James.galbraith

It’s not just the Secret Service that deleted text messages after specifically being asked to preserve such internal communications. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) fully admitted in litigation ongoing in Massachusetts that top officials with the previous administration erased texts even after a government watchdog and civil rights organizations had filed public records requests. Phones belonging to Thomas Homan, Ronald Vitiello, and Matthew Albence—all of whom at one point served as the agency’s acting director—were wiped.

“ICE’s filings assert that not only did five of these senior officials wipe their ICE-issued devices, but that doing so was in compliance with instructions issued across the agency,” a statement said.

RELATED STORY: Groups urge termination of ICE contract for site accused of unlawfully deleting surveillance videos

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“This revelation was included in filings that are part of an ongoing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit brought by nonpartisan watchdog group American Oversight and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Massachusetts that seeks records concerning the federal criminal prosecution of Massachusetts state court Judge Shelley M. Richmond Joseph, including the emails and text messages of seven senior agency officials,” the ACLU of Massachusetts said.

That judge is facing trial after allowing a defendant to leave her courtroom from a back entrance in April 2018. ICE agents had been waiting to sweep the defendant up at a different door, despite many judges vocally condemning this practice by federal immigration officials. American Oversight and the ACLU of Massachusetts said that Homan “immediately” asked if ICE lawyers could pursue action against the judge, while former legal adviser Tracy Short boasted her arrest would be “first of many.” 

While American Oversight and the ACLU of Massachusetts filed records requests relating to ICE’s reaction to the incident the following November, most phones were still wiped. “All but one of these deletions occurred after American Oversight and the ACLU of Massachusetts specifically requested information from these devices,” the ACLU said. 

“In the supplemental declarations filed on Thursday, ICE asserted that it instructed employees to wipe their agency-issued phones upon departure, and suggested that the agency had no policy of preserving data on those cell phones,” American Oversight said. “According to the declarations, ICE employees were left to their own discretion as to whether communications sent using their mobile devices needed to be memorialized, and even then, employees were not required to preserve the original messages themselves. Moreover, agency personnel were instructed to erase phone data upon their departure from the agency.”

This is not reassuring when it comes to any government agency, especially this one. In another example this past year, ICE knew that an abusive jail in Florida was illegally erasing surveillance footage but failed to report it to the National Archives and Records Administration as required by law. ICE also failed to reprimand the Glades County Detention Center for deleting the footage in the first place. 

“The deletion of security footage at Glades is not the only example of ICE’s attempts to skirt recordkeeping laws,” the ACLU of Florida and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) said at the time. “In 2019, ICE obtained permission from the National Archives to destroy years’ worth of sexual assault and death investigation records from ICE facilities across the country—a plan later blocked by a federal judge following a lawsuit filed by CREW.”

Several of the ICE officials in the litigation are also well-known for all the wrong reasons. Homan was a central figure in the previous administration’s separation of families at the southern border, a crime against humanity that remains one of the darkest moments in our nation’s modern history. Vitiello, who succeeded Homan as acting director, dismissed those separations as “only 2,500 people” affected. Albence, another acting director under that administration, once compared migrant family jails to summer camp. He has since moved on to a job with private prison profiteer GEO Group.

The ACLU further noted that ICE officials were apparently using an “honor system” where they would summarize their text communications in a memo versus just preserving the text themselves. But there is no “honor” when it comes to ICE. “ICE’s assertion that many of its most senior officials wiped their phones between 2019 to 2021 raises serious questions about whether ICE, under the Trump administration, violated public records retention laws and the separate requirements to preserve and disclose evidence relevant to ongoing criminal investigations and prosecutions,” said Daniel McFadden, staff attorney at the ACLU of Massachusetts. 

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OLATHE, Kan.— A decisive statewide vote in favor of abortion rights in traditionally conservative Kansas was confirmed with a partial hand recount, with fewer than 100 votes changing after the last county reported results Sunday.

Nine of the state’s 105 counties recounted their votes at the request of Melissa Leavitt, who has pushed for tighter election laws. A longtime anti-abortion activist, Mark Gietzen, is covering most of the costs. Gietzen acknowledged in an interview that it was unlikely to change the outcome.

A no vote in the referendum signaled a desire to keep existing abortion protections and a yes vote was for allowing the Legislature to tighten restrictions or ban abortion. After the recounts, “no” votes lost 87 votes and “yes” gained 6 votes.

Eight of the counties reported their results by the state’s Saturday deadline, but Sedgwick County delayed releasing its final count until Sunday because spokeswoman Nicole Gibbs said some of the ballots weren’t separated into the correct precincts during the initial recount and had to be resorted Saturday. She said the number of votes cast overall didn’t change.

A larger than expected turnout of voters on Aug. 2 rejected a ballot measure that would have removed protections for abortion rights from the Kansas Constitution and given to the Legislature the right to further restrict or ban abortion. It failed by 18 percentage points, or 165,000 votes statewide.

The vote drew broad attention because it was the first state referendum on abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June.

Gietzen, of Wichita, and Leavitt, of Colby, in far northwestern Kansas, have both suggested there might have been problems without pointing to many examples.

Recounts increasingly are tools to encourage supporters of a candidate or cause to believe an election was stolen rather than lost. A wave of candidates who have echoed former President Donald Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was rigged have called for recounts after losing their own Republican primaries.

Kansas law requires a recount if those who ask for it prove they can cover the counties’ costs. The counties pay only if the outcome changes.

Leavitt and Gietzen provided credit cards to pay for the nearly $120,000 cost, according to the secretary of state’s office. Leavitt has an online fundraising page. Gietzen also said he is getting donations from a network built over three decades in the anti-abortion movement.

Gietzen said Sunday he doesn’t accept the results of the Sedgwick County recount because of the discrepancy about the way the ballots were sorted and because some of the recount happened Saturday without outside observers present to watch.

“We still don’t know what happened in Sedgwick County. I won’t pay for Sedgwick County,” he said.

He said he’s also concerned about the results statewide because of a report out of Cherokee county in southeast Kansas about the results of one county election being transposed between two candidates when the results were transferred on a thumb drive from one voting machine to a tabulating machine.

Gietzen said he plans to file a lawsuit Monday seeking a full statewide recall.

Gietzen said he won’t publicly report the names of private donors helping him finance the recount, even though a state ethics official says it’s required. Gietzen, who leads a small GOP group, the Kansas Republican Assembly, argues that he’s not campaigning for the anti-abortion measure but is instead promoting election integrity.

Votes were recounted in Douglas County, home to the University of Kansas’ main campus; Johnson County, in suburban Kansas City; Sedgwick County, home to Wichita, Shawnee County, home to Topeka; and Crawford, Harvey, Jefferson, Lyon and Thomas counties. Abortion opponents lost all of those counties except Thomas.

In Jefferson County, the margin remained the same, with the pro- and anti-amendment totals declining by four votes each. Linda Buttron, the county clerk, blamed the change on things like ovals not being darkened and “the challenges of hand counting ballots.”

In Lyon County, the anti-amendment group lost a vote. County Clerk and Election Officer Tammy Vopat said she wasn’t sure the reason. But she noted: “You have to factor in human error.”

Johnson County, the most populous in Kansas, faced the biggest recounting challenge because it had the most ballots. It pulled in workers from different departments to help. The sorting process took so long that the actual counting didn’t begin until Thursday afternoon.

“This is almost like doing an Ironman triathlon and having to add on another marathon at the end,” said Fred Sherman, the county’s Election Commissioner. “So it is quite a gargantuan process.”

I think it’s fair to say that most people in the Black, brown, Indigenous, and LGBTQ+ communities have long believed that there is scant difference between the ideologies of Republicans, the right-wing media, and the Ku Klux Klan. History proves it, and present-day commentary verifies it.

A new video from The Daily Show with Trevor Noah places right-wing media talking heads—like Tucker Carlson and Greg Kelly—alongside GOP elected officials—like Rep. Majorie Taylor Green of Georgia and former President Trump—and KKK leaders, like David Duke and Imperial Wizard Bill Wilkinson. The rhetoric of all three groups is not just similar—it’s identical.

Between the ubiquitous phrases about “nationalism,” “Christian nationalists,” “white people being treated like second-class citizens,” “handouts to illegal immigrants,” and fears of white people being supplanted by people of color, the remarks of present-day politicians, media figures, and klansman prove that the current GOP is absolutely aligned with white supremacy.

RELATED STORY: R is for Racism: Sesame Place is learning a $25 million lesson after ignoring Black children

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So, maybe today’s GOP lawmakers aren’t all really actual members of the KKK, but … there are a few who are in every way the same, minus the hoods.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, former Rep. Steve King of Iowa and Florida Congressional candidate Laura Loomer have already signed up to attend American Renaissance’s annual gathering.

Founded in 1990 by Jared Taylor, the New Century Foundation promotes misleading and bogus scientific support to attempt to show that Black people are inferior to whites. The group is best known for its American Renaissance magazine, website, and annual gathering.

"Blacks and whites are different. When blacks are left entirely to their own devices, Western civilization—any kind of civilization—disappears,” Taylor said during a speech at the American Renaissance event in 2005.

Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano has been tied to the far-right social media site Gab, known for its white nationist and antisemitic rhetoric.

The Washington Post reports that Gab CEO (and alleged a Mastriano campaign consultant) Andrew Torba reportedly was heard speaking on a livestream saying that he and Mastriano don’t do interviews with non-Christian media.

“My policy is not to conduct interviews with reporters who aren’t Christian or with outlets who aren’t Christian, and Doug has a very similar media strategy where he does not do interviews with these people. He does not talk to these people. He does not give press access to these people,” Torba said. “These people are dishonest. They’re liars. They’re a den of vipers, and they want to destroy you. My typical conversation with them when they email me is ‘repent and accept Jesus Christ as your lord and savior.’ I take it as an opportunity to try and convert them.”

Greene, who paid Gab for “digital marketing,” according to the Post, has been open about her ties to Christian nationalism, even suggesting the GOP should openly proclaim itself the party of Christian nationalism.

Daily Kos’ David Nir writes that the “radicalization of the Republicans just keeps getting deeper and deeper,” and the “GOP is moving on to its next phase of being gradually overwhelmed by the seep of white nationalist ideas and organizing intent into their mainstream.” Nir points to the America First PAC convention that took place in Orlando, Florida, in early August. Greene, Arizona legislator Wendy Rogers, Rep. Paul Gosar, and Idaho Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin all attended.

Nir writes:

“Fuentes was clear that his objective is for the white nationalist movement to overtake the Republican Party, primarily by driving out old-style conservatives, reflected in his oft-repeated catchphrase ‘destroy the GOP.’ He told the audience: ‘We needed to redefine the right wing by solidifying the political realignment that Donald Trump initiated in 2016, under the banner, and under the slogan, and under the principles of America First.’”

Some states have no regard for the trauma associated with loss. In addition to having horrific anti-abortion laws, some states are allegedly forcing pregnant individuals to carry nonviable pregnancies. A Louisiana mother said she was denied an abortion after her fetus was diagnosed with a rare condition that it won't survive, local news outlet WAFB reported Tuesday.

Identified as  Nancy Davis, the woman pregnant with her second child, told the WAFB that she had her first ultrasound at the 10-week mark of her pregnancy at the Women's Hospital in East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana, when the medical staff noticed something unusual.

"It was an abnormal ultrasound, and they noticed the top of the baby's head was missing and the skull was missing, the top of the skull was missing," Davis told WAFB on Monday.

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As a result, Davis' fetus was diagnosed with acrania. According to the Fetal Medicine Foundation, acrasia is a rare and fatal congenital disorder in which the skull partially or completely fails to form; the disease has a high documented rate of mortality.

"It's a baby that's not going to be compatible with life," Davis said. "These babies either die stillborn or they die a couple minutes later.”

Lousiana’s “trigger law,” which was upheld by the Louisiana Supreme Court last Friday, puts abortion providers at risk of felony charges—with up to a decade in prison and a $100,000 maximum fine. The law has no exceptions for rape or incest.

After last week’s court decision, the state’s last three remaining abortion clinics will relocate, leaving the state without accessible providers for the first time since 1974.

While Louisiana’s abortion ban has exceptions for when a pregnant person’s life is endangered or when the fetus has specific fatal conditions, acrania is not on the list of diseases that qualify for an exemption under the state’s health department list of “congenital disorders and chromosomal abnormalities.” The list includes 24 conditions; why acrania is not among them is unclear.

"It's hard knowing that ... you know, I'm carrying it to bury it," Davis told WAFB.

Davis, now 13 weeks into her pregnancy, told WAFB that she faces the difficult decision of either carrying the fetus to term only to see it live for a few minutes, or crossing state lines to get an abortion.

"Florida is the closest … so ideally, Florida. But then the next-closest place would be North Carolina or something," Davis said.

At this time, Florida permits abortions up until the 15th week of pregnancy.

Davis said that she would be willing to testify before the Louisiana state legislature to advocate for acrania’s inclusion on the list of abortion exemptions.

"I just want them to consider special circumstances as it relates to abortion," Davis told WAFB. "Medical problems—like this is one—that needs to be in it."

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By David Badash Citing the Book of Leviticus a Florida K-12 private Christian school is telling parents any student found to be LGBTQ will be asked to leave “immediately.” NBC News reports it “obtained an email from the Grace Christian School in Valrico, about 20 miles east of Tampa, sent before the beginning of the school year by Administrator Barry McKeen.” The school’s email lumps being LGBTQ, or engaging in acts including “bestiality, incest, fornication, adultery and pornography” as “lifestyles.” “We believe that any form of homosexuality, lesbianism, bisexuality, transgender identity/lif…

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The MCU’s version of a legal procedural can be fun as hell.

Beneath She-Hulk’s quippy gags, trippy world-building, and zippy cameos is a heartfelt question: What if you dared to be big?

For Jennifer Walters (Tatiana Maslany), that query comes quite literally as she’s gifted with the powers of a Hulk. To be a Hulk — like her cousin, Bruce Banner (Mark Ruffalo) and his alter ego — means having super strength, near invulnerability, and heightened athletic prowess, among other powers. But those gifts come with a price. Over several Marvel movies, starting with Avengers: Age of Ultron in 2015, we’ve seen Bruce struggle with lack of control, loneliness, and his fear of hurting others. That’s all not to mention the duty, and burden, of using his abilities to protect and save the defenseless.

Jennifer also struggles with the existential questions around what it means to be big, but they affect her differently than they do her cousin, for one obvious reason.

Fictional MCU Earth is unfortunately a lot like the real world. Women are asked to shrink themselves to accommodate those around them. Jen has had a life of being told to stay out of the way, to be anyone but herself.

Within those boundaries, she’s carved out a good-enough life. She’s content. She’s comfortable. Becoming the She-Hulk threatens all of this, and not just because she becomes a lime-skinned anger monster. Her superpowers also spark in her a sense of defiance; they allow Jen to circumvent the rules set for her. Her powers offer Jen a tantalizing prospect: that she could create a life better than the one society has dealt. That is its own kind of scary, especially for someone who has learned to live a tiny life.

As she finds out, it’s not easy to choose to be big. It may even require being brave.

She-Hulk isn’t about girlbossing, gaslighting, and gatekeeping superheroism

I suppose you could call She-Hulk: Attorney at Law a “legal procedural” the same way you could call Captain America: Winter Soldier a “political thriller.” It involves a lot of generosity.

In the first four episodes critics were given, there are plots in which Jen has to figure out the legal ramifications of supervillain parole or how to serve a cease and desist to unlicensed magic users. These cases raise some perplexing philosophical questions. Like, what does the MCU want to say about prison reform and rehabilitation? Or how does the law — in which power is mostly abstract — hold actual magic users responsible? It’s a funny conceit, but the legal cases give texture to the MCU and offer a glimpse into the effects that superheroes have on civilian life.

Unfortunately, the show never really goes that deep into how cases are won or, so far, how one might navigate the complicated intersection between nuanced lawyerly duties and more straightforward superhero ones. The good guys are good. The bad guys are bad. The bad guys who are reformed are good now. Most of the time, Jen’s side is the just one.

Chuck Zlotnick

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law largely works, though, because it’s not actually a legal procedural — it’s more of a comedic origin story. It all hinges on Maslany’s breezy and charismatic portrayal of Jen. She grounds the character with mountains of approachable appeal, like someone you wouldn’t mind eating a bagel in front of. Her performance cuts through that much-criticized CGI.

At the start, Jen is content in her circumscribed life. She’s a single lawyer with a loving but annoying family. Her paralegal (Ginger Gonzaga) is her best friend. She’s proud of her work in the DA’s office. Jen isn’t living large, but things could be much worse.

The character’s big goals in life are to date more and have a great job. She’s relatable and practical. She probably has a five-year plan. If someone threw out the idea of the endless, ever-expanding multiverse, Jen would say that she wants to live in the timeline where she didn’t amass student loans in law school. If given the choice to live a superhero’s life, she would ask if it offered health care (the Avengers famously do not).

But she isn’t given a choice. Thanks to a freak accident in which she absorbs some of her cousin’s gamma-radiated blood, Jen gains super strength, invulnerability, and broccoli-hued skin. Unlike Bruce, though, she’s able to control it. As she explains, life as a woman already means controlling anger and emotion; she’s well practiced at not seeming too mean, too rageful, too much. Switching between her Hulk form and regular civilian form is easy. That it’s so difficult for Bruce shows reflexively how men aren’t held to the same standards.

Superpowers as a symbol for female liberation — and how that empowerment threatens the status quo — isn’t new. It’s as old as the goddesses depicted in ancient legends or the accusations of witchcraft across centuries. Plus, the allegory is right there in so many Marvel and DC comic books. The show picks up this tradition and builds on it. An ongoing plot line revolves around She-Hulk’s impenetrable — that is, thick — skin!

Till now, Marvel’s cinematic track record with its female superheroes has been, well, a mixed bag. It took more than a decade and 20 movies before the studio created its first female superhero movie in 2019’s Captain Marvel. In 2021, Natasha Romanoff a.k.a. Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson) received her first movie (a prequel), and that same year Wanda Maximoff a.k.a. Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) got her own series in WandaVision. Both were ultimately killed off — Wanda in Multiverse of Madness and Natasha in Endgame. The pattern of elevating a woman superhero to a high profile then having her die by self-sacrifice isn’t exactly great optics.

Marvel’s television offerings like Hawkeye and Ms. Marvel are more promising. They have not only allowed its titular female heroes to live but actually laid solid foundations for their futures. She-Hulk joins Hawkeye’s Kate Bishop (Hailee Steinfeld) and Ms. Marvel’s Kamala Khan (Iman Vellani) as the second generation of Marvel’s female superheroes.

But Marvel is still getting its sea legs when it comes to onscreen feminism. There are more than a few instances in which, say, Jen has a line about mansplaining or a character jokes about cat-calling. These moments seem to exist solely because the writers see them as easy signals to the audience — flashing neon signs that point out this behavior as sexist. I’m left wondering who that’s for. Perhaps I’m naive, but I’d hope that someone tuning into She-Hulk and wanting to enjoy it would know that cat-calling a woman on the street is not good behavior.

I guess I’m also deeply cynical in that I do not think a joke on She-Hulk: Attorney at Law is the thing that will keep someone from participating in blazing misogyny. We’ll see how far Marvel wants to go in examining the sexist world She-Hulk pushes back against.

In She-Hulk, super powers help its hero find out who she is

What the show does particularly well is handle Jen’s identity crisis with her newfound abilities. This struggle lands more successfully than the more obvious nods to gender inequality; it includes canny observations about how women move within the world.

Being big and strong allows Jen to access a world that she’s never been allowed to be a part of. Regular people don’t get to beat up demons, throttle muggers, or save lives, but as She-Hulk, Jen can do all of those things. She wields literal physical power, and experiences joy in doing so. Even some of the things that bug her in civilian life — dating, jerks at work, family life — can be alleviated by punching some henchman.

Her Hulk form also seems to bring her closer to who she really is, and that’s something to be excited about.

Transforming into the Hulk lets Jen tap into the primal glee of not only being strong, but also being aggressive, loud, flashy, proud, cocky — things she hasn’t allowed herself to be before. These qualities allow her to thrive at her new job as a superhero law attorney, get multiple matches on dating apps, and become famous. As She-Hulk, she has an extremely hot one-night stand! Good for She-Hulk for being the first MCU superhero to use her powers for horniness.

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Indulging in it feels natural to Jen, so natural that she begins to question if She-Hulk is actually who she was always meant to be. If society hadn’t taught her to shrink, would this be her life? At the same time, what if she likes the parts of her that aren’t She-Hulk?

Jen wrestling with her sense of self and sorting which parts are the “real” her isn’t tidy.

Being a Hulk doesn’t affect her intelligence or her work ethic, yet it has enabled her to get a better job (and better health care). But her new success brings to light the way Jen has been continually overlooked and taught to undercut herself. Her new powers have made clear how unfairly she’s been treated, and now she has the ability to do something about it.

So why would she want to go back to her old life? And wouldn’t a hero, if they were really a good-to-the-bone hero, want to change the way that world works?

It seems clear the show wants us to understand that power isn’t just great responsibility, it’s also great privilege. There’s a distinction there. One is about recognizing what you owe other people; the other is about recognizing what we owe ourselves. And the joy of She-Hulk is that Jen, I think, sees both.

She-Hulk: Attorney At Law premieres on August 18 on Disney+.

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Trump may release footage of the FBI search. Has he thought this one through?

Teachers in Florida are being subjected to new curriculum training sessions designed by Gov. Ron DeSantis. This is the same person who made it unlawful to say the word “gay” and banned the teaching of critical race theory in classrooms because it could make white people feel bad or guilty—even though it was never taught in K-12 in the first place. Now the Republican governor is rewriting history that eliminates the Reconstruction era, WFLA-8 reports.

The new curriculum comes out of HB 7, called the “Individual Freedom” bill, but better known as the “Stop WOKE Act.” It essentially bans teachers from teaching racially focused subject matter because it could make students or educators “feel guilt, anguish, or other forms of psychological distress” based on their “race, color, sex, or national origin.”

So what do you do when you want to teach American history and not make (white) people feel guilty? You simply whitewash the parts that you don’t want to be taught.

On June 29, teachers around the state began pieces of training in everything from American history to civics, the role of the U.S. Supreme Court, and the value of morals for what the state calls “desirable citizens.”

RELATED STORY: 'Don't Say Gay' in action: No sex ed in Miami public schools for students in grades 6-12

Much of the training by the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) focused on slavery, the Founding Fathers, the country’s creation, and, throughout, a focus on “Christian principles” as America’s bedrock.

According to one teacher who attended a training in June, the curriculum implies that the Founding Fathers never wanted a separation of church and state.

“Founders expected religion to be promoted because they believed it to be essential to civic virtue,” one slide read, while another slide noted that, without virtue, citizens become “licentious” and open to tyranny.

Barbara Segal, a 12th-grade government teacher at Fort Lauderdale High School, told the Tampa Bay Times, “It was very skewed … There was a very strong Christian fundamentalist way toward analyzing different quotes and different documents. That was concerning.”

One of the most frightening and inaccurate aspects of the presentation to teachers was the answer to a question about who came to the British colonies and why. The answer included a list of those who’d immigrated: “Aristocrats, Indentured Servants, Religious Dissenters, and Enslaved People.” 

Of course, enslaved people never immigrated to the British colonies, or to the American colonies, or to the United States. They were brought from their homes without their permission and forced into slavery—but I digress.

As WFLA-8 reports, the FDOE mentions the words “slave” or “slavery” 21 times, but completely ignores the history of the post-Civil War Reconstruction era and skips straight ahead to the 1960s civil rights movement—with no mention of Jim Crow.

I guess it could make people feel guilty to learn about the period just after the Civil War ended, from 1865 to 1877, when newly freed people faced horrific battles as they moved en masse from the Southern states to the North for better jobs and a better life.

Smithsonian Magazine reports that nearly 2,000 Black Americans were lynched during Reconstruction. According to a report from 2020, between 1865 and 1877, thousands of Black women, men, and children were massacred, sexually assaulted, and terrorized at the hands of white supremacists.

Not to mention the horrifying guilt of learning about the era of Jim Crow laws, when free Black Americans faced the trauma of laws that were enforced at the end of Reconstruction, segregating them from white Americans—aka “separate but equal” after the passage of Plessy v. Ferguson by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1986—all but calling Black people inferior and therefore not worthy of being in the same spaces as whites.

Vogel told JAX-News4 that the presentation downplayed slavery. And although it highlighted that two-thirds of the Founding Fathers owned slaves, it equally noted that “even those that held slaves did not defend the institution.”

“It’s mind-blowing what they tried to convince us of, in some cases. Some cases were worse than others,” St. Johns County teacher Justin Vogel said. “The other part of it is that the Founders, quote, ‘did all they could’ on the issue of slavery; that was what they were trying to convince us of,” Vogel added.

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The state of the Republican Party is so heinous that the former director of the CIA, Michael Hayden, perceives them as one of the most “nihilistic, dangerous, and contemptible” political forces in play today. 

Hayden is a retired four-star general who served as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and director of the National Security Agency (NSA) under former President George W. Bush. His position on today’s GOP was offered on Twitter when he retweeted a post from Edward Luce, the associate editor of the Financial Times.

“I’ve covered extremism and violent ideologies around the world over my career. Have never come across a political force more nihilistic, dangerous & contemptible than today’s Republicans. Nothing close,” Luce wrote.

“I agree. And I was the CIA director,” Hayden tweeted in response on Wednesday. 

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The statement is a cutting one, given Hayden’s history. When he was director of the CIA, he oversaw conflicts with the Taliban and ISIS.

And particularly so, as it comes just after former President Donald Trump spent the last week slamming the nation’s intelligence institutions and Justice Department in response to the FBI search of his Mar-a-Lago resort for sensitive and classified records that investigators believe were improperly retained.

Several Republicans in the House and Senate have echoed Trump’s criticisms of the FBI and DOJ of late and have done so despite a recent spate of violent attacks on law enforcement. 

The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a memo internally on Monday noting the uptick. The threats have occurred mostly online and on social media platforms, but according to CBS, the threats assessed by the FBI have also featured calls for a civil war, an armed uprising, and the placement of a dirty bomb at the FBI office in Washington, D.C. 

Threats made against lawmakers have increased, too. The U.S. Capitol Police reported last year that threats made against lawmakers have jumped up hugely. For instance, last year Capitol Police reported that more than 9,600 threats were made against legislators in Congress. In 2017, that number was just over 3,900 threats recorded. 

Wisconsin’s Ron Johnson is touting a new endorsement this week from the Border Patrol union, whose president Brandon Judd spoke at an event organized by an anti-immigrant hate group just weeks ago. Johnson on Tuesday promoted the endorsement from the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC), falsely claiming in a tweet that the Biden administration’s “open border policies are dangerous.”

There are no “open borders,” but what is dangerous are Judd’s extremist views, which have also included promoting the white supremacist conspiracy theory that’s been at the center of numerous racist mass shootings. Johnson, however, still gladly welcomed the endorsement.

RELATED STORY: Border Patrol union president and racist 'replacement' theory promoter makes hate group appearance

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Zachary Mueller, political director for immigrant rights advocacy group America’s Voice, was among voices who in June noted Judd’s appearance at a gathering organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), a Tanton network organization that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. FAIR is a hateful group that’s tried to camouflage its extremism by mingling with officials like Judd, when Judd is just as bad as they are, appearing in a political ad that depicted violence against President Joe Biden.

Even before that, Judd—who is once again an active border agent and employee of the federal government—appeared in a right-wing ad where failed Arizona Republican candidate Jim Lamon shot at actors portraying President Biden, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and Sen. Mark Kelly. While decent people were repulsed, Lamon instead reveled in the outrage. 

Remember when Republicans were also outraged that the Biden administration wasn’t starving migrant babies who are in U.S. custody with their parents? That might seem like a lifetime ago, but it was just May, and the border union was among the extremist voices openly pushing for these babies to be starved. As I noted at the time, thousands upon thousands of active border agents are members of this union. If they’re openly arguing for abusing children in their custody, what in God’s name are they doing behind the scenes?

But, hey, Johnson seems to have no issue with any of this, by accepting the union’s endorsement with open arms and promoting the endorsement on Facebook as well. Judd was in fact at Johnson’s side during a press conference this week, where the Republican complained and complained about the southern border but offered no humane solutions to the supposed issues he was raising. Johnson later said that any immigration reform was out of the question until the border is “under reasonable control,” WKOW reported.

This is Republican-speak for, we never plan to do anything, and just to further show how unserious he is on this issue, he voted against the hugely popular comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the U.S. Senate in 2013.

Johnson, who lied about his office’s role in trying to overturn the legitimate results of the 2020 presidential election, wants to stay in the job in order to continue working against the American people by killing Medicare and Social Security. He will face off against likely Democratic challenger Mandela Barnes in November. While remembering that polling is just polling, one new showing does have Johnson eating Barnes’ dust. 

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In a stunning turn of events, Allen Weisselberg, the loyal and years-long chief financial officer of former President Donald Trump’s family business, pleaded guilty Thursday to 15 counts of tax fraud. But that’s not the best part: He has additionally agreed, per his plea deal, to testify at trial against the very company he’d staunchly refused to testify against.

According to a press release from the District Attorney of New York’s office, Weisselberg was sentenced to five months in jail, to be served on Rikers Island, and five years probation, “contingent on his [Weisselberg’s] testifying truthfully in the upcoming criminal trial of the Trump Organization by providing truthful testimony as to the facts underlying his allocution and plea.”

Weisselberg and other Trump Organization employees were paid via “intentionally unreported or misreported” income in “order to pay less in taxes,” the District Attorney’s letter states.

RELATED STORY: Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg to plead guilty to millions in off-the-books payouts

Weisselberg, 75, who initially pleaded not guilty in 2021, was accused of taking more than $1.7 million in off-the-books payments to himself for rent, several leased Mercedes-Benzes, school tuition for his grandchildren, and more.

Allegations against Weisselberg and the Trump Organization include payouts to executives over 15 years of operations, but only Weisselberg was accused of bilking the state, city, and the federal government of unpaid and underserved taxes—to the tune of more than $900,000.

In addition to jail time, Weisselberg must also make full repayment of taxes, penalties, and interest due to the New York City and New York State tax authorities totaling $1,994,321, according to the District Attorney’s office.

Although former president and current Florida resident Donald Trump, who has called the investigation into his charitable organization’s financial dealings a “political witch hunt,” has not been charged criminally in this case, prosecutors highlight that his name was on many of the checks.

For months, prosecutors have tried to both pressure and coax Weisselberg into testifying against Trump and his company, but he has refused to meet with them.

“Today, Allen Weisselberg admitted in Court that he used his position at the Trump Organization to bilk taxpayers and enrich himself,” said Alvin Bragg, who took over the case after Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. left the DA’s office. 

“Instead of paying his fair share like everyone else, Weisselberg had the Trump Organization provide him with a rent-free apartment, expensive cars, private school tuition for his grandchildren and new furniture – all without paying required taxes. This plea agreement directly implicates the Trump Organization in a wide range of criminal activity and requires Weisselberg to provide invaluable testimony in the upcoming trial against the corporation. Furthermore, thanks to the incredibly hard work and dedication of the team prosecuting this case, Weisselberg will spend time behind bars. We look forward to proving our case in court against the Trump Organization.”

Last week, Trump testified before the New York Attorney General’s office. He invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination under oath more than 400 times.  

The criminal case by the Manhattan District Attorney’s office against Trump and the Trump Organization has been long in the works but is not on a smooth path to trial.

Things began to grind to a halt, the Associated Press reports, when the grand jury was disbanded and when another top prosecutor, Mark F. Pomerantz, who had been investigating Trump, left the office after Bragg ended efforts to seek an indictment, The New York Times reports.

“The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes—he did,” Pomerantz wrote in a letter obtained by the Times.

Bragg has said he was worried about being able to prove Trump had intent when he broke the law.

Jury selection in the Trump Organization trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 24.

The full list of charges to which Weisselberg pleaded guilty is as follows:

• Grand Larceny in the Second Degree, a class C felony, one count
• Criminal Tax Fraud in the Third Degree, a class D felony, three counts
• Scheme to Defraud in the First Degree; a class E felony, one count
• Conspiracy in the Fourth Degree, a class E felony, one count
• Criminal Tax Fraud in the Fourth Degree, a class E felony, one count
• Offering a False Instrument for Filing in the First Degree, a class E felony four counts
• Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree, a class E felony, four counts

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I couldn't convince myself that 'your medamn business' would be readable.

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If there’s one thing conservatives love, it’s stomping down on LGBTQ+ youth and allies. The group that likes to describe themselves as having family values is dead set on terrorizing the lives of queer people just in time to garner hate votes in November, and their hate campaigns include literal children. As Daily Kos has continued to cover, Republicans are coming down hard in attempts to ban trans folks from simply existing, including participating in sports teams, using public restrooms, and accessing safe, age-appropriate, life-saving gender-affirming health care. It’s shameful.

We’ve covered how conservatives and conspiracy theorists are using school board meetings as a route to spread “grooming” hysteria, especially when it comes to books by and about LGBTQ+ people in public school classrooms and libraries. Some school districts, as we’re seeing happen in Wisconsin, are apparently acting against LGBTQ+ students and staff in every way they can think of.

As Daily Kos covered at the time, the Kettle Moraine School Board recently moved to ban public school teachers and staff from sharing their pronouns in emails, wearing rainbow attire, and displaying signs in the classroom that could be interpreted to have political or religious messages. Because conservatives are unwilling to accept that Pride flags and Black Lives Matter signs are not tied to a political party, those have been banned. The latest update from the school board is that the school board voted to explicitly affirm the Pride flag ban, again using the argument that they’re political, as reported by the Associated Press.

RELATED: Wisconsin school district bans teachers from wearing rainbow attire and displaying Pride flags

“If you have a policy that says ‘nothing political,’” stated American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) attorney Christine Donahoe. “Does that mean you can’t have a sign up that says, ‘Support our Troops,’ or ‘Believe Women’ or ‘Save the Planet?’” She added that to some people, all of those things are political in nature.

According to local outlet FOX 6, the board voted to uphold the ban at a Tuesday night meeting on Aug. 16. The room was reportedly packed, and brave students actually spoke up. Sadly, public comment was cut off at one hour. It’s unclear how many folks who wanted to speak but didn’t have a chance to agreed or disagreed with the policy. 

"I am not controversial. I am not political,” one student told the board, per the outlet. “I am a person.”

One student accurately pointed out that pride flags are not a “political stance” but an assertion of self-acceptance and the acceptance of others.

As reported by the outlet, students Britain Farrar and Bethany Provan started a Change.org petition over the summer in an effort to have the school board reverse the policy. At the time of writing, they have about 13,000 signatures.

“It doesn’t feel like my school supports us,” Provan told the outlet, adding that this “sucks.”

Provan is very right—it does suck, and all of these students (and staff) deserve much better. 

When President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act Tuesday afternoon, he made very sure that the American people knew who was responsible for the very good things the bill will do: “And let’s be clear,” he said. “In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people, and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interests in this vote—every single one.”

He went on to make it absolutely clear: 

“Every single Republican in Congress voted against lowering prescription drug prices, against lowering healthcare costs, against a fairer tax system.”

“Every single Republican—every single one—voted against tackling the climate crisis, against lowering our energy costs, against creating good-paying jobs.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-ish-WV), who was in the room, might not have approved of that message, but it was and is the right one. Because the things Biden highlighted in this new law are very, very popular.

If you want to help make America the place it ought to be, it starts by electing more and better Democrats. And you can do your part right here. Donate now to support Daily Kos-endorsed Democrats!

A new poll from Politico/Morning Consult breaks down the numbers:

• Placing caps on prescription drug price increases: Somewhat or strongly support: 76%; somewhat or strongly oppose: 13%. Net: +63
• Allowing Medicare to negotiate some prescription drug prices: Support: 73%; oppose: 13%. Net: +60
• Reducing the federal budget deficit by $300 billion: Support: 72%; oppose: 11%. Net: +61
• Limiting annual out-of-pocket prescription drug costs for Medicare beneficiaries to $2,000: Support: 72%; oppose: 15%. Net: +57
• Putting a 15% corporate tax minimum on companies that have usually paid little, if any, taxes: Support: 61%; oppose: 24%. Net: +37
• Providing $60 billion in incentives for clean energy manufacturing in the U.S.: Support: 59%; oppose: 28%. Net: +31
• Investing $369 billion in climate and energy programs over the next 10 years: Support: 54%; oppose: 33%. Net support: +21

The poll also found Biden’s approval ticking up, from a low of 39% in June to 42% now. That gain is reflected in Civiqs data, as well.

That by no means suggests the 2022 midterms are going to be a cakewalk for Democrats, but it means they have some very concrete and popular things to run on. And they are.

It can’t all be “kitchen table” because there are a lot of new voters, mostly women, who want to hear that their fundamental rights are going to be restored and protected from here on out. Democrats have to shine a bright light on the increasingly violent, extremist, Christofascist Republicans and the danger they pose to democracy.

Biden’s willingness to call out Republicans for trying to stop progress and block popular things that make a real difference in people’s lives is a great start.

SIGN THIS: Thank all congressional Democrats for passing the historic Inflation Reduction Act.

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After persistent and often harsh criticism for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and now the monkeypox emergency, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will undergo a significant overhaul, involving cultural and structural changes aimed at realizing its prior reputation as the world's premier public health agency. From a report: "For 75 years, CDC and public health have been preparing for COVID-19, and in our big moment, our performance did not reliably meet expectations," CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said in an email to CDC's 11,000-person staff Wednesday, which was seen by The New York Times and Stat News. "My goal is a new, public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness." Though the CDC endured meddling and undermining during the Trump administration, many of the agency's pandemic misfires were unforced errors -- such as the failure to stand up reliable SARS-CoV-2 testing in the early days and muddled messaging on masks. In a meeting with senior staff Wednesday, Walensky made a startling acknowledgement of the failures while outlining the overhaul in broad strokes. The cultural changes appear aimed at stamping out pedantic data analyses that have slowed and hampered the agency's public health responses. A briefing document provided to the Times said the goal is for CDC staff to "produce data for action" as opposed to "data for publication." As such, the agency will cut down on the time allowed to review studies before they're released. The agency will also change the way it grants promotions to staff, placing more emphasis on public health impact rather than the number of scientific publications.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The Secret Service knew about a threat to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi days ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol—but didn’t pass the information along to the United States Capitol Police until the attack was already underway, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington reports.

“January 6 starts #1776 all over again…Fight for EVERYTHING,” a Parler user not named by CREW posted on Dec. 31, 2020, in a post discovered by the Secret Service on Jan. 4, 2021. That line was accompanied by an “enemies” list with Pelosi’s name on it.

RELATED STORY: Report: Pence aide warned Secret Service of threat to VP before Jan. 6

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“Biden will die shortly after being elected,” a Jan. 2 post from the same account read. “Patriots are gonna tear his head off. Prison is his best case scenario.”

And the next day: “We’re all on a mission to save America. Lone wolf attacks are the way to go. Stay anonymous. Stay alive. Guns up Patriots!!”

It took until 5:55 PM on Jan. 6 for the Secret Service to send the post with Pelosi’s name in it to the Capitol Police. By that time, law enforcement had been fighting off the attack by a mob of insurrectionists for hours. They knew Pelosi was at risk, and she had been moved for her safety.

This is far from the first indication that a host of law enforcement agencies fell down on the job in the lead-up to Jan. 6. They had warnings. These social media posts filled with threats were … social media posts. They were available. What, though, is going on at the Secret Service?

First, the Secret Service denied former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson’s account of Donald Trump furiously demanding to be taken to the Capitol and attempting to wrest control of a vehicle from the Secret Service driver. There was supposedly going to be sworn testimony contradicting Hutchinson. Instead, the relevant agents and staff stopped cooperating and lawyered up. Worse, the Secret Service had deleted text messages from Jan. 6, and they apparently can’t be recovered. 

The missing text messages showed the Secret Service to be complicit in a cover-up of Trump’s behavior during the attack on the Capitol. The fact that they didn’t turn the threat against Pelosi over to the Capitol Police when they found it—and that they were warned by a Mike Pence aide of threats to Pence as well—suggests that the cover-up wasn’t the only thing the Secret Service was complicit in. Either way, it’s time to clean house.

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

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"If a person wants to be the nominee of the Republican Party, there can be no evasion and no games. They must reject any group or cause that is built on bigotry. This party does not prey on people's prejudices."

That statement came from former Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. But the only part of Ryan’s title that matters now is “former.” Everything he said then proved to be utterly and completely false. The Republican Party today is entirely built on people’s prejudice and bigotry, on “critical race theory,” and on who is allowed to use a restroom. 

There was a day when Republicans in power realized that Donald Trump wasn’t suited for any form of public office—when threats of violence against political opponents were seen as shameful. A time when overt racism, misogyny, and hate were considered something to be denied—even if those comments were still made more discretely in the back room at $1000-plate fundraisers.

That distant time was 2016. But what Republican leadership didn’t seem to get was that the party they were leading was already dead.  Over the last six years, Republicans have put the U.S. dog whistle industry out of business. They’re not quiet—even when they’re calling for blood.

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It’s not hard to find what Republican politicians thought about Trump-style politics in 2016, because they were out there talking about it. Trump was denounced as a serial philanderer, a pathological liar, utterly amoral, an unmatched narcissist, and a man who “describes his battle with venereal disease as his own personal Vietnam.” And that’s just Ted Cruz.

Then there’s Marco Rubio, who referred to Trump as a con artist, a failure, a fraud, the most vulgar person to ever seek public office, and someone who has “spent a career of sticking it to working people."

Here’s 2016 Lindsay Graham on CNN declaring that Trump is “a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot” who “doesn't represent my party.”  Except no. Trump doesn’t just represent the party, he is the party.

On Tuesday night, Republican Sen. Liz Cheney lost her primary battle decisively despite having won that same contest with over 73% of the vote six years ago. As Laura Clawson reported, the most important thing about Cheney’s loss may be what it has to say about the state of the GOP. Members of Cheney’s own party did not miss the opportunity to fling some celebratory spit her way and to give her a good kick while she was down.

Cheney is now enshrined as the Last Honest Republican. But that’s not the case. Cheney was just the last Republican who still seemed to be deluded about the party she represents.

When John McCain ran for the White House in 2008, he did so heading up what was the most conservative ticket, and platform, ever put forward. His selection of Sarah Palin as vice-presidential nominee was an enormous reward to, and boost for, the Rush Limbaugh crowd. Which is also the white nationalist militia crowd.

When McCain lost, and then Romney repeated that failure four years later, in spite of a campaign boosted by dark money billions from the recently decided Citizens United case, it was such a blow that Republicans undertook a serious navel-gazing exercise. 

Looking at their recent election results and the changing demographics of the U.S., RNC Chair Reince Priebus cranked out a thick report that called on Republicans to “campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them” while establishing a more diverse group of candidates and a broader tent of positions.

Only while Priebus was laboring on his “multi-year road map,” Republican donors like the Koch brothers had already discovered that stoking hatred toward the first Black president and generating scads of conspiracy theories to feed the “Tea Party movement” was easy peasy lemon squeezy. Why search for ways to engage voters when enraging them was so much simpler?

Four years later, Graham and Cruz and Rubio and the rest might still pretend that they were the heirs to the same conservative Republican Party as McCain, but that party was already dead. Limbaugh, Rupert Murdoch, Breitbart, and a growing wave of social media pundits had created a demand for something darker, uglier, and rawer—something Donald Trump was ready to deliver. Priebus would go on to be Trump’s chief of staff, and if that’s hard to remember now, that’s because he lasted barely six months before being told he was resigning. 

The fact that Trump hired Priebus in the first place showed just how unsure the Republicans were in 2016 that the party was ready to go all the way. When horrors emerged in the last stages of the campaign—Trump insulting a gold star family, the stomach-churning contents of the Access Hollywood recording, Michael Flynn checking in with his Russian buddies—there was a tendency to back away, to waggle a finger, to try and put some distance between Trump and the party he ostensibly led. Installing people like Priebus was a sop to the people who still worried that Trump was a bridge too far. Those sops turned out to be completely unnecessary.

In terms that Republicans today would surely understand, right-wing media and the “Tea Party movement” spent years grooming the party to accept Donald Trump and buy into his vile positions and attitudes.

In 2016, the Republican leadership no longer understood their own base. When they finally learned, people like Priebus and Ryan simply left. A few rare people fought. And lost. Like a hermit crab, the Trump party moved into the Republican shell and just lived there.

Here’s one little note from the 2020 convention that shows just how little the Republican Party under Trump wanted to do with its past. The chair of that convention was Ronna Romney-McDaniel. She had used that name all her adult life. Before the convention, she dropped “Romney” at Trump’s request—because of his deep disdain for the 2012 candidate, who is also her uncle.

With the violence of Jan. 6, Republicans had one last moment to put some distance between themselves and Trump. Characters like Kevin McCarthy declared he had “had it” with Trump and Mitch McConnell gave a lengthy speech to Republican senators centered on his disdain for the outgoing Republican boss. 

Both of them backed away within days. Because they realized that even if they were disgusted with Trump, their well-groomed party was not. Fed on a diet of hate and calls for violence, the Republican base was not at all upset by the idea that they should engage in an armed coup to maintain white nationalist power. After all, isn’t that what Fox, and AM radio, and traveling circuses (like the Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz show) have been telling them all along?

Republicans are not upset with candidates like Arizona’s Blake Masters saying that Black people are the cause of gun violence, or that Democrats want to take away Republican guns because they know Republicans “have a lot of plans” for using those weapons. Those people saved their disgust for candidates like Cheney. For the Republicans who didn’t go along with their new 1776 moment.

When Trump’s swamp base in Mar-a-Lago was searched for documents essential to national security, Republicans didn’t step back. They saw it as an opportunity to show Trump just how quickly they would pledge their allegiance, even if that meant shredding every vestige of their claims about “law and order.” After Jan. 6, they’ve learned their lesson: support Trump, no matter what supposed principles suffer. In fact, the more disgusting the response, the better.

Trump didn’t create this party. He only confirmed a malignant transformation that had already happened and is still happening. Republican candidates in 2022 aren’t being measured by their policies, but by their ability to create outrage. If a candidate doesn’t spread a constant stream of hate-filled rhetoric, they are immediately suspect. 

On Tuesday night, as Cheney was being ousted from a party she seems to believe is still concerned about policies, a state senator who offered Dr. Anthony Fauci the choice of “the chair, the gallows, or lethal injection” easily won his race. He missed the option of the firing squad, which Oklahoma Republicans cheered when a candidate there demanded that Fauci be summarily shot. That candidate gets a vote next week.

This is a Republican Party where Black people are to blame when a white man shoots white kids in a school. Where health officials are causally condemned to death for the crime of trying to stop a pandemic. Where the spiritual advisor of a state senator and gubernatorial candidate goes on stage to tell her audience that Nancy Pelosi “loves to murder children for Baal” and will be killed before the midterms. 

The Republican Party is deep in panem et circenses, and anyone who tries to halt the blood sport is absolutely no longer welcome. This isn’t a party that can be reasoned with or compromised with. It can only be survived. And defeated.

Maybe after 2024, the fever will finally break. But probably not.

Adam Neumann burned billions. Now investors are giving him more money.

Housing in the United States has a problem. And Adam Neumann, the charismatic founder known for successfully rebranding shared office space as WeWork, and unsuccessfully running it, thinks he has a solution: Flow. This residential real estate startup wants to address a wide variety of issues, including housing availability, a lack of social interactions in a remote world, and the inability of renters to gain equity.

The housing shortage is certainly a big deal. The US was short nearly 4 million housing units as of late 2020, and the problem is spreading across the country. The inability to buy a home has huge repercussions on everything from Americans’ quality of life to their ability to create wealth. The problem is big enough that venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) is writing its biggest check to date — $350 million, valuing the company at $1 billion — to invest in Flow with the hope that the company can disrupt residential real estate through technology.

In a blog post, a16z co-founder Marc Andreessen wrote that Neumann is returning to “the theme of connecting people through transforming their physical spaces and building communities where people spend the most time: their homes.” Andreessen added that solving housing problems “requires combining community-driven, experience-centric service with the latest technology in a way that has never been done before to create a system where renters receive the benefits of owners.”

What any of that means is not exactly clear. What we do know is that Flow plans to operate more than 3,000 apartments that Neumann recently acquired, and that the company will likely add community features and provide the opportunity for renters to gain equity.

The big open question here is whether this failed founder and the veneer of technology will actually do anything to help the housing crisis in the US. It’s notable that one of the main problems with US housing is there’s not enough of it. While the issue there stems from exclusionary zoning, private equity’s mad dash to buy rental homes — like the thousands of apartments Neumann and friends gobbled up — is not making things better.

While offering people the ability to gain some sort of equity stake in their apartments could help people build wealth, Flow’s rentals are probably for those who are already relatively rich. The Nashville property Neumann bought, for instance, features a saltwater pool, valet trash pickup, and a dog park. Add on top of that all the premium services and community-building aspects Neumann’s properties will supposedly offer, and things get even pricier.

It also looks like the project will involve the blockchain. There are a few clues that suggest this, including several trademark applications uncovered by the Wall Street Journal. The filings for an entity related to Flow mention real estate development, co-living space management, and cryptocurrency trading services. We also know that both Neumann and Andreessen recently teamed up on a similarly named project, Flowcarbon, which aims to apply blockchain technology to the market for carbon credits. Additionally, it’s likely Flow will have to use some sort of nascent tech to justify its billion-dollar valuation before the startup has done a thing.

When WeWork filed to go public, many pointed out that the real estate company was going out of its way to convince people it was a tech company — and, by extension, to justify its sky-high valuation. This time around, you can almost see the wheels turning in Neumann’s head. What’s more cutting edge than Web3? The rebranding of crypto and blockchain could purportedly change the internet as we know it, wresting control of the web away from big tech companies, like Facebook and Google, and giving it back to creators.

Sure, that sounds great. But what does that have to do with real estate, community, and giving renters equity?

Arpit Gupta, a real estate expert and professor of finance at NYU’s business school, surmises that Flow might try to combine a number of existing things and market them into one. Those include timeshares (flexibility!), co-ops (equity!), layaway financing (access and equity!), and luxury buildings in trendy areas (well-heeled millennials). Perhaps, Flow wants to offer short-term apartments with company-provided financing where you could grow your ownership stake the longer you live there.

“It’s like WeLive 2.0 combined with some sort of rent-to-equity system,” Gupta imagined. Oh, and they will probably launch a token — for finance and fun — that would allow more people an ownership stake in the business and create a lot of buzz.

Flow would by no means be the only company trying to bring technology to bear on real estate. Venture capital-funded tech startups are tackling everything from real estate investing to helping finance renters into becoming owners. Web3 real estate companies, specifically, tend to involve putting property rights on the blockchain and tokenizing equity shares in buildings, according to Gupta.

We also don’t yet know the full scope of Neumann’s latest plans. In addition to Flow and Flowcarbon, a search of related trademark applications turns up Flow Life (investment and crypto trading services), Workflow (workspace design), Flow Village (online professional networking) and Kibbutz (educational services and social networking platform). Of course, just because you file for a trademark doesn’t mean you’re actually going to do something.

But as we know from the fate of WeWork’s one-time umbrella organization, the We Company, Neumann’s ambitions don’t exactly hew to what’s possible. In addition to running an ever-growing portfolio of coworking spaces, the We Company also branched out into seemingly unrelated businesses, including a school and an engineering firm that makes wave pools. Neumann is also well known for being a profligate spender and a poor manager of money — behaviors that ended up contributing to the downfall of his company.

Nevertheless, Neumann’s reputation and wild ambitions still haven’t curbed his ability to raise money.

“In Silicon Valley, there is always money for the repeat founder,” Eliot Brown, Wall Street Journal reporter and author of WeWork tell-all The Cult of We, told Recode. “Failure doesn’t seem to stop people.”

That’s particularly the case here. Andreessen is partially responsible for the cult of the founder, a term that refers to the mythical status given to founders who are thought to do no wrong. Now, his VC firm is funding Neumann’s return to glory.

“One of the ironies is that the big fuel behind the rise and fall of WeWork was this fetishization of the founder,” Brown said. “Adam became sort of the paragon of the founder gone wild and that was a creation, in large part, of the mystique that Andreessen put out about founders.”

For Andreessen, however, Neumann’s experiences and failures are a virtue.

“We understand how difficult it is to build something like this and we love seeing repeat-founders build on past successes by growing from lessons learned,” Andreessen wrote in his recent blog post. “For Adam, the successes and lessons are plenty.”

Presumably that means Flow will have no wave pool.

This story was first published in the Recode newsletter. Sign up here so you don’t miss the next one!

Fresh off his crudités fiasco, Mehmet Oz needed to do a better job looking like a man of the people. This ain’t it.

At a recent campaign event, a Democratic campaign worker did an amazing job getting Oz to simultaneously lie and look even more out of touch than he looked getting the name of the grocery store wrong as he pretended to buy asparagus, a huge bag of whole carrots, and a small crown of broccoli with the apparent intent of dipping them in guacamole and fresh salsa. It was a simple question, or should have been: “How many houses do you own?”

“Legitimately, I own two houses,” Oz answered. (When the answer starts with “legitimately,” you know to look deeper.) “But one of them we're building on, the other ones I rent,” he added. Wait … he owns two (“legitimately”) but then after the one he’s building on, the other ones, plural, he rents? What does that even mean? 

It means he’s trying not to answer the question, but he doesn’t know how to get out of it.

Can you chip in $3 to help John Fetterman flip Pennsylvania's Senate seat from red to blue?

RELATED STORY: Dr. Oz failed to mention his New Jersey condo. John Fetterman jumped in with the jokes

The Daily Beast, which obtained the footage, counts 10 properties owned by Oz, whose net worth of around $100 million comes from his time as a celebrity TV doctor:

• a 9,000-square-foot mansion in New Jersey

• a 7,000-square-foot country house in Pennsylvania

• a condo in New Jersey

• a piece of residential real estate in Sariyer, Turkey

• another piece of residential real estate in Sariyer, Turkey

• a Manhattan condo

• another Manhattan condo

• an oceanside mansion in Palm Beach, Florida

• a cattle farm in Okeechobee, Florida

• and a piece of residential property in Konya, Turkey, which appears to be used as a student dormitory

When Oz said, “the other ones we rent,” you could have been forgiven for thinking he was saying he rented multiple homes from other owners, but no, he has properties he rents out. Oz’s wife has an additional two properties.

To be fair to Oz, despite all of the trolling he’s taken from his Democratic opponent, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, one of his 10 properties is in Pennsylvania. That’s 10%! 

His Pennsylvania property—the one he bought in late 2021 after launching his Senate campaign—is presumably the house Oz referred to as the “one of them we’re building on.” Since buying it, he has claimed to be renovating it—though, The Philadelphia Inquirer recently reported, “there’s little sign of work at the property, and he continues to live at his in-laws’ home in the nearby borough of Bryn Athyn.”

By contrast, that’s two properties in New Jersey, one of them his main residence for years, at which he has continued to film campaign videos, and the other of which he failed to disclose and has rented out to Turkish nationalists. And two properties in Manhattan. And two properties in Florida. And three in Turkey.

There are thousands of elections on the ballot this year, and Democratic campaigns all over the country need your help to get out the vote. Mobilize is your one-stop shop to get connected with campaigns anywhere in the country that need volunteers to call, text, write, and knock on doors. Click here to view GOTV opportunities near you.

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Apple is aiming to hold a launch event on Sept. 7 to unveil the iPhone 14 line, Bloomberg News reported Wednesday, citing people with knowledge of the matter, rolling out the latest version of a product that generates more than half its sales. From the report: The new iPhones will kick off a busy fall product season, which will also include multiple new Macs, low-end and high-end iPads, and three Apple Watch models. Apple is updating its flagship product at a precarious time for the industry. Smartphone sales have begun to flag as consumers cope with inflation and a shaky economy. But Apple appears to be faring better than its peers: The iPhone sold well last quarter, and the company has signaled to suppliers that it doesn't foresee a dropoff in demand.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Klaxton shares a report from Electrek: Clean energy accounted for more than two-thirds of the new US electrical generating capacity added during the first six months of 2022, according to data recently released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Wind (5,722 megawatts) and solar (3,895 MW) provided 67.01% of the 14,352 MW in utility-scale (that is, greater than 1 MW) capacity that came online during the first half of 2022. Additional capacity was provided by geothermal (26 MW), hydropower (7 MW), and biomass (2 MW). The balance came from natural gas (4,695 MW) and oil (5 MW). No new capacity was reported for 2022 from either nuclear power or coal. This brings clean energy's share of total US available installed generating capacity up to 26.74%. To put that in perspective, five years ago, clean energy's share was 19.7%. Ten years ago, it was 14.76%.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — A Florida court of appeal this week upheld a decision stating a 16-year-old teen could not get an abortion because she lacked the maturity to make such a decision, even after the parentless teen said she was not ready to have a child and is still in school.

An opinion released Monday by the Florida 1st District Court of Appeal upheld an earlier decision by a state court judge. That judge was not convinced the teen had demonstrated the maturity to choose to get an abortion. The teen, identified only as Jane Doe 22-B, has no parents but is in the care of Florida’s child welfare agency and has a guardian. She is about 10 weeks pregnant and currently resides with a relative.

“The minor states that she is sufficiently mature to make the decision, saying she ‘is not ready to have a baby,’ she doesn’t have a job, she is ‘still in school,’” the Monday order states. “And the father is unable to assist her.”

Florida abortion law requires parents to consent before a minor can have an abortion. But underage teens can also circumvent the consent requirement by asking for a waiver from a state circuit court judge. According to the appeal court’s decision, the teen’s guardian supports the teen’s wish to get an abortion.

Gov. Ron DeSantis in 2020 signed into law a measure that made parental consent for an abortion a requirement for minors. The new law was a win for Republicans who long sought to topple precedent set by the state Supreme Court in 1989 when it rejected a similar parental notification law that was declared a violation of privacy. Voters approved a constitutional amendment in 2004 that led the Legislature to create a parental notification requirement, but it provides for exceptions and the ability for minors to ask the court for waivers.

The court’s decision to deny the teen an abortion was just one of the roughly 200 petitions filed by minors looking to bypass parental notification laws that Florida circuit court judges decide every year. A POLITICO analysis of Florida court reports shows the majority of those petitions are approved. Judges deny an average of 18 of those petitions each year.

This year, Florida’s GOP-led Legislature banned pregnant people from receiving abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The law provides no exceptions for rape or incest. That law, however, is separate from the parental consent requirement.

The teen’s initial request to get an abortion without a guardian’s permission was first denied by Escambia County Circuit Judge Jessica Frydrychowicz but upheld by the three-judge appellate panel.

But one appeals court judge, Scott Makar, offered partial dissent, writing in the opinion that the appellate court should have sent the case back to the lower court.

“Given the open-ended nature of the order reflecting the trial judge’s willingness to hear from the minor again—and the time pressures presented—I would remand the case to the trial court,” Makar wrote.

The Escambia County Judicial Circuit, where the teen sought permission for an abortion, sees an average of one to two petitions a year and that circuit has not dismissed a petition in at least five years, the reports show.

Jane Doe 22-B is not without options. Makar wrote that the teen was grief-stricken by the recent death of a friend and that Frydrychowicz was willing to re-evaluate the case in a few days.

“Reading between the lines, it appears that the trial court wanted to give the minor, who was under extra stress due to a friend’s death, additional time to express a keener understanding of the consequences of terminating a pregnancy,” Makar wrote. “This makes some sense given that the minor, at least at one point, says she was open to having a child, but later changed her view after considering her inability to care for a child in her current station in life.”

I know it’s hot in Arizona, and climate change is hitting us all hard, but damn, it seems as if Republican voters’ brains are being fried in the sun. In addition to voting for election-denier Kari Lake for governor and Trump-endorsed far-right candidate Blake Masters for Senate, GOPers in the Grand Canyon state are also backing Mark Finchem—a QAnon conspiracy theorist and proud member of the Oath Keepers—for secretary of state.

Finchem, 57, who attended former President Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 but denied going inside the U.S. Capitol during the insurrection, will oversee the state’s elections in 2024 if elected.

As reported on CNN, the Trump-endorsed nominee who spoke at a QAnon convention has called the COVID-19 vaccine a “crime against humanity” and hinted that it was a “bio-weapon.” But he’s posted his most outrageous commentary on the social media platform Pinterest, which is most commonly known for DIY crafts, beauty hacks, and design tips.

RELATED STORY: Heading into midterm elections, Georgia officials fear a frightening shortage of poll workers

One of Finchem’s mood boards is titled “Treason Watch List” and features a slew of photos of leaders the nominee has connected to a variety of oddball conspiracies. Another is titled “Thought Provoking,” where he compares Democrats to Nazis, per CNN.

According to an opinion piece by Dana Milbank for The Washington Post, Finchem was endorsed by prominent antisemite and founder and CEO of the media site Gab, Andrew Torba. The Arizona Mirror reports that Torba is consulting on Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano’s campaign. Mastriano crossed police barricades in front of the Capitol on Jan. 6.  

Finchem has been a vocal denier of Trump’s loss in 2020 to President Joe Biden. He has said that early voting should be banned and mail-in ballots restricted. He has sued to try to end the use of electronic vote-counting machines in Arizona, where he was financially backed by My Pillow Guy Mike Lindell, according to The New York Times. 

Trump has called Finchem “the kind of fighter we need,” adding (in his characteristically strangely capitalized way) that Finchem “will bring Integrity back to our Elections.”

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Finchem was also endorsed by leading Oath Keeper and former Sheriff Richard Mack.

But Finchem is just one of many far-right conspiracists to attack our elections.

Politico reports that the Republican National Committee has been recruiting and training thousands of 2020 election deniers to crew the polls in battleground states, all under the guise of “election integrity.”

In taped recordings obtained by Politico of organizing summits held in Florida and Pennsylvania, conservative elections attorney Cleta Mitchell was heard discussing how the RNC needs to challenge work by Democrats to build a “new American majority”—work that would include registering more voters of color.

“It’s a place the left sees as a great target of opportunity, and we have to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mitchell said.

Trump and his followers proved on Jan. 6 how dangerously close they came to overturning our democracy. Help cancel Republican voter suppression with the power of your pen by clicking here and signing up to volunteer with Vote Forward, writing personalized letters to targeted voters urging them to exercise their right to vote this year.

It is not at all shocking that a former top immigration official turned Fox propagandist has emerged as a central figure within a devastating new report on the previous administration’s family separation policy. The Atlantic’s Caitlyn Dickerson reports that Thomas Homan was loudest in pushing the evil idea of stealing children from their parents back in 2014, when he served under the Obama administration.

He’d reportedly planned to retire when he was promoted to acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) by the next administration. It was then when he openly took pleasure in terrorizing families. “I’m enjoying it,” he said about his job in 2018. The previous year, Homan had warned immigrant families that they “should be uncomfortable, you should look over your shoulder, and you need to be worried.”  

RELATED STORY: Biden administration has reunited nearly 400 children stolen from parents by previous president

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Dickerson reports that Homan had been “the most strident” in deterring asylum-seekers by separating families legally seeking refuge, raising the proposal during a 2014 meeting with then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson. Johnson confirmed the idea had been raised and rejected as “heartless and impractical.”

“This is the earliest instance I’ve discovered of family separation being proposed as a way to deter migration to the United States,” Dickerson reported. (The U.S. similarly separated enslaved children and American Indian children from their parents). “This makes Tom Homan the father of what might be the Trump administration’s most controversial policy,” Dickerson continued. Border officials had “piloted” separations in 2017, pushing a widespread policy the following year under former Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

Nielsen’s deputy chief of staff told Dickerson “she was shaken by the nonchalance with which” officials including “Homan had proposed taking vast numbers of children away from their parents.” She said they weren’t “grasping the humanity of the situation,” they just seemed interested in appeasing the insurrectionist president and white supremacist Stephen Miller. The latter of these two racists had reportedly sought to steal as many as 26,000 children from their parents. And while Nielsen’s deputy might have been “shaken,” her boss also lied about the existence of a family separation policy. There’s no such thing as an innocent party here.

Just days before a federal judge ordered a halt to this crime against humanity and told officials to reunite 2,600 children (they missed the deadline by months), Homan froze during a televised interview when asked if the policy was humane. “I think—I think it is the law,” the liar said in a lie. Earlier that year, Homan had claimed in another bold lie that ICE doesn’t sweep up people who aren’t targets. But ICE does, and there’s even a crass term for it: collateral arrests. Homan was such a liar that an ICE spokesperson resigned rather than continue spreading lies for him. Woof, and we haven’t even touched on Homan speaking at an event hosted by an anti-immigrant hate group while he was still in his government position.

”Homan acknowledged that many people would think him evil for proposing the idea [of family separation], but he said it was intended to help families, not hurt them,” Dickerson reported. Right. The insurrectionist administration ignored warnings from its own people to not separate families, and it doesn’t take a mental health or child welfare expert to know that violently tearing a child from its parent will terrify them. (Especially in asylum-seeking families who may have already suffered traumatic events.) If Homan were really seeking to help them, he would have allowed them to pursue their asylum claims.

“Homan retired from ICE at the end of June 2018, and that August, Fox rewarded him with a job as a network contributor,” Media Matters said, one of more than a dozen former officials to have skated over to the propaganda network. The Biden administration continues to work to reunite families cruelly ripped apart by former officials like Homan. “More than 5,000 families were separated under Trump’s 2018 ‘zero tolerance’ policy and a 2017 pilot program and advocates estimate over 1,000 remain separated,” NBC News said. Read Dickerson’s entire report (and you should) here.

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