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Nearly two years after former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found that Minneapolis police officers are more likely to use neck restraints and chemical irritants on Black people and more likely to cite, use force against, and arrest Black people during traffic stops. The human rights departments announced the saddening but not shocking findings on Wednesday after a nearly two-year investigation. The probe was sparked when Chauvin was recorded kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes, killing the Black father on May 25, 2020. In the human rights investigation, the department defined “a pattern or practice of discrimination” as “the denial of rights” in “more than isolated, sporadic incidents” but as “repeated, routine, or of a generalized nature.”

“After completing a comprehensive investigation, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights finds there is probable cause that the City and MPD engage in a pattern or practice of race discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act,” the department said in its findings.

RELATED STORY: Yet another investigation shows policing system is as crooked as we thought it was

Officers were accused in the 72-page report of disproportionately killing people of color and Indigenous community members. “In fact, since 2010, of the 14 individuals that MPD (Minneapolis Police Department) officers have killed, 13 of those individuals were people of color or Indigenous individuals,” officials wrote in the report. “People of color and Indigenous individuals comprise approximately 42% of the Minneapolis population, but comprise 93% of all MPD officer-involved deaths between January 1, 2010, to February 2, 2022.” 

The list of offenses the police department is accused of in the report hardly begins and ends there.

Officers reportedly posed as community members on social media “to post comments and content online attacking police critics and criticizing local officials,” and in specific cases posed as Black community members to criticize a local branch of the NAACP and to attend the birthday party of a prominent Black civil rights lawyer.

“While MPD officers also use MPD covert social media to investigate criminal activity, engaging with community members in a false way is improper when there is no nexus to a criminal investigation or to a public safety objective,” state human rights officials said in their report.

They also pointed to examples of supervisors approving unlawful activities, such as a case involving a 14-year-old, unarmed, Black teen who was sitting on the floor of a bedroom using his phone when an officer encountered him in 2017. 

“When the 14-year-old did not immediately stand up when instructed to do so, the officer quickly hit the 14-year-old with their flashlight, splitting his ear open, and then grabbed him by the neck and placed him in an unconscious neck restraint,” investigators said in their report. “By deeming this officer’s use of force appropriate, the supervisor effectively authorized the officer to continue using such egregious force in the future.”

Only about 20 discipline decisions went to arbitration in a more than 10-year time frame between January 2010 and April 2021. “In all but one of those cases, an arbitrator agreed with the City and MPD that some form of discipline was warranted,” investigators wrote.

In one example of the kind of harmful trickle-down effect delayed action has had in the department, an officer found to have used excessive force actually ended up becoming a field training officer.

Investigators wrote:

“In 2019, an arbitrator reduced a termination decision to an 80-hour suspension for an officer who had used excessive force while making an arrest in 2016. Immediately after the misconduct had occurred, MPD relieved the officer of duty and required the officer stay home before eventually assigning the officer to a desk position monitoring cameras where they had no contact with the public. However, the day after the Police Conduct Review Panel recommended finding that the officer used excessive force, MPD returned the officer to regular duty with full enforcement responsibilities and relied on the officer as a field training officer.Furthermore, while the Police Conduct Review Panel made its recommended finding to the Police Chief at the end of 2017, the officer was not provided an opportunity to contest the allegations of misconduct until eight months after the panel provided its recommendations. The Police Chief then did not terminate the officer for an additional six months.”

Read the full investigative report:

In completing its investigation, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights reviewed 700 hours of body-camera footage and nearly 480,000 pages of city and police department documents including training policies and disciplinary records. It followed a temporary court order the department requested from the Hennepin County District Court to “immediately implement public safety changes” four days after starting its investigation on June 1, 2020.

”At the time the court order was entered, at least 65 completed police misconduct investigations were awaiting the Police Chief’s review and at least four of those cases had been on the Police Chief’s desk for over 200 days,” the human rights department wrote. “As of June 2020, the average time a police misconduct case sat on the Police Chief’s desk without a final decision was 88 days.”

Medaria Arradondo, the first Black Minneapolis police chief, appointed in 2017, retired this year, and in many ways, the toxic culture in the police department long predate his tenure as chief. Even as he stepped into the role, his predecessor, Janee Harteau, faced criticism regarding the killing of Justine Ruszczyk Damond.

Former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter after shooting and killing Ruszczyk, who also used the last name Damond. She called 911 to report a potential sexual assault behind her home. Noor testified during his trial in 2019 that while he was a passenger in his partner’s car he heard a “loud bang on his squad car” that scared Noor so much he reached across his partner to fire through the driver’s side window, killing Ruszczyk.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced last April that the Justice Department has opened its own pattern or practice investigation into the city and its police department. “The investigation I am announcing today will assess whether the Minneapolis Police Department engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force, including during protests,” Garland said in a news release. “Building trust between community and law enforcement will take time and effort by all of us, but we undertake this task with determination and urgency, knowing that change cannot wait.”

The Justice Department investigation is separate from the investigation the state human rights department conducted. 

As part of that investigation, officials stated:

“Moving forward, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights will work with the City of Minneapolis to develop a consent decree, which is a court-enforceable agreement that identifies specific changes to be made and timelines for those changes to occur. Unlike previous efforts to reform policing in Minneapolis, a consent decree is a court order issued by a judge.”

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The federal judiciary is on tap for the House Wednesday—specifically, the topic of reforming the federal judiciary. The House has a raft of suspension bills (legislation that doesn’t require the regular rules process on the floor) it will run through, including the bipartisan Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act, which the Senate already passed in February. While that’s happening, the Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on Courts will hold a hearing on Supreme Court ethics, or lack thereof.

That’s the juicy part of the day, with lawmakers spurred on by the disclosure of Ginni Thomas’ text messages showing the depth of her involvement in trying to promote a coup. As the spouse of a wildly partisan political activist, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas at the very least should have recused from any cases related to the 2020 election and Donald Trump. Which of course he did not. This hearing will examine the lack of Supreme Court ethics and Congress’ role in dealing with that, including impeachment.

A memo obtained by The Hill from subcommittee chair Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) and sent to members ahead of the hearing outlines the existing codes of conduct that apply to other federal judges and summarizes legislative proposals that would extend the code to Supreme Court justices. As of right now, they’re exempt from it and are expected to discipline themselves—which, in Thomas’ case, doesn’t happen. The memo also outlines Congress’ impeachment authority as one of the tools at their disposal.

“Threats or inquiries of impeachment as a means of regulating the conduct of Supreme Court justices have had varying effects,” the memo said. Just one justice in the nation’s history has been impeached by the House, Samuel Chase in 1804. He was not convicted by the Senate. In 1969, Justice Abe Fortas resigned over an impeachment threat. The current crop of Republican justices pretty much thumb their nose at the idea of ethics, in contrast to the newest justice-designate, Ketanji Brown Jackson, who has preemptively recused herself from an affirmative action case before she’s even been officially seated on the court.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

The memo makes it clear that this hearing is about the Thomases and the increasing calls for action  “following the reporting about text messages between the spouse of an associate justice and the then-White House Chief of Staff.”

“The Supreme Court has long operated as though it were above the law. But, Justice Clarence Thomas’ refusal to recuse himself from cases surrounding January 6th, despite his wife’s involvement, raises serious ethical—and legal—alarm bells,” vice chair of the subcommittee Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), said ahead of the hearing. “The need for strong, enforceable ethics laws is clearer than ever. We have to do more to hold the Court accountable and restore public trust through a binding code of ethics and recusal.”

“Recent reports that the text messages of a justice’s spouse urging the overturning of a free and fair election may have been at issue in a case in front the Supreme Court—but that the justice did not recuse himself from the case—is just the latest and particularly egregious example in an unfortunately long list of illustrations as to why Supreme Court justices need to follow a formal code of ethics,” Johnson told The Hill. “I have been calling for this sort of reform for years, and I am encouraged to see a large, bipartisan majority of the public in favor of this long overdue legislation.”

Republicans, and particularly Senate Republicans, are unlikely to agree because it’s their justices behaving badly. It is, however, important for Democrats to keep pushing that point and to keep up the drumbeat for reform. The threat of some kind of action from Congress—a SCOTUS code of ethics, court expansion, impeachment—is at this point the only leverage that exists against the rogue Supreme Court majority.

The legislation they will pass Wednesday (a slightly different version passed 422-4 in December) will help some toward that effort. It also demonstrates that even the most hardcore partisan Republicans—in this case the bill’s sponsor, Sen. John Cornyn—recognize that there has to be at least the gloss of accountability for the Supreme Court. The bill toughens financial disclosure requirements for federal judges, including Supreme Court justices. They will have to make financial holdings and stock trades publicly available online, in the interest of disclosing conflicts of interest that would warrant judges recusing themselves from related cases.

As it currently stands, the parties involved in a case can request to see the judge’s financial disclosures, as can members of the public, but the judges themselves get to decide how much information they release and when. They have sole discretion in redacting information and can take all the time they want to fulfill requests.

The legislation is a result of a report last fall in the Wall Street Journal that found more than 130 judges broke the law by hearing cases in which they had a financial interest instead of recusing themselves. The Journal found 685 lawsuits that were decided by judges with a financial stake, with the potential fallout of hundreds of cases being overruled.

When the Journal alerted the judges to these violations, “56 of the judges […] directed court clerks to notify parties in 329 lawsuits that they should have recused themselves. That means new judges might be assigned, potentially upending rulings.” Most of the judges gave lame excuses or played dumb. “I had no idea that I had an interest in any of these companies in what was a most modest retirement account,” said Judge Timothy Batten Sr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia, who owned JPMorgan Chase stock and ruled favorably for the bank in several cases.

Under this legislation, everyone in the judiciary branch will have to follow disclosure requirements like those that apply to lawmakers, reporting within 45 days all stock trades of more than $1,000. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts will have to create an online database, searchable and publicly accessible, of judicial financial disclosure forms and will have to get those forms into the database within 90 days from when they’re filed. The new law will apply to Supreme Court justices as well as federal appellate, district court, bankruptcy, and magistrate judges. The database has to be online within six months of President Joe Biden signing the bill.

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In an ideal world, we don’t have to poll on human rights issues. We don’t have to fight for basic rights and dignities and we don’t have to worry about elected officials (and election hopefuls) turning diversity into a rallying cry for hate. But as conservatives continue to show, nothing is off-limits when it comes to keeping their voter base enraged, as long as they’re getting to the polls.  

Should it matter how the public feels about trans folks receiving gender-affirming health care? On the one hand, it shouldn’t. On the other hand, it clearly does. Or it matters insofar as we need to educate and mobilize voters to get on the right side of history to prevent the party of hate from legislating an already marginalized population out of existence. It’s with this framing in mind that we can dig into some recent public opinion data from Civiqs about some of the most pressing trans rights issues in the United States today.

I won’t sugarcoat this: When it comes to Republican respondents, the numbers are bleak. The disparity between Democrats and Republicans is considerable and, obviously, concerning. But we have to both try to change the minds of conservatives and mobilize progressives to hit the polls every chance we can. Now, let’s look at some specifics on health care, sports, and books.

RELATED: Republicans in this state once again ensure it’s legal to fire LGBT teachers because of who they are

As some background on the polling, this survey was conducted by Daily Kos/Civiqs and included 1,248 registered voters in the United States. It was conducted online from April 23 to April 26, 2022. Results are weighted by factors including region, age, race, gender, political party identification, and education to be representative of the population of registered voters in the U.s. The survey has a margin of error of ± 2.8% at a confidence level of 95%.

While the survey results cover a number of exciting and relevant topics, including Joe Biden’s approval rating, student debt forgiveness, book bans, and Biden’s campaign promises, there are several important questions regarding trans rights specifically.

Let’s start with the foundational: Are issues involving transgender rights important to you? Just over one-quarter of respondents said trans issues are very important to them, while another quarter said they’re “somewhat” important, nearly one-third said they’re not important at all, and 2% said they’re unsure.

Forty-three percent of respondents believe that trans folks face discrimination, harassment, and attacks on their rights in the U.S. today, while a concerning 41% believe trans folks already have equal rights and want “special” treatment. About 13% of respondents said neither statement matches their perception, and about 3% said they are unsure. 

In terms of gender-affirming health care, responses are pretty divided. About 35% of respondents believe this anti-trans legislation is actually helping trans youth (it isn’t) while about 48% believe it is hurting them. Just under 10% of respondents feel it’s neither helping nor hurting (which is strange, but I digress), and about 8% of respondents are unsure.

Lastly, we have to talk about trans folks and sports. This is one of the subjects that gets the biggest emotional reactions in general (as well as here on Daily Kos) and the numbers here seem to mirror that range of feelings. The survey asked if legislation being pushed around the nation barring trans youth from participating on teams that align with their gender identity is helping or hurting. 

Forty-five percent of respondents said the legislation is helping, 36% said it’s hurting, 9% said neither, and 8% said they’re unsure. The question doesn’t ask if the legislation is helping trans youth versus helping cisgender youth, so the results here are additionally nuanced in that it’s difficult to parse out where people are coming from in their rationale: Are they prioritizing the feelings of cisgender people, or only responding as a means of punishing trans youth? On the one hand it doesn’t matter, but on the other, it can be useful to understand these dimensions when it comes to messaging and advocacy. 

It is useful to look at these responses as broken down by political party. For example, just 5% of Republicans believe trans people face discrimination. I’m willing to bet nearly everyone here at Daily Kos is going to find that number as disturbingly (and unrealistically) low as I do, and yet there it is. On the other hand, more than 80% of Democrats believe trans people face discrimination. Less than 15% of Republican respondents believe legislation banning gender-affirming health care hurts trans youth. Meanwhile, more than 80% of Democrats recognize these efforts as harmful.

As some other additional findings, women and people living in urban areas were more likely to say trans issues are very important to them. Men and people in rural areas were more likely to believe trans folks want special treatment. A concerning number of young voters believe trans folks want special treatment, with 39% of voters between 18 and 34 saying so. 

More than three-quarters of respondents who frequently watch Fox News believe trans folks want special treatments, whereas just 7% of folks who watch MSNBC frequently believe the same. 

Sixty-six percent of Republicans believe anti-trans legislation barring youth from accessing gender-affirming health care is helping, whereas just 7% of Democrats feel that way. Similarly, more than 80% of Republicans believe anti-trans sports legislation is helping whereas just 10% of Democrats think so. 

You can check out a more in-depth write-up of this data from my colleague, Carolyn Fiddler. 

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

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On Sunday, a pair of fuel deports in Bryansk, Russia, roughly 100 miles from the border with Ukraine, exploded into flames. As with the fuel depot that “mysteriously” burned in Belgorod, Russia, back on March 31 (after two Ukrainian helicopters were seen zipping past in a daring treetop-level raid), Ukrainian officials are being cagey about the cause of the explosions at Bryansk. But there seems almost no doubt that the fires were started by a carefully targeted Ukrainian assault that avoided hitting civilian targets and went straight for vital military supplies.

Speaking of Belgorod, there was another explosion in Belgorod oblast early on Wednesday morning. In this case, an ammunition storage area in the village of Staraya Nelidovka, barely 10 miles from the Ukrainian border, went up in a series of spectacular explosions.

Belgorod wasn’t the only ammunition storage facility to blow sky high in the last 24 hours. Another mystery fire broke out at a smaller ammunition storage facility in the Russian-occupied area of Luhansk. This time, it was near the town of Pervomaisk. Except this was no mystery at all, since this was close enough that it may have been shelled from Ukrainian forces still struggling to hold the town of Popasna just a handful of miles to the west.

The amount and nature of ammunition lost at Pervomaisk and Staraya Nelidovka is hard to estimate, and it’s not clear that it will have a great impact on Russia’s efforts in the war, except that both these attacks should indicate to Russia that their ammunition storage facilities are vulnerable. That might generate a tendency not to stockpile as much material in a single location. Considering the difficulties that Russia is already having with logistics, making them sweat the placement of materials has some value on its own.

When it comes to the destruction of the fuel supplies at Bryansk, those 1,500 tons represent about 430,000 gallons, or roughly 170,000 miles of travel for T-72 tanks. The earlier strike at the fuel depot in Belgorod generated rationing of fuel across a wide area.

But it’s not just the diesel that’s going missing—it’s the ability to store large amounts of diesel close to the area of combat. The missing tanks at Belgorod and Bryansk may not put any real cap on the fuel available to Russian forces; however, they could definitely mean that fuel tankers hauling supplies to those forces have a much more lengthy round trip. As with the strikes on ammo depots, that’s a direct attack on Russia’s fragile ability to juggle logistics. 

One other thing that might shake Russia up just a bit: Bryansk is almost exactly halfway between Kyiv and Moscow.

Listen to Markos and Kerry Eleveld talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party Chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast 

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Twitter announced its sale to Elon Musk on Monday, and there’s been at least a week’s worth of drama since. Large numbers of existing users left Twitter, while right-wing accounts gained followers as their supporters apparently joined the site. Tesla’s stock dropped by more than $100 billion—kind of a problem for Musk since he put up Tesla shares as collateral for his Twitter purchase.

The specifics of the deal became public on Tuesday, including a $1 billion termination fee if either party pulls out. If the deal doesn’t close by Oct. 24, both sides can walk away, or, if there’s a regulatory delay, they can extend for six months. But while “It’s actually a pretty plain vanilla merger agreement,” according to an expert quoted in The New York Times, the drama surrounding it is decidedly not vanilla.

RELATED STORY: Twitter announces sale to Elon Musk as his recent tweets show what a bad idea that is

Even without the drop in Tesla’s stock, there was some reason for concern about the financial details of the purchase:

It makes you wonder how Musk plans to make this work. Does he think he’s just getting a $44 billion toy, a piece of conspicuous consumption even more impressive than owning a really big yacht? Or does he have a plan to wring more money out of the platform than its current or past executives have been able to do?

However he plans to make it work on a financial level, Musk is throwing up red flags about how it will work for users and current Twitter employees. On Tuesday, Musk targeted two Twitter executives in his own tweets, in both cases piggybacking on attacks on the executives by right-wing media figures seeking Musk’s attention. As a result of Musk’s criticism of Vijaya Gadde, one of Twitter’s top lawyers in charge of trust and safety and legal and public policy, Gadde’s mentions filled with abuse, including overt racism. Musk also responded to a tweet by Pizzagate conspiracy theorist Mike Cernovich, saying “Sounds pretty bad” in response to Cernovich’s attack on a different Twitter executive.

It didn’t take Musk long to bolster concerns that he would run Twitter in service to the far right, in other words, and enable abuses.

But we already knew that. Popular Info’s Judd Legum has detailed how Musk’s commitment to free speech is situational and self-serving, including Musk’s attacks on journalists who’ve criticized Tesla, Musk’s threats to Tesla workers who’ve discussed unionizing, and Tesla’s ask to the Chinese government to censor criticism of its products. Musk’s idea of free speech is all about punching down and dogpiling, but stops abruptly when his own interests are involved.

About the China thing, too: Another billionaire with too much power weighed in with a concern about Musk’s purchase of Twitter:

No one really knows what the worst-case scenario for an Elon Musk-owned Twitter looks like. But the best-case scenario here may just be that he wreaks havoc with poorly thought-out tweets and ones outright encouraging abuse, then loses interest before the sale ever becomes final. Whatever happens, it’s guaranteed to be a continuing advertisement for taxing the rich a helluva lot more.

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The Jan. 6 committee is not done with Kevin McCarthy. 

The leader of Republicans in the House of Representatives and longtime ally to former President Donald Trump will soon find himself on the receiving end of another request to appear before the panel investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

McCarthy was never formally subpoenaed by the committee, but investigators asked that he cooperate voluntarily this January. His refusal to come forward has simmered as options have been explored by the committee behind the scenes on how to go about navigating the legal thicket that is demanding another member of Congress testify under subpoena. 

“We’ve invited him to come earlier before the latest revelation that was reported on tapes. So in all probability, he will be issued another invitation to come just like some other members,” Jan. 6 committee Chairman Bennie Thompson told reporters Tuesday. 

That decision will be made “soon,” Thompson added.

RELATED STORY: The Jan. 6 committee wants you, Kevin McCarthy

Audio recordings of McCarthy obtained by The New York Times over this week have exposed the Republican as a leader on edge, fearful, and prepared to call on Trump to resign after Jan. 6 because he believed the president had some responsibility for the attack. McCarthy has denied making the comments.

But in a phone call four days after the insurrection, McCarthy is reportedly heard openly worrying to GOP leadership about the inflammatory remarks pouring out from fellow lawmakers like Reps. Mo Brooks of Alabama and Matt Gaetz of Florida—among others—who supported Trump’s push to overturn the election. 

Brooks took the stage at the Ellipse on Jan. 6 and called on the president’s supporters to “fight like hell” before they descended on the Capitol. Gaetz used the aftermath of the attack to lash out at fellow Republicans critical of Trump, including Liz Cheney, who is now the Jan. 6 committee vice chair. 

“The other thing I want to bring up and I’m making some phone calls to some members, I just got something sent now about … Matt Gaetz where he’s calling peoples names out … this is serious stuff people are doing that has to stop,” McCarthy said.

“I’m calling Gaetz, I’m explaining to him, I don’t know necessarily what to say but I’m going to have some other people call him too … This is serious shit, to cut this out,” McCarthy said.

When Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana pointed out to McCarthy that Gaetz’s remarks bordered on illegality, the House leader acknowledged again the severity of the situation. 

“Well, he’s putting people in jeopardy, he doesn’t need to be doing this. we saw what people would do in the Capitol and these people came prepared well with everything else,” McCarthy said.

Gaetz has retreated from McCarthy since the recordings were published. In a statement posted on Twitter, the congressman—who is currently under investigation by the Department of Justice—defended his comments and called McCarthy and Scalise “weak men.”

Gaetz said he was “protecting President Trump from impeachment” while the House GOP leader was defending Rep. Adam Kinzinger and “protecting Liz Cheney from criticism.”

Gaetz has not yet been asked to appear before the Jan. 6 committee thus far—at least not publicly. A spokesman for the committee did not immediately return a request for comment Wednesday. Gaetz also did not immediately return a request for comment to Daily Kos.

Besides McCarthy, the committee has previously issued requests for records and deposition to Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania. Both Republicans have refused to appear voluntarily. 

Details about Jordan and Perry’s conduct in the runup to Jan. 6 have been made more transparent with the recent publication of text messages sent to Trump’s chief of staff at the time, Mark Meadows. 

More than a month after the 2020 election, Perry texted Meadows frantically in search of guidance as the administration sought a path to overturn the election results. 

“Mark, just checking in as time continues to count down. 11 days to 1/6 and 25 days to inauguration. We gotta get going!” Perry wrote on Dec. 26. 

Perry wasn’t just looking for guidance, however—he was also offering some of his own.

It was Perry who spurred Meadows to meet with Jeffrey Clark, an assistant attorney general at the Department of Justice on board with Trump’s claims of rampant election fraud.

According to the testimony that former Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen provided to the Senate Judiciary Committee last year, Trump not only pushed the Department of Justice to discredit the election results, but it was Clark who led a charge to have him ousted so the scheme could be better controlled.

Clark pleaded the Fifth Amendment over 100 times when he finally sat with members of the committee in February following weeks of delays. 

The texts show Perrry also spewed conspiracy theories to Meadows about rigged voting machines and accused the CIA of a cover-up. 

As for Jordan, White House call logs show the Ohio Republican spoke with Trump for roughly 10 minutes on Jan. 6. A text message obtained by the committee and made public in December also appeared to show Jordan sharing legal arguments in support of an unconstitutional pressure campaign leveled at then-Vice President Mike Pence to stop the count.

Jordan said the text was a forward from former Pentagon Inspector General Joseph Schmitz, but it is not clear whether the text was in fact a forward or why it was sent at all, based on what the committee released.

Jordan has been notoriously inconsistent when fielding questions about his engagement with Trump on Jan. 6. 

Both he and Perry voted against the formation of the select committee investigating the attempted overthrow. Both now sit on a shadow committee purporting to analyze the events of Jan. 6.

RELATED STORY: White House Jan. 6 call log confirms what Jim Jordan couldn’t—or wouldn’t

When Thompson told reporters Tuesday that another invitation was due soon for McCarthy, the Mississippi Democrat also did not rule out issuing “invites” to other members of Congress. 

“We’ll make a decision on any others before the week is out,” Thompson told The Hill. 

When asked if he would skip the second invite for McCarthy and move straight to a subpoena, Thompson said it was “a consideration.” 

According to the Times, in the Jan. 10 GOP leadership call where McCarthy lamented the remarks from Gaetz and Brooks, Cheney was on the line too and raised concerns about Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado publicly tweeting about the movement of lawmakers as they were under siege. 

In other clips, McCarthy is heard asking about whether Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia was involved in any remarks at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. She did not speak at the rally that morning but had spent weeks advocating for Trump and promoting the lie that the election was stolen by Democrats.  

McCarthy is gunning to become speaker of the House should Republicans take the majority. It has been a long-awaited goal for the legislator and may explain the increasingly light touch he has employed with some of the most extreme members in the House and in particular those on the uber conservative House Freedom Caucus. 

When Rep. Paul Gosar was censured and removed from his committees for posting an animated video depicting the murder of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, McCarthy called it an “abuse of power” inflicted by “one-party rule.” 

A month after the insurrection, when Greene posted a sign outside of her Capitol Hill office targeting a fellow lawmaker who is the parent of a transgender child, McCarthy was quiet. 

A few months later in May 2021, when Greene was reportedly stalking Ocasio-Cortez through the halls of Congress and harassing her, McCarthy was quiet.

When Greene spewed conspiracy theories on social media about everything from “staged” school shootings to questioning whether a plane actually hit the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001 to antisemitic rhetoric, she was booted off her committee assignments. 

McCarthy said he was opposed to Greene’s remarks but said in the same breath that her ouster was a Democrat “power grab” and called it “dangerous.” 

When both Gosar and Greene attended a conference organized by white nationalists this February, McCarthy said he spoke to both lawmakers but wouldn’t divulge what, if any, the repercussions might be.  

According to CNN, during a House GOP conference meeting Wednesday morning, McCarthy said his remarks on the calls were merely him “floating scenarios about Trump’s future after Jan. 6.”

He reportedly received a standing ovation.

McCarthy did not respond to multiple requests for comment by Daily Kos.

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There’s a common thread in some of the biggest battles of the Republican culture war over the past year and change—beyond the bigotry and dishonesty that is their bedrock. The specific common thread is Christopher Rufo. From critical race theory (CRT) to grooming, math textbooks to Disney, Rufo is on Fox News so often he has his own in-home studio, issuing the talking points of the moment. And all of his talking points are aimed at promoting a vision of the United States based on the cultural politics of the 1950s combined with the rampant privatization and lower taxes on corporations and the wealthy of the 2020s. Rufo wants the racism and gender norms of the 1950s, minus the public schools and government revenue. 

Rufo hit big in 2021 with his promotion of a false version of critical race theory as a danger to white children everywhere. Like a Bond villain, he even explained what he was doing as he was doing it. “We have successfully frozen their brand—‘critical race theory’—into the public conversation and are steadily driving up negative perceptions. We will eventually turn it toxic, as we put all of the various cultural insanities under that brand category,” Rufo tweeted in March 2021. “The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think ‘critical race theory.’ We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans.”

And yet, despite laying out his strategy right there in plain sight, he got many in the traditional media to bite, covering the critical race theory panic that Rufo created as if it were an organic grassroots phenomenon. Now he’s back, leading the charge against Disney and propelling “grooming” as an accusation to be used in a broader attempt to drive LGBTQ people out of public life. That work earned him a puff piece in The New York Times over the weekend, and a spot on the stage as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the “Stop WOKE Act.”

RELATED STORY: A look inside banned Florida math textbooks suggests Republicans simply lied about what’s in them

After weeks of bashing Disney for “grooming” and highlighting mug shots of past Disney employees who have been charged with child sexual abuse unconnected to their employment at Disney, Rufo told the Times, “It’s wrong, factually and morally, to accuse someone of being a groomer with no basis and evidence.” About that:

But as Moynihan, a political scientist at Georgetown University, wrote at his Substack, it goes deeper. In Rufo’s usage, “this language is largely not about sexual abuse of children. Rufo is much more likely to describe ‘grooming’ in the context of kids being exposed to ideas he dislikes rather than actual sexual abuse. In other words, sharing certain political beliefs — usually centered around recognizing the status of historically marginalized groups — are treated as interchangeable with child abuse, its perpetrators akin to child abusers.”

Listen to Jennifer Fernandez Ancona from Way to Win explain how Democrats must message to win on Daily Kos’ The Brief podcast with Markos Moulitsas and Kerry Eleveld

“The reservoir of sentiment on the sexuality issue is deeper and more explosive than the sentiment on the race issues,” Rufo told the Times. In translation: He thinks he can ride anti-LGBTQ bigotry even further than racism. 

Rufo’s overall message that institutions from Disney to the public schools are grooming children by exposing them to ideas he doesn’t like was a major factor in his participation in the banning of math textbooks in Florida because they supposedly contained CRT and other “prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies.” In Times coverage of that episode, Rufo explained his opposition to social-emotional learning, saying, “in practice, SEL serves as a delivery mechanism for radical pedagogies such as critical race theory and gender deconstructionism.”

”The intention of SEL,” according to Rufo, “is to soften children at an emotional level, reinterpret their normative behavior as an expression of ‘repression,’ ‘whiteness,’ or ‘internalized racism,’ and then rewire their behavior according to the dictates of left-wing ideology.”

Don’t teach our kids to be kind. It might make them less racist.

Rufo is part of a broader Republican movement to end public education, something he’s strategically laying the groundwork for with each new campaign he wages. CRT, grooming, social-emotional learning—all of these are buzzwords intended to weaken support for public education. Disney came into it because of the company’s opposition to the Florida Don’t Say Gay law banning the teaching of anything that might imply to children that LGBTQ people are acceptable members of their communities.

Rufo laid out his approach in an April speech at Hillsdale College, titled “Laying Siege to the Institutions.” In it, he called for a “narrative and symbolic war against companies like Disney” in which “You have to be very aggressive. You have to fight on terms that you define.” On schools, he was explicit: “To get to universal school choice, you really need to operate from a premise of universal public school distrust.”

(When American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten slightly mistranscribed some of this, Rufo threatened legal action, so apparently he’s kind of sensitive here.)

Rufo is far from the only prominent conservative openly trying to dismantle public education. There’s Betsy DeVos, of course, the Trump education secretary whose only experience related to education was years of funding efforts to privatize it. Then there’s this:

Make no mistake: Republicans are coming for public education, in many cases looking for the government to provide vouchers that can go to unregulated religious and private schools. What they definitely don’t want is empowered teachers who can speak up for their students—all of them, not just the straight white Christian ones—and teaching that encompasses the racial history of the U.S., exposure to a wide range of experience, and basic social skills alongside of 2+2=4.

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It’s annual shareholders meeting season for banks, many of which face questions over fossil fuel financing. Three big banks—Citigroup, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America—held their meetings on Tuesday and each bank had shareholders vote on climate finance resolutions proposed by groups like the Sierra Club and Harrington Investments. None of the measures passed, though the votes of 12.8% for Citi, 11% for Wells Fargo, and 11% for Bank of America show that shareholders have a vested interest in fighting climate change. Because each proposal crossed the 5% threshold of approval, all three can be refiled next year. “Today’s votes put the question of fossil fuel expansion firmly and irrevocably on the table for three of the world’s top four fossil banks,” Jason Opeña Disterhoft, senior climate and energy campaigner at Rainforest Action Network, said in a statement.

“A critical mass of investors affirmed that business-as-usual expansion of fossil fuels is incompatible with a 1.5 degrees C world and threatens their portfolios overall,” Disterhoft continued. “Ending fossil expansion is a matter of when, not if: Citi, Wells Fargo and Bank of America must recognize this direction of travel and make ending fossil expansion a precondition for financing for all clients.” Statements from other activists and advocates echoed that hopeful sentiment, yet publications like Politico chose to frame the vote as a question of “woke capitalism,” as if earnestly fighting climate change is some type of passing trend. Bloomberg seemed to at least get to the heart of the problem, quoting Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser cautioning against pulling support of fossil fuel companies. “It’s not feasible for the global economy or for human health or livelihoods to shut down the fossil-fuel economy overnight,” Fraser said. “The transition needs to be accelerated, but it also needs to be managed to minimize the shock to our economy and our communities.”

Advocates for substantial change in the banking industry are begging and pleading with banks to do the right thing, but it’s shareholders who have the ability to counteract the Frasers of the sector. And there are indeed some major players who want banks to adopt the right kinds of policies, such as these proposals, which would’ve forced the likes of Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America to take “available actions to help ensure that its financing does not contribute to new fossil fuel supplies that would be inconsistent with the IEA’sNet Zero Emissions by 2050 Scenario.” A group of 32 philanthropists whose asset managers hold stakes in major banks signed a letter in support of the proposals, including John Hunting, Basso Capital Management founder Howard Fischer, and president of the Sagner Family Foundation, Deborah Sagner.

Given the way these initial votes shook out, those same philanthropists are bound to react to their wishes being ignored by the likes of BlackRock, Fidelity, and others. Banks that have yet to hold their annual shareholder meetings include Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, and Morgan Stanley. The companies face similar pressure to adopt policies that prioritize climate change as well as proposals benefitting marginalized customers like the ones proposed at Citi and Wells Fargo urging the companies to internationally recognize Indigenous communities’ right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). FPIC policies could potentially prevent banks from sinking money into projects that actively harm Indigenous communities, like Enbridge’s Line 3 pipeline, which was financed by Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America, along with numerous other financial institutions.

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The Kevin McCarthy tapes just keep coming, and the latest round have the far-far-right annoyed at not just McCarthy and Rep. Liz Cheney but other members of Republican leadership as well. All because in the days after the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, McCarthy and other Republican leaders were a little bit honest, in private, about what had happened and the role of some Republican House members in inciting an insurrection.

New recordings released by The New York Times have McCarthy saying, of comments by Rep. Matt Gaetz about Cheney: “He’s putting people in jeopardy. And he doesn’t need to be doing this. We saw what people would do in the Capitol, you know, and these people came prepared with rope, with everything else.” 

RELATED STORY: Awkward recording of Kevin McCarthy emerges hours after his denial. What else do reporters have?

“It’s potentially illegal what he’s doing,” Rep. Steve Scalise, the second-ranking House Republican, said of Gaetz.

In response to their comments about him, Gaetz released a statement saying that McCarthy and Scalise “held views about President Trump and me that they shared on sniveling calls with Liz Cheney, not us. This is the behavior of weak men, not leaders.” 

Gaetz … has a point? McCarthy is sniveling and weak and not a leader—but his failure to lead comes in his failure to follow through on his comments in these recordings from January 2021. The collapse of any interest he had in penalizing people like Trump and Gaetz and Brooks for their actions. One interesting question is whether McCarthy did call Gaetz in January 2021 to tell him to “cut this shit out,” as he indicated in that recording he planned to do. But don’t look for McCarthy to rebut Gaetz by proving that he did call him to say that.

House Republican leaders also discussed Rep. Mo Brooks’ rally speech on Jan. 6, in which he said it was “the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”

”You think the president deserves to be impeached for his comments?” McCarthy responded to that line. “That’s almost something that goes further than what the president said.”

In response to hearing about deleted tweets by Rep. Barry Moore of Alabama—including one saying, “it was a Black police officer who shot the white female veteran”—McCarthy muttered, “Can’t they take their Twitter accounts away, too?”

These and other comments in the recordings have McCarthy and other Republican leaders under fire from more than just Gaetz. Tucker Carlson is big mad. McCarthy “sounds like an MSNBC contributor,” Carlson said, warning that “unless conservatives get their act together right away, Kevin McCarthy or one of his highly liberal allies like Elise Stefanik is very likely to be speaker of the House in January. That would mean we will have a Republican Congress led by a puppet of the Democratic Party.”

Stefanik, mind you, replaced Cheney in Republican leadership because she managed to meet the Trump loyalty test. Apparently that’s no longer good enough.

“Heck, yeah,” he was concerned about McCarthy wanting Republicans kicked off Twitter, Rep. Andy Biggs told CNN. Taking away Twitter accounts is “not something I’m for,” said Rep. Scott Perry, head of the House Freedom Caucus.

Markos and Kerry talk Ukraine and speak with Wisconsin Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler on how hitting back at Republicans helps win elections

The Republican Party is in disarray, but with the extremists and inciters of insurrection poised to come out on top, and McCarthy scrambling to appease them in any way he can, that’s not as much fun as it usually is. These recordings put into stark relief the utter collapse of any significant opposition by Republican leaders to a violent attempt to overturn an election. Less than 18 months after McCarthy was hoping for some of his members of be kicked off Twitter and claiming he was going to tell Gaetz to “cut this shit out” and urge Trump to resign, he has become entirely committed to sucking up to the far right to bolster his hopes of becoming speaker. Those hopes may have taken a hit, but that doesn’t mean anything good for the Republican Party’s support for democracy.

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On Monday, April 25, two discriminatory bills passed through legislative chambers in Tennessee. The first bill, House Bill 2633/Senate Bill 277, seeks to give permission to public school teachers (and other school employees) to ignore the correct pronouns of students. In essence, this is giving legal permission to teachers to misgender students who are routinely marginalized in general and already report higher rates of harassment and bullying in school.

The second bill is Senate Bill 2153, which aims to stop trans girls from participating in the sports teams that align with their gender identity at the college level, as reported by local outlet WREG. This bill also adds a cause for athletes to sue if a trans athlete wins a competition.

As is the case with all of these Republican pieces of legislation, conservatives say it’s about fairness in sports and protecting girls and women, but really it’s about signing discrimination into law. 

RELATED: Republicans in this state once again ensure it’s legal to fire LGBT teachers because of who they are

House Bill 2633 also protects school employees from any adverse employment actions and civil liabilities if they refuse to use a student’s correct pronouns. As Daily Kos has stressed in the past, pronouns are not optional. Pronouns are not suggestions. Getting someone’s pronouns right is as important, respectful, and frankly, reasonable, as getting someone’s name right. Yes, you might make a mistake. No, that doesn’t make you a monster. But the correct course of action is simply to apologize and make a dedicated effort to get it right next time. Again, it’s about dignity and respect.

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Speaking on the house floor Monday, Democratic state Rep. Bob Freeman spoke against the bill while on the House floor on Monday, telling conservative colleagues that if “your religion teaches you to hate kids, I think you need to find a new religion,” according to local outlet FOX 17.

Unfortunately, the bill ultimately passed in the House with a vote of 67 to 25. The bill advanced in the Senate committee on Tuesday. 

Now, in terms of the sports issue, you might recall that Republican Gov. Bill Lee actually already signed a piece of anti-trans sports legislation into law. Back in 2021, Lee signed a measure requiring student-athletes to prove their gender identity matched their sex as assigned at birth by using their original birth certificate. (If that birth certificate was unavailable, parents are apparently supposed to bring other forms of proof of the student’s sex as assigned at birth.)

That law is set to go into effect as of July 1, 2022, though it is currently facing a lawsuit.

As of now, lawmakers in Tennessee are pushing legislation to bar trans athletes from participating in girls’ sports at the collegiate level. And that bill is headed to Lee’s desk, where, based on recent history, it’s highly likely it’ll be signed into law as well. Shameful.

If you’d like to learn more about trans rights and advocacy from several experts, please feel free to check out our recent panel. You can also watch the video below.