Apple demonstrated "passkeys" at WWDC 2022, a new biometric sign-in standard that could finally kill off the password for good. TechCrunch reports: Passkeys are based on the Web Authentication API (WebAuthn), a standard that uses public-key cryptography instead of passwords for authenticating users to websites and applications, and are stored on-device rather than on a web server. The digital password replacement uses Touch ID or Face ID for biometric verification, which means that rather than having to input a long string of characters, an app or website you're logging into will push a request to your phone for authentication.
During its WWDC demo of the password-free technology, Apple showed how passkeys are backed up within the iCloud Keychain and can be synced across Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV with end-to-end encryption. Users will also be able to sign in to websites and apps on non-Apple devices using an iPhone or iPad to scan a QR code and Touch ID or Face ID to authenticate. "Because it's just a single tap to sign in, it's simultaneously easier, faster and more secure than almost all common forms of authentication today," said Garrett Davidson, an Apple engineer on the Authentication Experience team.
It's Geeked Week, courtesy of Netflix, which means a smorgasbord of new teasers for upcoming series. Most notably, we got some new teaser footage for The Sandman, a teaser for the third and final season of Locke & Key, and a full trailer for the Resident Evil live-action series. There were also teasers for a new series from the creators of the masterful German series Dark, called 1899; Mike Flanagan's The Midnight Club; the anthology series Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities; and Wednesday, Tim Burton's new series focused on a grown-up Wednesday Addams.
(Spoilers for prior seasons of Locke & Key below.)
First teaser for The Sandman, adapted from Neil Gaiman's iconic graphic novels.
The Sandman
Sandman fans have longed for a screen adaptation of Neil Gaiman's iconic graphic novels for decades, and we're finally getting it, thanks to Netflix, executive producer David Goyer (Foundation), and showrunner Allan Heinberg. Gaiman has been heavily involved as an executive producer and has regularly enthused on social media about his delight about how the series turned out. If this teaser is any indication, we're inclined to agree. It certainly gets the look and feel of the graphic novels exactly right.
Not a great result from a fucking horrible line of cases
Southwest Airlines aircraft loading for morning flights at the Denver International Airport in 2015. | Joe Amon/The Denver Post via Getty Images
Southwest Airlines v. Saxon carves out the narrowest exception to one of the Court’s most egregious anti-worker decisions.
The Supreme Court handed down an extraordinarily narrow victory for an equally narrow subset of American workers on Monday. The upshot of the Court’s decision in Southwest Airlines v. Saxon is that workers who “frequently” load and unload cargo for airlines can sue their employers.
But it’s worth emphasizing again how narrow the Saxon decision is. Justice Clarence Thomas’s 8-0 opinion for the Court (Justice Amy Coney Barrett was recused from this case) benefits workers who load and unload cargo for airplanes that travel across state lines — and it may benefit no one else. And, if anything, it reaffirms a previous line of anti-worker decisions lionizing a practice known as “forced arbitration,” which allows companies to strip their employees of their right to sue the employer.
In the workplace, forced arbitration occurs when an employer requires its workers to give up their right to sue the company as a condition of their employment. Under the Court’s decisions in Circuit City v. Adams (2001) and Epic Systems v. Lewis (2018), most employers can order their workers to give up this right under pain of immediate termination.
Workers forced into arbitration may still bring any dispute they may have with their employer before a privatized arbitration system, but this system overwhelmingly favors corporate parties. A 2015 study of forced arbitration in the workplace found that workers are about half as likely to prevail before an arbiter as they are to prevail in litigation. And when workers do prevail in arbitration, they are typically awarded about a fifth as much money as a worker who prevails before a judge.
The decisions enabling forced arbitration in the workplace were wrongly decided. The Federal Arbitration Act of 1925 does require courts to enforce some contracts that provide for arbitration, but not employment contracts with forced arbitration provisions. As the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg explained in a 2015 dissent, the law was enacted to counter “the reluctance of some judges to enforce commercial arbitration agreements between merchants with relatively equal bargaining power.”
Not only was this law never intended to allow employers to force their workers into arbitration, it was never intended to apply to employment contracts at all. The Arbitration Act explicitly exempts employment contracts involving “workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”
Nevertheless, in Circuit City, the Court held that the Arbitration Act applies to nearly all workers — even most workers who are engaged in foreign or interstate commerce, under the Court’s current understanding of “commerce.”
That said, Circuit City did hold that “transportation workers” are exempt from forced arbitration, and the Saxon decision holds that workers who “load and unload cargo” for airlines are transportation workers. So, good for those workers. If you happen to be a worker whose job is to handle cargo for an airline, you should now have the right to sue your employer if they violate your legal rights.
But Saxon gave the Court the opportunity to revisit Circuit City more broadly — and it didn’t take that chance.Circuit City, with its egregious misreading of the Arbitration Act, remains good law. That means that the overwhelming majority of workers may still be victimized by forced arbitration.
Circuit City is an embarrassingly poorly reasoned decision
The Circuit City case turned on the proper way to read two separate provisions of the Arbitration Act. The first provides that contracts requiring arbitration typically shall be “valid, irrevocable, and enforceable.” This provision applies only to contracts regarding a “transaction involving commerce.”
The second relevant provision is the one that exempts workers from the Act. It provides that “nothing herein contained shall apply to contracts of employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce.”
To understand how to read these two provisions, it is helpful to understand some constitutional history — and particularly how the Supreme Court has changed its understanding of the word “commerce.” The word “commerce” appears in one of the most important provisions of the Constitution, which states that Congress may “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes.”
When the Federal Arbitration Act was enacted in 1925, the Supreme Court defined the word “commerce” very narrowly — too narrowly to permit Congress to regulate most American workplaces.
Indeed, seven years before the Arbitration Act became law, in Hammer v. Dagenhart (1918), the Supreme Court struck down a federal law attempting to ban child labor. Dagenhart held that Congress’s power to regulate “commerce ... among the several states” was limited to a power to regulate “the transportation of persons[,] land [or] property, as well as the purchase, sale and exchange of commodities.”
So, as the Federal Arbitration Act was originally understood in 1925, all employment contracts were beyond the scope of the law. Again, the law applies to any “contract evidencing a transaction involving commerce.” But, in 1925, only workplaces that transported persons or property, or that traded in commodities, were subject to the Arbitration Act.
Similarly, the provision stating that contracts involving “employment of seamen, railroad employees, or any other class of workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” would have been read to exempt all workers who would otherwise be subject to the law — that is, all workers who work in transportation or commodities trade.
During the Franklin Roosevelt administration, however, the Court abandoned Dagenhart’s narrow reading of the word “commerce”; it explicitly overruled Dagenhart in 1941. Under the modern reading of the Constitution, Congress’s authority to regulate commerce extends broadly to all “activities that substantially affect interstate commerce.” Among other things, that means that nearly every workplace is subject to congressional regulation.
Thus, if the word “commerce” is given its modern meaning, the Arbitration Act’s provision extending the law to all contracts “evidencing a transaction involving commerce” does apply to nearly all workplaces. But the provision exempting “workers engaged in foreign or interstate commerce” should also be read broadly to exempt virtually every workplace in the United States.
But Circuit City read the first provision broadly, to apply the Arbitration Act to every workplace. Then it read the second provision narrowly, to apply only to transportation workers.
This is anachronistic and wrong. Again, as originally understood in 1925, the law would have been read to apply to no workplaces at all. And, even if the law is read using a modern definition of the word “commerce,” that word appears in the statute twice and should be given the same meaning both times.
Instead, Circuit City defined the word one way when determining the scope of the Arbitration Act itself, then defined it in a different, much narrower way when interpreting the exemption for workers engaged in interstate commerce.
This was wrong, and it has been a disaster for workers who can now be shunted into an arbitration system that does not adequately protect their legal rights.
Saxon creates an exceedingly narrow exception from Circuit City’s broader rule
Again, the Saxon decision concedes that many workers who load or unload cargo for airlines meet the definition of a “transportation worker.” That’s good news for them.
But the decision is exceedingly narrow. Among other things, Justice Thomas’s opinion rejects the argument that airline workers “as an industry” are transportation workers exempt from forced arbitration. Saxon’s exemption applies only to workers who “physically load and unload cargo on and off airplanes on a frequent basis.”
It is far from clear whether other airline employees — supervisors who oversee the unloading of cargo but do not handle that cargo, airport workers who check passengers’ tickets, workers who sell tickets, etc. — are exempt from forced arbitration. These workers could very well be the subject of future litigation.
The upshot is that, while Saxon does exempt some workers from forced arbitration, the decision reaffirms Circuit City’s erroneous reading of the Federal Arbitration Act, and it suggests that any future carveouts from forced arbitration will be narrow.
While Latino advocates like Voto Latino and allies like media watchdog Media Matters for America have previously launched significant efforts monitoring Spanish-language media, it still doesn’t match the effectiveness of just outright owning some of these stations, WLRM Miami notes. A major announcement last week could be a game-changer.
“A group of Latinos, including several prominent Democrats, have signed an agreement to buy 18 radio stations in 10 cities in a $60 million cash deal,” including Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Houston, NBC News reports. Among the stations that have been purchased is Miami’s Radio Mambí, described by WLRM as an “ultraconservative” outlet popular among the Cuban community.
“As Latinos drive population growth in the United States, they continue to navigate the ocean of information on what is happening in the world and their place in it,” Stephanie Valencia said in a statement reported by Forbes. “With minority media on the decline, now is the time to be investing in more resources to create content for Latinos by Latinos. Through the unique combination of creative content and new and existing media platforms to serve our community, we can embrace cultural pride and collectively empower Latinos.”
Valencia, cofounder of polling firm Equis Labs, will head the Latino Media Network (LMN) alongside Jess Morales Rocketto, who is political director for the National Domestic Workers Alliance. The two raised tens of millions of dollars for the effort, and tapped investors and advisors including actor and activist Eva Longoria, Emmy-winning journalist María Elena Salinas, and Latina magazine founder Christy Haubegger.
WLRM reports that the deal must still be approved by the Federal Communications Commission, a process that could go into next year. But if given the thumbs up, the stations could reach as many as a third of the nation’s Latinos, the group told NBC News. “We believe in the power and reach of radio and it remains a main source of media for a significant number of our community,” Rocketto said in that report. “We hope to create relevant content for radio and other audio platforms with content that our community can trust and rely on.”
The Voto Latino and Media Matters effort announced earlier this year, Latino Anti-Disinformation Lab, has the media watchdog monitoring Spanish-language media, as well as internet groups and messaging apps, for misinformation, with Voto Latino tasked with speaking with the community. It came shortly before the March 2022 launch of Americano, a conservative outlet targeting Spanish speakers and headed by Michael Caputo, a disgraced official with the previous administration. Caputo was revealed to have celebrated blocking scientists from accurately reporting on the novel coronavirus pandemic.
“For those concerned about the disinformation problem harming Democrats' chances with Hispanics, this is a Defcon 1 moment,” Miami-based pollster Fernand Amandi told NBC News during the conservative outlet’s launch. “We should worry,” adding that the “ultimate act of disinformation is to pretend that this is not a big problem.” José Alonso Muñoz, deputy communications director for United We Dream, said “there has never been a greater need for Democrats to invest in sustained outreach to Latino voters.”
WLRN reports that “talk show hosts at stations like Mambí labeled then-presidential candidate Joe Biden a ‘socialista’ who would turn the U.S. into a left-wing dictatorship like Venezuela's.” Valencia told WLRN that while “[t]here are elements of Radio Mambí that are really important to preserve," the sort of inflammatory lies made during the campaign could be a thing of the past. Could be, because like with any other reporting, there has to be constant vigilance.
CUPERTINO, Calif.—Exactly two years after Apple first announced the M1, its direct successor has finally been revealed. Apple executives and product managers presented details about the new chip—predictably dubbed the M2—during its annual developer conference.
The M2 is an improvement in many ways on the M1, but it's not meant to one-up the higher-end M1 Pro, M1 Max, or M1 Ultra seen in the MacBook Pro and Mac Studio. M2 Pro, Max, and Ultra variants have higher CPU and GPU core counts that will still outspeed the M2's performance improvements.
Like its predecessor, the M2 has eight CPU cores—four high-performance cores and four low-power efficiency cores. Apple says it will perform about 18 percent faster than the M1's CPU It also bumps the GPU cores from eight to 10, providing a 35 percent performance boost, though as with M1 we may see multiple versions of the M2 chip that ship with different numbers of GPU cores.
Is anyone surprised? Another blatant racist in the GOP camp, with prominent Trump and Thiel backing
Just when you think Republicans can’t get any more loathsome, another steps up to unleash even more racist, conspiratorial rhetoric. Arizona Republican Senate candidate Blake Masters is the latest gem.
Masters acknowledges that there is a problem with gun violence in the nation, but it’s not the proliferation of weapons or the fact that it’s easier to get a gun than Sudafed. Nope. The “gangs” are the problem, he claims. “It’s people in Chicago and St. Louis shooting each other,” he says, and “very often, Black people, frankly.”
Now we get it: It’s the Black people. If we just got rid of them, we wouldn’t have any more gun violence. Why didn’t we think of that before? Oh, and by the way, Masters alleges that the “Democrats don’t want to do anything” about gang violence.
But just when you think Masters is racist, he doubles down and calls Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson an “affirmative action candidate” for the Supreme Court.
“It’s her legacy. She was chosen for her race and gender, and I think that’s pretty messed up,” Masters says, claiming that “most Americans want to stop obsessing about race all the time.” And then he blamed the Democrats again, only this time it's for “dividing people on the basis of race.”
Masters is skillful at diverting attention. Business Insider reports that at one point, Masters’ campaign posted a pledge on its website plainly stating he would only vote to confirm federal judges “who understand that Roe and Griswold and Casey were wrongly decided and that there is no constitutional right to abortion.” That has since been removed. So Masters not only claims that President Biden nominated Justice Jackson based only on her race and gender, he also wants Roe overturned as soon as possible.
To give you some background on Masters, he’s a tech entrepreneur who’s generously supported by Peter Thiel, a conservative Silicon Valley billionaire. He’s also a darling of the white nationalist group VDARE for his xenophobic stance on immigrants, according to The Daily Beast.
Trump has called Masters “a great modern-day thinker,” CNN reports, and Fox News’ Tucker Carlson refers to him as “the future of the Republican Party,” according to Politico.
“President Trump is a great man and a visionary,” Masters said in a statement to CNN. “It’s incredible to have his endorsement. I wish everyone could know how this feels.”
Masters is also a “Big Lie” theorist and a proponent of the “great replacement” ideology.
“Blake knows that the crime of the century took place, he will expose it, and also never let it happen again,” Trump said.
The Associated Press reports that he has accused the Democrats of attempting to bring immigrants into the U.S. in order “to change the demographics of our country.”
But let’s get back to Masters’ blaming of gun violence on Black Americans.
Perhaps the Stanford University grad, who “hates” Silicon Valley but has financially benefited from it, missed or didn’t take any classes in American history. He seems to be blanking on the parts about racial disparity as a result of centuries and generations of oppression and bias, and how this country is based on a system that keeps Black and brown communities chronically underfunded and over-incarcerated.
And by the way, most mass shootings are committed by white Americans, according to Statista Research Department. “Between 1982 and June 2022, 68 out of the 129 mass shootings in the United States were carried out by white shooters. … Broadly speaking, the racial distribution of mass shootings mirrors the racial distribution of the U.S. population as a whole.”
What Republicans like Masters need to do is stop pointing the finger at everyone and everything except guns, the ease with which Americans can get guns, and how we’re perpetually incapable of passing even the most modest of sensible gun reforms.
We need to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and bump stocks today. And we need to have required background checks and waiting periods. This is not a Black people issue or a gang issue. This is a gun issue.
Three police officers have been placed on ‘non-disciplinary paid administrative leave' after witnessing a drowning and failing to intervene, according to a news release from Tempe, Arizona, officials.
The incident occurred on May 28, when officers arrived at the scene after a reported disturbance between a couple, who were allegedly homeless. After officers spoke to the couple, they then proceeded to check their records. While the police were checking those records, a man identified as Sean Bickings jumped into the Tempe Town Lake.
While recordings indicate the officers told him not to jump in, what is startling is that they failed to help him when he began to struggle and beg for help. Body camera footage released Friday depicts the man jumping into the water and how the officers reacted. However, the 11-minute video cuts off before Bickings begs the officers for help. Authorities claimed that the incident was too sensitive to share. Instead, since the video ends before the drowning, a transcript released by Tempe police details the entire incident.
Before Bickings says he is drowning, an officer can be heard saying, “How far do you think he is going to be able to swim?”
The transcript then details the events that followed.
“I'm drowning,” Bickings said.
According to the transcript, an officer then replied: “Come back over to the pylon.”
After Bickings said, “I can't, I can't,” another officer replied: “OK, I'm not jumping in after you.”
Bickings then begged, moments before he died: “Please help me. Please, please, please. I can't touch. Oh God, Please help me. Help me.”
His wife, who was still on the scene, also begged officers to intervene: “I'm just distraught because he's drowning right in front of you and you won't help.”
According to the transcript, one of the officers then threatened to put her in his police car unless she calmed down.
“He’s everything I got,” she said. “I can’t lose him, he’s going to die.”
An officer was also recorded telling her that someone is getting a boat to rescue Bickings, but by then it was too late— Bickings had disappeared below the surface of the water.
Andy Anderson, a former assistant chief with Phoenix Police, told 12News, “This is not a lake patrol team that has the equipment to do a water rescue, these are street cops.”
It is unclear at this time how much time passed between him entering the water and then drowning.
According to The Washington Post, officials said Bickings swam no more than 40 yards before he became distressed and“soonwent under and did not resurface.” The Arizona Republic reported a that team with Tempe Fire Medical Rescue pulled Bickings’ body out of the water around 11:30 AM.
Investigations into the incident are ongoing. According to News12, the three unnamed police officers have been placed on paid administrative leave pending investigations into the incident and police response by both the state Department of Public Safety and the Scottsdale Police Department.
Tempe City Manager Andrew Ching and Police Chief Jeff Glover called the death “a tragedy” and Glover met with the man’s mother, the news release said.
China aims to double its wind and solar capacity by 2025, according to a new road map that also allows for more coal-fired power plants to bolster energy security. From a report: The world's biggest polluter earlier estimated it needs to double wind and solar use by 2030 to deliver on its pledges under the Paris climate accord. The latest plan -- if implemented -- means China might reach that goal earlier. But Beijing has also ramped up reliance on coal-fired power plants in recent months to support its ailing economy as the Ukraine war pushes up global energy prices. The country's central economic planner said 33 percent of power supply to the national grid will come from renewable sources by 2025, up from 29 percent in 2020, in a document released Wednesday. "In 2025, the annual power generation from renewable energy will reach about 3.3 trillion kilowatt-hours... and the wind power and solar power generation will double," the plan said. China, already the world's largest producer of renewable energy, has accelerated investment in solar and wind projects to tackle pollution at home, which researchers say kills millions every year. Beijing has pledged to peak emissions by 2030 and become carbon neutral by 2060.
And he's happy to fuck over the country and his own party
The most sought-after man in Washington, D.C., these days is likely also one of the least popular, at least with Democrats. That would be Sen. Joe Manchin, the West Virginia Democrat who has decided to make himself king by being the primary obstacle to the Senate achieving anything. He might think he’s in charge because of the criticality of his single vote, but he’s actually playing Mitch McConnell’s patsy.
We saw it on infrastructure, when Senate Republicans ran to him to lock him up for months in negotiations, effectively shutting down all the momentum President Biden and Democrats had going into the process following the quick enactment of the American Rescue Plan. On voting rights, when there was a strong and unified push, they did it again. McConnell’s useful tool Susan Collins reached out with an alternative, which has been creeping along with no visible progress. Now it’s happening again with gun regulation.
The strategy on McConnell’s part seems clear—keep Manchin tied up in these never-ending “bipartisan” talks, and keep anything from actually happening. And keep him away from Chuck Schumer, or at least be there after those meetings to whisper poison in his ear about anything Schumer might be asking for, specifically using the budget reconciliation bill that is available to Democrats until the end of September to pass meaningful economic help to the American people.
Schumer and Manchin have been having regular, private talks on using that budget bill to pass the parts of the Build Back Better plan he says he’s open to—something on climate, lowering prescription drug costs, and maybe some corporate tax increases. Manchin himself has said whatever he agrees to has to deal with inflation (he doesn’t explain how) and reduce the deficit.
Fellow Democrats are trying to get him focused on the one part of inflation that’s going to bite them all in the ass—in November if they don’t do something about it—ending expanded subsidies for Affordable Care Act policies. Come October, people are going to start getting their premium notices and finding out they can’t afford to keep their insurance.
House Democrats in swing districts are getting pretty damned anxious about that problem. Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-IL) led a group of 26 fellow Democrats in writing to Schumer and Speaker Nancy Pelosi to make the reconciliation bill includes this fix. “These out-of-pocket cost increases are imminent: starting this autumn, when enrollees begin receiving notices of their premium increases for 2023 health plans, our constituents will find that the same high-quality coverage that they have been able to afford thanks to the American Rescue Plan will now be out of reach,” the lawmakers wrote.
“We cannot allow the progress we have made to be temporary,” they added. “We must make lower out-of-pocket costs and expanded coverage a permanent pillar of our health care system, and reconciliation is our only chance to get this done.”
Manchin hasn’t said no to that yet, but he’s also not said yes. He’s probably been too busy basking in the fact that he’s in such high demand for Republicans.
Every examination of the shooting and the police reaction in the town of Uvalde, Texas, only seems to make things worse. Not only has the story of the events been shifting since the first day, every one of those shifts seems to be toward greater levels of both staggering incompetence and something that’s very difficult to distinguish from plain old cowardice.
On Friday, The New York Times explained more of how the first moments of the tragic shooting unfolded. And, surprise ... It’s worse.
Worse as in the chief of the school district police arrived on the scene just two minutes after the shooting began, and—lacking a police radio—the chief got on a cellphone and left a message for the remainder of the Uvalde police over a landline. That message: “The gunman has an AR-15, he told them, but he is contained; we need more firepower and we need the building surrounded.”
That single message, delivered over the phone by the just-arrived chief of the school district police, would become the operating order of the day. No one countered it. No one overruled it, even as more shots—and pleading phone calls—came from the room where the gunman was “contained.” And that chief, who commanded a six-person team with no experience handling such a situation, would remain the officer in charge throughout the next hours.
When a tactical team of border control officers eventually breached the door, they did so not because Uvalde police had reevaluated. They went in against the orders of that chief, who was ordering them to stop right up until the last second.
Despite lacking a police radio, and apparently having no experience at all with either hostage or active shooter situations, that phone call made Chief Pete Arredondo the incident commander. His regular command was not the actual Uvalde Police, but just the six-person school district police.
It’s now known that police from at least 14 different jurisdictions and agencies arrived on the scene in the following hour, crowding into the hallway outside the room where the shooter was executing children. That absolutely included the Uvalde Police, who were allegedly trained to handle exactly the kind of active shooter situation underway. No one ever seems to have suggested that an officer with more knowledge take charge.
Arredondo’s order held. Even though the police in the hallway, and both parents and police gathered outside, could still hear “sporadic gunfire” from inside the room, no one tried to go in. No one tried to go in even though there were getting calls like this from 10-year-old Khloie Torres, who whispered into her phone from inside the room.
“There is a lot of bodies. I don’t want to die, my teacher is dead, my teacher is dead, please send help, send help for my teacher, she is shot but still alive.”
It’s unclear which teacher Torres was referencing, but it’s also come out in the last two days that teacher Eva Mireles, one of the two teachers who died in that room, called her husband, Ruben Ruiz. Ruiz is one of those six officers in the school district police. An officer under Arredondo’s command. Ruiz continued to follow the command that no one should go into the room, even when his wife was dying on the other side of a plain wooden door.
Khloie Torres pleaded on the phone—quietly, quietly—for over 15 minutes. At the 11-minute mark, gunfire can be heard on that the recording of her call. She called back twice more.
Police were there in great numbers. They were aware that there were still people at risk on the other side of that door—children and teachers, some of them already wounded. They knew the shooter was still engaged in executing those people inside the room. But they didn’t go in.
They had on hand every member of a team that had gone through training in how to handle an active shooter situation less than two months earlier.
That’s eight AR-15s, a tactical shotgun, and body armor.
The police department is by far the largest expense in the town of Uvalde, Texas, consuming over 40% of the town’s budget. For a town of just 13,000 residents, it somehow justifies the expense of a SWAT team. This wasn’t a matter of Barney Fife fumbling in his pocket for a single bullet. These were supposedly well-trained and definitely well-equipped officers on the scene—standing outside a door, and very definitely listening as people were being executed.
When that door was finally opened, it didn’t take some kind of battering ram. It took a janitor’s key.
The group that finally went in wasn’t a SWAT unit. They weren’t from Uvalde. They were an “ad hoc” group containing members of two federal agencies, along with a sheriff’s deputy, who simply couldn’t stand it anymore. “They were done waiting for permission,” said one member of the group.
But as they started to go in, they got a direct order from the police on the scene. That order was “Do not breach.” By that time, there were over 140 police on hand. And the order was still not to go in.
They ignored the order, entered the room, and killed the gunman.
The Fox Corporation at one time not only held an LGBTQ friendly employer status from the Human Rights Campaign, it proudly boasted about it. But the company this past April lost that status due to its increasingly bigoted and intentionally inflammatory coverage. “Fox’s June 1 segments attacking trans people continued this trend,” Media Matters reports. June 1, of course, is the start of LGBTQ Pride Month.
Media Matters reports that Lia Thomas, a University of Pennsylvania athlete who is also transgender, was “repeatedly misgendered” by contributor Katie Pavlich during a Fox and Friends appearance. Thomas was in fact the subject of transphobic attacks on at least three other Fox News programs. Media Matters said that on The Ingraham Angle, a guest “expressed opposition to the existence of trans children.” All of this on the first day of Pride alone.
“Earlier this year, Fox aired 170 segments discussing trans people in just three weeks,” Media Matters continued. “Much of this coverage spread dangerous lies about the trans community and repeatedly invoked the long-debunked myth that trans people pose a threat to minors and seek to groom them. And Fox’s previous coverage vilifying Thomas included deadnaming her and even more misgendering of her.”
Fox News has also been a major actor in promulgating “grooming” accusations against LGBTQ people. “Tucker Carlson recently wondered aloud why fathers aren’t storming classrooms and beating up teachers who talk about identity,” Daily Kos’ Marissa Higgins wrote in April. “Teachers pushing sex values on your third grader, why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher?” he falsely claimed at the time.
LGBTQ activist and journalist Michelangelo Signorile in April detailed Carlson’s “pathological obsession” with gay people, including a disturbing incident while he was a student at Trinity College. Signorile noted a yearbook entry “listing the ‘Dan White Society’ as a club to which Carlson stated he belonged.” Dan White is the San Francisco elected official who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk in 1978. “There is no Dan White Society, at least not any that any other student at Trinity listed as having been a member,” Signorile wrote.
Vanity Fair also in April reported that Fox Corporation’s LGBTQ employees were “fed up” with the “hateful” coverage. I mean, good that they’re mad about it, but it’s not like this is anything new. A separate report from Media Matters found that the propaganda network has been attacking the legally protected public school education of immigrant children for at least a decade now.
“In January, Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade said the Biden administration is ‘poisoning these cities, and these towns, and these schools, with people that don't belong there,’ regarding people who recently crossed the border,” Media Matters reported. Once again, that fucking Fox and Friends. Kilmeade in particular really doesn’t like migrant children, also complaining about them during segments in September and October.
Then last month, the network obsessed about brown infants getting baby formula. But Fox News employees seemed to be okay with that. I guess its much easier to tolerate disgusting attacks when it doesn’t concern you.
Florida has turned into a complete GOP hellscape. Imagine what had happened if just a few more people had actually voted. DeSantis barely won the governor's race, but he governs like he won by 80 points
TALLAHASSEE, Fla. — The Special Olympics reversed its Covid-19 vaccine mandate for upcoming competitions in Orlando after Florida threatened event organizers with a $27.5 million fine over the requirement.
The Special Olympics issued a statement on Friday saying it will lift its mandate as directed by state officials on May 27 “based upon the Florida Department of Health’s interpretation of Florida law.”
This year’s Special Olympics USA Games are set to kick off Sunday and will wrap up on June 12. The event is expected to attract 4,000 athletes.
The Florida Department of Health sent a letter to Special Olympics International threatening the $27.5 million fine on Thursday. A copy of the letter, first reported on Twitter by ABC News, states that the Special Olympics had asked 5,500 people to provide proof of vaccination in order to gain access into the 2022 USA Special Olympics Games, which violates a state ban on requiring proof of vaccination.
“[Special Olympics International] was unable to bring the event into compliance for the benefit of their delegates,” the letter says. “And reinstate all who were denied access based on proof of vaccination.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday during a press conference hailed the decision by the Special Olympics to reverse the vaccine mandate as a win for the thousands of athletes who are expected to compete in the games. He said the mandate marginalized those players, especially those who have some immunity after previously testing positive for the virus.
“What connection that has to competing, I don’t understand,” DeSantis said of Covid-19 vaccines. “We’ve never seen something wielded like this vaccine to try to marginalize disfavored people.”
“And a lot of these special Olympians have also had Covid by now,” DeSantis said. “Most people have had it by now.”
DeSantis signed Florida’s ban on vaccine mandates in November as the Biden administration planned to roll out federal vaccine mandates that following month. The new Florida law led the Florida Department of Health to issue a $3.5 million fine against Leon County after 14 county employees were fired for not complying with a vaccine mandate. The state Department of Health later forgave the $3.5 million fine.
Florida’s health department is overseen by state Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo, who said during Friday’s news conference that talks leading up to the reversal by the Special Olympics began six months ago. Ladapo has long been skeptical of the safety and effectiveness of the Covid-19 vaccine. He said the vaccines mandated by the Special Olympics offer no protection at this point in the pandemic.
Ladapo’s zero-protection stance was a small shift from his previous take on vaccines, which is that they were one of many tools in the fight to spread Covid-19. But that protection also weakens over time, which is why the Special Olympics mandate would not be effective in stopping the virus, Ladapo claimed.
“Ethically, it doesn’t make sense,” Ladapo said. “It’s on the wrong side.”
He also said there needs to be more discussions about adverse reactions to the Covid vaccine.
“We don’t like to talk frankly about safety because it's taboo,” Ladapo said. “But it is an honest conversation that needs to happen.”
Ladapo was one of more than 20 medical professionals who signed a memo in 2021 asking the U.S. Food and Drug Administration not to give final approval to Covid-19 vaccines, which were developed as Covid infected 85 million people nationwide. The memo asks for the FDA to undergo years of testing on the safety of the vaccines before they are given final approval.
The vast majority of medical professionals and organizations, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the FDA, Johns Hopkins Medicine and Mayo Clinic, advise the public to get the vaccine both to protect against the virus and to lessen serious symptoms of the virus.
In the recent flurry of anti-LGBTQ+ news focusing on book bans and Don't Say Gay bills, you might be wondering if Republicans are still hellbent on keeping trans girls from participating in girls' sports teams. The sad answer is yes.
A recent example comes to us from Ohio, where House Republicans passed a bill at 11:15 pm (yes pm) on Wednesday, which would not only ban trans girls and women from participating in girls' high school and college sports but would subject people to a humiliating, degrading “verification process” if they’re accused of being trans, per local outlet NBC 4. That process includes looking at their genitals. Schools found in violation of these rules would open themselves up to lawsuits.
House Bill 61 is misleadingly called the “Save Women’s Sports Act,” but we all know it’s not about “protecting” cis women and it’s certainly not about actually providing equal funding and opportunities when it comes to athletics. It’s about demonizing vulnerable trans girls and keeping people in the closet. But how did this come to pass at nearly midnight on a weeknight? Let’s check out how conservatives got their way below.
Here’s how this worked. HB 61 wasn’t actually scheduled, but Republicans forced the language into House Bill 151 (which would revise the state’s teacher residency program) and it was revealed at essentially the last minute. This means, among other things, that advocates and allies didn’t have real-time to prepare and do outreach and educate.
“All these girls ask for is a fair shot, and to be given the chance to play and win by the rules in the sports that they love,” Republican Rep. Jena Powell, who snuck in the amendment said shortly before the bill passed. “The opportunity is being ripped from them by biological males.” Without any facts or evidence, she falsely claimed cis girls are losing scholarships, medals, opportunities, and education because of trans youth.
And to be clear: Trans girls and women are girls and women, not “biological males.” It’s transphobic and offensive to use that language when describing trans women, and it of course only feeds into the paranoid, hysterical conservative idea that trans people are “pretending” or trying to “trick” people about their sex and gender identity. It’s hateful, discriminatory, and simply inaccurate.
Local outlet News 5 reporter Morgan Trau says she tried to access the substitute bill on more than one occasion while the House was in session but she wasn’t able to; Democrats reportedly told her they also didn’t have it, and Republicans either said the same or didn’t reply. She received it before the public got it online, but even that went up only a few hours before the vote.
The bill explicitly bans anyone of the “male sex” from participating in women's sports. If someone’s sex is “disputed” they must prove their sex with a statement from their physician that includes details about the “internal and external reproductive anatomy” as well as their genetic makeup and testosterone levels.
It’s unclear who would foot the bill for all of this testing.
Again: This is discrimination. These bills are based on hate, ignorance, and an attempt to keep a gullible voter base fired up and angry at the wrong people. Trans folks are not dangerous demons clamoring to “steal” medals or fanfare on the field. Trans student-athletes are just like cis student-athletes in that they want to have a community, make friends, gain skills, and get some exercise. That’s it. Given the disproportionate rates at which trans youth are bullied and harassed at school, taking away chances to build camaraderie is especially cruel.
It shouldn’t matter, but there is only one openly trans girl playing high school sports in the entire state, per News 5. It’s not like Republicans have bigger issues to legislate about, right?
As solar and wind energy ramps up in the United States, the industries have gotten better at installing and operating their facilities. This experience can be seen in how the facilities are financed. According to new research, people working in the fields—and adjacent ones—have learned to be more efficient, reducing the overall cost of power. Further, according to Mark Bolinger, a research scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and one of the paper's authors, this so-called learning rate can be extrapolated into the future, and it spells good news for the two renewable sources of energy.
"The people who operate these turbines naturally get better over time as they do more of it. They get more efficient, and it allows them to lower their costs a bit," Bolinger told Ars, adding that the same holds true for the workers manufacturing the facilities. "Some of them have been doing it for a really long time… All things being equal, that should lead to a reduction in manufacturing costs."
There's a large amount of literature on learning rate and learning curve theory, he said. Moore's Law, which pertains to the power of silicon computer chips, says that the number of transistors per silicon chip doubles each year. Bolinger said that the learning rate in these renewable energy operations is similar to that. Learning rate is a measure of how much cost declines for each doubling of cumulative output, he said.
The US flag flies in front of the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. | Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg via Getty Images
A silly case about a minor paperwork error could snowball into a serious threat to the right to vote.
The dispute in Ritter v. Migliori, an election case currently pending on the Supreme Court’s shadow docket, is beneath the dignity of a nation’s highest court.
It involves a fight over whether 257 ballots cast in a low-level state judicial race should be tossed out because of a very minor paperwork error. It also involves a fairly obvious violation of a federal law providing that voters should not be disenfranchised due to such errors.
David Ritter is a Republican candidate for a judgeship on the Lehigh County Court of Common Pleas in Pennsylvania. Official tallies show him leading Democrat Zachary Cohen by 71 votes. Meanwhile, 257 ballots remain uncounted — enough to potentially flip the race from Ritter to Cohen.
Ritter wants the Supreme Court to prevent these ballots from being counted, thus locking in his victory. And, while the election took place last November and two other judges who prevailed in that election have already been sworn in, the outcome of the Ritter/Cohen race remains uncertain as the fight over these uncounted ballots drags on.
A state law provides that voters who cast their ballots by mail shall “date and sign” the envelope accompanying their ballot. Significantly, however, the state does not care which date the voter writes on this envelope — only that a date is written upon it. Envelopes that are dated “July 4, 1776” or “April 5th, 2063” will be opened and the ballot within shall be counted. But Ritter argues that voters who fail to write any date should be disenfranchised.
Ritter’s argument conflicts with a federal voting rights law, which provides that voters should not be disenfranchised due to paperwork errors “if such error or omission is not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote in such election.”
This law, which was enacted as part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, was intended to prevent states from hunting through paperwork filed by voters of color to find small errors that could then be used to disenfranchise those voters. But the law is written broadly to apply to any state action that would strip someone of the right to vote because of a paperwork requirement that is irrelevant to whether the voter is legally qualified to vote.
Ritter in other words, should be an extremely easy case. Even if there might be a legitimate reason why Pennsylvania could require voters to accurately state the date when they cast their ballot, a requirement that voters must write any random date on their ballot envelope is “not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote.”
As Judge Paul Matey, a Trump appointee to the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, wrote about this case “no party contests that voter declarations with inaccurate dates were counted in this election.” There’s no way to defend a state policy that discards undated ballots, but which counts ballots that purport to have been cast on “December 25, 0 CE”
Nevertheless, Ritter raises three legal arguments that could do considerable violence to federal voting rights law. His arguments would have gained no traction in another era. But this Court is notoriously hostile to federal voting rights statutes. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in a 2021 dissenting opinion, her Republican-appointed colleagues have “treated no statute worse” than the Voting Rights Act.
There is a non-zero risk, in other words, that the Court could transform this low-stakes case, about an entirely clearcut dispute, into a vehicle for gutting much of what remains of American voting rights law.
The case makes aggressive attacks on the law protecting voters with minor paperwork errors
Although Ritter attempts to argue that the voting rights law at issue in this case does not apply to the facts of this case, those arguments are exceedingly unpersuasive. The law excuses all paperwork errors by voters that are “not material in determining whether such individual is qualified under State law to vote.” A requirement that voters write any random date that they choose on an envelope is not relevant to determining whether a voter can lawfully cast a ballot.
His strongest arguments — strong, not because they are consistent with current law but because they could persuade many of the justices on this highly politicized Court — involve three structural attacks on the federal government’s power to enact and enforce voting rights laws.
Ritter suggests that the voting rights law is unconstitutional
Ritter’s most aggressive legal argument is that the provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 at issue in this case may be unconstitutional.
The Constitution gives Congress nearly limitless power to set the rules governing congressional elections, but its power to regulate state and local elections like the judicial race at issue in Ritter is narrower. As Ritter’s lawyers write in their brief, “though Congress can modify state regulations of federal congressional elections ... its power to modify state regulations of state elections can be justified only under its power to enforce the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments.”
That statement is true as far as it goes, but it also does not undercut the constitutionality of the Civil Rights Act. The 15th Amendment prohibits states from denying the right to vote “on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude,” and it also gives Congress broad power to enforce this prohibition.
Indeed, the Court has repeatedly said that Congress may enact broad voting rights laws that ban techniques that states have used in the past to disenfranchise racial minorities, even if those federal laws also prevent states from using those techniques in racially neutral ways. In City of Boerne v. Flores (1997), for example, the Court endorsed “a suspension of literacy tests and similar voting requirements under Congress’ ... power to enforce the provisions of the Fifteenth Amendment.”
That is, to prevent states from using literacy tests to target voters of color, Congress may enact a blanket ban on all literacy tests as a voter qualification. It follows that Congress may also enact a blanket ban on election rules that disenfranchise voters for minor paperwork errors, in order to prevent states from using these errors to target voters because of their race.
If the Supreme Court were to back away from the rule it announced in Flores and similar cases, that could be a catastrophe for voting rights. It could reopen the door to literacy tests and other tactics that were historically used to disenfranchise voters, unless a voting rights plaintiff could prove that these tactics were being deployed specifically to target voters because of their race.
Ritter claims that the relevant provision of the Civil Rights Act can only be enforced by the attorney general
Ritter also points to a provision of the voting rights law at issue in this case, which allows the US attorney general to file suit against states that target voters who make minor paperwork errors, and claims that only the attorney general may bring such suits.
This argument is wrong for many reasons. Among other things, federal law also provides that federal courts hearing voting rights suits brought under the Civil Rights Act shall hear those suits “without regard to whether the party aggrieved” has exhausted other possible legal remedies. It makes no sense to include this broadly worded provision if the only party that is allowed to file such a lawsuit is the attorney general.
It is worth noting that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 — the single most important safeguard against race discrimination in elections — also contains similar language permitting the attorney general to file lawsuits. And it also contains similar language indicating that private parties should be able to bring voting rights lawsuits even if they haven’t exhausted other legal remedies.
Indeed, in a 2021 concurring opinion, Justice Neil Gorsuch made a very similar argument to the one Ritter makes to undercut the Civil Rights Act, though Gorsuch targeted the Voting Rights Act. And, last February, a Trump judge in Arkansas embraced this narrow reading of federal voting rights law — holding that only the attorney general may file suits enforcing the Voting Rights Act. So far only one other justice, Clarence Thomas, has publicly shown support for this approach.
But it’s a sign that the question of whether to cut off voting rights suits by private plaintiffs, and give sole authority to enforce such suits to a single political appointee, is an open one — at least among the rightward fringe of the federal judiciary. Existing law rejects this limited reading of voting rights statutes, but at least some members of the Supreme Court appear eager to toss out existing law.
Ritter wants to shut down voting rights suits brought after an election
Finally, Ritter relies on something called the “Purcell principle” to argue that federal courts may not enforce the voting rights provision of the Civil Rights Act after an election has already taken place.
In Purcell v. Gonzalez (2006), the Court warned federal judges to be cautious about altering a state’s election law as the election draws close. “Court orders affecting elections ... can themselves result in voter confusion and consequent incentive to remain away from the polls,” the Court warned in Purcell, and this risk increases “as an election draws closer.”
Though Purcell simply urged judges to exercise caution when handing down decisions close to an election, key members of the Court’s Republican-appointed majority have relied on Purcell to shut down voting rights lawsuits months before Election Day. Concurring in Merrill v. Milligan (2022), for example, Justice Brett Kavanaugh invoked Purcell to justify reinstating a racially gerrymandered congressional map in Alabama — despite the fact that Merrill was decided nine months before the next general election and three months before the next primary.
If the Supreme Court were to embrace this argument, the implications would be breathtaking. The impact of state laws that illegally disenfranchise voters often are not apparent until after an election has taken place, when voters who expected their votes to be counted are surprised to learn that they were not.
It is far from clear that the provision of the Civil Rights Act relevant in the Ritter case could be enforced at all if it can’t be enforced in post-election proceedings. Federal courts are not allowed to hear a lawsuit challenging a state or federal law unless the plaintiff in that lawsuit can show that they were injured in some way by that law.
But the crucial point in the Ritter case is that about 250 voters inadvertently made a paperwork error that caused their ballots to be set aside. These voters couldn’t possibly have known that they were injured by the state law calling for them to write a date on the ballot envelope until after the election took place. And, if they had known that the state law required them to write a date on the envelope, they would have simply written a date on the envelope rather than challenging the state law in federal court.
Similarly, Zachary Cohen — Ritter’s opponent who is now pushing to get the disputed ballots counted — couldn’t have known that the outcome of the election could turn upon whether undated ballots are counted until after the election took place. Cohen’s injury, in other words, was entirely speculative until after the election had already happened.
Thus, if post-election lawsuits are forbidden, it is likely that no one would have been legally permitted to challenge Pennsylvania’s requirement that voters must write a date on their ballot envelopes.
Any time this Court hears a voting rights case is a cause for alarm
The bottom line is that Ritter involves a straightforward violation of a federal statute, which clearly requires the 257 disputed ballots to be counted. In his attempt to prevent those ballots from being counted, Ritter asks the Court to do considerable violence to the federal government’s power to protect voting rights.
And yet, given this Court’s history, it is entirely possible that at least five justices will take Ritter up on his invitation to gut this part of federal voting rights law. The arguments raised by Ritter are extreme, but they aren’t less extreme than the kinds of arguments that have already earned favor with the justices.
Four justices, for example, have signed onto a theory known as the “independent state legislature doctrine,” which would potentially give gerrymandered state legislatures limitless power to write highly partisan election laws — even if those laws violate the state’s constitution. The newest justice, Amy Coney Barrett, has not yet weighed in on this theory. But it is entirely possible that she will provide the fifth vote for it because she typically votes with the Court’s right flank in voting rights cases.
The Court’s Voting Rights Act decisions, meanwhile, have taken such liberties with the text of that law — and with the text of the Constitution — that their outcomes seem unconstrained by very basic rule that words are supposed to have meaning. In Brnovich v. DNC (2021), for example, the Court invented several new limits on the Voting Rights Act — such as a presumption that voter restrictions that were common in 1982 are lawful — which appear nowhere in the law’s text. As Justice Kagan wrote of Brnovich, the majority opinion “mostly inhabits a law-free zone.”
All of which is a long way of saying that, this Court frequently goes out on a limb to strike down or weaken voting rights laws. And the kind of judges who brought us Brnovich could also embrace the fairly extreme arguments presented in Ritter.
This is probably not the most likely outcome in Ritter. But, in this Court, it is dangerous to predict that any case will end well for voting rights.
This is untenable. And unconscionable, as Sen. Luján says.
17 There have been 17 mass shootings since Uvalde. And Republicans are still saying America doesn’t have a gun problem. It’s unconscionable.
— Senator Ben Ray Luján (@SenatorLujan) June 2, 2022
The Senate is still having it’s bipartisan talks, and President Biden is speaking Thursday evening to “deliver remarks on the recent tragic mass shootings, and the need for Congress to act to pass commonsense laws to combat the epidemic of gun violence that is taking lives every day.”
Those talks in the Senate are reportedly inching along. "There is a framework for a bill," one source told NBC News. Republican Susan Collins said they were making “rapid progress.” Sen. Dick Blumenthal (D-CT) said discussions have been “productive and encouraging.” But have any of them talked to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), the Republican Mitch McConnell put in charge of pretending to act like they were doing something?
Probably not, because this is what Cornyn had to say Wednesday about the process and any possibility at all of making weapons of war harder for 18-year-olds to get their hands on: “Not gonna happen.”
That was after he told reporters Tuesday that meetings that day included a “very constructive conversation about the best response to the horrific events in Uvalde last week.” The assumption every one is working under is that Cornyn’s approval of anything is essential for McConnell to agree to anything, and nothing moves unless McConnell says so.
McConnell is at the “mental health and school safety” point of doing nothing constructive, so it will take 10 either very scared or very brave Republicans to buck him to do anything meaningful.
This is while the nation’s mayor—Democratic and Republican alike—are pleading for something to be done. Again. They just resent a letter, originally penned in August 2019, to Senate leaders Chuck Schumer and McConnell with this update:
In response to the recent tragedies in Uvalde and Buffalo and the continuing increase in gun violence that is plaguing our cities and our people across this nation, the U.S. Conference ofMayors today is reissuing the letter sent by more than 200 mayors to the United States Senate in August of 2019. The same two bills passed the House more than one year ago and are again pending in the Senate: H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Check Act and H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act. We have updated the list of original signatories, removed those mayors who no longer are in office, and added new mayors who have asked to be listed.
They originally wrote immediately following the back-to-back massacres in El Paso and Dayton, events which were “just the latest reminders that our nation can no longer wait for our federal government to take the actions necessary to prevent people who should not have access to firearms from being able to purchase them.”
We’re still waiting, with no end to the casualty count in sight. That’s how Mitch McConnell has determined it will be.
Since when has the GOP ever let facts get in the way of their racist rants?
Republicans have been very weirdly angry about the large amount of drugs that U.S. border officials have seized from failed smuggling attempts. These outbursts are not serious, but instead part of Republicans’ demonization of asylum-seekers and other migrants. “800 pounds of fentanyl were seized at our Southern Border in October,” claimed a November tweet from Elise Stefanik, the number three House Republican and racist “replacement theory” proponent. “This is Biden’s Border Crisis.”
“Border crisis” echoes the wording put out by an anti-immigrant hate group at the very state of the Biden administration, but that’s a whole different issue. The reality is that it’s overwhelmingly U.S. citizens who get caught with drugs, available data shows.
“Out of the 42 incidents in which a person's nationality was reported, 33 (79%) involved US citizens. Just 3 incidents involved a smuggler without legal status,” American Immigration Council Senior Policy Counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick shared in a Twitter thread this week. He said data from official Customs and Border Protection (CBP) releases and social media posts from December 2021 to May 2022 showed the overwhelming majority of seizures were from passenger vehicles at ports of entry, followed by pedestrian lanes. “Only TWO publicly-reported seizures were linked to people crossing between ports of entry,” he wrote.
“The data is of course incomplete, because CBP doesn’t publish details on every single seizure,” Reichlin-Melnick continued. “But it does back up what the less detailed but more complete monthly statistics show; there is no measurable link between migrants and fentanyl smuggling.”
“For Republicans to criticize the seizures is a little weird,” MSNBC’s Steve Benen wrote last year. “In fact, common sense suggests GOP officials should focus attention elsewhere, since the seizures disprove one of the party's favorite talking points: If the president had implemented an ‘open-border’ policy, as the right routinely claims, U.S. Customs and Border Protection wouldn't have stopped these shipments before they entered the country.”
But then what would Republicans like Greg Abbott use to justify their expensive, ham-handed border stunts? The right-wing governor in April launched a short-lived political stunt forcing commercial vehicles to undergo inspections by state officers. Because these were redundant checks happening after Customs and Border Protection officers had already done their checks, Abbott’s stunt turned up nothing. The Texas Tribunereported that state inspectors cited a couple of hundred drivers for minor infractions that included under-inflated tires and oil leaks.
The data shows that the overwhelming majority of people arrested for fentanyl smuggling at the border were US citizens. Out of the 42 incidents in which a persons' nationality was reported, 33 (79%) involved US citizens. Just 3 incidents involved a smuggler without legal status.
— Aaron Reichlin-Melnick (@ReichlinMelnick) May 31, 2022
As mentioned earlier, replacement theory proponent Stefanik and other Congressional Republicans have mimicked the “border crisis” rhetoric put out by designated anti-immigrant hate group Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) just one day after President Biden’s inauguration. “Within days of the release, Republicans began to echo the same language in their messages on social media,” The American Independent reported earlier this year.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other GOP lawmakers had mimicked FAIR’s “border crisis” term nearly 40 times altogether through March, the report found. “The call to repeat the ‘border crisis’ language also appeared in a memo from the House Republican Study Committee that urged party members to use the term and blame it on President Biden,” Oliver Willis wrote.
They’re a vocal bunch alright, but when it comes to denouncing racist rhetoric tied to racist mass murderers, cat’s got their tongues.
“The highest-ranking Republican official in U.S. government, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, repeatedly refused to denounce ‘replacement theory’ in a press conference Tuesday afternoon,” Daily Kos’ Joan McCarter wrote last month. “That puts him in company with New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, the third in command among House Republicans, who seems to be an adherent of the white nationalist conspiracy theory.”
You mean a "true account" from an avowed and inveterate liar who literally made up the "alternative facts" tagline isn't that interesting? No shit.
Published by Knewz
By David Wetzel New York (Knewz) — During Donald Trump’s presidency, Kellyanne Conway did plenty of talking. How many people believed her pro-Trump spin is up for political debate. What’s not up for debate is the fact that apparently not many people are interested in what she has to say these days. Kellyanne Conway’s book, “Here’s the Deal,” sold just 25,000 copies in its first week on the market, according to showbiz411.com. The site also notes that book has already dropped to No. 126 on Amazon’s best-seller list. Still, it was the fourth in most sales on Amazon in the past week and received …
Anything to break the dealer stranglehold. They add nothing to the process
Enlarge / Ford's electric F-150 Lighting (L), eTransit (M), and Mustang Mach-E (R) battery-electric vehicles have all been such successes that they're all sold out for the rest of the year. And that's prompting the company to rethink how it goes about the whole process. (credit: Ford)
Few Americans enjoyed the car-buying process even before supply chain chaos, and the chip shortage led dealerships to mark up inventory by thousands of dollars. But buying a Ford electric vehicle might be a lot less painful in the future, if Ford CEO Jim Farley gets his way. On Wednesday, Farley said that he wants the company's EVs to be sold online-only, with no dealer markups or other price negotiations, according to the Detroit Free Press.
"We've got to go to non-negotiated price. We've got to go to 100 percent online. There's no inventory (at dealerships), it goes directly to the customer. And 100 percent remote pickup and delivery," Farley said while speaking at a conference in New York.
One of Tesla's most popular innovations was to eschew traditional dealerships and sell its products directly to customers. But traditional manufacturers like Ford are usually prohibited from selling their products directly to customers, a legacy of fears over vertical integration written into state laws during the early 20th century. As such, Ford's franchised dealers will almost certainly still have a role to play.
Either someone on First Lady Jill Biden’s staff has a sick sense of humor, is a troll, or is just really, extraordinarily obtuse. On Wednesday, the first day of June, the first day of Pride Month, they announced that there will be a White House celebration next Monday for Nancy Reagan. She’s getting a stamp. So Postmaster General Louis DeJoy will be there, too.
— Jeffrey St. Clair, CounterPunch (@JeffreyStClair3) June 1, 2022
President Ronald Reagan did not publicly acknowledge the existence of AIDS until September 1985, four years after it emerged in the U.S. And then it was only because a reporter brought it up at a press conference.
And yes, Biden is having this celebration with that Louis DeJoy—the guy Trump handpicked to destroy the Postal Service. The most hated, corrupt person in government since Trump’s departure.
It has been 20 days since the postal board gained a Biden majority. They should fire louis dejoy now. He’s corrupt. I was the first member of Congress to demand dejoy’s firing and the firing of every dejoy toady on the board back on Jan 25 2021. There are no more excuses.
— Bill Pascrell, Jr. 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@BillPascrell) June 1, 2022
Yes, Congressman Pascrell—they should fire DeJoy now. They should have fired him months ago.
Just in case you think this is maybe something that’s been in the works forever and not really the responsibility of the Biden administration, nope. Wednesday’s announcement was the first anyone heard of it publicly. The USPS made the surprise announcement that it would issue the stamp June 1. The first day of Pride Month. It absolutely smacks of Louis DeJoy trolling the libs. And the White House playing along?
What in the hell are they thinking?
This is the kind of unforced error the Democrats really need to stop making. 👇 https://t.co/47DM2WwcBs
It is absolutely an unforced error. There’s nobody friendly to the White House that is going to look on this kindly. It’s a poke in the eye to the LGBTQ and allied community. It’s a poke in the eye to the former First Ladies—Eleanor Roosevelt, Martha Washington, Dolley Madison, and Lady Bird Johnson—who also have stamps on the basis of having done stuff for the nation that wasn’t harmful.
It’s showing an administration that doesn’t really get where it’s seated right now, at this existential tipping point for democracy. That everything is normal and thy have to be pleasant and conciliatory to the people who are trying to destroy not just the Biden administration, but the whole Democratic party and a majority of its base.
It’s just “galling,” as the editors of GayNrd write. “To call Nancy and her husband Ronald’s stance during the AIDS epidemic problematic is almost laughable. Almost because there’s nothing too funny about it.”
Ok, but it had better be enforced just as rigidly against straight orientations too. No prince/princess stories, no mention of a female teacher's husband, etc.
Published by Reuters
By Maria Caspani
(Reuters) – North Carolina lawmakers advanced legislation on Wednesday that would prohibit classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity for some public school students, a move decried by opponents as harmful to LGBTQ youth.
The “Parents’ Bill of Rights,” a broad piece of legislation that opponents say mirrors Florida’s so-called “Don’t say gay bill,” cleared the state’s Republican-led Senate and will head to the House of Representatives, which also has a Republican majority.
It could reach the desk of Governor Roy Cooper as soon as this week. Cooper, a Democrat, has spoken against the bill and is all but certain to veto it.
Advocates and civil rights groups have tracked hundreds of bills this year across state legislatures directed at lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, including many that target transgender youth specifically.
Florida’s “don’t say gay” bill was signed into law in March. In April, the governor of Alabama signed a bill prohibiting classroom discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity in certain grades, and similar measures are being considered in Louisiana and Ohio.
The North Carolina measure would prohibit mention of sexual orientation or gender identity in curricula for students from kindergarten through third grade. Schools would also have to notify parents if a student requests to be addressed by a different name or pronoun.
Supporters of the Republican-sponsored measure say it would allow greater involvement of parents in their children’s education and well-being.
Those opposing the legislation warned it could result in youth being outed to their families. If enacted, critics said, it will put an unnecessary burden on teachers and create a more hostile school environment for LGBTQ children who already face marginalization and are at greater risk of suicide.
“We’re disappointed but not surprised. And we will continue to fight for the rights of LGBTQ youth,” the ACLU North Carolina chapter said on Twitter.
Shortly after senators cast their votes, opponents of the measure in the gallery erupted in chants of “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going anywhere.”
(Reporting by Maria Caspani, Editing by Aurora Ellis)
AT&T several weeks before the start of Pride Month 2022 announced a promotional campaign benefiting The Trevor Project, a commendable nonprofit organization dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ children and teens. “Mention The Trevor Project when you get our best deal on any smartphone with an eligible AT&T Unlimited plan and we’ll donate $500 to the organization.”
But as the telecommunications company has been donating to the pro-LGBTQ organization, it's also been bankrolling bigoted politicians who’ve been introducing, and passing, often-rushed legislation targeting the very existence of these children.
Popular Information reports that AT&T donated more than $1 million to anti-LGBTQ politicians since last year alone, including $100,000 to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and $10,000 to his corrupt state attorney general, Ken Paxton.
Once again, Trevor Project, the organization at the focus of the company’s promotional campaign, is dedicated to preventing tragic deaths among young LGBTQ people. But just this year, Texas quietly removed the organization’s phone number from its Department of Health website. “This isn’t the first time LGBTQ resources have been removed from Texas state government websites,” Daily Kos’ April Siese wrote in March.
There’s been plenty of cash for other bigots, too. Popular Information said that AT&T gave $50,000 to Ron DeSantis in Florida, where Republicans advanced legislation targeting migrant children just hours after passing its notorious “Don’t Say Gay” bill in March. DeSantis’ degenerate press secretary, Christina Pushaw, has been central in promoting this harmful and disparaging “groomer” terminology that’s being commonly wielded by extremists against LGBTQ people. The Advocate reported that there’ve been calls for Pushaw’s firing, including from state lawmakers. But why would DeSantis fire her when she’s doing exactly what she was hired to do?
“Few companies are as aggressive in promoting their allegiance to the LGBTQ community as AT&T,” the report said. It said the company “did not respond to a request for comment.”
Other “flag-waving” companies that have made donations to anti-LGBTQ politicians since last year include GM ($1,031,900), The Home Depot ($824,200), CVS ($548,000), FedEx ($467,600), Delta ($384,000), American Express ($144,550), Target ($122,000), and Verizon, which donated more than $500,000 to anti-gay politicians and political committees even as it touted its employee contingent in a Pride parade in 2019, the report said:
“Verizon has also donated $50,450 to the [Republican Governors Association] and $4,500 to politicians in Oklahoma and South Carolina behind recent anti-LGBTQ legislation,” Popular Information continued. “This includes $1,000 to South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster (R), who signed a law last month that ‘bans transgender athletes from playing on public school and college sports teams that align with their gender identity.’” USA Todayreports that a recent survey found the state ranking as the worst for LGBTQ people.
All in all, Popular Information said that 25 major companies donated $13.2 million to anti-LGBTQ forces since 2021. Yet several of the companies listed above sent pro-LGBTQ messages on social media at the start of Pride Month this week. “We stand with the LGBTQ community and for diversity and inclusion in all its dimensions,” CVS tweeted.
“Despite donating millions to anti-LGBTQ politicians, all 25 corporations included in Popular Information's analysis were highly rated by HRC's 2022 Corporate Equality Index,” the report said. How do they get away with that? Researchers said that HRC doesn’t include political donations in its scoring, “enabling corporations to craft a pro-LGBTQ image while bankrolling politicians that are undermining LGBTQ rights.” Happy Pride.
