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All 12 federally recognized Indigenous tribes in Michigan sent Joe Biden a letter on Friday laying out a plan for the president to shut down the Line 5 oil pipeline, which stretches 645 miles from Superior, Wisconsin, to Sarnia, Ontario, as part of Canadian pipeline giant Enbridge’s Lakehead System. The aging 3-mile section that runs under the Straits of Mackinac in particular poses a severe threat to major waterways in the area, including Lake Michigan and Lake Huron.

As the coalition of organizations known as Oil and Water Don’t Mix note, “Line 5 has spilled 33 times and at least 1.1 million gallons along its length since 1968.” Sections of the pipeline were damaged in 2018 due to an anchor hitting the twin pipes under the Straits of Mackinac and additional damage in 2019 from Enbridge contractors, essentially make the pipeline a ticking time bomb for environmental disaster.

“We view Line 5 as an existential threat to our treaty-protected rights, resources, and fundamental way of life as Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes,” the tribes wrote. The 12 tribes make up the Three Fires Confederacy of the Odawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi. What the tribes propose is for the president to publicly support Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s order to shut down the Line 5 pipeline through an official statement of interest via the Justice Department.

The tribes stressed the importance of Biden explicitly urging in his letter that the shutdown be affirmed and resolved in a timely manner. Tribes also want the president to consider revoking the 1991 Presidential Permit that allowed for the pipeline expansion that included key sections of Line 5 being built. The tribes also requested that they be involved in negotiations with Canada by having a designated representative participate in those talks.

In addition to hitting Biden’s desk, the letter was sent to numerous lawmakers and Cabinet members, including Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, and Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Officials including Biden have so far been silent about the letter. A Biden administration official told Michigan Advance that they “expect that both the U.S. and Canada will engage constructively in [the 1977 Treaty] negotiations.”

Article six of the 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty was invoked last month by Canada in an effort to allow Line 5 to remain operational and effectively halt any progress with State of Michigan v. Enbridge, a lawsuit filed by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel asking an Ingham County Circuit Court judge to uphold Whitmer’s order to shut down Line 5. The treaty prevents public officials from hindering the flow of oil in U.S.-Canada pipelines.

Enbridge and conservative lawmakers in both the U.S. and Canada have continually fought to keep the pipeline running, bringing up the specter of rising energy costs despite the fact that experts believe incrementally shuttering the pipeline would only lead to negligible price hikes. A look at Enbridge’s PR campaign against the shuttering of Line 5 shows a company desperately clinging to oil in the face of an ongoing climate crisis. Instead of signaling even a passing interest in renewables, Enbridge’s team mocked up a map showing tanker trucks bringing oil up to Canada.

The tactics from Enbridge and the lawmakers who benefit from the fossil fuel industry reek of desperation. It’s worth noting that of the 14 lawmakers who sent a letter urging Biden to keep Line 5 in operation, just one person received no donations from fossil fuel companies. The rest benefitted from thousands of dollars from the likes of Exxon Mobil, Marathon, and Valero, among others.

Biden sending a message to Enbridge and its sycophants that Line 5 must go would be an incredible way to honor Native American Heritage Month and the land so violently stolen from the Indigenous groups still fighting to keep it from being destroyed. The Great Lakes represent 21% of the Earth’s fresh water. It’s unacceptable that such a vital ecosystem would be deprioritized for the sake of such limited and damaging resources.

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Long-anticipated subpoenas for senior officials to former President Donald Trump and members of his 2020 reelection campaign were issued by investigators on the Jan. 6 Committee on Monday.

The subpoenas come at the same time obstruction to congressional oversight wafts in the Washington, D.C., air with former White House adviser Steve Bannon being held in contempt of Congress two weeks ago, after flatly refusing to cooperate with the probe. Former acting attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, Jeffrey Clark, has also refused to cooperate citing claims of executive privilege.

A total of six new subpoenas were issued Monday. One went, as widely expected, to John Eastman, a senior fellow of the conservative think tank The Claremont Institute and former legal professor at Chapman University. Eastman authored a six-point memo instructing Vice President Mike Pence on how to deny Joe Biden’s rightful victory, but has since waffled publicly about the memo’s intent. But for lawmakers on the committee, Eastman’s actions, regardless, demand answers.

In addition to Eastman’s now-notorious memo, the committee also cites his participation in a briefing “for nearly 300 state legislators from several states regarding purported election fraud,” during which he propped up Trump’s lies about election fraud and told the group it was “’the duty of legislators to fix this, this egregious conduct and make sure that we’re not putting in the White House some guy that didn’t get elected,” the committee’s letter states.

Eastman also allegedly met with Trump and Pence on at least two occasions—mere days before the insurrection. It was then, the committee contends, that he communicated with Pence’s counsel, Greg Jacob, regarding his earlier proposal to delay or block certification of the election.

And, perhaps most damning for Eastman, are his own words in a Jan. 6 email. The committee specifically cited an email from the former law professor to Greg Jacob. Eastman allegedly told Jacob “the siege” unfolding at the Capitol that day was due to Jacobs and Pence failing to promote lies about the election certification process. Eastman blasted Jacobs, saying he and Pence “did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened.”

Eastman is also allegedly one of the numerous officials who met with Trump toadies in a “war room” at the Willard Hotel. It has been widely reported that in addition to Eastman, Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani were also regularly on hand at the war room.

Incidentally, in a new analysis published by The Bulwark on Monday, Christian Vanderbrouk unpacked a 37-page report first published by The Claremont Institute last October. The Texas Public Policy Foundation, which did not return a request for comment Monday by Daily Kos, co-published the report.

As pointed out by Vanderbrouk, the post-election war game was dreamed up by Eastman and others and amounts to “an instruction manual for how Trump partisans at all levels of government—aided by citizen ‘posses’ of Proud Boys and Oath Keepers—could, quite literally, round up opposition activists, kill their leaders, and install Donald Trump for a second term in office.”

When reached for comment Monday, Vanderbrouk told Daily Kos by email that he wrote and published the piece Monday because he hopes “that it puts to rest any remaining questions about whether Claremont and its supporters are good-faith players in our system.”

The committee has demanded a response by Eastman by Nov. 23; his deposition is currently slated for Dec. 8.

No stranger to congressional oversight, retired Lieutenant General Michael Flynn was also subpoenaed Monday and requested for deposition on Dec. 6.

“You reportedly attended a Dec. 18, 2020, meeting in the Oval Office, during which participants discussed seizing voting machines, declaring a national emergency, invoking certain national security emergency powers, and continuing to spread the message that the November 2020 election had been tainted by widespread fraud,” the subpoena letter states.

Also cited by the committee was Flynn’s appearance on Newsmax TV the day before that Oval Office meeting, where he opined openly about so-called precedents he perceived for deploying military troops or declaring martial law to “rerun” the election.  

Flynn reportedly met with Trump just weeks after he was pardoned by the president on charges that he lied to the FBI. He was one of Trump’s most stalwart allies, even speaking to the former president’s supporters at a “MAGA March” protesting the outcome of the election on Dec. 12, 2020.

Trump reelection campaign officials like William Stepien, Jason Miller, and Angela McCallum were also subpoenaed Monday.

As a manager to the reelection campaign, Stepien oversaw “the conversion of the Trump presidential campaign to an effort focused on ‘Stop the Steal’ messaging and fundraising,” the committee said in its subpoena.

That messaging overtly highlighted conspiracy claims about voting machines that Stepien and other Trump campaign members had long known were patently false, the committee added. A memo published in September outlines how Trump campaign staff knew of the deceit for weeks, but ran with it, anyway.

The committee also wants Stepien to provide any information he might have about the campaign’s attempts to persuade states to delay or deny certification of electoral votes, or send multiple slates of electoral votes to Congress.

Stepien, if he complies will be deposed on Dec. 13.

Jason Miller regularly spread claims of “widespread fraud” in the election, and publicly asserted Democrats would “steal the election,” a committee letter to the former Trump campaign adviser states.

This message was echoed by the mob who attacked the Capitol and notably, even after the election, lawmakers claim Miller, Trump, and Trump’s former personal attorney Rudy Giuliani coordinated press events to make more bogus claims about the election. Miller is also believed to have been in the war room at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 5.

Miller is scheduled to be deposed on Dec. 10.

As for Angela McCallum, the national executive assistant to Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign, investigators say she was directly involved in efforts to “encourage state legislators to alter the outcome of the 2020 election.” One such example provided by the committee is a publicly available recording of a voicemail left to a Michigan state representative. McCallum wanted to know whether Trump could “count on” the representative.

“And you told the representative that he/she had authority to appoint an alternate slate of electors based on purported evidence of widespread election fraud,” the subpoena states.

If she complies, like all others subpoenaed Monday, the deadline to submit documents is Nov 23. Her deposition is currently slated for Nov 30.

Also subpoenaed Monday was Bernard Kerik. The former New York Police Department Commissioner—who was convicted of tax fraud in 2001—reportedly booked hotel rooms to be used as command centers for Trump officials, and is alleged to have been at the Willard Hotel on Jan. 5 along with Bannon, Eastman, and Giuliani. 

In Kerik’s subpoena, lawmakers allege the former commissioner met with Giuliani “at least as early as Nov. 5” to promote claims of election fraud.

Former White House deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, and Kash Patel, the former chief of staff to then-acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller, were subpoenaed weeks ago. Onetime White House chief of staff Mark Meadows was also slapped with a subpoena but has been on thin ice with the committee in recent days. He has reportedly delayed providing materials as requested.

In September, rally organizers including Amy Kremer, founder and chairwoman of Women for America First, were subpoenaed. The group coordinated a rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6. Kremer’s daughter and co-founder of Women for America First, Kylie Kremer, was also subpoenaed. Their depositions were recently put on hold, but it is unclear exactly why. A spokesperson for the committee has declined to comment on details of the investigation. 

Caroline Wren and Cindy Chafian were served, too. As reported by ProPublica, Wren served as a deputy to Donald Trump, Jr.’s girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, at the joint presidential fundraising committee, Trump Victory, throughout the 2020 campaign. Chafian, yet another organizer of the rally at the Ellipse, was involved with Wren in planning and budgeting for the event.

Maggie Mulvaney, listed as a “VIP lead” in a rally permit arranged by Women for America First, was also subpoenaed. Mulvaney is the niece of Trump’s former acting White House chief of staff, then director of the Office of Management and Budget, then special envoy for Northern Ireland, Mick Mulvaney.

In addition, Megan Powers, of MPowers Consulting LLC, and Hannah Salem, of Salem Strategies LLC, were also listed on permits for the rally. Legislators believe the women were supervising rally scheduling and logistics. Also subpoenaed were Lyndon Brentall of RMS Protective Services—flagged on permit paperwork as an “on-site supervisor”—and Justin Caporale and Tim Unes. Both Caporale and Unes worked for Event Strategies Inc.; the committee believes they have information about project and stage management for the rally. 

Katrina Pierson, Trump’s campaign spokesperson in 2016, received a subpoena last month. According to the FEC, Pierson received $10,000 biweekly for her work with the Trump campaign from September 2019 to January 2020. Pierson is believed to have been in contact with Trump regularly before and on Jan. 6.

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The House and Senate are both in recess this week, neither planning floor sessions. However, that doesn’t mean that they’re not working on the critical half of President Joe Biden’s big economic, climate change, and family agenda he’s calling Build Back Better (BBB). It’s the companion bill to the hard infrastructure bill that both the House and Senate have passed. Now that House Democrats have decided to trust Biden’s ability to bring recalcitrant Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema along and do it in the next three weeks, with the Thanksgiving holiday thrown in, the pressure is very much on. Because it’s not just BBB that has to be dealt with by Dec. 3.

The conservative House Democrats who have been fighting that larger budget reconciliation bill agreed that they would allow for a vote on the package “no later than the week of Nov. 15.” So that’s the immediate job. There won’t be any time to rest if that achievement is met because Congress agreed to give themselves that Dec. 3 deadline for two rather important things: lifting or suspending the debt ceiling, and providing government funding for the remainder of Fiscal Year 2022 (we’re already almost a month and a half into it).

Republicans are going to help with neither task. Which means it would make a lot of sense for Democrats to get one of those big must-pass things done as quickly as possible—they need to put the debt ceiling suspension in the budget reconciliation BBB bill, which will pass with only Democratic votes.

There’s a lot of good reasons to do that. Joe Manchin is one big one. He backed the idea as recently as a few weeks ago, saying, “Democrats have the responsibility, being the majority party right now, to do it through reconciliation” if Republicans refuse to help. Republicans will refuse to help.

Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has already promised that, and he can’t back down. He’s already been blasted by other Senate Republicans who said he caved on extending the deadline in early October. For his reward, the former guy is renewing his attacks on McConnell. Republicans aren’t going to help.

It would be a sweetener for Manchin—as much of an obstructionist asshole as he is, he’s not willing to play with that particular fire, the full faith and credit of the United States. But he is going to be more than willing to delay and delay and delay the BBB budget reconciliation bill. It’s been a constant game of whack-a-mole for Democrats with him, as he takes turns with Sinema to pose objections that Democrats have to address—because this thing doesn’t pass without them.

If it’s the only game in town for lifting the debt ceiling, or better yet forever eliminating it as a weapon for McConnell, then Democrats had better do that.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has blessed the strategy. On the way to the Glasgow climate summit last week, Yellen told reporters that Democrats should be willing to do it. “Should it be done on a bipartisan basis? Absolutely. Now, if they’re not going to cooperate, I don’t want to play chicken and end up not raising the debt ceiling. I think that’s the worst possible outcome,” Yellen told The Washington Post. “If Democrats have to do it by themselves, that’s better than defaulting on the debt to teach the Republicans a lesson.”

The Senate Budget Committee has ruled out that approach previously, but they could and should change their minds, and they should do it using the process Greg Sargent at the Post discussed with Georgetown law professor David Super. The reluctance of Democrats to deal with the debt limit in reconciliation has been because this form of bill requires specific amounts of either spending or revenue increases, and they don’t want to saddle themselves with having passed a $3 or $4 or whatever trillion increase. But, Super has argued, they don’t actually have to specify a number: “You can probably change the number to something you don’t spell out in ink, but that you describe,” Super explained. “You tie it to the national debt. That is a number. It’s just not a number you wrote out.” The number is the national debt, and the debt ceiling is set is tied to that number. Period. No more need for Congress to ever get involved.

Resolve those two things by Thanksgiving (a tall order, but not impossible). Then Congress can focus all of its attention on government funding, which is also mired down right now by Republicans refusing to help appropriators in the Senate set spending levels. They want to skip the budgeting and appropriations process completely and just have another full-year continuing resolution—the kind of stop-gap funding measure that continues funding for everything at current levels until a date specified in the resolution. The current one runs until Dec. 3.

“An endless cycle of continuing resolutions is not a responsible way to govern,” Appropriations Chairman Patric Leahy said in response to the proposal. “It means cuts to veterans, cuts to national security and defense, handcuffing our response to the pandemic, and not meeting the challenges of climate change. We have made clear what we are for. What are they for? We are ready to get to work as soon as they come to the table.”

They will not come to the table, and they don’t have to. There are 50 of them, just like there are 50 Democrats, and they have Manchin and Sinema willing to continue giving Republicans veto power over the Democrats’ agenda. As long as the two of them insist the filibuster remains, McConnell has minority rule, with the exception of budget reconciliation. So Democrats need to use it, and they need to make Manchin help. That would make the next two months just slightly less hellish.

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On Nov. 22, 1963, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Many people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald, who was arrested and charged with Kennedy’s murder, was not the only person involved in the assassination. Since that time there have been myriad conspiracy theories that run the gamut from a belief that director of the CIA Allen Dulles colluded with organized crime and Lyndon B. Johnson to get rid of Kennedy to the idea that JFK faked his own assassination in order to better fight against some shadowy New World Order from below the radar of the public eye.

The one consistent touchstone in most, if not all, JFK conspiracy theories is that Kennedy himself (and his brother Robert) were creating giant upheavals in the established order of the U.S. government. It is the belief that the Kennedys represented a light in the dark and shadowy world of true power and elitism that drives the conspiracy theory’s staying power. At the beginning of November, QAnon Trumpists descended on Dallas and Dealey Plaza under the impression that one of the many Q-conspiracy theories would be realized: the resurrection of John F. Kennedy, or at the very least the resurrection of his son, John K. Kennedy Jr., who died in 1999 in a plane crash off of Martha’s Vineyard. The MAGA-conspiracists went down to Dealey Plaza on Nov. 2 with the assumption that something big was going to be revealed. It wasn’t.

They don’t care. They’re staying.

Reporter Steven Monacelli and VICE reporter David Gilbert have been following this QAnon crew in Dallas, and found that they’ve been led by an antisemitic QAnon activist, Michael Brian Protzman, to the grassy knoll in downtown Dallas for a reappearance of one of the deceased Kennedys. And while nothing happened to support the wild conservative Christian eschatological theories on JFK and/or JFK Jr. anointing Donald Trump the “king of kings,” their belief in Protzman has not wavered.

But unlike most influencers, Protzman has effectively built a cult within the QAnon movement, where his followers refer to him as a godlike figure, are willing to travel across the country to see JFK resurrected, and most of all, continue to praise Protzman even when the miracle fails to materialize.

His rise within the QAnon world has been rapid. Back in March, his Negative48 Telegram channel had around 1,700 members; today, it has over 105,000 members. But aside from the number of followers Protzman has, what makes him stand out from other QAnon influencers is the loyalty and worship he has engendered in those people.

According to VICE, Protzman has promoted content to his audience like the film Europa: The Last Battle, which purports to explain how Jews created communism and orchestrated both World War I and its sequel, World War II, in order to get Israel created at the expense of the Nazis. True story. Anyways, this asshat has also been able to take advantage of the fact that President Joe Biden recently delayed the public release and declassification of thousands of remaining government documents related to the JFK assassination, which has not helped. Of course, the fact that Donald Trump first delayed the release of these documents in 2017 does not seem to have registered with this MAGA-adjacent QAnon crowd.

The motivations for the assassination in all of these conspiracy theories lead to the same the thing: the protection of a secret world power establishment. In these theories, whether Kennedy’s death allows the escalation of war into Vietnam and Cambodia or it is simply the outgrowth of a sexual jealousy between Kennedy and organized crime boss Santos Trafficante is immaterial in the end. The important thing to understand is that in the end, the government and other secret establishment officials covered up the “truth” about the Kennedy assassination in order to protect their world order.

This unbelievably general and truly unsophisticated view of global power dynamics is at the center of these cult-level conspiracy theories. Are you ready for this? Hold on to your socks!

And after JFK Jr. didn’t appear at the site of his father’s assassination, QAnoners moved their goal post to the Rolling Stones concert that was In town. The irony that these QAnon folks are heading to see a rock and roll group that openly hates Donald Trump is lost on them, of course. In fact, it almost wouldn’t be a story about QAnon if the logic wasn’t so truly wrong-headed.

Guess what? They totally saw all kinds of people you thought were dead, including Michael Jackson, Prince, and Aaliyah. Plus, these QAnon music fans saw the original not dead musician, Elvis!

Sounds like a truly amazing concert. The most important thing to realize here is that while this sect of QAnon seems to be a bit more acutely delusional in their views of reality than maybe other QAnon conspiracists who are a little more shrewd in how openly ridiculous their theories are in practice, the results are the same: The concert these QAnon folks went to was a lot more exciting than the concert that the rest of the people enjoying the Rolling Stones saw.

And that’s the point. 

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After his COVID-19 diagnosis led to the revelation that he had refused to be vaccinated and lied about it publicly, saying, “Yeah, I’ve been immunized,” Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is facing something he doesn’t seem to have a lot of experience with: consequences for his actions. But don’t worry. He’s rich, famous, white, and embracing a Republican position. The consequences will be limited, as the NFL and one of his top sponsors have made clear.

Rodgers spent last week whining about being “in the crosshairs of the woke mob” and “cancel culture,” because that’s how conservative white guys tell the world that it would be worse for them to face consequences for their actions than it was for them to do whatever they fear the consequences of. 

He also said, “The great MLK said that ‘You have a moral obligation to object to unjust rules and rules that make no sense.’” And that he did his own research on the vaccines, but also was following Joe Rogan’s advice on how to treat his COVID-19, which are two statements that kind of contradict each other. Note: Listening to Joe Rogan or even talking to him directly does not constitute research.

Rodgers offered up a series of false claims about COVID-19 vaccination while accusing an NFL doctor of having told him categorically that no vaccinated person could get or spread COVID-19. That would be false information, but, CNN reports, a league source said, “No doctor from the league or the joint NFL-NFLPA infectious disease consultants communicated with the player.”

On to the consequences! Rodgers quickly lost his sponsorship from Prevea Health, which he’d had since 2012. And State Farm silently pulled most of its ads featuring Rodgers from circulation on Sunday. For the previous two Sundays, Rodgers had been in about a quarter of the ads in State Farm’s weekly football advertising blitz. This Sunday, his share was down to 1.5%.

However, State Farm is not fully ditching Rodgers. 

”Aaron Rodgers has been a great ambassador for our company for much of the past decade,” the company said in a statement Monday.

“We don’t support some of the statements that he has made, but we respect his right to have his own personal point of view. We recognize our customers, employees, agents, and brand ambassadors come from all walks of life, with differing viewpoints on many issues. Our mission at State Farm is to support safer, stronger communities. To that end, we encourage vaccinations, but respect everyone’s right to make a choice based on their personal circumstances.”

Which of the statements don’t you support, guys? Come on, get specific. Was it where he advocated treating COVID-19 with unapproved medications? Was it his decision to “immunize” himself with homeopathic treatments? Was it the Martin Luther King, Jr. thing? State Farm doesn’t support some of the statements Rodgers made, so tell us which. 

An NFL source, similarly, told ESPN that while the league was looking into whether Rodgers had followed protocols—which he acknowledges he did not, by refusing to wear a mask to press conferences—he won’t face suspension. Rodgers has also been pictured spending time with his teammates off the job, something NFL rules prohibit for unvaccinated players. And get this: His rationale for why it’s okay to refuse to wear a mask to press conferences in violation of the rules is that everyone else is vaccinated and masked.

Aaron Rodgers does not believe the rules apply to him. Prevea Health is suggesting the rules do, in fact, apply to Rodgers. State Farm insurance is trying to have it both ways, dramatically dialing back their visible association with him in the immediate wake of his comments, but refusing to cut him loose or even to strongly criticize his statements. And while State Farm is not primarily a health insurance company, it does offer life insurance so you’d think it would want as many people as possible to get life-saving vaccinations. Apparently not as much as it wants to keep Aaron Rodgers’ waning star power on board, though—or not as much as it wants to avoid enraging the ivermectin crew.

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Here’s to hoping Florida is ready for another four years under a lying, conniving, anti-vaxxer, anti-mask governor who soundlessly kicked off his reelection campaign Friday, all while raising millions over the past several months via a political action committee—so very shady. 

Under Florida law, once a person becomes a candidate they must sign a campaign oath and file a financial disclosure within 10 days before beginning to raise money. The money is limited to $3,000 from any single person or entity. Hence Gov. Ron DeSantis’ sexy relationship with a political action committee, which can legally collect unlimited money, as long as it remains disconnected from a campaign. 

At a press conference in Pasco County, Florida, DeSantis officially signed paperwork adding his name to the 2022 ballot, allowing him to start running ads and speaking at campaign rallies. But here’s the rub: By skirting the law and waiting to throw his name in the hat, DeSantis has managed to raise $53 million under his Friends of Ron DeSantis political action committee. 

“We’re not going to be doing really anything in terms of public announcements ‘til after the legislative session, but you know, you got to prepare for these things,’’ DeSantis said when a reporter asked him Monday when he would formally announce his reelection. 

According to the Miami Herald, DeSantis raised donations of $25 or less “while also collecting dozens of five- and six-figure contributions, the majority of which are from out of state.” 

Also, DeSantis has taken advantage of his position in the past year by connecting his press events with his gubernatorial announcements, and then using those announcements to campaign for money. 

From offering signing bonuses to any out-of-state law enforcement members willing to move to Florida to skirt vaccine mandates, to issues on immigration and federal mask mandates, as soon as DeSantis proclaims a position to the legislature and makes a public announcement in a press conference, a fundraising email drops into a donor’s box. 

As the Miami Herald reports, when DeSantis went after public education last week, spewing his vitriol to ban mask and vaccine mandates, $100,000 in contributions rolled into his account from the DeVos family—the wealthy relatives of former President Donald Trump’s Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, aka the dumbest member of Trump’s Cabinet, hands down. 

According to NBC News, in September, DeSantis’ donors included Ken Griffin, the GOP megadonor and billionaire founder of the Citadel hedge fund. Griffing donated $5 million to DeSantis’ campaign in April, the largest donation he has received this year. In May, DeSantis got $500,000 from WeatherTech founder David MacNeil, $250,000 in March from Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus, and $250,000 in February from former Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner, who moved to Florida after he lost reelection. 

In September DeSantis used Sean Hannity’s Fox News (or Pravda, as I like to call it) program to deflect from his plans to run for president in 2024 and instead announce his reelection campaign. 

“I’m not considering anything beyond doing my job,’’ Desantis said in response to a question about a possible presidential run.  “We’ve got a lot of stuff going on in Florida,’” DeSantis said. “I’m going to be running for reelection next year.”

Another talented grifter, challenging Republican Florida voters to play a fun game of Three-card Monte. Good luck folks! It’s not as if DeSantis hasn’t had over 60,000 residents die of COVID-19 on his watch while poo-pooing vaccines and masks.

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President Joe Biden this past weekend said he supported financial settlements for asylum-seeking parents and children who were forcibly separated at the southern border by the previous administration and subsequently filed legal action against the federal government, CNN reports. The president in his remarks Saturday, said families “deserve” compensation.

“If in fact, because of the outrageous behavior of the last administration, you coming across the border, whether it was legal or illegal, and you lost your child, you lost your child, is gone, you deserve some kind of compensation no matter what the circumstance,” he said. To be clear, asylum is legal immigration. Families were following the law by asking for relief at the border. But as to what the settlement amounts will be, “I have no idea,” Biden continued. “I have no idea.”

The remarks come just days after the president shot down reports that his administration has been in talks for possible settlements of up to $450,000 for victims of the family separation policy. That number had been initially reported by The Wall Street Journal. “’ $450,000 per person? Is that what you’re saying?’ Mr. Biden said when asked by Fox News reporter Peter Doocy about the payments The New York Times reported last week. “That’s not going to happen.”

Following a swift rebuke from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the White House then clarified the president’s remarks. The civil rights organization filed a class-action lawsuit in 2019 on behalf of separated families and has been in negotiations with the Justice Department. In her remarks Thursday, White House Deputy Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “perfectly comfortable” with settlements, but didn’t specify an amount. 

“If it saves taxpayer dollars and puts the disastrous history of the previous administration’s use of zero tolerance and family separation behind us, the president is perfectly comfortable with the Department of Justice settling with the individuals and families who are currently in litigation with the U.S. government,” she said. But ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero said the president’s initial remarks (as well as predictable outrage from Republicans) may have hurt settlement talks.

“Shortly after Biden’s comments, lawyers from the Justice Department reached out to lawyers representing the families, including those from the American Civil Liberties Union,” NBC News reported. Romero said in the report that Justice Department officials “communicated on Wednesday evening that the settlement numbers for separated families were higher than where the settlement could land.” The Wall Street Journal said negotiations have continued.

“The president’s comments and congressional pushback certainly appear to have affected negotiations,” Romero said in that report. “It’s not hard to put two and two together.” 

Media Matters said Fox News has been aggressively pushing against settlements, including hosting Stephen Miller, the white supremacist aide who helped implement this very policy in the first place. House Republicans have also introduced legislation seeking to block settlements. Party of family values, or something. As noted before, if Republicans wanted to avoid costly settlements, they should have supported asylum law and demanded the previous president stop his cruelty. But that would have required standing up to him, wouldn’t it?

Like also previously noted, Physicians for Human Rights said in a 2020 report noted that the family separation policy constituted “torture,” concluding that it was a form of enforced disappearance. “Parents who asked U.S. officials about the wellbeing and whereabouts of their children were not given answers for weeks and months at a time,” the report said. “I didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye,” one father said after he was falsely accused of being a gang member. He was separated from his four-year-old son for months. 

Calling it a “litany of horrors,” the Atlantic in 2019 called this humanitarian disaster the number one “unthinkable” moment of  the previous president’s administration.” Forcibly yanking children from their parents,” Ashley Fetters wrote, “is of a piece with some of the darkest moments of American history: the internment of Japanese Americans; the forcible separation of American Indian children into special boarding schools; slavery.”

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A conversation has unfolded on social media—and God help us all—it has the audacity to be about the concept of being “woke,” “staying woke,” and all matters “wokeness”-related. This idea of staying woke was created by Black people and until recent years was regarded exclusively in our communities as a word of warning form sister to sister, brother to brother. Keep your head on the swivel. Be on the lookout for racism in disguise, racial profiling in disguise, white supremacist messaging in disguise. Stay vigilant. Stay educated. Stay woke.

Vox magazine writer Aja Romano narrowed down the originating use of the phrase to the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014 after police expressed discontentment with Brown walking in the street. Romano wrote that “‘stay woke’ suddenly became the cautionary watchword of Black Lives Matter activists on the streets, used in a chilling and specific context: keeping watch for police brutality and unjust police tactics.”

Then like many a phrase before it, white people caught on to the warning and ruined it. The challenge to stay woke, or to educate yourself on injustices hidden in plain sight—like police brutality—became isolating reminders to some that not only were they uneducated, but uncool and incapable of keeping up with popular lingo, Black lingo. So they have apparently retreated to that warm and cozy place of resenting Black people, America’s favorite scapegoat. 

In a PBS Newshour rant Wednesday, Democratic strategist James Carville blamed election losses— including Democrat Terry McAuliffe’s recent loss to Republican Glenn Youngkin in the Virginia gubernatorial race—on “stupid wokeness.”

“Don’t just look at Virginia and New Jersey,” Carville said of McAuliffe’s loss and Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy’s close-call victory in New Jersey. “Look at Long Island, look at Buffalo, look at Minneapolis. Even look at Seattle, Wash.” Carville called the activist movement to use a portion of law enforcement budgets to fund social and mental health services “‘defund the police’ lunacy.” He reprimanded school boards acting to rename schools once named after former presidents who owned slaves. “People see that,” Carville said, “and it’s just really (having) a suppressive effect all across the country, and Democrats, some of these people, need to go to a woke detox center or something.

“I mean they’re expressing a language that people just don’t use, and there’s a backlash and a frustration at that.”

The funny thing is I don’t disagree with Carville’s observation, but I part ways with him on what we should do about that observation. Although relying on coded language, Carville shared a certain truth about a portion of white Democrats. Black people are expressing a language that white people don’t use, and there’s a backlash and a frustration with that.

After decades of ignoring racism, downplaying it with phrases like “pulling the race card” and rendering it practically nonexistent in mainstream news media, George Floyd’s violent death at the hands of a white Minneapolis cop forced a national conversation about racism in America. White people had to sit with it as they had their morning coffee. They had to have conversations with their children about it, some for the first time, and now these same white people are sick of it because they have the luxury of being sick of it. They can turn off their cellphones and television screens and not have to encounter racism anymore. Black people cannot. 

Reecie Colbert, a political commentator and founder of the social media haven Black Women Views Media, pointed out in a soul-affirming and profanity-laced video that McAuliffe didn’t run on defunding police or renaming schools. “This is gaslighting, and you know I have to say that whether it’s Republicans or Democrats, y’all know how to talk in your code speak,” she said. “So wokeness is a euphemism for Blackness, is what you’re trying to say.”

She added: “What you’re saying is recognizing racism and offering prescriptions against white supremacy is creating a backlash, and well, that would actually be somewhat accurate, but guess what? You don’t have a motherf—ing choice but to do it because you’re not going to keep the base of the Democratic party, which is Black people and people of color, by siding with the racists, with the white supremacists.”

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones ”warned journalists on Twitter Sunday not to engage. “Say what you mean, and more importantly, make the people you are interviewing say EXACTLY WHAT THEY MEAN. Do your jobs,” in a tweet.

Hannah-Jones has been targeted by Republicans for her “1619 Project” in The New York Times Magazine and her correct assertion in the piece that slavery has had an undeniable effect on American society. Her advice to journalists came after CNN State of the Union co-anchor Dana Bash asked Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Sunday: “Are Democrats too woke, senator?”

Thankfully he didn’t answer that question, but he also didn’t have the opportunity to answer the more specific questions I would have preferred Bash press Warner on—how important should addressing racism be to the Democratic Party, and if addressing racism is a priority, how does the party plan to marry that priority with Democrats like Carville who feel reporting on racism or “wokeness” is overdone? 

Warner didn’t have to answer those questions. He instead got to focus on the branding of the “defund the police” movement. “Listen, I don’t support defund the police,” he said, while also championing a call of the movement for more community-based approaches to policing. 

“This is how propaganda works,” Hannah-Jones tweeted with video of the interview. “Mainstream media normalizes murky, dog-whistle terminology that is used to stoke white resentment. What is woke here @DanaBashCNN and how was the extremely moderate candidate who did not run on CRT ‘too woke’?”

On the campaign trail, Youngkin emphasized his opposition to critical race theory in schools, a nonexistent threat Houdini-like Republicans have made appear real. The theory is a framework for interpreting law that maintains racism has an undeniable effect on the legal foundation of American society, and fittingly, it is usually taught at the graduate or law school level. That, however, didn’t stop Youngkin from promising support of a ban on critical race theory in K-12 schools and tweeting a campaign video featuring the outrage of a white mom who years earlier tried to get author Toni Morrison’s classic novel, Beloved, banned from her son’s Advanced Placement English curriculum. 

Morrison’s novel has nothing to do with critical race theory. It does, however, focus on the devastating effects of slavery, which Republicans have also deemed inappropriate for schools in a toxic rebranding of critical race theory to mean anything related to racism or Blackness. The only enlightening element of Carville’s political analysis is the reminder that Republicans aren’t the only ones who feel that embracing Blackness equates to political sabotage. 

“And before people disingenuously complain ‘woke’ is denigrating to older people, it’s actually pundits like Carville using terms like ‘woke’ to insult voters under 45 that’s denigrating,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Don’t wonder why youth turnout falls when Dems talk about them like this.”

RELATED: ‘How fitting is this rebuke to GOP racism?’ It’s like Toni Morrison was speaking directly to GOP mom

RELATED: Guess what, Karen? CRT is a straw man backed by GOP billionaires who don’t even care about the issue

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As his ally Ted Cruz launches another conservative crusade against a freakin’ puppet, Sen. Josh Hawley, most famous for abetting an attempt to topple our nation’s government, announces his own new political theme will be “masculinity.”

Yes, this is Josh Hawley we’re talking about. Yes, this is the campaign theme he’s going to adopt after he claimed in a speech that more men are watching porn and playing video games these days because of “years of being told” that “their manhood is the problem.”

We still don’t know how that might work, by the way. One might think that current generations are playing more video games and watching more porn these days (if they actually are) due to the notable trend of The Internet Exists. Apparently, though, conservatives believe their menfolk are drowning themselves in Mario Cart and internet porn because the local Costco refused to take “three wicked flexes, five grunts, and one opening of a really tight screw-on cap” in lieu of payment.

Or something. “Our manhood is under attack” is one of those weird conservative tics that is both so omnipresent and so poorly described that it’s become something of a chupacabra to the rest of us. Maybe it exists, maybe it doesn’t, all we know is that in conservative circles it’s known for marathoning PornHub while whining about how unappreciated it feels.

In an AXIOS interview, Hawley attempted to explain what the hell he’s on about:

“Well, a man is a father. A man is a husband. A man is somebody who takes responsibility.”

Yeah, okay. That narrows it down. Not quite the crack narration of “man, woman, person, camera, TV,” but it definitely qualifies as a series of words. Feels a bit like the first-pass lyrics to a Disney Mulan song?

“I think you put together lack of jobs, you put together fatherlessness, you put together the social messages that we teach our kids in school, I think we’ve got to confront that and its effects.”

Conservative men are watching porn because they’re sad about what their kids are learning in school? Okay, now you’ve really lost me. I’m beginning to think Hawley arrived at his new theme of “masculinity” by picking words out of a hat.

Now, there is something that’s a bit troubling about Sedition Josh’s gravitation toward “masculinity” as his own self-chosen political theme. Josh Hawley is widely known to be very ambitious. Hawley has already taken multiple actions to ally himself with the Big Lie, claiming election fraud that doesn’t exist in service to an attempt to nullify a U.S. election to allow a would-be strongman to retain power regardless of the vote totals.

And the movement Hawley has been attempting to wedge himself into the leadership of considers hyper-masculinity to be a very important thematic element. Paranoia over supposed lost masculinity both helped create and helped sustain European fascism of the last century, a sort of “brittle manhood” widely acknowledged by scholars as a central theme of fascist thought.

Donald Trump was a spectacularly unlikely exemplar of that “new man” idolized by the fascist right. He may have been an out-of-shape golf cheat who couldn’t masculine his way down a flight of stairs, but he was unrelentingly crude, was openly contemptuous and cruel toward women, and personified the sort of crass belligerence that the conservative far-right idolizes as a path toward restoring male dominance over the too-uppity womenfolk. The man may have been the first president to hint at his own penis size during a televised presidential debate.

Who are the avatars of conservative masculinity today? Thickheaded bullies who don faux-military apparel and storm government offices while waving flags in support of people who are worse. Hawley wants to insert himself into that discussion as he did the Big Lie itself, latching on as a way of convincing the common rabble that whatever they believe, he’s willing to shout about it.

But Hawley may, ahem, be misunderstanding what his supporters are yelling. You’re going to climb up in front of a crowd of male Trump supporters and tell them the problem is that they’re watching too much porn these days? Really?

Ehhhh. Well, good luck with that.

Really, though, while it once may have been uncanny how Donald Trump and his team managed to bumble into each of the core themes of fascism solely, or at least it seemed at the time, due to his own uncontrollable narcissism and insistence on surrounding himself with conservative C-listers, there is nothing bumbling about the Republican adaptation of each of those themes one after another, polishing them, assembling them, and marketing them as what the party now stands for—the beliefs that its candidates must abide by to remain in good standing with the movement. The explicit propaganda of the Big Lie, claiming that the last American presidential election was “rigged” or “stolen” as means of undermining a democratic vote that the party knows well and true that it lost, has now become party mandate. The themes of a great replacement jeopardizing American greatness (and whiteness), “attacks” on white conservative masculinity, and above all the growing belief among the Republican base and their pundits that violence is both justified and may now be required to reform American according to their beliefs—these are all overtly fascist themes.

It is not likely that Hawley will be that new fascist avatar, no matter how much he wants it. His performances are too insincere. His contempt for the other is too obviously pantomimed, not at all like the true guttural hate that Trump and his top allies revel in. Hawley may be a prep-school version of a hoodlum, but the movement wants the real thing.