Throughout the week, I save news giving me hope or just making me laugh. Here are those from the past couple of weeks.
Since the Supreme Court declared almost half Oklahoma’s land is under Native American ruling, one-fourth of oil and gas drillers and 60 percent of refinery capacity operate on reservation land. The Keystone XL pipeline also crosses the Indian country. Regulation for all this moves from oil-friendly Oklahoma to federal and tribal governments. The state’s shale fields were already hard hit with a one-third drop in oil prices this year. The Bureau of Indian Affairs may also have authority over clean-air programs and pipeline grants within the reservation.
Chief Justice John Roberts granted permission for New York DA Cyrus Vance to skip the 25-day waiting period to move forward in issuing a subpoena for DDT’s financial records. Roberts did not grant the same privilege to the House for requests to immediately go forward. In last Thursday’s hearing where DDT’s lawyers gave the same failing arguments and seemed unprepared, a federal judge gave DDT until July 27 to file more challenges to the subpoena. To investigate hush money DDT paid two different women with whom he had affairs, Vance asked for eight years of DDT’s personal and business records from he accounting firm Mazars USA. The firm does not object.
The Supreme Court also ruled against DDT on his DACA program, but he illegally rejects applications and hasn’t even filed for a rehearing with the required 25 days. Also, he consistently changed his mind about moving forward: no executive order, signing a bill to “give [Dreamers] a road to citizenship, no permission for “amnesty” but “want[s] to make people happy.” Ken Cuccinelli, acting deputy secretary of Home Security, refused to remove the website statement that the Supreme Court ruling “has no basis in law.” A federal court has ordered DDT to accept the applications and return the policy to where it was before September 2017.
DDT rescinded his controversial plan to deport all students who are not enrolled in at least one face-to-face class this fall. Lawsuits against DDT had alleged the action violated the Administrative Procedure Act governing rule-making and was a political move to force universities to reopen campuses with classes in person.
After DDT sent his thuggish federal agents to Portland (OR), Oregon’s AG Ellen Rosenblum announced her office will sue federal law enforcement agencies and start a criminal investigation into the agents’ force. She seeks a temporary restraining order stopping them from detaining Portlanders after agents had no probably cause to seize and detain them. Several people destroy DDT’s behavior as “Pinochet-style abducting citizens.” August Pinochet became president of Chile in a junta when he overthrew a democratically-elected leader and became the country’s dictator. Violations of human rights through rape, torture, abduction, murder were common in the 1970s along with Operation Condor, a secret campaign to wipe out the opposition as people were “disappeared.”
The brutality by federal agents has energized the protest movement and caused protest crowds to grow. On Friday night, a naked woman went up to federal officers line and pointed her finger at them, daring them to shoot. They sprayed pepper balls at the ground inches from her feel. She didn’t move. Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said the presence of federal agents is “like adding gasoline to a fire.” [Right: federal agents firing pepper spray.]
Brown also said the deployment of federal officers is “a mere distraction from the president’s failure to lead this nation through a global pandemic. It is a blatant abuse of power by the federal government. They are inappropriately trained [according to DHS]. Their presence is not needed. And frankly they’re exacerbating an already challenging situation. It is absolutely counterproductive to the work we’re trying to do here.”
Defense Secretary Mark Esper has decided to ban the Confederate flag at military installations by listing flags that can be flown. With the new policy, the LGBTQ rainbow flag will also be banned. Esper’s memo stated unauthorized flags—like the Confederate flag—are acceptable in museums, historical exhibits, works of art, and other educational programs.
As DDT gives everyone a rosy picture of COVID-19 in the U.S., Senators pass along the opposite image to their constituents—especially vulnerable ones up for re-election such as Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Mitch McConnell (R-KY). Forty states see surges in infections, and 67 percent of registered voters distrust and disapprove of DDT’s virus information.
During DDT’s first few months, he used the 1996 Congressional Review Act to erase 14 Obama-era regulations, a law used only once previously. According to that law, any regulation not submitted by the agency within 60 legislative days can be fast-tracked. Thus far this year, DDT signed at least 33 executive orders and plans far more as Democrats eye them for dissolution:
- Destroying environmental law signed by Richard Nixon stopping environmental impact requirements for Infrastructure that he has avoided for over years;
- Preparing another illegal DACA order with the claim the Supreme Court told him to do it;
- Banning undocumented immigrants from being counted in the census;
- Eliminating a fair housing regulation designed to block racial disparities in the suburbs;
- Weakening an Obama-era controls on climate-warming methane pollution.
- Restricting the type of scientific research to be used to craft environmental and public health regulations;
- Forbidding retirement investment managers from considering environmental consequences in their financial recommendations;
- Making asylum even more difficult for migrants;
- Erasing civil rights protections for transgender patients seeking health care;
- Allowing homeless shelters to deny transgender people access to single-sex shelters corresponding to their gender identity;
- Stopping persecution for businesses killing birds “incidentally”;
- Permitting energy firms to use undersea sonic blasts to search for oil, regardless of the impact on ocean mammals’ health.
As of a year ago, judges have overturned at least 70 executive orders, and the GOP Congress has overturned three more. In three years, Earthjustice filed over 100 lawsuits to defend environmental and health protections. Of the settled 49 lawsuits, Earthjustice won 39. Presidential candidate Joe Biden and Democratic leaders have kept a careful eye on the executive orders for a review. DDT believes he is creating new laws when he signs executive orders, but his orders are only implementations of laws by the Executive branch. Orders cannot overturn U.S. laws, but Congress can overturn DDT’s orders.
Hackers have found almost 300 documents in which police shared detailed reports about the threats in protests from far-right extremists attempting to create chaos and disorder instead of DDT’s myth of the “antifa.” Law enforcement intelligence was politicized, causing danger to both protesters and police, according to the communication, because of sensationalization of antifa threats with no substance, a situation not part of the factual material about the boogaloo documents. The disaster lay with the desire of the intelligence to paint the antifa as threatening as the far right although the latter showed no concrete evidence of serious criminal activity. Details about their communication. The good news would be dissemination of DDT’s government manipulation.
On July 1, several civil rights laws went into effect in Virginia:
- Removing unnecessary abortion regulations.
- Preventing driver’s licenses suspension over unpaid court fees.
- Ending the requirement of principals to report to police misdemeanors committed at school.
- Limiting to $50 what health insurers can charge for insulin.
- Extending to aspiring Americans in-state tuition at public colleges and driver privilege cards.
- Banning discrimination against LGBTQ individuals in employment and housing.
- Banning the practice of so-called “conversion therapy” on minors.
- Decriminalizing cannabis possession.
DDT received a sad comeuppance this past week. A week ago, he spent his morning retweeting messages from Chuck Woolery, a conservative former game show host who accused health experts of lying about COVID-19’s seriousness. Woolery wrote:
“Everyone is lying. The CDC, Media, Democrats, our Doctors, not all but most, that we are told to trust. I think it’s all about the election and keeping the economy from coming back, which is about the election. I’m sick of it.”
Woolery continued by claiming there “much evidence, yes scientific evidence, that schools should open this fall.” The next day he sent his last tweet for now:
“Covid-19 is real and it is here. My son tested positive for the virus, and I feel for those suffering and especially for those who have lost loved ones.”
Woolery deactivated his Twitter account on Wednesday; his son is apparently doing well.
World COVID-19 cases, 14,646,706; deaths, 608,978. USA cases, 3,898,550; deaths, 143,289.
Ending with a bit of humor. After DDT repeatedly told the world the U.S. would have fewer cases of COVID-19 without testing, Dan Rather offered some assistance to DDT: “We can apparently solve the issue of undocumented immigrants by just not counting them.” DDT could save $20 billion.