Independent News
Thousands of Etsy sellers are going on strike after platform raises fees once again
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If you have the funds to access goods by small makers and small businesses, it’s a really great way to shop. That said, not everyone is lucky enough to have a space for local artists to sell locally that are actually affordable for their budget. Etsy is perhaps one of the biggest sellers in the game, in that small businesses can sell their products on an already well-established and widely used platform. Provided you’re okay with longer waits or paying more for shipping, you can order from (pretty much) anywhere.
This sounds like a win, but according to Etsy sellers, the platform is taking advantage of the vulnerable position many artists are in. This is a source of income, and, according to sellers, the platform has gotten too used to taking a chunk of their survival money in fees. Now what? Etsy sellers are going on strike from April 11 to April 18.
RELATED: Workers at Amy’s Kitchen are organizing after years of unsafe working conditions
More than 14,000 Etsy sellers are asking shoppers to stay off of Etsy for the week. Some are making themselves unavailable on the platform for this time to strike and get the company’s attention after the platform increased its transaction fees from 5% to 6.5%. In recent years, for perspective, the company already increased this fee from 3.5% to 5% back in 2018.
In addition to this fee, Tech Crunch reports that Etsy can advertise products from sellers making at least $10,000 per year—and take a cut of the sale from the referral, coming in at 12%. On the one hand, having your shop or item shows up in a Google search is great advertising, but on another, it’s fair to see why sellers are frustrated they can’t opt out of this and not give even more company to the platform.
In an interview with Yahoo, Kristi Cassidy, an organizer for the strike, told the outlet those on strike want to get the platform’s attention and spread the word. Cassidy, a seamstress based in Rhode Island, circulated a petition addressed to CEO Josh Silverman that now has close to 50,000 signatures of support from both buyers and sellers.
“Rather than rewarding the sellers whose hard work has enabled Etsy to become one of the most profitable tech companies in the world, Etsy gouges us, ignores us, and patronizes us,” Cassidy writes in part in the petition.
Now, there are more than 5 million sellers on Etsy, so clearly the majority are not striking. As reported over at The Cut, some sellers aren’t striking because they simply can’t afford to take their shop offline for the week. But organizing—these folks organized by gathering on Reddit—is inspiring, impressive work and should be celebrated and respected, especially when it comes to these decidedly murky online spaces.
Dispatches from Ukraine: ‘It smelled of war,’ says young mother in Kyiv
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The last time I was in Kyiv, my grandmother brought me to her favorite crypt. It was one of those churches with lots of domes on its head, spindle knobs like golden garlic cloves. We crept, hushed, into the winding underground alleys below the church. We held red wax candles and they flashed against golden altars in dark corners where mummified monks had laid for centuries. The coffins had windows; decay fogged up the glass.
My grandmother had a scarf wrapped around her head and a permanent scowl etched by years of dogged survival: rations, factory work, running shoeless in the snow. She knelt at each coffin. “This is the monk you pray to for childbirth,” our guide advised me. When we emerged into the busy light of Kyiv, I was hungry, and my babushka sensed it. We left the underground world behind and walked into the sunshine of our city.
Kyiv’s underground now shelters far more than just monks. Fifteen-thousand residents shelter in train stations in Kyiv: playing cards, drinking tea, petting dogs, texting, sleeping, weeping, laughing, swearing, staring off into space. Kyiv’s Arslenka station, informally known as the deepest metro station in the world, was built during the Cold War as a bomb shelter, back when Russia and Ukraine were socialist republics in a shared federal union. Today, children’s movies play and maternity ward babies wiggle in that same station as cluster munitions incinerate apartment complexes overhead.
Yana Plotnitska is a blogger with a background in social media, communications, and photography. Her son, Ostap, is almost 2 years old. They’re on the front lines of the war in Ukraine. We spoke about their daily life, attempts to find shelter, and hopes for the future. This interview was conducted in Ukrainian via Telegram on March 10. It was translated by the author and lightly edited for clarity.
YANA PLOTNITSKA: The 15th day of the war in Ukraine is coming to an end. I still can’t believe it. It’s like a nightmare: There is a war in my country.
YANA PLOTNITSKA: Under other conditions, I would have mobilized a long time ago. [I] would have been in the capital and helped either informationally, or at least to the best of my ability. But I have a baby. He is 1 year and 9 months old. We gave him a beautiful Ukrainian name: Ostap.
Otherwise, I would have been in Kyiv—but having a child, we could not take the risk. We came to the Zhytomyr region, to the village, because it seemed safe here, for the baby. My husband (not a military man at all, a musician!) returned to Kyiv to defend the state, and Ostap and I stayed here. At this point, the story could [have] a happy ending. But we were wrong about how secure any place can be.
Zhytomyr serves as both a military corridor, bringing supplies east, and a humanitarian corridor, bringing people west. “Powerful explosions” and daily bombardments have destroyed schools and homes since late March.
PLOTNITSKA: How is my day going now? I wake up and look anxiously at the phone: Is there any morning news from my husband? Then I read the news: How was the night in Kyiv? Did they bomb my house? Has the Russian army approached us now? I spend my days at home, until some detail triggers me, and suddenly I can’t remember how much I left at my old home: the baby’s first album? Our photos? His toys? And simply: home! And in the evening, hell begins.
For one, we miscalculated. We are in territory where planes are constantly flying. Russian planes are flying over us—I am currently writing this under their roar—and we cannot be sure whether they are flying further, or whether they [will] drop a bomb here.
Russia is known for attacking at night. These attacks under darkness sow confusion and fear, and inspire early curfews. Parking garages, root cellars, shops, bars—even a strip club—all serve as makeshift shelters. Other shelters, built during the Cold War era, are dangerous and decaying. Some shelters are locked; others are filled with debris and dirt. At any moment, “the walls can crack, fall down, and then you’re trapped.”
PLOTNITSKA: I hug my son tightly and try to hold him close to me. Well, surely something will suddenly be dropped on us. If I hold him, at least he has some chance.
He wakes up from the rumble of the planes, and says that when “zhzhzhzh” [the sound of the military plane] comes, it will be “bah” [the sound of explosions]. Can you imagine that? A child who is not even 2 years old knows that when a plane flies [by], next will come “bah!”
After a particularly terrible night, we decided to go further to the west, where the Russians did not reach—[and] I hope they will not. Tomorrow, we will have a long road with many stops. Wish us luck!
***
If you ask Ukrainians about Donetsk, they’ll tell you that Russian agents staged attacks and blamed Ukrainians in order to instigate a war. If you ask Vladimir Putin, he’ll say that Ukrainians were committing “genocide” against Russians in Donetsk, so Russia had no choice but to intervene to “rescue Russians from the tyranny of a pro-western government in Kyiv.”
Investigations into highly-publicized explosions in Donetsk have pointed to Russia’s “staged use of cadavers and likely faked IED damage.” Life in the Russian-occupied “People’s Republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk might sound like something out of an east Berlin noir: agents who monitor all communications for loyalty? Torturing dissidents in cellars? Humanitarian aid resold on the black market for 70% markup?
Mariupol, a nearby city in the Donbas region, has gained unfortunate fame as Russians resort to medieval siege tactics to seize the city, bombing maternity hospitals and filling mass graves in the process. If Russia seized Mariupol, it would end up with “full control of more than 80% of Ukraine’s Black Sea coastline—cutting-off its maritime trade and further isolating it from the world.”
PLOTNITSKA: We have been in an undeclared war for eight years; some have even stopped calling it a war. So we understood that a full-scale invasion was only a matter of time.
…
We understood that sooner or later, Putin would attack. I mean, he has already attacked: Russian troops have been waging war against civilians, and our army in Donbas, since 2014. But all this time he said that “They are not there.”
[Since 2014,] when[ever] we went somewhere, we took all [our] documents with us, because we didn’t know if we would return home. We didn’t know if there would be somewhere to return to. But somehow we continued to make plans for a happy future: We planned to buy a car, go on a trip.
And on the eve of the war, my husband asked me: “Where should I take you and our son, and when?” At that moment, I felt a strong need to support our army. And the next morning, we were awakened by a call: “Get ready, the war has begun.” We did not hear the explosions then, like most Kyivites. Sounds either did not reach our area, or we were very weak after COVID-19, and therefore we slept soundly.
Even so, we gathered [our belongings] quickly and ran, because we knew one thing: We must save our child from the Russian horde. When we came outside again [after hiding], I felt that the smell outside was completely different: it smelled of war. We said goodbye to [our] home indefinitely.
Just last week, my grandmother told me: “I was born in war, and I’ll die in war.” After her husband died, she built her home with her own hands. It had its own root cellar, an outhouse, rows of cabbage, potatoes, and beets, hand-knit white curtains. As I write this, half of my family’s hometown, Makariv, is rubble now, as are the neighbor’s homes, the local elementary school, and the bread factory down the road.
PLOTNITSKA: I am convinced that the war with Russia will end in our victory. You know, Ukraine has fought so hard to be free that now, it will achieve just that. We are so united, the whole nation. I have never felt such power before. We will win because we are fighting for our land. For [our] language. For the Motherland. We have what [Russians] don’t have: a love for what we die for. Those who come to seize never defeat those who fight for the truth.
At the end of March, Russia withdrew troops from Kyiv in preparations in favor of a move east, towards Donbas and Luhansk. Is it a bait and switch tactic, an attempt to carve out wider separatist regions? Ukrainian intelligence has identified Russia’s hope is to create a “Korean scenario,” a divided Ukraine: “They now have three tasks: to surround our troops in Donbas, to completely occupy Mariupol and the south. If they lose Kherson [a city west of Mariupol], their entire Mariupol occupation will collapse. And that’s all. There will be no capture of Kyiv, Kharkiv or Odesa.”
PLOTNITSKA: We feel the whole world is so united around us. And we are insanely grateful for the words, actions, [and] material and physical help provided to us by the world community. But there is something else we would like to ask. We understand how difficult this decision is and how it should be weighed.
But, you know … when the Russians destroyed the maternity hospital in Mariupol, I thought about the world community and asked aloud, although I knew that [nobody could hear me]: “Please close the sky!” They bombed a maternity hospital. Just imagine! And they themselves said that they did it deliberately. Can you believe that? And we live in it.
I remembered how almost two years ago, I was in labor. I know what a stressful and difficult period it is for a woman to have a child, and here is a bomb. It seems that the Russians have nothing human left. Therefore, I can ask the world community now: Sign petitions, speak at rallies, but [also] ask to close the sky for us. We will cope on Earth—just ask them to close the sky.
Because now they are killing our children, and if we don’t stop them, where will they go next? I very much hope that the war will end soon. We will win and start working on rebuilding our beautiful cities and picturesque villages. I hope to be back [in Kyiv] soon.
I last spoke to Yana on March 21; she and Ostap have made it to a (temporarily) safe place. It’s unclear how safe this location will be in the days to come. Her husband—the musician—is still fighting for their country.
For more stories from Ukrainian people in their own words, check out other interviews in this series. If you’re looking for a way to help, Daily Kos has raised over $2 million for various organizations on the ground in Ukraine.
This story was produced through the Daily Kos Emerging Fellows (DKEF) Program. Read more about DKEF (and meet the author, and other Emerging Fellows) here.
QAnon Qronicles: There is no QAnon; David Mamet always be canceling … himself; and spaceships!
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The Qronicles is a series that will collect some of the news, videos, and general mis/disinformation roiling around the conspiracy world of QAnon. You can cringe, you can laugh, but these folks are organizing and showing up at the polls!
WelQome back! (Yeehaw!) It’s been a little while since we talked about the conspiracy world that is QAnon. Guess what? There is no QAnon now! There is only Q and Anon. Wrap your pea-brain around that my friends! Oh, I’m sorry. Are you confused? Did you think you knew all about QAnon? Well you don’t! You don’t know Q … anon … about anything!
What’s the thing you were saying about there not being a QAnon? I’ll get to that. First, you need a little background. The Boston Globe reports that there were some mass-mailed QAnon postcards that ended up in a lot o people’s snail-mail boxes on the east coast of the United States. You hadn’t heard? Well, some of us are keeping up with the lizard people controlling the world, and some of us are too busy worrying about democracy and voting and stuff. I’m rather disappointed in all of you guys!
Like many throughout New England, I recently received what’s been dubbed the “QAnon postcard.” On its front there’s an array of notable faces framing the words “The True Story of Qanon” and a QR code. Then things get really bizarre.
The advertised “true” story on the flip side is a hodgepodge of lies about COVID-19, Sept. 11, and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, plus an obligatory side dish of doomsday prognostications. It’s less a postcard than a conspiracy theory bingo card seemingly fashioned by someone drowning in Fox News and Internet cesspools.
Conspiracy researcher Mike Rothschild has been following the QAnon world’s response to this mysterious postcard. Writing, “Q message board GreatAwakening/win discovered the QAnon postcard that’s been bulk mailed around the east coast. Their verdict? It’s a CIA data gathering/discrediting op, which they know because no believer would ever call it ‘QAnon.’ There is Q, there are anons, etc …” Rothschild explains there are some Qs or anons who think this postcard could be from some Qs or anons, but who knows, and they aren’t right in the head. Got that?
What this means going forward is anyone’s guess. The CIA is sending out postcards to collect data—as opposed to, I don’t know, taking all of the QAnon’s message boards IP addresses and collecting boatloads more data that way. Anythewhos!
American playwright and masculine dickhead David Mamet has decided his waning relevance on the national scene doesn’t have to do with the deleterious character development and lack of meaningful commentary of his stage and screen offerings over the past few years. Instead, he blames CANCEL CULTURE! Boom! You have been canceled!
Let us go look at Mr. Mamet’s biography over at Dartmouth’s Digital Theatermaker Profile: “Mamet’s father was a labor lawyer, and his mother worked as a school teacher.” Good job buddy! ABC, amiright? Always Be Canceled!
Anything new happening with the Jan. 6 stuff?
Nope. same old QAnon truth-telling. The logic is like a finely sharpened knife! SnarQ! (I did it again!). Is it QAnon’s fault? Nope. Everything is everybody else’s fault. Just ask this guy.
At the end of the video you get to see this special conservative Christian’s face. Seems to be the same guy as this Jesus-loving peacenik.
Then there’s this. It’s a religious one, but the frequency with which the message is delivered and the fact that they have been activated by this political connection between LGBTQ+ rights and pedophilia makes it something that has to be included in these Qronicles.
The Q Origins Project has been doing some heavy lifting, cataloguing the great history of Anon, and pulled up a gem from back in 2017. Back then, QAnon was tying some of the outstanding antisemitic conspiracy theories of the day back to themselves. That includes things like the “illuminati,” and the “Earth Alliance.” What? Yup. Huh?
The Earth Alliance comprises of multiple factions and organizations involved in various supply, support and command roles within the U.S Military industrial Complex (MIC).
The Earth Alliance includes ”Patriots” among the military industrial elite of the U.S and many other major countries that are supportive of the goals of defeating the Cabal.
The goal of the Earth Alliance is to defeat the ”Babylonian Money Magic System” and end financial tyranny on earth.
Did you know that there are spaceships in this conspiracy theory? Don’t believe me? Jump to the 5:50 mark in the video below and you will hear all about how President Donald Trump has already been aboard the “Earth Alliance” ship.
Wait, what is happening here?
According to Jerome Corsi a (former White house Correspondent) for the popular “conspiracy theorist” show INFOWARS hosted by Alex Jones, stating in a televised interview, that three high-ranking military generals had asked Donald Trump to run for president of the United States, this being prior to the 2016 presidential election against Hillary Clinton.
Got it?
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Spanish-language ads targeting Marco Rubio on immigration inaction feature surprising voice: His mom
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The pro-immigrant voicemail once left by Sen. Marco Rubio’s mother to her son is at the center of Spanish-language ads calling out his failure to permanently protect immigrant families in his state, and across the nation.
“This is advice from the person who loves you most in the world,” says a voice portraying the late Oriales García Rubio. “Please don’t mess with the immigrants. They are human beings just like us, and they came to the country for the same reasons that we came: to work, to improve their lives. Don’t hurt them. Poor little ones.”
The Florida Immigrant Coalition Votes (FLIC Votes) notes that Rubio formerly touted the voicemail to reporters, playing the recording for TIME Magazine in 2013. That same outlet even hailed him as “The Republican Savior” that same year. But nearly a decade later, Rubio has failed to heed the advice given to him in the message.
RELATED STORY: ‘We are not going to be props again’: Venezuelan activists target Rubio over immigration inaction
“Rubio himself comes from a family of immigrants who came to the United States in the 1950’s,” FLIC Votes said in a statement received by Daily Kos. “Rubio has publicly stated his family ‘immigrated to America with little more than the hope for a better life’; yet the senator has failed to support policies to protect immigrants, instead has supported policies that attack them and separate families.”
As previously noted, Rubio has in recent years failed to support humane immigration bills putting undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization, including hundreds of thousands of people in the state of Florida.
While three Florida Republicans were among the nine GOP members overall who last year voted for the Dream and Promise Act—a bill that would protect Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients, Temporary Protected Status holder, and farmworkers—Rubio did nothing to help advance the legislation in the Senate.
“Even though the senator seems to have forgotten his immigrant roots, prioritizing his political aspirations, his mother certainly didn’t,” FLIC Votes continued. TIME Magazine’s Michael Grunwald reported at the time that García Rubio’s heartfelt, Spanish-language message reminded her son that “undocumented Americans—los pobrecitos, she called them, the poor things—work hard and get treated horribly.”
This voicemail would not prove to be the last time an immigrant mother urged Rubio to use his power to protect families.
As previously noted, a group of immigrant moms confronted Rubio on Capitol Hill in 2013, worried over rumors that he was walking away from the comprehensive immigration reform package he was supposedly championing. “I am the author of this bill, this proposal,” a flustered Rubio told the mothers, adding that he didn’t understand why he was being asked to commit to himself. But the moms’ fears were absolutely right. By 2016, Rubio had voted for a mass deportation president.
“Marco Rubio is a political chameleon, constantly shifting positions depending on whatever is politically convenient for him at any time,” FLIC’s Thomas Kennedy told Daily Kos. “In 2013, he supported immigration reform but ultimately voted against his own bill because of pressure from the tea party.” But Rubio has gone even further: During his failed presidential run, he endorsed an end to the popular DACA program.
“His own mother begged him in a voicemail released to the public ‘not to mess with the immigrants,’” Kennedy continued. “He didn’t listen and now he has embraced the full nativism and anti-immigrant hysterical vitriol of Trump’s Republican Party.”
RELATED STORIES: Marco Rubio’s anti-LGBT record continues on, following defense of Florida GOP’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill
Two dozen groups call on Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to support legalization for TPS holders
Penn professor Amy Wax lays her racism bare on Tucker Carlson’s show for all the world to see
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Amy Wax, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, took her entitled self to the stage of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson Today show Monday and laid her full-Karen a** out for the world to see.
Wax, 69, has a history of sharing her bigoted opinions about Black and brown folks. But her latest screed targeted the alleged “resentment, shame, and envy” harbored by “Black and other “non-Western” people for Westerners’ “outsized achievements and contributions.”
When Wax was done criticizing Black Americans, she moved on to Asian and South Asian Indians, focusing particularly on doctors at Penn and Brahmin women from India.
They “are on the ramparts for the antiracism initiative for ‘dump on America,’” she said, complaining that Brahmins “are taught that they are better than everybody else because they are Brahmin elites and yet, on some level, their country is a s—hole. … They’ve realized that we’ve outgunned and outclassed them in every way. … They feel anger. They feel envy. They feel shame. … It creates ingratitude of the most monstrous kind.”
Again, this is not the first time Wax has laid her racism bare.
On Jan. 24, in an interview with Concordia University professor Gad Saadshe, Wax said, “Given the realities of different rates of crime, different average IQs, people have to accept without apology that Blacks are not going to be evenly distributed throughout all occupations. They’re just not, and that’s not a problem. That’s not due to racism.”
And in early January, The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that a petition garnered 800 signatures after Wax claimed that “the United States is better off with fewer Asians and less Asian immigration.”
Penn Law School dean Theodore Ruger said at the time that Wax’s comments were “anti-intellectual,” “racist” and “diametrically opposed to the policies and ethos of this institution.” He added that “they serve as a persistent and tangible reminder that racism, sexism, and xenophobia are not theoretical abstractions but are real and insidious beliefs in this country and in our building.”
The Philidelphia Inquirer reports that Wax is currently facing a faculty senate review that could result in sanctions against her. Wax has worked at Penn for two decades and is a tenured professor.
In 2018, Ruger barred Wax from teaching mandatory first-year law courses after students became enraged over a video in which she said she’d never seen a Black Penn Law student graduate at the top of their class.
Neil Makhija, a Penn Law lecturer who also serves as executive director of Indian American Impact, a national South Asian civic and political organization tweeted Tuesday:
“Prof Amy Wax resents that she sees all the ‘brown faces’ at Penn Medicine and wants to ask them ‘why did you come here?’ Meanwhile, most were born in the U.S. and Americans all their lives. And are probably going to be the ones to treat her if she’s in the hospital.”
Tucker Carlson tells church ‘I skipped the first three’ vaccinations for COVID-19
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Tucker Carlson is a lot of things. For one, he’s a homophobic rich kid who failed upward by presenting himself as an intellectual patrician conservative in the vein of William F. Buckley Jr. Another thing Carlson is is a snake oil salesman determined that his wealth and position are a birthright. That’s it. He will say and do and change anything in the service of his vacuous statements on any given thing.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlson has landed himself firmly on the side of nothingness. He has refused to say whether or not he has been vaccinated, and has attacked mask mandates and vaccine requirements while staying silent about Fox News’ stringent COVID-19 requirements and mandates—some of the strictest in the corporate America. He hasn’t said much about fellow Fox News on-air personality Neil Cavuto’s battle with COVID-19. As recently as this past winter, Carlson has helped promote false conspiracy theories about the efficacy of Ivermectin as a cheap “alternative treatment” for COVID-19. As with most things issued from Fox News media, calling out Tucker Carlson for being a raging hypocrite is like calling out the moon for being round.
But in between blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Vice President Kamala Harris and spinning round and round in circles to confuse his audience, Tucker makes public appearances. It was at one of these recent appearances that Tucker claimed he hasn’t been vaccinated … maybe?
According to the Voice of San Diego, Carlson appeared at the beginning of April in front of a crowd at the Awaken Church in San Marcos, California. Tucker was there to absorb some of the holy anti-public health measures that the Awaken flock has been hoodwinked into believing under the guise of “faith.” Aussie-cum-American Pastors Jurgen and Leanne Matthesius have defied public health orders to hold indoor services.
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Over the summer, while they were making headlines for being pigheaded, Pastor Leanne Matthesius explained their official position: “We’ve made this decision not out of defiance but out of obedience to God and our responsibility as shepherds over the flock that God has entrusted to us.” Meanwhile, her husband, Pastor Jurgen Matthesius, gave up a piece of the truth: “Our governor and county officials continue to keep our churches under strict regulations, preventing us from meeting the needs of our congregation and our community.”
RELATED STORY: Tucker Carlson, Ron Johnson promote yet another deadly pandemic hoax
A reminder: Their “congregation” and “community” live in San Marcos, California. Meeting outside isn’t an issue in San Diego in the wintertime, let alone the summertime. But if God’s great green earth isn’t providing for them, I guess they’ve got to do what they’ve got to.
To put into perspective how far into the politics of the day this church is, all one needs do is turn back the clock one month. That’s when the same church, at the same site, hosted a two-day Reawaken America conference—featuring a slew of right-wingers including Eric Trump, Roger Stone, and disgraced and pardoned criminal, Michael Flynn.
That defiance fit with the message of the two-day event, where speakers railed against mask mandates and COVID-19 vaccines in a program featuring elements of a trade show, political rally and fire-and-brimstone evangelical tent revival.
It had been a couple of weeks since they had some right-wing heavy hitters in to speak about God and stuff, so they brought Tucker by to kiss their rings and maybe fill up some coffers.
Carlson’s speech was loose, but pointed. It oscillated between admiration of his four dogs and jokes about organic peanut butter, to talk of demonic forces and spiritual warfare. He also touched on another of his favorite topics, the “unraveling of Western civilization,” which he said was ultimately an effort to destroy Christianity.
Tucker then dug deeper into his shallow bag of hyperbole to slam Christian leaders who “chose the path of cowardice and abandonment of their own flocks,” during the COVID-19 pandemic, and didn’t risk their community’s and congregations lives by holding super-spreader events. In fact, vaccines are totally whatever to Tucker, it seems. After “he scoffed at the idea of getting a second booster shot,” Tucker apparently exclaimed, “I skipped the first three, I’m not getting that one either.”
The Daily Beast got a recording of Carlson’s rousing statements of ignorance. Warning: It’s Tucker Carlson speaking.
That’s a big wow. I’m surprised. Do I believe that Tucker Carlson hasn’t been vaccinated against COVID-19? It’s possible. He did spend a bunch of money (likely re-reimbursed by Fox News and tax written off) building a home studio in Maine so that he could spew his hate-filled diatribes from the safety of his home. Do I believe that Tucker Carlson is just pandering to the anti-vaxxer audience he has cultivated and makes money from and is willing to say just about anything to serve the cynical darkness that chases him through eternity and possibly for a run for office in Maine? I’d say that’s equally, if not more, possible.
Fiona Hill: Trump said he wanted more than two terms in the White House—and he wasn't joking
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Fiona Hill is a longtime Russia expert who has repeatedly distinguished herself as someone willing to speak boldly, from the strong warning she offered about Russia’s efforts to undermine U.S. democracy during her testimony at Donald Trump’s first impeachment hearings to her statement soon after Russia invaded Ukraine that using nuclear weapons would be in character for Vladimir Putin.
Hill’s expertise on Putin—she co-authored a biography of him—inflects her read of Donald Trump, who she was able to observe in detail during her time as senior director for European and Russian affairs at the National Security Council in his administration. A New York Times Magazine look back at Trump’s treatment of Ukraine highlights an important passage from her recent memoir, There Is Nothing For You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century: “In the course of his presidency, indeed, Trump would come more to resemble Putin in political practice and predilection than he resembled any of his recent American presidential predecessors.”
RELATED STORY: Fiona Hill: Putin tried to warn Trump he would go nuclear, but Trump didn’t understand the warning
In the Times piece, Hill offers more thoughts on that basic assessment, describing how “He would constantly tell world leaders that he deserved a redo of his first two years,” because, “He’d say that his first two years had been taken away from him because of the ‘Russia hoax.’ And he’d say that he wanted more than two terms.”
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When interviewer Robert Draper suggests Trump was joking, Hill responded, “Except that he clearly meant it.”
Hill also heard David Cornstein, Trump’s ambassador to Hungary and a longtime friend, say similar things about Trump’s ambitions. “Ambassador Cornstein openly talked about the fact that Trump wanted the same arrangement as Viktor Orban”—the prime minister of Hungary, one of the autocratic leaders Trump so admires—Hill told Draper, “where he could push the margins and stay in power without any checks and balances.”
But it was the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol that fully clarified for Hill who Trump is and what his ambitions are. “I saw the thread,” she told Draper. “The thread connecting the Zelensky phone call to Jan. 6. And I remembered how, in 2020, Putin had changed Russia’s Constitution to allow him to stay in power longer. This was Trump pulling a Putin.”
Yeah. And U.S. institutions and democracy were strong enough to withstand it once, but we can’t afford a second attempt. Especially since, as Hill also told Draper, “Putin has been there for 22 years. He’s the same guy, with the same people around him. And he’s watching everything”—everything that happens through U.S. elections and changing administrations.
As Hill warned during her impeachment testimony, “President Putin and the Russian security services operate like a super PAC. They deploy millions of dollars to weaponize our own political opposition research and false narratives. When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces as they seek to divide us against each other, degrade our institutions, and destroy the faith of the American people in our democracy.” Donald Trump is at this point Putin’s eager ally in doing that.
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Remember Miya Ponsetto? The woman who tackled a Black teen when she lost her phone strikes plea deal
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The California woman shown on video tackling the teen son of Grammy Award-winning trumpeter Keyon Harrold after falsely accusing the child of stealing her phone pleaded guilty to the heaviest charge against her, a felony hate crime. Miya Ponsetto pleaded guilty specifically to the charge of unlawful imprisonment in the second degree as a hate crime though she was also charged with aggravated harassment, District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced on Monday.
“Under the terms of the plea, Ponsetto will be required for two years to abide by the terms of her California probation stemming from a separate case, continue counseling, and avoid further interaction with the criminal justice system,” the district attorney’s office wrote in a news release. “Under the terms of the plea, Ponsetto will be required for two years to abide by the terms of her California probation stemming from a separate case, continue counseling, and avoid further interaction with the criminal justice system.”
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It’s only if Ponsetto doesn’t comply with the terms of her plea agreement that she faces state prison; the term would be between one-and-one-third and four years—a leniency she hasn’t exactly earned.
Ponsetto had three open cases in California in 2020 alone, Naomi Puzzello, a spokeswoman with the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, confirmed last year. Ponsetto was charged with public intoxication when she, her mother, and a third person were involved in a physical altercation at a hotel on Feb. 28. She was charged with driving under the influence when a witness saw her drive away from a supermarket “clearly intoxicated” and responding officers spotted open containers of alcohol and marijuana in her car on May 29, Puzello said. Ponsetto was also charged with driving with a suspended license and, in a separate incident, resisting arrest, driving under the influence, and driving with a suspended license.
When questioned specifically about attacking the Black teen on Dec. 26, 2020, at Arlo SoHo hotel in Manhattan, she told journalist Gayle King: “I’m a 22-year-old girl. How is one girl accusing a guy about a phone a crime?”
King pushed Ponsetto on her defense. “You have to at least understand your actions that day,” the journalist said. “You seem to have attacked this teenager about the phone. And then it turned out he didn’t even have your phone. That’s the thing. You’re 22 years old, but you’re old enough to know better.” At that point, Ponsetto, seated next to her attorney, extended her hand forward and said, “Enough.”
District Attorney Bragg said in a statement: “Ms. Ponsetto displayed outrageous behavior. As a Black man, I have personally experienced racial profiling countless times in my life and I sympathize with the young man victimized in this incident. This plea ensures appropriate accountability for Ms. Ponsetto by addressing underlying causes for her behavior and ensuring this conduct does not reoccur.”
Both Ponsetto and the hotel later admitted their regrets in the incident, Ponsetto saying in her interview with King that she “could have approached the situation different.” The hotel apologized to Harrold and his son days after the initial incident in a statement emailed to Daily Kos.
“We’re deeply disheartened about the recent incident of baseless accusation, prejudice, and assault against an innocent guest of Arlo hotel,” the hotel said in the statement.
“In investigating the incident further, we’ve learned that the manager on duty promptly called the police regarding the woman’s conduct and that hotel security intervened to prevent further violence; still, more could have been done to de-escalate the dispute.
“No Arlo guest—or any person—should be subject to this kind of behavior. We want to apologize to Mr. Harrold and his son for this inexcusable experience, and have reached out to them directly to express our sincere regret and to offer help in dealing with this traumatic event.”
Civil rights attorney Ben Crump represents Harrold and his son in a lawsuit against the hotel, which initially allowed Ponsetto to make demands of the teen despite her having checked out of the hotel and no longer being a guest.
“When Miya Ponsetto couldn’t find her cell phone, she defaulted to blaming and assaulting an innocent Black teenager and was aided by the Arlo Hotel staff, who backed her up instead of defending their Black guest,” Crump said in his statement. “It’s highly disappointing that she was permitted to plea down, only receiving probation. We won’t change the culture until we hold people accountable for their outrageously bad behavior.”
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Kansas' Democratic governor signs GOP-pushed bill rolling back pro-immigrant ordinance
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In a major disappointment to immigrant families and advocates in the state, Kansas’ Democratic governor this week signed Republican-pushed legislation that majorly rolls back a Wyandotte County ordinance that sought to limit collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration officials.
The Safe and Welcoming Act had passed the Unified Government of Wyandotte County’s Board of Commissioners by a 6-4 vote just this past February, and had the support of a wide coalition of groups across the state. It’s a fact that this type of policy makes communities safer. The legislation also opened up municipal cards for local residents who lack IDs.
But Gov. Laura Kelly’s likely GOP opponent this fall, state attorney general Derek Schmidt, has supported legislation that would roll back the ordinance. The Kansas City Star reported Kelly initially seemed to oppose the bill pushed by Schmidt and Republicans, but apparently flipped, approving the bill on Monday. Advocates slammed it as “political cowardice” and “moral betrayal,” the report continued.
The report notes that if Kelly had decided to veto the bill, GOP lawmakers would’ve likely had enough votes to override her. Kelly in fact did veto three other bills this week, but not this one. “Kelly’s decision was met with immediate outrage from Wyandotte County activists,” including Metro Organization for Racial and Economic Equity organizer Marcus Winn, The Kansas City Star said.
“It’s clear that there are Kansas political leaders from both parties guided more by personal ambition than the common good of our state,” Winn said in the report. “Moving forward, we plan to remind all our elected officials, regardless of party or position, that they work for the people and hold them accountable.”
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The report also notes that the legislation passed this week would “clarify that those ID cards could still be issued but couldn’t be used to satisfy state law for identification purposes, including voting.” It’s unclear if this means that lawmakers were pushing the right-wing trope that undocumented immigrants vote, but just to be clear, they can’t vote. In fact, it’s the GOP that’s frequently behind shocking reports of voter fraud.
Local residents had expressed optimism and joy when Wyandotte County passed the ordinance in January. Advocates for Immigrant Rights and Reconciliation organizer Yazmin Bruno Valdez told KCUR at the time that one-fifth of residents in the region lack a photo ID. She’s lacked one for two decades.
“I felt very like, you know, like not a part of society. I felt like there were several things that I couldn’t do,” she said in the report. “When I had to go to my senior prom, they didn’t let me in ’cause I didn’t have an ID. Despite being a student at my school, I needed a driver’s license or a state-issued ID. That was something I just didn’t have as an immigrant. And these are just small snippets of my life, small snippets of everybody’s life here in Wyandotte County.”
Advocates in states like Texas have successfully enacted enhanced library cards that can be used as IDs. “That’s something that we need, whether we need to pick up a prescription or pick up our kids from our schools, get a library card, simple everyday activities,” Valdez continued to KCUR. “Without an ID, we can’t get these things done.”
Kansas state Sen. David Haley, a Democrat, called Kelly’s approval “a real kick in the teeth,”The Topeka Capital-Journal reported. “I understand it is an election year but that’s a kick in the teeth.” Kelly had notably defeated the notoriously anti-immigrant Kris Kobach in 2018. But this move unfortunately appears to be the latest in Democratic lawmakers apparently succumbing to GOP-pushed fears and narratives during election season.
While President Biden’s decision to end Stephen Miller’s debunked policy that has for more than two years used the pandemic as an excuse to stomp on U.S. asylum law is a just and moral decision, two Senate Democrats who are up for reelection, Mark Kelly and Maggie Hassan, are among those who have joined a group of Senate Republicans to delay the president’s action. Hassan, who represents New Hampshire, also released a widely-panned ad from the southern border:
Another Senate Democrat who is up for reelection, Raphael Warnock, is not part of the group that introduced legislation to delay the end of Title 42, but did release a statement opposing the Biden administration’s action. “Your statement is deeply concerning to us, considering our commitment to supporting policies that ensure the humane treatment of migrant communities,” Latino and immigrant groups told the senator, in a statement reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.