Democrat News

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Former Fugees rapper Pras Michel is on trial in Washington, D.C., after he pleaded not guilty in 2019 to participating in a global campaign-finance conspiracy.

According to NPR, jury selection began Monday in the trial of the Grammy-winning musician — who stands accused of conspiring with fugitive Malaysian financier Jho Low to surreptitiously divert funds to former President Obama‘s 2012 campaign.

Michel also faces a civil forfeiture complaint alleging his involvement in a scheme to block the Justice Department’s investigation into embezzlement from Malaysian investment fund 1MDB. The founding member of 1990s hip-hop group the Fugees has denied any wrongdoing.

“Mr. Michel is extremely disappointed that so many years after the fact the government would bring charges related to 2012 campaign contributions,” said Barry Pollack, an attorney representing Michel, in 2019. “Mr. Michel is innocent of these charges and looks forward to having the case heard by a jury.”

Michel’s case will indeed be heard by a jury in a trial that NPR said is expected to continue through much of April.

In May 2019, the Justice Department indicted Michel on four counts related to his alleged efforts to make and conceal foreign campaign donations in collusion with Low. Believed to be hiding somewhere in China, Low is not standing trial alongside Michel, according to NPR.

Prosecutors have alleged that Low transferred more than $21.6 million from foreign entities into Michel’s accounts. The “Ghetto Supastar” hitmaker then allegedly distributed the funds among various conduits and straw donors so they could contribute to Obama’s reelection campaign without revealing the source of the money.

The Justice Department has also accused of Michel of opening bank accounts under false pretenses while cooperating with Low.

Since his 2019 indictment, Michel has been active on the music scene — joining forces with fellow Fugees alumni Wyclef Jean and Lauryn Hill for an international reunion tour in late 2021. The Fugees are known for hits such as “Ready or Not,” “Killing Me Softly With His Song,” “Fu-Gee-La,” “No Woman, No Cry” and “Zealots.”

In a 2018 statement provided to the Washington Post, Michel proclaimed his innocence and insisted that his name was being unjustly “dragged through the mud.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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The White House responded to the school shooting at The Covenant School, a private Christian school, in Nashville by demanding Republicans finally do something to help stop the epidemic of gun violence against children. The shooter is a 28-year old female white woman, according to police.

During her White House press briefing, Karine Jean-Pierre responded to the newest crisis.

“We must do more and he wants Congress to act because enough is enough,” Jean-Pierre said. ” In his State of the Union, the President called on Congress to do something to stop the epidemic of gun violence tearing families apart, tearing communities apart.”

“How many more children have to be murdered before Republicans in Congress will step up and act to pass the assault weapons ban?” she asked.
“To close loopholes in our background check system or to require the safe storage of guns. We need to do something!”

“Once again, the President calls on Congress to do something before another child is senselessly killed in a preventable act of gun violence. Again, we need to do something,” she stressed.

It won’t take long for Congressional Republicans to whine about the White House using this horrible shooting to call for gun control and demand no one should comment for 24 hours.

Republicans have been focusing on using kids to rev up a culture war talking points with CRT, and ridiculous grooming charges against school educators.

But when faced with real threats against our children from mass murdering weapons, Republicans cower before the NRA.

Here is a prime example of the Republicans’ response. This is from the elected representative for the area where Covenant School is.

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WASHINGTON — 

Is it a crime or free speech for someone to “encourage” immigrants to come to this country illegally, or remain here after their visas have expired?

The Supreme Court grappled with that question Monday in the case of a Sacramento man who charged immigrants $500 to $10,000, and falsely promised he could help them obtain U.S. citizenship.

He was convicted of 15 counts of fraud as well as two counts of encouraging two immigrants to overstay their visas.

That latter charge won him a partial acquittal before the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and it posed for the high court a clash between immigration law and the 1st Amendment.

Since 1952, federal law has made it a crime to “encourage or induce an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact” that doing so would be illegal.

Pointing to those broad words, the 9th Circuit ruled that the provision violated the 1st Amendment because it could be read to make it a crime for family members or friends to encourage a person to come to this country or to remain here illegally. The appeals court upheld the 15 fraud counts against the defendant, Helaman Hansen, and a 20-year prison term.

The justices agreed to hear the government’s defense of the “encourage” provision of the law, and most of them sounded skeptical of the free-speech claim, at least in this case.

“He solicited immigrants and defrauded them. He was taking advantage of very vulnerable people,” said Justice Neil M. Gorsuch. “This law has been on the books for 50 years.”

Justice Amy Coney Barrett agreed, noting there is no record of the law being used to prosecute innocent people for encouraging immigrants to stay in this country.

But the court’s liberals said they saw a potential free-speech problem.

“This statute criminalizes words,” said Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Justice Elena Kagan agreed that the law‘s wording is so broad that it could threaten everyday conversations. What if a lawyer, doctor or neighbor advises someone they should stay in this country even if they are undocumented, she asked.

“They say, ‘I really think you should stay.’ What happens?” she said to Deputy Solicitor Gen. Brian Fletcher.

He replied the government has not and will not prosecute people for such family or friendly conversations. If such a case arises, he added, the defendant should invoke the 1st Amendment as a defense.

He urged the court not to strike down the “encourage or induce” provision solely because it could be potentially misused in future cases.

Several of the justices also noted that Hansen may be entitled to win a retrial for part of his case because the jury instructions were flawed.

The case was United States vs. Hansen, and a written opinion can be expected by late June.

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Six people, including three children, died after the 376th school shooting since Columbine. We have learned nothing. Children are being slaughtered, and one side of the aisle (the pro-life side) doesn’t care.

This shooting occurred at a private Christian school in Nashville by a 28-year-old female shooter armed with at least two assault-style rifles and a handgun. So, it’s not because of a lack of prayers in the school. It’s not because of a lack of Jesus. It’s because our country is saturated with firearms.

A woman, possibly from Highland Park, Illinois (it was hard to hear, and I have the olds), interrupted a Fox News reporter while he was about to report what happened. She has had it, and she said she survived a mass shooting last year and offered an emotional plea for gun sense.

“Aren’t you guys tired of covering this?” she asked. “I’ve been lobbying in D.C. since we survived a mass shooting in July.” She was on vacation in the area when this mass shooting broke out. She rightly said that gun violence is the number one killer of children and teens in the U.S.

We need to do something, but one side of the aisle is pro-death.

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Benjamin Netanyahu may not realize it yet, but his dare against the political odds is over. Israel’s longest serving prime minister, who was reelected in November despite an ongoing corruption trial and whom even rivals acknowledged was a political magician, is out of tricks. This fall won’t happen imminently, but his coalition of ultra-nationalists, religious fundamentalists and the merely corrupt is losing its moral legitimacy, even among growing numbers of its voters.

Netanyahu’s fatal mistake was his firing Sunday of his defense minister, Yoav Gallant, for calling on the government to halt its judicial revolution — legislation that would erode the independence of Israel’s Supreme Court and destroy the nation’s fragile system of checks and balances, effectively concentrating governance in the hands of the prime minister. Gallant noted the deepening rift within the army over the plan, and the growing protest movement among army reservists refusing to serve, and warned that the nation’s security was at risk.

In firing Gallant and ignoring his warning, Netanyahu placed loyalty to himself above loyalty to country. With Iran approaching the nuclear threshold, possibly in a matter of weeks, even as Palestinian terror attacks increase and Hezbollah probes weaknesses in Israel’s northern border defenses, perhaps in preparation for the next war, Netanyahu is presiding over the erosion of the military’s cohesion. The man who’d convinced Israelis that only he was tough and shrewd enough to keep Israel safe in the Middle East has betrayed Israeli security.

Immediately after Netanyahu announced Gallant’s firing, tens of thousands of young people gathered in the streets, blocking traffic and lighting bonfires through the night. Their ranks, and a general strike, continue to grow as I write today. Meanwhile, several members of Netanyahu’s Likud Party in the Knesset declared their support for suspending his judicial legislation and negotiating with the opposition on reform instead. For the first time, Netanyahu’s grip on his party had faltered.

In a national speech Monday night in Israel, the prime minister announced a temporary halt to the legislation.

Netanyahu’s miscalculation was to assume that the Israeli public would acquiesce in his transparent attempt to extricate himself from his legal troubles — he faces multiple charges — by initiating the most far-reaching judicial transformation in the nation’s history. Instead, since January, an astonishing protest movement spontaneously emerged, initially drawing tens of thousands and now hundreds of thousands to weekly demonstrations around the country.

By simultaneously assaulting liberal Israelis on multiple fronts — from diminishing democracy to augmenting ultra-Orthodox power to indulging political corruption to tolerating growing settler violence — this government left large numbers of Israelis feeling disenfranchised and desperate.

Resorting to the divisive political strategy that has served him in the past, Netanyahu tried to delegitimize the protesters, denouncing them as anarchists and leftists, by which he meant, not patriots. His son, Yair, went one step further, calling the protesters Nazis. Meanwhile, some Netanyahu supporters began physically attacking demonstrators, with no rebuke from the prime minister.

But this time the usual tactics didn’t work. There is no more patriotic protest movement anywhere than this movement for Israeli democracy, which is led by veterans of the country’s toughest combat units and whose symbol is the Israeli flag. Even more than rage at Netanyahu, the strongest emotion one senses among the protesters is an overwhelming love for Israel and fear for its future.

The man who rose to power as the guardian of Israeli patriotism has been defeated by a movement of patriots.

Netanyahu’s tragedy is that, at the end of his long political career, he now endangers his own most precious legacies. The leader who presided over Israel’s high-tech revolution jeopardizes the Israeli economy with his judicial recklessness, as the tech companies contemplate relocating abroad and leading economists warn of impending disaster.

Thanks to the Abraham Accords, which the Trump administration initiated and Netanyahu endorsed, Israel established relations with four Arab countries, in effect ending the Arab world’s siege against the Jewish state. Yet by including extreme anti-Arab parties in his coalition, he is endangering the durability of those agreements.

No world leader did more to focus international attention on the danger of a nuclearizing Iran. Netanyahu’s solemn vow was that the Jewish state would never allow a regime promoting Holocaust denial and that was committed to Israel’s destruction to acquire nuclear weapons. Yet Netanyahu’s judicial plan has left Israel and its army distracted and divided. If Iran acquires the bomb, that too will be Netanyahu’s legacy.

There is something biblical in the tragedy of Benjamin Netanyahu. Followers often greet him with an old Hebrew song celebrating King David but substituting Netanyahu’s nickname: “Bibi, King of Israel!”

No doubt Bibi has been tempted to compare himself to David, ancient Israel’s greatest king. But in an interview with journalist Bari Weiss shortly after he was elected last fall to his fifth term, Netanyahu inadvertently revealed a darker foreboding about his place in history. Asked to name his favorite biblical character, Netanyahu replied, “King Saul. He was tragic.”

Saul, the first king of Israel, ended his reign in defeat, half-mad and disgraced, replaced by the upstart David. Netanyahu, the most talented and ambitious leader of his generation of Israeli politicians, might have been another David. Instead, as more and more sectors of Israeli society turn against him, and his hero story is transformed from savior to destroyer, it is the specter of Saul that torments his end.

Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem and author of “Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor.”

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Dan Goldman, a freshman member of the Democratic side of the House of Representatives (and a former member of the impeachment team!), is still getting settled in to his office in DC. Getting a Congressional office set up is no easy task. From hiring staff to navigating the ins and outs of DC to providing daily fact checks during Republican led sham hearings, Goldman has his hands full. So, it should be no surprise that he has put decorating his office on the back burner, a dilemma that has not gone unnoticed by Eric Swalwell, a relatively senior member of the Democratic Party.

Swalwell decided to take matters into his own hands, providing a variety of wall decorations, photos and artwork that would add a special, personal touch, to Goldman’s office.

Enjoy.

Goldman had a response.

I love seeing my 2 favorite Congressman working together on a common cause. Keep being amazing, boys.

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Fox Business host Stuart Varney bashed Donald Trump’s political future repeatedly this morning.

Varney listed Trump’s infatuation with January 6, impending indictments, and threats of violence against prosecutors, as alienating to independent voters. (Ya think?)

Varney opened his 10 AM EST hour discussing Trump’s Waco sedition rally.

“Trump gathered his base in Waco, Texas, Saturday. It was a classic Trump rally. Flags everywhere. He said he won the 2020 election, but the voting was rigged against him,” Varney said. “And he claimed to be the victim of a legal system weaponized against him.”

“Prior to the rally, Trump was sounding off on his possible indictment by New York DA Alvin Bragg. He called Bragg an animal and appeared with a baseball bat threatening death and destruction,” he said.

Varney then dug in.

“I have to wonder about a presidential candidate taking that kind of approach. Okay, the base, maybe 30% of Republicans, will stick with him no matter what he says or does,” he said.

“But the rest of the party and independent voters? Do they want to return to slash, burn, and insult politics?” Varney asked.

Varney then discussed new polling in Iowa and New Hampshire that showed DeSantis doing well.

Varney told his audience how the Waco audience went silent when Trump started mocking the Florida Governor. Varney finished his almost two-minute diatribe against Trump this way:

“Republicans like Trump policies; they don’t much care for his style. They would like him to change, but he won’t,” Varney said. “He may win some primaries — but he won’t when the general because the base is no longer big enough, and this time around, he won’t carry independents.”

At the end of the above video, I added his clash later in the program with Trump sycophant Rachel Campos-Duffy, who claimed the US has become Venezuela.

“How do you think independents in this country will react?”

“I don’t think he’s trying to win independents right now. I think he’s trying to win the primary,” Campos-Duffy replied.

“He may get them, but if he doesn’t have the independents, he can’t win,” Varney said.

Looks like Varney took his cues from another Murdoch source, The New York Post: Trump won’t change, and that shows he can’t win. But Murdoch is having it both ways: his hosts dump on Trump, and his “contributors” defend Trump.

There’s more here:

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On Monday morning, Fox and Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade remarked that Trump ‘blew it,’ making serious mistakes during his Saturday rally in Waco, Texas.

Kilmeade described the rally as insane and awful.

“This is such an opportunity for Republicans,” Kilmeade said. “Just to say, look at what we did – look at what he’s doing – look at what we had – look at what he is doing.”

“And I think for President Trump to spend 80% of his time complaining about court cases instead of just looking at his own record and what he would have done,” he said.

Kilmeade rambled through some issues facing the country that Trump might have claimed he would make perfect.

“If he does that or other candidates do that, they will be unbelievably successful. That’s going to be the conversation at the kitchen table.”

“Instead, the United States’ former president opened up with January six video, which is insane!” Kilmeade said with disbelief.

“[Trump] should be running from that, period. I don’t care his point of view; that is not a good thing for him.,” Kilmeade chided. “I thought that was absolutely awful. Even though he is winning in the polls, that will not help.”

It was no coincidence that Trump held his rally during the thirty-year anniversary of the 51-day siege at the compound of religious cult Branch Davidian leader David Koresch, (self-proclaimed prophet), which ended in tragedy.

Early primary polls are meaningless, especially when candidates haven’t officially entered the race.

Kilmeade is correct, though. Defending those who attacked the US Capitol and killed police officers will not help Trump reach normal people in this country. He lost by over 7 million votes in 2020, before the insurrection.

Fox and Friends is refusing to state the obvious. Trump is running his campaign based on his own narcissism, with a huge helping of QAnon, anti-government, Christian nationalist, homophobic, sovereign citizen psychos that make up his MAGA cult.

Rupert Murdoch is clearly no longer Team Trump. His NY Post also weighed in.

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SACRAMENTO — 

Gov. Gavin Newsom came close but couldn’t quite bring himself to say it: The drought’s over.

It’s disappointing when a governor won’t acknowledge what ordinary citizens already know because they can see things for themselves.

Another drought will emerge soon enough. It always does. That’s the California pattern — climate change or not.

But right now, the biggest threat this spring is flooding from rivers leaping their banks.

There’s just something about California governors and water officials that prevents them from admitting we’re through a dry spell and into a wet period.

They fear we’ll resume taking long showers and swamping our lawns. We’ll stop conserving water and go back to wasting it. So, they treat us like children, denying the obvious.

On Friday, Newsom and his water advisors stood on a Sacramento Valley farm flooded with storm runoff and pointed out that this has been one of California’s wettest winters on record. The Sierra snowpack is historically deep.

And we’re still in a drought?

Yes, Newsom asserted.

“Are we out of the drought? Is the drought over?” Newsom asked rhetorically in his opening comments at the farm, answering every attending reporter’s question before it was asked.

“It would be nice to have a governor say that the drought is over. But unfortunately, complication requires nuance.”

He said we’d just gone through “the three driest years in recorded history,” while conceding that the last three months were more like the Great Flood of 1862 when practically the entire Central Valley was a lake.

“It’s incumbent upon us to continue to maintain our vigilance … to allow for the fast-tracking of groundwater replenishment projects, stormwater capture and recycling programs,” Newsom continued.

Sure, but a California governor has vast powers. Why couldn’t he do all those things — expediting recovery from the last drought while preparing for the next — without asserting that the drought persists?

By the end of the event, Newsom seemed almost ready to utter the forbidden words. But he stopped short. The governor concluded by re-asking and re-answering the question:

“Are we out of the drought?

“Mostly but not completely.”

Secretary Wade Crowfoot of the state Natural Resources Agency is a drought hard-liner. He noted that two parts of California — the Southeastern region that relies on Colorado River water and the Klamath Basin near Oregon — “continue to experience acute water shortages.”

“No,” he told reporters, “We’re not out of drought conditions.”

“If we declared the drought over and removed emergency provisions,” Crowfoot said, “we would be unable to quickly and effectively provide support where those conditions still exist.”

Why? It should be possible for state government to be honest about the so-called drought and still provide emergency help for communities that need it.

Play it straight with the public.

When government doesn’t level with people and they know it, they become even more cynical and tune out officials trying to lead them. If it’s raining buckets and we’ve got the thickest snowpack in decades, most people aren’t going to buy there’s still a drought.

“No one understands a continued drought declaration after the 12th atmospheric river,” says state Sen. John Laird (D-Santa Cruz), a former natural resources secretary.

Anyone who believes we’re stuck in a drought probably should look up the word.

The Glossary of Meteorology defines “drought” as “a period of abnormally dry weather sufficiently prolonged for the lack of water to cause serious hydrologic imbalance in the affected area.”

OK, we had three years of abnormally dry weather that caused a serious hydrologic imbalance. We now are having abnormally wet weather.

But the hydrologic imbalance persists in some areas, especially in aquifers that were irresponsibly depleted by farmers for decades. That doesn’t mean the drought persists. It just means we’ve got a water shortage underground — caused by drought and over-pumping — and in some hard-hit small communities.

We’re not in a drought. We’re recovering from one.

Most of California’s surface is saturated.

As of late last week, Los Angeles’ precipitation for the season was 194% of normal — nearly twice the average. San Diego was at 149%, Bakersfield 161%, Fresno 183%, Sacramento 132%, San Francisco 153% and Redding 120%.

But in a few places, precipitation for the season was below average: Palm Springs was at 84% of normal and Mt. Shasta was only 21%.

Snowpacks, however, were epic: 228% of normal for the state. The runoff will be filling foothill reservoirs this spring.

Some surplus water will be poured across fallowed farm fields so it can soak into the ground and recharge sinking aquifers.

To Newsom’s credit, he has been trying to expedite the recharging by streamlining regulations, spending state money and making it easier for water districts and growers to replenish underground reservoirs.

That’s what took him to the Yolo County farm — to call attention to the landowner’s recharging project.

Newsom also rolled back some of the state’s toughest drought restrictions. And he announced that the State Water Project will greatly increase its planned summer deliveries to farms and cities — by more than double.

A governor couldn’t do that if we were still in a drought.

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It’s time for a three-part quiz on California government.

Question 1: What does the California Board of Equalization do?

If you’re stumped, don’t despair. This obscure state tax agency run by four regionally elected board members and the state controller has considerably fewer duties than just a few years ago. In 2017, after accusations of mismanagement and corruption, the California Legislature stripped the board of about 90% of its duties and staff and handed them over to two newly formed state agencies, the Department of Tax and Fee Administration and the Office of Tax Appeals. The board’s main responsibility at the moment is making sure county assessors properly collect property taxes.

Question 2: What does the elected state superintendent of public instruction do?

This answer may seem easier, but it’s tricky. An obvious guess would be that this nonpartisan elected official sets policy for the California Department of Education and approves curriculum frameworks and academic standards for the state’s public schools. But, no; that’s the job of the appointed state Board of Education. The state superintendent’s job is to oversee the department and its employees, the type of job usually held by an appointee with expertise in management.

Question 3: Does California really need these five elected officials?

Probably not. But that’s a question that we hope voters will get to answer next year.

Two bills would put constitutional amendments on the 2024 ballot to do away with the positions. One, ACA-11, by Assemblymember Phil Ting (D-San Francisco), would eliminate the Board of Equalization and hand the rest of its duties and staff over to the state’s other tax agencies; the other, ACA-9, by Assemblymember Kevin McCarty (D-Sacramento), would eliminate the elected superintendent position once the term of the current officeholder ends and replace it with one appointed by the governor.

These are sensible proposals. The Legislature should support the bills, which would let the voters decide. We have been saying in editorials for years that these positions are unnecessary and it’s a waste of money to maintain them.

It seems the only reason these five elected seats have hung around so long (the Board of Equalization was established in 1879) is that they often serve as career-extending positions for termed-out legislators. The current state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Thurmond, is a former member of the California Legislature, as were the three superintendents before him. Two of the four current elected Board of Equalization members are former state legislators too. The other two are former city council members. None of them are experts in tax policy. (The fifth board member, the state controller, is an ex officio member.)

Putting these questions on the ballot will open up a healthy debate about the roles and responsibilities of elected officials, as well as the function and structure of government. Having more elected positions doesn’t automatically translate to better oversight.

One of the main reasons that the Board of Equalization was gutted in 2017 was because of evidence that the elected officials were misusing staff and funds to serve their own political interests. For example, one of the board members assigned 113 employees to parking and registration duties at a conference that was not focused on tax policy.

One concern already being voiced is that the staff of the Board of Equalization, even in its diminished state, does important work and offers valuable tax assistance to voters and county assessors. That work can continue whether or not it is overseen by four elected board members. In fact, no other state has an elected tax commission. Besides, ACA-11 would eliminate only 13 BOE positions. Most of the nearly 200-person workforce is made up of civil servants who would do the same work as part of another state agency.

For those worried that eliminating these five elected jobs will dilute the power of the voters to direct state and local government services, consider this: There are seven other statewide constitutional officers, including the governor, as well as 120 full-time state legislators and many thousands of elected officials representing the 58 counties, 482 cities and more than 1,000 school boards in California. And that’s not even counting the state’s many elected water boards and special districts. Californians don’t have a shortage of opportunities to elect government representatives.

But ultimately, it should be up to voters to decide. Once they know enough about these five elected positions to confidently answer the essay portion of a California civics quiz, we think the choice will be clear.