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It’s not that the GOP frontrunner for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat didn’t try to sell his soul to the devil, it’s just that the devil wouldn’t take it.

Instead, Donald Trump endorsed a guy whose soul status, as it were, was never in question—celebrity TV healther Dr. Memet Oz. Oz currently trails hedge fund manager David McCormick by several points in the GOP primary, so getting Trump’s nod surely stands to give the bad doctor a little boost.

“This is all about winning elections in order to stop the radical left maniacs from destroying our country,” Trump said in his statement. Amid touting Oz’s many dubious credentials, Trump added, “He even said that I was in extraordinary health, which made me like him even more (although he also said I should lose a couple of pounds!).” 

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Trump’s very carefully considered pick is generally good news for Democrats. Last month, an internal poll leaked by a super PAC supporting Democratic Senate candidate Connor Lamb showed Democratic frontrunner John Fetterman beating Oz by 9 points, but trailing McCormick by 3. That’s an internal poll by a pro-Lamb group trying to cast doubt on the electoral prospects of another Democrat, so grain of salt. But it’s still noteworthy in terms of which Republican is likely to fare better in the general election.

Certainly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t seem super jazzed about the news. Asked about Trump’s pick on Fox News Sunday, McConnell offered only, “We’ll see. I think we’ve got a good choice of candidates in Pennsylvania. I think we’ve been in a good position to win that race regardless of who the nominee is. I guess we’ll find in the next few weeks how much this endorsement made a difference.”

But however well Oz may or may not play in the general election, Trump’s endorsement of him is blowing the minds of right-wingers—and not in a good way.

Former Trump associate Roger Stone posted a pic to Telegram of Oz on set with former First Lady Michelle Obama and queried, “Wait ? President endoresd this guy ?” [Sic for that whole quote.]

“I have enormous respect for President Trump,” wrote Trump’s first endorsee for the seat, alleged wife abuser Sean Parnell, who dropped out after losing custody of his children. “But I’m disappointed by this. Oz is the antithesis of everything that made Trump the best president of my lifetime.”

Former One America News Network (OANN) host Liz Wheeler tweeted, “Trump endorsing Dr. Oz confirms what Trump supporters fear for 2024. … His worst thing was surrounding himself with idiots, suck ups & deep state. We worry, has he learned his lesson or will 2024 be a repeat? Endorsing Oz? The same.”

Right-winger John Cardillo posited, “Even money odds Dr. Oz will eventually switch parties and f’k over PA voters. Do NOT trust this guy.” Cardillo further called the endorsement “inexcusable,” charging that Oz would be Mitt Romney 2.0. Trump “just put his political capital behind an anti-gun pro-abortion open borders Hollywood liberal,” he added.

Conservative radio host Erick Erickson lamented, “It’s like Donald Trump’s staff is sabotaging Trump by convincing him to make the worst possible endorsements.”

But the money quote came from Breitbart Editor Joel Pollak, who predicted: “This endorsement could divide MAGA in the only way that matters: he could lose America First conservatives over it.”

From his lips to god’s ears.

Anyway, impressive pick by Trump—snubbing his extremist base while passing over the guy who likely has the edge with suburbanites. Kudos.

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Here’s what happens when you give in rhetorically to the far right’s rhetoric on social issues: you lose. When you say abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” and codify that in laws to create exceptions in bans for rape and incest. Instead of taking the stance that every person who can get pregnant has the right to choose to continue that pregnancy or not within the bounds decided upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Because when you start making exceptions, when you start conceding that maybe some abortions are justified while some are not, you’re losing ground.

That ground has been gobbled up by the extremists that are now the mainstream of the right and of the U.S. Supreme Court. Because, as Jennifer Haberkorn writes in the LA Times, those “good” abortions—the rape and incest ones—are increasingly being tossed along with the rest. By the Supreme Court.

There is no exception for rape and incest in the Texas abortion ban, the vigilante law that the Supreme Court is allowing to stand while it is challenged in court. The Mississippi law that the court heard in December, and almost certainly will uphold, also includes no ban for rape and incest.

RELATED STORY:  At least 13 states have introduced legislation to limit or ban abortion since the year’s start

“When there are no exceptions for a person who survived rape or incest, it means the state is coercing that person into a pregnancy they don’t want,” Michele Goodwin, a UC Irvine professor who studies law and health and is founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy told the LA Times. Survivors have already been through one harm, “but here’s the state rubber-stamping a second harm.”

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Goodwin is a survivor of incest and of an abortion at 12. Her father impregnated her, then lied about her age to get a legal abortion for her. Seeing that option being shut off for other children is worrying, to say the least. “I tried to put myself in the deepest corners of closets as a child,” she said. “One of the key steps of being a survivor is to be able to get your freedom back, to be able to get your autonomy back, to be able to get your decision-making back.”

For decades, forced birthers wouldn’t dare go after rape and incest survivors because such huge majorities believe survivors should have access to legal abortion. Back in 2012, when that poll was conducted, there were 13 Republican Senate candidates who agreed with the Republican National Coalition for Life that they were “unconditionally pro-life” and “recognize the inherent right to life of every innocent human being, from conception until natural death, without discrimination.” Two of them are in the Senate now: Ted Cruz (TX), and Deb Fischer (NE). They are among the extremists who helped cram the Supreme Court with forced birther justices.

That’s why a decade later we’re at the point where states feel like outlawing abortion completely, no exceptions, is going to work. “There’s now the opportunity to overturn Roe vs. Wade, overturn abortion rights at the Supreme Court, and that is sort of emboldening these state legislators to move well beyond where a lot of people thought they could go 10 to 15 years ago,” Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state abortion legislation for the Guttmacher Institute, told the LA Times.

That’s extremely convenient for current Senate Republicans, from Leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy to firebrands like Sens. Josh Hawley (MO) and James Lankford (OK) who can say they believe the exceptions should be kept, but have to build a Supreme Court that will allow them to be eliminated in their states.

Even so, it’s not as though having those exceptions has eased the way for survivors seeking abortion care. The states that have tried to outlaw abortion and keep the exceptions don’t make it easy to use them, creating red-tape barriers like requiring police reports or doctor’s signatures. A child who’s been raped by a family member isn’t going to have easy access to officialdom. Plenty of rape survivors have plenty of reasons to refuse to report their assault. While little data on the use of these exemptions exist, Guttmacher studied abortion in assault survivors in 2005, finding “just 1% of patients getting an abortion did so because of rape and less than 0.5% did so because of incest.”

“There are so many practical reasons that a rape exemption doesn’t pan out for survivors, and so it serves to feel like a salve on abortion restrictions,” said Juliana Gonzales, senior director of sexual assault services at the SAFE Alliance, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit. “On a practical level, the exceptions don’t do anything. That’s the honest truth.”

What they have served as is a way for the extremists to pretend that they are compassionate toward survivors, to pretend that they care about the person carrying a fetus. They’re even increasingly giving up that façade. Google “life of the mother exceptions” and you’ll find link after link from the forced birther groups and their allies attesting to the fact that they don’t care, rejecting the idea that a fully realized person’s life is equal to that of a fetus, much less more important.

There are still some lower courts and law enforcement officials who recognize that, as of now anyway, there’s a constitutional right to abortion. In Idaho, the state Supreme Court has temporarily blocked its new Texas-style abortion ban which was scheduled to be implemented in a few weeks. And in Texas, District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez dismissed an indictment against Lizelle Herrera, who had been arrested for murder for having an abortion.

That’s a dim ray of hope, with a packed Supreme Court poised to do its worst. Which means two things have to happen—we have to elect enough Democrats who will fight like hell to regain all that lost ground and codify abortion protections, and expand the U.S. Supreme Court to get it out of the hands of dangerous ideologues.

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In a previous update, we noted that the United States and NATO allies have been pointedly dropping the distinctions between “defensive” and “offensive” weaponry that sharply limited what sorts of equipment NATO countries were willing to send to Ukrainian forces. Body armor, ammunition, and anti-armor drones and missiles were readily handed over; armored vehicles and especially military aircraft were right out.

The distinction was made in an effort to not be seen as providing anything that could be used to attack Russian territory directly, out of fear that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin would insist that NATO was now attempting to attack Russia itself. That would lead to Putin ordering retaliatory attacks on whatever NATO member he declared to be most involved, which would trigger NATO’s reciprocity agreements and turn the war directly into one between NATO and Russia. The Biden administration was especially fierce about limiting such aid, knocking away proposals from NATO countries (read: Poland) that wanted jets or other offensive tools handed over—even as Ukraine’s president stumped furiously for such assistance.

There are still a whole lot of reasons why Ukraine probably won’t be getting planes anytime soon, but that other equipment? It’s flowing. Our own speculation was that this was a direct result of Ukraine forcing a dramatic Russian retreat in the captured towns north of Kyiv, a retreat that left behind a landscape of Russian war crimes. Pictures showed evidence of the torture and summary execution of civilians, the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, and a Russian focus on looting that went past obsession to something bordering on pathetic. The evidence of those crimes was enough to goad NATO nations into taking more aggressive action; it became clear that every passing hour of Russian occupation, in the lands presently under their control, is another hour in which Russian troops are committing new war crimes in the places they still can.

Mother Jones picks up on this too, and provides some corroborating evidence from the Sunday shows confirming that yes, Russia’s exposed war crimes are the reason the U.S. is now dropping its previous objections to offensive weapons delivery. Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan used Meet the Press to link the two directly:

“Given the nature of the battle, how things have shifted and adjusted and what the Russians have done, frankly, killing civilians, atrocities, war crimes, we have gotten to a place in the United States and across many members of the NATO alliance where the key question is: What does Ukraine need and how can we provide it to them?”

Sullivan even boasted that the U.S. deserved some of the credit for the Russian retreat, asserting on Face The Nation that Russia “failed chiefly because of the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian armed forces, but they also failed because the United States and our partners put in the hands of those armed forces advanced weapons that helped beat back” Russian forces. That’s a long way from previous administration’s insistence that the United States mainly was a third party to the war—on the contrary, it’s a public boast that NATO involvement is a big part of the reason Russia faced heavy enough losses to force a retreat.

It’s also clearly an intentional move. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a public show of speaking with Ukrainian soldiers being trained on the use of U.S.-provided Switchblade drones in Biloxi, Mississippi, highlighting the direct U.S. training of Ukrainian troops that was no doubt being provided all along but which defense officials were circumspect in talking about. Now it’s not just out in the open, the U.S. is very nearly rubbing it in the faces of their Russian counterparts.

Sullivan’s statement also hints at the second reason NATO is suddenly being much more aggressive in the sort of weapons they’re willing to provide Ukraine, enough so that talk of “offensive” or “defensive” weapons has largely dropped from the discourse. Sullivan lauded the “bravery and skill” of Ukraine’s forces in pushing back Russia’s Kyiv advance; those Ukrainian forces have shown such dramatic success that NATO countries are now much more confident that if they do take the step of supplying heavy offensive weapons, provoking likely Russian rage, it won’t just be pissing into the wind. Those weapons will be used and used effectively and might even make the difference between Ukrainian defeat, long-term stalemate, or outright routing of Russia’s forces.

In balancing the risks of “provoking” Putin against the potential gains of providing those weapons, the scales have now tipped heavily toward the gains. NATO now sees Russian occupation of Ukrainian towns as far more intolerable, due to the documentation of war crimes, and sees the odds of Ukraine’s military being able to kick those occupiers out as being quite high, compared to what NATO’s own military analysts were expecting in the early days of the war.

So Ukraine gets the weapons, and the United States is now much more willing to poke Putin in the eye.

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The Jan. 6 committee has amassed so much evidence in the nearly 500 days since Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that congressional investigators are weighing a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for the twice-impeached ex-president. 

Whether they ultimately issue that referral is a question that hangs heavy in the air over the probe and members are internally split on the path ahead, according to a report by The New York Times from Sunday. 

Nonetheless, after some 800 interviews and extensive cooperation from those orbiting the Trump White House and campaign in the runup to Jan. 6,  the committee’s bipartisan leadership has said the evidence strongly indicates Trump illegally obstructed Congress—again—and committed fraud against the American people as he and those who sought to keep him in power worked to pull off a scheme that hinged on his lies about the outcome of the 2020 election.

During an interview on CNN following the Times report, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican ousted from GOP leadership for her participation in the probe, brushed off the notion that division was stewing among members. 

The sources in the Times said some lawmakers on the committee are at odds over whether it is actually necessary to throw their weight behind a criminal referral for the ex-president to the Department of Justice. 

That referral is mostly symbolic as the committee has acknowledged countless times over the last year in court and to the press that it simply does not have the authority to prosecute Trump.

A criminal referral could also potentially trigger a lengthy series of delay tactics from Trump or his allies in Congress that would draw time and resources away from key areas of the probe. 

From the Times:

The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.

This assessment on optics reflects, at least in part, the scars left in Washington from the deeply contentious and circus-like atmosphere created in the wake of Trump’s first impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. 

Prosecution in this case, as a matter of constitutional fact, must be left to the proper—and separate—channels at the Department of Justice.

To that end, over the sprawl of its inquiry the select committee has issued subpoenas aplenty and filed lawsuits to claw back or expose various records from integral Trump White House and campaign officials. In this process, it has left a trail of morsels for the Department of Justice to consider as that department conducts its own separate and massive review of Jan. 6.

Take the case of John Eastman, the Trump attorney who wrote a memo proposing how to overturn the election through an unconstitutional pressure strategy involving former Vice President Mike Pence. 

RELATED STORY: Trump led a criminal conspiracy, Jan. 6 lawyers say in court

When a federal judge in California finally reviewed the emails Eastman sought to keep away from the committee during his tenure at Chapman University, the judge found information that led him to believe Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” engaged in a federal crime. 

The ruling was a boon for transparency overall, to be sure, but it also provided the Department of Justice with something deeply important, at least in the eyes of some members of the Jan. 6 committee: A federal judge’s ruling, they reportedly said, would simply mean more in the eyes of Attorney General Merrick Garland. 

Once the committee completes its investigation, it will issue a report on its complete findings and recommendations. That report alone may have so much information and relevant evidence in it that the Department of Justice could use it as its guide to bring criminal charges. 

Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who previously served on both impeachment inquiries for Trump and for former President Bill Clinton, now sits on the Jan. 6 probe. She is of the opinion that a criminal referral isn’t the end all be all to accountability or justice. 

When asked whether the select committee would issue a criminal referral for Trump, Lofgren told the Times, “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.”

“It doesn’t have a legal impact,” Lofgren said. 

Other panel members like Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia have been insistent, however, that it is about the principle of the matter, political ramifications of the criminal referral be damned. 

“This committee, our purpose is legislative and oversight, but if in the course of our investigation we find that criminal activity has occurred, I think it’s our responsibility to refer that to the Department of Justice,” Luria recently told MSNBC. 

This weekend, Cheney told CNN “there’s not really a dispute on the committee” over the referral and emphasized that members are working in a “really collaborative way.” 

The committee, reportedly, has not yet met formally to discuss issuing a referral to the Department of Justice for Trump, however, and there may not be a meeting in the mix any time soon. 

Public hearings are expected this summer, potentially in May and June, and according to committee member and Rep. Pete Aguilar, the probe is not interested in “presupposing” what will be in its final report. 

As of April 6, the Department of Justice has made nearly 800 arrests in its investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

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Two big stories hit the wires today, and reading between the lines in them, it seems like everybody is fed up with Sen. Joe Manchin’s back-stabbing of fellow Democrats, and they’re increasingly willing to talk about it. Obliquely and cautiously, of course, but nonetheless on the record. It seems that fellow Democrats are now willing to talk about just how untrustworthy he is. 

The White House has been burned so many times by Manchin that they’re not going to say anything specific about how or whether they are proceeding with negotiations over rebuilding Build Back Better, the big climate and domestic investments bill that Manchin scuttled last year. “I would quite explicitly not comment on the conversations that are happening,” Brian Deese, Biden’s National Economic Council director, told reporters recently. “I don’t think that has served anyone particularly well.”

It has indeed not, since Manchin has reneged time and time again. At this point, everyone involved is very carefully not saying anything about what Manchin has told them he’s willing to do, because every time they’ve gone out on a limb about what’s he’s committed to, he denies it. The most the White House would say is what Manchin has gone on record talking about as his priorities. “There are things like prescription drugs and lower utility bills that people understand are popular—are practical,” Deese told Politico. “If we can get movement, it will be in exactly that frame.”

RELATED STORY:  Manchin offers a path to Biden’s building back priorities, ideas Sinema has already nixed

So the White House and Democrats are at the point of telling Manchin to write the bill himself, and saying nothing more about it. “This is really up to Joe,” one person involved in the process told Politico. “It’s basically going to be the Manchin reconciliation bill when all is said and done.” Another said “This is a matter of Joe Manchin coming up with a bill that he’s comfortable with. … He is the way he is.”

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That’s no guarantee of getting Manchin on board, however, as his fellow moderate Democrats in the Senate well know. That’s what they did with the voting rights effort. Manchin was the single Democratic senator who opposed HR 1, the For the People Act the House passed early in 2021. So they had him write his own bill, one that he promised he would get Republicans to support. That didn’t turn out so well.

Rolling Stone has the other big new Manchin story about how he scuttled this effort, and it’s not a flattering portrayal from fellow Democrats interviewed—more than 30 key people inside and outside of Congress who worked on the voting rights legislation. It starts with Sen. Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who has been spending way too much time trying to get Manchin to play along, telling Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, “I think we’re gonna get this voting-rights thing done.”

Yeah, right. Tester—along with Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Angus King (I-VT)—had been painstakingly working with Manchin not just to draft the bill, but to get him to agree to a process that would let it pass. And Tester really thought that they were there, that Manchin really wanted what he said he wanted—“some good rule changes to make the place work better.”

Here’s how it went: “At the end of one of their calls, Tester recalls saying that with everyone in agreement on a filibuster deal, all they had to do was put the finishing touches on the voting legislation itself and they were ready to proceed. ‘Yeah,’ Manchin replied, according to Tester.”

Kaine spent the most time working with Manchin on the process, including the night he spent in his car, stranded in a snow storm out side of D.C. He told Rolling Stone that he too had thought Manchin was on board making the changes to the filibuster necessary to get it passed. “I thought we were there a couple of times,” Kaine says. “But maybe that was just me.”

“It was like riding a roller coaster,” Sen. Tester told Rolling Stone. “There were many nights when I went to bed and I thought, ‘This thing is done. We just have to hammer out the details.’ But then something would always happen,” he added. “I don’t know what happened. I can guess. But I don’t know.”

In the meantime, the other back-stabber in the caucus was apparently feeling neglected. Her spokesman, John LaBombard, says as much. He told Rolling Stone that no one was paying her enough attention, assuming that she wouldn’t ultimately stand alone against the reform if they got Manchin on board. Team Sen. Kyrsten Sinema wants the world to know that she’s as much of a diva as Manchin. “It would be a mistake on anyone’s part to engage in any wishful thinking that Sen. Sinema’s policy or tactical positions are somehow contingent on the positions of other colleagues and are not sincerely held,” LaBombard says.

So that’s why she gave that big, obnoxious floor speech—the longest one in her career—against changing the filibuster to save democracy. She was peeved that Manchin was getting all the attention, apparently.

Which is also a thing to remember when working with Manchin on the other stuff: Sinema. Some of the stuff Manchin has said he would agree to (and again, all of that has to be taking with several blocks of salt) are thing Sinema has already nixed. Namely, raising taxes on super rich people and corporations, since they’re presumably paying her way these days.

The level of frustration with Manchin openly expressed by White House staff and Democratic senators suggests that they’ve reached the end of their capacity for patience with him. They all came as close to saying he can’t be negotiated with in good faith as they’re going to with him being a colleague and this being the Senate.

As far as Sinema is concerned, who the hell knows. At this point there truly is just one solution: Increase the Democrats’ majority and make them obsolete. Meanwhile, the two of them are doing everything they can to sabotage the 2022 midterm election for Democrats.

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In a years-in-the-making win for immigrants and their advocates last month, the Biden administration announced that it would no longer be jailing immigrants at the disreputable Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama. The site was initially recommended for closure more then a decade ago, but evaded it under pressure from right-wing lawmakers. No more.

But mirroring events following closures in a number of other states, rather than just releasing immigrants detained at Etowah, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are instead transferring them elsewhere. In this case, to a privately operated prison in Louisiana with its own “history of neglect and reported abuses,” The Advocate reports.

RELATED STORY: Termination of Alabama jail’s ICE contract is a win more than a decade in the making

Legal representatives told The Advocate that nearly a dozen asylum-seekers have been moved to the GEO Group-operated LaSalle Correctional Center in Jena, which has been the center of major complaints within the past five years. That includes a 2017 civil rights complaint finding the site “had the highest number of sexual and/or physical abuse incidents in the country.”

“Now, ICE has begun holding people in solitary confinement at LaSalle, as the jail is over capacity,” said advocacy organization Freedom for Immigrants. “Solitary confinement is a torturous, inhumane, and cruel practice.” The Advocate reports that nurses in 2019 filed a lawsuit against GEO Group alleging that they got sick from mold and other toxins at the facility. But a judge threw out most of the cases.

“The years of ongoing abuse at LaSalle underscore what we’ve already known to be true: All immigration detention is inherently dehumanizing and abusive,” Freedom for Immigrants continued. “It’s not enough to move people from one jail to another.”

But that’s exactly what ICE has done in response to numerous people-powered wins against the mass detention agency. In New Jersey last fall, Bergen County was the remaining locality in the state to continue holding a federal immigration contract when the commissioner board voted unanimously to end the agreement. Like in Alabama, it was the culmination of years of organizing by immigrants and advocates.

But rather than releasing them, ICE moved them hundreds of miles away to New York. It was the same in Illinois earlier this year following implementation of state law that effectively ended immigration detention in the state. Injustice Watch reported nearly three dozen immigrants were instead sent to facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas. “The rest were deported or transferred to other law enforcement agencies.” 

“They’re just taking me farther and farther from the family,” one of the immigrants, Armando Cazares, said in the report. “I didn’t even wanna tell my mom where I’m at. I’m scared. I’m breaking my mom’s heart.”

Remember: Data indicates most people in ICE custody “do not have a single criminal conviction,” and ICE has discretion to allow them to pursue their cases from their own homes and communities.

“In March 2020, in fact, more than six out of ten (61.2%) had no conviction, not even for a minor petty offense,” TRAC Immigration said. In an unprecedented move, the Department of Homeland Security watchdog recently urged the removal of all people detained at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico, citing inhumane conditions. But ICE’s reaction was to instead attack the integrity of the report, including accusing the inspector general’s office of staging photos.

“Human rights abuses are inherent to the immigration detention system, and all immigration detention centers are abusive,” Freedom for Immigrants Director of Visitation Advocacy Strategies Sofia Casini told The Advocate. “That’s why it’s not enough to transfer people from one abusive jail to another. This is not some shell game: We are talking about peoples’ lives.”

RELATED STORIES: Biden administration to stop use of one of the worst immigration detention sites in the nation

Immigrants hoped for freedom following Illinois law ending detention. ICE transferred them instead

ICE ignores pleas for release and instead transfers remaining immigrants detained at New Jersey jail

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In a troubling report obtained by KUTV, investigators failed to find enough evidence that a 10-year-old Black girl was harassed because of her race and disability, and committed suicide after allegedly dealing with prolonged bullying at a majority-white Utah school. Although the child’s family attorney, Tyler Ayres, told Deseret News that Isabella “Izzy” Tichenor was bullied at Foxboro Elementary School in North Salt Lake for being Black and autistic, a team of three independent investigators hired by the school district alleged the attorney did not make the same allegation when emailing the school district’s general counsel. Ayres allegedly said in the email that the district was “deliberate[ly] indifferen[t] to reports of bullying made by Izzy and her family” but did not specify that the bullying was due to Izzy’s race or disability.

Isabella’s mother, Brittany Tichenor-Cox, told The Salt Lake Tribune after her daughter’s death last November that a teacher told Izzy’s class that some students smelled bad and that the girl’s classmates used the comment to threaten her and tell her that she stunk because of her skin. Still, the Davis School District was allowed to limit the scope of investigators’ work to bullying that happened only on the basis of the child’s race or disability. “The Team was not authorized to investigate Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s allegations that Izzy may have been bullied on any ground that was not race or disability,” investigators wrote in their report.

RELATED STORY: ‘I let them work it out’: Vile teacher allegedly tells mom when Black student told her skin stinks

Investigators said they found no direct evidence supporting allegations that Izzy was “bullied on the basis of her race or disability … While many interview subjects reported that students and teachers made comments to Izzy about her hygiene, no witness recalled that she was expressly bullied for being Black or autistic,” investigators wrote. They also concluded there was “no direct evidence to support allegations” that Foxboro or district officials “knew and failed to respond to the alleged bullying on the basis of Izzy’s race or disability.”

“The only allegations the Team could find came from Mrs. Tichenor-Cox, who alleged after Izzy’s death that Izzy was bullied for being Black or autistic,” investigators wrote.

They did, however, note that “issues relating to race, disability, and poverty sometimes intersect and when they do, can further complicate already challenging situations.”

“It can be very difficult to extricate one from the others,” investigators wrote.

They reviewed more than 2,600 pages of documents, including Izzy’s educational assessments, Individualized Education Plan, and emails between Foxboro and the district. Investigators also interviewed 47 witnesses, not including Izzy’s mother, who investigators alleged declined through her attorney.

The Davis School District received the report of the investigation on March 29, yet waited until just before 5:30 PM the day before its spring break to release the findings and an attached statement to media, KUTV reported.

“Once again, the Davis School District expresses its sorrow and sincere, heartfelt condolences to the family of Izzy Tichenor,” District Spokesman Chris Williams said in the statement. “We thank the Independent Review Team for its work and its diligence. We are studying the report and reviewing its recommendations. We are taking it seriously.

“We vow to continue our ongoing and extensive efforts to foster a welcoming environment for all students in the Davis School District.”

There have long been reports from students of color and their parents of a toxic environment in the district. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reviewed more than 200 incident files containing allegations of racial harassment and other discrimination, according to findings the DOJ released last September. “The Department’s investigation uncovered systemic failures in the District’s handling of complaints of racial student-on-student and staff-on-student harassment, discipline of Black students, and refusal to allow Black students to form student groups,” the DOJ wrote.

The agency reported that the district was “deliberately indifferent to known racial harassment,” including white students repeatedly calling Black students the N-word. “We learned of incidents in which white students referred to Black students as dirty, asked why they did not wash their skin, and commented that their skin looked like feces,” the DOJ reported. “White students also called Asian-American students pejorative slurs, such as ‘yellow’ and ‘squinty’ and told them to ‘Go back to China.’”

The report regarding Isabella’s experience is only the latest incident of reported racism at the school. Investigators recommended the district provide training to identify and address bullying, diversity and equity, and trauma-informed poverty as well as establishing “clear protocols” regarding record keeping. “As described above, Foxboro did not document Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s complaints that Izzy was being bullied until after they were informed that Izzy had attempted suicide,” investigators wrote in the report. They also said the school failed to identify Isabella’s family as the complainant when her mother reported that another student had called Isabella’s sister the N-word on or around Oct. 25, 2021.

“The District did not learn who the complainants were until November 3, 2021 — the day Mrs. Tichenor-Cox told Foxboro that Izzy had attempted suicide,” investigators wrote in the report. “That same day, the District reviewed the Izzy’s Encore file, which, by that time, Foxboro updated to include Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s complaints that Izzy’s sister had been bullied for her race.

“If the District had been alerted to Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s concerns sooner, the District could have investigated the allegations and taken corrective action against the perpetrator earlier.”

Investigators concluded in the report that while the school cared about the Tichenor-Cox family and provided resources to assist with its housing instability, it ultimately failed to protect Isabella. “Mrs. Tichenor-Cox reported at least one incident that she believed constituted bullying to Foxboro,” investigators concluded. “Foxboro had an obligation and responsibility to Izzy to investigate Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s report. Yet, Foxboro dismissed and failed to timely document her concern. As a result, Foxboro failed to conduct the investigation that Izzy was due and deserved.”

Darlene McDonald, an advocate with the Utah Black Roundtable and the Utah Educational Equity Coalition, told The Salt Lake Tribune she wishes investigators had gone further in their report after the only evidence of racial harassment cited was regarding Izzy’s sister. 

“As a community, as a state, as people of color, we must look at this and ask how we don’t keep going through this year after year after year,” she said.

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After his father-in-law left the White House, Jared Kushner got a $2 billion golden parachute—from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Kushner predictably started a private equity firm despite his lack of experience in private equity, and went to the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), asking for an “investment.”

The professionals in charge of screening possible investments for the PIF raised a series of objections only to be overruled days later by the fund’s board, which is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner became close during his time as a senior White House adviser.

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The objections to investing in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, included “’the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management’; the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for ‘the bulk of the investment and risk’; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them ‘unsatisfactory in all aspects’; a proposed asset management fee that ‘seems excessive’; and ‘public relations risks’ from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, according to minutes of the panel’s meeting last June 30,” The New York Times reports.

The reason given internally was that Kushner was worth the risk despite his inexperience and potential public relations problems, in order to “capitalize on the capabilities of Affinity’s founders’ deep understanding of different government policies and geopolitical systems.” That’s a lot of words when you could just say “buying access and influence.”

As a measure of how much the eventual bin Salman-led decision to hand over $2 billion to Kushner was driven by relationships, Steven Mnuchin, the former Trump treasury secretary, also started a private equity firm and went to Saudi Arabia asking for money. He got $1 billion despite having relevant experience in the field. Kushner is also getting a higher asset management fee from the PIF than Mnuchin is.

Few other investors have bought what Kushner was selling. According to public filings, the main fund at Affinity Partners had just $2.5 billion invested. It sounds like he’s basically owned by Saudi Arabia at this point. But then, he did a lot to earn this kind of loyalty when he was in a position to do so.

In a side note on the brokenness of the traditional media, check out this framing: “Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.”

Guys. You really don’t need ethics experts to tell you that. Everyone can see it. Nor do you need to include the waffling “the appearance of.” It’s blatantly corrupt, even if we don’t know if it’s more of a thank you for Jared’s help providing cover on the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or more of a down payment on future services should Trump make it back to the White House. And it’s business as usual for all of Team Trump.

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A Texas district attorney announced on Sunday that a 26-year-old woman charged with murder for a “self-induced abortion” should never have been indicted, and prosecutors will be filing a motion to dismiss the indictment on Monday. Lizelle Herrera was arrested on Thursday by the Starr County Sheriff’s Office and held on a $500,000 bond after the sheriff’s office reported that she “intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.” She was held in the Starr County jail in Rio Grande City, which is on the U.S.-Mexico border, NPR reported. Now it seems District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez is attempting to correct the wrong by asserting in a Facebook post that “Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.”

“Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family,” Ramirez wrote in the post. “To ignore this fact would be shortsighted. The issues surrounding this matter are clearly contentious, however based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.”

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Read the district attorney’s complete Facebook post:

“Yesterday afternoon, I reached out to counsel for Ms. Lizelle Herrera to advise him that my office will be filing a motion dismissing the indictment against Ms. Herrera Monday, April 11, 2022. In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.

In reviewing this case, it is clear that the Starr County Sheriff’s Department did their duty in investigating the incident brought to their attention by the reporting hospital. To ignore the incident would have been a dereliction of their duty. Prosecutorial discretion rests with the District Attorney’s office, and in the State of Texas a prosecutor’s oath is to do justice. Following that oath, the only correct outcome to this matter is to immediately dismiss the indictment against Ms. Herrera.

Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family. To ignore this fact would be shortsighted. The issues surrounding this matter are clearly contentious, however based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.

Going forward, my office will continue to communicate with counsel for Ms. Herrera in order to bring this matter to a close. It is my hope that with the dismissal of this case it is made clear that Ms. Herrera did not commit a criminal act under the laws of the State of Texas.”

Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told NBC-affiliated KXAN-TV before the motion to dismiss that homicide “doesn’t apply to the murder of an unborn child if the conduct charged is ‘conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child.'”

Vladeck later tweeted of the news Sunday that it is a “sobering reminder, among other things, to *always read the statute.*”

“It sure looks like the prosecutors just … forgot … that Texas’s murder statute expressly exempts from its scope a pregnant woman who terminates a pregnancy,” Vladeck said in the tweet, linking to Texas penal code.

The penal code states that criminal homicide “does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is:

“(1)  conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child; (2)  a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result of the procedure; (3)  a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent as part of an assisted reproduction as defined by Section 160.102, Family Code;  or (4)  the dispensation of a drug in accordance with law or administration of a drug prescribed in accordance with law.”

Herrera’s arrest seems to exemplify exactly the kind of harm abortion rights activists have been warning of following a toxic Supreme Court decision last December. That’s when the court ruled to allow a Texas ban on abortions after six weeks with the provision that abortion providers have the right to challenge the Texas law in federal court. Many considered it early evidence of the high court’s inclination to overturn the groundbreaking Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a 48-page dissent at the time:

“My disagreement with the Court runs far deeper than a quibble over how many defendants these petitioners may sue. The dispute is over whether States may nullify federal constitutional rights by employing schemes like the one at hand. The Court indicates that they can, so long as they write their laws to more thoroughly disclaim all enforcement by state officials, including licensing officials. This choice to shrink from Texas’ challenge to federal supremacy will have far-reaching repercussions. I doubt the Court, let alone the country, is prepared for them.”

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