More Courts Plus DDT, House

In the space of 24 hours, the Supreme Court blocked Texas’ new law allowing state police enforcement to arrest immigrants crossing the border, changed the ruling—with three dissents—to permit the arrests, and then lost the ruling when the 5^th Circuit Court let the earlier injunction blocking the law during litigation stand. The rulings started in February when a federal district judge blocked the law, stating the law “threatens the fundamental notion that the United States must regulate immigration with one voice.” Texas AG Ken Paxton’s office then appealed the ruling to the 5th Circuit Court, which reversed Ezra’s ruling. Biden appealed to the Supreme Court which temporarily blocked the law until March 18 when it made its two contradictory decisions. The appeals decision was made by a three-judge panel. A DDT appointee voted against the George W. Bush and the Biden appointments.

House GOP extremists are so afraid to lose the border issue for campaigning that they want to cause a government shutdown blocking its solution. Congress had an agreement on five of the six appropriations bills necessary to keep government open after March 21 and were on the edge of the one for Homeland Security until the far-right members of the House began a revolt. Now they’re pushing for a continuing resolution until October 1, 2024, an unpopular solution that leaves the funding at 2023 levels without consideration for inflation. Democrats wanted an additional $1.56 billion to secure the border, but Republicans refused the offer. The White House pointed out that their refusal would cripple border security—“less agents to secure out border, less officers to protect the traveling public, less people to go after drug traffickers than today, less detention beds than today, as well as diminished capacity to respond to disasters, cybersecurity incidents and national security threats.”

The House requires 72 hours after receiving the bills, and the Senate mandates 30 hours of debate unless they agree to forgo it. If the House had agreed to the bill by Sunday, it could be considered on Thursday, the day before the shutdown, leaving the Senate with one day to turn it around. No matter how long the shutdown, it will cost government funding: preparation of contingency plans, lost fees and revenue, and administrative costs with more money to start agencies back up and back pay for furloughed federal employees. Two-thirds of IRS agents would be furloughed in the midst of tax season, and active-duty troops and essential airport security staff will work without pay. Nationwide, flights will be delayed.

Airports are already struggling with mishaps, eight events on United airplanes in the past two weeks. Among them are an engine fire from plastic packaging wrap, a tire lost shortly after takeoff, and a plane veering off the runway, and all required emergency landings or diversions. Five of the incidents were on planes made by Boeing. Although no injuries were reported, the problems create anxiety about aviation safety. Most of the incidents reported in the last two weeks required emergency landings or diversions. In May, United pilots will start to have an extra day of in-person training and a “centralized training curriculum for new hire maintenance technicians.”

Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) has decided to not pick Vivek Ramaswamy for his vice-president—but he could become the Secretary of State. Or maybe Homeland Security Secretary—both odd choices because of his racism. His qualifications, according to DDT’s allies: good public speaking skills and is the son of Indian immigrants. And of course, he would be loyal. In addition, Ramaswamy wants to use the military as law enforcement and deport all 700,000 Dreamers who were brought to the U.S. as children, forcing them to reapply for citizenship. In foreign affairs, he would let China invade Taiwan and allow Russia keep occupied Ukraine.

In his spare time, DDT is putting together a list of people he plans to prosecute if he becomes president while he pardons all the insurrectionists committing crimes on January 6, 2021 to overturn the legal 2020 presidential election. DDT is starting with former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and the entire members of the House January 6 investigative committee, a group he calls “the Unselect Committee.” Also on the list are Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, in charge of the criminal trial for his hush money business fraud and onetime officials and allies now critical of him. These include former chief of staff John Kelly, former AG Bill Barr, ex-attorney Ty Cobb, and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark A. Milley. Other targets are officials at the FBI and DOJ. He also plans to appoint a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. DDT falsely blames Biden for all his indictments and lawsuits he faces. Unfortunately for DDT, House members might have a legitimate claim of immunity, the “Speech or Debate clause,” which is part of the U.S. Constitution.

DDT’s loyal lawyer Alina Habba may be disappearing from his orbit after she was responsible for an $82,500 settlement by DDT’s golf club in Bedminster (NJ) to a former waitress alleging she was tricked into an unfair hush-money deal after a supervisor sexually harassed her. The contract includes the line stating both “parties agree that Alina Habba is not a party to this release.” Habba posed as a concerned friend to the waitress and offered her free legal advice and denigrated the waitress’s lawyer before leveraging the relationship and “fraudulently inducing” Bianco to “quickly agree to unconscionable and illegal terms,” thereby ingratiating herself with DDT. The waitress is considering a lawsuit against Habba for fraud and plans to again sue the golf club for sexual harassment because she no longer has a nondisclosure agreement.

Noting that Gaza’s “waterfront property could be very valuable,” DDT’s son-in-law Jared Kushner wants Israel to remove civilians while it “cleans up” the strip. Part of his job in DDT’s White House as senior foreign policy adviser was to create a peace plan for the Middle East. Conservatives praised his Abraham Accord, but the Palestinians had no part in it. To Kushner, disposal of the Gazans should be on a bulldozed area of the Negev desert. “Gaza was not really a historical precedent [sic],” according to Kushner in his revisionist history. He added that Palestinians having their own state would be “a super bad idea” and “essentially be rewarding an act of terror.”

In a House hearing on Tuesday, Republicans grilled retired generals Mark Milley, former chair of Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Kenneth McKenzie, former head of U.S. Central Command, about the Afghanistan withdrawal in summer of 2021, hoping to find reasons for impeaching President Joe Biden. They testified about errors made during two decades of war leading to chaos but conceded that the Biden administration made multiple mistakes.

Milley said the withdrawal of nonessential civilian and military personnel, a little more than two weeks before the deadline to leave, was poorly timed. He said the “fundamental flaw” was that the withdrawal “was too slow and too late.” Both generals had recommended a small presence of 2,500 troops in Afghanistan, but all of them were withdrawn.

Democrats brought up the Doha agreements requiring the withdrawal which DDT’s administration signed in 2020 as the start of the events. DDT reduced troop levels to 2,500 in January 2021, days before Biden was inaugurated. Thus, the withdrawal was well underway when Biden entered office. McKenzie also disagreed that the evacuation would have been better at Bagram airbase where U.S. forces were withdrawn in July. He said that Bagram’s use was impossible because of the troops remaining in the country. McKenzie also took complete responsibility for the 13 U.S. soldiers killed in a suicide attack at Abbey Gate.

RNC co-chair Lara Trump had plans to hire conservative activist Scott Presler for her “legal ballot harvesting division” but has changed her mind. A conspiracy theorist and election denier, anti-Muslim Presler has 1.5 million followers on X. He “remains focused on his nonprofit,” Early Vote Action, to “organize & mobilize Republicans to vote early.” Hearing about the potential hire, Democrats were ready to publicize his participation. In the past, Republicans have opposed third parties delivering ballots, but Trump planned to structure a program to collect ballots in states where the process is legal.

Eight primaries on March 19 and two special elections make no difference in the presidential candidacy nominations for 2024 because Biden and DDT already had enough delegates. Both of them took primaries in Arizona, Illinois, Kansas, and Ohio. DDT also took Florida’s primary, but the Democratic primary was canceled with all 224 of the delegates assigned to Biden. In Ohio, inexperienced extremist Bernie Moreno, endorsed by DDT, took the U.S. Senate candidacy from Secretary of State and state Sen. Matt Dolan to run against incumbent Sherrod Brown. The quality of Brown’s competition may make the general election better for him.

Replacing former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) who resigned at the end of 2023, Vince Fong, endorsed by both McCarthy and DDT, is likely to run against another Republican as he has almost 41 percent of the votes with 84 percent of them turned in. A Democrat came in third in the bright red district. The runoff is on May 21, leaving that seat empty for another two months. Fong faces a challenge from the California’s secretary of state in a court ruling allowing him to run despite being on the ballot for reelection to the state Assembly.

Tomorrow will have more election results after the votes get counted!

Sunday News for the DDT Cult

Judge Tanya Chutkan is still deliberating a  request to restrict Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) from statements encouraging violence and intimidation, but a Colorado judge issued a protective order prohibiting threats and intimidation. Her case is the first to block DDT from the primary ballot, using the 14^th Amendment preventing candidates who participated in insurrections. The district judge stated that the order was to protect the safety of herself and her staff. An October 13 hearing will deal with two motions to dismiss the lawsuit on the basis of DDT’s free speech rights, and an October 30 hearing will discuss DDT’s removal. The state set January 5 as the deadline for its 2020 presidential primary ballot. A similar Minnesota case will be heard that the state’s Supreme Court on November 2.

Gag orders limiting statements by trial participants outside the court are common, especially in high-profile cases. In 1991, the Supreme Court ruled them constitutional to avoid prejudicing a jury, but that covered only the defense lawyers as officers of the court. It did not address standards for a defendant’s gag order, but the 5^th Circuit Court upheld a gag order in 2000 for a defendant who used the 1991 case to oppose the order. The order was lifted two months later, however, to avoid interfering with the defendant’s election campaign and reimposed after the election was over.

The gag request for DDT is based on the concern that his angry, vengeful statements put people in danger now with “multiple threats” to special counsel Jack Smith. A Texas woman also threatened to kill Chutkan, perhaps because of DDT’s violent statements. The gag order request used the theory of stochastic terrorism, the belief that demonizing someone with mass communication increases the possibility of “lone wolf” attacks. DDT, however, could use a gag order as an excuse if he loses in 2024.  

DDT might refuse to follow a gag order and not pay any fines. Another possibility would be to jail him, but that would be bad publicity. Chutkan, however, has said that she could move the trial up if he didn’t follow directions.

Nine California Democratic legislators asked AG Rob Bonta to fast-track a state court ruling to remove DDT from the ballot because his inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021, makes him ineligible to participate in the GOP presidential primary. Bonta, who may run for governor in 2016 after Gavin Newsome is termed out, said he is reviewing the request.

Good news for President Joe Biden means bad news for DDT:

• Rupert Murdoch, who is trying to woo DDT and is antagonistic toward Biden, may be out of the decision-making process for the Fox network.
• Elon Musk’s decisions for X, formerly Twitter, is causing millions of people in the U.S. to drop his social media platform. A mandated subscription fee for all would lose more millions.
• The death of Rush Limbaugh in early 2021 has caused his loyal listeners to abandon AM talk radio for their primary news source.
• Tucker Carlson, fired from Fox, has not found another powerful audience.
• Project Veritas, far-right political group editing videos to smear individuals and groups, may have disappeared.

An Atlantic profile of Gen. Mark Milley, outgoing chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, may have destroyed veterans’ votes for DDT. The former occupant of the White House has always expressed disgust for disabled, going so far while campaigning in 2015 to mock Pulitzer-Prize winning New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis, a congenital joint condition that limits movement in his arms, by supposedly imitating him (left).  Milley shared an anecdote about his choice of veteran Luis Avila to sing “God Bless America” for Milley’s welcoming ceremony as chair. During his five combat tours, Avila had lost a leg and suffered brain damage, two heart attacks, and two strokes. His wheelchair almost fell over on the rain-softened ground, and several people kept him from falling.

After Avila finished singing, DDT congratulated him before multiple people heard him say to Millay:

“Why do you bring people like that here? No one wants to see that, the wounded.”

Milley said DDT told him to never let him appear in public again. Avila will again perform at Milley’s retirement ceremony.

DDT wanted wounded veterans excluded from a 2018 military parade because “Nobody wants to see that.” DDT’s decision to not visit U.S. military in a French cemetery was because it was “filled with losers”—1,800 Marines who lost their lives in a World War I battle. Senior advisers said that DDT didn’t understand the government value of finding soldiers missing in action because they were caught and deserved their treatment after performing poorly. In 2020, he announced “no Americans were harmed” in an Iranian missile attack although 11 military members with brain injuries were transported to hospitals.

Last weekend, he unleashed his ire on Truth Social by posting that Milley should be executed for treason. Milley had communicated with his Chinese counterparts about security concerns during DDT’s last days in the White House when he appeared to become more and more unhinged. If Milley is a witness regarding DDT’s indictment, DDT’s statement could be considered intimidation.   

In another posting, DDT, who rolled back over 100 environmental policies, praised UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for scrapping environmental legislation against “fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue.”

On Sunday afternoon, DDT responded to the alleged corruption of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) by demanding, “EVERY DEMOCRAT SHOULD RESIGN FROM THE SENATE!”

When suggestions appeared shortly before DDT’s time in the White House about removing him with the 25^th Amendment, he had to ask Steve Bannon, “What’s that?” Now he’s calling for Republicans to remove Joe Biden from the presidency through “extraordinary constitutional measures.” DDT still doesn’t understand the 25^th Amendment. It is not used for “incompetence”; the criteria are mental or physical incapacitation, with no evidence of Biden suffering from these.

DDT also wants a government shutdown, believing that his GOP House campaigners can “defund” special Jack Smith and save him from prosecution. He also doesn’t realize that DOJ prosecutions are not defunded with a shutdown.

A new name from DDT’s orbit has hit the media when Molly Michael told the FBI about his to-do lists—that were written on classified documents. These were notecards from his high-level classified briefings, and she saved them. The FBI didn’t find them in the search because they didn’t look at Michael’s desk. DDT faces 37 charges in the Southern District of Florida connected to his mishandling of classified documents. Starting to work for DDT in 2018, Michael, his former special assistant and Oval Office operations coordinator, can confirm every part of this mishandling, including his direct involvement in hiding these documents. She was the only member of still-trusted assistants who DDT took to Mar-a-Lago and follow his to-do lists on the classified documents.

Michael also knew where all the boxes were going, and Walt Nauta sent her a photo of the box spilling classified documents across the floor. She sent DDT a photo of how boxes were stored. Michael wasn’t indicted, perhaps because she willingly cooperated, testifying extensively to investigators. She told them that DDT ordered her not to tell them about the classified files he kept at Mar-a-Lago.

In her new book, Enough, another aide, Cassidy Hutchinson, wrote about destruction of government documents, massive numbers of them that former chief of staff Mark Meadows burned in his office fireplace—so many that his wife complained about dry-cleaning bills for the “bonfire” smell. Meadows is one of 19 defendants in the Georgia RICO case about DDT and his team trying to overturn election results. Some of the destroyed documents related to meetings with Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA) who was in the forefront of DDT’s election fraud campaign and linked to efforts to install Jeffrey Clark as attorney general who would then use the DOJ to overturn the election.  

In her confirmation hearing to Connecticut’s state Supreme Court, Nora Dennehy explained she abruptly resigned from special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the special counsel’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election because the DOJ’s political nature during DDT’s administration. DDT and his loyalists selected Durham to prove a “deep state” conspiracy against DDT, and his AG Bill Barr at the time appeared to be working to support that evidence-free fantasy. Barr violated DOJ guidelines in his public statements about the probe and considered releasing an interim report before the 2020 election. Durham’s investigation, however, failed.

As part of his campaign, DDT has used the Heritage Foundation and Mark Meadows for his Project 2025, that erases any visibility democracy. Instead, DDT, if elected, would have “total control” of the federal government. The U.S. would be similar to the authoritarianism of Turkey or Hungary. Basics of Project 25, according to Politico:

“Defund the Department of Justice, dismantle the FBI, break up the Department of Homeland Security and eliminate the Departments of Education and Commerce….  Give the president complete power over quasi-independent agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission, which makes and enforces rules for television and internet companies…. [And ensure the remainder] of this slashed-down bureaucracy is reliably MAGA conservative … and that the White House maintains total control of it.”

The 2024 presidential election is even more important than the one in 2020 for the U.S. safety.

House Republicans Back to Impeach Biden

In 2022, campaigning congressional Republicans claimed their purpose was to improve the lives of U.S. families. The GOP gained a majority of four votes and then focused on “anti-woke,” pro-impeachment, and pro-shutdown for the federal government agenda. With only 11 days to pass a budget, or at the least a continuing resolution for the current budget, by September 30, they need to deal with a new farm bill, reauthorization of the Federal Aviation Administration, funding for domestic disaster relief, and a new round of aid for our Ukrainian allies. Therefore, Republicans focus on President Joe Biden’s impeachment.

The big problem in the impeachment plan, however, is no evidence. Far-right Republicans lied about Biden’s so-called corruption, even providing witnesses in committee hearings who failed to support the accusations, but none of these searches have born fruit. Nevertheless, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), terrified of the far-right Freedom Caucus, directed an impeachment inquiry on the first day back from an almost seven-week vacation committees. His fact-free claims were “allegations of abuse of power, obstruction, and corruption.”

Eleven days ago, McCarthy said he needed a full House vote for an inquiry but apparently decided on a unilateral inquiry because he couldn’t find a majority of House members for even an inquiry. When then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi (R-CA) had opened an inquiry into former Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) in 2019, McCarthy drafted a resolution condemning her actions for robbing all lawmakers from voicing their opinions. He may think he is protecting vulnerable Republicans in the next election, especially the ones from 18 districts supporting Biden in 2020.

In January 2020, the DOJ declared Pelosi’s lack of floor vote invalid: DDT’s DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel declared the House must take formal votes to authorize impeachment inquiries. DDT’s DOJ ruling that the DOJ can therefore refuse impeachment-related subpoenas is binding on the current administration. Steven Engel wrote:

“[W]e conclude that the House must expressly authorize a committee to conduct an impeachment investigation and to use compulsory process in that investigation before the committee may compel the production of documents or testimony.”

This ruling from DDT binds the DOJ, FBI, and IRS, and Biden could choose to follow DDT’s precedent. Although the binding doesn’t carry legal weight in court, DOJ internal opinions control subsequent administrations unless revoked or superseded by new opinions.

Spearheading the impeachment inquiry are Oversight Chair James Comer (R-KY), Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Ways and Means Committee Chair Jason T. Smith (R-MO). Not surprisingly, congressional Democrats have expressed their criticism for the impeachment. In a 14-page report, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a constitutional expert and top Democrat on the Oversight Committee, called Comer’s crusade “an epic flop” and “a complete and total bust.” Raskin lists a large number of Comer’s failures, both his lack of evidence and his “baseless and sensationalistic claims.” The report’s devastating accuracy comes from its simple presentation of what Comer and his team has said and done during the past nine months as they started with their conclusion and then worked backward. 

Raskin proved the lack of evidence, stating it “debunks … Republican conspiracy theories.” In the 12,000 pages of subpoenaed bank records, over 2,000 pages of suspicious activity reports, and multiple witnesses, including two former business associates of Hunter Biden, Republicans found:

• No bank records showing payments to the president.
• No suspicious activity reports alleging potential misconduct by the president or that he is involved in his son’s business dealings.
• No witnesses testifying to misconduct by the president.

Yet Comer declares the opposite, accusing Biden of taking “millions and millions of dollars from bad people and bad countries around the world.” Far-right media sources such as Breitbart editor and Steve Bennon have lambasted Comer for failing to support bribery allegations.

Senate Republicans agree that the House GOP doesn’t have enough evidence for an impeachment. Some of them recall the debacle of then-President Bill Clinton’s impeachment proceedings, backfiring in the 1998 midterm election when Democrats broke a trend by picking up five House seats. Conspiracy theorist Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) reluctantly agreed that the GOP can’t find any “direct evidence” or “hard proof” of Biden’s wrongdoing, and Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) called it “a lot of noise.” GOP Whip Sen. John Thune (D-SD) wants to stay “focused on the future and not the past,” and GOP Policy Committee Chair Joni Ernst (R-IA) prefers to concentrate on the national security policy. (She might want to do something about the damage that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is doing in that area.)

Up to 30 House Republicans believe the GOP has no necessary evidence against Biden. Even far-right GOP members of the House oppose McCarthy’s actions. Particularly outstanding is Colorado’s Ken Buck who called Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) confused statements about the impeachment timeline “absurd,” especially after she argued, like a teenager, with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) about who started the process. Buck said that impeachment comes only after evidence of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” which doesn’t exist right now.

By mid-August, far-right House Republicans had filed six separate impeachment resolutions against Biden, all of them with no evidence against him. Gaetz revealed the reason when he explained the purpose was to make Biden look bad enough to lose the 2024 election. He wrote:

“Let me break it to all of you: There’s no conviction and removal of Joe Biden coming on impeachment. I know that. You know that…. The jury is the American people.”

Comer clearly indicated retaliation as the reason for the impeachment. Asked if the House will have non-stop impeachments with competing parties controlling the House and White House, he said:

“If it is, it’s because the Democrats impeached Donald Trump twice. And I blame this impeachment craze on the Democrats and a lot of voters feel like, well they impeached Trump twice and we should impeach Biden. And again, that’s irresponsibility on the Democrats’ side.”

Greene has focused on Biden’s impeachment since his January 2021 inauguration. She filed her first article of impeachment against him on the first full day of his presidency and sponsored over half the nine impeachment resolutions submitted in the 118th Congress. McCarthy has been so devoted to Greene that she has been called the real speaker of the House.

McCarthy is caught between a lack of votes and Gaetz’s declaration that he will remove McCarthy from the speaker position because McCarthy declared only an inquiry, not a full impeachment. He accused McCarthy of not living up to the secret agreement that got him the votes for speaker in the 15^th ballot and said he would hold votes, every day if necessary, to kick McCarthy out of leadership. Gaetz also demands votes on term limits and balanced budgets, the release of footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, more investigations into Biden’s family—specifically subpoenas of his son Hunter, who is the focus of the impeachment inquiry—and the scrapping of a budget deal McCarthy cut with the president earlier this year. In addition, Gaetz wants parts of DOJ defunded, including special counsel Jack Smith who indicted DDT. Gaetz said Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) will be publicizing the hidden agreement.

Former Freedom Caucus member from Texas, Randy Weber, said his colleagues may be going too far. Unlike other conservatives opposing earmarks, he wants $100 million for the Ike Dike, a Gulf Coast hurricane protection project, as well as protections for some of the nation’s biggest energy and trade facilities. Weber wants heavy cuts in spending but requested $686 million for earmarks, far more than any other House member.

Although GOP senators usually appear more sane then GOP House members, the sociopath elected to the Senate from Alabama—although his residence is in neighboring Florida—has assumed the leadership of far-right conservative action. Not satisfied with blocking all military officer promotions, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) wants to defund the FBI, the ATF, the DOJ, the IRS, the FDA, and the Department of Homeland Security. And Senate rules allow him to do it single-handedly. Tuberville found an ally in Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), known for his far-right credentials after declaring that conservative Bob Bennett wasn’t conservative enough. Lee tweeted a defense of Tuberville’s blockade and called for Republicans to “de-fund” Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and “cut Pentagon funding.” Even if the two of them have no followers, they can carry out their psychopathic opposition to national security by themselves, thanks to the Senate rules.

Through his bravado, Tuberville displays his ignorance. In late July, retired two-star Marine Gen. Arnold Punaro called Tuberville “a coward,” who “doesn’t understand our military.” Last weekend, House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul (R-TX) said Tuberville is “paralyzing” the military; Tuberville said McCaul “wasn’t quite up on his facts.” Soon afterward, the senator said Joint Chiefs Chair Gen. Mark Milley’s retirement on October 1 wasn’t a problem, that he could just stay until his replacement was confirmed—something that Tuberville is blocking. Told that law prevented Millay from remaining, Tuberville replied:

 “He has to leave? He’s out. Get somebody else to do the job.”

A qualified nominee is waiting for Tuberville to permit him to take Millay’s position.

55 Years after King’s Assassination

Every year on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, White people claim that King wanted them to be “colorblind,” yet King consistently discussed the legacy of enslavement and the need to address structural racism, topics now banned in one-third of the states. Right-wing groups such as Moms for Liberty fight to ban books because including them in the curriculum “makes children hate their country, each other, and/or themselves.” [Painting by Jonathan Harris] 

Republicans cherry-pick King’s words to support their “anti-woke wars” and opposition to “critical race theory.” Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis claims that teaching about the history of slavery and racism in the U.S. is “basically teaching kids to hate our country and to hate each other based on race.” The conservative explanation of CRT causes condemnation of all lessons and books on racism and gender although CRT theory is used only in higher education and legal circles to discuss race as a social concept.

The ban on CRT, according to DeSantis’ handpicked state Board of Education, protects students from education that will “distort historical events, but the state policy prevents students from learning accurate U.S. history. An Oklahoma law blocks teachings that cast anyone as “inherently racist, sexist or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously” or make them feel “discomfort, guilt, anguish or any other form of psychological distress” because of their race or sex.

The King family pointed out the misuse of King’s words. His youngest daughter, Bernice, said:

“The word ‘woke’ has been repurposed to deter the very work that people focused on awareness about injustice and on the urgent need to eradicate injustice were centering the word to accomplish. Many will distort a positive narrative so that white supremacy can persist.”

Blacks created the term “woke,” which white conservatives use in a pejorative manner, as a defensive survival tactic against police brutality and other unjust societal dangers toward the Black community. In 1923, the term was a call to Blacks to become more socially and politically conscious. Conservative whites co-opted the term to describe any progressive approach—indeed, any traditional education about racism in curriculum used for decades.

The conservatives’ decision to prevent anything “woke” expresses their desire for people to be unaware of political injustice. The purpose of “anti-woke” laws is to erase its context, to convince people that inequalities don’t exist and therefore don’t need to change. Instead, laws prevent any understanding of racism so that White people won’t be “uncomfortable.” Conservatives use “woke” as a slur and an attack just as they used “cancel culture” in the past when they themselves tried to cancel culture and identify themselves as victims.

King’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” written four months before the 1963 March in Washington and five years before his assassination, described an obligation to collect facts “to determine whether injustices exist” from police brutality, wealth inequality, and antidemocratic threats to voting rights. In the letter, he rebuffs “unjust laws” and white moderates with a “shallow understanding” of injustice.

Racism is one of the three greatest threats to the progress of society, according to King.  In 1967, he said, “Racism can well be that corrosive evil that will bring down the curtain on western civilization.” The current hatred for teachers, books, and education discussing racism blew up when protesters marched against the killing of George Floyd in the summer of 2020.

Recently, House far-right Republicans have discussed the eradication of “woke” education in the military. Before their election, they promised to investigate Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, because he thinks West Point students should be educated, including about racial issues, about different viewpoints.

DeSantis described Florida as “where woke goes to die.” With the death of “woke,” people become more ignorant and more willing to vote for conservatives. They also become more violent as demonstrated by their behavior in school board meetings and at the Capitol on January 6, 2021. They fight for limiting rights to only heterosexual white people. “Anti-wokers” take positions as education leaders, setting statewide policies and educational standards. Their control censors books from classrooms and libraries while mandating curriculum that excludes teaching about minorities and unconstitutionally promoting evangelical Christianity in schools. Teachers and librarians are no longer professionals: they simply do what they are told.

Misrepresentations spread by conservatives:

“It’s not true … that the United States was built on stolen land.” – Ron DeSantis. [European settlers appropriated land occupied by Native Americans with little or no renumeration.] 

Texas conservatives wanted to replace the word “slavery” with “involuntary relocation” in the social studies curriculum. They failed. (Earlier, Texas textbooks described slaves as “workers.”)

CRT is “state sponsored and state-sanctioned racism… America is not a racist nation.” – Former VP Mike Pence

Slavery was a “necessary evil” to build the nation—the thinking of the Founding Fathers. – Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR)  

White people are not responsible for Black enslavement, according to a South Dakota law requiring this ideology in school curriculum. Education can also not include topics about Native Americans topics and the history of their oppression in the South Dakota territory.

[visual – Book banning and guns]

When CRT was originally banned, conservatives claimed that they were going after only rascism materials; within the past year, however, the censorship broadened to LGBTQ materials, anything about “sex,” and whatever else makes conservatives “uncomfortable.” An Oklahoma library canceled a Sexual Assault Awareness Month program and the inaugural Shameless Romancebook club meeting. Instead of waiting for book challenges, administrators are simply stealing books from school library shelves.

“Woke” will continue in the courts. In mid-November, a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction against Florida’s Stop WOKE Act renamed the Individual Freedom Act, temporarily blocking the law restricting teaching about systemic racism in public school. The judge ruled that the law violates the First and Fourteenth Amendments by preventing some viewpoints in university classrooms while permitting “unfettered expression of the opposite viewpoints” favored by the State of Florida. State lawyers argued public school teachers don’t have First Amendment rights in the classroom because they are mouthpieces of the state.

The judge called the law “dystopian.” It banned teaching that people are “privileged or oppressed” solely because of their race, national origin, or sex and that a person’s race, national origin, or sex can predispose the person to biases, “whether consciously or unconsciously.” An expert on McCarthyism called these laws comparable with redbaiting and scare tactics in the “Second Red Scare” of the 1950s.

DeSantis has a new system to prevent higher education from teaching about systemic racism. He appointed five trustees to a politically progressive liberal arts school in Sarasota, the New College of Florida, and created a solid conservative majority on the board. One appointee, Christopher Rufo, started the battle against CRT two years ago. Other appointees are from the conservative Claremont College leading the MAGA movement, an editor of a conservative Catholic magazine, the cofounder of a Florida Christian school which uses textbooks from Bob Jones University Press for a “Biblical worldview” to history and creationism, and MAGA Candace Owen who threatened to kill Dr. Anthony Fauci if he “came at [her] kid with a vaccine.”

On the school’s website is standard “diversity, equity and inclusion” language, but the school also teaches the classics, Western history, and other approved “anti-woke” classes. The vast majority of its almost 300 independent study projects listed for the semester are in science with many of them traditional topics from the humanities. Yet a website announced views considered radical left such as events during Black History Month. Jonathan Chait wrote:

“[DeSantis] is not seeking to protect or restore free speech, but to impose controls of his own liking.”

Chait compared the “anti-wokeism” to the conservative institutional takeover in Hungary under the charge of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, cited as a model by the governor’s spokesperson at the National Conservatism Conference in Miami. With his single-party, anti-democratic rule, Orbán controls the judiciary, media, and elections.

Rufo plans “a top-down restructuring” of the college as his first step to “reconquer public institutions all over the United States.” He has these goals:

• Abolish “diversity, equity, and inclusion” and replace it with “equality, merit, and colorblindness.”
• Restructure the academic departments to reflect the new pedagogical approach.
• Hire new faculty with expertise in constitutionalism, free enterprise, civic virtue, family life, religious freedom, and American principles.
• Establish a graduate school for training teachers in classical education.

DeSantis and Rufo plan to model New College after the conservative Christian college, Hillsboro; one of DeSantis new trustees is Hillsdale dean Matthew Spalding. Recent Hillsboro speakers discussed the January 6 “hoax,” ways that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg rigged the 2020 election, and the DOJ “persecution” of law-abiding patriots. Rufo accused DeSantis’ opponents and other progressives of “grooming” and insinuated public schools are filled with child molesters.

That’s the direction of public education—book bannings, revisionist history, and QAnon conspiracy theories. Less than a month ago, a survey of 2,000 people finds that 73 percent oppose banning books and 43 percent have looked for challenged or banned books to read during the year. Legislators’ next step is punishing “woke” corporations speaking out for social justice, but 71 percent of the population oppose these possible laws.  GOP legislators, however, have a history of ignoring their constituents’ wishes. 

By 2011, 94 percent of the U.S. population were favorable toward Martin Luther King Jr. If he were alive today, however, laws in one-third of the states would keep him from expressing his views in school.

DDT’s Difficulty with Generals, Search Warrant

With the danger of Deposed Donald Trump (DDT) running for the presidency in 2024, news about his past becomes far more important. An ongoing message from DDT is his love for generals, but appointing them didn’t bring the satisfaction he thought it would. Once, he complained to a former Marine Corps general, his chief of staff John Kelly, that he wanted “totally loyal” generals like World War II generals who served Adolf Hitler. This information is included in The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021 by journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser. Kelly responded:

“You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and almost pulled it off?”

DDTd couldn’t believe Kelly and insisted, “No, no, no, they were totally loyal to him.” The book’s authors describe DDT’s military leaders in conflict between resigning in protest and remaining in the administration to prevent more catastrophes. In another conversation with Kelly, DDT said he didn’t want any injured veterans to be part of his Independence Day parade, that “this doesn’t look good for me.” He kept disagreeing with Kelly who told him “those are the heroes.”

A week after the military police fired gas cannisters and used grenades at peaceful racial justice protesters in Lafayette Square, Gen. Mark A. Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, drafted a resignation letter. DDT’s action to clear the square for his photo op in front of a church caused Miley to do “deep soul-searching,” according to the draft of the letter. He added DDT was “doing great and irreparable harm” to the country and made “a concerted effort over time to politicize the United States military.” Miley felt he could no longer change that.

“You are using the military to create fear in the minds of the people—and we are trying to protect the American people. I cannot stand idly by and participate in that attack, verbally or otherwise, on the American people.”

Milley concluded by writing he “deeply” believed that Trump was ruining the international order and causing significant damage to the United States overseas and did not understand that millions of Americans had died in wars fighting fascism, Nazism, and extremism. He pointed out that DDT “subscribe[s] to many of the principles that we fought against.” Milley never sent the letter because he was persuaded to stay, but he later feared two “nightmare scenarios” from DDT’s clinging to power: the 1933 fire in the German parliament Hitler used to seize German control and a declaration of martial law “or a Presidential invocation of the Insurrection Act, with Trumpian Brown Shirts fomenting violence.” The insurrection on January 6, 2021 was DDT’s failed “Reichstag moment,” the parliament fire. Milley later said about the attack:

“They shook the very Republic to the core. Can you imagine what a group of people who are much more capable could have done?”

Baker and Glasser provided a detailed description of DDT’s relationship with his generals from their book in this article. In response to DDT’s desire to have “the biggest, grandest military ever for the Fourth of July” after watching the one in France for the Bastille Day celebrations, then Defense Secretary James Mattis said, “I’d rather swallow acid.” Authors explained that the difference between DDT and his generals were difference in values, their view of the U.S. Air Force general Paul Selva, the vice-chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that parades in Portugal, where Selva grew up under a dictatorship, “were about showing the people who had the guns.” DDT was surprised that Selva didn’t like his idea.

DDT had avoided going into the military with “bone spurs” [visual] but loved being Commander-in-Chief. As generals continued to disagree with him, however, he called them “very untalented people” and he “did not rely on them” because they weren’t unquestioning loyal to him. DDT then frequently replaced them for no reason other than they weren’t his “loyalists.” He openly said, “I want a yes-man!” The “adults” in the White House were largely gone by 2019. And in his devotion to Russian President Vladimir Putin, he “gave Russia Ukraine and Syria,” as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told him.

One of DDT’s infamous questions for Milley was about turning the National Guard on protesters. “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” he asked. This question indicates DDT’s increasingly erratic thoughts and behavior, causing Robert Gates, a former Secretary of Defense and C.I.A. chief, to persuade Milley and then Defense Secretary Mark Esper to stay in their jobs until they were fired. Milley was contrite about his presence at Layfayette Square, but he still participated in the killing of Iranian commander Qassem Suleimani without briefing congressional leaders in advance. Pelosi described him as “evasive” and disrespectful to Congress. Milley had followed DDT’s order not to notify lawmakers.

Esper, too, was on the hot seat. DDT’s then chief of staff Mark Meadows threatened Esper for not recanting his opposition to invoking the Insurrection Act after Lafayette Square. Yet Esper was determined “to endure all the shit and run the clock out,” as he put it. He refused to turn the right to deploy troops over to people such as Robert O’Brien or Ric Grenell.

 Both Milley and Esper hung on, but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told them that the “crazies” were ascendant in the White House and inside the Pentagon. The day after DDT lost the election, he fired Esper, Defense Secretary, and replaced him with Christopher Miller, an obscure mid-level counterterrorism official at DDT’s National Security Council, surrounded by DDT’s political minions and one of only two people in the U.S. able to launch nuclear weapons. DDT lobbied Miller to preemptively attack Iran.

Milley knew coups required the takeover of the military, the national police, and the interior forces, and he was again persuaded not to retire. He warned Miller and his new people that they were being watched and the newly elected president could put them “behind bars” for any illegal actions. Milley overheard DDT asking Miller if he were ready for the upcoming January 6 protest because “it’s going to be a big deal.” He told Miller to have “enough people to make sure it’s safe for my people.” Milley didn’t see DDT after that.

On January 6, Milley ordered the D.C. National Guard to the Capitol at 3:04 pm. They arrived at 5:40 pm, almost four hours after the attack began, and set up a perimeter by 7:00 pm. Then-VP Mike Pence had also tried to defend the Capitol, but Meadows told him to pretend DDT was the person who took action to give the impression that he “is still in charge.” Milley called DDT both “shameful” and “complicit.”

The search warrant updates won’t go away. More pieces:

• At least one of DDT’s lawyers signed a written statement in June claiming that all classified material in the Mar-a-Lago storage were returned to the government after a government visit to the club on June 3. The assertion was wrong—or a lie. Therefore the DOJ cited a potential violation of a criminal statute related to obstruction as one basis for the warrant.
• Material seized by the search warrant contained 11 sets of documents with confidential or secret markings, some of them “classified/TS/SCI”—“top secret/sensitive compartmented information” to be viewed only in a secure government facility.
• The search was done in the storage areas with boxes of material as well as DDT’s office and residence.
• DDT said he had declassified the material while he was still in the Oval Office, but there is no evidence that this happened. Right-wing writer John Solomon, designated by DDT as a representative to interact with the National Archives asserted that DDT had a “standing order” during his term that “documents removed from the Oval Office and taken to the residence were deemed to be declassified the moment he removed them.” No law permits this order.
• Surveillance video outside the storage room for two months showed boxes moved in and out of the room while the DOJ was attempting to retrieve the materials.
• The 30 million documents that DDT claims President Obama has in Chicago are under sole custody of the National Archives in that city.
• DDT has been barred from receiving intelligence briefings usually provided to former presidents; Biden said DDT could not be trusted because of his “erratic behavior.”

The good news: the U.S. economy recovered all the jobs lost since the pandemic shutdown in 2020, the fastest employment bounce-back in U.S. history. Biden has seen 9.5 million jobs, 3 million more than DDT achieved in his first three years before he lost them all to his mismanagement of the pandemic. Job seekers have their choice of 10.7 million openings.  

Hypocrisy for the day:

Mama Bears, a group of Georgia mothers has been intent on banning library books. One of its members now complains about her being banned from a school board for censorship because she can’t read what she calls sexually explicit passages aloud at the meetings. Mama Bears has tried to ban over 100 books with no evidence they are pornographic. Fifty-one years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that “one man’s vulgarity is another’s lyric.” People upset by language can avert their eyes.

Judicial Partisan Hacks, Gavin Newsom’s Win, ‘Peril’

Yesterday, I finished my blog post with a column from Eugene Robinson about the claim from Justice Amy Coney Barrett that the Supreme Court justices are not “partisan hacks.” (Note that she appeared with Dictator Donald Trump (DDT) at the White House as soon as she was confirmed.) Former conservative Republican Jennifer Rubin has more to say about Barrett’s protests. As Rubin wrote: 

“The declaration [that ‘this court is not composed of a bunch of partisan hacks’] might be a tad more credible if she had not chosen to appear in an overtly political setting. University of Texas law professor Steve Vladeck tells me: ‘I’m hard-pressed to imagine a worse place to give a speech about the court not being partisan than . . . at an event in which she was introduced by Senator [Mitch] McConnell. It’s either remarkably tone-deaf or it’s deliberate. Neither is encouraging.’”

Rubin explains Barrett was selected by “a president who pledged to see Roe v. Wade overturned, and was picked from a list of judges vetted by antiabortion advocates.” She gave evidence of Barrett’s “extreme antiabortion advocacy” during confirmation hearings, and her defense of “judicial philosophies” doesn’t hold water if it is consistently favorable to the extremists in a specific political party. In defending the far-right decisions of her court in the dark of night, Barrett ‘fails to grapple with the fact that the court’s decision-making has skewed sharply to the right based solely on a change in personnel, as evidenced by the profoundly flawed decision issued last term gutting a key provision of the Voting Rights Act,’ according to constitutional scholar Joshua Matz.

As Rubin points out, conservative justices “tutored in Federalist Society buzzwords such as ‘judicial restraint’ (except for example, when rewriting the Voting Rights Act) … have latched onto a brand of jurisprudence in which the only ‘legitimate’ method of interpretation is time-traveling to the 18th century, often neatly bypassing the post-Civil War amendments that federalized rights.” They have elevated rights such as religions freedom and gun ownership while “diminishing others (e.g., those guaranteed by the 14^th Amendment.” Rubin compares the accordion-like expansion of executive power for GOP presidents and contractions for Democratic presidents. I think that fits the description of “partisan hacks.”

Approval for the Supreme Court has dropped to an all-time low at 37 percent, dropping from 52 percent a year ago before she joined the court. Fifty percent expressed disapproval, up from 37 percent a year ago.

While recently confirmed justices move the U.S. to the far-right, California confirmed its state’s democracy in yesterday’s recall election for Gov. Gavin Newsom that cost taxpayers over $300 million. With 74 percent of the vote counted, Newsom beat the recall by almost 64 percent—two percent higher than when he won his position in 2018. QAnon conspiracy theorist and major opponent Larry Elder, the Trumpiest of 46 candidates, would have removed mask and vaccine mandates, minimum wage, and abortion access, according to his campaigning which was also marked by racism and sexism.

With polling highly favorable for Newsom before Election Day, Republicans, Elder, and DDT began their evidence-free hue and cry about a rigged election. Reality had no part in their claims: in California, the GOP has 24 percent of registered voters, about half the 46.5 percent of registered Democrats. And the question is how many Republicans would have turned out on Election Day if they believe the system is rigged.   

Transgender candidate Caitlyn Jenner added to the lack of reality among Republicans. With one percent of the total, about 56,000 votes, she snarked, “You kind of get the government you deserve.” In California, that’s right. During her campaign, Jenner complained about seeing homeless people on her way to her private airplane hangar, lied about not voting last year, insulted other trans people and opposed trans rights, didn’t show up to some media appearances, and flew to Australia to appear in a reality show.

Senior editor at the LA Times, David Lauter, ran his piece with the title “Trump Still Wins Elections—for Democrats.” Other governor candidates are using the same anti-DDT techniques as Newsom, Terry McAuliffe opposing wealthy private-equity executive Glenn Youngkin in Virginia and New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy opposing businessman and former state lawmaker Jack Ciatarelli. Although 63 percent of Republicans and GOP-leaning independents want DDT to lead the party, only 49 percent think he should be a presidential candidate in 2024. Supporting DDT means losing centrist voters, and criticizing DDT means losing his base.

Vaccination may be the prime issue this coming year: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is lying about vaccines changing human RNA, and DDT himself was booed for suggesting people getting vaccinated, important to keep GOP voters alive. The number of daily deaths is dropping to a daily average of 1,000 in the U.S., but the vast majority of deaths are in the unvaccinated, a majority of them Republicans.

A new book from Robert Costa and Bob Woodward, Peril,  may be part of disillusioning more unaffiliated voters about DDT. One huge story from the two authors is about Joint Chiefs of Staff chair Mark Milley, who was so concerned about DDT’s stability after the loss of the presidential election that Milley called his counterpart in China Gen. Li Zuocheng of the People’s Liberation Army, to tell him the US. would not strike and worked to protect the military from DDT’s unpredictable actions. Questions about that report may appear during Milley’s hearing before the Senate Armed Forces Committee on September 28.

Philip Bump described the problem about DDT’s exerting every power he could find to fight the terror of being viewed as a loser. Part of DDT’s self-perceived power was trying to convince VP Mike Pence that he could stop the electoral vote counting to overturn the voters’ will. DDT told Pence if he didn’t follow this request, “I don’t want to be your friend anymore.” Pence even called former VP Dan Quayle to find out how he could follow DDT’s orders, but Quayle told him he couldn’t do it. To think that Quayle, often known as a joke, saved democracy!

Failing to bully Pence, DDT became “all but manic, screaming at officials and constructing his own alternate reality about endless election conspiracies,” according to the book’s account. Milley told senior military officials not to take orders from anyone unless he was involved. 

Based on over 200 interviews with participants and witnesses for DDT’s last days in the White House, Peril includes a transcript of a telephone call between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Milley about the possible danger of nuclear war because DDT controlled the weapons. About DDT, Pelosi said, “He’s been crazy for a long time.” Milley told Pelosi he agreed with her “on everything.” That’s when Milley told his top service chiefs to watch everything “all the time.” Addressing the problem of Milley possibly overstepping his authority, the authors wrote:

“Milley was overseeing the mobilization of America’s national security state without the knowledge of the American people or the rest of the world … and believed his actions were ‘a good faith precaution to ensure there was no historic rupture in the international order, no accidental war with China or others, and no use of nuclear weapons.’”

Milley had good reason for his fear. Immediately after the 2020 election, DDT secretly drew up a memo drafted by two of his loyalists to withdraw all troops from Afghanistan by January 15, 2021, while he was still in the White House. No one on the national security team knew about the memo, and it was nullified. Yet Milley had no idea what else DDT would do in secret. The book I Alone Can Fix It (Phil Rucker and Carol Leonnig) reported that Gina Haspel, CIA director when DDT refused to concede the election, worried he would attack Iran in a right-wing coup because he was “acting out like a six-year-old with a tantrum.”

Although DDT was ready to concede the election on November 4, phone calls to loyalists such as Rudy Giuliani convinced him he could follow through with the conspiracy theory of election fraud, ignoring its lies and damages to democracy. Former adviser Steve Bannon persuaded DDT to return to the White House for January 6 and “fucking bury [Biden].”

Tucker Carlson may have gone over the edge with his conspiracy theories on Fox network. Anti-vaxxer and hip-hop star Nicki Minaj claimed the testicles of her cousin’s friend became swollen after being vaccinated; Carlson said on his show that he wants to see the man’s balls. In response, author Kurt Eichenwald explained that the two primary causes of this condition, called hydrocele, “are injury or STD (chlamydia or gonorrhea)… He needs an MD, stat.” Carlson started out by thinking the cousin’s testicles were swollen, and his show ran this chyron: “NICKI MINAJ: COUSIN’S TESTICLES BECAME SWOLLEN.” Despite looking like a fool, Carlson is still pursuing the case, asking the man to tell Carlson his story.

At least Carlson admitted he lies on his show when he “feels cornered or something”—which seems most of the time. He made his confession during an interview with conservative media host Dave Rubin after Rubin asked how CNN employees such as Chris Cuomo and Brian Stelter “live with themselves” after they constantly tell lies that the internet exposes. Yet Carlson tried to distinguish between his lies and those from the CNN anchors, saying he lies “to protect the system because I really believe in the system.”

Biden Works, DDT Lies

President-elect Joe Biden:

On November 13, 2020, the election of 2020 was called for Joe Biden as president and Kamala Harris as vice president. They have a total of 306 electoral votes with 232 for Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), exactly the opposite numbers for the 2016 election which DDT called a “landslide victory.” (That year, a few “faithless voters” dropped DDT’s official number from 306 to 304.) The map below shows totals for all states. Nebraska and Maine are incorrect because they separate the electoral votes by districts: Nebraska is 3-1 in favor of DDT, and Maine is 3-1 in favor of Biden. The lined blue states indicate court cases.

DDT has not conceded, but he slipped in his 15-minute speech about the vaccine on this afternoon to say “who knows which administration it will be. I guess time will tell.” In the same speech, his first public speaking in a week, he threatened to withhold the vaccine from New York because of comments by Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

NYT has this piece about possible Cabinet members, including a large number of women. All potential nominees share two characteristic: none is related to Biden, and all are authorities in their fields. Most are recognizable from their past work and dedication to the United States; i.e., former North Dakota senator Heidi Heitkamp, who lost her election after voting against Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation for the Supreme Court, for Agriculture Department and nuclear physicist Ernest Moniz, President Obama’s Energy Secretary, for the same position managing the country’s nuclear arsenal. 

Sixteen federal prosecutors assigned to investigate election fraud throughout the nation denounced AG Bill Barr’s memo to investigate voter fraud, despite the lack of evidence, which could interfere with the election. In a letter, these assistant U.S. attorneys from the DOJ Civil Rights division come from 15 of 44 jurisdictions in both red and blue states. Part of their responsibility is monitoring the November 3 election. They asked Barr to rescind his order to examine allegations of voter irregularities before results are certified:

“It was developed and announced without consulting non-partisan career professionals in the field and at the Department. Finally, the timing of the Memorandum’s release thrusts career prosecutors into partisan politics.”

A coalition of over 1,000 legal experts and scholars—judges, AGs, and law professors—from both GOP and Democratic gubernatorial administrations also denounced DDT’s refusal to accept the election results and called on his attorneys to meet their “ethical obligations” by ending their support for his false claims and assertions. The open letter also singled out GOP officials who support DDT’s attempts to throw out thousands of ballots and condemned Barr for his “shameful legacy” by authorizing investigations of election fraud immediately after the election.  

While Barr tries to rig the election for DDT, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley stands up to DDT’s politicization of the military despite DDT’s replacement of key Pentagon figures with ideologue loyalists.Standing next to DDT’s new acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller, Milley spoke at the opening of the US Army’s museum:

“We are unique among militaries. We do not take an oath to a king or a queen, a tyrant or a dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. No, we do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or religion. We take an oath to the Constitution. And every soldier that is represented in this museum, every sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman, each of us will protect and defend that document, regardless of personal price.”

DDT:

DDT’s Lawsuits:

DDT put his personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, famous for his press conference in front of the Four Seasons Total Landscaping, in charge of his election litigation and all public communications related to it. The transfer came after DDT lost his “Sharpiegate” case in Maricopa County (AZ). One of DDT’s three losing cases today, the case falsely claimed felt-tip markers invalidated ballots in counting machines. The judge stated that the number of disputed ballots was too few to affect the election’s outcome. 

In Michigan, DDT lost a case to stop certification of votes in Detroit pending an audit. GOP plaintiffs claimed poll workers coached voters on who they could vote for and poll challengers weren’t permitted to monitor vote-counting. About 100 GOP challengers were allowed into the vote-counting site but couldn’t return after leaving because virus protections required a quota of people in the room. The judge ruled some allegations were too general and others were “rife with speculation and guesswork.” Michigan’s GOP legislative leaders said they will not question the electoral votes going for Biden.

In Pennsylvania, one case is still pending, but in the other, a judge refused DDT’s request to dismiss over 8,000 ballots. Lawyers have no evidence of fraud; they say they “intend to produce it” later. 

Three voters in Wisconsin sued to exclude votes in three Biden-supporting counties to change the state’s electoral votes to DDT. The evidence-free charge of widespread fraud in absentee voting accuses voters of bypassing the requirement for photo ID by describing themselves “indefinitely confined” because of the pandemic.

Fox network had to correct formerly reputable legal scholar Jonathan Turley, professor at the George Washington University Law School, after he told Fox & Friends that thousands of DDT’s votes in Michigan were switched to Biden because of software in “half the districts.” Turley also falsely claimed the software affected counts in other states. Co-host Steve Doocy noted his research shows any glitch didn’t impact the vote count. He added the errors in two counties were from human error. Even DDT’s own administration believes the software caused no problems.

Already nervous about representing DDT, Porter Wright Morris & Arthur, a large prestigious law firm based in Columbus (OH), dumped him as a client in a Pennsylvania case to block mail-in ballots.  

DDT’s Superspreader:

After DDT’s wild rides around the country in frantic campaigning at taxpayer cost, over 130 Secret Service agents protecting DDT and the White House are isolating or quarantining after testing positive for COVID-19 or coming in close contact with infected co-workers. About ten percent of the agency’s core security team is sidelined because of the virus. Last summer, dozens of the agents also fell ill or were forced to quarantine after DDT’s Tulsa (OK) rally and his following trip to Arizona. DDT also insisted in putting his staff at risk on a joyride outside the hospital while he was ill with coronavirus. White House staff mostly fail to wear masks, and Secret Service agents have been seen without them while on duty.

At least eight staffers at the RNC are also infected, some of them in field offices where they were exposed to large staff gatherings.

COVID on the cruises has started. Seven passengers tested positive on the SeaDream 1 docked in Barbados. Passengers testing negative can leave the ship and go home. The cruise, the first in the Caribbean since the shutdown in March, was intended to show cruising safety. With fewer than 250 guests outside U.S. waters, the ship could operate without following CDC guidance.

Nevada’s Democratic governor Steve Sisolak is the fifth governor to test positive for COVID-19. He’s the third person in his office with the virus. The wife of Georgia’s beleaguered Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger also has coronavirus.

DDT’s senior administration officials have said DDT’s refusal to concede can prolong the pandemic with greater loss of lives because DDT blocks government officials from communicating with Biden. Without Biden’s access to the huge database for making decisions from Operation Warp Speed, the public-private coordination to speed up availability of a vaccine, its distribution could be significantly delayed. Biden is still talking with doctors and other experts to opt for a federal government plan instead of DDT’s decentralized approach.

Thanks to DDT, more people are developing long-term health problems and dying from COVID-19. The U.S. tally of 183,364 cases on November 13, 2020, puts the total over 11 million and today’s deaths of 1,395 brings the total to just short of 250,000.

The cowardly “humoring” Republicans prove DDT is nothing but a toddler having tantrums. He makes his supporters look foolish because they believe the loser’s arguments have merit. Michael Gerson pointed out that U.S. Republicans are no better than China and Russia in sabotaging the democratic system by claiming it is corrupt. The longer GOP lawmakers wait to admit Biden will be the president, the more they destroy constitutional law and endanger national security.

DDT has set a pattern with losing candidates failing to concede despite being behind up to 80,000 votes. Sen. Martha McSally (R-AZ) waited over a week to concede after she lost by almost 80,000 votes. Tweeting has also become the GOP fashion in firing people. In Oregon, appointed Secretary of State Bev Clarno fired the state’s election director, Steve Trout, by tweet this past week only two months before she leaves office because he criticized the antiquated voter registration software. Described as “dangerous” and “ignorant,” Clarno’s action comes while Oregon continues to count the last few votes and reconcile signatures as well as the “canvass, manual audit, electoral college, and recounts,” according to Trout. Clarno did not run for election, and Democrat Shemia Fagan will take over on January 4, only two months after Clarno’s tweet.

The far-right Proud Boys, who DDT told to “stand by” in his September presidential debate, plan to be a part of the protest “Million MAGA March” today with other white supremacists. The groups are known for their violence; tomorrow is a good day to stay home.

The Ins and Outs of DDT’s World

After months of rumors that John Kelly, chief of staff to Dictator Donald Trump (DDT), would depart the White House, the latest comments that the two of them were no longer speaking bore fruit. DDT announced that Kelly would be out of the House by the end of the year, probably to be replaced by 36-year-old Nick Ayers, currently VP Mike Pence’s chief of staff. As with other DDT’s changes in personnel, he’s looking for someone who won’t disagree with him. Less than 17 months ago, which DDT called “almost two years,” optimists hoped that Kelly would curb DDT’s unruly impulses, but Kelly had his own problems of lying and refusing to back down on fact-checks of his falsehoods, specifically his attacks on Rep. Frederica S. Wilson (D-FL). Kelly also supported Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and the family separation travesty at the U.S.-Mexico border. Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner will be delighted to see the last of Kelly, although he is also testifying in Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Other openings also give DDT a chance to appoint more high-level officials. With the failure of Matt Whitaker as acting AG because of his criminal activities, DDT found a more confirmable AG candidate with the same credentials as Whitaker—supports the firing of former FBI Director James Comey, wants to investigate Hillary Clinton, believes that Robert Mueller’s investigation is wrong, and has a pattern of handing out pardons for the president. Bill Barr, AG for George H.W. Bush, considers Jeff Sessions an “outstanding attorney general” and gave pardons for H.W.’s friends implicated in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Pro-lifers are also delighted that Barr opposes Roe v. Wade. He also supports harsh drug laws and mass incarceration. Barr can protect DDT with his belief that the executive branch should oppose attempt from Congress to obtain executive data, a position that Republicans will approve. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) called Barr “a man whose writings endorse the anti-democratic notion that the president is effectively royalty, unaccountable to laws, the Constitution, or constraint by Congress.” He added that Barr “supported unconstitutional surveillance of Americans … and advocated for the use of torture.”

Another, far more unlikely, DDT appointment is Heather Nauert, State Department spokeswoman, to replace Nikki Haley as UN Ambassador for the United States. A former long-time employee for the Fox network, Nauert had no experience in foreign policy, government, or politics until DDT put her into the State Department in March 2017. Twenty years ago, she was hired among many other young female cable personalities to publicize the Bill Clinton scandal with Monica Lewinsky. Bill Shine, now White House deputy chief of staff for communications after he was forced to leave Fox for his handling of sexual misconduct, brought Nauert to Fox. She explained her popularity by saying, “It’s more interesting to see a young person talking about issues than a big, old, fat white guy.”

On the Fox network, sometimes as host of Fox & Friends, Nauert complained about migrant children bringing “disease” into the U.S., ranted about “illegals,” and lament As a talking head on Fox News, she peddled the Benghazi conspiracy, claimed that immigrant children are bringing “disease” into America, railed against “illegals,” and protested about “sharia law … now changing everything” in the United States because a Minnesota YMCA accommodated Somali-American Muslim girls during swimming class.

Nauert is known for her gaffes. Last June, she gave the D-Day invasion attacking German forces in World War II as an example of the “strong relationship with the government of Germany.” Nothing about the German reunification in 1990 and the end of the Cold War. Most recently, she posted a photograph of herself cheerfully smiling in front of the Saudi Royal Court while she represented the United States on a “fact-finding mission” into the torture and dismemberment U.S. resident and WaPo journalist orchestrated by Saudi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salam. During the same time, her boss, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, also grinned and laughed with MBS. [visual]

In talking about why Nauert is “clearly not qualified” for the job, Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said:

“Our foreign policy is a mess, and the president was laughed at in his last speech before the U.N. I’m not sure anybody would advise him that the way to correct all his mistakes is to put a Fox & Friends anchor as our top ambassador to the United Nations…. These days it seems that the most important qualification is that you show up on Donald Trump’s TV screen, and if you’re successful in that endeavor, then you seem to be a top candidate to get a whole bunch of top positions in the U.S. government.”

Peter Baker and Michael M. Grynbaum wrote about DDT’s reshaping the role of the ambassador, a position that became part of DDT’s Cabinet at Nikki Haley’s insistence:

“If confirmed, Ms. Nauert may serve more as a public face for the administration than as a policymaker, leaving Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and John R. Bolton, the president’s national security adviser, to dominate decision-making back in Washington. Many in Washington saw the appointment as a way for Mr. Bolton to consolidate power.”

Even an opinion piece in The Hill, a conservative publication, disagreed with DDT’s choice with the understatement that Nauert is not “one of America’s top diplomats,” that the choice is “downright silly.” Chances are good that DDT selected Nauert to downgrade the U.S. involvement in the UN.

Another new DDT nominee is Army Chief of Staff Gen. Mark Milley for the new chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. An odd choice, Milley disagrees with several DDT positions. Milley has said:

• The duty of soldiers and officers is to the U.S. Constitution, not any political party or figure.
• Russia and China are the most dangerous potential foes; “the faint clouds of a coming storm are visible on the horizon.”
• Korea is “the most dangerous near-term threat to the U.S.”
• Barring new transgender recruits from enlisting has no military rationale. Earlier this year, he testified year that he’s “received precisely zero reports of issues of cohesion, discipline, morale and all those sorts of things” as a result of the presence of transgender troops.

Like DDT, Milley does believe in a big military budget. He said:

“Failure to pass the budget, in my view as an American citizen and the chief of staff of the United States Army, constitutes professional malpractice.”

One of DDT’s judicial nominees, Thomas Farr, may lose a confirmation for the fourth time despite VP Mike Pence’s vote to advance him. Known for his racist positions on segregation and voter suppression, Farr alienated even Tim Scott (SC), the GOP’s only black senator, who wrote a letter to the Wall Street Journal to keep Farr from representing a region with 30 percent black population.

“I am saddened that in the editorial “Democrats and Racial Division” (Dec. 1) you attempt to deflect the concerns regarding Thomas Farr’s nomination to the federal bench. While you are right that his nomination should be seen through a wider lens, the solution isn’t simply to decry ‘racial attacks.’ Instead, we should stop bringing candidates with questionable track records on race before the full Senate for a vote. […]

“We must not seek to sow the seeds of discord, but rather embrace the power of unity. Simply put, if the Senate votes on a candidate that doesn’t move us in that direction, I will not support him or her. Our country deserves better.

After voting to confirm over 99 percent of DDT’s judicial nominees, many of them racist, Scott finally drew a line when he refused to follow his party to confirm Farr. Scott’s white cohorts have not reached that line yet; they continue to support nominees with “questionable track records on race.”

Robert Wilkie, VA Secretary, one of these “questionable” appointments, praised Confederate President Jefferson Davis as a “martyr to ‘The Lost Cause'” and an “exceptional man in an exceptional age.” He also called abolitionists who opposed slavery “radical,” “mendacious,” and “enemies of liberty” and said the Confederate “cause was honorable.”

Race isn’t the only line that the administration crosses:

• Karen Budd-Falen, an ally of right-wing extremist Cliven Bundy who led an armed standoff with federal officials, is the deputy solicitor for Parks and Wildlife working on issues related to endangered species, wildlife refuges, and national monuments.
• Adrian Zuckerman, nominee for Romanian ambassador, was sued for sexual harassment by his former secretary.
• Lane Genatowski, nominee to head a cutting-edge research program in the US Department of Energy (DOE), is personally invested in various natural gas-based utilities and gas pipeline companies.
• Andrew Smith, head of the Federal Trade Commission’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, has over 120 conflicts of interest after working for a law firm with a huge number of corporate clients including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, and Uber.

Almost all DDT employees are endangered species except his family. The latest one to surface is DDT’s vice president. Trump’s 2020 strategy meeting last Monday questioned whether Pence should be on the ticket because he “doesn’t add anything.” DDT has been questioning Pence’s loyalty for weeks, and advisors are pushing DDT to replace Pence with Nikki Haley. Pence has spent years lying for DDT, covering for him, and swallowing criticisms. But DDT has no loyalty to others: he just demands it for himself.