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welcome to reality trivia
reality is the state of things as they actually exist
may 24, 2019
real news today
may 24, 2019
*Trump signs memo requiring immigrants’ sponsors to pay back the government for welfare
(TRUMP)
*Florida pastor refuses to give up millions of dollars stolen in a Ponzi scheme — calling it ‘God’s blessings’
(Christianity)
*WHITE WOMEN ARE HELPING STATES PASS ABORTION RESTRICTIONS
(Elections)
*Alabama Doesn’t Value Its Own Residents’ “Sanctity of Life”
(Talkers)
*SORRY MR. PRESIDENT, FACTS PROVE THE HOUSE DEMOCRATS ARE DOING WAY MORE THAN THE GOP SENATE
(Demo Politics)
*LAWMAKERS IN TEXAS JUST CONCOCTED A NEW WAY TO KEEP DEMOCRATIC VOTERS FROM THE BALLOT BOX
(America)
*WHY DID DEUTSCHE BANK KEEP LENDING MONEY TO DONALD TRUMP — EVEN AFTER HE DEFAULTED ON LOANS WORTH HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS AND SUED IT?(TRUMP)
*THE UNCHECKED CORRUPTION OF TRUMP’S CABINET
(TRUMP)
*A Limited Corporate Crackdown
(Corporate Criminals)
*Meet Sydney Wilson, the 14-Year-Old Wiz Kid Headed to Spelman College
(Real People)
*‘Yes Ma’am, I Used the N-Word’: Mississippi Furniture Store Owner Unapologetic After Hurling Racial Slurs at Black Customers(Amerikkkans)
*SLAVERY: LAST KNOWN US SLAVE SHIP FOUND IN ALABAMA
(Black History)
*THERESA MAY ANNOUNCES SHE WILL RESIGN ON 7 JUNE
(World)
*CALIFORNIA AGENCIES FOUGHT FIRES ON FEDERAL LAND. NOW TRUMP WON’T PAY IN FULL
(Trump)
(for previous day's articles see "what's inside" below)
comment/tweet of the day
george conway: “.@realDonaldTrump—fixed this for you,” Conway wrote. “Without your bizarre, improper, impeachable, and ILLEGAL behavior in response to the perfectly justified investigation you like to call a “Witch Hunt,” and without your deranged behavior in numerous other respects, your poll numbers, especially because of the great, full-employment economy that you inherited and then goosed up with massive deficit spending, would be much higher than they are.”
“Too bad! The most unfit and incompetent president in American history.”
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Tom Steyer: "This country is sorely lacking a positive shared vision for the future. Impeachment is the first step towards renewing our civic engagement so that we can work out a shared positive vision about what it means to be an American and what America itself is about, which is the goal of the whole exercise.
"Impeachment is a way for us to reaffirm our belief in the system itself, our belief in the system of laws, our belief that everyone is accountable to the laws and that Americans have the ability and the courage to pursue the American experiment that was supposed to have been leading the world."
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Malcolm Nance✔
@MalcolmNance
WARNING: We are in grave danger. Trumps says he declassified all allied intelligence fm FBI, GCHQ, MI6, AVID & ASIS for AG Barr to get revenge. This is the end of the 5-EYES relationship. No one will EVER share intelligence with us again. #Imoeach to Save our Nation’s Security.
9:49 AM - May 24, 2019
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the greatest threat to america is trump and the republican party!!
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ANOTHER ASSHOLE REPUBLICAN!!
$19.1 billion disaster aid package stalls after single House Republican objects
BumRushDaShow - demo underground
5/24/19
Source: Washington Post
A House Republican lawmaker blocked a $19.1 billion disaster aid package on Friday, delaying a bill that would send federal funding to disaster affected areas across the country. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) voted to block the legislation, which has the support of President Trump and passed the Senate on Thursday. Only one vote was needed to defeat the motion. House lawmakers left town Thursday morning, before Senate negotiators reached a compromise on the bill. With members absent, House leaders had hoped to pass the measure by unanimous consent.
Following the objection, the House ended its session. The House is set to have another "pro forma" session -- one with few lawmakers present -- on Tuesday, at which time they plan to again try to pass the legislation by unanimous consent. "We'll see," Roy said when asked whether he would object again. "I have not decided what I'm going to do next week, but I also have a job to do back in Texas."
The full House is not due back in Washington until June 3. Roy's objection to the disaster aid bill further delays legislation that would send aid to victims of Western wildfires, Midwestern flooding and hurricanes that hit the Southeast and Puerto Rico, as well as to other disaster-affected areas across the country.
Roy, 46, is a freshman lawmaker but one who is no stranger to Capitol Hill and the highest levels of conservative politics. He is a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who served in that role as Cruz helped force the federal government into a partial shutdown in 2013 that lasted more than 2 weeks.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/191-billion-in-nationwide-disaster-aid-stalls-in-house-after-single-republican-objects/2019/05/24/76a926ca-7e30-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html
When doing "unanimous consent" legislation passage, all you need is one douche to show up and hold it up requiring a voice or roll call vote.
A House Republican lawmaker blocked a $19.1 billion disaster aid package on Friday, delaying a bill that would send federal funding to disaster affected areas across the country. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) voted to block the legislation, which has the support of President Trump and passed the Senate on Thursday. Only one vote was needed to defeat the motion. House lawmakers left town Thursday morning, before Senate negotiators reached a compromise on the bill. With members absent, House leaders had hoped to pass the measure by unanimous consent.
Following the objection, the House ended its session. The House is set to have another "pro forma" session -- one with few lawmakers present -- on Tuesday, at which time they plan to again try to pass the legislation by unanimous consent. "We'll see," Roy said when asked whether he would object again. "I have not decided what I'm going to do next week, but I also have a job to do back in Texas."
The full House is not due back in Washington until June 3. Roy's objection to the disaster aid bill further delays legislation that would send aid to victims of Western wildfires, Midwestern flooding and hurricanes that hit the Southeast and Puerto Rico, as well as to other disaster-affected areas across the country.
Roy, 46, is a freshman lawmaker but one who is no stranger to Capitol Hill and the highest levels of conservative politics. He is a former chief of staff to Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), who served in that role as Cruz helped force the federal government into a partial shutdown in 2013 that lasted more than 2 weeks.
Read more: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/191-billion-in-nationwide-disaster-aid-stalls-in-house-after-single-republican-objects/2019/05/24/76a926ca-7e30-11e9-8ede-f4abf521ef17_story.html
When doing "unanimous consent" legislation passage, all you need is one douche to show up and hold it up requiring a voice or roll call vote.
HHS rolls back protections for transgender people
By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR - ap
5/24/19
WASHINGTON (AP) — A new Trump administration rule would roll back sex discrimination protection for transgender people in health services.
In the proposed rule issued Friday, the Health and Human Services Department says laws banning sex discrimination in health care don’t apply to people’s “gender identity.” LGBT groups have long warned such a move could lead to denial of needed medical care.
That rule reverses the policy of the Obama administration, which had found that sex discrimination laws do protect transgender people. It faces a 60-day comment period and court challenges are expected.
The Obama-era rule dates to a time when LGBT people gained political and social recognition. But a federal judge in Texas said the rule went too far by concluding that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is a form of sex discrimination, which is forbidden by civil rights laws.
Under the Obama rule, a hospital could be required to perform gender-transition procedures such as hysterectomies if the facility provided that kind of treatment for other medical conditions. The rule was meant to carry out the anti-discrimination section of the Affordable Care Act, which bars sex discrimination in health care but does not use the term “gender identity.”
In the Texas case, a Catholic hospital system, several states and a Christian medical association argued that the rule went beyond the law as written and would coerce providers to act against their medical judgment and religious beliefs.
In the proposed rule issued Friday, the Health and Human Services Department says laws banning sex discrimination in health care don’t apply to people’s “gender identity.” LGBT groups have long warned such a move could lead to denial of needed medical care.
That rule reverses the policy of the Obama administration, which had found that sex discrimination laws do protect transgender people. It faces a 60-day comment period and court challenges are expected.
The Obama-era rule dates to a time when LGBT people gained political and social recognition. But a federal judge in Texas said the rule went too far by concluding that discrimination on the basis of gender identity is a form of sex discrimination, which is forbidden by civil rights laws.
Under the Obama rule, a hospital could be required to perform gender-transition procedures such as hysterectomies if the facility provided that kind of treatment for other medical conditions. The rule was meant to carry out the anti-discrimination section of the Affordable Care Act, which bars sex discrimination in health care but does not use the term “gender identity.”
In the Texas case, a Catholic hospital system, several states and a Christian medical association argued that the rule went beyond the law as written and would coerce providers to act against their medical judgment and religious beliefs.
in the name of justice!!!
Lawyer for Navy SEAL accused of war crimes also works for Trump Organization
By Zachary Cohen, CNN
Updated 7:00 AM ET, Fri May 24, 2019
Washington (CNN)An attorney for Navy SEAL chief Edward "Eddie" Gallagher also represents the Trump Organization, CNN has learned, just days after reports surfaced indicating the President is considering pardoning Gallagher of charges that could constitute war crimes.
Gallagher faces a slew of accusations connected to violations of military law while he was deployed to the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2017, including premeditated murder in the stabbing death of an injured person in Iraq. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump Organization lawyer Marc Mukasey started working on the case in recent months, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a former business partner of Trump ally and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also is helping with Gallagher's case. Kerik, who once served three years in federal prison for charges including tax fraud and lying to officials, was nominated as homeland security secretary by President George W. Bush but withdrew from consideration due to potential tax violations.
He has regularly appeared on Fox News as a surrogate for the President.
Lead defense attorney Tim Parlatore confirmed Wednesday that Mukasey, who is also involved in legal efforts to block House lawmakers from accessing President Donald Trump's financial records, is "one of the attorneys on Chief Gallagher's team."
Kerik has been working with Gallagher's lawyers for "two to three months" as a strategist and investigator, one of the sources familiar with the situation said.
Parlatore previously represented Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who has privately encouraged the President to pardon some United States servicemen accused of war crimes, including Gallagher, a person familiar with the conversations told CNN on Tuesday.
Hegseth has not publicly disclosed his efforts to help the servicemen, despite discussing their cases on his show "Fox & Friends." The Daily Beast was first to report the news of Hegseth's efforts.
"I have represented him in the past," Parlatore said of the Fox host, adding that he is not currently involved in any active cases for Hegseth and that his ties to the Fox News host had nothing to do with him joining Gallagher's legal team.
"I was recommended to this case by Commissioner Kerik," Parlatore added, speaking to reporters in San Diego. Gallagher "brought us in to ... provide a more aggressive defense."
Parlatore said he does not have an issue with Hegseth using his platform to encourage the President to pardon Gallagher.
"If he wants to lobby the President for what he thinks is right, that's his prerogative. I didn't ask him and if he's doing that, I don't have a problem with it," he said.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Gallagher's wife, Andrea, said she didn't know who Mukasey and Kerik were before they joined the team and was unsure how exactly they ended up becoming part of it. She said she thought someone involved in the case met Kerik at an event and thought his experience with the law would be helpful.
"He was more of an advising role to our family," she said. Mukasey, she added, has a "supporting role, he's not our lead lawyer, he's not our main lawyer."
But it seems Kerik has had a hand in shaping Gallagher's defense team behind the scenes.
In addition to recommending Parlatore for the role of lead attorney, Kerik helped facilitate Mukasey's hiring after he expressed interest in becoming involved in the case, according to the source with knowledge of the situation.
Mukasey and other members of the defense team have not discussed Gallagher's case directly with the President or asked for a pardon, according to Parlatore. But he also insisted that it would be well within Trump's rights to get involved should he choose to do so.
"We have not asked the President to get involved ... We haven't had any communications," he said. "If the President chooses to act it will be on his own."
"The President has the power to pardon anybody either before or after a conviction," Parlatore added.
That authority would allow Trump to intervene if he decides that the merits and evidence of the case suggest "it should never have gone forward to begin with" and "should end," he said.
Trump's interest in the possible pardons was first reported by The New York Times, which also said the Trump administration had made requests for expedited pardon paperwork for a group of Marine Corps snipers accused of urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters.
The newspaper said the administration had requested the process be complete by Memorial Day in time for a presidential announcement.
The Justice Department pardon office asked the US military for case files for at least two US service members accused of premeditated murder, including Gallagher and Army Maj. Matt Golsteyn, three US officials told CNN on Tuesday.
Golsteyn divulged his role in the killing of a bomb maker in Afghanistan during a job interview with the CIA and subsequently in a Fox News interview. The Army says the killing was premeditated, and Golsteyn is set to stand trial.
Gallagher's case has been championed by dozens of members of Congress, including some of Trump's staunchest supporters in the House of Representatives. In March, Trump discussed the matter with Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, who tweeted about their conversation afterward.
Trump himself later tweeted that Gallagher would be moved to less restrictive confinement -- "In honor of his past service to our Country," he wrote -- adding Norman's Twitter handle and the handle of the morning television show "Fox and Friends," which has covered the matter extensively.Last week, another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, said he was planning to ask the President to pardon Gallagher if he is found guilty, citing new combat footage from a helmet camera.
Hunter's office said on Monday that the congressman hadn't spoken to Trump about a pardon for Gallagher, but "is hopeful that President Trump does take this action, it certainly is warranted."
Gallagher faces a slew of accusations connected to violations of military law while he was deployed to the Iraqi city of Mosul in 2017, including premeditated murder in the stabbing death of an injured person in Iraq. He has pleaded not guilty.
Trump Organization lawyer Marc Mukasey started working on the case in recent months, according to sources familiar with the situation.
Former NYPD Commissioner Bernard Kerik, a former business partner of Trump ally and former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, also is helping with Gallagher's case. Kerik, who once served three years in federal prison for charges including tax fraud and lying to officials, was nominated as homeland security secretary by President George W. Bush but withdrew from consideration due to potential tax violations.
He has regularly appeared on Fox News as a surrogate for the President.
Lead defense attorney Tim Parlatore confirmed Wednesday that Mukasey, who is also involved in legal efforts to block House lawmakers from accessing President Donald Trump's financial records, is "one of the attorneys on Chief Gallagher's team."
Kerik has been working with Gallagher's lawyers for "two to three months" as a strategist and investigator, one of the sources familiar with the situation said.
Parlatore previously represented Fox News host Pete Hegseth, who has privately encouraged the President to pardon some United States servicemen accused of war crimes, including Gallagher, a person familiar with the conversations told CNN on Tuesday.
Hegseth has not publicly disclosed his efforts to help the servicemen, despite discussing their cases on his show "Fox & Friends." The Daily Beast was first to report the news of Hegseth's efforts.
"I have represented him in the past," Parlatore said of the Fox host, adding that he is not currently involved in any active cases for Hegseth and that his ties to the Fox News host had nothing to do with him joining Gallagher's legal team.
"I was recommended to this case by Commissioner Kerik," Parlatore added, speaking to reporters in San Diego. Gallagher "brought us in to ... provide a more aggressive defense."
Parlatore said he does not have an issue with Hegseth using his platform to encourage the President to pardon Gallagher.
"If he wants to lobby the President for what he thinks is right, that's his prerogative. I didn't ask him and if he's doing that, I don't have a problem with it," he said.
CNN has reached out to the White House for comment.
Speaking to CNN on Thursday, Gallagher's wife, Andrea, said she didn't know who Mukasey and Kerik were before they joined the team and was unsure how exactly they ended up becoming part of it. She said she thought someone involved in the case met Kerik at an event and thought his experience with the law would be helpful.
"He was more of an advising role to our family," she said. Mukasey, she added, has a "supporting role, he's not our lead lawyer, he's not our main lawyer."
But it seems Kerik has had a hand in shaping Gallagher's defense team behind the scenes.
In addition to recommending Parlatore for the role of lead attorney, Kerik helped facilitate Mukasey's hiring after he expressed interest in becoming involved in the case, according to the source with knowledge of the situation.
Mukasey and other members of the defense team have not discussed Gallagher's case directly with the President or asked for a pardon, according to Parlatore. But he also insisted that it would be well within Trump's rights to get involved should he choose to do so.
"We have not asked the President to get involved ... We haven't had any communications," he said. "If the President chooses to act it will be on his own."
"The President has the power to pardon anybody either before or after a conviction," Parlatore added.
That authority would allow Trump to intervene if he decides that the merits and evidence of the case suggest "it should never have gone forward to begin with" and "should end," he said.
Trump's interest in the possible pardons was first reported by The New York Times, which also said the Trump administration had made requests for expedited pardon paperwork for a group of Marine Corps snipers accused of urinating on the corpses of Taliban fighters.
The newspaper said the administration had requested the process be complete by Memorial Day in time for a presidential announcement.
The Justice Department pardon office asked the US military for case files for at least two US service members accused of premeditated murder, including Gallagher and Army Maj. Matt Golsteyn, three US officials told CNN on Tuesday.
Golsteyn divulged his role in the killing of a bomb maker in Afghanistan during a job interview with the CIA and subsequently in a Fox News interview. The Army says the killing was premeditated, and Golsteyn is set to stand trial.
Gallagher's case has been championed by dozens of members of Congress, including some of Trump's staunchest supporters in the House of Representatives. In March, Trump discussed the matter with Rep. Ralph Norman, a South Carolina Republican, who tweeted about their conversation afterward.
Trump himself later tweeted that Gallagher would be moved to less restrictive confinement -- "In honor of his past service to our Country," he wrote -- adding Norman's Twitter handle and the handle of the morning television show "Fox and Friends," which has covered the matter extensively.Last week, another Republican lawmaker, Rep. Duncan Hunter of California, said he was planning to ask the President to pardon Gallagher if he is found guilty, citing new combat footage from a helmet camera.
Hunter's office said on Monday that the congressman hadn't spoken to Trump about a pardon for Gallagher, but "is hopeful that President Trump does take this action, it certainly is warranted."
Undocumented Trump workers hit back after getting fired despite years of service: ‘You knew these weren’t real papers!’
By Brad Reed - raw story
May 24, 2019
Two longtime employees who worked at a Trump golf club in New Jersey were recently fired after an E-Verify check showed they were not eligible to work legally in the United States.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the two men, who worked for years as cooks at Trump’s golf course in Colts Neck, NJ, slammed their former employer for hypocrisy by claiming the golf course knew all along they weren’t in the country legally.
“We’ve always told you these weren’t real papers,” fumed 46-year-old Juan Espinoza, one of the workers who was recently fired. “We’ve always told you the truth. You knew that.”
He then shamed President Donald Trump for attacking undocumented laborers after he successfully exploited them for years.
“It enrages you,” he said. “To hear [Trump] talking about Mexicans, and he had us working there, and he knows how much he exploits Mexicans.”
47-year-old Abelardo Montes, another worker fired from the golf course, told the Post that working at the clubs was hard because he didn’t receive health insurance, sick time or vacation like other workers received.
“I worked sick, with fevers, with headaches, with stomach pain,” he explained. “I had to keep working. I couldn’t lose a day. I had to pay my rent and my bills.”
Read the whole report here.
In an interview with the Washington Post, the two men, who worked for years as cooks at Trump’s golf course in Colts Neck, NJ, slammed their former employer for hypocrisy by claiming the golf course knew all along they weren’t in the country legally.
“We’ve always told you these weren’t real papers,” fumed 46-year-old Juan Espinoza, one of the workers who was recently fired. “We’ve always told you the truth. You knew that.”
He then shamed President Donald Trump for attacking undocumented laborers after he successfully exploited them for years.
“It enrages you,” he said. “To hear [Trump] talking about Mexicans, and he had us working there, and he knows how much he exploits Mexicans.”
47-year-old Abelardo Montes, another worker fired from the golf course, told the Post that working at the clubs was hard because he didn’t receive health insurance, sick time or vacation like other workers received.
“I worked sick, with fevers, with headaches, with stomach pain,” he explained. “I had to keep working. I couldn’t lose a day. I had to pay my rent and my bills.”
Read the whole report here.
US to strafe crucial nesting area for 3m birds with poison to eradicate mice
Midway Atoll to be bombarded with rodenticide after scientists and volunteers discovered seabirds with open wounds
World’s largest albatross colony at Midway Atoll. Photograph: Andy Collins/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries
Midway Atoll in the Pacific Ocean was the scene of a crucial naval battle in the second world war. It is now set for a very different sort of conflict – a bombing campaign to rid the area of mice.
The US government is moving ahead with a plan to strafe Midway with poison aimed at eradicating mice that are on a deadly rampage through one of the world’s most important sites for seabirds.
The three low-lying islands, fringing coral reefs and lagoons that make up the Midway Atoll refuge, located about 1,200 miles north-west of Honolulu, cover an area only slightly larger than New York City’s Central Park but are a crucial nesting area for around 3 million birds, including albatrosses and terns.
Over 70% of the world’s Laysan albatross are found on Midway including Wisdom, a 68-year-old creature believed to be the world’s oldest known wild bird. This year Wisdom hatched her 37th chick.
But in 2015 it became clear this Pacific idyll was under threat after scientists and volunteers discovered nesting birds with open wounds on their heads, necks and backs. Mice inadvertently introduced to Midway are responsible for the bites, with their victims essentially eaten alive. Dozens of seabirds have died or abandoned their nests as a result of the attacks.
“We’ve seen gruesome attacks on adult birds that are sitting on nests, causing big wounds that get infected,” said Patty Baiao, US program manager with Island Conservation, an environment group working on the project. “Albatross are long-lived and monogamous birds, so once you take a few adults out of the population you can have a significant impact.
“The mice are having an impact at an ecosystem level and it was clear something needed to be done.”
After considering various options the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for the conservation of Midway, opted to bombard the atoll with a rodenticide called Brodifacoum with the aim of wiping out the mice. The poison will be distributed via crews in helicopters.
The plan has been approved due to the understanding that the mice, but not the birds, will be attracted to the bait. The endangered Laysan ducks, which are present at Midway year-round, will be relocated to a mouse-free island for the duration of the project, which is due to start next year.
A further year will be required to determine if the assault on the mice has proved successful, thereby echoing the eradication of rodents on several other islands that have suffered wildlife declines.
“This approach uses a tool we know works with proved effects,” said Baiao. “Given the urgency we have, it’s the only realistic option.”
The US government is moving ahead with a plan to strafe Midway with poison aimed at eradicating mice that are on a deadly rampage through one of the world’s most important sites for seabirds.
The three low-lying islands, fringing coral reefs and lagoons that make up the Midway Atoll refuge, located about 1,200 miles north-west of Honolulu, cover an area only slightly larger than New York City’s Central Park but are a crucial nesting area for around 3 million birds, including albatrosses and terns.
Over 70% of the world’s Laysan albatross are found on Midway including Wisdom, a 68-year-old creature believed to be the world’s oldest known wild bird. This year Wisdom hatched her 37th chick.
But in 2015 it became clear this Pacific idyll was under threat after scientists and volunteers discovered nesting birds with open wounds on their heads, necks and backs. Mice inadvertently introduced to Midway are responsible for the bites, with their victims essentially eaten alive. Dozens of seabirds have died or abandoned their nests as a result of the attacks.
“We’ve seen gruesome attacks on adult birds that are sitting on nests, causing big wounds that get infected,” said Patty Baiao, US program manager with Island Conservation, an environment group working on the project. “Albatross are long-lived and monogamous birds, so once you take a few adults out of the population you can have a significant impact.
“The mice are having an impact at an ecosystem level and it was clear something needed to be done.”
After considering various options the US Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for the conservation of Midway, opted to bombard the atoll with a rodenticide called Brodifacoum with the aim of wiping out the mice. The poison will be distributed via crews in helicopters.
The plan has been approved due to the understanding that the mice, but not the birds, will be attracted to the bait. The endangered Laysan ducks, which are present at Midway year-round, will be relocated to a mouse-free island for the duration of the project, which is due to start next year.
A further year will be required to determine if the assault on the mice has proved successful, thereby echoing the eradication of rodents on several other islands that have suffered wildlife declines.
“This approach uses a tool we know works with proved effects,” said Baiao. “Given the urgency we have, it’s the only realistic option.”
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Trump and Ben Carson: King and court jester of the kakistocracy
Trump's clownish HUD secretary is a perfect emblem of his incompetent misrule, but the disorder is much larger
CHAUNCEY DEVEGA - salon
MAY 24, 2019 5:10PM (UTC)
Donald Trump is the leader of the American kakistocracy — a term that means rule by the stupid, ignorant, lazy and profoundly incompetent. Sophia A. McClennen predicted this accurately in a Salon essay published a full month before Trump was inaugurated. As business professor André Spicer described it in a Guardian op-ed, a kakistocracy is "the wicked disorder that can result when expertise and ethical judgment are aggressively and systematically pushed aside."
On Wednesday, in keeping with his ceremonial duties as king of the kakistocrats, Donald Trump stood at a lectern in the Rose Garden after reportedly throwing a temper tantrum during a (very brief) meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Trump proclaimed, "I don't do cover-ups" and announced that there would no trillion-dollar infrastructure bill as long as Democrats in Congress dared to investigate him.
Along with the seal of the President of the United States, Trump's lectern was festooned with a placard that read "no collusion" and "no obstruction," and included other supposedly favorable details about Robert Mueller's investigation, at least as massaged and misrepresented by Attorney General William Barr.
The net effect of Trump's press conference was akin to a scene from Mike Judge's satire "Idiocracy" but with one key difference: Judge's fictional President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho is more intelligent than Donald Trump, possesses more charisma and after his own fashion actually cares about the welfare of the United States.
Given his horrible public and private behavior and his gross defects in character and morals, Donald Trump's "no collusion, no obstruction" is the political equivalent of an attorney asking a defendant in court, "When did you stop beating your wife?" That the president of the United States must repeatedly deny engaging in criminal behavior is a de facto confession to virtually everything Trump has been accused of doing.
And of course Trump chose to lie, as usual. During his Wednesday press conference Trump chose a lie of omission: the other part of the ABC News infographic which he and his minions chose to discard detailed all of Trump's allies who have been charged, convicted or imprisoned because of Mueller's investigation.
A king has a court. This is especially true in a kakistocracy. Donald Trump's favorite jester of the moment is Ben Carson, the famed brain surgeon now turned secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
On Tuesday, Carson testified before Congress, displaying no evidence of the supposed intelligence that enabled him to become one of the country's most celebrated pediatric brain surgeons.
During his testimony, Carson could not answer basic questions about his job and what it entails. He appeared to lack even the most elemental expertise necessary to serve in a cabinet-level position — for any agency.
Carson was unable even to answer a simple question about foreclosures: Carson repeatedly confused the term "REO" (meaning real estate owned properties) with Oreo cookies.
In an effort to diffuse the laughter and dodge the barbs thrown at him for his amazing display of incompetence, Carson then tweeted a photo of himself smiling while holding a bag of Oreos.
A joke about a black conservative who works for a racist president proudly holding up a bag of Oreos writes itself. Unfortunately the joke is so obvious that it is rendered crude and dull, and would likely end up on the cutting room floor at "Saturday Night Live" or "The Jeffersons," or might have made the cut as a skit featuring Artie Lange's "That's My White Mama" character on "Mad TV."
Ben Carson is not the only jester in the court of the king of the kakistocracy. Donald Trump has filled key governmental positions, from the cabinet level down, with individuals who are manifestly unqualified for their jobs. This takes several forms. In some cases these people have no training for the jobs they have been assigned. Federal judges with lifetime appointments, for example, who possess little if any knowledge of the law and the Constitution. Their qualifications? Enforcing the will of the extreme right by overturning women's reproductive rights, smothering the civil and human rights of nonwhites, LGBTQ people and other groups, killing unions, overturning labor and environmental laws, and making it harder for Democrats to vote as a way of ensuring the Republican Party's continued rule.
There are other members of Trump's kakistocracy who may have the intelligence and ability to run portions of the government effectively but have no desire to do so. Why? Destroying American government and democracy is their primary goal. In the service of gangster capitalism, the government and the very idea of the commons must — as anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once put it — be shrunk down to the point it can be drowned in the bathtub. As Norm Ornstein said of the Trump regime in a 2017 essay in the Atlantic, "Awful as the grifterish mentality and behavior may be, worse is the other part of kakistocracy — inept, corrupt, and disruptive governance."
American kakistocracy as led and enforced by Donald Trump and his agents is not a simple matter of incompetent and broken governance. A kakistocracy has a broad impact on society. Writing at openDemocracy, Amra Ali explains it this way:
Therefore, kakistocracy will not only capture rule by the “stupid” and the “worst,” but how they push human relationships, that form the controlling governmental machinery, into a degenerative state.
The American kakistocracy is not an indictment of Donald Trump and other members of the country's elite alone. Trump's movement would have little power or legitimacy if there were not many millions of Americans who share his values. (Most polls continue to report that nearly 90 percent of Republicans support him.)
Nearly two and a half years into Trump's regime, it is obvious that his voters and other rank-and-file supporters love him. They love him for his ignorance, boorishness, crudeness, anti-rationality, irrationality, the fact that he proudly does not read and other willful deficits of the intellect and mind. In their eyes, these are not disqualifications but positive attributes that elevate him above all other leaders.
Philosopher Henry A. Giroux summed much of this up in devastating detail in a recent essay here at Salon:
Thinking is now viewed as an act of stupidity, and ignorance a virtue. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture, as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two-thirds of the American public believe that creationism should be taught in schools and most of the Republican Party in Congress do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, making the U.S. the laughingstock of the world. Politicians endlessly lie, knowing that the public is addicted to extreme violence and shock, which allow them to drown in overstimulation and live in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images.
News has become entertainment and echoes reality rather than interrogating it. ...
Unsurprisingly, education in the larger culture has become a disimagination machine, a tool for legitimating ignorance that now plays a central role in the formation of an authoritarian politics that has gutted the ideologies, policies and institutions that are crucial to a substantive and thriving democracy.
I am not talking about the kind of anti-intellectualism that has a long history in the United States. I am pointing to a more lethal form of ignorance fueled by a manufactured type of illiteracy that is often ignored. What I am referring to is a mode of illiteracy that is both a scourge and a political tool power designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking, and the capacity for critical thought.
In tragic fashion, Donald Trump is proof that the myth of American meritocracy may, if turned upside down, actually be true: Anyone can become president, if he is a rich white man craven and stupid enough to appeal to the worst instincts of Americans and rule over a kakistocracy.
RELATED: HUD proposes gutting trans protections one day after Ben Carson promised it wouldn't
On Wednesday, in keeping with his ceremonial duties as king of the kakistocrats, Donald Trump stood at a lectern in the Rose Garden after reportedly throwing a temper tantrum during a (very brief) meeting with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer. Trump proclaimed, "I don't do cover-ups" and announced that there would no trillion-dollar infrastructure bill as long as Democrats in Congress dared to investigate him.
Along with the seal of the President of the United States, Trump's lectern was festooned with a placard that read "no collusion" and "no obstruction," and included other supposedly favorable details about Robert Mueller's investigation, at least as massaged and misrepresented by Attorney General William Barr.
The net effect of Trump's press conference was akin to a scene from Mike Judge's satire "Idiocracy" but with one key difference: Judge's fictional President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho is more intelligent than Donald Trump, possesses more charisma and after his own fashion actually cares about the welfare of the United States.
Given his horrible public and private behavior and his gross defects in character and morals, Donald Trump's "no collusion, no obstruction" is the political equivalent of an attorney asking a defendant in court, "When did you stop beating your wife?" That the president of the United States must repeatedly deny engaging in criminal behavior is a de facto confession to virtually everything Trump has been accused of doing.
And of course Trump chose to lie, as usual. During his Wednesday press conference Trump chose a lie of omission: the other part of the ABC News infographic which he and his minions chose to discard detailed all of Trump's allies who have been charged, convicted or imprisoned because of Mueller's investigation.
A king has a court. This is especially true in a kakistocracy. Donald Trump's favorite jester of the moment is Ben Carson, the famed brain surgeon now turned secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
On Tuesday, Carson testified before Congress, displaying no evidence of the supposed intelligence that enabled him to become one of the country's most celebrated pediatric brain surgeons.
During his testimony, Carson could not answer basic questions about his job and what it entails. He appeared to lack even the most elemental expertise necessary to serve in a cabinet-level position — for any agency.
Carson was unable even to answer a simple question about foreclosures: Carson repeatedly confused the term "REO" (meaning real estate owned properties) with Oreo cookies.
In an effort to diffuse the laughter and dodge the barbs thrown at him for his amazing display of incompetence, Carson then tweeted a photo of himself smiling while holding a bag of Oreos.
A joke about a black conservative who works for a racist president proudly holding up a bag of Oreos writes itself. Unfortunately the joke is so obvious that it is rendered crude and dull, and would likely end up on the cutting room floor at "Saturday Night Live" or "The Jeffersons," or might have made the cut as a skit featuring Artie Lange's "That's My White Mama" character on "Mad TV."
Ben Carson is not the only jester in the court of the king of the kakistocracy. Donald Trump has filled key governmental positions, from the cabinet level down, with individuals who are manifestly unqualified for their jobs. This takes several forms. In some cases these people have no training for the jobs they have been assigned. Federal judges with lifetime appointments, for example, who possess little if any knowledge of the law and the Constitution. Their qualifications? Enforcing the will of the extreme right by overturning women's reproductive rights, smothering the civil and human rights of nonwhites, LGBTQ people and other groups, killing unions, overturning labor and environmental laws, and making it harder for Democrats to vote as a way of ensuring the Republican Party's continued rule.
There are other members of Trump's kakistocracy who may have the intelligence and ability to run portions of the government effectively but have no desire to do so. Why? Destroying American government and democracy is their primary goal. In the service of gangster capitalism, the government and the very idea of the commons must — as anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist once put it — be shrunk down to the point it can be drowned in the bathtub. As Norm Ornstein said of the Trump regime in a 2017 essay in the Atlantic, "Awful as the grifterish mentality and behavior may be, worse is the other part of kakistocracy — inept, corrupt, and disruptive governance."
American kakistocracy as led and enforced by Donald Trump and his agents is not a simple matter of incompetent and broken governance. A kakistocracy has a broad impact on society. Writing at openDemocracy, Amra Ali explains it this way:
Therefore, kakistocracy will not only capture rule by the “stupid” and the “worst,” but how they push human relationships, that form the controlling governmental machinery, into a degenerative state.
The American kakistocracy is not an indictment of Donald Trump and other members of the country's elite alone. Trump's movement would have little power or legitimacy if there were not many millions of Americans who share his values. (Most polls continue to report that nearly 90 percent of Republicans support him.)
Nearly two and a half years into Trump's regime, it is obvious that his voters and other rank-and-file supporters love him. They love him for his ignorance, boorishness, crudeness, anti-rationality, irrationality, the fact that he proudly does not read and other willful deficits of the intellect and mind. In their eyes, these are not disqualifications but positive attributes that elevate him above all other leaders.
Philosopher Henry A. Giroux summed much of this up in devastating detail in a recent essay here at Salon:
Thinking is now viewed as an act of stupidity, and ignorance a virtue. All traces of critical thought appear only at the margins of the culture, as ignorance becomes the primary organizing principle of American society. For instance, two-thirds of the American public believe that creationism should be taught in schools and most of the Republican Party in Congress do not believe that climate change is caused by human activity, making the U.S. the laughingstock of the world. Politicians endlessly lie, knowing that the public is addicted to extreme violence and shock, which allow them to drown in overstimulation and live in an ever-accelerating overflow of information and images.
News has become entertainment and echoes reality rather than interrogating it. ...
Unsurprisingly, education in the larger culture has become a disimagination machine, a tool for legitimating ignorance that now plays a central role in the formation of an authoritarian politics that has gutted the ideologies, policies and institutions that are crucial to a substantive and thriving democracy.
I am not talking about the kind of anti-intellectualism that has a long history in the United States. I am pointing to a more lethal form of ignorance fueled by a manufactured type of illiteracy that is often ignored. What I am referring to is a mode of illiteracy that is both a scourge and a political tool power designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking, and the capacity for critical thought.
In tragic fashion, Donald Trump is proof that the myth of American meritocracy may, if turned upside down, actually be true: Anyone can become president, if he is a rich white man craven and stupid enough to appeal to the worst instincts of Americans and rule over a kakistocracy.
RELATED: HUD proposes gutting trans protections one day after Ben Carson promised it wouldn't
Republicans spent more than $4 million at properties bearing President Trump's name: report
More than a quarter of the money spent has come from Trump's own presidential campaign, according to a new analysis
SHIRA TARLO - SALON
MAY 24, 2019 4:21PM (UTC)
Republicans have spent more than $4 million at hotel, golf and vineyard properties that bear President Donald Trump's name since he was inaugurated in January 2017, according to a report published Friday by The Hill.
More than three dozen members of Congress have held fundraisers or spent the night at the president's properties, the news outlet reported, citing filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
More than a quarter of the money spent has come from Trump's own presidential campaign, which has reportedly paid his businesses nearly $1.5 million over the last two years.
Watchdog groups and lawmakers have raised concerns over the possibility that Trump could be illegally profiting off of the presidency as candidates, foreign governments and corporate interest groups friendly to the president's agenda have booked rooms and gathered at Trump properties in an apparent attempt to curry favor with the administration.
The Trump International Hotel in Washington, located just blocks from the White house, has particularly emerged as a source of tension. The president's annual financial disclosure, released last week by the White House, revealed Trump generated $40.8 million in income from the property.
Attorneys general in the District of Columbia and Maryland have accused Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a sitting president from accepting gifts or payments from states or foreign governments without congressional approval. (The Trump Organization announced last February that it donated profits generated from conducting hotel revenuewith foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, although it declined to reveal the amount of the contributions and how those amounts were calculated. It also refused to identify those foreign customers.)
Earlier this year, the inspector general of the General Services Administration (GSA) said the agency ignored guidelines detailed in the U.S. Constitution by allowing the Trump Organization to maintain its government-issued lease of the Trump International Hotel after Trump became president.
"The Trump Hotel is a glaring physical symbol of the Trump Administration's refusal to play by the same rules as everyone else," House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said at the time.
Still, the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit a campaign from spending money at a company that benefits a candidate — and the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) said they did not see anything wrong with hosting events at the president's properties.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told The Hill that the campaign "pays market rates for venues, and we report all expenditures as required by law to the FEC." RNC spokesman Michael Joyce meanwhile said the party's donors "enjoy visiting Trump properties and have also pointed to the security, convenience and price as factors" in the decision to hold formal RNC meetings at the properties.
The Hill noted Republican spending at the president's properties has surged significantly since Trump took the helm at the White House. The news outlet pointed to an analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog organization, which found Republican campaigns spent only $468,382 at Trump-owned properties in the dozen years before he announced his presidential campaign in 2015. Since Trump became president, more than 150 political groups, including campaigns and committees, spent nearly $5 million at Trump businesses, the CREW report found.
"This isn't a continuation of a trend. It's not as though Trump properties were a draw for fundraisers in the past," Robert Maguire, CREW's research director, told The Hill. "Trump came into office presenting an unprecedented set of conflicts of interest stemming from his refusal to divest from his businesses. What this spending shows is that far from being a check on these conflicts of interest, his political allies embraced it and fueled it. He's actively trying to profit off of the presidency."
More than three dozen members of Congress have held fundraisers or spent the night at the president's properties, the news outlet reported, citing filings with the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
More than a quarter of the money spent has come from Trump's own presidential campaign, which has reportedly paid his businesses nearly $1.5 million over the last two years.
Watchdog groups and lawmakers have raised concerns over the possibility that Trump could be illegally profiting off of the presidency as candidates, foreign governments and corporate interest groups friendly to the president's agenda have booked rooms and gathered at Trump properties in an apparent attempt to curry favor with the administration.
The Trump International Hotel in Washington, located just blocks from the White house, has particularly emerged as a source of tension. The president's annual financial disclosure, released last week by the White House, revealed Trump generated $40.8 million in income from the property.
Attorneys general in the District of Columbia and Maryland have accused Trump of violating the U.S. Constitution's Emoluments Clause, which prohibits a sitting president from accepting gifts or payments from states or foreign governments without congressional approval. (The Trump Organization announced last February that it donated profits generated from conducting hotel revenuewith foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury, although it declined to reveal the amount of the contributions and how those amounts were calculated. It also refused to identify those foreign customers.)
Earlier this year, the inspector general of the General Services Administration (GSA) said the agency ignored guidelines detailed in the U.S. Constitution by allowing the Trump Organization to maintain its government-issued lease of the Trump International Hotel after Trump became president.
"The Trump Hotel is a glaring physical symbol of the Trump Administration's refusal to play by the same rules as everyone else," House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings said at the time.
Still, the U.S. Constitution does not prohibit a campaign from spending money at a company that benefits a candidate — and the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee (RNC) said they did not see anything wrong with hosting events at the president's properties.
Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh told The Hill that the campaign "pays market rates for venues, and we report all expenditures as required by law to the FEC." RNC spokesman Michael Joyce meanwhile said the party's donors "enjoy visiting Trump properties and have also pointed to the security, convenience and price as factors" in the decision to hold formal RNC meetings at the properties.
The Hill noted Republican spending at the president's properties has surged significantly since Trump took the helm at the White House. The news outlet pointed to an analysis by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW), a watchdog organization, which found Republican campaigns spent only $468,382 at Trump-owned properties in the dozen years before he announced his presidential campaign in 2015. Since Trump became president, more than 150 political groups, including campaigns and committees, spent nearly $5 million at Trump businesses, the CREW report found.
"This isn't a continuation of a trend. It's not as though Trump properties were a draw for fundraisers in the past," Robert Maguire, CREW's research director, told The Hill. "Trump came into office presenting an unprecedented set of conflicts of interest stemming from his refusal to divest from his businesses. What this spending shows is that far from being a check on these conflicts of interest, his political allies embraced it and fueled it. He's actively trying to profit off of the presidency."
Devastating analysis shows Trump’s trade war has massively helped Mexico — while hurting America
By Brad Reed - raw story
May 24, 2019
President Donald Trump’s trade war is wreaking havoc on many American farmers — but it turns out that Mexico is actually benefiting.
Business Insider reports on a new analysis by the International Monetary Fund showing that imports from Mexico, which Trump has regularly attacked for supposedly “taking advantage” of the United States, have skyrocketed ever since Trump began slapping massive tariffs on products imported from China.
“US imports from Mexico have also offset those from China over the past year,” Business Insider writes. “After President Donald Trump’s administration imposed tariffs on $16 billion worth of Chinese products last year, US imports from China decreased by $850 million, and those from Mexico increased by a similar amount.”
Business Insider also reports that the IMF has found that American businesses are paying “almost entirely” for the tariffs enacted by the president, which completely undercuts his claims that his tariffs are only hurting China.
“Tariff revenue collected has been borne almost entirely by US importers,” the IMF said while citing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There was almost no change in the (ex-tariff) border prices of imports from China, and a sharp jump in the post-tariff import prices matching the magnitude of the tariff.”
Business Insider reports on a new analysis by the International Monetary Fund showing that imports from Mexico, which Trump has regularly attacked for supposedly “taking advantage” of the United States, have skyrocketed ever since Trump began slapping massive tariffs on products imported from China.
“US imports from Mexico have also offset those from China over the past year,” Business Insider writes. “After President Donald Trump’s administration imposed tariffs on $16 billion worth of Chinese products last year, US imports from China decreased by $850 million, and those from Mexico increased by a similar amount.”
Business Insider also reports that the IMF has found that American businesses are paying “almost entirely” for the tariffs enacted by the president, which completely undercuts his claims that his tariffs are only hurting China.
“Tariff revenue collected has been borne almost entirely by US importers,” the IMF said while citing data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There was almost no change in the (ex-tariff) border prices of imports from China, and a sharp jump in the post-tariff import prices matching the magnitude of the tariff.”
*bites from real news - 5/24/2019*
*Utah judge suspended for 6 months without pay for criticizing Trump in private Facebook posts
A judge in Utah this week was suspended for six months without pay because he criticized President Donald Trump in his private Facebook posts.
*Jewish Americans will never vote for Trump no matter how much he sucks up to Israel: columnist
In a column for the Washington Post, conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin disabused Donald Trump of the notion that he will ever gain the support of Jewish voters because they find his conduct appalling.
*Federal judge blocks Mississippi abortion law
In the abortion debate, when does life begin? Washington (CNN)A federal judge blocked a Mississippi law on Friday that forbids abortion after the detection of a fet ... (CNN)
*Missouri Governor Signs Bill That Ban Abortions From the Eighth Week of Pregnancy Onward
Jefferson City, Mo. (AP) -- Missouri Gov. Mike Parson on Friday signed a bill that bans abortions on or beyond the eighth weeks of pregnancy without exceptions for cases of rape or incest, making it among the most restrictive abortion policies in the ... (Bloomberg/AP)
*toxic america: ‘It’s killing us’Why firefighters are battling to ban flame retardants
Massachusetts has failed to sign a bill banning flame retardants into law despite endorsement of lawmakers, pediatricians and some firefighters
*Flame retardants: What to know about chemicals in furniture
*Plastics Industry on Track to Burn 14 Percent of World’s Remaining Carbon Budget
by Sharon Kelly, DeSmogBlog - truthout
*Separated by Design: How Some of America’s Richest Towns Fight Affordable Housing
In southwest Connecticut, the gap between rich and poor is wider than anywhere else in the country. Invisible walls created by local zoning boards and the state government block affordable housing and, by extension, the people who need it.
*THE TURBOTAX TRAP TurboTax: Uses A “Military Discount” to Trick Troops Into Paying to File Their Taxes
Intuit, the maker of TurboTax, created and promoted a “military discount” that charges service members who are eligible to file for free.
*PIPELINE OPPONENTS STRIKE BACK AGAINST ANTI-PROTEST LAWS
TWO LAWSUITS IN LOUISIANA AND SOUTH DAKOTA ARE THE FIRST SIGNS OF RESISTANCE TO EFFORTS BY THE FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY TO CRIMINALIZE PIPELINE PROTESTS.
*Race and money - South Dakota: A promise unfulfilled Water pipeline stops short for Sioux reservation
After 25 years and a half-billion dollars, only half of the project’s water delivered to Pine Ridge Reservation comes from the Missouri River – unlike supplies for white ranchers
*Pretty hurts Are chemicals in beauty products making us ill?
Cosmetics and personal care items women use every day are packed with a constellation of chemicals that health advocates say could be connected to a host of health problems
*An (Even More) Inconvenient Truth: Why Carbon Credits For Forest Preservation May Be Worse Than Nothing
How the hunger for these offsets is blinding us to the mounting pile of evidence that they haven't — and won't — deliver the environmental benefit they promise
*A False Answer, a Big Political Connection and $260 Million in Tax Breaks
Holtec International gave a false answer in a 2014 New Jersey tax break application connected to political boss George E. Norcross III, a Holtec board member. Five days after WNYC and ProPublica asked about it, lawyers called it “inadvertent” and asked the state to correct it.
*America's Reproductive Slaves
BY CHRIS HEDGES - truthdig
America’s corporate state has no intention of funding programs and building institutions to ease the burden of rearing and nurturing children. Yes, the corporate state needs young bodies as fodder for the bloated military and endless foreign wars.
*America was never a Christian nation: Constitutional attorney demolishes right-wing myths about the Founding Fathers
It’s not an idea that is based on facts or history or reality. It is revisionist, and it is, I think, one of the greatest threats our country faces right now.
Where do you think the proposed $15 billion comes from?
Judge Orders Voter Fraud Alarmist To Be Deposed Again After Docs Raise New Questions
By Tierney Sneed - tpm
May 24, 2019 12:43 pm
ALEXANDRIA, VA — J. Christian Adams — a former member of President Trump’s voter fraud commission who has been sued for defamation for his reports claiming mass fraud — will have to sit for another deposition in the case, after a last-minute discovery dump raised new questions about how the reports came together.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis said at a hearing Friday that he was granting the plaintiffs’ request to reopen the deposition. He said the topics should be limited to the materials —some 1,000 pages of documents — that were turned over after Adams had initially been deposed. He declined Adam’s attorney’s request to narrow the deposition any farther than that, pointing to procedural rules designed to help parties avoid and deal with any disagreements within a deposition.
“That’s how the process works,” Davis sternly told Adams’ attorney, noting that the court does not have an “extrasensory” perception of what issues may arise during a deposition.
Adams and his group the Public Legal Interest Foundation were sued over reportsreleased in 2016 and 2017 called Alien Invasion and Alien Invasion II, respectively. The reports alleged that thousands of noncitizens had been removed from Virginia’s voter rolls and included voting records, which showed the alleged noncitizens’ personal information such as addresses, birthdays and social security numbers. The lawsuit, which also alleges voter intimidation, was brought by people named in the report who were in fact citizens, as well as by the Richmond Chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
To argue for reopening the deposition, the plaintiffs in a filing last week pointed to an email from a volunteer who helped Adams assemble the report. In it, the volunteer Steven Albertson referenced a 10-15 percent rate of people they identified as noncitizens who were actually citizens eventually re-instated on the rolls. Albertson said in a deposition that the source of that estimate was likely Adams — a claim Adams denies.
The plaintiffs also pointed to an email exchange — turned over the hour before the discovery deadline — that Adams had with other conservative activists including Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Adams’ attorneys in a filing Wednesday suggested that the exchange was made public by the plaintiffs in an effort to “silence and smear” anti-voter fraud advocates. The filing called out TPM by name for reporting on the Thomas emails. The emails came up only briefly at Friday’s hearing. The plaintiffs, represented on Friday by Zachery Martin, defended their inclusion of the emails in their filing because in them, Adams discussed the same Voting Rights Act voter intimidation provision he is now accused of violating.
Adams was not present at Friday’s hearing.
Davis was visibly impatient with many of the arguments put forward by Adams’ attorney, Michael Lockerby, as to why the deposition should not be re-opened.
As Lockerby tried to explain why the documents put forward by the plaintiffs weren’t relevant, Davis told him, “I don’t care.”
“To discuss four out of 1,000 [pages] is not going to persuade this court,” the judge said.
When Lockerby claimed that, “if anyone was surprised” by the current situation, “it was us,” Davis pushed back and explained the position that the last minute discovery had put the plaintiffs in.
“That’s surprise,” the judge said.
Davis refused to limit the deposition to less than a full day. He also declined to limit it to just the email exchanges involving Adams. He said it would be fair game that Adams be deposed about any hypothetical discussion between two other people that said they knew he was lying.
However, Davis also showed some skepticism towards the plaintiffs and particularly towards their claim that PILF’s fundraising was relevant to their case. Breaking down how PILF raises money could be a “waste of everybody’s time” the judge said.
“I don’t want a whole bunch of phone calls in chambers because parties can’t agree what’s relevant or not,” Davis warned.
The case is currently set to go to trial in September. At the end of Friday’s hearing. Davis asked the parties if they had started discussing a potential settlement. Lockerby said they were working on scheduling a settlement conference.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Ivan Davis said at a hearing Friday that he was granting the plaintiffs’ request to reopen the deposition. He said the topics should be limited to the materials —some 1,000 pages of documents — that were turned over after Adams had initially been deposed. He declined Adam’s attorney’s request to narrow the deposition any farther than that, pointing to procedural rules designed to help parties avoid and deal with any disagreements within a deposition.
“That’s how the process works,” Davis sternly told Adams’ attorney, noting that the court does not have an “extrasensory” perception of what issues may arise during a deposition.
Adams and his group the Public Legal Interest Foundation were sued over reportsreleased in 2016 and 2017 called Alien Invasion and Alien Invasion II, respectively. The reports alleged that thousands of noncitizens had been removed from Virginia’s voter rolls and included voting records, which showed the alleged noncitizens’ personal information such as addresses, birthdays and social security numbers. The lawsuit, which also alleges voter intimidation, was brought by people named in the report who were in fact citizens, as well as by the Richmond Chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
To argue for reopening the deposition, the plaintiffs in a filing last week pointed to an email from a volunteer who helped Adams assemble the report. In it, the volunteer Steven Albertson referenced a 10-15 percent rate of people they identified as noncitizens who were actually citizens eventually re-instated on the rolls. Albertson said in a deposition that the source of that estimate was likely Adams — a claim Adams denies.
The plaintiffs also pointed to an email exchange — turned over the hour before the discovery deadline — that Adams had with other conservative activists including Ginni Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.
Adams’ attorneys in a filing Wednesday suggested that the exchange was made public by the plaintiffs in an effort to “silence and smear” anti-voter fraud advocates. The filing called out TPM by name for reporting on the Thomas emails. The emails came up only briefly at Friday’s hearing. The plaintiffs, represented on Friday by Zachery Martin, defended their inclusion of the emails in their filing because in them, Adams discussed the same Voting Rights Act voter intimidation provision he is now accused of violating.
Adams was not present at Friday’s hearing.
Davis was visibly impatient with many of the arguments put forward by Adams’ attorney, Michael Lockerby, as to why the deposition should not be re-opened.
As Lockerby tried to explain why the documents put forward by the plaintiffs weren’t relevant, Davis told him, “I don’t care.”
“To discuss four out of 1,000 [pages] is not going to persuade this court,” the judge said.
When Lockerby claimed that, “if anyone was surprised” by the current situation, “it was us,” Davis pushed back and explained the position that the last minute discovery had put the plaintiffs in.
“That’s surprise,” the judge said.
Davis refused to limit the deposition to less than a full day. He also declined to limit it to just the email exchanges involving Adams. He said it would be fair game that Adams be deposed about any hypothetical discussion between two other people that said they knew he was lying.
However, Davis also showed some skepticism towards the plaintiffs and particularly towards their claim that PILF’s fundraising was relevant to their case. Breaking down how PILF raises money could be a “waste of everybody’s time” the judge said.
“I don’t want a whole bunch of phone calls in chambers because parties can’t agree what’s relevant or not,” Davis warned.
The case is currently set to go to trial in September. At the end of Friday’s hearing. Davis asked the parties if they had started discussing a potential settlement. Lockerby said they were working on scheduling a settlement conference.
Tensions flare in Texas Capitol over new Sandra Bland video
Paul J. Weber, Associated Press - chron
Updated 2:32 pm CDT, Friday, May 24, 2019
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas authorities on Friday denied withholding a cellphone video of Sandra Bland's confrontational traffic stop, responding to a Democratic legislator's heated questions about why the 39-second clip never publicly surfaced until now.
Bland, a 28-year-old black woman from outside Chicago, had used her phone in 2015 to briefly film a white state trooper as he drew a stun gun and yelled "I will light you up!" while ordering her out of the car. She was dead three days later, hanging in her jail cell outside Houston.
"The Department of Public Safety has not illegally withheld evidence from Sandra Bland's family or her legal team," said Phillip Adkins, general counsel of the agency.
The video had not been publicly seen until it was aired this month by a Dallas television station, and both lawmakers and Bland's family say they had also never seen the clip . They say the video proves that Trooper Brian Encinia had no reason to fear for his life and questioned whether he should have faced charges beyond perjury.
Democratic presidential contenders in the crowded 2020 field have also reacted to the video with calls for accountability and criminal justice reforms .
Explanations by state officials were challenged, often sharply, by Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, who said he never received the video despite asking for all evidence two years as chairman of the House Committee on County Affairs. He told Adkins he was handed a jumbled "data dump" of four discs and said the description of Bland's cellphone video in the state's investigative report wasn't an honest account.
"I disagree with you. I think it's a fair and accurate description of the video," Adkins said.
Coleman interrupted, talking over him.
"You can disagree all day long, because I don't have lying eyes, sir," he said. "I've looked into this more than anyone."
Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal of Chicago, attended the hearing at the Texas Capitol but did not testify. She told reporters afterward she heard "a lot of discrepancies" at the hearing but declined further comment.
Encinia, the trooper, was fired after being indicted for perjury and said he came to fear for his safety after stopping Bland for failing to signal a lane change. The perjury charge was later dropped in exchange for Encinia agreeing to never work in law enforcement again.
Coleman said Encinia "got off light" and accused state officials of not being ethically forthcoming with their handling of the video. Adkins said they have documents showing that a thumb drive with the cellphone video had been sent by prosecutors in 2015 to Cannon Lambert, the Bland's family attorney. Lambert has said he never saw the video in evidence that was turned over.
The hearing had been quickly arranged before the Texas Legislature adjourns Monday until 2021. One proposal that could still reach Gov. Greg Abbott's desk would make it more difficult to jail people for low-level misdemeanors, which some lawmakers have sought in the wake of Bland's death. Law enforcement groups, however, are fighting the measure.
In 2017, Coleman passed a "Sandra Bland Act" that included de-escalation training, independent investigations of county jail deaths and more racial profiling data. Advocates for criminal justice reforms have praised the changes, but the end product disappointed Bland's family, who felt it didn't address the circumstances leading up to her death.
Bland, a 28-year-old black woman from outside Chicago, had used her phone in 2015 to briefly film a white state trooper as he drew a stun gun and yelled "I will light you up!" while ordering her out of the car. She was dead three days later, hanging in her jail cell outside Houston.
"The Department of Public Safety has not illegally withheld evidence from Sandra Bland's family or her legal team," said Phillip Adkins, general counsel of the agency.
The video had not been publicly seen until it was aired this month by a Dallas television station, and both lawmakers and Bland's family say they had also never seen the clip . They say the video proves that Trooper Brian Encinia had no reason to fear for his life and questioned whether he should have faced charges beyond perjury.
Democratic presidential contenders in the crowded 2020 field have also reacted to the video with calls for accountability and criminal justice reforms .
Explanations by state officials were challenged, often sharply, by Democratic state Rep. Garnet Coleman, who said he never received the video despite asking for all evidence two years as chairman of the House Committee on County Affairs. He told Adkins he was handed a jumbled "data dump" of four discs and said the description of Bland's cellphone video in the state's investigative report wasn't an honest account.
"I disagree with you. I think it's a fair and accurate description of the video," Adkins said.
Coleman interrupted, talking over him.
"You can disagree all day long, because I don't have lying eyes, sir," he said. "I've looked into this more than anyone."
Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal of Chicago, attended the hearing at the Texas Capitol but did not testify. She told reporters afterward she heard "a lot of discrepancies" at the hearing but declined further comment.
Encinia, the trooper, was fired after being indicted for perjury and said he came to fear for his safety after stopping Bland for failing to signal a lane change. The perjury charge was later dropped in exchange for Encinia agreeing to never work in law enforcement again.
Coleman said Encinia "got off light" and accused state officials of not being ethically forthcoming with their handling of the video. Adkins said they have documents showing that a thumb drive with the cellphone video had been sent by prosecutors in 2015 to Cannon Lambert, the Bland's family attorney. Lambert has said he never saw the video in evidence that was turned over.
The hearing had been quickly arranged before the Texas Legislature adjourns Monday until 2021. One proposal that could still reach Gov. Greg Abbott's desk would make it more difficult to jail people for low-level misdemeanors, which some lawmakers have sought in the wake of Bland's death. Law enforcement groups, however, are fighting the measure.
In 2017, Coleman passed a "Sandra Bland Act" that included de-escalation training, independent investigations of county jail deaths and more racial profiling data. Advocates for criminal justice reforms have praised the changes, but the end product disappointed Bland's family, who felt it didn't address the circumstances leading up to her death.
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THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS DECLARING A FAKE EMERGENCY TO SELL WEAPONS TO SAUDI ARABIA
Alex Emmons - the intercept
May 24 2019, 2:17 p.m
THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION chose the Friday afternoon before Memorial Day weekend to invoke an obscure state-of-emergency provision that would allow it to sell billions of dollars in weapons to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates without giving Congress a chance to block the sale.
A Democratic congressional source told The Intercept on Friday that the administration was using the measure to clear a backlog of more than 20 proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, many of which would be blocked if they came to a vote in the Senate.
Under the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, the State Department must notify Congress 30 days before concluding an arms sale, which gives Congress the chance to vote on halting the weapons transfer. Under the rarely used provision, however, the president can certify that “an emergency exists” and that an immediate transfer is necessary for “the national security interests of the United States.”
In a statement on Friday, Sen. Bob Menedez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that in notifying Congress of its plans, the Trump administration had “described years of malign Iranian behavior but failed to identify what actually constitutes an emergency today.”
Since 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been involved in an intervention in Yemen, aimed at restoring the former president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power. The intervention’s U.S.-supported bombing campaign has come under heavy criticism for repeatedly destroying civilian structures, including homes, markets, factories, water treatment plants, schools, and hospitals.
Menendez previously held up $2 billion in sales of precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over human rights concerns.
In the past, presidents who invoked the provision have been able to point to time-sensitive emergencies that justified going around Congress. In the days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, for example, President George H.W. Bush invoked it to transfer M60 tanks and F-15 aircraft to Saudi Arabia to secure its northeastern border.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who warned days ago that the Trump administration would try to circumvent Congress, said that President Donald Trump is only using the loophole because he knows he cannot sell weapons to Saudi Arabia any other way.
“There is no new ‘emergency’ reason to sell bombs to the Saudis to drop in Yemen, and doing so only perpetuates the humanitarian crisis there,” Murphy said in a statement Friday.
The move has also alarmed arms control advocates, who have argued for restrictions on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, especially in the wake of the murder last year of Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, told The Intercept that Congress should have a hand in reigning in arms sales.
“There’s a reason why the arms trade has a process where congressional involvement is mandated,” Abramson said. “It’s exceedingly dangerous because these are life-and-death materials. It’s good if there’s a check and balance system.”
A Democratic congressional source told The Intercept on Friday that the administration was using the measure to clear a backlog of more than 20 proposed arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, many of which would be blocked if they came to a vote in the Senate.
Under the 1976 Arms Export Control Act, the State Department must notify Congress 30 days before concluding an arms sale, which gives Congress the chance to vote on halting the weapons transfer. Under the rarely used provision, however, the president can certify that “an emergency exists” and that an immediate transfer is necessary for “the national security interests of the United States.”
In a statement on Friday, Sen. Bob Menedez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that in notifying Congress of its plans, the Trump administration had “described years of malign Iranian behavior but failed to identify what actually constitutes an emergency today.”
Since 2015, Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been involved in an intervention in Yemen, aimed at restoring the former president, Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi, to power. The intervention’s U.S.-supported bombing campaign has come under heavy criticism for repeatedly destroying civilian structures, including homes, markets, factories, water treatment plants, schools, and hospitals.
Menendez previously held up $2 billion in sales of precision-guided bombs to Saudi Arabia and the UAE over human rights concerns.
In the past, presidents who invoked the provision have been able to point to time-sensitive emergencies that justified going around Congress. In the days after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, for example, President George H.W. Bush invoked it to transfer M60 tanks and F-15 aircraft to Saudi Arabia to secure its northeastern border.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, who warned days ago that the Trump administration would try to circumvent Congress, said that President Donald Trump is only using the loophole because he knows he cannot sell weapons to Saudi Arabia any other way.
“There is no new ‘emergency’ reason to sell bombs to the Saudis to drop in Yemen, and doing so only perpetuates the humanitarian crisis there,” Murphy said in a statement Friday.
The move has also alarmed arms control advocates, who have argued for restrictions on arms sales to Saudi Arabia, especially in the wake of the murder last year of Saudi dissident and Washington Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi.
Jeff Abramson, a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association, told The Intercept that Congress should have a hand in reigning in arms sales.
“There’s a reason why the arms trade has a process where congressional involvement is mandated,” Abramson said. “It’s exceedingly dangerous because these are life-and-death materials. It’s good if there’s a check and balance system.”
Facebook Refuses to Remove Fake Pelosi Video From Platform
Danika FearsBreaking News Editor
Daily beast - cheat sheet
Facebook says it will not remove the viral video of Nancy Pelosi that was edited to make it appear as if the House speaker was slurring her speech. The social-media platform, which has been struggling to combat the rapid spread of disinformation online, told The Guardian that it will instead include a link with the video that directs users to a fact-checking site that says the footage is misleading. Facebook will also make sure that the video does not appear at the top of users’ news feeds, the newspaper reports. “There’s a tension here: We work hard to find the right balance between encouraging free expression and promoting a safe and authentic community, and we believe that reducing the distribution of inauthentic content strikes that balance,” a Facebook spokesperson said. “But just because something is allowed to be on Facebook doesn’t mean it should get distribution.” A version of the video that’s live on Facebook has already been viewed millions of times.
Trump Admin Plans to Weaken Protections for Transgender People in Health Care
Olivia Messer - Reporter
DAILY BEAST - CHEAT SHEET
The Department of Health and Human Services said Friday that it plans toredefine the terms of an Obama-era policy that kept health-care providers from discriminating against transgender patients. HHS Director of the Office for Civil Rights Roger Severino said the agency is rewriting an Affordable Care Act regulation that prohibited health-care discrimination based on sex—in order to keep HHS regulations “more consistent” with other federal departments. “When Congress prohibited sex discrimination, it did so according to the plain meaning of the term, and we are making our regulations conform,” said HHS Director of the Office for Civil Rights Roger Severino. The Obama administration’s definition of nondiscrimination protections on the basis of sex included a person’s internal sense of being “male, female, neither, or a combination of male and female,” Severino told The Washington Post. The National Center for Transgender Equality has said it will fight the proposed regulation. “It’s about the right of every American to be treated with dignity when they walk into an emergency room, meet a new doctor, or find the right insurance plan,” a spokeswoman said.
ACLU and Planned Parenthood File Lawsuit Against Alabama Abortion Ban
Pilar Melendez - Reporter
daily beast cheat sheet
The American Civil Liberties Union and Planned Parenthood on Friday sued the state of Alabama, challenging its new near-total abortion ban that makes almost all instances of performing the procedure a felony. The lawsuit, filed in United States District Court for the Middle District of Alabama, is fighting to stop the bill from going into effect in October. It argues the ban conflicts with Roe v. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision that established the right to an abortion. “The Alabama legislature has been pushing abortion care further and further out of reach for years with medically unnecessary and politically motivated restrictions, and this extreme abortion ban shows us just how far they’ll go to push their anti-abortion agenda,” ACLU attorney, Alexa Kolbi-Molinas, said in a Friday press release. The legislation bans all abortions in the state except when it “is necessary in order to prevent a serious health risk” to the woman, and does not make exceptions for rape and incest victims. Under the new ban, doctors who perform an abortion could face as much as 99 years in prison.
Trump Administration to Make It Easier for Adoption Agencies to Reject Same-Sex Parents: Axios
Pilar Melendez - Reporter
DAILY BEAST CHEAT SHEET
The Trump administration is reportedly mulling two plans that would make it easier for adoption agencies to reject same-sex couples, senior administration officials told Axios. One option under consideration is to rescind entirely an Obama-era policy that prevented adoption and foster-care agencies from receiving federal funding if they refused to work with same-sex couples. The other would be to add an exemption for religious organizations. The discussion is “mainly about which approach would hold up better in court,” Axios reports. The new rules, which could be announced as early as July, is the latest Trump administration attempt to undo the previous administration’s policies. Religious organizations have consistently bristled at Obama’s adoption policy, arguing that they’re being forced to contradict their beliefs.
Nevada Democrats pass bill to restore voting rights of 77,000 people
The bill automatically restores the right to vote to more than 77,000 people once they leave prison.
DANIELLE MCLEAN - thinkprogres
MAY 24, 2019, 12:28 PM
Nevada may soon restore voting rights to tens of thousands of people who have been released from prison after serving out a felony conviction.
The bill, which passed both chambers of the state legislature and is awaiting a signature from newly elected Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, would restore one of the most fundamental constitutional rights to people that have served their debt to society.
“Nevada is about to go from the embarrassing distinction of having one of the most complicated and draconian laws in the country to be among the most democratic and inclusive of formally incarcerated people,” Blair Bowie, a fellow at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., told ThinkProgress.
The bill is one of several ways Nevada Democrats have sought to increase voter turnout since taking control of both the governor’s office and the state legislature following the November 2018 midterm elections.
So far this year, the state legislature has introduced a sweeping voter rights bill that automatically registers motorists to vote when they get their drivers’ licenses and allows for same day voter registration, among other features. Such laws have been shown to improve turnout among populations that have historically been underrepresented at the polls, including students, low-income residents and people of color.
“Every Nevadan should be able to vote because it is our fundamental right to do so. We want to make sure our voting process is a seamless process,” said Annette Magnus, executive director of Battle Born Progress, a progressive advocacy group in Nevada.
If signed into law by Sisolak, the voter re-enfranchisement bill will allow Nevada to join 38 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing formally incarcerated citizens to automatically exercise their voting rights after serving their sentence and completing parole.
It would immediately restore the voting rights of more than 77,000 people once they leave prison, including those in jail and those out on parole or on probation. The bill passed in the state Senate along party lines on Wednesday.
The expansion of voting rights in Nevada comes amid efforts in some Republican-controlled states to restrict voting rights, including preventing as many minority voters from casting a ballot as possible, in a bid to retain power. Those states have passed a raft of voter suppression regulations over the past decade, including voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting, and barriers to registering to vote.
Nevada Republicans argued that the measure will restore the vote to people with serious felonies who have not proved they deserve a second chance, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
But experts say re-enfranchising people who have served time in prison reduces recidivism because it allows them to feel that they have a stake in their own communities and gives them a sense of belonging.
Changing the law also streamlines a process that formally incarcerated people have said is confusing and often difficult to navigate.
Currently, Nevada requires anyone with multiple convictions or has committed violent crimes to go through a complicated petition process in order to get their rights back. State agencies often failed to provide the needed paperwork to prove that the formerly incarcerated person was eligible to vote again, Bowie said.
The state previously relaxed its restrictive laws in 2017, by getting rid of a mandate requiring first time and non-violent offenders to be honorably discharged from parole or probation to get their rights back. People who could not pay off their legal debts were often dishonorably discharged, specifically disenfranchising lower-income people.
Getting rid of those barriers now allows Nevadans to exercise their constitutional rights.
“This is a really great step for full democratic inclusion,” said Wesley Juhl, spokesman at the ACLU of Nevada, which advocated in support of the bill.
“We know that [voting] is a priority for everyone coming back into society. We just want to make sure they feel whole again and like full members of the community,” he added.
Across the United States meanwhile, there are signs in recent years that public support has largely shifted in favor of allowing people who were formerly incarcerated to vote.
The 2020 Democratic presidential nominees recently debated whether to allow people currently in prison to vote.
And last November, Floridians overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure restoring the voting rights of 1.5 million people with felony convictions. But the Republican-controlled legislature has been hard at work trying to deny thousands their new-found voting rights.
Lawmakers in Tallahassee earlier this month passed a bill that excludes people with convictions from getting back their vote unless they pay off their fees and fines. Those arrears can sometimes amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law.
With its new-found control over the government, and as long as they keep power, Democrats are positioned to prevent such an outcome in Nevada.
The bill, which passed both chambers of the state legislature and is awaiting a signature from newly elected Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak, would restore one of the most fundamental constitutional rights to people that have served their debt to society.
“Nevada is about to go from the embarrassing distinction of having one of the most complicated and draconian laws in the country to be among the most democratic and inclusive of formally incarcerated people,” Blair Bowie, a fellow at the Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C., told ThinkProgress.
The bill is one of several ways Nevada Democrats have sought to increase voter turnout since taking control of both the governor’s office and the state legislature following the November 2018 midterm elections.
So far this year, the state legislature has introduced a sweeping voter rights bill that automatically registers motorists to vote when they get their drivers’ licenses and allows for same day voter registration, among other features. Such laws have been shown to improve turnout among populations that have historically been underrepresented at the polls, including students, low-income residents and people of color.
“Every Nevadan should be able to vote because it is our fundamental right to do so. We want to make sure our voting process is a seamless process,” said Annette Magnus, executive director of Battle Born Progress, a progressive advocacy group in Nevada.
If signed into law by Sisolak, the voter re-enfranchisement bill will allow Nevada to join 38 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing formally incarcerated citizens to automatically exercise their voting rights after serving their sentence and completing parole.
It would immediately restore the voting rights of more than 77,000 people once they leave prison, including those in jail and those out on parole or on probation. The bill passed in the state Senate along party lines on Wednesday.
The expansion of voting rights in Nevada comes amid efforts in some Republican-controlled states to restrict voting rights, including preventing as many minority voters from casting a ballot as possible, in a bid to retain power. Those states have passed a raft of voter suppression regulations over the past decade, including voter ID laws, restrictions on early voting, and barriers to registering to vote.
Nevada Republicans argued that the measure will restore the vote to people with serious felonies who have not proved they deserve a second chance, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
But experts say re-enfranchising people who have served time in prison reduces recidivism because it allows them to feel that they have a stake in their own communities and gives them a sense of belonging.
Changing the law also streamlines a process that formally incarcerated people have said is confusing and often difficult to navigate.
Currently, Nevada requires anyone with multiple convictions or has committed violent crimes to go through a complicated petition process in order to get their rights back. State agencies often failed to provide the needed paperwork to prove that the formerly incarcerated person was eligible to vote again, Bowie said.
The state previously relaxed its restrictive laws in 2017, by getting rid of a mandate requiring first time and non-violent offenders to be honorably discharged from parole or probation to get their rights back. People who could not pay off their legal debts were often dishonorably discharged, specifically disenfranchising lower-income people.
Getting rid of those barriers now allows Nevadans to exercise their constitutional rights.
“This is a really great step for full democratic inclusion,” said Wesley Juhl, spokesman at the ACLU of Nevada, which advocated in support of the bill.
“We know that [voting] is a priority for everyone coming back into society. We just want to make sure they feel whole again and like full members of the community,” he added.
Across the United States meanwhile, there are signs in recent years that public support has largely shifted in favor of allowing people who were formerly incarcerated to vote.
The 2020 Democratic presidential nominees recently debated whether to allow people currently in prison to vote.
And last November, Floridians overwhelmingly passed a ballot measure restoring the voting rights of 1.5 million people with felony convictions. But the Republican-controlled legislature has been hard at work trying to deny thousands their new-found voting rights.
Lawmakers in Tallahassee earlier this month passed a bill that excludes people with convictions from getting back their vote unless they pay off their fees and fines. Those arrears can sometimes amount to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is expected to sign the bill into law.
With its new-found control over the government, and as long as they keep power, Democrats are positioned to prevent such an outcome in Nevada.
a repeat of 1860?
how did that work out?
Republicans attend rally to carve out new Christian state: ‘It’s either going to be bloodshed or Liberty State’
By Bob Brigham - raw story
May 24, 2019
The far-right gathered in Spokane Valley to push for the creation of Liberty State, a 51st US state that is intended to be something of a wildlife sanctuary for Christian conservatives, the Spokesman-Review reported Friday.
“The Liberty State Gala drew about 200 people to the CenterPlace Regional Event Center in Spokane Valley. Supporters of the new Christian conservative state – which would span parts of Washington and Oregon as well as Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – raised money by auctioning pies and other desserts,” the newspaper reported.
One of the speakers was notorious far-right Republican state Rep. Matt Shea. Shea published a “biblical war” manifesto last fall.
In April, Shea was caught conspiring to far-right extremists to commit acts of violence against liberal activists. In response, Shea quoted an anti-Semitic website to lash out at the journalist who exposed him.
Shea was not the only elected official to attend the Liberty State rally.
“The lineup of speakers included Shea, a Spokane Valley Republican who has championed the Liberty State movement; Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan; Spokane City Council candidate Tim Benn; and Loren Culp, the police chief in Republic, Washington, who made national headlines when he pledged not to enforce a controversial gun control initiative that voters passed in November,” the Spokesman-Review noted. “County Prosecutor Larry Haskell, former Treasurer Rob Chase and gun activist Anthony Bosworth also were in attendance, as were Barry and Anne Byrd, who lead the Marble Community Fellowship in northern Stevens County.”
Shea’s legislative assistant, Rene’ Holaday, warned of violence if people did not go along with the idea to state the new state.
“It’s either going to be bloodshed or Liberty State,” Holaday said ominously.
“The Liberty State Gala drew about 200 people to the CenterPlace Regional Event Center in Spokane Valley. Supporters of the new Christian conservative state – which would span parts of Washington and Oregon as well as Idaho, Montana and Wyoming – raised money by auctioning pies and other desserts,” the newspaper reported.
One of the speakers was notorious far-right Republican state Rep. Matt Shea. Shea published a “biblical war” manifesto last fall.
In April, Shea was caught conspiring to far-right extremists to commit acts of violence against liberal activists. In response, Shea quoted an anti-Semitic website to lash out at the journalist who exposed him.
Shea was not the only elected official to attend the Liberty State rally.
“The lineup of speakers included Shea, a Spokane Valley Republican who has championed the Liberty State movement; Spokane City Councilman Mike Fagan; Spokane City Council candidate Tim Benn; and Loren Culp, the police chief in Republic, Washington, who made national headlines when he pledged not to enforce a controversial gun control initiative that voters passed in November,” the Spokesman-Review noted. “County Prosecutor Larry Haskell, former Treasurer Rob Chase and gun activist Anthony Bosworth also were in attendance, as were Barry and Anne Byrd, who lead the Marble Community Fellowship in northern Stevens County.”
Shea’s legislative assistant, Rene’ Holaday, warned of violence if people did not go along with the idea to state the new state.
“It’s either going to be bloodshed or Liberty State,” Holaday said ominously.
*What's Inside*
may 21 - may 23
✔NEW LAWSUIT ACCUSES KANSAS RESTAURANT OF REFUSING TO SERVE BLACK CUSTOMERS BECAUSE ‘BLACKS DON’T GIVE GOOD TIPS’(RACE MATTERS)
*HERE ARE THE GOP’S SECRET TALKING POINTS DEFENDING ALABAMA’S ABORTION LAW
(GOP POLITICS)
*TRUMP ADMINISTRATION WANTS TO FUND MORE “CLEAN COAL” FAILURES
(ENVIRONMENT)
*FBI HAS SEEN SIGNIFICANT RISE IN WHITE SUPREMACIST DOMESTIC TERRORISM IN RECENT MONTHS
(WHITE SUPREMACY)
*ONE OF TRUMP’S BROKEN PROMISES HAS COST US TAXPAYERS 255 TIMES THE PRESIDENTIAL SALARY HE VOLUNTEERED NOT TO TAKE(TRUMP)
*PLASTIC A BIGGER THREAT TO WHALES THAN OIL SPILLS OR DRILLING, STUDY SAYS
(ENVIRONMENT)
*TOXIC AMERICA MAKEUP: US COSMETICS ARE FULL OF CHEMICALS BANNED BY EUROPE – WHY?
(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*BERNIE SANDERS CAMPAIGN RALLIES SUPPORT AT MCDONALD'S STRIKES ACROSS US
(CANDIDATES)
*EU CITIZENS IN UK COMPLAIN OF BEING DENIED RIGHT TO VOTE
(WORLD)
✔HOW DID WATER APPEAR ON EARTH? SCIENTISTS THINK IT'S DOWN TO THE GIANT CRASH THAT FORMED THE MOON
(SPACE NEWS)
*RED STATES ARE PAYING PLANNED PARENTHOOD MILLIONS FOR SUING THEM
(AMERICA)
*DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AGENDA: READING, WRITING AND RELIGION
(EDUCATION)
*PURDUE PHARMA ACCUSED OF 'CORRUPTING' WHO TO BOOST GLOBAL OPIOID SALES
(CORPORATE CRIMINALS)
*REPUBLICAN KELLER WINS PENNSYLVANIA SPECIAL ELECTION
(ELECTIONS)
*BORDER VIGILANTE WAS ACCUSED OF RUNNING CHILD-CANCER CHARITY SCAM
(AMERIKKKANS)
*TWO GROUPS THAT HELPED DEMS WIN BACK THE HOUSE ARE JOINING FORCES FOR 2020
(PROGRESSIVES)
✔THE GOP HAS OFFICIALLY JUMPED THE SHARK
(GOP POLITICS)
*ELIZABETH WARREN’S PLAN TO HELP BLACK STUDENTS GET AHEAD
(CANDIDATES)
*OP - ED: TRUMP’S TRADE WAR WITH CHINA IS WAGED TO MAKE THE RICH RICHER
(CAPITALISM)
*PLUTO LIKELY HAS LIQUID OCEANS, SCIENTISTS SAY
(SPACE NEWS)
*IS MAYOR BILL DE BLASIO’S ADMINISTRATION TARGETING BLACK, LATINO COMMUNITIES FOR FORECLOSURE?
(CANDIDATES)
*'I GET CALLED A SELL-OUT ALL THE TIME': TRUMP'S VOTERS OF COLOUR SPEAK OUT
(SUCKERS)
*REVEALED: 1.6M AMERICANS LIVE NEAR THE MOST POLLUTING INCINERATORS IN THE US
(AMERICA)
Shining
madamesilverspurs - Demo Underground
*late news of interest*
EPA wants to triple level of rocket fuel chemical allowed in drinking water
Another "gift to polluters."
KYLA MANDEL - thinkprogress
MAY 24, 2019, 2:19 PM
The Trump Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wants to raise the threshold for a chemical found in rocket fuel to triple the previous limit allowed in drinking water supplies. This is the first new drinking water rule introduced by the agency since the George W. Bush administration.
In the EPA’s latest move to weaken environmental and health protections, it released a notice on Thursday requesting public comment on its proposal to raise the maximum level allowed for the chemical perchlorate — which is linked to thyroid problems — to 56 micrograms per liter.
This is three times higher than what the EPA previously recommended as a safe level for drinking water (15 micrograms per liter). The previous recommendation was just an advisory to help guide states, as opposed to an enforceable limit, which is what the agency is now proposing.
In addition to this change, the EPA is seeking comment on three other alternate options: setting the level to 18 micrograms per liter, to 90 micrograms per liter, or simply abolishing the rule regulating perchlorate in drinking water.
The news comes after a decade-long delay following a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) demanding the EPA set an enforceable standard for the chemical.
“This is enough to make you sick—literally,” Erik Olson, senior director for health and food at NRDC, said in a statement on the new proposed limits. “As a result, millions of Americans will be at risk of exposure to dangerous levels of this toxic chemical in their drinking water.”
In addition to rocket fuel, perchlorate is found in fireworks, airbags, matches, signal flares, some food packaging, and munitions. Health risks from exposure include disruption to the thyroid’s ability to produce hormones needed for normal growth and development, along with potentially causing reproductive problems.
According to NRDC, scientists recommend a limit that is “10 to more than 50 times lower” than what the EPA is currently proposing. Two states currently have much stricter, enforceable standards than required by the EPA: California (at 6 micrograms per liter) and Massachusetts (at 2 micrograms per liter).
The EPA’s proposal comes as the agency has been dragging its feet on implementing a similar legally enforceable standard for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — a group of man-made chemicals that are toxic to humans and can increase the risk of cancer — in drinking water. Currently there is no maximum level for PFAS chemicals under EPA rules. Numerous communities in 43 states are currently suffering from the toxic chemical polluting their water.
These delays or weakening of chemical standards come despite EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler recent arguments that water issues are the world’s leading environmental crisis.
“This is another Trump administration gift to polluters and water utilities that have lobbied to be off the hook for cleaning up the problem,” Olson said of the proposed change to perchlorate.
The Trump EPA features several top officials who once worked for the chemical industry. This includes a former Koch Industries staffer, David Dunlap, who worked on water and chemical policy and now serves as deputy EPA assistant administrator for research and development, and a former chemical industry attorney, Steven Cook, who oversees Superfund sites. Meanwhile, Nancy Beck, the Trump administration appointee who oversees the EPA’s toxic chemical unit, previously worked as an executive at the American Chemistry Council, one of the industry’s main lobbying groups.
What’s more, a 2009 House Committee report found that Beck, a former Bush administration official, was slowing progress in confirming the health threats from chemicals like perchlorate found in drinking water. The committee concluded she had been “inappropriately intervening in agency science.”
Ties to the chemical industry also extend to Wheeler. In a letter sent to the EPA administrator last month, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D- MD), accused Wheeler of failing to disclose his previous lobbying on behalf of Darling Ingredients, which is involved in making fuel and fertilizers regulated by the EPA.
In the EPA’s latest move to weaken environmental and health protections, it released a notice on Thursday requesting public comment on its proposal to raise the maximum level allowed for the chemical perchlorate — which is linked to thyroid problems — to 56 micrograms per liter.
This is three times higher than what the EPA previously recommended as a safe level for drinking water (15 micrograms per liter). The previous recommendation was just an advisory to help guide states, as opposed to an enforceable limit, which is what the agency is now proposing.
In addition to this change, the EPA is seeking comment on three other alternate options: setting the level to 18 micrograms per liter, to 90 micrograms per liter, or simply abolishing the rule regulating perchlorate in drinking water.
The news comes after a decade-long delay following a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) demanding the EPA set an enforceable standard for the chemical.
“This is enough to make you sick—literally,” Erik Olson, senior director for health and food at NRDC, said in a statement on the new proposed limits. “As a result, millions of Americans will be at risk of exposure to dangerous levels of this toxic chemical in their drinking water.”
In addition to rocket fuel, perchlorate is found in fireworks, airbags, matches, signal flares, some food packaging, and munitions. Health risks from exposure include disruption to the thyroid’s ability to produce hormones needed for normal growth and development, along with potentially causing reproductive problems.
According to NRDC, scientists recommend a limit that is “10 to more than 50 times lower” than what the EPA is currently proposing. Two states currently have much stricter, enforceable standards than required by the EPA: California (at 6 micrograms per liter) and Massachusetts (at 2 micrograms per liter).
The EPA’s proposal comes as the agency has been dragging its feet on implementing a similar legally enforceable standard for per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) — a group of man-made chemicals that are toxic to humans and can increase the risk of cancer — in drinking water. Currently there is no maximum level for PFAS chemicals under EPA rules. Numerous communities in 43 states are currently suffering from the toxic chemical polluting their water.
These delays or weakening of chemical standards come despite EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler recent arguments that water issues are the world’s leading environmental crisis.
“This is another Trump administration gift to polluters and water utilities that have lobbied to be off the hook for cleaning up the problem,” Olson said of the proposed change to perchlorate.
The Trump EPA features several top officials who once worked for the chemical industry. This includes a former Koch Industries staffer, David Dunlap, who worked on water and chemical policy and now serves as deputy EPA assistant administrator for research and development, and a former chemical industry attorney, Steven Cook, who oversees Superfund sites. Meanwhile, Nancy Beck, the Trump administration appointee who oversees the EPA’s toxic chemical unit, previously worked as an executive at the American Chemistry Council, one of the industry’s main lobbying groups.
What’s more, a 2009 House Committee report found that Beck, a former Bush administration official, was slowing progress in confirming the health threats from chemicals like perchlorate found in drinking water. The committee concluded she had been “inappropriately intervening in agency science.”
Ties to the chemical industry also extend to Wheeler. In a letter sent to the EPA administrator last month, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D- MD), accused Wheeler of failing to disclose his previous lobbying on behalf of Darling Ingredients, which is involved in making fuel and fertilizers regulated by the EPA.
Yet Another Open Letter to Rick Santorum
nancegreggs - demo underground
5/16/19
TO: Rick Santorum (R - Asshole)
I just heard your latest diatribe on CNN about how abortion is morally wrong because it is the taking of a human life.
Given the policies of your party, could you please explain how it is morally right to take food away from living children by gutting programs like SNAP, or refusing them nutritious school lunches if they can’t afford to pay for them?
Could you please explain how your party’s unending efforts to overturn Obamacare, which would leave millions of children and their families without healthcare coverage, is morally right?
Could you please explain how your “pResident” and your party are demonstrating their concern for children by taking them away from their parents at the border, locking them in cages, and then ‘losing them’?
Could you please explain why your party tries to shut down sex education in schools and access to affordable birth control, when both of those things have been proven effective in reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies that often lead to having an abortion?
Could you please explain why your party refuses to legislate and enforce reasonable gun control laws that would protect our children in their own classrooms?
It’s always the same old song from people of your ilk: Gin-up your ‘base’ by declaring your love of the ‘unborn child’ – and then gin them up further by promising to cut funding for programs that children directly benefit from because they’re “draining the system” of money that they don’t deserve.
Your arrogance in appointing yourself the arbiter of what is morally wrong or right is only surpassed by your blatant hypocrisy. As long as the “pResident” and the party you support are willing to allow traumatized children to be jailed at the border, to be slowly starved by cuts to the programs that feed them, to be denied affordable healthcare that treats them when they are sick, and to leave them unprotected from weapons that cut them down in their schoolrooms, you are in no position to claim any moral highroad you pretend to represent.
I understand you are a self-proclaimed devout Catholic. I would strongly suggest that you examine your conscience, confess your sins against the children you allegedly care about, and recite a sincere Act of Contrition.
Maybe your priest will absolve you – but I doubt that your God will. In Catholicism, forgiveness of your sins is always dependent on your solemn promise to go and sin no more. And as long as you keep catapulting the Republican propaganda that your “pResident” and your party care about children, you continue to sin.
If you truly believed in the sanctity of life, you would believe that the already-born are as deserving of your protection as the not-yet-born. But you obviously don’t – because stirring-up the “base” by characterizing abortion as murder is seen as a vote-getter, while feeding, housing, and caring for the children already here is invariably characterized as wasting the taxpayers’ money on “free stuff” for the offspring of those who gave birth to children they couldn’t afford to raise.
If I were a priest and you walked into my confessional, your penance would be so lengthy that between reciting twenty rosaries per day, doing the Stations of the Cross once a week, and daily novenas to at least a dozen different saints, you wouldn’t have enough time to open your lying, hypocritical mouth.
Yours in Christ (who I, as a Jew, seem to know a lot better than you do),
--- NanceGreggs
I just heard your latest diatribe on CNN about how abortion is morally wrong because it is the taking of a human life.
Given the policies of your party, could you please explain how it is morally right to take food away from living children by gutting programs like SNAP, or refusing them nutritious school lunches if they can’t afford to pay for them?
Could you please explain how your party’s unending efforts to overturn Obamacare, which would leave millions of children and their families without healthcare coverage, is morally right?
Could you please explain how your “pResident” and your party are demonstrating their concern for children by taking them away from their parents at the border, locking them in cages, and then ‘losing them’?
Could you please explain why your party tries to shut down sex education in schools and access to affordable birth control, when both of those things have been proven effective in reducing the number of unwanted pregnancies that often lead to having an abortion?
Could you please explain why your party refuses to legislate and enforce reasonable gun control laws that would protect our children in their own classrooms?
It’s always the same old song from people of your ilk: Gin-up your ‘base’ by declaring your love of the ‘unborn child’ – and then gin them up further by promising to cut funding for programs that children directly benefit from because they’re “draining the system” of money that they don’t deserve.
Your arrogance in appointing yourself the arbiter of what is morally wrong or right is only surpassed by your blatant hypocrisy. As long as the “pResident” and the party you support are willing to allow traumatized children to be jailed at the border, to be slowly starved by cuts to the programs that feed them, to be denied affordable healthcare that treats them when they are sick, and to leave them unprotected from weapons that cut them down in their schoolrooms, you are in no position to claim any moral highroad you pretend to represent.
I understand you are a self-proclaimed devout Catholic. I would strongly suggest that you examine your conscience, confess your sins against the children you allegedly care about, and recite a sincere Act of Contrition.
Maybe your priest will absolve you – but I doubt that your God will. In Catholicism, forgiveness of your sins is always dependent on your solemn promise to go and sin no more. And as long as you keep catapulting the Republican propaganda that your “pResident” and your party care about children, you continue to sin.
If you truly believed in the sanctity of life, you would believe that the already-born are as deserving of your protection as the not-yet-born. But you obviously don’t – because stirring-up the “base” by characterizing abortion as murder is seen as a vote-getter, while feeding, housing, and caring for the children already here is invariably characterized as wasting the taxpayers’ money on “free stuff” for the offspring of those who gave birth to children they couldn’t afford to raise.
If I were a priest and you walked into my confessional, your penance would be so lengthy that between reciting twenty rosaries per day, doing the Stations of the Cross once a week, and daily novenas to at least a dozen different saints, you wouldn’t have enough time to open your lying, hypocritical mouth.
Yours in Christ (who I, as a Jew, seem to know a lot better than you do),
--- NanceGreggs
