Muslims Protest MCPS Lack of "Opt-Out"
Tuesday there was a demonstration at the Montgomery County Public Schools office building, led by a group of Muslims who want their children to be allowed to opt out of class discussions and readings about LGBT+ topics. There might have been about a hundred people there, counting both sides, though the numbers shifted through the morning.
The nominal issue is kind of subtle but the real issue is not. The nominal issue is about an "opt out" policy where some parents want their children to leave the classroom for religious reasons during discussions of certain books that are assigned in class. That's complicated, because it sounds somewhat reasonable if you accept the premise that some students follow religious teachings that promote persecution of people of any faith who violate the sect's taboos, and the schools are somehow obligated to cooperate with that persecution against community members. "Opt-out" is a couple of paragraphs of a PDF file, probably in Courier font, with a lot of whereases and some signatures at the bottom: done. A bureaucratic item to check off a list. Sounds easy enough in light of "freedom of religion."
The nominal topic is "opt-out," but the real issue is that these people find some of our neighbors so loathsome that they cannot bear to be in the room when they are mentioned. The people who demand this option are not thinking for themselves, these beliefs do not reflect conclusions they have come to through evidence or logic. They have been taught that some of our neighbors are inherently disgusting, and they choose as individuals to believe this. They believe that some students in the classroom, some teachers, some students' parents, some community leaders, some of their neighbors are so immoral that righteous people cannot even allow themselves to acknowledge their existence. And these religious extremists believe that the Montgomery County Public Schools should adjust their policies to enable them to profoundly insult our community members.
Here is some video from the protest:
Frankly, it appears to me that the school district might have been picking a fight with this one. After one parent had a child sit outside for a book discussion in March, with a teacher's permission, MCPS implemented a policy the very next day saying that students could not opt out of the readings. I agree with the decision, and do not believe students should pick and choose what they will learn in school -- but neither should the schools be flipping their policies around without any input or explanation, especially when they know there will be controversy.
A lawsuit has also been filed. I have no idea how that will come out. If Maryland has an opt-out requirement for storybooks and MCPS is in violation of it, then they will lose. If the school district convinces a judge that they can't have students popping in and out of class depending on the topic, then they'll win. We do expect rightwing legal grandstanders to participate, so this will probably be in the news when it gets to court.
Some of the protesters spoke at the school board meeting after the demonstration. A number of speakers referred to a right that parents have to determine what their children should be taught in school. There is no such right. They have the right to send their kids to a religious school if they want a religious education, but public schools have a responsibility to stick with the facts, regardless of what parents believe. Public education is not a marketplace where you give consumers what they ask for. Curriculum is determined by careful deliberation, and there is community input in that process but the goal is not to add everybody's favorite thing to the classroom agenda.
Here is video of all the BOE public comments from that day:
The last speaker at the board's public comments was Montgomery County Council member Kristin Mink, whose presentation was informal and sometimes wandered, but she made some good points -- if anything, the extemporaneous quality of her presentation made it more effective. She had spent the morning at the protest talking with the Muslim protesters and said, "This issue has unfortunately put some Muslim families on the same side of an issue as white supremacists and outright bigots," which drew a negative response from the Muslims present (and a written response from CAIR), but, well it's true, and she clarified well enough that she was not calling them bigots. In this case they are on the same side as the bigots, you can't argue with that.
Ms. Mink noted that the opt-out policy tells a certain demographic of people that "when they appear in books we're going to let some people say we're not going to read those books. There's no way to do that without sending a clear message to the LGBTQIA community that you are seen as different, as other, and other people don't need to learn about your existence or have you included in the curriculum. Montgomery County Public Schools has a responsibility to teach a fact based, science based, curriculum."
She said, "Same as evolution, we don't let religions opt out of that part of the science curriculum. Those parents who don't believe in evolution are free to teach a counternarrative at home or in their own religious institutions and say here's what you're going to learn about in school and here's what our family believes. All different religions of people have the ability to teach around the facts and the science that are going to be reflected in the MCPS curriculum but we cannot modify our fact-based, science-based curriculum to reflect particular religious beliefs that are not aligned with that science-based curriculum. And that's not an infringement on particular religious freedoms; just as we cannot allow folks to opt out of teaching about evolution, we can't allow them to not teach about this."
This is the grown-up solution. Schools will teach facts, and if someone's religion denies the facts then the family has the choice to send their kids to a private school or to discuss in the home where there are differences between their beliefs and the facts that are taught in class. Certainly if you belong to an extremist religious sect (and a couple of speakers made it clear that most Muslims do not share these anti-LGBT views), then you must realize that you are surrounded by people who believe differently from you and that has to be part of your children's upbringing. The lesson is: we do X but people outside our group do Y. It's not that hard to understand. So if you want to teach that gay and trans people are unclean, then you will have to teach that at home, not in our public schools.
posted by JimK at 12:29 PM
184 Comments:
A federal court on Tuesday temporarily blocked a Florida law that prohibits sex-change procedures on children under 18. The opinion leans heavily on medical and scientific rationales to argue that it is unconstitutional to ban the use of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery on teenagers.
Twenty states maintain age restrictions on sex-change procedures, and the problem they face is explaining to judges that American medical associations aren’t following the best available evidence. This is known to European health authorities and has been reported in such prestigious publications as the British Medical Journal. But American judges need some way to evaluate conflicting scientific authorities—especially as institutions responsible for ensuring that medical professionals have access to high-quality research aren’t functioning as they should.
A case in point: Springer, an academic publishing giant, has decided to retract an article that appeared last month in the Archives of Sexual Behavior. The retraction is expected to take effect June 12.
The article’s authors are listed as Michael Bailey, a well-respected scientist, with dozens of publications to his name, and Suzanna Diaz, who writes under a pseudonym to protect the privacy of her daughter, who suffers from gender dysphoria.
Their paper is based on survey responses from more than 1,600 parents who reported that their children, who were previously comfortable in their bodies, suddenly declared a transgender identity after extensive exposure to social media and peer influence. Mr. Bailey’s and Ms. Diaz’s sin was to analyze rapid onset gender dysphoria, or ROGD. Gender activists hate any suggestion that transgender identities are anything but innate and immutable. Even mentioning the possibility that trans identity is socially influenced or a phase threatens their claims that children can know early in life they have a permanent transgender identity and therefore that they should have broad access to permanent body-modifying and sterilizing procedures.
Within days of publication, a group of activists wrote a public letter condemning the article and calling for the termination of the journal’s editor. Among the letter’s signatories is Marci Bowers, a prominent genital surgeon and president of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, an advocacy organization that promotes sex changes for minors.
Nearly 2,000 researchers and academics signed a counter letter in support of the article. Springer nonetheless decided to retract the paper. Springer initially asserted that the study needed approval from an institutional review board. But it quickly abandoned that rationale, which was false.
The publisher now maintains that the retraction is due to improper participant consent. While the respondents consented to the publication of the survey’s results, Springer insists they didn’t specifically agree to publication in a scholarly or peer-reviewed journal. That’s a strange and retrospective requirement, especially considering that Springer and other major publishers have published thousands of survey papers without this type of consent.
Anyone familiar with the controversy over transgender medicine knows what is going on. Activists put pressure on Springer to retract an article with conclusions they didn’t like, and Springer caved in. We’ve become accustomed to seeing these capitulations in academia, media and the corporate world, but it is especially disturbing to see in a respected medical journal.
Rather than appreciate the long-term risk to itself and the scientific community from doing the bidding of activists, Springer has instead agreed to evaluate and retract all survey papers that lack the newly required consent. If Springer follows through on its promise, hundreds of authors who chose to publish in Springer’s journals may have their research retracted.
The publications that support what they call “gender-affirming care” rely heavily on surveys. The U.S. Transgender Survey of 2015, for instance, has generated several influential papers. As it happens, the USTS didn’t inform participants that their answers would be published in peer-reviewed journals.
This kind of double standard runs through gender-medicine research. Papers advocating “gender transition” are readily accepted by leading scientific journals despite having grave methodological flaws and biases. Work that questions gender-transition orthodoxy stands almost no chance of being published in the best-known journals. Every now and then, an errant research paper slips past the censors, but should it prove significant enough to threaten the settled science narrative, retribution is swift and merciless. The researcher Lisa Littman learned this lesson in 2018, when she was widely attacked after publishing on the topic. Mr. Bailey and Ms. Diaz are learning it now.
The idea is to manufacture the appearance of scientific consensus where there is none. The pseudo-consensus then allows such American medical associations as the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Endocrine Society to recommend body-altering procedures for children.
While many Americans have heard news about the wave of states passing legislation that curbs sex changes for the young, few realize that an equally fierce, and arguably far more important, battle is raging: the battle for the integrity of the scientific process. It is a fight for the ability to have censorship-free scientific debate as a means to advance human knowledge.
"The 49 page indictment every American should read"
For the first time in U.S. history, the prosecutorial power of the federal government has been used against a former President who is also running against the sitting President. This is far graver than the previous indictment by a rogue New York prosecutor, and it will roil the 2024 election and U.S. politics for years to come.
Special counsel Jack Smith announced the indictment in a brief statement on Friday. But no one should be fooled: This is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s responsibility. Mr. Garland appointed Mr. Smith to provide political cover, but Mr. Garland, who reports to Mr. Biden, has the authority to overrule a special counsel’s recommendation. Americans will inevitably see this as a Garland-Biden indictment, and they are right to think so.
***
Thirty-one of the counts are for violating the ancient and seldom-enforced Espionage Act for the “willful retention of national defense information.”
But it’s striking, and legally notable, that the indictment never mentions the Presidential Records Act (PRA) that allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office. It allows for good-faith negotiation with the National Archives. Yet the indictment assumes that Mr. Trump had no right to take any classified documents.
This doesn’t fit the spirit or letter of the PRA, which was written by Congress to recognize that such documents had previously been the property of former Presidents. If the Espionage Act means Presidents can’t retain any classified documents, then the PRA is all but meaningless. This will be a key part of Mr. Trump’s defense.
In the court of public opinion, the first question will be about two standards of justice. Mr. Biden had old classified files stored in his Delaware garage next to his sports car. When that news came out, he didn’t sound too apologetic. “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,” Mr. Biden said. AG Garland appointed another special counsel, Robert Hur, to investigate, but Justice isn’t going to indict Mr. Biden.
As for willful, how about the basement email server that Hillary Clinton used as Secretary of State? FBI director James Comey said in 2016 that she and her colleagues “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” According to him, 113 emails included information that was classified when it was sent or received. Eight were Top Secret. About 2,000 others were later “upclassified” to Confidential. This was the statement Mr. Comey ended by declaring Mrs. Clinton free and clear, since “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
This is the inescapable political context of this week’s indictment. The special counsel could have finished his investigation with a report detailing the extent of Mr. Trump’s recklessness and explained what secrets it could have exposed. Instead the Justice Department has taken a perilous path.
The charges are a destructive intervention into the 2024 election, and the potential trial will hang over the race. They also make it more likely that the election will be a referendum on Mr. Trump, rather than on Mr. Biden’s economy and agenda or a GOP alternative. This may be exactly what Democrats intend with their charges.
It was once unthinkable in America that the government’s awesome power of prosecution would be turned on a political opponent. That seal has now been broken. It didn’t need to be. However cavalier he was with classified files, Mr. Trump did not accept a bribe or betray secrets to Russia. The FBI recovered the missing documents when it raided Mar-a-Lago, so presumably there are no more secret attack plans for Mr. Trump to show off.
The greatest irony of the age of Trump is that for all his violating of democratic norms, his frenzied opponents have done and are doing their own considerable damage to democracy.
In a column for the conservative National Review, longtime political observer Andrew McCarthy made the case that Donald Trump can no longer call the investigation by special counsel Jack Smith a "witch hunt" since key evidence contained in the 37-count indictment was provided courtesy of his own lawyers.
He wrote, "Now, since we’re hearing a lot, and we’re going to hear a lot more, about selective prosecution, about the sense that the 'boxes hoax' is the 'biggest witch hunt of all time,' understand this: The evidence of this soliloquy -- wherein it was Trump-splained that a 'great job' by a lawyer entails making incriminating evidence disappear and taking the fall for it so the client escapes jeopardy -- does not come from Donald Trump’s enemies."
the Presidential Records Act allows a President access to documents, both classified and unclassified, once he leaves office
From The National Archives:
Presidential Records Act (PRA)
In 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which states that any records created or received by the President as part of his constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration.
Under the PRA, the official records of the President and his staff are owned by the United States, not by the President.
Arizona loser Kari Lake: "If you want to get to Trump, you're going to have to go through me, and 75 million Americans just like me. And most of us are card carrying members of the NRA. That's not a threat, that's a public service announcement."
So I guess she's saying that, mmm, about a fifth of the country is going to shoot the other four-fifths of us? Is that reasonable human behavior? It does not make sense to us Little Mouses, but we are, how do I say this: normal. We don't like to shoot each other, and also we do not protect criminals.
"In 1978, Congress passed the Presidential Records Act (PRA), which states that any records created or received by the President as part of his constitutional, statutory, or ceremonial duties are the property of the United States government and will be managed by NARA at the end of the administration.
Under the PRA, the official records of the President and his staff are owned by the United States, not by the President."
thanks for posting the Archives' spin
shockingly, they believe they have unlimited authority
how deep state of them
try posting the actual law that says former Presidents do have a right to access classified information
but, regardless of that, if they don't prosecute Hillary and Biden, it shows a political bias on the part of the DOJ
after all, neither Hillary nor Biden were Presidents before they broke the law
and they did break it because the PRA doesn't pertain to VPs and Secretaries of State
the truth is, this indictment and the NY one are both part of a vast right-wing conspiracy
the purpose: that Trump is the issue in 2024 rather than Biden's dismal record
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html
definition of a loser:
you're an incumbent and your challenger is under indictment at both the state and Federal level and recently was found guilty of sexual assault
and you still are behind him in the polls!!!!!!!!!!!!!
"the Archives' spin" LOL.
We have a thing called "the Constitution" which assigns order and responsibilities for a US government. If you don't like it, go somewhere else. The National Archives have a central role in record-keeping and trust me, "their spin" is government policy.
Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been fully nvestigated and it was determined they did not break any law. Hillary was investigated under GOP pres, house, senate. Numerous times. Nada.
You only look silly claiming that what Trump did was okay, or was the same as what some Democrats did. It is not close.
"We have a thing called "the Constitution" which assigns order and responsibilities for a US government."
you ever read that thing?
it says the legislature makes the laws
and the executive is obligated to maintain those laws
when they make up their own interpretation, that's unconstitutional
"which assigns order and responsibilities for a US government. The National Archives have a central role in record-keeping"
can you cite that part of the Constitution?
The National Archives is obligated under law to make records available to ex-presidents
courts will decide the archives fulfilled the obligation in this case
"Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden have been fully nvestigated and it was determined they did not break any law"
how about the basement email server that Hillary Clinton used as Secretary of State? FBI director James Comey said in 2016 that she and her colleagues “were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” According to him, 113 emails included information that was classified when it was sent or received. Eight were Top Secret. About 2,000 others were later “upclassified” to Confidential. This was the statement Mr. Comey ended by declaring Mrs. Clinton free and clear, since “no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”
it was thought unreasonable to bring the case since she was a leading candidate for President, so the case would amount to election interference
let the voters decide
the same should apply to Trump
btw, everyone is saying he should be indicted because he didn't cooperate
Hillary was every bit as uncooperative
Hillary was investigated under GOP pres, house, senate. Numerous times. Nada.
You only look silly claiming that what Trump did was okay, or was the same as what some Democrats did. It is not close.
then, there's Biden
the special prosecutor is still investigating him
but we do know that Biden had classified files stored in his Delaware garage next to his sports car. When that news came out, he didn’t sound too apologetic. “My Corvette’s in a locked garage, OK? So it’s not like they’re sitting out on the street,”
it neither case, not exactly nada
"You only look silly claiming that what Trump did was okay, or was the same as what some Democrats did. It is not close."
I do?
more Americans favor returning Trump to the White House than want Biden to stay
they obviously don't he does anything serious
"you ever read that thing?
it says the legislature makes the laws
and the executive is obligated to maintain those laws"
that's only true if the legislature closely adheres to the gay agenda
otherwise, the executive makes the laws
just ask Obama and Biden
A Minnesota man who claimed Antifa set fire to his camper during the political unrest of 2020 because he had displayed a Trump campaign flag admitted to staging the event and committing insurance fraud, the Justice Department announced Tuesday.
Denis Molla, age 30, of Minneapolis suburb Brooklyn Center was indicted by a federal grand jury in July and pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud after being accused of defrauding and attempting to defraud an insurance agency and GoFundMe donors of more than $300,000 following the alleged incident, according to court records.
In September 2020, Molla had "falsely reported to law enforcement that someone had lit his camper on fire and that three unknown males were near his home when he heard an explosion," according to a DOJ news release. The Justice Department said Molla claimed his property was vandalized with graffiti referencing "Biden 2020," Black Lives Matter, and Antifa.
Molla falsely told CNN affiliate WCCO shortly after the fire that he believed someone set the blaze in response to Trump 2020 flags he had put in his yard. "These kind of stuff should not happen, especially over beliefs of some sort," he told WCCO.
"Mr. Molla was obviously remorseful during his federal plea hearing today," Ryan Garry, Molla's attorney, told CNN via email Tuesday. "It's easy for the general public to look down on him, without knowing what was going on in his life, and cast immediate judgement. Mr. Molla is a wonderful husband and father who made a mistake that he sincerely regrets. Unlike many others, he has accepted full responsibility for his actions and is sorry for what happened."
Federal guidelines call for Molla to receive a sentence of up to 51 months, plus a fine and restitution, but prosecutors did not immediately make a sentencing recommendation.
Judge David Doty released Molla on his own recognizance pending a sentencing hearing to be scheduled at a later date.
Gender Ideology is not a pendulum, and it will not swing back with a little help from inertia. Gender Ideology is a fundamentalist religion—intolerant, demanding strict adherence to doctrine, hell-bent on gathering proselytes. I do not here use the term “religion” metaphorically or lightly.
Induction into this religion begins with a baptism: the selection of pronouns and often a new name, greeted with all the celebration (and more) of a conversion. It evangelizes aggressively: through social media influencers, who claim to know a teen’s truest self better than her parents and to love that teen so much more than they ever could. Therapists, teachers, and school counselors play evangelist to numberless kids at American school.
There’s no physical evidence that any of us possesses an ethereal gender identity, of course. It may actually be disprovable; there is a good deal of evidence against it. No matter. The adherents take it on faith. The notion that each of us is born with a gender identity, utterly separable from our physiology, known only to us, imagines gender identity as the secular version of the ‘soul.’
Gender Ideology is policed by blasphemy laws – like those passed in California and New York, which assign criminal and civil penalties to healthcare workers who intentionally misgender patients and landlords who intentionally misgender tenants. And outside of statutory law, most social media services will quickly exile you if you’re caught blaspheming (ie. misgendering, deadnaming et al.). College campuses enforce these blasphemy laws with such smug severity, they are rarely violated. Much as the instances of public blasphemy in Mecca round down to zero.
Adherents to the gender orthodoxy reserve their greatest ire for apostates, “detransitioners,” those who once identified as ‘transgender’ before reversing course and resume identification with their biological sex. The level of ostracism and hatred detransitioners face in America today would be familiar to anyone who has tried to leave a close-knit orthodox faith community.
And, finally, Gender Ideology is full of holidays—one or two in every calendar month, except August. (No need for a celebration - it seems - when there is no school.) These are regarded with all the sanctity of religious festivals. As in, “I can’t believe Abigail would schedule her talk just before Pride Month.” All major institutions are expected – or is it compelled? – to celebrate Pride by changing their logos to incorporate the look of the Pride flag. They don’t do that for any other holiday – not even Christmas.
All of which is to say, Gender Ideology is not a tide, and it will not turn with the gravitational pull of the moon.
Trump said earlier this month that "everybody wants to see the Open Championship" played at his Turnberry gold resort in Scotland, which is one of his favorite most beloved courses.
But the British Open notified Trump after the January 6 uprising that the British Open would not be held at any of his golf courses.
One source said "We have no plans to stage any of our championships there in the foreseeable future and will not return until we are convinced that the focus will be on the championship, the players and the course itself." Another source said Trump would "have to sell" the course "before anything changes."
Gee I hope they have another place to play.
Donald Trump vowed Saturday to continue running for president even if he were to be convicted as part of the 37-count federal felony indictment that was issued against him this week.
“I’ll never leave,” Trump said in an interview aboard his plane. “Look, if I would have left, I would have left prior to the original race in 2016. That was a rough one. In theory that was not doable.”
Trump is not legally prohibited from running for president from prison or as a convicted felon. If he wins the election, he would pardon himself, if necessary.
The former president leveled harsh criticisms at special counsel Jack Smith and argued that the case against him was politically motivated and flimsy. “These are thugs and degenerates who are after me,” he said.
Trump predicted he would not be convicted and said he did not anticipate taking a plea deal, though he left open the possibility of doing so “where they pay me some damages.”
While Trump said campaign fundraising had skyrocketed since the indictment was issued, he conceded it was an unwelcome development.
“Nobody wants to be indicted,” said Trump. “I don’t care that my poll numbers went up by a lot. I don’t want to be indicted. I’ve never been indicted. I went through my whole life, now I get indicted every two months. It’s been political.”
He repeatedly cited the Presidential Records Act to assert he’d done nothing wrong.
The larger context here is so important. I do think people would have been willing to hear from the Department of Justice that they need to indict their top political opponent, and hear that in good faith, if we had not experienced what we have from the past six years from this Department of Justice. We have a Department of Justice that had Hillary Clinton, who was never president and will never be a president, mishandling classified information and they invented a new legal standard to simply to let her go.
We have all the paperwork disputes with President Obama, and President Clinton, we have thefts of documents from the National Archives by a Clinton associate, and nothing has happened to those people. We have the Russia-gate collusion-hoax in which the Department of Justice invented and participated in a Democrat-invented conspiracy theory see to say Donald Trump was a traitor.
This week, we learned that Joe Biden was credibly accused by a very serious whistleblower of a $5 million bribery scheme and the FBI worked to cover it up. You're absolutely right that people are talking about the broader context because that is the most important thing here. Nobody takes the Department of Justice seriously so long as they fail to include exculpatory evidence and participate in this kind of hoax over, and over, and over again.
Eighty percent of likely Republican primary voters in a new poll think former President Trump should still be able to get back to the Oval Office even if he’s convicted in the classified documents case.
A CBS News-YouGov poll, released Sunday, found that just 20 percent of likely GOP primary voters think Trump shouldn’t be able to serve again as president if he’s convicted over his alleged mishandling of classified documents.
Trump, who is running for the White House in 2024 after losing his 2020 reelection bid to President Biden, was indicted last week on 37 counts as part of the probe into Trump’s document handling.
Just 12 percent of likely GOP primary voters said they’re more concerned the the documents were a national security risk, compared to 76 percent who said they’re more concerned that the indictment against Trump was politically motivated. Another 12 percent said they’re concerned about both.
Sixty-one percent of that group also said the indictment “won’t change” their view of the former president. Seven percent said the indictment might change their view “for the worse” and 14 percent say “for the better.” Eighteen percent said it “depends.”
Nearly two-thirds of likely GOP primary voters said they’d prefer Trump not talk about the various investigations against him as he campaigns for 2024, while 39 percent say they would prefer he do so.
Trump polled at the top of a hypothetical Republican primary field, leading with 61 percent who say they’ll vote for him. In second place was Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, with 23 percent.
It is unconscionable for a President to indict the leading candidate opposing him. Joe Biden kept classified documents for decades.
I, and every American who believes in the rule of law, stand with President Trump against this grave injustice. House Republicans will hold this brazen weaponization of power accountable.
Former Attorney General Bill Barr said Sunday that presenting former President Trump as a victim of a “witch hunt” is “ridiculous” in reaction to the narrative presented by most in the GOP that the charges are politically motivated.
“It’s a very detailed indictment. And it’s very, very damning,” Barr told Shannon Bream on “Fox News Sunday. “And this idea of presenting Trump as a victim here, a victim of a witch hunt is ridiculous.”
“Yes, he’s been a victim in the past. Yes, his adversaries have obsessively pursued him with phony claims, and I’ve been at his side defending against them when he is a victim,” he added. “But this is much different. He’s not a victim here.”
The Justice Department charged Trump in a damning 37-count indictment last week over his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House. Evidence collected by the Justice Department revealed that the former president possessed documents containing nuclear and military secrets. The charges Trump faces hold several decades of prison time.
Barr, who was appointed by and served as an attorney general under Trump, has been critical of the former president’s handling of classified documents. He said last week that the investigation was not a “witch hunt,” noting that the probe would not have gone anywhere if the former president just turned over the documents.
Barr said Sunday that the government acted responsiblly in looking into Trump’s handling of classified material, adding that it was Trump who “acted irresponsibly.”
“He was totally wrong that he had the right to have those documents,” he said. “Those documents are among the most sensitive secrets that the country has.”
he has a right to his opinion, but it seems to turn on whether Trump gave the papers back without resisting
that's what's kind of ridiculous
actually, I will say that the one charge that may have some merit is that he showed he documents to some people, who didn't have clearance, to impress them
if so, and that was the motive, an appropriate penalty would be a fine
you know full well that neither Hillary or Biden would have been charged with such a thing
and the American public also knows it
they both deserved an indictment more because they were not President and had no legal right to possess the documents after leaving office
by weaponizing the DOJ, Dems hae damaged democracy more than Trump
I think we knew that a federal indictment of former president Donald Trump would elicit a collective primal scream from the right-wing fever swamp — and they have not disappointed.
In true Trump-era fashion, the response from most elected Republicans has been a collective whine about "unfairness" and the "weaponization" of the "deep state." Some have even gone so far as to at least hint around that it's a nice little country we have here, be a shame if anything happened to it. I would expect nothing less. This is how they roll.
There are, notably, a few dissenters from that party line.
Utah Sen. Mitt Romney put out a statement saying that Trump "brought this on himself" and it's "consistent with his other actions offensive to the national interest," which is true. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a 2024 GOP hopeful, said "these facts are devastating," which is also true. But they, and a handful of others, are outliers among GOP elected officials.
One very significant former GOP official has come out swinging, however:
...Bill Barr: "We can't forget here that this entire thing came about because of reckless conduct of the president. If he had just turned over the documents, which I think every other person in the country would have done ... " ...
There are a number of Trump defenses out there. But the main talking point, which we can assume was coordinated, is that this is a political prosecution engineered by President Biden to take out his most threatening political rival. And their main proof of this is that the Department of Justice (DOJ) declined to prosecute Hillary Clinton. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina probably articulated this the best, including the deployment of some very emotional righteous indignation:
STEPHANOPOULOS: There's an audio tape of Trump saying he knows this is secret information, he knows he's sharing it with other people. How is that okay?
LINDSEY GRAHAM: *sigh* I'm not saying it's okay. I'm not saying it's okay to take a hammer to BlackBerry.
He's not saying it's ok, he's just saying that Hillary Clinton got off so that cancels out Trump's crimes. Or something.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wi. says that Trump refused to prosecute Clinton but Joe Biden sent in a SWAT Team to torment Trump:
Ron Johnson wonders to Maria Bartiromo why Biden hasn't been more magnanimous in his treatment of Trump, like Trump was to Hillary Clinton
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sounded the same theme:
"Is there a different standard for a Democrat secretary of state versus a former Republican president? I think there needs to be one standard of justice in this country. Let's enforce it on everybody and make sure we all know the rules."
It wasn't a perfect defense of Trump but as long as he makes sure to condemn Hillary Clinton is probably good enough for the moment.
As much as I loathe the idea of re-litigating "but her emails," I'm sorry to say that it's necessary. There was almost no pushback to this talking point from the media, probably because they didn't get the Clinton story right in the first place. A few have since stepped up to point out that Clinton didn't refuse to cooperate with the government, as Trump did, although Trump and his accomplices will no doubt cry inanely about her "bleaching the emails" and smashing the phones" and that will be enough to sustain the argument. Trump may even say "Russia, if you're listening" again. But those allegations are just plain silly and always have been. And the fact that she didn't obstruct the investigation is only part of the story.
As it happened, Clinton copied all work emails to the State Department system so they had them. The Justice Department inspector general issued a report in 2018 about the FBI Investigation and determined that the people tasked with marking documents as classified had not done so clearly. Moreover, only three email chains "contained any classification markings of any kind," and they were low-priority "call sheets" marked with the lowest priority of classification, which had info and details for Clinton to refer to when talking to a foreign leader. There were no nuclear secrets or war plans among them, needless to say.
The State Department under Rex Tillerson and Mike Pompeo did two separate investigations and found in 2019 that there was "there was no persuasive evidence of systemic, deliberate mishandling of classified information" and that Clinton bore no "individual culpability."
And let's dispense with the "magnanimous" Trump defense. Trump tried desperately to get the DOJ to investigate Clinton (and many others he considered his political enemies.) His White House counsel told him that the DOJ operated independently and if he ordered it there would be tremendous unrest from career officials and massive political blowback. That didn't stop him. He conspired with Matthew Whittaker, then an assistant to then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions to get Sessions to assign a Special Counsel to investigate Clinton. In the end, they succeeded in getting Sessions to assign John Huber, a US Attorney in Utah to look into all the allegations against Clinton, including the bogus "Uranium One" scandal which had also already been dismissed. That investigation didn't turn up anything either.
Notably, when Bill Barr became Attorney General he looked into all of it and also came up with nothing. If anyone thinks that Barr wouldn't have prosecuted Clinton if he could have doesn't recall just how much he hates her guts. The evidence just wasn't there. So, the FBI, the DOJ Inspector General, two State Department probes, a Clinton-hating attorney general and a U.S. Attorney assigned to review all the evidence found that Clinton committed no crimes. (I'm not even counting the 10 Benghazi investigations which were the genesis of the email scandal —- and also came up empty.)
I know your eyes have glazed over by this point and you wonder why in the world anyone should care about this. And frankly, we shouldn't have to. It's long settled ancient history. But the right's "whatboutism" and the media's continued unwillingness to acknowledge that, once the FBI determined there was no crime, there was no crime, I fear that a lot of people who aren't already down the right wing rabbit hole will be persuaded that this is a partisan prosecution simply because of the words "classified documents."
When former FBI Director James Comey held that first notorious press conference in the summer of 2016, in which he larded with inappropriate personal judgments about Clinton, he laid out the criteria the Justice Department uses when it decides whether to prosecute classified documents cases. He said:
In looking back at our investigations into mishandling or removal of classified information, we cannot find a case that would support bringing criminal charges on these facts. All the cases prosecuted involved some combination of: clearly intentional and willful mishandling of classified information; or vast quantities of materials exposed in such a way as to support an inference of intentional misconduct; or indications of disloyalty to the United States; or efforts to obstruct justice. We do not see those things here.
Assuming they have proof of the charges in the Trump indictment, there can be little doubt that they met three of those four criteria, (the fourth being disloyalty to the United States which I believe to be true as well.) So when you see these Republicans emitting their epic whines about how unfair all this is because Hillary didn't get indicted, keep in mind that it wasn't for lack of Trump trying to get it done. It was because, unlike him, she didn't break the law. And even Jeff Sessions, Rex Tillerson, Mike Pompeo and Bill Barr couldn't find a way to make it so.
In case you were wondering, yes the House Republicans are considering a new investigation into —- you guessed it —- her emails. Because of course they are.
The federal indictment of former President Donald Trump has unleashed a wave of calls by his supporters for violence and an uprising to defend him, disturbing observers and raising concerns of a dangerous atmosphere before his court appearance in Miami on Tuesday.
In social media posts and public remarks, close allies of Trump — including a member of Congress — have portrayed the indictment as an act of war, called for retribution and highlighted the fact that much of his base carries weapons. The allies have painted Trump as a victim of a weaponized Justice Department controlled by President Joe Biden, his potential opponent in the 2024 election.
The calls to action and threats have been amplified on right-wing media sites and have been met by supportive responses from social media users and cheers from crowds, who have become conditioned over several years by Trump and his allies to see any efforts to hold him accountable as assaults against him.
Experts on political violence warn that attacks against people or institutions become more likely when elected officials or prominent media figures are able to issue threats or calls for violence with impunity. The pro-Trump mob that attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, was drawn to Washington in part by a post on Twitter from Trump weeks earlier, promising that it would be “wild.”
The former president alerted the public to the indictment Thursday evening in posts on his social media platform, attacking the Justice Department and calling the case “THE GREATEST WITCH HUNT OF ALL TIME.”
“Eye for an eye,” wrote Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz., in a post on Twitter on Friday. His warning came shortly before the special counsel in the case, Jack Smith, spoke to the public for the first time since he took over the investigation of Trump’s retention of classified documents.
On Instagram, Trump’s eldest son’s fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, posted a photo of the former president with the words, “Retribution Is Coming,” in all capital letters.
In Georgia, at the Republican state convention, Kari Lake, who refused to concede the Arizona election for governor in 2022 and who is an ardent defender of Trump, emphasized that many of Trump’s supporters owned guns.
“I have a message tonight for Merrick Garland and Jack Smith and Joe Biden — and the guys back there in the fake news media, you should listen up as well, this one is for you,” Lake said. “If you want to get to President Trump, you are going to have go through me, and you are going to have to go through 75 million Americans just like me. And I’m going to tell you, most of us are card-carrying members of the NRA.”
The crowd cheered.
Lake added: “That’s not a threat, that’s a public service announcement.”
Political violence experts say that even if aggressive language by high-profile individuals does not directly end in physical harm, it creates a dangerous atmosphere in which the idea of violence becomes more accepted, especially if such rhetoric is left unchecked.
“So far, the politicians who have used this rhetoric to inspire people to violence have not been held accountable,” said Mary McCord, a former senior Justice Department official who has studied the ties between extremist rhetoric and violence. “Until that happens, there’s little deterrent to using this type of language.”...
A Christian missionary, 31-year-old Jordan Webb, of Fort Dodge, Iowa, was sentenced to 25 years for sex abuse with persons under the age of 12, five years for incest and two years for a child endangerment charge.
Webb had served as a missionary in the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia for the Harvest Baptist Church. Webb’s victim was diagnosed with gonorrhea in early April 2022, just days after Webb was also diagnosed with gonorrhea. In addition to the prison sentence, Webb will also be required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life and will be on supervision as if on parole for the remainder of his life.
Us Little Mouses don't do this stuff and we are not quite sure how it works. Does the church teach people how to do this, or is it just that sexual predators and pedophiles are welcomed into the church and rewarded with positions of authority?
"I think we knew that a federal indictment of former president Donald Trump would elicit a collective primal scream from the right-wing fever swamp — and they have not disappointed."
well, the prosecution is anti-democratic
but there is no "primal scream"
just thoughtful discussion
you should try it
simply tell the truth and let the voters decide
which is what will happen
"In true Trump-era fashion, the response from most elected Republicans has been a collective whine"
collective, you say?
I think primal scream and whine are different
I guess you hope to keep throwing up crap, and maybe something will stick
unfortunately, it doesn't work that way
any Republican who wins will pardon Trump, as they should
Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, expressed concern about the impact of the indictment on the country — and said it is "political in nature."
"When you bring an indictment like this, it's not done in isolation. It's not done in a vacuum. You gotta take a lot of things into account. There's no allegation that there was harm done to the, to the national security. There's no allegation that he sold it to a foreign power or that it was trafficked to somebody else or that anybody got access to it," said Rubio.
"You have to weigh the harm of that, or lack thereof, on the harm that this indictment does to the country. This is deeply divisive," he said.
He said prosecuting the likely GOP presidential nominee, who will run against an incumbent president, is alone "political in nature," and said there will be "certain harm."
This will put institutions into "tremendous crisis," he said.
"The judge will be attacked. The process will be attacked. The Department of Justice will be attacked. The prosecutor will be attacked," said Rubio.
While the senator said the classified documents found at Mar-a-Lago "should not have been there," he said the indictment "is a separate thing."
"You're bringing an indictment that basically alleges no real damage to national security — not that it excuses it — versus what we're going to see now. We're going to subject this country to a divisive spectacle" at a time when we're dealing with major issues.
"People can debate about who they think it shouldn't be. Voters are going to make that decision. Okay, bottom line is that our republic will produce a president. Your policies are what we need to hold them to," Rubio said.
"we are not quite sure how it works. Does the church teach people how to do this, or is it just that sexual predators and pedophiles are welcomed into the church and rewarded with positions of authority?"
you found a rare case of opposite gender abuse
usually, it's homosexuals who infiltrate the church under false pretenses and abuse underage boys
There was nothing new about springtime wildfires in Canada until the wind shifted unexpectedly last week. That shift blew smoky air all over the northern and eastern US, producing memorably apocalyptic-like orange air in New York City.
Not wanting to waste a crisis, the lamestream media jumped right in with both feet. They blamed the wildfires on the much-dreaded “climate change,” scared the daylights out of everyone about the air quality and then warned that more like it was on the way unless we changed our fossil fuel-burning ways.
Not unexpectedly, the media’s knee-jerk take was all wrong.
Wildfires and smoky air have always occurred wherever there are forests. At least eighteen of these dark or “yellow days” occurred in the US and Canada from 1706 to 1910. George Washington even noted in his diary the one that occurred on May 19, 1780 that reached as far south as Morristown, New Jersey.
Contrary to the climate narrative, however, the good news is that the number of wildfires and acreage burned has dramatically declined everywhere.
Canadian government data show that wildfires in Canada have been overall declining since 1980. That trend of is the opposite of the trend of increasing emissions and average global temperatures.
If “climate change” is taken to mean an upward trend in average global temperature, then it correlates with fewer, not more, wildfires in Canada and everywhere else.
Few Americans would have even heard of the Canadian wildfires had not been for the smoky air casting a pall everywhere, sending air quality indexes skyrocketing and enabling the media to do what it likes best: scaring the hell out of people.
More Americans watched left-leaning MSNBC than any other cable news this week; it won the ratings race in both the total day and prime time averages of total viewers and in the key 25-54 age demographic. MSNBC scored 1.46 million total day viewers and 179,000 demo viewers for first place. Fox News came in second with 1.28 million total day viewers and 136,000 demo viewers.
After a hard turn to the right that included a live interview with Donald Trump in front of a live audience on its knees to worship him, CNN came in at third place with 710,000 total viewers and 125,000 average total day demo viewers. They fired their CEO but they're toast.
Once we saw Fox TV through the vent to the church rec-room, and man it was bad. They were making stuff up, it was bizarre. MSNBC is our favorite, too, but all the mouses wish Rachel would be back on more. She is really good.
"More Americans watched left-leaning MSNBC than any other cable news this week;"
really?
how often has that happened?
While the media world fixates on the 37-count indictment of Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago documents scandal, other issues — such as those on the education front — continue to go largely ignored.
Take the decision by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to label Moms for Liberty, a national organization started by two Florida mothers in 2021, as an "extremist group" in its “The Year in Hate and Extremism” annual report. Moms for Liberty has more than 115,000 members in 280 chapters nationwide.
The SPLC has regularly thrown the "extremist" label on conservative organizations with which it disagrees — sometimes to its own detriment. In 2018, for example, the center paid a $3.375 million settlement and issued a video apology to Maajid Nawaz and the Quilliam Foundation after falsely labeling him as an "anti-Muslim extremist." The settlement was made to avoid a defamation lawsuit.
According to the SPLC report, the Moms group can be "spotted at school board meetings across the country wearing shirts and carrying signs that declare, ‘We do NOT CO-PARENT with the GOVERNMENT.’” Per SPLC’s view, it is an “antigovernment” group. Moms for Liberty and other parental-rights groups or chapters have been added to SPLC’s "hate map."
Could there possibly be a political angle here? Well, Susan Corke, director of the SPLC's Intelligence Project, visited the White House this past week to meet with National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli.
Moms for Liberty’s co-founder, Tiffany Justice, laid out the organization’s mission in a statement to Fox News and in an interview. As a parent of two kids in elementary school, I didn’t see anything remotely extreme or unreasonable in what she said. In fact, many parents, regardless of political leanings, might agree with her basic perspective, even if they disagree with some of the specific issues the group takes on.
"We are a group of moms and dads and grandparents and aunts and uncles, community members, that are very concerned about the direction of the country," Justice explained.
According to the Moms for Liberty website, its core mission is to "unify, educate and empower parents to defend their parental rights at all levels of government." This includes its battles against mask mandates, the teaching of Critical Race Theory, gender identification, and sexual orientation in grades as low as kindergarten.
In that, the group is basically no different in its focus than the educational platforms championed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), who was reelected in a landslide in 2022, or Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R), who was elected in 2021 in a state that President Biden won by double digits the previous year.
DeSantis went on in 2022 to sign a bill that mirrors the Moms for Liberty mission. Said bill was officially called the Parental Rights in Education law, but progressive groups and many Democrats quickly dubbed it the "Don't Say Gay bill,” in an effort to make the governor and parents' rights groups appear to be homophobic and transphobic. Many major media outlets followed suit.
In a signal that logic and truth may not yet be dead and may still be valued, many Floridians and much of the American public appear to have rejected that characterization, with polls showing more than 60 percent of voters supporting the law.
Some in the media took their cues from the SPLC about the Moms group anyway. On MSNBC, Frank Figliuzzi, former FBI assistant director of counterintelligence-turned-cable news analyst, hailed the SPLC report and recalled the tactics of the Ku Klux Klan, which the SPLC quite properly and successfully targeted when it was founded in 1971.
Figliuzzi said that after the FBI focused on the KKK decades ago, “they took off their hoods and their sheets and they put on suits and ties, and they went local, and they ran for office. So, this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this going-local mainstreaming of hatred. We’ve seen it before, and we see it now with people who truly are driven by hate and deception, running for school board and elective office.”
A statement from the New Hampshire Moms for Liberty chapter refuted the SPLC’s branding: ”Labels only have the power you give them. We are not now, nor will we ever be, a ‘hate group’ no matter what the SPLC says. If you understand, defending parental rights and fighting to improve education is not hateful, but instead, is our duty.”
Education and parents’ rights could be a deciding issue in the 2024 presidential election, in which the difference in key battleground states could come down to suburban women and independent voters.
Disturbing numbers tell the story about the current state of U.S. academia:
- ACT test scores are at a 30-year low, according to tests administered by the National Assessment of Educational Progress, commonly known as the Nation's Report Card;
- One-third of fourth and eighth graders can't read at even a basic achievement level;
- Just 22% of Chicago public school children read at a basic achievement level;
- Just 26% of 8th-grade students overall are proficient in math, while 31 percent are proficient in reading.
So what are the consequences of all of this? According to the National Assessment of Adult Literacy, "two-thirds of students who cannot read proficiently by the end of the fourth grade will end up in jail or on welfare."
The American educational system is obviously in serious trouble. The U.S. ranks near the bottom in math, for example, badly trailing the likes of Japan, South Korea, Estonia and even countries like Poland and Slovenia.
Many parental groups and individual parents are concerned about their child's education, and such fears led to Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia. But some on the left seem horrified, not so much by the state of America’s educational system, but by the pushback from parents on the right and in the middle who are demanding a return to basics in education — and so, those parents are labeled as extremists.
That might not work so well politically in 2024.
Parents have every right to insist that their children receive the best education, not the politically correct one. They have every right to know what their kids are being taught, and then to decide if they think it’s the right curriculum for their kids. Because when it comes to the basics of reading, math and writing, our students clearly are failing at a patently alarming level.
This year’s fires in Canada have already been remarkable: Hundreds are burning across much of the country.
A dry, windy and abnormally warm spring created ideal fire conditions in many regions with the first major fires erupting in May in Alberta, an oil and gas producing province that is regularly plagued by fires.
So far, more than 2,300 fires have consumed about 9,142,899 acres of forest, far higher than the 674,357 acres that burn, on average, by this point in the season.
Climate research suggests that heat and drought associated with global warming are major reasons for the increase in bigger fires.
Canada has the world’s largest intact forest ecosystem, and many parts of the country have experienced drought and high heat recently. That can make trees vulnerable to fire and can dry out dead grass, pine needles, and any other material on the bottom of the forest floor that can act as kindling when a fire sweeps through a forest.
Wildfire experts see the signs of climate change in the dryness, intense heat and longer fire season that have made these fires more extreme and are likely to do so in the future.
Trans model and TikToker Rose Montoya celebrated Pride at the White House last week, posing in photos with Joe Biden and former "trans kid" Jazz Jennings, as well as going topless alongside a topless woman who has undergone a double mastectomy and clearly identifies as a man.
Pride at the White House, of course, is a family friendly affair, and kids and families were present during the festivities.
Montoya was part of the Pride crowd on the White House lawn, listening to speeches and sharing affirming selfies, but at the end of Biden's speech, Montoya walked to the edge of the stage draped in a trans flag.
Biden is seen on stage, declaring it to be "happy Pride month, happy Pride year, happy Pride life!"
At Saturday's Pride celebration, Biden draped the White House in a Progress Pride flag, flanked by American flags which looked substantially diminutive in comparison, something of an afterthought compared to the bizarrely patterned flag denoting sexual depravity and gender identity indoctrination.
The video shows Biden and wife Jill practically braying at the crowd about how loved they are and how much they belong at the White House. Montoya met Biden, posing for a selfie, saying "trans rights are human rights."
This phrase is used as a means to push men into women sports, into women's bathrooms, and into women's identity.
For Montoya, the message of belonging from the Biden's was apparently an invitation to drop his top and flaunt his feminized breasts for the camera.
Montoya then went topless, grabbed his breasts, and shook them around. Next to Montoya stood a trans man in a traditional strong man pose showing off her mastectomy scars.
"Are we topless at the White House?" Someone joked with mock scandal.
It is hard to imagine any other circumstance where public nudity would be not only condoned but celebrated on the White House lawn.
At the Pride celebration, Biden spoke of the need to "affirm" trans kids, saying that the laws protecting children are dangerous, and that as a result "... families across the country are facing excruciating decisions to relocate to a different state to protect their child from dangerous anti-LGBTQ laws."
"We need to push back against the hundreds of callous and cynical bills and laws introduced in states, targeting transgender children terrifying families, and criminalizing doctors and nurses. These bills and laws attack the most basic values and freedoms."
Montoya, like Biden, advocates for sex changes for minors. Montoya posed with Jazz Jennings, who was transitioned as a child on reality television. Jennings was put on puberty blockers, then onto cross-sex hormones, and when it was time for Jennings to undergo a castration, there was not enough penile tissue to construct the resemblance of a vagina.
Because of this course of treatment, Jennings will never experience orgasm or be able to have children. But for Montoya and Biden, that's just what affirmation is all about
Tax cut legislation that House Republicans are set to consider this week after pushing the global economy to the brink of disaster would deliver more than $28 billion to the richest 1% of Americans next year—and just $1.4 billion to the poorest fifth of the country.
"Tax cut legislation that House Republicans are set to consider this week after pushing the global economy to the brink of disaster would deliver more than $28 billion to the richest 1% of Americans next year—and just $1.4 billion to the poorest fifth of the country."
sounds like you have a brain the size of rodent
tax cuts can only go to those who pay tax
in America, the poorest fifth don't have many taxes to cut
the richest 1%, on the other hand, pay for most of our government, as well as most of the benevolent, educational, and arts institutions
that will still be true, even after a 28 billion cut
This is really some big excitement. But where are Trump's alleged supporters?
Protests were scheduled for later in the day by Trump backers who have criticized the felony charges, though the number of Trump supporters and those opposing him were a fraction of the crowd compared with the media in attendance hours before the Tuesday afternoon hearing.
Last we heard, Trump had not been able to find a single lawyer to represent him in this trial, even the arraignment, which is today. They know they'll get stiffed and, let's face it, the L will not look good on their resume. Maybe a public defender can be assigned.
Miami cops had estimated 5,000 to 50,000 protesters. Maybe they have been watching the wrong channel. Or maybe they will be kept busy controlling the crowd of journalists.
Us Little Mouses are going to go see if anything good has been dropped in the dining room. We'll check back on this story tomorrow, if we remember.
A nine-year-old girl was verbally attacked during a track meet in British Columbia, Canada last week by a man who accused her of being transgender. The incident once again exposes how anti-trans panic around transgender women and girls participating in girls’ and women’s sports affects all female athletes.
One of the girl’s mothers, Heidi Star, tells local news site Castanet that her daughter was competing in the fourth-grade shot-put finals at a track and field event at the Apple Bowl in Kelowna, B.C., on June 8. As she stepped up to compete, the grandfather of another student competing in the event began yelling from the stands.
“‘Hey, this is supposed to be a girls’ event, and why are you letting boys compete,’” the man shouted, according to Heidi Star, who said her daughter is cisgender, uses she/her pronouns, and wears her hair in a short pixie cut.
Star said the man’s outburst brought the event to a halt and that he also indicated another student-athlete with short hair who he insisted was “obviously trans.”
According to Star, the man’s wife accused her of being “a genital mutilator, a groomer, and a pedophile,” while he insisted that she provide proof that her daughter was born female.
Star told Kelowna news site iNFOnews.ca that her daughter was left “shaking and sobbing.”
“All the kids that were there went, ‘This is gross. This is rude, why would he be doing this?’ The other child he pointed out just ran away altogether,” she said.
iNFOnews.ca reports that when organizers of the event, which brought together student-athletes from schools across the region, moved the shot-put finals to a pit away from where the man was seated, he followed. When teachers asked him to leave, he refused.
Central Okanagan School District 23 superintendent Kevin Kaardal said that the man was not from the district. But, Kaardal said, the district is “taking steps to ensure he is not able to be on our school property or attend events in the future.”
Star said that her daughter has worked with a transgender coach and theater teacher and had a transgender cousin. “She completely understands the spectrum of gender and diversity,” Star said, adding that her daughter has never witnessed this kind of hatred before.
“Mostly, she feels very sad whenever she thinks about it,” Heidi Star said. “It was really sad to be asked for a certificate to prove she’s a girl.”
Star, said she considers what happened to her daughter to be a hate crime. She said she filed a report with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but was told that because officers did not witness the incident, there was nothing they could do.
The girl’s other mother, Kari Star, said that the incident destroyed their daughter’s confidence. “She was inconsolably crying during this whole event and continued once it was over and we were leaving. Not to mention, she was unable to concentrate on her track and field finals and the shot-put throw for which she had qualified,” she said.
“The biggest thing I’m really hoping is that policies will be put in place so that, when stuff like this happens police are called right away,” she said. “There was no protocol on what to do and we have to kind of accept that this is the world we live in and you’re going to get people who feel emboldened enough to do these atrocious things. It’s not fair to the parent volunteers at these events to be expected to navigate what are really criminal harassment matters.”
The incident demonstrates the detrimental effect panic around transgender athletes competing in girls’ and women’s sports can have on all athletes. In the U.S., several states have passed laws banning trans women and girls from participating on school sports teams that reflect their gender identity. Laws introduced by Republicans in states like Florida and Ohio that would have required student-athletes to be subjected to “genital examinations” in order to participate in girls’ sports have been defeated in state legislatures.
Nope. Didn't happen.
The former president is now painfully aware of the fact that the crowds aren’t coming on his command anymore.
Two dozen white supremacists are outside the main Disney World entrance in Orlando right now, marching with signs featuring Gov DeSantis’s face, swastikas, the n-word and homophobic slurs.
This is the 2023 Republican Party.
The granddaughter of Disney co-founder Roy Disney is speaking out online in the wake of a weekend demonstration near Walt Disney World where a small group of people gathered with Nazi flags and messaging in support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
"My grandfather is spinning in his grave," Abigail Disney wrote on Twitter Sunday, sharing a video of the scene in Orlando.
[A lot of our grandfathers, WWII veterans, have been spinning in their graves since Trump said "there are good people on both sides" in Charlottesville. We don't like Nazis.]
The Orange County Sheriff's Office said about 15 people demonstrated near the theme park for two hours on Saturday. Two counter-protesters also showed up, and the event dissipated with no arrests, the office said.
"We are aware of these groups that aim to agitate and incite people with anti-Semitic symbols and slurs. They are also aware of the law," the office said in a statement. "The Orange County Sheriff’s Office deplores hate speech in any form, but people have the First Amendment right to demonstrate."
Videos and photos circulating online and obtained by USA TODAY show multiple people waving red and black flags with swastikas, one holding a DeSantis poster and a "DeSantis 2024 Make America Florida" flag planted in the ground.
"This is really some big excitement. But where are Trump's alleged supporters?
Protests were scheduled for later in the day by Trump backers who have criticized the felony charges, though the number of Trump supporters and those opposing him were a fraction of the crowd compared with the media in attendance hours before the Tuesday afternoon hearing."
you do know that he leads the polls for the GOP nomination and is running neck and neck with Biden in polss for the general election, right?
sounds like more than "alleged"...
sounds like TTF means teach the fantasy
"Last we heard, Trump had not been able to find a single lawyer to represent him in this trial, even the arraignment, which is today. They know they'll get stiffed and, let's face it, the L will not look good on their resume. Maybe a public defender can be assigned."
news reports I've seen is that Trump's lawyer entered his plea, and he wasn't a public defender
sounds like TTF means teach the fantasy
"Us Little Mouses are going to go see if anything good has been dropped in the dining room. We'll check back on this story tomorrow, if we remember."
thanks for the head's up an where to put the rat poison
"Two dozen white supremacists are outside the main Disney World entrance in Orlando right now, marching with signs featuring Gov DeSantis’s face, swastikas, the n-word and homophobic slurs.
This is the 2023 Republican Party."
Dems' hyperbole is as bad as Trump's
GOP supporters are currently half the country
and, no, they aren't Nazis
"The granddaughter of Disney co-founder Roy Disney is speaking out online in the wake of a weekend demonstration near Walt Disney World where a small group of people gathered with Nazi flags and messaging in support of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
"My grandfather is spinning in his grave," Abigail Disney wrote on Twitter Sunday, sharing a video of the scene in Orlando."
why, Abigal? did he think Nazis supported him?
btw, Walt probably does spin in his grave every year on Gay Day in Disneyworld and really started whirling madly when the company supported teaching kindergarteners about homosexuality and transgenderism
"A lot of our grandfathers, WWII veterans, have been spinning in their graves since Trump said "there are good people on both sides" in Charlottesville. We don't like Nazis."
I think polls show that most veterans realize the MSM lied about that by taking his statement out of context
sounds like TTF means teach tomfoolery
"you do know that he leads the polls for the GOP nomination and is running neck and neck with Biden in polss for the general election, right?"
I do. You do know the election is not for many months and further court dates for der fuhrer will be set. Polling this early doesn't mean much.
"the MSM lied about that by taking his statement out of context"
Right...you are trying to spin that der furher's comment about "good people on both sides" was NOT about the Nazis with their tiki torches intoning JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US at Charlottesville where Heather Heyer was murdered.
Most veterans realize Nazis are evil people who loathe freedom and democracy.
Biden edges Trump and DeSantis in poll, but voters are looking around
President Joe Biden holds single-digit edges over both former President Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis in the 2024 presidential race, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll finds, but nearly 1 in 4 voters say they would support a third-party candidate if the election was held today.
In a potential rematch of the 2020 contest, Biden is backed by 34% and Trump by 32%; 23% say they would support an unspecified independent contender. In a choice between Biden and DeSantis, Biden leads the Florida governor by 33%-26%; 25% indicate they would vote for a third-party candidate.
The findings underscore both how close the race for the White House continues to be and how dissatisfied many voters are with their most likely choices. Support for independent candidates typically fades as elections near, but at the moment, interest in voting beyond the two major parties is historically high.
No third-party candidate has managed to get as much as 20% of the national vote since former president Teddy Roosevelt was the Progressive Party nominee in 1912.
The nationwide survey of 1,000 registered voters, taken June 5-9 by landline and cellphone, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1 percentage points.
Biden's two-point advantage over Trump is too close to be statistically significant, but his seven-point lead over DeSantis is just outside the poll's error margin.
In a Biden-Trump contest, 13% of Democrats and 13% of Republicans say they would support a third-party contender, as do 41% of independents. DeSantis loses a greater proportion of voters in the GOP, at 19%.
Yikes! This is serious. They want to ban a book about a mouse!
A Missouri school board is set to decide whether to remove "Maus" after employees flagged it for review, due to a law banning "explicit sexual material."
I tell you, this really shows where our American conservatives are headed. They want to whitewash the Holocaust, of all things. While waving the American flag, no less.
"I do. You do know the election is not for many months and further court dates for der fuhrer will be set. Polling this early doesn't mean much."
all true
problem is you said "alleged" followers
at this point, he has followers
that's the truth
unlike so much in the gay agenda that is false
"Right...you are trying to spin that der furher's comment about "good people on both sides" was NOT about the Nazis with their tiki torches intoning JEWS WILL NOT REPLACE US at Charlottesville where Heather Heyer was murdered."
no spin at all
the statement is available online, in its entirety
and he makes clear that he is not talking about Nazis
that's the truth
unlike so much in the gay agenda that is false
"Most veterans realize Nazis are evil people who loathe freedom and democracy."
we all think that about Nazis
you are simply incorrect to say there are a huge swath of Americans that are Nazis
we can say, however, that you are a despicable creep
that's the truth
unlike so much in the gay agenda that is false
A ban on green investing has passed North Carolina’s GOP-controlled legislature as part of a broader Republican crusade against businesses that champion sustainability and workplace diversity. The bill bans state agencies from using “environmental, social and governance” standards to screen potential investments, award contracts or hire and fire employees. It also says the state cannot weigh how a company promotes sustainability, engages with its community or structures its leadership to support those goals.
At least two other states — North Dakota and Idaho — have already enacted laws banning such criteria. And elected officials in several other red states have derided them as “woke” or proposed similar policies to stop investors who contract with states from adopting them.
Remember when the Republicans won the House, and the first thing they did was make it all right to smoke in their office building? These guys are disgusting. They have a philosophy of disgustingness. They think destroying everything that's good is funny.
"Republicans boycotted American-owned Bud Light and it fell from the #1 beer in the U.S."
Republicans?
Many of the people who were disgusted by corporate America's deep dive into wokeness may have been Republicans
but, the revulsion to this trend is coming from most Americans
as a result, all of corporate America is pulling back
we will soon see fewer commercials with homosexuals slobbering all over to sell everything from cars to toothpaste
America is sick of it
next up will be content of shows which now seem required to have gay characters
this will change
the Bud Light boycott has been veyr effective and is paying dividends!
Canada is experiencing its worst wildfire season of the 21st century.
Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair announced the grim milestone this week, saying more than 47,000 square kilometres have burned so far this year, with 431 wildfires currently burning across Canada. And it's barely the middle of June -- fire season in Canada is usually July through September.
I was listening through the vent the other day and heard a Trump voter saying that the problem is that they didn't set fires in the forest ahead of time to prevent bad fires. Which is exactly the same thing they didn't do for the last ten or twenty thousand years that humans have lived in Canada. But sure, it's not because the world is getting hotter.
Canada needs to invest in forest management.
Just when it seemed the progressive activists at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) couldn't become any more ridiculous, they did just that last week when they breathlessly declared a new set of "antigovernment extremists" threatening America: parents.
SPLC's deliberate smearing of parents' rights advocates was front and center in its latest annual report. Its "Hate map" lists numerous parents' rights groups, including my organization, Parents Defending Education (PDE), alongside such groups as the Ku Klux Klan.
A closer look reveals that SPLC characterized its "antigovernment extremist" designees as "reactionary anti-student inclusion" groups that "spew homophobic and transphobic speech in the name of protecting their children's innocence, disregarding and disrespecting children in the LGBTQ community."
Since our founding two years ago, PDE has fought tirelessly to defend students' and parents' civil rights in education. We have filed 28 complaints with the Office of Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Education, nearly all in opposition to racially segregated programming that denied opportunities to students on the basis of skin color, as well as three federal lawsuits on behalf of families.
The work of an extremist hate group? Hardly. Race-based segregation was immoral in 1953, and remains so in 2023.
But while SPLC's ad hominem allegations are outlandishly false and easily disprovable, the attacks are meant to serve a larger and more nefarious purpose: to vilify and delegitimize Americans who disagree with a progressive agenda, chilling and intimidating opponents into submission. When it launched its attack last week, SPLC joined a long line of institutions attempting to bully parents into silence.
Activists across the country are employing similarly menacing tactics across the country—and they have allies in the federal government. In 2021, the National School Boards Association colluded with the Biden administration to request federal intervention against parents protesting school boards. The letter went so far as to question whether the federal government could treat some parental protests as forms of domestic terror.
Over the past two years, the National Education Association's annual meeting has voted to fund investigations into groups that opposed "anti-racism" (2021) and gender activism (2022).
All of this politically motivated mudslinging sends a message to every American raising his or her voice in opposition to radical overreach: speak up and you too will face personal and professional ruin.
The good news is that this is only happening because parents are winning. Radical progressives are pushing policies opposed by the vast majority of parents, and parents are pushing back—hard.
Earlier this summer, President Biden's Department of Education proposed new Title IX regulations which would allow biological boys to participate in girls' sports—even though 71 percent of parents oppose such policies. Parents responded by flooding the administration's comment portal with 130,000 comments, many filed with the assistance of PDE and other parent groups listed on SPLC's "Hatewatch" map. Whether or not the administration wants to listen, parents made their voices heard.
When investigations revealed graphic and controversial content in school curricula nationwide, parents responded by submitting an avalanche of Freedom of Information Act requests. They persisted even when schools attempted to price them out by charging exorbitant processing fees.
Actual "antigovernment extremists" would not work within the system, helping Americans submit comments against the Biden administration's proposed regulations. They would not testify before Congress and state legislatures to provide policy recommendations on how to improve schools and restore trust between administrations and families. Yet that's exactly what PDE and other parent groups have been doing.
Even so, progressive activists would have everyone—especially in the media—believe that parental engagement constitutes extremism. Such deception is a slap in the face to the millions of parents who have to sign permission slips for Advil and field trips but are now deprived of deeply personal information about their children, impeding their right to raise their kids as they see fit.
In these times, speaking up and standing firm against ideologues sniping from the hedgerows is precisely what's necessary. As progressive activist groups resort to slaying invisible dragons, parents' work combating real injustice in the education system will speak for itself.
The Republicans have absolute proof that Biden has been taking bribes from ... a foreign country ... mumble-mumble Hunter Biden five million dollars. The committee investigating the Biden crime family had whistleblowers lined up to testify, but they disappeared.
But that is a small matter, because the Republicans also have seventeen tape recordings proving that Biden took, uh, bribes, Hunter China Romania millions Burisma.
There are questions about the tapes. For one thing, nobody has heard them. On Newsmax Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said lawmakers “don’t know if they’re legit or not, but we know that the foreign national claims he has them.”
“We don’t know for sure if these tapes exist,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on “The Chris Salcedo Show” Wednesday.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested on a program called “The Conservative Circus” that not only might the tapes not exist, but also that the foreign national who spoke to the FBI informant might lack credibility.
Lauren Boebert told Fox yesterday she is going to search for the mysterious tapes that supposedly exist somewhere that will supposedly prove Biden is guilty.
Even desperate Little Mouses don't try to feed their families imaginary cheese.
According to Donald Trump, he won't quit the presidential race even if he's convicted of the felony charges he now faces in Miami federal court.
That leaves open, for the moment, the interesting possibility that the next president of the United States might take the oath of office in Leavenworth before springing himself with a pardon, hopping on Air Force One in Kansas City and flying back in glorious triumph over the rule of law and putting in motion a revenge act fueled by rage and violence.
That's the horror show many people fear — and Trump doesn't mind if you do. Less than an hour after his arraignment in Miami on Tuesday, on a 37-count indictment, he was headed back to Bedminster, New Jersey, on his private jet and sending emails to his faithful followers urging them once again to fill the coffers of a supposed billionaire fighting for his imaginary noble cause.
This is typical Donald Trump.
Nothing is more Trump than this indictment and his reaction. As if penned by a movie writer out on strike, the final act of Donald Trump's political life is unfolding in state and federal criminal court, even as he traverses the country speaking at rallies and effectively digging his own grave. On Tuesday night, Trump tried to cite the Presidential Records Act to defend his actions in a public speech carried on C-SPAN. "I had every right to have these documents," he claimed. But the act doesn't say that. It specifically excludes classified documents. Here's a tip: Look for that statement to be replayed on a video screen in court to help convict him.
The details about the records Trump kept at Mar-a-Lago are chilling, and the actions he took with them are both darkly comic and terrifyingly dangerous. A former president of the United States stored secret government documents, which he wasn't supposed to keep and initially denied having, in a bathroom with a now-infamous chandelier. They were also stored on a ballroom stage in his resort that was easily accessible to anyone. There was no guard or lock on the doors.
In one case, sensitive national security information "releasable only to the Five Eyes intelligence alliance consisting of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States," was found spilled on the floor in a storage room.
Our enemies, and even some of our allies, have spent significant sums trying to find out our government secrets. They could've saved a lot of money by just booking a room at Mar-a-Lago.
Maybe that's exactly what they did.
This is real Three Stooges stuff. The indictment exposes Trump as a clown and fool desperate for attention. Book a room at Mar-a-Lago; after you check in, go to the concierge and whisper the code word "chandelier" in his ear for access to the bathroom with the cheap plastic shower curtain and chocolate brown fixtures. Once there, you'll have full access to U.S. government secrets, including but not limited to documents from: 1. the CIA, 2.the Department of Defense, 3. the Department of Energy, 4. the National Security Council, 5. the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency and 6. the National Reconnaissance Office. For the amazingly low price of $29.99, you can also see reports from the State Department and the Bureau of Intelligence Research. The next code phrase, "copies please," gets you into a storage room with a high-speed copy machine. Say nothing and you'll still get access to whatever is in the ballroom. Stick around and Trump will brag about our military plans to you later.
Is Donald Trump's goose finally cooked? Well, it has been for some time. He put himself in the pot long ago, but like the cartoon Daffy Duck that he seems to be, he keeps blowing out the match as the hunters try to start the fire under his pot. He uses his natural inert gasses and noxious aroma to do it. But now comes the blowtorch-wielding Bugs Bunny — or at least Coach Beard, or rather special counsel Jack Smith, straight out of central casting. He looks like dead-eye Marshal Earp, descending on Trump like the angel of death. He just needs the hat.
Cold, calm and completely unimpressed by the former president's ability to bully and sell baloney, Smith came to the podium following the unsealing of the indictment, made a terse statement to the press, took no questions and left one reporter obsequiously trying to get one in. Smith's message was clear — he's coming for Donald.
His dark, empty eyes reminded me of the scene in "Jaws" when Quint describes sharks: "You know the thing about a shark, he's got ... lifeless eyes, black eyes, like a doll's eyes."
Donald Trump's frenzied screams and the threats from the GOP mean nothing to a man who looks like Coach Beard, acts like Columbo and will devour you like a great white shark.
Trump now faces serious charges in federal court in addition to the state charges previously filed in Manhattan. Those two criminal cases, plus at least two others that may follow, have finally led some of his closest supporters to shake their heads publicly — in private, they've been doing so for some time. Then again, many people are still in stunned disbelief. They never thought this day would come. Those of us who believed otherwise are refraining from saying "I told you so" — OK, we're definitely not.
Naturally, some of the critics of the Justice Department, consumed by the "will he or won't he" and "taking too long" musings on the action (or inaction) of Merrick Garland and Jack Smith, are now focused on the federal judge assigned to the case. Judge Aileen Cannon has limited judicial experience and an apparent case of Trump worship. He appointed her and she infamously made decisions earlier in the Mar-a-Lago investigation that were promptly overturned by a higher court. If Cannon wishes to be taken seriously as a jurist, the stakes have never been higher for her than they are now.
Trump claims he will fight to the bitter end and afterward, but he doesn't have a lot of options no matter what he says. His lawyers know this too. How do you defend a case where your client's recorded words taken in context will be used against him? His "best case" scenario, according to some, is to negotiate a plea deal under which he retires to Mar-a-Lago wearing an ankle bracelet for the rest of his life and cannot run for office. He gets to sell the rest of his presidential papers at an exorbitant fee and make money off his speaking tours, while continuing to bilk his base with an endless bombardment of emails selling cheap souvenirs and asking for donations.
Trump will still have a base, no matter what, and I'm sure he's thought about how much he can charge for them — and who the probable highest bidder might be. Someone, probably his longtime aide Jason Miller, is putting together the first draft of that letter now, while those with any sense in Trump's camp try to get him to face facts. Then again, there's probably no one working for Trump at this point who's capable of carrying out such a mission, or has the stones to do it. Surrounding himself with sycophants at the highest levels, and gullible kids who just need a job at the lowest levels, Trump has nothing but fumes left in his tank — and he's trying to coast into a safe harbor on those.
Trump may actually believe that the best-case scenario involves winning the election and issuing himself a pardon, or rigging the trial with a friendly judge. He's certainly trying to sound confident as he protests that he's only being prosecuted because he's running for office. Actually, it's the other way around: He's running for office to try and save himself from being prosecuted.
You have to wonder if dear Donald has even considered the worst-case scenario: spending the rest of his natural life behind bars. Who are we kidding? It haunts his every thought.
Most of Trump's critics believe it won't come to that — and plenty of his worshippers don't believe it will happen either. However, look deep into Jack Smith's eyes and tell me you don't start singing, in Quint's voice, "Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies ..."
Meanwhile, Trump prattles on and most of the Republican Party continues, at least on the surface, to support the idea that this historic indictment is evidence of a "two-tiered" justice system. But the noteworthy exceptions are proof this strategy is doomed. Former Attorney General Bill Barr, who is highly skilled at bending the law to suit his own purposes, has declared that Trump's in the cooking pot. Rep. Ken Buck of Colorado — a former Trump warrior and right-wing extremist — said he had no intention of supporting "a convicted felon for the White House." Trump has yet to be found guilty, of course, but Buck said the prosecution has a strong case.
Buck even quoted Trump from the campaign trail in 2016 about the absolute need to hold people accountable for mishandling classified information. Back then, he famously said Hillary Clinton was "unfit for office" due to her handling of such material.
"I think his words will set the standard that America will look at in determining whether he is fit for president," Buck said.
Trump is about to find out that the nonsense he spouts outside the courtroom could have calamitous results for him inside the courtroom, particularly in a criminal trial this unprecedented and this notorious. He will be exposed as the traitorous, incompetent, callous buffoon and charlatan that he really is.
Trump may still have to face his toughest criminal challenges ahead, in the Georgia election-interference case and in Smith's Jan. 6 investigation. As much as he keeps on crying that his political opponent is bringing him down, his real nemesis is himself.
It always has been.
Trump remains a stain on the presidency, and a stain that has spread across the globe. Part of the fallout of his latest debacle is that our nation will have to earn the trust of our allies all over again when it comes to sharing sensitive information. That could take years. Trump has compromised intelligence gathering, compromised his country and compromised the lives of his most fervent supporters.
He has used them, screwed them over and made their lives infinitely more painful and difficult — even as they defend him. Some of them will never learn that, and some of them don't care.
He is a stain on humanity, and he doesn't care. Or, if you prefer the words of the government on page 39 of the indictment, he did "knowingly and willfully falsify, conceal and cover up by any trick, scheme and device the fact that he hid and concealed from the grand jury" his continued possession of classified documents.
Maybe Trump has deluded himself into thinking he can beat the rap — whatever the rap — because he will do whatever it takes. If all else fails, he'll get his supporters and his opponents riled up and ready to rumble, and then sneak out of the bar when the fight breaks out.
States have seized the initiative in resisting environmental, social and governance investing. These legislative efforts have been so successful that the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance recently published an article titled “It’s Time to Call a Truce in the Red State/Blue State ESG Culture War.” ESG advocates are understandably concerned that what looked like a juggernaut is suddenly facing stiff opposition. But that’s no reason to slow the effort. ESG either protects the retirement assets of hard working Americans or, as states are increasingly concluding, it doesn’t.
Last year the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heritage Foundation jointly proposed model legislation to stem the rise in ESG investing. Their proposal has served as the basis for states to require that asset managers focus exclusively on maximizing returns. These 10 states combined—Arkansas, Florida, Kansas, Kentucky, Indiana, Montana, North Dakota, Tennessee, Utah and West Virginia—hold more than $500 billion in pension fund assets.
The bills have varied in language. Eight states have explicitly named ESG when outlining their new investing restrictions. Florida, Indiana and Kansas also prohibit investing to advance “social, political, or ideological interests.” Montana and West Virginia add the phrase “or other similarly oriented considerations” to their ESG restrictions.
All are clear and consistent in their intention: Those responsible for investing and shareholder voting must act solely in the financial interests of the pension fund’s beneficiaries. ESG and other forms of politically motivated investing are inconsistent with that duty.
"Maybe Trump has deluded himself into thinking he can beat the rap"
actually, the odds on in his favor
Biden has become the first President to arrest his leading potential opponent
while such a thing should be possible, the case should be compelling, agreed to by all sides
none of that is present here
he likely will win in court, if the case gets there, but it's more likely the case will be delayed with motions until after the election
if he wins, he can direct the AG to dismiss the case
if another Repub wins, he will be pardoned
RFK, Biden's leading Dem opponent wins, he will also probably pardon Trump
and Biden is also likely to be impeached
France's ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy just lost his appeal on bribery and corruption charges, bout the same as our guy. He'll get three years in prison, and will be required to wear an electronic bracelet under house arrest for one year, and two years suspended. Our guy is looking at about three hundred years in prison, so far, on the current round of indictments. Wait till the Georgia charges hit, and the January 6th charges, and the Bedminster charges for revealing US government secrets.
See, little ol' France can do it, it doesn't hurt. They have laws and they enforce them. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!
A Montana man has been sentenced to 18 years in prison after his conviction on federal hate crime and firearm charges related to a “self-described mission to rid the town of Basin of its lesbian, queer and gay community,” officials said.
John Russell Howald was convicted in February for firing an AK-style rifle at the home of a woman who openly identified as a lesbian, the US Department of Justice said in a news release. The woman was inside the home during the March 2020 incident.
Howald was armed with two assault rifles, a hunting rifle, two pistols and multiple high-capacity magazines that were taped together for faster reloading, the release said.
“Hoping he had killed her, Howald set off toward other houses occupied by people who identify as lesbian, queer or gay,” the release said.
Some residents who knew Howald spotted him and stalled him long enough for a Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office deputy to respond, prosecutors said.
Howald was recorded “yelling and firing more rounds with the same rifle, expressing his hatred toward the community’s gay and lesbian residents and his determination to ‘clean’ them from his town,” the release said.
Howald pointed his rifle at a responding deputy, “nearly starting a shootout in downtown Basin,” before running into surrounding hills, according to the release.
He was arrested the next day, armed with a loaded pistol and a knife. “In Howald’s car, officers found an AR-style rifle and a revolver. During a search of Howald’s camper, officers found an AK-style rifle, a hunting rifle, and ammunition,” prosecutors said.
“Motivated by hatred of the LGBTQI+ community and armed with multiple firearms and high-capacity magazines, this defendant sought to intimidate – even terrorize – an entire community by shooting into the victim’s home trying to kill her for no reason other than her sexual orientation,” ATF Director Steven Dettelbach said in the release.
Howald’s 18-year prison sentence, to be followed by five years of supervised release, was announced during Pride Month and comes as the Human Rights Campaign has declared a national state of emergency for the LGBTQ+ community in the US.
“The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived – they are real, tangible and dangerous,” the group’s president, Kelley Robinson, said. “In many cases they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”
Howald hoped to inspire similar attacks around the country, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“The Justice Department will continue to vigorously defend the rights of all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, to be free from hate-fueled violence,” Clarke said in the release. “This Pride Month, we affirm our commitment to using the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Hate Crimes Prevention Act to hold perpetrators of hate-fueled violence targeting the LGBTQI+ community accountable.”
"France's ex-president Nicolas Sarkozy just lost his appeal on bribery and corruption"
interesting, because Trump wasn't charged with that
Biden is being accused of it, though
what Trump is accused of is something all former Presidents since the 70s have been involved with: disputes with the Archives over access to records
prior to the seventies, Presidents owned their own records
so, it's a little hard to work up any outrage about Trump's actions
btw, after Clinton left office, a judge ruled that a departing President can decide what is personal and what is a Presidential record
back then, the Archives was claiming Clinton had that right because they wanted to prevent Judicial Watch from obtaining Clinton's records
The government’s position was that Congress had decided that the president and the president alone decides what is a presidential record and what isn’t. He may take with him whatever records he chooses at the end of his term.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed: “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office,” she held, “it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”
Judge Jackson added that “the PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”
an inconvenient truth that Trump's lawyer is sure to bring up in court
"See, little ol' France can do it, it doesn't hurt. They have laws and they enforce them. Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité!"
France has never been a model of governance
compare their revolution in 1700s to ours
they always fail because they value resentment and vengeance above the welfare of society
they have a luntic fringe TTF-type mindset
"they always fail because they value resentment and vengeance above the welfare of society"
You have just described Trump to a "T"... let me fix that for you:
Trump always fails because he values resentment and vengeance above the welfare of society.
"There was nothing new about springtime wildfires in Canada until the wind shifted unexpectedly last week......
Canadian government data show that wildfires in Canada have been overall declining since 1980. "
Look who thinks we are experiencing normal Springtime Canadian fires, ignoring the fact that this year's fires there are record-breaking because your sources at the Spectator is wrong.
The Canadian government's June 5, 2023 press release tells us:
"...Current June projections indicate the potential for continued higher-than-normal fire activity across most of the country throughout the 2023 wildland fire season due to ongoing drought and long-range forecasts for warm temperatures. For June, warm and dry conditions will increase wildfire risk in most of Canada from British Columbia and Yukon eastward into western Quebec and the Atlantic region. During July, wildfire potential is expected to expand into Yukon, although the eastern edge will recede from western Quebec into central Ontario...."
The fact is new record numbers of hectares of Canada are burning up.
The Washington Post adds:
"It’s becoming the summer of smoke in North America as a record siege of wildfires continues to rage in Canada.
Thick wildfire smoke first invaded northern Minnesota on Wednesday morning, causing its air quality to deteriorate to Code Red levels — signifying unhealthy conditions for the general public. By Wednesday afternoon, thick smoke had spilled south into Minneapolis where the local air quality was nearing its worst level on record, a throwback to last week when record smoke pollution infiltrated New York, Philadelphia and Washington.
Air quality alerts covered nearly the entirety of both Minnesota and Wisconsin into at least Thursday.
The acrid haze is coming from fires in both Canada’s east and west. Smoke from Quebec and Ontario is wrapping around a low-pressure zone over the Great Lakes and being flung southeastward. Simultaneously, smoke in western and central Canada is riding the jet stream — the zone of roaring high-altitude winds — from west to east. This latest bout of smoke comes as Canada races toward its largest fire season in the modern record, with more than 5 million hectares (12.4 million acres) involved, the most on record by far. ..."
I've looked at this site a couple of times recently, so tell me, has this stupid anonymous person been commenting here a long time? Does he or she actually think the National Archives is "the deep state?" Do they really believe gender identity is an ideology? Do they think Hillary had classified material in her personal email? Does this idiot really think the Presidential Records Act says that Trump can keep sensitive government papers in his bathroom? Does this person think that Teach the Facts actually "boycotted" Chik-Fil-A?-- Google sure can't find it, if they did. Do they really believe that Canada is having a record wildfire season because they don't fireproof their forests correctly? Can they actually think fires and droughts and floods and severe storms are declining, and that the atmosphere is actually staying the same temperature?
Are they saying false things because they think it's funny, or is there something actually wrong with this person? It seems to me like a very strange kind of nihilism that wants to drag everybody else down with it. God made the world such a beautiful place, why does someone want to undo His work and make it ugly?
WASHINGTON — Several Republicans said this week that they don’t know if there really are tapes of Joe Biden talking about taking a bribe.
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) revealed Monday that a tip the FBI received in 2020 said a foreign national who allegedly paid Biden $5 million has recordings of himself talking to Biden when he was vice president.
The audio purported to be a compelling new detail about the FBI tip, which Republicans have demanded be made public since learning of it last month.
At the same time, the uncertainty over whether the recordings actually exist is a reminder that while the tip came from a credible career informant, the informant’s source is someone else, and the underlying information, audio and all, remains unverified hearsay.
Speaking about the recordings on Newsmax Tuesday, House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) said lawmakers “don’t know if they’re legit or not, but we know that the foreign national claims he has them.”
Comer pressured the FBI into showing his committee a redacted copy of the form during a private briefing last week. He said the June 2020 document, an FBI worksheet for recording tips from confidential human sources, indicates someone claimed to have paid Biden and his son Hunter $5 million in bribes several years prior.
The FBI has resisted handing over a copy of the form for public consumption, maintaining that such documents contain uncorroborated information and that releasing them can endanger sources.
The allegation that Biden was caught on tape has seemingly forced Republicans to remind an eager conservative media that the allegations might be untrue.
“We don’t know for sure if these tapes exist,” Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) said on “The Chris Salcedo Show” Wednesday when asked if Republicans would consider impeaching the president.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) suggested on a program called “The Conservative Circus” that not only might the tapes not exist, but also that the foreign national who spoke to the FBI informant might lack credibility. (Some Republicans on the Oversight Committee have said the source is former Burisma executive Mykola Zlochevksy, a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch.)
“We don’t know really if the tapes exist, we just don’t know that, whether this was just a bluff on the part of, whoever the executive was, I think it was Mykola Zlochevsky, the CEO of the... the corrupt oligarch,” Johnson said.
Burisma has been at the center of Republican attacks on Biden since 2019, when former President Donald Trump tried to pressure Ukrainian President Volodymyrr Zelenskyy to announce a sham investigation into the Bidens. Joe Biden’s son Hunter served on Burisma’s board when Biden was vice president and advocated for the firing of a Ukrainian prosecutor, a dynamic that Republicans described as a conflict of interest. The reality is that the prosecutor hadn’t been investigating Burisma and that his ouster had been a priority of both the U.S. and other Western countries.
During an Oversight Committee hearing on Wednesday, Rep. Dan Goldman (D-N.Y.) noted that Zlochevsky reportedly said in 2019 that he had had no contact with Joe Biden.
“The issue here is, is there any connection to President Biden? They have provided zero actual evidence to that effect,” Goldman said. “And yet they are smearing him with innuendo and debunked allegations to try to create the impression that then-Vice President Biden did anything wrong.”
Still, some lawmakers and right-wing media outlets are taking for granted that Biden took a bribe — especially as a diversion from the recent indictment against Trump for illegally retaining sensitive documents and obstructing an FBI investigation.
“Joe Biden caught on tape getting bribed and the Left looks the other way,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) said on Twitter. “Donald Trump slow walks documents and they want to give him a death sentence.”
Good article here about 7 Dumb Defenses of Trump Since His Latest Indictment. I'm not going to repeat the debunkings but here are the 7 dumb defenses:
1. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden All Did It, Too
2. Trump Was Entitled to Obstruct the Investigation
3. The Presidential Records Act Is Not a Criminal Statute
4. Republican Voters Don’t Care
5. The Prosecutors Tried to Bribe a Defense Lawyer
6. No Harm Done
7. This Is Election Interference
Sometimes the young Little Mouses argue among themselves and try to change the rules of their little games. It's cute but the grown-ups have to teach them to play fair and respect both the rules of their game and one another. It looks like Republicans are people who never learned those important things.
"I've looked at this site a couple of times recently, so tell me, has this stupid anonymous person been commenting here a long time?"
No, it's only happened recently.
"Does he or she actually think the National Archives is "the deep state?""
I think so. When people refer to the "deep state", they generally mean parts of the government that consist of unelected individuals who believe they have more authority than elected officials.
"Do they really believe gender identity is an ideology?"
Not exactly. From reading his comments, It seems he believes that the idea that gender can differ from biology is an ideology. This idea is without any empirical evidence. Do you disagree with that?
"Do they think Hillary had classified material in her personal email?"
He likely thinks that. It's a fact and he seems to know a lot of facts.
"Does this idiot really think the Presidential Records Act says that Trump can keep sensitive government papers in his bathroom?"
He seems to. The PRA provides that ex-Presidents can access presidential records that pertain to their terms. Just today, he provided information about a court that ruled that, under PRA, ex-Presidents alone decide what is personal and what is presidential.
If an ex-President has these at his house, they are perfectly safe since the Secret Service watches the place 24/7.
Anonymous clearly knows this.
"Does this person think that Teach the Facts actually "boycotted" Chik-Fil-A?"
This person is aware that TTFers participated in the gay boycott of Chik-Fil-A. Did you know that?
'Do they really believe that Canada is having a record wildfire season because they don't fireproof their forests correctly?'
The forest floor near populated areas should be cleared to prevent loss of life and property.
"Can they actually think fires... are declining,"
Overall, they are - in Canada.
"and that the atmosphere is actually staying the same temperature?"
I didn't hear him say that.
"Are they saying false things because they think it's funny, or is there something actually wrong with this person?"
I haven't heard him say anything false.
"It seems to me like a very strange kind of nihilism that wants to drag everybody else down with it."
Are you referring to gay pride parades?
"God made the world such a beautiful place, why does someone want to undo His work and make it ugly?"
Are you referring to gay pride parades again?
"I've looked at this site a couple of times recently, so tell me, has this stupid anonymous person been commenting here a long time?"
As far as I can tell, since before 2010; but it could be that he has an evil twin that has the exact same stunted, punctuation-adverse writing style.
You can expect him to regurgitate all the latest right-wing talking points after spinning his wheel of bumper-sticker answers. He's not as far gone as the Q-Anon cult, but he's circling that neighborhood, and he's a master of logical fallacies.
Come back often and read what he as to say - it will entice you to encourage all of your friends to vote like their lives depended on it.
"is there something actually wrong with this person?"
I don't think it will take you too long to figure out that one. Your questions indicate you've never dealt with someone like him before. Enjoy watching the revelations unfold... it will provide you with wonder, astonishment, disbelief, and numerous searches through the DSM.
Have a nice day.
"I'm not going to repeat the debunkings"
good idea
that way you won't need to defend the ludicrous "debunkings"
"but here are the 7 dumb defenses:
1. Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, and Joe Biden All Did It, Too"
Both Hillary and Joe mishandled classified information. Neither were Presidents before they did this.
Hillary's conduct was worse than Joe and Trump because she kept the information in a manner that was easily accessible to our enemies, and because she destroyed the evidence. She wasn't charged because she was the presidential nominee of a major political party. Also, the FBI, scandalously, helped her. First by inappropriately dismissing a case when that should have been the role of DOJ and then by destroying the server after quickly examining it, insuring their decision could not be questioned.
Since Joe, similar to Trump, had Secret Service protection, it is unlikely that the physical files he kept were accessed by foreign powers. But, at the same time, he was not covered under the PRA, and had no legal justification to retain the files.
Dems say Trump is worse because he didn't turn over the Material immediately. But Hillary and her lawyer combed through the files and unilaterally deleted most of them. Joe did turn them over right away but that is a hollow gesture since he was President at the time of discovery and could get access to any of it at any time. There is no allegation that the material left Trump's possession.
As for Bill Clinton, like Trump, he was covered under the PRA and a court ruled that he, solely, was entitled to determine which information was personal and which was presidential.
"2. Trump Was Entitled to Obstruct the Investigation"
I haven't heard this although this assumes the investigation is valid. There was actually no justification for it
"3. The Presidential Records Act Is Not a Criminal Statute"
There are no criminal penalties provided in the PRA. It's irrelevant though, since the 38-count indictment doesn't mention the PRA. As a matter of fact, the failure of the indictments to address the PRA says a lot
"4. Republican Voters Don’t Care"
87% of Repubs think the prosecution is political. He continues to lead the polls for the nomination. He has raised almost 7 million in donations since the indictments were announced.
"6. No Harm Done"
True, no harm was done.
"7. This Is Election Interference"
It is, indeed. Dems desperately want Trump to be the nominee so Trump will be the issue rather than Biden's miserable record
"Sometimes the young Little Mouses"
Drop the euphemisms.
You aren't mice,
you're rats
I have reviewed the indictment brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith in the documents case against former President Donald Trump, and have serious concerns with the way this case is being framed in the public and with some aspects of the way the prosecution itself is being conducted.
Here are six major issues I see that need to be addressed by the special counsel’s team.
1. Interplay Between the Espionage Act and the Presidential Records Act
Others have already spoken insightfully about the scope of the Presidential Records Act (PRA). Mike Davis of the Article III Project has published and spoken on the subject, and Michael Bekesha of Judicial Watch had a fascinating article in The Wall Street Journal detailing his experience litigating the Clinton Sock Drawer Case.
Basically, their argument distills down to the idea that the president’s authority to retain personal records, as well as his rights to access his presidential records, make it impossible to prosecute him under the Espionage Act section at issue here, § 793(e), because the government cannot prove “unauthorized possession,” as required under the statute.
I want to make a different point relating to the intent element of the Espionage Act, the statute Trump is being charged under.
Section 793(e) requires the government to prove that the defendant knew he had National Defense Information (NDI) in his possession, knew there was a government official entitled to receive the information, and then willfully failed to deliver it to that official.
This is a very high set of mens rea bars to jump in any circumstance. Proving a defendant’s intent and knowledge can often be tough. But it’s even tougher here because of the Presidential Records Act.
The Presidential Records Act sets up a system where the president designates all records that he creates either as presidential or personal records (44 U.S.C. § 2203(b)). A former president is supposed to turn over his presidential records to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), and he has the right to keep his personal records.
Based on the documents I’ve read and his actions I’ve read about, I believe Trump viewed his “boxes” as his personal records under the PRA. There are statements he made, quoted in the indictment, that support that view. If Trump considered the contents of these boxes to be of purely personal interest, hence his designation of them as personal records, did he knowingly retain NDI?
Did he really think these documents, like years-old briefing notes and random maps, jumbled together with his letters, news clippings, scribbled notes, and random miscellaneous items, “could be used to the injury of the United States”? Or did he just think of them as mementos of his time in office, his personal records of the four years, akin to a journal or diary?
If he thought these boxes were his personal records, he may have believed NARA simply had no right to receive them at all — meaning he did not willfully withhold anything from an official he knew had the right to receive them because he didn’t believe that anyone had the right to receive them.
By breathlessly bandying around classification levels and markings, the special counsel is trying to make this case seem much, much simpler than it is. Classification levels do not automatically make something NDI, and having classified documents in your possession is not enough to convict here. It is simply not the case that the fact that previously classified documents were found in boxes in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom means Trump is guilty.
That’s what they want you to think, and that has the media’s inch-deep view for the most part, but it’s dead wrong.
More than anything, this case hinges on the ability of the special counsel to prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” aspects of Trump’s state of mind that will be extremely difficult to prove in this case because of his obligations and rights under the Presidential Records Act — in addition to all of the usual issues.
2. Classification and National Defense Information
Just because something is classified — even Top Secret, SCI, NOFORN, FISA, pick your alphabet soup — does not mean it is National Defense Information within the meaning of the Espionage Act. NDI, for the purposes of an Espionage Act prosecution, is defined as one of a long list of items “relating to the national defense which information the possessor had reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.”
A lot of the documents listed in the indictment are older, or seemingly random. Would Trump in 2022 have had reason to know that a 2019 briefing document “related to various foreign countries, with handwritten annotation in black marker” could harm the U.S. or help foreign countries?
It is tough to say because we cannot see the documents, but that is a question the jury is going to have to decide in the end, and Trump’s legal team needs to drive home this point over and over again: Classification is not dispositive in this case. Harm to America or benefit to foreign countries is the standard.
Anyone who has worked around government knows that overclassification is a huge problem. A ton of documents end up being classified because of arcane technical rules that may not reflect the real world. If the president were to ask the Navy what’s for lunch for the next week at Coronado, for example, there is a good chance the answer comes back with a classification marker on it.
To put it simply, not everything classified constitutes NDI. This case revolves around actual legal standards and statutory language, not a bunch of scary-looking all-caps acronyms.
3. Walt Nauta and DOJ Misconduct
Far and away the most troubling side story to emerge from this saga so far are the allegations made by Trump aide and co-defendant Walt Nauta’s lawyer last week.
You may have missed it if you blinked. Not surprisingly, the corporate media have mostly buried this one.
Nauta’s lawyer, Stanley Woodward, alleged in a court filing that during a meeting with prosecutors about his client’s case, the head of the Counterintelligence Section of DOJ’s National Security Division Jay Bratt “suggested Woodward’s judicial application for a DC Superior Court judgeship might be considered more favorably if he and his client cooperated against Trump.”
If true, and I find it hard to believe that Woodward just made the whole thing up, this is wild misconduct. Truly wild. It could undermine the entire case against both Trump and Nauta. It could end careers at DOJ if fairly investigated.
Woodward is a highly accomplished lawyer. He spent a decade at Akin Gump, a top law firm, clerked on the D.C. Circuit, and has very substantial experience in government investigations. This is not some fly-by-night TV lawyer. He is a legal heavyweight, and he is leveling an extremely serious allegation of misconduct against a senior official at DOJ.
Watch this issue as the case against Trump and Nauta begins to move. We will all hear more about it, I am sure.
4. Attorney-Client Privilege
The indictment relies on a significant amount of information received, in one form or another, from one of Trump’s lawyers, Evan Corcoran, who was compelled to testify in front of the grand jury. According to news reports, the argument for breaching the privilege was the crime-fraud exception, which is worth examining in greater detail.
The attorney-client privilege protects from disclosure to the government confidential communications made between clients and their attorneys. It has been around for centuries and is considered a core protection in our system of justice.
The crime-fraud exception, though, allows the attorney-client privilege to be broken in rare circumstances when two requirements are met: First, there needs to be a prima facie showing that the client was engaged in criminal conduct. Second, the client has to have obtained or sought the attorney’s assistance in furthering that crime.
I have not seen DOJ’s filings on Corcoran, but I would be interested to know how they argued this. First of all, what was the crime they used as a predicate? Was it unlawful retention of the documents? If so, there is nothing in the indictment that I can see indicating Corcoran’s communications with Trump would have furthered that in a way that would justify breaching privilege.
Was it obstruction? I think this is the most likely option: They pierced attorney-client privilege using obstruction as the predicate crime for the crime-fraud exception, saying that Trump’s conversations with Corcoran amounted to him attempting to enlist Corcoran in a criminal obstruction scheme.
Now, we will see how this theory goes for the government. I have my doubts.
But if that is the case, just reading this indictment, it seems as though the obstruction charges may have been structured specifically in part just to get Corcoran’s testimony in, to help buttress what would otherwise be a much weaker case against Trump on the substantive charges.
In any case, the special counsel is going to have to show why the communications in question were a solicitation by Trump to Corcoran to join him in criminal acts, as opposed to Trump asking a lawyer he hired to advise him on his legal defense, to tell him what his options were, or to outline what defensive steps might be possible, and what was done by others in previous cases like Hillary Clinton’s emails.
Reading the conversations in the indictment, they sound a lot more like honest attorney-client communications than they do crime fraud to me, even with all ellipses and modifications made by the special counsel’s team.
I expect a motion by Trump’s legal team on this issue, and if they win that will cut the guts out of much of this case. It will be very tough to prove intent and willfulness the way the government needs to without Corcoran, at least based on what we see in the indictment.
5. Timing: Why Now?
This is not a legal defect in the indictment, but it is an important point nonetheless. Why are they bringing this case now?
They know Trump is the leading candidate for president. They know he is beating Biden in the polls. They must know how bad it looks for a sitting president’s DOJ to indict that president’s primary political opponent.
DOJ has long had policies in place to prevent new indictments from being brought, or overt investigative acts being committed, in the months preceding an election in order to avoid the appearance of political timing. The same reasoning clearly applies here.
The special counsel’s team did not have a statute of limitations issue, they could have easily just announced the facts as they saw them after the search warrant was executed and all the documents were recovered, and then held off on further investigative acts and the indictment until after November 2024.
The fact that they did not follow that course is strong evidence to me that a big part of this is the burning desire among many on the left to “get Trump.” They don’t care about the law. They don’t care about the facts. They don’t care about norms or propriety or anything else. They just want Trump in cuffs.
The fact that our law enforcement and intelligence apparatuses are being weaponized in this way against a leading presidential contender is truly a black mark on them and on our republic.
If I were Trump’s lawyers, I would consider moving to continue further proceedings until after November 2024. Let the case sit. The country doesn’t need to litigate this right now. We need to pick our next president. If DOJ won’t agree to that continuance, let them explain why this has to happen right now. There is no good reason that I can see.
6. Jack Smith: Why Him?
If you could pick any lawyer in the country to handle a controversial case against a former president, a case involving an aggressive, unprecedented use of the Espionage Act, a controversial law in and of itself, what lawyer would you pick?
You’d probably want just a consummate professional, right? Career prosecutor with no political profile at all? White knight in shining armor who’s never lost a case?
Or you could pick Jack Smith.
The single case Jack Smith is most publicly associated with was the prosecution of Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell.
In that case, using a very aggressive interpretation of the scope of federal bribery and honest services fraud statutes, Smith nuked the career and life of a popular Republican politician, before having all his convictions overturned by the Supreme Court in a unanimous opinion.
A unanimous Supreme Court smacked Smith down for an overzealous, legally defective prosecution of a Republican politician, and the opinion was so devastating that DOJ did not even attempt to retry the case. It was just dropped.
As has been noted publicly as well, Smith’s wife is a leftist filmmaker who produced a hagiography of Michelle Obama, and he currently lives in the Netherlands. Was there not anyone else up to the task on this side of the Atlantic?
If this is not a political prosecution, if Merrick Garland wasn’t just trying to “get Trump,” then why was Jack Smith the pick? Like the timing, the decision reeks of politics.
In the US, the month of June hosts a number of important celebrations. It is ushered in by Memorial Day, the bank holiday on the last weekend of May, which solemnly commemorates America’s war dead. It also includes Father’s Day, Flag Day and the anniversary of D-Day. Yet for the Biden administration, all of these events pale in significance to that other all-important June event – namely, Pride Month.
Enter trans-identified model and social-media influencer Rose Montoya, who posted a video on Instagram and TikTok this week of him meeting Joe and Jill Biden. The video then cuts to a shot of Montaya, where he pulls down his dress and flashes his breast implants.
Montoya is, to borrow a phrase from JK Rowling, a ‘penised individual’ who identifies as a woman. He once complained that airport-security scanners are transphobic because apparently they once picked up his bait and tackle. (I thought they only scanned for metal objects, but what do I know?) Nevertheless, in the eyes of the Biden White House, not only is Montoya literally a woman – his ‘activism’ also marks him out as someone deserving of an audience with the president.
And so Montoya was invited on to the White House lawn to celebrate Pride Month. To commemorate the occasion, the president mumbled some platitudes about love and ‘advancing equality’. However, thanks to Montoya’s topless display, despite his buxom enthusiasm for the Biden administration, he has now been banned from the White House for this ‘inappropriate and disrespectful’ behaviour.
This is hardly the first ‘misstep’ the Biden administration has made by promoting questionable LGBT activists. Before Rose Montoya there was trans TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney. He was invited to the White House last year to discuss his transition and his desire to be a mother. Since then, his promotional partnership with Bud Light managed to almost single-handedly sink the reputation of what was once America’s most popular beer.
Before Dylan, there was Demetre Daskalakis, the president-appointed monkeypox adviser, who appeared at an HIV prevention summit in April wearing a leather harness and flanked by two scantily clad men. Before Demetre, there was Sam Brinton, the dress-stealing, bald ‘nonbinary’ fella with a side job in nuclear policy at Biden’s Department of Energy.
When Biden talks about ‘advancing equality’ I wish someone would ask: what kind of equality, exactly, does the LGBT crowd lack? To me, it looks very much like some are becoming more equal than others. When the ‘Progress Pride’ flag, which represents the ideological beliefs of a tiny activist minority, can be hung at the White House alongside the Stars and Stripes, which is supposed to represent all Americans, you do have to wonder.
This is no laughing matter. But for those who find this relentless focus on sexuality and gender identity to be unsettling, I think mockery is the only cure. And in that, the Brits have the edge, because Americans are far too sincere and earnest. I was reminded of this by a brilliant conversation between Douglas Murray and Julie Bindel from earlier this week. Murray, himself an openly gay man, expressed his distaste for Pride marches, saying:
‘What I massively dislike is seeing a bunch of disco gays, on top of a bus, waving to the public as if they’re celebrities. Sorry love, you’re not a celebrity, you’re just gay. That’s all. And you shouldn’t treat the general public as your audience, waiting for them to celebrate the magnificent, wonderful you.’
If Trump does succeed in dodging the multiple felonies the US government is throwing at him, and makes it all the way to the Republican convention, I suggest he change his campaign slogan to ‘Make Sex Private Again’. Okay, maybe it’s not as catchy as MAGA, but it would certainly get my vote.
'It was a mess': Ugly U.S.-Mexico match halted after 4 ejections, brawls and anti-gay chant
PARADISE, NEVADA - JUNE 15:
Folarin Balogun's USMNT teammates had tried in vain to prime him. They had told the tales of U.S.-Mexico, of melees and more. As they integrated their newest recruit ahead of Thursday's CONCACAF Nations League semifinal, they used words like "intense" and "crazy."
But nothing, nobody, could have prepared Balogun for 8:43 p.m. here at Allegiant Stadium, when Mexico's Cesar Montes wound up and hacked Balogun down.
He clutched for his leg, writhing in pain. Then he looked up. "And I just saw a swarm of people fighting," he'd later recall.
Thus began 30 minutes of madness, of ugly, combustible, borderline unsafe soccer — or at least something resembling it. By the time Balogun could survey the instant carnage, one red card had already been brandished, and beer was flying. It rained down from the stands throughout a shameful second half that overshadowed a triumphant 3-0 U.S. victory.
The first alcoholic projectiles were aimed at Weston McKennie, who'd charged at Montes and soon found himself surrounded by Mexicans. By the time he emerged, his jersey was torn apart — but the U.S. Soccer crest was intact, and so, as McKennie strode toward the U.S. bench for a replacement top, he looked up at the furious fans, then out across the field, and kissed the crest, again and again, eyes wide, arrogance calculated and glorious, goading more fury.
Then he, too, was shown a red card.
From there, the match devolved into a cauldron of danger and chaos, of hate unrestrained and anger uncontrolled. Mexico instigated much of it. The Americans, though, couldn't refrain from getting involved.
"Yeah, they're always throwing beer," Weah added nonchalantly. "But you get used to it."
What they wouldn't tolerate, though, is the chant that crescendoed as the clock ticked and the seats emptied with the final result beyond doubt. The infamous grito, "p***," an anti-gay slur, first appeared early, then boomed across Allegiant Stadium late on. It prompted at least three warnings, then a temporary suspension of play. Which of course didn't halt it. As U.S. keeper Matt Turner prepared to take goal kicks, knowing the chant was inevitable, he tried helplessly to plead with the fans to stop, or even to the referee to simply end the game.
"You could tell it's coming," Turner later said. "It goes against everything that we stand for on our side. We've been very vocal and open about the strength of our team being our diversity, the strength of our nation being its diversity."
The ref finally complied with common sense, five minutes before he was supposed to blow his final whistle, but CONCACAF said that no, the match had not been abandoned — as protocol for homophobic chanting suggests it should have been. It was simply called off, mercifully and wisely, at the referee's discretion. It ended with heads spinning and proverbial sour tastes in the mouths of almost everyone involved.
Centralia’s Pine Street Plaza was an explosion of color, music and joy on Saturday as the Lewis County LGBTQ+ community and its allies gathered to celebrate Pride Month.
Pride celebrations in the United States began as protests, with the marginalized LGBTQ+ community fighting for equal rights in the wake of the deadly Stonewall Uprising, so Lewis County Pride organizers were disappointed but not surprised when a group of self-identified white supremacists arrived to protest the event.
Many wore masks, but one unmasked protester has been identified as Daniel Rowe, the founder of the neo-nazi group Evergreen Active Club who has been convicted for stabbing an interracial couple in Olympia in 2016.
Videos posted online by festival attendees and the Evergreen Active Club show the protesters, who were primarily white men, holding signs outside the plaza and attempting to argue racist propaganda with festival attendees and security officers.
Their hate-fueled presence on Saturday did little to stop the celebration, however. Festival attendees simply shifted their dancing from within the square to the street, blocking the protester’s signs with their own “Rural Americans Against Racism” signs and rainbow decorations.
While the protesters later attempted to visit businesses in Centralia and Chehalis, where a drag show was held at McFiler’s Chehalis Theater that evening, multiple businesses denied the group entry or service, according to Facebook posts.
“Our visibility, safety and sense of belonging are not up for negotiation. Least of all because of outside self-professed Nazis attempting to storm and disrupt our events,” the Lewis County Dignity Guild, one of the groups that helped organize this year’s Pride festival, stated Sunday in a news release.
“This community was ready as soon as these agitators showed up and we outnumbered their hate with love. We remained happy in the face of their hatred.”
The Dignity Guild also thanked community members who stood with their LGBTQ+ neighbors in the face of adversity on Saturday.
“We hope your cup was filled with the love it deserves and that love nourishes your soul as it did ours to continue the march ahead, laying more foundational bricks so that those who come next might have an easier time,” the Dignity Guild stated.
Lewis County’s third official Pride festival carried the theme “Bee Yourself,” with volunteers sporting glittered bug antennas as they handed out swag and celebrated with attendees.
Drag artists from across the Pacific Northwest performed and many local organizations, including Lewis County PTA + PTO, the Timberland Regional Library, the Centralia Prevention Coalition, Molina Healthcare, Providence-Swedish Health Alliance, St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church, Centralia Methodist Church, the Rural Youth Alliance and others, set up booths in the plaza to offer resources and support to attendees.
The festival also featured a new event — a memorial dance titled “Groove is In The Heart” — to honor Rikkey Outumuro, also known as Tru Starlet, a local LGBTQ+ activist and performer who was murdered in October 2021.
The event was organized by a group of 20 to 25 committee members and community volunteers, according to Dignity Guild board member Kyle Wheeler.
“It’s never just a one person effort,” he said Monday.
“Pride is a joyous celebration of our community’s survival despite people attempting to erase us — something we face daily, not just the month of June,” the Lewis County Dignity Guild stated in a news release on Sunday. “We still celebrated yesterday for making it through another year as the manifestation of resilience every queer person has. We still performed, we still danced in the street and we still ate some delicious cupcakes,” the Dignity Guild stated.
Grandma Mouse is better on the social media than I am, and when I showed her the other commenter's response to Trump's 7 dumb defenses, she laughed and said, "Oh, honey, that web site just has a shitposter, that's all it is. Look what he did, he took those false statements and just repeated them. He didn't read the article, he's just saying stuff to piss people off. Everybody knows those talking points are bullshit, pardon my French sweetie, but there he goes, acting like he is having a normal conversation with another person."
Grandma Mouse took a sip of her afternoon MD-20/20 apertif and said, "They call it flooding the zone with shit. They make up so many crazy things that you can't argue with them logically. It doesn't matter what they say, as long as their voices are the ones breaking the silence. It's just so the other side can't get a word in. You want a sip, sweetie? I think I'll have another."
Shitposter? I had to look that one up. Urban Dictionary defines it as "A person who regularly submits terrible or nonsensical posts to an internet forum." So, yeah, Grandma, sounds like you got that one right.
"Do they think Hillary had classified material in her personal email?"
LOL! Here's some things that the imbecile who wrote this can consider:
Walt Nauta is a 10-year veteran of the Navy and served as an aide to former President Donald Trump both in and out of office.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has now indicted him for allegedly "making false statements in interviews with the FBI."
But why stop the indictments with a man who loyally served and followed the orders of the former president of the United States, was a Navy veteran, and a hard-working immigrant from Guam?
Are there not far bigger fish to fry to remind Americans that justice is blind?
After all, when Smith announced his indictments of Trump, he lectured America on the rule of law and the cherished notion that no one is above it.
So let us start with the former interim director of the FBI itself, Andrew McCabe.
McCabe admittedly lied four times about his illegally leaking sensitive information to witnesses and mishandling classified information.
Have those crimes suddenly ceased being felonies?
Or is it now the policy of the United States government that an FBI director can lie with impunity, and leak, and mishandle sensitive classified information?
Yet Walt Nauta may be sent to prison while McCabe will continue to earn a fine salary at CNN as a paid "expert" to deplore . . . what exactly?
What McCabe knows best from his own experience with the deed - the "mishandling of classified information"?
Nauta reportedly is being indicted for claiming he "did not know" what he supposedly did know in relation to the movement of the president's papers.
His denial was proffered with nearly the exact phraseology that another FBI director, James Comey, used under oath when he stonewalled congressional inquisitors on 245 occasions.
Was the FBI director ever indicted for feigning ignorance or amnesia before Congress?
Did Nauta ever record a private, and likely classified, conservation he had with the president of the United States in the White House, and then leak it to the New York Times?
That is precisely what James "Higher Loyalty" Comey bragged about doing.
Most recently, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm admitted that she, too, recently lied while under oath to Congress when she denied owning private stocks.
Was Nauta's "I don't know" a greater threat to the rule of law and the security of the republic than the lies of the secretary of Energy? She deliberately misled Congress about potential conflicts of interest involving her stock portfolio.
Then we come to President Joe Biden. He has sworn that he never discussed business with his son, Hunter Biden, currently under suspicion for tax improprieties and leveraging foreign governments by selling them supposed Biden influence.
Yet plenty of witnesses have contradicted Joe Biden's statement. Photos even reveal him side-by-side with his son's business associates.
For nearly 20 years, Senator, Vice President, private citizen, and now President Biden has concealed the fact he unlawfully took classified documents home and moved them about in various unsecured locations.
Was Biden's movement of classified documents for the last 20 years less egregious than what Nauta is accused of having done?
Was Biden's Corvette garage more secure than the closets and bathrooms inside the Mar-a-Lago gated estate?
Biden's lawyers, after nearly two decades, only came forward because of the media hype surrounding the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago in search of classified documents.
Is there some law that states that a senator, vice president, and president can improperly remove classified documents, move them about to various unsecured locations, and avoid the sort of felony indictments now facing Nauta and Trump?
Let us end with the greatest exemptions of all - those accorded to Hillary Clinton.
She has variously committed the following likely major felonies.
One, she illegally transmitted classified information involving national security over her own unsecure server while serving as secretary of state.
Two, she destroyed both email records and communication devices that were under government subpoena.
Three, she was untruthful about both the use and destruction of said subpoenaed items.
Four, she illegally hired a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to work on her campaign as an opposition researcher.
Five, she conspired to disseminate false documents among top government intelligence and investigatory agencies as well as the media, for the sole purpose of destroying her presidential opponent Trump and thereby warping the 2016 election process.
And?
Clinton - like self-confessed liars or dissimulators John Brennan, former CIA Director, James Clapper, former Director of National Intelligence, and former FBI Directors James Comey and Andrew McCabe - was exempted from all legal jeopardy. She, too, continues to monetize her past notorieties and controversies.
The last thing this country needs is another bottled-piety lecture on the rule of law from Special Counsel Smith, Biden, and the array of admitted lying former high government officials.
They, not Walt Nauta, should be ashamed.
clearly, like Robert Mueller before him, Smith is angry that he wasn't able to flip Nauta and is trying to coerce him still
btw, somehow, being on the same side as the Unabomber has never caused TTFers to reconsider their position
"Look what he did, he took those false statements and just repeated them. He didn't read the article"
Aunt Bea, if you think a statement is false, please say which one and explain why it is false
and, no one is going to read a link
if you want to discuss something, put the text in the comments
"It's just so the other side can't get a word in"
this is risible, considering the volume of nonsense posts put up by this person recently
"btw, somehow, being on the same side as the Unabomber has never caused TTFers to reconsider their position"
The Master of False Equivalency strikes again.
Every one of the GOP's tentpole issues is wildly unpopular with the American public: expanding access to assault rifles, banning immigration, lowering taxes on the rich, cutting social programs, forcing pregnant people to bear unwanted children, support for Russia and Putin, do-nothing approach to climate change, putting children into the workforce, book bans and forcing schools to teach biased lessons, all of it. Take the groomer panic: 71% of Americans approve of same-sex marriage. The people losing their shit about queer people are a strange, tiny minority.
But they are loud. We live in a church but it's not one of "those kind" of churches, it's a church with nice people who try to do good things. But we hear the people talking sometimes to visitors. It must be hard to hold your ground when these ugly people are advocating for absurd positions on everything. Why can't they just let people live their lives? It doesn't make sense to us Little Mouses.
"Every one of the GOP's tentpole issues is wildly unpopular with the American public"
wildy, huh?
that's amazing since Trump currently leads Biden in the RCP average of general election polls
and Gallup recently found that more people in America consider themselves conservatives rather than liberals
it must be that, despite controlling the media, the intelligence agencies, the entertainment industry and virtually all educational institutions, liberals just can't get the message out
LOL!
"a strange, tiny minority"
and yet, when the strange tiny minority boycotts Bud Light and Target, sales and stock values crater
alternatively, when the huge TTF super-majority boycotts Chik-Fil-A, their sales go through the roof
isn't life strange
"it's a church with nice people who try to do good things"
you mean like taking away funding from faith-based organizations that have helped the poor for decades because they won't forsake religious convictions and embrace the gay agenda?
or try to talk adolescents into gender-bending treatments that will negatively alter their lives?
or help women kill babies that are unborn because the babies would be inconvenient?
or prevent inner-city kids from having a choice to attend a better school than the failing one teacher unions want them to go?
if you think those things are good, you must have a brain the size of a rodent
Oops, the Republicans' whistleblower has croaked. A woman who may have had evidence against the Biden family in a bribery plot “passed away inexplicably,” Rudolph Giuliani says. He told Newsmax that the unnamed woman, reportedly the wife of Burisma’s former owner, “died under suspicious circumstances.” “She was willing to give up all the offshore bank accounts, including the Bidens’ accounts.” Except maybe a Biden Crime Family hit-man wacked her, or her ivermectin didn't work, or she fell out of a high window. So now we'll never know about those bank accounts. But they're real, pinky-swear.
Us Little Mouses offer thoughts and prayers to her family, if she existed, or they exist.
An analysis by the Washington Post Tuesday said the Republican case was based on “a secondhand allegation from a single source… extremely limited evidence.”
“Where’s the money?” the president joked last week in response to a question about the House investigation. “It’s a bunch of malarky.”
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html
Yikes, the latest Harvard poll, out today, has Trump ahead of Biden by six points.
Meanwhile, Biden is now ending his speeches by saying "God save the queen, man"
The Queen is dead.
Sorry, Joe. Someone should have told you!
At this point, election polls are like trying to guess where the humans will drop some cheese in a year and a half. For instance:
NBC GOP primary poll *June 2015*
Bush 22%
Walker 17%
Rubio 14%
Carson 11%
Huckabee 9%
Paul 7%
Perry 5%
Cruz 4%
Christie 4%
Fiorina 2%
Trump 1%
Graham 1%
Kasich 1%
"Jeb Bush Surges To Lead Pack" by @chucktodd and @mmurraypolitics
I can't even remember who some of these people are, who were predicted to beat Trump in the primaries.
Rhonda Santis: “Our household is a Christ-centered household.”
Christ: "Uh, no."
Marist Poll headline: Republicans Stand Firm Behind Trump Although Majority of Americans Want Trump to Drop Out of 2024 Presidential Race
56% of Americans think Trump should drop out of the 2024 presidential race given his indictment by a Florida grand jury; 43% say Trump should continue to run
One in four Americans (25%) say Trump did nothing wrong.
The whole question for Republicans is getting control without a majority. If the US continues to practice democracy, they don't have a chance. That's why they're against it.
News from 2021 seems relevant now...
"Leading counterintelligence officials issued a memo to all of the CIA’s global stations saying that a concerning number of U.S. informants were being captured and executed.
The CIA’s counterintelligence mission center investigated dozens of incidents in the last few years that involved killings, arrests or compromises of foreign informants."
CIA was freaking out, wondering why this was happening. It was almost as if foreign agents had secret information about US intelligence.
Wow, thank goodness we have a President who knows how to get things done. That bridge on I-95 was going to cripple transportation on the Eastern seaboard for a long time, but President Biden says we should have traffic going again in two weeks.
That's because he has a plan, he has good advisors and listens to them, and he knows how to execute his plan.
They are going to use lightweight glass to build support to get the collapsed road replaced, as I understand it -- I picture this being like gravel. Then, while traffic is able to pass on the temporary stretch, they are going to build a new permanent bridge next to the old one. Maybe it will take more than two weeks, maybe it will take three, I think the President sees this as a challenge.
Did you know we have a psychic Little Mouse? She calls herself Diana. She actually told us about the bridge idea this past Tuesday, before it was announced, but, you know, we're a little hesitant to believe her sometimes, because we don't all believe in that stuff.
Diana had another prediction, too, and we'll see if she is right. She said that Republicans will root against building a new bridge, and will try to undermine it like they tried to undermine the economy, because they can't stand to see America do well under a Democratic President. She says they'll say it's impossible and will try to throw obstacles in the way of it. I don't know, it's hard to imagine that people really want us to fail, but, well, we'll see.
"Wow, thank goodness we have a President who knows how to get things done. That bridge on I-95 was going to cripple transportation on the Eastern seaboard for a long time, but President Biden says we should have traffic going again in two weeks.
That's because he has a plan, he has good advisors and listens to them, and he knows how to execute his plan."
yeah, he's known for that
remember when he had that great plan to pull out of Afghanistan?
also, that great plan to secure his family finances by taking a bribe from Burisma
the more successful criminal elements always have a plan
"They are going to use lightweight glass to build support to get the collapsed road replaced, as I understand it -- I picture this being like gravel. Then, while traffic is able to pass on the temporary stretch, they are going to build a new permanent bridge next to the old one."
interesting. if this works, why not make it permanent?
if this temporary structure can take the heavy traffic of I-95 for a year, why build anything else?
hope these advisors know what they are doing
hate for this to turn out like Afghanistan
"Maybe it will take more than two weeks, maybe it will take three, I think the President sees this as a challenge."
oh, this guy thrives on challenges
I hear he does those puzzles where you try to find 100 Santas hiding in a crowd
also, he was challenged finding the podium when he gives speeches
so he got himself a plan
now, Jill leads him out by the hand
problem solved
“What faith tradition teaches you to treat human beings like this ― to belittle them, to demean them?” Gavin Newsom, to Sean Hannity.
Pathological narcissism is a term often applied to former President Donald Trump, but it has been less examined as a potential predictor of voting for him. Trump projects a grandiose and omnipotent self-image during press conferences and rallies, and his followers at these events often respond with both effusive admiration and an inflated sense of their own self-regard, all of which are aspects of narcissism. However, while Trump’s personal narcissism has been well documented, there is little research on the narcissism of his supporters. In this study we conducted an exploratory analysis examining the hierarchical structure of pathological narcissism and which aspects of narcissism within that structure were associated with intended voting for Trump in the 2020 U.S. presidential election in a sample of U.S. residents collected online using Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. Results indicated that an eight-echelon hierarchy best fit the data. Within this hierarchy, antagonistic and indifferent aspects of narcissism within the fifth echelon best predicted intended voting for Trump over and above relevant demographic variables. These results have implications for the study of narcissism and, especially given the results of the 2020 election, the degree to which one can make use of narcissistic aspects of personality in political contests.
Pathological narcissism is a term often applied to former President Donald Trump [1]. Less commented upon is what leads people to vote for him. Research suggests that demographic factors influence voting for Trump (e.g., people who are White, male, older, and less educated are more likely to vote for him), but identity politics explains only a portion of people’s voting behavior [2, 3]. There is reason to suspect that Trump’s narcissism may reflect in some ways the narcissism of those who vote for him. However, there is little research on the association between narcissism and likelihood of voting for Donald Trump.
Although most Americans did not approve of Donald Trump and his performance as president, there is a large and vocal minority who very much did and do [32]. To the extent that Trump has a cohesive political platform, it focuses on appealing to people who may identify with and thus voted for him: heterosexual, older White men without a college education [3]. This appeal extends more broadly to regions in which potential supporters may cluster. However, more than just identity influences voting [2]. The pathological narcissism that some have attributed to Donald Trump repels many people who are secure in their identity, but it may attract those who may be less secure, who may think of themselves as exceptional but feel undervalued and who thus identify with the grandiose and aggressive aspects of Donald Trump, using this identification to defend against their own vulnerability [13, 32, 33]. In effect, Trump’s narcissism may attract the support of those who also have narcissistic tendencies (and, additionally, may reinforce these tendencies). Indeed, at Trump’s rallies and other public events, his followers often respond with what might be considered effusive admiration and an inflated sense of their own self-regard, manifesting aspects of both narcissistic grandiosity and vulnerability. It is unclear the degree to which one or both dimensions of narcissism might influence how people actually vote. Research suggests that narcissistic entitlement is associated with political conservatism in general [34]. Research further suggests that collective narcissism (the feeling one’s in-group is exceptional, which is linked to narcissistic vulnerability) is associated with voting for Trump for president in 2016 in particular [32] as well as with holding a positive opinion of him post-election [35]. However, there is little research examining what aspects of pathological narcissism might have predicted voting for Trump for re-election in 2020.
Study findings suggest that aggression and indifference are the aspects of narcissism most associated with intending to vote for Donald Trump in 2020 rather than more vulnerable aspects of narcissism. This is consistent with Trump’s aggressive stance during his presidency and (re)election campaigns [27, 29] rather than one that is more consoling towards his supporters and any vulnerability they might feel. It is feasible that vulnerable aspects of narcissism (and/or other aspects of personality) may have predicted voting for Trump in 2016 (e.g., that those who voted for him in 2016 did so out of vulnerability and frustration; see [32]), and that this changed in the 2020 election cycle. However, these findings cannot speak to this directly. Given the chronological variability of pathological aspects of personality vis-à-vis normal personality traits (for review see [59]), an extension of this research could involve a longitudinal investigation of how aspects of pathological narcissism differentially predict likelihood of voting (or a proxy of this, such as level of approval) over time.
Nevertheless, findings may have implications for understanding the role of personality in elections. By all accounts, Donald Trump ran his 2020 reelection campaign and his presidency more broadly based on the dimensions of narcissism highlighted in this study: antagonism and indifference seem to have been guiding principles, both implicitly and explicitly [27–29]. While touching on emotional (and at times darker) aspects of human nature has long been a feature in politicking, especially among the modern-day Republican Party [60], we might reflect on the results of the 2020 presidential election in considering how effective it is to rely on this entirely. That Trump definitively lost both the popular vote (with his opponent Joe Biden winning more votes than any other candidate in American history [61]) as well as the electoral college (which generally favors Republican-leaning states) suggest that doing so may not be that effective: a platform rooted in animosity towards others can generate a substantial amount of angry enthusiasm (as was clear during the election and its immediate aftermath), but may not be one that is convincing to the majority of people, at least not in a country as diverse as the U.S.
In this study we examined the influence of aspects of pathological narcissism on intention to vote for Donald Trump for U.S. President in 2020, finding that self-centered antagonism and indifference to others were the aspects of narcissism driving intended Trump voting. When considered along with the fact that Trump lost the election, findings suggest that appealing to the darker aspects of personality may not be the most effective way to win elections.
Every single Trump state, including Florida and Texas, is a welfare state subsidized by taxpayers in blue states. Every red state receives more federal money than they contribute. Every one. All of them rely on majority-Democratic taxpayers for their state spending.
I guess that makes them smart.
Majorities of registered voters believe that special counsel Jack Smith’s indictment of former President Donald Trump is “politically motivated” and election interference, according to a Harvard/Harris poll.
A portion of the poll, which was conducted after Trump’s arraignment, gauged public perception of the 37-count indictment relating to classified documents Trump allegedly took to Mar-a-Lago at the end of his presidency.
Of the registered voter respondents, 55 percent believe that the indictment is “politically motivated” versus 45 percent who find it “valid.”
Similarly, 56 percent of the participants categorize the indictment as “interference by the Department of Justice in the 2024 elections,” and only 44 percent see it as “the fair application of the law”:
Bud Light’s parent company Anheuser-Busch has laid out a plan to appease beer distributors affected by two months of plunging sales sparked by an ongoing customer boycott.
The company plans to provide financial assistance to its wholesalers, reimburse fuel for distributors’ trucks and launch a new ad campaign for Bud Light next week, A-B CEO Brendan Whitworth wrote in a letter Thursday.
“We recognize that over the last two months, the discussion surrounding our company and Bud Light has moved away from beer, and this has impacted our consumers, our business partners, and our employees,” Whitworth said.
Bud Light sales have been roughly 25% lower year-over-year in every single week since it partnered with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for an Instagram post in early April, setting off a firestorm of negative coverage on right-wing media and on social platforms. A tepid response to the controversy from the company’s CEO also angered LGBTQ+ advocates.
Damage was so severe that Bud Light, which is typically the top-selling beer in the United States, lost its place for May to Modelo Especial.
Grab a Yuengling and join me in a toast to the patriots who have let Target, Anheuser-Busch, and Kohl’s know that “Go woke, go broke” is not just a slogan. The three corporate giants all famously kowtowed to the Leftist agenda over the last few months, and now they’re feeling the pain for having done so: they’ve lost a collective $28.7 billion in market value since the beginning of April, when Bud Light ads featuring the obnoxious fake woman and publicity hound Dylan Mulvaney first appeared.
Axios reported Friday that “Corporate America is finding itself trapped between society’s progressive impulses, and the conservative backlash.” Note how the woke “journalists” try to tilt the playing field in their favor: Axios would have us believe that the “progressive” impulses, by which they mean the Left’s obsession with sexual deviance and perversion, as well as with socialism and internationalism, are coming from “society.” The “conservative backlash,” on the other hand, isn’t coming from “society” at all. So if you want to be on the side of “progress” and of the societal consensus, you should support the Leftist corporations, and not the patriots who are standing up to their efforts to push Leftism upon us instead of just contenting themselves with selling their products.
Reality is exactly the opposite. American society, despite being blanketed with Leftist propaganda for decades, is still for the most part not disposed to accept the idea that men can become women (and, suddenly, dominant female athletes), and that we should all celebrate the mutilation of children in pursuit of delusions and fantasies that often aren’t even their own, but those of their parents who have fallen prey to the prevailing social contagions.
Given the complexities of running for and holding office, especially for a long time, it’s easy to imagine that most, if not all leading elected officials have some violation of federal law — maybe technical, maybe grave, maybe both — that could be discovered by a team of motivated investigators. Do we want DOJ inquiries of officials and contenders considered threatening to the current order to become the norm?
The question, therefore, isn’t whether Donald Trump broke the law, but whether he broke the law in such a way that it’s worth creating such a potent precedent of DOJ intervention in politics. Does a violation of document safekeeping — followed, more damningly, by lies and defiance of court orders — reach that threshold? I don’t know the answer, but too few people are asking the question.
Weighing the threats
The simplest thing to say is that Donald Trump is just different. His conduct in and out of office has been so revolting, and his contempt for the rule of law so flagrant, that the country can and must treat him as a national emergency — and then draw a line under this episode.
But the logic of the emergency is yet another feature of degrading democracies: An exceptional power very often becomes a regular one. (Republicans, certainly, are unlikely to resist the temptation to try to deploy the DOJ next time they have the chance.) And the fact that nearly every respectable expert and authority in America is wildly enthusiastic about prosecuting the former president doesn’t inspire confidence that all the risks are being measured.
No president in American history has been as intensely hated by as many powerful people — in business, in media and most potently in the very government he once led and seeks to lead again — as Donald Trump. And no one can deny that this fact has played a role in the aggressiveness with which multiple law enforcement agencies have pursued him.
In just about every way, of course, Mr. Trump has made his own situation worse: He has consistently voided his right to the benefit of the doubt, and he has been targeted at least in part because he painted a bullseye on himself. Maybe motivated prosecutors were going to get him no matter what, but he didn’t have to make it so easy for them.
But it’s not just that the people who hate him want to take him down: It’s that all the political and prudential arguments against prosecuting him fade away when everyone who matters seems to be on the same side. The risks to the country’s political stability, not least from making law enforcement agencies the final authority over the political system, don’t register when everyone in the top political caste believes Donald Trump and his supporters are the greatest threat of all.
In the resulting mania, a potentially tragic irony is being missed: What if the most enduring damage Mr. Trump does to American institutions isn’t from his own actions, as heinous as they have been, but from the legal and political precedents set by attempts to bring him to heel? What if the immune response does more damage than the infection?
The die is cast. Only in the decades and centuries to come will we understand the full implications of crossing this Rubicon.
A special prosecutor is investigating Biden's mishandling of classified documents
A special prosecutor, who started earlier, has indicted Donald Trump for the same offense
according to the media, Joe is in no trouble, though, because he tuned over the documents right away
actually, he had these documents from his time as Senator and VP, for years - so he had no case to retain them under the PRA at all
and he only turned them over after his administration raided Trump's house and people started asking questions
but, even giving him the benefit of the doubt on those two issues, Biden still has a tremendous problem:
it's true he turned over the documents
but only seven of the counts against Trump relate to obstruction
the other 31 counts make the case that mishandling classified information is a violation of the Espionage Act
if so, then Biden is even more vulnerable than Trump
and special prosecutors always feel pressure to find something, anything
look for aides who assisted Biden to be prosecuted and a report to be drawn up showing Congress how to impeach Biden
The corporate embrace of Pride Month began in about the mid-2010s, with rainbow-patterned flag displays in stores and corporate-sponsored Pride parade floats. It left a bad taste in the mouth of many LGBT folks. They though that here was a tradition founded by downtrodden activists who struggled for decades, when it was quite dangerous to be openly gay or trans. Now it was being colonized by money-grubbing corporations trying to make an easy buck through a gesture at allyship.
We’re seeing now that the cynical reading of corporate Pride has a lot of truth to it. When Bud Light did a sponsorship deal with a trans influencer, conservatives launched a boycott and took to shooting cases of the beer. Companies like Target, Cracker Barrel, and Walmart, which have set up Pride displays or advertising, have been deluged with boycotts.
In response, many companies are pulling back. Anheuser-Busch apologized for the sponsorship deal, and is now planning a new advertising campaign portraying the brand in as uncontroversial a fashion as possible. Target has pulled some of its Pride displays. LGBT influencers report that few brands are currently coming to them with sponsorship deals. The Starbucks union said management in some stores forbade them from putting up Pride displays.
this weekend, Peyton Manning was seen drinking a Bud Light at a sporting event
problematic
he'll never another commercial...
A year after a transgender woman was found dead in a pool of blood in Opa-locka, her alleged killer appeared before a Miami-Dade County judge for a bond hearing.
Corneilus Bailey of Miami was already in prison after he was sentenced in March for an unrelated burglary charge. On Wednesday, the 26-year-old man was formally charged with second-degree murder and tampering with physical evidence in connection with 50-year-old Nedrea Sequence Moss' death.
“Nedra was a very instrumental person in the community because Nedra helped a lot of people in their time of need," said Tatiana Williams, a close friend. "She was a very caring person. Someone that if you needed anything, if she could have helped she would have been there for you."
Williams said it's been a long year waiting for some sort of justice. Moss' body was found at the intersection of NW 32nd Ave and NW 132nd Terrace.
Police records state Bailey shot Moss inside her car. He got inside and drove away. Bailey allegedly abandoned the body in Opa-locka and got rid of the car in a separate location. He then threw the victim's phone inside a storm drain.
Police said he confessed to the crime.
“You are excited but it doesn’t bring the individual back," Williams said. "But just to know that someone is working, that law enforcement was working to bring this person to justice, it feels good."
On Wednesday, supporters and family of Cashay Henderson, a Black transgender woman who was killed in Milwaukee earlier this year, gathered at the headquarters of Diverse & Resilient on North Holton Street to demand justice for her murder.
In February, firefighters responding to an apartment fire found 31-year-old Henderson had been shot and killed in her home. She was the third Black trans woman killed in Milwaukee in nine months.
CommunityX, an impact tech and media company, sponsored the Justice4Cashay press conference. The organization’s CEO, Chloe Cheyenne, opened the event denouncing Henderson’s murder.
“All across this country, we are seeing an attack on trans lives, and to be quite honest we’re sick of it,” Cheyenne said.
“America’s distorted definition of freedom and choice continues to compromise the already marginalized, already endangered. Let trans people live. Let white trans people live. Let brown trans people live. Let Black trans people live. Let Black trans women live their lives.”
Ada Henderson, Cashay’s sister, was also there. But was overcome with emotion and struggled to say more than a few words.
“Cashay was a great person. She was very kind, very loving. And she didn’t deserve this,” Ada said as she wiped her tears. “My family and I just want justice for what happened to her. That’s all I can say.”
Ada said Cashay was her only sibling and was her best friend.
Chris Allen, president and CEO of Diverse & Resilient, said there are ways people in the community can show up in support of trans lives.
He said for one, seek out education. “Because there’s a lack of information out there, it’s easy for misinformation to run rampant. It’s easy for folks to politicize trans identities because people don’t know who trans people are, and so the messages that you do hear that are not true can be easily latched onto and spread, and that increases the anti-trans discrimination and violence that we’re seeing,” he said.
Allen said another way to support is to find ways to volunteer with LGBTQ+ organizations in your community, donate to organizations and be vocal against anti-trans rhetoric.
The suspect in Cashay’s murder, Cordell Howze, will be arraigned Thursday. He is charged with first-degree reckless homicide and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
A newly formed tropical depression in the Atlantic Ocean, about halfway between the coast of Africa and the eastern Caribbean Sea, is likely to intensify into Tropical Storm Bret over the next day, and it could approach or impact the Lesser Antilles as a hurricane by the weekend. What’s happening in the central Atlantic is, at the very least, highly unusual, and may be historic. If the system intensifies into a named storm by June 22, it would be among the earliest on record to do so in the Atlantic’s Main Development Region.
While atmospheric chaos plants the seeds of storm growth, record-warm ocean temperatures over the Atlantic have created an environment ripe for this system’s intensification. Ocean temperatures around the world are at record high levels, with human-caused climate change the driver of a long-term warming trend. The waters in the Atlantic are as warm as they would typically be at the peak of hurricane season two to three months from now.
The Hurricane Center is also monitoring a second disturbance in the wake of this depression that has a strong chance to develop into a storm as well.
Little Mouses are not actually very good swimmers, so we are hoping his summer doesn't bring a bunch of flooding and stuff. This church seems pretty solid but it's pretty old, and a hurricane could make a mess out of our little home in the wall. Could y'all humans please cut down on the pollution and cool our planet down a bit?
"...That said, several other brands have doubled down on Pride support, likely because aside from Bud Light (which has seen close to a 30 percent drop in sales, possibly due as much to its quick reversal as its initial action), the effects of the terror campaign have reportedly been modest. But if the homophobic terror campaign continues, Target probably won’t be the last to give up.
Now, I should note that while it was rather unseemly for corporations to embrace Pride, it was still a net positive for LGBT rights as a whole. It reflected the fact that gay marriage at least had entered the zone of consensus, where that right is taken for granted across most of the population, and gay couples could (in most of the country, at least) live openly without fear of attack. Pride symbols being used for aggressive advertising campaigns is, alas, just what tends to happen as a by-product of this process.
Admittedly, conservatives were last to the Pride party. Gay marriage bans were central to George W. Bush’s re-election campaign in 2004, and it wasn’t until 2017 that 50 percent of Republicans in Gallup’s poll said same-sex relationships were morally acceptable. The politicians still lagged behind: Codification of the Supreme Court’s ruling legalizing gay marriage passed last year, and the vast majority of Republicans voted against it in the House and Senate.
But now, the conservative movement is attempting to destroy the gay marriage consensus, returning to its familiar effort to create a political wedge issue. Aside from the terror attack on corporate Pride, LGBT people of any kind are now smeared as pedophile “groomers,” and the Pride flag taken as a symbol of sexual perversion. Government support for LGBT rights, like the Biden administration hanging a Pride flag on the White House, is characterized—in the usual habit of casting support for minority rights as victimizing conservatives—as “state-enforced homosexuality.” States like Florida, Indiana, and Kentucky have proposed or passed “Don’t say gay” laws forbidding LGBT teachers from mentioning their sexual or gender identity in the classroom—both directly oppressing them and implying in the process that LGBT sexuality is inherently depraved.
Sure enough, rank-and-file conservatives are getting the message. In 2023, the Gallup poll registered the largest drop in moral approval of gay marriage since it started collecting the poll in 2001, from 71 percent in 2022 to 64 percent this year. This was driven largely by a deep decline among Republicans, with support falling from 56 percent to 41 percent—about where it was in 2014, before the Obergefell decision legalizing same-sex marriage.
The point of all this is to shove LGBT people back into the closet. Through a combination of legal repression and an omnipresent threat of violence, LGBT people will feel afraid of expressing their identity in public, and instead present as heterosexual and cisgender.
Thus far, the fascists have only dented the gay marriage consensus. Hence the remaining brand support for Pride: Two-thirds support for gay marriage is still solid enough for more confident brands to calculate that they might earn more sales by sticking to their guns, and burnish their reputation among the majority of the population in the process. Indeed, they might lose money if they give up. But should people like Matt Walsh—who is currently ferociously attacking Fox News for being too woke—keep chipping away at public opinion, that will change. Even just driving Republican support for gay marriage to zero would probably be more than enough.
Corporations exist to make money. Corporate support for any social issue is an incidental indicator of its success, not a driver of it. The moment it costs a dime to continue supporting LGBT rights even rhetorically, most if not all companies will stop doing it."
I was a young teen when I destroyed my music collection in the name of Jesus.
I stood in the cul-de-sac with my best friend, Joanna, and we smashed our CDs to smithereens on the hot, hard asphalt. Scratched and snapped and broken into pieces, these secular musicians would never again whisper their ungodly thoughts into our young, impressionable ears—a thing we had been convinced, in church and youth group and summer revivals, would tempt us slowly away from our god.
Hallelujah! Free from . . . smooth jazz? Good Charlotte? No Doubt? I don't remember which bands they were, but I do remember that anything not made by a Real Christian™ was trying to plant demonic influence in my very soul. So smash
"Riot Girl" on the pavement; scratch "I'm Just a Girl" until it is no more. The devil isn't in the details, you see: He's in the music.
With that story as my Genesis, you won't be surprised to learn that I grew up during the Satanic Panic of the '80s and '90s, when a large portion of the U.S. population truly believed that cartoons and musicians and a certain type of book were trying to convert their kids to Satanists. Rock music, they said, when played backward, contained hidden messages from the devil. The Smurfs were a gay cult. My Little Pony was trying to entice me to witchcraft (never mind that the witches were the bad guys). And an underground Satanic cult was abusing children en masse.
The only safe choice for us teens: Smash those CDs. Turn off the cartoons. Burn the books.
Be afraid.
Because anything might be trying to destroy your soul. A punk rocker, a Care Bear, a rainbow.
This was my childhood. My teen years. My formative moments. A collection of fever-pitch fears that the most innocuous things might be the very path to hell. You may not be surprised to learn that I was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder in my 20s. I'm hypervigilant, prone to panic attacks, triggered in the clinical sense of the word. For so much of my life, everything felt like a threat. Some (even innocuous) things still do.
Fear is something I've since learned to interrogate in myself. Because fear is natural, and even good sometimes. It tells us not to touch the hot stove. It asks, "Do you really want to walk down that dark alley"? It protects. But when the fear is unjustified—not grounded in real danger—it can be a prison. It can do real harm.
During the Satanic Panic of the '80s and '90s, that fear led to the false imprisonment and deportation of innocent people. Terrified parents decided their kids were being abused by daycare providers and, despite a complete lack of evidence, the paranoia that had gripped the nation pushed judges and juries to convict. One couple spent 21 years behind bars.
And then there were the invisible victims, like me and my cohort. With our panic attacks and our shame and our confusion about who and what to trust. With our childhoods missing pieces because instead of laughing at cartoons, we were being asked to interrogate them, tattle on them, and destroy them in the name of God. The panic stole some part of our innocence and had a ripple effect deep into our lives.
For the past few years, I've watched—with growing unease—as another Satanic Panic unfolds in my lifetime.
QAnon is still growing (in 2021, an alarming 16 percent of Americans said they believe its core tenets, according to a 2022 PRRI study), pushing the idea that secret Satanists within the government are both sacrificing children (because the bad guy is always secretly sacrificing children) and trying to undermine your personal safety and take away your (unspecified) rights. Rippling outward from there, an even larger sample of the population seems to be stuck on the idea that children's books and history classrooms hide a secret evil that's coming for our children.
Just like in the '80s and '90s, it's not just the secret, powerful Satanists who are the focus of this cultural fear. It ripples outward to yet again demonize marginalized groups. It's the heart of the panic about Critical Race Theory and gender education that has already resulted in the introduction of dozens upon dozens of legal attempts to censor education. It's the foundation of the panic about so-called obscenity in kids' books (being so loosely defined as to sometimes include fart jokes or dressing the "wrong" way), leading to campaigns to defund entire library systems. And it's what has turned the nation to a sinister debate about who uses what bathroom, which has already resulted in legal changes that Human Rights Watch warns will undermine people's rights to health, education and privacy.
They say that history repeats itself, but I didn't realize history was so short. That I'd watch the fever pitch play out in my teen years and again as I approach 40. Of course, these aren't the only two moral panics to grip a nation and destroy lives. Go back further and you find actual witch hunts. You find Jeanne d'Arc burned at the stake for wearing pants. You find the myth that Jewish people were ritually killing Christian children, a myth known as blood libel that has put millions of Jews in danger in multiple eras.
We like to think modern people are logical. But I see no logic in the screaming terror at seeing a performer in a feather boa or in the stubborn denial of the real statistic that 80 percent of those who commit sexual violence know their victim. Our children aren't in danger from the stranger in eyeliner or the person of ambiguous gender; they are in danger from their fathers, brothers, family friends. The latter is an uncomfortable truth, one our hearts rebel against.
In 2020, as I watched these dominos falling, fear building, I quietly started writing a book I'd meant to write for years: "The Wicked Unseen," a young adult novel set during the Satanic Panic that asks the same questions, now weighing even more heavily on my heart. How do we bridge the gap between what we are afraid of and what we should be afraid of? How do we get better at interrogating our fears? If the stove is clearly off, should we still be afraid to touch it? If statistically there is no danger from drag queens, should we be afraid of them?
In my book, the pastor's daughter disappears on Halloween weekend, and the whole town cries "Satanists!" But their panic, their assumption, their focus on Satan, is keeping them from the truth. And that's the point. Panic often keeps us from the truth. Instead of making us safer, it makes us less safe.
In the '90s, the so-called villains of the panic were innocent daycare teachers who ended up jailed or deported with no proof of wrongdoing. Now, the so-called villains are drag queens, queer people, history teachers, gender rebels. Ironically, in the crossfire of both panics lie the children—who are learning to be afraid. To break their CDs and burn their books and run from ideas their parents disagree with instead of wrestling with them. Children like me, in therapy for over a decade, grieving the unnecessary loss of childhood innocence.
I'm not coming to this essay on a high horse, the wide-eyed shock of How could this happen? or This is not my America. I'm coming here with a broken CD in my outstretched hands, saying I too have been afraid of things that couldn't hurt me. And that it is never too late to interrogate your fears, measure them against the facts, and change your mind.
We do it every day.
When we jump because we thought the scarf on the floor was a snake—but realizing it's a scarf, we pick it up. When we think someone doesn't like us and then learn they're shy and become their friend.
The panic is here. The panic is dangerous. But the panic isn't inevitable. I say this as person who has—many times—reevaluated and changed my mind. Every one of us has the choice to stop participating, to make those mind changes, heart changes, action changes. To say that if "My Little Pony" can turn us from church to witchcraft, well, our faith wasn't very strong in the first place, was it?
"The panic is here. The panic is dangerous."
yes, it is
it's called Trump Derangement Syndrome
right now, it's threatening to tear our country
Biden could put country about partisanship by pardoning Trump
he could end his career doing something right
"he'll never another commercial..."
"Biden could put country about partisanship by pardoning Trump"
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So you believe Trump committed crimes that require pardoning.
Have you purchased your weapon of war for the RW war to come when Trump is found guilty by the overwhelming evidence and a jury of his peers in Judge Aileen Cannon's courtroom?
"when Trump is found guilty by the overwhelming evidence and a jury of his peers in Judge Aileen Cannon's courtroom?"
Pretty doubtful this will ever happen. The trial, if it happens, will certainly not happen before the next election. Whether Trump wins or not, the public pressure to end it will force some President to pardon him for this victimless crime. Remember, on 31 of the counts against Trump, Biden is guilty of the same. Except that Biden wasn't even a former President when he did it. There is no rationale for prosecuting Trump.
In most criminal trials, the prosecuting attorneys have one job: to convince a jury that the defendant deserves to go to jail. Every now and then, however — maybe once in a career — they need to be able to do more than that. In highly controversial cases, or with ones that garner an unusual level of public attention, the prosecutor has a larger job: to convince the broader community that the person on trial should go to jail.
Special Counsel Jack Smith has an even higher burden to bear than that. He needs to convince the country —maybe not all of the country, but certainly more than just the half that didn’t vote for Donald Trump — that Trump deserves jail.
Taken at face value, Smith has a long way to go. Indeed, assuming every single allegation in the indictment of the former president is true, he’s not even close. This is because there are no allegations in the indictment that Trump did anything with the classified documents that harmed the country. He didn’t sell them to the North Koreans or give them to Vladimir Putin. Chinese intelligence agencies didn’t infiltrate Trump’s bathroom and sneak off with nuclear secrets.
To be sure, such harm is not a legal or technical requirement for a conviction. But right now, a good chunk of the country is asking itself whether we really want to throw a former president of the United States in jail — for what well may be the rest of his life — for a crime that is not only victimless, but also apparently commonplace among and seldom enforced against former officeholders.
I recognize that others will make the case that there is a victim here — the rule of law, which I agree has value in and of itself. But I am a lawyer and a former lawmaker, so I’m not sure it means as much to a large swath of the nation as it does to me.
More importantly, any defense of the rule of law necessarily implies an evenhanded application of that law. The Justice Department has a problem on that front, too. Ages ago, then-FBI Director James Comey addressed the nation and declared that the Department of Justice (DOJ) had determined that “it (was) possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary (Hillary) Clinton’s personal e-mail account.” In that account those “hostile actors” would have had access to “matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level.”
As of now, at least, the Justice Department has not made similar allegations regarding Trump. It will not be lost on some, then, that the government chose not to pursue one high-profile political figure in a case where she may have actually allowed enemies access to classified information, but has chosen to prosecute another figure who did not allow such access.
I’m not defending what Trump did. Indeed, it is indefensible. And I am assuming for the sake of argument that everything in the indictment is true, which is far from established.
I’m simply positing this: If the DOJ doesn’t want to tear this country apart, it had better have something else in the hopper that is more damning than what it has offered the public so far. To jail a president in this manner, you’d really need something that shocks members of the Freedom Caucus into silence — something that forces the talking heads at Fox News and Newsmax to begin openly questioning Trump’s fitness for office. They need to have something which, if proven, causes a good chunk of MAGA America to take pause.
That may sound unreasonable, but we’ve seen something like that before. Fifty years ago, two days after it was revealed that President Richard Nixon had erased part of a damning audiotape, two senators walked into the Oval Office and told the him that he had lost the support of his own party in Congress. They told him that 10 of his supporters in the House of Representatives who had recently voted not to impeach him had changed their minds. They also told him that several senators had indicated that they would vote to remove him from office. Nixon resigned the next day.
Nearly two-thirds of the nation supported Nixon’s impeachment by the time he left office, even though he had won 60 percent of the popular vote less than two years earlier. For now, at least, the Justice Department hasn’t given any indication that it can produce evidence against Trump sufficiently persuasive to achieve such widespread support.
If all of this sounds like it isn’t fair to Jack Smith, it isn’t. If it sounds like we are asking him to be more much more than just a federal prosecutor, then yes, we are. But that is what “prosecutorial discretion” is all about.
The DOJ has chosen to prosecute Trump, which is its right. Indeed, some people would suggest it is an obligation. But perhaps the entire reason we have a Department of Justice, an FBI, a court system and the rule of law is to help keep the country together. Maybe trying to put a former president and leading candidate for another term in the White House in jail serves that purpose.
But so far, it certainly doesn’t look like it.
Myth #2: Educators are experts in teaching and know best how to instruct kids.
If you haven’t already, listen to Emily Hanford’s extraordinary six-part podcast Sold A Story, which documents how the educational establishment came to reject all evidence about the science of reading in favor of a cult-like devotion to the literacy guru Lucy Calkins and her ineffective program of “balanced literacy.” (Bari Weiss, editor of The Free Press, interviewed Hanford earlier this year on the Honestly podcast.)
A public radio reporter in Washington, D.C., Hanford tells a harrowing story of groupthink through the eyes of teachers who taught “balanced literacy” for years and realized that it was doing more harm than good only when their own children started to struggle with reading. Their stories are heartbreaking, as many of them feel tremendous guilt for buying into a program that failed to teach children the basics of phonics-based reading. Many admit they assumed there was something wrong with their students when they didn’t respond to Calkins’ “three cueing” system.
In the months since Hanford’s reporting, education leaders have been forced to issue extraordinary apologies. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your child’s fault. It was our fault,” New York City’s schools chancellor recently told parents, as he explained that hundreds of public schools have been teaching reading the wrong way for the past two decades.
It is not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the biggest scandals of our time. It is likely a major cause of America’s literacy crisis, which left millions of American children reading below grade level. Many of those children are now adults who continue to struggle with reading, because they weren’t taught properly in school.
Of course, many K–12 educators do have expertise in child development and learning, and the teaching profession deserves our trust and respect. But Hanford shows definitively that teachers, just like the rest of us, are susceptible to fads and nostrums. Civilian oversight is appropriate, even necessary, when the educational establishment, in the revolutionary spirit of our age, calls for an overhaul of tried-and-true teaching methods in academic disciplines like math or history.
Myth #3: Our public schools are free from religion and ideology.
An African American mom objects that black history is being ignored in her daughter’s public school. A conservative white mom protests that her son is being taught that the U.S. is an intrinsically racist country. An immigrant Muslim dad objects to sexually explicit materials in the school library.
On the surface, these examples seem quite different. But they are all, at least in theory, perfectly reasonable concerns. And we’ve designed the public education system so that disputes like these will be political. It’s an inevitable result of compulsory attendance, centralized school assignment, and political control.
American public schools were once explicitly Christian and even Protestant. I would argue that, until recently, they were implicitly Christian while also offering a heavy dose of moderate liberalism, the dominant American civil religion of the last century. But as our politics have fractured, this traditional approach to education has given way in many schools. What’s been sucked into the void has differed from place to place: sometimes a reactionary conservatism, and sometimes a radical progressive ideology that seeks to destroy much of what we’ve inherited from prior generations.
Parents of all political persuasions are finding that the local public school is not a haven of tolerance and critical thinking, but is instead advancing a quasi-religious ideology that conflicts with their core values.
Turning the Myths into Reality
So much of the management of our K–12 public schools comes down to “appeasement,” says Terry Grier. “Educational leaders often appease the squeaky wheel in order to keep their jobs.”
There are likely to be a lot of squeaky wheels in the coming years. The curriculum battles at the local level will likely become more heated. More parents will be looking for escape routes—to charter schools, private schools, or even homeschooling. In both red and blue states, governors and state legislatures will try to score political points—using the blunt tool of legislation to force curriculum reforms or to give families more control over their children’s educational fate.
Despite its problems, our existing system still has many advantages. It continues to serve over 80 percent of American children, giving it tremendous economic and institutional advantages. And most Americans still think of public schools as the first choice for their kids.
Perhaps, one day, the public school system will launch a counter-reformation to address some of the core problems that have prevented it from fulfilling its noble purpose. But for now, the vested powers of the educational establishment, much like the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century, have chosen to take a purely defensive position. Heretics who call for reform are labeled segregationists, book banners, or at the very least, “divisive.”
That should not stop parents—and education advocates—from demanding that our public schools aim for the very highest of goals and try to fulfill the promise of the myths. As Terry Grier says, “All children, not just the children of the privileged and the powerful, deserve access to the same high quality of education.”
Here’s why we should doubt the widespread claim that Donald Trump was hoarding the nation’s most sensitive nuclear and military secrets in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom: If he had, that highly classified material would have been leaked by now.
The New York Times and Washington Post would be quoting highly placed current and former officials familiar with the investigation who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the investigation – but who were eager to show the danger Trump presents by revealing the secrets he held.
I suspect we have only the vague, yet frightening descriptions of the seized documents from Special Counsel Jack Smith’s 37-count indictment, because a more detailed accounting might show they are more innocuous than apocalyptic. I could be wrong about that, but this much we know: Since Trump burst on the scene in 2015 the leaking of classified information has been the weapon of choice for his opponents at the highest reaches of government.
The Russiagate conspiracy hoax was fueled by leaks, especially from House Intelligence Committee Democrats and highly placed FBI officials; the Department of Justice’s inspector general referred former FBI Director James B. Comey for criminal investigation over leaks connected to the probe.
Trump is not the only target. One leaker gave ProPublica the confidential tax information of thousands of wealthy Americans – a gross violation of the privacy of ordinary citizens. Another gave Politico a highly confidential, though technically not classified, draft of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, prompting the incessant, illegal harassment of conservative justices, and a plan to murder Justice Bret Kavanaugh.
One of the more duplicitous performances in the theater of D.C. politics is given each time current FBI Director Christopher Wray and his minions gravely tell Congress they cannot answer questions because they involve “ongoing investigations.” The truth is that they much prefer leaking cherry-picked pieces of information, behind the cloak of anonymity, to advance their narrative.
Unlike Trump, leakers do not just possess secret material, they helped spread it far and wide. And, unlike the former president, they are almost never brought to justice. The Intercept reported that the Trump administration referred at least 344 allegations involving the leaking of classified information to the Department of Justice but that “very few referrals typically end up identifying suspects.”
None of this exonerates the former president. The special counsel appears to make a strong case that he violated the law. But the guns-blazing effort to hold him accountable cannot be separated from the fact that the rule of law in America is increasingly becoming a situational tool, invoked only at the convenience of the powers that be.
Consider the argument regarding classified documents, now widely embraced by mainstream news outlets that want to get Trump but give a pass to President Joe Biden. For decades, the possession of such information outside the area authorized for individuals to view it – a sensitive compartmented information facility, or SCIF – was considered a crime. We don’t know how Biden ended up with such material from his days as a senator and vice president, but it was illegally removed. We also don’t know whether Biden reviewed these documents, though it is hard to believe he never saw them and even more unlikely that as they were moved and dispersed to several locations in the years since that nobody saw the classified markings and asked “the big guy” about them.
Biden’s supporters, however, are arguing that there’s “no there there” even if he took, viewed, and intentionally held the documents. All of that is now fine and dandy because he returned them when they were discovered. During a recent interview with GOP presidential hopeful Francis Suarez, ABC News presenter George Stephanopoulos, for example, declared that “there’s a very big difference between those two cases. President Biden turned them over himself. Had Donald Trump turned over all those documents, he wouldn’t have been charged.”
One wonders how this new standard might be applied to other crimes. Will bank robbers go free if they agree to return the money?
This is not the only example of how Biden’s supporters are moving the goalposts to protect him. It is now beyond dispute that the president’s son and his brother Jim were running a multi-million-dollar influence peddling scheme, which hinged on the potential favors Biden could provide their business partners who just happened to be in countries, including Ukraine, China, and Romania, where Biden was deeply involved in policymaking while serving as vice president.
Despite the president’s insistent denials, evidence shows that he was not only aware of but met with people involved in these deals – the payments of which were often channeled through a series of shell companies and funneled, in some cases, to at least nine of his family members including his young grandchildren. It remains unclear to this day what services the Bidens were providing these entities other than access to Joe.
This is textbook political corruption. But now, his defenders insist, this is a problem for Biden only if it can be proved that he directly received money from the deals or that he specifically changed a policy in a quid pro quo for the payments to his family members.
Even if we accept that Biden never took any action in exchange for the money – that his famous boast that he forced Ukraine to fire the prosecutor investigating the corrupt gas company paying his son $83,000 a month was not a signal that he had delivered on a promise but that he was carrying out official policy – there is no doubt that his family was offering the promise of influence.
Donald Trump may get what he deserves, but America cannot endure as a great nation if the rule of law does not apply to all. To all. Fairness to all. Justice to all. That is the hallmark of our great democracy, which is built on the people’s trust in our institutions. That trust is eroding as our leaders brazenly weaponize our legal system. Benjamin Franklin warned that our founders had given us “A republic, if you can keep it.” We are losing it day by day.
"But perhaps the entire reason we have a Department of Justice, an FBI, a court system and the rule of law is to help keep the country together. Maybe trying to put a former president and leading candidate for another term in the White House in jail serves that purpose."
Trump campaigned on "draining the swamp," i.e. getting rid of the criminals and grifters taking advantage of the political system at the detriment of US citizens.
There is no better way for the DOJ to fulfill that promise than to prove that no one is above the law. Perhaps when politicians start to realize they can go to jail for their treasonous behavior, they'll start behaving better.
If the DOJ DOESN'T get a conviction, it will show the worst elements in US political life that anything goes when it comes to keeping secret documents and keeping yourself in power.
At that point, most people won't think of "Banana Republic" as a fashion brand, but as the political system the once great US democracy devolved into.
New Gallup poll: Only 47% of Americans belong to a house of worship... the first time that number has fallen below half of the country since they started polling on this ... the collapse in church membership has happened mostly over the past two decades.
Us Little Mouses actually feel like the house of worship belongs to us, we live in its walls. Anyway, this survey only interviewed humans.
They’ve read their history: if they can embed fascism deeply at every level of American government, business, and civic life, it will take generations to rip it out…
The GOP is increasingly clear about their goal: Make America Russia, or at least Russia’s mini-me, Hungary. They are openly embracing a modern, westernized, Christian white supremacy-based version of classic fascism.
And the MAGAT Republicans have a three-step process to bring it about that they’re already putting into place.
They’re willing to put enormous time and resources into the project, because they know that once fascism fully seizes a nation it’s extremely difficult to dislodge it.
In 19th century America, it took a Civil War to defeat the Southern fascist movement we call the Confederacy, as I lay out in The Hidden History of American Democracy.
In 20th century Germany, Japan and Italy it took military defeat at the hands of an alliance of democracies to purge those nations of fascism. In Chile and Spain it took long, painstaking, deadly years of movement-building to produce what was essentially a political revolution to dislodge Pinochet, and fascism in Spain didn’t fully end until Franco died in 1975.
These are the stakes for contemporary America, and the Christo-fascist movement that has seized most of the Republican Party knows it well.
They’ve read their history: they know that if they can just once achieve total power in the US, they can embed fascism so deeply at every level of American government, business, and civic life that it would take generations to rip it out.
To accomplish this, they’re following the script Viktor Orbán provided as an example, producing a “kinder and gentler” version of Putin’s fascist autocracy. It involves three major steps:
Take over the electoral systems “to ensure election integrity” and then, when you “win” elections, pass more laws disenfranchising your opponents’ voters.
Build a fascist base of support by openly mobilizing hate of racial and gender minorities, merging large church factions into the Party, funding a fascist-leaning media infrastructure, aligning your policies with the richest and most powerful billionaires and industries in the country, and calling for a return to “traditional” roles for women.
Seize control of the ultimate state power — the power to kick in your door and imprison you — and use it against political opponents.
Let’s review their efforts and successes so far.
1. Corrupting electoral systems
In Hungary, after Viktor Orbán was first elected in 2010 mostly on a platform of stopping the flow of brown-skinned Syrian refugees with his principle campaign pledge to “build a wall” across the nation’s southern border (which he then did), his first order of business was to replace a party-neutral election system with gerrymanders that would keep him and his Fidesz Party in power.
And it worked. As the Journal of Democracy noted:
“Although in both the 2014 and the 2018 elections Fidesz failed to win more than 50% of all votes cast, it both times secured a two-thirds parliamentary majority.”
Orbán used that supermajority to rewrite the nation’s constitution and pass laws that further gerrymandered parliamentary districts and gave extra “bonus” seats in parliament to parties that got a vote over a certain threshold. His party then took over administration of election systems across the nation.
The result was that in a recent election Fidesz took 68% of the seats in Parliament with 53 percent of the vote.
How did his party even get to 53% of the vote? Control of the media.
After his oligarch cronies bought up virtually all of the country’s radio and TV infrastructure and put the equivalent of rightwing talk radio and Fox “News” into cars and homes in every region of the country, he also seized control of public media — Hungary’s equivalent of PBS and NPR — so that “96% of public news coverage about the government was positive, and 82% of its coverage about the opposition negative.”
Opposition politicians are blacked-out of public media and also ignored by the commercial media owned by Orbán’s pals: many voters don’t even recognize the names of opposition candidates. Instead, every word uttered by Orbán and his MAGAT-equivalent allies is carried live in breathless “breaking news” coverage.
Since publication of the Powell Memo in 1972 and its widespread implementation in the 1980s, over 90% of political radio broadcast outlets in the United States carry pro-fascism programming. In the world of television, Fox “News” and Sinclair Broadcasting have established a strong beachhead. And Republicans in Congress try every year to fully defund NPR and put it up for sale to the highest GOP-aligned billionaire bidder.
Like with Russia and Hungary, gerrymandering in the US is the only reason Republicans right now control the House of Representatives.
In Pennsylvania, even though a majority of voters statewide cast ballots for Democrats, 13 of the state’s 18 representatives to Congress are Republicans. In the 2018 election in Wisconsin, although the majority of statewide votes went to Democrats, Democratic politicians only won 36 of the 99 seats in that state’s state assembly.
As the Brennan Center notes:
“In the 26 states that account for 85 percent of congressional districts, Republicans derive a net benefit of at least 16 to 17 congressional seats in the current Congress from partisan bias.”
At the state level, efforts to corrupt election systems in Red states have gone into hyperdrive. Almost a thousand bills making it harder to register or easily vote have been proposed over the past decade in states controlled by Republicans, with well over 200 of them becoming law.
Some even saw the work of elections officials openly seized by partisan Republican hacks. For example, Houston — a Blue dot of 3 million voters that has the potential to swing the mostly-Red state — just saw its entire election system set up for a takeover by Republicans in a naked power grab by the Texas legislature.
With the blessing of five Republicans on the Supreme Court, multiple layers of restrictions designed to make it more difficult and costly for working-class voters to take time off work to cast a ballot are now in place in state after state, resulting in millions purged from the voting rolls, long lines in heavily Democratic districts, and onerous requirements for those who would like to vote by mail.
Both states have also criminalized voter registration drives, which are most heavily used to get female, minority, and youth voters on the rolls.
To suppress the reliably Democratic votes of people of color, Florida and Texas have begun arresting former felons who were told by the state they could vote, and then parading them before TV cameras in public.
The result in the 2022 election was dramatic: Republican turnout in Florida in 2022 was at 67.3%, while Democratic turnout collapsed to 52%.
Black voter turnout was what pulled down those Democratic numbers (and their being midterms) because, as Politico noted:
“Black turnout [in Florida] dropped from 62 percent [in 2020] to 40 percent [in 2022].”
2. Building a fascist follower base
In Russia and Hungary, Putin and Orbán have cast themselves as populists, raging against “elites” and minorities while, in the background, giving the morbidly rich everything they want. Orbán built his wall, while Putin has revived the “blood and soil” idea of white Russian genetic superiority. He’s even mandated that Russian passports must contain “genetic information” by 2025.
Both men have heavily criminalized homosexuality and restricted abortion, with Russia recently rolling out new restrictions designed to prevent “80 percent” of abortions by white Russian women. New anti-trans legislation is being voted on by the Duma (the Russian parliament) this week.
As the Associated Press reported, this is similar to the tactic Republican governors are taking across America:
“Hungary’s right-wing governing party last year banned the depiction of homosexuality or sex reassignment in media targeting minors under 18. Information on homosexuality was also forbidden in school sex education programs, or in films and advertisements accessible to minors. The governing Fidesz party argued the measures were meant to protect children from pedophilia.”
Seven months ago, CNN reported on Putin’s similar efforts:
“Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday signed into law a bill that expands a ban on so-called LGBTQ ‘propaganda’ in Russia, making it illegal for anyone to promote same-sex relationships or suggest that non-heterosexual orientations are ‘normal.’”
Putin and Orbán have both encouraged volunteer Brownshirt-, Blackshirt-, and Proud Boys-types of vigilante groups that harass liberals and minorities both online and on the streets of those nations. They also often hire them for security and offer them free legal counsel.
With Putin’s blessing, for example, men who call themselves Aktivisky (activists) patrol the streets looking for “deviants” and racial minorities who “shouldn’t be here.” They film and selectively edit their harassment to create online content, which is then shared on YouTube (one channel has over 1.7 million subscribers), Telegram, and other social media sites, both to encourage others to do the same and to make money.
Here in the United States, fascist leaning billionaires are now openly supporting rightwing groups devoted to “protecting” America’s schoolchildren from “deviance.”
While these Republican-aligned organizations have no interest in protecting our kids from easily accessed sex on the internet or gun violence — the leading cause of childhood deaths in America — they’re all about banning books that positively depict Black or queer people or discuss America’s history of racial violence, calling them “pornography.”
Donald Trump is telling his followers that if he’s reelected he’ll pardon the January 6th traitors and that China was right to “crack down” on their largest racial minority group, the Uighurs, by building concentration camps to house them.
Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright wrote in her book Fascism: A Warning:
“Decades ago, George Orwell suggested that the best one-word description of a Fascist was ‘bully.’”
Trump played the bully when he tore families apart at the border: around a thousand children are still missing, having been trafficked into so-called “Christian” private adoption systems that failed to track them or how much money they were paid.
DeSantis and Texas Governor Abbott are both getting a pull-the-wings-off-the-fly delight out of kidnapping and deporting to Blue states vulnerable asylum-seeking families; with the GOP, the cruelty is the point.
Republican followers are similarly responsible for the majority of terror attacks and politically motivated murders over the past 20 years, and their bullying continues apace. Domestic terrorists killed 25 people in the US last year in 12 separate incidents. All were Republican-aligned rightwingers and white supremacists.
3. Use selective prosecution to punish those who speak out
Trump flaunted the rule of law while President, and now promises to be as corrupt as Putin and Orbán if he’s reelected. Other MAGAT Republicans — particularly Ron DeSantis — are echoing his corrupt rhetoric, even going so far as to promise to pardon Trump if he’s convicted of his crimes.
In Russia and Hungary, dissidents who aren’t murdered by private-sector or volunteer Activiskys face arrest and imprisonment for speaking out against government corruption and fascism.
Both countries have transformed their police and judicial systems into instruments of state oppression in ways Trump and MAGA Republicans are now saying we should emulate here in the US.
Two years ago Orbán cemented control of his nation’s supreme court with the appointment of András Zs Varga as its chief justice. Varga had never before served as a judge and describes the rule of law in the European Union as “tyrannical” and “totalitarian.”
This sort of projection — accusing your political enemies of exactly what you are doing or intend to do — is also a hallmark of contemporary Republican political rhetoric.
Across the Atlantic, the Council of Europe’s Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) this month published a new report highlighting how Hungary’s criminal justice system has been so badly corrupted by Orbán and his Fidesz party that his cronies routinely walk free even when convicted of the most egregious crimes — while political opponents rot in prison for minor offenses.
Here in America, we had a brush with this sort of takeover of the criminal justice system when Richard Nixon and his Attorney General, John Mitchell, weaponized the Department of Justice against Nixon’s perceived enemies.
Following his resignation and Mitchell’s imprisonment, the DOJ instituted new rules creating a sort of political “wall of separation” between the DOJ and the White House, a policy that was respected from the 1970s right up until Bill Barr took the helm as AG under Donald Trump.
Barr ignored that policy and made sure Trump cronies Mike Flynn and Roger Stone got light sentences, bowed to Trump’s demand to investigate and try to imprison Hillary Clinton, and tried to discredit the Mueller Report’s finding that Trump and his campaign had numerous corrupt entanglements with Russia and Putin’s agents.
The ever-brilliant Mark Sumner posts a lengthy summary of Trump’s most corrupt pardons over on Daily Kos so I won’t repeat it here, other than noting that most people are at least familiar with his forgiving serious crimes by Flynn, Stone, Steve Bannon, Dinesh D’souza, George Papadopoulos, Joe Arpaio, three Republican congressmen, two participants in the Bundy uprising, and various murderers whose violence, in every case, was racially or politically motivated.
Meanwhile, Trump last week outright declared that if he’s elected he’ll appoint prosecutors who will nakedly pursue political prosecutions of people hostile to Republicans, including Democratic politicians and the prosecutors and FBI agents who’ve ensnared Trump himself:
“I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in the history of the United States of America, Joe Biden, and the entire Biden crime family,” Trump said, along with a promise to “totally obliterate the Deep State.”
Not only have Republicans not called him out for this purely fascist proclamation, it’s been essentially endorsed by Ron DeSantis, Mike Pence, and the editorial pages of major rightwing publications.
Pence went so far as to assume that Garland has not been following DOJ policy and has colluded with President Biden to initiate a political persecution of Trump:
“Attorney General Merrick Garland, stop hiding behind the special counsel and stand before the American people and explain why this indictment went forward.”
Rhetoric like this tears apart Americans’ confidence in the impartiality of our system of justice, which is exactly what the Republican fascists want. Just like their yelling about “voter fraud” to justify their own rigging of our elections, if they can convince us our justice system has always been corrupt then nobody will object — or even get what’s going on — when they completely compromise and fatally corrupt it.
An early warning came two years ago when Nancy Pelosi successfully pushed the Protecting Our Democracy Act through the House. It would have turned the DOJ policies instituted post-Nixon that insulated the DOJ from political influence into laws the department must follow regardless of who heads it up, including a requirement for the Justice Department to disclose to Congress all contacts with officials from the White House.
The united GOP opposition to the law — that led to it dying from a Senate filibuster — is only explicable when you consider how many Republicans are today supporting Trump’s call to turn the DOJ into an armed enforcement operation for the party of whichever president is in office. That, of course, is the main thing the Act would have made a crime.
America’s challenge
The Republican Party’s affection for Putin and Orbán is undisputed. Republicans in the House last week vowed to block any new funding for Ukraine, while Putin’s allies suggest that his best chance to win the war will come when Republicans kill American aid to Ukraine.
Orbán — who also takes Putin’s side — was feted when he was the keynote speaker at a Republican-aligned convention in Texas last year, declaring to cheers that Hungarians “do not want to become peoples of mixed race.” (CPAC also recently completed their second convention in Budapest, bringing Republicans to see the “modern miracle” of Hungary.)
Orbán got a standing ovation when he read the part of the Hungarian constitution that declares marriage exclusively between a man and a woman, and said America needs “less drag queens and more Chuck Norris.”
He called for an overthrow of the American form of government and the European Union, replacing both with Putin-aligned systems and policies. The starting point, in his mind, is the American 2024 election.
“We must take back the institutions in Washington and in Brussels,” he told the Republican audience. Warming to Trump’s calls for an alliance between the US, Putin, and Hungary, he added, “We must co-ordinate the movement of our troops, because we face the same challenge. You have two years to get ready.”
Our democratic republic is facing serious challenges from Orbán’s international rightwing coalition, the fascist wing of the GOP, and the billionaires who support both.
This isn’t something office-holding Democrats — particularly lacking control of the House or the power to break a Senate filibuster — can deal with alone.
To paraphrase the author of the Declaration of Independence, the best defense against those who seek to tear down our rule of law and replace it with fascist tyranny is an informed and activated populace.
The White House, the DOJ, and the Senate — all in Democratic hands — can’t stop American fascism given the level of Republican opposition, MAGAT GOP control of the House, and the funding behind the movement.
The Supreme Court won’t stop it, either: if anything they’ve made the situation worse by handing control of the GOP to rightwing billionaires, decriminalizing voter suppression, and legalizing political bribery.
Neither Canada nor the EU are planning to ride to our rescue, either.
It’s up to us to save this nation by waking up friends, neighbors, and co-workers — and by registering and showing up to vote this November and next.
While President Biden may have the bully pulpit, we are literally the only ones who can bring about the political change necessary to reclaim American democracy.
In 2020, along with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a spike in murders in the United States. This increase in lethal violence, understandably, was covered extensively in national and local media outlets. While the increase in murders was significant, the overall murder rate remained far below its peak in the 1980s and 90s.
The murder rate declined slightly in 2022. Nevertheless, violent crime became "a key midterm voting issue," as politicians on both sides of the aisle ran thousands of ads focused on the topic. Year to date data for 2023 shows murder is down about 12 percent so far in more than 90 cities that have released data for 2023, compared with data as of the same date in 2022.
For example, 2023 murders have declined 40% in Minneapolis, 28% in Atlanta, 26% in Los Angeles, 20% in Philadelphia, and 18% in Baltimore.
If the trend holds, it will be "the largest decline ever recorded." It would also be the first time ever the murder rate declined by double digits in a single year.
The precipitous decline in the murder rate, however, has not been mentioned in the nation's largest newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal, and the Associated Press. It also has been rarely mentioned on cable news channels.
Us Little Mouses are glad the church we live in gets the newspaper every day. That is the perfect paper for us to make our nests. We read it sometimes, too, and it scares the kaboodle out of us. They make the world sound so scary. It's actually not so bad.
Great tweet from Anthony Citrano, showing a photo of Donald Trump:
"It's almost impossible to believe he exists. It is as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it all up in an old hot dog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face."
Hunter Biden is pleading guilty to tax evasion charges and a gun charge, and Kevin McCarthy is mad about it. McCarthy said that other people who faced such charges would be sent to prison for 10 years or more. In reality, the two misdemeanor charges are typically dealt with as a civil matter that involves a fine, and Biden is being treated more harshly than others would in such a case.
The comparison point is Roger Stone. Hold them up side by side. Us Little Mouses think Kevin McCarthy is just a big crybaby.
"There is no better way for the DOJ to fulfill that promise than to prove that no one is above the law."
Which can only be done if A former President is tried for a victimless crime, right?
Trump and the Archives dispute whether he can possess certain documents but no one is saying that trump didn't keep them secure or risk letting them fall into enemy hands.
According to James Comey, Hillary did both.
If we want to prove no one is above the law, that's where we should start.
"Perhaps when politicians start to realize they can go to jail for their treasonous behavior, they'll start behaving better."
Trump displayed no treasonous behavior.
"If the DOJ DOESN'T get a conviction, it will show the worst elements in US political life that anything goes when it comes to keeping secret documents and keeping yourself in power."
are you saying Presidents are the worst elements in US political life?
they are elected, and this is a democracy, you know...
"At that point, most people won't think of "Banana Republic" as a fashion brand, but as the political system the once great US democracy devolved into."
that's true
Dems have so weaponized law enforcement that the US is beginning to resemble a banana republic
"New Gallup poll: Only 47% of Americans belong to a house of worship... the first time that number has fallen below half of the country since they started polling on this ... the collapse in church membership has happened mostly over the past two decades."
is there some reason you hate religion?
you feel threatened?
I'll give a big thrill:
even fewer attend weekly
so what?
"Hume told Fox News anchor Bret Baier, who spoke with the former president, that Trump's "answers on the matters of the law seem to me to verge on incoherent.""
odd, you've quoted many people using the same word: incoherent
he said some of the papers were his personally his and some were presidential records
he said he was sorting through them
btw, after Bill Clinton left office, a judge ruled that a departing President can decide what is personal and what is a Presidential record
back then, the Archives was claiming Clinton had that right because they wanted to prevent Judicial Watch from obtaining Clinton's records
The government’s position was that Congress had decided that the president and the president alone decides what is a presidential record and what isn’t. He may take with him whatever records he chooses at the end of his term.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed: “Since the President is completely entrusted with the management and even the disposal of Presidential records during his time in office,” she held, “it would be difficult for this Court to conclude that Congress intended that he would have less authority to do what he pleases with what he considers to be his personal records.”
Judge Jackson added that “the PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”
"Great tweet from Anthony Citrano, showing a photo of Donald Trump:
"It's almost impossible to believe he exists. It is as if we took everything that was bad about America, scraped it up off the floor, wrapped it all up in an old hot dog skin, and then taught it to make noises with its face.""
if you guys spent less time on meaningless exercises of Trump derangement syndrome, he never would have gotten into the white House in the first place
Trump admitted his guilt on FOX News.
And FYI, on election day 2024, Joe Biden (DOB 11/20/42) will be 81 and Donal Trump (DOB 06/14/46) will be 78,
Only one of them has had his former attorney general say, he "engages in reckless conduct that leads to situations, calamitous situations, like this, which are very disruptive and hurt any political cause he's associated with" and he "always put his own interests and gratifying his own ego ahead of everything else, including the country's interests."
"Which can only be done if A former President is tried for a victimless crime, right?"
Lots of people get tickets for speeding, smoking a joint, or possessing some weed in a baggie - and most of the time those are "victimless crimes." That doesn't mean they don't have to pay the fine or go to jail.
Being "victimless" isn't a deciding factor in how are law are enforced.
Even morons know that. But somehow you keep pushing that canard as if it made any difference.
"Dems have so weaponized law enforcement that the US is beginning to resemble a banana republic"
Funny how law enforcement suddenly gets "weaponized" when Republicans are indicted, but aren't doing their jobs when Hunter only got charged by Trump's appointee with some misdemeanor tax and 1 illegal gun charge after 5 years of "investigation."
What we're hearing now is that the DOJ slow walked Trump's election stealing plot investigation for a year before overwhelming evidence from reporters and Jan 6 committee testimony made it look like they weren't doing their job.
Trump made a point of tightening up security laws in the wake of "Hillary's e-mails." It's his own damn fault if he didn't follow the law regarding classified info after that.
The best part about it is that the more he talks, the more evidence he provides for the prosecution. Much of the trial may just be tapes of Rumpie incriminating himself.
Lock him up!
A federal judge in Arkansas on Tuesday struck down the state’s law forbidding medical treatments for children and teenagers seeking gender transitions, blocking what had been the first in a wave of such measures championed by conservative lawmakers across the country. In his 80-page ruling, Judge James M. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court in Little Rock said the law both discriminated against transgender people and violated constitutional rights for doctors.
The other day Grandma Mouse was working on perhaps her fourth MD 20/20 aperitif of the afternoon, rocking on her recliner, and she called me over and said, "You know what? I'll tell you a secret, them rednecks is only trying to be assholes. They ought to leave those poor people alone." Then she closed her eyes and slept till dinner. It looks like this Arkansas judge agrees with her.
Don't forget, Donald Trump appointed the “corrupt” prosecutor who just accepted a plea deal from Hunter Biden. The investigation started in 2018, and wasn’t over by time Trump left office, so BIDEN KEPT THE REPUBLICAN-APPOINTED PROSECUTOR ON so he could continue investigating Biden’s own son. It doesn't get any more Deep State than that.
About 1.5 million people have been dropped from Medicaid in recent months as states purge their rolls after the lifting of a pandemic-era rule on eligibility. While the number of Medicaid recipients grew by over 20% during the pandemic, analysts estimate as many 15 million people could lose their coverage over the next year.
Fifteen million people losing their health coverage. What kind of country would let that happen?
Lauren Boebert tried to bring articles on impeachment against President Biden today. Only two idiots supported her and she was a complete laughingstock on the House floor.
We found part of a peach once back behind the kitchen cupboard, and brought pieces of it into our wall here, for all the Little Mouses to share. It was pretty good. But I don't understand why this lady wanted to bring peaches to the President, or why her friends didn't help her.
"Only one of them has had his former attorney general say"
actually, Biden doesn't have a former attorney general since he isn't a former President yet
his attorney general is a guy who was nominated for the Supreme Court but wasn't confirmed by the Senate
His attorney general has, among other egregious acts, tried to treat parent who protest at school bard meetings as terrorists and now set up a constitutional crisis by indicting a former President on a minor document handling case that could have been brought against any former President since the law was passed in the seventies
when he is a former attorney general, on one would be surprised if he portrayed Biden as a doddering, slobbering, senile fool who endangered our national security repeatedly with indecisiveness dur to age-related problems
"Being "victimless" isn't a deciding factor in how are law are enforced"
prosecutors have something called prosecutorial discretion and decline to bring charges all the time
whether there is a victim is definitely s factor in those decisions
it is common in banana republics for a current government to arrest the former leader and/or the challenger to the current government
Even morons know that.
"Funny how law enforcement suddenly gets "weaponized" when Republicans are indicted"
nothing sudden about it at all
Dems have been doing this since Obama won a second term by using the IRS to harass Tea Party opposition groups
"Trump made a point of tightening up security laws in the wake of "Hillary's e-mails." It's his own damn fault if he didn't follow the law regarding classified info after that"
Trump isn't accused of any law he created
the handling of classified information by former Presidents is covered under the PRA
the handling of classified information by former Secretaries of State is not
"The best part about it is that the more he talks, the more evidence he provides for the prosecution. Much of the trial may just be tapes of Rumpie incriminating himself."
or explaining that the records were his personal records which the courts ruled he alone had the authority to categorize
here's the court:
“the PRA contains no provision obligating or even permitting the Archivist to assume control over records that the President ‘categorized’ and ‘filed separately’ as personal records. At the conclusion of the President’s term, the Archivist only ‘assumes responsibility for the Presidential records.’ . . . PRA does not confer any mandatory or even discretionary authority on the Archivist to classify records. Under the statute, this responsibility is left solely to the President.”
"In his 80-page ruling, Judge James M. Moody Jr. of Federal District Court in Little Rock said the law both discriminated against transgender people and violated constitutional rights for doctors."
a preposterous ruling thata will be overturned
"It looks like this Arkansas judge agrees with her."
yes, clearly the jus=dge had been drinking
"About 1.5 million people have been dropped from Medicaid in recent months as states purge their rolls after the lifting of a pandemic-era rule on eligibility. While the number of Medicaid recipients grew by over 20% during the pandemic, analysts estimate as many 15 million people could lose their coverage over the next year.
Fifteen million people losing their health coverage. What kind of country would let that happen?"
Medicaid eligibility is determined by Congress
our Federal debt was increased about 10 trillion by COVID emergency provisions
if we make the permanent, we will bankrupt the country
"Lauren Boebert tried to bring articles on impeachment against President Biden today. Only two idiots supported her and she was a complete laughingstock on the House floor."
we already know Joe Biden mishandled classified information before he was President and there is strong evidence he participated in the Biden family influence-peddling scheme
impeachment is coming
Lashrecse Aird defeated the lone anti-abortion Democrat in the Virginia state Senate on Tuesday night in a closely-watched Democratic primary race, cementing a Democratic majority in the narrowly held chamber.
Now go fishing in Alaska for free with a billionaire who will be before your court and by all means, do NOT recuse yourself.
https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
WTF, Roberts?
"prosecutors have something called prosecutorial discretion and decline to bring charges all the time"
Indeed. That is probably why Trump appointee David Weiss didn't apply or even mention bribery or influence charges against Hunter - the Feds normally stick to charges they can actually prove, you know because they have evidence for them and can get a conviction in court with them.
Because the DOJ has a pretty good record of winning that they don't want to mess up, and Weiss would look like a fool if he brought up right-wing fever dreams with no evidence and then got them tossed out of court - you know, like Rudy G. did when he tried to claim voter fraud without any evidence and got laughed out of court SIXTY TIMES, and had to face lawsuits for his cynical abuse of the court system.
"Thanks for banning abortion, Alito!"
Alito didn't ban abortion
you think a TTFer would want to teach the facts
are you a pathological liar, or do you actually a thoughtfully intentional liar?
and don't even try the "too dumb to know better" defense
"Now go fishing in Alaska for free with a billionaire who will be before your court and by all means, do NOT recuse yourself.
https://www.propublica.org/article/samuel-alito-luxury-fishing-trip-paul-singer-scotus-supreme-court
WTF, Roberts?"
ProPublica has leveled two charges against me: first, that I should have recused in matters in which an entity connected with Paul Singer was a party and, second, that I was obligated to list certain items as gifts on my 2008 Financial Disclose Report. Neither charge is valid.
• Recusal. I had no obligation to recuse in any of the cases that ProPublica cites. First, even if I had been aware of Mr. Singer’s connection to the entities involved in those cases, recusal would not have been required or appropriate. ProPublica suggests that my failure to recuse in these cases created an appearance of impropriety, but that is incorrect. “There is an appearance of impropriety when an unbiased and reasonable person who is aware of all relevant facts would doubt that the Justice could fairly discharge his or her duties” (Statement on Ethics Principles and Practices appended to letter from the Chief Justice to Senator Durbin, April 25, 2023). No such person would think that my relationship with Mr. Singer meets that standard. My recollection is that I have spoken to Mr. Singer on no more than a handful of occasions, all of which (with the exception of small talk during a fishing trip 15 years ago) consisted of brief and casual comments at events attended by large groups. On no occasion have we discussed the activities of his businesses, and we have never talked about any case or issue before the Court. On two occasions, he introduced me before I gave a speech—as have dozens of other people. And as I will discuss, he allowed me to occupy what would have otherwise been an unoccupied seat on a private flight to Alaska. It was and is my judgment that these facts would not cause a reasonable and unbiased person to doubt my ability to decide the matters in question impartially.
Second, when I reviewed the cases in question to determine whether I was required to recuse, I was not aware and had no good reason to be aware that Mr. Singer had an interest in any party. During my time on the Court, I have voted on approximately 100,000 certiorari petitions. The vast majority receive little personal attention from the justices because even a cursory examination reveals that they do not meet our requirements for review. See Sup. Ct. R. 10. To ensure that I am not required to recuse, multiple members of my staff carefully check the names of the parties in each case and any other entities listed in the corporate disclosure statement required by our rules. See Supreme Court Rule 29.6. Mr. Singer was not listed as a party in any of the cases listed by ProPublica. Nor did his name appear in any of the corporate disclosure statements or the certiorari petitions or briefs in opposition to certiorari. In the one case in which review was granted, Republic of Argentina v. NML Capital, Ltd., No. 12-842, Mr. Singer’s name did not appear in either the certiorari petition, the brief in opposition, or the merits briefs. Because his name did not appear in these filings, I was unaware of his connection with any of the listed entities, and I had no good reason to be aware of that. The entities that ProPublica claims are connected to Mr. Singer all appear to be either limited liability corporations or limited liability partnerships. It would be utterly impossible for my staff or any other Supreme Court employees to search filings with the SEC or other government bodies to find the names of all individuals with a financial interest in every such entity named as a party in the thousands of cases that are brought to us each year.
• Reporting. Until a few months ago, the instructions for completing a Financial Disclosure Report told judges that “[p]ersonal hospitality need not be reported,” and “hospitality” was defined to include “hospitality extended for a non-business purpose by one, not a corporation or organization, . . . on property or facilities owned by [a] person . . .” Section 109(14). The term “facilities” was not defined, but both in ordinary and legal usage, the term encompasses means of transportation. See, e.g., Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language 690 (2001) (defining a “facility” as “something designed, built, installed, etc., to serve a specific function affording a convenience or service: transportation facilities” and “something that permits the easier performance of an action”). Legal usage is similar. Black’s Law Dictionary has explained that the term “facilities” may mean “everything necessary for the convenience of passengers.” Federal statutory law is similar. See, e.g., 18 U.S.C §1958(b) (“ ‘facility of interstate commerce’ includes means of transportation”); 18 U.S.C §2251(a) (referring to an item that has been “transported using any means or facility of interstate commerce”); Kevin F. O’Malley, Jay E. Grenig, Hon. William C. Lee, Federal Jury Practice and Instructions §54.04 (February 2023) (“the term ‘uses any facility in interstate commerce’ means employing or utilizing any method of . . . transportation between one state and another”).
This understanding of the requirement to report gifts reflected the expert judgment of the body that the Ethics in Government Act entrusts with the responsibility to administer compliance with the Act, see 5 U.S.C. App. §111(3). When I joined the Court and until the recent amendment of the filing instructions, justices commonly interpreted this discussion of “hospitality” to mean that accommodations and transportation for social events were not reportable gifts. The flight to Alaska was the only occasion when I have accepted transportation for a purely social event, and in doing so I followed what I understood to be standard practice.
For these reasons, I did not include on my Financial Disclosure Report for 2008 either the accommodations provided by the owner of the King Salmon Lodge, who, to my knowledge, has never been involved in any matter before the Court, or the seat on the flight to Alaska.
In brief, the relevant facts relating to the fishing trip 15 years ago are as follows. I stayed for three nights in a modest one-room unit at the King Salmon Lodge, which was a comfortable but rustic facility. As I recall, the meals were homestyle fare. I cannot recall whether the group at the lodge, about 20 people, was served wine, but if there was wine it was certainly not wine that costs $1,000. Since my visit 15 years ago, the lodge has been sold and, I believe, renovated, but an examination of the photos and information on the lodge’s website shows that ProPublica’s portrayal is misleading.
As for the flight, Mr. Singer and others had already made arrangements to fly to Alaska when I was invited shortly before the event, and I was asked whether I would like to fly there in a seat that, as far as I am aware, would have otherwise been vacant. It was my understanding that this would not impose any extra cost on Mr. Singer. Had I taken commercial flights, that would have imposed a substantial cost and inconvenience on the deputy U.S. Marshals who would have been required for security reasons to assist me.
"On Monday night, Fox News aired Brett Baier's latest interview with Trump, in which the former president opened a firehose of lies "defending" himself in the case of the stolen classified documents. Trump's litany of B.S. is now becoming all too familiar: He supposedly declassified the documents. (He's on tape admitting he hasn't.) They were his personal property. (Extensive evidence shows he knows they were not.) He's "president" and gets to do whatever he wants. (Basically a confession.) Trump's strategy is to toss off a bunch of excuses, which often contradict each other, just so his followers can grab onto whichever rationalization tickles their fancy."
Jack Smith made a grave mistake by not mentioning the interplay between the Presidential Records Act and the laws he is accusing Trump of violating
there are not a lot of court cases on the PRA but what exists seem to support the idea that Trump has the final say on what records were his personal records and what were presidential records
in short, former Presidents go by a different set of rules because, unlike ordinary citizens, that have access to classified information
there are no criminal penalties under the PRA and, regardless, Smith has not addressed whether Trump adhered to the PRA
anon said: "prosecutors have something called prosecutorial discretion and decline to bring charges all the time"
moron said: "Indeed. That is probably why Trump appointee David Weiss didn't apply or even mention bribery or influence charges against Hunter - the Feds normally stick to charges they can actually prove, you know because they have evidence for them and can get a conviction in court with them.
Because the DOJ has a pretty good record of winning that they don't want to mess up, and Weiss would look like a fool if he brought up right-wing fever dreams with no evidence and then got them tossed out of court - you know, like Rudy G. did when he tried to claim voter fraud without any evidence and got laughed out of court SIXTY TIMES, and had to face lawsuits for his cynical abuse of the court system."
this moron conjured quite a bit of diversion to distract from the fact that prosecutorial discretion should have taken into account:
1. that the documents were secure in Trump's possession because his place was watched 24/7 by the Secret Service
2. that the government got all the documents anyway
3. that Trump is not accused of allowing access to our enemies
4. the alleged crimes have no victim
5. the alleged crimes have no other aggravating factors
6. that voters will, over the next year, have a chance to opine on Trump's suitability for office and access to classified information
7. there is not bipartisan agreement as to the severity of the crimes
8. that the prosecution by a government of its leading challenger is a common tactic of authoritarian regimes
9. that there is a context of false charging being made against Trump over the years by Democratic officials
10. that the current President has committed identical crimes to 31 of the counts
1: The Secret Service is tasked with protecting Trump, not a bunch of documents he has stacked up in boxes all over Mar-a-Lago.
2: Trump refused to hand them over and the FBI had to go get them. I bet you'd claim Trump wouldn't have to go to jail if FBI had to go in and collect all the money he stole from a bank because "they got all the money anyway." Conservatives get stupider when they read the drivel you write.
3: Indeed. And he's not being charged with that either - does that help you see how any of this works?
4: Irrelevant.
5: Except, you know, that fact that he refused orders to turn over the documents he wasn't supposed to have.
6: They did that in 2020, and more voters than ever decided he was unfit.
7: Irrelevant.
8: It is. Charging politicians with crimes when they commit them is also a common tactic of healthy democratic regimes. They like to call it "rule of law." Breathing is also a common tactic of authoritarian regimes. Plenty of Democrats have gone to jail for crimes they committed, so have Republicans. This isn't something new here.
9: There is a common tactic of Trump and Republicans making false charges against Democratic officials, and lying about the legitimacy of votes they received.
11. No he hasn't. You are either lying or your perpetual reading comprehension problem makes you incapable of understanding even basic facts.
Trump is specifically charged with 31 violations of Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act.
That section makes it illegal for anyone who has "unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over" national defense information -- such as documents, blueprints, photos, plans and more -- and who "has reason to believe [the information] could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation" then either shares it with unauthorized people or "willfully retains the same and fails" to return it.
Trump is being charged be because he willfully retained and FAILED TO RETURN secret documents, not because he HAD them. When Biden and Pence found they had secret documents, they immediately returned them.
Trump had something like 18 months to return the documents after they were requested - and he willfully and repeatedly refused.
Trump could have returned them when asked and there would be no prosecution.
But he didn't.
Apparently because they were in with his golf shirts.
Your desperation to conflate Trump's situation with Biden's would be laughable if Trump's malfeasance wasn't so deplorable.
For reference, here is Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act from
https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title18/part1/chapter37&edition=prelim#
"(e) Whoever having unauthorized possession of, access to, or control over any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blueprint, plan, map, model, instrument, appliance, or note relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation, willfully communicates, delivers, transmits or causes to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted, or attempts to communicate, deliver, transmit or cause to be communicated, delivered, or transmitted the same to any person not entitled to receive it, or willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it; or"
If the goal of the Durham hearing was to elevate/promote Adam Schiff, Republicans have succeeded… otherwise it’s a disaster
A California man who used an electroshock weapon on a Washington police officer during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced to 12.5 years in prison Wednesday.
Daniel Rodriguez, 40, pleaded guilty in February to four felony counts, including conspiracy and assaulting a law enforcement officer with a deadly or dangerous weapon. At his sentencing, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson described him as a “one-man army of hate, attacking police officers and destroying property.”
“You showed up in D.C. spoiling for a fight,” Berman continued, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Rodriguez was identified as the man who used a stun gun on an officer just over a month after the riot. At the time, he was well known among the Los Angeles area’s far-right community as a Donald Trump superfan.
In the lead-up to his sentencing, prosecutors laid out evidence that Rodriguez pressed an electroshock weapon twice into the neck of Washington Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, who was swept into the mob while guarding the Lower West Terrace tunnel at the Capitol. Fanone was able to retreat from the rioters before collapsing, and a fellow officer came to assist him.
Fanone spoke at Rodriguez’s sentencing on Wednesday, saying he feels nothing for the criminal.
“I don’t give a shit about Daniel Rodriguez. He ceased to exist to me as a person a long time ago,” Fanone, now retired from the police force, said in court. “Any compassion or empathy I felt toward those who laid siege to our Capitol, whose actions I felt were at least in part influenced by their leader Donald Trump and his lies, has been eroded — eroded by the attacks directed at me and my family by supporters of Donald Trump and the right-wing media.”
Fanone also called for the Justice Department to indict Trump for the violence, saying he represents the “divisive movement” that led to the Capitol riot.
Two other men are serving prison time for attacking Fanone. Albuquerque Cosper Head was sentenced last year to 7.5 years and Kyle Young to seven years.
Prosecutors sought 14 years for Rodriguez, noting in a court filing ahead of sentencing that he wrote in a group chat with other Trump supporters: “There will be blood. Welcome to the revolution.”
On his way out of court Wednesday, according to several reporters covering the trial, Rodriguez shouted: “Trump won!”
"Lots of marriages don't produce life - we still call them marriages anyway"
marriage is the way life is produced
homosexual activity never does so it's not qualified to be called a marriage
"1: The Secret Service is tasked with protecting Trump, not a bunch of documents he has stacked up in boxes all over Mar-a-Lago"
regardless of why they are doing it, the point is that they would prevent unauthorized access to any part of Trump's residence
the documents were secure
"2: Trump refused to hand them over and the FBI had to go get them."
the point is no harm occurred, and yes, that is a factor in deciding whether to prosecute
"3: Indeed. And he's not being charged with that either - does that help you see how any of this works?"
the point is no harm occurred, and yes, that is a factor in deciding whether to prosecute
"4: Irrelevant."
the point is no harm occurred, and yes, that is a factor in deciding whether to prosecute
"5: Except, you know, that fact that he refused orders to turn over the documents he wasn't supposed to have.";
they were as safe with him as they would be in some government warehouse until he could settle access issues with the Archives
the point is no harm occurred, and yes, that is a factor in deciding whether to prosecute
"6: They did that in 2020, and more voters than ever decided he was unfit."
obviously, the post-presidency document access issue couldn't be an issue until he was an ex-President
"7: Irrelevant."
very relevant
no ex-President should be charged with a crime unless it was so heinous that even his supporters wuld be calling for prosecution
"8: It is. Charging politicians with crimes when they commit them is also a common tactic of healthy democratic regimes."
crimes with victims, yes
mishandling documents is something virtually every President could be charged with
If Biden succeeds in convicting Trump, prosecuting rivals will become a regular occurrence
just like impeachment and refusing to confirm a President's SCOTUS nominees have
"They like to call it "rule of law.""
when the only person this applies to is the leading rival of the current President, the rule of law has already been squandered
both Hillary and Joe have been passed over for prosecution
FBI Director James Comey addressed the nation and declared that the Department of Justice had determined that “it was possible that hostile actors gained access to Secretary Hillary Clinton’s personal e-mail account.” In that account those “hostile actors” would have had access to “matters that were classified at the Top Secret/Special Access Program level.”
let's go over the felonies that Hillary committed and wasn't charged in order to preserve the "rule of law":
One, she illegally transmitted classified information involving national security over her own unsecure server while serving as secretary of state.
Two, she destroyed both email records and communication devices that were under government subpoena.
Three, she was untruthful about both the use and destruction of said subpoenaed items.
Four, she illegally hired a foreign national, Christopher Steele, to work on her campaign as an opposition researcher.
Five, she conspired to disseminate false documents among top government intelligence and investigatory agencies as well as the media, for the sole purpose of destroying her presidential opponent Trump and thereby warping the 2016 election process.
"Plenty of Democrats have gone to jail for crimes they committed, so have Republicans. This isn't something new here."
not if their last name is Clinton
Presidents are in a different category
there is a law called the Presidential Records Acts that addresses their access to confidential information
doesn't apply to anyone else
"9: There is a common tactic of Trump and Republicans making false charges against Democratic officials, and lying about the legitimacy of votes they received."
the first three years of Trump's term were dominated by a false fabricated and paid for by Hillary Clinton
it also hasn't happened to Biden, despite the fact he kept confidential records for a much longer time than Trump
I bet you'd claim Biden wouldn't have to go to jail if FBI asked for all the money he stole from a bank because he gave it back when they asked. TTFers get stupider when they discuss Biden.
"11. No he hasn't. You are either lying or your perpetual reading comprehension problem makes you incapable of understanding even basic facts.
Trump is specifically charged with 31 violations of Section 793(e) of the Espionage Act."
with all those "or"s, it's obvious Biden is guilty of violating the letter of this law
and he doesn't have the benefit of the PRA to rely on
Good comment here by Robert Reich:
If the past few years have taught us anything, it's that:
1) Poverty is a policy choice.
2) Workers keep America going, not billionaires.
3) Corporate profits don't trickle down.
4) Health care is a human right.
Ooh, slap fight. MTG overheard saying to Lauren Boebert on the House floor today: "I've donated to you, I've defended you. But you've been nothing but a little bitch to me... And you copied my articles of impeachment after I asked you to cosponsor them."
Sometimes our Little Mouse girls get like that when they reach middle school. But then, the difference is, real rodents grow out of it.
What did Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Loretta Lynch, and James Comey know about Russia-collusion — and when did they know it? John Durham dropped a bombshell in his testimony today at House Oversight, which will go on for at least a couple of hours or more, but this part wasn’t the bombshell. In his special-counsel report, Durham had already revealed that CIA Director John Brennan briefed these four in August 2016 that Hillary Clinton planned to paint Donald Trump as linked to Russian intelligence, presumably to shift attention away from her own e-mail scandal.
That briefing resulted in a “referral memorandum,” and one of its recipients was then-FBI director James Comey. Oversight chair Jim Jordan asks Durham whether Comey ever bothered to share that with the agents assigned to the newly launched Operation Crossfire Hurricane or ever presented to the FISA court when applications were made for domestic surveillance of Trump campaign officials. Nope, Durham says, and explains how he found that out:
Let me expand the truncated transcript on Durham’s recollection:
JORDAN: Can you tell the committee what happened when you took that referral memo, and shared it with one of those agents?
DURHAM: We interviewed the first supervisor on the Crossfire investigation, the operational person. We showed him the intelligence information. He indicated he had never seen it before. He immediately became emotional, and got up and left the room with his lawyer, spent some time in the hallway, came back.
JORDAN: He was ticked off, wasn’t he? He was ticked off because this was something he should have had as an agent on the case. This was important information that the director of the FBI kept from the people doing the investigation.
DURHAM: The information was kept from them.
In other words, the director of the FBI knowingly withheld evidence pertinent to an FBI investigation. That resulted not just in errors made by the agents conducting the investigation that might have resulted ending what turned out to be a witch hunt, but also contributed to misrepresentations to the FISA court about the nature of the evidence they used to conduct surveillance on Trump campaign figures.
Florida has lost their case denying trans people medicaid coverage for gender affirming care. This is another final judgment. The precedent could be used to challenge restrictions on adult care in Florida. Still, the net effect is that today's victory in the medicaid case is a hollow one. The plaintiffs will likely still not be able to access care due to criminal prohibitions on nurse practitioners providing care and the freeze frame policies limiting access.
"If the goal of the Durham hearing was to elevate/promote Adam Schiff, Republicans have succeeded… otherwise it’s a disaster"
LOL!
Yeah, he's promoted to the history books now:
House Republicans censured Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) on Wednesday, handing down one of the chamber’s harshest penalties to the California Democrat for his role in investigating former President Donald Trump during the Russiagate hoax..
The measure passed by a 213-209.
Durham was tasked by the Attorney General to investigate the origins of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections.
The censure, a rarely used move typically reserved for severe infractions by lawmakers, passed the House.
Trump's led over Biden in general election match-ups has been expanding since indictment:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2024/president/us/general-election-trump-vs-biden-7383.html
If the Trump indictment has had any perceptible effect on his chances to win his third consecutive Republican presidential nomination, it isn’t apparent in the polls.
Polls show Biden trailing in the popular vote against Trump — whom, remember, he walloped in the popular vote in 2020 by 51% to 47%.
Extrapolating from those numbers, assuming a uniform swing in each state and accounting for the changes in electoral vote numbers from the 2020 census, that looks like Trump winning 328 electoral votes and Biden only 210 — the lowest number for a Democrat since 1988, when Ronald Reagan was president.
If the last seven years of constant anti-Trump intrigue have shown anything, it’s that America’s liberal so-called elites want to govern a certain way and will not tolerate being told otherwise. Given Donald Trump’s recent arrest, they could not make themselves any clearer apart from possibly having the man killed.
These kinds of dramatic outcomes to political battles are supposed to be precluded in a government of consent, which allows for a peaceful transfer of power. Uprisings, show trials, assassinations, and the like are not supposed to be necessary when the people can choose and remove their rulers.
But the recalcitrance of the elites has pushed the country into a political crisis. Their refusal to be restrained by popular opinion has left a large swath of the population with nothing to lose.
Trump’s supporters are the regime’s helots, the “deplorables” consigned to sweat and toil for a government that openly hates them.
When Biden hung the banner of “Pride” from the White House balcony, he was merely making formal the implicit. It was received like the taunt that it obviously was. These humiliations are now a normal part of daily life for the downwardly mobile middle-class.
The White House is occupied by a venal, sleazy puppet whose sordid crimes have been covered up by the “free press.”
A regime that treats good people like criminals and criminals like “public servants” exposes its own iniquity. But try explaining that to Jill Biden, who expressed “shock” that Trump still has supporters despite being arrested by her husband’s government for something no worse than something her husband did (and, unlike Trump, he did it without the power to declassify documents). Don’t Republicans realize, she told a room of wealthy donors in Manhattan’s Upper East Side last week, what a serious matter this is?
The Left isn’t trying to persuade anyone of Trump’s turpitude. Their own hands are far too dirty for that. They just want to crush him and demoralize those who find hope in his spirited war with the deep state that has worked endlessly toward his destruction and the ruin of liberty in America.
To millions of Americans, nothing that Trump has done with any porn star or “classified” briefing measures up to the betrayal of having their country taken from them. Indeed, to earn the proscription of such “elites,” as we have, is its own honor.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) presided over the vote to censure Rep. Schiff that fell largely along party lines, 213-209, with six Republicans voting “present” — including all GOP members of the Ethics Committee. Because six Republicans voted present, the majority threshold to pass the vote was lowered...
As the speaker exited the floor, he was met with handshakes and slaps on the back from GOP lawmakers who congratulated him on the passage of the resolution.
Schiff, meanwhile, was embraced by Democrats, who also took photos with him and chanted his name.
While such a chaotic display hadn’t been seen on the House floor in recent history, decorum in the chamber has faltered since the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol.
Rep. Ken Buck (R-Colo.), the only Republican not part of the Ethics Committee who voted present on the resolution, lamented the disarray on the House floor. When asked why he voted present, Buck said Schiff wasn’t given “due process.”
“We haven’t heard his side of the story,” he said.
Buck said he’s long opposed kicking House members off committees. He said he was promised the House would address that issue but said it has not done so.
“We are spiraling to the bottom,” he said. “We should be striving to do better.”
A vote to table the resolution — or effectively kill it — failed early Wednesday afternoon on a 208-218 vote along party lines. The vote triggered an immediate debate on the censure measure, which the House voted on later Wednesday.
The measure that passed Wednesday is similar to one the House blocked last week but did not include the possibility of a $16 million fine against Schiff. Luna had said that amount was half the cost of an investigation into the alleged collusion.
On the House floor Wednesday, Luna blamed Schiff for having “ripped apart American families across the country with repeated false narratives” and “sowing lasting division across our land.”
Democrats have dismissed the GOP’s efforts to censure Schiff as partisan retribution for trying to hold Trump accountable, as well as an attempt to distract Americans from Trump’s legal problems.
Ahead of the Wednesday vote to table the resolution, Schiff said the “false and defamatory resolution” came at considerable cost to the country and blasted GOP lawmakers for not instead censuring those in the body who had sought to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
AI-generated child sex images spawn new nightmare for the web
Investigators say the disturbing images could undermine efforts to find real-world victims
The US birth rate is down 43% from 1950.
In 1981, voters ended New Deal stability and equity in favor of pro-rich Reaganism - weakened wages, loss of job security, student loan debt, rise of price-gouging oligopolies, and social media all weigh against family formation.
Us mouses definitely don't have that problem. We share with each other and take care of each other and have lots of babies.
the law Trump is accused of violating is not well understood
for one thing, it never mentions "classified" information
it says:
"information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation,"
this is likely why only 31 counts were brought despite the seizing of hundreds of classified or top secret files
e prosecutor will have to prove that Trump had reason to believe some dated information could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation
this will be very difficult to prove and the prosecutors probably chose the 31 documents where they could convince a jury Trump should have known would damage our national security
this will be even more difficult because of the fact that he once had access to the information and he was keeping it in a secure location
so, why would him having information he is already familiar with damage our security?
further it adds that he:
"willfully retains the same and fails to deliver it to the officer or employee of the United States entitled to receive it"
on each and every item, it must be clear that the Archives was entitled to receive the data but courts have already ruled that the ex-President alone will determine what is personal notes and what is presidential work papers
hard to see Trump losing this case, with a GOP judge and a Florida jury
"on each and every item, it must be clear that the Archives was entitled to receive the data but courts have already ruled that the ex-President alone will determine what is personal notes and what is presidential work papers"
There's that Trump Lawschool U stupidity again.
"For the first two centuries of U.S. history, outgoing presidents simply took their documents with them when they left the White House. The materials were considered their personal property.
But for the past four decades, every presidential document — from notebook doodles to top-secret security plans — is supposed to go directly to the National Archives as the material is considered the property of the American people.
So when former President Donald Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, all his records should have traveled from the White House to the National Archives, according to Jason R. Baron, who served as director of litigation at the National Archives for 13 years.
"No president has the right to retain presidential records after he or she leaves office," Baron said. "And so it is an extraordinary circumstance if presidential records are found in a former president's residence or anywhere else under his control."
Why can't presidents keep their documents these days?
The rules changed for one reason: Watergate.
When President Nixon resigned amid the 1974 scandal, he wanted to take his documents to his home in California — including his infamous tape recordings.
Congress realized it would not have access to that material, and they also feared it could be destroyed. So legislators passed the Presidential Recordings and Materials Preservation Act, which made all of Nixon's material public property.
However, that measure applied to Nixon only. In 1978, Congress passed the more sweeping Presidential Records Act that has been the standard ever since.
"Every president, when they leave office, those records that have been created by the president and his staff are presidential records that go to the National Archives," Baron said. "The owner is the American people.""
"So when former President Donald Trump left office on Jan. 20, 2021, all his records should have traveled from the White House to the National Archives, according to Jason R. Baron, who served as director of litigation at the National Archives for 13 years."
his statement is either being mischaracterized, or he is simply speaking as an advocate for the interests of the National Archives staff, of which he is one
only presidential records, not personal ones, are the subject of the PRA
and the courts have also ruled that the ex-President is the only one authorized to designate which records are personal and which are presidential
""No president has the right to retain presidential records after he or she leaves office," Baron said. "And so it is an extraordinary circumstance if presidential records are found in a former president's residence or anywhere else under his control.""
actually, it's common
btw, the indictment nowhere mentions the PRA
further the PRA provides for no criminal penalties
conflating the Espionage Act, which concerns information that could harm the US and has criminal penalties, with the PRA, which pertains to all presidential records, despite not defining the term, and carries no criminal penalties...
is legally adventurous
and will likely fail
Conflating top secret documents which could harm the US with "presidential records" is simply ridiculous, and explains why the indictment never mentioned the PRA.
"Someone find this idiot a clue
Conflating top secret documents which could harm the US with "presidential records" is simply ridiculous, and explains why the indictment never mentioned the PRA."
yes, "Time for some facts" really is an idiot, isn't he?
but ex-Presidents do have security clearance
so, keeping records in a secure place, under Secret Service protection, at an ex-President's residence, doesn't endanger national security
btw, the Secret Service agents work for the government, not Trump
so, why couldn't they have taken the records back to Washington at any time?
in a sense, the records were in government custody since they had access
why was an FBI raid necessary?
btw, We had five years to stop using fossil fuels to prevent wiping out “all of humanity” from June 21st 2018, Greta Thunberg claimed in a now-deleted Tweet.
Today is the anniversary of a doomsday prediction made by Swedish climate campaigner Greta Thunberg when she was just 15 years old June 21st 2018, stating the human race had five years to end fossil fuels or face certain death. She wrote then:
"A top climate scientist is warning that climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next five years."
While these alarming, but later forgotten warnings with very definite and certain sounding timescales are a major part of green propaganda, this particular instance has taken on a life of its own due to the Streisand Effect, given as the deadline date approached Thunberg was caught having deleted the claim.
As previously reported, remembering these deadline predictions are dangerous for the left because if civilization really is beyond the point of no return, they lose all their political power. Fact-checkers have tried to neuter the Tweet-delete by pointing out she said humanity would merely run out of time to save itself this year, not that humanity would actually end in 2023, pointing out what is obvious to anyone with basic reading comprehension.
As for Thunberg, she certainly isn’t acting like anything changes today. Indeed, as reported she was spending this week getting picked up by police for sitting in front of oil tankers, hardly the act of a woman who believes all hope is now lost.
"but ex-Presidents do have security clearance"
Trump has no formal security clearance now, and you can point to no law indicating that he does.
-------------------------------
Biden Bars Trump From Receiving Intelligence Briefings, Citing ‘Erratic Behavior’
David E. Sanger
Published Feb. 5, 2021
Updated Feb. 10, 2021
President Biden said there was “no need” for former President Donald J. Trump to get the briefings, traditionally given to ex-presidents as a courtesy and to keep them informed if their advice is needed.
WASHINGTON — President Biden said on Friday that he would bar his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, from receiving intelligence briefings traditionally given to former presidents, saying that Mr. Trump could not be trusted because of his “erratic behavior” even before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
The move was the first time that a former president had been cut out of the briefings, which are provided partly as a courtesy and partly for the moments when a sitting president reaches out for advice. Currently, the briefings are offered on a regular basis to Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
Mr. Biden, speaking to Norah O’Donnell of CBS News, said Mr. Trump’s behavior worried him “unrelated to the insurrection” that gave rise to the second impeachment of Mr. Trump.
“I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings,” Mr. Biden said.
“What value is giving him an intelligence briefing?” Mr. Biden added. “What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
The White House said this week that it had been reviewing whether the former president, whose impeachment trial in the Senate begins on Tuesday, should receive the briefings. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff, said last month, just before Mr. Biden’s inauguration, that Mr. Trump’s access to any classified information should be cut off.
“There is no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing, not now and not in the future,” said Mr. Schiff, Democrat of California, who was the House manager for Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial, a year ago.
“Indeed, there were, I think, any number of intelligence partners around the world who probably started withholding information from us because they didn’t trust the president would safeguard that information, and protect their sources and methods,” Mr. Schiff said. “And that makes us less safe. We’ve seen this president politicize intelligence, and that’s another risk to the country.”
The question of how Mr. Trump handles intelligence came up several times during his presidency. Shortly after he fired the F.B.I. director James B. Comey in 2017, Mr. Trump told the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador about a highly classified piece of intelligence about the Islamic State that came from Israel. The Israelis were outraged.
Later in his presidency, Mr. Trump took a photograph with his phone of a classified satellite image showing an explosion at a missile launchpad in Iran. Some of the markings were blacked out first, but the revelation gave adversaries information about the abilities of American surveillance satellites.
The Hamilton County chapter of Moms for Liberty, a national organization recently listed as an "extremist group" by a civil rights watchdog, apologized Thursday morning after it launched a newsletter called "The Parent Brigade" Wednesday that featured a quote from Adolf Hitler on its front cover.
The quote in the newsletter drew condemnation on social media Wednesday night and Thursday morning from local politicians and candidates for elected offices.
Around 11:30 a.m. Thursday, Moms for Liberty emailed IndyStar and posted a statement on the group's Facebook page condemning Adolf Hitler and apologizing for using the quote. A new version of the front page without the quote or explanation was uploaded.
"We condemn Adolf Hitler's actions and his dark place in human history," the statement from chapter chairwoman Paige Miller reads. "We should not have quoted him in our newsletter and express our deepest apology."
Not giving Trump daily briefings is not the same as revoking his security clearance. He was granted clearance when the people elected him President.
Most officials working with the government must have security clearances as well as a reason to access documents restricted by the government. However, as the president, Trump did not need to pass any security clearances.
In fact, the President, Vice President, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and many elected officials are not required to get permission for security clearances of any classified documents as their positions in office mean the American people decided to entrust them with national security secrets, according to a report from the Congressional Research Service.
There is simply no law stating that a president keeps his security clearance after he leaves office, and you can't point to one.
You can pretend it's still valid all you like, but that doesn't make it true.
While it is true that members of Congress aren't required to get security clearances, secure information is only given to them on a "need to know" basis. And once they leave office, unless there is some particularly special circumstances, they have no "need to know." And they don't get to keep that information locked up in their bathroom with their golf shirts.
Here are the conditions under which Trump can have access to classified material once he leaves office (of course, the only one of these he met was being an EX-president):
https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-31/subtitle-A/part-2/section-2.2
§ 2.2 Access to classified information by historical researchers, former Treasury Presidential and Vice Presidential appointees, and former Presidents and Vice Presidents.
(a) Access to classified information may be granted only to individuals who have a need-to-know the information. This requirement may be waived, however, for individuals who:
(1) Are engaged in historical research projects;
(2) Previously occupied a position in the Treasury to which they were appointed by the President under 3 U.S.C. 105(a)(2)(A), or the Vice President under 3 U.S.C. 106(a)(1)(A); or
(3) Served as President or Vice President.
(b) Access to classified information may be granted to individuals described in paragraph (a) of this section upon:
(1) A written determination by Treasury's Senior Agency Official, under Section 5.4(d) of Executive Order 13292, that access is consistent with the interest of the national security; and
(2) Receipt of the individual's written agreement to safeguard classified information, including taking all appropriate steps to protect classified information from unauthorized disclosure or compromise. This written agreement must also include the individual's consent to have any and all notes (including those prepared or stored in electronic media, whether written or oral) reviewed by authorized Treasury personnel to ensure that no classified information is contained therein and, if so, that the classified information is not published.
(c)(i)(A) A historical researcher is not authorized to have access to foreign government information or information classified by another Federal department or agency.
(B) A former Treasury Presidential or Vice Presidential appointee is only authorized access to classified information that the former official originated, reviewed, signed or received while serving as such an appointee.
(C) A former President or Vice President is only authorized access to classified information that was prepared by Treasury while that individual was serving as President or Vice President.
(ii) Granting access to classified information pursuant to this section does not constitute the granting of a security clearance for access to classified information.
(d) Treasury personnel will coordinate access to classified information by individuals described in paragraph (a) of this section with the Director, Office of Security Programs, who will ensure that the written agreement described in paragraph (b)(2) of this section is signed as a condition of being granted access to classified information.
(e) Any review of classified information by an individual described in paragraph (a) of this section shall take place in a location designated by the Director, Office of Security Programs. Such persons must be accompanied at all times by appropriately authorized Treasury personnel authorized to have access to the classified information being reviewed. All notes (including those prepared or stored in electronic media, whether written or oral) made by an individual described in paragraph (a) of this section shall remain in the custody of the Office of Security Programs pending a determination by appropriately cleared subject matter experts that no classified information is contained therein.
(f) An individual described in paragraph (a) of this section is subject to search, as are all packages or carrying cases prior to entering or leaving Treasury. Access to Treasury-originated classified information at another Federal department or agency, as may be authorized by the Director, Office of Security Programs shall be governed by security protocols in effect at the other Federal department or agency.
(g) Treasury personnel must perform a physical verification and an accounting of all classified information each time such information is viewed by an individual described in paragraph (a) of this section. Physical verification and an accounting of all classified information shall be made both prior to and after viewing. Any discrepancy must be immediately reported to the Director, Office of Security Programs.
(h) An individual described in paragraph (a) of this section may be charged reasonable fees for services rendered by Treasury in connection with the review of classified information under this section. To the extent such services involve searching, reviewing, and copying material, the provisions of § 2.1(b)(8) shall apply.
you are quoting regulations, created by the deep state
you've already quoted Archives staff's position
they don't override the judgments of the American people
There is simply no law stating that a president loses his security clearance after he leaves office, and you can't point to one.
"the President, Vice President, members of Congress, Supreme Court justices, and many elected officials are not required to get permission for security clearances of any classified documents as their positions in office mean the American people decided to entrust them with national security secrets,"
according to a report from the Congressional Research Service, which works for members of Congress, a body elected to make our laws
"There is simply no law stating that a president loses his security clearance after he leaves office, and you can't point to one."
Irrelevant.
Try reading the law again. It specifies precisely how an ex-president MAY achieve access to certain classified documents, IF he was permitted to by someone, like for example, the CURRENT president.
The only requirement that Trump met was that he was an ex-president. He fulfilled NONE of the other requirements for accessing secret documents with what he kept at Mar-a-Lago. As such, he is guilty of violating that statute whether he had a security clearance or not.
"Irrelevant"
brilliant analysis
"Try reading the law again. It specifies precisely how an ex-president MAY achieve access to certain classified documents, IF he was permitted to by someone, like for example, the CURRENT president."
you're again bringing up Archives' regulation again
the Congressional Research Service says
"the President,...many elected officials are not required to get permission for security clearances of any classified documents as their positions in office mean the American people decided to entrust them with national security secrets,"
the American people gave Trump clearance
"The only requirement that Trump met was that he was an ex-president. He fulfilled NONE of the other requirements for accessing secret documents with what he kept at Mar-a-Lago. As such, he is guilty of violating that statute whether he had a security clearance or not"
what "statute" are you spiraling around now? the Espionage act?
it doesn't use the word "secrets", it discusses information relating to the national defense which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation
there is no proof that Trump had reason to believe that any of the documents could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation
that's the standard of the Espionage Act - not "secret" or "classified"
if so, will the jury get security clearances?
will information that could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation be made public at a trial?
Trump is a veritable jackass but is convicting him of a petty, victimless crime worth compromising the security of the US?
twelve Floridians will never convict him
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., has been at the center of every left-wing hoax orchestrated against former President Donald Trump since 2016. From the trumped-up claims of Russian collusion to a fabricated scandal over military aid in Ukraine to the conspiracies surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot as a desperate effort to impeach, Schiff has been the primary conductor.
So on Wednesday, hours after John Durham detailed the special counsel’s findings in the Russia hoax investigation before the House Judiciary Committee, the lower chamber formally censured Schiff, who is presently seeking a seat in the Senate. The resolution passed 213-209.
The resolution forced Schiff to stand before lawmakers embarrassingly and requires the House Ethics Committee to probe the congressman’s “falsehoods, misrepresentations, and abuses of sensitive information.”
Schiff is now the 25th representative in congressional history to be censured by the House.
The formal measure, however, is the least Congress could do. After Schiff polarized the country for years and undermined U.S. relations with a nuclear superpower, lawmakers ought to vote on expulsion. Members on the House Ethics Committee now tasked with investigating Schiff’s tenure should consider such a recommendation.
In January, McCarthy booted Schiff from the Intelligence Committee in one of his first moves presiding over the Capitol chamber.
“I am committed to returning the House Intelligence Committee to one of genuine honesty and credibility that regains the trust of the American people,” McCarthy said at the time.
It’s not Schiff’s lying that earned him a lost committee assignment and a formal censure. If lying warranted expulsion from Congress, we’d have no legislature. It’s that as chairman of the House Intelligence Committee with access to the nation’s top secrets, Schiff abused his leadership perch to orchestrate hoax after hoax against the democratically elected president for the apparent crime of winning the 2016 election. His conduct sowed nationwide division, jeopardized national security, and undercut the legitimacy of the House. Now he expects a promotion from California voters to a seat in the Senate when he doesn’t even deserve an office on Capitol Hill.
At just 18 years old, Kayla Lovdahl has already transitioned to a boy, regretted that decision and detransitioned back to being a girl. Now, she’s taking the doctors and hospitals that allegedly rushed her through gender treatment to court.
Her story is shocking, yet not uncommon.
According to her lawsuit filed in California State Court last week, Kayla first decided she was a boy at age 11 after learning about the transgender community online.
By 12, she alleges, she was prescribed puberty blockers and testosterone by doctors who failed to provide sufficient psychological screening and who told her parents: “It’s better to have a live son than a dead daughter.”
At 13, Kayla had her healthy breasts removed in a double mastectomy to masculinize her chest. And, by 17, she’d realized it was all a mistake — and that the professionals around her had failed to protect her.
“The hardest part was being sold something that I believed was going to help me and make me feel better, only to do it and come out on the other side not feeling any better,” Kayla said in a YouTube interview. “I could always have waited, but I can’t undo it.”
The California native is suing Kaiser Foundation Hospitals and four individual doctors, seeking unspecified damages for causing “deep physical and emotional wounds and severe regret.”
“They essentially handed Kayla the prescription pad and allowed her naive, emotional, childish rollercoaster of feelings to dictate the so-called ‘treatment’ that she would receive,” the lawsuit alleges.
Kayla’s attorney Mark E. Trammell of the Center for American Liberty told The Post that the hospital and doctors “breached the standard of care that they should be held to as medical professionals” by allowing her to transition so quickly.
In a statement, a representative for Kaiser Permanente told The Post: “When adolescent patients, with parental consent, seek gender-affirming care, the patient’s care team carefully evaluates their treatment options and then a multidisciplinary team of physicians and other experienced professionals are available to provide the patient and their family with information, counseling, and other support.
“Care decisions always rest with the patient and their parents or guardians and, in every case, we respect the right of patients and their families to make informed decisions about their personal health.”
That's interesting because TTF always claims that individuals, at all ages, go through rigorous psychological evaluation before medical professionals will allow gender reassignment surgery.
Here, they flippantly say it's all up to whatever the "patient" wants
Tragically, Kalya is joining a growing group of young people speaking out about their gender transition regret.
More and more detransitioners and medical professionals alike have been ringing the alarm bells about hasty gender care.
But many of the detransitioners who are brave enough to share their cautionary tales have been shut out by the very same transgender activist community that once embraced them.
Perhaps there are well-meaning advocates who are genuinely invested in helping struggling children find their true selves. But it’s obvious that any rush to label children as “trans” and speed them through medical transition can have devastating consequences.
Even someone who supports the rights of trans adults to medically transition should take pause at the thought of a 13-year-old — barely a teenager — being allowed to remove healthy parts of their body based, often, only on a sudden and recent conviction that they were born in the wrong body.
But, because it’s become a culture war issue, we’re presented with a false choice between “grooming kids” or “advocating trans genocide.”
One can oppose the medical transition of minors while also embracing a live-and-let-live mentality when it comes to adults. There’s a common sense, compassionate compromise.
Even countries that were once the most progressive on treating trans youth are coming to this conclusion. France, Sweden, Finland and the United Kingdom have all pumped the brakes on gender affirming care for minors.
Now it’s time for America to do the same.
Unfortunately, the next frontier in this battle requires teens who should have never been in this position in the first place to duke it out in court.
Trammell is also representing detransitioner Chloe Cole in a similar ongoing legal battle . He believes the lawsuits will “cause doctors and hospitals who are performing these types of surgeries to really give informed consent.”
Hopefully their warnings will prevent more children from going under the knife.
Changing your hair, your name or your pronouns is one thing — but making irreversible medical decisions as a minor that could leave you infertile is entirely another.
We don’t even trust kids to commit to a tattoo until they’re 18. Allowing 13-year-olds like Kayla to undergo irreversible and invasive elective procedures like double mastectomies is unconscionable.
The Biden administration is backing down from trying to force Catholic health care providers to enter the gender transition business.
The Justice Department this week let the deadline pass to file an appeal before the Supreme Court in Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, marking the second time the administration has declined to defend the Affordable Care Act’s “transgender mandate.”
The practical effect of the decision: Catholic medical professionals and organizations in the church’s extensive U.S. health care network will not be required to perform gender transition surgeries or provide medical insurance coverage for their employees to undergo such procedures.
Becket Law, which represented a coalition of Catholic hospitals, nuns and a Catholic university, cheered the department’s decision to drop the legal battle after the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a temporary block on the mandate in December.
“After multiple defeats in court, the federal government has thrown in the towel on its controversial, medically unsupported transgender mandate,” said Luke Goodrich, Becket vice president and senior counsel. “Doctors take a solemn oath to ‘do no harm,’ and they can’t keep that oath if the federal government is forcing them to perform harmful, irreversible procedures against their conscience and medical expertise.”
The Sisters of Mercy coalition sued in 2016 after “the federal government reinterpreted the Affordable Care Act to require doctors and hospitals across the country to perform controversial gender-transition procedures, including on children, even when doing so would violate doctors’ consciences,” Becket said.
This was the second legal win in less than a year for Catholic health care providers who objected to the mandate.
In August, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a lower court’s permanent injunction on behalf of the Franciscan Alliance, a Catholic health care network with nearly 19,000 providers. The Biden administration declined to bring an appeal before the Supreme Court.
“These religious doctors and hospitals provide vital care to patients in need, including millions of dollars in free and low-cost care to the elderly, poor, and underserved,” said Mr. Goodrich. “This is a win for patients, conscience and common sense.”
The Justice Department did not comment publicly on the decision, but the department filed “statements of interest” against laws in Arkansas and Kentucky that barred medical providers from giving gender transition drugs or offering such surgeries to minors. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court has been sympathetic to religious freedom arguments in similar cases.
Transgender rights supporters claimed a legal victory this week when a federal judge in Little Rock struck down Arkansas’ new law barring transgender treatments for children and teenagers. The judge ruled that the statute discriminated against transgender patients and violated the constitutional rights of doctors who agreed to perform the practices. It was one of the first legal tests of a statute proposed by lawmakers in several conservative states. An appeal of the ruling is expected.
Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission President Brent Leatherwood hailed the Biden administration’s decision not to appeal the transgender mandate as a “significant victory in safeguarding the rights of medical professionals to operate in a manner consistent with their deepest held beliefs.”
“This is an important development we should take note of because it not only represents a win for conscience rights but also furthers efforts to shield vulnerable individuals who should never become pawns in the sexual revolution,” he said in a statement.
The deadline to bring an appeal before the Supreme Court was Tuesday.
U.S. Catholic bishops voted late last week to rewrite their official guidance to Catholic health care institutions on transgender surgeries and hormone treatments. The move was widely seen as a prelude to establishing a clear bar on such treatments for transgender people at Catholic hospitals and church-affiliated medical centers.
In March, the bishops approved a “doctrinal note” holding that Catholic health care services “must not perform interventions, whether surgical or chemical, that aim to transform the sexual characteristics of a human body into those of the opposite sex or take part in the development of such procedures.”
The U.S. has more than 600 Catholic-affiliated hospitals and more than 1,600 long-term care and other health care facilities. The church’s health ministry is the largest single group of nonprofit health care providers in the country, according to the Catholic Health Association of the United States. An estimated 1 in 7 patients hospitalized in the U.S. daily is treated in a Catholic hospital.
SUPREME COURT
Americans give the Supreme Court a negative 29 - 58 percent job approval rating.
Registered voters give the Supreme Court a negative 30 - 59 percent job approval rating. This is the lowest approval rating that the Supreme Court has received among registered voters since Quinnipiac University first asked the question in 2004.
"American voters drop the gavel and prove harsh judges as a drip, drip, drip in approval gives the Highest Court its lowest marks,"added Malloy.
Nearly 7 in 10 Americans (68 percent) think that the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by politics, while 25 percent think that the Supreme Court is mainly motivated by the law.
A majority of Americans (63 percent) support limiting the number of years a Supreme Court Justice can serve on the Supreme Court, while 29 percent oppose it.
YOU HAVE NO ONE TO BLAME BUT YOURSELF FOR PREVENTING DISINFECTING SUNLIGHT FROM SEEING THE GIFTS YOUR JUSTICES FREELY ACCEPT, MAKING YOUR COURT APPEAR TO BE CORRUPT, JOHN ROBERTS
"the President,...many elected officials are not required to get permission for security clearances of any classified documents as their positions in office mean the American people decided to entrust them with national security secrets,"
"the American people gave Trump clearance"
Irrelevant.
Trump stopped being president in January of 2021. After that CFR paragraph 2.2 applies to ex-presidents as it very explicitly states, and copied above. Ignore it all you like, but that doesn't change the facts.
"what "statute" are you spiraling around now?"
The Code of Federal Regulations, Title 31, Subtitle A, Part 2, § 2.2 - I provided a link for it.
I pasted it above so you wouldn't have to stress your delicate clicky finger.
"if so, will the jury get security clearances?"
Probably not, just the lawyers on both sides. There are procedures for this kind of trial already in place.
"will information that could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation be made public at a trial?"
Of course not, idiot. Unless the Rumpster blurts some out of his uncontrollable pie hole.
"Trump is a veritable jackass but is convicting him of a petty, victimless crime worth compromising the security of the US?"
Unless you convict politicians for their crimes, more politicians will commit crimes - it will become a magnet for criminals seeking money, power, and a chance to pardon themselves. There is enough criminality in the US political system as it is - we need to "drain the swamp" and put consequences and responsibility back into the system. And convicting him of those crimes will not compromise US security. Trump leaving classified documents in cardboard boxes in his ballroom where all sorts of people can wander through compromises security.
And why aren't you making these same "victimless crime" arguments about Hunter Biden?
"twelve Floridians will never convict him"
That may be true, but that doesn't mean that he didn't do the crime. That would be a measure of how easily Floridians are sucked into the Cult of Trump, not of the facts of this case.
Just ask O.J.
Tensions inside the House Freedom Caucus have reached the point that some members are floating the idea of purging colleagues from the group. While the members suggesting a purge did not specify the people they want to remove, they are signaling that one target of any ejection push is Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.). Some in the Freedom Caucus have focused on Greene, who’s become a close ally of Speaker Kevin McCarthy, to illustrate their fears that certain group members are too aligned with GOP leaders and too outwardly critical of the group when it splits on certain issues.
Oh I see, MTG is too sane, too moderate for the rest of 'em. She doesn't shoot her mouth off enough. The bomb she planted didn't explode. She just doesn't meet their standard.
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