News Including Hopes of Democracy

Housed in civilian homes, four Israeli hostages in good medical condition were rescued in central Gaza while Israelis killed at least 210 Gazans. Of the remaining 115 hostages, fewer than 80 are expected to be alive. Almost 37,000 Gazans have been killed since October 7, not counting people not removed from the rubble. Benny Gatz will delay his news conference about leaving the government, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s War Cabinet. The U.S. pier to Gaza has been replaced and humanitarian aid will hopefully be resumed. Israeli forces illegally dropped white phosphorus munitions on densely populated residential areas in southern Lebanon since last October. The use has a high risk of excruciating burns to the bone and lifelong suffering,

A prominent Russian, falling to her death, hasn’t fallen out of a window to his/her death since February when a prominent blogger, disclosing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s huge losses in eastern Ukraine, mysteriously died, reportedly suicide. In December, Putin’s alleged ally Vladimir Egorov, a prominent politician in western Siberia’s oil-rich Tobolsk region, died after falling from a third-floor window, and a deputy editor of a pro-Putin newspaper was dead at her home. Almost a year ago, Russian diplomat Alexander Nikoayev died after a mysterious attack near her country house.

In another storm that supporters of Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) hope will result in a mistrial for the recent New York conviction, Judge Juan Merchan released information about a social media post supposedly from the cousin of a juror, announcing the conviction before the jury announced its findings. It was signed “Michael Anderson,” a well-known pro-DDT troll and self-identified “professional sh*tposter,” likely ten days before the announcement. Legal expert Joyce Vance praised the judge for making the issue public with no conclusion, knowing DDT will use it for a reversal appeal, and publicize all “details & facts.”

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) should be pleased: Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg has agreed to testify to Jordan’s Judiciary Committee on June 13 about the recent hush money/business fraud trial in which jurors convicted DDT after DDT’s sentencing on July 11. Bragg has shown more courtesy for Congress than Jordan, who refused a subpoena from the House January 6 investigative committee for his testimony.

Conservatives are trying to get DDT elected in November by putting Democratically-affiliated presidential candidates on state ballots. The GOP started with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. until they seem to be a threat to DDT. Their next target is Cornel West, and GOP operatives connected to a Colorado firm are financing the far-left candidate’s name on the North Carolina ballot by gathering tens of thousands of signatures assisted by a GOP consulting firm. A prominent GOP activist was seen outside a DDT rally in April, gathering signatures by telling rallygoers it “helps take away votes from Joe Biden.” Other GOP activists have been seen working for West’s signature gathering, and large numbers of signatures have come from GOP-leaning counties and far fewer from progressive areas.

DDT’s supporters might want to stay quiet about their claims that he has greater mental acuity than Biden. Time magazine journalist, who conducted interviews with both President Joe Biden and DDT this year, stated that the interviewers dumbed down their questions in DDT’s interviews. The examples below indicates Biden can answer “a complex questioning containing multiple premises” but doesn’t believe DDT “is capable of answering a simple unlayered question.” On X, Magdi Jacobs posted:

“Something striking: the substance of Trump and Biden’s answers is, of course, quite distinct but, even more than that, one can tell the interviewer has more confidence in the intellectual capacity of one man over the other.”

She used the example of questioning about their positions on defending Taiwan. The question for DDT:

“I want to get your thoughts on China. Do you think the U.S. should defend Taiwan if China invades?”

The question for Biden:

“CIA Director Bill Burns says the President Xi Jinping of China has ordered the Chinese military to be ready by 2027 to conduct a successful invasion of Taiwan. You said on multiple occasions that you would use U.S. forces to defend Taiwan. What does that mean? Is it boots on the ground? What shape would that take?”

Some help for democracy during the past week:

Rep. Elise Stefanik, DDT’s campaigner and wannabe vice president candidate, has filed four baseless ethics complaints against two judges, a state AG, and special counsel Jack Smith to make DDT accountable in efforts to make him happy. Information about one that failed months ago has just emerged. A state commission just cleared New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron and his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, of “inappropriate bias and judicial intemperance.”  

A study has found that after 20 year, same-gender marriage does not harm different-sex couples in their divorce, marriage, or cohabitation. The few significant effects show improved attitudes toward marriage among young people in states which granted marriage equality with increases in the number of marriages after states legalized marriages.

The IRS has filed a lawsuit against the Ohio doctor who claimed that Covid vaccine makes people magnetic for not paying her taxes in 2001, 2012, and 2013, almost $650,000 including late fees and penalties. She also claimed that vaccinations made people “interface” with cell towers and interfered with women’s menstrual cycles. The doctor received over 350 complaints with the medical board which can discipline physicians for making false or deceptive medical statements.

Arizona: The state’s “Secure Border Act,” allowing police to arrest immigrants and state judges to write orders for deportation, will cost state taxpayers at least $350 million and may be unconstitutional. In addition, Republicans have not allocated funding for the proposal and cannot pay for costs out of the state’s general operating costs because of the constitution. Because of Gov. Katie Hobbs’ veto, the bill has been sent to the voters in a ballot referral. The complexity of the ballot initiative may also violate the state’s single-subject rule.

Colorado: The reason is probably fear of losing elections, but the result is positive. Prominent state Republicans have told their chair, Dave Williams, to resign his position after he sent hate emails about the LGBTQ+ community. According to Williams, “God Hates Pride,” and people should burn all the pride flags. Gay Republican Valdamar Archuleta recently renounced the GOP endorsement and Xed an anti-Williams post. GOP Rep. Richart Holtorf wants Williams to resign and hinted at a petition circulated by state Republicans for the resignation or removal. The state House GOP caucus chair echoes their statements. Thus far, Williams stated he plans to stay as GOP chair.

In May, the Colorado GOP told its members to take their children out of public schools because educators turn their kids transgender. Running for Congress, Williams broke a DDT cardinal rule by using his name and felony convictions for fundraising, both for himself and for the state GOP. DDT may withdraw his endorsement of Williams.

Texas: In an amazing ruling from the most conservative appeals court in the nation, the 5^th Circuit Court ruled that state libraries cannot censor books only because of parents’ complaints. In Llano County, most of the complaints were about “a book about a farting leprechaun, a book about a transgender teen, two books about the history of racism in the United States and a book about puberty,” according to the Houston Chronicle. The opinion stated the library must consider “patrons’ First Amendment rights.” A DDT-appointed judge and another appointed by George W. Bush dissented, calling those in the majority opinion as the “library police.”

Texas’ top election official ordered counties to protect ballot privacy after existing ballots could reveal how individuals vote.

Virginia: Two colleges are facing backlash after dropping a curriculum about systemic racism developed by a group of faculty and students after the George Floyd killing. A board appointed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin, an ardent critic of DEI, voted 10-5 against making the curriculum mandatory.

Pride Month: According to orders from Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis for “Freedom Summer,” no bridge in the state can display any colors during the next three months except red, white, and blue. Last Saturday, the Jacksonville’s LGBTQ community lit the Main Street Bridge in rainbow colors. Seventy people stood on the bridge in downtown Jacksonville on Friday and turned on high-powered flashlights at the same time to create this rainbow ribbon. Friendship Fountain’s columns of multi-colored water also shot into the air. The inspiration for the response came from a man celebrating his honeymoon with his husband in Leipzig (Germany) when he heard DeSantis’ restriction on “freedom” and thought about life in East Germany before it was freed by a Republican president’s work. Other summer holidays banned from different colors are National Gun Violence Awareness Month (orange) and Juneteenth (red, black, and green of the Pan-African flag). 

DDT Plans to Destroy Democracy

Rep. Troy Nehls (R-TX) has always been clear about how he wants the House to politicize every action and now wants to use the House as a super PAC for Deposed Donald Trump (DDT). Wearing a necktie featuring DDT’s images, he said:

“Everything that we do in the House of Representatives should be in the best interests of getting Donald Trump re-elected.”

A few weeks ago, Nehls supported extending the GOP’s 2017 cuts running up trillions of debt for the U.S., saying “Trump is right all the time” and wants Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson to be “consulting with Donald Trump on just about everything we do.” Violating his oath of office, Nehls also lied about having two Bronze Star medals (he got only one) and a Combat Infantryman Badge, revoked because he served as a civil affairs officer. Yet he still wears both medals he wasn’t awarded.

To divert attention from DDT’s criminal trial, the House campaigners plan investigations of pro-Palestine campus protests, hiding from failures in impeachment of President Joe Biden and another in the failed conviction of HHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas’ impeachment.   

DJT stocks clawed their way upward this past week, but no one knows for how long. The number of Truth Social users continues to shrink, dropping by 19 percent in April over a year ago and four percent from the previous month. Revenue suffers: the number of users controls advertising prices. Truth Social’s MAGA approach limits users, now numbered at 2 million while Meta’s 10-month-old Threads has climbed to 31.4 million, almost reaching the 34.2 million on X.

In another setback, SEC charged DDT’s accounting firm for his Trump Media & Technology Group, BF Borgers, with widespread fraud and operation of a “sham audit mill,” falsely representing its compliance with accounting standards between January 2021 and June 2023. The firm has shut down and agrees to pay $14 million in fines.

Trump Tower has grown shabby, struggling to find renters and looking tired—like DDT. A description with photos.

DDT’s former AG Bill Barr says he’ll vote for DDT because he can be talked down from his outrageous statements—such as executing the person who leaked his going to the White House bunker to avoid protesters. In his two interviews with Time magazine’s Eric Cortellessa when he repeatedly brags about picking only loyalists, DDT pictures himself as benevolent, saying he let his former officials “quit because I have a heart…. From now on, I’ll fire.” His plans to destroy democracy if he is reelected: 

• Build migrant detention camps and deploy the military, both at the border and inland, to deport over 11 million immigrants. Override the Posse Comitatus Act which makes using the military against civilians to do the deportation because migrants “aren’t civilians.” (They are the people who made the U.S. economy the “envy of the world,” according to the conservative Wall Street Journal.)
• Reinstall his first term Remain in Mexico program.
• Permit red states to monitor women’s pregnancies and prosecute anyone violating abortion laws.
• Withhold congressionally-approved funds.
• Fire any U.S. AG who doesn’t carry out his orders to prosecute someone.
• Pardon everyone accused of attacking the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. (Over 800 have pled guilty or been convicted by a jury. He repeated his falsehood that the police “ushered” the insurrectionists into the Capitol.)
• May refuse to help an attacked ally in Europe or Asia if he thinks they aren’t paying enough for their own defense. (His lied that NATO wouldn’t help the U.S. although the only time NATO needed to help was for the U.S. after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S. when 18 other NATO members launched operations, including securing the skies over the U.S., naval anti-terrorism efforts, and assistance with the ground war in Afghanistan.)
• “Gut” the U.S. Civil Service and replace employees with those who swear loyalty to DDT.
• Send the National Guard, legally controlled by state governors, to U.S. cities “as he sees fit.”
• Close the White House pandemic-preparedness office.
• “Staff his administration with acolytes who back his false assertion that the 2020 election was stolen.”
• Increase tariffs although firms and other consumers buying products pay for this tax.
• Give police more power and immunity from prosecution.
• Maintained that “the FBI gave fake numbers” about declining in the U.S.
• Appoint a “real special prosecutor” to go after Biden.  

The title of the interview, “How Far Trump Would Go,” wasn’t a question. DDT’s “ideas” are already published in his Project 2025      prepared by far-right operatives including the Heritage Foundation. A second term for DDT would sweep away executive constraints with the doctrine called unitary executive theory. Matthew Schmitz, far-right co-founder and editor of the Compact magazine, demonstrates the conservative coverup of DDT’s destruction of democracy describing him as “the outlaw hero, a figure of defiance with deep roots in American culture who exposes the injustices and hypocrisies of a corrupt system.” The most ironic comparison is Robin Hood, because DDT stole from the poor and gave to the rich with his 2017 tax cuts that he plans to reinstate.

DDT also plans to reinstate his former Muslim ban and keep Gazans from refuge in the U.S. As for the Israeli annihilation of Gaza, DDT has said that Israel “must clean out the cancer.” People who believe that President Joe Biden is too supportive of Israel might want to DDT’s goal.  

Barr’s defense of DDT hasn’t softened DDT’s anger toward his former AG. DDT says he wants an AG with “courage” because Barr didn’t back him in his “stolen” election lie.

RNC top lawyer and strong election attorney, Charlie Spies, has resigned after he angered DDT for criticizing the lie about the stolen 2020 election. Spies had pioneered the use of unregulated campaign donations to fund super PACs and sued to purge voter rolls. DDT’s campaign said it raised $76 million last month, but these donations are for both himself and the RNC.

Legal Issues:

Fox network describes DDT’s naps in court as a power move to demonstrate his contempt for the process, but sources talk about his lack of confidence in beating the indictments. Since the New York criminal trial started three weeks ago, DDT has railed against lawyer Todd Blanche because he doesn’t follow DDT’s instructions and is lacking in aggression. DDT anger may come from his belief that the trial is not going well. He wants Blanche on the attack against witnesses, the jury pool, and the judge, vicious like his former ruthless Ray Cohn, eventually disbarred, yet Judge Juan Merchan has already reprimanded Blanche for his defenses.

A legal firm has filed a motion to withdraw from a lawsuit against DDT by a 2016 campaign staffer allegedly shut out for being pregnant because of “an irreparable breakdown in the attorney-client relationship between the firm and the campaign.” Representing herself, the plaintiff objected  because the firm had protested submission of discovery materials. The judge ordered the firm to turn over all 2016 and 2020 campaign complaints of sexual harassment and gender or pregnancy discrimination. Representing DDT for at least a decade, the firm in another sexual discrimination and abuse case against DDT.

New York – Criminal Business Fraud/Hush Money to Stormy Daniels to Interfere with 2016 Election:

In a plan to keep DDT out of jail for violating his gag order, attorneys want delay by filing an emergency writ of habeas corpus for a stay. They briefed DDT about the idea, calling it DDT’s “jailbreak” strategy.

Presently jailed for perjury, former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg won’t be a witness in the trial, but he left handwritten notes about his secret role in DDT’s 2016 presidential campaign, documenting his plan for the allegedly fraudulent reimbursement at the heart of the case. Weisselberg’s services to DDT, assisting with FEC filings, may also be unreported contributions.

More detailed reports of the trial last week are in earlier posts.

Florida – DDT’s Taking Classified Documents:

DDT’s lawyers new plan to delay the trial is Chinese immigrant’s Supreme Court decision of a race-neutral law as precedent to toss charges against DDT.  In Yick v. Hopkins (1866) Lee Yick, convicted of operating an unlicensed laundry in 19^th-century San Francisco, argued racism in denying him a permit. The filing claims federal prosecutors are using unconstitutional “selective prosecution” of DDT with the falsehood that other people are not being prosecuted for the exact same conduct. In the 1990s, justices made this argument extremely difficult to defend, especially if the government has valid reasons for not bringing up any cases that the plaintiff uses. Other people mishandling classified documents didn’t obstruct the government as DDT did, making DDT unique. His appointed judge Aileen Cannon is sure to take weeks for a decision.

Supreme Court:

Anti-MAGA conservative former Judge J. Michael Luttig and others predict that conservative justices will return the case to a lower court, already dismissing the immunity argument, to determine which presidential acts are “official” and which are “private or personal.” Luttig described the argument assumes “all future presidents will act in bad faith.” With appeals, determination of DDT’s “official acts” could postpone his trial for up to a decade.

Biden called DDT’s bluff. At rallies, DDT demanded debates with Biden. Now Biden says okay. And DDT says only on his terms and not when the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) schedules debates.

Political Chaos Continues

Surprise! With 4,747 votes, unopposed Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) won all 26 Nevada’s GOP convention delegates in the state’s caucus. Two days earlier, Nikki Haley lost the GOP state-sanctioned primary with 22,638 votes.

President Joe Biden got good news for his 2024 presidential campaign when Marianne Williamson dropped out of the race. Rep. Dean Phillips (MN) is Biden’s only candidate at this time.

Rallies and Truth Social posts from Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) have guaranteed publicity about his 91 indictments while a special counsel completed its investigation of Biden’s having classified documents in his home and former office after he left his VP office. The inquiry found he had retained the material and shared sensitive information with a ghostwriter but did not commit any crimes. For a conviction, officials would need to prove that he willfully kept the documents. Biden’s cooperation provided the major difference between him and DDT. Special Counsel Robert Hur told Congress that “the allegations … in the indictment of Mr. Trump, if proven, would present serious aggravating facts” because he allegedly didn’t return classified documents when given the opportunity to cooperate.

Republicans, however, are delighted that Hur questioned Biden’s mental acuity. Biden responded to being called an “elderly man with a poor memory.”, sometimes with anger, saying, “I know what the hell I’m doing.” The report accused him of not remembering the year when his beloved son Beau died.

In another major happening on Thursday, Supreme Court justices had oral arguments about whether the 14th Amendment would allow states to keep DDT’s name off the primary ballots. A description will be in Sunday’s weekly DDT review.

GOP senators insisted on strict border reform included in a bill with aid for Israel, Ukraine, and the Indo-Pacific but turned down that deal in exchange for a clean national security bill without anything about the southern border. Eighteen Republicans voted with Democrats to consider the clean bill in the Senate. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) opposed aid for Israel because of its treatment of Gaza, and Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) author of the failed border reform package opposed the new bill. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said that senators will stay through next week’s recess “until the job is done.” He added:

“Failure to pass this bill would only embolden autocrats like Putin and Xi, who want nothing more than America’s decline.”

Schumer is going to face a Senate that may behave as badly as the House typically does. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) attacked Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) when she asked him why he voted against the bill with conservative border reform that she negotiated. He called it a “half-ass” effort and, after more questioning, railed against lacking permission for an amendment process, saying, “That’s ass-backwards.” Sinema reminded him of Senate rules allowing amendments only after senators approve a motion to proceed to a bill. Graham ridiculed her, saying that “the fix is in.” He added, “We got the crap kicked out of us for weeks.”

The editorial board of the conservative Wall Street Journal, owned by Rupert Murdoch, wrote that Republicans will be at fault for following DDT if they allow Ukraine—and the easter European democracy—to fall because of no U.S. aid. Iran and North Korea are providing munitions to Rusia, and China could take over Taiwan with assistance in the funding bill.  

The funding bill may have moved forward after backlash to Republicans who didn’t break the 60-vote filibuster for the bill with border reform in what NBC reporter Sahil Kapur calls the GOP “endless doom loop.” Republicans insist on a bill, get what they want, and then they vote it. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) was an example of this syndrome. On Fox, he said he opposed the stand-alone security aid package because it lacked provisions for the southern border; earlier he voted against the bill that included these provisions.  

Like other MAGA members, Sean Hannity stoked fear about immigrants by lying about a migrant in New York after the far-right “Guardian Angels” pushed him to the street. Hannity interviewed the group’s leader, Curtis Sliwa, who accused the man of taking part in a wave of crime and chaos by undocumented migrants. The attacked man is a resident of the Bronx; he was not shoplifting as Sliwa told Hannity on air but was subject to a disorderly conduct summons for trying to disrupt the interview “on a crowded sidewalk.” Silwa founded the group in the 1970s and admitted he lied about early crime-fighting efforts for publicity. He lost the mayoral 2021 election.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office agree with other economists that migrants will boost the U.S. economy by $7 trillion and an increase of $1 trillion in revenue within the next decade because immigrants add to the labor force. CBO Director Phillip Swagel said:

“More workers mean more output and that in turn leads to additional tax revenue.”

If the clean funding bill passes the Senate, it goes to the House where Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson (R-LA) lives in constant denial. Wednesday he failed to pass an impeachment against DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and a funding bill for Israel, and he has no appropriations bills just five working days before a government shutdown after two continuing resolutions. In response, Johnson said:

“We’re governing here. Sometimes it’s messy.”

Johnson may think he’s governing, but this chart shows how little the current House is accomplishing. Although the House still has another ten months to “govern,” it will still achieve only one-third the number of laws during the last Congress if it doubles the legislature during that ten months. And Johnson isn’t headed that way. Philip Bump has recorded lack of unity in the House among Republicans and their constant conflict. Only obviously political issues can be voted out of the House, and the Senate won’t be allowing them into law.

Leading Catholic priest Father James Martin has advice for Johnson’s claim to be the new Moses:

“One red flag for spiritual directors is, ‘Then God said this.’ Not everything that pops into your head during prayer is from God.”

If he is Speaker in 2025, Johnson has lost another powerful Republican, Cathy McMorris Rodgers from eastern Oregon, who will not run for reelection. Chair of the Energy and Commerce Committee, she is the seventh committee member who doesn’t plan to return. Since Johnson became chair in October, GOP representatives Bill Johnson (OH), Kevin McCarthy (CA), and George Santos (NY) have departed mid-term. 

Far-right GOP members are beginning to mourn the loss of Kevin McCarthy although they were responsible for his ousting. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) Xed:

“Getting rid of Speaker McCarthy has officially turned into an unmitigated disaster. All work on separate spending bills has ceased. Spending reductions have been traded for spending increases. Warrantless spying has been temporarily extended. Our majority has shrunk.”

Massie told one of his colleagues:

“Name one thing that’s improved under the new speaker.”

Even Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), leader of the movement to oust McCarthy, said that Mayorkas’ impeachment would have been passed if McCarthy were still Speaker:

“Wouldn’t it have been nice to still have Kevin McCarthy in the House of Representatives? Never thought you’d hear me say that.”

With the inability to accomplish anything,  Republicans want a dictator to issue orders—no regulations, guidelines, etc. For over four decades, the GOP decided to break the government, creating a crisis so that they can have a dictator like Hitler or Mussolini or Pinochet in Chile to give orders. A short history of these destructions:

• Ordered by Republicans, Ronald Reagan began breaking the educational system and labor unions. Since Reagan, the middle class has gone from almost two-thirds of the U.S. population to under half.
• George H.W. Bush broke U.S. manufacturing
• George W. Bush gave control to the pharmaceutical and insurance industries.
• To Republicans, freedom and individual responsibility lets billionaires take control and ignore the poor; it polarizes people, demonizes minority groups, and pushes the “Great Replacement Theory.”
• DDT lies to lead the GOP fight against judicial and election institutions. He supports world dictators and opposes democratic allies; America First means supporting Russia.
• During DDT’s administration 500,000 people in the U.S. unnecessarily died from Covid from his lies to get reelected.
• The anti-vaxxer movement is now killing people from measles and other infectious disease, some of which had been largely eradicated while people were vaccinated.
• Packing the Supreme Court with Catholic conservatives is destroying the rights of women and other minorities.
• Fear is the main campaign argument of conservatives, and their promotion of guns, including in schools, leads to generations of terrified people. Guns are the chief cause of youth deaths.
• Gone are entrepreneurs because anti-trust laws are no longer enforced.
• DDT aims to eliminate objective journalism.

The United States has its first self-identified dictator as a presidential candidate in 2024.

Another evidence of growing authoritarianism is the growing violence. As threats against Nikki Haley skyrocked, she applied for Secret Service protection after DDT’s lying attacks against her character, career, origins, and beliefs soared, a trend beginning with DDT’s campaign and administration. The Capitol Police recorded under 900 threats against members of Congress in 2016. By the next year, after DDT moved into the White House, the numbers more than quadrupled and rose every year of his administration, peaking at 9,700 in 2021. During the first full Biden year, the number dropped by 25 percent, but still high.

Johnson: Politics over People

“I refuse to put people over politics.”  Speaker MAGA Mike Johnson accidentally told the truth about himself in a fundraising email. Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) responded, “We know.”

In the House short week, two censures of Democrats failed, and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) went off the rails—as usual. Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason T. Smith (MO) took on Matt Gaetz (FL) for ousting Speaker Kevin McCarthy (CA), and Gaetz said that Smith is gay. Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (KY) tried another useless excuse for impeaching President Joe Biden. Johnson passed a few bills, one of them violating a budget law passed in June, that the Senate will trash.

Finally unsure of whether he can pass 11 appropriation bills in 12 days approved by the Senate before the government shutdown, Johnson said he might have a “laddered” continuing resolution to the budget, a temporary funding bill that “extends individual pieces of the appropriations process, individual bills.” In addition to chaos from the fights of rolling mini-government shutdown threats about which agencies to defund, the tactic might not even be legal and probably impossible with an extremely small GOP majority. Johnson’s backward strategy is just passing bills and worrying about the Senate later.

The Speaker already pulled an bill from the floor: Northeastern lawmakers won’t support the billion-dollar-cut to Amtrak in the transportation bill. The agriculture bill failed in September because of the amendment blocking mail delivery of abortion medication and steep cuts to farm programs. Johnson wants drastic cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps) serving 41 million low-income Americans and states blocked from exempting some work requirements. His Bible, his entire “worldview,” includes the importance of feeding the poor. 

Another appropriation bill, Commerce-Justice-Science, is so controversial that House Republicans can’t get out of a majority committee. The far-right wants to cut FBI and DOJ budgets, block any gun safety, and defund federal funding for universities’ response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and stalking. The largest bill, Labor-HHS-Education, has also stayed in committee because of GOP problems of family funding agencies and research on gun violence. The GOP wants to cut almost $15 billion in Title I school assistance and $14 billion to the Department of Health and Human Services. The Financial Services bill, dropping the Treasury Department’s budget by 8 percent and the IRS by 9 percent, stays in committee because a Democratic amendment allows undocumented immigrants work for federal agencies if they qualify under the DACA program.

Republicans on the House Judiciary and Intelligence committees met behind closed doors Friday to work over 702, a surveillance program set expiring at the end of the year. They can’t agree on how government agencies can search the program’s data for information about people in the U.S. Designed only for non-U.S. persons, those in the U.S. get caught in the sweeps. Judiciary Republicans want warrants for all these searches; Intelligence Committee wants warrants only for some.

Like McCarthy, Johnson made promises to the far-right for their votes. Impeaching Biden was one of them; Johnson is either deluded about how the lack of evidence and the rampant politization and just plain lying. (Proverbs 6:16-19: of the “six things the LORD hates, … a false witness who speaks lies.” On his first full day, Johnson false claimed “mounting evidence” of the president having “engaged in bribery schemes, pay-to-play schemes.”

A week later, Johnson gave up on claiming evidence and praised the impeachment as “a deliberate constitutional process that was envisioned by the founders, the framers of the Constitution” and the committee’s work an “extraordinary job very methodically and I would say outside the scope of politics.” Even DDT loyalist Steve Bannon slammed the Republicans for being unprepared, and it’s obviously political. GOP’s own witnesses in the first impeachment don’t want to move forward until they get some evidence. Jen Kiggans (R-VA) wants to focus on appropriation bills. In other false witness, Johnson claimed Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas had “committed impeachable offenses” (nobody can find evidence) and agreed with Sean Hannity that Biden has experienced “cognitive decline” (getting his lies from Fox).

AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, is the biggest donor to Johnson’s campaign, $25,000 of the paltry amount he collected. His first business was aid for Israel by increasing the deficit in stripping IRS funds. AIPAC sees the $14 billion for Israel as the “first step.”

Johnson may be the first open Christian nationalist as Speaker of the House. He believes that founders are “evangelicals,” founding documents were based on “biblical principles,” and God entrusted the U.S. as a divine mission and will withdraw blessings of unique power and posterity if the nation strays off the path of Christian morality. Johnson wants a religious litmus test in Christianity for all candidates and ran seminars for churches training them in making the U.S. a “Christian” nation. He also believes “the greatest command of the Bible is that … you love your neighbor as yourself.” Unless they need food.

Claiming he couldn’t remember his anti-LGBTQ+ positions, he conveniently forgot the four years that he closely worked discredited Exodus, a defunct “ex-gay” group claiming it would change people from homosexual to heterosexual through “conversion therapy,” a form of child abuse. He gave legal advice to Exodus and helped put on its annual anti-gay event aimed at teens. Children suffering false “conversation therapy” have higher rates of attempted suicide and trauma.” Johnson attributed part of the fall of the Roman Empire to “the rampant homosexual behavior that was condoned by the society.”

Johnson is close to the Apostolic Reformation (NAR), a nondenominational network promoting extremist theologies in Christians’ taking over society. Key instigators in the January 6 insurrection, the group has become increasingly powerful in politics during the past eight years. More about its activities here. Johnson erased all 69 episodes of his Christian podcast, but summaries of some of them are here.

In a 2019 speech given to the First Baptist Church of Haughton (LA), Johnson said:

“You don’t want to be in a democracy. Majority rule: Not always a good thing.”

Johnson can’t be trusted for other reasons. When he became dean of a religious law school over a decade ago that never came to fruition, he said it couldn’t fail “from a pure feasibility standpoint.” Never having seen the feasibility study, he hid its problems and then blamed its failure on others. Paul Pressler, the far-right activist he worked with in raising funds and developing the school, a few years after Johnson quit, for assaulting young men. The 2017 case revealed that, in 1978, Pressler had been expelled from a Houston church for sexual misconduct, but his law partner, 12 years the leader of the Harris County (TX) GOP, had lied to cover up Pressler’s assault of both males and females since 2004.

Raj Shah, former executor at Fox, now directs Johnson’s communications team and guides messaging for House GOP members. Insisting that Fox lie about DDT’s “stolen” election, Shah mysteriously left Fox after the company made a $787.7 million settlement for lies that he pushed. From 2017 to 2019, Shah was on DDT’s communications team where he claimed that Stormy Daniels was lying about DDT’s paying her paid hush money. Conservative Punch Bowl reported that the Speaker, in selecting a leadership staff, “mostly eschewed experience in favor of political allies and fellow conservative travelers.” Like DDT, he picks loyalists over competence or honesty. False witness?

Johnson cited ultra-right Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY) as close friends and said, “I don’t disagree with them on many issues and principles.” Greene has said that she wants the impeachment to “long and excruciatingly painful for Joe Biden.” She also lied about trans surgeries in her speech to the House and thought Robert E. Lee, a Confederate general, was a Founding Father in forming the nation.

Johnson’s ideas are largely unpopular:

• 78 percent: States should not be able to imprison people for having homosexual sex.
• 61 percent: Amazon should not be forced to sell anti-LGBTQ+ books.
• 61 percent: States should not be allowed to ban same-gender marriage.

Other majority opposition to Johnson’s positions: imprisoning doctors who provide abortions, repealing the Affordable Care Act’s protections for people with pre-existing conditions, cutting funding for Social Security and Medicare, nation-wide abortion ban, and voting to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Stories about MAGA Mike Johnson, new House Speaker, may never end—like the one in which he didn’t declare any bank accounts or investments—but the one about his wife is bizarre. In her Christian counseling business, Kelly Johnson uses a practice founded the 1980s with a specialty in temperament therapy from the teachings of Greek physician Hippocrates, c. 460 to c. 270 BC. She asserts people have these temperaments instead of personalities: Melancholy, Choleric, Sanguine, Supine, and Phlegmatic. To her, personalities are a “mask,” but temperaments are “inborn” and thus inherent to each individual regardless of outside influences such as parenting. Kelly Johnson’s business website has been removed after the media pointed out that it compares being LGBTQ+ to people having sex with animals.

Johnson’s sleeping arrangement while in Washington, D.C. may reflect his financial disclosure’s lack of assets. With no apparent residence in the city, Johnson evidently sleeps in his office, basically “free housing,” and showers in the gym. Lawmakers are provided reimbursements for housing while they’re in office, and one colleague called it “unsanitary.” 

Earlier posts about Johnson are here and here.    

This just scrapes the top of the iceberg about Johnson. Expect more next week!

U.S. Problems Continue – DDT, Speaker, Israel War

First, a Bit of Good News:

Polish voters may be tired of their authoritarian right-wing government. After eight years, the governing right-wing part could be ousted. Its ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party won the most votes of a single party (36 percent), but it doesn’t have enough for a majority in parliament because three potential coalition partners have 53 percent. Looking for more rights, women’s turnout was about 73.7 percent.

PiS and its leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski are allied with Hungary’s far-right Viktor Orban and the U.S. MAGA supporters. The new coalition promises to renew Poland’s relationship with the EU, and Donald Tusk, a coalition leader, also pledged support for Ukraine. Official election results are expected by Tuesday, and President Andrzej Duda will ask PiS, receiving the most votes, to form a government. The parliament has 460 seats, but PiS has only 200 of the 231 needed to form a majority with another 11 from a likely partner. The coalition has 248 votes. If both sides fail, Duda could name a new potential prime minister; if that fails, he would call for new elections. Even a successful coalition would require two to three months to complete the process for controlling the government.

The Supreme Court ordered two internet sellers of gun parts to obey a regulation regarding “ghost guns” which lack serial numbers. In August, a 5-4 vote of the high court kept the regulation after a lower court nullified it. Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh disagreed. No justice publicly dissented from the ruling overturning a federal judge’s decision exempting Blackhawk and Defense Distributed from following the regulation. The regulation included unfinished parts in the regulation and includes any method of making the ghost guns.

No justice dissented publicly from Monday’s brief, unsigned order, overturning a ruling from a federal judge in Texas that exempted the two companies, Blackhawk Manufacturing Group and Defense Distributed, from having to abide by the regulation of ghost gun kits. The regulation is in effect during an appeal to the 5^th Circuit Court, possibly returning to the Supreme Court.

The DOJ has appealed the prison sentence length for four Proud Boys convicted of seditious conspiracy in the January 6 insurrection because they were much shorter than prosecutors recommended. Existing appeals include another seditious conspiracy sentencing for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes.

A proposed settlement for migrant families separated during DDT’s administration would prohibit the federal government from a similar policy for the next eight years, and affected immigrants who could legally stay in the country, receiving work permits and benefits. No monetary compensation is involved. The final step to the deal is approval by a federal judge in the Southern District of California. Of the 4,227 children separated from their families, a Biden task force has reunified 3,126 with their families and still working on the remaining 1,000+.

DDT:

Judge Tanya Chutkan has imposed a gag order on Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) in the Washington, D.C. trial, saying that his “presidential candidacy does not give him carte blanche to vilify … public servants who are simply doing their job.” She cited court rulings when adding:

“First Amendment protections yield to the administration of justice and to the protection of witnesses.”

DDT is blocked from attacking witnesses, prosecutors, and court staff involved in the criminal case.  According to the judge, DDT’s terms such as “deranged” and “thugs” for people in the case risk poisoning the proceedings. DDT also suggested that one of the witnesses, former Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Gen. Mark Milley, would have received the death penalty at another time. DDT can still attack Washington, D.C., its residents, and the Biden administration. John Lauro, DDT’s attorney, said that calling on people with whom DDT disagreed to be “executed” for treason should be permissible, but Chutkan pointed out that DDT is a “criminal defendant … under the supervision of the criminal justice system.” She explained that “no other criminal defendant” would have “the right to say and do exactly as he pleases.”

Chutkan declared that the trial date would not change because it “will not yield to the election cycle.”

House Speaker:

On Tuesday noon, the Republicans plan a full House vote for Speaker, with Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) leading the far-right charge. By the time that the House recessed last Friday, Jordan claimed 152 votes and spent the past three days intimidating others to support him against Austin Scott, a conservative Republican from Georgia. Jordan needs 55 more votes to reach the required 217 votes, and at least five Republicans still openly oppose him, leaving him short of the necessary total.

Jordan’s supporters posted phone numbers of holdout mainstream GOP legislators, telling conservative voters to flood the Capitol switchboard threatening wrath if their representative doesn’t vote for Jordan, i.e., “browbeat” them into submission. Instead of giving secret deals, like Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), or asking skeptics how to satisfy their concerns, like Steve Scalise (R-LA), Jordan tries to create fear in any opposition. Sean Hannity, supposedly a journalist on Fox network, is also twisting legislators’ arms for Jordan.

Bullying promotor of conspiracy theories, Jordan was called a “political terrorist” by former Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) who talked about several legislators in the outgrowth of political opportunism leading to the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol. Asked about Jordan, Boehner said:

“I just never saw a guy who spent more time tearing things apart ― never building anything, never putting anything together.”

Jordan also voted against impeachments for DDT, worked to overturn the 2020 presidential election for Joe Biden, refused to comply with a subpoena from a House subcommittee, and opposes the legal agreement to raise the debt ceiling until January 2025. Electing him would all but guarantee a government shutdown on November 17. Late Night Show host Stephen Colbert summarized Jordan’s “inadequacies.”

The GOP argument for electing him is to get a Speaker—any Speaker—to move forward although the situation had not changed when Scalise had more votes for the position. The most frighting part of Jordan being Speaker, however, is that he is third in line for U.S. president after VP Kamala Harris.  

The U.S. Constitution does not give any responsibilities for the Speaker so the House has created these. Originally, the Speaker just managed the flow of debate and separated himself from exchanges among the members. The party system led to the position being a prize for the majority party, but the Speaker couldn’t vote on legislation until after 1850. By now, the Speaker is the chief spokesperson for the House, point person in negotiations with the White House and the Senate, and holds weekly news conferences with the media to describe the party’s agenda. The biggest power of the Speaker is controlling the House floor: who speaks, what motions are recognized, and which bills get votes. The acting speaker, Patrick McHenry, has none of those powers.

In the past, Republicans followed the Hastert rule, referring to the Speaker in the early 21^st century of passing any vote only with a “majority of the majority.” With the slim majority of 221 GOP House members and several factions dedicated to contradictory beliefs, Republicans now use tyranny by the minority. Eight Republicans were able to remove McCarthy from Speaker, and 99 secret votes, 44 percent of the House’s 433 members, are moving Jordan towards its leadership. In another secret vote after Scalise, the winner, dropped out, Jordan received only 124 votes, his opponent a relative unknown. That goes for the Speaker election.

Republicans met Monday evening to air complaints. Jordan tried to respond to them, but over a half dozen still plan to vote against him. If they stick to their guns, they can save the country, but it will be hard.

Israel/Gaza War:

In Israel, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi is drafting regulations for the far-right government plans regulations allowing him to order police to arrest journalists for factual reporting and target anyone damaging national morale during the war against Gaza. Regulations would also apply to the general public for both truthful and inaccurate reporting. Karhi’s purpose is to shut down broadcasts by Qatari state-owned broadcaster Al Jazeera in Israel and Gaza. In the past, Karhi has openly expressed contempt for Supreme Court justices, refusing to say that he will obey their rulings, and disdain for reserve soldiers who haven’t volunteered. Israeli journalist Etan Nechin wrote on X that Netanyahu’s government “is acting more like Putin’s.”

UN relief workers report a huge humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but the Israeli ambassador to UK, Tzipi Hotovely, claimed no crisis because Israel is trying to prevent the deaths of innocent Gazans. Reports indicate heavy bombing of Gaza’s civilian areas, damaging and destroying hospitals, schools, mosques, and residential buildings. Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office denied ceasefire that would permit foreign nationals and Palestinian civilians near Gaza’s border crossing with Egypt to flee the region. Israel is still preparing a ground offensive where it has killed at least 2,802 people wounded over 10,000 others. At least 600 U.S. citizens are caught in Gaza. Hamas said it will unconditionally release kidnapped foreign nationals.

On Monday, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with Prime Minister Netanyahu for over six hours. He said that President Biden will travel to Israel on Wednesday to show support for the country and discuss humanitarianism with Netanyahu. Biden will also visit Jordan, meeting with Jordanian King Abdullah II, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah El-Sisi, and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to discuss the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

Menendez, Courts – Corruption

The indictment of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) gave Republicans an excuse to exercise their hypocrisy muscles. “You know why I’m standing by him? Because his constituents voted for him,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) said. “I believe in the rule of law,” the House speaker added. “A person’s innocent until proven guilty.” No, the Speaker wasn’t talking about Menendez. He was defending Rep. George Santos (R-NY) in January after he was indicted with 13 charges. Nine months later, McCarthy said Menendez should resign, “very much so” and what prosecutors presented “seems pretty black and white.”

With a small margin in the House, McCarthy needs Santos’ vote. The Senate has a smaller margin, but McCarthy doesn’t care—it’s Democratic.

Democrats may be right in calling for Menendez to resign, but the Supreme Court might consider him innocent. In 2016, a unanimous court found Bob McDonnell, former Virginia GOP governor, and his wife innocent of bribery and corruption because they didn’t take the money in a direct exchange for an “official act.”

Dangers for Menendez:

• Democrats are not eager to defend him.
• The corruption is obvious. 
• Menendez hasn’t bothered with a defense other than he’s not guilty and that accusations come from racism toward his being “a first generation Latino American” to become a senator.

Judge Aileen Cannon, appointed by former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), has been stalling the trial regarding his concealing classified documents at Mar-a-Lago for over six weeks. Now she agreed to a DOJ request for hearings on October 12 about conflicts of interest: two DDT attorneys representing his co-defendants represent other clients who may be witnesses against Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira. Stanley Woodward, Nauta’s attorney represented “at least seven other individuals who have been questioned in connection with the investigation,” including those who testified about Nauta, according to the DOJ. Nauta should be told of “potential conflicts and attendant risks,” the DOJ wrote.

The Georgia RICO case with 19 defendants including DDT keeps plugging along as three more of them, fake electors illegally signing a certificate for the Electoral College, requested a move from state to federal court. DDT’s former chief of staff Mark Meadows and former DOJ official Jeffrey Clark made the same request;  Meadows was refused. They all claim trying to overturn the election is legal because they were federal officers. Chesebro’s defense is that GOP electors weren’t false because the Republican Party elected them. Federal Judge Steve Jones did not give a time when he would rule; Meadows is appealing his rejection.  

Clark maintains DDT told him to write the letter to top Georgia officials accusing election fraud in the state. He said that DDT had “ratified” all his actions dealing with the elections in a three-hour meeting in the Oval Office. Clark is charged not only with the state RICO act but also attempting to create a false statement—the draft letter.

Fulton County DA Fani Willis has listed former MAGA lawyer Lin Wood as a state witness, raising conflicts of interest for several defense attorneys. He recently retired to avoid professional discipline. Lawyers include Harry MacDougald representing Clark; McDougald had represented and was co-counsel to Wood in a failed 2020 election-related petition to the Supreme Court. Another lawyer, Scott Grubman, had represented Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and his wife, Patricia Raffensperger, state witnesses; Grubman represents Ken Chesebro.

Judge Scott McAfee will permit attorneys for two co-defendants, Ken Chesebro and Sidney Powell, to interview jurors returning the RICO indictment with some restrictions. Their trial is scheduled for October 23. McAfee said the Court would “guide and maintain oversight” of the process to ensure that “privileged matters remain protected.” He also emphasized the importance of secrecy surrounding grand jury deliberations. Defense attorneys are to file a list of proposed questions, and the state can file any objections. 

Peter Navarro, DDT’s former trade adviser found by Jared Kushner on Amazon, has stayed loyal to his boss. As part of his protection, Navarro called female aides who formerly worked at the White House—Cassidy Hutchinson, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Stephanie Grisham, Kayleigh McEnany, Olivia Troye—the “pimp ladies” because they testified against Deposed Donald Trump (DDT). He was especially vicious about Hutchinson’s narrative of Rudy Giuliani sexually molesting her at the rally on January 6, 2021. Navarro finished his angry tweet with “Rudy Giuliani hero, Cassidy trash.” McEnany is an odd name to include because the former press secretary hired as Fox network pundit has not spoken out against DDT. The Supreme Court will likely hear the case, Moore v. U.S., in December with Alito’s interviewer the case’s petitioner.    

With the Supreme Court going back into session next week, the subject of recusal has been popular, especially after new corruption scandals surrounding Justice Clarence Thomas. As he proceeds to participate in rulings for cases in which he has received favors from some of the principals, people are questioning why Republicans believe he shouldn’t need to recuse himself in a case dealing with government regulations after he benefits from the Koch network. In part of its report on the situation, ProPublica recounts when Republicans, including than Indiana’s Rep. Mike Pence, asked Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from all abortion-related cases because she spoke at a lecture cosponsored by a women’s rights group that filed Supreme Court briefs.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson has recused herself from the government regulation case, nicknamed Chevron because of a prior ruling with that name. She sat on the case, Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo, while on the D.C. Circuit Court.

Justice Samuel Alito has excused himself from any need for recusal with his rule, that recusal is simply the “personal decision of each justice.” Therefore, he isn’t recusing himself from a “major tax case” involving an attorney who interviewed him for a newspaper article and helped him “air his personal grievances.”   Regarding the interviews, Alito said “he did so as a journalist, not an advocate.”

The Mississippi Supreme Court has come out on the side of democracy—at least a little. It struck down part of a 2023 state law authorizing some circuit court judges in Jackson and surrounding county to be appointed rather than elected. The area is majority Black, and concerns came from the majority-white legislature trampling voting rights. Most judges are elected in the rest of the state. The chief justice can appoint justices for such reasons as a case backlog, but the court stated it saw no special circumstances to require appointments in this situation. The NAACP has been fighting the legislature for almost a year while it decided to appoint judges and expand the state police role in Jackson.

Gov. Tate Reeves has worked since 2020 to put Jackson citizens under his thumb by allowing the water disaster in the state capital, ending the federal pandemic rental assistance program, and returning the $130 million in aid. The city population, 83 percent Black, was without water for six weeks before the thick brown water barely emerging from the pipes cost $40 a month. In 2021, Reeves refused federal Covid unemployment benefits in the state with no minimum wage and the highest poverty and child poverty rates in the U.S. Food stamp funding was used for athletics; 90 percent of those applying for that help are denied.

In reporting about the retirement of Rupert Murdoch from his leadership position, MSNBC host Medhi Hasan wrote:

“Three of the most destructive events of my lifetime could not have happened without the toxic influence of Fox Corp. and News Corp.”

The Iraq War: An examination by The Guardian of 175 Murdoch-owned papers before the war showed all of them supported the invasion. Over half of Fox’s viewers thought WMDs were discovered in Iraq even as late as 2015, 12 years after the invasion and long after the lie was uncovered. While former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair hadn’t decided on the country’s involvement, he thought a phone call promoting the war from Murdoch “was prompted by Washington.”

Brexit: News Group Newspapers, parent of The Sun, registered as an official “leave E.U.” campaign group and spent over 96,000 euros on the newspaper’s “BeLEAVE in Britain” posters. The slim majority for separation between the UK and the EU in 2016 sent the UK into a tailspin with the resignation of four prime ministers and resulted in economic havoc. From an undermined EU came an increasing rise in domestic far-right populists and an expansionist Putin Russia.

DDT and the Big Lie: Fox provided the foundation for DDT’s 2016 presidential victory by building a conservative audience incensed by “birther” conspiracies and anti-immigrant anger. Murdoch provided DDT with free airtime with the weekly segment Mondays with Trump in 2011. After DDT’s nomination, Fox was his propaganda arm and then transitioned into state TV after DDT moved into the White House. After DDT lost in 2020, Fox stayed with DDT, blasting DDT in private but still profiting from pushing his big lie about having won the election.

Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said:

“No individual alive has done more to divide America than Murdoch.”

All three of the above, plus far more violations of democracy, weren’t done for principle or ideology, only for power and wealth. Murdoch agreed with this position when he said during the Dominion lawsuit against Fox that he agreed his platforming conspiracy theorists was “not red or blue, it is green.”

GOP Promates Disinformation, Democratic Senator Indicted

Thanks to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and his leadership in the promotion of weaponization, disinformation inundates the United States in the conservative campaign opposing research programs to block its spread. Stanford University, facing litigation, is searching for ways to track election-related disinformation through the Election Integrity Partnership (EIP). After legal threats, the National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program to advance the communication of medical information including topics of nutritional guidelines. Employees were told to not flag misleading social media posts and limit communication to answering medical questions.

Probing an imaginary collusion between the Biden administration and Big Tech, Jordan issued subpoenas and demands for researchers’ communications between the government and social media platforms regarding the Russian disinformation for the 2016 election. Ironically, a claim of free speech prevents the scientific community from speaking. As Russia, China, and Iran expanded influence campaigns, social media platforms stopped content moderating. Twelve major media accounts from those countries had likes and reposts on X almost double since owner Elon Musk removed the label government-affiliated, and artificial intelligence produced widespread voter manipulation.

In Missouri v. Biden, now before the Supreme Court, the current administration seeks to block a 5^th Circuit ruling that the White House, the FBI, and top federal health officials violated the First Amendment by improperly influencing tech companies’ decisions to remove or suppress posts on the coronavirus and elections. Judge Terry Doughty, appointed by former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) made a broader ruling that also barred government officials from working with academic groups, including the Stanford Internet Observatory.

Jordan has also sent a new round of record threatening requests to at least two grant recipients, and researchers face online death threats. Disinformation scholars, many of them tracking both covid-19 and 2020 election-rigging conspiracies, face an onslaught of public records requests and lawsuits from conservative sympathizers echoing Jordan’s probe. As George Orwell wrote in his 1949 book, 1984, about his vision:

“War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

Again thanks to Jordan’s leadership, the burgeoning conspiracy theories about Covid will result in far more deaths. Anti-vaxxers with fear of masks increased as cases spiked since early July. Alex Jones, who refuses to pay court-ordered awards and fees for his lies about the Sandy Hook massacre of small children and their children, originated the evidence-free theories about the return of strict precautions.

Far-right activists are selective, however, in their First Amendment rights. They support undemocratic lies about elections, death-causing medical information, and threats calling for violence, but Matthew Kasmaryk, a DDT-appointed federal judge in Texas, has made another un-Constitutional ruling since blocking the use of abortion drug mifepristone for the entire U.S. This one blocks drag shows, never seen to cause any problems, after West Texas A&M University President Walter Wendler canceled a campus drag show raising funds for The Trevor Project, a nonprofit to reduce LGBTQ+ youth suicides. In a lawsuit, students stated that Wendler violated their free speech rights by banning the show. Federal judges, even one appointed by DDT, in Florida, Montana, and Tennessee have blocked laws banning or limiting drag shows from going into effect, meaning that Kacsmaryk made an extreme departure from precedent.

While Jordan pushes disinformation across many topics, Elon Musk has become the king of climate change disinformation after purchasing Twitter. A report gave him one point out of 21 in assessing policies to reduce inaccurate information, the worst of the five major tech platforms. His one point was for an accessible and readable privacy policy, but X, the new name for Twitter, is the only platform to lack a clear reporting process for flagging harmful or misleading content for higher review.

Musk is using Texas as his personal dumping ground for wastewater. SpaceX wants to dump 200,000 gallons of treated wastewater into the South Bay at Port Isabel. Although contaminants are supposedly removed, the wastewater can destroy the salt balance of the bay, a popular fishing place and unique ecological location.

In another Texas location, Musk wants to dump 142,000 gallons of wastewater every day until he finishes a nearby Bastrop water treatment in 2025. The dump would go into the threatened Colorado River, the primary water source for nearby communities, including farms and ranches producing food. Musk’s Boring Company bought the land to build his company town near Austin, Snailbrook, like those in the 19th century for industries such as mining, textiles and steelworks.

Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee are investigating the accusation that Musk blocked Ukraine from Starlink, the satellite network he gave them, preventing Ukraine from attacking Russian warships. Committee chair Jack Reed also said that the committee is probing recent revelations related to Starlink that exposed “serious national-security liability issues.”

Using records obtained from Musk’s Neuralink implant tests on monkeys, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM) is investigating the trials. Musk denies that any monkeys died, but a dozen previously healthy monkeys, with average ages of 7.5 years, were euthanized in “gruesome” trials. Rhesus macaques can live to 40 years. PCRM described the process:  

“Neuralink staff drilled holes into Animal 15’s skull, removed part of her skull and skin to expose her brain, and implanted two electrodes, one in each hemisphere of her brain. The surgery lasted five hours.”

After the surgery, medical problems included excessive itching, bloody discharge, and loss of balance as well as signs of pain or neurological impairment. Her eyes swelled half-shut, lab tests showed multiple bacterial infections on her implants, and a necropsy after her euthanizing found her brain “focally tattered” with “remnant electrode threads” in her brain. This investigation would be the third into Musk’s Neuralink testing.

Other Musk activities:

Musk plans to charge subscription fees for all X users.

Last weekend, Musk joined DDT to “celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, with strong antisemitic social media posts. Musk’s attack was on “the Soros organization [that] appears to want nothing less than the destruction of western civilization.” He is currently battling the Anti-Defamation League in an evidence-free accusation of destroying his ad revenue. Antisemitic tweets increased by 106 percent from June 2022 to February 2023, compared to the three months before and after Musk’s purchase of the company.

Anyone subscribing to X, formerly twitter, can count on his taking their data, including their face photograph plus employment and educational history to be used for advertising. In the future, X and AI may determine who gets a job.

Musk loves X for names. Other uses for the letter are a slang term for the drug MDMA also known as ecstasy; “the end” or “danger.” Labels of harmful and toxic substances throughout Europe; wrong answers, cancellations requiring a do-over; and other concepts of error and rejection.

With no shouts of “government weaponization,” Bob Menendez has been federally indicted for the second time. The New Jersey senator is a Democrat so Jordan doesn’t care. This time, his wife has also been indicted, both for bribes from three New Jersey businesspeople. Federal prosecutors accused them of accepting $480,000, gold bars worth over $100,000, a Mercedes-Benz C-300 convertible, and home mortgages in exchange for benefitting the businesspeople, also indicted, and the Egyptian government between 2018 and 2022.

Menendez went on trial in 2017 for helping an eye doctor with federal officials in exchange for vacations at the doctor’s Dominican villa, flights on his private jet, and campaign donations. He went free because a hung jury resulted in a mistrial. In 2006, Menendez was investigated for allegedly doing favors for a nonprofit that paid him $300,000 in rent. He was reelected in 2018 and plans to run again in 2024 although he was dropped as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee    because of Democratic bylaws.

[If Senator Bob Menendez and his wife can be indicted on bribery and corruption charges, why do Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife, Ginni, go free?]

GOP legislators in several states are determined to overturn democracy. Alabama refused to redistrict after the Supreme Court sent the case back to the 5^th Circuit Court. The state is re-appealing the case, hoping the high court will change its mind. North Carolina passed a law to permit GOP legislators to overturn the popular vote in elections. The Ohio Supreme Court ruled five times against the gerrymandered legislative maps, but the bipartisan commission assigned to draw fair maps hasn’t met since May 2022. The current conservative-led state high court will likely rubber-stamp whatever GOP lawmakers decide. Florida now has a study commission intended to change how prosecutors and judges are elected.   

A classic rejection of democracy comes from Wisconsin as GOP legislators are considering the impeachment of both the state’s top election official and a state Supreme Court judge who has stated that the legislative districts are rigged. A 2020 Harvard study ranked Wisconsin’s legislative maps the worst, on par with Jordan, Bahrain, and the Congo.

One example of gerrymandering is the shift from a rectangular blob of the 73^rd district in the northwest Wisconsin corner to a shape that locals called it the “T.rex.” It elected  the first Republican in 50 years, an onion-shipper who never before held public office. She blasted the Black Lives Matter movement and cheered on January 7 insurrectionists. Of the 99 state Assembly districts, 55 contain “disconnected pieces of territory,” according to a recent complaint, and 21 of the 33 Senate districts have the same problem. A GOP state senator threatened to impeach the newly elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz before she won by 200,000 votes and again after she was sworn in if she didn’t recuse herself from the maps case.

2023’s Fourth of July – Continue Fighting for Equality

The barbecues are lit and the meat is burning. It’s 2023’s Fourth of July, supposedly celebrating the great country of the United States of America. Yet the polarization between conservative and liberal approaches that in the U.S. in Civil War times. Republicans have appropriated the mantle of loving the nation and being patriotic, declaiming that they are the only ones with this devotion to the country. (Photo by Ann Hubard)

Robert Reich, employed in one GOP administration and another two Democratic ones, wrote:

“Republicans claim they love America. But they sure don’t seem to like the American people. They consistently oppose reforms that a majority of Americans believe would make their lives better, like raising the minimum wage, paid family leave and student debt relief, and these supposedly America-loving Republicans also seem to hate American cities, which is where eighty percent of Americans live.”

He used footage of Republicans blasting these cities with derogatory terms and saying they “can’t comprehend how people live there.” But, Reich continues, Republicans don’t follow up on their “love [for] rural America”:

“Republicans have historically tried to block Medicaid expansion and cut its funding, which rural Americans have especially benefited from. They’ve sided with big Ag over independent farmers and they’re continually trying to cut food stamps, which rural Americans depend on even more than those in cities. So maybe it’s the land itself they love, except that while in office, Donald Trump ruled back more than a hundred environmental regulations, making it easier to pollute America’s air, water, and land. And he opened about two million acres of federally protected and culturally significant land to oil drilling. So what’s left? I know—the brave men and women who defend this country.”

Reich added that “Republicans are increasingly rejecting America’s core principles” by “attacking freedom of speech with book bans, the attempted banning of books here in America. They’re attacking freedom of assembly with laws restricting protests, and they’re rejecting the separation of church and state.” He stressed that “Republicans are even shunning democracy itself, denying election results, passing laws that make it harder to vote and kicking out legitimately elected lawmakers they disagree with.”

Reich wrote:

“Patriotism means loving freedom. The freedom to make your own healthcare choices, the freedom to choose who and how you love, freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom to unionize… Patriotism also means wanting Americans to be free from the fear of gun violence and free from crushing student debt. Above all patriotism involves strengthening our democracy. True patriots don’t put loyalty to their political party above their love of America. True patriots don’t support an attempted coup. Now is the time for the rest of us to reclaim patriotism and affirm its true meaning.”

Liz Cheney, a Republican who lost her 2022 re-election in Wyoming because she tried to be bipartisan, complained that “we’re electing idiots.” She continued her opposition to Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) by saying:

“Electing serious people can’t be partisan… We have a major-party candidate who’s trying to unravel our democracy. We have to think about, all right, what kinds of alliances are necessary to defeat him, and those are the alliances we’ve got to build across party lines.”

At his alma mater, Northwestern University in Evanston, two-term Illinois J.B. Pritzker gave a definition of Cheney’s term to the graduating class in “How to Spot an Idiot.” These are some of his recommendations in developing an “idiot detection system.”

“Look for the person who is cruel. When we see someone who doesn’t look like us, or sound like us, or act like us, or love like us, or live like us—the first thought that crosses almost everyone’s brain is rooted in either fear or judgement or both. That’s evolution. We survived as a species by being suspicious of things we aren’t familiar with.

“In order to be kind, we have to shut down that animal instinct and force our brain to travel a different pathway. Empathy and compassion are evolved states of being. They require the mental capacity to step past our most primal urges.

“I’m here to tell you that when someone’s path through this world is marked with acts of cruelty, they have failed the first test of an advanced society. They never forced their animal brain to evolve past its first instinct. They never forged new mental pathways to overcome their own instinctual fears. And so, their thinking and problem-solving will lack the imagination and creativity that the kindest people have in spades… Over my many years in politics and business, I have found one thing to be universally true—the kindest person in the room is often the smartest.”

On Twitter, Pritzker shared part of his speech:

“Whenever I’m about to do something, I think ‘Would an idiot do that?’ and if they would, I do not do that thing.” – Dwight Schute, a fictional character on The Office

In discussing the Supreme Court decisions, former Republican columnist Jennifer Rubin wrote:

“On this Independence Day, we should reaffirm the twin pillars of democracy: Voters (not the mob) pick their leaders, and elected leaders (not unelected judges) make policy decisions for which they are held accountable. Just as we need to preserve the sanctity of elections (by prosecuting coup instigators), democracy defenders need to address judicial radicals’ gross distortion of our system, resulting in the current Supreme Court’s subversion of democracy…

“One telltale sign that the justices have become partisan politicians: their refusal to adopt mandatory ethics rules, which destroys the essence of judicial impartiality that is the root of their legitimacy. When judges cease to eliminate conflicts of interest or the appearance thereof, they appear indistinguishable from politicians wined and dined in rarefied settings by lobbyists. The stench of financial corruption, coupled with justices’ intemperate rants in partisan settings and in op-eds, convinces Americans that the justices are partisan players out to score points for their own side.”

Rubin goes point-by-point in explaining the ideological flaws and corruption of the current court before using polls to show that voters understand these deficits in justices:

“… 53 percent ‘believe that the nation’s highest court rules mainly on the basis of their partisan political view rather than on the basis of the law (33%), while 14% say they don’t know.’ Before the Dobbs [anti-abortion] opinion, a separate January 2022 poll showed that ‘38% of Americans believed that the justices rule mainly on the basis of law, versus 43% who believed that the court rules on the basis of their political views.’…

“On this Independence Day, which celebrates rebellion against a monarch lacking consent of the governed, it behooves us to dedicate ourselves to robust and authentic democracy—government of the people, by the people, for the people—not by arrogant right-wing justices.”

Retired for his ministerial position, activist Rev. William Barber wrote his “Moral Declaration for America,” expressing his rage at both the “Supreme Court and political leaders [who] conspire to lie about history and embrace action contrary to love and justice.” He called “their actions … both piracy and perjury at the same time. They have conspired to assassinate the hopes and possibilities of a fully representative democracy to make way for the unimpeded rise and sustainment of the evils of domination, authoritarianism, racism, economic oppression, militarism, and empire tendency, all of which are contrary to our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution… We are in a battle for civilization itself.”

Democrats didn’t escape Barber’s criticism; its party was in the majority when Clarence Thomas was put on the Supreme Court, and “many Black organizations and civil rights organizations [supported him] because of his race.” He added:

“We are all responsible for this mess. So, it’s time to let go of the blame game. It is time for people with a moral conscience to wield every ounce of influence and power they have towards justice and to force this nation to be true to what it said on paper—’that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.’…

“To the people of this nation, our struggles are inextricably linked. The extremists are winning by default and by shallow margins of victory. We must use all the tools available to us to fight voter suppression, and we must also commit to mobilizing the 20 million poor and low-wealth people who did not vote in the past election because they have been disabused of their importance to our democracy.”

Free-lance journalist Skylar Baker-Jordan asked her readers to use patriotism as a verb, to dissent and demand the U.S. be better. The sentence, “All men are created equal,” is “a challenge to be met.” Abigail Adams’ plea to her husband, “Remember the Ladies, and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors,” still has not given women “full autonomy.”

So eat your burnt meat and have a good celebration but follow that up the next day with “the truest form of patriotism … demanding” that the nation do better. Justice Sonia Sotomayor ended one of her dissents by stating, “Pursuit of diversity will go on, despite the court” and quoting Martin Luther King Jr:

“We shall overcome.”

A Tale of Two U.S. Presidents

The United States woke up on February 20 to discover that President Joe Biden made a surprise visit to Kyiv, Ukraine just four days before the first anniversary of Russia’s invasion. The secret 22-hour trip departing at shortly after 4:00 am on February 20 culminated in a 10-hour train trip into Kyiv from Poland. Russian officials were notified of the Biden’s journey shortly before his departure “for deconfliction purposes” to avoid direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia.  

Biden spent five hours in the Ukrainian capital, talking with President Volodymyr Zelensky and visiting U.S. embassy staff. Russian officials were notified of the Biden’s journey shortly before his departure “for deconfliction purposes” to avoid direct conflict between the U.S. and Russia. While in Ukraine, Biden promised another $460 million for howitzer shells, anti-tank missiles, air surveillance radars, and other aid and talked with Zelensky about “long-range weapons and the weapons that may still be supplied to Ukraine even though it wasn’t supplied before.” (Above: Biden and Zelenskyy saying goodbye at the Memorial Wall of Fallen Defenders of Ukraine in Russian-Ukrainian War with photos of killed soldiers, in Kyiv.)

During Biden’s unusual travel to a conflict zone where the U.S. or its allies lack control over the airspace, U.S. surveillance planes did kept watch over Kyiv from Polish airspace. The visit was unprecedented because, unlike other presidential visits to war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. has no presence on the ground in Ukraine.

Biden was accompanied by only three White House staff members and two journalists, one print reporter and one photographer, instead of the usual 13-person press pool. A two-person TV crew joined Biden’s motorcade in Kyiv, and nine other journalists were able to attend Biden’s meeting with Zelensky at the presidential palace. Details of Biden’s travels were not divulged until he was safely out of Ukraine.

Russian President Vladimir Putin plans a state-of-the-union speech to Russian lawmakers the day after Biden’s visit when Biden is speaking in Poland. Polls show flagging support in the country for continuing the war in Ukraine. China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, will also visit Moscow for talks regarding the war in Ukraine.

Far-right lawmakers were incensed about Biden’s secret trip to Ukraine and his support for the country. Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) wanted Biden to go visit the train derailment in East Palestine (OH), and Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) accused Biden of “ditching America for Ukraine.” Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC) blamed Biden for both the “war zone … at the southern border and “another war zone he created in Ukraine.” Furiously tweeting about Biden leaving the U.S. on Presidents Day, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) added, “I can not express how much Americans hate Joe Biden.”

Greene used Biden’s trip to again call for his impeachment:

“He went to Ukraine, a NON-NATO nation, whose leader is an actor and is apparently now commanding our United States military to world war. We must impeach this America Last fool before it’s too late.”

Amanda Marcotte called the anti-Zelensky legislators the “fascist faction” opposed to democracy. She described Tucker Carlson’s rants on his Fox show:

“Right after Zelenskyy’s speech to Congress, Tucker Carlson of Fox News described him as a ‘Ukrainian strip club manager’ and falsely said that Ukraine had been the aggressor, portraying Putin as the victim of a Ukrainian plot to ‘topple the Russian government.’ He also echoed the antisemitic talking points the Russian government has deployed against Zelenskyy, who is Jewish, by accusing him of waging ‘ongoing war against Christianity.’”

Fox’s Jesse Watters, another Russian asset, said that Zelenskyy was “charming, but he’s a killer” motivated by “vengeance.” Turning Points USA founder Charlie Kirk called Zelenskyy an “uppity foreigner” and an “international welfare queen.”

Almost two-thirds of people in the U.S. support Ukraine’s regaining its territory even if a prolonged conflict. Even 53 percent of Republicans agree. Although sanctions have increased oil prices in the world, 75 percent support these sanctions.

Another sector of Republicans supported Biden’s trip. In the conservative National Review, Mark Antonio Wright praised the president, writing that the visit “is an example of America in its finest tradition.” He explained:

“The moment reminds me not so much of Presidents Bush, Obama, and Trump flying unannounced to Iraq or Afghanistan, but of President Roosevelt’s wartime travels across the Atlantic. Make no mistake, there was risk involved in this trip. Traveling to the capital of a nation fighting a shooting war with a great power, the U.S. had no way to choreograph with exactitude the circumstances of his travel or arrival. Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine has total control of the airspace. Neither the U.S. nor Ukraine could guarantee Biden’s security on the ground. The president of the United States was inside the Russian WEZ—the weapons engagement zone—the entire trip. For that Joe Biden should receive credit.

“At home, it may often feel like our republic is irretrievably fractured. Abroad, mistakes and wrong turns have tarnished our reputation for competence and steadfastness. But America is still, for all its faults, seen in dark and terrible places as the last best hope. Beyond our shores, people still react to our presidents with hope. We should remember that.”

The Daily Beast journalist David Rothkopf declared that Biden’s visit shows leadership in foreign policy, putting him on a par with Presidents Ronald Reagan and John F. Kennedy:

“Kennedy and then Reagan in Berlin. Now, Biden in Kyiv. Periodically, during the past 60 years, American presidents have stood up at the eastern edge of Europe and looked to Russia to say, ‘We stand with our allies. Our resolve is unshakeable.’ Kennedy said, ‘Ich bin ein Berliner.’ Reagan said, ‘Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall.’ Biden, on his surprise President’s Day visit to Kyiv, said, ‘One year later, Kyiv stands. And Ukraine stands. Democracy stands.'”

Rothkopf added that Biden’s standing next to Zelensky and walking with him throughout Ukraine’s capital sends the message of solidarity “to those fighting for Ukraine.” Biden stated:

“I thought it was critical that there not be any doubt, none whatsoever, about U.S. support for Ukraine in the war. The Ukrainian people have stepped up in a way that few people ever have in the past…. It’s not just about freedom in Ukraine.… It’s about freedom of democracy at large.”

Jimmy Carter, the oldest living president in the United States, is also making news by entering hospice care in his home to spend his “remaining time” there. For the past several years, he has suffered from falls and skin cancer melanoma which spread to his liver and brain. (Right: Carter with Delaware’s then-Sen. Joe Biden.) A few tributes to Carter:

“This man moves humanity forward every single day.” – Maria Shriver, niece of former president John F. Kennedy

“Former President Carter’s love and compassion for all people set him apart as a leader, servant, and simply a great man striving to achieve a Beloved Community.” – Bernice King, daughter of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Coretta Scott King   

“From the time he began his service in the United States military and through his presidency, he showed a consciousness of caring.” – Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX)

“Jimmy Carter is one of the kindest most thoughtful people I’ve ever had the honor of meeting. He is the best of us.” – Jon Stewart, comedian and writer     

The Israel-Egypt Camp David accords are one of Carter’s lasting achievements. (Carter won the Nobel Peace Prize for this presidential achievement in 2002.) – Craig Shirley, a biographer of Ronald Reagan who defeated Carter in 1980

“He leaves this planet so much better than he found it.” – Nick Kristof, New York Times columnist  

“Rest easy, Mr. President. We will be forever by your side.” – Anthony Gugliemi, spokesman for the U.S. Secret Service which protected Carter for almost half a century

In his first campaign when he rose from a relatively unknown southern governor to the Oval Office in a tight race with incumbent Gerald Ford, Carter said:

“If I ever lie to you, if I ever make a misleading statement, don’t vote for me. [If I lie, I] would not deserve to be your president.”

Over 70 years ago, Carter a U.S. Navy lieutenant training to work on the nation’s first nuclear submarine, led 22 U.S. citizens in dismantling a nuclear reactor 110 miles from Ottawa, the Canadian capital, after an accident leading “to overheating fuel rods and significant damage.” In his 2015 autobiography, A Full Life: Reflections at Ninety, Carter described the incident and his preparations for repairing the reactor. On a nearby tennis court, they built an exact replica of the reactor and practiced their actions. Teams of three workers were lowered into the highly radioactive site for the 90-second maximum exposure time, longer than current standards. While there, each of them completed specialized tasks such as turning just one screw. Carter had radioactive urine for months, and this experience might have led to his cancer. Carter’s demand for near-absolute perfection, however, resulted in success.

2022 – A Look at Last Year

Politics: To get elected, Republicans have blamed President Joe Biden and the Democrats for the higher inflation during the past year. A new paper by Nobel-prize winner Joseph Stiglitz and Ira Regmi, however, explains that the problem is insufficient supply shortages from “supply side disruptions, largely the result of the COVID-19 pandemic … and disruptions to energy and food markets originating from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. … [It] is not the result of significant excesses of aggregate demand such as might have arisen from excessive U.S. pandemic spending.” The wealthy may be responsible for “industry-specific problems” because they prefer a weaker institution instead of being challenged in a stronger institution to increase their assets. The inflation within the car industry comes from the lack of microchips caused by car manufacturers’ cancelation of these orders at the beginning of the pandemic.

If the U.S. income distribution remained the same as in 1975, the bottom 90 percent would have a cumulative income of $50 trillion more. Yet companies used inflation as an excuse to increase prices more rapidly than costs.

Firearms were the number one cause of death for U.S. children in 2020, higher than vehicle deaths and other injuries. Between 2013 and 2020, the number of children’s firearm-caused deaths rose 81 percent, with a 31-percent increase from 2019 to 2020. The U.S. is unique among its peers in the number of these deaths; no other similar large or wealthy country shows firearm deaths in the top four causes of children’s mortality.

Many of these deaths occurred while children were in school. The K-12 School Shooting Database reported on-campus shootings “pretty much every single school day.” The year 2022 broke the record for most school shootings during over 40 years with 2022 one of the most violent years for youth ages 12-17. They increased 163 percent since 2020 and 1,900 percent since 2010, most of them this year by student shooters ages 10-18 years old who went to school armed.

Despite political divisiveness, last year was a good year for democracy:

The House January 6 investigative committee completed ten years and an extensive report on the attempts of Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) to overturn the 2020 presidential election with no evidence of widespread wrongdoing;

Most states, like Arizona and Georgia, rejected extremist candidates although some of them are still suing to get an office to which they weren’t elected.

Congress revised the Electoral Count Act to keep a vice-president from turning an election over to the loser and approved the chips act for huge investments blocking China from controlling the semiconductor industry, a modest gun safety bill for the first time in almost 30 years, marriage equality, the first Black female Supreme Court justice, clean energy in the Inflation Reduction Act, and job-creating investments in an omnibus budget bill effective until September 30, 2023;

Biden manifested success when he mobilized a coalition and kept the economy on an historic run. He created over 10.5 million jobs since he took office, funded the hiring of teachers, increased the ability of people to sign up for the Affordable Care Act, controlled drug prices for Medicare users, and gave debt assistance for student loans.

The Supreme Court decision overturning abortion rights in Roe v. Wade raised a strong backlash;

Bipartisan support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will help the country continue its brave fight against the Russian oppressive invasion on February 24, 2022; and

Authoritarian Jair Bolsonaro lost the Brazilian election, although he followed DDT in claiming he won, and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, known as Lula, was inaugurated on January 1, 2023. (Bolsonaro refused to follow tradition by passing the presidential sash to Lula, so the representative of “the Brazilian people,” 33-year-old garbage collector Aline Sousa did the honors.)

Climate: Devasting flooding, storms, heat waves, and droughts with 15 disasters by October costing the U.S. over $1 billion in damage each, far above the average. The 233 reported tornadoes in March created a new record. During five weeks of summer, five 1,000-year rainfall events occurred, and severe flooding in Mississippi knocked out the troubled water supply for weeks in the state’s capital, Jackson. Montana’s historic flood from heavy rain and melting snow forced the evacuation of large parts of Yellowstone National Park. Hurricane Ian, largely in Florida, is the most expensive in U.S. history, and a typhoon pounded 1,000 miles of Alaska coast. Heat waves set temperature records, and wildfires were worse that at least 1,200 years in Arizona and New Mexico. The drought dropped the Mississippi River water level near Memphis so low that barges required additional dredging and upstream water releases, snarling grain shipping during harvest. Tighter water use restrictions of Colorado River water caused dangerously low levels in major reservoirs. Other continents faced the same problems which will only worsen as global warming fuels changes in global winds and jet streams.

DDT’s appointment for USPS Postmaster General, Louis DeJoy, had refused to purchase electric delivery vehicles, but under Biden the agency purchased at least 66,000 of them, more than half the 106,000 vehicles to be acquired by 2028, replacing the fleet of 220,000 vehicles.

Media: Networks are shifting their focus: Rupert Murdoch, owner of an international empire, is distancing himself from DDT which bodes poorly for DDT’s hoped-for 2024 presidential election. On the other hand, CNN has moved from is middle-of-the-road to progressive approach into a conservative philosophy after its sale to TimeWarner by AT&T and Chris Licht’s replacement of Jeff Zucker. Licht follows John Malone, a board member of CNN’s parent company Discovery, is leading the movement to conservative support because of his support for DDT. CNN’s dip in ratings leads those for cable networks.

Foreign Policy: North Korea resumed its testing of nuclear bombs in 2022, proving the country has no intention of participating in denuclearization. Kim Jong-Un is violating the UN Security Council’s ban from nuclear tests and ballistic missile launches, and China and Russia vetoed more UN sanctions on North Korea, splitting the council for the first time since 2006. North Korea will be siding with those two countries in trade and travel, moving from engagement with the U.S. and South Korea.

Words of the year reflect the culture of 2022:  

Dictionary.com – “woman”: Anti-trans attacks began the GOP’s call for defining woman, sometimes leading to vagueness, non-answers, and ignorance such as Sen. Josh Hawley’s (R-MO) answer of “someone with a uterus.” The announcement of the word stated that its “Word of the Year reflects how the intersection of gender, identity, and language dominates the current cultural conversation and shapes much of our work as a dictionary.” Definition: “an adult female person” with an explanation of the biology of female but continues that “the word belongs to each and every woman—however they define themselves.” The controversy started with Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) asked then Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson for the definition of a woman.    The Cambridge English Dictionary expanded its definition of woman to include transwomen. 

Collins English Dictionary – “permacrisis”: “An extended period of instability and insecurity, esp. one resulting from a series of catastrophic events.”

Meriam-Webster – “gaslighting”: From the 1944 movie Gaslight, the term is defined as manipulating someone to make them question their own reality. It also means the presentation of a false narrative to another group of person so that they doubt their perceptions and become misled, disoriented or distressed, usually for the gaslighter’s own benefit. Typically the audience is vulnerable as from unequal power relationships of afraid of losses connected to challenging the false narrative.

Oxford English Dictionary – “goblin mode”: For the first time, this respected source permitted its users to vote on the “word of the year.” Viral on social media platforms such as TikTok, the term refers to the rejection of societal expectations and living without concern for self-image. Dictionary.com defines the term as “a slang term for a way of behaving that intentionally and shamelessly gives in to and indulges in base habits and activities without regard for adhering to social norms or expectations.” 

Tech Industry: Last year, shares lost $7.4 trillion, shown by the 30-percent decrease in the Nasdaq Composite, and Elon Musk lost $205 billion of his $269 billion assets when he purchased Twitter and began to make it a fascist social media platform. In the crypto currency world, Sam Bankman-Fried stole $8 billion from hjs FTX company, and DDT tried to make money from his NFT SUPERHERO trading cards. The entire industry is down 89 percent, and DDT’s digital cards, while make a profit the first few days, have seriously dropped.  

Supreme Court: For the past year, the high court has been marked by leaks—presumably by Justice Samuel Alito—and accusations of conflicts of interest, particularly from Justice Clarence Thomas as his wife, Ginni, has pushed for overturning the election and been active on conservative boards. Chief Justice John Roberts just released his annual report with no mention of these problems although he did complain about the possibility of violence toward the judicial branch because of protests following their overturning Roe v. Wade. He praised congressional action to shield personal information about judges and their families. No mention was made of the request for a Code of Judicial Conduct applicable only to the Supreme Court. Instead his introduction focused on the overturning of the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision by the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education that desegregated public schools—possibly his justification for overturning Roe.

Religion: With DDT’s judges and justices pushing religious practices on all the people in the U.S., the fundamentalist Christians have increased hatred and violence. The year 2022 might be considered the year that trans hate exploded. LGBTQ victories may have increased, but hundreds of hate trans bills proliferated across the U.S. along with anti-LGBTQ policies. Drag queens reading to children were attacked and threatened along with their advocates at over 120 events. Club Q in religious Colorado Springs saw five people dead and another 25 wounded after a mass shooting. A new culture espousing the false belief that trans people are dangerous to women’s athletics is another cry from people who want “traditional families.”

Texas AG Ken Paxton told the state’s Department of Public Safety to compile a list of people who legally changed their gender on driver’s licenses and other department records for the past two years. He ignored normal channels to get the information. Parents are fleeing to other states in fear for their families’ safety because of laws permitting child abuse investigations. Florida banning gender-affirming healthcare for patients under 18, and children’s hospitals have been threatened and attacked.

Investments: Losses in world stocks and crypto collapses took trillions of dollars from investors in 2022 with global equities down $14 trillion during the volatility of almost 300 interest rate hikes and three 10-percent rallies. U.S. Treasuries and German bonds, the basics for global borrowing markets and assets in troubled times, lost 17 percent and 25 percent respectively in dollar terms. In just January, ten-year Treasury yields jumped to 1.8 percent from less than 1.5 percent, knocking 5 percent off MSCI’s world stocks index with that yield at 3.8 percent by the end of the year, stocks down almost 20 percent, and oil 8 percent higher down from almost 80 percent last March. Natural gas is up almost 15 percent.

And much more: DDT is facing multiple court cases with existing and potential charges for his personal businesses and his professional life in the White House. 

Queen Elizabeth died, and her 15^th prime minister, Liz Truss, lasted only 43 days before she was replaced. [The fight over managing Covid continues as anti-vaxxer Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, has become DDT’s leading competition for the next GOP presidential primary in 2024. And all this leaves out the problems among congressional Republicans who differ on leadership as well as sports and other culture.

 

The year 2022 was a combination of angst from the GOP and achievement from the Democrats led by Joe Biden.