James.galbraith

As states across the country continue to restrict abortion, pregnant people are the ones bearing the consequences. In the most recent incident, a parentless 16-year-old Florida resident seeking an abortion was denied one because a judge thought she was not “mature” enough. The 10-week-pregnant teen was told that she did not prove “by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy.”  As a result, a judicial bypass was denied for her to receive an abortion, and a Florida appellate court agreed to the decision on Monday.

Though abortion is legal in Florida for up to 16 weeks, because the girl is still a minor she needed to petition her case to prove she is capable of making the decision for her own health. Under the law, minors can petition a "judicial waiver" to go around the parental consent requirement, but a court has to find them "sufficiently mature" to let them move forward with the abortion.

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The girl completed a handwritten petition using the correct form, noting she “is not ready to have a baby,” as she’s “still in school” pursuing her GED without a job, and the father “is unable to assist her.” She also noted that her appointed “guardian is fine with what [she] wants to do,” according to the court filing.

But following the girl’s petition hearing, while the trial judge found the pregnant girl to be “credible” and “open,” the judge ruled that “[the minor] may be able, at a later date, to adequately articulate her request, and the Court may re-evaluate its decision at that time.”

Ultimately Escambia County Circuit Court Judge Jennifer J. Frydrychowicz seemed to want to push her own agenda. While she found the teen to have credibility and said she “showed, at times, that she is stable and mature enough to make this decision [and] acknowledges she is not ready for the emotional, physical, or financial responsibility of raising a child,” Frydrychowicz thought the teen needed more time given the experience of the trauma she had in the past to decide whether to end her pregnancy. 

But given the time sensitivity related to a pregnancy, the teen did not have this time. The unidentified teen then took her case to the appellate court, which claimed the teen was not mature in their dissent:

The detailed written order points out that the minor has evaluated the pros/cons in making her decision and the transcript reflects a similar mental process. 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. 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.

The trial court found, based on the nonadversarial presentation below, that Appellant had not established by clear and convincing evidence that she was sufficiently mature to decide whether to terminate her pregnancy. Having reviewed the record, we affirm the trial court’s decision.

According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights, at least 36 states require parental involvement in a minor’s decision to have an abortion. However, Florida is one of the six states that require that a parent or guardian be notified of a teen's intent to get an abortion, as well as consent to the procedure.

Doctors who perform abortions on teens without parental consent are in violation of the Parental Notice of and Consent for Abortion Act, which makes it a third-degree felony for a doctor to terminate a pregnancy of “an unemancipated minor without the required consent.”

According to Human Rights Watch, most young people “voluntarily involve a parent or another trusted adult in their abortion decision, even if the law doesn’t require it. But for those who don’t—often because they fear abuse, deterioration of family relationships, being kicked out of the home, or being forced to continue a pregnancy—laws like Florida’s pose a barrier to their care.”

Advocates noted the harmful effects such laws may have on teens facing abuse or unsafe family environments. “Many teens live in dysfunctional family environments, and parental involvement laws cannot transform these families into stable homes nor facilitate productive communications," Advocates for Youth said.

Abortion rights, climate change, and gun safety are all on the ballot this fall. Click to start writing Postcards to Democratic-leaning voters in targeted House districts today.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NPR: Stephen Flavall makes his living by playing video games to an audience of thousands on Twitch. When he first started streaming, he only had about fifteen people at a time watching him. He liked how he could engage with a small community, cracking jokes while people cheered him on. Unfortunately, the vibe changed as his popularity grew. "Around 200 viewers was when it started getting exhausting," says Flavall. "Now I have like 2,000 viewers [at a time] and when that many people are asking you questions and telling you what to do, it becomes absolutely unmanageable. I started having anxiety, bordering on full panic attacks." Flavall's gotten to a better place now, but his story isn't unique. Burnout is on the rise across the country, even for those whose work is -- quite literally -- play. While professional video gaming can sound like an enviable gig, it's not too different from being a performer. Streamers have an audience, a persona, and act in the same role for long hours. Streamers can't really take breaks, either. They risk their fanbase losing interest during a stream and logging off. Since they're self-employed, they can't rely on paid vacation, or sick leave. That leaves streamers wondering how to navigate making an income that isn't an official "job." [...] Twitch audiences can also demand that streamers play games they may have soured on. Haelian, another Twitch streamer known for playing rogue-likes, got tired of trying to escape the underworld of Hades day-in and day-out. But that game made his stream popular, and his fans weren't pleased. [...] Twitch's competitive culture also fans the flames. It's not just that a streamer can tire of a game or rude viewers; they can also fall victim to a pervasive "always on" mentality. Taylor Chou, Director of Talent Management at Evil Geniuses, an esports and gaming entertainment company, says that Twitch can be a pretty toxic work environment. "When you're a streamer, you truly know that every single second that you are not online, grinding, posting, streaming -- somebody [else] is," Chou says. "That's a lot of pressure for people to learn how to manage." Chou also says that communicating with your audience and having a support system is key to mitigating streamer burnout. "Most of the best ways to deal with burnout start with a support system," says Chou. "When you're a streamer, make sure that your community has a sense that this is a person they're watching." But that kind of structure can take years to build, and while fans have rallied around streamers, they can just as often stress or even harass them. That leaves many burnt out and on their way to signing off for good. Further reading: Deadly Swatting Increasing On Twitch; Alarmed Streamers Press For Change (Ars Technica)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

President Joe Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law Tuesday afternoon, the big climate change, tax fairness, and health care reconciliation bill that Democrats passed in record time this month. Biden was joined by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Majority Whip James Clyburn. The big celebration signing will happen next month, when Congress is back in D.C., but enacting the legislation now will start the ball rolling immediately on the many provisions it has to help American consumers and to start reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

“With this law, the American people have won, and special interests lost,” Biden said. “The American people won, and special interests lost. […] This administration began in a dark time in America, a once-in-a-century pandemic, devastating joblessness, clear and present threats to democracy and the rule of law, doubts about the future of America itself. And yet we have not wavered, we have not flinched, and we have not given in. Instead, we are delivering results for the American people.“

Biden also blasted Republicans for their refusal to support any part of this bill. “In this historic moment, Democrats sided with the American people and every single Republican in the Congress sided with the special interest in this vote, every single one,” Biden said. “The big drug companies spent nearly $100 million to defeat this bill, $100 million. And remember, every single Republican in Congress voted against this bill. Every single Republican in Congress voted against lower prescription prices, negotiating drug costs, a fairer tax system. Every single Republican voted against tackling the climate crisis, against lowering our energy costs, against creating good-paying jobs.”

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Biden continued, previewing the message he’s going to take into the midterm elections: “My fellow Americans, that is the choice we face. We can protect the already powerful, or show the courage to build a future where everybody has an even shot. That is the America I believe in. That is what i believe in. And today, we have come a step closer to making that America real.”

Ahead of the official bill signing, the White House provided a briefing memo titled “By the Numbers,” detailing the major provisions of the legislation and how it will move the nation forward.

Some highlights:

• 5 to 7 million Medicare beneficiaries could see their prescription drug costs go down because of the provision allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug costs.
• 50 million Americans with Medicare Part D will have peace of mind knowing their costs at the pharmacy are capped at $2,000 per year, directly benefiting about 1.4 million beneficiaries each year.
• 3.3 million Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes will benefit from a guarantee that their insulin costs are capped at $35 for a month’s supply. […]
• 13 million Americans will continue to save an average of $800 per year on health insurance premiums
• 3 million more Americans will have health insurance than without the law. […]
• Families that take advantage of clean energy and electric vehicle tax credits will save more than $1,000 per year.
• $14,000 in direct consumer rebates for families to buy heat pumps or other energy efficient home appliances, saving families at least $350 per year.
• 7.5 million more families will be able to install solar on their roofs with a 30% tax credit, saving families $9,000 over the life of the system or at least $300 per year.
• Up to $7,500 in tax credits for new electric vehicles and $4,000 for used electric vehicles, helping families save $950 per year. […]
• Power homes, businesses, and communities with much more clean energy by 2030, including:
  • 950 million solar panels
  • 120,000 wind turbines
  • 2,300 grid-scale battery plants
• Advance cost-saving clean energy projects at rural electric cooperatives serving 42 million people.
• Strengthen climate resilience and protect nearly 2 million acres of national forests. […]
• Reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1 gigaton in 2030, or a billion metric tons – 10 times more climate impact than any other single piece of legislation ever enacted.
• Deploy clean energy and reduce particle pollution from fossil fuels to avoid up to 3,900 premature deaths and up to 100,000 asthma attacks annually by 2030. […]
• 15%: the minimum tax on corporate profits the Inflation Reduction Act imposes on the largest, most profitable corporations.
• $124 billion: savings over 10 years the Inflation Reduction Act will generate from collecting taxes already owed by wealthy people and large corporations, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
• And no family making less than $400,000 will see their taxes go up a penny.

To quote Biden at another historic bill signing, “This is a big fucking deal” for the American people.

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Joseph Cuffari, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, has said he will not recuse himself from a probe of Secret Service text messages tied to Jan. 6 that were deleted, despite multiple requests from Congress that they be retained.

Cuffari relayed his decision to members of the House Oversight and House Homeland Security Committees in a letter dated Aug. 8. Cuffari said he would not step down from the internal probe because doing so would “upend the very independence that Congress has established for Inspectors General” and potentially burden witnesses in the internal investigation. 

Cuffari just a week ago told members of Congress he would seek legal advice about remitting internal records to Congress before he would cooperate. 

Not only will he not recuse, but according to his new public letter, the inspector general further said he would not allow members of his staff to sit for transcribed interviews, as committees first requested on Aug 1.

RELATED STORY: Cover-up alleged by top Democrats probing missing Secret Service texts; DHS watchdog asked to recuse

Cuffari Response to Step Down by Daily Kos on Scribd

Cuffari’s refusal to step aside was made public when Reps. Carolyn Maloney and Bennie Thompson, who separately chair the House Oversight Committee and House Homeland Security Committee, published their response to the Trump-appointed inspector general.

“Your obstruction of the Committees’ investigations is unacceptable, and your justifications for this noncompliance appear to reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s authority and your duties as an Inspector General. If you continue to refuse to comply with our requests, we will have no choice but to consider alternate measures to ensure your compliance,” Maloney and Thompson wrote.

It was only last month that Cuffari told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack that the Secret Service texts had been deleted.

At first, the watchdog said the messages were erased as a part of a pre-planned, agency-wide device reset and that he had only learned they were lost in December 2021. Cuffari also lamented a lack of cooperation from the Secret Service. 

But Cuffari, it turns out, knew about the missing messages far before then. He learned of them in May 2021. Yet, for 14 months, he failed to notify anyone of his findings, as required under law.

He “abandoned” the review, Maloney and Thompson wrote. 

When he met with members of the Jan. 6 committee this July, Cuffari quickly ordered a criminal probe into the missing texts and directed the Secret Service to stop its own forensic search while the matter was under review internally.

The missing Jan. 6 texts are just one of many issues Maloney and Thompson have with the inspector general.

In their letter, they noted how he has long failed to comply with congressional requests for documents and, in particular, those related to sexual harassment and domestic abuse allegations raised by staff at the Department of Homeland Security. There are mounting concerns that Cuffari allows staff to work “with independence and objectivity.” 

“Full compliance with our requests is necessary,” Maloney and Thompson. citing, among various other legal precedents, the rights of Congress established by the Supreme Court in Hutcheson v. United States in 1962.

“Legislative inquires need not yield to parallel proceedings, even if those proceedings are criminal in nature,” the high court found. 

Cuffari should respond by Aug. 23, the committee chairs wrote.

They also ordered Cuffari’s deputy inspector generals, Thomas Kait and Kristen Fredricks, to appear by that date, as well. 

RELATED STORY: A curious draft: Records show warning on missing Jan. 6 texts removed from watchdog report

Cuffari’s appointment was reportedly under the scrutiny of President Joe Biden in recent weeks. Anonymous sources told The Independent that Biden was taking a greater interest in Cuffari, but things have since been quiet. A spokesperson for the White House did not return multiple requests for comment to Daily Kos.

Damning leaks from Pence associates show the absurdity of GOP defenses of Trump.

In a Monday court filing, the Justice Department asked a federal court not to unseal the affidavit showing probable cause for the warrant to search Mar-a-Lago, giving reasons that underscore the hot water Donald Trump appears to be in.

Disclosing the affidavit now would, according to the filing, “cause significant and irreparable damage to this ongoing criminal investigation.” It would do that by revealing, “among other critically important and detailed investigative facts: highly sensitive information about witnesses, including witnesses interviewed by the government; specific investigative techniques; and information required by law to be kept under seal.”

RELATED STORY: Search warrant shows Trump is under investigation for possible Espionage Act violations

That’s not all: “The fact that this investigation implicates highly classified materials further underscores the need to protect the integrity of the investigation and exacerbates the potential for harm if information is disclosed to the public prematurely or inappropriately.

The Justice Department argued to the court that, if the affidavit were released, it would require extensive redactions—that, in fact, “the affidavit cannot responsibly be unsealed in a redacted form absent redactions that would be so extensive as to render the document devoid of content that would meaningfully enhance the public’s understanding of these events beyond the information already now in the public record.” But if it wasn’t redacted to that extent, according to the government, that’s where the integrity of the investigation, the need to obscure information relating to highly classified materials, and the need to protect the identities of the agents and witnesses involved could all be compromised.

The Justice Department is not here to play—not that we thought it was once Mar-a-Lago was searched.

President Joe Biden will sign the Inflation Reduction Act into law Tuesday. That’s the big climate change and health care bill passed in record time by the Congress this month, an accomplishment that Biden and fellow Democrats intend to highlight in the 85 days until the 2022 midterm election. Suddenly, Democrats have the advantage of a strong record of accomplishments to run on, while at the same time running against Republican extremism and obstruction—as good a formula as you can get for a midterm election.

The White House is planning a big bill-signing celebration next month when Congress returns after the Labor Day holiday, when the fall campaign will kick off in earnest. That will include a big speech right after Labor Day in Wisconsin, where Biden will stump for Gov. Tony Evers, the Democrat running for reelection, and Mandela Barnes, challenger to Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

Sources to CNN say it would be a “hard-hitting kick off for midterm campaigning, with the President touting tangible, long-talked-about wins like lowering prescription drug costs and gun restrictions while hammering Republicans for being extremists who are in the pocket of special interests.”

That’s a characterization Republicans have certainly earned. They’ve delayed legislation that will help grow the economy; they stepped in it in a big way by delaying a vote on the bipartisan and popular legislation to help veterans affected by toxic burn pits during their service; and they prevented diabetic people with private health insurance from getting affordable insulin. Then there’s abortion, where in state after state Democrats are going on the offense against hugely unpopular new laws from Republicans.

While Republicans have committed all those unforced errors, they’ve also seen their main campaign narratives lose oomph as gas prices are falling and Democrats are getting stuff accomplished. There’s also that issue of Donald Trump under criminal investigation for all his potential criming and espionage.

The campaign push from the administration is going to begin before Labor Day, as will Biden’s travel around the country to tout the Democrats’ accomplishments. That will include Biden traveling to Ohio to break ground for a new Intel megaplant, where he’ll celebrate the semiconductor bill recently passed. In addition, through the rest of August, Cabinet members will hit 23 states in 35 trips.

The White House is also planning “hundreds of town halls and roundtables” with the Senate and House, and is pledging to coordinate more closely with political allies beyond Congress. The administration is also going to unveil a website to help Americans navigate the rebates and tax credits available to them through the new climate bill for making their homes energy efficient.

With all that happening, that bill signing ceremony next month and the campaign events following it are going to be a lot more celebratory and enthusiastic.

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By Ray Hartmann The campaign of Georgia Republican U.S. Senate nominee Herschel Walker is resorting to a strategy often employed by his idol Donald Trump: When you have no defense, portray yourself as a victim. In a Wall Street Journal op-ed commentary carrying Walker’s byline today, the headline asks, “How Low Can Gutter Politics Go?” — with the subhead “Bill Kristol’s Republican Accountability Project tries to stigmatize me for my past mental illness.” As reported this week at Raw Story, the ad “includes footage of Republican Senate hopeful Herschel Walker’s ex-wife graphically describing hi…

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Rudy Giuliani can slither away no more. The Fulton County, Georgia, district attorney has informed former President Donald Trump’s slimy private lawyer that he is the target of a criminal investigation into the 2020 presidential elections in Georgia.

According to reporting from The New York Times, just last week Giuliani told prosecutors that he was too unhealthy to fly to Georgia to appear in front of the special grand jury. Giuliani’s team claimed a “recent invasive procedure” following a “complex artery diagnosis.” But a Fulton County judge wasn’t buying it and ordered Giuliani to Georgia to testify on Aug. 17—a day of reckoning.

Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court said, “Mr. Giuliani is not cleared for air travel, A-I-R. … John Madden drove all over the country in his big bus, from stadium to stadium. So one thing we need to explore is whether Mr. Giuliani could get here without jeopardizing his recovery and his health. On a train, on a bus or Uber, or whatever it would be,” adding, “New York is not close to Atlanta, but it’s not traveling from Fairbanks.”

RELATED STORY: Fulton County DA catches Giuliani lying about being unable to travel, offers free bus or train trip

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According to Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis, Giuliani “purchased multiple airline tickets with cash, including tickets to Rome, Italy, and Zurich, Switzerland, for travel dates ranging between July 22, 2022, and July 29, 2022. All of these dates were after [his] medical procedure,” Daily Kos’ April Siese writes. 

The former mayor of New York, best known for his hair dye mishap and uncanny impression of the Batman villain the Penguin, has played a large part in the Big Lie. His attorney, Robert Costello, told the Times that when it comes to questions about Trump, his client would likely invoke attorney-client privilege. “If these people think he’s going to talk about conversations between him and President Trump, they’re delusional.”

It’s a party in Atlanta as Giuliani joins rabid Republican South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham. He too has been ordered to testify before the grand jury in Georgia about pushing election officials to overturn the results in the 2020 election.

Graham, like his defiant MAGA brother Giuliani, attempted to challenge the district attorney’s subpoena. He too was shut the fuck down.

“[T]he Court finds that the District Attorney has shown extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia’s 2022 elections,” U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May said.

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Sen. Lindsey Graham’s efforts to squirm out of accountability for his role in Donald Trump’s coup attempt have failed. The South Carolina Republican has been ordered to testify before a grand jury in Georgia about his role in pressuring election officials there to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state.

Earlier this month, Graham challenged a subpoena to testify before a Fulton County special grand jury that is investigating the Trump team’s efforts to subvert the election. Graham asserted that he’s a U.S. senator and is thus immune from having to answer for his effort. Nope, says U.S. District Court Judge Leigh Martin May. “[T]he Court finds that the District Attorney has shown extraordinary circumstances and a special need for Senator Graham’s testimony on issues relating to alleged attempts to influence or disrupt the lawful administration of Georgia’s 2022 elections.”

Graham was among the first to jump into the fray in the days after the November 2020 election, including calling Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger twice, according to Raffensperger, to try to get him to illegally throw out legal vote-by-mail ballots and overturn the election. President Biden pulled out a 12,000 vote win in Georgia, or to be more exact, 11,780 votes. Graham was allegedly echoing Trump’s notorious plea to Raffensperger to “find” those votes to toss.

Last month, a Fulton County judge ordered Graham to testify, but he challenged that ruling, attempting to get his objection moved to a federal court. Graham’s lawyers argued that the U.S. Constitution “provides absolute protection against inquiry into Senator Graham’s legislative acts.”

They further argued that “Sovereign immunity” prohibits a local prosecutor from summoning a U.S. Senator “to face a state ad hoc investigatory body” and argued that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis didn’t now show “the ‘extraordinary circumstances’ necessary to order a high-ranking federal official to testify.”

High-ranking, my ass, Judge Martin May said in many more measured words. “In sum, the Court finds that there are considerable areas of potential grand jury inquiry falling outside the Speech or Debate Clause’s protections,” she wrote. “Additionally, sovereign immunity fails to shield Senator Graham from testifying before the Special Purpose Grand Jury.”

The case goes back to the Superior Court of Fulton County, Graham’s federal court appeal lifeline severed.

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A GOP House's attacks on the rule of law will be a horror show.

It’s not worth spending too much time on any single one of the litany of shifting excuses Republicans have come up with for Donald Trump having top secret classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. There are so many of them and they are so blatantly dishonest, you just can’t get distracted. But every now and then, it’s also worth pausing to say, “Really, guys? That’s what you’re going with?”

So it is with the claim that Trump had declassified all those documents, possibly with the power of his mind and without having told anyone he had done it. Or automatically by having moved them from one location within the White House to another.

John Bolton, briefly Trump’s national security adviser and now a critic of Trump when it serves him to be, pointed out one of the big problems in the declassification claims.

RELATED STORY: Republicans advance new theory: If Trump even thought about doing it, it is legal

The claim that Trump had a standing order that anything he took from the Oval Office to the White House residence was “almost certainly a lie,” Bolton said, and such an order would have required significant documentation. But it’s not just that:

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Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro actually did make the argument that Trump was trying to get those documents out to the public by having declassified them. “The reason why you declassify stuff you don’t need to classify is the American public need to know. It’ll keep us out of wars and it’ll keep our jobs here if you do that,” he told Steve Bannon. Here we are apparently supposed to ignore that Trump didn’t release these documents to the American public. He had them at Mar-a-Lago, where whoever he was showing them to, he wasn’t making them broadly available.

And, of course, most of the Republicans claiming that Trump declassified the documents would not even pretend to believe they should be publicly available. But anyone who makes that argument needs to be hit with the immediate follow-up: “Do you believe those should be put on the internet and printed in the newspapers for everyone to see?”

Bolton’s follow-up quote in The New York Times is—despite the fact that Bolton is a terrible, evil person—equally accurate: “When somebody begins to concoct lies like this, it shows a real level of desperation.”

And when somebody and their allies concoct well over a dozen lies, excuses, and deflections in less than a week … well, that’s a lot of desperation. What those desperate lies can’t do, though, is change the facts of the matter, and it’s those facts that the FBI and the Justice Department are looking into.

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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The complete guide to every excuse Republicans have made for Trump's theft of classified documents

Search warrant shows Trump is under investigation for possible Espionage Act violations

The Republican reactions to Trump, ahem, being caught with highly classified nuclear weapons-related documents after asserting to federal agents he didn't have them continues, and as the facts worsen for Trump his pro-attempted-coup Republican allies are sliding towards the obvious endpoint. If a Republican leader commits a crime against the government, well then maybe that thing shouldn't even be a crime at all!

Rand Paul has been homing in on that one. He started out claiming that the FBI might have been planting evidence against Trump.

Then we found out that it wasn't just any documents the government was hunting for, but classified nuclear weapons documents, and that among the potential criminal charges facing Trump was violations of the Espionage Act, so Paul had to revise and extend his hackery. If Donald Trump violated the Espionage Act, and the government has him dead to rights on that, it can only mean the Espionage Act is wrong. "It is long past time to repeal this egregious affront to the 1st Amendment," tweeted Paul.

It's not enough to merely suggest that the FBI is full of crooks who would plant evidence against Dear Leader, as addled Trump supporters throughout the country target FBI offices and individual FBI agents. No, if Donald Trump is caught with classified national security documents being stored in a room at his spy-riddled for-profit golf club, it is A Violation Of The First Amendment Itself to not let him keep them. Or to, you know, even look into it.

Good work, Rand. Can always count on you to jump off any rhetorical bridge you might come across. A First Amendment right to keep and sell classified nuclear secrets, sure, you stick with that one.

Rand Paul has always been a bit of a turd, piping up with sudden libertarian proclamations in between advocating for big government powers, but ... actually, I forget where I'm going with that. He's just a turd.

On Team Spy, however, Trump ally Peter Navarro isn't content with "let's just repeal whatever laws Donald Trump was caught violating." He wants you to know that Donald Trump was patriotically planning on patriotically leaking our nuclear secrets so that the American people can "get more jobs."

The video suggests that Navarro was on exactly as much cocaine as you think he was when suggesting this.

Got it? Donald Trump is a big-brain whistleblower who was going to out national nuclear secrets so that the United States would "stay out of wars." Then you'll all get jobs, America. Don't you want jobs?

Surely, we can all agree that Donald Golf Resort Trump, in between hosting Saudi golf tournaments and attempting to overthrow the United States government, only has the American people's best interests at heart. He wasn't going to trade those documents away for the right to build a new hotel in Saudi Arabia or in the center of Moscow. He was going to patriotically release that information for the good of everyone who congregates in midwestern diners.

It is not enough, say other Republicans, to merely erase whatever laws Donald Trump may have willingly broken. The Republican focus during two impeachment trials and during every other scandal during Trump's years was always on finding out who was trying to enforce laws Donald wanted to break, so that those people or government agencies could be punished good and hard.

That's why Trump and his lawyers released a their copy of the government warrant papers served at Mar-a-Lago with the names of the goverment agents involved left unredacted, which in turn immediately led to Trump's base hunting down information about the agents and, predictably, death threats. It's why Republicans followed up the release with a party-wide campaign accusing the FBI of being corrupt, which almost immediately led to an attack on FBI offices because of course it did.

By Wednesday the Republican message was already out, though. Sen. Rand Paul was only one of the Republicans whose immediate reaction to the raid was to parrot the Trumpworld insistence that whatever Bad Stuff the FBI might have found was, uh, actually planted there. Why, Dear Leader being caught doing a crime means it's time to gut the FBI, which every Republican knows has been corrupt this whole time!

Don't just get rid of the laws Trump broke. Find out who found out he was breaking the laws, call them corrupt, release their public information, and shutter their whole agencies if we have to. All hail Dear Leader, and so forth.

Obviously, catching Donald Trump with nuclear weapons secrets in the basement of his spy club means that the sitting attorney general also has to go. That's just common sense.

Here's a tip: "GOP strategist" is not a news thing. CNN chose to host a "GOP strategist" despite the job of "GOP strategist" being, quite literally, strategizing how to best bullshit the American people with party-flattering spins on news events. It is not news; CNN, as a network, is reliant on booking partisan liars to mislead the public about current events in between news reports of what those current events actually are. Hosting professional liars is the core network strategy; it's cheap, it's assured to generate faux-"controversy," and you can be abso-tootly sure that party-paid propagandists will always, always be willing to show up. They own the suits, they know where the studio is, and they know how to look presentable on camera. Can’t say that about government records law experts.

But sure, this is all very bad news for Merrick Garland. The first former president to be caught stealing nuclear secrets is really putting Merrick Garland in a bind here, and if Merrick Garland doesn't want to be seen as overplaying his hand he either has to put Donald in prison or this or resign in shame.

Sure, fine. Let's go with that. The dude who defended Trump through a list of half-dozen treasons and counting is going with it, so you know it's gonna be a (very stupid) thing. But we agree: If the Department of Justice can't see its way to prosecuting a very powerful figure caught dead to rights doing the sort of crime other people get decades in prison for, then it would certainly demonstrate Justice Department leadership isn't up to snuff. That's what you meant, right?

All right, so the Republican response is now morphing into one in which Trump violating the Espionage Act means we have to erase the Espionage Act, Donald Trump hiding nuclear weapons secrets in his for-profit golf club serves only as proof that Donald Trump was valiantly trying to save the American people by spilling those secrets, the FBI discovering that Donald Trump was lying through his crooked teeth when he claimed he didn't have the documents now requires a wholesale purge of the FBI for Their Unholy Audacity, and the attorney general who oversaw getting those papers back is now hopelessly politically compromised because he may have actually believed the bullshit we tell our schoolchildren about "nobody being above the law," which is not something the Republican Party has believed at any point in its modern history.

If you're going to eliminate whatever laws Donald breaks from now until his eventual McDonald's-caused death, plus whatever agents discovered the crimes, plus whatever agencies the agents belong to, plus the attorney general for having the audacity to believe he had any right to, for example, take classified nuclear documents out of Donald's golf club and for-profit wedding venue even if Donald didn't want him to, there's not much of America that's going to be left. You're undermining everything that counts as "rule of law," when people say "rule of law."

At some point you don't have a government at all, if you're getting rid of all the parts that might inconvenience Dear Leader during a crime spree.

Which, as it turns out, is what the pro-insurrection parts of Republicanism's violent base are again saying out loud. Republicanism is becoming indistinguishable from the threats of terrorism it fosters. And it's all because Republicans think that whatever Trump wants, whether it's stealing nuclear weapons secrets or staying in office despite losing an election, Trump should get.

RELATED STORIES:

Trump took classified docs and tried to hide them from investigators. His excuses don't hold water

'We will not stand by and we will not stand down': Armed Trump backers protest at Phoenix FBI office

Cincinnati FBI breach suspect is killed in shootout and identified as possible Jan. 6 participant

The complete guide to every excuse Republicans have made for Trump's theft of classified documents

Southern Nevada may look completely different much sooner than visitors and residents expected, as agencies like the Las Vegas Valley Water District set their sights on meeting goals laid out in a law targeting “non-functional” grass. Those types of lawns are typically used to beautify places like office parks or entrances to housing tracts, but they require a substantial amount of water that the region cannot afford to waste. AB 356 was approved by Gov. Steve Sisolak last June, which requires communities who rely on the Colorado River to phase out certain nonfunctional turf by the end of 2026.

The law also establishes a Nonfunctional Turf Removal Advisory Committee and requires that studies be done on water conservation. According to PBS, the nonfunctional turf targeted in this law alone accounts for 31% of the grass in the Las Vegas region. Already, millions of acres of nonfunctional lawns have been removed this summer as the whole Southwest continues experiencing severe-to-extreme drought in what’s been described as the region’s worst drought in 1,200 years. Las Vegas Water Authority Public Information Officer Bronson Mack told CBS News that the grass will be replaced by more water conservation-friendly drip-irrigated trees and plants.

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A study published way back in 2007 touted the benefits of drip irrigation, especially as it relates to residential water consumption. Sadly, AB 356 does include a carve out on single-family homes, so if a property is zoned as such it’s up to the owner to decide how they want to conserve water. The law does apply to commercial property, homeowners associations, and housing developments. According to the Southern Nevada Water Authority, this elimination of nonfunctional grass will “save our community an estimated 9.6 billion gallons of water per year.” 

Already, other cities are eying similar water conservation measures. Aurora, Colorado, which partially relies on the Colorado River Basin as one of its sources of water, will have its city council review its own nonfunctional grass ordinance. As the Gazette reports, the ordinance would primarily target cool weather turf like Kentucky bluegrass and fescue and bar its use in new golf courses and for new developments and redevelopments. Cool-weather grass would also be prohibited on street medians, residential front yards, and even in curb landscapes. Limits would be placed on backyards with cool-weather turf.

Nevada Independent reporter Daniel Rothberg argues that this is “just the beginning” to address rampant overuse of the Colorado River and worsening climate change that has pushed water resources to the brink. Writing in The New York Times, Rothberg details the consensus from experts that more must be done than just conserving enough water to stave off crisis but leave those reliant on the river on “the razor’s edge.” Southwesterners cannot live like they’ve been living if they want to come out of the present drought sustainably. Rethinking what landscaping looks like may be a crucial first step in that process.

Abortion rights, climate change, and gun safety are all on the ballot this fall, and there are literally thousands of ways to get involved in turning our voters. Plug into a federal, state, or local campaign from our GOTV feed at Mobilize and help Democrats and progressives win in November.

Video captured by the independent media site News2Share shows supporters of former President Donald Trump armed with guns, waving confederate and American flags outside of the FBI office in Phoenix, Arizona on Saturday.

"We're here in support of Trump, for what happened to him, the unlawful search with the FBI at his Mar-a-Lago home," someone at the demonstration told News2Share. "We are sick and tired of this tyrannical government called the Biden regime. We will not stand by and we will not stand down.

"We're gonna take the fight to the FBI if need be."

RELATED STORY: Fueled by MAGA rhetoric, Ohio man’s self-martyrdom in FBI attack becomes just a ‘false flag’

The latest in a string of Republican rantings, the demonstration is in response to the FBI executing a search warrant at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home in Palm Beach, Florida, on Monday—an act that has led to the seizure of 11 sets of classified documents, including those related to nuclear weapons, according to The Washington Post.

Somehow though, Trump apologists still maintain the former president’s rights were violated while they go about the business of threatening the federal judge who signed the warrant and any other official they see fit to accuse without a shred of evidence of widespread election fraud. 

RELATED STORY: Trump’s fanatical supporters ready to ‘lock and load’ for ‘civil war’ after Mar-a-Lago searched

In Gillespie County, Texas, a county about 80 miles west of Austin, elections administrator Anissa Herrera said she resigned from her work due in large part to threats she faced, according to the Fredericksburg Standard. 

“After the 2020 (election), I was threatened, I’ve been stalked, I’ve been called out on social media,” Herrera told the newspaper. “And it’s just dangerous misinformation.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray condemned such threats in a statement on Thursday. “Unfounded attacks on the integrity of the FBI erode respect for the rule of law and are a grave disservice to the men and women who sacrifice so much to protect others,” he said. “Violence and threats against law enforcement, including the FBI, are dangerous and should be deeply concerning to all Americans.

They are to Democrats. Many tweeted their outrage at the double standard propagated when a group of white men and women were allowed to threaten federal officials while armed. 

Warning: This video contains disturbing footage of violence that may be triggering to viewers.

A social media user who goes by Jason V. tweeted on Sunday, that the "armed domestic terrorists" probably haven't been taken down yet "because they're not black or brown."

Shannon Watts, founder of the grassroots movement for public safety Moms Demand Action, pointed to a trend of recent violence following GOP reaction to the search of Trump’s home.

The most recent of which is a Capitol Police report that a man started firing in the air then drove his car into a vehicle barricade in a fiery crash early Sunday at East Capitol Street and Second Street.

”When our officers heard the sound of gunfire, they immediately responded and were approaching the man when he shot himself,” Capitol Police said in a news release. “Nobody else was hurt.

“At this time, it does not appear the man was targeting any Members of Congress, who are on recess, and it does not appear officers fired their weapons.” 

No other injuries were reported in the incident, and investigators are still looking into the man’s background. But for many, the incident is an example of violence spiraling out of control as Republicans instigate a greater divide between Trump supporters and the rest of the country. 

Regarding the protest outside of the Phoenix FBI building, Democrat Eric Smith tweeted congressional candidates of North Carolina:

“This is a Declaration of War & as such the Federal Government will be well within its rights to use all the firepower at its disposal to put these traitors down & down for good”

RELATED STORY: Here's a rundown of the double standards between Trump's domestic terrorism and the BLM movement

Majid Padellan, a blogger and influencer who goes by "Brooklyn Dad" on social media, tweeted on Sunday:

"Not a single Republican leader has called upon the armed trumpers at the Phoenix FBI to stand down. Any blood will be on their hands."

In another tweet, Padellan laid out a series of actions and statements by Trump that created the kind of climate in which his supporters would feel emboldened to threaten federal officials. "First he told domestic terrorists to ‘Stand back and stand by,’” Padellan said. “Then he refused to call the National Guard on January 6th.

“Then he wouldn't call off his armed supporters outside the Phoenix FBI. Donald trump is a pathetic, cowardly traitor."

Read the full redacted search warrant obtained for Trump’s Mara Lago home:

My oh my. It’s been less than a week since federal agents raided Donald Trump’s Florida beachhouse in search of classified documents that Trump stole from the White House, but Republicans have come up with a truly dizzying number of excuses and smokescreens trying to cover up his wrongdoing—often several each day. Honestly, it’s been somewhat hard to keep track of them all, especially as many contradict one another, but we’re here to help. Below, please find our day-by-day catalog of every b.s. pretext Trump’s defenders have tossed out there.

Monday

Excuse: Everyone is corrupt except Trump—says Trump himself.

In fairness, if anyone can recognize vintage caudillo behavior, it would be Donald Trump.

Excuse: This warrant and raid business was uncalled for. Trump would have turned over everything had the government simply asked politely.

Oh, wait, they did subpoena him? Nevermind!

Tuesday

Excuse: It’s totally fine that Trump took all of those documents. The only issue is that he racked up some library fines for failing to return overdue government secrets.

Since Trump has never borrowed a library book in his life, he wouldn’t know the penalty for returning one after the due date, so he can probably be convinced it’s very serious, like they take away one of your golf courses or something.

Excuse: The FBI put it there!

Trump watched the raid of one country club on closed-circuit television from his other country club, so of course he’ll be releasing the tapes of all this planted evidence (“P. Tapes” for short) immediately.

Wednesday

Excuse: This is all the fault of the Deep State FBI, headed up by ultra-liberal Christopher Wray.

Reminder: Christopher Wray is a member of the Federalist Society and was appointed to his post by Donald Trump.

Thursday

Excuse: #Whatabout Obama? Obama did it, too. He did it worse, in fact. Also, he’s a secret Muslim.

So true. As the National Archives explained, they maintain Obama’s classified materials “in a NARA facility in the Washington, DC, area” and noted that Obama “has no control over where and how NARA stores the Presidential records of his Administration.” You can think of this facility as Obama’s version of Mar-a-Lago, albeit with a vibe that’s a bit more Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Excuse: LOL, like, the only thing that would justify this would be, I dunno, nuclear secrets.

Narrator: It was nuclear secrets.

Excuse: They didn’t raid Trump quickly enough!

Warrant was issued on a Friday, the seizure took place Monday. Everyone knows that most unlawful sharing of nuclear secrets happens on the weekend.

Excuse: Trump declassified all of this stuff with the power of his OWN MIND.

Just call him President Kreskin.

Friday

Excuse: Maybe it was aliens.

Maybe it was aliens.

Excuse: But her emails!

Damn, where was that frenzy?

Excuse: Oh, please, all you need is a smartphone to find the same nuclear secrets Trump took.

Even, like, an iPhone 6 will do!

Excuse: Trump only took a tiny bit of super-duper-classified stuff, and don’t worry about all the other documents.

A standard bankers box holds some 2,500 pages, or around 1.2 million words. It’s a well-known fact that even the smallest nuclear secret needs at least 1.3 million words to describe it.

Excuse: My fellow Americans, when you are busy fomenting a violent coup to overturn the results of an election you’ve lost, it is quite simply inevitable that you will also steal classified secrets in the confusion of it all.

In fact, it should be noted, one crime simply cancels out the other. That’s how it works.

Excuse: They’re only investigating Trump because he might run for president again.

This is definitely how it works. And if Trump follows this advice but changes his mind and does decide to run after all, that’s just tough noogies for the feds.

Excuse: Trump was just trying to prevent World War III. I think this was more or less the plot of Sneakers: Too many secrets!

After all, Donald the Dove, Hillary the Hawk, right, MoDo?

Excuse: Trump installed an Autodeclassifierbot 3000™ at the threshold of the Oval Office.

This is obviously why his attorneys signed a sworn statement telling the feds in June that all classified materials had been given back to the government—because there were none to return!

Excuse: Trump didn’t take those documents intentionally—the General Services Administration just stashed them in boxes that got moved to Mar-a-Lago when Trump exited D.C.

Guess these guys never heard that warning at the airport about accepting items from strangers.

Saturday

Excuse: This has happened to you: Your landlord gives you three months’ notice that you’ve got to move out, but you just don’t really believe them. Every week they keep telling you until, at long last, you finally realize they mean it, so of course your departure turns into a haphazard mess.

Also, in this case, you live in the White House and your landlord is the people of the United States of America. Very relatable!

What excuses will the coming week bring? Stay tuned! The bullshit never ends.

P.S. We miss any? Lets us know in comments!

Note: This post has been updated with even more nonsense excuses!

"The fate of Warner Bros. DC Comics movies is looking grim," writes the Verge. Since April's merger between Warner Brothers and Discovery, they call it "fairly obvious" that "the new guard at Warner Bros. Discovery wants to jettison or at the very least put some distance between itself and the DC Extended Universe's current iteration (along with all the baggage associated with the endeavor.)" The DC Extended Universe was plagued by a number of issues long... like a general lack of cohesion, subpar storytelling, and an association with a toxic fandom whose obsession eventually devolved into harassment campaigns against studio executives. Looking back, Justice League as it was released in 2017 was a haphazard attempt to catch up to the Marvel Cinematic Universe that put far too much faith in the power of people's general familiarity with characters like Wonder Woman, Cyborg, and Aquaman who didn't really have presences in the DC Extended Universe at the time. Screen Rant calls Justice League "a movie that polarized audiences and was less successful than Man of Steel at the box office" — then explains what happened next: The DC Extended Universe had been struggling with highly divisive or critically panned movies, such as Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Suicide Squad, but it was not until Justice League that the franchise really took a significant financial hit. In addition, Justice League was also the start of a series of behind-the-scenes controversies, and at this point, it is difficult to picture the Justice League cast all returning for a sequel.... With Ben Affleck seemly done with Batman and the studio wanting to move away from everything Justice League-related, DC needed a way to combine what had been working, such as Jason Momoa's Aquaman and Gal Gadot's Wonder Woman, with new strategies, such as Michael Keaton's [appearing in the upcoming Flash movie as] Batman. The answer seemed simple — the multiverse.... The fact that Batgirl, a movie that would have shown the aftermath of The Flash's multiverse journey, was canceled [last week] proves that the multiverse is no longer a priority for DC. Not only that but right before Batgirl's cancelation was announced, it was reported that Ben Affleck would replace Michael Keaton's rumored cameo in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.... During Warner Bros. Discovery's earning calls on August 5, CEO David Zaslav mentioned that the new management will make upcoming DC Extended Universe movies like Black Adam and The Flash "even better", suggesting that reshoots could be on the way.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

"A 17-year-old [named Robert Sansone] created a prototype of a novel synchronous reluctance motor that has greater rotational force -- or torque -- and efficiency than existing ones," writes Slashdot reader hesdeadjim99 from a report via Smithsonian Magazine. "The prototype was made from 3-D printed plastic, copper wires and a steel rotor and tested using a variety of meters to measure power and a laser tachometer to determine the motor's rotational speed. His work earned him first prize, and $75,000 in winnings, at this year's Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair (ISEF), the largest international high school STEM competition." From the report: The less sustainable permanent magnet motors use materials such as neodymium, samarium and dysprosium, which are in high demand because they're used in many different products, including headphones and earbuds, explains Heath Hofmann, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Michigan. Hofmann has worked extensively on electric vehicles, including consulting with Tesla to develop the control algorithms for its propulsion drive. [...] Synchronous reluctance motors don't use magnets. Instead, a steel rotor with air gaps cut into it aligns itself with the rotating magnetic field. Reluctance, or the magnetism of a material, is key to this process. As the rotor spins along with the rotating magnetic field, torque is produced. More torque is produced when the saliency ratio, or difference in magnetism between materials (in this case, the steel and the non-magnetic air gaps), is greater. Instead of using air gaps, Sansone thought he could incorporate another magnetic field into a motor. This would increase this saliency ratio and, in turn, produce more torque. His design has other components, but he can't disclose any more details because he hopes to patent the technology in the future. [...] It took several prototypes before he could test his design. [...] Sansone tested his motor for torque and efficiency, and then reconfigured it to run as a more traditional synchronous reluctance motor for comparison. He found that his novel design exhibited 39 percent greater torque and 31 percent greater efficiency at 300 revolutions per minute (RPM). At 750 RPM, it performed at 37 percent greater efficiency. He couldn't test his prototype at higher revolutions per minute because the plastic pieces would overheat -- a lesson he learned the hard way when one of the prototypes melted on his desk, he tells Top of the Class, a podcast produced by Crimson Education. In comparison, Tesla's Model S motor can reach up to 18,000 RPM, explained the company's principal motor designer Konstantinos Laskaris in a 2016 interview with Christian Ruoff of the electric vehicles magazine Charged. Sansone validated his results in a second experiment, in which he "isolated the theoretical principle under which the novel design creates magnetic saliency," per his project presentation. Essentially, this experiment eliminated all other variables, and confirmed that the improvements in torque and efficiency were correlated with the greater saliency ratio of his design. [...] Sansone is now working on calculations and 3-D modeling for version 16 of his motor, which he plans to build out of sturdier materials so he can test it at higher revolutions per minute. If his motor continues to perform with high speed and efficiency, he says he'll move forward with the patenting process.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The warrant set a raid on Mar-a-Lago in motion; it suggests a potential investigation into federal crimes.

Two key documents related to the FBI’s search of former President Donald Trump’s home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on Monday are now available to the public: the warrant that authorized the raid, and the property receipt that details what federal agents recovered.

Together, the documents provide a clearer picture of how the search came together, and both the size and scope of the seizure.

The documents indicate the warrant was issued to investigate potential violations of the Espionage Act. That act states, among other things, that an official entrusted with sensitive or classified information who allows it to be taken away from its secure location through “gross negligence” or who knows it’s been removed from safety and doesn’t tell federal officials can be fined or imprisoned for up to 10 years. They also suggest an inquiry into possible improper removal or destruction of federal records, and obstruction of a federal investigation.

The receipt suggests 11 sets of documents were recovered, including items related to French President Emmanuel Macron, handwritten notes, photos, and top-secret materials.

Trump decried the search, claiming in a statement, incorrectly, that his home was “under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents.” Reports quickly began to emerge that the search was premised on recovering sensitive information that needed to be secured. A Thursday Washington Post report stated that classified nuclear documents may be among those recovered; that’s concerning given the wide range of allies and adversaries who’ve had, and continue to have, access to the golf club that serves as one of the former president’s homes.

The National Archives recovered at least 15 boxes of presidential records earlier this year; federal law requires presidential administrations to turn over their records to the National Archives. A tipster reportedly told the federal government that not all important documents had been recovered. The FBI reportedly visited Mar-a-Lago in June and told Trump to better secure the remaining items; a subpoena was also issued after that visit in an attempt to recover them.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department asked the judge who authorized the search that the warrant and property receipt be unsealed. Trump quickly released a statement saying he was “ENCOURAGING the immediate release of those documents.”

Now they have been released. Read them here, or below:

The Wall Street Journal has the scoop on Friday that FBI agents who searched former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home hauled away 11 sets of classified documents, including top-secret items that must be housed in federal facilities. 

A reported 20 boxes were taken by agents, including a handwritten note and the executive grant of clemency Trump bestowed on GOP operative and ‘Stop the Steal’ advocate Roger Stone. 

The inventory obtained by The Wall Street Journal also noted that the boxes contained information about “the President of France.” Attached to this list is a seven-page document that features the warrant used to search Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida, resort. 

RELATED STORY: Put up or shut up: Trump claims he won’t stop release of Mar-a-Lago search warrant

Trump has until 3 PM ET today (Aug. 12) to furnish any objection to unsealing the warrant, though he has already claimed he would not object. The former president’s attorneys did not return a request for comment by email or phone when Daily Kos reached out Friday. 

The records taken by agents also reportedly include a reference to documents that are labeled as “Various classified/TS/SCI.” The TS is shorthand for “top secret,” and SCI is shorthand for “sensitive compartmented information.”

Per the Journal:

“It also says agents collected four sets of top secret documents, three sets of secret documents, and three sets of confidential documents. The list didn’t provide any more details about the substance of the documents.

Trump’s attorneys have indicated they do not have a copy of the affidavit. They have separately asked for more information about what was taken from the resort, anonymous sources told the Wall Street Journal.

In the wake of initial reports that FBI agents had identified classified information held at Mar-a-Lago, Lieutenant General Mark Hertling, the former commanding general of the U.S. Army Europe and Seventh Army, offered the public a crash course on classification qualifications on Twitter.

The three types of classification labels, confidential, secret and top secret each come with certain restrictions, Hertling said, noting there is nothing higher than a ‘top secret’ classification.

A “confidential” document, while the lowest level of certification, is still key to keep protected because it still contains information that could potentially damage national security or disclose an element of it. This could be tied to things like the number of troops deployed or weapons capabilities. 

Per the Code of Federal Regulations, a “secret” classification would be attached to an item that, if exposed, would do “serious damage” and in particular to “foreign relations significantly affecting the national security; significant impairment of a program or policy directly related to the national security; revelation of significant military plans or intelligence operations; and compromise of significant scientific or technological developments relating to national security.”

A “top secret” document is the top-of-the-line in terms of classification. Any documents with this label that are disclosed without permission or authorization are considered to pose “exceptionally grave damage” to national security. 

Security clearances are only granted to individuals who require them for their work and the process to obtain them is rigorous. 

As the Wall Street Journal broke this news first on Friday, Breitbart, the right-wing propaganda outlet, said it also obtained a copy of the warrant before it was unsealed. Breitbart’s coverage echoed Republican talking points about the warrant, insinuating that there was something nefarious at play because, they claimed, the warrant showed it was issued by Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart on Aug. 5 and the search of Trump’s home was not conducted until Aug. 8. 

All of this, of course, was preceded by meetings between Trump’s legal team and FBI agents and investigators. 

This story is developing.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — Florida’s Medicaid regulator has finalized new rules banning health care providers from billing the taxpayer-funded program for gender-affirming medical treatments, a move that comes as the state has sought to block such therapies for young people.

The Florida Agency for Health Care Administration on Thursday added new language to the rules governing the state’s $36.2 billion Medicaid program. The new rules declare that the program does not cover services for treatments such as puberty blockers, hormone therapies or surgical procedures as a treatment for gender dysphoria, which refers to the feelings of discomfort or distress some transgender people experience when their bodies don’t align with their gender.

The updated rule will take effect on Aug. 21.

The new rule is the latest step by Gov. Ron DeSantis to restrict gender-affirming treatments. Last Friday, Florida’s medical board voted to start the rulemaking process that could lead to the banning of gender-affirming medical treatment for youths. And the Republican Florida governor has become increasing vocal in his objections to such treatments.

The American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association support gender-affirming care for adults and adolescents. But medical experts said gender-affirming care for children rarely, if ever, includes surgery. Instead, doctors are more likely to recommend counseling, social transitioning and hormone replacement therapy.

A coalition of LGBTQ and health rights groups, including Lambda Legal, Southern Legal Counsel, Florida Health Justice Project, and National Health Law Program, said the rule will leave thousands of transgender Floridians without critical care when they need it most.

“Ignoring thousands of public comments and expert testimony, Florida’s AHCA has finalized a rule that will deny Medicaid coverage for all medically necessary gender-affirming care for both youth and adults,” the coalition statement said. “This discriminatory and medically unsound rule will take effect on August 21, 2022, putting transgender people in jeopardy of losing access to critical gender-affirming health care services.”

The move by Florida’s Agency for Health Care Administration to ban Medicaid from covering such treatments began in April after the agency published a report claiming there was not enough scientific evidence to prove that the treatments improved health. AHCA held a public hearing on the new language in June that attracted more than 150 people on a late Friday afternoon.

Florida’s Department of Health also accused the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the American Academy of Pediatrics of misleading the public into believing the treatments are safe.

The American Academy of Pediatrics, however, has ramped up efforts to protect transgender youths amid an increase in states pushing legislation aimed at preventing minors from accessing gender-affirming care or transgender girls participating in women and girls’ sports.

“It is critically important for every child to have access to quality, comprehensive and evidence-based care — transgender and gender-diverse youth are no exception,” said Lee Savio Beers, American Academy of Pediatrics immediate past president in a statement earlier this year.

Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has been rewriting websites its users visit, letting the company follow them across the web after they click links in its apps, according to new research from an ex-Google engineer. The Guardian reports: The two apps have been taking advantage of the fact that users who click on links are taken to webpages in an "in-app browser," controlled by Facebook or Instagram, rather than sent to the user's web browser of choice, such as Safari or Firefox. "The Instagram app injects their tracking code into every website shown, including when clicking on ads, enabling them [to] monitor all user interactions, like every button and link tapped, text selections, screenshots, as well as any form inputs, like passwords, addresses and credit card numbers," says Felix Krause, a privacy researcher who founded an app development tool acquired by Google in 2017. Krause discovered the code injection by building a tool that could list all the extra commands added to a website by the browser. For normal browsers, and most apps, the tool detects no changes, but for Facebook and Instagram it finds up to 18 lines of code added by the app. Those lines of code appear to scan for a particular cross-platform tracking kit and, if not installed, instead call the Meta Pixel, a tracking tool that allows the company to follow a user around the web and build an accurate profile of their interests. The company does not disclose to the user that it is rewriting webpages in this way. No such code is added to the in-app browser of WhatsApp, according to Krause's research. [...] It is unclear when Facebook began injecting code to track users after clicking links. "We intentionally developed this code to honor people's [Ask to track] choices on our platforms," a Meta spokesperson told The Guardian in a statement. "The code allows us to aggregate user data before using it for targeted advertising or measurement purposes. We do not add any pixels. Code is injected so that we can aggregate conversion events from pixels." They added: "For purchases made through the in-app browser, we seek user consent to save payment information for the purposes of autofill."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Since the search by FBI agents at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home on Monday, Trump, the Republican Party, and its media allies—when not viciously demonizing the Department of Justice and the FBI—have insisted that it was a political fishing expedition, and there was nothing to be found beyond mementoes of Trump’s years in the White House. Darn near the makings of a future scrapbook. And besides, even if there was something incriminating, it was planted! 

But on Thursday night, just hours after Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department was seeking to have the search warrant unsealed, The Washington Post is reporting that:

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

One can only assume that Republicans are currently, frantically, trying to come up with a way to spin this story.

And this story probably also explains the need for the “it was planted” claims that Trump and his allies started peddling on Tuesday.

“The legislature is as barbaric, primitive, and Neanderthal as any in the country. It’s really troubling.” That’s former Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, a Democrat who served from 2007-2011, in an interview with The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. He’s talking about Ohio, the focus of Mayer’s deep dive into how state legislatures are, in her words, “torching democracy.”

She focuses much of the article on Ohio, which was the subject of international condemnation when a pregnant 10-year-old rape victim had to leave the state to obtain an abortion this summer. She was the victim of an extreme abortion ban that the legislature passed in 2019, which went into effect when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion protections. The Ohio legislature, like plenty of others around the country, was already pretty assured what the U.S. Supreme Court was going to do on abortion well ahead of both the leak of Justice Samuel Alito’s decision in May, and the final hammer blow in June. In Ohio, abortion is banned after six weeks or from the moment there’s fetal cardiac activity. Ohio Republicans were feeling slightly humanitarian and so gave an exception for risk of death or serious permanent injury to the mother.

“According to David Niven, a political-science professor at the University of Cincinnati, a 2020 survey indicated that less than fourteen per cent of Ohioans support banning all abortions without exceptions for rape and incest,” Mayer writes. Thanks to rampant gerrymandering at the state legislative district level, what the vast majority of Ohioans support doesn’t matter. “Ohio is about the second most gerrymandered statehouse in the country,” explained David Niven, a political science professor at the University of Cincinnati. “It doesn’t have a voter base to support a total abortion ban, yet that’s a likely outcome.” He concluded, “Ohio has become the Hindenburg of democracy.”

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David Pepper, an election law professor, former Cincinnati city councilman, and a former chairman of the state’s Democratic Party spoke with Mayer as well about Ohio, the stampeded to fascism in the Republican Party, and the Supreme Court. “No one knows anything about statehouses,” he said. “They can’t even name their state representatives. And it’s getting worse every year, since the local media’s dying and the statehouse bureaus are being hollowed out.”

He pointed to the concurring opinion from Justice Brett Kavanaugh in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision that overturned federal abortion rights. Kavanaugh argued that the court was restoring “the people’s authority to address the issue of abortion through the processes of democratic self-government.” Pepper blasted that notion: “It’s so disingenuous—total gaslighting. Many statehouses no longer have representative democracy. Because they’ve been gerrymandered, they don’t reflect the will of the people.”

Even now, the extremist Trump-packed court is preparing to make it so, so much worse. They’ve scheduled a case for the fall term that puts those Republican legislatures in charge of determining the outcome of federal elections on the basis of a crackpot legal theory from the right.

As Daily Kos Election’s Stephen Wolf explained when the court announced it was taking the case, “Republicans are now asking the Supreme Court to rule that the U.S. Constitution gives state legislatures near-absolute power to set all manner of federal election laws, including district maps—regardless of whether state constitutions place limits on abuses such as gerrymandering.” And this Supreme Court, the one packed by Sen. Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump, is as likely as not to do it.

The theory of independent state legislatures the court is taking up is based on an interpretation in the Constitution’s Elections Clause, which states that the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” These extremist Republicans interpret that to mean that state legislatures have supremacy in crafting the rules governing federal elections. Supremacy over state courts, over federal courts, over Congress, over governors, over citizen-initiated constitutional amendments.

That means state legislatures having control over who gets to vote, how those votes are counted, and in the case of the Electoral College in presidential elections, who gets to be president.

Wolf points out that the Supreme Court itself is the reflection of those extreme gerrymandered states: “Five of the six GOP appointees were confirmed by Republican Senate majorities that won fewer votes and represented fewer Americans than the Democratic minorities, and three were chosen by a president who was elected despite losing the popular vote.” As of now, four of them—Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh—have already signaled that they are sympathetic to the argument. That leaves just Amy Coney Barrett to cast the deciding vote.

There really is only one thing Democrats can do to prevent the Supreme Court from letting the likes of the Ohio legislature bring and end to this whole 233-year-old constitutional experiment: Expand the court. Dilute the malign power of the majority on this court that wants to overthrow a century of progress.

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While Congress is officially on August recess, there’s work to be done this week. Namely, the House has to pass the reconciliation bill formerly known as the “Inflation Reduction Act. It’s still called that in practice, to be sure. Striking the name out of the language was just a typically petty effort on the part of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) during the vote-a-rama of amendments last week.

The House Rules Committee met Wednesday, preparing for a Friday vote for which an estimated one-third of members will send in a proxy rather than vote in person. Those Republicans who are going to show up for debate are going to be typically obnoxious, as they showed in the Rules Committee.

“If the Green New Deal and corporate welfare had a baby, it would look like this,” House Ways and Means ranking member Kevin Brady (R-TX) said. “America is in a recession,”  Rep. Jason Smith (R-MO) said, continuing a theme he’s been harping on for weeks.

They’ll also attack the IRS, and the provision in the bill that provides about $80 billion over the next ten years for the chronically underfunded and overworked agency that has been hamstrung with ancient equipment and technology. The attacks will be a long the lines of this, but maybe a little less crotchety:

Republicans have proposed dozens of amendments, many of which will be just as petty as Graham’s. It’s not clear whether they’ll show up to actually offer and debate them, because it is August. Democrats are planning no amendments, intending to pass the bill as is, so it doesn’t have to return to the Senate.

That’s fine by the members, including the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which had pushed for a much stronger bill. This is a good start, they insist, and truly significant climate change legislation on which to build. 

Speaker Nancy Pelosi promised in a letter to Democratic colleagues and the public that “House Democrats will pass and send to the President the landmark Inflation Reduction Act.” (Take that, Lindz.) “This bill makes a tremendous difference at the kitchen table of America’s families,” Pelosi said. “Those of us who have been fighting from the beginning for more family provisions in Reconciliation know we must never give up that fight—and will continue it in future legislation.

 

An investigation is in progress after an Escambia County, Florida, special education teacher resigned just one day before the school year began. Identified as Michael James, the teacher allegedly resigned over racist behavior towards classroom decorations.

According to the Pensacola News Journal, in a letter emailed to Gov. Ron DeSantis and Escambia County Superintendent Tim Smith, James wrote that a district employee removed pictures of historic Black American heroes from his classroom walls under the claim that the images were "age inappropriate." The photos removed from the teacher’s bulletin board at O.J. Semmes Elementary School included depictions of Martin Luther King Jr., Harriett Tubman, Colin Powell, and George Washington Carver.

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"It really floored me," James told the News Journal. "I've been teaching special education for 15 years, and it just really floored me when she did that."

According to the News Journal, James chose the board's theme because most of the students and residents in the neighborhoods surrounding the school identify as Black. By putting up images of these historic figures, he hoped to motivate his students with inspirational leaders who look like them.

In addition to the pictures of the Black leaders, James said he posted a copy of the Pledge of Allegiance in the bulletin board's upper right-hand corner.

"Am I to believe Escambia County Schools employs those that dislike African Americans and are against swearing allegiance to these United States of America? Is there a dislike in anything that states 'One Nation Under God' in it?" James wrote in his letter to the governor and superintendent.

He noted that he could not work for a school, or under the umbrella of a school district, that would hire people who would condone such behavior.

"I hate to say this about everybody in the staff or the leadership there, but something is not right," he said. "Something needs to be changed or fixed.

James sent his letter addressing the issue Monday night, and by Tuesday he resigned as a teacher.

Escambia County Public Schools spokesperson Cody Strother sent the following statement on behalf of the school district:

"Our office was made aware of this employee's resignation and his stated reasons for resigning very early this morning, Tuesday, Aug. 9, 2022," the statement read. "Around the same time, we were copied on an email written by this individual and released to the Governor's Office and various media outlets before we had any opportunity to investigate. We are now in the process of conducting a full investigation. If these allegations are deemed factual, we will certainly take corrective action, as it is our aim that all of our teachers feel valued and supported."

The district has yet to confirm the identity of the district employee who allegedly removed the pictures from James’ classroom walls; however, in his letter James said the employee worked as a board-certified behavior analyst for the school district.

He noted that he not only spent $58 of his own money to buy school supplies, but spent hours decorating the board behind his desk.

On Monday, he said the behavior analyst and another behavior coach entered his classroom to help him set up the room, which while he found “unusual,” he went along with.

"They came in, and we started moving tables around and swapping some out, and I had made the bulletin board a couple of days earlier."

He recalled: ”I was sitting down in one of the children's chairs cutting something out, and I turned around and saw her start taking something off the bulletin board.”

When James questioned what the behavioral analyst was doing, "She said something along the lines of it wasn't age appropriate. Something like that," James said.

While he says she did not mention race, he noted that she also seized a picture of former President Barack Obama that was placed near his desk.

"She picked it up and said, 'You don't need to put this up either,'" James said. "She said — I can't remember exactly what she said — but she said, 'the kid are too young' or something like that. It floored me. I thought, 'This is the first Black president.’"

This was James’ first experience in a Florida school. He has previously worked in other states.

"I don't know who guided her or why she took that on her own. I've never seen that in 15 years — just completely take down my board — without asking or anything," he said.

"I didn't say anything else. I honestly let it go, but got to thinking about it and got pretty upset," he added. "I could have just sent it the principal. But things need to get done. A lot of times people can just sweep things under the rug.”

In response to the incident, Smith told the News Journal that teachers are permitted to decorate their classrooms with educational materials. He added that he was unaware of any policies that would prohibit a teacher from displaying pictures of inspirational American heroes on their walls.

James’ resignation comes amid a national teacher shortage that began at the start of the pandemic. In addition to the number of teachers who have lost their lives due to the novel coronavirus, many teachers have retired or resigned due to school policies or health concerns. Not to mention the increased number of mass shootings in school districts that has impacted teachers nationwide.

As a result teachers are in demand everywhere, so James is not worried about finding a new job.

"I'll be teaching somewhere in a month," he said. "I have excellent credentials."

Others outside of the school district also commented on the incident, including Charlie Crist, who is running for the Democratic nomination for governor to challenge DeSantis in November. Crist blamed DeSantis’ notion of “culture wars” for politicizing Florida’s public schools.

“This is the sad reality of Ron DeSantis’s Florida — a teacher, in a predominantly Black community, comes into their classroom to see posters of historically Black American heroes, including President Obama, taken down for being ‘inappropriate’,” Crist said in a statement to the News Journal.

“DeSantis’s culture wars are infiltrating every corner of our state, and it’s Florida’s students who are paying the price.”

Professionals pursuing that 'just right' look for LinkedIn profiles and resumes are tapping high-end headshot photographers who say they can help clients look better, feel better -- and boost their careers. From a report: Nailing your professional headshot seems harder and more clutch than ever at a time of record job changes and on-screen first impressions. The buttoned-up and made-up looks that once dominated business directories and professional profiles now seem stuffy in the work-from-anywhere era. Selfies are free, but some people chasing that just-so photo for their LinkedIn profile are paying $1,000 or more for headshots. Their quests are fueling a cottage industry of headshot photographers who offer facial-expression coaching and promise to help even the most insecure subjects look and feel great. "I'm not a photographer per se," says Peter Hurley, who charges $1,500 for a headshot session and $300 for each image his clients keep. "I consider myself a facial conveyance strategist." His go-to move is telling people to "squinch," by which he means raise the lower eyelids -- just a tad -- in a modif

Political fundraising emails are notoriously a mix of over-exaggerations, routine misrepresentations and ALL CAP PLEAS.

Relief is not on the way.

The Federal Election Commission, the nation’s chief campaign finance watchdog agency, gave its blessing to a program proposed by Google on Thursday that will effectively allow federal campaigns and other political committees to bypass spam filters and land in the inbox of Gmail users. The commission, in a 4-1 vote, said that Google’s program would not amount to an impermissible contribution to the committees, clearing the way for the search giant to implement the program should it so choose.

The program, as described in a proposal from attorneys from Google, would allow emails from federal campaigns and committees in the program “that meet objective security criteria” and do not otherwise break Gmail’s terms of service to “not be affected by forms of spam detection to which they would otherwise be subject” and automatically land in a user’s inbox. These political senders’ emails would continue to be directly routed to users’ inboxes, unless or until a user opts out from receiving them from a particular committee or campaign.

Google’s proposal said it intends to run the program through January 2023, unless the program “degrades the user experience.”

The FEC has been inundated with thousands of comments about the proposal, which one commissioner called "record breaking," with virtually all of them urging the agency to not approve the program.

“NO,” one submitted on the eve of the hearing read in its entirety. The Democratic National Committee weighed in to oppose the pilot program.

“With Google’s spam filter removed, participating committees will be incentivized to employ the abusive fundraising tactics that Google’s spam filters would have otherwise caught,” Sam Cornale, the DNC’s executive director, wrote in a comment to the agency.

But a majority of commissioners approved the program, if reluctantly.

“I am going to support [the program]. I don’t want to, and it is for the same reason all the commenters don’t want to,” Dara Lindenbaum, a Democratic commissioner, said. But she voted for the program because she believed it was within the law.

Lindenbaum, along with the three Republican commissioners — Allen Dickerson, Trey Trainor and Sean Cooksey — voted to approve the program. Democratic commissioner Ellen Weintraub voted against it, and Democratic commissioner Shana Broussard abstained.

"We appreciate the FEC’s speedy review of our request and we will reflect on the positive and negative feedback received during the public comment period," José Castañeda, a spokesperson for Google, said in a statement. "Our goal during this pilot program is to assess alternative ways of addressing concerns from bulk senders, while giving users clear controls over their inboxes to minimize unwanted email."

The proposal to let political campaigns skip past spam filters came after Republicans battered Google when a study found that Gmail was more likely to mark Republican emails as spam than Democratic ones. Republicans railed against the tech giant, including senators grilling Google’s chief legal officer at luncheon.

Google has long maintained that its spam filters had no political bias and that it was applying the same rules to all bulk email senders. One of the study’s lead authors has since said it has been misrepresented in the fight in D.C. The study also found that Outlook, Microsoft’s email client, and Yahoo disproportionately flagged liberal senders as spam.

Republicans' digital operations have generally lagged behind Democrats over the last decade. And the party’s small-dollar online fundraising operation is hitting an unexpected slow down, with payments processed through WinRed, the party’s central online payment processor, falling by about 12 percent from the first to the second quarter of this year. (The study at the center of the frustration directed toward Google was for the 2020 election.)

A recent survey from the Center for Campaign Innovation, a nonprofit focused on improving conservatives’ online infrastructure, of 32 Republican fundraisers found that 70 percent of them found that recent fundraising had underperformed expectations.

In that survey, in-house email lists were ranked as the most important fundraising tool campaigns and organizations had. And while 78 percent of respondents said they believed Republican emails were more likely to be caught in spam filters than Democratic ones, the report didn't place all the blame on Silicon Valley.

But, the report notes, “respondents didn’t place all of the blame on tech companies, however, with one suggesting ‘the reason Republicans think that we get sent to spam more is because our emails typically contain more language that triggers the spam filter.’”