This is going to be a quick post, because I’m having a pain flareup, and it’s difficult to use my computer. There is quite a bit of news today; here are some stories that caught my attention.
“In the past few weeks, I have been trying to convince my colleagues it would be eccentric to change governments when we have achieved so much,” he said in his speech outside No. 10 Downing St. amid loud booing from the crowd nearby. “I regret not to be successful in those arguments and, of course, it’s painful not to be able to see through those projects myself.”
Johnson also said he planned to remain as prime minister until a successor is chosen — a move that may face opposition from others in an increasingly hostile Parliament.
In his speech, he hailed his government’s achievements, including supporting Ukraine after the Russian invasion and weathering the Covid pandemic.
He becomes the third consecutive British prime minister to resign before their term in recent years, following in the footsteps of Theresa May and David Cameron.
While Johnson was met by applause from colleagues on Downing Street, boos from a crowd nearby threatened to drown out his speech. Meanwhile, a loudspeaker blasted a reworked version of the Bay City Rollers song “Bye Bye Baby” with the lyrics changed to “Bye bye Boris.”
Among tax lawyers, the most invasive type of random audit carried out by the I.R.S. is known, only partly jokingly, as “an autopsy without the benefit of death.”
Wassily Kandinsky, Murnau, Garden
The odds of being selected for that audit in any given year are tiny — out of nearly 153 million individual returns filed for 2017, for example, the I.R.S. targeted about 5,000, or roughly one out of 30,600.
One of the few who received a bureaucratic letter with the news that his 2017 return would be under intensive scrutiny was James B. Comey, who had been fired as F.B.I. director that year by President Donald J. Trump. Furious over what he saw as Mr. Comey’s lack of loyalty and his pursuit of the Russia investigation, Mr. Trump had continued to rail against him even after his dismissal, accusing him of treason, calling for his prosecution and publicly complaining about the money Mr. Comey received for a book after his dismissal.
Mr. Comey was informed of the audit in 2019. Two years later, the I.R.S., still under the leadership of a Trump appointee after President Biden took office, picked about 8,000 returns for the same type of audit Mr. Comey had undergone from the 154 million individual returns filed in 2019, or about one in 19,250.
Among those who were chosen to have their 2019 returns scrutinized was the man who had been Mr. Comey’s deputy at the bureau: Andrew G. McCabe, who served several months as acting F.B.I. director after Mr. Comey’s firing.
Trump is probably getting very nervous today, because his last White House Counsel Pat Cippilone is expected to testify tomorrow in a private hearing of the January 6 Committee.
Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel under former President Donald Trump, has reached an agreement to appear Friday before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, two sources familiar with the matter tell CBS News.
Woman with a parasol in a garden, Pierre Auguste Renoir
The panel issued a subpoena for Cipollone’s testimony last week after former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified that Cipollone strongly opposed Trump’s efforts to travel to the Capitol on Jan. 6. Other witnesses have testified that Cipollone was one of the main White House officials opposed to attempts by Trump and his allies to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He previously sat for an informal interview with the committee.\Hutchinson testified that Cipollone said a trip to the Capitol would present “serious legal concerns” and urged her multiple times to work to make sure such a trip didn’t happen.
“Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy. Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,” Hutchinson recalled Cipollone telling her.
Hutchinson also recounted an exchange between White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who was her boss, and Cipollone as rioters breached the Capitol on Jan. 6. Cipollone urged Meadows to speak to the president, Hutchinson said. She testified that Cipollone told Meadows that “something needs to be done or people are going to die, and the blood is going to be on your effing hands.”
A right-wing activist whose organization wrote a brief that was cited by the United States Supreme Court in its decision to overturn Roe v. Wade also posted a video in which she boasted of praying with the justices.
Rolling Stone is reporting that Peggy Nienaber, who serves as the executive director of a ministry that falls under Liberty Counsel’s umbrella organization, boasted that she and her associates are “the only people” who get an opportunity to pray with sitting Supreme Court justices.
A video obtained by the publication shows that Nienaber made the admission to a live streamer who was filming outside the court during a celebration of its decision to overturn 50 years of precedent on abortion rights.
Paul Cézanne, Poplars
“You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” the live streamer asked her at one point.
“I do,” Nienaber replied. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.”
Rolling Stone notes that this could be a conflict of interest for the justices who chose to pray with Nienaber.
“Such an arrangement presents a problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag,” the publication writes.
HIGHLAND PARK, Ill. – The dad of the accused Fourth of July parade killer told The Post on Wednesday that his son talked about a mass shooting in Denmark the night before allegedly launching his own massacre — and the dad washed his hands of any guilt over how the suspect got his gun.
“He goes, ‘Yeah, that guy is an idiot.’ That’s what he said!” the dad recalled his son saying of the Denmark shooter.
Irises in the artist’s garden at giverny, Claude Monet, 1900
The father said his son added, “People like that … [commit mass shootings] to amp up the people that want to ban all guns.”
“I talked to him 13 hours before [Monday’s massacre]. That’s why I guess I’m in such shock. … Like, did he have a psychiatric break or something?” the father said of his son.
On Tuesday, Steven Greenberg, who previously represented R. Kelly in the fallen singing superstar’s federal sex-trafficking case out of Brooklyn, announced that Crimo Jr. and his estranged wife, Denise, had retained him in the wake of their son’s arrest.
Congratulations are apparently in order for Elon Musk: The Tesla chief executive had twins in November with Shivon Zilis, a top executive at his company Neuralink. The news of the twins’ arrival, first reported Wednesday by Insider, brings Musk’s total brood count to nine.
Court filings obtained by the outlet showed that Musk and Zilis filed a petition to change their children’s names to “have their father’s last name and contain their mother’s last name as part of their middle name” in April. One month later, a Texas judge approved the petition.
The twins were reportedly born just “weeks” before the SpaceX founder and musician Grimes had a baby daughter via surrogate. The girl is the couple’s second child. Her existence was also kept secret until March this year, when a Vanity Fairreporter sent to profile Grimes heard the “lone cry” of a baby upstairs.
Pierre Bonnard, The Small Garden
Zilis, 36, is identified on her LinkedIn as director of operations and special projects at Neuralink, a neurotechnology firm co-founded and chaired by Musk. She began working at the company in May 2017, the same month she was named a project director in artificial intelligence at Tesla, where she remained until 2019.
An expert in artificial intelligence, Zilis met Musk, 51, in 2015. Insider reported that her work at OpenAI, a research laboratory co-founded by Musk. He exited his leadership role there in 2019 to focus on “a painfully large number of engineering & manufacturing problems” at other companies under his umbrella, including Tesla and SpaceX, Bloomberg News reported at the time.
Zilis has “been floated” as a potential pick to run Twitter should Musk’s $44 billion deal go through, Insider said. She often publicly engages with Musk on Twitter, replying to his tweets and in at least one instance defending him from critics.
That’s all I have for you today. I wish you all a peaceful Thursday.
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Here’s hoping you’re safe where you are today. Thanks to the NRA, Republican lawmakers, and the “Supreme” Court we might as well be living in the wild west before law and order arrived. Yesterday, we supposedly celebrated the birthday of the “United” States of America, and at least two celebrations provided opportunities for angry young men with guns to kill people. In some states it’s no longer safe to go to a grocery store, a Walmart, a movie theater, a nightclub, a music festival, a school, or even a church, mosque, or synagogue. And with the most recent SCOTUS decision on guns, even blue states will see their gun laws weakened.
First there was the horrific mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, IL and later last night another shooting during a fireworks display in Philadelphia.
At least six people were killed in a shooting in downtown Highland Park, Illinois, during a Fourth of July parade, and dozens have been injured, officials said.
The suspected gunman, who has not been charged, was taken into custody Monday evening. He used a “high-powered rifle” in the attack, police said.
Robert “Bobby” E. Crimo III, the person of interest identified by police after Monday’s shooting in a Chicago suburb that killed six people and wounded 38 others, left a long trail of tributes to mass shootings and public killings on social media platforms, according to numerous profiles that appear to belong to him.
Crimo performed as a rapper who went by the name “Awake,” whose recent music videos included depictions of mass murder.
Crimo’s most recent video posted to YouTube showed him in the aftermath of a school shooting. It ends with Crimo draping himself in an American flag. Another music video showed a cartoon depiction of a man wearing a shirt with his YouTube channel’s logo on it, holding a long gun and being shot by police….
Crimo had his own Discord server, where fans and people who knew him would chat. The community featured a politics board filled with nihilistic political memes. The most recent post before the shooting, which was posted in March, was a picture of Budd Dwyer, the Pennsylvania state treasurer who shot and killed himself on live television in the late 1980s, along with the caption “I wish politicians still gave speeches like this.”
On Discord, fans would share posts that Crimo had made of himself. One apparent selfie Crimo took in March reads: “Cursed image screenshot and send to everyone or commit not alive anymore,” a reference to suicide….
Crimo also posted frequently to a message board that discussed graphic depictions of murder, suicide and death. His most recent post to that message board came last week, when he posted a video of a beheading.
The suspected shooter posted music on several major streaming platforms under the pseudonym Awake the Rapper, and he apparently made and posted music videos online featuring ominous lyrics and animated scenes of gun violence.
In one video titled “Are you Awake,” a cartoon animation of a stick-figure shooter resembling the suspect’s appearance is seen wearing tactical gear and carrying out an attack with a rifle. Crimo, seen with multicolored hair and face tattoos, narrates, “I need to just do it. It is my destiny.”
In another video titled “Toy Soldier, a similar stick-figure resembling the suspect is depicted lying face down on the floor in a pool of his own blood, surrounded by police officers with their guns drawn.
"The people who were gone were blown up by that gunfire. Blown up.
…Those [injuries] are what are seen in victims of war, not victims at a parade."
Among them was David Baum, a local physician, who was standing with members of his family just 200 feet from the majority of the casualties, he said.
“All of a sudden, you heard these Howitzer-type noises going off. Immediately people started screaming ‘Bodies down, shooter,’ and they all started scattering,” he recalled.
“I told my family to run,” Baum said. He remained briefly in a location that was sheltered from the gunfire. “Then I kind of just stuck around until I thought maybe, maybe there was no longer the threat.”
After the shooting stopped, “there were a lot of people screaming,” he said.
“There were six bodies that were immediately assessed to be dead. Those bodies were literally blown up by these bullets.”
Other victims were hit in the arms or legs, Baum said. “I saw horrific, devastating injuries, the kind that you normally see in a war.”
As emergency responders tended to victims, Baum said he pitched in with other healthcare professionals, including a nurse, a nurse practitioner, an emergency room doctor, and a plastic surgeon.[….]
“I don’t think I need to describe the horrific nature of what the bullets did to those bodies, but it was horrific,” said Baum of Monday’s attack. “As a physician for 33 years, blood doesn’t bother me. But seeing people’s heads blown up, and bodies eviscerated, would be disturbing to anyone who was there besides maybe a physician.
As I wrote above, there was another shooting in Philadelphia last night.
Two police officers were shot near Philadelphia’s Benjamin Franklin Parkway as thousands attended a Fourth of July concert and fireworks show Monday night, leading to crowds scattering from the scene.
One officer sustained a graze wound to the head and the other a gunshot wound to the right shoulder, Philadelphia Police Department Commissioner Danielle Outlaw said just after midnight Tuesday. Both were treated and released from Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, she said.
A photo supplied to NBC10 by John McNesby, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 5 union, showed a bullet lodged in an officer’s cap. Inside the cap was a memorial card for a Philadelphia police chaplain who recently died.
“It is miraculous the fact that the round stopped in his hat,” Outlaw said.
The officer grazed in the head is a 36-year-old PPD highway patrol officer and the other is a 44-year-old Montgomery County Sheriffs’ deputy, the commissioner said. Both were part of the security detail for the festival, she said.
The gunman was not immediately arrested or identified. It was unclear if the officers were targeted or if they were struck during “celebratory gunfire” amid Fourth of July festivities, Outlaw said….
The gunfire broke out around 9:47 p.m. near the Philadelphia Museum of Art during the finale of the 16-day Wawa Welcome America festival as throngs of people watched a fireworks show following a concert headlined by Jason Derulo on the parkway, police said.
Not surprisingly, the crowd panicked and people ran to find safety.
This is the scene in Philadelphia during reported active shooter during firework show tonight.
We need to stop debating and start acting on gun safety. All Americans- left and right do not want gun violence to continue. It doesn’t have to be this way.
Communities across the United States were left shaken after fireworks were mistaken for gunfire during multiple July Fourth celebrations, causing scenes of chaos.
In a sign of heightened alert after the shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, where six people were killed and 38 injured on Monday morning, crowds ran for cover at separate events in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and Orlando, Florida.
Police said about 12 people were injured in a stampede in Orlando caused by the crowd mistaking fireworks for gunfire. Reporters said hundreds of people ran away from the display, taking cover where they could.
“We believe this was fireworks that were going off in the crowd at the same time the main fireworks display was going off,” Orlando Deputy Police Chief Eric Smith told CBS affiliate WKMG.
“People started running, believing it was gunshots, of course, with everything that’s going on.”
This year’s Fourth of July weekend, a time when Americans gather for barbecues, parades and fireworks, was marred by violence, rattling a nation already on edge in the wake of multiple mass shootings.
The Highland Park tragedy marked the 309th mass shooting in the U.S. in 2022, according to the Gun Violence Archive, which defines a mass shooting as four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter.
It also occurred during a weekend that saw at least 57 people shot in the Windy City, nine fatally, NBC Chicago reported.
In the neighboring state of Wisconsin, one person was killed and four others were injured in Kenosha when gunfire erupted around 10:20 p.m. in the 6300 block of 25th Avenue, according to the Kenosha Police Department….
“There are no suspects in custody and no known motive,” police said, as the investigation in ongoing.
On the East Coast, two Philadelphia-area law enforcement officers were injured in a shooting that erupted as tens of thousands of people celebrated July Fourth, gathering for fireworks and live music Monday at and near the city’s famed Museum of Art….
The gunfire broke out before 2 a.m. in the 1500 block of L Street as people were leaving the club, Sacramento police said. The victim was identified as 31-year-old Gregory Grimes.
There were also shooting incidents in New York City, Kansas City, MO, Richmond, VA, and Haltom City, TX. Read more details at the link.
This is what easy access to dangerous weapons has done to our country. America not so beautiful.
Again, please stay safe and take care of yourselves today.
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Patriot Front, a group that the Southern Poverty Law Center classified as a white nationalist hate group that broke off from Vanguard America after the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017, march down South Michigan Avenue in the Loop as anti-abortion activists march across the street during a March for Life rally, Saturday afternoon, Jan. 8, 2022.Pat Nabong/Sun-Times
Freedom’s Ring is faint and disappearing in the USA!
Guns have more rights in this country than women and children. The Supreme Court is rewriting law after law with little more justification than they were put there by the Federalist Society to get the job done, they now hold a supermajority and their misguided religious fervor will rule every decision. Police can overlook stating Miranda Rights. The EPA can’t oversee pollution releases in carbon-producing companies This is what the post-2016 election era has brought us. We are living in a Republican dystopia and it’s getting worse.
Every American officeholder should announce that they will never appoint anyone recommended by the extremist group funded by the Koch brothers and others to any judicial appointment. Every candidate needs to announce their intent.
I would suggest you read a compelling book about Germany called The Death of Democracy: Hitler’s Rise to Power and the Downfall of the Weimar Republic published in 2018 and written by Benjamin Carter Hett. As you ask yourselves what Germans in the years of 1933-1934 should’ve, would’ve, could’ve been doing finish by asking yourselves what should we be doing now?
To say that Hitler was elected is too simple. He would never have come to power if Germany’s leading politicians had not responded to a spate of populist insurgencies by trying to co-opt him, a strategy that backed them into a corner from which the only way out was to bring the Nazis in. Hett lays bare the misguided confidence of conservative politicians who believed that Hitler and his followers would willingly support them, not recognizing that their efforts to use the Nazis actually played into Hitler’s hands. They had willingly given him the tools to turn Germany into a vicious dictatorship.
Benjamin Carter Hett is a leading scholar of twentieth-century Germany and a gifted storyteller whose portraits of these feckless politicians show how fragile democracy can be when those in power do not respect it. He offers a powerful lesson for today, when democracy once again finds itself embattled and the siren song of strongmen sounds ever louder.
Realize that Republicans at all levels are using these same techniques. We have “spates” of right-wing insurgencies and they appear only helpless and enabling to stop the rise of White Nationalism. Patriot Front marched around the Freedom Trail in downtown Boston this weekend. The Patriot Front also showed up around Independence day in Philadelphia in 2021. The group was run off by residents. They were arrested in Idaho last month. They are a radical white Christian nationalist group. This is not normal. They’re showing up everywhere.
Driving the news: Police received a call around 12:30 p.m. that a group of protesters were marching through the city, though their route was unknown, CNN reported.
Many of the marchers wore khaki pants and dark-colored polo shirts, with cloth coverings over their lower faces, along with sunglasses and caps.
State of play: The group approached a rental truck parked near the Haymarket metro stop and unloaded shields and a number of different flags, according to the Boston Herald.
Among them were U.S. flags, with some being flown upside down and others showing just the 13 stars of the original U.S. colonies. Other flags displayed versions of the symbol used by Benito Mussolini’s National Fascist Party, per the Herald.
Patriot Front flags were also flown, per CNN.
Boston police received a report around 1:25 p.m. of a Black man being injured in a confrontation with Patriot Front marchers.
The man told police that he was pushed around, knocked to the ground, and assaulted by members of the group, suffering several lacerations. He was later taken to Tufts Medical Center, the Herald reported.
Around 1:30 p.m. the group left the scene via the metro system after packing their materials into a rental truck, per the Herald.
The big picture: City Council President Ed Flynn wrote in a letter Saturday that members of neo-Nazi groups have “continued to make their presence known” in Boston in recent months.
In February they targeted doctors working to address racial disparities in healthcare at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital and appeared at the city’s Saint Patrick’s Day parade in March, Flynn wrote.
What to watch: The Boston Police Department is conducting a civil rights investigation into the incident and no arrests have yet been made, per the Herald.
What they’re saying: “The disgusting hate of white supremacists has no place here. [Especially] when so many of our rights are under attack, we will not normalize intimidation by bigots,” Boston Mayor Michelle Wu tweeted on Saturday.
I will never go to Florida again. It’s become the fascist cookbook for laws that could be enforced by the White Nationalist Inquisition. They’ve come for me again. Every student and especially professor at any legitimate university or college has what is called Academic Freedom. It no longer exists in Florida
The concept of academic freedom is based on the idea that the free exchange of ideas on campus is essential to good education. Specifically, academic freedom is the right of faculty members, acting both as individuals and as a collective, to determine without outside interference: (1) the college curriculum; (2) course content; (3) teaching; (4) student evaluation; and (5) the conduct of scholarly inquiry. These rights are supported by two institutional practices—shared governance and tenure (see below.) Academic freedom ensures that colleges and universities are “safe havens” for inquiry, places where students and scholars can challenge the conventional wisdom of any field—art, science, politics or others.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) on Tuesday signed legislation mandating public colleges and universities survey students and faculty about their beliefs in an effort to promote intellectual diversity on campuses.
“We obviously want our universities to be focused on critical thinking, academic rigor,” DeSantis said during a news conference Tuesday, according to the Naples Daily News.
“We do not want them as basically hotbeds for stale ideology,” he said.
“It used to be thought that a university campus was a place where you’d be exposed to a lot of different ideas,” DeSantis said. “Unfortunately, now the norm is, these are more intellectually repressive environments,” he added.
Under House Bill 233, surveys would be conducted annually on campuses to assess viewpoint diversity and intellectual freedom, and determine “the extent to which competing ideas and perspectives are presented,” and whether students and faculty “feel free to express beliefs and viewpoints on campus and in the classroom.”
I would hate to hear what DeSantis thinks is “stale ideology”. Academic freedom supports the free exchange of ideas but basically ensuring your faculty has an agenda you approve of is just about as fascist as you can get. Throw out theory and replace it with whatever. Does this mean Med Schools must teach that a clump of vibrating cells is a heartbeat when there are no valves present in a fetus at that point in development? How about me? We all live in mixed market economies. Capitalism, Socialism, Communism, whatever are political ideologies and are discussed just as philosophical takes on how to apply data and theory. They’re abstracts only. There, I just got in trouble because I use market economies and dump the philosophical vantages for the idea of doing what works for each individual market. Capitalism is a Marxist Construct. Are my views stale or is he just plain ignorant?
Last month, Major League Baseball and its partners again released Independence Day-themed baseball hats that each of the 30 teams will wear. This year’s version features a flush of stars across the front against a blue and white backdrop, offset with a shaggy shock of red. The Toronto Blue Jays, located in a country that does not celebrate American independence, were also issued the caps — even though the Canadian flag does not contain stars nor the color blue. Public outrage prompted a redesign of the Toronto caps. Next is the USA-themed socks, the marketing, the freedom-inspired spikes, gloves, wristbands, the inevitable paeans to the armed forces.
By now, we’re all numb to the spectacle. At least publicly, the emphasis on the Fourth of July shifted from family to symbols years ago — Sept. 11 did that. Two decades of paid patriotism has made it ever harder to center the Fourth on reconnecting with your favorite aunts and uncles. No backyard barbecue and badminton game could compete with 20 years of military tributes and unquestioned nationalism. You think back to Righetti. Cosmetically, there was nothing about that July 4, 1983, that said patriotism. All Yankee Stadium said that day 39 years ago was baseball. Ninety-four degrees. Sox-Yankees. The Stadium looked as it did every other day. The crowd came because it was July 4, a Monday day game — a great day for baseball and family — and, along with Bat Day, the biggest giveaway day of the year: Yankee Cap Day. You smile a little at the victory in that, because only a few decades earlier, the Yankees were most resistant to a brilliant piece of marketing. In the 1950s, the Yankees did not want fans wearing Yankees caps. George Weiss, the Yankees’ general manager at the time, thought a million New York kids wearing the team cap cheapened the brand. Yankees hats were a piece of a professional uniform. They were for players, not fans.
Grilling, baseball and fireworks, first replaced by symbols — and now by a country tearing itself completely apart. July 4, 2022, falls in the midst of devastation. It is Independence Day in America with independence under current and relentless assault. From Miranda rights to the environment, to the separation of church and state, to guns — so many guns — people are reeling. The U.S. Supreme Court has run a chain saw through what two generations of Americans had known to be the legal baselines of their lives. Tens of millions of women today do not feel freedom and certainly are not celebrating independence. The people who can become pregnant who feel celebratory toward the Court may do so from the victory of their position, but it nevertheless remains true that the power of choice — and the right to privacy — has been taken from all of them.
He was not speaking metaphorically. It was not an offhand comment. President Donald J. Trump had every intention of joining a mob of supporters he knew to be armed and dangerous as it marched to the Capitol. And there had even been talk of marching into the House chamber himself to disrupt Congress from ratifying his election defeat.
For a year and a half, Mr. Trump has been shielded by obfuscations and mischaracterizations, benefiting from uncertainty about what he was thinking on Jan. 6, 2021. If he truly believed the election had been stolen, if he genuinely expected the gathering at the Capitol would be a peaceful protest, the argument went, then could he be held accountable, much less indicted, for the mayhem that ensued?
But for a man who famously avoids leaving emails or other trails of evidence of his unspoken motives, any doubts about what was really going through Mr. Trump’s mind on that day of violence seemed to have been eviscerated by testimony presented in recent weeks by the House committee investigating the Capitol attack — especially the dramatic appearance last week of a 26-year-old former White House aide who offered a chilling portrait of a president willing to do almost anything to hang onto power.
So, this is not a drill. This is real. I think it’s time we dig into a little Weimar Republic History and see where the Germans got it wrong and then vow to get it right.
Happy Independence Day even though we are less independent today than we were when Hillary told us during her campaign that all of this was bound to happen.
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
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Monday is the Fourth of July, AKA Independence Day, but it’s difficult to celebrate “freedom” when the Supreme Court is rapidly taking away our rights. It feels as if we are racing against time to prevent a fascist takeover of the U.S. And no, I don’t think that is an exaggeration.
I’m hoping for a quiet weekend on the political news front, but there is still news breaking today. Republicans are still trying to undercut Cassidy Hutchinson’s testimony before the January 6 Committee, and There is also a bit of news about the DOJ investigation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. We are still dealing with the aftermath of a series of shocking SCOTUS decisions and fears of what these out-of-control “justices” may do next.
Then-President Donald Trump angrily demanded to go to the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, and berated his protective detail when he didn’t get his way, according to two Secret Service sources who say they heard about the incident from multiple agents, including the driver of the presidential SUV where it occurred.
The sources tell CNN that stories circulated about the incident — including details that are similar to how former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson described it to the House select committee investigating January 6 — in the months immediately afterward the US Capitol attack and before she testified this week.
While the details from those who heard the accounts differ, the Secret Service sources say they were told an angry confrontation did occur. And their accounts align with significant parts of Hutchinson’s testimony, which has been attacked as hearsay by Trump and his allies who also have tried to discredit her overall testimony.
Like Hutchinson, one source, a longtime Secret Service employee, told CNN that the agents relaying the story described Trump as “demanding” and that the former President said something similar to: “I’m the f**king President of the United States, you can’t tell me what to do.” The source said he originally heard that kind of language was used shortly after the incident.
“He had sort of lunged forward — it was unclear from the conversations I had that he actually made physical contact, but he might have. I don’t know,” the source said. “Nobody said Trump assaulted him; they said he tried to lunge over the seat — for what reason, nobody had any idea.”
The employee said he’d heard about the incident multiple times as far back as February 2021 from other agents, including some who were part of the presidential protective detail during that time period but none of whom were involved in the incident.
The source added that agents often recounted stories of Trump’s fits of anger, including the former President throwing and breaking things.
“Not just plates,” the source added, a reference to how Hutchinson testified this week that she saw ketchup on the wall and a porcelain plate shattered on the floor of the White House dining room after Trump had thrown his lunch at the wall upon hearing about then-Attorney General William Barr telling a media outlet there was no widespread fraud in the 2020 election.
Until Tuesday, we had both publicly stated that the Department of Justice had insufficient evidence to indict former President Trump for his conduct on Jan. 6. Our conclusion, which we each came to independently, was largely grounded in First Amendment concerns about criminalizing purely political speech.
But Tuesday’s explosive testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, changed our minds. In particular, Hutchinson testified to hearing Trump order that the magnetometers (metal detectors) used to keep armed people away from the president be removed: “I don’t fucking care that they have weapons, they’re not here to hurt me. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the fucking mags [magnetometers] away. Let my people in. They can march to the Capitol from here; let the people in and take the mags away.”
Admittedly, Hutchinson is only one witness, and it is true that some of her testimony would, in the context of a criminal trial, constitute hearsay. But Hutchinson—unlike many of her detractors who have contested certain details of her testimony—testified under oath and, contrary to the sneering commentary of the House Judiciary Committee GOP Twitter account, not all of Hutchinson’s second-hand remarks were introduced to establish the truth of the matter asserted. Even much of that portion of her testimony that did constitute hearsay might still be admissible under the relevant evidentiary rules.
These utterances by Trump (as alleged by Hutchinson) were not political speech. They serve as additional proof of intent and context, and—crucially—a material act to increase the likelihood of violence. This easily distinguishes Trump’s speech at the rally from other kinds of core political speech that should never be criminalized.
Read the authors’ legal arguments at the Lawfare link.
The Justice Department has subpoenaed two Republican Arizona state senators for information tied to possible correspondence with President Donald Trump’s attorneys as attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election were underway.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and Sen. Kelly Townsend received subpoenas last week, according to Kim Quintero, a spokeswoman for Senate Republicans in Arizona. The subpoenas came as the Justice Department deepened its investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol to include key Republican players in battleground states. Fann and Townsend are the first state legislators known to have received subpoenas as part of that push.
The Yellow Sheet Report, a political tip sheet, first reported the news. The legislators received the subpoenas while at the Arizona Capitol in Phoenix. Federal agents tried to deliver Townsend’s at her home, she said; she invited them to the statehouse, where she was working.
The subpoenas came the same week Arizona House Speaker Russell “Rusty” Bowers (R) testified before the U.S. House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bowers testified about efforts by Trump and his allies to overturn the former president’s loss in Arizona.
Bowers told The Washington Post on Friday that he has not been subpoenaed and that he is not aware of any members of the Arizona House who have been subpoenaed.
Fann and Townsend are complying with the request, Quintero said, and staff members have already identified tens of thousands of records from constituents and others that could fit what is being broadly requested. The subpoenas are identical and request emails and text messages, Quintero said.
“They’re requesting text messages and emails from a list of people, which I can’t disclose who those people are, because they told us not to speak with the media about this,” she said.
Hours after the Supreme Court action, the Buckeye state had outlawed any abortion after six weeks. Now this doctor had a 10-year-old patient in the office who was six weeks and three days pregnant.
But for now, the procedure still is legal in Indiana. And so the girl soon was on her way to Indiana to Bernard’s care.
While Indiana law did not change last week when the Supreme Court issued its groundbreaking Dobbs decision, abortion providers here have felt an effect, experiencing a dramatic increase in the number of patients coming to their clinics from neighboring states with more restrictive policies.
Hours after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last week, a man with a wiry, squared-off beard and a metal cross around his neck celebrated with his team at a Brazilian steakhouse. He pulled out his phone to livestream to his followers.
“We have delivered a huge blow to the enemy and to this industry,” the man, Jeff Durbin, said. But, he explained, “our work has just really begun.”
“Even the states that have trigger laws,” which ban abortion at conception without exceptions for rape or incest, did not go far enough, Mr. Durbin, a pastor in the greater Phoenix area, said. “They do not believe that the woman should ever be punished.”
Resistance to “the question of whether or not people who murder their children in the wombs are guilty,” he said, “is going to have to be something we have to overcome, because women are still going to be killing their children in the womb.”
Even as those in the anti-abortion movement celebrate their nation-changing Supreme Court victory, there are divisions over where to go next. The most extreme, like Mr. Durbin, want to pursue what they call “abortion abolition,” a move to criminalize abortion from conception as homicide, and hold women who have the procedure responsible — a position that in some states could make those women eligible for the death penalty. That position is at odds with the anti-abortion mainstream, which opposes criminalizing women and focuses on prosecuting providers.
Many people who oppose abortion believe that life begins at conception and that abortion is murder. Abolitionists follow that thinking to what they believe is the logical, and uncompromising, conclusion: From the moment of conception, abolitionists want to give the fetus equal protection as a person under the 14th Amendment.
No equal rights for the pregnant woman though–she’s just a broodmare now.
Voting rights advocates expressed alarm Friday, a day after the U.S. Supreme Court said it will consider a conservative legal theory giving state legislatures virtually unchecked power over federal elections, warning that it could erode basic tenets of American democracy.
The idea, known as the “independent legislature theory,” represents to some theorists a literal reading of the Constitution.
But in its most far-reaching interpretation, it could cut governors and state courts out of the decision-making process on election laws while giving state lawmakers free rein to change rules to favor their own party. The impact could extend to presidential elections in 2024 and beyond, experts say, making it easier for a legislature to disregard the will of its state’s citizens.
This immense power would go to legislative bodies that are themselves undemocratic, many advocates say, because they have been gerrymandered to create partisan districts, virtuallyensuring the party-in-power’s candidates cannot be beaten. Republicans control both legislative chambers in 30 states and have been at the forefront of pushing the theory….
The [January 6] committee has offered fresh evidence suggesting President Donald Trump sought to disrupt the congressional counting of electoral votes to allow state legislatures time to send alternate slates of electorsas part of a bid to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
State legislatures have already introduced or enacted laws in a number of GOP-controlled states that voting rights groups say make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Experts say if the Supreme Court adopts the independent legislature theory, it would give state lawmakers ultimate control over election-related decisions like redistricting, as well as issues such asvoting qualifications and voting by mail.
“This is part of a broader strategy to make voting harder and impose the will of state legislatures regardless of the will of the people,” said Suzanne Almeida, director of state operations for Common Cause, a nonpartisan pro-democracy group. “It is a significant change to the power of state courts to rein in state legislatures.”
The case could also open the door for state legislatures to claim ultimate control over electors in presidential elections, said Marc Elias, aveteran Democratic voting rights attorney.
The latest Emerson College Polling national survey of US voters finds a majority disapprove of President Biden, Congress, and the Supreme Court. Biden has a 40% job approval, while 53% disapprove of the job he is doing as president. Since last month, Biden’s approval has increased two points. The US Congress has a 19% job approval, while 70% disapprove of the job they are doing. The Supreme Court has a 36% job approval; 54% disapprove.
Spencer Kimball, Executive Director of Emerson College Polling said, “Independent voters align more with Democrats on Supreme Court approval: 71% of Democrats and 58% of Independents disapprove of the job that the Supreme Court is doing whereas a majority, 56%, of Republicans approve of the job they are doing.”
In the 2022 November Midterm Elections, 46% of voters plan to vote for the Republican congressional candidate on the ballot while 43% plan to support the Democratic congressional candidate. This congressional ballot test has remained relatively stagnant since last month’s national poll, where Republicans also led by three points on the congressional ballot, 45% to 42%.
Looking at 2024, 64% of Democratic primary or caucus voters think President Biden should be the Democratic nominee for president, while 36% think he should not be. In the 2024 Republican Primary, 55% of voters would support former President Trump, 20% Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and 9% former Vice President Mike Pence. No other potential GOP candidate clears 5%.
In a hypothetical 2024 Presidential Election matchup between President Biden and former President Trump, Trump holds 44% support while Biden has 39% support; 12% would vote for someone else and 5% are undecided. “Since last month, Trump has held his share of support while Biden’s support has reduced four points.”
The Trump family crime syndicate certainly is a cult. Let’s hope we don’t get a repeat where the left just boycotts our democracy because they can’t get their way. The desire to see Roe as national law is strong everywhere but in the White Christian Nationalist party.
Following the Supreme Court decision to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling, which leaves abortion legality up to the states, 59% of voters think that Congress should pass a law legalizing the right to abortion. Among women, support for the legislation is higher: 62% think Congress should pass a law legalizing the right to abortion compared to 55% of men.
“While a majority, 65%, of Republicans oppose Congress passing a law to legalize the right to abortion, the policy has majority support among Democrats and Independent voters, 81% of Democratic voters and 58% of Independent voters support federal legislative action to legalize abortion,” Kimball said.
Congressional legalization of the right to abortion has the highest support among 18-29 year olds: 76% support a federal legalization of abortion, compared to 59% of 30-49 year olds, 50% of 50-64 year olds, and 56% of those over 65.
A majority, 57%, say that they or someone that they’ve known have had an abortion. Among those who have had or know someone who has had an abortion, 62% think Congress should pass a law legalizing the right to abortion.
There are also some numbers on the impact of the public hearings held by the January 6th committee.
The January 6th hearings have had a split impact on voters’ intention to vote for Donald Trump in 2024 if he were to run: 35% say it makes them less likely, 32% say it makes them more likely, 28% say it makes no difference.
Kimball noted, “Half of Republicans say they are more likely to vote for Trump following the January 6th hearings, while a plurality, 38%, of Independents say they are less likely to support Trump if he runs in 2024. More specifically, among those who voted for Trump in 2020, nine percent say they are less likely to vote for him again in 2024 after the hearings.”
Kimball continued, “The January 6th hearings reflect an educational divide, regarding their impact on Trump support: those with a college degree or less are about 33% less likely to vote for Trump because of the hearings, whereas 51% of those with a postgraduate degree are less likely to support Trump because of the hearings.”
Yes, Trump loves him some undereducated people. There are also some numbers on the economy–which is labeled the most important issue by the majority of voters–and gun regulation.
In other polling news, Reproductive and Women’s rights are moving quickly up the priority scale. It’s hard to see that we will get anything done without some new blood in the senate.
A new poll finds a growing percentage of Americans calling out abortion or women’s rights as priorities for the government in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, especially among Democrats and those who support abortion access.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in remarks immediately after the decision that “reproductive freedom is on the ballot in November.” But with pervasive pessimism and a myriad of crises facing the nation, it’s not clear whether the ruling will break through to motivate those voters — or just disappoint them.
Everyone is still reeling from the number of extremely radical opinions forced on us by a group of White Nationalist Christians on the Supreme Court.
Our first job is to educate the public about this anti-democratic power grab and how radical the Court’s political agenda is.
Then we need to focus on the elections. And win enough seats to be in a position to save democracy from these politicians disguised as justices.
The framers intended Congress to be the most powerful of the three branches of government, consisting of representatives of the people and the states. The executive was to be feared and constrained; the judiciary was, in comparison, an afterthought mostly left to future Congresses to craft. In drafting the Federalist Papers, Alexander Hamilton considered the courts the “least dangerous to the political rights of the Constitution.”
What we’ve seen this term is a court determined to prove Hamilton wrong. While Congress has the ability to curtail the authority that the unbalanced, undemocratic courts have accumulated, there seems to be almost no drive among Democrats to even challenge the third branch.
Let me clarify that I do not propose invalidating the principle of judicial review, whereby the courts have the authority to block and overturn legislative and executive actions. The Supreme Court’s function as arbiter of the Constitution is an important and needed one, given the possible abuses from the other branches.
It’s a power that is more easily used to strike down than to build. As Vox’s Ian Milhiser has noted, while the court can’t establish an agency to protect the rights of citizens, it can absolutely erase one out of existence.
Here’s some historical reference from Ian Milhiser at Vox: “The case against the Supreme Court of the United States. The Court was the midwife of Jim Crow, the right hand of union busters, the dead hand of the Confederacy, and now is one of the chief architects of America’s democratic decline.”
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court’s public approval ratings are in free fall. A Gallup poll taken in June before the Court’s decision in Dobbs found that only 25 percent of respondents have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the Court, a historic low. And that’s after nearly a year’s worth of polls showing the Court’s approval in steady decline.
To thisI say, “good.” The Dobbs decision is the culmination of a decades-long effort by Republicans to capture the Supreme Court and use it, not just to undercut abortion rights but also to implement an unpopular agenda they cannot implement through the democratic process.
And the Court’s Republican majority hasn’t simply handed the Republican Party substantive policy victories. It is systematically dismantling voting rights protections that make it possible for every voter to have an equal voice, and for every political party to compete fairly for control of the United States government. Alito, the author of the opinion overturning Roe, is also the author of two importantdecisions dismantling much of the Voting Rights Act.
Moreover, while the present Court is unusually conservative, the judiciary as an institution has an inherent conservative bias. Courts have a great deal of power to strike down programs created by elected officials, but little ability to build such programs from the ground up. Thus, when an anti-governmental political movement controls the judiciary, it will likely be able to exploit that control to great effect. But when a more left-leaning movement controls the courts, it is likely to find judicial power to be an ineffective tool.
The Court, in other words, simply does not deserve the reverence it still enjoys in much of American society, and especially from the legal profession. For nearly all of its history, it’s been a reactionary institution, a political one that serves the interests of the already powerful at the expense of the most vulnerable. And it currently appears to be reverting to that historic mean.
WASHINGTON, DC – JUNE 30: In this handout provided by the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts, Jr. (R) looks on as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson signs the Oaths of Office in the Justices’ Conference Room at the Supreme Court on June 30, 2022 in Washington, DC. Jackson was sworn in as the newest Supreme Court Justice today, replacing the now-retired Justice Stephen G. Breyer. (Photo by Fred Schilling/Collection of the Supreme Court of the United States via Getty Images)
President Joe Biden in a written statement praised Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s historic swearing in as the first Black female Justice of the Supreme Court, calling it a “profound step forward.”
“Her historic swearing in today represents a profound step forward for our nation, for all the young, Black girls who now see themselves reflected on our highest court, and for all of us as Americans,” Biden said in the written statement.
Biden also thanked retiring Justice Stephen Breyer for “his many years of exemplary service.”
Here are some links to news on the latest January 6th Committee’s findings.
“[A person] let me know you have your deposition tomorrow,” read a slide that the Jan. 6 committee broadcast at the end of Hutchinson’s hearing, which Vice Chair Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) characterized as pressure on a key witness. “He wants me to let you know that he’s thinking about you. He knows you’re loyal, and you’re going to do the right thing when you go in for your deposition.”
Meadows is the person whose name was redacted in that slide. Contents of that final deposition were described to POLITICO, which could not independently corroborate the identity of the intermediary or that Meadows directed any message be delivered to Hutchinson before her second deposition.
Mark it on your calendars. This was the week the meteoric political career of Donald Trump did what meteors often do and collided with planet Earth, leaving a large, ugly mark on the landscape.
The fact that Trump may soon announce his candidacy for the presidency in the days ahead is itself more of a sign of his political collapse than it is of any strength he may have. The first time he ran for president, he did it because he thought it would boost his brand. This time he is likely to do it because he thinks it may make him more difficult to prosecute. And because he can use it to mount one last big attempt to fleece his supporters.
The excursion that almost happened came into clearer focus this week, as the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 presented explosive testimony and records detailing Trump’s fervent demands to lead his supporters mobbing the seat of government. Though Trump’s trip was ultimately thwarted by his own security officers, the new evidence cuts closer to the critical question of what he knew about the violence in store for that day.
Trump has acknowledged his foiled effort to reach the Capitol. “Secret Service wouldn’t let me,” he told The Washington Post in April. “I wanted to go. I wanted to go so badly. Secret Service says you can’t go. I would have gone there in a minute.”
But as Trump repeatedly floated the idea in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6, several of his advisers doubted he meant it or didn’t take the suggestion seriously. One senior administration official said Trump raised the prospect repeatedly but in a “joking manner.”
As a result, the White House staff never turned Trump’s stated desires into concrete plans. Press officers made no preparations for a detour to the Capitol, such as scheduling an additional stop for the motorcade and the pool of reporters who follow the president’s movements. There was no operational advance plan drafted for the visit. No speech was written for him to deliver on the Hill, and it wasn’t clear exactly what Trump would do when he got there, said the person who talked with Trump about the idea.
From MediaIte’s Colby Hall: “Rudy Giuliani Deletes Tweet Insisting Cassidy Hutchinson Was Not Present When He Asked for a Pardon.” Giuliani has to be so close to jail that he can smell the jello.
Flagged by Ron Flipowski, who noted “She wasn’t there when I asked Trump for a pardon. But I never asked for a pardon. Only Rudy.”
He deleted the apparently self-incriminating Tweet and clarified that he never asked for a pardon …
So, that’s enough of the chaos for today. I’m just dreaming of BBQ chicken, potato salad, and a really big piece of my mother’s chocolate cake.
Have a nice long weekend!
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The employee said he’d heard about the incident multiple times as far back as February 2021 from other agents, including some who were part of the presidential protective detail during that time period but none of whom were involved in the incident.
Arizona Senate President Karen Fann and 
Could Bernard help?
Even as those in the anti-abortion movement celebrate their nation-changing Supreme Court victory, there are divisions over where to go next. The most extreme, like Mr. Durbin, want to pursue what they call “abortion abolition,” a move to criminalize abortion from conception as homicide, and hold women who have the procedure responsible — a position that in some states could make those women eligible for the death penalty. That position is at odds with the anti-abortion mainstream, which opposes criminalizing women and focuses on prosecuting providers.
State legislatures have already introduced or enacted laws in a number of GOP-controlled states that voting rights groups say make it more difficult to cast a ballot. Experts say if the Supreme Court adopts the independent legislature theory, it would give state lawmakers ultimate control over election-related decisions like redistricting, as well as issues such as
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