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If you think America doesn’t have systemic racism issue, then you’re not paying attention to the news—or history.

As the world watches no fewer than three separate trials involving violence incited by white nationalists unfold across the nation, laying bare the deficient legal system in America and the ever-present deep racial injustice, a Texas teen has been arrested in connection with a fire at an Austin synagogue. 

Franklin Barrett Sechriest was arrested Wednesday, accused of arson, a first-degree felony, for reportedly starting a fire at Congregation Beth Israel on Sunday, Oct. 31. He is being held on a $100,000 bond, according to an arrest affidavit in the case, ABC KVUE reports. 

The fire Sechriest allegedly lit was small and set on the exterior of the synagogue. No one was injured. Damage is estimated to be around $25,000, which includes the cost of repairing the structure’s ornate wooden front doors.

According to KVUE, Sechriest was seen on video surveillance driving into the parking lot to the synagogue in an SUV, possibly a 2017 Jeep Compass. He was carrying a five-gallon olive green jerry can. He then left, still carrying the container. Austin Fire Department arson investigators say they saw the flames ignite from four different camera angles.

The fire comes just a week after several anti-semitic incidents took place around Austin. 

The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that on Oct. 24, members of the Goyim Defense League, a neo-Nazi group, hung “Vax the Jews” banners from an overpass near the local Jewish Community Center as well as several synagogues.

The Anti-Defamation League calls the group “a loose network of individuals connected by their virulent antisemitism.”

According to journalist and author Nate Thayer, Sechriest is a known member of the Goyim Defense League. 

Thayer points to camera footage that appears to be Sechriest. This followed by a photo of the alleged arsonist seen burning a Nazi swastika outside of Austin with at least 10 other members of the Goyim Defense League. And another photo of allegedly of Sechriest seen in a car on Halloween day harassing trick or treaters in Austin. The man in the passenger seat is wearing a hat with a swastika on it. 

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Sen. Joe Manchin’s people are making sure this holiday week for Congress doesn’t pass without King Joe making more pronouncements about why we can’t have nice things, like a climate change and human infrastructure package that starts to address racial, social, and economic inequality called Build Back Better. His people told Axios Wednesday that his “instinct” is to keep delaying President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan because of “red-hot inflation.”

He’s finding little back-up for that, even from professional economics troll Larry Summers, who’s been warning about inflation since March. Summers went on CNN Wednesday night to talk inflation again, of course, but he didn’t say anything Manchin wanted to hear. As far as the already passed hard infrastructure combined with BBB goes, “I think it’s fine,” Summers said. “The 10 years of the two spending bills together, A, are less than the one year of what they did last spring, and, B, unlike what they did last spring, are paid for by tax increases. So I don’t think that’s an inflation problem. I think a lot of it is vitally needed investments in the future of the country.”

When he says “last spring” he’s talking about the emergency COVID-19 relief package the reduced childhood hunger and kept the whole economy from crumbling under the weight of a global pandemic. So it is kind of a shock that he agrees with the 17 Nobel laureates in economics who support BBB. Or maybe it’s because he doesn’t want to look foolish in the face of 17 Nobel laureates endorsing the package. Either way, it gives Manchin—who is highly unlikely to ever be considered for a Nobel prize for anything—no cover whatsoever. That doesn’t mean he’s likely to give up his bullshit, but it makes him easier to isolate.

By the way, here’s what Joseph Stiglitz, on of those 17 economists, had to say on BBB. It’s important to have handy in this debate:

Some, however, have invoked fears of inflation as a reason to not undertake these investments. This view is short-sighted. These are importantly supply side measures, increasing the ability of more Americans to participate productively in the economy, helping to improve our low employment-working age population ratio. Significantly reducing the fraction of children growing up in poverty and giving these children access to pre-K and college education will reap large dividends in years to come. We need safe school buildings and bridges, and affordable child and elder care, whether inflation is 2% or 5%. With the investments being financed by tax increases, the inflationary impacts will be at most negligible—over the medium term outweighed by the supply side benefits; and their progressivity will help address one of the country’s critical problems, the growing economic divide.

The Build Back Better package will provide much needed support to a still-recovering economy, but it will accomplish much more than that. By meeting long-standing social needs, boosting long-term economic performance, and taking serious steps toward addressing the climate crisis we can already see unfolding, it would transform the U.S. economy to be more efficient, equitable, sustainable, and prosperous for the long run, without presenting an inflationary threat.

There are lots of reasons for the BBB to pass, and economic recovery remains a critical one. Given Manchin’s general stubbornness, it’s unclear that any of this could break through. But maybe, just maybe, the idea that continuing this argument makes him look stupid in front of his colleagues might do the trick.

Or he’ll stick with the billionaire Republican megadonors. He’s got Home Depot co-founder Ken Langone on his side, already planning 2024 reelection campaign fundraising. “I’m going to have one of the biggest fundraisers I’ve ever had for him,” Langone told CNBC. “He’s special. He’s precious. He’s a great American.”

Ugh. No wonder Manchin has such an insane ego. He’s got billionaires feeding it like that. And giving him money, of course. It’s not just Langone. Nelson Peltz, a big Trump donor says he calls Manchin every week to give him pep talks. “Joe is the most important guy in D.C. Maybe the most important guy in America today,” he told CNBC last month. “I call him every week and say, ‘Joe, you’re doing great. Stay tough. Stay tough, buddy.’ He’s phenomenal.”

Those Maserati types have to hang together, I guess. 

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Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials have refused to allow Haitian asylum-seekers detained at a New Mexico detention facility access to legal services that could determine their futures in the U.S., a number of advocacy groups say. They believe at least 45 Haitians have been detained at Torrance County Detention Facility since the end of September.

“In addition to ICE’s denial of their access to legal support, local groups have observed court dockets for Black migrants from Haiti moving disproportionately fast, leading to unfair, rapid deportation orders,” groups continued.

This racist targeting is not isolated. In Florida last month, Black immigrants said that officials were selecting only non-Black immigrants for release as part of pandemic measures.

“Haitian detainees describe poor food, inadequate medical care, and mistreatment, common to Torrance and ICE detention centers nationwide, as well as insufficient access to information in Haitian Kreyol, which together amount to racist discrimination and violate even ICE’s own standards,” attorney Allegra Love, Innovation Law Lab, National Immigration Project, Haitian Bridge Alliance, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Mexico, and the American Immigration Council said.

Among them is a 25-year-old who expressed fear about being returned to Haiti by officials. “If I don’t have an attorney, I think that they can deport me,” he said. He did not share his name out of fear of retaliation. “I don’t know what asylum is. I wasn’t allowed to speak. Nobody explained anything and they just told me I was supposed to have an attorney.” Advocates are willing, able, and ready to aid Haitian migrants in detention, but ICE is blocking them.

“For the last 42 days I have been begging ICE to provide us with information and access to the Haitian men detained at Torrance so we can provide them with critical pro-bono legal assistance and meeting resistance each step of the way,” Love said in the statement. “ICE is doing everything it can to deport these Haitian men without any semblance of due process. It’s racist, it’s wrong, and I am fed up with it.”

Advocates have issued a letter to ICE with a number of demands, including being provided with a list of all Haitian migrants detained at Torrance, access to these men, that pro bono legal support information in Haitian Kreyol be provided to these men, and that officials not deport anyone until they’ve been able to consult with someone.

“It is unconscionable for ICE to block access to legal counsel for these Haitian asylum seekers who have already suffered horrific treatment at the hands of the U.S. government just for seeking protection from harm,” ACLU of New Mexico staff attorney Rebecca Sheff said. “By rushing their cases the government seems determined to deport these men to Haiti, where they face abuse and potentially even death, without due process and in some instances before they have even had a chance to talk to an attorney or submit their asylum application.”

Advocates said many of the Haitian migrants at Torrance were detained at or near Del Rio, Texas. Advocates last month also filed a civil rights complaint about the mistreatment of Haitian asylum-seekers at the hand of officials, saying families were denied access to basics including water, food, and blankets. In detention, the complaint said individuals were then deprived of medical attention, leading to at least one miscarriage. One woman, Marjory, told detention officials of her pregnancy and requested medical attention, she was “blatantly ignored,” the complaint said. “Days later she suffered a miscarriage.” 

“The federal government confined Black families fleeing from Haiti in inhumane and life-threatening conditions for an unnecessarily and excessively long period of time,” said Lawyers for Civil Rights Staff Attorney Arielle Sharma. “These families came to the U.S. to seek safety, but instead were met with further despair.”

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As we honor our vets on this 2021 Veterans Day, consider supporting them in the businesses they’ve founded and the products they’ve created. It can’t be easy for many of them; as they say, they leave the military with emotional scars they may carry with them for a lifetime. 

Known as “the war to end all wars,” Veterans Day falls on Nov. 11 because it was the day of an armistice, or temporary cessation of hostilities, between the Allied nations and Germany. It went into effect on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. 

We’ve put together a list of some of the vet-owned businesses we love. 

1. Dope Coffee

Launched by Marine Corps veteran Michael Loyd Jr. in 2018, along with Stace and Chel Loyd, Dope Coffee “focuses on coffee-oriented products created by and for Black people and anyone interested in Black culture,” according to Daily Coffee News. 

Loyd says he first tasted specialty coffee courtesy of Green Bean Coffee at Camp Leatherneck in Afghanistan not long after he enlisted in 2010.

After leaving Afghanistan, Loyd was stationed at Camp Pendelton in San Diego, California, where he bought and ran a small, drive-through coffee kiosk called Solar Cafe. “I learned the basics of the coffee game, and I saw that coffee can heal through conversation,” Loyd says in a LinkedIn post. 

After leaving the military in 2017, Loyd says he was “depressed, suicidal, and dealing with PTSD and barely holding on.” He says the racism he felt under Trump’s presidency was unlike anything he’d experienced. He and his wife Chel picked up and moved to an all-Black neighborhood in Atlanta to begin their life anew. 

Loyd started writing and producing hip-hop music under the stage name Creative Mike The Rapper. He explained the company’s beginnings to Forbes:

“Dope Coffee on day one…was going to be a counter-drug brand. It was like literally, let’s take a drug, which is coffee, well the caffeine in it, and let’s sell that and then let’s just teach more people in our communities to sell that, instead of drugs…but then it just started morphing…Black people, our culture is very ‘dope.’ Everything about it. So, when you take that word…it’s a loaded word to use…look at where we are today. I don’t think there’s any benefit to us having gone through [slavery] but if you look at it and see where we are today, I think it’s amazing.”

2. Pigeonly

Founded by Air Force veteran Frederick Hutson in 2013, this app has connected more than 300,000 incarcerated people to more than 1.5 million people “on the outside,” Verizon.com reports. And it has saved the families of inmates as much as $10 million annually in communication costs. 

While service 51 months in prison, Frederick learned that the $1.2 billion inmate communication industry created connections that were costly and complex. “It’s one of those things where you don’t really understand how it works until you experience it or someone you care about experiences it,” Hutson tells Verizon. 

Hutson says the emotional difference incarcerated people feel when they a letter or call from family means the world, so inmates can feel especially distraught when calls are more than the average utility bill or letters are lost or destroyed in the mail. 

In 2019, Pigeonly served 58,000 inmates and 76,000 loved ones across the nation. Families can use the flat rate of $18 for 300 minutes, equaling about 6 cents a minute, to talk with their inmates by phone, saving them nearly $100 a month on average for the same amount of time. 

“One of the problems I’m addressing is making poverty less expensive,” he says. “The truth is that some people are sent to jail simply because they can’t make $500 bail, then they lose their job because they are in jail.” That’s the start of an unbreakable cycle, now add in cutting off communication with family and loved ones, and the results can be lasting and emotionally damaging. 

“Building a company requires you to have a clear vision of where you want to go so you can manage long and short-term goals simultaneously. This is a skill I learned very early in my military career,” Hutson tells Forbes.

Pigeonly has grown since its inception and now offers users the option of uploading photos and letters from their mobile phones. Pigeonly can print and ship them in a way that meets each prison’s various mailing regulations. Families can also design personalized postcards and greeting cards in the app to be printed and sent.

“If you can’t stay in touch, who’s going to give you that couch to sleep on when you are released?” Frederick asks Verizon. “Who’s going to help you find that first job and drive you to the DMV to get your license again? People get lost in the system, and they get forgotten about until their release date comes, and they are thrown back on the street” without a support system.

3. Rumi Spice

The idea of Rumi Spice was born in March of 2013 when Army veteran Kimberly Jung was speaking with fellow veteran Keith Alaniz. Alaniz told Jung about a local saffron farmer he’d met when serving in Afghanistan. The man had a warehouse full of the pricy spice, but no buyers to sell to overseas. 

“I was very surprised to find out it grows the best in the climates of Afghanistan with hot winds and dry climate,” Jung told NPR’s The Salt. “So, I immediately thought, hey, this could be an awesome business opportunity.”

Jung and Alaniz teamed up with four friends, also veterans, and quickly realized that not only could they sell In the U.S., but while doing that, maybe they could create a market for saffron—a way to replace the poppy farmers were being forced to grow to fund the Taliban. 

“Without investment in agriculture, Afghan farmers have little prospects with shrinking land allotments – making them susceptible to the Taliban,” the group’s website reads. “Rumi Spice strives to change this dynamic.”

Since its foundation, Rumi has grown its offerings to sell such unique spices as black cumin, coriander, and fennel. Rumi also offers a wide array of spice blends. One of them is baharat, a Middle Eastern spice blend that includes the company’s black cumin along with black pepper, cassia, nutmeg, paprika, coriander, cardamom, and clove.

4. R. Riveter Handbags

Cameron Cruse and Lisa Bradley are military spouses who created a one-of-a-kind handbag company. The concept is that military spouses across the country fabricate the various parts of the handbags at home and then ship them to Georgia for assembly. 

“Each handbag features durable materials—from uniforms, tents, and blankets—sourced from government surplus or, when possible, directly from service members,” Bradley tells Southern Living. “Rosie the Riveter embodies everything that we stand for. Our mission is a bit more modern, but her spirit and ‘we can do it’ attitude still apply.”

Each military spouse is sent the leather and textiles they need to cut and dye. Once completed, pieces are sent to the home base in Georgia, where the items are stitched together. 

Each bag or wallet is stamped with a number corresponding to the name of a military spouse who created it. Their first names and duty stations are listed on the R. Riveter website.

5. Combat Flip Flops

Seattle native and Army Ranger veteran Matthew “Griff” Griffin was working as a government contractor in Afghanistan, setting up medical clinics, the day he toured a combat boot factory and saw a flip-flop thong punched through the sole of a combat boot. He tells ABC News he went back to his hotel room and registered the domain name CombatFlipFlops.com that night. 

“Our concept was to create flip-flops in a combat boot factory in Afghanistan,” Griffin tells ABC. 

“The one thing that I saw when I was traveling around to Asia, Africa, all throughout the Middle East, Persia, was that small businesses were really the sustainable driving factor,” he said.

The concept of not only making the flip flops using heavy-duty combat boot rubber but making them in Afghanistan turned out to be a lot more challenging than Griffin thought. After a couple of failed attempts, Griffin moved production to his garage in Seattle, where his co-founders Andy Sewrey, 42, and fellow soldier Donald Lee, 39, turned his garage into a factory and made 4,000 pairs of sandals themselves, and eventually moved production to Colombia. 

Today, the company has expanded beyond flip-flops and into sarongs and shemaghs at a women-run factor in Kabul, Afghanistan, where a portion of the proceeds go toward the education of women in secondary school. 

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In Texas, a state legislator wants to “investigate” hundreds of books in school libraries. In Kansas, a school district is pulling dozens of books off the shelves of libraries and forming a committee to decide “if the books contained on this list meet our educational goals or not.” In Spotsylvania County, Virginia, two school board members are talking outright about burning books.

The Spotsylvania County School Board voted unanimously this week to remove “sexually explicit” material from school libraries, and to consider what else might be “objectionable” in school library collections. But two members of the board went above and beyond. 

”I think we should throw those books in a fire,” said board member Rabih Abuismail. Kirk Twigg wants to “see the books before we burn them so we can identify within our community that we are eradicating this bad stuff.” 

What books? Apparently whatever is determined to be sexually explicit. According to Abuismail, the presence of 33 Snowfish in the Riverbend High Schools’ digital app (which would, if nothing else, make it difficult to burn), means that the schools “would rather have our kids reading gay pornography than about Christ.”

The issue was first raised by a parent who said that she was initially alarmed at LGBTQIA material available to students, and on further investigation found a book she liked even less. That book is Adam Rapp’s 33 Snowfish, and I’m not going to lie, it sounds dark. It was also one of the Young Adult Library Services Association’s top 10 books for young adults in 2004.

While this parent and these board members are definitely targeting LGBTQ content in particular, that’s not all that’s at risk when the book-burning, or the book-removal-from-libraries, starts. Remember that Glenn Youngkin’s winning gubernatorial campaign in the very same state of Virginia ran an ad taking aim at former Gov. Terry McAuliffe for vetoing a bill that would have allowed parents to reject “sexually explicit” reading assignments—and the book in question was Toni Morrison’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Beloved, generally considered to be one of the great U.S. novels of the 20th century.

The media consistently downplayed Youngkin’s appeals to racism—it’s no accident that the book in that ad was by a Black author—and now, just over a week after he prevailed, we’ve got members of a Virginia school board advocating for book-burning and the rest of the board going ahead with an extreme attack on the reading material available to high school students. LGBTQ books and books by authors of color is what’s disproportionately going to be removed from schools by this board, and in Kansas, and in Texas, and in who knows how many more states before the current Republican orgy of bigotry and censorship abates.

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There are definitely some members of Trump’s circle who would not dare talk to the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 without the permission of Donald Trump. There are some who, like John Eastman, should know that any honest discussion of events on and before that day will leave them open to serious charges. But there are others who may very well want to speak—if not out of concern for the nation, then out of frustration and anger at the way they, and their families, were treated as expendable in Trump’s quest for endless power.

Among those who have a good reason to be resentful of how the attempted overthrow of the government played out are a number of aides to Mike Pence. CNN reports that the committee is seeking testimony from at least five members of Pence’s team, including National Security Adviser Keith Kellogg and former Chief of Staff Marc Short. Short may be among those who have already testified. Former Pence Press Secretary Alyssa Farah voluntarily met with Republican Rep. Liz Cheney and fellow Republican member of the committee Adam Kinzinger in October.

Considering recent news that Pence’s team was pressured by attorney John Eastman to carry out his coup plan while the assault on the Capitol was underway, previous confirmation from Short that he was banned from the White House following the attempted overthrow, and currently unconfirmed reports from the Mueller, She Wrote podcast that Pence’s whole team was locked out of their offices on Jan. 6 and placed in additional danger when their security badges were deactivated, all of them could have good reason to spill what they know to the committee.

Over the last few days, the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 has issued a flurry of subpoenas to Trump officials, advisers, attorneys, and campaign members. These followed an earlier group of subpoenas that included one for proud fascist Steve Bannon, who has refused to testify, was held in contempt by the full House, and is currently waiting for the Department of Justice’s decision on whether contempt of Congress is still something that should concern anyone. Even those subpoenas that have gone out are just a portion of the list of people the committee would like to interview.

The frustrating slowness of getting these major figures into a chair—along with the ongoing fight to obtain documents from the national archives that are being blocked by a lawsuit from Donald Trump—may make it seem that the select committee is achieving little when it comes to an actual investigation into events surrounding Jan. 6 and the insurgency. However, back on Nov. 4, Cheney claimed that the committee has already interviewed “more than 150 people.” Cheney did not get more specific, and since most of the committee’s work has been behind closed doors, it’s difficult to know just who has appeared or what kind of information has been collected.

Most of those who have refused to talk have already found refuge in the vast Republican network of “think tanks” and “institutes” that stand by offer GOP insiders a steady six-figure paycheck. Others view themselves as potential candidates for upcoming offices in the Trump-centric party. 

But while Pence himself has made extensive efforts to appease the crowd that was chanting for his neck and the man who hung him out to dry, that attitude apparently doesn’t extend to the members of his staff who, according to the Mueller, She Wrote podcaster, were left “huddled on a loading dock” in the midst of the Capitol attack.

In the latest round of subpoenas, the committee included at least one member of Pence’s inner circle: Keith Kellogg. However, that’s not necessarily a sign that the security adviser is a reluctant witness. As CNN points out, it’s not unusual for “friendly subpoenas” to be produced for witnesses who are willing to cooperate, but who don’t want to be seen as volunteering to tell their story.

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Score one for congressional oversight as former President Donald Trump loses yet another legal fight to keep records hidden from investigators on the Jan. 6 Committee.

First reported by Politico, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan issued the order swatting Trump’s latest request down late Wednesday. It is the third time in less than a week she has done so as the former commander-in-chief has tied himself in knots to shroud hundreds upon hundreds of pages of records that lawmakers say are integral to understanding the Capitol attack and, further, to prevent it from ever happening again.

National Archivist David Ferriero will begin turning documents over to the committee this Friday, barring any intervention from the courts. President Joe Biden has not claimed executive privilege over the documents, and following Chutkan’s latest refusal, Trump has already appealed. 

Before Wednesday night’s ruling, Trump’s attorney Jesse Binnall had requested an injunction to keep records—such as White House correspondence strategizing how to overturn the 2020 election results, for example—away from the committee. Binnall cited confidentiality concerns and claims of executive privilege.

Surreally, Binnall also asked Chutkan to issue a stay of her ruling before she had even rendered it.

She would not.

On Tuesday, Chutkan dressed Trump, now a year removed from his defeat in 2020, down. Writing in a 39-page opinion, Chutkin admonished the former president for his plain failure to “acknowledge the deference owed to the incumbent President’s judgment” and his insistent “notion that his executive power exists in perpetuity.”

“But presidents are not kings and plaintiff is not president. He retains the right to assert that his records are privileged but the incumbent president is not constitutionally obligated to honor that assertion,” Chutkan wrote.

Binnall filed Trump’s appeal just an hour after Chutkan ruled on Tuesday. 

In Wednesday’s ruling against the temporary order request to bar documents from disclosure, Chutkan bristled: “This court will not effectively ignore its own reasoning in denying relief in the first place to grant injunctive relief now.”

She added, as well, that there is no “end-run around preliminary injunction” simply because Trump seeks appellate review.

“Were the court to grant the plaintiff’s motion, the effect would be to give the plaintiff the fruits of victory whether or not the appeal has merit. Plaintiff is not entitled to injunctive relief simply because the procedural posture of this case has shifted,” Wednesday’s six-page ruling states.

She continued: “But while Nov. 12 draws near, this court’s jurisdiction is not imperiled. Plaintiff has already filed a notice of appeal with the Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. He is, therefore, free to petition that court for relief.”

According to the National Archives, documents sought by the committee were broken up into four tranches. The first tranche—anticipated for release Friday—will likely include call logs, White House visitor logs, and files held by Trump’s former chief of staff, Mark Meadows.

That batch is not expected to exceed 100 pages.

The second and third tranche is due to the committee by Nov. 26, barring a judge’s order to stop the hand-off. According to court records, that batch could include up to 724 pages. The fourth tranche spans 551 pages and the review period is still ongoing, so a deadline has not yet been set.

“[The National Archives] anticipates that it will identify additional tranches of responsive records on a rolling basis,” Judge Chutkan wrote on Nov. 9.

Records are expected to include, among other things, daily presidential diaries, schedules, White House visitor logs, drafts of presidential speeches and remarks, and other correspondence related explicitly to Jan. 6.

The Jan. 6 Committee has so far issued nearly three dozen subpoenas. As the anniversary of the insurrection fast approaches, anticipation for public hearings with key figures from the Trump administration are hotly anticipated.

Select committee spokesperson Tim Mulvey told Daily Kos in an email Thursday: “At this stage in the investigation, the Select Committee is gathering facts, reviewing materials, and hearing from witnesses to build a body of evidence. A major aim of the Select Committee’s work, however, is to provide answers to the American people about the violence of Jan. 6 and its causes. We intend to tell this story through hearings and other public events when the time is right.”

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The defendants in the federal civil lawsuit over the lethal 2017 Unite the Right riots in Charlottesville and their neo-Nazi cohorts were hoping to turn the trial currently unfolding in court into a kind of circus where they could strut their propaganda chops—and indeed they clearly have been conducting themselves both in and out of the courtroom accordingly.

But to their dismay, the plaintiffs’ attorneys in the case have diligently, step by step, been peeling back the onion layers of the white nationalist movement’s planning and preparations for the event. Along the way, the defendants are also being exposed as the unrepentant hatemongers and violence-loving thugs they are. It hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for them.

One of the defendants, neo-Nazi Christopher Cantwell, had already dropped the N-word during opening arguments. Cantwell has been the obnoxiously obvious leader of the effort to exploit the trial for their own glorification, hijacking the court as a platform for his ideas.

“I consider this a spoken-word performance, and I take this kind of thing seriously, especially once I found out people were going to be able to listen in,” Cantwell said on a recent podcast. “I thought this was a tremendous opportunity both because of the cause at hand, and because I knew the world was listening.”

“I look like a star,” he added.

As Tess Owen of Vice reports, Cantwell tried last week to question codefendant Matthew Heimbach, erstwhile leader of the white-nationalist Traditionalist Worker Party, and tried to turn it into a circus by asking: “What’s your favorite Holocaust joke?” After a long pause, Heimbach laughed, and Cantwell withdrew the question.

Cantwell’s antics have earned applause on the far right. Codefendant Jason Kessler, posting on Telegram, touted the “epicness and boldness” of Cantwell’s opening statement, hailing it as a “free speech performance.” Meanwhile, on several far-right Telegram channels, their supporters have piled on to make vicious comments about both the plaintiffs and their attorneys—particularly those who are Jewish—and root for the defendants.

As Owen notes, a technical glitch allowed a flood of neofascists into the public access line for the proceedings:

When the court recessed for lunch on Monday, a glitch allowed trolls to swarm the public-access line, delaying proceedings by 30 minutes while the clerk worked to figure out what was going on. At first, listeners who realized the “mute-all” function had been removed began saying things like “Make America Great Again” and “Let’s Go Brandon” (an in-joke for conservatives who hate Joe Biden). One listener namechecked Cantwell’s podcast. Then came the racist slurs: one person said the N-word repeatedly, and another urged the rest of the people on the call to “read Siege,” a neo-Nazi manifesto that’s been associated with violent accelerationist groups like Atomwaffen.

In the meantime, the evidence continued to pile up demonstrating both the defendants’ culpability for specifically planning to create a violent event in Charlottesville, as well as their generally stupid and vicious nature. Even the “smart” white nationalists like Richard Spencer—the primary organizer of the infamous “Jews Will Not Replace Us” tiki-torch parade the night before the lethal riots—were exposed as being both not particularly bright, as well as deeply mendacious.

As BuzzFeed’s Christopher Miller reported, plaintiffs’ attorney Michael Bloch systematically demonstrated Spencer’s leading role in bringing an array of white-nationalist hate groups to Charlottesville through multiple communications and relentless hatemongering. On the stand, Spencer admitted that he and his fellow white supremacists frequently used hate speech in private.

Bloch played a recording of Spencer made the day after the Aug. 12, 2017, riots that left one person dead and multiple people injured after neo-Nazi James Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into a group of counterprotesters. Spencer can be heard on the recording speaking with some of his codefendants, including Nathan Damigo, Jason Kessler, and Elliott Kline, while shouting racist and antisemitic phrases.

“Little fucking kikes. They get ruled by people like me. Little fucking octoroons… I fucking… My ancestors fucking enslaved those little pieces of fucking shit. I rule the fucking world,” Spencer yells. “Those pieces of fucking shit get ruled by people like me. They look up and see a face like mine looking down at them. That’s how the fucking world works. We are going to destroy this fucking town [of Charlottesville].”

Spencer admitted those were his remarks, but says they were unrepresentative: “That is me at my absolute worst. I won’t dispute that that’s me, because at the end of the day I have to live with that,” he testified. “My animal brain. That’s me as a 7-year-old. It’s a 7-year-old that is probably still inside me. I’m ashamed of it. That is a childish, awful version of myself.”

Another video of Spencer, shot at the afterparty for the Aug. 11 tiki-torch parade he organized, show him telling his followers: “I was born too late for the Crusades. I was born too early for the conquest of Mars. But I was born at the right time for the race war.”

Bloch also demonstrated to jurors the reality that they couldn’t believe a word out of Spencer’s mouth by presenting evidence featuring dozens of text-message exchanges between himself and Cantwell. Spencer had told the court they had only communicated a handful of times and “ate lunch once.”.

“Between July and August you exchanged 88 text messages with Mr. Cantwell,” Bloch told him. “But you said, ‘We shared a few text messages, seven in total.’ Isn’t that what you told the jury?”

A long pause ensued. Finally Spencer muttered: “I think I was referring to instances.”

The plaintiffs’ attorneys also played a video for the jury of the deposition of Vasillios Pistolis, a neo-Nazi member of the terrorist action group Atomwaffen Division and a former Marine who was an avid participant in the violence. In online chats leading up to the rally, ProPublica reported, his fellow neo-Nazis had encouraged Pistolis to be vicious with any counterprotesters, maybe even sodomize someone with a knife. He’d responded by saying he was prepared to kill someone “if shit goes down.”

Pistolis was asked in the deposition why he referred to Heather Heyer, the woman killed by Fields’ car, as a “fat cunt.” “Because that’s what she is,” he says. He also called Fields a “hero.” Asked why he posted a meme showing a car running over a Communist protester, he answered: “I thought it was funny.”

In stark contrast, the victims of the violence who appeared on the stand this week were compelling and empathetic. Marissa Blair, who only survived Fields’ attack because her then-boyfriend, Marcus Martin, pushed her out of the way moments before he too was struck and hurled over the top of the vehicle, recounted her ordeal for the jury.

Voice cracking, she described how she got up immediately afterward and saw Martin’s hat, covered in blood, lying on the ground.

“I was confused. I was scared. I was worried about all the people that were there,” Blair told the court. “It was a complete terror scene. It was blood everywhere. I was terrified.”

Blair told the court she was there that day with Heyer, a close friend. “Nobody expects your friend to be killed for standing up for what you believe in, right in front of you,” she said.

Hate crimes expert Brian Levin of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told Owen that the defendants’ antics are likely to backfire badly.

“While it may seem, and often is, that the defendants are using their appearances to platform bigotry and troll the court, they do so at their own legal risk,” said Levin. “Key to legal representation is client control, and while ideology is admissible in the case, an exposition of it in a particularly offensive way is going to leave a jury with a bad taste in their mouth as they attempt to digest a lot of information. No lawyer would advise them to discuss Holocaust jokes and other vile banter because it does nothing to help their defense.”

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The first year of Joe Biden’s presidency appears likely to end with Postmaster Louis DeJoy, Trump’s pick to dismantle the nation’s longest-serving institution, inexplicably still in office. Biden has had a lot do to and many messes to clean up, but this one is right at the top and should have been dealt with already. The problem is, he can’t directly fire DeJoy. The U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors has to do that, and the chair of that board, Ron Bloom, happens to be a big DeJoy booster. Why that’s the case for Bloom, who is a Democrat, is not really known, but there’s certainly a whiff of corruption  behind it.

That can end early next month because Bloom’s term is going to expire on Dec. 8. The Trump appointee was named to serve out the remainder of a seven-year term, left vacant (as most of them were, during the Obama administration) for Trump to fill. That term officially ended one year ago, but he’s been in a one-year holdover term where he has pushed DeJoy’s plan of trying to completely privatize the mail. He has experience at that from his previous employment at investment banking giant Lazard, which made great profits from investing in the privatization of England’s Royal Mail system. So he’s the man to help DeJoy on this job.

Bloom has been cycling in and out of government and corporate restructuring jobs for decades. In his latest gig at Lazard, the Revolving Door Project notes that the National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) was among his clients. The big postal union “hired Bloom to explore solutions to USPS’s solvency issues. Although celebrated by NALC as a ‘reality check’ for broadly opposing service cuts and encouraging expansion of services, the final report issued by Bloom’s Lazard group also left the door open to ‘greater flexibility to pricing of products’ (read: unpopular price hikes) and private-sector contract partnerships in logistics and freight forwarding services (which postal unions have  long opposed as a form of privatization).”

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Those private-sector contracts are precisely what DeJoy has been pushing (along with the rate hikes, mail slow downs, and fewer hours of operation for post offices) and have raised serious questions about conflicts of interest for him, since he maintains financial ties to his former logistics and freight company which has a new contract with the USPS. It’s a match made in heaven, him and Bloom.

It’s a match that the rank-and-file postal workers of the USPS have a problem with, even though leadership is still backing him. The American Postal Workers Union (APWU), National Association of Postal Mail Handlers Union (NPMHU), National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC), and the National Rural Letter Carriers Association (NRLCA) are focused on trying to get the Postal Service Reform Act of 2021 passed. It’s a critical piece of legislation for the USPS that would free it from the financial shackle of having to pre-fund 75 years of retiree health care and pension payments—$120 billion worth. It’s the only government agency operating under that restriction. Getting that law enacted is a goal for the letter carriers and postal workers, too. But, they argue, it won’t make much difference if the whole institution is dismantled by DeJoy and team.

“It is my fervent belief that if we do not stop the destructive policies that are being implemented in the Postal Service, that we’re not gonna have a Postal Service to negotiate with for a contract—or a need for any kind of legislative relief,” Iowa Postal Workers Union President Kimberly Karol told DC Report. “These policies are so bad and so detrimental to the future of the Postal Service, that I think it is very important that we get the public informed and speak out, and get DeJoy and Bloom replaced for advocating for these very destructive policies.”

At least one senator, Wisconsin Democrat Tammy Baldwin, is on record telling Biden to replace Bloom, and after him, Dejoy. “Our Postal Service is, by law, a fundamental service provided to the people by our government, authorized by the Constitution, created by an Act of Congress, and supported by the people. I don’t believe that Postmaster General DeJoy understands who he works for— the American people,” Baldwin said in a statement last week. “I wanted to see him go last year when he ordered changes that led to delayed mail for Wisconsin families, seniors, veterans, and businesses and I oppose Ron Bloom’s nomination to a new term because I would like to see a new Postal Board of Governors show DeJoy the door and bring on a new Postmaster General.”

There’s a whole raft of public interests groups—77 of them in total—who agree. In a letter sent to Biden last month, the group urged him not to “reward this failed leadership with a new term.”

“Instead, please take this opportunity to correct the course of the Postal Service’s future by moving expeditiously to nominate a replacement for Mr. Bloom who will be forward-looking and more representative of the postal workforce, and will not rubber-stamp the disastrous policies of Mr. DeJoy,” they wrote.

These two have to go. They’re not just destroying the oldest and most beloved public institution in the nation, they’re doing it for personal profit and not even pretending to hide that fact! They should have been fired months ago for the gross mismanagement of the USPS, if not for the stench of corruption surrounding them. Here’s Biden’s chance, and it’s easy. Just pick someone new for the board. Someone who’s not a crook.

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A group of House Democrats are pushing to censure Republican Rep. Paul Gosar after he shared an animated video altered to show him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Joe Biden. Aside from expulsion, censure is the harshest penalty the House can impose on a member … and it’s likely to be a point of pride for Gosar, to say nothing of a fundraising angle.

“For a Member of Congress to post a manipulated video on his social media accounts depicting himself killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden is a clear cut case for censure,” 10 Democrats said in a statement. “For that Member to post such a video on his official Instagram account and use his official congressional resources in the House of Representatives to further violence against elected officials goes beyond the pale.”

But the Democrats’ statement also hints at why Gosar won’t face any penalty he finds meaningful: Because he’s just the leading edge of a Republican Party increasingly committed to violence.

“As the events of January 6th have shown, such vicious and vulgar messaging can and does foment actual violence. Violence against women in politics is a global phenomenon meant to silence women and discourage them from seeking positions of authority and participating in public life, with women of color disproportionately impacted,” the Democrats said. “Minority Leader McCarthy’s silence is tacit approval and just as dangerous.”

Gosar is defiantly unapologetic. While the video, which drew a warning from Twitter, is no longer on his Twitter or Instagram pages, he said in a statement Tuesday, “It is a symbolic cartoon. It is not real life. Congressman Gosar cannot fly. The hero of the cartoon goes after the monster, the policy monster of open borders. I will always fight to defend the rule of law, securing our borders, and the America First agenda.”

The rule of law here includes representations of himself killing one of his colleagues in Congress and attacking the president of the United States, something you’d think might draw Secret Service attention.

So Democrats and a very few Republicans may or may not censure Gosar, and it will not make one bit of difference in his behavior, because the violence of today’s Republican Party is not something that gives a damn about the traditional rules or the traditional punishments. Gosar may be, as his own sister said on CNN, a “sociopath,” but the structures around him—the fact that, as she also said, “No one holds him accountable”—are what allow him to continue his dangerous behavior without consequences. And the more Republicans like Gosar—or Reps. Andy Biggs and Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert and Mo Brooks—get away with constantly inciting their followers to see Democrats as the inhuman enemy and violence as a reasonable response, the more the entire Republican Party will continue to move in that direction. All the while the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland remains obsessed with not appearing to do anything that could ever be construed as partisan, like prosecuting the crimes of high-profile Republicans.