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Not surprisingly, a Trump-appointed Florida judge has banned masks for travel. We begin today’s roundup with an analysis of the decision from Lawrence Gostin at The Daily Beast:

On Monday, Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle in Florida threw out the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s mask mandate for air travel and other forms of mass transportation. Deaths from COVID-19—and the mask mandates intended to prevent them—may be on the wane nationwide, but whatever you think about such policies, this is the latest and most egregious example of a judge acting as a partisan warrior in the COVID-19 culture wars.

Mizelle was appointed to the federal bench by President Trump in 2020. She was 33, and had been practicing law for only 8 years. She had nevertried a case as a lead attorney. The Senate confirmed her even though the American Bar Association gave her a rating of “not qualified.” This nominee should have been rejected by the Senate not because of her judicial philosophy and not because of her age, but because she simply didn’t have the credentials and experience to be a federal judge with lifetime tenure.

Now she is substituting her opinion for that of scientific professionals at the CDC, and dictating health policy in America. The outcome could be disastrous, only serving to further embolden the right-wing activists who dispute the reality of this horrifically lethal pandemic.

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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy today publicly announced that Russia’s long-expected Donbas offensive has now begun, with Russia boosting offensive operations throughout eastern Ukraine. What precisely that means is not yet clear; while Russian missile and artillery strikes have escalated in the past few days, the details on Russian ground assaults aren’t yet known. The newest ISW report remains skeptical that Russia will be any more successful in these attacks than in its failed Kyiv operations, though heavy casualties on both sides are all but assured.

One report suggests Russia may be attempting to surround and take Slovyansk, southeast of Izyum; this is at odds with previous intelligence suggesting—implausibly—that the Russian offensive would be aimed at taking far-off Dnipro, bypassing Ukraine’s most entrenched eastern defenses entirely. A Slovyansk attack would be a more incremental approach, but Ukrainian defenses there are robust.

Ukraine is not only defending, however. It’s also continuing to press Russian supply lines, a tactic that proved devastatingly effective in degrading Russian forces around Kyiv to the point that Russia was forced to retreat. Now those operations are targeting Russian lines leading to Izyum, a city recently captured by Russia that has been the staging ground for these newest attempted Russian drives southward.

There remain few scenarios in which Russian kleptocrat Vladimir Putin can carve out a win, no matter how the war unfolds from here. The sanctions currently dooming Russian attempts to replace the equipment being lost are likely to remain in effect for many years to come. While Putin has now arrested numerous of his own officials in an attempt to find scapegoats for Russia’s displays of military incompetence, the many opportunities for Russia to deescalate and declare partial victory are now behind us. Throwing Russian troops haphazardly toward the frontlines in an attempt to exhaust Ukraine territorial defense forces regardless of Russian costs appears to be one of the few plans Putin’s handpicked and thieving military leaders believe they might have the skills to accomplish.

Some of today’s news:

• There’s no ‘off ramp’ for Putin as Russia’s weaknesses are laid bare to all
• Ukraine makes a play for Izyum salient supply lines
• Zelenskyy says Ukraine won’t give up land; sanctions against Russia likely permanent

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In a victory for Black immigrants and Black-led organizations that have been leading this years-long fight, the Biden administration announced on Friday that it will designate Cameroon for Temporary Protected Status (TPS), citing “extreme violence perpetrated by government forces and armed separatists.” 

The decision stands to shield from deportation tens of thousands of Cameroonian immigrants who are already in the U.S., advocates said.

“TPS will provide an urgently needed measure of stability and security for an estimated 40,000 people from the deadly conflicts in Cameroon,” said the Temporary Protected Status Deferred Enforced Departure Administrative Advocacy Coalition (TPS-DED AAC). The coalition urged the Biden administration to “follow this announcement with swift implementation of TPS and immediate cessation of deportations to Cameroon to ensure protection.”

RELATED STORY: Menendez urges TPS for Cameroon and Ethiopia: ‘The United States must continue to lead’

But it is a bittersweet victory. Numerous advocates noted that while they celebrated the “life-saving protection TPS will provide for thousands of Cameroonians,” they also mourned the “harm that came to those who were deported back to dangerous conditions.” Human Rights Watch said in a February report that Cameroonian asylum-seekers deported from 2019 to January 2021 faced abuses following their return, including arbitrary arrest, extortion, and rape.

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“It is not lost on us that the journey to get to what should’ve been an obvious decision took years instead of days,” the UndocuBlack Network said. For comparison, Ukraine’s designation for Temporary Protected Status came within 10 days of Russia’s unprovoked invasion.

“A key step towards remedying the harms caused by the delay in designation is a strategic and equitable implementation plan,” UndocuBlack continued. “We urge the administration to immediately publish a Federal Register Notice (FRN) to provide eligible Cameroonians the opportunity to apply for TPS as soon as possible. An FRN publication would also officially open the registration period needed to facilitate the release of Cameroonians who are currently detained by ICE and CBP.”

The organization, which steadily fought for relief alongside Cameroon Advocacy Network and Haitian Bridge Alliance, also urged the administration to waive registration fees (officials waived certain application fees for Afghan refugees last fall) and a “culturally competent community outreach plan” to reach as many eligible people as possible.

UndocuBlack also urged relief for other Black immigrants facing imminent risk. “The current conditions in Cameroon made it a textbook case for TPS designation. Other majority-Black countries, with very similar conditions, must also receive TPS designation immediately. We hope Mauritania with the widespread practice of enslaving its Black population and Ethiopia with the armed conflict and humanitarian crisis in its Tigray region will also receive TPS designation soon.”

Foreign Relations Committee Chair Robert Menendez last month urged relief for Cameroon and Ethiopia in a statement supporting the Biden administration’s designation of Afghanistan for Temporary Protected Status, writing it was “critical that TPS is not politicized to preference some countries over others. As I have said before, Black migrants are too often excluded when these important decisions are made.”

Following news of Cameroon’s designation last week, affected immigrants “who have lived in fear of imminent deportation said they feel like they can finally breathe,” Human Rights Watch said.

“I was almost deported myself [last year], but was taken off the plane,” one man told Human Rights Watch. “Thinking of the fact that there were many Cameroonians deported who faced hard times in jails in Cameroon … God has spared me. With this [TPS] news, it’s like a new day.” Both Human Rights Watch and affected individuals also urged the Biden administration to return recently deported Cameroonians. “It has been a nightmare, but now I feel safe,” another man told Human Rights Watch. “However, I will only be satisfied when the US government does something about my brothers that were deported, and those of us who have been unjustly treated by the immigration court system.”

“The United States recognizes the ongoing armed conflict in Cameroon, and we will provide temporary protection to those in need,” said Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “Cameroonian nationals currently residing in the U.S. who cannot safely return due to the extreme violence perpetrated by government forces and armed separatists, and a rise in attacks led by Boko Haram, will be able to remain and work in the United States until conditions in their home country improve.”

RELATED STORIES: Following disturbing human rights report, advocates again urge deportation relief for Cameroonians

Complaint says ICE subjected African asylum-seekers to degrading, full-body restraint

Cameroonians fleeing conflict are in dire need of Temporary Protected Status

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I’m trying to think of anything more undignified than sucking up to colossal loser Donald Trump after everything that’s happened in the past few years—telling him he won elections he lost, groveling for his endorsement, buying overpriced tchotchkes at his cult compound/golf resort, and pretending you’re not staring directly into the sallow, rheumy eyes of primordial evil.

I wouldn’t hire Trump to manage a Chuck E. Cheese, unless I actually wanted to open a strip club with an animatronic jug band and didn’t know who to bribe or murder to make that happen. And yet, according to a profoundly pathetic Sunday New York Times story, Republicans as a whole still can’t get enough of his unique blend of feral charisma and sultry lunch meat sweats.

The story is long, sad, and eye-gougingly horrific, but we pretty much already knew the broad strokes of everything that’s in there. Republicans are cashing in their souls for endorsements, and Trump is devouring those souls like so many saucy McNuggets. Pretty standard fare for the sell-out-democracy party.

That said, one portion of the story did grab my eye, because there’s such a huge disconnect between what these GOP hopefuls—almost all of whom went to college—are likely thinking in the parts of their brains they’ve decided to keep alive and what they’re actually doing these days to curry Trump’s favor.

Mr. Trump enjoys flattery and is not above rewarding sycophants. But insiders say bringing compelling visual material matters, too. Big fonts are crucial. With photos and graphics. In color.

“He’s not a real big digital guy, so we had printouts,” said Joe Kent, who has since won Mr. Trump’s backing for his effort to unseat Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, one of the 10 Republican impeachment votes.

…

When he likes what he sees, Mr. Trump will mail words of encouragement, scrawled on news clippings with a Sharpie. “You are doing great!” he wrote in January to Mr. Kent. “You are doing great!” he wrote last October to Harriet Hageman, who is challenging Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming.

Good God, is being in Congress really worth this degradation? Is being in the GOP worth it? If I had to choose between behaving this way to stay politically relevant or chaining a pair of slumbering antelopes to my vintage Sam and Frodo nipple rings, it would probably come down to a coin flip.

The Times charitably refers to the GOPsters visiting Trump at Mar-a-Lago as a “parade of supplicants”—possibly because “caravan of ass-kissers” was deemed too déclassé for the paper of record. But Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio sums up these ingratiation celebrations pretty well.

“What was The Apprentice but a sad scramble of people behaving like crabs in a bucket to be lifted out by him?” said D’Antonio. “How are these people anything other than contestants vying for his approval?”

That’s a good analogy, but like most analogies, it’s a bit imprecise. Crabs in a bucket have far more dignity. If the GOP ever reaches crabs-in-a-bucket levels of seriousness again, maybe we can talk. But for now, they’re still beholden to the worst sentient being on this or any planet. And, well, the vast majority of them seem just fine with it. 

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

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Across the country, attacks against Asian Americans are increasing due to misconceptions associated with COVID-19. In the most recent incident reported, a father was left in a coma after being brutally attacked in Chinatown in Chicago, Illinois, last week. Identified as Jin Yut Lew, the 61-year-old man was visiting his relatives when he reportedly never returned home after.

His children then made a Facebook page to spread the word about their missing father. It wasn’t until days later that street cleaners allegedly found Lew lying on the ground on April 7 and took him to the hospital.

“As I go to get the sign, I was startled … I go, ‘Are you OK, buddy?’ And he rolled over, and I saw blood on his face,” Tommy Duddleston, who was removing street sweeping signs when he found Lew, told the Chicago Sun-Times. Duddleston is a ward superintendent who works for the Department of Streets and Sanitation.

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Lew’s family believes he was carjacked, robbed, and brutally beaten.

As a result of the incident, Lew was diagnosed with severe brain trauma.

“He already had multiple brain surgeries. They had to do a craniotomy to decompress the brain because of brain bleeding,” Dr. Kim Yee, the spokesperson for the family, said according to ABC News. As of Sunday he remains in a coma and may have permanent brain damage.

“We just need to pray hard that Mr. Lew will wake up and speak to us and tell us what happened,” Yee said in another statement. “It’s about time we step up to do something immediately. Get this offender off the street immediately.”

Yee also noted that Lew was unidentified and left to die for more than a day until someone who saw his photo on social media recognized him and connected him to the family. His family was reunited with him two days after he went missing. 

While it is not clear if the attack was racially motivated, the attack follows a string of attacks on AAPI community members in Chinatown specifically. According to data compiled by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, anti-Asian hate crimes have increased by 339% in 2021.

“Everyone’s fearful, and it doesn’t seem like it’s getting better,” Lew’s son said. “We need to wake up to that, and the city needs to get that under control. I grew up here. I know what it was like 30 years ago. The city is almost unrecognizable now.”

While xenophobia against the AAPI community is not a new phenomenon, the rate at which these crimes are increasing is more alarming with every data report released. Hate crime data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino found that hate crimes against Asian Americans surged in 2020 in at least 15 cities, Daily Kos reported. As the cities were further reviewed, a new report indicated that crimes against Asian Americans rose by 169% when comparing the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2021.

As of Monday, no one was taken into custody in connection with the incident.

An online fundraiser to pay for Lew’s medical bills passed its $50,000 goal Thursday.

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The seditious conspiracy docket in Washington, D.C., has been busy of late as members of the extremist Oath Keepers group have spent recent days scrambling to mount their defense. 

There has been a request for an entirely different trial venue in one instance, and in several other instances, many of the defendants have requested that many of the toughest charges they face be dismissed altogether. 

After a tense status conference two weeks ago, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta ordered several of the Oath Keepers to file their respective motions by mid-April if they wanted to have certain charges dismissed or if they wished to align themselves with others. The next hearing is currently slated for May 6. 

RELATED STORY: More Proud Boys fold like cheap suit, Oath Keepers raked by judge on way to trial

Oath Keeper Thomas Caldwell pushed on April 12 to see four of the most severe charges dropped against him from the overarching U.S. v. Rhodes indictment. That included seditious conspiracy. Other co-defendants Kelly Meggs, Roberto Minuta, Joseph Hackett, Jessica Watkins, and David Moerschel have since asked to join him.  

Thomas Caldwell Motion to Dismiss Counts 1-4 of Indictment by Daily Kos on Scribd

Late Monday afternoon, an attorney for Rhodes, Phillip Linder, filed a motion asking that Rhodes also be allowed to join Caldwell’s motion. 

Elmer Rhodes Joins Motion to Dismiss by Daily Kos on Scribd

Beyond dismissal of the seditious conspiracy count, Rhodes, Caldwell, Meggs, Minuta, Hackett, Watkins, and Moerschel also want the obstruction conspiracy charge to be dropped and their respective counts for aiding and abetting that obstruction dropped as well. They say the charge of conspiring to stop an officer from discharging their duties should be wiped away, too.

That defense is, at the very least, creative.

In effect, they argue that the Department of Justice failed to properly state the offense in the seditious conspiracy charge. The government, they say, needs proof that the purpose of the conspiracy on Jan. 6 was to forcibly stop Congress from doing their duty, i.e., “executing the election laws.” 

They also argue—curiously—that members of Congress are “constitutionally prohibited” from “executing any law.” Further, the certification process of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6 did not constitute an “execution of any law,” Caldwell’s motion states. 

Other charges, like conspiracy to obstruct a proceeding and aiding and abetting that obstruction, should be tossed on a technicality. The use of the word “otherwise,” for example, in the legal definition for the crime of tampering, was pored over at length by Caldwell’s defense attorneys. 

In a similar notable filing from Joseph Hackett’s defense attorney Angela Halim, the Department of Justice’s indictment was attacked outright because it accused Oath Keepers, quite simply, of too many “distinct conspiracies.” 

Halim said federal prosecutors are unfairly lumping multiple distinct issues into one seditious conspiracy charge.

The multiple alleged conspiracies Halim said were being forced into one count included: 1) The Oath Keepers’ planning from November to December 2020 to stop the transfer of power by force; and 2) the group’s alleged planning to physically stop the certification on Jan. 6. 

A third element of the indictment, she said, was also faulty because it suggested an impossibility.

Prosecutors, she argued, wrongly claim that Hackett, Rhodes, and others plotted “stop the transfer of power” after Jan. 6. Really, she said, the “transfer of power” had already begun in earnest in November once the election was complete. 

Oath Keeper Joseph Hackett Motion to Dismiss Counts 1 to 4 Indictment Memorandum by Daily Kos on Scribd

Halim asked the judge to drop a tampering charge against Hackett, too. 

Prosecutors say Hackett deleted evidence from his phone sometime on or after Jan. 6.

Hackett says those allegations were overly broad and that it would have been impossible for him to know he was under investigation or facing a possible trial when he deleted files from his phone. Plus, he contends, the government must prove that what he deleted would have been relevant to the case against him anyway.

Hackett wants the court to sever the tampering charge from the others he faces. If the judge won’t do that, then he wants to be tried on the tampering charge separate from the conspiracy counts but only after the conspiracy case has been decided. Doing otherwise, his attorney argued, would unfairly prejudice him.  

As for defendant Kelly Meggs, his attorney Jonathon Moseley was disbarred in early April after the Virginia State Bar found he violated multiple rules. One of those violations included obstructing an investigation into his conduct.

Mehta formally ordered Moseley to stop filing on Meggs’ behalf as a result, but the attorney kept it up nearly a week afterward, saying he was “caretaker counsel” for Meggs. 

In one of his last filings, Moseley argued the toughest charges against Meggs should be dropped because it was simply impossible for Oath Keepers to oppose a transfer of power.

“Not only could such a goal not be accomplished, but beyond that, it is an irrational concept lacking in any basis, in fact, law or common sense,” Moseley wrote.

“This is not a case in which conspirators might attempt to do something they are unable to successfully achieve. It is an irrational concept like dividing by zero. There can be no such thing in law or fact,” he added.

He continued, partially noting the 20th Amendment stipulation on the transfer of power:

“There is nothing in heaven or Earth that can stop the transfer of presidential power, nothing in the universe that can add 1 minute to a president’s term of office. Not even God making the sun appear to stand still would keep a President in office 1 second longer because even if the Earth stopped rotating, it would still be 12:01 PM one minute after noon.”

Meggs also tried and failed to subpoena U.S. Capitol Police for emails, messages, and other recordings related to law enforcement’s discovery of pipe bombs being planted on Jan. 6. That suspect was never found. 

If the counts are not dropped against Caldwell—and it is exceedingly unlikely that they would be—he has asked that his trial take place at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia (USDC EDVA). 

If the trial went on at the Alexandria, Virginia, division of the Eastern District, the jury could be tough. 

The district’s Alexandria, Virginia, division is situated in the heart of northern Virginia, a region that is densely populated by government employees and contractors. The region is also made up of thousands of people who work in the defense and intelligence industries, and for the U.S. military. 

Other USDC EDVA divisions are located in Richmond, Newport, and Norfolk, Virginia. 

So far, the Department of Justice has secured unanimous guilty verdicts on all counts in each of the three jury trials it has brought in its investigation of Jan. 6. They have also all been held in Washington, D.C.

Caldwell’s change of venue request was joined by Connie Meggs, wife of Kelly Meggs. Connie’s charges were split off from her husband’s weeks ago. 

Connie Meggs and Caldwell commissioned a survey for prospective jurors on April 15.

According to Meggs’s attorney Juli Haller, 91% of those polled in D.C. admitted to making at least one prejudicial statement about Jan. 6 compared to just 63% of those surveyed in Virginia.

The numbers were even better in Florida, Haller noted, where just 49% of those surveyed made negative statements. The defendants also surveyed prospective jury pools in North Carolina. 

No decision on the venue request was yet entered by Mehta late Monday afternoon.

Motion to Transfer Venue Ca… by Daily Kos

Meanwhile, on Monday, Oath Keeper Edward Vallejo’s failure to file a motion for review of his detention order has cost him a bond hearing that was slated for this Thursday. 

Prosecutors say Vallejo took orders from Oath Keeper ringleader Elmer Rhodes in the runup to the Jan. 6 attack and that he was responsible for helping to secure hotel rooms where firearms, ammunition, and other weapons to support the assault were stowed.

Vallejo was ordered to remain in jail before his trial after a judge agreed with prosecutors that he posed too great of a danger to the community if released. 

Trial dates could change but for now, Oath Keeper defendants Jessica Watkins, Joseph Hackett, Kenneth Harrelson, David Moerschel, and Thomas Caldwell are scheduled for trial in July.

Elmer Rhodes, Roberto Minuta, Brian Ulrich, Edward Vallejo, and Kelly Meggs are presently docketed for trial in September.

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The long-running gradual consumption of the Republican Party by the authoritarian QAnon conspiracy cult is nearing the terminal takeover phase: A recent survey by Grid found 72 Republican candidates with varying levels of QAnon affiliation. The most salient fact, however, is not only is the cult presence growing, but not a single Republican in any capacity can be found who either denounces the trend or works in any other way than in concert with it.

That reality is terrifying not just because QAnon has a long record of inspiring unhinged, violent behavior with its fantastically vile beliefs and rhetoric. Most of all, QAnon at its core is deeply eliminationist, with an agenda calling for the mass imprisonment and execution of mainstream Democrats for ostensibly running a global child-trafficking/pedophilia cult—which seamlessly fits the people being targeted by Fox News and mainstream Republicans as “groomers” for opposing the right-wing attacks on the LGTBQ community.

Grid’s survey was based on a review of “public records and reporting, social media posts, and campaign materials and events,” which its team of reporters used to identify and confirm QAnon-aligned candidates for public office in 2022. They found at least 78 of them in 26 states, all but six of them Republicans, mostly running against other Republicans in their state primaries.

“They’re running for governorships, secretaries of state, seats in the Senate and House, and in state legislatures,” the study says. “They have raised over $20 million this cycle — and over $30 million since 2018.” Its simple summary: “QAnon appears to be a growing political movement with increasing clout and significant mainstream appeal.”

The highest concentration of these candidates is in Arizona, which has 13 of them; Florida is a close second with 12, while California has 10 and Texas has six. Over a dozen of them are incumbents, including Congressmembers Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado. Another 14 serve at the state level, mostly legislatures.

One of the incumbents, Arizona House member Mark Finchem, participated in the 2021 Capitol insurrection—as did several other QAnon candidates—and has been subpoenaed by the House Jan. 6 committee.

Most of these candidates, indeed, have never held public office and have dubious (at best) records of achievement:

• Shiva Ayyadurai, who has four degrees from MIT and is running for the Massachusetts governorship, runs a website claiming that he is the inventor of email.
• Ryan Dark White, who’s running for a U.S. Senate seat in Maryland and goes by the name Dr. Jonathan Ambrose McGreevey, has also pleaded guilty to illegal weapons charges and to fraudulently obtaining more than 80,000 doses of opioids.
• Carla Spaulding, a candidate seeking to be the GOP nominee to run against Democratic House whip Debra Wasserman Schultz for her Florida seat, pays herself a hefty $60,000 salary out of her campaign contributions while running up a six-figure campaign debt. Nonetheless, she has far outraised her Republican competitors for the nomination; she’s No. 3 on Grip’s QAnon fundraising list.

As Grid notes, “Q himself may be on the ballot this year.” In Arizona, Ron Watkins—the longtime 8kun site administrator who is believed to have authored at least some of the “Q drops” that fueled the cult between 2017 and 2020—is running in for the U.S. House in Arizona’s 2nd Congressional District, though his candidacy is considered a long shot at best. Watkins vowed to raise $1 million for his bid, but so far appears only to have raised about $50,000.

In a rational world, QAnon would have shriveled up and blown away after all of its cherished predictions and beliefs about “the Storm” led by Donald Trump and his allies that would sweep up these evil pedophiles and put them in prison to await execution were completely demolished by the cold reality of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 election. But instead, it kept spreading and growing, its fanaticism helping fuel the Jan. 6 insurrection, and providing a driving force for the ongoing anti-democratic insurgency that has followed. In states like Oregon, it now fundamentally controls the Republican political apparatus.

QAnon reared its ugly head in the U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson. As Alex Shepard observed at The New Republic, much of the questioning from Republicans revolved around the core QAnon beliefs:

The Q-inspired pedophile smear is consuming Republican politics. “The phrase ‘child porn’ (or ‘pornography’ or ‘pornographer’)” was mentioned 165 times during Brown’s confirmation hearings, The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank tallied. “I’m not suggesting she likes what’s happening in child pornography,” Senator Lindsey Graham said Monday. But “she ha[d] a chance to impose a sentence that would deter [child pornography], and she chose not to.” Senator Josh Hawley, meanwhile, referenced QAnon in his own remarks. “Judge Jackson’s view is that we should treat everyone more leniently because more and more people are committing worse and worse child sex offenses,” he said, while also stating that “we’ve been told things like child pornography is actually all a conspiracy, it’s not real.” The lunatics who follow QAnon may just be onto something, in other words: The truth is out there.

Shepard also notes that there are concrete reasons for Republicans to permit themselves to be subsumed by an authoritarian cult: It polls well. “Nearly half of Republicans (49 percent) and 52 percent of Trump voters believe that Democrats run child sex-trafficking rings, per YouGov polling conducted during Jackson’s confirmation hearings,” he reports. “Even though only 18 percent of Republicans had a positive view of QAnon (compared to 16 percent of all respondents), 30 percent of all respondents believed that ‘top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings,’ suggesting the wide reach of the conspiracy theory.”

What all this tells us is that Democrats this fall will be facing a multipronged attack by Republicans, all based on hysterical fantasy: Democrats are soft on crime, they want to push critical race theory and “transgender ideology” on your kids, and they’re pro-pedophile. All three are designed to appeal to the lizard-brained lowest common denominators: the people inclined to violent eliminationism. Candidates should come prepared.

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Melissa Lucio is scheduled to be executed by the state of Texas on April 27 after her 2008 conviction for killing her 2-year-old daughter, Mariah. But a growing number of advocates and lawmakers say that state officials will be killing an innocent woman should they go through with the execution. They cite an investigation and trial so deeply flawed that five jurors who convicted Lucio have since asked for Texas to halt her execution and give her a new trial.

“I am now convinced that the jury got it wrong and I know that there is too much doubt to execute Lucio,” juror Johnny Galvan Jr. wrote in the Houston Chronicle this month. “If I could take back my vote, I would.”

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Both Galvan and the Innocence Project, a leading organization that has fought to exonerate wrongly convicted people, noted that prosecutors’ case largely rested on the confession that Lucio gave after hours of interrogation. Detectives tormented Lucio the night of Mariah’s death. The child had fallen down some stairs but initially appeared to be fine. But two days later, she never woke back up from a nap.

“In the interrogation room, officers berated and intimidated Ms. Lucio, who was pregnant and still reeling from the loss of her child, for five hours,” the Innocence Project said. “Research has shown that survivors of sexual abuse and violence, like Ms. Lucio, are more vulnerable to falsely confessing under such coercive conditions.”

But at 3 AM, “physically and emotionally exhausted” from hours of interrogation, Lucio said “’I guess I did it’ in the hopes that they would end the interrogation.” This coerced statement was then used in her trial as a false confession. In his op-ed, Galvan Jr. wrote that he was not made aware of Lucio’s history as a physical and sexual abuse victim, and how that “made her vulnerable to falsely confess when subjected to aggressive interrogation tactics on the night of her daughter’s death.”

He said no one told him that she pleaded her innocence more than 100 times before saying, under duress, that she did it. But Lucio has always been clear: “Mariah was my baby, I loved her,” she said last month, according to Innocence Project.

There have been further disturbing developments in the time since Lucio’s conviction. Armando Villalobos, the Cameron County district attorney who fought to have her executed as part of a likely cynical reelection ploy, has himself been sentenced to more than a decade in prison on charges of bribery and extortion. “Mr. Villalobos argued that Ms. Lucio abused her daughter leading to her death, but thousands of pages of interviews and records from Child Protective Services show that Ms. Lucio’s children never said she was violent with any of them,” Innocence Project continued.

Not with just days until Lucio may become the first Latina to be executed by the state of Texas, more than 80 state lawmakers have called on “Gov. Greg Abbott and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to grant Lucio clemency or a reprieve,” the Dallas Observer reports.

“New evidence that has emerged since Ms. Lucio’s trial points to the fact that her daughter, Mariah, died after a tragic accident and not by her mother’s hands,” lawmakers wrote. “A commutation or a reprieve would give her lawyers the time they need to develop all the evidence that could prove Ms. Lucio’s innocence. While we understand the gravity of the issue before you and the important role that the Board of Pardons and Paroles plays in our criminal justice system, we also believe this is an opportunity to prevent a miscarriage of justice that would undermine public trust in our legal system.”

“Ms. Lucio’s case is one that gives even proponents of the death penalty pause,” lawmakers continued. “Doctors who recently reviewed the autopsy—including a leading specialist from The University of Texas Medical Branch—concluded that the jury heard false testimony about whether Mariah was abused.”

“A panel of federal judges on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals agreed in a unanimous three-judge opinion that Ms. Lucio was denied the right to present ‘a meaningful defense,’” Innocence Project continued. “And in a subsequent decision following an appeal from the state, 10 out of the Fifth Circuit’s 17 judges agreed that the exclusion of the psychologist’s testimony skewed the evidence against Ms. Lucio.” 

Innocence Project said last month that 100,000 people had signed a petition urging the state to halt Lucio’s execution. Since that time, that number has swelled to over 230,000. Just days ago, Lucio’s team appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals for a stay of execution.

“I want to tell my supporters that I’m very grateful for all the letters they have sent me, their words of encouragement, their support, and their belief in me,” she said according to Innocence Project. “I’m just very excited that so many people have signed the petition, so many have believed in me and know that I was wrongfully convicted, I’m hoping that I will be set free from this place.” Click here and help a life by urging Gov. Greg Abbott to grant clemency for Melissa Lucio.

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Leadership abhors a vacuum and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is Exhibit A. First, McConnell had the chance to finish off Donald Trump’s political future during his second impeachment but failed to seal the deal.

Next, McConnell had a chance to give Americans a Republican vision they could vote for in November, but he demurred—choosing instead to offer nothing for which Republicans could be held to account as a cynical campaign strategy.

Now, McConnell’s getting burned on both fronts—by Scott and Trump alike. Trump is getting his jollies by carpet bombing the 2022 landscape with endorsements at will. At the same time, Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, who’s running the Senate GOP’s bid to retake the upper chamber, has pounced on McConnell’s unsteady grip on the caucus.

After Scott dropped his disastrous 11-point plan to “Rescue America” last month on “an unsuspecting party,” he relished the upheaval he created, according to a delightful Washington Post account.

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Scott used a Wall Street Journal op-ed to malign his critics as “careerists in Washington” and jeered, “Bring it on.” He also restructured the National Republican Senatorial Committee’s fundraising efforts to line his own campaign coffers and then punched back at his detractors.

“We don’t spend much time worrying about criticisms from anonymous Republican consultants who lost the Senate last cycle and who have gotten rich off maintaining the status quo,” Chris Hartline, NRSC communications director and Scott campaign spokesperson, told the Post.

But the pugnacity of Scott and his allies doesn’t reverse the fact that he’s adding significant deadweight to GOP efforts in November.

For one, he sucking up a lot of money for himself. Donors at some of his events (including in Florida) have been asked to divide their first $10,800 between Scott’s campaign account and his own leadership PAC before gifting more to the NRSC account.

The Senate GOP committee is pretty flush at $33 million—$13 million more than at the same point in 2020 and more than twice as much in 2018.

But Scott isn’t up for reelection and, as one GOP strategist noted, “He is doing it in a state where there is an incumbent senator who is in-cycle.” That would be Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida.

But that’s just one example plaguing what colleagues joke has become the “National Rick Scott Committee.” Another change includes Scott whittling down the cut for candidates who let the NRSC fundraise off their images in digital ads. Candidates used to split the haul 50-50 with the committee along with getting donors’ names but, under Scott, they get just 10% of donations plus donor names.

Overall, the takeaway among many of the colleagues Scott is supposed to be helping is that “Rick Scott seems to care a lot more about his political future than the Senate incumbents he is supposed to be working for,” according to one anonymous source.

But one group that is extremely pleased with Scott’s efforts is Senate Democrats.

“We’ve got three words for him: Keep it up,” said David Bergstein, the communications director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which has been readily highlighting Scott’s plan to raise taxes on more than 100 million American households as well as sunset Medicare and Social Security.

“No NRSC chair has done more for Senate Democrats than Rick Scott,” Bergstein added.

Someone else who applauds Scott’s self-serving actions is a fellow Florida man who loves anyone and anything that becomes a thorn in McConnell’s side.

“I don’t agree with everything in the plan, but Rick is a good man,” Donald Trump said.

Trump’s statement, however, surely says more about his hatred for McConnell than it does Scott’s stewardship of the NRSC.

“I’d take Romney over McConnell,” Trump recently said of Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, who became the lone GOP senator to vote in favor of Trump’s first impeachment. “I think he’d do a better job, and I think Romney is a lowlife.”

For his part, McConnell would be in a much better position to put Scott’s GOP agenda to rest if he would bother to pound out a plan of his own. But the fact is, Scott dared to tell Americans what Republicans stand for and McConnell hasn’t. And there’s really no telling who will be running the Senate GOP caucus if Trump runs again in 2024 and wins.

McConnell can thank himself for that too.