Charges of hypocrisy can be the emptiest of criticisms in Congress, but with a Republican Party descending into truly dangerous inanity, it’s worth highlighting again. Because these people are dangerous, and because they’re using the traditions and norms of their institution in order to get elected and re-elected so they can continue to destroy our democracy from the inside. So here we go: CNN's review of the Republicans who railed against the infrastructure bill and who now have their hands out for infrastructure bill money to bring home to their states and districts.
Take one of the most extreme members of the insurrectionist GOP, Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona. When the bill passed, he issued a press release saying the bill was “phony” and “only serves to advance the America Last’s socialist agenda,” “imposes new taxes, which is completely unacceptable,” and “adds another $400 billion to the deficit.” He wrote three separate letters this year to ask for money from that “phony” bill. (He did not issue a press release about his participation in adding to the deficit.)
Gosar wrote to support a grant to build a bypass “to improve access between the great cities of Phoenix and Las Vegas.” He wrote another to support a highway extension that would “improve the region’s competitiveness,” and yet another for a project “that will positively impact both the economy and quality of life of the region.”
None of which sounds like socialism at all, as President Joe Biden pointed out in a speech Friday, calling Republicans—and specifically Gosar—out:
Biden calling out Republicans who called the infrastructure bill socialism but still asked for money: I didn’t know there were that many socialist Republicans pic.twitter.com/ueK42ZBxBm
It’s not just Gosar. The biggest crank in Congress, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), wrote a total of 10 different letters for projects in the state. “Opposition to a spending bill does not always mean opposition to the goal of that spending; opposition to a spending bill can mean opposition to spending that adds to the deficit and is not offset with spending cuts elsewhere,” a Paul spokesperson tried to argue in justifying Paul’s inconsistency.
These people are all playing a dangerous game, winning primaries by being the most outrageous MAGA Democrat-haters, voting against the bills, and then turning around and using the system to bring home projects that they can campaign on, get reelected, and then return to the Capitol and get back to work trying to destroy democracy.
The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has been keeping track of all the Republican House members who “voted no, took the dough” on the big funding bills Democrats have passed, including the American Rescue Plan that passed with no Republican votes, and the infrastructure bill.
Here are four of them who we can kick out of Congress in November with Daily Kos-endorsed Democrats:
Ken Calvert (CA-41) took credit for $20 million in earmarked transportation projects despite voting against the INVEST in America Act and the Infrastructure bill.
Michelle Steel (CA-45) took credit for $8.3 million in funding to dredge the Newport Harbor after she voted against the Infrastructure bill that provided the funding for that project.
Don Bacon (NE-02) promoted the Restaurant Revitalization Fund in his district after voting NO on the American Rescue Plan that created said fund.
Yvette Herrell (NM-02) asked for Infrastructure funds to be directed toward a Superfund Site cleanup in her district after voting against Dems’ bill that guaranteed that funding.
Democrats Will Rollins, Jay Chen, Tony Vargas, and Gabe Vasquez have a good shot at flipping these districts for Democrats, as do all the House endorsees on the Daily Kos endorsement list.
yup, Intel still is ignoring actual competition, and it's finally starting to catch up to them
Enlarge / Acer announced the Swift Edge laptop today. (credit: Acer)
Acer's Swift Edge clamshell announced today is a gentle reminder of the so-called Intel tax. The PC offers a larger screen with more expensive display technology and pixels than a similarly specced Acer Swift 5 ultralight for the same price. The other big difference between the two laptops is that the new Swift Edge opts for AMD Ryzen 6000 processors, while the Swift 5 uses Intel 12th Gen CPUs.
Acer is releasing the Swift Edge in the US this Friday with a Ryzen 7 6800U, carrying eight cores, 4MB of L2 cache, 16MB of L3 cache, and a clock speed of 2.7 GHz that can boost to 4.7 GHz. Combined with 16GB of LPDDR5 RAM and 1TB of PCIE 4.0 SSD storage, it'll have a $1,500 MSRP.
That's the same MSRP that the Swift 5 has as of writing and when we reviewed it in July. For that price, you get an Intel Core i7-1260P with four performance cores (2.1-4.7 GHz), eight efficient cores (1.5-3.4 GHz), and 18MB of L3 cache, plus the same RAM and storage specs as the aforementioned Swift Edge configuration.
Drugs are expensive. No one's giving them out as candy.
The infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels once said, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it,” and Fox News is keen to take advice from an actual Nazi anytime they have the chance. That’s precisely why, this month, the channel is rife with new and newly updated tales of a Halloween season fraught with fentanyl-laced candy.
The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has lately announced the discovery of brightly colored fentanyl pills, which is being used by Fox to perpetuate the falsehood that drug dealers pass off these pills as candy and hand them out to kids on Halloween. And if you think that’s not totally implausible, the reason these dealers are able to dupe American parents at every turn, Fox alleges, is because President Joe Biden has thrown the Southern border “wide open to drug cartels” so they can flood “our streets with fentanyl.”
What’s true is that the DEA issued a memo last month about “rainbow fentanyl,” which they described as “a new method used by drug cartels to sell highly addictive and potentially deadly fentanyl made to look like candy to children and young people.”
“Rainbow fentanyl—fentanyl pills and powder that come in a variety of bright colors, shapes, and sizes—is a deliberate effort by drug traffickers to drive addiction amongst kids and young adults,” DEA Administrator Anne Milgram said in the memo.
But Fox took that announcement and ran with it, because of course they did. Any chance to vilify immigrants is one they’re willing to cling to. So they’ve cranked up the panic wagon and warned parents to throw away any candy that resembles the drugs in the DEA’s seizure (sound advice since loose pills are probably uniformly unwanted) or to cancel the holiday altogether (a reactionary decision based on a hypothetical situation that has never happened).
"Every mom in the country is worried, what if this gets into my kid's Halloween basket? The rainbow fentanyl." -- Ronna McDaniel pic.twitter.com/fzIioFrXQY
Joseph Palamar, an associate professor in the department of population health at NYU Langone Health, told CNN, “I don’t think people will be giving these pills out as Halloween candy,” adding that in his study of illegal fentanyl trends, the colorful pills aren’t new and handing them out at Halloween isn’t actually a problem that exists in the world. Fentanyl users who leave the drug around the home for their small kids to find and eat is a much more fundamental and real issue.
Mariah Francis of the National Harm Reduction Coalition told Rolling Stone magazine, “The idea that because [the pills] are colorful means that [cartels] must be trying to force fentanyl or ply children or their Halloween candy is markedly ridiculous. [...] People just make creative colors, and honestly, there’s no reason for it. And it’s been happening for the last 60 years. We saw it with MDMA, we see it in club drugs. And it’s actually kind of embarrassing because the DEA is really just late, late to the party.”
Francis added that the belief that the cartel has any intention of passing off their drugs as candy to kids is “utterly divorced from reality.”
But Fox News is continuing to use the latest scare to terrify their viewers. Of course, it’s never an accident when bad news is tied to specific states just ahead of the midterms. In this case, the “new” report about rainbow fentanyl comes alongside reported incidents of kids overdosing after getting their hands on fentanyl—in the battleground states Georgia and Pennsylvania. (Note that neither of these states lies along the Southern border.)
But what’s never mentioned by Fox and other conservative media is that it’s not Biden’s fault, or the made-up boogeyman called “open borders,” but instead that the drug war, as Democrats and Republicans agree, has been a monumental failure in every way—except in how successful it has been in locking up as many Black and brown people as possible.
In a statement to the nation, Biden said in part: “Sending people to prison for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives and incarcerated people for conduct that many states no longer prohibit. Criminal records for marijuana possession have also imposed needless barriers to employment, housing, and educational opportunities. And while white and Black and brown people use marijuana at similar rates, Black and brown people have been arrested, prosecuted, and convicted at disproportionate rates.”
The governor’s race in Oregon is tight. Democrat Tina Kotek is facing off against Republican Christine Drazan, as well as former conservative Democratic State Sen. Betsy Johnson, who announced her plans to run in the Beaver State’s gubernatorial race last year—as an independent.
Three-way races are often messy affairs, but the situation in Oregon is especially grim. The people of an entire United State are hanging their hopes on Kotek, the lone contender campaigning for equity and progress; meanwhile, Kotek’s campaign must fight back against the GOP-lite Johnson, as well as the seemingly bottomless purse of the state’s QAnon “patriot” contingency, which is funding Drazan.
Drazan is the former Oregon House minority leader, and her politics are exactly in line with what the GOP has to offer Americans: nothing. Unfortunately, Ms. Johnson stands to give the GOP a victory, as she does the dirty work of pulling Democrat Tina Kotek closer to the right—especially with regard to big business interests.
But what this really means is that Drazan must court the rightest of right wings in her state, as the center and the left of the state are already in line with the other candidates. You know what that means: Big money is coming into her campaign from shady extremist sources, notably from Oregon libertarian far-right Tea Party funder, David Gore.
David Gore and his wife have reportedly spent at least $70,000 on Drazan’s campaign this year. The mega-donor has spent almost a half-million dollars of his money on supporting the far-right Tea Party Patriots crew that helped organize the Jan. 6 insurrection. HuffPo reports that one week after Jan. 6, Gore gave “$150,000 to the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund.”
This is Drazan’s support network. And now, The Oregonianseems to be engaged in damage control for Drazan, arguing that Kotek’s calling Drazan out for being tied to right-wing extremists is “misleading.”
Drazan unequivocally stood up to the far-right wing of her party last year when she led her caucus to expel former Rep. Mike Nearman for plotting to help violent demonstrators breach the Oregon Capitol.
That’s not exactly what happened. In June 2021, Republican State Rep. Mike Nearman was expelled from the chambers on a 59-1 vote after loads of video and audio evidence showed he had illegally coordinated and physically helped protesters breach the Oregon state Capitol building on Dec. 21, 2020—an action that resulted in “thousands of dollars in damage and six injured Salem and Oregon State police officers.” Giving Drazan credit for “standing up,” in this case, is like giving her credit for brushing her teeth at least once a week. The lone dissenting vote was from Mike Nearman himself.
The Oregonian, after saying that Drazan’s link to right-wing extremists is “misleading,” proceeds to show how it isn’t misleading at all. For example, Drazan has been asked about—and has unequivocally stayed mum about—Republican Senate candidate Jo Rae Perkins, who is a QAnon adherent with the kinds of problems of logic that QAnon conspiracists suffer from. Drazan’s silence is complicity, but The Oregonian doesn’t point that out.
A perfect encapsulation of the three candidates' politics can be summed up in their stated approaches to dealing with homelessness in Oregon. This is from a debate held at the end of July:
Kotek, who made housing a policy and funding focus while in the Legislature, has preached an approach of building up better outreach to homeless Oregonians while increasing shelter space and working to ramp up housing production.
[...]
Drazan and Johnson countered they’d both been active on the issue — Johnson in helping to morph a never-used jail in Portland into a shelter — and each have hinted at a harder line approach they’d use to force accountability on houseless Oregonians and reduce public camping.
One person, Kotek, wants to figure out how to create more housing, and the other two want to convert a jail while also putting more unhoused Oregonians … in jail. This is enough to tell you who each candidate is. But it is more than that. In a more recent debate, Johnson explained that the “legislature needs to get out of the house-building business. We need to let developers to do their job.” The point, of course, is that she wants to deregulate the housing market in Oregon. It isn’t much different than what Gov. Gavin Newsom is trying, and succeeding, to get away with in California right now.
There are problems with treating housing insecurity as a crime, of course. For one, it’s inhumane. But there’s a precedent from recent history that shows it just doesn’t work. A couple of months ago, big donors funded the nationally covered recall of progressive San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin. The success was predicated on pointing out how San Francisco continued to have homeless people and crime. This recall was enacted on the same excuses going on in Oregon now: We need tougher-on-crime law enforcement to lower rates of crime and homelessness. This argument doesn’t hold water; evidence has shown that by notdefunding the police over the last two years, crime has gone up slightly in areas where income inequality continues to widen its gap. San Francisco very quickly put in Brooke Jenkins, who coincidentally had ties to groups funding Chesa Boudin’s recall.
Guess what.
San Francisco police reported higher rates of both violent and property crime than over the same period last year. The increases dispel hopes that replacing DA Chesa Boudin would have an effect on crime rates in the city. Shocker. https://t.co/Xttame0E2C
Update at 7:30 pm ET: Delaware Court of Chancery Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted Elon Musk's request for a stay in an order that gives the parties three weeks to negotiate and close the merger. The trial won't begin on October 17 as scheduled and would be canceled entirely if the merger closes by the end of this month. If deal talks fall apart, a trial would be scheduled for November.
"This action is stayed until 5 p.m. on October 28, 2022, to permit the parties to close on the transaction. If the transaction does not close by 5 p.m. on October 28, 2022, the parties are instructed to contact me by email that evening to obtain November 2022 trial dates," McCormick wrote.
Musk's motion for a stay said the merger is on track to close by October 28. Twitter did not want the litigation stayed. "Plaintiff Twitter opposes the motion on the basis that Defendants' agreement will not ensure that the transaction closes fast enough," McCormick wrote.
In June, The Daily Beast reported on how Walker, who had all kinds of disparaging things to say about “deadbeat dads” and how even if things don’t work out in a relationship “you don’t leave the child,” had indeed sired a second son. The mother had to take Walker to court a year after the child was born in order to “secure a declaration of paternity and child support.”
At the time, The Daily Beast confirmed the woman’s statements with court documents declaring Walker to be the child’s parent. At the time, Walker’s campaign manager Scott Paradise attempted to attack Sen. Raphael Warnock, even while admitting to his boss being an epic piece of detritus. “Herschel had a child years ago when he wasn’t married. He’s supported the child and continues to do so. He’s proud of his children. To suggest that Herschel is ‘hiding’ the child because he hasn’t used him in his political campaign is offensive and absurd.”
The Daily Beast had to release this latest report after Herschel Walker told a reporter asking him about the original June article that something something, jibberish.
“Because of the article I had more kids. That’s why I haven’t reached out to anyone, because I said no. And that’s what I mean when I said no, I said it’s not correct, that’s a lie. And that’s what I mean, when that’s a lie,” Walker said.
So there it is again. Herschel Walker is a liar, a hypocrite, a misogynist, a liar again, a coward, and an egomaniac whose pants are on fire.
Turns out this is a much bigger deal than initially reported. Impressive.
President Biden on Thursday announced that he is pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession and encouraged state governors to do the same for state offenses. He also directed federal officials to review how marijuana is classified under the Controlled Substances Act. From a report: "There are thousands of people who have prior federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result," Biden said in a statement. "My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions." The blazing announcement means that all prior charges, convictions, and not-yet-prosecuted offenses will be pardoned. The Justice Department will set up an administrative process for those affected to obtain a certificate of pardon. Senior administration officials estimated that over 6,500 people will get federal pardons and thousands more with convictions under code in the District of Columbia will be impacted. However, the officials noted that there are currently no people in federal prisons solely on simple marijuana possession convictions. The vast majority of simple marijuana possession convictions are state convictions, which will not be affected by the federal pardons. That's why Biden has called upon governors to extend the pardons to those charges.
Leave it to Wisconsin to object to anything that helps black people. Rural flyover ftw
After years of pushing lawmakers to consider student loan debt forgiveness, President Joe Biden was the one who stepped up and did the damn thing. It may not have been all the forgiveness everyone wanted or hoped for, but most agree it is enough to make a difference in the lives of millions of Americans. Now, a conservative group in Wisconsin has filed a lawsuit against Biden, claiming that his plan to cancel up to $20,000 violates federal law because it favors Black borrowers.
The suit was filed Tuesday by the conservative legal group Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of the Brown County Taxpayers Association, The Washington Post reports. The complaint argues that because the White House has said that the “One-Time Student Debt Relief Plan” is “likely to help narrow the racial wealth gap,” it possesses an “improper racially discriminatory motive” and, therefore, violates the U.S. Constitution guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
The Wisconsin group is not alone in suing Biden; six other states have done the same—Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and South Carolina—and there’s also a suit from Arizona's attorney general. But the Wisconsin complaint is the only one to openly pull the race card.
Rick Esenberg, president and general counsel of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, says, “The White House has indicated that one reason to do this is that they believe it would disproportionately benefit certain racial groups. [...] The racial motivation supports these taxpayers standing to challenge [the policy] and informs yet another constitutional difficulty with the program.”
The suit is asking for a preliminary injunction and a temporary restraining order to stop students from getting loan forgiveness while the court and the judge are deciding the case.
According to the White House Fact Sheet, “The Department of Education will provide up to $20,000 in debt cancellation to Pell Grant recipients with loans held by the Department of Education, and up to $10,000 in debt cancellation to non-Pell Grant recipients. Borrowers are eligible for this relief if their individual income is less than $125,000 ($250,000 for married couples).”
Abby Shafroth, director of the National Consumer Law Center’s Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project, tells the Post, “Student loan policies have had a discriminatory impact, and student debt cancellation helps to remedy some of that discriminatory impact, but this is a race-neutral policy.”
The suit additionally argues that Biden and the Department of Education’s plan is an executive overreach and violates the constitutionally-mandated separation of powers by skirting congressional approval.
Biden’s administration challenges the notion that he needs congressional approval, citing the “HEROES Act” of 2003, a law that clearly gives the executive branch broad authority to overhaul student loan programs.
"This is so obnoxious for them to try and claim that the law is somehow the law because there are more student loan borrowers who may be African American, that this is somehow a violation of the equal protection clause. [...] The fact is that student loan borrowers are hardworking. They did the right thing. They took on the responsibility for financing their higher education. They are simply asking to be treated fairly in a system that treats them unfairly,” Ross said.
This is a big fucking deal, folks. President Joe Biden is making critical moves to decriminalize cannabis, most significantly erasing federal prosecutions for simple possession.
As I’ve said before, no one should be in jail just for using or possessing marijuana. Today, I’m taking steps to end our failed approach. Allow me to lay them out.
Those steps: “I’m pardoning all prior federal offenses of simple marijuana possession”; “I’m calling on governors to pardon simple state marijuana possession offenses”; and “I’m asking @SecBecerra and the Attorney General to initiate the process of reviewing how marijuana is scheduled under federal law.”
This isn’t decriminalization yet, but it’s moving toward it.
Sending people to jail for possessing marijuana has upended too many lives – for conduct that is legal in many states. That’s before you address the clear racial disparities around prosecution and conviction. Today, we begin to right these wrongs.
You can read President Biden’s full statement here. Highlights:
First, I am announcing a pardon of all prior Federal offenses of simple possession of marijuana. I have directed the Attorney General to develop an administrative process for the issuance of certificates of pardon to eligible individuals. There are thousands of people who have prior Federal convictions for marijuana possession, who may be denied employment, housing, or educational opportunities as a result. My action will help relieve the collateral consequences arising from these convictions.
Second, I am urging all Governors to do the same with regard to state offenses. Just as no one should be in a Federal prison solely due to the possession of marijuana, no one should be in a local jail or state prison for that reason, either.
Third, I am asking the Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General to initiate the administrative process to review expeditiously how marijuana is scheduled under federal law. Federal law currently classifies marijuana in Schedule I of the Controlled Substances Act, the classification meant for the most dangerous substances. This is the same schedule as for heroin and LSD, and even higher than the classification of fentanyl and methamphetamine — the drugs that are driving our overdose epidemic.
Evangelicals don't have values. Only lust for power at any price.
Published by AlterNet
By Alex Henderson Former football star Herschel Walker, who is hoping to unseat Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock in Georgia’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, is campaigning as an anti-abortion hardliner — declaring that he opposes abortion even in cases of rape or incest or even if a pregnant woman’s life is in danger. But on Monday night, October 3, the Daily Beast reported that Walker had impregnated a woman in 2009 and paid for an abortion. Walker has vehemently denied her allegations, although his son Christian Walker finds the allegations and the Beast’s reporting to be totally credible. …
By Alex Henderson In Oklahoma, the OU Health hospital is counting on federal pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. But Republicans in that state have given OU an ultimatum: if they want to receive $108 million in Rescue Plan funds, Oklahoma Children’s Hospital — which is part of the OU system — will have to stop providing gender-affirming care for transgender youth. Washington Post reporter Kimberly Kindy, in an article published on October 4, explains, “The move, which Oklahoma Gov. Kevin J. Stitt (R) signed into law on Tuesday, marks the first time conservative sta…
Elon Musk could be the owner of Twitter by sometime next week, but the sides have to resolve a few disagreements first. Musk told Twitter this week he is willing to honor their original deal in an attempt to avoid a court trial he's likely to lose. But as of late Wednesday, representatives of Musk and Twitter were reportedly still at odds over terms in an agreement that could end the litigation.
"Sticking points include what would be required from both sides for litigation over the stalled deal to be dropped and whether the deal's closing would be contingent on Mr. Musk's receiving the necessary debt financing," The Wall Street Journal wrote, citing people familiar with the discussions.
According to The New York Times, Twitter "has sought reassurances about how the two sides could guarantee closing and a reaffirmation of the specifics in the previously agreed contract. It's also considering options like court supervision of the closing process and requesting that Musk pay interest to compensate for delays."
The future of video games is about more than just fun.
On the frosty planet of Frigidus, a virtual world full of icy caverns and treacherous waterfalls, your mission is to race down a track and target the animals that come flying your way. This isn’t exactly easy: Bumping into walls — you navigate via your phone or tablet — can slow down your avatar, and there are other characters meant to distract you from your objective. Still, the idea is that through all these challenges, Frigidus’s frosty terrain can give you something other video games don’t: medical treatment.
Frigidius is just one part of the EndeavorRx universe, a video game that’s designed to treat ADHD in children between the ages of 8 and 12. The game, which was cleared by the Food and Drug Administration in 2020, is designed to prompt the parts of the brain that we use to focus our attention. Now the company that created it, Akili Interactive, is hoping to expand its games for all sorts of other conditions, including depression and Covid brain fog. The goal is to create a new type of medicine, using technology to deliver a treatment that doesn’t require any in-person supervision or risk causing any severe side effects.
The idea of a prescription video game sounds far-fetched, and possibly counterintuitive if you read the headlines warning about the rise of video game addiction. Still, games like EndeavorRx are appealing because they raise the possibility that an extremely fun activity could double as a potential therapy. This approach promises to make it much more affordable to deliver treatment and suggests that we can transform the phones, tablets, and computers we already own into medical devices, simply by downloading an app. The challenge is that the impact of these games — which are still relatively new — is up for debate, even as companies like Akili go public and try to tackle more conditions. This means that, at present, these platforms run the risk of overpromising and under-delivering.
EndeavorRx does have some scientific backing. After analyzing the results of five clinical trials with more than 600 children, the FDA found that the game could facilitate “general improvement in attention” and seemed to mitigate other ADHD symptoms, too. Though EndeavorRx isn’t designed to replace a pharmaceutical, it’s only available to people who have a prescription. Patients with a prescription are sent an access code they can use to download the game. The list price of the game is $450 a month for those covered by insurance, but people who don’t have insurance pay a discounted, though still pricey, $99 a month. These are just some of the reasons Akili executives say that EndeavorRx isn’t just a spin on Mario Kart or a souped-up version of the brain-training app Luminosity.
For all the “I’m not like other video games” energy, playing EndeavorRx does feel familiar. You navigate the virtual galaxy as a cartoonish avatar, which you can dress in various outfits, including an equestrian getup and a Frozen-esque ice queen dress. Within the broader EndeavorRx game, you can visit different worlds, where you can select different tasks that challenge you to focus. Completing these tasks earns you prized mystic creatures that you’re supposed to collect, and the game gets harder or easier depending on how well you’re doing. The hope is that between swatting down targets and sliding through power zones, the technology can essentially train patients to stay focused.
Courtesy of Akili
The EndeavorRX game is designed to help children with ADHD.
“Under the hood are these really complex and beautiful sets of algorithms that are creating stimuli and closed feedback loops to activate a very specific part of the brain,” Matt Omernick, Akili’s co-founder and chief creative officer, told Recode. “This engine underneath is what’s really making lasting effects in the brain, and the nice skin, or the wrapper or the vessel, is the style and the look and the feel of the video game.”
While Akili’s product was the first of its kind to get clearance from the FDA, it’s far from the first example of video games being used in medicine. Veterans have used video games to alleviate the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and therapists have increasingly turned to online gaming to work with people with depression, schizophrenia, and anxiety, especially during the pandemic. Some experts believe that these games could do even more as virtual reality takes off.
But proponents may be getting ahead of themselves. When the FDA approved EndeavorRx in 2020, the agency cleared it through a process for marketing lower-risk medical devices. EndeavorRx isn’t that popular yet, either: Less than 1,000 prescriptions were written for the game in the second quarter of this year, and just 3 percent were reimbursed by insurance companies. Some critics have also voiced concern that the game only teaches kids how to get better at games, which is a gain that doesn’t really translate into everyday life. Attrition could also make these kinds of games less effective, as an August study that analyzed people using Akili, as well as other platforms, pointed out.
“Let’s say you want to scale it out to 1 million ADHD kids,” explains P. Murali Doraiswamy, who co-authored the study and serves as director of the neurocognitive disorders program at Duke Medical School. “They have to be self-motivated to do it.”
These drawbacks haven’t held back Akili’s aspirations. The company is already working on a game for adults with depression, and recent research indicated that its platform could help people with lupus. Of course, the company is hoping that developing games for all those conditions could become a big business. Akili raised more than $160 million after going public through a SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, earlier this year. The company recently partnered with the children’s gaming platform Roblox, too — a sign that it’s happy to blur the line between medical and traditional video gaming.
“I’ve always found that the more engaging, the more fun the activity is, the more likely someone is to come along. Just like a medicine, the better it tastes, the more likely someone is to take it,” explains Josué Cardona, who leads a video game-focused nonprofit, Geek Therapy.
This is all part of a broader effort to reimagine what video games are and what they can do. It’s already clear that our virtual worlds will get more sophisticated as technologies like 5G and the metaverse take off. Now, there’s a race to make them as useful as possible for our everyday lives, whether that’s using them to treat mental health conditions, practicing job interviews, or learning a language.
EndeavorRx’s progress thus far suggests this race is continuing, but we’re still in the early days. For now, it’s not yet clear how big an impact this new approach to health care might have. Still, it does seem fair to say that at least some of the help that kids get from the company’s game is real, even if the planet of Frigidus isn’t.
This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!
When Matt Shea, the Washington state legislator with deep ties to right-wing extremists and a history of dalliances with domestic terrorists, finally stepped aside in 2020, he anointed a relatively unknown Republican named Rob Chase as his successor in his Spokane Valley district. Little was known about the much less bombastic Chase.
Two years later, we know a lot: Not only has Chase proven to be a classic right-wing conspiracy theorist—dabbling in QAnon, 9/11 “truther,” and FEMA concentration camp theories, not to mention his ardent embrace of Donald Trump’s claims of fraud in the 2020 election—he’s also continued Shea’s legacy of promoting far-right politics within the state Legislature. A recent in-depth report by Wilson Criscione of InvestigateWest explores how Chase’s mild-mannered brand of extremism, in fact, may actually be more effective—and problematic—than Shea’s.
Shea personally recruited Chase, the former Spokane County Treasurer, to run for his seat in 2020. Chase’s fondness for conspiracism was first revealed in late August that year in an interview with Daniel Walters of The Inlander, in which Chase affably meandered through a laundry list of conspiracy theories: JFK’s assassination, Barack Obama’s birth certificate, Freemasons running the Vatican, and various QAnon-related theories about Hillary Clinton and John McCain, and COVID-19 denialism.
"There is a deep state — there is a shadow government that's been behind the scenes for, gosh, a century probably," Chase told Walters.
Since winning the seat in 2020, though, Chase has become focused particularly on Trump’s election denialism, and has increasingly used his official position in the Legislature to promote it. As Criscione reports, Chase has led a push among his fellow Republicans to question the legitimacy of the entire election process, including Washington state’s popular vote-by-mail system.
The next year, Chase penned an open letter to Washington’s then-secretary of state, Kim Wyman, in which he claimed that the 2020 election results (including, apparently, his own) were “fraudulent.” He demanded an independent audit, “or else we need [to] decertify the election results.”
Chase also introduced bills in the Legislature for such an audit, but they died in committee. He also signed a petition demanding Spokane County’s 2020 election results be audited.
He is unapologetic about his conspiracism. He told Criscione that he doesn’t consider his views fringe or extremist, claiming that 50 years before, such views would have been considered mainstream.
“You should be able to read whatever you want without being chastised for it,” Chase said.
Chase also has avidly spread COVID-19-related conspiracy theories on his Facebook page. He has labeled the COVID vaccine untested and “not a vaccine,” claiming it is “created by Eugenecists who want a smaller Global population.” He told Criscione that when he contracted a COVID infection, he took the anti-parasite drug ivermectin, a popular alternative treatment among COVID conspiracists that has been demonstrated to have no effect on the disease.
He also has been an active proponent of Shea’s proposal to split Washington state in half, creating a new state called “Liberty” from the eastern half—though Chase has now renamed it simply to “East Washington” in the bills he has introduced in the Legislature, which has drawn a handful of supporters in Olympia. He told Criscione that the idea is especially popular with his constituents, claiming they’re sick of the more heavily populated western half of the state dictating policy for the eastern half.
Devin Burghart, executive director of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, observed that Chase’s mild-mannered demeanor might make him more effective at delivering misinformation and far-right ideology than Shea.
“I think they’re equally dangerous,” said Burghart. “I think that Shea is more adept at stirring up the base, whereas Chase is a better vehicle for moving far-right ideas from the margins into the mainstream.”
Since leaving the Legislature, Shea has focused primarily on building the Spokane Valley congregation, On Fire Ministries, where he is the pastor. He continues to spread far-right conspiracist ideas while speaking on the stump, and his flock in Spokane Valley included members of the neofascist Patriot Front gang that attempted to riot at the Pride in the Park event in Coeur d’Alene in June.
Like his protégé, Shea also has been ardently promoting election denialism. He recently announced that On Fire Ministries would be hosting a “training session” for “poll watchers” to stand guard at Washington state’s ballot drop boxes at multiple locations in the Spokane area. Some of his allies in the right-wing “election integrity” movement already attempted similar tactics in the Seattle area during the July primary.
And like his mentor, Chase has a high tolerance for white nationalists and other racist extremists. In 2021, he hired the former chair of Spokane County’s Republican Party, who resigned in disgrace after a video surfaced in which she defended and praised white nationalist James Allsup. Chase told reporters that he is opposed to white nationalism, but considered the matter with Allsup to be a free-speech issue.
“I thought it was a hit job. She did nothing wrong,” Chase said of her resignation. “People have the right to speak.”
In his interview with Criscione, Chase dismissed suggestions that his politics are dangerous, saying he’s “not a threat to anybody.” He insisted he is only representing his Spokane County constituents, where he estimates that at least 30% of the voters are “grassroots” Republicans like he is.
“How can 30% of the county be a fringe group?” Chase asked.
“His profile has definitely grown among far-rightists in the last couple of years. He has essentially replaced Matt Shea in that context as the pipeline into the Legislature, at least for folks in Eastern Washington,” Burghart said.
In July, an HIV-positive man became the first volunteer in a clinical trial aimed at using Crispr gene editing to snip the AIDS-causing virus out of his cells. For an hour, he was hooked up to an IV bag that pumped the experimental treatment directly into his bloodstream. The one-time infusion is designed to carry the gene-editing tools to the man’s infected cells to clear the virus.
Later this month, the volunteer will stop taking the antiretroviral drugs he’s been on to keep the virus at undetectable levels. Then, investigators will wait 12 weeks to see if the virus rebounds. If not, they’ll consider the experiment a success. “What we’re trying to do is return the cell to a near-normal state,” says Daniel Dornbusch, CEO of Excision BioTherapeutics, the San Francisco-based biotech company that’s running the trial.
Hehe yes, but I can see them wanting to do his deposition first
Elon Musk at Tesla’s Gigafactory in Gruenheide, Germany, in March. | Patrick Pleul/AFP via Getty Images
The billionaire might buy Twitter after all — and for once not get his way.
Elon Musk wanted to buy Twitter. Then he didn’t. Now, according to a letter he sent to Twitter earlier this week, he does. Yes, again.
The news in this months-long saga came the very weekhe was expected to be deposedin in a lawsuit Twitter filed against Musk for breach of contract. The exact reasons for his 180 are unknown, but experts told Vox that it shows the Delaware Court of Chancery’s muscle in potentially reining in the richest person in the world’s disregard for convention in his business dealings.
After Bloomberg first reported on Musk’s renewed offer to Twitter, an SEC filing revealed that Musk sent Twitter a letter on Monday night saying he wants to buy the company at the price he originally offered: $54.20 per share, amounting to a deal worth around $44 billion. That’s higher than Twitter’s Wednesday stock price.
On Thursday, court documents show, the two parties reached an agreement to close the deal, and, at Musk’s request, the Court of Chancery stayed the trial. If the two fail to complete the sale by October 28, however, a new trial date could be scheduled for November.
Those closely watching the case say the billionaire’s sudden, unexpected willingness to close a deal that he previously soured on could represent a meaningful break in the Elon Musk narrative — that, at a moment when everyone is watching, he might not get his way. Perhaps that’s why his offer contains one important stipulation: The letter notes that Musk will close the deal “provided that the Delaware Chancery Court enter an immediate stay of the action” and “adjourn the trial.”
Musk has gotten into legal trouble before, but he has a track record of coming away from it with victories or minor fines — and hardly a ding to his public image. A Twitter trial, should it continue, could be a watershed moment for how the public sees Musk: no longer as the genius, environment-loving tech innovator, but increasingly as a rich man who breaks promises when it benefits him.
Through the ups and downs of the Twitter deal, Musk has faced the court of public opinion, and he’s not coming away unscathed. According to a Morning Consult poll from June, US voters have a less favorable impression of him than they did in April, with unfavorability among Democrats jumping to 59 percent. Musk may avoid more reputational damage if the lawsuit ends quickly, because this trial would mark the most high-profile attempt at holding him accountable in the public eye.
As explained by the Chancery Daily, which has been providing real-time updates and context on the lawsuit through its Twitter account, “The letter doesn’t say much, it doesn’t do much, but it does mean something. It means that Elon’s mindset has changed.”
Musk may not be above the rules after all
Even if those watching the case take everything Musk does or says with a grain of salt, the letter he sent to Twitter could still be read as a rare public capitulation from a powerful man with a track record of mostly getting his way.
Take his multiple run-ins with the SEC. Musk first locked horns with the agency a few years ago when it sued him for making false and misleading tweets about having secured funding to take Tesla private, making share prices jump. Musk is Tesla’s largest individual shareholder. He and Tesla each paid a $20 million fine — still pretty tame for a billionaire — and Musk agreed to have tweets regarding his companies reviewed internally, a leash Musk chafes at and continues to fight. He has continued to tweet about other stocks, like Gamestop and Dogecoin, moving markets. The SEC is also currently investigating Musk for the late disclosure of the Twitter shares he began buying early this year, a move that may have saved him over $143 million.
There is “definitely some frustration within the four walls at the SEC with trying to get Musk to follow the rules,” according to Josh White, a professor of finance at Vanderbilt University who was formerly an economist at the agency. The SEC has sometimes been accused of being toothless, though it has recently been ramping up enforcement, including levying a $1.26 million fine on Kim Kardashian for failing to properly disclose a crypto-touting ad.
Musk has been involved in other public skirmishes before. In 2018, Musk infamously called a British cave diver involved in the rescue of a Thai youth soccer team a “pedo guy” on Twitter. The diver lost his defamation suit against Musk.
Earlier this year, the Delaware Court of Chancery also ruled in favor of Musk in a lawsuit where Tesla directors accused the CEO of pressuring them to buy SolarCity, a solar energy company Musk helped found, at an inflated price. The plaintiffs are currently appealing that ruling in the Delaware Supreme Court.
The odds against Musk
The Twitter saga is only the latest controversy in which Musk has found himself. Twitter sued Musk in July, asking the court to force him to follow through with a $44 billion acquisition offer he made the company in April and rescinded months later.
According to Ann Lipton, a law professor at Tulane University and former corporate litigator, Musk’s case was always weak. (Musk refused to follow through on the purchase of the social media platform on the premise that it had misled him about the number of spam bots. Twitter has said he reneged because of a market downturn that affected both Twitter and Tesla stock prices.)
“Every day that passes in this court, it’s been clear that [Musk’s case] is weaker. He’s lost a lot of rulings with the chancellor,” she told Vox.
The Delaware Court of Chancery has a history of efficiently ruling on corporate disputes; many businesses, including Twitter, incorporate in Delaware because of its famously pro-business laws. Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick, the court’s chancellor, has denied most of Musk’s broad requests for Twitter data so far. In September, Musk’s lawyer also argued that the trial should be delayed till November. That request was denied, too. Then, hundreds of Musk’s personal text messages were released in court documents made public last week.
It’s possible that Musk’s text messages played some role in his decision to revive his offer to buy Twitter. The texts revealed the ease with which Musk and other wealthy investors — including Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, who committed $1 billion to the deal — chatted about coming up with the billions of dollars required for the purchase. In the texts, some of the nation’s wealthiest and most influential people showed excitement at the idea of Musk leading Twitter and turning it into the ultimate platform for uncensored speech.
“Especially after the text messages came to light, it was sort of embarrassing for everyone,” Lipton told Vox. “If he was afraid that those investors would get cold feet, that would mean that he could end up buying the company, but with less investor support.”
Initially, Musk outwardly behaved as if he was one step ahead of Twitter, even tweeting a meme implying that the lawsuit would backfire and force Twitter to reveal the truth about its bot problem in court. Proof that Twitter lied about the degree of its bot problem hasn’t surfaced. On the other hand, Musk’s text messages indicate that in April, before he agreed to buy Twitter, he was already aware of the issue of fake accounts. That public revelation deflates his argument that he was misled about Twitter’s bots before agreeing to acquire the platform.
With his latest offer, Musk isn’t trying to negotiate a lower price — an option he’s previously hinted at wanting. Instead, it could be an indication that he is aware of where things stand: His case is weaker than Twitter’s, and Twitter is unlikely to settle at a lower price.
There’s also Twitter’s value to think about. If Musk began to think the court would force him to be the site’s new owner, Lipton said, dragging the case out could further hurt the price. When Twitter accepted Musk’s offer on April 25, its price was about $51 per share. It fell by 11 percent on the day Musk announced he was pulling out. Wednesday morning, before it was revealed that Musk wanted to buy again, it was trading around $42.70.
“He’d end up with a weaker company than he had before,” Lipton said.
So if Musk believes he doesn’t have a good chance of winning, agreeing to buy Twitter for $44 billion before any more damage is done to the company might just be the best deal he can get.
The winners and losers, if Musk buys Twitter
If Musk ends up buying Twitter, its shareholders will win big, according to White. (Twitter is currently a publicly traded company; Musk wants to take it private. If Twitter agrees to his proposal, it will also resurface many of the questions about what else he will do with the social media platform.)
White says that Musk would be overpaying for Twitter; he estimates that, based on current market conditions, if the deal fell through, the company’s stock would be trading between $10 and $20 per share rather than above $50.
It would likely be a very different story for Twitter users and employees. The global sentiment around Musk buying Twitter has been mostly negative, according to a study by Tufts University analyzing sentiments expressed by Twitter users regarding the acquisition. In the US, according to the study, there was a big spike in sadness and anger when Twitter accepted Musk’s bid on April 25. When Musk claimed the deal was on hold in mid-May, there was a rise in angry tweets. Progressives are also already worried about the possibility of a Musk-led Twitter allowing former President Donald Trump back on the platform after he was suspended in January 2021.
Given the high price Musk is paying for Twitter, he will likely want to quickly earn a return on his investment, White continued. The text messages released last Thursday showed Musk telling Twitter board chair Bret Taylor that his “biggest concern was headcount and expense growth.” In a June meeting with Twitter employees, Musk didn’t deny the possibility of layoffs once he took the reins.
Tesla shareholders probably aren’t thrilled either. Tesla’s stock price fell after Musk’s intention to buy Twitter after all became public. White said he believes that it declined in part due to uncertainty over how much more stock Musk might have to sell to come up with $44 billion. In August, he sold almost $7 billion worth of his Tesla shares.
Shareholders might also fear Musk’s ability to lead yet another company on top of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink, and the Boring Company. “Every day or every hour he spends working on Twitter — which he will have to, it’s a huge investment for him — that’s one less hour he would spend on Tesla,” White said.
Musk’s unpredictable style and tendency to weigh in on the issues of the day in an inflammatory manner — such as the Ukraine-Russia war — can also create fallout for the businesses he runs. In June, SpaceX employees wrote a letter to company executives voicing their concerns about how their CEO’s public behavior reflected on them. Several employees involved in writing the letter were fired.
What happens next
As of October 6, the trial is on pause. Twitter and Musk have agreed to close the deal, but given how tumultuous the acquisition has been, Twitter was likely careful not to agree too hastily.
“Twitter’s going to want some kind of hard commitment from him that will prevent him from backing out — maybe a court order of some kind,” said Lipton.
There might also be important details that the public has no idea about. “We don’t see everything,” said Donna Hitscherich, a professor of finance at Columbia Business School. “It ain’t over till it’s over. I think that’s the tagline for this whole thing. [Mergers and acquisitions] deals are complicated under the best of circumstances, and this one added some twists and turns.”
Whatever the outcome, in the face of his history of avoiding accountability, the possibility of Musk facing consequences this time is meaningful. If he ends up buying Twitter, that would be a win for the courts and the rule of law, White said.
“As a society, we often view wealth as maybe being above the law,” he noted. Musk might have the resources to hire the best lawyers in the field, but the Court of Chancery’s powers are nothing to scoff at. It can seize some of Musk’s assets — such as his Tesla shares — if he doesn’t comply with a court order.
“I think this is him conceding defeat,” Lipton said. “And I think he’s doing it in recognition that the law was just not going to go his way.”
Update, October 6, 6:45 pm: This story was originally published on October 5, and has been updated to indicate that Twitter and Musk have agreed to a deal, and that the court has stayed the trial.
Late on Monday a report from The Daily Beast came out saying that around 2009 Republican Senate candidate for Georgia Herschel Walker had urged a women he impregnated to get an abortion. The report also showed receipts that Walker paid the woman’s medical costs. This was followed up by Walker’s own very right-wing son Christian going on a rant attacking his father for hypocrisy while also reminding media outlets that Walker’s past is filled with domestic violence claims and decades of being a not-so-great dad. Walker has denied the claims against him in sort of word salad statements to the press.
In recent months, in front of lots of people and to lots of people with microphones, Walker has complained that he is against abortions. He is so very morally opposed to abortions that he does not believe there are anyexceptions he could think of that would square with who might have the right to decide to do with their own reproductive situation: This includes rape, incest, or the health and welfare of the person carrying the egg. The fact that Walker’s garbage fire of a campaign includes the height of moral hypocrisy was not surprising. Also not surprising was the fact that by Tuesday afternoon it became clear the Republican Party would walk back virtually everything they’ve been claiming to believe about the concept of abortion for the past 60 or so years.
Here’s Newt Gingrich taking time away from wondering about tattoos to explain how Republican voters need to forget everything about how much of a morally bankrupt monster Herschel Walker is because Herschel Walker has a “deep commitment to Christ.” Quick reminder: Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock has been the senior pastor at Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church since 2005. If the Jesus thing is your thing, I mean, c’mon!
Gingrich: I think Walker is the most important Senate candidate in the country because he’ll do more to change the Senate… by his deep commitment to Christ. He had a lot of concussions.. pic.twitter.com/40VkaCoFgZ
So, “murdering infants” is less of a virtue to Loesch than “winning.” Loesch goes on to say that the woman who Walker was dating and got pregnant and paid for an abortion for is a “skank.” And she also characterizes women who decide to have an abortion as “skanks.” Take it in, but wear a mask—the sulfur pouring out of her face is poison.
Conservative evangelical radio host Erik Erickson wanted to get out in front of this by saying it was old news.
I thought we all knew this. Also, old news and people do change over time. https://t.co/HhPgtRYJP0
Later on, because all of these GOP shills are tragically narcissistic, Erickson had to say that he wasn’t wrong even if he wasn’t right.
On the Walker thing, it may not have been public, but I'm about 100% sure one of his opponents told me it was rumor. I thought it was public, but it might not have been. It was definitely talked about in quiet discussions. Here's what a lot of people are going to miss…
The anonymous attack on Herschel Walker is just the latest in a series of attempted Democratic character assassinations going back to the allegations against Justice Clarence Thomas. National Right to Life stands behind its endorsement of Herschel Walker. It is the Democratic candidate, Raphael Warnock, who has in fact voted to pay for thousands of abortions.
Herschel Walker wants to protect unborn children while Raphael Warnock wants to see them die through unlimited abortion. The Democratic party knows it cannot win on the issues, so we once again see an attempted character assassination, a tactic that is sadly all too often encouraged by a compliant and willing media.
Hmmm.
Sen. Rick Scott left his throne of bones to go on the Hugh Hewitt show and say that nothing matters!
MAGA-red voters aren’t going to be swayed by the fact that Walker shouldn’t be allowed to drive your kid in a carpool, let alone become senator. These guys don’t need any GOP leaders to finesse things for them.
Man wearing shirt that says “BLOWJOBS” doesn’t want kids seeing anything inappropriate. pic.twitter.com/qtB4qNSowz
Since Dobbs, women have registered to vote in unprecedented numbers across the country, and the first person to dig into these stunning trends was TargetSmart CEO Tom Bonier, who's our guest on this episode of The Downballot. Bonier explains how his firm gathers data on the electorate; why this surge is likely a leading indicator showing stepped-up enthusiasm among many groups of voters, including women, young people, and people of color; how we know these new registrants disproportionately lean toward Democrats; and what it all might mean for November.
Shocker, and no GOP voter gives a shit. Anything in pursuit of power.
In what comes as absolutely zero surprise to anyone, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lied about migrant busing during last week’s gubernatorial debate, begrudgingly acknowledging that, yes, the New York City mayor’s office actually had reached out to his office after all in an attempt to coordinate the arrival of migrants used as human props by the Texas Republican.
During last Friday’s debate against Democratic challenger Beto O’Rourke, Abbott was asked by a moderator if there’d been “coordination with the states and cities these migrants are being taken.” Abbott responded that Mayor Eric Adams “never called my office, never talked to anybody in my administration,” and that it was Adams who was the liar.
But following receipts pulled by the mayor’s office as the debate played out, The Texas Tribunereports that on Tuesday Abbott finally admitted there had been some communication after all. Still, he tried to claim he wasn’t all that wrong because it wasn’t Adams himself who had reached out.
Abbott has in fact lied about this numerous times, making a similar claim last month that Adams’ office had not been in contact with him at all. “Mayor Adams and his staff have at no point made any effort to reach out to Governor Abbott or his office,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze claimed to The Texas Tribune.
To quote the late, great Aretha Franklin, lies, lies, and more lies: Following the latest claim from Abbot during the debate, Adams’ Press Secretary Fabien Levy pulled out a screenshot of an email dated Aug. 1 showing New York City communicating with Texas. In fact, the text of the email acknowledges that someone from Abbott’s office had returned a phone call from Adams’ office, meaning communication had been established prior to that.
We already knew that Abbott was full of shit because officials from other cities targeted by the Republican have previously said that his office had been completely “uncooperative.” Not to mention that the only reason why Abbott is making any sort of acknowledgement now is because he’s been caught in a lie. But as referenced earlier, “Abbott stressed that Adams himself had not reached out,” The Texas Tribune said. Oh, give it fucking rest, Greg. You’re a liar.
We do question what other kind of coordination may have happened in relation to this outrageous stunt, not with the elected leaders of cities but with right-wing propaganda. When the Texas Republican bused his first 30 migrants to Washington, D.C., this past April, they were dropped off directly in front of a building housing a number of media outlets, including Fox News. It was not lost on observers that the right-wing outlet already had some propaganda all set for publishing.
“The bus arrived an hour ago,” American Immigration Council Policy Director Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted at the time. “Not sure where people are going now. But this was all coordinated closely with Fox News, which had an article up immediately.”
Recent polling has O’Rourke with a 12-point lead over Abbott among likely Latino voters, particularly among Latinas. During the debate, the former congressman blasted Abbott’s nativist policies and rhetoric, which have continued unabated as the state has continued to see racist hate crimes.
“This hateful rhetoric, this treating human beings as political pawns, talking about invasions and Texans defending themselves–that's how people get killed at the Walmart in El Paso,” O’Rourke said. He also pointed to the recent horrific shooting death of a migrant by the former warden of an immigrant detention facility previously accused of abuses. “The gentleman in Hudspeth that we just learned about yesterday—this is incredibly dangerous for Texas, and it's not reflective of our values.” State lawmakers have since urged the Justice Department to pursue hate crime charges.
"This attack was a hate crime, an act of violence against innocent immigrants committed by a man who has a history of attacks on vulnerable people,” Rep. Joaquin Castro said. “Based on the circumstance of this case, it's hard not to believe that there victims were attacked in cold blood by two men who looked at the color of their skin and decided to make them targets.”
Dr. Mehmet Oz has been a day-time talk show staple since Oprah introduced him to America in 2004, with multiple appearances on her show. Then it seemed like Oz, who got his own show in 2009, became the go-to lifestyle doctor for morning shows, radio, books, and magazines—where he has peddled snake oil and bogus products, promoted vaccine deniers, and accrued a vast fortune. He’s using that fame and fortune to parlay into a Senate seat in Pennsylvania, where he has never lived until he decided to try to get this job that can help him grow his fortune.
Oz’s quackery came under close scrutiny in a Washington Poststory this week, though it’s never been a big secret. But, because Oz, “a cardiothoracic surgeon, is putting his medical background and his popular TV show at the center of his campaign pitch,” his history of pitching “potentially dangerous products and fringe viewpoints” needs to become an issue in this campaign. So Democrats, including the Chuck Schumer-aligned Senate Majority PAC, are making it one. So is John Fetterman, the Democratic candidate who is an actual Pennsylvanian.
“He calls himself a doctor. But Doctor Oz sold out his patients. On his TV show, Oz promoted reckless and dangerous medical advice,” the narrator says in the PAC’s one-minute radio ad obtained by The Hill. The narrator continues to say Oz “made millions of dollars pushing fake miracle cures like this,” then the ad cuts to clips of Oz’s huckster pitches: “This miracle pill can burn fat fast” and “I’ve got the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat.”
Fetterman’s ad is more fun, but probably will have less reach than the multimillion-dollar ad buy from the PAC.
Before there was Dr. Oz, there was Dr. Nick. They say the Simpsons always predict the future – and once again, they nailed it. pic.twitter.com/hx5ivJtpdg
Oz’s most-recent quackery, pre-campaign, was pushing hydroxychloroquine, the antimalarial drug that Trump and the far right embraced, to treat COVID-19. Oz backed his claim based on a French doctor’s research as published on YouTube. Oz owns shares in at least two of the pharmaceutical companies that produce the drug. What a coincidence, huh?
Over the years, he’s hocked a litany of “miracle” treatments that range from useless to dangerous. Like raspberry ketones—“the No. 1 miracle in a bottle to burn your fat” (it supplanted green coffee extract as “the magic weight-loss cure for every body type”), or putting a bar of lavender soap under your sheet to prevent leg cramps, or making personal health decisions on your astrological sign.
The Postdetails how Oz hosted a doctor who pushed the use of human chorionic gonadotropin (HCG), a hormone often used to treat infertility, as a weight-loss regimen in conjunction with a dangerous 500-calorie a day diet. Oz did tell his viewers in that segment that they should consult a doctor before embarking on a diet of fewer than 1,200 calories. A bunch of studies had been done on HCG prior to Oz’s show, disproving its weight loss benefits. And after that show aired, the FDA sent letters to seven different companies warning they were making unfounded weight-loss claims. The FDA said it sent those letters after “it had received reports of blood clots in the lungs, cardiac arrest and death among people who injected themselves with HCG.” But Oz had the doctor promoting HCG on the show again.
In 2012, Oz promoted selenium supplements, calling them the “holy grail of cancer prevention.” (That’s after his 2011 claims that a diet of “endive, red onion, and sea bass” would reduce the risk of ovarian cancer by as much as 75%.) Selenium is a naturally occurring mineral found in some foods, and the subject of several medical reviews, none of which found cancer-fighting benefits. The National Institutes of Health, however, does warn that “extremely high intakes of selenium can cause severe problems, including difficulty breathing, tremors, kidney failure, heart attacks, and heart failure.”
Oz might have missed the “do no harm” part of his medical training, and certainly wasn’t adhering to it when it came to the dogs he was using for research projects.
He’s a quack, a dangerous one, who sure seems to have put celebrity and wealth and power above his Hippocratic oath. If—as a licensed medical doctor—he’s that willing to play fast and loose with people’s lives, he sure wouldn’t take an oath to the Constitution seriously as a senator.
This week on The Downballot we check in on Pennsylvania, where Republican Doug Mastriano has called for "40 days of fasting and prayer" to save his ailing campaign for governor; dig into ad spending numbers that show Democrats airing far more spots because they aren't relying on super PACs; and recap the dispiriting results of Italy's general election, which saw the far-right win for the first time since Mussolini.
Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Patrick Pleul/dpa-Zentralbild/ZB)
Why did Elon Musk agree to buy Twitter again instead of continuing to argue his claims that Twitter violated the merger agreement by lying about bots? There are a few answers, but "the biggest one of all is that he's almost certain to lose [in Delaware Court of Chancery]. And of course, if he loses, he has to do exactly what he's just agreed to do, which is close the deal at the original price," law professor Robert Miller told Ars in a phone interview yesterday.
Miller is the F. Arnold Daum chair in corporate finance and law at the University of Iowa College of Law. "The Delaware Supreme Court and the Delaware Court of Chancery have cited Professor Miller's articles on material adverse effects, an issue the Court of Chancery has described as 'one of the most difficult issues under Delaware law,' more than forty times," his University of Iowa bio says. Musk's defense against Twitter's lawsuit depended heavily on whether he could prove that Twitter suffered a material adverse effect.
Musk tried to get out of the $44 billion deal by claiming that Twitter lied in its estimate that fewer than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users (mDAU) are spam or fake. But his claims seemed to have no solid proof, and with the scheduled trial less than two weeks away, Miller says Musk probably finally realized his case likely isn't a winner.
Again: There is no underlying Republican philosophy. None at all, aside from an insistence that anything a Republican does is good and anyone who criticizes a Republican is bad. Republican voters don't care if you have sex with minors (Matt Gaetz), help cover up the sexual abuse of student-athletes (Jim Jordan), troll local malls looking for teen girls to sexually assault (Roy Moore), or commit actual treason against the republic (Donald What's-His-Name). If former Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert, a child rapist and now-felon, ran for office again on a platform of Every Republican Gets To Rape Children, a goodly portion of the Republican base and nearly all of its evangelical flank would rally to his cause immediately.
If you think anti-abortion-rights ex-football star Herschel Walker being exposed as having paid for an abortion would make a dent in any of those skulls, after the Republican Party's bigwigs breezily brushed aside prior episodes of Walker holding a gun to his then-wife's head or brazenly lying to his campaign staff about how many children he had, forget it. The Republican Party has hitched its wagon to violent insurrection and to a Big Lie crafted as justification for nullifying elections that don't go the party's way.
So yeah, we're now in the Gosarian state of having even Herschel Walker's own family washing their hands of him as official Republicanism insists that, no, yet another Republican paying for an abortion before turning around and demanding abortion be banned for everyone else is not a big deal. It's just your average Tuesday.
Righty sort-of pundit Erick Erickson was so quick to dismiss the story he hit send before deciding which excuse he'd go with. Let's go with one of everything, and let the audience take their pick!
I thought we all knew this. Also, old news and people do change over time. https://t.co/HhPgtRYJP0
You're supposed to pick just one slip from the Excuse Box, Erick. Don't just reach in there with both hands.
Then you've got the Nazi-adjacent crowd, and the Nazi-adjacent crowd has a very simple message: Nothing Our Candidates Do Matter. The only thing that matters is power.
If you're noticing that the Republican defenses of Walker suffer from a distinct lack of consistency, that's because Walker first responded to the story by denying it ever happened and threatening to sue the media outlet reporting it. Walker, however, is considered such a prolific and unapologetic liar that even his own campaign staff doesn't trust him any farther than they can throw him, and initial Republican excuse-making presumed from the outset that the story was true no matter what Walker might personally say about it.
Mind you, Donald Trump says he believes Herschel's denials. And that, my friends and neighbors, is how you end up bankrupting your own casino.
As for the actual blowback Walker is facing from the not-surprising revelation that his anti-abortion stance is just as hollow as his "pro-family" declarations and his supposed business accomplishments: Losing his son's support seems to be the beginning and end of it. National Republicans are uniformly standing behind him, dismissing the news just as they dismissed Walker's record of abuses and violence. From Rick Scott to Mitch McConnell, the people controlling the money are sticking with him.
So are donors: Walker's campaign is boasting of a supposed "record-breaking" fundraising haul after this latest news broke, with Republican supporters giving $182,000 to the campaign in one day.
This is not actually that much, in campaign terms...
Some perspective: Warnock raised $26M in third quarter, which is roughly $288k a day on average. https://t.co/1E1HvCfa5p
… but it does show that Republican voters sincerely do not give a flying damn about all these supposedly deep-seated religious-or-not principles that they insist the republic abide by. Herschel could have personally performed the abortion himself, and it would only have resulted in the Republican base giving him even more money.
And, given the way his campaign's been going, we're not willing to say that won't be next week's story.
Again, the GOP never actually cares about local rule. They just whine about it when they think they can get the result they want there instead of elsewhere.
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner leaves a news conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 14. | Matt Rourke/AP
Philadelphia elected a progressive prosecutor twice. The state government wants to fire him anyway.
Right before the midterms, another political drama is unfolding in Pennsylvania: Republican lawmakers have filed articles of impeachment against Philadelphia’s twice-elected district attorney Larry Krasner, who ran on a platform of reducing mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty. The move follows a 63-page interim report released on Monday by a state committee formed to investigate Krasner and crime in Philadelphia, which did not recommend impeachment.
Republicans have claimed their investigation is about seeking solutions for rising crime, but for the past five years, they’ve been eager to connect their anti-Krasner rhetoric to the broader Democratic Party — a narrative that has fueled backlash againstprogressive prosecutors in other cities and painted Democrats as anti-police. Pennsylvania’s investigation started just weeks after San Francisco voters recalled their progressive prosecutor Chesa Boudin.
Republicans filed two articles of impeachment. The 22-page House resolution accuses Krasner of being “derelict in his obligations to the victims of crime, the people of the City of Philadelphia and of this Commonwealth,” and of obstructing the state committee’s investigation. Republicans say they reserve the right to introduce “further or more detailed Articles of Impeachment” against Krasner in the future.
Krasner responded Wednesday morning to the news of the impeachment articles with since-deletedTwitter thread. “We knew this was coming,” Krasner had written.“Its devastating to democracy, and it shows how far toward fascism the Republican party is creeping. These Republicans divest from communities and then grandstand about crime for political gain.” He noted Republicans “don’t allege I’ve committed a crime. They just don’t think Philly has a right to govern itself.”
Krasner’s allies see the state probe as a cynical stunt by a Republican-controlled legislature that both underfunds Philadelphia and blocks its leaders from passing tougher gun laws. They also view it as a dangerously anti-democratic effort to overturn the will of Philadelphia voters — akin to the effort to overturn the city’s votes for Biden in the 2020 election.
The committee, dubbed the Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order, was voted into existence by nearly all House Republican lawmakers in June. It’s already embroiled in one legal battle with Krasner, who has objected in court to their sweeping request for documents. To impeach Krasner, the committee might have to demonstrate evidence of misbehavior or corruption — not just ideological disagreement — and that could end up being the subject of yet another court fight.
The backdrop to all of this is the midterm elections. In Pennsylvania, there’s a tightly contested US Senate race where the Republican candidate, Mehmet Oz, has made crime the focus of multiple attack ads. The governor’s race alsohas implications for 2024 and beyond: The current Republican nominee, Doug Mastriano, led the effort to overturn Pennsylvania’s votes for Biden two years ago.
Mastriano, who is now trying to defend himself against accusations of being anti-democratic, has becomeone of the few high-profile GOP officials to defend Krasner against impeachment, calling the inquiry “political grandstanding.” And dozens of Democrats, including Democratic Lt. Gov. candidate Austin Davis, voted with Republicans in September to hold Krasner in contempt for refusing to comply with a subpoena. (Krasner argued in state court that the committee’s subpoena was illegitimate and illegal.)
Some other Pennsylvania Democrats are seeking to distance themselves from the controversy. Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman, who has been running ads about “funding the police,” has not weighed in, and gubernatorial candidate Josh Shapiro’s campaign also declined to comment.
Matt Rourke/AP
Members of the Pennsylvania House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order listen to testimony during a hearing in Philadelphia on September 29.
A pioneering progressive prosecutor confronts rising crime in Philadelphia
Krasner, who was first elected in 2017, was one of the first people to run as a self-described “progressive prosecutor” — part of a growing national movement of candidates who emphasize that the discretionary decisions made by a city’s chief attorney can have a profound effect on mass incarceration.
Since taking office, Krasnerhas stopped seeking cash bail for some low-level offenses, a move to reduce jail time that some defendants have to servesimply because they’re low-income. His team also stopped prosecuting marijuana casesand most prostitution cases against sex workers, and heavily deprioritized retail theft — something that’s been on the rise in the city over the past two years. His office touts statistics on his website that Krasner has imposed over 29,000 fewer years of incarceration compared to the previous district attorney.
Amid rising crime rates and increasing concern about crime,a growing backlash, led primarily though not exclusively by Republicans, has depicted reformers like Krasner and Boudin as threats to public safety. Researchers have not found a link between progressive prosecutors and local crime rates, and in fact found that declining to prosecute a misdemeanor can significantly reduce the likelihood of future crime.
If more DAs like Boudin and Krasner are booted out of office, reformers fear other prosecutors may lose interest in bucking old “tough on crime” playbooks.
While some of Philadelphia’s crimeuptick began prior to Krasner taking office, the situation has gotten worse since the pandemic. Philadelphia’s murder rate went up 58 percent between 2019 and 2021. There were a record 499 homicide victims in 2020, followed by another record-breaking 562 homicides in 2021. The number of murders this year — 409 as of October 3 — is slightly less than this time last year, but still the second-highest the city has seen by this date in 15 years.
Gun violence has also been increasing statewide and nationally since the pandemic started, including in suburban and rural areas. One analysis from the Council on Criminal Justice, a research and policy group, found a 30 percent increase in homicides across 34 US citiesin2020compared to 2019, and another independent crime analysis found murder up 37 percent across 57 localities.
Jane Roh, a spokesperson for Krasner, noted that of the five largest cities in Pennsylvania, Philadelphia’s increase was similar to Pittsburgh (where homicides were up 53 percent) and smaller than Reading (117 percent) and Allentown (71 percent). Compared to the other 12 Pennsylvania counties of at least 300,000 residents, Philadelphia’s increase ranked sixth.
Still,the level of violence is hard to hand-wave away with comparative statistics, and because Philadelphia is so large, percentage increases can obscure what are many, many more deaths. Earlier this month, five high schoolers in Philadelphia were shot, one fatally, after an afternoon football scrimmage, and other crime, like carjackings, has spiked.
Matt Slocum/AP
Investigators work the scene where one student was killed and four others wounded in a shooting near Roxborough High School in Philadelphia on September 27.
Critics of the district attorney allege that his policies have contributed to the rise in crime by sending a message that laws in the city won’t be enforced. They point to declines in conviction rates for illegal gun possession: Between 2015 and 2020, the share of illegal gun possession cases resulting in conviction fell from 65 percent to 42 percent, a decline driven primarily by cases being dismissed by judges and withdrawn by the district attorney. The district attorney said that some offenders went through diversion programs instead of facing jail time and that police brought forward weak cases that were too difficult to win in court.
Krasner’s supporters stress that the lagging performance of police should get more attention. From January 1, 2017, through September 18, 2022, Philadelphia police made arrests in less than 40 percent of homicide incidents in the city and just 18 percent of nonfatal shootings. The district attorney cannot charge those who have not been arrested.
Krasner has argued more energy should be focused on improving the low clearance rate for shooting cases rather than on trying to remove illegal guns from the streets. (In February, the Philadelphia Police Department launched a new division focused on investigating nonfatal shootings.) Roh, Krasner’s spokesperson, also noted that the DA supports a host of enhanced gun safety regulations, measures opposed by Republicans on the state level.
Even amid the rise in crime,Krasner easily won his reelection in 2021, earning more than twice as many votes as his Republican challenger, Chuck Peruto — who campaigned on getting tougher on crime. While Krasner faced a heated primary, beating a prosecutor backed by the city’s police union, he barely campaigned in the general election against Peruto and declined to debate him. Democrats outnumber Republicans in Philadelphia seven to one, and the city hasn’t had a Republican DA in over three decades.
Krasner has been a target of attacks for Pennsylvania Republicans for the last half-decade, but the impeachment inquiry markeda new escalation. The investigation began in June after three House lawmakers who live in districts far from Philadelphia circulated a memo seeking their colleagues’ support for impeaching Krasner for “dereliction of duty.”
About two weeks later, 110 Republicans and four Democrats in the Pennsylvania House voted against 86 Democrats to establish the committee, which has subpoena power. In July, Pennsylvania’s Republican House speaker appointed five members to the committee, including two Philadelphia Democrats who had voted against the inquiry; one, Danilo Burgos, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he only agreed because he was told they’d be investigating crime statewide. But Republican lawmakers voted against an amendment supported by Democrats that would have expanded the committee’s scope to study statewide violence.
Michael Straub, a spokesperson for Pennsylvania’s House speaker, defended the narrow focus. “I mean, Philadelphia is such a crucial place in the state,” he told Vox. “So much of what makes Philadelphia relevant to the rest of the country and rest of the world is its population and culture, so making sure Philadelphia is safe and vibrant and attracting people is important to everyone regardless of political party.”
Matt Rourke/AP
Supporters of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner demonstrate outside a hearing conducted by the Pennsylvania House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order in Philadelphia on September 29.
Republicans tried to claim their probe wasn’t about impeachment
Despite the unambiguous origins of the committee, Republicans spent weeksclaiming that their work should not be assumed to be about impeachment. The committee “has a wide-ranging scope and is much broader than a mere impeachment inquiry,” said Jason Gottesman, House Republican caucus spokesperson, when Vox asked about the anti-democratic implications of the probe.
Unlike other states, Pennsylvania voters cannot recall elected officials, and there have been only two successful impeachments in state history — a state supreme court justice in 1994 and a district judge in 1881. The state constitution says “the Governor and all other civil officers shall be liable to impeachment for any misbehavior in office,” although Krasner’s office arguesthis language applies only to elected state officials, not local politicians.
Some reports have suggested the “any misbehavior in office” language is vague enough to include general discontent with how an official approaches their job. Bruce Ledewitz, a Duquesne University law professor who teaches a course on the Pennsylvania Constitution, told Vox that the select committee would need to find actual evidence of corruption or misbehavior to impeach Krasner. Simply disagreeing with his policies would not be enough.
“The idea that the constitutional language is so broad that it could mean anything, I don’t think that’s the case,” Ledewitz said, pointing to the statutory removal provisions, and contrasted them with the looser standards of impeachment at the federal level. If the Pennsylvania legislature does move to impeach Krasner, Ledewitz said they’ll need to prepare for it to be challenged in court, like it was in Pennsylvania in 1994.
In August, the select committee issued its first subpoena of Krasner, requesting documents related to his policies including on bail and plea bargains. They also asked for documents on prosecuting police officers, and the “complete case file” of Ryan Pownall, a former Philadelphia police officer who faces third-degree murder charges for killing a Black man in 2017. Pownallis set to go on trial in November.
Krasner allies say the select committee’s interest in these case files reveals they are more interested inshielding police from accountability than protecting victims of crime. Vox asked the Republican chair of the select committee, Rep. John Lawrence, why these documents were being prioritized in the investigation. Gottesman, answering on Lawrence’s behalf, pointed to threepress releasesfrom Lawrence that did not directly address the question.
Matt Rourke/AP
Rep. John Lawrence, chair of the Pennsylvania House Select Committee on Restoring Law and Order, speaks with members of the media in Philadelphia on September 29.
In a letter sent to the committee in August, Krasner’s lawyers asked the committee to withdraw their requests and end the investigation, and later petitioned a state court for relief. They argued in legal filings that the probe is illegitimate because it serves no proper legislative purpose and Krasner has committed no impeachable offense. They also said that impeaching Krasner would violate the constitutional rights of the Philadelphia voters who elected him, that documents for the pending Pownall trial are privileged, and that it would be illegal to disclose grand jury materials.
The select committee — which asked for the “complete case file” of a pending murder trial, including documents “related or referring to the investigative grand jury proceedings” — denies it sought any privileged materials. The committee’s first interim report issued September 13 noted that the district attorney’s office could withhold privileged materials if it provided a list of them.
Krasner’s lawyer, Michael Satin, told Vox that they would not produce such a logwhen the request was “patently improper” and an abuse of power by the legislature. “Courts, not legislative bodies, are best equipped to resolve disputes involving a subpoena, especially one that involves an inquiry into a pending criminal case,” said Satin. The select committee has asked Krasner at least twice in writing to withdraw their court petition.
But state lawmakers — including Democrats opposed generally to the impeachment inquiry — were not happy that Krasner resisted the legislature’s subpoena and voted 162-32 to hold him in contempt. Republicans like Rep. Lawrence claimed Krasner “willfully neglected” the subpoena, though Krasner’s team pushed back, saying they followed the law by registering their objection with the judiciary, in addition to writingtheir objections to the committee.
Rep. Jared Solomon, a Democratic state rep from Northeast Philadelphia, told the Philadelphia Inquirer he saw Krasner’s resistance as “exactly the same” as Steve Bannon, who was convicted of contempt for failing to comply with congressional subpoenas into the January 6 investigation.
About a week after the contempt vote, Krasner’s team began providing some records to the select committee — primarily those that were already available online on their website. If Krasner’s team had provided those documents to the committee initially and only objected to the files related to the pending murder trial, it’s unlikely as many Democrats would have held the district attorney in contempt, but Krasner’s team didn’t want to grant legitimacy to what they saw as a sham investigation.
“This impeachment investigation is absolutely just a witch hunt. I’m on the judiciary committee and I have voted at every instance to not proceed with this, but I’m a lawyer and so is District Attorney Krasner, and legal subpoenas are legal subpoenas,” said Rep. Emily Kinkead (D-Pittsburgh), who voted to hold Krasner in contempt. “While I understand everything the legislature does is inherently political, we have the right to issue subpoenas and if he believed there were privileged items that were requested, he should have created a privileged log, to say, ‘These documents exist but you’re not entitled to see them,’ but he didn’t even do that.”
Matt Rourke/AP
Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner holds up a report by his office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, highlighting exonerations due to wrongful convictions, during a news conference in Philadelphia on June 15.
Impeachment looks less likely in the Senate than in the House
In order to impeach, a majority of members in the Republican-controlled House would need to vote in favor, and then two-thirds of the state Senate would need to, too. That means 34 senators would need to vote in favor of impeachment, and there are 28 Republicans currently in the chamber.
Despite dozens of Democrats voting to hold Krasner in contempt, it still might be hard to get six on board for impeachment, especially when the specter of Republicans trying to throw out Philly votes two years ago still looms so large.
“Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” Trump proclaimed in the fall of 2020, in an attempt to gin up distrust about election integrity in Pennsylvania’s biggest city. Following the 2020 election, Trump put on blast a Republican election commissioner from Philadelphia who found no evidence of voter fraud, insisting “he refuses to look at a mountain of corruption & dishonesty.”
Krasner performed especially well in his reelection campaign in areas with high levels of gun violence, giving the district attorney confidence to say his progressive policies were backed by a mandate from the people most affected.
Progressive allies of Krasner have been organizing to send a message to Democratic state officials that voting to impeach Krasner would be aligning themselves with Republican election deniers.
“We’re not just going to roll over and pretend that there’s not an attack on Philadelphia, on Black and brown people,” said Tonya Bah, a Philadelphia activist who leads Free the Ballot. “For Democrats to side with Republican leadership to harm someone that we elected, it is very disheartening, and quite frankly, we have to draw a line in the sand.”
On September 23, the Working Families Party, a union-backed group that helps elect progressive candidates locally and nationally, announced it would be rescinding five midterm endorsements of Democratic state reps who had voted to hold Krasner in contempt.
Vox contacted the five Democrats who lost their WFP endorsements. Two elected officials from Pittsburgh — Reps. Jessica Benham and Emily Kinkead — said they didn’t even know they had received the WFP endorsement but were not planning to vote for impeachment.
“I voted to hold the DA in contempt because legislative bodies have jurisdiction to issue and enforce their own subpoenas,” Benham said. “That the DA responded in part to the subpoena after the contempt vote, which carried no actual penalty, demonstrates that he could have responded in part prior to that vote, but chose not to for reasons unclear. Nevertheless, I will be voting against impeachment if that charge comes before the House, as I respect the will of the voters.”
Rep. Danielle Friel Otten of Chester County also said she views her subpoena vote as very different from any vote to remove someone from office. “For me, the vote to find DA Krasner in contempt of the House was about equal application of the law,” she told Vox. “This was a procedural vote about responding to a lawfully issued subpoena. Larry Krasner was duly elected by the voters of Philadelphia, and impeachment requires a high bar. To this point, I’ve seen no evidence of any impeachable offense.”
Vanessa Clifford, the mid-Atlantic political director for the Working Families Party, told Vox both Benham and Kinkead had submitted candidate questionnaires applying for WFP’s endorsement, and were both personally notified that their state committee had endorsed their reelection campaigns.
Rep. Rick Krajewski, a Democratic state House lawmaker representing West Philadelphia who voted against holding Krasner in contempt and was disappointed by the nine Philadelphia state reps who did, said Krasner is an easier “punching bag target” than, say, local judges, because there’s only one of him. Pinning the city’s problems on the district attorney is also easier for state Republicans to do than investing in Philadelphia communities, schools, workers, and parks and recreation.
There’s no doubt that Philadelphia has real issues with people feeling safe, Krajewski added. “But as a result, we’re seeing a return to ‘tough on crime’ rhetoric, to overpolicing, and in my opinion, that is the wrong response to this moment,” he said. “We’ve seen that during the Reagan era, the Nixon era, an investment in crackdown does not work. I think for myself and other Democrats who support Larry, we’re having real conversations with our community about what this could mean for our democracy and how we can stand united.”
Update, October 26, 5:40 pm ET: This story was originally published on October 5 and has been updated, most recently to reflect the content of articles of impeachment against Krasner.
Another GOP coward. How this shithead continues to hold office is astounding and is quite an indictment of Kentucky.
Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky joins a growing list of Republicans scurrying away from Democratic challengers looking to debate their opponents ahead of November elections. Paul simply didn't show up on Monday to debate former Kentucky House Rep. Charles Booker on KET's Kentucky Tonight as planned, NBC affiliate LEX 18 reported. Booker described Paul’s disappearing act as “disrespectful” to voters.
"It's an affront to the democratic process,” the Democrat told LEX 18. “If you are running for office, you should make your case about why you believe your vision is best suited for the people. That's what I'm doing. That's what we're doing across the Commonwealth. That's why we're organizing. That's why I'm here tonight. He should be here too. He's not entitled to this Senate seat. It doesn't belong to him. It belongs to the people of Kentucky."
Booker called Paul a “coward” in a Twitter photo showing the Democrat sitting alone on a set at the debate. “Rand Paul and I are supposed to debate tonight,” Booker said. “They even had a cup of water ready for him.”
Rand Paul and I are supposed to debate tonight. They even had a cup of water ready for him. Coward. pic.twitter.com/V7OTy3kZPj
Paul chose not to show up and receive the cup, citing concerns of political violence in an earlier interview with LEX 18. "I think that debates should involve civility and should involve parties that are actually willing to address questions," Paul said. "And I think that there's been a certain tenor, so far, that really involves more accepting of political violence - that I think worries me and makes me concerned."
Civil debate is an admired quality in a Republic but justifying, mocking, or celebrating violence, as documented in this video of Charles Booker and his allies, should be rejected. pic.twitter.com/t3hrJBtJPk
He tweeted on Monday: “Civil debate is an admired quality in a Republic but justifying, mocking, or celebrating violence, as documented in this video of Charles Booker and his allies, should be rejected.”
Video the Republican included in the tweet cited various incidents of violence aimed at Republicans, and relied on the racist dog whistle tactic of trying to link those incidents to a Black political opponent who had nothing to do with them.
One of those examples of violence was a baseball game from June 2017, during which James T. Hodgkinson fired at Republican lawmakers. It was an awful incident, in which Hodgkinson died after being shot by police, WBEZ Chicago reported.
In another incident cited in the video, Paul’s wife, Kelley, described a neighbor-related dispute that ended in violence in 2017. Rene Boucher was convicted of assault and ordered to pay $580,000 in damages after he attacked Paul and broke his ribs, NBC News reported. While admitting that Democrats condemned the violence immediately, the attack ad accused Booker of mocking Paul. The tweet that Paul’s team used as its sure-fire evidence of Booker mocking violence against Paul seems more like a spoof of the State Farm insurance jingle: “Like a good neighbor State Farm is there.”
The Booker campaign wrote: “Like a bad neighbor, Rand doesn't care."
Then, Paul proceeded to show his constituents through his actions how the words may not be too far from the truth. He bragged about supporting legislation to block potentially life-saving reproductive health care.
"I strongly oppose any federal funding of abortion and will attempt to stop the flow of tax dollars to groups who perform or advocate for abortion," Paul wrote in a synopsis of his views on abortion. "I have been leading the fight to prohibit all taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion provider and introduced legislation to do so."
Booker, conversely, advocated against government intrusion into the homes of the people of Kentucky. “I fully believe that women and the people of Kentucky deserve agency to make decisions over their bodies,” he said, “and we should not have government operating as a big brother, surveilling in our homes, certainly intruding in the uterus of the people of Kentucky to say that this person should not get healthcare.”
Rand Paul didn’t show up to defend his big government ban on abortion, but my position is clear. I will always defend your rights. We must codify Roe. pic.twitter.com/xmtyQRmHG6
The family of a Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) officer killed during a training exercise is suing the police department for wrongful death after news that the officer was investigating at least one of the officers involved in his death for sexual assault. Houston Tipping, 32, died during a Los Angeles Police Academy bicycle training exercise in May. While the training was meant to be a bicycle training, it somehow turned into a “grappling exercise” that led to Tipping’s death.
A county medical examiner ruled Tipping's death an accident, noting that suspicious injuries revealed in the autopsy were sustained during attempts to save his life. But Tipping’s family believes he was targeted for taking the incident report of a 2021 sexual assault committed by colleagues, including one officer who was allegedly involved in the exercise leading to his death.
"I'm certainly alleging that at least one officer engaged in an abuse of force in order to try and scare or harm Officer Tipping in order to prevent him from investigating a claim of rape," the family’s lawyer, Bradley Gage, said at a Monday press conference.
At the press conference, Gage shared that Tipping was not only looking for another job prior to his death, but also investigating an incident involving at least four officers who committed an act of sexual assault in the Los Angeles area.
"In July 2021, four police officers were involved in the sexual assault of a woman in the Los Angeles area," Gage said. "A report was taken by officer Tipping, and I've seen that report. And … the female victim claimed that she was raped by four different people, all LAPD officers."
He continued: “She knew the names of some of those officers because they were in uniform and they had their name tags on … That name of one of those officers with the name tag seems to correlate with one of the officers that was at the bicycle training.”
In response to questions from a reporter, Gage said he thinks "murder is what occurred."
Lawyer for LAPD officer killed during training exercise by other cops says dead cop was investigating a gang rape by four cops at least one of whom was there when he was beaten to death. pic.twitter.com/DIZ9b1uBGK
While the LAPD maintains that the incident was an accident, the family believes it was “intentional,” and has consistently spoken against the claims the department has made.
Although medical records indicated Tipping was "possibly dropped" on his head, department officials claimed that he was not beaten or hit on the head during the training incident.
"Officer Tipping did not sustain any laceration to the head" and "was also not struck or beaten during this training session," Police Chief Michel Moore told the LAPD Board of Police Commissioners in June. "He did grapple with another officer, and both fell to the ground, resulting in a catastrophic injury to his spinal cord."
Gage disputed the claims in July, and showed reporters MRI scans revealing that Tipping had staples in his head due to the injuries he sustained leading up to his death. He also referred to declarations from a nurse and a paramedic that said Tipping had suffered spinal cord injuries, a collapsed lung, broken ribs, and liver damage consistent with being fatally beaten.
“When you look at all these horrific injuries, the truth is something went seriously wrong here,” Gage said. “I cannot fathom anything other than a severe beating.”
This is not surprising because we already know that coroners and medical examiners - who work more closely with police departments than even prosecutors - undercount police killings by more than 50%. https://t.co/mLZYOvsP2j
Like other incidents where officers have been accused of killing someone, the department conveniently claims no video footage of the incident is available, despite trainings often being recorded.
"LAPD claims there was no video taken this day," Gage said. "We don't believe that's accurate.”
The updates in Tiplling’s case are related to a damages claim made against the LAPD by Shirley Huffman, Tipping’s mother. Gage first filed the claim in June, alleging that Tipping died after being repeatedly hit in the head, causing bleeding and multiple fatal neck fractures.
During his press conference Monday, Gage noted that newly found evidence pointed to the possibility that Tipping may have been killed because his investigation into the sexual assault came during a time of whistleblowing and reports about alleged “shadow-gangs” within the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. “Shadow-gangs” refers to groups within local law enforcement that cover up officers’ crimes.
According to ABC News, during the time Gage and LAPD officials were disputing the circumstances that led to Tipping’s death in July, LA County Sheriff Alex Villanueva’s former chief of staff publicly admitted he’d once belonged to the alleged “Grim Reaper” deputy gang within the county sheriff’s department.
But that’s not all. According to a report by The Los Angeles Times , the LAPD has a history of failing to discipline officers for sex crimes, in addition to concealing these crimes from the public. If Gage’s allegations can be connected to this history, Tipping’s death may open an even bigger investigation into how law enforcement officials not only abuse their power but commit heinous crimes that get swept under the rug.
Because Republicans will vote for any huckster hypocrite as long as they think their bigotry aligns.
Herschel Walker speaks at a September 2022 campaign event in Gwinnett, Georgia. | Megan Varner/Getty Images
New abortion allegations are beginning to plague Walker’s campaign.
Republicans have had a public and private lament over the past few months: Given the headwinds Democrats are facing, the party would be further ahead in key Senate races had GOP primary voters nominated different candidates. Those voters gave them Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Blake Masters in Arizona, and J.D. Vance in Ohio, all of whom beat out more mainstream Republicans and all of whom are locked in tight struggles with Democratic opponents in swing states.
With the ongoing revelations he’s faced, however, Herschel Walker is perhaps the prime example of the GOP’s candidate-quality problem.
On Wednesday, Walker was attacked — again — for being a hypocrite on the issue of abortion after a second woman claimed he’d pressured her into getting the procedure and drove her to obtain one in 1993. This allegation follows that of another woman who told The Daily Beast in early October that Walker helped pay for her abortion in 2009.
Both women said they spoke out due to Walker’s inconsistency on the subject: He’s long taken a hard-line stance on abortion, previously stating that he’d back an abortion ban without exceptions, though he’s since softened that position. Walker has flatly denied both allegations, calling the newest claim “foolishness.”
The latest abortion allegation is in addition to a series of bombshells that have emerged about Walker throughout the campaign. While his football celebrity and Donald Trump’s encouragement were enough to win his primary, he’s had a troubled history that included policy gaffes and a number of domestic violence allegations.
Georgia is a particularly bad place for Republicans to have a bad candidate. As Republicans stare down a competitive map to retake Senate control, their hopes of flipping seats rest on states like Nevada and Georgia, which have seen narrower polling margins. Walker’s myriad issues are now weighing him down in a place that should be otherwise gettable for the party. While other Republicans, like Gov. Brian Kemp and lieutenant governor nominee Burt Jones, have consistently led in the polls, Walker has recently trailed Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock.
It’s far from clear that Walker’s baggage will be decisive in the race.According to FiveThirtyEight, Warnock saw some slight gains in polling after the Daily Beast story came out in early October, though polls remain tight. Partisanship runs deep in Georgia, and Republican voters showed with their Trump support in recent years that they are willing to overlook personal hypocrisy for a GOP win.
“Walker’s vague, sometimes incoherent answers on policy questions, his history of domestic violence — these are all things that make him a less-than-ideal candidate,” says Emory University political scientist Andra Gillespie. “If the Republican nominee had been the state agriculture commissioner, I suspect that the race would still be competitive, but he might have been performing in the vicinity of Brian Kemp.”
The revelations about Walker, briefly explained
Questions about whether Herschel Walker was prepared for a campaign began even before he jumped into the Republican primary, when Trump was encouraging him to join the race.
“I know national Republican leaders who spoke to him and expressed skepticism about his ability to run a campaign and raise funds,” says Ralph Reed, a friend of Walker’s and former chair of the Georgia Republican Party, who argues that those critiques “underestimated” Walker’s ability to win. As of late October, Walker and Warnock are within the margin of error of one another in FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregator.
Broadly, news reports about Walker have underscored hypocrisy on issues like abortion as well as his critiques of absentee fathers, raising questions about his consistency and commitment to socially conservative policies. Additionally, domestic violence and stalking allegations have pointed to concerns about his character and past treatment of romantic partners and family members.
Some of the issues that have emerged:
Domestic violence and stalking allegations: Walker has faced domestic violence allegations from multiple women, including two he was allegedly romantically involved with. Grossman, his ex-wife, has accused him of threatening to kill her on two occasions, once while he held a gun to her head and once holding a razor to her throat. A judge had previously granted a protective order to Grossman, noting that Walker posed “a clear and present danger of family violence.”
Walker has not denied these incidents but said he does not recall them, pointing to his struggles with mental health and dissociative identity disorder, which can include memory loss as a symptom. As PolitiFact notes, Walker has not been arrested or charged with a crime.
Walker and Grossman have both spoken about these allegations prior to the campaign in interviews with ABC and CNN in 2008. Walker has also written about the challenges he’s faced with dissociative identity disorder in a 2008 book, which describes the potential for violent thoughts.“He has owned up, apologized, gotten treatment and since dedicated his life to sharing his story to help others,” the campaign said in a statement to PolitiFact about past incidents of domestic violence.
Another woman that Walker was involved with has also accused him of threatening to kill her, while a third woman has accused him of stalking her, both allegations that his campaign denied to PolitiFact. In his Twitter thread, Walker’s son Christian Walker also referenced threats of violence that he and his mother, Grossman, faced, alleging that his father “threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from [his] violence.”
On the Democratic side, Warnock has faced allegations of domestic violence from his ex-wife, Ouleye Ndoye, as well. Previously, she accused him of running over her foot during an argument, which he has denied. PolitiFact notes that medical professionals did not see injuries to Ndoye’s foot at the time.
Past actions on abortion: The Daily Beast story alleges that Walker covered the cost of a former girlfriend’s abortion in 2009 when they were dating, something that was not previously publicly known. As proof, she provided a receipt for the procedure, a photo of a check signed by Walker, and a “get well” card that was sent at the time. The same woman also told The New York Times that Walker pressured her to get a second abortion.
Walker had previously taken one of the hardest-line stances on abortion of any Republican candidate, expressing his support for a ban that does not include exceptions for rape, incest, or the life of the mother. “I just can’t with the hypocrisy anymore,” the woman, who requested anonymity to protect her privacy, told the Daily Beast.Walker later softened his position on the issue, noting that he would support exceptions included in Georgia’s six-week abortion ban.
A second anonymous woman has also said that Walker pressured her to get an abortionand drove her to the clinic when she became pregnant in the 1990s. This second allegation was announced via a virtual press conference led by attorney Gloria Allred in late October.
“We don’t need people in the US Senate who profess one thing and do another,” the woman said.
Walker has flatly denied both reports.
Comments on absentee fathers: In the past, Walker has criticized absentee fathers, though multiple news reports have now suggested that he has at least one child he does not see. In addition to his adult son, Christian, Walker has three children he didn’t acknowledge publicly before they were reported on, including at least one he appeared to play little role in raising, according to the Daily Beast. “I support them all and love them all. I’ve never denied my children,” Walker has previously said. Another Daily Beast report described how Walker had lied to his campaign about the existence of his children, suggesting that some of his own staffers viewed him as a liability.
Past claims he’s made about the size of his business and the amount of money it was donating to charities also have little evidence backing them up.
Policy gaffes: There are several comments Walker has made that have spurred questions about his policy experience. He previously argued that “clean air” from the US floated to China and defeated the purpose of investments to address such pollution, a statement that’s counter to scientific evidence. Additionally, he suggested that inflation was a women’s issue because “they’ve got to buy groceries,” a statement that prompted pushback for its sexist framing.
Voter concerns about Walker have been evident in polling: An October Quinnipiac survey found that 50 percent of Georgia respondents said they had a favorable opinion of Warnock, while just 39 percent felt the same about Walker.
The impact they could have in Georgia
Walker’s issues could cost Republicans the Senate seat in Georgia, though there are still some major factors working in his favor.
For one, there are national trends that bode well for all Republican candidates. The party in power typically faces a backlash in the midterms that could be further exacerbated by the president’s unpopularity.
In an October Civiqs poll, 37 percent of Georgia respondents said they approved of the job President Joe Biden was doing, compared to roughly 40 percent who do so nationwide, according to a FiveThirtyEight survey aggregator. A majority of Georgia’s likely voters also rated cost of living, jobs, and the economy as the most important issues in the upcoming election in a Monmouth poll, with many conservatives blaming Biden and Democrats for driving prices up.
“People are going to vote with their pocketbooks and wallets, not so much on the emotional side of things. They are being affected by inflation, gas prices, and now you have interest rates going up,” says Marci McCarthy, the chair of the DeKalb County Republicans.
Some voters may also be willing to overlook Walker’s flaws because they’re interested in seeing a Republican Senate majority that will check a Democratic administration. Because it is one of the few seats that is considered a true swing state, the Georgia Senate race could determine which party secures a majority. A September CBS News poll highlighted this dynamic: 72 percent of Walker voters said they were backing him in order to oppose Biden, and 86 percent said they were doing so to help Republicans gain control of the Senate.
Walker’s celebrity status as a football player in the state may also help insulate him with certain voters. Walker won the Heisman Trophy while he was a running back at the University of Georgia, where he helped the school secure a national championship.
“Not only Georgia, but Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, we really do love our football,” says Camilla Moore, the chair of the Georgia Black Republican Council, who noted that people will “always view Herschel as that champion with the Georgia Bulldogs.”
Beyond national trends, the state’s Republican lean could also benefit Walker. Although demographic changes in Georgia, including an influx of Black, Latino, and Asian American voters — along with aggressive turnout efforts led by gubernatorial nominee Stacey Abrams — have helped make the electorate more friendly to Democrats, experts say Republicans hold a narrow edge. If Republicans are able to mobilize their voters in higher numbers than the 2020 turnout, that could contribute to pushing Walker over the top.
“I think the state is still a little more Republican than Democrat. In that respect, Warnock is swimming against the tide,” says Charles Bullock, a political scientist at the University of Georgia.
The real question will be whether moderate Republicans and independent voters are willing to overlook the many problems that have been raised with Walker’s candidacy. Moderate, college-educated white women, in particular, are a contingent that the allegations of domestic violence could turn away, experts tell Vox. Given how much support Kemp has appeared to pick up, including with moderates, Walker faces the challenge of ensuring that these voters don’t split their ticket and vote for Warnock or choose the libertarian candidate in the race.
“I think in this race, it’s going to be down for Herschel to the suburban white, college-educated voters, especially women. If those voters, who are now voting for Kemp in big numbers, break for Herschel, he’ll win,” said Reed.
Update, October 26, 5:45 pm ET: This story was originally published on October 4 and has been updated, including most recently to include a new allegation raised against Walker.
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24087403/Endeavor_Soup.jpg)
Courtesy of Akili
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24081805/AP22272643235507a.jpg)
Matt Rourke/AP
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24081925/AP22270842978989a.jpg)
Matt Slocum/AP
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24081807/AP22272643236326a.jpg)
Matt Rourke/AP
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24081949/AP22272643572471a.jpg)
Matt Rourke/AP
/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/24081806/AP21166725084167a.jpg)
Matt Rourke/AP
