James.galbraith

Subpoena deadlines came and went for four members of Team Trump last week, with at least one of them vowing to defy the subpoena from the House select committee investigating the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. So, where’s the follow-up?

Steve Bannon, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager and White House adviser, claimed he wasn’t going to comply with the subpoena because Trump invocated executive privilege. There are a few problems with this. One is that Trump is not the executive and does not have executive privilege; the actual executive, President Joe Biden, has decided to turn over key documents to the committee. The other problem for Bannon is that he hadn’t even worked in the White House since 2017. In late 2020 and early 2021, when Trump’s efforts to overturn the election led to a bloody insurrection, he was just a guy.

Trump’s longtime aide and former golf caddie Dan Scavino was finally served with his subpoena on Friday—at Mar-a-Lago, no less. 

Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows is “engaging with the Select Committee,” and Kash Patel, who served in various roles in the administration, said Friday he “responded to the subpoena in a timely manner.” (It’s not clear what “responded” means here.)

In a statement Friday, Reps. Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, the chair and vice-chair of the committee, said they “will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral.”

The clock is ticking on anything that could be considered “swift.” If the committee wants anyone, from targets to observers, to believe that it is serious about getting this information, the criminal referral for Bannon needs to come, well, swiftly. Without further delay. Rapidly.

Suppose Bannon openly defies the committee and doesn’t face criminal charges in short order. Why wouldn’t Meadows and Patel believe they can continue “engaging” to string the committee along and run out the clock? Scavino ducked the subpoena for weeks, so they know he’s defiant, and he telegraphed where his loyalties lie by finally being located at Mar-a-Lago—which means any further sign of delay or resistance from him should be met quickly and forcefully. And there are more people stacked up behind them who have gotten subpoenas from the committee, all of whom need to know that Thompson and Cheney and the rest of the committee mean business.

Put it to you this way: If there’s not a criminal referral for Bannon within a day or so, I won’t believe the committee is serious about getting Team Trump to comply. Why would Bannon take them any more seriously?

We shouldn't have had to go through this, and we don't have to again.

ATLANTA — In a focus group last week, Pennsylvania Democrats one after another articulated the issue vexing top White House aides, party operatives in Virginia and voters in Georgia: Why isn’t President Joe Biden’s diminished job rating rebounding?

All nine participants from Tuesday’s session gave Biden C- grades or lower. And their answers circled back to a similar point: The pandemic and the many ways it continues to hinder normal life is souring their views of Biden.

One woman said she wanted to buy a car but supply chain issues were delaying new shipments to the dealership. A man complained about understaffed restaurants.

“There is a malaise,” said Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican strategist who became a vocal supporter of Biden in 2020, and led the focus group of Democratic voters. “People don’t feel like their lives have been improved. They did sort of feel that promises aren’t being kept.”

Nearly nine months into office, Biden and his team contend that the ravages of the pandemic are starting to recede due to his actions. They point to polling showing strong support for his legislative agenda, anchored by physical infrastructure and social and climate spending packages. They note how rare it’s been for Democratic lawmakers to break ranks, even during this current, difficult period.

But Biden’s standing with Americans has plummeted, with his average approval rating plunging by nearly 15 points since late June. He's seen a drop among Democrats and even more with Republicans, but the decline has been particularly steep among independent voters. In the same time period, the president has scrambled to salvage his domestic initiatives amid infighting among Democrats over their size and sequencing. He has presided over a chaotic and deadly withdrawal from Afghanistan and faced criticism for his response to the inhumane treatment of Haitian migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

But it’s the pandemic that looms over it all, making it all the more difficult for the White House to turn back the slide.

Longwell said she was struck by how similar the concerns of Democrats sounded to Republicans, and also by how little Democrats in her surveys blame Republicans for standing in Biden’s way. It’s a point echoed by nearly a dozen strategists who have compiled or reviewed research into Biden’s precipitous decline.

Biden and Democrats in Washington “are in a morass of fighting with each over bills that nobody knows what’s in,” Longwell added. “It just looks like a cluster.”

The White House has never disputed the notion that Biden’s political fate is tied to his handling of the Covid-19 fight. It’s why they quickly moved to pass a $1.9 trillion relief bill upon taking office and placed such an emphasis on getting people vaccinated. But recognizing a hurdle is different than clearing it. Early, bullish proclamations about the country reopening proved to be premature, as did the belief that they could use persuasion, access and education to increase vaccination rates.

Biden’s job has been complicated by some Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, who have spread anti-vaccine conspiracies and rejected vaccine and mask-wearing requirements in predominantly red counties. But public health experts have also criticized the administration for being confusing with its messaging and slow to adopt new approaches. A recent push for vaccine mandates has led to an uptick in vaccination rates, but tens of millions have still not received a shot.

For the president and his allies, there’s only one clear way out: Reports from leading party operatives, some shared with the White House and Democratic committees, and polling provided to POLITICO, all point to Biden needing to get a handle on the virus to claw his way out of the muddle.

In one widely circulated memo, Democratic strategist Simon Rosenberg argued that Biden’s steep drop-off can only be explained by the public’s perception of his uneven handling of the pandemic and a belief he is not prioritizing it. Rosenberg, who has been in touch with White House and party committee officials, contends that the tens of millions of dollars being spent to sell Biden’s Build Back Better agenda is “reminding” voters that the president isn't focused on the virus. Even passing both bills won’t be enough to significantly improve Biden’s standing without Democrats first establishing they are the party responsible for defeating Covid, he said.

“The president’s decline is alarming. It’s serious,” Rosenberg said. “But it also can be reversed. And it isn't going to be reversed by passing these two bills alone. He has to get Covid under control.”

In interviews in the swing state of Georgia and focus groups conducted in other battlegrounds, most Democratic base voters echoed those concerns. Kayla Scott, 30, a cafe worker in southeast Atlanta, said more financial assistance from the federal government to help with the pandemic fallout would go a long way.

“Especially not just people with children, a lot of us don't have children,” said Scott, a Black woman, who voted for Biden in 2020. “But a lot of us have to be in this public-facing environment as service workers because there's no real extra help for us and people are getting sick every day.”

Pandemic fatigue is growing among Biden’s core voters elsewhere, too. In a nearly 100-page study of 40 so-called “gettable” Democrats and independents done in Clark County, Nev., last month, researchers found that voters were “anxious, tired, and exhausted.” The researchers added that voters “looked at the government’s [Covid] stumbles along the way and shrugged their collective shoulders.”

“I see them as flat on their backs,” Gretchen Barton, research director at the Democratic-aligned nonprofit Future Majority, which conducted the study with liberal advocacy group Way to Win, told POLITICO.

Future Majority President Mark Riddle, whose recent surveys with Change Research look at battleground states and swing congressional districts, called it concerning that Biden’s approval rating on handling Covid stood at 46 percent in battleground states. But voters there say they still trust Democrats (41 percent) over Republicans (24 percent) when asked which party has better delivered on defeating Covid, the polling found.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki acknowledged Friday that there’s “no question” the continued pandemic is impacting Biden's numbers.

“This is a really tough time in our country. We’re still battling Covid and a lot of people thought we’d be through it, including us,” Psaki told reporters. But she added the president’s focus is not on fluctuating polls, but “on getting the pandemic under control, returning to life, a version of normal so people can have [the] security of going into work.”

Others in the president’s orbit take the longer view. “You and I are going to have this conversation a year from now,” said John Anzalone, the longtime Biden pollster. “The political environment is going to be different. And so will Biden’s numbers.”

In interviews and polling analyses, Democrats said they ultimately need to get to a place where Biden and down-ballot candidates are playing offense on the issue of Covid. Biden’s directives around vaccine mandates were a good start, Riddle said, but he advised Democrats to make Republicans pay for their intransigence and in some cases stonewalling, singling out Govs. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas.

Just two presidents in the post-World War II era — including Trump — have had worse approval ratings than Biden by this point in their tenures. And although that may be a product of a more polarized nation, his foundering is fraying nerves among Democrats across the country — especially in Virginia, where a governor’s race next month presents one of the party’s first major political tests since Biden took office.

It isn’t the virus’ resurgence alone that’s hindered Biden. While Afghanistan and the border have largely faded from the news cycle, polls show they contributed to his slide, especially in how voters judged his competency in the job. In Georgia, Democrats said they remained confused and upset by Biden’s decision-making on Afghanistan, migrants at the border, and the intraparty feuding around his economic agenda. “Disappointed” was a word used by most of the Black and white voters who spoke to POLITICO in the metro Atlanta area when describing Biden’s time in office. But none said they were prepared to abandon Democrats in 2022 and 2024.

Sylvia Bernstein, a 71-year-old Biden voter from Atlanta, said Biden had “made horrible mistakes,” particularly on Afghanistan and refugees. “And now this budget that he’s trying to pass — $3 trillion — I don’t see that happening,” said Bernstein, who is white. “And I don’t think he’s gotten much support from other Democrats. Everybody seems to be floundering around.”

The hope among elected Democrats is that legislative success will ultimately calm voters like Bernstein and give Biden a needed reprieve from the seemingly endless brutal news cycles he’s endured, whether they be on the Covid battle or Afghanistan withdrawal.

“We get this done, then those numbers will turn around,” said Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D-S.C.) of Biden’s job numbers. “We don't get this done, then those numbers will not turn around.”

Specifically, Clyburn blamed the sustained intraparty fighting over the Build Back Better plan for hurting the president.

“On substance, the president’s programs are what people seem to want. Like everything else, it's the sausage making that's causing problems with the polls,” he added. “There are one or two [senators] that will keep him from getting to 50.”

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from How-To Geek: Firefox now sends more data than you might think to Mozilla. To power Firefox Suggest, Firefox sends the keystrokes you type into your address bar, your location information, and more to Mozilla's servers. Here's exactly what Firefox is sharing and how to control it. This change was made as part of the introduction of Firefox Suggest in Firefox 93, released on October 5, 2021. As part of Firefox Suggest, Firefox is getting ads in your search bar -- but that's not the only thing that will be news to longtime Firefox users. According to Mozilla, "Firefox Suggest acts as a trustworthy guide to the better web, surfacing relevant information and sites to help people accomplish their goals." In reality, what that means is, when you start typing in your address bar, you won't just see the standard search suggestions from Google or your current search default engine. You'll also see "Firefox Suggest" results pointing to web pages. Some of them are sponsored ads, but you can disable the ads. Firefox Suggest is on by default. Mozilla's blog post on the subject says Firefox Suggest is an "opt-in experience," which was the case in September 2021 -- but it's now enabled by default in Firefox 93. However, as of Firefox 93's release in October 2021, Firefox Suggest is only enabled in the USA -- for now. It's worth noting that, for many years, Firefox and other web browsers have had search suggestions in their address bar. So, when you start typing "win" in your address bar, you may see suggestions for "Windows 11" and "Window repair." This is accomplished by sending keystrokes to your default search engine as you type in the search bar, as Mozilla's support site explains. Mozilla is also providing contextual suggestions, for which it needs more data, including the city you're located in and whether you're clicking its suggestions. You can disable Firefox's suggested results, if you like. This will stop Mozilla from collecting the data you type in your search bar, and it will also disable the suggested results and ads. To do so, open Firefox and click menu [and then] Settings. Select "Privacy [and] Security" in the left pane, and scroll down to "Address Bar -- Firefox Suggest." Disable "Contextual suggestions" and "Include occasional sponsored suggestions" to stop Firefox from sending data to Mozilla.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Voting-rights advocates are seething over the near-total stagnation in Washington. But they see a new opening with the filibuster.

When President Joe Biden recently floated the possibility for a filibuster carveout for raising the debt limit, supporters leapt at the chance to bypass the supermajority threshold for efforts to expand access to the ballot.

“Once you make an exception for something as existential as raising the debt ceiling, it makes it much easier to do the same for something as existential as democracy itself,” said Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-N.Y.), who has long called for Biden to support liberals’ efforts to eliminate the filibuster.

But Jones and other backers of Democrats’ voting bills may be in for another round of disappointment. When Democrats accepted the short-term, debt-limit deal offered by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to punt the deadline until December, it also postponed any discussion about changes to the filibuster — which advocates see as blocking any real chance of sending legislation to Biden’s desk.

“Quite frankly, we know that the likelihood of legislation getting passed without that [change] is very slim at this point,” said Virginia Kase Solomón, the CEO of the League of Women Voters.

Desperate to generate momentum with the debate focused elsewhere, some voting-rights groups are now trying to crank up the heat on the White House, urging Biden to call for the same exception for Democrats’ stalled voting bills.

On Tuesday, a group of about 100 protesters picketed outside the White House, led by the League of Women Voters and the People For the American Way. They have promised to repeatedly demonstrate outside the White House, in an effort to get Biden’s attention.

“This was one of his priorities. This was part of the platform that he ran on to help strengthen and fix our democracy,” said Solomón. “We've heard a lot of words coming from the White House. But we haven't seen a lot of action.”

Five of the protestors — including Ben Jealous, the president of the People For the American Way and former NAACP head — were arrested after refusing to leave Pennsylvania Avenue outside the White House. They were all held overnight, before ultimately being released without any charges.

“I think about Kamala, and I think about Joe. I know them as friends,” Jealous told the crowd, minutes before he was arrested on Tuesday. “We need our friends to stand up and be friends to the people of this country, have the courage that it takes to actually move voting rights forward.”

Cedric Richmond, the Biden senior adviser and former Louisiana congressman, argued the White House had taken action on its own — including an executive order to government agencies to find ways to increase voter participation, along with movement out of the Justice Department, including appointing well-regarded civil rights lawyers to top positions and growing the civil rights division.

He also said the White House remained engaged with Capitol Hill over voting rights.

“We are pushing Congress to act in terms of legislation, and we're using our political capital to get it done. Doesn't always have to be in public and seeking the attention for doing it,” Richmond said in an interview.

“I think the activists missed the fact that this is the first time we had all of the Democratic senators in favor of a bill. And now that we have that, we're pushing that and so we'll have a vote and then we'll go from there,” he continued.

And even if Biden was to publicly pressure the Senate on the filibuster, there are still barriers in the way: Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), both who have ardently supported the existing rules, which they say will prevent both parties from passing extreme legislation.

On Wednesday, before the agreement with McConnell was announced, Manchin once again shot down a change for the debt ceiling. “Nothing’s changing” on the filibuster, he told reporters.

Yet even with the reanimated filibuster conversation, what has been particularly grating to some advocates is that voting rights has repeatedly played second fiddle to other legislative priorities in Congress.

“We can’t even have a conversation about voting rights, because infrastructure, once again, is kind of blocking the way,” said Texas state Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a liberal Democratic lawmaker who was part of the group of Texans who fled the state over the summer in order to block a Republican-led bill that added new restrictions to voting in the state.

For those Texas Democrats, it is a particularly bitter pill to swallow. “Everything that we foreshadowed,” has come to pass in their state, Crockett said. The bill that they temporarily blocked is now law in Texas, after enough Democrats returned to the state House after weeks away to provide a quorum. And early proposals for the state’s new congressional map lock in Republican seats across the state.

“When it comes to voting rights, you see the remedy coming after the harm. And sometimes when the harm is already done, the remedy is really inconsequential,” said Texas state Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, a Democrat.

In Congress, Democrats have been unable to send any voting-rights legislation to the president’s desk because of both filibusters, or the threat thereof, from Republicans and some intra-party squabbling. Their first attempt — the For the People Act, which got the symbolic H.R. 1 (117) and S. 1 (117) designations as the party’s top priority — died in the Senate because Manchin did not support it, and was also later filibustered by Republicans after Manchin agreed to a procedural vote.

Senate Democrats have now turned their attention to two other pieces of election legislation: the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore key provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and was introduced in the Senate this week, and the Freedom to Vote Act, a pared down version of H.R. 1 that Manchin brokered with his Democratic colleagues.

The West Virginian has been in conversations with Republican colleagues to try to find any sort of compromise, POLITICO has reported, but the odds of securing 10 Republican senators who would sign on to break a filibuster for any sort of election legislation is very low. That looming failure is one of the last things advocates pin their hopes on for Manchin to change his mind on the filibuster.

“A reasonable person in Joe Manchin’s position would, upon discovering that there are not 10 Republican senators of good conscience … will vote to make an exception to the filibuster,” Jones, the freshman New York congressman, said.

It will be tested soon. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote in a "Dear Colleague" letter on Monday that senators should be prepared to consider both pieces of legislation “this work period or immediately at the start of the next.”

We knew at the time that Donald Trump sent an army of contracted goons from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in to the city of Portland, Oregon, in the summer of 2020 to arrest citizens protesting against police brutality—summarily sweeping people off the street on the pretext of a kind of preventative arrest based on groundless speculation that they were “antifa” conspiring to “burn down our cities,” as Trump put it—that it was an outrage against the Constitution and the rule of law.

What we didn’t know (and an internal DHS review that only surfaced this week reveals) was that it was also an extraordinary exercise in authoritarian incompetence. It demonstrates that senior DHS leadership pushed unfounded conspiracy theories about antifascists, encouraged the contractors they hired to violate protesters’ constitutional rights, and made spurious connections, based on no real evidence, between protesters who engaged in criminal activity. It also revealed poor training and inadequate guidance, which contributed to the federal intelligence officers’ lack of knowledge on legal restrictions for the collection of such information, and turned the entire operation into a massive mess.

“The report was a stunning analysis of the incompetence and mismanagement and abuse of power during the summer of 2020,” Oregon Sen. Ron Wyden, who released a redacted version of the document Friday, told Oregon Public Broadcasting.

Originally released on Jan. 6—and its contents subsequently overlooked due to that day’s events—the internal review focused on DHS’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis (I/A). It found that senior DHS leaders attempted to politicize intelligence in order to support Trump’s claims that a massive “antifa” conspiracy was behind the many anti-police protests around the nation, but particularly so in Portland. The same leaders pressured subordinates to illegally search phones, and when legal staff objected, sought to cut them out of the discussion.

A team of open source intelligence collectors, tasked with analyzing information obtained from public sources, also created dossiers on protesters and journalists—which they called “baseball cards”—despite having no clear connections to domestic terrorism or security threats.

“The report documents shocking, coordinated efforts by our government to abuse its power and to invade liberty in violation of the Constitution,” said Oregon federal public defender Lisa Hay. “In Portland, we were concerned that the government unconstitutionally collected information, including through the illegal search of protestors’ cellphones last summer. This report confirms that was their intent.”

Over the course of the summer, between June 4 and Aug. 31, DHS sent at least 755 officers—from agencies that ranged from Federal Protective Service to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, as well as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Secret Service, and U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis personnel—to Portland, tasked with protecting the city’s downtown federal courthouse. The building had come under regular attack during nightly social justice protests that arose initially from the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in late May.

The Floyd protests were an international phenomenon, spreading to over 2,000 cities and towns, occurring in all 50 states as well as in over 60 other countries. Demonstrators turned out en masse to support those seeking justice for Floyd and the wider Black Lives Matter movement, and standing up against police brutality. Most of these protests lasted one or two days; however, in Portland, where police brutality issues had taken on an extraordinary edge, the protests became a daily affair—one that eventually surpassed 100 consecutive days.

By early July, most of the protests had become quiet and nonviolent, with only sporadic violence and vandalism, with the notable exception of an arson attack on the federal courthouse downtown—which is about the time that DHS agents began showing up, wearing anonymous military gear, arresting protesters on the streets, and spiriting them away in unmarked vans.

Over the next few nights, they clashed with protesters in the area around the courthouse, using flashbangs and munitions to disperse the crowds. One protester was shot in the forehead by an “impact weapon” round that caused him brain damage. Another protester—a Navy veteran who was attempting to speak with the DHS officers—was brutally beaten with batons, breaking his hand.

That was when the scene exploded. On the night of July 24, thousands of Portlanders took to the streets to protest the arrests. The protest was entirely peaceful—drum circles, groups of teachers and nurses, a marching band, a “Wall of Moms” wearing yellow shirts—until the DHS officers began unleashing tear gas on the crowd. A brigade of “fathers” arrived with leaf blowers and blew the gas back at the officers.

The escalated protests continued nightly. DHS officials called the protests “criminal violence perpetrated by anarchists targeting city and federal properties.” It brought in reinforcements on July 28, even though many of these officers lacked proper training, and both Mayor Ted Wheeler and Gov. Kate Brown—along with both of the state’s senators—demanded the DHS police be withdrawn. Eventually, they negotiated a phased withdrawal, and the DHS arrests ceased.

It was shortly apparent that the right-wing attempt to make “antifa” and Black Lives Matter into bogeymen responsible for the protest violence was utterly bogus. An Associated Press review of the arrest documents from the summer’s protests showed that most of the people taken into custody were not left-wing radicals and had no ties to larger movements. It had already been clear for months that “antifa” was not responsible for the violence—which in many instances appeared in fact to have been instigated by police pushing back on protesters. This didn’t prevent Trump from declaring on Twitter that he intended to have antifa designated a terrorist organization, though in fact he lacked the statutory power to do so.

The internal review at DHS conducted afterward revealed that the push for concocting intelligence about antifa intended to fit this narrative came from the top. Though the names are redacted, it is safe to assume that Chad Wolf, the DHS unconfirmed “acting secretary,” was particularly involved, since he made numerous public statements at the time that mirror the shape of the discussions with the agency.

At the time the protests broke out, Wolf appeared on Fox News with Tucker Carlson and announced that the Department of Justice had plans “targeting and investigating the head of these organizations, [and] the individuals that are paying for these individuals to move across the country.”

Trump himself appeared on Fox with Laura Ingraham and claimed that “people that are in the dark shadows” are “controlling the streets” of Democratic cities. When Ingraham warned him that he sounded like he was promoting a conspiracy theory, he doubled down with a pitch-perfect rendition of the “evil antifa thug” caricature central to the narrative attacking the movement.

“We had somebody get on a plane from a certain city this weekend, and in the plane it was almost completely loaded with thugs wearing these dark uniforms, black uniforms, with gear and this and that,” he claimed.          

The DHS internal review found that Wolf and his immediate underlings at I/A pushed staffers to describe the protests as “Violent Antifa Anarchist Inspired” (VAAI) actions—an entirely new category that had no evidentiary support or background.

“You could see where this VAAI definition was coming from a mile away,” a career analyst is quoted saying in the report. “He got tired of [Redacted Name] telling him they did not have the reporting and he was convinced it was ANTIFA so he was going to fix the problem by changing what the collectors were reporting.”

An email was sent to DHS senior leaders “instructing them that henceforth, the violent opportunists in Portland were to be reported as VAAI, unless the intel ‘show[ed]...something different.”

The report says that the DHS leadership “did make other attempts to controvert the collection-analysis processm,” pointing particularly to the push for VAAI designations. One memo from the same leader posited that “we have overwhelmingly intelligence regarding the ideologies driving individuals toward violence,” but the analysts responded with factual reality: “In fact, overwhelming intelligence regarding the motivations or affiliations of the violent protesters did not exist,” the report says. “Indeed, the review team could not identify any intelligence that existed to support [Redacted Name]’s assertion.”

Wolf and his team even concocted an analytical framework for the protests—claiming that there are four distinct phases in which they develop—that appeared to have been pulled from their nether regions, and then required analysts to work overtime to come up with evidence to support it and put it into a report which then went utterly ignored:

A second example of the manner in which [Redacted Name] turned analysis upside down was his dictate regarding the “Four Phases of Protest.” Apparently, [Redacted Name] came to the conclusion sometime after George Floyd’s death and the subsequent protests that four phases of protest exist, and he wanted to say, at least temporarily, whether a protest was in a particular phase, and the indicators of that phase. As with the VAAI term, [Redacted Name] devised this idea about phases of protest on his own. From the analysts’ perspective, the problem was that they were typically asked to investigate a question, not given a conclusion and told to write a paper to support it. In this case, [Redacted Name] gave the analysts four phases and told them to find support for his proposition. Aggravating the task, they were given 48 hours over a weekend so the paper could be sent to state and local partners. … At any rate, the paper was sent to state and local officials, where it was greeted like “a tree that fell in the forest that no one heard.”

The review also noted that Federal Protective Services officers requested assistance from DHS’s Homeland Identities Targeting and Exploitation Center to search protesters’ cellphones. The latter team found the searches were illegal, and resisted pressure from senior Homeland Security leaders to assist in the searches.

And then there were the “baseball cards.” These dossiers were compiled by freshly hired collections analysts who targeted people arrested during the protest and suspected of having “antifa” or BLM connections. The internal review found that out of the 48 reports provided, 13 of them involved people accused of non-violent offenses, such as trespassing or failing to comply with an order, with no clear tie to any national security threat or mission. One “baseball card” report focused on a person who was arrested and accused of flying a drone and identified on social media as a journalist.

Republicans took the bogus narrative and functionally made it an official one widely believed across the country—namely, that “antifa and BLM burned down cities across the nation”—and have even used it to justify the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. At congressional hearings, they have even tried to claim that examples of lethal violence, such as the slaying of an FPS officer in Oakland, by far-right extremists was the product of “antifa” radicals.

The narrative also was primarily responsible for the failures by both DHS and other federal law-enforcement agencies, notably the FBI, to adequately take the very real and building threat of white-nationalist terrorism seriously. The result, in fact, unleashed a plague of far-right violence that reached a high-tide mark on Jan. 6, but which has still not receded.

“This was a textbook example of what happens when you send people in with a political agenda, inadequate training, and no real effort to correct the kind of problems that showed up early,” Wyden told OPB. “This was about politics. We know that Donald Trump tried to say again and again, ‘Portland is really the problem.’ And he would never really focus on the fact that his people, were basically okaying, for example, the use of tear gas near a school in our community.”

Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday said they were opposed to Pentagon nominee Brenda Sue Fulton, citing her past tweets and statements criticizing the GOP and evangelicals.

During a confirmation hearing for a trio of nominees, several Republicans — including Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Rick Scott of Florida, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Dan Sullivan of Alaska — said they would outright oppose Fulton's confirmation to be assistant secretary of Defense for manpower and reserve affairs.

The rocky session was reminiscent of the rough reception GOP senators gave Colin Kahl, whom President Joe Biden nominated to be the Pentagon's top policy official, over his tweets. Kahl was later confirmed.

In a similar fashion, Republicans said Fulton's tweets showed bias against Republicans and evangelicals and questioned whether she could effectively lead the sprawling personnel portfolio.

Fulton apologized for several of the tweets, calling it "always wrong to tarnish an entire group of people with the beliefs or actions of one or a few."

Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota, followed by other Republicans, noted a January 2018 tweet labeling the GOP "racist" for not calling out racism. "Let’s be real," Fulton wrote. "When one of our two national political parties is unable to call out racism, our system is broken. It’s not a political statement to say the GOP is racist; it’s a moral statement, and one backed up by an increasing mountain of evidence. #FixThis."

Fulton responded that she regretted the tweet, and said she aimed to convey that combating racism is a moral issue that transcends party.

"I want to take the opportunity to apologize to you, and to all the members of the committee, for that tweet. My intent was to say that racism isn't Democratic or Republican, that it's not a political issue, it's a moral issue," Fulton told Rounds. "But I went about it all wrong. The words are muddled and confused, and I deeply regret them."

Several more Republicans criticized her comments on social media, taking aim at tweets and statements criticizing evangelical Christians. Cotton cited a June 2014 tweet that followed the Supreme Court's Hobby Lobby decision arguing the tenet of religious freedom had been "twisted to mean conservative Christians can dictate their beliefs to the rest of us."

"I think you'll understand why so many members of this committee and the Senate do not think you are fit to take over this position," Cotton said. "You are going to be in charge of military chaplains. You are nominated to be the assistant secretary of Defense for manpower and reserve affairs and you have a long history of offensive, inflammatory accusation against Bible-believing Christians. I will oppose this nomination and I certainly hope the entire Senate will oppose it as well."

At the outset of the hearing, ranking Republican Jim Inhofe also pressed Fulton on whether she intended to change any policies regarding the rights of military chaplains and whether she considers conservatives who oppose abortion rights, such as himself, to be "radical." Fulton said she does not in both instances.

Fulton said she supports religious freedom and argued that her record in the military and beyond shows that she has consistently worked with people with differing views.

She cited her tenure as a member of the U.S. Military Academy's Board of Visitors and said some of her closest working partners were Republican members of Congress, name-checking House GOP appropriator Steve Womack of Arkansas.

"I'm a Christian," Fulton said in an exchange with Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. "I will, as I have throughout my career, work side by side with Republicans, with Democrats, with Independents, with anyone regardless of their political beliefs for the mission, for what is best for our armed forces."

Fulton, a former Army captain, is a 1980 graduate of West Point and was a member of the first class to admit women.

Fulton was appointed by then-President Barack Obama to the West Point Board of Visitors in 2011, becoming the first openly gay member of the board. She was also a vocal proponent of repealing the Pentagon's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, which barred gay troops from serving openly.

Fulton isn't the first of Biden's Pentagon nominees to be raked by Senate Republicans for past tweets.

Kahl's nomination ran into trouble over past tweets criticizing GOP officials and Trump administration policies.

After a bumpy confirmation hearing in which he apologized for "disrespectful" rhetoric on social media, all Senate Republicans opposed his nomination. Kahl was eventually narrowly confirmed in April.

Biden's initial pick to lead the White House Office of Management and Budget, Neera Tanden, was withdrawn in March amid concerns that she lacked the votes to be confirmed amid criticism from senators over her tweets.

Near the end of Thursday's hearing, Armed Services Chair Jack Reed (D-R.I.) came to Fulton's backing, noting that he knew of "no complaints" from subordinates or superiors and concluded that her personal opinions "do not influence your professional activities."

Today is the deadline for four of Donald Trump's most notorious toadies to provide documents to the House special committee probing the Jan. 6 insurrection. Chief of staff Mark Meadows, aide Dan Scavino, professional grizzled hobo Steve Bannon and determined remora Kash Patel have all vowed to ignore their subpoenas from the committee; Trump himself has insisted they do so, claiming as ex-president to have an "executive privilege" to block their testimony that is not a real thing and never has been.

The committee investigating the violent attack on the U.S. Capitol wants to hear from each of the four because there's been a great deal of evidence that Trump's inner circle gathered the violent crowd that day for the explicit purpose of threatening Congress into overturning the election—an orchestrated act of sedition. Investigators want to know the full extent to which Trump's White House staff, his allies, and Trump himself took action to gather and incite the crowd.

We know Trump's team gathered a collection of some of the most militant domestic extremists in the nation and told them, on television, to march to the Capitol to make their feelings known to the lawmakers assembled at that very moment to recognize Trump's election loss. We know Trump and allies went to significant lengths to intimidate his vice president, Mike Pence, into accepting a scheme to nullify vote counts during the proceeding and that the crowd was assembled as a specific means of intimidating Congress into taking such action.

We know, in short, that Donald Trump fully intended to topple the next United States government, that his staff helped him, that his Republican allies helped him, and that a significant chunk of the now-fascist Republican Party's lawmakers endorsed or abetted the scheme. Now it's time for each of those implicated in the seditious plot to testify about who knew what, who did what, and when.

The refusal of Trump's sedition-backers to comply with the House subpoenas sets up the predictable next stage of the fight: The committee now has to decide what to do about it. Committee chair Bennie Thompson has already indicated the committee was prepared to make criminal referrals to the Department of Justice, and because President Joe Biden has explicitly rejected the notion of invoking executive privilege on Trump's behalf it is expected that the new slightly de-Trumpened department will not shield Trump on this one, no matter how much he screams for it.

The committee, and Congress as a whole, needs to do significantly more than file charges. This was an attempted insurrection. It targeted the nation's top elected lawmakers, and the shouted goals of at least part of the assembled crowd were to capture or kill elected officials in order to further Trump's plot. Even criminal charges aren't enough; the documents simply must be produced. It is a matter of national security.

Imposing steep, ruinous fines for every day of delay is in order. Finally doing what has long been threatened, reestablishing a Capitol cell in which those refusing to help the committee investigate a seditious insurrection so that those seditionists can rot there until their minds have been changed, needs to be on the table as well. It's difficult to imagine a more plausible reason for doing so than when investigating a literal violent attempt to topple our government.

Attempting to overthrow democracy based on hastily crafted hoaxes meant to undermine the legitimacy of an election is an unforgivable act. Those who act to cover up how it happened are traitors to their nation.

Democrats might never get another opportunity like this. The global climate certainly won’t.

The United States — the largest carbon polluter in history — is closer than it’s ever been to taking sweeping and lasting action on the climate crisis.

The bad news is that if Democrats can’t pull it off, they may never get another opportunity like this — and the planet certainly won’t.

Democratic leaders are trying to pass two major pieces of legislation — the $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill and the up to $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act — that they say can slash US pollution by up to 45 percent in the coming decade. In the outlined Build Back Better Act, Congress would flex its power to transform the electricity sector so that it runs on mostly clean energy, steer the transportation sector toward electric vehicles, and finally take action on methane pollution, one of the most harmful greenhouse gases.

But there have been many recent moments when the precarious dealmaking in Congress seemed close to falling apart. One of the biggest sticking points has been with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, who has questioned the party’s approach to passing both bills simultaneously. “What’s the urgency that we have?” Manchin asked on CNN’s State of the Union in late September.

In part because of Manchin’s opposition, even progressive leaders have begun to manage expectations, signaling the ultimate bill will be less ambitious. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont suggested that the $3.5 trillion figure would see some “give and take.” The package is likely to shrink to $2.3 trillion or less, the New York Times reported on Wednesday.

So what is the urgency?

Democrats only have one year before midterm elections could take away their narrow majorities in the House and Senate. That would leave them powerless to pass any legislation without help from Republicans.

At the same time, the planet faces a rapidly closing window to avert the worst catastrophes of global warming. Every fraction of a degree will translate into lives and livelihoods lost. The world can’t afford another decade of American inaction, and what Congress does next will help determine the future of the climate.

A last chance for Democrats

Historically, the president’s party loses seats in Congress in midterm elections. Next November, Democrats could lose their narrow control of Congress if they lose even one Senate seat or more than a few House seats.

“The middle of that Venn diagram — when we have leaders who care about science and we still have that window of opportunity — is now,” said Lena Moffitt, campaign director at the climate advocacy group Evergreen Action.

Democrats in Congress are also relying on a roughly once-a-year process, known as budget reconciliation, to try and push the Build Back Better Act through the Senate. Reconciliation allows them to pass a budget with a simple majority, instead of the 60 votes that are usually required in the Senate. There might not be time or political will to make a similar move in 2022. And some Democrats remain unwilling to eliminate the Senate filibuster, which is the other way they could pass progressive policies.

In short, if the historical pattern holds, Democrats may not get another chance under President Biden — or even this decade — to take serious action on climate. Some Republicans have been hinting at taking climate change more seriously, but much of the party’s leadership continues to downplay and deny climate science.

The next time the US has an opening like this, climate change will likely be dramatically worse — and that much harder to stop.

Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The best chance for the global climate

Climate scientists have warned that once the atmosphere warms more than 1.5 degrees Celsius, we will live in a drastically changed world. If countries, corporations, and individuals don’t take immediate action to reduce pollution, the world may hit that grim milestone in just 10 years.

Over the long term, if the world continues on its current polluting path, the world will warm more than double that amount, risking catastrophes humanity has never had to confront. The window to chart a new course is rapidly closing.

And the world’s “last, best chance” to take decisive collective action is less than a month away, as John Kerry, who serves as President Biden’s climate envoy, has said. In early November, world governments will gather in Glasgow for the United Nations climate conference, COP26. Following up on the Paris climate accord, countries will pledge more ambitious pollution targets and tackle the challenge of financing a worldwide transition to clean energy.

The US bears the most responsibility of any country for global warming, having released 20 percent of the world’s greenhouse pollution since 1850. Today, the country ranks second in emissions behind China. But the US also has the power to magnify its impact if it leads by example, or if it flexes its influence on the global economic system, for example by affecting global prices of fossil fuels by ending government subsidies.

Climate experts say progress at the COP26 conference depends on the United States proving it can do its part, for symbolic as well as practical reasons. This is the first year the US officially returns to global negotiations after former President Donald Trump withdrew the country from the Paris climate accord. Now, Biden has to lead by example by showing that the country can swiftly change direction for good, demonstrating progress on its national pledge of cutting emissions 50 to 52 percent by 2030.

“There is this sense of exhaustion about how long is it going to take for one of the biggest emitters in the world to do its fair share,” said Rachel Cleetus, the clean energy policy director at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

It’s unclear whether Congress will deliver on climate-change legislation by the time the international community meets in Glasgow. But any steps forward would send “a very important signal that can really help catalyze more ambition from other countries,” Cleetus said.

The climate policies on the line

As Democrats fight over the details of the infrastructure bill and pare back the Build Back Better agenda, the proposals that would tackle climate change are changing.

Pressure to shrink the size and scope of the Build Back Better agenda could wind up pitting environmental priorities against one another, Dana Johnson, federal policy director at WE ACT for Environmental Justice, told Vox. This could reduce protections for communities that are most vulnerable to climate change.

“Are we going to prioritize clean air over people having clean water? Are we going to prioritize water over reducing the energy burden in homes?” Johnson asked. “People of low wealth and people of color will still get the short end of the stick.”

The impact of both pieces of legislation depends heavily on which proposals members of Congress can agree on and which they cut.

Cleaning up the power sector is the easiest and fastest way to address US emissions, climate experts told Vox, because clean electricity can fuel everything from cars and trucks to homes and offices. The 183 active coal-fired power plants left in the nation are heavy polluters that can be replaced with “off-the-shelf, ready-to-go technologies that are commercially available and easy to build up in America today,” said Jesse Jenkins, an environmental engineering professor at Princeton University who is advising lawmakers on the bill.

The Build Back Better Act could accelerate this transition with a Clean Electricity Payment Program (CEPP), which would reward utilities for increasing clean energy by 4 percent year over year and ding them if they don’t. In an interview with Vox this summer, Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN) called this part of the package “the biggest change in our energy policy since the lights went on.” But as the chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Manchin will ultimately set the terms of the CEPP.

The program tops a list of six leading climate policies that Congress is currently considering, according to the consulting firm Rhodium Group. Next on the list are:

• Between CEPP and clean energy tax credits, the bill allots $235 billion for utilities, producers, and consumers in subsidies extended for the next decade
• $80 billion in rebates and investments in electric vehicles and public transit before 2030, which would mean fewer gas-guzzling cars added to US roads
• Fines for oil and gas producers that leak an excessive amount of methane. This is the most direct way lawmakers want to target emissions from fossil-fuel production.
• Funding for “natural carbon removal,” which takes the form of agricultural and forestry programs that would focus on soil conservation and reforestation.

Any of these could wind up dropping out of the final legislation under pressure from holdouts like Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Sen. Manchin.

Manchin, who profits personally from family investments in coal and has relied on campaign donations from the oil and gas industry, has said he wants more coal and natural gas to be part of the Build Back Better Act. He has also suggested increasing funding for carbon capture and storage, which have divided environmentalists but are supported by many fossil-fuel companies. (One ExxonMobil lobbyist bragged in an undercover video, taped by the climate activist group Greenpeace UK, that he meets with Manchin’s office every week, the HuffPost reported.)

If the proposed investments are left alone, however, Rhodium Group found that the six top climate proposals in the two-pronged Democratic approach would eliminate up to a billion tons of carbon pollution. A billion tons is equivalent to taking “250 million cars off the road forever,” John Larsen, the consulting group’s energy research director, told Vox — roughly the impact of disappearing every vehicle that has driven on US roads in 2021. Most of these gains would come from the reconciliation package, Larsen added.

Another way to measure the importance of these climate policies is to consider what happens without them. Domestic emissions could flatline and possibly even increase in the next decade if existing US policies continue, according to Rhodium’s modeling. (That’s based on the pessimistic assumption that there will be no federal legislation, no new EPA regulation, and no further state action.) Pollution levels in 2030 would remain just 15 to 25 percent below the US peak in 2005.

Basically, a business-as-usual approach to climate change would not get the US anywhere near Biden’s target of 50 percent reductions by the end of the decade.

You can see the huge gap between Biden’s promises for 2030 and the current course of the US in the chart below. Biden’s target for this decade appears as a vertical line in the bottom right corner, just above the year 2030. The green and blue area is where the country is headed if nothing changes. (Since there’s a fair bit of uncertainty baked into these predictions, the colors reflect the possible range of scenarios.)

Rhodium Group’s Taking Stock report, July 2021

The gulf between current practices and Biden’s pledges represents 2.3 billion tons of pollution that the country somehow needs to prevent.

Infrastructure is not easy to change once it’s in the ground — just think of all the old buildings, bridges, highways, and pipelines that are still in use after decades or even centuries. If the government doesn’t slow the construction of new fossil-fuel infrastructure, and gas continues to power many buildings, America’s dependence on dirty energy will be baked in for years to come. Congress has the power to shape how quickly the country manages to bend its current path — a path that leads to disastrous warming.

Jenkins, the Princeton professor, called on the House and Senate to play a leading role in the US solution to climate change. “It will be impossible for the Biden administration to make up for congressional inaction,” he said. If Congress is not “putting its shoulder into accelerating the transition, then it’s going to be really hard to keep up the pace.”

The law couldn't stop him; only a few people did. It's not a comforting thought.

Click here to go see the bonus panel!

Hovertext:
Honestly you could've just started with our collective browser history.

Today's News:

By Mark Hill Published: October 06th, 2021

A hacker’s release last week of data from the Oath Keepers organization—which played a key role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection—revealed the breadth and depth of the penetration into the ranks of law-enforcement authorities by such far-right extremists. It also revealed the importance of weeding them out from the ranks of police officers—and the urgency of acting quickly.

Not only was there a surge in interest in joining the group after the Jan. 6 violence, but the interest was pronounced among law-enforcement officers. A survey of the data by USA Today found more than 200 people who signed up to join the group over the past decade who identified themselves as members of a police agency; of those, 21 are still serving today.

Despite the group’s well-established role in the insurrection, Jason Wilson of The Guardian found that hundreds of people either joined the Oath Keepers anew or renewed their membership afterward. These included people who cited their military ranks when they joined; among their numbers were combat veterans, national guardsmen, retired servicepersons, and members of the clergy. Others who joined were connected to the firearms industry or engaged in security contracting.

“The Oath Keepers subscribe to anti-government conspiracy theories, so the fact that officers belong to an organization that believes in this type of stuff really calls into question their discretion and their ability to make sound judgments,” domestic-terrorism analyst Daryl Johnson told USA Today.

The active law-enforcement officers identified on the membership list include:

• Riverside County, California, Sheriff Chad Bianco, who told USA Today he enrolled in 2014 with a single year's membership.
• a police officer in the small town of Ferndale, Washington, who has been embroiled in civil-rights disputes there.
• an officer at the Louisville Metro Police Department, who was involved in a 2018 shooting.
• several New York Police Department officers, including a former U.S. Army member.
• a former U.S. Army captain who joined the Chicago Police Department and is still there.
• an 80-year-old, part-time officer at the Ashley County Sheriff’s Office in Arkansas.
• a corrections officer in Riverside, California.

Sheriff Bianco has long been aligned with far-right “constitutionalist” beliefs. He announced earlier this summer that he would refuse to enforce the state’s COVID-19 mandates, proclaiming himself as “the last line of defense from tyrannical government overreach.”

Another officer on the list—Maj. Eben Bratcher, operations chief with the Yuma County Sheriff's Office in Arizona—left a note for the Oath Keepers when he signed up: "We have 85 sworn officers and Border (of) Mexico on the South and California on the West. I've already introduced your web site to dozens of my Deputies." He told USA Today that he didn’t recall writing that. He said he received newsletters from the group for "some time” but dropped out “due to the sheer volume of email I received."

The Ferndale officer, identified by BuzzFeed as Scott Langton, reportedly inquired with the Oath Keepers on Feb. 4, saying: “I’m not looking to be on some Liberal hit list.” Langton has been sued at least twice for allegedly committing civil rights and use of force abuses while in uniform; one suit was settled, the other remains active in federal court. He was placed on administrative leave after his attempts to join the Oath Keepers were revealed.

A common misconception shared by most police officers is that they have a First Amendment right to say just about anything on social media or in public, Val Van Brocklin, a former federal prosecutor who trains police departments on using social media, told USA Today. But people in charge of enforcing the law are also expected to be nonpartisan and unbiased in that work, and spouting far-right extremism places a cloud over entire departments.

"The vast majority of cops in the country don't understand this," Van Brocklin said. "A public employer does not have to pay you for your insubordination or dishonorable conduct that sullies the badge and the uniform."

“I don’t think police officers should be involved with extremist groups,” Heidi Beirich, Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, told USA Today. "You are a part of the government, you represent the full, whole community as a police officer, and there’s obviously a problem when you’re in a group that’s questioning the government’s right to do the things that the government has the right to do.”

When Daily Dot analyzed the data, it also found significant numbers of Oath Keepers within the ranks of the U.S. military, as well as within the federal bureaucracy. Some 160 alleged members shared their official military or government emails with the militia. Some 28 email addresses used the .gov domain, including those from local city governments to sheriff’s departments.

Oath Keepers within such federal agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Aviation Administration, and National Aeronautics and Space Administration show up within the data as well. One domain originated from the Los Alamos National Laboratory, a nuclear weapons facility.

As we observed previously:

… [E]ffectively confronting far-right extremism must begin with police reform, and particularly the task of weeding extremists out of our police forces. The public cannot expect agencies tasked with enforcing the laws that prohibit extremist violence to do so seriously when those same extremists permeate their ranks.

AMD said Windows 11 can cut game performance on Ryzen CPUs by 10 to 15 percent, and the operating system may not utilize AMD's "preferred core" technology, but a fix is in the works. PCWorld reports: A support note on AMD's web site published this week said Windows 11 may increase L3 cache latency a whopping threefold, which can cause slowdowns in latency sensitive applications. Lighter duty, cache-sensitive games might see a 3 percent to 5 percent hit, and lighter-duty games as e-sports titles could see frame rates drop from 10 to 15 percent. AMD also said its "preferred core" feature, which tells the operating system which core in each CPU can hit the highest clock, also doesn't work right in Windows 11. Each CPU is tested to see which core will run the fastest at the factory and is marked so the OS will dispatch tasks to that "preferred core." Since Windows 11 doesn't seem to work with it right now, any performance bump from using the best core wouldn't happen. The company said the performance cost would be most noticeable in CPUs with more than 8 cores and with TDP ratings above 65 watts.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Another day, another case of the GOP looking the other way when it comes to women’s safety. This time, the party has decided to dismiss accusations made by women of domestic and sexual violence against three candidates in next year’s key midterm Senate races—two of whom have the support of former “grab-em-by the p***y” President Trump.

First, there’s ex-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who is desperate to get back into politics. This comes three years after he was forced to resign after being accused of sexual misconduct and campaign finance violations in 2018. Greitens’ former hairstylist accused him of sexually and physically abusing her and attempting to blackmail her with a semi-nude photo he took of her without her consent. 

The Washington Post reported that while Greitens described the relationship as an extramarital affair and the relations “consensual,” the woman, referred to only as Witness 1, said the relationship “included unwanted and potentially coerced sexual acts that she felt afraid to say no to and physical violence.” 

According to The Post, Greitens bound and blindfolded the woman in his basement when his wife was out of town. He then ripped her shirt off and took a photo of her chest, threatening that if she told anyone about his sexual assault and behavior, he was “going to take these pictures, and … put them everywhere.” His motivation? “[The photos] are going to be everywhere, and then everyone will know what a little whore you are.”

Although felony charges against him were dropped, the Missouri Legislature launched an impeachment investigation, which led to Greitens’ resignation.  

When Greitens announced his Senate run earlier this year, he received a resounding endorsement from the likes of Rudy Guiliani, former mayor of New York and President Trump’s most devoted henchman. 

Next up is Sean Parnell, a leading Republican candidate in Pennsylvania. He is a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan and unsuccessfully ran for Congress in 2020. 

In 2017 and again in 2018, Parnell’s wife filed temporary protection-from-abuse orders against him. Neither of the orders was extended after hearings with Parnell and his wife, and both were later expunged. 

“Sean’s actions and attitude toward women are disturbing, well-documented, and disqualifying,” Senate candidate Jeff Bartos told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “The citizens of Pennsylvania deserve to know this information.”

Last up is NFL legend and Trump-minion Herschel Walker, now the front-runner for the GOP nomination in Georgia.

According to public records reviewed by Associated Press, Walker repeatedly threatened ex-wife Cindy Grossman during his divorce. In 2005, Grossman secured a protective order against him, alleging violence and controlling behavior, AP reports. 

In an interview with ABC News, Grossman said Walker held a gun to her head, saying, “I’m going to blow your f---ing brains out.” She filed for divorce in 2001, citing “physically abusive and extremely threatening behavior.”

Both Walker and Parnell have the backing of Trump, someone who obviously ignores accusations of sexual misconduct, as he’s been accused of it by 26 women. And Republican senators seemingly don’t care much about it either. 

“Americans are pretty forgiving,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) said when HuffPost asked about the allegations against Walker. “I don’t think that’s a deal-breaker. I actually think he’s quite a good candidate.”

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), herself a survivor of sexual assault and domestic abuse, acknowledged Walker “had some baggage there” but added the Heisman Trophy-winner had “addressed it.”

Mitch McConnell—or “swamp turtle” as Dem. Amy McGrath, a retired U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel, likes to call him—told Politico about Walker, “I think there’s every indication he’s going to be a good candidate.”

As America grapples with the very real threat of fascism, the fledgling "One America News" network has staked out a position as one of the nation's dominant promoters of pro-Trump, anti-democratic hoaxes and fake news. A new Reuters investigation pins much of the blame for its rise on a single American company: AT&T.

According to the network's archconservative founder, the whole thing was AT&T's idea. In a deposition unearthed by Reuters, OAN head Robert Herring Sr. testified that it was AT&T executives who pitched the idea to him. The company, owner of CNN, HBO, and majority owner of DirectTV "told us they wanted a conservative network. They only had one, which was Fox News, and they had seven others on the other" side. So Herring built it, and AT&T has been the near-exclusive source of the network's funding ever since.

There are a few things in the report that seem especially notable. "The records include a reported offer by AT&T to acquire a 5% equity stake in OAN and AWE, though the two sides ultimately signed a different deal. The court filings also cite a promise by OAN to “cast a positive light” on AT&T during newscasts," reports Reuters. The idea that AT&T would be so enamored with a brand-new conservative network already gaining a reputation for shoddy reporting and wholesale hoaxes that it would want part ownership is remarkable—or would be if the Dallas-based AT&T and its preceding incarnations had not had decades of experience in being one of the most malignant companies in the nation. That deal did not happen.

What happened instead is that AT&T has funded the company in the more standard manner. As the network has continually promoted conspiracy theories about a deadly pandemic and pushed hoaxes that have successfully undermined American democracy and led to an attempted toppling of the United States government, AT&T and DirectTV have funneled "tens of millions of dollars" to Herring's company through carriage fees. Do you get DirectTV? Congratulations. One of America's leading sources of pro-fascist conspiracy hoaxes gets a cut of your monthly bill whether you watch it or not. That satellite box sitting beneath your television set helped create an insurrection.

The other notable charge in the Reuters piece is the claim—also alleged in sworn testimony by the Herring family—that AT&T agreed in 2014 to a proposed bargain in which the Herrings would use their OAN network and their own lobbying to heavily promote the planned AT&T acquisition of DirectTV, crafting positive content about the merger to help sway federal regulators in exchange for AT&T placing OAN and another Herring network on DirectTV when the deal went through. The Herrings indeed mounted a full press to promote the merger; the lawsuit in question is because the Herrings say AT&T didn't follow through with their end of the bargain.

That lawsuit was settled secretly in 2017, and is presumably the reason that DirectTV began airing both Herring networks only weeks afterwards.

Now, there's a gaping problem that's complicating our understanding of what really happened in that case. The Herrings are the driving force behind a "news" network that is infamous for publishing fraudulent content. They are not just liars, they have turned lying into the core premise of a new pro-fascism, anti-democracy, viewer-killing television studio. You can take the Herring claim that AT&T did this or did that only with 12 pounds of salt because all of these people can be presumed to be exactly the sort of people who would lie in court in order to line their own pockets.

On the other hand, AT&T is also a company that has long had a corporate culture of being sleazy, icky slimeballs. An unnamed AT&T executive's claim to Reuters that it would never trade political support to network deals comes off as laughable; if there's any company in America that would do such a thing, AT&T would be it. All sides here are terrible, dishonest, and almost unfathomably gross.

AT&T, you will note, is currently embroiled in yet another scandal for its backing of Texas Republican lawmakers whose new "private bounty for turning in those that assist abortions" has effectively ended Roe in the state. That's resulting in new battles as other media outlets refuse to even run ads attacking the powerful company over that support. The AT&T defense is that it supports both lawmakers who want to end abortion rights in America and those who do not.

Similarly, the AT&T defense of its status as near-exclusive funder of a fascist "news" network actively promoting hoaxes and conspiracy theories both about the current deadly pandemic and about the supposed fraudulence of our very democracy is that it also carries networks that don't do such things, so whatcha gonna do. Both defenses are unpersuasive.

Oddly, the word fascism appears nowhere in the Reuters story. This is a bit curious as the network's continued insistence that Dear Leader Donald Trump was the actual winner of an election he lost, its promotion of a stream of hoaxes aimed squarely at undermining confidence in elections that did not go Dear Leader's way, and its goading of actual political violence in support of those aims objectively tick off sufficient boxes to describe the network as such.

We've known for a while that DirectTV is the primary funder of OAN, and the primary means by which the network is able to peddle brazenly false information to Americans in an effort to sway them into doing actively harmful things. The news that AT&T executives were themselves the impetus for founding the network in the first place is new.

None of it changes the fact that AT&T's boardroom, and DirectTV's boardroom, aren't choosing to fund a "conservative news network." They are using their companies to back a hoax outlet that has repeatedly and provably undermined the nation's safety and welfare. A hoax outlet, not a news one.

This is indefensible by any standard. There was once a difference between "conservative commentary" and the invention of outrageous hoaxes meant to bend the "news" towards whatever paranoias the movement's leaders find most useful; that line has been erased. Each of the companies involved is now responsible for killing Americans outright.

There's not a chance in hell any of the three companies will reconsider—again, all three are dens of gleeful crookedness, as has become commonplace at the pinnacle of American "success"—so your best bet is to take your money out of the picture. You do not need DirectTV. Dump it. Supporting for-profit companies looking to make that profit by goading Americans into believing false information about a deadly disease or about our very democracy itself is not defensible. Your pennies cannot be the ones that make the venture a profitable concern.

An anonymous reader shares a report: When Facebook's platforms went down early on Oct. 4, the online tracker Downdetector was among the first places users looked to find out what was happening. Downdetector, which uses crowdsourcing to track outages, recognized Facebook's problems were dramatically different than a typical outage. Its system automatically released a notification, including a tweet, informing the internet of the disruption. The outage was among the biggest ever declared by Downdetector, said Luke Deryckx, chief technology officer at closely held Ookla LLC, the Seattle-based company that owns it. "Downdetector is a vehicle for users to report their experience," he said, adding that the company crowdsources "users' relationship with the internet." "In this case, we'd received a clear and almost instantaneous signal that there was a Facebook-related outage." The idea of Downdetector was born over drinks at a bar in Haarlem, a city in the Netherlands, in February 2012. Tom Sanders and Sander van de Graaf were both working at IDG Communications Inc., the media publisher of magazines including CIO and Computerworld. Van de Graaf was a developer, and Sanders was the editor in chief. Readers would often call the newsroom to report an online outage at a company or service provider, but the reporters would often get no response -- or have to wait hours -- when they called to ask about the disruption. "We thought, wouldn't there be ways to automate this so we didn't have to check with the press office and we could get the data directly ourselves?" Van de Graaf said.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either. My girlfriend, a political junkie just like me, charged into the kitchen just the other day to ask me, “Did you know that Kyrsten Sinema spent two weeks doing an internship at a winery in California during the pandemic—and got paid for it?”

My response: “What. What!” Yes, said Kaili. She’d just heard about it during a comedy sketch on Jon Lovett’s podcast. “How,” I asked with extreme incredulity, “could we not have heard about this before?” She wondered the same thing. We’re media professionals who follow the news obsessively, and it’s not like we’ve had a whole lot else going on lately, what with COVID-19 and all. So W, we both marveled, TF?

Now at this point I’m guessing the story is probably news to you as well—and that in and of itself is a story. The gossipy D.C. media really has no lower bar when it comes to elevating stories about politicians behaving bizarrely, and a sitting U.S. senator taking time off in the middle of a global pandemic to make wine surely rates. But there has been virtually no coverage.

Credit to reporter Dave Levinthal at Insider for breaking the story … all the way back in May. (Again, I’m gobsmacked that I only learned of it in October, but that’s the whole genesis of this piece.) Levinthal cracked the case thanks to a single line item in a new financial disclosure statement Sinema filed that month showing she’d earned $1,117.40 at Three Sticks Winery in Sonoma County.

Insider put the piece behind its paywall, so that may have slowed its uptake, but newsrooms all have subscriptions to one another’s sites, and anyhow, there’s always Twitter. How did this not light Twitter on fire?

Friend, it didn’t. The next time anyone wrote about Sinema’s wine country moonlighting wasn’t until two and a half months later, when Paul Bomberger at the Press Democrat—the local paper in Sonoma—picked up on Insider’s story. Bomberger’s calls to Sinema’s offices were ignored, but he did narrow down the timeframe of her internship to August of 2020 and was able to score a few quotes from a winemaker at Three Sticks, Ryan Prichard. (“She was full-in and a great asset to the team.”)

After that, basically nothing. Politico’s Playbook, which normally loves these sorts of tales, gave Bomberger’s piece a one-sentence aside in a parenthetical a couple of days later. Perhaps that offhand treatment is why the many reporters who read Playbook each day somehow were not piqued, but come on. The story is as juicy as the grapes Sinema supposedly spent her days sorting.

A few smaller sites rehashed the original story, but John Gorgola at The Nation was just about the only person to really pick up the thread, wondering last month why Sinema chose this winery out of the 8,000 or 9,000 across the country. As Insider’s Levinthal noted, one of the destinations listed on an invitation for a $5,000-a-person Sinema-headlined fundraiser the same month as her vineyard gig was Three Sticks.

And as Gorgola in turn pointed out, Three Sticks is owned by private equity titan William Price III. (His generational suffix—those triple vertical lines—is also how the hyper-exclusive winery, with a product that’s seldom available for purchase, earned its name.) The investment firm Price founded, TPG Capital, has spent more than $10 million on lobbyists over the past decade. What’s an extra $1,117.40 for another friendly ear to a man like that, especially for the target of a last-ditch persuasion campaign aimed at preserving a tax loophole beloved by Wall Street?

There, though, the trail more or less goes cold. Even the notoriously gabby Maureen Dowd only tucked in a brief reference to the story at the very end of her most recent column. But Kaili has many, many questions, and so do I—questions that reporters might like to start asking. Consider this a collaborative list from two political fiends burning with a need to know:

1. A Sinema spokesperson told Insider “that the Senate Ethics Committee preapproved Sinema's work.” Could we please see a copy of that letter?
2. If Sinema, who makes a fetish of her love of wine (a fawning Axios piece recently described her as a “wine-drinking triathlete,” as though quaffing vino were some unique trademark), were proud of her work, why didn’t she announce her internship at the time?
3. Relatedly, Sinema’s a pretty regular Instagram user but didn’t post a single photo from Three Sticks last summer. Beautiful wineries are inherently Instagrammable, so why no pics?
4. There were extremely important races for president and Senate in her swingy home state last year. Why did she hie off to another (deep blue) state for two weeks not long before Election Day when Democrats were killing themselves to get out the vote in Arizona?
5. Related to that, did Sinema spend any time during the August congressional recess meeting with constituents? That’s what members of Congress claim they do, anyway, during their totally-not-a-vacation breaks.
6. Did Sinema skip the Democratic National Convention to play winemaker? We don’t know the exact dates of her internship, but the DNC was from Aug. 17-20 last year, and her high-dollar fundraiser in Sonoma was a three-day extravaganza running from Sept. 21 through Sept. 23. Did she wrap up work at the winery and then go mingle with rich donors?
7. Did someone flag Sinema’s financial disclosure for Insider, and if so who—and why?
8. How many people applied for this internship? Did Sinema take a slot from someone else without her income ($174,000/year)? Someone who might actually be interested in a career in wine-making?
9. Did she keep the money she made?
10. This all went down during a pandemic (let’s not forget), and before vaccines were available. What safety precautions did Sinema take? Did she think that risking exposure to COVID-19 while working a completely unnecessary side-hustle was worth it?

And above all else: How in the hell has this not been a bigger story? Every technicolor wig, every empty pronouncement, and every snide dig at fellow Democrats from Sinema merit endless attention from the Beltway press corps. But, somehow, not this—the story of the plucky senator doing a jus’ reg’lar folks internship at a salt-of-the-earth winery.

Is this a Watergate-level scandal, just waiting to be blown open by a 21st century Deep Throat skulking down in the wine cellar? Of course not. But it’s a really, really weird story, and given the outsize power Sinema holds as a highly disagreeable member of an evenly divided Senate, something this far out of the ordinary merits greater scrutiny. Now, let’s see some.

Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh was confirmed to the highest court in the land three years ago this week. (Thanks for that, Joe Manchin!). Oct. 6, 2018 stands as an inflection point in the court's move toward illegitimacy.

To be sure, then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's blockade of President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, Merrick Garland, was questionable. But the subsequent nomination of Neil Gorsuch by the former guy proceeded as normal, and Gorsuch hid his rabid extremism well throughout. Kavanaugh, though, couldn't hide his essential being. The privileged white frat boy bully was on full display, and the nation woke up to the fact that even on the Supreme Court, our country's most revered government institution is open to that guy—the same guy who got the promotion over you because of his daddy and his connections.

Since Ruth Bader Ginsberg's death and the unleashing of the rabidly far-right majority with her successor, Amy Coney Barrett, the Supreme Court’s last shreds of legitimacy are falling away. That's made abundantly clear by the latest survey from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Its findings—that more than one-third of Americans would consider abolishing the court if it continues to rule counter to majority opinion—demonstrate that the last hope for a court the people see as legitimate lies in its reform.

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The survey found that 34% of respondents said "it might be better to do away with the court altogether" if it "started making a lot of rulings that most Americans disagreed with." In 2007, Annenberg asked that question and fewer than 20% of respondents agreed the court could be abolished, while over 80% disagreed. Now 65% disagree with the idea of abolishing the court, dropping precipitously from about 78% in 2019.

Most Americans, for example, support abortion rights; 59% in a recent Pew poll say it "should be legal in all or most cases." Yet the Supreme Court, in a secretive and opaque shadow docket ruling, allowed almost all abortion to end in Texas. It will hear a case this fall that could end that constitutional right to an abortion for millions of Americans.

The survey also found that 38% of Americans believe that "Congress should pass legislation saying the Supreme Court can no longer rule on that issue or topic" when the Congress disagrees with the court's decisions, up about 10 points from the 2019 survey. Say, on voting rights, which the Roberts court has effectively eviscerated.

"Respect for judicial independence appears to be eroding," Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), said of the findings. "The willingness of more than 1 in 3 Americans to entertain the idea of abolishing the court or stripping jurisdiction from it is alarming." The findings also aren't outliers, the APPC points out. "Gallup reported in September that the Supreme Court’s approval rating plunged to 40%, a new low, from 49% in July. A Marquette Law School Poll in September found the court’s approval rating falling to 49% from 60% in July."

Whether this erosion in trust in the court is coming from the rabid right that trusts no one but Trump, or the rest of us who have watched the court become increasingly beholden to far-right corporate interests isn't clear from the survey. What is clear is that if more than one-third of the population thinks doing away with the court is a solid idea, then the president and Congress taking on court reform by expanding it is not a particularly radical proposition.

What Elie Mystal says: "Court expansion is the preferred constitutional solution to a Court that oversteps its mandate or thumbs its nose at the will of the people." Court expansion dilutes the power of the new Federalist Society majority, appointed not for their judicial experience or integrity, but for their willingness to participate in advancing a fascist vision for the U.S.

What Mystal also says: "As the Court prepares to merrily set everything on fire this term, Democrats are looking at the constitutional fire extinguisher and thinking, It says we can only break the glass in case of an emergency, and we're not sure burning our constituents' rights at the stake qualifies." They've got to get over that, just like they have to get over thinking getting rid of the filibuster is a radical idea (which, by the way, they'll have to do to expand the court and save everything, anyway). With more than one-third of the country thinking the court is worthy of dissolution, using this option to save the institution (and the country!) is a no-brainer.

BOISE, Idaho — Idaho Gov. Brad Little said he will rescind an executive order involving Covid-19 vaccines by Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin, and the commanding general of the Idaho National Guard also on Tuesday told McGeachin she can’t activate troops to send to the U.S.-Mexico border.

Little and Major General Michael J. Garshak made the statements as McGeachin on Tuesday in a flurry of activity attempted to exercise her authority as acting governor with Little out of the state.

Little is in Texas meeting with nine other Republican governors over concerns on how President Joe Biden is handling border issues. McGeachin, a far-right Republican, is running for governor. In Idaho, the governor and lieutenant governor don’t run on the same ticket.

McGeachin’s executive order issued Tuesday afternoon seeks, among other things, to prevent employers from requiring their employees be vaccinated against Covid-19.

“I am in Texas performing my duties as the duly elected Governor of Idaho, and I have not authorized the Lt. Governor to act on my behalf,” Little said in a statement shortly after arriving in Texas on Tuesday. “I will be rescinding and reversing any actions taken by the Lt. Governor when I return.”

Little is expected to be back in the state Wednesday evening.

McGeachin in a letter to Garshak on Tuesday morning sought information on how to activate troops.

“As of Wednesday, my constitutional authority as Governor affords me the power of activating the Idaho National Guard,” McGeachin wrote to Garshak in the letter obtained by The Associated Press. “As the Adjutant General, I am requesting information from you on the steps needed for the Governor to activate the National Guard.”

Garshak replied with one paragraph on Tuesday afternoon.

“I am unaware of any request for Idaho National Guard assistance under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) from Texas or Arizona,” Garshak wrote, in part, to McGeachin. “As you are aware, the Idaho National Guard is not a law enforcement agency.”

Little in June sent a team of Idaho State Police troopers to the border to help with intelligence gathering and investigative work to stop drugs from coming across the border. Idaho shares an international border with Canada but not Mexico.

Republican Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona had requested the help under the Emergency Management Assistance Compact that empowers states to help other states in times of disasters or emergencies.

“On Sept 24, I spoke to my counterpart in Texas, Lt Gov. Dan Patrick’s office, and they affirmed the need for additional resources in helping the situation on our southern border,” McGeachin told Garshak.

McGeachin’s office on Tuesday didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“Attempting to deploy our National Guard for political grandstanding is an affront to the Idaho constitution and insults the men and women who have dedicated their life to serving our state and the country,” Little said in a statement.

In May when Little was out of state, she issued an executive order banning mask mandates that Little eliminated when he returned, saying mask mandate decisions were best left to local officials. Little has never issued a mask mandate.

[These three religious liberty cases may simmer in shadow docket purgatory for a while.]

Following the long conference order list, the Court relisted three religious liberty cases: Arlene's Flowers Inc. v. Washington, Dignity Health, Inc. v. Minton, and Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Lacewell These cases may simmer on the shadow docket for some time.

Will Arlene's Flowers Bloom Again?

Last term, Justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch would have granted review in the long-running Arlene's Flowers case. Alas, Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett let Arlene's Flowers wilt. But as Yogi Berra said, the case ain't over till the mandate issues. After cert was denied, the petitioner's filed a petition for rehearing. Usually, these petitions are summarily denied. But this petition had a fighting chance.

On July 26, the Tenth Circuit decided 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis. This case held that a web developer can be required to build a website for a same-sex wedding. Eugene wrote about this case here. This case presents a much cleaner vehicle to address the compelled speech issue. For example, Eugene contended that floral arrangements are not speech, but he contended that a website is speech. On July 27–only a day after 303 Creative was decided–Baronelle Stutzman filed her petition for rehearing. She urged the Court to grant cert, or in the alternative, hold her petition until 303 Creative is decided for a GVR:

This Court should reconsider its denial of Barronelle's petition and either grant the petition outright or hold it for consideration with the 303 Creative petition that is forthcoming later this year. (Barronelle's counsel also serves as counsel to 303 Creative and represents to the Court that a petition will be filed). If the latter, the Court will have the option of granting both petitions and consolidating the cases, or granting one petition and holding the other for a GVR.

The cert petition was filed in 303 Creative on September 24. And Stutzman notified the Court that this petition was filed. The reply in 303 Creative is due on October 28. The respondent may ask for an extension. But, in all likelihood, the case can be granted by December or January. And the Court could decide the First Amendment case by June. Or the Court could drag out the process, grant cert in February, and hear the case in OT 2022. (This term is already going to be hectic). Assuming the Court reverses in 303 Creative, the Court could then GVR Arlene's Flowers in June 2022 or even June 2023! That would the second GVR for Stutzman. The first came after Masterpiece Cakeshop in June 2018. Has any case ever been GVR'd twice, five years apart, without a merits ruling? That must be some kind of record. It is remarkable this case will be floating around for nearly a decade. I can't even fathom what the attorney's fees would look like. But this stratagem would give Justices Kavanaugh and Barrett another shot to keep the case alive.

Still, a GVR would not likely give Stutzman any relief. After Masterpiece, the Washington Supreme Court reaffirmed its prior opinion based on the Free Exercise Clause. If the Court GVRs on the Free Speech Clause in 303 Creative, the Washington Supreme Court would likely reaffirm its prior decision. Baronelle will be back at the Supreme Court in 2024 or so. By that point, the Court may have already granted cert in Masterpiece Cakeshop II!  And the Court can hold Arlene's Flowers for a third GVR. Jack Phillips and Baronelle Stutzman can have a cert party. I am mostly joking.

Dignity Health and Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany

Dignity Health, Inc. v. Minton presents the question whether a California Catholic hospital can be required to perform a hysterectomy on a transgender patient. The cert petition was filed in March 2020. It was relisted several times, and on July 1, 2020, was rescheduled for the long conference. And after the long conference, it was relisted again. If there was a dissent from denial of cert, it probably would have already come. Rather, the Justices may be holding this case in light of another petition.

John Elwood suggests that the Court is holding Dignity Health in light of Roman Catholic Diocese of Albany v. Lacewell. Here, New York mandates that insurance policies cover abortions. Roman Catholic Diocese squarely calls on the Court to overrule Smith. Even if the Court stops short of that outcome, but reverses in the New York case, it can still (you guessed it) GVR Dignity Health. Ultimately, Dignity Health can simmer on the shadow docket for some time. And Roman Catholic Diocese may go through a waiting period before the Court grants. The Justices may not want yet another abortion case for the docket this term.

Stay tuned.

During a CNN interview on Sunday, Dr. Anthony Fauci debunked the racist lie that immigrants are to blame for rise in COVID-19 cases. It’s a lie recently spread by Republican politicians, and one that more than half of Republicans believe per new polling (more to come on that). When asked by CNN if there was any truth to those claims, Fauci replied, “No, absolutely not.”

“When you have 700,000 Americans dead and millions and millions and millions of Americans getting infected, you don’t want to look outside to the problem. The problem is within our own country,” he said. “Certainly immigrants can get infected, but they’re not the driving force of this, let’s face reality here.”

Not that it will really do anything to change the minds of people who believe—or pretend to believe for advancement of their political futures—that immigrants have been to blame for worsening the pandemic. The poll that Fauci was asked about is a new Kaiser Family Foundation poll finding that 55% of Republicans "say immigrants and tourists bringing COVID-19 into the U.S. is a major reason for the high number of cases.” That poll found that 40% of unvaccinated adults said it’s immigrants and tourists to blame. Jesus, take the wheel.

When it comes to the people in elected office, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott tried to pin superspreading on asylum-seekers just one day after recklessly lifting pandemic restrictions. He would later test positive himself, one day after attending a maskless fundraiser. Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, noted tourist himself, would also seek to falsely blame asylum-seeking families. Over in Florida, the thin-skinned Gov. Ron DeSantis turned what was supposed to be a press conference about hurricane assistance into a rant about immigrants. 

“Ron Desantis and his incompetence led Florida to a place where the state accounts for 23% of hospitalizations nationwide and hospitals are suspending elective procedures,” Florida activist Thomas Kennedy tweeted at the time. “To deflect, he scapegoats immigrants as usual. What an absolutely disgusting and cowardly thing to do.”

And also just false, Fauci backed up. He also notably addressed the Biden administration’s continued use of Title 42, an unsound public health order implemented by the prior administration that uses the pandemic as an excuse to quickly deport asylum-seekers. Forbes reports that while Fauci said during the interview “he didn’t know enough about the ‘intricacies’ of the policy to comment,” he said his “feeling has always been that focusing on immigrants, expelling them … is not the solution to an outbreak.”

It’s not, a top public health expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had said before being bullied into implementing the policy last year. People within the federal government have continued to agree with the assessment that Title 42 shouldn’t be in place after a State Department official issued a memo calling the policy “illegal” and “inhumane,” and urged a halt to Haitian deportations. Per CBS News, more than 7,000 Haitian asylum-seekers and migrants, including kids, have been deported through 65 Immigration and Customs Enforcement flights in the past several weeks.

And now, here we have the chief medical adviser to the president saying “expelling them … is not the solution to an outbreak.” So why is this cruel and illegal policy still in place? Right now, the plausible explanation seems to be politics and trying to appease the right-wing part of this country that will lie about the border and immigrants anyway, and that’s a terrible explanation.

Behind-the-scenes crew members in the television and film industries showed that they’re united in demanding a better deal from the major studios, voting overwhelmingly to authorize a strike. Just under 90% of the 60,000 IATSE members who would be affected by a strike voted—and of those who voted, 98% voted yes. That’s about as strong a statement of intent as you will find. And it looks like the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers got the message because on Monday, after the strike vote was announced, it agreed to go back to the bargaining table after refusing to negotiate for the 11 days before the strike vote. 

“The members have spoken loud and clear,” IATSE President Matthew Loeb said in a statement on Monday. “This vote is about the quality of life as well as the health and safety of those who work in the film and television industry. Our people have basic human needs like time for meal breaks, adequate sleep, and a weekend. For those at the bottom of the pay scale, they deserve nothing less than a living wage.”

Last week, as the authorization vote loomed, 120 members of Congress, led by Rep. Adam Schiff and Sen. Alex Padilla, wrote a letter urging the AMPTP to negotiate and come to a fair agreement. 

Noting the workers’ sacrifice during the COVID-19 pandemic and their “essential role” in helping the industry survive, the lawmakers wrote, “The key issues in this negotiation, as we’ve come to understand them, are about worker dignity and basic human necessities. We are united in our belief in the importance of livable wages, sustainable benefits, and reasonable rest periods between shifts and during the workday.”

The IATSE workers who could be involved in a strike include a vast range of jobs: cinematographers, operators, grips, editors, costumers, writers assistants, hairstylists, makeup artists, art directors, set medics, warehouse workers, script supervisors, electrical lighting technicians, and more. And they’re all over the country, not just in Hollywood.

The workers are calling on the studios to treat “new media” as it now is: media, no longer a new and unstable format requiring workers to make concessions. Netflix can afford to pay its workers a decent wage. 

IATSE members are also calling for reasonable rest—basically a night’s rest and weekend breaks so they don’t fall asleep at the wheel on their way home for an inadequate amount of sleep before starting work again, and actual meal breaks during those 12+ hour days. And they need the pensions and health coverage they’ve worked for to remain secure and available to them for years to come.

If this strike happens, it will be Hollywood’s largest since World War II and the largest private-sector strike in any industry in over a decade. But the best outcome here would be if the AMPTP looks at the strike authorization vote and coughs up a fair contract right away.

Republicans have long, long sought to demonize LGBTQ+ people and materials, especially as a means of distraction from the party’s ongoing failures. As Daily Kos has covered, we’ve seen state lawmakers rally hysteria about trans folks—and especially trans students—having the most basic rights and protections. For example, access to age-appropriate, gender-affirming medical care and—igniting a debate that has riled people on all sides—whether or not trans girls should be allowed to compete on girls’ sports teams. It’s not surprising, though it continues to be disappointing, that even books are not safe from Republican meddling.

One example? Librarians at a public library in Wyoming might face criminal proceedings by County Attorney General Mitchell Damsky over books that allegedly contain obscene materials, as reported by The Los Angeles Blade. Those “obscene” materials? They’re books that include LGBTQ+ books and sex education. Nothing obscene about it, but of course, Republicans don’t want to see it that way. 

The Campbell County Public Library in Cheyenne, Wyoming, is under fire from two residents in the county, Hugh and Susan Bunnett, who filed a report on Sept. 29 detailing allegations about the “obscene” material. According to the Blade, Damsky’s office declined to comment on the ongoing situation but confirmed the report has been received and is being reviewed. 

As for the librarians, they’re not sure what’s coming next. Because they haven’t been contacted by investigators, they’re not entirely sure what to do. According to the executive director of the library, Terri Lesley, they’re abiding by their own internal review policies for books they’ve received complaints about. Sometimes after a book is reviewed, for example, it’s moved to a different age category—teen instead of middle-grade, for example—or included on different lists, like teen instead of children’s. Sometimes it stays where it originally was. 

In speaking to the Associated Press, Lesley said the library has received 35 complaints about 18 books. Lesley described the number as “unexpected” and unusual for a public library. 

“We are trying to be the force of reason,” she added. “Trying to work through these things using the policy we have in place — review these books and do our due diligence.”

Books apparently include This Book is Gay by Juno Dawson, How Do You Make a Baby by Anna Fiske, Doing It by Hannah Witton, and Dating and Sex: A Guide for the 21st Century Teen Boy by Andrew P. Smiler, among others. That’s according, mind you, to a local pastor, Susan Sisti, who is upset about those books, as well as others, being in the library. Because the librarians haven’t been contacted by investigators yet, they aren’t sure which books are actually in question. 

Obviously, which books are appropriate for what reader varies greatly. People have different comfort and maturity levels, and that’s fine. But dropping labels like “pornography” or “obscenity” are huge—and they’re also often implicit in suggesting LGBTQ+ material that, if it focused on cisgender, heterosexual people, would be just fine.

In speaking to The Daily Beast about the situation, Deborah Caldwell-Stone, who heads the American Library Association’s Office of Intellectual Freedom, explained that all of the books in question are available both in bookstores and Amazon. She stressed that none of the books meet the legal definition of child pornography or obscenity. 

“We’re just deeply concerned about this effort to prosecute librarians and educators for providing constitutionally protected mainstream materials,” she told the outlet in reference to orchestrated attacks on books and libraries.

If you’re wondering if this story feels all too familiar—community members outraged over a public library in Wyoming that dares to be remotely inclusive—that’s probably because it’s not the first time we’ve written about it here at Daily Kos. This is the very same library that had to cancel a magic show for kids because of threats against both the performer and the library staff. Why the threats? Though it wasn’t part of her show, the magician is an openly trans woman—and conservatives, apparently, refused to be the least bit gracious or normal about it.

Magician Mikayla Oz, of Iowa, said at the time she received a phone call saying that if she came to the community, there would be “issues.” In an email, someone told her she wasn’t “f—king welcome.” For safety reasons, and to avoid upsetting or stressing out the children in the case of possible issue or protest, they canceled the event. Still, people have been curious as to how there was a hulabaloo about the event to begin with, given that the library only did its usual (relatively small) publicity for the event, it didn’t touch on LGBTQ+ issues at all, and the library staff itself didn’t even realize Oz was trans when they booked her. 

Anti-LGBTQ+ people are, and always have been, deeply organized, motivated, and dedicated to their cause. Unfortunately, that cause hinges on exclusion, discrimination, and pushing people back into the closet. It’s not been about just books, or magic shows, or pronouns. It’s always been about the right to exist. 

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An institution that allows McConnell to do what he's doing has to change, and almost all Democrats now realize it.