, mental health and legal assistance to apply for asylum.
The settlement also prohibits the federal government from separating any migrant families crossing the border for eight years, unless the parents are considered a danger to their children or the public or they have previously entered the country illegally more than twice.
The deal, announced by the Justice Department, may end one of the darkest chapters in U.S. immigration policy, in which families crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally in 2017 and 2018 were systematically separated. Children younger than 18 were sent to the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services, while parents were prosecuted by U.S. attorneys in federal court.
But the settlement could be derailed by Republicans in Congress if they challenge the court’s mandate to appropriate money to reunify and provide services to separated families.
Cats can be mysterious creatures to begin with, but their ability to purr has long perplexed scientists. How can so small an animal make such a deep sound?
Now, scientists may be one step closer to solving this perplexing pet puzzle. Cats, they say, have pads within their vocal cords that may help produce the low-frequency vocalizations involved in purring, according to a new paper published last week in the journal Current Biology.
Big animals, like elephants, have longer vocal cords than smaller animals do, which allows them to produce lower sounds. The same rule applies to musical instruments: A large double bass can produce lower notes than a small violin does, for example.
“Typically, the larger the animal, the longer the vocal folds and so the lower the frequency of sound created,” says study co-author Christian Herbst, a voice scientist at the University of Vienna, to New Scientist’s Jason Arunn Murugesu.
But domestic cats, with their relatively short vocal cords, seem to be an exception to this rule. Though they typically weigh around ten pounds, when purring, they can make low-frequency rumbles between 20 and 30 hertz—lower than the lowest bass sounds made with the average human voice.
To explain this phenomenon, researchers studied eight domestic cats that had already been euthanized because of terminal illness. With the cat owners’ consent, the scientists removed the animals’ larynges from their bodies, then pushed warm air through them to simulate feline vocalizations.
With this method, the researchers were able to produce purring sounds at frequencies between 25 and 30 hertz—without any input from the cat’s brain, and without any muscle contractions. The vocal cords vibrated in a way that resembled “vocal fry” in humans, or the creaky, low register sound some people make when speaking.
Other vertebrates produce sounds in a similar way—via a passive process known as flow-induced self-sustained oscillation. When this occurs, the brain sends a signal to the vocal cords that causes them to press together. As air flows through the vocal cords, they begin to vibrate—and from here, physiology takes over, and the brain is no longer involved….
The researchers analyzed the deceased cats’ vocal cords and found masses of tissue embedded within them that they theorize might be the key to purring. These structures, which they termed “pads,” might slow down the vocal cords’ vibrations by making them denser, enabling the animals to make lower-frequency sounds in spite of their diminutive size.
Interesting, huh?
In people news, longtime GOP strategist and author Kevin Phillips has died.
“The whole secret of politics is knowing who hates who.”
That insight was the brainchild of Kevin Phillips, the longtime political analyst who passed away this week at 82 years old. Phillips’s 1969 book, “The Emerging Republican Majority,” provided the blueprint for the “southern strategy” that the Republican Party adopted for decades to win over White voters who were alienated by the Democratic Party’s embrace of civil rights in the 1960s.
Phillips advised Republicans to exploit the racial anxieties of White voters, linking them directly to issues such as crime, federal spending and voting rights. The strategy, beginning with Richard M. Nixon’s landslide victory in the 1972 presidential race, helped produce GOP majorities for decades.
To the witch’s house we go, by Margaryta Yermolayeva
Though Phillips later reconsidered his fealty to the GOP, updated versions of the “southern strategy” live on in today’s Republican Party, shaping the political world we inhabit today. So I asked historians and political theorists to weigh in on Phillips’s legacy. Their responses have been edited for style and brevity.
Kevin Kruse, historian at Princeton University and co-editor of “Myth America”: Kevin Phillips was a prophet of today’s polarization. He drew a blueprint for a major realignment of American politics that is still with us. For much of the 20th century, Democrats dominated the national scene, because of the reliable support of the “Solid South.”
But the “Negro problem” of the 1960s, Phillips argued, presented Republicans an opportunity to take the South and Southwest, too, a new region he anointed “the Sun Belt.” All they had to do was appeal to the hatreds of White voters there, through racially coded “law and order” appeals.
Phillips, of course, proved correct about the regional realignment. Republicans won every single state in the South in the 1972, 1984, 1988, 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns. Today, Republicans dominate the region partly because they still employ Phillips’s polarizing politics of resentment and reaction, from complaints about Black Lives Matter to panics about “woke” education. Donald Trump’s continued dominance of the GOP shows that the underlying instinct to exploit division and inflame hatred remains.
Read the rest, including more quotes by experts, at The WaPo.
House Republicans are still in chaos. Yesterday, one of the craziest House reps, George Santos, had an insane freakout in the midst of the Speaker fight.
We’ve all had an extremely long week, as you’re likely aware. On Friday afternoon, George Santos, the New York representative whose tally of alleged federal crimes is now up to 23, was spotted screaming in the hallway of the Longworth House Office Building. It appears Santos — who famously suggested his family was Jewish then revised this to “Jew-ish” — was accosted by pro-Palestinian protesters.
Normally, neither a small protest on Capitol Hill nor George Santos shouting in front of a gaggle of reporters would be all that notable. But there’s the twist: Santos was holding a 2-month-old baby when this all went down….
You probably have a lot of questions right now, as do I. Hartmann doesn’t have any answers. She posted some tweets, but WordPress won’t let me do that anymore. You can read them at NY Mag.
Rep. George Santos (R-NY) had a complete meltdown on Friday afternoon during a tense interaction on Capitol Hill that ended with a man in police custody—and somehow involved a baby.
According to a clip shared by NBC News’ Sahil Kapur, Santos called the man, identified by cops as Shabd Khalsa, “human scum” for asking him questions critical of Israel’s bombings in Gaza….
“You came into my personal space yelling at me,” Santos fumed. “What are you doing about terrorists destroying Israel?” He then sped down a hallway in the Capitol’s Longworth Building, screaming statements condemning Hamas….
Capitol Police said in a statement to The Daily Beast that 36-year-old Khalsa was arrested and charged him with simple assault “after an officer witnessed him have physical contact with a congressional staffer in the Longworth Building.” The staffer was not identified.
A profile on X under the name Shabd Singh, the same name Khalsa gave to reporters, says that he is a former campaign organizer for Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT).
He told The Hill that he was Jewish-American and that Santos, who was previously busted falsely claiming to be Jewish, “began yelling at me, essentially framing what I am saying as some sort of antisemitic trope.”
Still no information about the baby. If you’ve heard anything about the origins of the child or what Santos was doing with him/her, please let us know.
As Daknikat wrote yesterday, Insurrectionist Jim Jordon is currently the leading candidate for House Speaker, but he doesn’t yet have the votes to be election, thank goodness.
After a series of setbacks, Republicans ended the week no closer to electing a new speaker as deep internal divisions have left the conference struggling to govern and the House in a state of paralysis.
The chaos within House GOP ranks intensified dramatically over the past several days as the conference has tried and so far failed to find a viable successor to Kevin McCarthy following his unprecedented ouster at the hands of a small faction of hardline conservatives.
Black Cat Halloween, by Iva Wilcox
Rep. Jim Jordan is the new GOP speaker nominee following Majority Leader Steve Scalise’s exit from the race. But the Ohio Republican faces the same kind of grim vote math that doomed Scalise’s speaker bid as Jordan lacks the 217 votes needed to win the gavel in a full House floor vote.
Jordan has the weekend to continue to make his case and attempt to flip holdouts, but he faces a steep uphill battle.
The GOP conference faced whiplash this week after Scalise won an initial vote to become speaker nominee, only to drop out not long after as a result of entrenched opposition to his candidacy. The week ended with another vote, this time to make Jordan the new nominee. But it soon became clear that Jordan also faces a stiff wall of resistance.
The House remains effectively frozen as long as there is no speaker, a dire situation that comes as Congress faces a fast-approaching government funding deadline in mid-November and as crisis unfolds abroad in Ukraine and with Israel’s war against Hamas.
Asked by CNN’s Manu Raju how the entire episode reflects on the GOP, McCarthy said on Friday, “it’s terrible.”
Centrists are signaling they’re open to a deal. Democrats are outlining terms. With no speaker in sight yet, House Republicans are ramping up their discussions about a way to reopen the chamber.
A bipartisan solution to the GOP’s leadership chaos still sounds farfetched to most on the Hill — but then, so does the idea that Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) might overcome his dozens of skeptics and win a floor vote early next week.
There’s just one problem with the idea that a temporary compromise could get the House back to legislative business: It has the same issue that plagued the speakership bids of Kevin McCarthy, Steve Scalise and now Jordan. Right now, no solution has the near-unanimous House Republican support that’s required to pass on the floor.
Which means that, unless Jordan can overcome his skeptics and push to victory on the floor in the next several days, the only way forward might be with Democrats. A group of centrist Democrats wrote to Acting Speaker Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.) on Friday to propose a limited agenda and some perks for the opposing party in exchange for temporarily restarting House business during a time of global crisis.
Some self-described GOP pragmatists have suggested that if Republicans can’t chart a course on their own, they could cut a deal with Democrats to break the 10-day impasse.
“At some point we have to do a bipartisan deal. I mean, they don’t want to acknowledge it, but these guys do not want to govern,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said of his own party’s conservatives.
But as desperation creeps into the GOP while Jordan pushes to lock down the gavel, it’s clear that any attempt to further empower a caretaker speaker would fall short within their own party. McHenry has indicated that his future role as acting speaker is up to his colleagues to settle — even as the Nov. 17 shutdown deadline draws closer and Israel seeks U.S. aid — but his fellow Republicans simply can’t agree on anything.
Read more at the link above.
I suppose I have to include some news from the war between Israel and Hamas. (BTW, is it just me, or has the Ukraine war completely disappeared from the media?)
A blast has struck a convoy on an evacuation route in Gaza, killing a number of people including several children, after a stark deadline ahead of a possible Israeli ground assault.
The IDF told civilians in and around Gaza City Friday that they must move south to avoid being caught up in Israeli military operations and announced a six-hour evacuation window on Saturday.
Black Cat at Halloween, by Daniel Eskridge
Israel has massed troops and military equipment at the border with Gaza, and continued bombarding the densely populated territory in response to the deadly October 7 attacks by the Islamist militant group, Hamas.
Videos authenticated by CNN showed a scene of extensive destruction following Friday’s blast on Salah Al-Deen street. A number of bodies, including those of children, can be seen on on a flat-bed trailer that appears to have been used to carry people away from Gaza City. There are also a number of badly burned and damaged cars.
It’s unclear what caused the widespread devastation. CNN has reached out to the IDF for comment on any airstrikes in the same location.
Even before the evacuation warning, more than 400,000 Palestinians had already been internally displaced by the past week of fighting as conditions worsen inside the bombarded strip.
But the evacuation statement and the prospect of a potential incursion have been sharply criticized by rights groups, including the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) head, who warned that such a move could bring “catastrophic humanitarian consequences.”
As Israel engages in a massive air campaign ahead of an anticipated full-scale ground invasion of the Gaza Strip, Israeli President Isaac Herzog said on Friday that all citizens of Gaza are responsible for the attack Hamas perpetrated in Israel last weekend that left over 1,200 people dead.
“It is an entire nation out there that is responsible,” Herzog said at a press conference on Friday. “It is not true this rhetoric about civilians not being aware, not involved. It’s absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’etat.”
When a reporter asked Herzog to clarify whether he meant to say that since Gazans did not remove Hamas from power “that makes them, by implication, legitimate targets,” the Israeli president claimed, “No, I didn’t say that.”
But he then stated: “When you have a missile in your goddamn kitchen and you want to shoot it at me, am I allowed to defend myself?”
At another point in the press conference, Herzog presented a different perspective, saying, “Of course there are many, many innocent Palestinians who don’t agree to this — but unfortunately in their homes, there are missiles shooting at us, at my children.”
Ghost Cat, by Neocale at Deviant Art
Herzog’s comments follow Israel’s announcement that it had directed the 1.1 million residents of northern Gaza to evacuate, likely ahead of a ground invasion. Israel dropped thousands of flyers over northern Gaza and left voice messages on Friday directing people to leave their homes and flee south.
Human rights groups and the United Nations denounced the evacuation order.
“The United Nations considers it impossible for such a movement to take place without devastating humanitarian consequences,” Stéphane Dujarric, spokesman for the UN secretary-general, said in a statement. “The United Nations strongly appeals for any such order, if confirmed, to be rescinded avoiding what could transform what is already a tragedy into a calamitous situation.”
“Ordering a million people in Gaza to evacuate, when there’s no safe place to go, is not an effective warning,” Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor to Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “World leaders should speak up now before it is too late, he added.
Documents exclusively obtained by NBC News show that Hamas created detailed plans to target elementary schools and a youth center in the Israeli kibbutz of Kfar Sa’ad, to “kill as many people as possible,” seize hostages and quickly move them into the Gaza Strip.
The attack plans, which are labeled “top secret” in Arabic, appear to be orders for two highly trained Hamas units to surround and infiltrate villages and target places where civilians, including children, gather. Israeli authorities are still determining the death toll in Kfar Sa’ad.
The documents were found on the bodies of Hamas terrorists by Israeli first responders and shared with NBC News. They include detailed maps and show that Hamas intended to kill or take hostage civilians and school children.
One page labeled “Top Secret” outlines a plan of attack for Kfar Sa’ad, saying “Combat unit 1” is directed to “contain the new Da’at school,” while “Combat unit 2” is to “collect hostages,” “search the Bnei Akiva youth center” and “search the old Da’at school.”
Another page labeled “Top Secret Maneuver” describes a plan for a Hamas unit to secure the east side of Kfar Sa’ad while a second unit controls the west. It says “kills as many as possible” and “capture hostages.” Other orders include surrounding a dining hall and holding hostages in it.
The detailed plan to attack Kfar Sa’ad is part of a trove of documents that Israeli officials are analyzing, according to one source in the Israeli army and one in the government. Surveillance video of Hamas terrorists entering a kibbutz on Oct. 7 shows tactics similar to those laid out in the documents obtained by NBC News.
The Israeli officials said that the wider group of documents show that Hamas had been systematically gathering intelligence on each kibbutz bordering Gaza and creating specific plans of attack for each village that included the intentional targeting of women and children.
The judge presiding over the upcoming damages trial against Rudy Giuliani said Friday she will tell jurors that the former Trump lawyer intentionally hid financial documents and other records in defiance of court orders.
Vlad Vampire Cat, by Carrie Hawks
In a five-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the move was necessary given “Giuliani’s continued and flagrant disregard of this Court’s August 30 Order that he produce financial-related documents concerning his personal and his businesses’ past and present assets” and other pertinent information.
That means jurors deciding how much Giuliani should pay two Georgia election workers he defamed will be told they can assume the worst about why the former New York City mayor has failed to turn over the court-ordered records.
“The jury will be instructed that it must, when determining an appropriate sum of compensatory, presumed, and punitive damages, infer that defendant Giuliani was intentionally trying to hide relevant discovery about the Giuliani Businesses’ finances for the purpose of shielding his assets from discovery and artificially deflating his net worth,” the judge wrote.
Additionally, Giuliani and his lawyer will be prohibited “from making any argument, or introducing any evidence, stating or suggesting that he is insolvent, bankrupt, judgment proof, or otherwise unable to defend himself” since he failed to hand over evidence that would show that’s true, the judge wrote.
You might be forgiven for thinking it’s been a very quiet few months for the Covid-19 pandemic. Besides the rollout of new boosters, the coronavirus has largely slipped out of the headlines. But the virus is on the move. Viral levels in wastewater are similar to what they were during the first two waves of the pandemic. Recent coverage of the so-called Pirola variant, which is acknowledged to have “an alarming number of mutations,” led with the headline “Yes, There’s a New Covid Variant. No, You Shouldn’t Panic.”
Even if you haven’t heard much about the new strain of the coronavirus, being told not to panic might induce déjà vu. In late 2021, as the Omicron variant was making its way to the United States, Anthony Fauci told the public that it was “nothing to panic about” and that “we should not be freaking out.” Ashish Jha, the Biden administration’s former Covid czar, also cautioned against undue alarm over Omicron BA.1, claiming that there was “absolutely no reason to panic.” This is a telling claim, given what was to follow—the six weeks of the Omicron BA.1 wave led to hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of weeks, a mortality event unprecedented in the history of the republic.
Indeed, experts have been offering the public advice about how to feel about Covid-19 since January 2020, when New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo opined, “Panic will hurt us far more than it’ll help.” That same week, Zeke Emanuel—a former health adviser to the Obama administration, latterly an adviser to the Biden administration—said Americans should “stop panicking and being hysterical.… We are having a little too much [sic] histrionics about this.”
This concern about public panic has been a leitmotif of the Covid-19 pandemic, even earning itself a name (“elite panic”) among some scholars. But if there’s one thing we’ve learned, three and a half years into the current crisis, it’s that—contrary to what the movies taught us—pandemics don’t automatically spawn terror-stricken stampedes in the streets. Media and public health coverage have a strong hand in shaping public response and can—under the wrong circumstances—promote indifference, incaution, and even apathy. A very visible example of this was the sharp drop in the number of people masking after the CDC revised its guidelines in 2021, recommending that masking was not necessary for the vaccinated (from 90 percent in May to 53 percent in September).
As that example suggests, emphasizing the message “don’t panic” puts the cart before the horse unless tangible measures are being taken to prevent panic-worthy outcomes. And indeed, these repeated assurances against panic have arguably also preempted a more vigorous and
urgent public health response—as well as perversely increasing public acceptance of the risks posed by coronavirus infection and the unchecked transmission of the virus. This “moral calm”—a sort of manufactured consent—impedes risk mitigation by promoting the underestimation of a threat. Soothing public messaging during disasters can often lead to an increased death toll: Tragically, false reassurance contributed to mortality in both the attacks on the World Trade Center and the sinking of the Titanic.
Read the rest at The Nation. The gist is that Covid-19 is still out there and still dangerous. Pretending it’s not won’t help us.
That’s my contribution for today. What do you think? What other stories have caught your interest?
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Loki with a fishing net (per Reginsmál) as depicted on an 18th-century Icelandic manuscript (SÁM 66)
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
That’s a rhetorical question when you don’t have creator gods running amok in your religious landscape, but I have a suggestion. I vote for Loki. However, the gods of Norse mythology don’t really have much to do with the current battles. Loki is now known mainly by a TV series, a Marvel character, the video game “Assassin’s Creed”, and the Wagner Opera “Der Ring des Nibelungen.”
The old gods and goddesses always had a great sense of humor and irony. Much of their fun has to do with internecine complaints among themselves, which humankind is brought into. The God of Abraham seems to be all about revenge, no matter which face you look at. He’s demanding since he doesn’t have to share anything with other goddesses and gods. And only one form will do, depending on the tribe that brought you into the world. You dance and die with the one that brought you unless you shrug your shoulders and read the books without supernatural nonsense. I could never imagine a perfect being whose primary trait is the desire to be worshipped. That sounds more like a human with Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Loki is nonbinary and is good at schemes and deceptions. Maybe that’s why Marvel thought he’d be profitable and popular today.
Loki, however, never had a reality show. He also isn’t sitting on a shitload of federal and state indictments, including rape, fraud, and the theft of secret documents.
And dead children, old people, and mothers are just as dead from one set of one’s war crimes or another’s. My mother always said two wrongs do not make a right. Mothers always have things like that up their sleeves. I know am a mother with the cannon of old wives’ tales and admonitions handed down by mine. However, I’m not an old wife, thankfully. Maybe Loki could sort this out like he frequently did within the community of beings dwelling in Asgard. He indeed won’t be plagued with journos trying to show both sides of any situation.
BB wrote extensively about the continued situation in the Middle East. So, I will switch to the other chaos in our country. A two-party system has usually been seen to be more stable than a parliamentary system of democracy because there are two primarily united fronts to make policy and govern. The Republican party is a perfect example of what appears to be a coalition of three stubborn sects with very few policy ideas other than handing the country over to the very rich and creating performance opportunities for the narcissistic among them.
I would say that this is no way to run a country or a homeland of gods. So, Israel has a coalition government, and we have a hot mess. Does democracy really have to be this disorganized and angry? Given the proof of a war crime, I can’t drop the Israeli/Palestinian suffering and the current escalation of war crimes as Israel dropped the Rain of Fire indiscriminately around the Gaza Strip today. The country had the high ground and is now losing it.
It’s not really an American democracy thing to have a Handmaiden and a bunch of whacky Opus Dei types deciding what’s supposed to be law. Here’s another one of Republican Chaos Agents. But it’s definitely a Leonard Leo thing.
Many could thank Leo for their advancement. Thomas Hardiman of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled to loosen gun laws and overturn Obamacare’s birth-control mandate. Leo had put Hardiman on Trump’s Supreme Court shortlist and helped confirm him to two earlier judgeships. Kyle Duncan and Cory Wilson, both on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, both fiercely anti-abortion, were members of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the network of conservative and libertarian lawyers that Leo h
ad built into a political juggernaut. As was Florida federal Judge Wendy Berger, who would uphold that state’s “Don’t Say Gay” law. Within a year of the party, another attendee, Republican North Carolina Supreme Court Justice Phil Berger Jr. (no relation), would write the opinion reinstating a controversial state law requiring voter identification. (Duncan, Wilson, Berger and Berger Jr. did not comment. Hardiman did not comment beyond confirming he attended the party.)
The judges were in Maine for a weeklong, all-expenses-paid conference hosted by George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School, a hub for steeping young lawyers, judges and state attorneys general in a free-market, anti-regulation agenda. The leaders of the law school were at the party, and they also were indebted to Leo. He had secured the Scalia family’s blessing and brokered $30 million in donations to rename the school. It is home to the C. Boyden Gray Center for the Study of the Administrative State, named after the George H.W. Bush White House counsel who died this May. Gray was at Leo’s party, too. (A spokesperson for GMU confirmed the details of the week’s events.)
The judges and the security detail, the law school leadership and the legal theorists — all of this was a vivid display not only of Leo’s power but of his vision. Decades ago, he’d realized it was not enough to have a majority of Supreme Court justices. To undo landmark rulings like Roe, his movement would need to make sure the court heard the right cases brought by the right people and heard by the right lower court judges.
Leo began building a machine to do just that. He didn’t just cultivate friendships with conservative Supreme Court justices, arranging private jet trips, joining them on vacation, brokering speaking engagements. He also drew on his network of contacts to place Federalist Society protégés in clerkships, judgeships and jobs in the White House and across the federal government. He personally called state attorneys general to recommend hires for positions he presciently understood were key, like solicitors general, the unsung litigators who represent states before the U.S. Supreme Court. In states that elect jurists, groups close to him spent millions of dollars to place his allies on the bench. In states that appoint top judges, he maneuvered to play a role in their selection.
After Rep. Kevin McCarthy’s ignominious removal from the House speakership last week, Rep. Steve Scalise has been pushed forward as the House GOP’s nominee for speaker — and the smiling face of Republican denialism. If there’s an obvious truth that can’t be reconciled with a Republican talking point or goal, then there may be no better person to smile and pretend the truth isn’t the truth than the Louisiana Republican.
There’s the Republican narrative about who Republicans are, who the Democrats are and what Pelosi represents, and then there’s the reality of Pelosi taking charge and acting in the best interest of her country as an angrily pouting Republican president does nothing. These two things — the narrative and the reality — conflict. So Scalise, who had observed Pelosi’s vocal advocacy, suggested that the attack on the U.S. Capitol was somehow her fault and not Donald Trump’s.
And when confronted with video evidence that he was standing near Pelosi on Jan. 6, what did Scalise say? His spokesperson Lauren Fine told The Washington Post that he was asking “why wasn’t the National Guard called prior to the day of?” What a dishonest response.
But it wasn’t surprising. The year before, in an October 2021 interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News, Scalise refused to answer Wallace’s simple question: “Do you think the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump?”
Scalise still appears to be unwilling to answer that question. CNN’s Manu Raju posted to the platform X on Wednesday that Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., said he wouldn’t vote for Scalise or Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, “since neither man would answer his question yesterday about whether the 2020 election was stolen.”
The House GOP has entered an angrier and more bewildered phase in its leadership crisis.
The fractious Republican conference has rejected a second speaker hopeful in eight days — this time, Kevin McCarthy’s longtime heir apparent, Steve Scalise. While Republicans appear to be turning next to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), some are already airing open doubts that Jordan can pull off what the majority leader couldn’t.
The lesson Republicans have learned in the frenetic week since McCarthy’s fall: They have no clear choice for leader who can unite their ranks — no matter how long this drags out and their chamber of Congress is paralyzed.
It’s not just GOP centrists sparring with the hard right. It’s not just McCarthy loyalists secretly fuming at Scalise or his allies. There’s mounting anger across the entire conference that no GOP speaker candidate, including Jordan, appears able to prevail under the current margins.
“We need to all recognize that this is much bigger than just one person or any single person’s petty feelings,” said Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.), who had voted for Jordan but publicly backed Scalise after he won the internal election.
It won’t be easy for any candidate to get past the internal spats that have only worsened as the GOP’s speaker fight drags on with no end in sight.
Only a messianic cult could like this situation. Oh, wait … hold my beer. Anyway, the deadline for government funding is sitting over our heads, as well as any hope for getting more defense weapons to Ukraine or Israel. Axios today suggests that the messianic cult may run to members of the Democrat Party. This is delusional, but I live in New Orleans, not the District Beltway. Thanks, Alexander Solender, for the nice midday Heroic Myth! “Bipartisan talk grows as GOP fails to find a speaker.” I fart in your general direction.
Lawmakers in both parties are expressing growing openness, both in public and in private, to a bipartisan deal to elect a House speaker as Republicans are continually thwarted in their efforts to do it alone.
Why it matters: With House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) withdrawing despite winning his party’s nomination, some Republicans are concerned nobody can win the job with just GOP votes.
What they’re saying: “There’s a sentiment building around [a bipartisan deal] among Democrats and Republicans,” Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of Democratic leadership who represents a swing district, told Axios.
“We’re open to anything that’s reasonable,” said Rep. Maria Salazar (R-Fla.), a member of the moderate Republican Governance Group. “Bipartisanship is not a sin.”
Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), a perennial bipartisan dealmaker, said “at this point, there are enough Republican and Democrats saying we’ve got to get this fixed.”
Rep. Greg Landsman (D-Ohio) said, as the situation devolves, he sees Republicans “absolutely” getting more open to a deal: “Yes, I mean you’re seeing that.”
State of play: With Scalise out of the running, all eyes now turn to Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), a co-founder of the right-wing Freedom Caucus.
But some of Jordan’s GOP colleagues are already predicting he’ll suffer the same fate as Scalise. “I think he’s gonna have a math problem as well,” said Mike Garcia (R-Calif.).
Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.) said “it’s going to be hard” for Jordan to win.
What we’re hearing: A bipartisan group of roughly ten House lawmakers is quietly holding “very” serious discussions, a moderate Republican involved in the discussions told Axios on the condition of anonymity.
“The question is who gets you to the largest minority of the majority,” the GOP lawmaker said. “Is it Don Bacon, who gets 20 [GOP] votes and 200 Democrats? Is it French Hill who gets 100 votes from Republicans? And the fewer Republicans, the more dangerous this is – not just politically, but structurally.”
Another question, the Republican said, is how many speaker candidates need to fail before people soften on the idea: “Kevin, Steve, Jordan, Emmer … how many losses do you have to have to make that an acceptable outcome?”
Between the lines: Congress is unfamiliar with bipartisan coalition governments in the vein of state legislatures and foreign governments – but the House had also never voted to oust a speaker until last Tuesday.
Nearly eight decades after the end of World War II, the thing we ought to understand most clearly about Nazi propaganda is not to believe a word of it. The images pumped out by Hitler’s messaging apparatus depicting a healthy, thriving and prosperous Germany were blatant lies used to paper over a horrifying genocide, as well as a self-destructive war that left much of the nation in ruins. But there’s one historical claim made by fascists that gets accepted at face value by people who ought to know better: The idea that authoritarian regimes are models of order and discipline. Videos of goose-stepping soldiers and myths about full employment and the trains running on time have persisted in the cultural imagination. The belief that the far right is ruthlessly efficient and well organized terrifies its opponents and emboldens its supporters, then and now.
If you still buy any of that, consider the Republicans in Congress, who are behaving like a sackful of trapped weasels over what should be a simple task: Picking which one of the indistinguishable MAGA-monsters gets to be speaker of the House.
Calling this a “clown show” really undersells the situation, and is unfair to the skill and training of actual clowns. All of this kicked off last January, when it took the smaller-than-expected Republican majority 15 ballots to elect Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California who had spent his entire career in politics aiming for that moment. It didn’t go well: McCarthy’s stint with the gavel lasted less than nine months, the shortest tenure for any speaker since Michael Kerr died in office in 1876. He was ousted, of course, by Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida and seven other renegade Republicans, motivated more by a desire for airtime on Fox News than any coherent grievance against McCarthy.
So it’s not a huge surprise that the House GOP’s efforts to elect another speaker are going poorly, even though there are officially only two candidates: Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana and Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. It was announced Wednesday that Scalise, previously McCarthy’s No. 2 in House leadership, had won a secret ballot vote at the GOP caucus meeting. But the prospect that Scalise could actually win a floor vote for the speakership fell apart quickly, after some of the most camera-hungry members of the GOP have refused to go along with the party’s vote. By Thursday, Scalise had enough and dropped out of the race.
Marvel’s Loki. Don’t you just love a genderfluid trickster god who likes to become a fish ever so often?
Jim Jordan is poised to take a step toward the speaker’s gavel on Friday — even as he faces a last-minute challenger.
Republicans are meeting Friday afternoon to hear directly from the Ohio conservative and Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), who threw his hat into the ring just before the close-door meeting and added a new dimension to the topsy-turvy speaker’s race.
While there are enough Republicans opposed to — or wary of — a Jordan speakership to block him from getting the 217 necessary votes on the floor, he is projecting confidence that he will clear the much easier simple majority threshold for becoming the conference’s pick for speaker on Friday.
“I think I can unite the conference. I think I can go tell the country what we’re doing and why it matters,” he told reporters, adding that he feels “confident” heading into the secret ballot vote.
But whether Jordan can ultimately capture the speaker’s gavel remains far more uncertain, with a coalition of vulnerable front-liners and frustrated allies of Scalise and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy predicting that the Ohio Republican falls short.
Scott’s entry is viewed more as a move designed to pull over Jordan critics and give the House GOP conference another choice. In a statement, the Georgia Republican said that he wanted to “lead a House that functions in the best interest of the American people.”
But one House Republican, speaking on condition of anonymity, predicted that whoever votes for Austin on Friday “will be a slightly overstated proxy for the Never Jordan people.”
“Others are keeping their powder dry until Jordan realizes he has no path to 217,” the Republican added.
Underscoring that uneasiness, several Republicans left a Friday morning closed-door meeting making it clear that they wanted to see who else other than Jordan would run.
Loki and Sigyn, by Arthur Rackham (c. 1867-1939)
Perhaps prognostication is best left to the Delphi Oracle, the Nechung Oracle, or the Oracle of Omaha? Well, there is the congressman who went to my high school and represents that district in Omaha.
“When you reward bad behavior you get more of it. So I struggle with that,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), though he stopped short of saying he will vote against Jordan.
He added that “we need to have enough time for other folks to consider [running] and to come up with a game plan.” Bacon floated other alternatives including Reps. Tom Cole (R-Okla.), Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) and Patrick McHenry(R-N.C.).
Notice they always stop short of saying I wouldn’t vote for them because their assholes who misbehave even though I am a pontificating asshole myself?
So, here’s more reads if you haven’t already been tired out by this nastiness.
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.
Good Day, Sky Dancers!
his makes things very interesting. Powell is a pretty good catch. This is from 
This is from CNN. “Trump fraud trial judge suggests gag order violation could result in imprisonment.”
Meanwhile, Trump Toady Gymbo Jordan lost his third vote for speaker. This is from breaking news from the 
There’s some good news from the Gaza/Israel War. 
I’m getting really sick of the constant TV coverage of the war between Israel and Hamas. Yes, it’s an important story, and needs to be covered. But do we really need to see and hear about it 24-7, while the cable networks ignore just about everything else? Dakinikat remarked to me a few days ago that it seems our generation have seen wars play out on TV now for most of our lives, beginning with Vietnam. She’s right. It’s so sad and depressing.
Jordan can thank Republicans representing districts Joe Biden won in 2020 for most of his vote-counting woes. Nebraska Rep. 
I would say that this is no way to run a country or a homeland of gods. So, Israel has a coalition government, and we have a hot mess. Does democracy really have to be this disorganized and angry? Given the proof of a war crime, I can’t drop the Israeli/Palestinian suffering and the current escalation of war crimes as Israel dropped the
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