James.galbraith

So here’s what we know: Thanks to the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court reversing Roe v. Wade, hundreds of thousands of Americans are no longer allowed to have abortions in nearly a dozen states, and people who don’t want to get pregnant may have to because some pharmacist at Walgreens has a “moral objection” to selling contraception. I’m sorry, but are you fucking kidding me?

NJ.com reports that 21-year-old customer Abigail Martin received a text from her local Walgreens pharmacy telling her she had no refills left on her birth control prescription. When she marched into the store to complain, Martin says a Walgreens employee, who was “wearing two crosses,” told her that she would have to contact her doctor.

“I said, ‘You won’t refill it, or you can’t refill it?’” Martin said.

RELATED STORY: Roe v. Wade reversal not only erased our civil rights, it also raised the risk of domestic violence

Martin called her doctor, who told her she had four refills on the prescription. The doctor’s office called Walgreens. Then Martin received two more texts, one saying the medicine was delayed and another alleging it was “out of stock.”

Finally, Martin found a pharmacist willing to refill her birth control. But according to Martin, the pharmacist asked her to identify the person who initially refused to order the refill. Martin described the employee and the pharmacist replied, “I know exactly who that is, and we’ve been having this problem for the last two weeks.”  

Walgreens posted the company’s policy on Twitter back in 2018, which allows pharmacists the right to “step away” from filling “a prescription for which they have a moral objection.” The statement also states that the pharmacist is “required to refer the prescription to another pharmacist or manager on duty to meet the patient's needs.”

But it seems cases such as Martin’s are beginning to ramp up in a post-Roe world.

Nate Pentz and his wife Jess were in a Walgreens in Hayward, Wisconsin, on July 3 when they were refused condoms by a cashier.

The employee told them he wouldn’t sell them the condoms because of his “faith.”

And in another case, a customer who simply goes by Nicole on Twitter said that one week after purchasing an at-home pregnancy test at her local Walgreens, she received a box of Enfamil baby formula at home.

Nicole tweeted that since she used her Walgreens rewards card, she believes the company was able to track her by accessing her private information and sending the formula to her home.

“THERE IS A FORMULA SHORTAGE, and yet @Enfamil is sending out formula all willy-nilly based on the data you clearly sold them… Shame on you, @Enfamil,” Nicole tweeted.

“Second, what if I were desperately trying to get pregnant and can’t?” Nicole wrote in a tweet thread. “Wouldn’t this be a kick to the face?!... What do you say to the women in states where abortion is now illegal?... Are you trying to make a political statement, or is this just a big money grab?”

She ends by stating that the Enfamil box was labeled “regiftable.” “Kiss off,” she tweeted. “From all the women who actually need this box that you are not helping.”

So, again, here we are: Laws are controlling our health care decisions, and people like Walgreens employees are imposing their religious beliefs on others.

But in reality, none of this will stop people from getting contraception or abortions. In fact, according to CBS News, women from surrounding states are flocking to Florida to Planned Parenthood facilities in order to receive abortions.

"We had to increase our staffing. We had to increase our appointments," Dr. Samantha Deans, the associate medical director of Planned Parenthood of Southeast and North Florida, told CBS News.

In early July, Leon County Circuit Judge John Cooper issued a temporary injunction to block the state law that would have prevented abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. The injunction puts a hold on the 15-week ban and will remain in effect “until the 1st District Court of Appeal - or possibly the Florida Supreme Court - rules on the state's appeal,” CBS News reported on July 13.

Politico reports that according to a Florida Agency for Health Care Administration report, 79,000 women received abortions in Florida in 2021, including 4,873 who came from outside of the state. Florida has the third-highest rate of abortion in the nation, followed by New York and Illinois.

Pro-life activist and founder of Florida Voice for the Unborn, Andrew Shirvell, told CBS News, "Florida is turning into an abortion destination state here in the South … We need a total ban on abortions here."

Of course, the next episode to the frightening unscripted reality show that has become America is locking up health care providers and those who attempt to travel to safe states for abortions. Stay tuned.

Hopes by the Jan. 6 committee that the Secret Service would turn over text messages the agency deleted from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6 were dashed on Tuesday.

The Washington Post was first to report that a senior official familiar with the matter said the Secret Service has “no new texts to provide” related to the Jan. 6 probe and that any other messages shared between its agents during the same period were also “purged.”

The National Archives confirmed to Daily Kos that it sent a letter to Damian Kokinda, the records officer for the Department of Homeland Security, ordering the Secret Service to look into the matter and determine if the messages were improperly deleted. The Secret Service must file a report within 30 days that itemizes what led up to the deletion, notates precisely what records were affected, and offers a plan for how the agency intends to “safeguard” its data in the future. 

Jan. 6 investigators and Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Zoe Lofgren said this past weekend they expected to receive the recovered texts by Tuesday. Lofgren and Kinzinger did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

According to the source who was interviewed by the Post:

“The agency, which made this determination after reviewing its communication databases over the past four days, will provide thousands of records, but nearly all of them have been shared previously with an agency watchdog and congressional committees, the senior official said. None is expected to shed new light on the key matters the committee is probing, including whether Trump attacked a Secret Service agent, an account a senior White House aide described to the Jan. 6 committee.

The committee issued a subpoena for the messages last week after Department of Homeland Security i”Inspector General Joseph Cuffari informed them the records were missing. They were deleted as part of an agency-wide overhaul of staff phones that were being migrated to new devices. 

Archives Letter to Ss by Daily Kos on Scribd

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 probe expects to see erased Secret Service text messages by Tuesday

When you look at historical examples of fascism, it seems more than a bit simplistic to describe those societies as “polarized.”

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The Kansans for Life, Kansas churches, and others have worked hard at funding their anti-choice campaign, with Kansas Catholic churches alone kicking in more than $750,000. The message they send through their TV ads lately has been simple and acknowledges the problem they face. People are not in favor of outright bans on abortion if the issue is put to them at the ballot box. How to get around that problem? Confuse the issue. In recent ads, the Value Them Both anti-abortion ads have focused on the concept that no, this really isn’t about ending abortion in Kansas, and anyone who says that is just fearmongering.

This shift clearly comes after the United States Supreme Court ruling has made this a top-of-mind issue for many voters walking to the ballot box. Republicans may not be following the message being sent over the airwaves.

The Kansas Reflector was able to find an audio address to the Reno County Republican Party. What happened? Speaking to the committee, a regional director for the Value Them Both coalition, Lori Chrisman, pointed out that they already have a piece of legislation, HB 2746, from the current session that would be reintroduced, effectively banning abortion. The legislation was originally put forward by Fort Scott Republican Trevor Jacobs and would ban abortion from fertilization to birth under all circumstances. The legislation does allow for stillbirths, ectopic pregnancies, and completion of a miscarriage; however, the legislation provides absolutely no exceptions for rape, incest, or to save the life of the mother.

The ad war in Kansas remains fierce, with over $10 million total going into the ad campaign. While anti-choice campaigns seem to offer fairly, ahem, strange claims, they cannot deny the claims make it clear what they really want.

The Kansas Value Them Both coalition has said they let Chrisman go, but it that does not undo the fact that the legislators behind the constitutional amendment have exactly one goal: banning abortion access in Kansas.

The vote on Kansas Amendment 2 is on the Aug. 2 special election, where all individuals, whether they are unaffiliated or aligned with a party, may vote to preserve access to reproductive care in Kansas.

The more we learn about Kansas Amendment 2, the easier it is to see through the smokescreen.

Sign the petition to the US Senate: Reform the filibuster and protect our reproductive freedom!

Enlarge / The buildings of the IHES. (credit: Dhananjay Khadilkar)

Even before this year’s Fields Medal winners announcement, the Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques (IHES) or the Institute of Advanced Scientific Studies, boasted a remarkable statistic. Since its founding in 1958, the institute has had 12 permanent mathematics professors; seven of them had won a Fields Medal, considered to be the Nobel Prize in mathematics. On July 5, Hugo Duminil-Copin was named a recipient of this year’s prize, and the IHES extended its remarkable record to eight. “I am extremely glad that Hugo won the Fields Medal. We were betting on him to win the prize this year,” IHES director Emmanuel Ullmo told Ars Technica.

People before topics

Duminil-Copin was recognized for his use of probability theory to tackle problems in statistical physics. The 36-year-old is the first professor at IHES specializing in probability theory, a trait that manifests the institute’s philosophy as well as the reason behind its success. “We don’t look for topics but individuals. While recruiting professors, our only focus is on finding the most brilliant mathematicians or physicists,” Ullmo says.

Ullmo recalls the process of hiring Duminil-Copin. “Around 2016, when I consulted experts to suggest names of brilliant young researchers, Hugo’s name was right at the top. Even though no other mathematics professor in IHES history had specialized in probability theory, we offered Hugo the position. If someone of Hugo’s level had been researching in some other field of mathematics, that would have suited us, too,” Ullmo says.

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Now that they’ve made abortion nearly impossible for millions of people to access, the forced birthers are primed to turn their attention to birth control, the inevitable next step for the bodies of girls, women, and trans people who can get pregnant. For years, people have been reporting from all over the country—in at least 26 states—about pharmacists’ refusal to fill birth control prescriptions, abortion medication, or dispense over-the-counter emergency contraception based on the personal belief of the pharmacy employee.

Since last month’s U.S. Supreme Court decision overturning federal abortion rights, there have been a spate of reports from forced birth states of pharmacies refusing to dispense not just abortion medication, but also contraception and other medications that can be used off-label to terminate a pregnancy. For example, people with lupus have been cut off from one of the few medications, methotrexate, that can help relieve symptoms because the drug can be used to end ectopic pregnancies.

The Biden administration is stepping in to remind pharmacies that a federal protection for birth control access exists, and if they break it, they’re in violation of civil rights laws. They sent new guidance to more than 60,000 retail pharmacies last week with that notice.

RELATED STORY:  When Supreme Court struck down Roe, it also took away lifesaving medicine, impacting millions

“Under federal civil rights law, pregnancy discrimination includes discrimination based on current pregnancy, past pregnancy, potential or intended pregnancy, and medical conditions related to pregnancy or childbirth,” the new guidance reads. Under the Affordable Care Act and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, any pharmacy receiving federal funding (which means filling prescriptions under Medicare) can’t discriminate on the basis of personal beliefs “in regard to supplying medications; making determinations regarding the suitability of a prescribed medication for a patient; or advising patients about medications and how to take them.”

Patients who experience this discrimination at a pharmacy can file a complaint with the Department of Health and Human Services Office of Civil Rights, which will investigate and pursue “corrective action” with the pharmacy.

In better birth control news, while it’s still legal anyway, a pharmaceutical company based in Paris, HRA Pharma, could be the first authorized provider of over-the-counter birth control, meaning no prescription necessary. The pill contains only progestin, not estrogen, and if the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approves it—which it definitely needs to do—it could make access to effective birth control much better.

In a surprising development, South Carolina has chosen to be one of the states leading on making birth control available without a prescription, even before the FDA decides on that new forum. It passed the “Pharmacy Access Act” this session, which was signed into law by Gov. Harry McMaster, who told reporters: “If South Carolina wants to be a pro-life state, then we must provide the means for people to avoid unwanted pregnancies, and that law makes it easier to do that, so that’s a good step.”

It’s only available to people with private health insurance or Medicaid, however, which does mean that uninsured or underinsured people will still face barriers obtaining it. There will also be the potential problem of pharmacists refusing to provide it, since it still is South Carolina. But it’s progress in one of the most unlikely of states. We’ll take it.

According to a 77-page investigative report released by the Texas House on Sunday, nearly 400 law enforcement officers—376 to be exact—responded to the mass shooting that claimed 21 lives at Robb Elementary School on May 24, but not one of them was willing to risk their life to save the children and teachers. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives,” authors of the report wrote. “Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”

The investigative committee found fault with the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District Police Department as well as state and federal law enforcement authorities, including the police chief of the school district, Pedro “Pete” Arredondo, who dubbed himself incident commander but failed to carry out the protocol he established. Arredondo has since resigned his position. “The void of leadership could have contributed to the loss of life as injured victims waited over an hour for help, and the attacker continued to sporadically fire his weapon,” authors of the report wrote. “A command post could have transformed chaos into order, including the deliberate assignment of tasks and the flow of the information necessary to inform critical decision making.”

RELATED STORY: Newly released Uvalde videos show shooter entering, followed by police inaction

The House committee continued in the report:

Notably, nobody ensured that responders making key decisions inside the building received information that students and teachers had survived the initial burst of gunfire, were trapped in Rooms 111 and 112, and had called out for help. Some responders outside and inside the building knew that information through radio communications. But nobody in command analyzed this information to recognize that the attacker was preventing critically injured victims from obtaining medical care. Instead of continuing to act as if they were addressing a barricaded subject scenario in which responders had time on their side, they should have reassessed the scenario as one involving an active shooter.

The committee described "precious time wasted" searching for keys to doors and shields when a "sledgehammer" or entry through an exterior window could have clearly done the trick.

CNN released body camera video on Sunday of police arriving on the scene and struggling to find door keys.

“Uvalde CISD and its police department failed to implement their active shooter plan and failed to exercise command and control of law enforcement responding to the tragedy,” authors of the investigative report wrote.

But these local officials were not the only ones expected to supply the leadership needed during this tragedy. Hundreds of responders from numerous law enforcement agencies—many of whom were better trained and better equipped than the school district police—quickly arrived on the scene. Yet in this crisis, no responder seized the initiative to establish an incident command post. Despite an obvious atmosphere of chaos, the ranking officers of other responding agencies did not approach the Uvalde CISD chief of police or anyone else perceived to be in command to point out the lack of and need for a command post, or to offer that specific assistance.

Authors of the report also described "low-quality internet service, poor mobile phone coverage, and varying habits of mobile phone usage at the school" all leading to inconsistencies in which teachers were notified that the school had locked down.

“In violation of school policy, no one had locked any of the three exterior doors to the west building of Robb Elementary,” the committee wrote. “As a result, the attacker had unimpeded access to enter. Once inside, the attacker continued into the adjoining Rooms 111 and 112, probably through the door to Room 111, and apparently completely unimpeded.”

The report, which is the result of dozens of interviews and "hours of audio visual evidence," according to The Washington Post, builds on leaked details that served to dispute the narrative state troopers initially tried to spread. When video of the shooting was leaked to the media, it showed the shooter later identified as 18-year-old Salvador Ramos get out of a pickup truck, hop a fence, go into the school, and firing a rifle "unobstructed," the Post reported.

Police responded three minutes after the gunman went into the first classroom, but "rapid shots sent them retreating further down the hallway," the Post reported. They stayed away for almost 77 minutes, one officer even taking time to use hand sanitizer, according to the newspaper.

One teacher told NBC News of the horror she faced just in double checking to make sure her classroom door was locked, given the school lacked doors that could be locked from the inside. During drills, she had appointed a student to let her back inside the classroom after checking to make sure the door was locked. So when the time came to use what they practiced, she said she asked the child: "Do you remember what we do?"

He responded, teary-eyed, "Yes, ma'am."

The teacher was able to check the classroom door and return to safety. She told NBC News that the gunman went inside the classroom across from hers.

Officers intervened only to try to prevent bystanders from doing what they should have done.

RELATED STORY: Mother who ran into Texas school during shooting says cops are warning her to stop talking

Angeli Rose Gomez, a mother who was able to save her children, told media outlets including CBS News how officers handcuffed her to try to prevent her from running into the school. She said when Uvalde officers told marshals to remove the handcuffs, she ran to get her children. 

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott initially praised officers’ response and later said he was “misled.” 

“I am livid about what happened,” Abbott said during a news conference The Texas Tribune covered in late May. “The information I was given turned out, in part, to be inaccurate, and I am absolutely livid about that.” 

Not livid enough to support legislative measures to tighten restrictions on guns or to up the age to purchase weapons like the one Ramos used. The governor is just livid enough to give lip service to a community’s devastation. 

Authors of the investigative report, however, reminded the public:

“We must not delude ourselves into a false sense of security by believing that ‘this would not happen where we live.’ The people of Uvalde undoubtedly felt the same way. We must all take seriously the threats to security in our schools and the need to be properly prepared to confront active shooter scenarios.”

Read the investigative committee’s full report:

Obliterating Roe v. Wade apparently wasn't enough. Sen. Ted Cruz said during his Verdict+ podcast on Saturday that he believes the Supreme Court was “clearly wrong“ in deciding to support same-sex marriage in the 5-to-4 decision on Obergefell v. Hodges. The landmark decision made same-sex marriage legal in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories in keeping with the equal protection and due process clauses of the 14th Amendment. But Cruz wants to follow the logic of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote in his concurrent opinion on Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization that “because any substantive due process decision is ‘demonstrably erroneous,’” we have “a duty to ‘correct the error.’” 

Cruz said: “Obergefell, like Roe v. Wade, ignored two centuries of our nation’s history. Marriage was always an issue that was left to the states. We saw states before Obergefell — some states were moving to allow gay marriage, other states were moving to allow civil partnerships. There were different standards that the states were adopting.”

RELATED STORY: Ted Cruz claims pro-Roe protesters worse than insurrectionists who 'peacefully' protested on Jan. 6

Cruz added:

“The way the Constitution set up for you to advance that position is convince your fellow citizens that if you succeeded in convincing your fellow citizens, then your state would change the laws to reflect those views. In Obergefell, the court said now we know better than you guys do, and now every state must, must sanction and permit gay marriage. I think that decision was clearly wrong when it was decided. It was the court overreaching.”

Democrat and former Ohio state senator Nina Turner definitely won the award for best tweeted responses to the Texas Republican in tweeting: “I think I speak for everyone when I say f*** what Ted Cruz has to say about anything, especially gay marriage.”

Fighting the temptation to leave it at that, another constituency of social media users reminded the public of just how serious a threat Cruz and the like are to our democracy. Those activists and commenters urged Democrats to vote Republicans out of office.

Majid Padellan, a blogger and influencer who goes by "Brooklyn Dad" on social media, tweeted: “Roe was just the beginning. Time to pick a side, folks.”

Comedian Noel Casler tweeted: “What happens in life to make someone into a Ted Cruz, universally loathed even within his own party & family. Gay Marriage is one of the few bright spots in a pretty dreadful SCOTUS reign during my lifetime. Anyone attacking it is not only an enemy of progress but of love itself.”

The Supreme Court wrote in its original decision on same-sex marriage:

From their beginning to their most recent page, the annals of human history reveal the transcendent importance of marriage. The lifelong union of a man and a woman always has promised nobility and dignity to all persons, without regard to their station in life. Marriage is sacred to those who live by their religions and offers unique fulfillment to those who find meaning in the secular realm. Its dynamic allows two people to find a life that could not be found alone, for a marriage becomes greater than just the two persons. Rising from the most basic human needs, marriage is essential to our most profound hopes and aspirations.The centrality of marriage to the human condition makes it unsurprising that the institution has existed for millennia and across civilizations. Since the dawn of history, marriage has transformed strangers into relatives, binding families and societies together. (...)

It is fair and necessary to say these references were based on the understanding that marriage is a union between two persons of the opposite sex. That history is the beginning of these cases. The respondents say it should be the end as well. To them, it would demean a timeless institution if the concept and lawful status of marriage were extended to two persons of the same sex. Marriage, in their view, is by its nature a gender-differentiated union of man and woman. This view long has been held—and continues to be held—in good faith by reasonable and sincere people here and throughout the world.The petitioners acknowledge this history but contend that these cases cannot end there. Were their intent to demean the revered idea and reality of marriage, the petitioners’ claims would be of a different order. But that is neither their purpose nor their submission. To the contrary, it is the enduring importance of marriage that underlies the petitioners’ contentions. This, they say, is their whole point. Far from seeking to devalue marriage, the petitioners seek it for themselves because of their respect—and need—for its privileges and responsibilities. And their immutable nature dictates that same-sex marriage is their only real path to this profound commitment.

The Supreme Court ultimately agreed with the petitioners, which included "14 same-sex couples and two men whose same-sex partners are deceased." Justices wrote:

No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice, and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater than once they were. As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage. Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of civilization’s oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants them that right.The judgment of the Court of Appeals for the SixthCircuit is reversed.

It is so ordered.

Sign and send the petition to the U.S. Senate: Stop the discrimination – pass the Equality Act now!

UVALDE, Texas — Nearly 400 law enforcement officials rushed to a mass shooting at a Uvalde elementary school, but “egregiously poor decision-making” resulted in more than an hour of chaos before the gunman who took 21 lives was finally confronted and killed, according to a damning investigative report released Sunday.

The nearly 80-page report was the first to criticize both state and federal law enforcement, and not just local authorities in the South Texas town for the bewildering inaction by heavily armed officers as a gunman fired inside a fourth-grade classroom at Robb Elementary School.

“At Robb Elementary, law enforcement responders failed to adhere to their active shooter training, and they failed to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety,” the report said.

The gunman fired approximately 142 rounds inside the building — and it is “almost certain” that at least 100 shots came before any officer entered, according to the report, which laid out in damning detail numerous failures. Among them:

— The commander of a Border Patrol tactical team waited for a bullet-proof shield and working master key for the classroom, which may have not even been needed, before entering the classroom.

— No one assumed command despite scores of officers being on the scene.

— A Uvalde Police Department officer said he heard about 911 calls that had come inside from the classroom, and that his understanding was the officers on one side of the building knew there were victims trapped inside. Still, no one tried to breach the classroom.

The report — the most complete account yet of the hesitant and haphazard response to the May 24 massacre — was written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives. Swiftly, the findings set in motion at least one fallout: Lt. Mariano Pargas, a Uvalde Police Department officer who was the city’s acting police chief during the massacre, was placed on administrative leave.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said an investigation would be launched to determine whether Pargas should have taken command of the scene. McLaughlin also said the city would now release all body camera footage from Uvalde police that was taken during the shooting.

Family members of the victims in Uvalde received copies of the report Sunday before it was released to the public.

“It’s a joke. They’re a joke. They’ve got no business wearing a badge. None of them do,” Vincent Salazar, grandfather of 11-year-old Layla Salazer, said Sunday.

According to the report, 376 law enforcement officers massed at the school. The overwhelming majority of those who responded were federal and state law enforcement. That included nearly 150 U.S. Border Patrol agents and 91 state police officials.

“Other than the attacker, the Committee did not find any ‘villains’ in the course of its investigation,” the report said. “There is no one to whom we can attribute malice or ill motives. Instead, we found systemic failures and egregiously poor decision making.”

The report noted that many of the hundreds of law enforcement responders who rushed to the school were better trained and equipped than the school district police — which the head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, the state police force, previously faulted for not going into the room sooner.

Investigators said it was not their job to determine whether officers should be held accountable, saying that decisions rests with each law enforcement agency. Prior to Sunday, only one of the hundreds of officers on the scene — Pete Arredondo, the Uvalde school district police chief — was known to have been on leave.

“Everyone who came on the scene talked about this being chaotic,” said Texas state Rep. Burrows, a Republican who led the investigation.

Officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety and U.S. Border Patrol did not immediately return requests for comment Sunday.

The report followed weeks of closed-door interviews with more than 40 people, including witnesses and law enforcement who were on the scene of the shooting.

No single officer has received as much scrutiny since the shooting as Arredondo, who also resigned from his newly appointed seat on the City Council after the shooting. Arredondo told the committee he treated the shooter as “barricaded subject,” according to the report, and defended never treating the scene as an active-shooter situation because he did not have visual contact with the gunman.

Arredondo also tried to find a key for the classrooms, but no one ever bothered to see if the doors were locked, according to the report.

“Arredondo’s search for a key consumed his attention and wasted precious time, delaying the breach of the classrooms,” the report read.

The report criticized as “lackadaisical” the approach of the hundreds of officers who surrounded the school and said that they should have recognized that Arredondo remaining in the school without reliable communication was “inconsistent” with him being the scene commander. The report concluded that some officers waited because they relied on bad information while others “had enough information to know better.”

A nearly 80-minute hallway surveillance video published by the Austin American-Statesman this week publicly showed for the first time a hesitant and haphazard tactical response, which the head of Texas’ state police has condemned as a failure and some Uvalde residents have blasted as cowardly.

Calls for police accountability have grown in Uvalde since the shooting. So far, only one officer from the scene of the deadliest school shooting in Texas history is known to be on leave.

The report is the result of one of several investigations into the shooting, including another led by the Justice Department. A report earlier this month by tactical experts at Texas State University alleged that a Uvalde police officer had a chance to stop the gunman before he went inside the school armed with an AR-15.

But in an example of the conflicting statements and disputed accounts since the shooting, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin has said that never happened. That report had been done at the request of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which McLaughlin has increasingly criticized and accused of trying to minimize the role of its troopers during the massacre.

Steve McCraw, the head of Texas DPS, has called the police response an abject failure.

The committee didn’t “receive medical evidence” to show that police breaching the classroom sooner would have saved lives, but it concluded that “it is plausible that some victims could have survived if they had not had to wait 73 additional minutes for rescue.”

Michael Brown, whose 9-year-old son was in the cafeteria at Robb Elementary on the day of the shooting and survived, came to the committee’s news conference Sunday carrying signs saying “ We Want Accountability” and “Prosecute Pete Arredondo.”

Brown said he has not yet read the report but already knows enough to say that police “have blood on their hands.”

“It’s disgusting. Disgusting,” he said. “They’re cowards.”

A federal judge temporarily blocked the Education Department’s Title IX guidance, which prohibits discrimination based on gender identity and sexual orientation.

Eastern District of Tennessee Judge Charles Atchley in an order late Friday said the agency’s guidance “directly interferes with and threatens Plaintiff States’ ability to continue enforcing their state laws” that restrict transgender people from playing on sports teams and using bathrooms that match their gender identity.

A coalition of 20 Republican attorneys general is being led by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery. They have argued their states face a “credible threat” of losing significant federal funding due to their policies and laws.

The states also argued that forcing schools to use transgender students’ pronouns is illegal under the First Amendment and that the Education Department violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Tenth Amendment, which delegates certain powers to the states.

The Education Department, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission and Justice Department, along with their leaders, are listed as defendants. They had urged the court to dismiss the lawsuit, which Atchley denied.

“As it currently stands, plaintiffs must choose between the threat of legal consequences — enforcement action, civil penalties, and the withholding of federal funding — or altering their state laws to ensure compliance with the guidance and avoid such adverse action,” wrote Atchley, a Donald Trump appointee.

The preliminary injunction essentially ties the department’s hands when it comes to protecting transgender students from discrimination in 20 states that have laws or are attempting to pass laws that restrict their access to facilities and sports. The department will have to finalize its Title IX rule to enforce its guidance.

Oral arguments: Former Tennessee Associate Solicitor General Sarah Campbell, on behalf of Tennessee and the other 19 states, argued in November that the department, through the guidance issued last year, rewrote “the federal anti-discrimination laws they enforce.” Campbell is now on the Tennessee Supreme Court.

“That’s not how lawmaking is supposed to work,” Campbell said, arguing that the Biden administration violated the Administrative Procedure Act when it issued the guidance and the “states’ sovereign authority to enforce its own legal code was directly injured as a result.”

Campbell also took aim at the Biden administration’s decision to craft its guidance around the landmark Supreme Court opinion in Bostock v. Clayton County, which says it is unlawful to discriminate against people based on their gender identity or sexual orientation in the workplace. She argued the case does not extend to Title IX, nor access to locker rooms or bathrooms.

They argued the Biden administration has not disavowed that they will enforce the interpretation and they mentioned a West Virginia lawsuit where the Justice Department filed a statement of interest saying that banning transgender kids from sports teams that match their gender identity violates Title IX.

In his Friday order, Atchley wrote that the department’s guidance documents “ignore the limited reach of Bostock.”

What’s next: The Education Department published its Title IX proposed rule in June, which would codify its guidance protecting transgender students once it’s finalized. The comment period on the rule runs through September.

The department is expected to undertake a separate rulemaking process for determining sports eligibility. A timeline for that process has not been established yet.

The court’s decision is also likely to be used to support arguments in a Connecticut case at the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals challenging whether transgender women and girls can play on sports teams that match their gender identity. Arguments in that case are set for Sept. 29.

On March 6, 2021, Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia delivered the decisive 50th Democratic vote to help pass President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. The stimulus package provided relief checks to most American families, expanded a child tax credit to combat poverty, and bolstered federal support to fight the coronavirus pandemic. That moment briefly raised hopes on the left that Manchin, a centrist if not conservative Democrat, would back Biden’s fledgling effort to usher in a progressive economic transformation not seen since the New Deal.

Yet over the following year-plus, Manchin has rejected every other attempt by Democrats to wield legislative power using their slim congressional majority without Republican votes. He nixed Biden’s initial $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan and then a smaller $1.9 trillion proposal, as well as a bid to relax the filibuster and allow Democrats to pass a major voting-rights bill. Biden has yet to stamp a veto on a single piece of legislation during his first year and a half in the White House. Manchin, however, continues to issue them at will.

[Christopher J. Regan: What the media are missing about Joe Manchin]

Manchin’s latest veto came yesterday, when he told Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer that he would not support legislation in the coming weeks to spend as much as $375 billion on new climate and energy programs and raise taxes on the wealthy. The West Virginian, according to a Democrat briefed on the talks and granted anonymity to describe them, said he would support only a bill that reduced prescription-drug costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate prices and extended subsidies in the Affordable Care Act for another two years. (The Washington Post first reported Manchin’s ultimatum.) Democrats need Manchin’s backing because to skirt Republican opposition, they are using a Senate budget process known as reconciliation that is not subject to the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome a filibuster.

Manchin’s move is devastating news for progressive lawmakers and activists, who view this two-year window of Democratic power in Washington as the final opportunity to meaningfully confront climate change before it’s too late. It also deepens a sense of betrayal directed at Manchin and widely shared among Democrats.

During the first year of the Obama administration more than a decade ago—the last time the party controlled both Congress and the presidency—Democrats believed that Republicans played them for fools when they dragged out negotiations over a far-reaching health-care bill only to walk away. They see Manchin doing the same now under Biden, playing the role of Lucy ripping away the football from a gullible Charlie Brown.

To progressives, Manchin’s slippery-if-not-dishonest negotiating style has meant that Biden has all but wasted what is likely to be—should Republicans recapture at least one chamber of Congress this fall—the Democrats’ only real chance at governing during his presidency. Yet Biden has actually gotten quite a few significant bills enacted since the American Rescue Plan passed last March; only it has been Republicans, and not Manchin, who have helped the most to deliver them.

Biden has signed bipartisan legislation to spend $1 trillion on infrastructure projects, tighten gun laws, combat sexual harassment in the workplace, overhaul the U.S. Postal Service, and reauthorize the Violence Against Women Act. Lawmakers are also nearing agreement to update the Electoral Count Act, and they’ve made significant progress on major legislation to bolster domestic manufacturing. For a Democrat presiding over one of the smallest congressional majorities in modern history, that’s not a bad legislative record, even if much of it has escaped the notice or appreciation of voters. Manchin has backed all of these efforts and even helped negotiate several of them, but his vote has been decisive for none of them. In each case, GOP support has been the necessary ingredient that allowed bills to clear the Senate filibuster that Manchin (along with Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona) has refused to alter.

The $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill for which Manchin did provide the crucial vote was a big deal; in dollar terms, it roughly equaled the stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act that became Barack Obama’s singular first-term accomplishments. But without even a sliver of Biden’s initial Build Back Better program making it through the Senate, it’s fair to argue that the president has actually gotten more from Republicans than he has from the most conservative member of the Democratic caucus.

[Read: Democrats try to build back (a bit) better]

Manchin, of course, has provided indispensable support to confirm many of Biden’s executive-branch and judicial nominees, and his mere presence in the caucus allows Democrats to control the Senate agenda—at least for the next few months. Even the prescription-drug reform that Manchin is now offering to support would fulfill a long-standing priority for the party. This morning, he also said that the larger climate-and-tax-increase package was still alive, if Democrats were willing to wait for another month’s worth of inflation data before acting on it. “Come back the first of September and pass this if it’s a good piece of legislation,” Manchin told a local radio host in West Virginia. “I’m being as sincere as I can be: I want to help this country.” (Manchin’s office did not respond to a separate request for comment and clarification on his position.)

After a year’s worth of thus-far fruitless negotiations, Democrats have reason to doubt Manchin’s sincerity. Many in the party see a senator who is too beholden to lobbyists, too sympathetic to bad-faith GOP arguments, too enamored of the attention he can command by holding aloft his metaphorical veto pen. Republicans have predictably refused to engage on most of Biden’s most ambitious agenda items, dooming his vision for a larger social-safety net and voting-rights legislation. But when they have chosen to deal, they have seemingly proved to be more reliable negotiating partners than the Democrat from West Virginia. That realization won’t lift the despair of progressives whose worst fears are coming true, but for Biden, it might count as the biggest surprise of all.

If you were wondering why Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis isn’t moving more quickly in her case against former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election, wonder no more. Today, according to Yahoo News, Willis’ office sent “target” letters to top GOP officials informing them of upcoming indictments for their roles in a fake elector scheme in the state.

According to Yahoo’s legal sources, the letters are going to state Sen. Burt Jones, the GOP candidate for lieutenant governor; state Sen. Brandon Beach; and David Shafer, chairman of the Georgia Republican Party.

Jones is running against attorney Charlie Bailey, a Democrat, who is wisely going for his Republican rival’s jugular, calling Jones’ role as a “fake” elector “un-American,” The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) reports.

RELATED STORY: Georgia GOP was fine with Trump’s fake elector scheme—until one of the fake electors ran for office

“Burt Jones doesn’t get to decide whose votes count and whose votes don’t … When you step in and say, ‘I am the official elector of this state, and I am saying that Donald Trump won this state despite the law, despite the certification (of votes), we are saying this because we want it to be the case,’ there’s nothing more un-American, there’s nothing more unpatriotic than an action like that,” Bailey told the AJC. 

Both Jones and Shafer were among the 16 Republicans who met in secret at the Georgia state Capitol on Dec. 14, 2020, naming themselves illegally as electors, signing their names in declaration, and then sending the list of names to the National Archives.

According to The Washington Post, just one day before 16 fraudsters met to falsely certify that Trump won the 2020 presidential election, Robert Sinners, the Trump campaign’s operations director for Georgia elections, sent out an email asking them for their “complete discretion in this process,” adding, “Your duties are imperative to ensure the end result—a win in Georgia for President Trump—but will be hampered unless we have complete secrecy and discretion.”

The Dec. 13 email additionally instructed Trump’s electors to intentionally mislead security guards at the Georgia Capitol by telling them they had appointments with Beach and Jones.

Willis has said that she has not ruled out indicting Trump himself to testify.

In an interview with NBC News Willis said, "We’ll just have to see where the investigation leads us… I think that people thought that we came into this as some kind of game. This is not a game at all. What I am doing is very serious. It’s very important work. And we’re going to do our due diligence and making sure that we look at all aspects of the case.”

Yahoo News reports that Georgia prosecutors are concentrating on the secrecy of the electors’ meeting.

But what isn’t clear is how the “target” letters play into Willis’ overall investigation. She has two options, according to legal sources. One, she charges the fake electors with “false writing” as they filed fake documents alleging to be electors. Or two, she uses the false writing charge as a “predicate act” in order to net Trump in the larger scheme of tampering with an election as connected to his infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, prodding him to “find” enough votes to flip the election results.

You know what? We do have to vote harder in 2022 than we’ve ever voted before. We have to vote in these midterms like the very fate of the Earth is at stake. Because it pretty much is. We have to spend the next 112 days working our asses off to make sure that Sen. Joe Manchin is kicked to the curb by a Democratic majority big enough to end his reign of terror.

The West Virginia Democrat and the fossil fuel industry’s primary representative in Congress isn’t on the ballot officially this cycle, so we can’t actually kick him out. But we can make him irrelevant. We can elect a Senate majority that will cast him aside, end the filibuster, pass vital legislation to save the planet and all of our civil, voting, and reproductive rights, and maybe even restore the Supreme Court. We can get a big enough Senate majority to demand he step down as chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee—he’s already being challenged there by colleagues!

We can get a majority big enough that he becomes a pariah and the only person willing to sit with him at lunch is Maine Sen. Susan Collins.

Donate now to give Democrats a true majority in the Senate give Joe Manchin the boot.

By now you’ve seen how Manchin has decided to pull the plug the rug out from Democrats again. For months, months, Manchin has been stringing his colleagues along, promising them he would support the climate and tax hike parts of the tattered remains of President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan—the visionary social, economic, and climate change package that would define Biden’s presidency. After successfully conning the rest of his party into splitting out and going along with the gift to the fossil-fuel industry that was the infrastructure bill, Manchin immediately reneged on helping Democrats with the rest on the flimsy excuse that Biden hurt his feelings by including his name in a White House statement.

The Washington Post broke the news Thursday night that Manchin was torpedoing the two elements of the plan that he’s been negotiating with Democrats on all year: climate and energy, and raising taxes on the wealthy. The stuff that he has been saying for months that there was a way forward on. The stuff Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and committee chairs like Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) have been slaving over to shape to Manchin’s demands, whittling away the critical elements necessary right now for curbing climate change.

RELATED STORY:  Joe Manchin is 'the one man who single-handedly doomed humanity'

State Sen. Mallory McMorrow on how Democrats can more effectively combat the GOP’s culture wars.

As a fiery viral speech she gave earlier this year made clear, Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow isn’t one to mince her words — and she doesn’t want other Democrats to do so either.

McMorrow thinks her party can be a lot more explicit when fighting GOP attacks, particularly as they struggle to defend their congressional majorities and retake state legislatures this fall.

“A much more powerful response is call bullshit, bullshit,” McMorrow said.

McMorrow came to national attention after she confronted a Republican colleague who accused her of grooming young children and who fundraised off that claim. “I want every child in this state to feel seen, heard, and supported, not marginalized and targeted because they are not straight, white, and Christian,” she said in a speech that went viral in April.

Now, McMorrow is urging Democrats to take on Republicans in the same way, on everything from abortion rights to critical race theory to the economy. This past week, she sat down with Vox to describe exactly how they can do so.

This interview has been edited and condensed for length and clarity.

Li Zhou

Why do you think your response to the false grooming claims you faced got so much attention?

Mallory McMorrow

I think for a long time there was this idea of grappling with the question of: if we talk about some of these conspiracy theories, especially from the darkest corners of the internet, is that giving them life that they wouldn’t otherwise have?

But what we’ve seen over the past year or so is between critical race theory, and then shifting into attacks on the LGBTQ community, particularly trans kids, that it was taking these attacks out of the darkest corners of the internet into the mainstream. And it was a mainstream attack from one of our two major political parties, on already marginalized groups of people.

I wanted to be very intentional about responding in a way that elevated it out of the typical Democrats versus Republicans. And a lot of what I wrote down earlier in the day talked about hypocrisy on the Republican side of the aisle. Here in Michigan, we had our previous speaker of the House, Lee Chatfield, [who] was actually accused by his sister-in-law of grooming and raping her starting when she was 15. And that investigation is still ongoing. I ended up taking it out because I recognize that, especially in this climate, if I even said the words “Republicans and Democrats” in my speech, nobody would listen.

The day of, or the day before I gave the speech, I was visiting a high school in my district. And the first question was from a girl who raised her hand, and she said, “I’m queer. Why does the state hate me?” And that really hurt, right?

I really recognized, like, I’m fine. But if you are on the receiving end of all of these headlines about how disgusting you are, and you basically aren’t allowed in places, that it hurts. So however bad I felt for one day, is how bad it feels every single day, if you are a queer 15-year-old trying to figure out why there’s so much legislation being introduced, targeting you for just existing. So, there was a lot that went into it.

I was mad, you know, there’s a lot to be said for just raw emotion. And I think that it has really struck a nerve for a number of reasons.

No. 1 is, I reclaimed my own identity. I really wanted to talk to people who are like me, who look like me, who are not the target of these attacks, who, frankly, are a member of the majority community. Because I think there’s a tendency to say, like, “Oh, these attacks are not about me, I’m fine. I’m not going to get involved.” But it only works when people in the majority group let it happen. It resonated in that it really was about my own values and my upbringing.

And I was just mad. I didn’t really care about trying to, you know, tamp it down and being super professional. I just really wanted to express what I felt.

Li Zhou

It can feel like the attacks that Republicans are making on a lot of these issues end up going uncontested because there is not a strong Democratic response. You mentioned there is a fear of elevating some of these claims, and I was wondering why you think Democrats aren’t willing to be more direct in countering these arguments?

Mallory McMorrow

Well, I think that is part of it is that we don’t want to give something credibility when it doesn’t have credibility. But I think we have to acknowledge that mindset is not working.

I also think that Democrats, and I’m one of those people, we love information and research and data. And I think sometimes we fundamentally believe if we show people enough information that we can convince them otherwise.

And I think critical race theory is a perfect example of how the strategy and the response were completely out of step. [Conservative activist and member of the right-wing Manhattan Institute think tank] Chris Rufo has flat-out admitted he created the fear around critical race theory. He has said he wanted anything related to The 1619 Project or diversity, equity, and inclusion, or Black Lives Matter, or really anything about an accurate teaching of history, he wanted everybody to think of critical race theory when they heard any of those things.

And the response from a lot of Democrats was to debate the merits of it, to say, you know, critical race theory is not taught in schools, that it is a graduate-level theory. But by doing that, you validate the false premise, instead of what I think is a much more powerful response is call bullshit, bullshit.

All of these culture war issues are manufactured to deflect and distract and scapegoat. And that doesn’t mean they’re any less terrible for the groups that are being targeted. But the reality is, they hurt everybody because they don’t actually solve issues that impact people’s everyday lives. So I know a lot of people say, “Well, we have to talk about the economy, we have to talk about inflation.” And that’s true. But people are never going to hear those things if we don’t blunt the attacks first.

Li Zhou

How satisfied are you with national Democrats’ response to the Dobbs decision, both when it comes to messaging and the actions that’ve been taken so far?

Mallory McMorrow

If there’s anything that I have been critical of Democrats about, it’s that we have not paid attention to state legislatures in the way that Republicans have for the past few decades. So the New York Times did a really well-done piece a few weeks ago, really highlighting the reason that Roe fell is not because of the Supreme Court or the federal government. It’s because Democrats lost 1,000 state legislature seats from 2007 to 2019. And you get more extreme chambers around the country who are passing these horrific laws that are designed to be challenged up to the Supreme Court.

So the silver lining is that there is finally a focus on state legislatures, and Michigan is a perfect example of that, where Betsy DeVos’s family — Dick DeVos ran for governor against Jennifer Granholm many years ago, spent a lot of money and lost the race. But they recognized that they could completely steer the direction of state politics by investing in the campaigns of every single Republican running for state House and state Senate. I saw this upfront when I ran for the first time in 2018. I flipped a Republican district. And I knew we were on the right track when probably two weeks before Election Day, I saw every single member of the DeVos family max out [donations] to my opponent.

And that is a willingness to build long-term political power from the ground up that Democrats have not necessarily done. A perfect example of this is last cycle, Democratic donors donated $96 million to Amy McGrath to try to defeat Mitch McConnell. Amy McGrath is wonderful, but there was no way that race was going to be won.

Comparatively, the DLCC [Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee], which supports state legislatures all around the country, their budget for the entire cycle for every single state legislature was $51 million. And the idea that somehow we’re going to change policy based on who’s in the White House or, you know, a few congressional or US Senate seats, is nonsense if we ignore the bottom.

Li Zhou

What do you make of activists’ concerns that asking people to vote isn’t enough?

Mallory McMorrow

I get people when they say, “We’ve been voting and nothing’s changed.” We also need to treat voters with respect. We’re all part of the same team, which is why I’ve been so intentional.

I want to make sure that people understand how important voting is, but also that I lay out a very clear plan, right? Like, here’s what we’re trying to do in the legislature, here’s what’s standing in the way, here’s what you can do with the ballot initiative, here’s what’s standing in the way.

It’s not just “vote,” it’s “here’s what we’re trying to do. If you vote, here’s what we’re able to do, if we flip four seats in the legislature,” which treats people with a level of respect that acknowledges this isn’t going to be fixed with one election, it’s just not.

Li Zhou

What was your experience like testifying at the House hearing on abortion rights this week, and your reaction to the misinformation that Republicans were spreading during that hearing?

Mallory McMorrow

It has become very apparent that Republicans, I don’t think, ever planned for Roe to be overturned, and they’re still living in this reality that’s based on rhetoric instead of the actual reality.

The fact that every time ectopic pregnancy came up, every single Republican said, “Oh, an ectopic pregnancy. That’s not an abortion.” Yes, it is — people will lose the access to care because abortion is banned, and women will die.

The fact that the story, this horrific story of the 10-year-old in Ohio who had to go to Indiana for an abortion, the fact that the first response was for the Republican operation to come out and say that that story was a lie. Instead of, you know, I saw some coverage out of Ohio that says that there’s about 52 of these cases a year, which means once every week, there is a 10-year-old who is getting pregnant.

And just the disrespect, to make jokes out of the situation. You know, watching [Sen.] Josh Hawley tried to do the gotcha question ... the day before or in our hearing, asking if a woman has ever given birth to a turtle or a taco — it’s just so flagrantly disrespectful, and they want to joke about it while women and girls and families and anybody who needs to access this care are already being driven into horrific situations and will die. That is the reality and you can no longer operate in a world of rhetoric. These laws have consequences, whether that’s what you intended or not.

Li Zhou

How do you think Democrats should be responding to Republican efforts to perpetuate some of this misinformation?

Mallory McMorrow

We have to respond very, very forcefully.

I am very intentionally saying: If you are somebody whose birth control fails, you don’t matter. If you are somebody who already has kids, and no, you can’t have any more, you don’t matter. If you are somebody like me — I had my daughter. And then I had an IUD placed that punctured through my uterus, which was horrific in and of itself. And it’s a very rare instance, but I had to have it surgically removed, which required being scheduled for a laparoscopy and a D&C. A D&C is an abortion procedure.

And we already know that medical schools are fearful about what they’re even going to be allowed to teach because they don’t want to lose funding. University of Michigan has already said that.

So like, being very upfront about that for anybody and everybody who’s concerned about this. This is going to impact every single person, whether you’re ever going to find yourself in the position of needing an abortion or not, just being blunt and telling them, to these Republicans, you don’t matter. They don’t care about you, and they don’t care if you live or die.

Rep. Adam Schiff of California, a member of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, expressed "great concern" Wednesday over the slow pace at which the Department of Justice is advancing its probe of the insurrection.

"I have been a part of many congressional investigations that have been contemporaneous with Department of Justice investigations," Schiff explained, "but it is unprecedented for Congress to be so far out ahead of the Justice Department in a complex investigation."

Schiff was talking to MSNBC host Ari Melber about reports that the Justice Department was reportedly caught off guard by many of the disclosures made Tuesday by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson in public testimony before the Jan. 6 panel.

Melber asked Schiff about a New York Times op-ed in which former Mueller prosecutor Andrew Weissmann said he was dismayed by Justice Department's halting investigation into Jan. 6. Weissmann wrote:

I have been involved in numerous high-profile investigations that engendered significant congressional interest, and what I have seen in this inquiry is not typical behavior from the Justice Department. Usually, department prosecutors and agents don’t want Congress jumping ahead of their investigation, and they work hard to make sure that doesn’t happen. The department wants to interview witnesses first, and prosecutors make sure that targets are fully truthful about their own potential wrongdoing and that their testimony is corroborated; use tools to flip recalcitrant witnesses; and build a case without revealing evidence to other prospective witnesses — efforts that can falter if Congress is conducting private and public interviews that may inadvertently undermine the strongest possible criminal case.

Weissman said the usual collegiality and coordination between Congress and the Justice Department simply doesn't appear to be taking place.

As Schiff noted, the Justice Department is far better positioned than Congress to move quickly in such an inquiry.

"They've got potent tools to get information, they can enforce their own subpoenas in a way we can't," Schiff explained. "We have to go hat in hand to them to enforce our subpoenas or to enforce a criminal contempt and the idea that a year and a half after these events, they would not have talked to these witnesses--even the Fulton County District Attorney is way ahead of them--is I think cause for great concern."

Well, consider us concerned.

Under this Supreme Court, patients could struggle to obtain lifesaving drugs like methotrexate.

Methotrexate is a fairly common drug that treats a wide range of medical conditions. I take it to help control an autoimmune disorder. So do about 60 percent of rheumatoid arthritis patients. It is used to treat some cancers, such as non-Hodgkin lymphoma. It also has at least one other important medical use.

The drug is the most common pharmaceutical treatment for ectopic pregnancies, a life-threatening medical condition where a fertilized egg implants somewhere other than the uterus — typically a fallopian tube. If allowed to develop, this egg can eventually cause a rupture and massive internal bleeding. Methotrexate prevents embryonic cell growth, eventually terminating an ectopic pregnancy.

And so many patients who take methotrexate say they have become the latest victims of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization — the decision overruling Roe v. Wade.

It’s unclear how widespread this phenomenon is, though the problem is serious enough that the Arthritis Foundation put out a statement warning that “arthritis patients who rely on methotrexate are reporting difficulty accessing it,” and that “at least one state — Texas — allows pharmacists to refuse to fill prescriptions for misoprostol and methotrexate, which together can be used for medical abortions.”

In some cases, pharmacists are reportedly reluctant to fill methotrexate prescriptions in states where abortion is illegal, and doctors are similarly reluctant to prescribe it. In other cases, pharmacists may refuse to fill valid methotrexate prescriptions because they personally object to abortion, even in states where the procedure remains legal.

The phenomenon of patients struggling to obtain therapeutic drugs that can be used in abortion care appears to be severe enough that, on Wednesday, President Joe Biden’s administration released a four-page “Guidance to Nation’s Retail Pharmacies.” It informed them that federal laws prohibiting discrimination on the basis of disability or pregnancy may require pharmacists to fill prescriptions for drugs like methotrexate. (The question of whether a particular denial by a particular pharmacist violates federal law will depend on the specifics of the case.)

Ultimately, however, laws are only as good as the courts that interpret them. And disputes over whether states can ban mifepristone, or whether pharmacists can simply refuse to dispense certain drugs, are likely to be resolved by the same justices who gave us Dobbs.

At best, that means a lot of confusion for patients until the courts sort these issues out. And, given this Court’s hostility toward abortions and sympathy for religious conservatives, it is likely that many patients will be denied prescription drugs.

Federal civil rights law probably requires pharmacists to dispense lawful drugs, but this Supreme Court is likely to give an exemption to religious conservatives.

It is always dangerous to predict what kind of laws may emerge from the fever swamps of the Texas state legislature. But red states are probably less likely to enact a blanket ban on drugs like methotrexate, which have many therapeutic uses unrelated to abortion, than they are to ban drugs like mifepristone that are primarily used in abortion care.

Even if drugs like methotrexate remain legal in all 50 states, however, individual pharmacists may refuse to dispense them, and doctors may be reluctant to prescribe them — out of a misguided belief that the drug is illegal, a fear of being targeted by overzealous prosecutors, or a religious or moral objection to abortion.

In its Wednesday guidance, the Biden administration argues that federal civil rights laws prohibiting “discrimination on the basis of sex and disability” may require pharmacists to dispense certain drugs even after Dobbs. The primary anti-discrimination law governing health care, which was enacted as part of the Affordable Care Act, prohibits discrimination by “any health program or activity” that receives federal funding through a program like Medicare or Medicaid. So most doctors, hospitals, and pharmacies are covered by this law.

Suppose, for example, that “an individual experiences severe and chronic stomach ulcers, such that their condition meets the definition of a disability under civil rights laws.” If a doctor prescribes the drug misoprostol, which is used to prevent stomach ulcers but is also used in medication abortions, then a pharmacy “may be discriminating on the basis of disability” if it refuses to dispense this drug “because of its alternative uses.”

Similarly, the guidance argues that a pharmacist may violate federal sex discrimination laws, which also prohibit discrimination on the basis of pregnancy, if it refuses to dispense methotrexate to a patient with an ectopic pregnancy.

Even if federal civil rights law does require pharmacists to dispense these and similar drugs, however — and that question will need to be litigated — it is likely that this Supreme Court will permit pharmacists with religious objections to those drugs to ignore federal law.

In June 2016, the Supreme Court announced that it would not hear Stormans v. Wiesman — a case involving a pharmacy that refused to dispense emergency contraception, in violation of a state regulation, because the owners objected to this form of contraception on religious grounds. The timing of this refusal to hear the case was significant: Justice Antonin Scalia had died just a few months earlier, depriving the Court’s Republican appointees of the majority they’d enjoyed for many years.

Without the votes he needed to take up the case, Justice Samuel Alito wrote an absolutely livid dissent in Stormans, accusing the state of “hostility to pharmacists whose religious beliefs regarding abortion and contraception are out of step with prevailing opinion in the State.” Notably, Alito’s opinion was joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, the most moderate member of the Court’s current six-justice conservative majority.

It is exceedingly likely, in other words, that if a similar case were to arise today — perhaps a case involving a pharmacist who objects, on religious grounds, to dispensing drugs like methotrexate, mifepristone, or misoprostol — that this Supreme Court would side with the pharmacist. It’s also likely that this Supreme Court would show similar solicitude to a doctor or other health provider who refuses to prescribe a medication because of a religious objection.

In a densely populated city, that kind of decision is likely to inconvenience many patients, who might have to walk several blocks to a different pharmacy in order to get their prescription filled. But in rural areas where patients could have to drive to another town to find another pharmacist, one pharmacist’s refusal to fill their prescription could be a very serious imposition — and that’s assuming that the pharmacist in the next town doesn’t also have religious objections to certain drugs.

In sparsely populated areas, in other words, patients are not only likely to struggle to find abortion care. Patients with common conditions like rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis may also struggle to fill their prescriptions, even if they take these drugs for reasons that have nothing to do with a pregnancy.

INDIANAPOLIS—Republicans knew the minute Roe v. Wade was overturned that they had a political problem, particularly with moderates in the suburbs who they need to vote for GOP candidates in the midterms.

The unfolding story of a 10-year-old rape victim who crossed state lines from Ohio for an abortion in Indiana is confirming just how damaging the issue may be.

“Oh, God no,” one prominent Republican strategist said, after members of his party suggested the victim should have carried the pregnancy to term. “Very bad,” said another. Or as one anti-abortion rights Indiana Republican strategist put it, “I’m not touching this story with a 10-foot-pole wrapped in a blanket wrapped in a whatever.”

In the three weeks since the Supreme Court’s ruling on Roe, Republicans poised for a winning midterm election have strained to keep public attention squarely on President Joe Biden’s weak job approval ratings and on inflation, fearful that abortion — a deeply felt issue that polls poorly for conservatives — could lift Democratic turnout and push moderates away from the GOP.

The case has become an instant flashpoint in the nation’s abortion wars, alarming Republicans as they try to use abortion to rally base voters without alienating the majority of Americans who say abortion should remain legal in at least some circumstances.

But the case of the pregnant 10-year-old has laid bare how uncontrollable GOP messaging around abortion may be. Not only were right-wing media outlets and Republican politicians who cast doubt on the story forced to backtrack once the facts of the case were confirmed, but the hits to Republicans appear likely to keep coming.

On Thursday, Jim Bopp, the National Right to Life Committee’s general counsel, inflamed the issue when he told POLITICO that the 10-year-old girl should have carried her pregnancy to term – a statement he later said resulted in him receiving death threats.

Despite what GOP leaders and strategists would prefer, the story is unlikely to fade quickly. Later this month, Indiana’s state legislature plans to convene a special session explicitly to pass new curbs on abortion, likely becoming the first state to do so in the wake of the Dobbs decision that reversed the national right to abortion enshrined by Roe in 1973.

“These are the kind of things that are going to breathe life into the Democrats’ hopes of maintaining some sort of coalition,” said John Thomas, a Republican strategist who works on House campaigns across the country. “I don’t think this is the dominant issue as we’re going into November, but these kinds of unforced errors are lifelines for the Democrats.”

Thomas said the Indiana case has already come up in at least one race he is working on and that he has advised candidates that, “You try to avoid the topic. You try to pivot to another issue.”

“Every day that we’re talking about anything but Biden’s cost of living is a wasted day politically,” said Scott Reed, a veteran Republican strategist. “You know, we’ve got a historic opportunity here this November, and let’s not blow it.”

Another national GOP strategist who works on several high-profile campaigns said Bopps’ comments could highlight exactly the parts of anti-abortion legislation that make moderate voters squeamish.

“The overall goal of the pro-life cause is to save lives and while I think his comments are well-intended, they don’t reflect the realities of this case or the electorate,” the strategist said. “His comments open the door for swing district Republicans to be labeled as extremists, eroding the gains we have made with suburban women that will be crucial to winning in 2022 and 2024.”

For weeks, the widely held expectation among both Democratic and Republican political professionals had been that Roe would almost certainly not be enough to stop Republicans from gaining a majority in the House in November, but that it could limit their gains, scaring off moderates and suburban women.

Abortion still ranks below other issues — most of all, the economy — as a top priority of voters, and the electoral landscape is so bleak for Democrats this year that they are likely to sustain widespread losses regardless of fallout from Roe. By November, said Dave Carney, a national Republican strategist based in New Hampshire, “it’s not going to matter what Bopp or whatever … his name is says. It’s not going to trump 9.1 percent inflation.”

But abortion has been ticking up as a priority since the court’s ruling on Roe. And in close House races and statewide contests in swing states, even a shift at the margins may be consequential.

Sean Walsh, a Republican strategist who worked in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, said the Indiana case will not only turn off moderate Republicans but will serve as a “motivator to get younger voters to vote — who usually are spotty in casting ballots.”

“It hurts because it sets the frames [of] the GOP position as ‘extreme,’” said Mike Madrid, a Republican strategist who was a co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “This particular case may not be remembered in a few weeks but the steady drip of stories coming will have a definite cumulative impact.”

For Republicans in Washington, focus on the most conservative elements of the party’s positioning on abortion may be unavoidable. Of the 13 states with trigger bans that have kicked in or are soon to in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, only five contain exceptions for rape or incest.

Mike O’Brien, an Indiana Republican operative and former legislative director for former Gov. Mitch Daniels, said the 10-year-old’s case is likely to focus the legislative debate on such exceptions.

“I suspect that those who were already hoping for a bill with exceptions will point to this as an example of a horrific situation where options are necessary,” he told POLITICO. “But legislators aren’t going to get off that easy with the Indiana pro-life lobby who already doubled down on a bill with no exceptions.”

In South Carolina, where lawmakers passed legislation in 2021 banning abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity, usually around six weeks of pregnancy, the legislature is considering going further. State Sen. Sandy Senn, the only Republican senator to vote against the measure, said she suspects many Republican women, like her, may be “pro-life” but “against forced birth” — she believes abortion should be legal through the first trimester. She says that harsher bans may spur voters to take it out on Republicans in November.

“Their voices might be heard at the ballot box when many women vote single issue on the abortion issue regardless of party affiliation,” Senn said. “It is nonsense to demand rape and incest victims, many of whom are children themselves, to carry children through birth just because a heartbeat is capable of detection.”

Even Republicans who oppose such exceptions are doubtful of the politics of it. South Carolina state Rep. John McCravy, who is chairing a special ad hoc committee on abortion, personally opposes exceptions in the case of rape or incest. But he isn’t sure whether his Republican colleagues feel the same way.

He said if legislation passes out of committee without rape and incest exceptions, he anticipates the vote could be much tighter than proponents may expect.

“If we get this bill through the Judiciary [Committee] and it’s got no exceptions in it, and it gets to the floor, I think it’ll be a close vote,” McCravy said.

Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life, said he will press lawmakers in his state — who banned abortions after the detection of fetal cardiac activity in 2019 with no exceptions for rape and incest — to not change their minds on exceptions when they meet later this year.

Endorsed candidates, he said, signed surveys saying they wouldn’t support such exceptions. Gonidakis added that he believes the 10-year-old should have been able to legally receive an abortion under Ohio law because of the health risks of carrying a pregnancy to term at that age. But whether the law needs to be clarified to make that more explicit for doctors fearing prosecution is a question for state lawmakers, he said.

“That’s a policy decision we should discuss at the statehouse, both pro-choicers and pro-lifers. That’s why we have a legislature. Let’s go have that conversation and sit down and talk about it,” Gonidakis said.

In Indiana, Destiny Wells, a former deputy state attorney general who is also the Democratic nominee for secretary of state, said in an interview that she hoped the case would make anti-abortion lawmakers think twice about the impact of their legislation.

“I would hope that the state of Ohio expecting a 10-year-old to carry her rapist’s child being brought to national light would slow down anti-abortion legislation,” she said.

It’s unclear if it will. Spokespersons for both of Indiana’s state legislative chambers did not make any caucus members available for interviews to discuss whether the specific case would shape their legislative approach.

Asked whether the high-profile nature of the 10-year-old’s case complicated the path toward further abortion restrictions in the special session scheduled to begin July 25, a former longtime veteran Indiana GOP lawmaker told POLITICO: “I think everyone is aware of the case, but I don’t think it will be a driving factor.” He added that he expects exceptions ultimately to include rape, incest, and life of the mother.

“More important is how they seek to address pressure from interest groups on both sides of the issue,” he said, “whose viewpoints may not align with the majority sentiment of the general public.”

Joe Manchin is forcing Democrats into a brutal choice: Take a deal now to lower the costs of health care premiums and prescription drugs, or try to negotiate a larger bill in September that includes climate and tax reform with no guarantee it will pass.

The West Virginia Democrat said Friday that he wants to see another month of inflation numbers before considering legislation that might increase taxes on some higher-income Americans and plow hundreds of billions of dollars into the energy sector. On Thursday Manchin “unequivocally” rejected July or August approval of Democrats’ proposed energy investments and tax increases in a meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, according to a person briefed on the meeting.

Manchin told West Virginia radio host Hoppy Kercheval that he’s not cutting off negotiations with Schumer. But when it comes to the legislation that would spend $500 billion and raise $1 trillion in revenues, he advised his colleagues, "come back the first of September and pass this legislation if it's a good piece of legislation.”

“If you're on a political deadline, and it has to be done in July, the one thing you know you can get done is basically … reducing drug prices, letting Medicare negotiate, that saves about $280 billion. over 10 years. Take 40 billion of that and extend the Affordable Care Act, the discounts that people were getting,” Manchin said.

Democrats are reeling after Manchin's communication to Schumer indicated that climate change and tax provisions are unworkable for any party-line bill considered this summer. Fury is building within the party, with Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) questioning whether Manchin should continue to chair the Senate's Energy committee.

And since Manchin stopped short of agreeing to vote for anything bigger in September pending inflation numbers due next month, Democrats would plunge into uncertainty if they don't take the smaller deal on the table.

Asked about Schumer’s response when he conveyed his views Thursday, Manchin replied: “He says, ‘Are you telling me you won’t do the other right now?’ I said, ‘Chuck, it’s wrong. It’s not prudent to do the other right now.’”

The Thursday night meeting between Schumer and Manchin blew up weeks of discussions over a larger deficit reduction package and potentially leaves just a slim health-care focused bill as a option for Democrats hoping to send far more expansive legislation to President Joe Biden’s desk. Health care premiums are typically set in the summer, so if Democrats waited until September they’d risk infuriating voters before the midterms — with no ironclad assurance from Manchin that he’d agree to a larger proposal.

The health care deal Manchin offered would reduce premiums for two years; Democrats were seeking a permanent solution due to Manchin’s own past insistence that new programs not be made temporary and were all paid for.

Manchin himself first proposed this year keeping a so-called reconciliation bill, which can avoid a GOP filibuster, focused on deficit reduction, climate spending, tax increases on the wealthy and corporations as well as prescription drug reform.

But the influential centrist soured intensely this week on the contours of that package as inflation continued dogging the economy, telling reporters on Wednesday that it was unclear what beyond prescription drugs Democrats could accomplish.

"All of our efforts should be: How do we reduce the gas prices, the high prices of energy, the high prices of food, all of these things: that’s every day living. And everyone’s talking about everything except though things," Manchin said in an interview earlier this week. "Unless you can get your financial house in order, you’re not going to get inflation under control."

Manchin’s rejection of Schumer’s offers for broader legislation sparked deep frustrations from progressives, particularly those who saw Democrats' control of Congress and the White House as a long-sought opportunity to rein in carbon emissions. It could be several years before Democrats find themselves with control of both chambers of Congress and the White House and the ability to unilaterally pass pieces of their long-term agenda.

In a rare statement criticizing a colleague, Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.) called Manchin's position "infuriating" and said that the "world is literally burning up while he joins every single Republican to stop strong action" on climate change.

"It's important that every young person, every activist, the majorities of this country who are demanding climate action understand very clearly this is not the Democrats," said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) in an interview. "This is one man named Joe Manchin. When it comes to the most important existential issue of our time, this man is a wrecking ball."

Democrats were willing to make severe concessions for Manchin to try and get something more expansive done this summer. Schumer offered to send half the bill’s new tax revenues to deficit reduction, cut subsidies for electric vehicles, nix direct payments to companies that produce consumer clean energy and even support permitting reform for more drilling, according to the Democrat briefed on the talks.

Manchin had sought to shave down an energy package originally set at more than $500 billion to $300 billion or less. He balked privately at sending money to the EV industry and the Direct Payment program.

Despite his general support for increasing taxes on corporations, Manchin said on Kercheval’s show that he was unwilling to install a 15 percent corporate minimum tax rate at the moment because of worries that “other countries aren't following suit … we took that off the table.” He said Friday that conversations about energy policy with Schumer were "positive."

Schumer also offered an energy deal to Manchin that didn't include tax increases that the centrist is worried about, like corporate taxes, the Democrat briefed on the negotiations said on Friday. Manchin rejected that as well.

Democrats are seeking to raise taxes on very high earners, force some so-called "pass-through" companies owners to contribute more in Medicare taxes and crack down on low tax corporations.

This February, Manchin laid out what he might be able to support: investments in energy, lowering prescription drug costs, reducing the deficit and tax reform. He has consistently said he supports rolling back the 2017 GOP tax cuts.

Democrats may decide to take Manchin’s slim offer given the insurance premium hikes that will occur this fall without action on health care and the party’s long-sought goal of lowering drug prices. What’s more, it would stave off a political disaster for the party trying to keep its tenuous hold on the evenly split Senate.

But that would be just a fraction of what Democrats once set out to do.

Last year they laid out a package costing trillions of dollars and reshaping the country’s education, tax, climate and housing policies. And just a year ago Manchin signed a document with Schumer indicating potential support for a $1.5 trillion bill.

The House eventually passed the smaller Build Back Back Better bill. But Manchin rejected it in December. In March he laid out a blueprint of a potential deal: “The revenue producing [measures] would be taxes and drugs. The spending is going to be climate.”

As he ended his interview with Kercheval, Manchin insisted he wasn't pulling out of talks with Schumer. In vintage Manchin style, he said that "I'm not stopping ... I am where I have been."

Josh Siegel contributed to this report.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but … monkeypox is coming for us. In fact, according to epidemiologists and public health officials, it’s already here. And although we have a vaccine that’s approved to prevent the virus, the red tape took forever to cut. 

Monkeypox is quickly spiraling into epidemic levels in the U.S., The Washington Post reports. But thankfully, The Daily Beast reports that Thursday, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)  granted certification for over 1 million doses of vaccine ready for distribution. But, damn, the FDA certainly took its time.

Jynneos is manufactured by Bavarian Nordic, a company that is headquartered in Denmark. In order for the shots to get to the U.S., they need to be flown in on “special planes,” says Peter Marks, who oversees vaccines for the FDA—planes that are able to keep the shots at the correct temperature. But, he adds, the planes can only “load 150,000 to 160,000 doses at a time.”

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Lawrence Gostin, director of the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law Center, told The Daily Beast that the shots stuck in Europe feel like “déjà vu all over again.”

“When you have a fast-moving, out-of-control spread of monkeypox in the United States, when the White House goes the extra mile and purchases a million doses, and then to not have them available to respond in a smart, effective way, it’s intolerable. There literally is no excuse,” Gostin says.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) describe monkeypox as a “rare disease caused by infection with the monkeypox virus.” The CDC adds that it is in the same family of viruses as smallpox, with similar but milder symptoms. It is rarely fatal.

The first U.S. cases of the monkeypox virus were discovered in May. Since then, over 1,000 cases in 41 states have been confirmed, and the government has repeatedly assured folks that there’s an ample supply of the vaccine in national stockpiles.

Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the Division of High Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the CDC’s Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases Center, told Reuters that the country has a “good stock” due to the possibility of needing it for smallpox.

White House coronavirus coordinator Ashish Jha confirmed to the Post that more doses of the vaccine are due from Denmark this week and “in the days and weeks ahead,” adding, “This is not some novel virus. We have tests, therapies, we have vaccines. … We are going to get our arms around this thing.”

Jha also noted that the monkeypox virus has disproportionately impacted gay and bisexual men. Which is why, the Post reports, health advocates from both Prep4All and Partners in Health have been pushing for more vaccines

Data scientist Michael Donnelly tells The Daily Beast, “The FDA has their heads in the ground…Thousands of GBTQ Americans are denied these vital vaccines every day while they sit in a warehouse in Denmark. It’s not a question of if this process will cause a delay—the delay is already here.”

However, with over 10,000 cases of the virus reported globally, the World Health Organization (WHO) is holding another emergency meeting on whether or not monkeypox should be declared a global health emergency, and public health authorities are demanding the FDA waive the vaccine’s inspection requirements.

New York City Councilman Erik Bottcher told The Daily Beast that “the FDA has already been contemplating it. We should absolutely use the European Medicines Agency’s determination that the Bavarian Nordic facility is in compliance.”

Thankfully, the FDA finally granted certification to the Danish medical facility that makes the vaccines today, and the shots will soon be on their way to the United States.

Amid ongoing criticism of its response, Politico reports that the White House is teaming up with GLAAD for a monkeypox briefing aimed at LGBTQ+ social media “influencers” in the hopes of sharing information with their followers: how it spreads, who's at risk, who is eligible for the vaccine, and why the community is at the center of the outbreak.

The bottom line is that we should know better. We’ve been through this before and we know that the faster we get shots in arms, the better off we all are.

House Republicans added yet another brick in their growing wall of far-right extremism this week: They voted unanimously against a measure requiring federal military and law enforcement officials to analyze and report on the breadth and depth of the presence of right-wing extremists, particularly neo-Nazis and white supremacists, within the ranks of the nation’s military and law enforcement.

The legislation—an amendment to the yearly National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) sponsored by Democratic Illinois Congressman Brad Schneider—passed anyway on Wednesday in a party-line 218-208 vote. But Republicans put up a fuss, with Congressman Andy Biggs of Arizona calling it an “Orwellian” measure that “denigrates law enforcement.”

Schneider’s amendment would require the FBI director, secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the secretary of Defense to publish a report analyzing white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity among the ranks of their soldiers and officers, and offer strategies for combating it.

The need for such an analytical report—both for the military and for the nation’s police forces—has been apparent for a long while. But it became profoundly apparent in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection, which involved significant numbers of military and police veterans, as well as some in active service members.

Both the Pentagon and large police agencies began grappling with the problem, but it’s unclear how effective and sustained their efforts have been, as well as how much such efforts have spread to state and local agencies. Certainly, incidents involving extremists within the ranks plotting acts of far-right terror keep bubbling up, as well as evidence of entrenched extremism within the ranks of elite military forces.

Predictably, these efforts have been opposed and undermined at every turn by an increasingly radicalized Republican political apparatus, and attacked relentlessly by right-wing pundits as an assault on conservatives—thus openly identifying themselves with neo-Nazi extremists.

Biggs’ attack on the amendment tried to claim the problem is nonexistent: “This amendment attempts to create a problem where none exists by requesting investigations into law enforcement and the armed services for alleged rampant white supremacists or white national sympathies,” he said.

The problem of extremist infiltration within the ranks of military and police has in fact long been documented over the past decade, well before Jan. 6. It also has been thoroughly documented since then, as in the recent Defense Department report titled “Insider Threat and Extremist Activity Within the DOD,” which found, among other things, that the numbers of violent extremist criminals with military backgrounds had been steadily mounting, but skyrocketed in 2021. It also details a number of different cases of extremists prepared to use their training and military weaponry to commit acts of mass terrorism.

Moreover, while the problem of the growing numbers intensifies the likelihood of acts of mass violence, the reality is that the presence of any of these extremists within the ranks poses a serious security risk/threat to other serving officers, as well as to the success of official operations. This is the primary reason they need to be found out and weeded out—the sooner, the better.

Schneider noted this during the debate on the House floor: “Such behavior, such extremism is a threat to us in all segments of society. There is no reason to believe that our military is any different,” he said.

“These are exceptions, they are rare, but we must do everything we can to identify them and to thwart them before risks become a reality,” he added.

The passage of Schneider’s amendment in the house does not ensure the report will be undertaken, however. While the House is expected to pass the full NDAA this week, the measure will then enter conference with the Senate, where it can always be stripped out.

In 2019, that’s exactly what they did: At the behest of Republicans, the conference committee excised language intended to screen military enlistees for “white nationalism” from the NDAA.

The House approved sweeping defense policy legislation on Thursday that marks the second straight year Democrats and Republicans endorsed significant increases to President Joe Biden’s Pentagon spending plan.

The $839 billion National Defense Authorization Act, approved in a 329-101 vote, is $37 billion more than the administration sought in military spending.

On top of the budget, the bill also rebukes several of Biden’s national security plans. Members maintained a nuclear cruise missile the administration planned to scrap, hampered F-16 sales to Turkey and limited the number of aircraft and ships the Pentagon can retire.

In a bipartisan blowout, 180 Democrats and 149 Republicans joined forces to pass legislation, which authorizes Pentagon spending levels and sets overarching military policy.

"It is the definition of a bipartisan bill," said Rep. Mike Rogers of Alabama, the top Republican on the Armed Services Committee.

It includes billions for more aircraft and ships than the Pentagon sought, following a bipartisan vote by the House Armed Services Committee to raise the bill’s price tag by $37 billion. Republicans and a sizable number of Democrats saw Biden’s request — already a $30 billion increase from the current year — as not enough to keep up with runaway inflation and match challenges posed by China and Russia.

The final Pentagon topline will have to be hammered out by House and Senate leaders in a compromise defense bill. And lawmakers must also pass a spending bill that makes the increase a reality.

Lawmakers this week slugged it out over the size of the Pentagon budget. The House rejected a push by progressive Reps. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) and Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) to revert the bill to Biden’s original $802 billion request, though most Democrats backed the effort.

House Armed Services Chair Adam Smith (D-Wash.) unsuccessfully fought against increasing the topline during a June committee markup. He backed the progressive push to slash the topline by $37 billion, arguing Biden’s budget level is sufficient to meet the military’s needs.

"It's not like we aren't spending money if we stick to the president's budget,” Smith said. “I think that's the number we should stick to."

Biden’s quest to sell F-16 fighters to Turkey also suffered a setback at the hands of Democrats, as the House approved an amendment that added hurdles to the jet sale to the NATO ally amid concerns about its purchase of Russian weapons, violation of neighboring countries’ territory and human rights concerns.

The measure was adopted 244-179, with 184 Democrats backing the proposal. If the provision becomes law, Biden will have to certify that the sale is critical to U.S. national security.

Progressives suffered another blow by the inclusion of funding to continue the development of a sea-launched nuclear cruise missile, a program the White House sought to kill. But lawmakers added guardrails on the weapon by requiring an analysis of alternatives and the declassification of the Pentagon’s Nuclear Posture Review before funding can be freed up.

Most contentious issues that could have broken up the bill’s bipartisan coalition were kept off the floor, most notably a progressive-led effort to expand troops’ access to abortions at military medical facilities.

Still, Democrats muscled through some of their priorities.

The House narrowly approved a provision from Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-D.C.) that grants the mayor of the District of Columbia the same control over its National Guard that governors of states have, whereas the city’s Guard powers are currently controlled by the president. The amendment was approved by the House after failing in the Armed Services Committee.

Democrats also voted to repeal the 2002 Iraq War authorization, a post-9/11 presidential power that authorized military force with Congress’ approval. Similar proposals have passed the House but haven’t yet seen action in the Senate, despite Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer claiming the move was a priority.

Other proposals with no connection to defense were wrapped into the bill. Rep. Ed Perlmutter (D-Colo.) won inclusion of his legislation to allow cannabis businesses to access the banking system. A bipartisan proposal from Reps. Mikie Sherrill (D-N.J.), Democratic Caucus Chair Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) and others were included to eliminate the federal sentencing disparity between drug offenses for powder and crack cocaine.

A heightened budget topline saw lawmakers propose purchasing more aircraft and ships, and prevent the military from retiring many older weapons as a money-saving move.

The bill authorizes 13 new warships, adding five ships the Navy didn’t request — an extra Arleigh Burke-class destroyer, another Constellation-class frigate, another fleet oiler and two expeditionary medical ships.

It also requires the Navy to keep five of the nine littoral combat ships it sought to retire. Lawmakers turned back a push by Smith to allow the service to scrap all nine hulls.

The bill also authorizes 64 F-35 fighter jets, three more than the Pentagon sought across the military services. Lawmakers approved $354 million to procure three more F-35C carrier-based jets for the Navy.

The legislation also authorizes $1 billion for the Pentagon’s account to arm Ukraine as Russia’s invasion grinds on in the eastern Donbas region.

It also includes a provision requiring cadets and midshipmen at the military service academies to fulfill their service obligations before playing professional sports.

The bill also greenlights a 4.6 percent pay raise for troops. And it codifies Biden’s executive order raising the minimum wage for federal contractors across the government to $15 per hour.

The Senate has not yet voted on its own defense bill.

Senate Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) told POLITICO that he aims to bring his version of the bill to the floor in September.

The 10-year-old Ohio girl who crossed state lines to receive an abortion in Indiana should have carried her pregnancy to term and would be required to do so under a model law written for state legislatures considering more restrictive abortion measures, according to the general counsel for the National Right to Life.

Jim Bopp, an Indiana lawyer who authored the model legislation in advance of the Supreme Court's decision overturning Roe v. Wade, told POLITICO on Thursday that his law only provides exceptions when the pregnant person’s life is in danger.

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp said in a phone interview on Thursday.

The story of the 10-year old rape victim forced to leave her home state to terminate a pregnancy has sparked a national conversation over the consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade and how far some states are willing to go to prohibit abortions.

The Columbus Dispatch reported on Wednesday that a 27-year-old man was charged with rape in connection with the case.

While Bopp’s model legislation, which was released in advance of the Supreme Court’s ruling late last month, encourages states to ban all abortions unless necessary to save the life of the pregnant person, it notes “it may be necessary in certain states to have additional exceptions, such as for a women pregnant as a result of rape or incest.”

“Unless her life was at danger, there is no exception for rape,” Bopp said. “The bill does propose exceptions for rape and incest, in my model, because that is a pro-life position, but it’s not our ideal position. We don’t think, as heartwrenching as those circumstances are, we don’t think we should devalue the life of the baby because of the sins of the father.”

It is currently legal to have an abortion in Indiana up to 22 weeks of pregnancy, though the state legislature is expected to hold a special session later this month to consider legislation that would ban abortion.

Republican legislative leaders have not shared details of the bill they plan to introduce, though abortion-rights proponents in the state are expecting the bill’s text to hew closely to Bopp’s model legislation.

Bopp said he believes it is “highly likely” Indiana’s legislature will pass a law during its special session that will “provide substantial protection to the unborn.”

“What the exact details of that are, I don’t know,” Bopp said.

According to the Office of Inspector General Department of Homeland Security (OIG), the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) erased “text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021.” The letter originally sent to the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General states that the messages were erased during what the USSS called  “a device-replacement program.”

Whether or not this is above board becomes even more questionable, according to OIG’s letter, when you consider that those erased text messages were “after OIG requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6.” On top of this, the letter reports that OIG inspectors have been stonewalled in their requests for “records of electronic communications” by the USSS.

RELATED STORY: The Jan. 6 committee dropping the hammer on Trump's coup strategist was worth the wait

The Secret Service’s involvement in the events of Jan. 6, 2021 and attempted coup d’etat have been under scrutiny for some time now. Vice President Mike Pence, who was key to Trump and “constitutional scholar” and coup architect John Eastman’s strategy, refused to leave the Capitol grounds when pressed by Secret Service.

The letter was first reported on by The Intercept’s Ken Klippenstein. Klippenstein also highlights exactly why the Secret Service’s text messages are potentially important to understand what exactly was happening behind the scenes on Jan. 6.

“People need to understand that if Pence had listened to the Secret Service and fled the Capitol, this could have turned out a whole lot worse,” a congressional official not authorized to speak publicly told The Intercept. “It could’ve been a successful coup, not just an attempted one.”

A spokesperson for the OIG would not comment on “ongoing reviews.”

UPDATE: The U.S. Secret Service has put out an official Statement. It’s very defensive and utterly preposterous.

“First, in January 2021, before any inspection was opened by OlG on this subject, the Secret Service began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In that process, data resident on some phones was lost.”

We should see someone explain this in front of the public and under oath. The idea that you could be so incompetent that you lose the single most important pieces of data in arguably the worst security scenario we have had in over two decades—and not have digital information backed up? That’s grounds for all kinds of people being fired, at the very least.

But that’s not what has happened here. That data is somewhere. Ask your provider.

Enlarge (credit: Smith Collection/Gado / Contributor | Archive Photos)

More than 10 million people rely on Ring video doorbells to monitor what's happening directly outside the front doors of their homes. The popularity of the technology has raised a question that concerns privacy advocates: Should police have access to Ring video doorbell recordings without first gaining user consent?

Ring recently revealed how often the answer to that question has been yes. The Amazon company responded to an inquiry from US Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), confirming that there have been 11 cases in 2022 where Ring complied with police "emergency" requests. In each case, Ring handed over private recordings, including video and audio, without letting users know that police had access to—and potentially downloaded—their data. This raises many concerns about increased police reliance on private surveillance, a practice that has long gone unregulated.

Ring says it will only "respond immediately to urgent law enforcement requests for information in cases involving imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person." Its policy is to review any requests for assistance from police, then make "a good-faith determination whether the request meets the well-known standard, grounded in federal law, that there is imminent danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requiring disclosure of information without delay."

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The amount of cryptocurrency flowing into privacy-enhancing mixer services has reached an all-time high this year as funds from wallets belonging to government-sanctioned groups and criminal activity almost doubled, researchers reported on Thursday.

Mixers, also known as tumblers, obfuscate cryptocurrency transactions by creating a disconnect between the funds a user deposits and the funds the user withdraws. To do this, mixers pool funds deposited by large numbers of users and randomly mix them. Each user can withdraw the entire amount deposited, minus a cut for the mixer, but because the coins come from this jumbled pool, it's harder for blockchain investigators to track precisely where the money went.

Significant money-laundering risk

Some mixers provide additional obfuscation by allowing users to withdraw funds in differing amounts sent to different wallet addresses. Others try to conceal the mixing activity altogether by changing the fee on each transaction or varying the type of deposit address used.

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