Thursday, August 31, 2023
The racist Florida shooter’s ideology extends to ordinary people
"Ron DeSantis's Florida recenters the world through the lens of an America defined by whiteness and Christianity. Through this lens, it certainly does appear that America is under threat by non-white mass immigration. Critical race theory is indeed a threat to such a perspective, as is an education that also allows a Black perspective on US history, or one that normalizes LGBTQ+ citizens. It is a politics that has justified DeSantis's treatment of immigrants as things. More recently, DeSantis has essentially suggested shooting migrants even suspected to be drug smugglers – here, he connects immigrants to crime, and uses that connection to justify killing some of them on sight..."
‘Brought to you by big oil’: US billboards call out companies for record heatwaves
Fossil Free Media, a non-profit media organization, installed the ads in cities rocked by heatwaves including Phoenix and Austin…
White Christians say too many see racism when it’s not there, new poll finds - The Washington Post
"Among White unaffiliated adults, 61% say people not seeing racial discrimination where it does exist is the larger problem for the country, while 39% say the opposite," a Pew spokesperson said in an email.
"Among Non-White unaffiliated adults, 71% say overlooking racial discrimination is the bigger issue, compared with 29% who give the opposite answer."…
Among religious groups, however, White Christians were most likely to say claims about nonexistent racial discrimination were the bigger problem. That number includes majorities of White Evangelicals (72 percent), White Catholics (60 percent) and White mainline Protestants (54 percent), according to data provided to Religion News Service by Pew Research…
DeSantis is refusing Biden’s IRA money - POLITICO
The Inflation Reduction Act makes Florida eligible for some $350 million in energy efficiency incentives. But Gov. Ron DeSantis has rejected the funding and other measures, creating the most prominent blockade by any Republican governor against Biden's economic agenda…
Why right-wing billionaires and the GOP want a nation of uneducated, compliant serfs - Raw Story
Republican politicians and the rightwing billionaires who fund them want a nation of uneducated, compliant serfs in their workforce, not a nation of well-educated union-conscious people who are willing to strike to get better pay and benefits...
Mitch McConnell freezes again while talking with reporters in Kentucky - The Washington Post
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to freeze for several seconds Wednesday while taking questions from journalists in an incident that mirrored another occasion when he abruptly stopped speaking in late July...
Opinion | Nikki Haley’s plea about Jacksonville shooting gets a big thing wrong - The Washington Post
But as a group of historians argues in "Myth America," this tendency is far more pernicious among Republicans: They have largely abandoned the goal of reckoning with our white-supremacist past, in part to play down the lingering effects of racism in the present...
Rudy Giuliani defamed 2 Georgia election workers, a judge rules : NPR
One of Giuliani's false accusations included a claim that Moss handed her mother a thumb drive "like they were vials of heroin or cocaine" as the two worked at the State Farm Arena for the Fulton County Board of Elections in 2020. In reality, Moss has said her mother had just handed her a ginger mint.
Last month, Giuliani conceded in a court filing in this case that he did make false statements about the two women…
Pope Says a Strong U.S. Faction Offers a Backward, Narrow View of the Church - The New York Times
To some people, "the situation of migrants, for example, is a lesser issue," the pope said. "Some Catholics consider it a secondary issue compared to the 'grave' bioethical questions."
But focusing on issues of sexual morality and downgrading issues of social justice, he said, clashes with his vision of the true church.
"That a politician looking for votes might say such a thing is understandable," he added. "But not a Christian."…
Wednesday, August 30, 2023
Opinion | When I Tell You Nikki Haley Is Pathetic, That’s an Understatement - The New York Times
" I could trace all her zigs and zags since early 2016: her initially ardent opposition to Trump's candidacy, her speedy capitulation, her stint in his administration as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, and so on. But they were covered in an excellent essay in The Times by Stuart Stevens early this year, and a span of mere months, from December 2020 to April 2021, tells the saga of her signature spinelessness just as well."
Biden Administration Unveils First Drugs for Medicare Price Negotiations - The New York Times
Medicare gained the authority to negotiate the price of some prescription medicines when Congress passed the Inflation Reduction Act last year, a signature legislative achievement for Mr. Biden. The announcement on Tuesday is a key step toward those negotiations, which will unfold over the coming months, with the new prices taking effect in 2026…
Six pharmaceutical manufacturers — Astellas Pharma, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Johnson & Johnson and Merck — have taken the Biden administration to court in an attempt to block the negotiation program. The industry's main trade group and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have also filed suit…
Nigerian police raid suspected gay wedding, arrest more than 200 people | CNN
Same-sex relationships are criminalized in Nigeria, and its penal code approves a punishment of up to 14 years in prison for people who are convicted of entering into a same-sex civil union...
Opinion | Why Racist Violence Keeps Happening - The New York Times
The three African American people at the Dollar General were killed for the same reason the Black churchgoers of Mother Emanuel were slain. They died because they were Black in a country that still produces white supremacists intent on hatred and death...
America Is Draining Its Groundwater Like There’s No Tomorrow - The New York Times
Groundwater loss is hurting breadbasket states like Kansas, where the major aquifer beneath 2.6 million acres of land can no longer support industrial-scale agriculture. Corn yields have plummeted. If that decline were to spread, it could threaten America's status as a food superpower…
‘Go after it’: GOP strategists say Republicans need to hit Biden on drug pricing - POLITICO
Republicans are working to persuade Americans that the Biden plan will stifle innovation and lead to price controls...
Former GOP Official Slices Trump With Brutal 'Axe Murderer' Comparison | HuffPost Latest News
Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia, gave his party a stark warning over the former president...
Ron DeSantis’s Florida is a dangerous and hostile place for Black Americans | T Anansi Wilson | The Guardian
Throughout his tenure as governor, DeSantis has taken every chance to criminalize, stigmatize and sideline Black Floridians…
Ohio Republicans accused of trying to mislead voters with abortion ballot wording | Ohio | The Guardian
According to the lawsuit filed with the Ohio supreme court, the ballot board was asked to "put the clear, simple 194-word text of the Amendment itself on the ballot, so that voters could see exactly what they were being asked to approve".
Instead, the board approved a summary of the amendment that is longer than the amendment itself, replacing the term "fetus" with "unborn child". The summary also does not mention the other forms of reproductive healthcare guaranteed by the amendment, like access to contraception and fertility treatments...
She’s a Prophet. She’s a Theocrat. She’s the Most Powerful Lobbyist You’ve Never Heard Of. – Mother Jones
Government, she tells her tour patrons, exists "to enforce the divine law of God's love." Abildness doesn't push fire and brimstone, but a utopia where all are "healed" and ruled by love of God. "It sounds less menacing, almost like peace and love," says André Gagné, a theology professor at Montreal's Concordia University. "But in the end, it's still subverting democratic institutions to get your will done because you have a particular vision of society."…
California sues school district over transgender 'outing' policy - ABC News
"Every student has the right to learn and thrive in a school environment that promotes safety, privacy, and inclusivity – regardless of their gender identity," Bonta said in a Monday statement announcing the lawsuit.
He continued, "The forced outing policy wrongfully endangers the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of non-conforming students who lack an accepting environment in the classroom and at home."…
Ted Cruz Busted For Sharing Yet Another Wildly Misleading Tweet | HuffPost Latest News
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) fell for more disinformation on social media on Monday, sharing a wildly out-of-context tweet about the border…
Secretaries of state get ready for possible challenges to Trump's ballot access
The issue centers on the 14th Amendment, which prohibits people who have "engaged in insurrection or rebellion" from holding public office. Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson raised the theory at last week's GOP presidential debate that Trump's conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, might disqualify him on those grounds — a theory that has gained traction among some legal scholars, though others discount the possibility.
Now, the people running state elections are trying to figure out what to do if people bring legal challenges against Trump...
Republicans demand answers from Garland on Covid relief fraud
Officials and experts say the worst of the fraud occurred during the Trump administration as the pandemic was unfolding, as a result of poorly designed relief programs whose rules were written both by executive branch officials and Republicans and Democrats in Congress...
Why a DOJ lawyer questioned a Trump case witness at the White House - The Washington Post
"It is completely standard that when you are interviewing someone who works in the White House to do the interview at the White House," said David Aaron, a former federal prosecutor who worked on national security cases. "When you are interviewing someone who works at the NSA [National Security Agency], you go to NSA. It has nothing to do with a power move; it's a courtesy."…
Christian home-schooler Michael Farris made parental rights a GOP issue - The Washington Post
"Everyone should be aware of Michael Farris and his influence on the Christian right," said R.L. Stollar, a children's rights advocate who was home-schooled and has long warned of the conservative home-schooling movement's political goals. "To Farris's credit, he is really good at what he does. He is really good at taking these more extreme positions and presenting them as if they are something that would just be based on common sense."
Farris, 72, has a long track record of taking stands on the right. He argued in 2003 for the authority of states to criminalize gay sex, a position the Supreme Court rejected in the landmark case Lawrence v. Texas. He aided the legal effort to keep Trump in power by overturning the results of the 2020 presidential election and has urged what he calls a "Joshua Generation" of young home-schoolers to "engage wholeheartedly in the battle to take the land," expanding the political and cultural power of conservative Christians…
Republican Group Hits Trump Hard In Damning Fox News Ad | HuffPost Latest News
The group will also have a billboard in Times Square showing all 91 felony charges against the former president...
Chris Christie warns if Trump wins the GOP nomination 'we're going to lose this election'
"And if we lose to Joe Biden, Republicans need to understand that we're going to be looking at a packed Supreme Court, we're going to be looking at the end of the filibuster," Christie said...
Pence outlines Day 1 executive actions if elected president | The Hill
Here's a look at some of the executive actions Pence said he would take upon assuming the presidency…
Chabot Elementary School in Oakland, California, Evacuated After Bomb Threat Following Libs Of Tik Tok Tweet
"Not only have we been continuously getting hate mails, the school has been receiving calls nonstop and Trump supporters and other unhinged racists have been spreading the school's info by posting the address of our kids' school for the whole internet to see," Chabot's equity and inclusion committee said in a statement to KRON4. "We have received a threat that has triggered an investigation by OPD which is now being considered a hate crime."…
Conservative Coalition Recruiting for Plan to Dismantle Federal Government
…an unprecedented attempt to avoid the setbacks Donald Trump faced during his first term in office by having civic infrastructure immediately in place to allow a conservative president to begin implementing his or her political vision…
Trump has ‘moral compass of an axe murderer,’ says Georgia Republican | Republicans | The Guardian
Former lieutenant governor Geoff Duncan describes Trump's roster of wrongdoing as 'like some sort of Ponzi scheme of lies'…
The Fourteenth Amendment Fantasy - The Atlantic
The Constitution won't disqualify Trump from running. The only real-world way of stopping him is through the ballot box...
Tuesday, August 29, 2023
Feds Probing 5,000 Pilots Suspected of Hiding Serious Health Issues: WaPo
"I know of a lot of pilots who have told me about [medical conditions] they aren't telling the FAA about,"…
Scientists find way to wipe a cell's memory to reprogram it as a stem cell
"We predict that TNT reprogramming will establish a new benchmark for cell therapies and biomedical research, and substantially advance their progress."…
Texas carves out narrow exception to abortion ban in new Republican strategy
"The exceptions in the bill are so narrow, and the penalties for violating the Texas ban are so high, that invariably, a lot of doctors are going to continue not to offer abortion in those situations because they don't want to get in trouble," said Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis...
‘Racism is still with us’: celebration of King’s 1963 speech shadowed by racist attack
She told CNN: "Yesterday we saw the hate. It unfortunately demonstrated where we are compared with 1963, and the answer is – not far at all."…
Florida shooting: ‘White supremacy has no place in US,’ Biden says after killings
A white man shot and killed two men and one woman – all three victims were Black – before fatally shooting himself yesterday…
‘Bring them to justice’: Georgia town residents demand answers in Trump election plot
The "travesty" was what Marilyn Marks, the town hall's main speaker, called "the largest voting system breach in US history". It happened in January 2021, when multiple people working on behalf of Donald Trump allegedly entered the Coffee county elections office and copied software and other digital information from the agency's computers, gaining access to the entire elections system of the state of Georgia, home to about 7.9 million registered voters.
The digital information obtained is now in an unknown number of hands, meaning that future elections could be affected in Georgia and in other states that use Dominion Voting Systems and other equipment made by partner companies...
Trump Orders GOP to ‘IMPEACH the BUM’ Biden or ‘Fade Into OBLIVION’
Donald Trump issued a stark ultimatum to Republicans in Congress on Sunday expressing anger that their talk of an impeachment inquiry against President Joe Biden has not yet amounted to meaningful action…
Pope Francis laments "reactionary," politicised, US Catholic Church | Reuters
Pope Francis has lamented what he called a "reactionary" Catholic Church in the United States, where he said political ideology has replaced faith in some cases...
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Opinion | John Eastman’s defense is shattered in state bar proceeding - The Washington Post
Trump's engagement in a patently unreasonable scheme would deprive him of the protection of the Supremacy Clause…
If Eastman's scheme was patently absurd, a Trump defense based on "advice of counsel" (requiring reasonable advice) would be invalid, especially when a fleet of other attorneys made clear the scheme was illegitimate…
Pope Francis denounces ‘backward’ attitudes of conservatives in U.S. Catholic Church | PBS NewsHour
Pope Francis has blasted the "backwardness" of some conservatives in the U.S. Catholic Church, saying they have replaced faith with ideology and that a correct understanding of Catholic doctrine allows for change over time…
Trump attacks special counsel over report that an investigator had a meeting at the White House
…but a source told NBC News the meeting was with a career White House staffer and not, as Trump claims, a sitdown to get Biden administration approval for criminal charges.
Republican group targets Trump over Georgia indictment | The Hill
An anti-Trump Republican group is targeting the former president over his indictment in Georgia, where he was charged with 13 counts related to efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election in the state...
GOPers think getting arrested makes Trump popular to Black folks
Needless to say, Trump lovers are leapfrogging some pretty obvious facts to make these claims. Like the fact that Trump is accused of attempting to disqualify votes from throngs of Black people who voted against him in 2020. Or the fact that Trump and allies terrorized Shaye Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman — two Georgia election workers who faced false accusations of election fraud. Or the fact that Trump has denied the existence of systemic racism. Or the fact that Trump has endorsed police brutality.
But if you don't trust Black people's intelligence to begin with — if you don't believe in their ability to discern fact from fiction — it's easy to assume that many of them would be fine voting for a criminally indicted hatemonger like Trump just because he's been arrested...
Michigan Gov. Whitmer will call on Democrats to codify ‘Obamacare’ into state law | PBS NewsHour
It comes as one of the Affordable Care Act's most popular provisions that requires insurers to cover preventive services faces a threat in federal court.
Writing the Affordable Care Act into state law will ensure Michigan residents "aren't at risk of losing coverage," due to future threats, Whitmer said in a statement provided to The Associated Press…
Pope Francis draws criticism for extolling Russian imperialist tsars | Reuters
"It is precisely with such imperialist propaganda, the 'spiritual ties' and the 'need' to save 'great Mother Russia' that the Kremlin justifies the killing of thousands of Ukrainians and the destruction of Ukrainian cities and villages," Oleg Nikolenko, spokesperson for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, said on Facebook.
"It is deeply regrettable that such notions of being a great power, which contribute, in essence, to Russia's chronic aggressiveness, are voiced by the pope, either knowingly or unknowingly," Nikolenko said.../cloudfront-us-east-2.images.arcpublishing.com/reuters/CZ642YJ3XJPEFCFZEZB6W3N73A.jpg)
Michael Cohen ‘appalled’ at ‘royal treatment’ Trump received during surrender in Georgia | The Hill
"How much money did it cost the American taxpayers? How much money did it cost the people of Atlanta in order to put all the police officers? For what? For this man to roll up like he's, you know, Caesar coming through the gates of Rome after victory? He is an indicted defendant on 91 counts, he should not be given this sort of royal treatment," he added...
Monday, August 28, 2023
Jacksonville shooting: 3 killed at Dollar General in Florida - The Washington Post
A White man armed with a high-powered rifle covered in swastikas killed three Black people after opening fire Saturday at a Dollar General store in Jacksonville, Fla., before fatally shooting himself, local law enforcement said, describing the attack as racially motivated...
Ukraine Drone Attacks Shut Down Moscow's Airports Again
For the third time in just over a week, Moscow has shut down major airports as a result of Ukrainian drone strikeson the Russian capital...
Weekly Roundup: Trickle Down Trumpism (Bradley Onishi and Daniel Miller; Straight White American Jesus podcast)
Brad and Dan discuss three main stories from the week: 
- The GOP debate, where Trump was somehow both absent and present.
- The killing of a shop owner in CA over her display of the Pride flag.
- The appearance of Spokane mayor Nadine Woodward at a Christian nationalist rally with Sean Feucht and Matth Shea.
Interview:
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