NOTE: The artwork in today’s post is from the Los Angeles Cat Art Show.
Amanda, by Mark Ryden
Yesterday Dakinikat wrote about Texas Governor Greg Abbott’s refusal to accept the decision of the right wing, corrupt Supreme Court that Federal law supersedes Texas state law; and therefore, Biden can order the removal of Abbott’s lethal razer wire from the Texas border with Mexico.
Unfortunately, other Republican Governors have come forward to back Abbott, and Donald Trump is urging these governors to send National Guard troops to support Abbott’s illegal activities. This is dangerously close to threatening civil war.
Like pouring water on a grease fire, former President Donald Trump has weighed in on the escalating standoff between the federal government and Texas.
In a multi-part social media post shared Thursday night, Trump called on “all willing states” to deploy their national guard forces to Texas “to prevent the entry of illegals, and to remove them back across the Border.”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott told Tucker Carlson on Friday, that so far, ten governors had sent National Guard or other law enforcement resources to assist on the border, and will be “disappointed” if others do not follow suit.
Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt told Fox News on Friday that he also “absolutely” plans to send national guard soldiers to Texas. ““We’ve already started putting the numbers together,” said Stitt.
(Less than 24 hours earlier, Stitt joined Newsmax host Carl Higbie for a casual chat about potential “force-on-force conflict” breaking out at the border.)
Stitt is one of 25 red state governors who have released statements expressing support for Abbott, who is continuing to defy the Supreme Court’s ruling earlier this week that found that the federal government, not states, have ultimate jurisdiction over border enforcement
The background:
The Court’s 5-4 ruling gave a green light to Border Control to cut down the miles of razor wire that Texas forces had erected without federal permission along the Rio Grande and around Shelby Park in Eagle Pass, which is an epicenter for unauthorized border crossings.
Yawning Toothy Silhouette, by Brandon Boyd
Two weeks ago, the Texas National Guard seized control of Shelby Park, blocking Border Control’s access to the area and effectively preventing them from conducting rescue missions. Rio Grande. Days later, a migrant woman and two children drowned, which the Biden Administration blamed Texas for.
Abbott has doubled down on border enforcement activity since the Supreme Court ruling. He published a strongly-worded letter on Wednesday that accused the Biden Administration of abdicating its constitutional responsibility to protect states from “invasion.” “The federal government has broken the compact between the United States and the states,” Abbott asserted.
Abbott cited a dissenting opinion from the 2012 Supreme Court case Arizona v. United States that argued that states have a constitutional authority to protect themselves if the federal government fails to.
Cori Alonso-Yoder, an associate professor from George Washington University Law School’s Fundamentals of Lawyering Program, told VICE News that she believes Abbott’s statement falls “more into the realm of political theater than actual supported legal theory.”
There’s also a bunch of crazy “christians” who say they will march to the border.
A convoy of hundreds of people plans to head to the Texas border to stop migrants crossing into the country from Mexico.
The group, called “Take Our Border Back,” is organizing on Telegram and now has more than 1,600 followers.
One of the group’s organizers described them as “God’s army” in a planning call, according to Vice.
“This is a biblical, monumental moment that’s been put together by God,” one organizer said, per Vice.
Another said: “We are besieged on all sides by dark forces of evil.”
“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. It is time for the remnant to rise,” they said.
Pete Chambers, a lieutenant colonel organizing the group, has claimed he was a Green Beret. He explained the group’s plans while speaking to conspiracist Alex Jones on his Infowars show on Thursday.
“That’s what Green Berets do. Unconventional warfare is our bread and butter. Now we’re doing domestic internal defense,” Chambers said.
More at the Insider link.
The Senate is now working on a new border bill, and President Biden has endorsed it. It’s not yet clear what House Republicans will do, but Speaker Johnson has said the bill is dead on arrival.
President Joe Biden on Friday urged Congress to pass a bipartisan bill to address the immigration crisis at the nation’s southern border, saying he would shut down the border the day the bill became law.
Katsunori Miyagi, Gravity Cat
“What’s been negotiated would — if passed into law — be the toughest and fairest set of reforms to secure the border we’ve ever had in our country,” Biden said in a statement. “It would give me, as President, a new emergency authority to shut down the border when it becomes overwhelmed. And if given that authority, I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”
Biden’s Friday evening statement resembles a ramping up in rhetoric for the administration, placing the president philosophically in the camp arguing that the border may hit a point where closure is needed. The White House’s decision to have Biden weigh in also speaks to the delicate nature of the dealmaking, and the urgency facing his administration to take action on the border — particularly during an election year, when Republicans have used the issue to rally their base.
The president is also daring Republicans to reject the deal as it faces a make-or-break moment amid GOP fissures.
It comes after a hectic week on the Hill, as Senate negotiators try to salvage monthslong talks to reach a border deal and unlock aid for Ukraine. The White House has continued to engage in talks and has publicly signaled optimism that a deal can be struck, even as some House Republicans say any bill is dead on arrival in the lower chamber. Donald Trump has also tried to scuttle the talks, adding another layer to complicated negotiations.
On the developing deal:
The contours of the deal are still subject to negotiation. But the negotiators have long discussed setting triggers for daily border crossings after which the Biden administration could shut down the border between ports of entry. Under the current proposal, asylum seekers would still be authorized to present claims at authorized ports of entry, although they would face a much higher standard for being granted the opportunity to apply for asylum.
Republicans who support a deal say the authority would both force Biden’s hand and strengthen that of his potential successor.
“This is an opportunity to put laws on the books that someone who is genuinely interested in securing the border will be able to use,” Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) said as the Senate adjourned Thursday. “President Donald J. Trump in 2017 asked for laws like this. We’re going to deliver it and if he becomes president, he’ll be glad that we did.”
The terms of the deal under discussion, which is largely agreed to but not yet final, would also give DHS expulsion authority if border encounters hit an average of 4,000-a-day over the course of a week, a metric that includes asylum appointments. That authority would become mandatory if daily crossings average more than 5,000 people for a week or crest over 8,500 a day, according to two people briefed on the emerging agreement and who were granted anonymity to discuss the details.
Senate negotiators have agreed to empower the US to significantly restrict illegal migrant crossings at the southern border, according to sources familiar with the matter, a move aimed at ending the migrant surge that has overrun federal authorities over the past several months.
President Joe Biden has vowed to use the authority offered by the deal, embracing measures that are far more draconian than he’s previously considered in an area many voters perceive him as weaker than former President Donald Trump.
Kitty Bread Time, by Travis Lampe
The Senate deal, which is expected to be unveiled as soon as next week, would also speed up the asylum process to consider cases within six months – compared with the current system, under which it could take up to 10 years for asylum seekers.
The details provide a new window into high-profile negotiations that have been going on for months – as Senate leaders hold out hope they can attach the deal to aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan as domestic and international crises loom. The plan would also put pressure on Republicans to decide whether to greenlight these new authorities or reject the plan as Trump has urged the GOP to defeat anything short of what he calls a “perfect” bill.
Under the soon-to-be-released package, the Department of Homeland Security would be granted new emergency authority to shut down the border if daily average migrant encounters reach 4,000 over a one-week span. If migrant crossings increase above 5,000 on average per day on a given week, DHS would be required to close the border to migrants crossing illegally not entering at ports of entry. Certain migrants would be allowed to stay if they prove to be fleeing torture or persecution in their countries.
Moreover, if crossings exceed 8,500 in a single day, DHS would be required to close the border to migrants illegally crossing the border. Under the proposal, any migrant who tries to cross the border twice while it is closed would be banned from entering the US for one year.
The goal of the trio of negotiators – GOP Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, Independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona and Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut – is to prevent surges that overwhelm federal authorities. The Biden administration and Senate leaders have been heavily involved in the talks, and more details of the deal are expected to be released in the coming days.
Meanwhile, it appears Congress is continuing to block aid to Ukraine.
In the Senate battle over Ukraine funding, one surprising issue has emerged that has led to a fascinating intra-Republican dispute—and one of the most aggressively anti-Ukraine Republicans is very vocally leading the “anti” side.
The issue is whether the United States and other Western countries should pay to prop up Ukraine’s entire economy, and specifically its social safety net and old-age pensions, or just replenish its critically diminished supply of munitions in its war with Russia. On December 11, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy traveled to Washington to make his case to Congress for $61 billion in emergency assistance the White House has requested for Ukraine.
Paul Koudounaris, Warhol Cat
“If there’s anyone inspired by unresolved issues on Capitol Hill, it’s just [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and his sick clique,” Zelenskiy said, only to fly home empty-handed because many MAGA Republicans in both chambers of Congress have soured on America’s Ukrainian ally—a position in lockstep with Donald Trump’s longtime geopolitical bromance with Russia’s leader-oligarch, Vladimir Putin.
Walking point in that platoon is Ohio Senator J.D. Vance, once an anti-Trump moderate who was reincarnated on the 2022 campaign trail as an ultra-MAGA scourge of liberals and university professors and elite educational institutions (he has a law degree from Yale). “Even if you support funding for Ukraine for some national defense purpose, which obviously I do not, I think it suggests that they’re effectively becoming a welfare client if we’re funding their pensioners,” said Vance, who is considered a possible vice presidential pick for Trump.
In December, Ukraine’s minister for social policy, Oksana Zholnovych, said that 500,000 civil servants, 1.4 million teachers, and 10 million pensioners could experience payment delays if foreign humanitarian assistance is not approved soon.
Vance and other MAGA senators have since gone out of their way to throw cold water on Biden’s funding package for Ukraine, which has been tied down in the Senate with unrelated immigration policy concessions Senate leaders in both parties have demanded to push a deal through.
As I write this I am in Warsaw, 170 miles from Poland’s border with Ukraine. The front line, where Ukrainians are right now fighting and dying, is another 450 miles beyond that. Not so far, in other words. A long day’s drive. I am well within range of Russian missiles, the kind that have hit Kyiv, Odesa, and Lviv so many times over the past two years.
Tens of millions of other people—Poles, Germans, Romanians, Finns, Estonians, Swedes, Slovaks, Lithuanians, Czechs, Latvians, Norwegians—are also in range of Russian conventional missiles, whether launched from Belarus, Russian-controlled parts of Ukraine, or Russia itself. Anyone in Europe could also be hit by Russian nuclear weapons, of course, as Russian television propagandists so frequently like to remind us. Dmitri Medvedev, a former Russian president, in recent months has threatened Poland with the loss of its statehood, threatened Sweden and Finland with nuclear and hypersonic missiles, and said the Baltic states belong to Russia anyway.
Most of the time, the possibility of Russian aggression doesn’t affect anybody or change anything. No one talks about it. Life goes on as normal. In Finland and Romania, preparations for presidential elections are under way. In Germany, farmers are on strike. Lithuania is holding an international light festival.
The moment the Ukrainians start to lose, all of that will change. For the past few months, Western observers have been tossing around the word stalemate, as if the Russian invasion of Ukraine had settled into some kind of dull, permanent stasis. In fact, the battlefield is dynamic. The front line is constantly changing, and the changes, both material and psychological, are starting to favor Russia. The Ukrainians are just as brave as they were a year ago and just as innovative. Their drones recently hit a Russian gas depot near St. Petersburg, hundreds of miles from Ukraine, among other targets. With no navy of their own, they have pushed much of the Russian Black Sea fleet away from their shores. But on the ground, in the southern and eastern parts of their country, they are rationing ammunition. They’ve never had sufficient missiles and bullets, and now they are at risk of not having enough to keep fighting at all.
Marc Dennis, Night Out
Were their front line to fall back dramatically, the horrific violence alone would trigger a shock wave through the rest of Europe. Russian occupation of more territory would continue to mean what it has meant for the past two years: torture chambers, random arrests, and thousands of kidnapped children. But an even deeper, broader shock wave would be triggered by the growing realization that the United States is not just an unreliable ally, but an unserious ally. A silly ally. Unlike the European Union, which collectively spends more money on Ukraine than Americans do but can’t yet produce as many weapons, the U.S. still has ammunition and weapons to send. Now Washington is on the verge of refusing to do so, but not because the White House has had a change of heart.
The looming end of American aid to Ukraine is not a policy decision. For two years, the Biden administration successfully led an international coalition to provide not soldiers but rather military aid to Ukraine. Officials convened regular meetings, consulted with allies, pulled in military support from around the world. Majorities in the U.S. continue to support Ukraine. Majorities in both houses of Congress do too. The Senate is said to have its legislation almost ready to go. But now, for reasons that outsiders find impossible to understand, a minority of Republican members of Congress, in a fit of political pique, are preparing to cut it all off. They might succeed.
Read the rest at The Atlantic. If you can’t get past the paywall, Applebaum has posted a gift article on Twitter.
On Thursday night, Alabama executed Kenneth Eugene Smith using nitrogen gas, a method never before used, but approved by the right wing Supreme Court. It did not go well, but Alabama will pretend that it did.
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall on Friday vowed to continue using nitrogen gas in executions and offered to assist other states interested in the novel method, while fending off concerns that an inmate executed the night before did not become unconscious as quickly as expected and thrashed on the gurney, according to witnesses.
“What occurred last night was textbook,” Marshall told reporters after the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith on Thursday evening by nitrogen hypoxia, in which he was forced to breathe only nitrogen through a mask and was denied oxygen.
The execution, the first in the U.S. using nitrogen gas, lasted roughly 30 minutes from the time it started to Smith’s time of death. Marshall said Friday that nitrogen hypoxia “is no longer an untested method — it is a proven one.”
But the physical reaction of Smith, who was 58 and on death row for over three decades for a 1988 murder-for-hire slaying, was already being highly scrutinized after a 2022 attempt to execute him by lethal injection failed when prison staff could not locate a suitable vein.
Media witnesses to Thursday’s execution said Smith was conscious for several minutes into the execution and then appeared to shake and writhe on the gurney for two minutes. They said that was followed by several minutes of deep breaths until his breathing slowed and it was no longer perceptible….
…one media witness said it appeared to take longer than the state had suggested for Smith to become unconscious and die.
“It’s interesting to see the attorney general say that everything went consistent with plans that they laid out,” Lee Hedgepeth, an Alabama reporter, said on MSNBC.
“We saw him begin violently shaking, thrashing against the straps that held him down,” Hedgepeth said of Smith. “This was the fifth execution that I’ve witnessed in Alabama, and I’ve never seen such a violent execution or a violent reaction to the means of execution.”
He added that Smith had dry-heaved into the mask.
There’s more at the link.
That’s all I have for you today–not a lot of good news, I’m afraid. What stories are you following?
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Good morning…while I wait eagerly for my personal signed copy of Liarmouth by John Waters to come in the mail, here is a shitload of cartoons for y’all to look over.
I’m getting a very slow start this morning. It feels like everything is kind of awful today, as it often is lately. The politics news is bad enough, but sadly there’s been another mass shooting and the perpetrator is still at large. Not surprisingly, it’s in Texas, and of course the weapon was an AR-15.
Five people are dead after being shot in a Texas home by a suspect armed with an AR-15 style rifle in a horrific series of “execution style” shootings, police said.
A manhunt is currently underway for the suspect, identified by police as 39-year-old Francisco Oropeza, according to ABC station KTRK in Houston.
A judge has issued an arrest warrant for Oropeza and assigned a $5 million bond. Authorities believe Oropeza left by walking or on a bicycle and is currently within a two mile radius of the scene, KTRK reported.
Police said the incident occurred at 11:31 p.m. local time on Friday when officials from the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office received a call about harassment in the town of Cleveland, about 55 miles north of Houston.
When authorities arrived at the location, they found several victims shot at the property, police said. Three of the deceased were females and two were males, including the youngest, an 8-year-old boy.
Two female victims were discovered in the bedroom lying on top of two surviving children, authorities told ABC News.
Three minors were located uninjured, but covered in blood. They were transported to a local hospital.
Police said they believe the massacre occurred after neighbors asked the suspect to stop shooting his gun in the front yard because there was a baby trying to sleep.
“My understanding is that the victims, they came over to the fence and said ‘Hey could [you not do your] shooting out in the yard? We have a young baby that’s trying to go to sleep,” and he had been drinking and he says ‘I’ll do what I want to in my front yard,'” San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers told KTRK.
WTF?! I’m at a complete loss for words. There’s more insanity at the link.
Yesterday we got more shocking news about our out-of-control Supreme Court.
Justice Samuel Alito was supposed to speak to law students at George Mason University in Arlington, Va., but when they showed up, he wasn’t there….
It wasn’t a lingering fear of Covid-19. In a mid-April interview in his chambers, Justice Alito fills us in on the May 12, 2022, event: “Our police conferred with the George Mason Police and the Arlington Police and they said, ‘It’s not a good idea. He shouldn’t come here. . . . The security problems will be severe.’ So I ended up giving the speech by Zoom,” he says. “Still, there were so many protesters and they were so loud that you could hear them.”
By now a noisy mob of law students may sound like any other school day, but last May also was a tumultuous time for the court. The preceding week, someone had leaked a draft of Justice Alito’s opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a landmark abortion case that wouldn’t be decided until late June….
He now says that the leak “created an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. We worked through it, and last year we got our work done. This year, I think, we’re trying to get back to normal operations as much as we can. . . . But it was damaging.”
It was damaging for millions of American women and for doctors too, but Sammy is oblivious to that. Alito also believes he knows who the leaker is.
“I personally have a pretty good idea who is responsible, but that’s different from the level of proof that is needed to name somebody,” he says. He’s certain about the motive: “It was a part of an effort to prevent the Dobbs draft . . . from becoming the decision of the court. And that’s how it was used for those six weeks by people on the outside—as part of the campaign to try to intimidate the court.”
That campaign included unlawful assemblies outside justices’ homes, and that wasn’t the worst of it. “Those of us who were thought to be in the majority, thought to have approved my draft opinion, were really targets of assassination,” Justice Alito says. “It was rational for people to believe that they might be able to stop the decision in Dobbs by killing one of us.” On June 8, an armed man was arrested outside the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh; the suspect was later charged with attempted assassination and has pleaded not guilty.
This man is delusional. No one suggested preventing the decision by murdering one of the justices. People peacefully demonstrated outside their homes. One crazy guy showed up outside Kavanaugh’s house and then turned himself into to police without doing anything.
He adds that “I don’t feel physically unsafe, because we now have a lot of protection.” He is “driven around in basically a tank, and I’m not really supposed to go anyplace by myself without the tank and my members of the police force.” Deputy U.S. marshals guard the justices’ homes 24/7. (The U.S. Marshals Service, a bureau of the Justice Department, is distinct from the marshal of the court, who reports to the justices and oversees the Supreme Court Police.)
He’s a lot safer than women who are refused care after miscarriages until they are at death’s door, but Sammy couldn’t care less about them. He is also ignorant of the history of protests against Supreme Court justices.
If Alito read a little history about the Court, he’d learn this is not in fact new.
After the Brown decision, “Impeach Earl Warren” billboards appeared across the South.
After the Court struck down New Deal agricultural supports, farmers in Iowa hanged six justices in effigy. pic.twitter.com/58krAr1zUx
Two years after John Roberts’ confirmation as the Supreme Court’s chief justice in 2005, his wife, Jane Sullivan Roberts, made a pivot. After a long and distinguished career as a lawyer, she refashioned herself as a legal recruiter, a matchmaker who pairs job-hunting lawyers up with corporations and firms.
Roberts told a friend that the change was motivated by a desire to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest, given that her husband was now the highest-ranking judge in the country. “There are many paths to the good life,” she said. “There are so many things to do if you’re open to change and opportunity.”
And life was indeed good for the Robertses, at least for the years 2007 to 2014. During that eight-year stretch, according to internal records from her employer, Jane Roberts generated a whopping $10.3 million in commissions, paid out by corporations and law firms for placing high-dollar lawyers with them.
That eye-popping figure comes from records in a whistleblower complaint filed by a disgruntled former colleague of Roberts, who says that as the spouse of the most powerful judge in the United States, the income she earns from law firms who practice before the Court should be subject to public scrutiny.
“When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong,” the whistleblower, Kendal B. Price, who worked alongside Jane Roberts at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Insider in an interview. “During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane’s clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It’s natural that they’d do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive.”
Roberts’ apparent $10.3 million in compensation puts her toward the top of the payscale for legal headhunters. Price’s disclosures, which were filed under federal whistleblower-protection laws and are now in the hands of the House and Senate Judiciary committees, add to the mounting questions about how Supreme Court justices and their families financially benefit from their special status, an area that Senate Democrats are vowing to investigate after a series of disclosure lapses by the justices themselves.
No wonder Roberts is resisting any serious ethics rules for his powerful court. Unfortunately he’s not alone. Even the liberal justices don’t want ethics rules. The three branches of government are supposed to be equal, but the Supremes are behaving as if their branch is more equal than the other two.
All nine justices, in a rare step, on Tuesday released a joint statement reaffirming their voluntary adherence to a general code of conduct but rebutting proposals for independent oversight, mandatory compliance with ethics rules and greater transparency in cases of recusal.
The implication, though not expressly stated, is that the court unanimously rejects legislation proposed by Democrats seeking to impose on the justices the same ethics obligations applied to all other federal judges.
It appears to be the first time an entire court has publicly explained its approach to ethics issues and attested to specific parts of federal law governing their conduct.
The justices’ statement, appended to a letter from Chief Justice John Roberts to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., appears squarely aimed at answering critics’ concerns and demands from some for outside oversight.
“Without a formal code of conduct, without a way to receive ethics complaints and without a way to investigate them, the Supreme Court has set itself apart from all other federal institutions,” said Gabe Roth, executive director of Fix the Court, a left-leaning judicial watchdog group that has been lobbying Congress to mandate a high court code.
Durbin said Thursday in a statement that the justices’ explanation of their approach to ethics “raises more questions than it resolves.”
“Make no mistake,” he said, “Supreme Court ethics reform must happen whether the Court participates in the process or not.”
As they investigate former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, federal prosecutors have also been drilling down on whether Mr. Trump and a range of political aides knew that he had lost the race but still raised money off claims that they were fighting widespread fraud in the vote results, according to three people familiar with the matter.
Led by the special counsel Jack Smith, prosecutors are trying to determine whether Mr. Trump and his aides violated federal wire fraud statutes as they raised as much as $250 million through a political action committee by saying they needed the money to fight to reverse election fraud even though they had been told repeatedly that there was no evidence to back up those fraud claims.
The prosecutors are looking at the inner workings of the committee, Save America PAC, and at the Trump campaign’s efforts to prove its baseless case that Mr. Trump had been cheated out of victory.
In the past several months, prosecutors have issued multiple batches of subpoenas in a wide-ranging effort to understand Save America, which was set up shortly after the election as Mr. Trump’s main fund-raising entity. An initial round of subpoenas, which started going out before Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in the 2024 race and Mr. Smith was appointed by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland in November, focused on various Republican officials and vendors that had received payments from Save America.
But more recently, investigators have homed in on the activities of a joint fund-raising committee made up of staff members from the 2020 Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee, among others. Some of the subpoenas have sought documents from around Election Day 2020 up the present.
Prosecutors have been heavily focused on details of the campaign’s finances, spending and fund-raising, such as who was approving email solicitations that were blasted out to lists of possible small donors and what they knew about the truth of the fraud claims, according to the people familiar with their work. All three areas overlap, and could inform prosecutors’ thinking about whether to proceed with charges in an investigation in which witnesses are still being interviewed.
On Wednesday, former President Donald Trump’s lawyers sent a desperate, 10-page letter to Rep. Mike Turner, chair of the House Intelligence Committee. The punch line comes in its conclusion: “DOJ should be ordered to stand down” in Special Counsel Jack Smith’s case against Trump for obstructing justice in his 18 months of stonewalling the return of classified documents improperly held at Mar-a-Lago.
Of course, Congress has no such power. Ironically, the letter achieved something completely unintended. It effectively confirmed that Trump has no viable defense against the likely Justice Department charges for Trump’s obstruction.
The letter also revealed for the first time that the classified documents recovered in the August 7, court-approved search of Trump’s country club home may include briefings of foreign leaders.
It’s hard to know what Trump was trying to achieve beyond “spin.” No crimes to see here, the letter lamely contends.
His lawyers assert that Trump didn’t knowingly possess or retain top-secret documents at Mar-a-Lago. His aides were just sloppy, the letter says, in the rushed process of leaving the White House, and Trump didn’t even know the classified documents were there. Even Vice Presidents Mike Pence and Joe Biden inadvertently took classified documents after their time in office.
If these contentions are a preview of Trump’s defenses to an indictment from Smith’s grand jury, Jack Smith can rest easy. The arguments are so abysmally weak that they leave any knowledgeable observer with a simple inference: Trump and his lawyers know an indictment is coming soon and there’s nothing they can do about it but offer smoke and mirrors.
Like asking Congressman Turner to investigate the need for legislation to address the lack of controls on classified documents that elected officials unintentionally take when leaving public service. Here’s the problem for the former president and his letter: Jack Smith has mountains of evidence that contradict Trump’s claim that his improper possession and retention of those classified documents was inadvertent.
The United States is wiring Ukraine with sensors that can detect bursts of radiation from a nuclear weapon or a dirty bomb and can confirm the identity of the attacker.
In part, the goal is to make sure that if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil, its atomic signature and Moscow’s culpability could be verified.
Ever since Russia invaded Ukraine 14 months ago, experts have worried about whether President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia would use nuclear arms in combat for the first time since the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The preparations, mentioned last month in a House hearing and detailed Wednesday by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a federal agency that is part of the Energy Department, seem to constitute the hardest evidence to date that Washington is taking concrete steps to prepare for the worst possible outcomes of the invasion of Ukraine, Europe’s second largest nation.
The Nuclear Emergency Support Team, or NEST, a shadowy unit of atomic experts run by the security agency, is working with Ukraine to deploy the radiation sensors, train personnel, monitor data and warn of deadly radiation.
In a statement sent to The New York Times in response to a reporter’s question, the agency said the network of atomic sensors was being deployed “throughout the region” and would have the ability “to characterize the size, location and effects of any nuclear explosion.” Additionally, it said the deployed sensors would deny Russia “any opportunity to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine without attribution.”
Read more details at the NYT.
I’m going to end there. What else is happening? What stories have captured your interest today?
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Right now the Southern states are experiencing the kind of surges that hit us in the Northeast at the beginning of the pandemic. Unfortunately these states are dealing with the Delta variant, which spreads much more easily than the early versions of the virus. That’s bad enough, but many Republican governors are making it worse by fighting against simple mitigation strategies that can protect their citizens.
Hospitals across the southern United States are reporting dramatic surges in coronavirus patients, forcing some to close their emergency rooms and others to treat more patients than they have capacity for as the delta variant of the virus continues to wreak havoc on regions with large swaths of unvaccinated residents.
Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R) on Monday said the state had “very startling” figures showing the largest, single-day increase in COVID-19 hospitalizations since the pandemic began. He said state hospitals had just eight beds in the ICU left for severely ill patients.
In Louisiana, an epicenter of the current wave, hospitalizations were climbing at the fastest rate since the pandemic started. Last week, the head of the state’s largest hospital described recent weeks as the “darkest” thus far, saying doctors were no longer able to provide patients adequate care under a crush in admissions.
“When you come inside our walls, it is quite obvious to you that these are the darkest days of this pandemic,” Dr. Catherine O’Neal, who runs the Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge, said last Monday.
O’Neal added later that week that dozens of children and young adults were now in the hospital, a reality that’s new under the delta variant. Half of the 12 children admitted were under the age of 2, The Advocate reported.
At least Louisiana has a Democratic Governor–Jon Bel Edwards–who actually cares about the situation. Not so in Florida and Texas, where Ron DeSantis and Gregg Abbott seem determined to kill as many of their citizens as possible.
Florida reported similar circumstances, with many hospitals over capacity. The Wall Street Journal reported that at least 43% of the state’s intensive care beds are filled with coronavirus patients, prompting complex logistical issues as hospital workers race to find space for a tide of sick residents.
And in Texas several hospitals said they were closing their emergency rooms due to a surge in COVID-19 cases, directing patients elsewhere.
The Artist’s Garden in Argenteuil, Dahlias, 1873’s Garden in Argenteuil, 1873, Claude Monet
The delta variant has upended the country’s reopening plans, prompting cities and states nationwide to reinstate social distancing measures and mask mandates that were relaxed just months ago and meant to usher in an era of relative freedom. Now, COVID-19 cases are rising in every state in the U.S. and hit the highest levels this week since February, averaging more than 100,000 a day.
Many of the states with the biggest outbreaks have some of the nation’s lowest vaccination rates and are led by Republican governors and legislatures that have made it much more difficult to protect their citizens. In Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) has banned vaccine passports and mask mandates for some businesses and schools. Arkansas’ Hutchinson said he made an error when he barred new mask mandates in April, and Texas’ Greg Abbott (R) has faced revolt from some school districts who have threatened to sue over his order to ban mask mandates.
School kids are the latest victims as Ron DeSantis and Greg Abbott, the Republican governors of Florida and Texas, prioritize ideology over public health guidance. The governors are clashing with local officials who are resisting their orders banning school mask mandates, which appear to directly contradict traditional conservative resistance to distant, centralized power.
The Delta variant of Covid-19 is challenging the long-held belief that children don’t get hit hard by the coronavirus. The American Association of Pediatrics reported last week that the US had an 84% increase in new Covid-19 cases among children from July 22 to 29, and Dr. Aileen Marty – an infectious disease expert at Florida International University – told CNN last week that children’s hospitals in the Sunshine State are “completely overwhelmed.”
As the Delta variant scythes across the country – especially less-vaccinated Republican states – there are increasing signs that leaders like DeSantis and Abbott have locked themselves into absolutist positions that they will be unable to water down without sustaining serious personal and political damage. But the price for their path is more sickness and death in crowded Covid-19 units among people they were elected to serve.
Renée Carpentier-Wintz
“For any other disease, you would not turn to your political leader for medical advice,” Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told CNN’s Pamela Brown on Monday. “Politicians should really let the public health and physician leaders move forward on how to get this thing under control.” [….]
The irony is that by resisting similar measures, these Republicans have proved true warnings by federal health officials that the Delta variant represents a grave threat. Now the same dynamic may play out again, as they ignore CDC advice that all kids in schools should wear masks.
Both governors enjoy strong support in conservative media. DeSantis was recently celebrated by right-wing pundits for his handling of the pandemic and is seen as a possible alternative nominee in 2024 if ex-President Donald Trump decides not to run again. ThSo their refusal to change course as conditions worsen only bolsters the impression that those who want a political future in the GOP must now demonstrate their contempt for common-sense health measures, just as surely as they must repeatedly prove their devotion to Trump.
In a move that escalated Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ fight over mask mandates, the governor’s office said Monday that the state board of education could move to withhold the salaries of superintendents and school board members who disregard the governor’s executive order that effectively prohibits mask mandates in school districts.
Last month DeSantis, a Republican, issued an executive order requiring the state’s health and education departments to create rules based on parents’ rights to make the health care decisions for their children who are students. Several lawsuits have since been filed challenging the constitutionality of the executive order.
Several school districts are considering mask mandates and a few have said masks will be required, with some opt-out exceptions.
A statement from the governor’s office on Monday says the state board of education “could move to withhold the salary of the district superintendent or school board members.”
His spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, pinned a tweet Monday that reads: “Ultimately — Education funding is for the students. The kids didn’t make the decision to encroach upon parents’ rights. So any financial penalties for breaking the rule would be targeted to those officials who made that decision.”
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Woman with a Parasol in a Garden, 1875
According to a COVID tracker created by The New York Times, Florida is currently recording a seven-day average of 122.1 deaths in the state from the virus, a figure larger than 32 other states combined.
Florida’s figure is also more than double that of the second most affected state, Texas, which is currently recording a seven-day average of 57.6, closely followed by California with around 42 people dying every day.
Louisiana and Missouri have also been badly affected, with average death rates of 33.4 and 25.1 each, while Maine and Vermont are faring the best, reporting figures of 0.1 and 0.3 respectively.
In most counties, cases are at least four times higher than a year ago, a USA TODAY Network analysis of Johns Hopkins University data shows. Five counties report a more than tenfold increase.
Cases among children are surging too, raising questions about the health consequences of students returning to campuses and a state ban on school mask mandates while vaccines are available for only some of the schoolchildren.
Public health experts and pediatricians said last fall that the most important factor to consider when deciding whether to start classes in-person was the amount of viral spread in the community at large. With cases so much higher than last year, districts are going against those recommendations by welcoming students to campus and limiting online learning options. Those moves follow instructions from the state government, which also prohibited schools from requiring masks for all children.
Over the seven days prior to last Friday’s state report, Florida saw 13,596 cases among children under 12, and 13,858 cases among ages 12 to 19.
There is no real mystery undergirding Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) decision not to advocate for measures aimed at containing the spread of the coronavirus in his state. During the first six months of the year, when cases were falling, he made his future ambitions very clear, embracing a variety of right-wing culture-war fights with an obvious eye toward maximizing his position for the 2024 Republican primary. He’d deny this if asked, no doubt, because there are legal obligations that accompany an actual declaration of candidacy and because elected officials enjoy being courted for such roles. But if you’ve seen a candidate position himself for a run, you knew what you were seeing.
Part of his ploy was to position his stewardship of Florida during the first part of the pandemic as the ideal balance of safety and freedom. Florida’s economy was unexceptional last year and its case totals unremarkable, but DeSantis, with the help of conservative media, was hailed as the anti-Andrew-Cuomo: a Republican who set aside the forceful recommendations of business closures and remote schooling. So he leaned into that with cases falling, waging a rhetorical battle against South Dakota Gov. Kristi L. Noem (R) and others as the most effective champion of personal freedom in the face of the pandemic.
It probably seemed like a good bet. Vaccinations were pushing cases lower and the pandemic seemed like it was moving to the background. It was easy to be the masks-are-a-choice guy because it seemed less likely that there would be a call to reimplement mandates. And Republicans, even in recent polling, don’t see masks as necessary because they aren’t worried about being infected. (Perhaps in part because they’re not following news about the virus very closely.)
But then the delta variant emerged. Cases in Florida began to spike and DeSantis was left with a bad set of choices: play it off as no big deal, push hard on vaccinations or reintroduce containment measures. He tried the second option for a while, without numbers budging much. So now he’s bear-hugged the first option.
Gustav Klimt, Bauerngarten mit Sonnenblumen, 1906
DeSantis is either very stupid or just plain evil. I’m going to go with stupid. This idiot is even trying to keep cruise ships from requiring vaccines.Predictably, Abbot and DeSantis are now expecting the rest of us to bail them out.
The Texas governor, Greg Abbott, appealed for out-of-state help to fight the third wave of Covid-19 in his state amid dire warnings while two more of the state’s largest school districts announced mask mandates in defiance of the increasingly hardline Republican.
Abbott’s request came on Monday as a county-owned hospital in Houston raised tents to accommodate their coronavirus patient overflow.
Private hospitals in the county already were requiring their staff to be vaccinated against the coronavirus.
Meanwhile, the Dallas and Austin school districts announced Monday that they would require students and staff to wear face masks. The Houston school district already announced a mask mandate for its students and staff later this week if its board approves.
The highly contagious Delta variant is fueling the wave.
The Republican governor has directed the Texas department of state health services to use staffing agencies to find additional medical staff from beyond the state’s borders as the Delta wave began to overwhelm its present staffing resources.
He also has sent a letter to the Texas Hospital Association to request that hospitals postpone all elective medical procedures voluntarily.
As a result of the increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, the state of Florida requested 300 ventilators from the federal government, according to a Department of Health and Human Services planning document obtained by ABC News.
Flowering Garden, Vincent Van Gogh
The request was made on Friday “to replace expended state stores,” the document said.
The ventilators were expected to be delivered on Monday, though it was not said how they will be allocated.
It comes as doctors are stressed and hospitals are tapped for resources, their beds continuing to fill with unvaccinated patients infected with the virus.
“The nurses, the physicians, they have passed burnout a long time ago,” said Dr. Joshua Lenchus, Broward Health’s chief medical officer. “This is sheer exhaustion”
CDC metrics on Monday showed five consecutive days with more than 20,000 new infections.
I feel for the citizens of Texas and Florida–especially the young children, who are at the mercy of their parents’ political ideologies as they return to school. This is completely insane!
That’s my rant for today. Thanks for reading, and I hope you stay safe and healthy wherever you live.
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Thanks to the Delta variant, and people refusing to be vaccinated, Covid-19 cases are rising around the country, particularly in Florida, Texas, Mississippi, and Louisiana. At least Louisiana’s Democratic Governor John Bel Edwards is trying to get the situation under control. But in the other three states, governors are working against public health.
When Gov. John Bel Edwards lifted Louisiana’s mask mandate at the end of April, he warned that loosening restrictions wasn’t a “one way street” and that he would reimpose the rules if COVID-19 came roaring back.
On Monday, as hospitals statewide buckled under an unprecedented surge in patients, Edwards followed through on his word.
Schools, businesses, universities, churches, and any other indoor public settings in Louisiana will require a face mask for entry beginning on Wednesday, under a proclamation Edwards signed that expires September 1.
“It has become extremely clear that our current recommendations on their own are not strong enough to deal with Louisiana’s fourth surge of COVID. In fact, nobody should be laboring under the misapprehension that this just another surge,” Edwards told reporters Monday in announcing the order he had already signed. “This is the worst one we’ve had thus far.”
The return to restrictions comes as the pandemic enters a new stage defined by the delta variant, a highly contagious strain of COVID-19 first identified in India that now accounts for most new cases in Louisiana. On Monday, the state reported 11,109 new confirmed and probable infections of COVID-19. More than 2,000 of those cases were among children.
One-third of all US Covid-19 cases reported in the past week were in just two states – Florida and Texas – according to White House Covid-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients.
The cases are mainly in areas where vaccination rates remain low, Zients said at a briefing Monday.
“In fact, seven states with the lowest vaccination rates represent just about 8- 1/2% of the US population, but account for more than 17% of cases, and one in three cases nationwide occurred in Florida and Texas, this past week,” Zients said.
In the past two weeks, daily case rates have gone up fourfold, according to Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health.
The increase comes as the Delta variant spreads and the percentage of fully vaccinated Americans hovers around 49.7%, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Hospitals are once again filling up with patients as the virus tears through the unvaccinated population.
“There are still about 90 million eligible Americans who are unvaccinated,” Zients said. “And we need them to do their part, roll up their sleeves and get vaccinated. Each and every shot matters.”
It doesn’t seem to matter to some Republican Governors.
On Saturday, Florida recorded 21,683 new cases of COVID-19, breaking its one-day record for new cases. But even as the state swells with fresh infections, Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis remains hellbent on his war against mask mandates. He even recently barred school districts from instituting mask mandates when classes reconvene in August.
The Sick Child, 1907, by Edvard Munch
DeSantis feels so good about his war on masks, he’s even laughing about it. “Did you not get the CDC’s memo?” DeSantis joked to a largely maskless crowd at a conference for the American Legislative Exchange Council in Utah last week, referring to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s updated guidelines recommending mask-wearing amid the surge of the Delta variant. “I don’t see you complying.”
He continued, prompting applause, “I think it’s very important that we say unequivocally, ‘No to lockdowns, no to school closures, no to restrictions, and no mandates.’ Floridians are free to choose and all Americans should be free to choose how they govern their affairs, how they take care of themselves and our families.”
The governor, who is reportedly eyeing a bid for president in 2024, has spent most of the pandemic fiercely opposing COVID safety measures—a stance public health officials say has allowed the virus to run rampant across the state and has now made Florida the epicenter of the pandemic in this country. To DeSantis’ sort-of credit, he has made recent efforts to boost vaccinations, though at the same time he’s selling anti-Anthony Fauci merchandise on his website.
In Mississippi:
In Mississippi, where ICU beds are nearing capacity with a surge of unvaccinated individuals, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves blasted the CDC’s mask guidelines as “foolish” and claimed that it reeked of “political panic.”
“It has nothing, let me say that again: It has nothing to do with rational science,” Reeves said on Thursday.
Except that it does. As Dr. Fauci warned on Sunday, “Things are going to get worse.” The country’s top expert on infectious diseases told ABC’s This Week, “You want them to wear a mask so that if in fact they do get infected, they don’t spread it to vulnerable people, perhaps in their own household, children, or people with underlying conditions.”
In an executive order issued on Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott, the Republican governor of the nation’s second-largest state, prohibited local governments and state agencies from mandating vaccines, saying that protection against the virus should be a matter of personal responsibility, not forced by a government edict.
Hospital Workers, by Carolyn Olson
The order also reinforced his prior directive prohibiting local officials from requiring face masks, despite growing calls from city leaders for greater flexibility to reverse the renewed spread of Covid.
The daily average of cases in Texas as of Friday was 8,820, according to a New York Times database, a 209 percent increase over the past 14 days. Cities across the state are facing a surge in hospitalizations reminiscent of the alarming spikes that occurred before Covid cases began nosing downward with the arrival of vaccines.
With 56 percent of the state’s population unvaccinated — including nearly five million children under 12 who are not eligible — health officials have expressed concern about the state’s vulnerability.
In May, when the CDC said fully vaccinated people could ditch masks and social distancing, it seemed to signal a return to normalcy. But epidemiologists cautioned at the time that the move wasn’t likely to be permanent, and shouldn’t be interpreted as the end of Covid-19 as a daily concern. Colder weather or a right hook in the virus’s evolution could bring restrictions right back.
Still, Americans seem shocked by the recent turn of events. Last week, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention advised everyone — even those who’ve gotten Covid-19 shots — to go back to indoor masking, a decision driven by new data showing the hyper-contagious Delta variant colonizes the nose and throat of some vaccinated people just as well as the unvaccinated, meaning they may just as easily spread this new version of the virus, while stilling being protected against the worst manifestations of the disease.
The prospect of contending with a prolonged outbreak phase — and adjusting again to a constantly evolving roster of restrictions — has brought back another feature of pandemic living in America: anger.
Board, Ernest; Vaccination: Dr Jenner Performing His First Vaccination, 1796
This time it’s not just the mostly Republican anti-masking refrain rearing its defiant head (though fights over school mask mandates have returnedwith a vengeance). Coast to coast, and across the political spectrum, contempt for unvaccinated people is rising. “It’s the unvaccinated folks that are letting us down,” Alabama Governor Kay Ivey, a Republican, said on July 22, as her state, with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, reeled from a 530% rise in Covid-19 hospitalizations in just three weeks.
Among the vaccinated, there’s a sense that the freedoms they gained by getting the shots — travel, eating out, concerts, sports, school, seeing friends — are now being jeopardized by those who are still holding out.
Though this new flavor of outrage might look and sound like righteous indignation, mental health professionals say that what’s behind it is fear.
“It’s scary to admit that somebody else has power over you and you’re at their mercy and you’re afraid of them, but showing that is not a very American ideal,” said David Rosmarin, an associate professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and a clinician at McLean Hospital. “Instead of expressing that fear, it’s a lot more comfortable to blame somebody else.”
Anger is what people in his profession refer to as a “secondary emotion.” It’s a feeling that arises in response to a more primal emotion, like fear and anxiety over having some aspect of your life threatened. “The reality is that there are millions of people who are miseducated about something, they’re making a big mistake that will have massive consequences that might affect you and your family and that makes you scared,” Rosmarin said. “But nobody is saying that.”
Unfortunately, there’s another looming disaster caused by the pandemic: the CDC eviction ban is expiring, and in Washington everyone is accusing everyone else of being responsible for dealing with the situation. And it’s complicated by a Supreme Court ruling.
The White House said Monday that it was unable to find a legal means to extend the eviction moratorium, despite the fact that millions of Americans could soon lose their homes even as the Delta variant of COVID-19 continues to spread.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has “been unable to find legal authority for a new, targeted eviction moratorium,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement. “Our team is redoubling efforts to identify all available legal authorities to provide necessary protections.”
The Garden of Death, Hugo Simberg, 1897
Citing a Supreme Court decision issued in late June, the White House said it was unable to unilaterally extend the moratorium for evictions. Late last week, Psaki issued a statement pressuring Congress to act, but the House went into recess before a vote could be held. Were it to pass the House, it is unclear if an extension of the moratorium would be able to pass the Senate.
The federal eviction moratorium expired over the weekend, yet more than 6.5 million U.S. households are currently behind in rental payments totaling more than $20 billion, according to a study by the Aspen Institute and the COVID-19 Eviction Defense Project. Without federal protections in place, many renters will now need to pay months of back rent.
“On this particular issue, the president has not only kicked the tires, he has double, triple, quadruple checked,” Gene Sperling, the White House COVID-19 economic relief coordinator, said at a briefing on Monday, adding, “The rise off the Delta variant is particularly harmful for those who are most likely to face evictions, and as that reality became more clear going into the end of last week, I think all of us started asking what more can we do.”
On July 31, the federal government’s eviction moratorium expired, potentially forcing millions of Americans out of their homes during yet another COVID surge. In the days before the eviction cliff, House Democrats attempted to extend the moratorium, but Republicans easily blocked their measure. Democratic lawmakers then spent the weekend arguing over who was to blame for the looming catastrophe.
Curiously, most Democrats chose not to focus on the primary culprit: the Supreme Court. In late June, five conservative justices signaled that they would not let the White House extend the eviction ban beyond July 31 absent further congressional authorization. These Republican-appointed justices set the terms of the debate, yet were largely absent from Democrats’ blame game. As a result, most vulnerable Americans will likely not understand they face homelessness in a pandemic because of SCOTUS. This strange dynamic is symptomatic of a deeper pathology in contemporary American politics: Democrats appear incapable of explaining how the Supreme Court stymies their own agenda—and the resulting confusion shields the court from criticism, consequences, and accountability when its decisions wreak havoc.
Vaccination by Adolfo Flores
When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged Biden to extend the eviction moratorium on his own, she framed the issue as a matter of morality. But the president’s inaction was almost certainly a legal calculation. To understand his hesitation, it’s key to remember that the recently expired moratorium was not the same policy that had been in effect since the start of the pandemic. Congress passed its first eviction ban in March 2020, explicitly prohibiting landlords from kicking out tenants who could not afford rent because of the pandemic. After this provision expired that August, Donald Trump issued an executive order asking the CDC to take action. The CDC responded in September with its own eviction moratorium set to run through the end of 2020. It was rooted in a federal law that allows the agency “to make and enforce such regulations” that are “necessary to prevent” the “spread of communicable diseases” between states. In December, Congress passed legislation that explicitly extended the CDC’s moratorium through Jan. 31, 2021. The agency then extended the ban several more times.
While the CDC kept the moratorium in place, a group of landlords sued to block it, claiming it exceeded the agency’s authority. On May 5, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich sided with the plaintiffs against the ban but stayed her order. One month later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit court refused to block the ban. The plaintiffs then appealed to SCOTUS, which came within an inch of ending the moratorium. Five justices—Clarence Thomas, Sam Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett—believed it violated the law. But Kavanaugh, who cast the decisive fifth vote, wrote separately to explain that although he believed the CDC had “exceeded its existing statutory authority,” he would not invalidate the ban. Instead, weighing the “balance of equities,” he would allow it to remain for “a few weeks.”
“In my view,” the justice declared, “clear and specific congressional authorization (via new legislation) would be necessary for the CDC to extend the moratorium past July 31.”
Kavanaugh’s analysis is dubious at best. (Maybe that’s why Chief Justice John Roberts didn’t join it, instead quietly voting to keep the moratorium in place.) Congress already gave the CDC expansive powers to fight the “spread of communicable diseases” between states. The agency acted pursuant to this law when it determined that mass evictions would force many Americans to live unhoused or crammed together in close quarters, transmitting the virus more widely. Crucially, when Congress chose to extend the moratorium, it simply passed a law extending the CDC’s own ban. By doing so, lawmakers chose “to embrace” the agency’s action and “expressly recognized” that it had the authority to issue the ban, in the words of the D.C. Circuit. It would not make a lick of sense for Congress to extend the CDC’s moratorium if it did not believe the CDC had authority to issue it.
More eviction reads:
The Washington Post Editorial Board: Opinion: There’s plenty of money to avoid evictions. States just have to spend it.
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.
Happy Caturday!!
It wasn’t a lingering fear of Covid-19. In a mid-April interview in his chambers, Justice Alito fills us in on the May 12, 2022, event: “Our police conferred with the George Mason Police and the Arlington Police and they said, ‘It’s not a good idea. He shouldn’t come here. . . . The security problems will be severe.’ So I ended up giving the speech by Zoom,” he says. “Still, there were so many protesters and they were so loud that you could hear them.”
“When I found out that the spouse of the chief justice was soliciting business from law firms, I knew immediately that it was wrong,” the whistleblower, Kendal B. Price, who worked alongside Jane Roberts at the legal recruiting firm Major, Lindsey & Africa, told Insider in an interview. “During the time I was there, I was discouraged from ever raising the issue. And I realized that even the law firms who were Jane’s clients had nowhere to go. They were being asked by the spouse of the chief justice for business worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and there was no one to complain to. Most of these firms were likely appearing or seeking to appear before the Supreme Court. It’s natural that they’d do anything they felt was necessary to be competitive.”
The justices’ statement, appended to a letter from Chief Justice John Roberts to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., appears squarely aimed at answering critics’ concerns and demands from some for outside oversight.
Dennis Aftergut at Justia: 
In part, the goal is to make sure that if Russia detonates a radioactive weapon on Ukrainian soil, its atomic signature and Moscow’s culpability could be verified.
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