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Andrew Goodman/War on the Rocks:

PUTIN THE PLANNER

Still, there was no reason for Putin to act so long as Donald Trump was president. Putin saw Trump weakening NATO by bashing it verbally, questioning whether the United States should honor Article 5, and reportedly flirting with the idea of withdrawing completely. If NATO might self-destruct, then there was no need for Putin to act to prevent Ukraine from joining it.

Putin had to change his calculus after Trump’s defeat in 2020. Joe Biden took steps to reassure allies of the U.S. commitment to NATO. Although there was nothing in NATO’s official statements to suggest that Ukraine could or would obtain membership at a definite point in time, the change in the U.S. attitude towards the alliance, combined with Zelensky’s support for membership, meant that the Ukraine problem became more acute. The timing might appear to be coincidental, but just a few months after Biden took office, the Russian military build-up began on Ukraine’s borders. This development fits with Putin’s penchant for planning carefully before taking action. It also suggests that Putin may already have made the decision to invade.

Robert Burns/AP:

Putin gets what he didn’t want: Ukraine army closer to West

The list of arms flowing to Ukraine is long and growing longer. It includes new American battlefield aerial drones and the most modern U.S. and Canadian artillery, anti-tank weapons from Norway and others, armored vehicles and anti-ship missiles from Britain and Stinger counter-air missiles from the U.S., Denmark and other countries.

If Ukraine can hold off the Russians, its accumulating arsenal of Western weapons could have a transformative effect in a country that has, like other former Soviet republics, relied mainly on arms and equipment from the Soviet era.

Chrissy Stroop/Open Democracy:

Is Hungary’s Viktor Orbán the US Christian Right’s new Vladimir Putin?

The fall of Putin’s star among US evangelicals leaves a void they may seek to fill with another strongman leader devoted to ‘family values’

In the summer of 2013, after my first of three academic years teaching at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration in Moscow, I was back in the American state of Indiana – the Republican stronghold in which I was born and raised, and whence the very evangelical former vice president, Mike Pence, also hails.

That same summer, Russian president Vladimir Putin signed his country’s ‘don’t say gay’ law, which banned the dissemination of “propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations” to minors (known in non-Orwellian language as life-saving information that LGBTQ children need to thrive).

I was at an outdoor concert in a suburb of Indianapolis with some of my evangelical relatives when this topic came up in conversation, and I distinctly remember how dismayed I was when one of them opined on how “refreshing” it was to see a political leader “finally standing up to the gay agenda”.

That was the moment it dawned on me that Putin’s star was on the rise with the American Christian Right, a phenomenon I began to observe systematically, and on which I eventually published commentary and policy research.

NY Times (in case you missed it with the extensive French election coverage):

Europe’s Far-Right Populists Suffer a Setback in Slovenia

The country’s prime minister, Janez Jansa, a Trump admirer, appears to have lost to centrist rivals.

With 95 percent of the vote counted in an election that the opposition called a “referendum on democracy,” results indicated that Mr. Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, competing against 19 rival parties, had won around 24 percent of the vote. That is far behind the 34 percent of its main rival, the centrist Freedom Movement, meaning that Mr. Jansa is highly unlikely to keep his post as prime minister.

The results, showing that no single party won a clear majority, presage a period of political haggling as rival groups try to stitch together a stable coalition in parliament. That should be within reach of the Freedom Movement, led by a political newcomer, Robert Golob, a former energy company executive, with help from the Social Democrats and other smaller parties.

Haaretz:

History and Energy: Understanding Germany’s Shameful Russia Policy

When the Russians invaded Ukraine at the end of February, it appeared to be a watershed moment for Germany. Yet two months on, the initial fighting talk by Chancellor Olaf Scholz has been replaced by pseudo-pacifism

This is a Zeitenwende moment, Scholz declared; Germany was at a “turning point.” He then pledged about $110 billion to bolster Germany’s stagnant military and raise defense spending to 2 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, which is nearly $3.7 trillion. This makes it the world’s fourth largest economy, behind the United States, China and Japan.

The day before, Scholz had reacted to the Russian invasion by suspending the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline that runs under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany. A week later, Germany agreed to transfer weapons systems to Ukraine, in what seemed a dramatic policy shift for the country.

However, two months on, it all seems to have dissipated as Germany has reverted to its pre-invasion vacillation, political stuttering and sanctimonious excuse-making.

Jonathan V Last/Bulwark:

Biden’s Handling of Ukraine Is the Most Successful American Intervention Since the Fall of the Berlin Wall

And voters refuse to give him credit for it.

At each stage of this conflict, there has been criticism of Biden from across the spectrum. At various points he’s been criticized for:

• Not sending MiG-29 fighters to Ukraine.

• Not imposing a No Fly Zone.

• Not sending enough offensive weaponry.

But Biden’s challenge at each point has been to titrate the minimum-force necessary to achieve our objectives—because keeping that force as small as possible kept the risks of Putin escalating the conflict as small as possible.

And at each moment Biden has been correct. Again: Look at the facts on the ground. Kyiv is free. A quarter of the Russian forces are out of action. The Russian economy is contracting at a fantastic rate. There has been no escalation of the conflict.

Think of this as the diplomatic and military equivalent of Just-in-Time Theory. And Biden’s team has executed it with tremendous success. A level of success that just about no one—including me—thought would be possible in the weeks leading up to the invasion.

I’ll say it again: The single biggest American foreign policy success since the fall of the Berlin Wall.1

And yet the American people disapprove.

Adam Bass/Ordinary Times:

From Jackasses to Sad Sacks: Democrats Struggle in The Culture War

In a two-way war, the conflict is engaged by both sides, fighting for their goals and causes.

…

Clearly, the party has not heeded the words from former President Barack Obama to not let perfect be the enemy of good.

Even so, it appears that national Democrats would prefer to focus on anything else other than standing their ground and fighting the culture war.

If their fear is that it will sink their chances in 2022, the reality is that they were doomed from the start due the infamous midterm curse that the president’s party suffers.

If they are worried that the GOP will pivot to inflation again, then they are cowardly in taking the risk of not holding the opposition party’s feet to the fire.

People’s lives could be at stake, and doing nothing is simply unacceptable at this point.

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As noted this morning, Russia went from attacking in too many axes during the war’s first season, to …. attacking in too many axes in this second phase. 

Right now, Russia is attempting to advance toward:

• Mykolaiv
• Kryvyi Rih
• Zaprozhzhia
• Sievierodonetsk
• Slovyansk/Kramatorsk
• South, east, west, and northwest of Izyum (seriously)
• Pushing out from Donetsk
• Mariupol

Well, you can add Moldova to the list, as a series of Russian false-flags are laying the foundational groundwork to declare the breakaway region of Transnistria an independent nation, like Russia did with the two “republics” in the Donbas—Luhansk and Donetsk. Once done, Russia can justify yet another invasion, because this one is clearly going so well. 

This lack of focus is truly hampering Russia’s war effort. Take a look at the Izyum salient, one of the rare corners of Ukraine where Russia seems to be getting its shit together. In today’s update, the Institute for the Study of War, the authors note that Russia seems to be getting its shit together: 

Russian forces have adopted a sounder pattern of operational movement in eastern Ukraine, at least along the line from Izyum to Rubizhne. Russian troops are pushing down multiple roughly parallel roads within supporting distance of one another, allowing them to bring more combat power to bear than their previous practice had supported.

Rubizhne is to the east of Izyum, and it’s true, Russia seems to be making slow (bloody) progress southward. But take a look at where Russia gained territory today—it’s northwest of Izyum!

Here is Russia, finally moving and taking ground, and they decide to splinter off part of their force to make a move in an entirely different direction. There’s no strategic road or rail in that direction, no lines of communication to cut. Those forces are now forming a new salient exposed to artillery and ambushes from Ukrainian forces to its west. Are they trying to push Ukrainian artillery out of range of the main supply lines north of Izyum? Maybe, but that line can easily be hit further north, and like everything else this war, this push is unlikely to be fully resourced to both hold this territory, and keep pushing. And by diluting the invading force, Ukrainian defenders have an easier time eliminating them. 

And that’s not all! There are two additional pushes from the Izyum salient—one to the east, toward Slovyansk, which makes total sense. If it’s successful, it would connect to Russian forces to the east and Izyum would no longer be a salient, dependent on those exposed supply lines.

But there is another push, this one to the southwest, toward Barvinkove. 

The objective of the Russian advance toward Barvinkove is not immediately obvious, as it leads Russian troops further away from their comrades pushing on Slovyansk. The road continues southeast from Barvinkove to the Donetsk Oblast boundary, however, and it is possible that Russian forces from the Izyum axis are meant to take up positions along much of the boundary to support claims that Russia has “secured the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts” even if the Russians have not actually secured the entire oblast itself.

Russia has irrationally pushed toward Kryvyi Rih down south, seemingly because it’s Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s home town. This seems to be a similar situation—a move based on political calculations, rather than sound military strategy. The best way to “secure the border of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts” would be to destroy all Ukrainian defenders in those oblasts. But if Vladimir Putin want to park some troops on a border hamlet to declare victory, who will dissuade him of the notion? So Russia’s formidable formation splinters even further.  

Same with Russians dying trying to storm the Ukrainian-held fortress at the massive Azovstal steel factory in Mariupol. Russia’s best bet would be to contain those Ukrainians as best as possible, and divert the rest of the forces elsewhere to the front. Putin even claimed that was the plan. But Russian forces haven’t left Mariupol in meaningful numbers and haven’t stopped assaulting the plant. Putin wants full control of the city for his May 9 victory parade, no matter the cost in lives. (Most are Chechen or Donbas conscripts anyway, so Putin cares even less.)

And what the hell are those sudden provocations in Moldova? Russia thinks more war is justified, given the current state of his armed forces? If you think Ukraine’s supply lines are stretched, just imagine trying to resupply forces in yet another country, with no port access for ocean resupply, and airspace contested by Ukrainian defenses. As Kamil Galeev has repeatedly written, Putin (and any Russian leader) derives domestic credibility by promising empire. He was never going to stop at Ukraine, and he wouldn’t stop at Moldova. Georgia can’t be feeling so great. And even supposed ally Kazakhstan canceled its own May 9 celebration, apparently to keep forces available for a possible Russian invasion. How can you trust the neighbor who keeps saying your independence from the Soviet Union was illegal 

Meanwhile, down south: 

I keep describing this area as a tug-of-war in a mudpile, with the two countries trading territory on a near-daily basis. The terrain is flat, open, and unforgiving for exposed forces. Anyone pokes their nose too far outside of home base, and artillery pushes them back. I mean, look at it, the only cover in sight are some cherry blossoms!

Snihurivika, to the north of Kherson was Russian occupied soon after the fall of Kherson. Then Ukraine took it in their big offensive that pushed Russia out from the Mykolaiv area and ended Russia’s designs on Odesa. Then Russia grabbed it back a couple of weeks ago. And here we are today, with Ukraine just outside the town once again. Meanwhile, to the west of Kherson, Russia pushed Ukraine out of Oleksandrivka again for what must be the third time. Don’t worry! Ukraine will pound the town into dust with artillery, Russia will retreat, Ukraine will move in, and the cycle will begin once again. 

Of course, you might wonder, “why is Russia devoting resources to retaking the approaches to Mykolaiv, when it’s supposed to be focusing on the Donbas region, but also pushing toward Kryvyi Rih and threatening Moldova?”

Yes. Exactly. Why? 

As usual, none of it makes sense. 

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A chilling video of an incident in North Charleston, South Carolina, showing dozens of kids and adults scrambling for cover as a barrage of gunshots rings out has left a community traumatized.

In the video, as gunfire is heard, a frightening scene unfolds Monday night at the Dixie Youth league baseball game, leaving players, coaches, and parents running for safety. The video was taken by Lori Ferguson, a parent at the game, The Post and Courier reports.

North Charleston police report that no one was injured, according to ABC News-4, but one of the team’s coaches took immediate action to petition that games no longer be played in North Charleston due to recent violence in the area.

RELATED STORY: Report: 2020 marks first time guns were the leading cause of death for kids and teens

SEE THE VIDEO BELOW: 

Witnesses told officers that prior to the gunshots, several teens pulled into the parking lot next to the baseball field and began fighting.

Blake Ferguson told WCSC-5 News he believes he heard between 50 to 75 shots before the teens drove off. 

“And then all of a sudden, boom, boom, and ‘Get down, everybody, get down!’ And you’re at a park. My kids are not with me directly and you just see everybody scattering,” Lori Ferguson told WCSC. “And my son’s on the pitcher mound by himself and it was just the most traumatic thing as a mother, as a citizen of this city, that you just feel helpless. I felt completely helpless.”

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Ferguson says she was disappointed by the police response, telling WCSC that none of the officers came to the field to check on families or players, adding that her children were “traumatized” by the incident.

“Now, I understand we could walk down the street, something could happen. We could be at church, something can happen. One-hundred percent understand that,” she told WCSC. “My kids asked me where the police were to protect them. They didn’t want to take a shower, in our own home, because now they’re traumatized by what happened tonight.”

A spokesman for the North Charleston Police Department, Harve Jacobs, told The Post and Courier that “NCPD officers are actively investigating this incident to the fullest extent of the law and will do everything in their power to locate and arrest the individuals involved in this heinous and reckless act.” He added, “We will leave no stone unturned in bringing these suspects to justice.”

According to Count on News-2, North Charleston Police Department reports that there have been 11 homicides in 2022 so far. 

“The ages of the victims and the alleged killers have gotten very young and that’s very scary because the younger and younger these gentlemen get we have to start asking ourselves what type of culture are we embracing,” Shakem Ahket, the co-founder of the Community Resource Center, told Count on News-2.

This latest event comes as a recent report from the University of Michigan Institute for Firearm Injury Prevention (IFIP) found that in 2020, gun violence became the second leading cause of death among children and teens in the U.S. 

The “change was driven largely by firearm homicides, which saw a 33.4% increase,” the report reads.  
Dr. Jason Goldstick, a researcher with IFIP and co-author of the letter, told The Guardian, “We knew gun violence had increased, but I was surprised by the level of increase for just one year … I can’t remember ever seeing that before.”

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We now know that Senate Minority Bleater Mitch McConnell was “exhilarated” after Jan. 6 because he thought the events of the day had finally discredited Donald Trump. But apparently he taught his Sith soldiers the dark arts of deflection and projection a little too well, because Cheesus’ most devoted disciples have since spirited him from his political tomb, replaced the nougat in his arteries with spicy McNugget sauces, refitted his brain with bionic parasites, and trundled his creaking corpus back onto the world stage like he somehow hadn’t incited a coup against the legitimate government of the United States.

Of course, resurrecting a two-time popular-vote loser makes zero sense unless your party isn’t a party so much as a cult of personality. Enter Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who prefers an evil far more chaotic and redolent of curly fries than the quotidian, pro-plutocrat variety McConnell has traditionally offered.

Based on a tranche of text messages former Trump Chief of Staff Mark Meadows somehow let slip through his bony Skeletor fingers and into the hands of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6, we now know that some Republicans, including Greene, were concocting an egregious lie about the Capitol insurrection even as it was underway.

The Washington Post:

At 2:28 p.m., while the insurrection was in full swing, Greene texted Meadows to say: “Please tell the President to calm people,” adding that “This isn’t the way to solve anything.” She knew the rioters were people who would listen to Trump.

But then at 3:52 p.m., Greene texted Meadows again: “Mark we don’t think these attackers are our people. We think they are antifa. Dressed like Trump supporters.” Presto, the pro-Trump insurrection became a false flag operation!

Greene wasn’t the only one. Just minutes earlier, Trump adviser Jason Miller had texted Meadows to suggest that Trump should tweet that “Bad apples, likely ANTIFA or other crazed leftists” had “infiltrated” the alleged “peaceful protest” by Trump supporters.

The “it was really antifa” hypothesis is absurd on its face, of course. Why would a left-wing group attack the Capitol to disrupt the certification of an election outcome they’d welcomed? And if you want to make Trump cultists look bad, you don’t need to launch a pretend insurrection. You could just put an M&M in a box with a hole big enough for an unclenched hand to go in but too small for a fist to come out, and then watch them walk around for three weeks with a box on their arm.

Of course, Greene wasn’t the only GOP guppy who quickly floated and/or hewed to the “antifa did it” conspiracy theory. Fox News’ biggest Trump apologists, including Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity, began sowing their bogus “it was antifa” seeds before the feces on the walls of the Capitol had fully dried. And Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, proving that even failed insurrections can’t be too young for him to exploit, claimed, without evidence, that “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”

Putting aside for the moment the absurdity of Joe Biden’s supposed antifa supporters trying to stop the transfer of power from a wannabe fascist to, well, Joe Biden, this raises another pressing question: How does one masquerade as a Trump supporter? Sure, anyone can wear a red hat and wave a goofy-ass flag, but can a mere civilian really perfect the languorous, thousand-mile Cheez-It stare they’ve all independently mastered? 

But this is the right-wing spin machine in a nutshell. Their talking points don’t need to make sense. They simply need to be repeated ad nauseam, and before long, they’re taken as gospel. Though, in this case, it is remarkable that Greene and her pals were crafting dishonest talking points even as their workplace had essentially become a Mardi Gras parade with bear spray and baseball bats instead of beads.

But that’s what happens when people follow an idol who has absolutely no shame or allegiance to the truth. They tend to act in lockstep with Dear Leader’s dictates instead of following the simple evidence of their eyes and ears. And now MTG’s first fleeting stab at a bullshit rationalization for her own tribe’s inexcusable behavior has metastasized into a monster tumor that threatens the future viability of Western democracy itself.

Not a bad day’s work for a freshman representative who, at that point, had served just three days in Congress.

Of course, it’s also possible that the antifa lie was concocted before the insurrection—by some of the coup plotters themselves. According to court documents, Proud Boys Chairman Enrique Tarrio suggested his members involved in the coming unpleasantness might consider wearing black, which could be interpreted as a ploy to make it look like a false-flag antifa operation: “We will not be wearing our traditional Black and Yellow,” Tarrio wrote. “We will be incognito and we will be spread across downtown DC in smaller teams. And who knows … we might dress in all BLACK for the occasion.”

Either way, the majority of Republicans have now chosen the word of a clammy game show host over the future health of our 246-year-old republic. They should be drummed out of polite society for doing it, but sadly, this dreadful, anti-democratic beat goes on.

What will McConnell do now? I have a feeling he’s feeling less and less “exhilarated” as this country sinks deeper into the undemocratic morass he helped create.

It made comedian Sarah Silverman say, “THIS IS FUCKING BRILLIANT,” and prompted author Stephen King to shout “Pulitzer Prize!!!” (on Twitter, that is). What is it? The viral letter that launched four hilarious Trump-trolling books. Get them all, including the finale, Goodbye, Asshat: 101 Farewell Letters to Donald Trump, at this link. Or, if you prefer a test drive, you can download the epilogue to Goodbye, Asshat for the low, low price of FREE. 

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We’ve usually thought of Trumpism as being an essentially mainstream-conservative movement with expanding extremist elements. But its post-Jan. 6 metastasis, bringing these elements together, suggests it has become its own kind of extremism: wildly conspiracist, militantly if not fanatically religious, and fundamentally violent.

A recent New York Times piece about how evangelical churches are building an army of Trump fans who believe the 2020 election was stolen through fraud gives us a clear and disturbing portrait of the emerging shape of Trumpism. It is framed by three key elements that are merging into a whole: Christian nationalists, the authoritarian QAnon conspiracist cult, and the Proud Boys.

Playing a central role in the coalescence of these three elements under Trumpism are evangelical megachurches and the rolling tent revival-style political rallies that QAnon-loving Trumpists have organized as national tours, particularly the ReAwaken America Tour, “a traveling roadshow that has featured far-right Republican politicians, anti-vaccine activists, election conspiracists and Trumpworld personalities,” not to mention megachurch pastors like Greg Locke, who has a social media following in the millions.

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

ReAwaken America, as the story notes, has attracted massive audiences numbering in the thousands to these megachurch venues, held in nine states this year. All but one of the tour’s stops have been hosted by megachurches, and the tour is sponsored by a charismatic Christian media company.

The performances wrap the narrative of election fraud in a megachurch atmosphere, complete with worship music and prayer, and have drawn criticism from some Christian clergy. When the tour came to a church in San Marcos, California, this month, a local Methodist minister denounced it as an “irreligious abomination” in an opinion essay.

A central figure at the rallies has been Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s onetime national security chief who became a prominent QAnon promoter after being fired for lying to the FBI (and later pardoned by Trump). Flynn played a leading role in the QAnon-led campaign to overturn the 2020 election.

Locke, similarly, was present at the Capitol on Jan. 6—speaking alongside Alex Jones of Infowars at a “Rally for Revival” the night before, at which he offered a prayer for the Proud Boys and its imprisoned leader, Enrique Tarrio, who had been jailed two days before on charges related to his arson of a Black Lives Matter banner three weeks before. Since then, Tarrio has been indicted on conspiracy charges for his role in the insurrection.

Both Flynn and Locke appeared at the ReAwaken America event earlier this month in Keizer, Oregon, a Salem suburb. The rally was part of a nationwide tour by far-right “alpha male” Clay Clark, featured leading QAnon figure Michael Flynn and other Trumpist media stars: Eric Trump, “My Pillow” executive Mike Lindell, notorious homophobe Sean Feucht, and a large cast of others.

It was a nonstop circus of right-wing conspiracism and Christian nationalism. At one point, Flynn introduced a video appearance from Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the onetime Apostolic Nuncio to the U.S., who launched into a pro-Putin, anti-Ukraine rant. Viganò told the audience (as he has done elsewhere) that the Russian military is actually preventing Deep State aggression and combatting the “globalist cabal.” He also claimed that the Ukrainian neo-Nazi Azov Battalion were present at the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol insurrection.

The event drew about 4,000 attendees, with people arriving from around the Pacific Northwest. Counterprotesters also turned out. Left Coast Right Watch reports that “this was absolutely a QAnon event”:

It featured former QAnon promoters like Ann Vandersteel, Gene Ho, John Chambers, and cranks like Lori Gregory, who appeared on a QAnon show to promote antivaxx conspiracy theories. There were, in total, 38 featured speakers, at least ten of which were there specifically to promote antivaxx and COVID paranoia. It was also a highly religious event—six people on the list had “Pastor” in front of their names with other evangelical figures speaking as well.

Julianne Jackson, founder of Black Joy Oregon, told the Salem Statesman-Journal that the rally made her feel unsafe in her own community—particularly after social media postings advertised a post-rally celebration of “Anglo American identity.”

“It’s very important to read between the lines and know that means whiteness,” Jackson said. “And that means danger for people like me and people that look like me.”

Besides being present in the crowd, far-right candidate Marc Thielman was publicly endorsed onstage by speaker Kevin Jenkins, and happily acknowledged the plug. Also among the crowd: Dan Tooze, the Proud Boys organizer who is running for a state House seat from Oregon City’s District 40. He took a selfie there with the Oregon Proud Boys vice president, Carl Todd.

Thielman and Tooze have a well-documented relationship of mutual avid support. Thielman, the former superintendent of schools in rural Alsea who stepped down after defying COVID-19 mask mandates, is scheduled to speak at an April 15 fundraiser for Tooze. He’ll be joined by two local Republican candidates, Clackamas County Commissioner Mark Shull and commission candidate Steve Frost.

The Proud Boys-evangelical connection has been building in the past year, notably when pastors organize political events at which the street-brawling neofascists can provide “security.” There were two such events last year in Oregon.

The Times notes that white evangelical churchgoers are extremely prone to buy into the narrative of a stolen election. It cites one poll, released in November by the Public Religion Research Institute, which reported 60% of white evangelicals persist in believing that Trump was only beaten with fraud, compared to 40% of white Catholics, 19% of Hispanic Catholics, and 18% of Black Protestants who believed the same.

Another Trumpist evangelical organization, F.E.C. United (“Founded on the Three Pillars of Society: Faith, Education, and Commerce”), organizes events at megachurches and similar venues around the country. Among them is The Rock, a nondenominational evangelical church in Castle Rock, Colorado, which in February hosted an F.E.C. United event featuring two major figures in the stolen election narrative: Shawn Smith, a founder of U.S. Election Integrity Plan; and Tina Peters, the clerk and recorder of Mesa County.

Smith made headlines at the event when he accused Colorado’s Democratic secretary of state, Jena Griswold, of election fraud. He went on: “If you’re involved in election fraud, you deserve to hang.”

Peters, who first grabbed attention in January 2021 by claiming she had evidence that Dominion’s voting systems were producing fraudulent results, became a celebrity at Trumpist events last summer, appearing onstage with figures like Flynn and My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell, another “Stop the Steal” conspiracy theorist. Peters was indicted last month on charges that she devised a scheme to copy voting machine hard drives and share the data with prominent 2020 election conspiracists.

The rallies often operate under different names, but they seem to share a rotating cast of stolen election celebrities, including Douglas Frank, a former Ohio math teacher whose second career as a (widely debunked) elections “expert” has taken off; Seth Keshel, a former Army captain and military intelligence analyst who worked alongside Flynn spreading disinformation in the weeks immediately after the election; Lindell, Flynn, and various other QAnon-connected figures.

At the churches, pastors often step up and endorse the conspiracy theories. “This will be your opportunity to find out real information about what really happened at the polls,” D.J. Rabe, a pastor of The House Ministry Center, a nondenominational church in Snohomish, Washington, told his congregation at an August worship service featuring a talk by Keshel. “Here’s what we’re going to find out: What everyone thinks happened didn’t really happen. The information is coming out.”

The rallies are readily adapted to strictly political settings as well, such as the “Save the Vote” event (a “Restoring Faith in Elections Rally”) planned in Payson, Arizona, on May 15. Featuring Keshel and Frank as the headliners, it’s primarily a campaign booster for Trumpist Republicans like Mark Finchem, a state legislator who was present at the Jan. 6 insurrection in Washington running for secretary of state; and Ron Watkins, the man closely associated with QAnon when he oversaw operations at the message board 8kun. Watkins is running for the GOP nomination for a congressional seat.

Finchem, for his part, filed a bill last September in the Arizona Legislature seeking to overturn the certification of the state’s 2020 presidential election count—even though the dubious “audit” he based the legislation on established again that Joe Biden had defeated Trump in the state.

Flynn turned up most recently in Ohio, where he campaigned for MAGA candidate Josh Mandel, who is seeking the nomination for a U.S. Senate seat with a Trumpist agenda—even though Trump himself endorsed his rival J.D. Vance. That did not daunt Flynn (“I think he’s been poorly advised,” he told reporters) or Mandel.

“Let me say it very clear: I believe this election was STOLEN, from Donald Trump,” Mandel told the audience, adding that even without the endorsement, he’s got the grass-roots. He’s “getting outspent heavily,” but is still “winning because we have this army of Christian warriors.”

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Rep. Madison Cawthorn is in the news again! No, not because he was busted for a second time trying to get on a plane with a loaded firearm. I mean, yes, yes that happened and was reported on today, but that’s not what this new news is! The Washington Examiner has put together a pretty damning bit of circumstantial evidence, brought to them by “multiple watchdog groups,” concerning Cawthorn being guilty of insider trading on a cryptocurrency stock.

The stock in question is the Let’s Go Brandon cryptocurrency (LBG) put together by hedge fund manager James Koutoulas. Koutoulas and Cawthorn seem to be buddies; a social media post from a day before NASCAR driver Brandon Brown announced he would be sponsored by the meme coin for all of 2022—leading to a huge spike in the coin’s value—has set off warning flares for watchdogs of insider trading, who say this is a clear case that needs investigation.

It seems Koutoulas and Cawthorn are social buddies as the founder of the Let’s Go Brandon crypto currency has quite a few posts with Cawthorn, including an Instagram post from Dec. 29, 2021 at an outdoor function, where Koutoulas wrote “Never get sick of a Madison Cawthorn bro out.” After reading that (and subsequently recovering from nausea), you can check out Cawthorn’s reply in the Instagram post, saying, “Tomorrow we go to the moon!” Going to the moon is a phrase the kids use in regards to buying cryptocurrencies with the belief that the currency’s market value will skyrocket.

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And even before that very intensely coincidental social media post, Cawthorn was clearly hanging out with the crypto hedge funder Koutoulas. Here they are a few weeks earlier.

It is illegal to purchase stocks with insider information. It is a crime. But as Craig Holman, a government affairs lobbyist for Public Citizen told the Examiner, Cawthorn would have to disclose whether he purchased more than $1,000 worth of the coin regardless of whether or not it was considered a security for regulatory purposes. “Owning cryptocurrency would be an asset subject to disclosure of a lawmaker’s annual financial disclosure form. It also could constitute a ‘personal benefit’ under the STOCK Act, making any official actions taken by Cawthorn to specifically and substantially benefit its value a violation of the STOCK Act.”

Most (if not all) crypto stocks have shown themselves to be poorly regulated pump and dump schemes, and so far the LGB cryptocurrency has played out much the same way as the Let’s Go Brandon meme coin: The coin’s value jumped to $570 million shortly after the Dec. 30 announcement only to drop to $0 by the end of January.

Koutoulas said in a Feb. 20 livestream that two factors led to LGBCoin’s precipitous decline: First, NASCAR rejected LGBCoin’s sponsorship deal with Brown on Jan. 4, and then later that month, unidentified insiders that owned an outsize share of the coin dumped all their holdings at once, causing the coin’s market value to evaporate.

Subsequently, the coin has been relaunched as just “LGB.” The creators of the the LGB meme coin are now the subjects of a recently filed class-action lawsuit for this very reason. Cawthorn is not named in that lawsuit, but to be sure, Cawthorn promotes the coin.

Whether or not Cawthorn will pay for any of his crimes remains to be seen.

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The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today around the Biden administration’s attempt to end the previous administration’s anti-asylum Remain in Mexico policy. While the president first ended the inhumane policy nearly a year ago, one “bizarre” ruling from a judge appointed by the insurrectionist president eventually led to its forced reimplementation. 

Whether the Biden administration can end this policy once and for all is now before the conservative court. This case matters, not only because real lives are at stake, but because justices will be deciding whether an incumbent president has the power to legitimately end a predecessor’s flawed policy.

RELATED STORY: Dozens of groups file brief opposing Remain in Mexico policy as Supreme Court arguments approach

A wide coalition of groups rallied in front of the Supreme Court building as oral arguments approached, including signatories from a recent legal brief supporting the administration’s attempt to end Remain in Mexico, which is officially known as Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP). The policy forces asylum-seekers to wait in dangerous regions of Mexico for their U.S. immigration court dates.

Among the vulnerable people named in that legal brief were Roberto and his son Mario, who were targeted by cartels just days after being sent back to Mexico. While Mario managed to get away, he has no idea what happened to his dad. Internal government emails have since warned of “heavily armed members of criminal groups” operating “with impunity” in regions where already vulnerable asylum-seekers are sent to wait.

“Everyone has a legal and human right to seek asylum here, yet dehumanizing and deadly anti-Black policies like ‘Remain in Mexico’ and Title 42 have gutted our country’s asylum system and left thousands vulnerable to violent atrocities, including sexual assault, kidnapping, and murder,” said United We Dream Senior Advocacy Manager Juliana Macedo do Nascimento in a statement received by Daily Kos.

While she warned the court’s ruling “will have far-reaching implications on the future of asylum in the U.S,” the ruling could impact any policy decision the Biden administration lawfully chooses to undertake. The lower courts, including the appeals court that backed Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling, have already made it no secret that they believe Democratic presidents have no right to govern. Just yesterday, a Louisiana judge issued a ruling against the Biden administration’s decision to end the anti-asylum Title 42 policy. That judge was also appointed by the insurrectionist president.

In a widely celebrated decision two years ago last summer, the Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision that the previous administration had unlawfully ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But the case in front of the justices today is very different. “In the DACA case, everyone, even those suing the Trump admin, agreed that DHS could terminate DACA if it went through the right procedures,” American Immigration Council Senior Policy Counsel Aaron Reichlin-Melnick tweeted.

“In today’s case, a judge said the Biden admin can’t end MPP, even if it goes through the right procedures,” he continued. “That’s the key difference.” Like the video embedded above from the #SafeNotStranded campaign notes, Kacsmaryk’s ruling states that Remain in Mexico has to remain in place until the government has infrastructure to detain every single asylum-seeker.

“Biden v. Texas will not simply determine whether the Remain in Mexico program can end,” Vox reported. “It could also allow Trump’s judges to entrench one of Trump’s policies—even when the American people voted to reject Trump.” This case is about vulnerable children and families who have already suffered so much and are simply asking for safety here. But it’s also about whether a duly elected president will be allowed to govern.

RELATED STORIES: Supreme Court to decide whether one federal judge can sabotage Biden’s immigration agenda

Conservative appeals court’s decision keeping Remain in Mexico in place slammed as ‘nonsensical’

Biden admin again tries to end Remain in Mexico policy, citing ‘endemic flaws’ and ‘human costs’

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“He led the team in prayer in the locker room before each game, and some players began to join him for his postgame prayer, too, where his practice ultimately evolved to include full-blown religious speeches to, and prayers with, players from both teams after the game, conducted while the players were still on the field and while fans remained in the stands,” Smith wrote.

One of the main concerns the Supreme Court will be looking at is whether Kennedy was praying as a private citizen or as an assistant coach and school employee. The Ninth Court of Appeals had ruled that the coach was acting as a public employee and thus not authorized to pray in the area because the First Amendment doesn’t apply. 

Kennedy, however, claimed that accommodations for religion were too far from players, making it difficult for him to perform his duties as a coach should he want to pray. “There were no accommodations that were feasible,” he said.

“It was tough,” he added, “to be taken away from the thing that you love.”

However, the Bremerton School District told the Supreme Court last year that school officials had heard complaints from players’ parents that their children felt forced to participate in the prayers because of who was conducting them and where. One parent even said his son felt “compelled to participate” out of fear he would lose out on playing time.

School officials noted to combat this issue, they offered Kennedy time and space to pray before and after games, such as in the press box, but he insisted on praying on the field where students were close by. 

“For seven years this was Kennedy conducting prayer on the field, leading it, delivering it to the students,” said Richard Katskee, vice president and legal director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, which is representing the school district.

The former coach put “himself on the 50-yard line and he makes a spectacle of things,” Katskee said. “There’s nothing about that that’s personal or private.”

Prior to losing his job, Kennedy was asked to stop the prayers and even put on leave when he failed to do so in 2015. As he continued to dismiss the school district’s requests not to pray on the field, in 2016 an evaluation of his performance determined he should not be hired for the next season, citing failure to follow district policy and failure to supervise student-athletes after games.

As a result, Kennedy chose not to reapply for his coaching position at Bremerton High School and instead filed suit against the Bremerton School District in federal district court in Tacoma, Washington.

The case brings up the constitutional question of how accommodating public schools must be to the religious beliefs of employees. Many have used the case to bring up the idea of separation of church and state. The Supreme Court ruled in 1962 that public schools could not offer prayers, even if participation by students is voluntary. Often students felt compelled to pray even if they were not comfortable because of the fear of teachers or higher authorities retaliating. 

Speaking to this and referring to Kennedy in conversation with CBS News, Rachel Laser, the president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said:

“When a coach uses the power of his job to be in a place and have access to students at a time when they’re expected to encircle him and come to him, that’s an abuse of that power and a violation of the Constitution.

“Religious freedom is not the right to impose your religion on others. We all need to have it, so that’s why the free exercise and establishment clause work together to protect religious freedom for all of us,” Laser added.

According to USA TODAY, some are concerned that if the conservative majority Supreme Court rules in favor of Kennedy, whether teachers can recite a prayer before classroom lessons will become the next topic of discussion.

The Supreme Court is expected to make a decision in the case this summer.

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Last winter, when it looked like there was a sliver of hope that Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin (WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (AZ) cared enough about our country to break the filibuster to protect voting rights, Republican Sen. Susan Collins (ME) was deputized by her leadership to create a bipartisan gang to divert them. It worked. Sinema made sure that any hope of passing voting rights legislation was extinguished in what will be remembered as the longest and easily most craven speech of her career. Manchin joined her in refusing to vote with Democrats to pass his own bill.

Collins’ effort is apparently still limping along, with the gang reportedly still meeting to reform the Electoral College Act (ECA) of 1887. That law sets up the process by which Congress certifies Electoral College votes, allowing for members of the House and Senate to submit objections to the electoral results of any state, and to have those objections voted on. If a simple majority of both chambers votes to sustain an objection, it stands. The law also allows the governor of a state to certify which slate of electors goes to Congress in the event that multiple slates are submitted. A majority in both the House and Senate would be needed to reject a slate. Which all worked as it was supposed to, until Donald Trump and his efforts to exploit the ambiguities of the law.

The reform group is working on tightening up those ambiguities, but mostly trying to make sure that they do not do anything to actually make sure the election that happens before the ECA matters is conducted freely and fairly. Collins made sure to make a point of that Monday.

RELATED STORY: Reforming the Electoral Count Act is necessary, but not sufficient, to save our democracy

“We’ve reached consensus on some of the key issues, such as the role of the vice president, to have language making clear that it’s ministerial; increasing the threshold in both the House and the Senate that is necessary to trigger a challenge; and some issues involving the transition period. And a few other issues,” she said. But, she said “some in our group” want to include voting rights provisions. “I would much prefer that we keep this focus on the ECA. It’s 135 years old. It was a source of confusion and ambiguity on Jan. 6. And we need to take care of it.”

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

She expanded on that, telling Politico “There are some Democrats who feel very strongly about going back and revisiting the Voting Rights Act provisions. And my worry is that it will kill the bill.”

Of course she doesn’t want to restore voting rights. She’s a Republican. She wants to be perceived as doing something to protect presidential elections so people don’t notice she’s backing the white supremacist Republican efforts to keep Black, brown, young, and otherwise marginalized people from being able to exercise their most fundamental right in this country: voting. She and the other Republicans (and Manchin) insist that the problem in the 2020 election was solely about what happened on Jan. 6.

This is a substantial backslide from where Collins started with this whole diversionary tactic. Back in early January, when she was trying to make sure voting rights legislation was stopped in its tracks, Collins was talking about securing elections, as well. She said then that they needed to reform the ECA and were also “ looking at additional protections against violence and threats for poll workers and election officials.”

A group of Senate Democrats quickly drafted  their own version of ECA reform, the Electoral Count Modernization Act. They worked with “with legal experts and election law scholars” from “across the political spectrum” to “establish clear, consistent, and fair procedures for the counting and certification of electoral votes for the presidency” and address the ambiguities in the 1887 Electoral Count Act.

While those senators—Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King, Senate Rules Committee Chairwoman Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Senate Majority Whip and Judiciary Committee Chair Dick Durbin (D-IL)—insisted that they also want to see voting rights legislation passed, they offered this to “clarify ambiguities in the electoral process after Election Day to truly ensure the will of the voters will prevail.”

That includes measures to keep bad partisan actors at the state level from hijacking the process and prohibiting state legislatures from appointing electors after Election Day to prevent the appointment of electors who would try to overturn election results. It would also make sure there is another layer of protection by allowing “limited judicial review” to make sure that courts could ensure that electors appointed by a state “reflect the popular vote results in the state.”

Those provisions are probably what Republicans like Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (WV) are complaining about when they say the Democrats want too much. She complained that “I don’t think we’ve made much progress over the last two weeks.” Asked if the bill could possibly pass, she said “I think we do. But it’s going to have to be a narrow bill to get it done.” Translation: There are not 10 Republicans who would be willing to make sure that our elections are free of voter suppression and that all elected officials abide by the will of the voters.

Democrats participating in the talks, meanwhile, remain cautiously optimistic. “We want to see what we can agree on, and hopefully we can move forward on that. I would hope that whatever we agree on we can vote on this year,” Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, (D-NH) said. “Now, we may not be able to agree on broader issues than just what’s in the Electoral Count Act. But if we reach agreement, I hope we can vote on that.” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) said “It’s very much alive. […] We can get a deal. We can get a deal, and we could get a whole bunch of votes in the Senate for it.”

Sure. It’s not terribly surprising that Collins is spearheading this play-act at elections reform. After all, while she fretted over the events of Jan. 6, she refuses to rule out supporting Trump if he runs again in 2024. So any Democrat counting on her to be working with them in good faith should keep that in mind.

Let’s be clear that passing electoral count reforms and doing away with the ambiguities of a 135-year-old law is critical. But it’s also not sufficient to restore our democratic processes. Passing this bill matters. But it’s not enough.

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