Independent News
Shocking SCOTUS leak shows abortion rights overturned under draft opinion from Justice Alito
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A draft opinion written by Justice Samuel Alito shows that the Supreme Court could overturn abortion rights in the U.S., essentially nullifying the landmark Roe v. Wade, which Alito called “egregiously wrong from the start.” The document, obtained by Politico, spans 98 pages and was apparently drafted in February. It marks an unprecedented leak for the nation’s highest court. Per Politico, “no draft decision in the modern history of the court has been disclosed publicly while a case was still pending.”
A source told Politico that Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett, all voted in agreement with Alito in a conference following oral arguments in December. The conservative justices have found zero support from their liberal counterparts. That conference and those oral arguments stem from a Mississippi case brought before the Supreme Court challenging the state’s law that would ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has yet to be decided — and this window into some of the Justices’ thinking is absolutely alarming.
This is a developing news story.
Registered Republican in Arizona sentenced to probation after casting dead mom's ballot in 2020
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A Scottsdale, Arizona, woman who cast her dead mother’s ballot in the 2020 presidential election escaped jail time Friday and was sentenced to two years probation instead.
According to Associated Press, the prosecutor in the case against Tracey Kay McKee, 64, argued that McKee should serve at least a month behind bars after she reportedly lied to investigators while also urging them to hold those who vote illegally to account.
In an interview with investigators, McKee said: “The only way to prevent voter fraud is to physically go in and punch a ballot. … I mean, voter fraud is going to be prevalent as long as there’s mail-in voting, for sure. I mean, there’s no way to ensure a fair election,” McKee told investigators. “And I don’t believe that this was a fair election. I do believe there was a lot of voter fraud.”
RELATED STORY: Not one, not two, but three states Mark Meadows registered to vote in
McKee’s mother, Mary Arendt, died on Oct. 5—just two days before early voting began.
The indictment against McKee alleges she “knowingly signed the name” of her mother, “under penalty of perjury,” and illegally submitted it to election officials during the period between Oct. 7 and Nov. 3.
According to reporting from the AZ Mirror, voter registration records from the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office show that both McKee and her mother were registered as Republicans. AP reports that McKee was never asked whether or not she voted for former President Trump.
“Your Honor, I would like to apologize,” McKee told Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Margaret LaBianca just before she was sentenced. “I don’t want to make the excuse for my behavior. What I did was wrong and I’m prepared to accept the consequences handed down by the court.”
McKee’s attorney, Tom Henze, vehemently argued against jail time for his client.
“Simply stated, over a long period of time, in voluminous cases, 67 cases, nobody in this state for similar cases, in similar context … nobody got jail time,” Henze said. “The court didn’t impose jail time at all.”
According to Fortune after an exhaustive review of voter fraud in six states by the AP, less than 475 cases were uncovered. Not nearly enough to have changed the outcome of Trump’s loss to Biden.
There is one case however that stands outs—Mark ‘Big Lie’ Meadows, Trump’s former chief of staff, was removed from voter rolls in North Carolina after it was discovered he was registered in both Virginia and North Carolina. Then yet another state popped up: South Carolina.
“What we’re hearing is voter fraud is out there,” Todd Lawson, the Assistant Attorney General in McKee’s case told LaBianca. “And essentially what we’re seeing here is someone who says ‘Well, I’m going to commit voter fraud because it’s a big problem and I’m just going to slide in under the radar. And I’m going to do it because everybody else is doing it and I can get away with it.’
He added, “I don’t subscribe to that at all.”
‘My son loves school because of her’: There are no words for how wonderful teachers are, but we try
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I come from a long line of teachers. My mother, father, grandmother, and a few aunts are all educators. So when I say teachers raised me, I’m not being figurative. They actually changed my diapers, showed me how to cross the street, and taught me how to think for myself. I owe everything to educators, and I’m not alone.
The staff members here at Daily Kos wanted to take this Teacher Appreciation Week to acknowledge the many educators who have directly impacted us. We hope you’ll join us in showing the teachers you know and love some appreciation in the comments.
RELATED STORY: Video of 11-year-old Prince supporting striking teachers unearthed by Minneapolis news station
As a student, my high school history teacher, Mr. Gunn, was a game-changer for me. After taking U.S. history, I took a semester course he taught on “the Constitution and students’ rights.” He created a series of cases based on, but not identical to, past Supreme Court cases involving students and schools, and had us research the precedents and argue for a side. It was an amazing education in reading carefully and crafting rigorous arguments, and he pushed us to have opinions and defend them, but debate respectfully with each other.
As a parent, I am so grateful for my kid’s kindergarten teachers. It’s a mixed JK/K class, so the kids are at a range of developmental stages, and then the pandemic is a complicating factor since some of the kids have had seriously limited time in group settings and outside the home until this year. In addition to everything he’s learning, I am blown away by the level of warm, concerned, individual attention my kid is getting, and the way his teachers have shown they really understand who he is. And not just his classroom teacher and paraprofessional, but the librarians, who on day one got his buy-in on the excitement of checking out a book every week. The gardening teacher. His afterschool teachers who come up with fun activities—active body, medium body, and quiet body—week after week. This has been such a challenging couple years for teachers and kids alike, and from everything I have seen, teachers have risen to the occasion in heroic ways.
Adrienne Crezo:
I never took a class with her, but my great-grandma, Dorothy Sunrise Lorentino, was my favorite teacher. As a child, she won a landmark education case that made public schools in the U.S. accessible to Native students, setting a precedent cited in Brown v. Board of Education. She then spent the rest of her life learning and teaching others. She was a special education teacher at a number of schools in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oregon, working primarily with ESL and disabled students. In 1997, she became the first Native American and first Oklahoman National Teacher of the Year when she was inducted into the National Teachers Hall of Fame. She’s an important figure in our Comanche history, in the history of education in the U.S., and in my life as I try to learn from her example and make the world a little more equitable.
I’ve had a lot of impactful and important teachers growing up, but one of the most important ones was John Gunn, my ninth and tenth grade advisory, and humanities teacher. I went to an alternative public school in New York and so advisory was sort of like a more robust “homeroom.” Your advisor teacher kept tabs on your progress across the board. John was great in many ways, but I will always remember how well he was able to zero in and ask me very simple questions that struck the perfect chord of not making me defensive, while also pointing out how naive many of my assertions were at that point in my very young intellectual life.
My very very impactful teacher was Carolyn Oubre, who taught me at Xavier University Preparatory School in NOLA. She was my English IV and English AP teacher. She taught me so much curiosity and critical reading skills, how language evolved, how to study media for themes, symbolism, and subtext. I grew such an appreciation for language and its nimbleness. I was already something of a writer before she got to me, but she thoroughly upped my game and the stakes. AND she brought texts alive. We would be reading Shakespeare like it was “The Young and the Restless.”
The two most important teachers in my life are people who so many want to contend are not teachers. In my own state, after repeated attempts to fund them, we still look down on funding special education paraprofessionals. Without two paraprofessionals as part of my life, I do not know where I would be, or where my children would be right now.
In my son’s early education, special education was difficult. He couldn’t tolerate loud noises, he didn’t like hearing or seeing other people eat, and he needed to wash his hands repeatedly. It’s funny because today, that might be a good thing, but at the time, a child washing their hands for three or four minutes in a row was not condoned. Teachers offered the lessons; the paraprofessionals put them into action. When my son struggled to write due to fine motor skill issues, they talked to him and made him feel okay about typing and succeeding at something he could handle. Holding a pencil? That was tough. Typing on a keyboard? He could do it. They offered to take him out after school to see local events to broaden his horizon. When a paraprofessional learned that we were struggling at home with his lack of sleep, a paraprofessional offered to sit with our son at night to provide my family respite.
These paraprofessionals provided the services that made for a young man who wanted to achieve.
My high school English teacher, Ms. Jorgenson at the Duke Ellington School of the Arts in Washington, D.C., instilled in me a love of reading. She was kind, and inspiring, and inclusive and made everyone in our class feel like what we had to say was important. I’ll never forget her.
I could list teachers for days who have helped me along the way, but the one who has had the most direct affect on my life recently is my son’s preschool teacher, Ms. Bracy. It was clear from his first day in her class that this was not a person just collecting a check. This was an educator who truly loves children. She had my son sit directly next to her on his first day and was patient with him during the months it took him to warm up. She cooks with her students, carves pumpkins with them, and makes Mother’s Day and Father’s Day cards with them. My son loves school because of her, and she makes all of our lives that much easier. Really, all the teachers at his school do. My daughter’s teachers just love her to death, too, and they work so hard to make sure she is well taken care of, from changing her multiple times a day to teaching her new dance moves, which she very much so appreciates. (If you’ve never heard this song before, thank my daughter’s teachers later for the introduction.)
So many of my educators were instrumental in shaping my life, from the high school teachers who helped me leave an abusive parent for foster care, to the college professor who talked me out of getting an MBA, to the grad school professors who shepherded my early career. But the first truly transformative teacher, the only teacher I’ve abused Google to track down, was the one who led me through second grade. My elementary school lumped the so-called “gifted” kids into two-grade classrooms, and Miss Seaman cultivated our curiosities, noticed our struggles, catered to our unique needs and interests, and always managed to do it with a sense of humor I remember to this day.
We were even in a short film together when I was 7! In Being Gifted: The Gift, I essentially played a version of myself—an annoyingly precocious kid—and she did the same, portraying a loving, thoughtful teacher. We may not have been great actors, but I remember her presence easing my discomfort amid the lights and cameras. Thirty years later, I spoke to the director. She told me it was Miss Seaman who promised the director that she had the “perfect kid” for the role, and it was she who convinced my mother to let me audition!
When I reached out to Miss Seaman (who’s long since become a Mrs.) eight years ago, it meant so much to me to hear that, despite teaching dozens of students per year, for 26 years, she vividly remembered me; she described me as “a wonderful spark to [her] school days.” We’ve fallen out of touch, but thanks to this challenge, I put a card of appreciation in the mail for her today!
Alisha Taylor:
My sixth grade math teacher, Gretchen Cullen, was amazing. She found ways to motivate us to learn more in a subject that many hate: algebra. She gave us “paw points” when we did extras. One that I remember was memorizing the first 30 numbers of pi. We’d trade in our points for prizes, one of which was lunch with her. I saved up all year to have a special pizza lunch with her and spent the entire time hammering her with questions, which she graciously answered. I’ve never forgotten her and believe that she was my inspiration for obtaining a Masters in Accounting. I wanted to be just like her: graceful, kind, generous, and inspirational.
Please keep this list going and shout out your favorite teachers in the comments!
ICE sued over over illegal deletion of surveillance footage at Florida detention facility
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The Biden administration announced last month that it would be pausing immigration detention at Glades County Detention Center (GCDC) in Florida. This is undoubtedly a major step forward for immigrant rights. In just one example, the jail has been accused of violating the law by regularly erasing surveillance footage.
But while civil rights and watchdog groups filed a complaint against that earlier this year, they say Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has “failed to take any action to correct these abuses, recover video footage, or ensure that Glades County is in compliance with federal law.” The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Florida and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) are now suing ICE, along with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA).
“The public needs a full accounting of any violations that occurred at the Glades County Detention Center, and that starts with ICE and NARA enforcing recordkeeping laws against the facility,” said CREW Senior Counsel Nikhel Sus. “It’s time to hold ICE accountable for contractors who violate federal law and fail to meet the standards of immigration detention.”
RELATED STORY: Biden administration to stop use of one of the worst immigration detention sites in the nation
Glades, which has contracted with the federal government to detain immigrants, is legally required to preserve footage for three years. The ACLU of Florida and CREW filed a complaint this past January after discovering the jail was violating the law by erasing footage. They said ICE had also known about the deletions but failed to report them, as is also required by law. The organizations then sued after ICE failed to take any corrective action.
What can Biden do? Listen to immigration activist Juan Escalante on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast
“ICE has been aware of Glades County’s unlawful practice of deleting footage for over a year and has yet to take any action against Glades to repair the issue, especially during such a pivotal moment when allegations of abuse can be confirmed with that video,” said ACLU of Florida Deputy Legal Director Katie Blankenship.
Just this past year, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was urged to probe the illegal misuse of a toxic chemical at GCDC. More than two dozen groups in a complaint expressed worry the facility was miusing chemicals at up to 50 times the permitted concentration, leaving detained people in danger of “shortness of breath, coughing, bloody noses, headaches, severe nausea, and an increased risk of reproductive health damage, among other chronic illnesses.”
Federal lawmakers representing the state had in February urged the Biden administration to terminate its contract with the facility. The next month, officials said they would pause immigration detention at the site. But The Washington Post reported that “officials said they are open to using the jail again someday if the county addresses the issues they raised.” But immigration detention is inhumane by design. It should stay paused indefinitely. Better yet, don’t renew the contract.
“The new lawsuit seeks to keep ICE accountable amidst an ambiguous moment at Glades as the current contract between ICE and Glades County ends on April 30, 2022,” the organization continued. But as of May 1, it’s unclear what the current status of the contract is. “The agency will decide between terminating its contract with Glades County, which would likely cause the center to close, or renewing a contract to keep the detention center open.”
Bel’Or Mbema Mapudi Ngoma, who was at one time detained at Glades, in March called it “one of the worst experiences” in detention. “I experienced constant abuses at Glades, in addition to unprofessional and racist treatment. The xenophobia I experienced at Glades reflects the limited vision of the world at places like Glades. Thus, Glades must close rather than continue to subject people to inhumane conditions, which would be a step in the direction of a vision of a world where all people are treated with humanity.”
Nor should detained immigrants be shuffled from one abusive site to another, as ICE has typically done when a facility has been shut down. ICE has every ability to release people in its custody. Let them fight their cases from their own homes and communities, and out of harmful immigration detention.
RELATED STORIES: Groups urge termination of ICE contract for site accused of unlawfully deleting surveillance videos
Lawmakers urge Biden admin to close Florida ICE facility accused of racist abuse, COVID endangerment
‘Glades is a dangerous place for immigrants’: EPA is urged to probe chemical misuse at ICE facility
Southern California faces major water restrictions as Western U.S. drought continues
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California is once again facing major drought conditions, albeit with no areas experiencing exceptional droughts at least. Still, a large stretch in the middle of the state is considered to be in an extreme drought, which has officials with Southern California’s Metropolitan Water District (MWD) imposing stringent restrictions on water usage across six agencies, spanning dozens of communities. The water restrictions, which will take effect on June 1, primarily target outdoor watering, according to the Los Angeles Times, which reports that the activity accounts for as much as 70% of residential usage. Hand-watering trees is still on the table, though officials caution that residents “can’t afford green lawns” and should only be watering outdoors once a week.
The outdoor watering restrictions could be enough to meet the 35% reduction of usage needed to get through the drought and keep an all-out outdoor watering ban from being imposed in September. Approximately six million Southern Californians are expected to be affected, with officials hoping they stick to using 80 gallons of water per day—a decrease from the MWD average of 125 gallons of water per person per day. “We knew climate change would stress our water supplies and we’ve been preparing for it but we did not know it would happen this fast,” MWD Board of Directors Chairperson Gloria Gray told CBS News. A colleague of Gray’s called the drought “unprecedented,” though California has been experiencing some semblance of drought conditions since at least 2001, just one year after the U.S. Drought Monitor began.
Water districts in various parts of the state have been responding to the worsening drought, which has so far spanned three years, with January-March of this year bringing the driest conditions on record in California. In addition to residential restrictions for communities served by the Vallecitos Water District that encompasses inland San Diego County, commercial businesses face permanent restrictions like only serving water at restaurants if a customer specifically requests it or hotels giving guests the option of having their towels and linens laundered less frequently. More than 109,000 people rely on services from the Vallecitos Water District.
In Northern California, customers who rely on the East Bay Municipal Utility District will also face water restrictions—albeit less drastic than those in Southern California. The agency is asking its 1.4 million customers to reduce individual water usage by 10% from 2020 levels. The drought has crippled a majority of the West. According to the U.S. Drought Monitor’s map of the West, just over 6% of residents across New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, Utah, California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, and Montana are not experiencing any drought conditions. There is major concern for the more than 55 million people experiencing drought conditions as well as what that could bring for wildfire season. Already, New Mexico has reported seven large fires since the start of the year, with Arizona reporting two. According to a World Economic Forum report in March, the present drought’s severity is undeniably linked to climate change. A study in Nature Climate Change even found that human activity contributed to 19% of the drought last year. Water restrictions may be tough, but if humans can make a difference in worsening the drought, they can hopefully move to lessen its intensity as well.
Spouting ‘groomer’ rhetoric, ‘Patriot’ bikers plan to confront Pride rally next month in Idaho
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Taking their cue from the incoming tide of far-right fearmongering about “grooming” and an “LGBTQ agenda” in schools and libraries, a group of Idaho biker militiamen are planning to show up to confront people celebrating a Pride event in a downtown Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, park next month.
Two men from the leadership of Panhandle Patriots, a militia-oriented bikers club based in northern Idaho—Justin Allen, the group’s vice president, and Jeff White, its “sergeant at arms”—told a recent gathering at a church hosted by Republican state House member Heather Scott that they planned to have a gun-driven event next month in Coeur d’Alene the same day as the city’s Pride Celebration at a park less than a mile away, and that they planned a confrontation: “We actually intend to go head to head with these people. A line has to be drawn in the sand. Good people need to stand up,” White told the audience.
The meeting, titled “Gameplan to Remove Inappropriate Materials in Our Schools and Libraries,” was held at Regeneration Calvary Chapel in Kootenai, a small town north of Sandpoint. Scott—who has a long history of associations and identification with the far-right Patriot movement—cohosted the gathering along with Amy Henry, who spoke remotely via Zoom. About an hour into the discussion—which mostly involved efforts to censor LGBT-friendly material from local public schools and libraries—Scott invited Allen and White up to the podium to speak.
White was the only person who actually spoke; Allen said not a single word during White’s soliloquy:
In Coeur d’Alene, on the 10th of June, there is Family Day. And at Family Day they are promoting family values, activities, and everything. The very following day, they are having Gay Pride Day. In the very same park the very next day, where they will be allowed to parade through all of Coeur d’Alene—drag queen dancers, education hour, making all this material available for all the kids in a park that is designed for kids.
We are having an event the very same day. That very same day we actually intend to go head to head with these people. A line has to be drawn in the sand. Good people need to stand up. And she was talking about the repercussions. We say, Damn the repercussions. Stand up, take it to the head. Go to the fight.
If you can, possibly, we know a lot of you are in Bonner County—we live in Bonner County. We are fighting in multiple counties. We are asking for all of you to come stand with us.
Ironically, the event being planned that day by Panhandle Patriots, dubbed “Gun d’Alene,” is being billed as an anniversary of the day in 2020 that armed “Patriots” flooded the streets of Coeur d’Alene in response to hoax rumors of the impending arrival of buses full of evil black-clad “antifa” vandals who mysteriously never showed up anywhere they were rumored to be going.
Dozens of people showed up on armed patrol, toting AR-15s and wearing body armor, at a downtown shopping strip mall. In a cellphone video shared on Facebook, one videographer said: “If you guys are thinking of coming to Coeur d’Alene, to riot or loot, you’d better think again. Because we ain’t having it in our town. … I guess there’s a big rumor that people from Spokane are gonna come out here and act up. But that shit ain’t gonna happen.”
Of course it didn’t happen, because it was never going to happen in the first place. The event next month is essentially celebrating the Patriots’ lethal gullibility. But that’s not how White described it, of course:
Our event is advertised as “Gun d’Alene,” because it’s an anniversary of when we stood to protect our community. We’re standing again to protect our community. We shifted our date to be able to go head-to-head with these people. They are trying to take your children.
Considering that the flagrant brandishing of weapons is part of the event’s entire raison d’être, his words also took on ominous overtones as he urged the audience members to come support them:
This fight is not just paper, it’s not just words, it’s not just politicians. They have to see people standing in their face saying ‘No more.’ If we don’t do this—they’re winning, as she said. The amount of steps they take are 10 to 1. They’ve got people nonstop. Nonstop on this. We gain two steps, they gain twelve. We’re not gonna win, we’re not gonna fight back at a leisurely pace. We’re busy six days a week doing this, and we know a lot of you are too. But we’re asking a lot of you—leave your homes, leave your comfort, come stand.
If you want to see it, if you want to see what they’re promoting, come down there on June 11. Come see what they’re doing. Come with us—come stand.
Another flier posted by the Panhandle Patriots advertising their planned confrontation with the Pride event shows a drag queen reading at a public library, and urges people to join them “in standing up against the indoctrination and grooming of our children.” Among its slogans: “If you don’t protect children, you are part of the problem.”
The park where the Patriots plan to hold their gun event, McEuen Park, is on the Coeur d’Alene waterfront less than three-quarters of a mile from Coeur d’Alene City Park, where the “Pride in the Park” events are scheduled to be held.
The Panhandle Patriots have been harassing members of the LGBT community in northern Idaho for awhile now. Last November, in conjunction with a local evangelical Christian church, they organized a protest in Post Falls outside the city library on the night it was hosting a program called the “Rainbow Squad,” an LGBTQ-friendly reading-discussion program.
Among the signs they carried, police body-camera footage shows, were slogans like “Flee From Sexual Immorality,” “Obey God Not Men,” “Sexual Immorality is an Abomination to God,” and “The Solution is Jesus Christ.”
On Facebook, Panhandle Patriots shared a post with its members calling out the library network’s upcoming meeting and urging others to attend:
The perversion that is becoming so pervasive in these libraries needs to be called out and CAST OUT.
We need people to show up and speak out, demand the removal of pro-LGBT books like the following:
[Links to such books as Auntie Uncle: Drag Queen Hero and Be Amazing: A History of Pride.]
A Post Falls native named Michelle White told the Coeur d’Alene Press that she and her two children had been participating for several months in Rainbow Squad events, saying she had always thought of the library as a “safe space” without judgment.
“These people are making it not a safe place for kids to gather by picketing and yelling at them as they go inside,” she told the Press. “Creating an environment that is not safe is not OK.”
Jessica Mahuron, the North Idaho Pride Alliance outreach coordinator, attended the November Rainbow Squad event and observed how the protesters’ intentions were to eliminate that safe space—and they succeeded.
“There were some people who felt intimidated from entering the building, others left because they were feeling so terrible, and for some, this is nothing new to them, so they stood strong,” Mahuron said. “The program is supposed to provide a safe, inclusive space for fun and friendship. What they experienced coming into that meeting was the exact opposite.”
As Tess Owen noted last year at Vice, Panhandle Patriots is closely associated with the so-called “American Redoubt” movement that is trying to organize a secessionist 51st state in the interior Northwest as a homeland for “Patriots.” And they’ve been increasingly busy the past few years: teaming up with anti-immigration vigilantes at the border (which involved confiscating drinking water left for migrants), leading anti-vaccination rallies, and swarming libraries to demand the removal books they say promote “an LGBTQ agenda.”
Their leader—a man named Mike Birdsong, who uses the nickname “Viper”—was present at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., during the Jan. 6 insurrection, and was photographed engaging the police in battle at barricades outside the building, though he has not been charged with any crimes from that day. Birdsong also has been photographed alongside well-known Proud Boys who have been charged with conspiracy at the insurrection.
Republican who wants to make state book the Bible calls for burning banned books
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Republicans love nothing more than stirring hysteria in their voter base. As Daily Kos continues to cover, for example, conservatives have made trans rights—and particularly the rights of trans youth—a rallying cry as we approach the 2022 midterm elections. Republicans have insisted they’re protecting women’s rights by banning trans girls from competing in sports teams, for example, and used the same justification to try and keep trans women out of women’s bathrooms. They’ve also made it clear they want to make it impossible for trans youth to access gender-affirming health care, which we know to be lifesaving.
Republicans are also going after library books. Yes, book bans are apparently alive and well in 2022. As Daily Kos continues to cover, most of the efforts to pull, ban, or even burn books are coming from conservatives at all levels of government. We’re also seeing concentrated efforts from conservative groups to mobilize folks (not all of whom are even parents or even live in the local area) to call for book bans at school board meetings. Book bans, perhaps unsurprisingly at this point, also target books by and about people of color, LGBTQ+ people, and books that tackle nuanced topics like sexual abuse, child abuse, and gender-based violence.
With all of this in mind, Tennessee lawmakers have passed SB 2247/HB 2666, which, if signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee, will allow members of the state’s textbook commission to decide if a challenged book will stay or be removed from public school libraries. The textbook commission, by the way, is filled with political appointees, as reported by The Washington Post.
RELATED: South Dakota teens say they received letter from beloved teacher filled with anti-trans rhetoric
In practice, here’s how the process would work. Challenged books are reviewed by the school board, all of whom are (obviously) elected to serve on the board. Makes sense. Once they decide on whether or not to keep a book, however, this legislation essentially vetos their decision. As long as one person—a parent, a student, or an employee of the school district—doesn’t want the book available in the library system, they can appeal to the textbook commission. Those folks, again, are political appointees. And their decision on that appeal would apply to all school libraries in the state.
Ultimately, the bill is just another way for conservatives to get books they don’t like out of the hands of young people. Even if a school district, for example, reviews a challenge or complaint about a book and decides to keep it, this appeal process is essentially a way for adults to try again and have the book pulled not just in their area, but statewide.
And if you’re thinking, Well, is that really so bad… It really is so bad. One of the sponsors of the bill, Republican Rep. Jerry Saxton, actually said he’d like to see inappropriate books burned.
As a review of that, per the Associated Press, Democratic. Rep. John Ray Clemmons, who represents Nashville, asked Sexton what he suggests be done with books ultimately deemed as inappropriate.
“You going to put them in the street?” Clemmons asked. “Light them on fire? Where are they going?”
“I don’t have a clue,” Sexton said. “But I would burn them.” Later on, Sexton did note he isn’t on the commission and that he doesn’t think anyone is going to burn books, but still. (Also: Sexton has continuously suggested that the state book of Tennessee should be the Bible. Really!)
You can watch that clip below, courtesy of local outlet FOX Nashville.
In speaking to Chalkbeat, Lindsey Kimery, who serves as a school librarian in Nashville, described the bill as a chance for just one person to “dictate” what is available in all school libraries. It’s unfair to students and it’s dangerous.
Relatedly, details of the bill also don’t specify how long a book would be unavailable from the library for this additional review process, which could mean that books are essentially banned before actually being banned.
Gov. Lee hasn’t commented directly on this legislation but based on his history of signing hate into law, it’s not looking good.
Ken Paxton has evaded trial for years. But on immigration, he can't get enough of going to court
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Texas’ corrupt attorney general has yet again sued the Biden administration, this time over policy that would allow asylum officers to handle cases instead of leaving them solely to immigration judges.
The rule could ease the massive caseload facing immigration courts. It could help some vulnerable people seeking asylum (going to the border and asking for safety is the process when Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum Title 42 policy isn’t in place). But Ken Paxton, indicted in 2015 on felony securities fraud charges, just can’t have that.
RELATED STORY: Biden administration readies new policy intended to speed up asylum process
Because Paxton is an influential white man in a powerful elected position, he’s managed to delay his trial for years. But when it comes to taking the president to court over lawful policies intended to improve our unfair immigration system, Paxton can’t get enough of the legal system.
In fact, if going to court had a “file 11 lawsuits, get the 12th one free” card, he’d be close to his freebie. That’s because the against the Biden administration’s asylum change is his 11th immigration-related suit. It’s barely been a week since Paxton also sued the Biden administration over its plan to end the use of Miller’s anti-asylum Title 42 policy. The Texas attorney general sued the administration over Title 42, knowing full well that a separate lawsuit led by Arizona, Louisiana, and Missouri would be successful.
A GOP-appointed judge sided with the states and blocked the administration from winding down the policy before the scheduled May 23 date. Policy experts noted the judge gave no legal analysis in his order and seems likely to block the termination itself when that deadline comes. Remember, Republicans truly believe Democratic presidents shouldn’t be able to govern (or win elections, for that matter).
Paxton has also fought to delay his own trial as he’s also gone all the way to Washington, D.C., in his efforts to sabotage the Biden administration’s immigration agenda. Paxton launched the lawsuit that eventually forced the administration to reinstate the inhumane Remain in Mexico policy. The Supreme Court heard oral arguments around the effort to terminate the program last week. Some observers said there could—could—be a chance the president wins this one. We’ll see. But sure enough, Paxton was there for the oral arguments. When it comes to his own trial, however, he’s MIA.
The administration’s policy change giving trained U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers more authority to handle cases was generally well received, though advocates and lawmakers said the administration needed to “ensure the due process rights of asylum seekers are protected under this new rule.”
It could also help relieve some of the huge burden facing immigration courts. “As of March, immigration judges had nearly 1.7 million pending cases—the largest backlog in the country’s history, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University,” The Texas Tribune reported. We know Paxton is a big fan of having decisions related to his corruption delayed for years. He feels that immigrants should have to wait years for their decisions too. He feels immigrants shouldn’t be able to access the legal asylum system, period.
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Trio of Republican lawmakers called up before Jan. 6 committee
This post was originally published on this site
Seeking information about their alleged roles in events that led up to the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the select committee probing the insurrection has now called on Republican Reps. Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama, and Ronny Jackson of Texas, to cooperate.
The committee wants Biggs to face multiple questions, including those involving right-wing conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander and Alexander’s claim that Biggs was just one of a handful of sitting lawmakers whoactively worked to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
Rep. Mo Brooks, who took the stage before Trump incited the mob and called on people to “fight like hell,” is again under the microscope for his remarks. This time, it was a public admission he made while running for the Senate. Brooks declared in March that Trump demanded he overturn the 2020 election.
And in arguably the most troubling letter the committee issued Monday, in its request to Rep. Ronny Jackson, investigators asked the Texas Republican to pry back the curtain on his potential ties to the extremist Oath Keepers group and its members currently facing trial for seditious conspiracy.
The requests come as the committee verges on resuming its public hearings on June 9, but they are not formal subpoenas. Investigators have historically aired on the side of caution when it comes to forcing compliance with their congressional colleagues. They have cited concerns over lengthy legal battles they anticipate they would face as the clock on the probe runs down.
But they have not ruled this option out altogether. Before Monday, previous requests were sent to Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Both have refused to cooperate.
According to investigators, Biggs is taking front row and center now for several reasons, chief among them his alleged relationship with right-wing conspiracy theorist Ali Alexander.
Last December, over a series of live streams, Alexander boasted that the ‘Stop the Steal’ movement he founded was receiving help from Biggs, then the chair of the House Freedom Caucus.
Alexander also named Reps. Paul Gosar of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama as instrumental facilitators.
“We’re the four guys who came up with a Jan. 6 event,” Alexander said in one since-deleted video.
In another video, as noted by The New York Times, Alexander said:
“We four schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting so that who we couldn’t lobby, we could change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” he said.
Biggs has denied ever meeting with Alexander or talking to him. Biggs did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos on Monday.
Alexander, however, has cooperated with the Jan. 6 committee—along with more than 800 other people—and turned over several records.
In April, he agreed to appear before a federal grand jury after receiving a subpoena for testimony relevant to the Justice Department’s investigation of Jan. 6.
The right-wing bombast has been mum about details of his cooperation, and when talking to the press, his attorney has underlined Alexander’s disavowal of the violence that unfolded.
Investigators also want to question Biggs about his conduct on Dec. 21 at the White House where he and other House Freedom Caucus members attended an in-person and prominently advertised meeting with Trump.
Trump’s then-chief-of-staff Mark Meadows boosted the signal after the meeting, noting he and other attendees were “preparing to fight back against mounting evidence of voter fraud.”
That meeting, according to the testimony already obtained by the committee, centered on the role then-Vice President Mike Pence could play if he would abandon his constitutional role during certification.
“As you may be aware, a federal judge… recently concluded that President Trump’s effort to pressure the vice president to refuse to count electoral votes likely violated two provisions of federal criminal law,” the committee wrote Monday, referencing a ruling from a federal judge in California.
In that ruling, the committee successfully obtained access to emails from conservative attorney John Eastman, the author of the six-point memo strategizing how to stop the certification.
Biggs could also answer questions about his push to see “alternate electors” installed for the count. In a text message to Meadows on Nov. 6—just three days after the election and before results were finalized—the Arizona Republican was already pushing a proposal to get Trump’s electors set up in battleground states.
Biggs acknowledged the scheme was “highly controversial.”
“It can’t be much more controversial than the lunacy that we’re sitting out there now. And It would be pretty difficult because he would take governors and legislators with collective will and backbone to do that. Is anybody on the team researching and considering lobbying for that?” Biggs wrote.
Meadows replied: “I love it.”
In the end, election fraud was not found in Arizona or elsewhere.
There’s also a push by the committee to learn more about a reported effort by House Republicans angling for presidential pardons after Jan. 6.
The committee disclosed Monday that White House personnel have already testified about the issue.
Just ahead of President Joe Biden’s inauguration, it was widely reported that Trump seriously entertained issuing pardons for those tied up in crimes related to Jan. 6. In February, Politico reported that two people familiar with the discussions, including an adviser to Trump, said Trump was worried about possible criminal charges.
“Is it everybody that had a Trump sign, or everybody who walked into the Capitol” who could be pardoned? Trump reportedly asked.
The 45th president believed if he pardoned people, they would “never have to testify or be deposed.”
Trump ended up abandoning the idea when he was informed it could cause him new legal headaches and fresh campaign finance scrutiny. His impeachment-worn attorney Pat Cipollone also allegedly threatened to resign if Trump went through with the plan.
Rep. Ronny Jackson on Monday slammed the request, dubbing the committee “illegitimate” and consumed by a “malicious and not substantive” agenda. He also described the investigation as a “ruthless crusade against President Trump and his allies.”
Jackson was particularly irked, he claimed, because the committee did not seek him out privately first, according to CBS.
A committee spokesperson did not immediately return a request to Daily Kos.
Jackson’s cooperation is being sought because of his potential relationship with Oath Keepers accused of orchestrating a complex, weaponized conspiracy to stop the nation’s peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6.
Related: Oath Keepers text expose talk of security details for Trump world figures, more Proud Boys ties
Prosecutors revealed last month that in the trove of text messages seized off Oath Keeper devices, the extremist group members discussed providing a personal security detail to Jackson during the attack.
“Dr. Ronnie Jackson on the move,” one message from an unidentified person said. “Needs protection. If anyone inside cover him. He has critical data to protect.”
Other users in the chat worried about Jackson, once the White House physician to Trump.
“Hopefully they can help Dr. Jackson,” a text at 3:03 p.m. read.
Rhodes responded two minutes later.
“Help with what?” he wrote.
Within the same minute, Rhodes replied again.
“Give him my cell,” he said.
As for Mo Brooks, the Alabama Republican is being called up to discuss his comments in March when he appeared to lapse in total fealty to Trump.
Trump dropped his endorsement of Brooks’s senate run following weeks of lethargic polling.
The former president first backed Brooks a full year in advance of the primary. But in that time, Brooks—looking to shore up more moderate Republicans in a tough race—began to backpedal, much to Trump’s ire.
Brooks voted against certification on Jan. 6 and even campaigned with life-size Trump posters at his side, according to the Associated Press.
But during a pro-Trump rally in Alabama in August 2021, Brooks urged the crowd to forget about the failures of the previous year’s election.
“There are some people who are despondent about the voter fraud and election theft in 2020. Folks, put that behind you, put that behind you,” Brooks said.
He was booed and as noted by reporters on-site, he “nearly lost the crowd” before waffling again.
”All right, well, look back at it, but go forward and take advantage of it. We have got to win in 2022. We’ve got to win in 2024,” Brooks said.
All lawmakers have been asked to set up a time to meet with investigators beginning next week.
Though it was nearly a foregone conclusion that Reps. Jackson, Brooks, and Biggs would not comply, ultimately, the panel has made clear that forcing testimony from some individuals would not make or break the entire probe given the voluminous evidence already collected.
India heat wave ‘tests the limits of human survivability,’ and Manchin sabotages climate efforts
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This week in Congress is limited to this week in the Senate, as the House is having a district work period, following the surprise trip by Speaker Nancy Pelosi and a small delegation of House Democrats to Ukraine. “Our delegation traveled to Kyiv to send an unmistakable and resounding message to the entire world: America stands firmly with Ukraine,” Pelosi said in a statement following the meeting.
“[Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy] conveyed the clear need for continued security, economic and humanitarian assistance from the United States to address the devastating human toll taken on the Ukrainian people by Putin’s diabolic invasion—and our delegation proudly delivered the message that additional American support is on the way, as we work to transform President Biden’s strong funding request into a legislative package.”
Pelosi’s statement points to one of the big fights of the day, the week, the month: aid to Ukraine and whether or not she and Majority Leader Chuck Schumer try to pass an additional $10 billion to combat COVID-19 with that bill. With the House out until March 10, that’s being back-burnered a bit while the Senate clears out some other stuff.
Other stuff largely consists of a Republican enforced marathon after the Senate finally voted to officially go to a House-Senate conference on the sweeping competitiveness bill both chambers passed weeks and weeks ago. There will be more than two dozen—28 in fact—procedural votes to instruct the Senate conferees on the bill. It has been decades since this many motions to instruct have had to be dealt with in the Senate, Schumer said, noting that “many members on both sides of the aisle have a stake in seeing this bill finalized.” Meaning, they’re spending hours and hours of floor time on (mostly) Republicans officially telling conferees what should and shouldn’t do in negotiations with the House.
The Senate comes in late Monday, and will do some housekeeping with a Treasury nomination. A slight hiccup on nominations is Colorado Democrat Michael Bennet’s COVID-19 diagnosis. That could delay any close confirmation votes this week in the 50-50 Senate, since there probably won’t be any Republicans willing to play nice and give up a vote on behalf of their colleague.
Speaking of Republicans not playing nice, with help from a few Democrats, the bipartisan gang that is supposedly negotiating the substitute for voting rights and election reform legislation is still putatively meeting on the Electoral Count Act legislation. It’s a good idea, but not enough to make the real reforms necessary to save our democracy and ensure that the next presidential election is free, fair, and clean. Democrats Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema made sure that couldn’t happen.
Speaking of whom, Manchin is also hard at work making sure real, substantive climate legislation doesn’t happen, either. That’s happening while the very lives of millions of people in India and Pakistan have been endangered by an unprecedented heat wave. “We don’t have a heat action plan and there are gaps in planning,” Chandni Singh, a climate expert with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) said. “You can only adapt so much. This heat wave is testing the limits of human survivability.”
So of course Manchin is spearheading another bipartisan gang ostensibly to negotiate a climate and energy bill everyone can agree to, but in reality to make sure that the Democrats can’t address it in the budget reconciliation bill they’ve still got at their disposal. That was the mechanism they were going to use to pass the big climate/social policy Build Back Better plan before Manchin killed it. He’s been stringing Schumer and President Joe Biden along by hinting he’d be willing to use that reconciliation package to do both climate and new taxes. Now he’s reneging on that and saying the process, which can pass with a simple majority vote and can’t be filibustered, saying it “is for taxes,” period. He says he’s “committed to an energy-climate bill that makes sense for the United States of America.”
What he’s committed to, as usual, is enriching himself. Manchin has been trashing the idea of a tax credit for purchases of electric vehicles for months, most recently calling it “ludicrous.” He’s instead pushing for more credits and investment in hydrogen. Specifically, he is pushing for a new hydrogen hub—funded by the infrastructure law he helped craft and shove through at the expense of climate legislation—in West Virginia. A hub that would be filed by waste coal, the stuff that Manchin has built a family fortune on. Manchin’s big idea for electric cars is having them fueled by burning very dirty coal (supplied by him) to create hydrogen.
Just like he managed to pry the climate change and social spending part of Build Back Better away from infrastructure last year, in order to pass the infrastructure law that could now end up making climate change even worse while lining his own pockets, he’s using the bipartisan gang format to kill of what’s left. Except not really. Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse (RI) sums it up. “They’re just not capable of that,” meaning Republicans and good-faith negotiations. “There’s literally nothing happening in the bipartisan effort. One Republican senator showed up at one meeting.”
One of the people who talks to Manchin is sounding kind of fed up. “If you get a bipartisan [climate] bill you can do outside reconciliation, it’s fine,” Montana Democrat Jon Tester said. But what they need to do is “prioritize on need. And I can tell you right now, in the area of housing and childcare, there’s incredible demand out there that’s not going to be solved by the private sector if we do nothing.” The stuff Manchin does not want to do.
Even if anything happens with Republicans, just as with infrastructure, it won’t do enough on climate change. It’s not like senators don’t know that. “What I worry about is doing something that is not significant, and people will say ‘We’ve dealt with climate,’” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT). “My perception is that there are very few Republicans who are prepared to tackle that crisis in a way that’s appropriate.” But they’re all held hostage by Manchin (and Sinema).
So, anyway, that’s what is happening this week on Capitol Hill. Same as it ever was.
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