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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.

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Republican Rep. Madison Cawthorn has been a busy bee these past few weeks. The blaring drone of his misinformation madness machine (aka his mouth), usually reserved for simply telling vacuous lies, has been cranked up to slander of late. His relentless pathological need to say anything and everything in order to glorify himself has led him to slander his own political party. Whether these moves by Rep.Cawthorn are a desperate attempt at boosting fundraising numbers remains to be seen.

Recently, the youngest GOP fiscal conservative hypocrite has been under the microscope after his FEC campaign filings revealed his finances to be what economists would call piss poor. On Sunday, the Washington Examiner published a report on the North Carolina teller of untruths and his extravagant use of taxpayer money. According to the report, Cawthorn spent just under $5,000 on “legislative planning food and beverage” expenses over a week in August. Also during that week, he took a trip to the Skylaranna luxury mountain resort in North Carolina.

RELATED STORY: Madison Cawthorn raised $3.5 million but seems to only have a little over $100K left

Before we go further, it is important to note here that Cawthorn was one of 174 Republicans to vote against the PACT Act at the beginning of March. This bill is set to help cover the broad range of expenses that military service members, who have been injured or poisoned during their service to our country, need in medical treatment. The Republican Party and Madison Cawthorn’s excuse for not voting to support our troops is that they would like to find a cheaper way to not deal with the military members they enjoy sending off to conflicts in foreign lands.

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The Examiner broke down some of the expenses accrued during the week of Aug 6-10:

• $2,950 allotted to his Skylaranna resort stay.
• $556 for four trips to local grocery stores that week.
• $491 spent at Papa’s and Beer Mexican Restaurant
• $382 worth of Chick-fil-A
• $53 at Joey’s NY Bagel
• $47 at Bojangles

It sounds almost like a party. What was Madison talking about while signing away American taxpayer cash to resorts and fast food and beverage joints?

The fact that this story has come through a conservative media outlet like the Examiner is just another example of the civil war going on within the den of thieves called the Republican Party. Cawthorn’s hyper-MAGA-style hucksterism has freaked out the more neocon established sectors of the party. That’s in part because the conservative Christian political party may be having all kinds of non-Christian-style drug-fueled orgies (if Madison is to be believed), and also because Cawthorn and other Republican members of Congress like Lauren Boebert and Paul Gosar represent a new tea party-inspired rat that has climbed aboard the sinking Republican ship. And trapped in a small space, rats will eat anything until there is only one rat left.

But to put Cawthorn’s expenses into perspective, the Washington Examiner gave an easy-to-understand comparison of Madison’s frivolousness—even in his own craven and corrupt political party:

About 286 representatives reported spending $0 for legislative planning events in 2021, House disbursement records show. The 149 representatives that did pull from their allowance to pay for legislative planning expenses spent $1,170 on average.

Only one representative spent more than Cawthorn for legislative planning events in 2021: Republican Rep. Kay Granger of Texas, who reported spending $6,000 for legislative planning that year.

In a different time in our country’s history, Rep. Cawthorn would have been expelled from the House of Representatives so many times it would have have created new laws in our country. Excuse me for one second, Madison Just finished off a couple hundred dollars in chicken sandwiches. He just wiped his hands with a wet towlette.

It’s nice if you can have someone else pay for it. It seems like Madison thinks of those “dollars” as “HIS” dollars, not “OURS.” It is important to realize here how truly malignant a narcissist like Cawthorn is. As the Smokey Mountain News reported on Monday, a former Cawthorn staff member is filing a labor violation claim against him, saying she was fired after being “denied leave when her uncle passed away and her husband had a heart attack during the same week.”

Lisa WIggins was a former caseworker and campaign aide to Rep. Madison Cawthorn, whose complaints were legally recorded by “David Wheeler, co-founder of nonpartisan advocacy PAC American Muckrakers.” Among other things, Wiggins explains that Cawthorn has closed virtually all of his district offices, making it more than difficult for constituents to interact with their representative. She also claimed that Cawthorn’s home offices in Henderson, North Carolina, housed more liquor bottles than water bottles.

“As far as the candidate himself, I mean, he’s just a bad person. He’s a habitual liar and he’s going to say and do anything he can to your face but behind your back he’s completely opposite,” she said. “There’s some good stories I have – a lot of good stories.”

Please, Miss—may I have another?

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A pipeline break in Webb County, Texas, sent around 900 metric tons of methane into the atmosphere last month, according to a Bloomberg report. The rupture of a section of the Big Cowboy pipeline, a 16-inch natural gas pipeline that spans 45 miles in Webb—which includes the city of Laredo—and Zapata counties and delivers gas to an Exxon operation emitted plumes large enough to likely be seen from space. In addition to methane, the pipeline also emitted greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and contained chemicals that may be dangerous to humans, like n-pentane, though there is not enough research to definitively quantify its effects. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) categorizes n-pentane as a class D carcinogen, which means more research must be done before issuing a decision on its harm to humans.

Lack of research on leaks such as the one that occurred on March 17 points to the unequal impact of environmental damages that occur from the fossil fuel industry. Until EPA head Michael Regan pushed for more environmental justice in monitoring polluters, few communities had quantifiable data as to how the industrial giants around them were impacting their health. Webb County has existed as a region of opportunity for the oil and gas industry, but that fossil fuel boom has done little to uplift its residents. Numerous pipelines criss-cross the county, which is considered part of the Eagle Ford Group known for its fossil fuels. Yet, like many communities that bear the brunt of polluters, Webb County is a vulnerable one. According to recent census data, more than 95% of residents are Latino and nearly 20% of residents live in poverty.

What is rare is accountability. The Texas Railroad Commission (RRC), which oversees a bevy of oil and gas projects in the state, told Bloomberg it was investigating the pipeline break—though even Energy Transfer, the company that operates the line itself, admits that the Big Cowboy pipeline is unregulated. Complaints have abounded from advocacy groups like Commission Shift over the RRC’s lack of oversight in fossil fuel matters, though it’s no surprise as to why the RRC usually fails to act until after the fact at best. According to a Commission Shift report, the four most recent commissioners of the RRC received 67% of their campaign funds from the oil and gas industry. Seemingly no politician with ties to the region has their hands clean of donations from polluters: Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both have received thousands from Energy Transfer as well as executives with Kinder Morgan, the company that entered into partnership with Energy Transfer for its Big Cowboy project.

In the meantime, the EPA is awaiting answer from the Texas Commission of Environmental Quality, which didn’t receive a report about the Big Cowboy pipeline break until March 30. Similarly, the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration also hasn’t received any information about the incident, though new onshore reporting requirements for pipelines like Big Cowboy are set to take effect on May 16. Under those guidelines, all gas-gathering lines are subject to the mandatory disclosure to the agency of incident reports, closing a previous loophole that made it harder for “unregulated” pipelines to be monitored. It’s a step in the right direction on the federal level, but it still allows for errors to pile up on a state and county level.

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Federal District Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle has voided the Centers for Disease Control-issued mask mandate, which requires masks at airports and transportation hubs nationally. In her 59-page ruling, Mizelle argued that the CDC had exceeded its legal powers by issuing the mandate in January 2021.

“The Court concludes that the Mask Mandate exceeds the CDC’s statutory authority and violates the procedures required for agency rulemaking under the [Administrative Procedure Act],” Mizelle wrote. “Accordingly, the Court vacates the Mandate and remands it to the CDC.” It’s a sweeping ruling, one that will likely create chaos at airports and transportation hubs across the country while the Department of Justice, White House, and CDC prepare an appeal.

The scope of the ruling is a surprise, as is the source. Mizelle was one of the judges on Mitch McConnell’s conveyor belt pushed through in the lame duck session after the 2020 election, while the nation was in the depths of the COVID-19 crisis. At 33, Mizelle was the youngest of all of Donald Trump’s successful nominees to the judiciary. She was the 10th to be deemed “not qualified” by the American Bar Association.

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The ABA’s standing committee on nominee evaluations sets the bar for judicial experience at at least 12 years in practice, and “substantial courtroom and trial experience as a lawyer or trial judge is important.” Mizelle had been admitted to the Florida bar in 2012, so had just eight years experience.  “Since her admission to the bar,” the ABA committee wrote, “Ms. Mizelle has not tried a case, civil or criminal, as lead or co-counsel.”

“She presents as a delightful person and she has many friends who support her nomination,” the committee wrote. “Her integrity and demeanor are not in question. These attributes however simply do not compensate for the short time she has actually practiced law and her lack of meaningful trial experience.”

The ABA didn’t remark upon one of Mizelle’s more extremist fringe notions, expressed in a speech at the 2020 Florida Chapters Conference of the Federalist Society, that she believes “paper money” is unconstitutional. “This view, popular in fringe conservative circles, is explicitly contravened by the Supreme Court’s decisions in Knox v. Lee and Parker v. Davis, which have affirmed the constitutionality of paper money,” explains the Vetting Room, a blog analyzing judicial nominations.

None of that mattered to Trump or Senate Republicans. Because what she had going for her was a stint as a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, the backing of the Federalist Society, and a husband, Chad Mizelle, who worked for Trump. He was a big booster of white supremacist adviser Stephen Miller, and that got him a job as acting general counsel for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), even though (there’s a theme here) he had far less legal and administrative experience than previous appointees to the position.

Mizelle also worked on the 2016 Trump campaign, where he “Monitored election-day activities to reduce voter fraud; reported incidents of illegal voting procedure to Philadelphia district attorney.” Uh, huh. We got ourselves another Clarence and Ginni Thomas in the making with these two.

We also have a rotten federal judiciary, larded up with Trump judges like this one. Yes, President Joe Biden has had tremendous success in getting actually qualified and diverse judges on the bench, but the damage that these ideologues can do can’t be exaggerated.

An appeal of Mizelle’s decision will go to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, one of three courts of appeal that Trump and McConnell flipped from a majority appointed by Democrats to a majority appointed by Republicans—including Trump, who appointed a whopping six of the judges there. Biden nominated Nancy Gbana Abudu, a civil rights litigator, to a vacancy on the 11th Circuit in January.

The chances of the Biden administration prevailing in the 11th look slim, and nonexistent in the Trump Supreme Court. The nation’s highest court already ruled that the CDC can’t impose national measures to curb the pandemic when it struck down the CDC’s eviction moratorium while the COVID-19 pandemic was still raging last summer. It did that from the shadow docket.

It’s not just the Supreme Court that needs expanding: The circuit and district courts need to have a new injection of qualified non-extremist judges to dilute the wack jobs who think we need to be running around with pocketfuls of gold coins. But the Supreme Court would be a very good place to start.

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In a statement released Friday, the Florida Department of Education (FDOE) announced it had rejected 41% of K-12 math books for not meeting Common Core standards and/or for “indoctrination” or “exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts,” aka critical race theory (CRT).

The April 15 document outlines that of the 132 textbooks submitted to FDOE, 54 were rejected, with 28 denied “because they incorporate prohibited topics or unsolicited strategies, including CRT.”

Twelve of the math books were tossed after claims by FDOE that they did not meet Florida’s B.E.S.T. Standards, adopted in 2019 to replace Common Core, but none of the titles of the books were included in the statement.

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“It seems that some publishers attempted to slap a coat of paint on an old house built on the foundation of Common Core, and indoctrinating concepts like race essentialism, especially, bizarrely, for elementary school students,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “I’m grateful that Commissioner Corcoran and his team at the Department have conducted such a thorough vetting of these textbooks to ensure they comply with the law.”

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Commissioner of Education Richard Corcoran, who is a former House speaker appointed by DeSantis, wrote that “Florida has become a national leader in education under the vision and leadership of Governor DeSantis.” He added, “When it comes to education, other states continue to follow Florida’s lead as we continue to reinforce parents’ rights by focusing on providing their children with a world-class education without the fear of indoctrination or exposure to dangerous and divisive concepts in our classrooms.”

In an op-ed for the Florida Phoenix, writer Diane Roberts called Corcoran “grossly unqualified,” citing his lack of experience in education and his ongoing attacks on public schools over charter schools.

Corcoran announced he will leave his position at the end of the year.

As has been reported numerous times, CRT is not taught in K-12 but is a graduate-level law school subject. DeSantis, who will likely run for president in 2024, has continued to report otherwise and tagged any sort of teaching about race and racism as CRT. He has gone so far as to write laws banning CRT in the classroom and offering parents the right to sue teachers if they believe it’s being taught.

In December 2021, DeSantis gave a press conference to announce his “Stop Wrongs Against Our Kids and Employees Act,” aka the Stop W.O.K.E. Act.

“Our legislation will defend any money for K-12 going to CRT consultants,” the governor said at the time. “No taxpayer dollars should be used to teach our kids to hate our country or hate each other.”

​​”They want to tear at the fabric of our society and our culture,” DeSantis warned. “They want to delegitimize the founding of the country and the Constitution.” He added that the term “equity” is used to mask critical race theory and is used by people to “smuggle in their ideology.”

In March, the Stop W.O.K.E. Act, aka “Individual Freedom” bill, was approved by the state Senate in a vote of 24-15 along party lines, and once signed by DeSantis, it will take effect July 1, 2022.

NPR reports that several Florida Democrats blasted the FDOE for banning the math books.

State House Rep. Carlos Smith tweeted in part: “#DeSantis has turned our classrooms into political battlefields and this is just the beginning.”

State Sen. Shevrin Jones tweeted: “Apparently CRT is being taught in mathematics in Florida, so the @EducationFL has banned some of the math books. No, this is not 1963, it’s 2022 in the “Free State of Florida.”