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As Daily Kos has covered in the past, The Walt Disney Co. is finally taking a stand against the hateful, discriminatory Don’t Say Gay law in Florida. While at first the company’s response to the legislation was quite lackluster, CEO Bob Chapek has recently come around and promised more advocacy and action to repeal the legislation, in addition to putting a pause on all political donations in the state. Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis seems unconcerned with Disney’s promise to better the state of Florida.

Sadly, this hateful legislation is not an outlier. We’ve seen countless anti-trans bills pop up around the nation, as well as several copycat bills eerily similar to the Don’t Say Gay legislation. We’re also seeing conservatives push the grooming angle in a way that’s deeply reminiscent of decades past. With all of this in mind, Charlee Disney, an heir to Disney, recently publicly came out as transgender and promised to do more to help their community. 

RELATED: Family service investigators are resigning instead of doing Greg Abbott’s dirty work

Disney, who is thirty years old and works as a biology teacher, told the Los Angeles Times they’ve been openly trans for the last several years, but came out more publicly last month while at a gala for the Human Rights Campaign (HRC). 

“I don’t call senators or take action,” Disney told the outlet, saying they felt they hadn’t done much to help the community previously, and knew they could be doing more as an activist. Disney pledged a donation of $250,000 to the HRC, and from there, Disney’s parents (Roy P. Disney and his wife, Sheri Disney) promised to double their child’s donation. 

While Charlee is very brave for coming out, and no one is ever obligated to do so, it’s also worth addressing that privilege exists across identities. Clearly, the Disney family is extremely well-positioned both financially and socially, and not standing up for your community in spite of your privilege is a choice. It’s great they’ve come around and are working to fight this legislation in a real way now, but it’s important to keep in mind that, say, a trans sex worker or a trans unhoused person does not have the same access to living peacefully.

In the bigger picture, the Tennessee Senate recently passed two bills seeking to oppress and discriminate against trans folks, as reported by the Tennessean. Both bills are sponsored by Republican Sen. Joey Hensley and both target trans girls who want to participate in girls’ sports. SB 2153 bans trans women from participating in sports at the college level and SB 1861 establishes financial consequences for public schools that opt out of determining a student’s gender as assigned at birth when it comes to what sports team they can play on. 

He admitted he did not discuss the legislation with any trans people. He also admitted he does not know of situations in Tennessee that the bills would actually address.

If you’re thinking, “Wait, doesn’t Tennessee already have anti-trans legislation signed into law?” It does! These bills are efforts to make it even harder for trans people. 

Times are dark right now when it comes to trans rights, but people are still fighting. For example, as highlighted by the Alabama Reporter, families in Alabama have already filed a federal lawsuit over the anti-trans law in their state banning safe, age-appropriate, gender-affirming health care for trans youth. The suit alleges that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution by denying trans youth health care, the absence of which will lead to mental and physical distress.

Republican Governor Kay Ivey signed the legislation into law last Friday, so it’s heartening to see the suit move quickly, though we continue to have a long fight ahead of us. 

Sign the petition: Demand the Senate pass the Equality Act and protect the LGBTQ community from discrimination.

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Today on The Brief, my and Kerry Eleveld’s weekly show/podcast about politics, our guest is Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters, and the nation’s foremost expert on the pernicious effects Fox News has on our democracy. 

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You can watch the show live right here on Tuesdays at 1:30 PM PT/4:30 PM ET, while the podcast version goes live Wednesday mornings at all the usual places, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify. A full list of places to download the show is available here.

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Texas Gov. Greg Abbott’s retribution for the Biden administration’s just decision to stop enforcing Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum Title 42 policy at the southern border is resulting in massive delays for commercial truckers, rotting food, and worries from businesses leaders that disrupted trade will lead to empty shelves.

The right-wing official last week claimed that he would forcibly bus asylum-seekers from Texas to Washington, D.C., to punish the administration for its correct move to end use of the white supremacist policy. This was a cruel, disgusting stunt that Abbott then quickly backed down from, stating that it would actually be voluntary. Thanks for the free rides, Greg.

But in another part of his retaliation, Abbott announced that commercial vehicles would have to undergo additional inspection at ports of entry, even though these vehicles are already inspected by the federal government. But even these added checks are a stunt, because The Texas Tribune reports troopers can only do mechanical checks, not cargo checks.

RELATED STORY: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott peddles horrific plan to kidnap immigrants, then backtracks

The unnecessary checks have now resulted in delays lasting for as long as several days, and warnings that consumers may soon pay the price of Abbott’s politicking.

“’One of our customers canceled the order because we didn’t deliver on time,’ said Modesto Guerra, sales manager for Sterling Fresh Inc., which imports broccoli from Central Mexico via the Pharr bridge before shipping it to the Midwest and East Coast,” The Texas Tribune reported in another recent piece. One Mexican trucker told a Spanish-language outlet that would normally make “two crossings into the U.S. a day,” the report continued. “Now, he’d be lucky to have one or two a week given the long delays at the bridges.”

“We are losing just as much as them,” he said in the report. “When they start needing more produce, the prices are going to go up.

The Pharr-Reynosa International Bridge has been the site of a protest by Mexican truckers, who have blocked traffic in both directions over Abbott’s shenanigans. We’ll see if mainstream media touts and promotes this protest as much as the one at the northern border. In one photo shared by The Monitor reporter Dina Arévalo, a handful of state vehicles and one commercial truck are seen on an otherwise empty port that the reporter said is usually one of the busiest in the nation. 

“For the 6th day, @GovAbbott has disrupted trade, which will affect businesses & lead to higher prices,” tweeted Rep. Joaquin Castro. “These political stunts have already militarized the border & harmed Texas guard members. Now, he’s going to make it harder for families to put food on the table.”

Similar warnings came from conservative Democrat Rep. Vicente Gonzalez, who told The Texas Tribune that Abbott’s “unnecessary secondary inspections are killing business on the border.” Both Gonzalez and Rep. Henry Cuellar had previously joined Republicans in opposing the Biden administration’s Title 42 decision.

Abbott’s Democratic opponent for governor, former Rep. Beto O’Rourke, shared a nearly 20-minute video from the Laredo-Colombia Solidarity International Bridge. Behind him was a very visible line of trucks, all stuck due to Abbott’s policies. Another video shared by O’Rourke showed truck after truck after truck. “This is inflation,” he tweeted. “Higher prices at the grocery store. A supply chain crisis that is killing businesses along the border. This is what Greg Abbott is doing to Texas.”

A concerned Texas International Produce Association (TIPA) issued a letter to Abbott on Friday that complained of hours-long delays, noting lines “at a stand-still” and that “many carriers and brokers are reporting hours of non-movement.” TIPA President Dante Galeazzi said he fears that business will get sick of Abbott’s bullshit (my words, not his) and move operations to Mexico or neighboring states.

”Warehouses have staff sitting idle, with no trucks to unload,” Galeazzi said. “Buyers in other parts of the country cannot understand why their product is not available. US trucking companies are losing money as they sit around for days with no loads to haul. I have even heard from a member that a trucking company is refusing to send trucks south of San Antonio out of concern there will be no cargo available. This is destroying our business and the reputation of Texas.”

But that’s Greg Abbott, who has sunk $2 billion in state taxpayer money (and counting) into his Operation Lone Star border scheme, which has been such a supposed success that the governor’s office won’t hand over all the data proving it’s been such a success.

What we can say the Operation Lone Star border scheme has done is continue to illegally imprison asylum-seekers and other migrants without any charges (which he doesn’t give a shit about) and force deployed soldiers to deplorable conditions. Some soldiers tied to the operation have also died, some by suicide. But Abbott’s reaction was to blame President Biden and to scapegoat a department leader. 

“If a person is a soldier or a migrant, he doesn’t care,” El Paso Rep. Veronica Escobar recently told Border Report. “For him, they represent an opportunity to advance his politics of hate and cruelty. He’s not focused on solutions or on working with Congress to really help Texans; he’s focused on winning (re-election) at any cost.”

RELATED STORIES: Escobar says Abbott’s plan to get asylum-seekers out of Texas is more ‘politics of hate and cruelty’

Texas refuses to be transparent about Operation Lone Star. Probably because it’s all a scheme

Texas’ corrupt attorney general is using the courts to sabotage Biden’s immigration agenda

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The three former Minneapolis cops convicted of violating George Floyd’s federal civil rights turned down plea deals in the state case against them, the Minnesota attorney general’s office told CNN after The Associated Press reported the news on Monday. Tou Thao, J. Alexander Kueng, and Thomas Lane were charged with aiding and abetting manslaughter and murder when they assisted their former peer, Derek Chauvin, in responding to a call regarding a twenty-dollar bill that a teen clerk suspected was fake. 

Chauvin ended up kneeling on Floyd’s neck for more than nine minutes in a murder—recorded in a witness video that went viral—on May 25, 2020, outside of the Cup Foods store in Minneapolis. Kueng held Floyd down with Lane, while Thao blocked bystanders from providing Floyd with any aid. The office of Attorney General Keith Ellison told CNN the accused men were offered plea deals on March 22, but prosecutors would not detail the specifics of those deals.

RELATED: Three ex-cops who watched Derek Chauvin murder George Floyd convicted of violating his civil rights

Earl Gray, Lane’s attorney, told The Associated Press the delayed federal sentencing hampered his ability to negotiate a deal. The news wire reported that all three former cops remain out on bail with no sentencing date scheduled. Hennepin County Judge Peter Cahill, the presiding judge in the case, told lead prosecutor Matthew Frank to file the proposed plea deals after the jury is seated, a process that is expected to take about three of the estimated eight trial weeks, according to the AP.

The offered pleas came up during a hearing Cahill held primarily to determine whether the officers’ state trial would be livestreamed. Federal court rules prevented the option in the ex-officers’ federal case, but the decision rests with Cahill in the state case. The judge allowed Chauvin’s trial to be livestreamed in a rare exception to normal court rules because of the pandemic.

“COVID-19 is less of a pandemic and more of an endemic issue now,” Cahill told the AP. He also emphasized that while he has publicly stated he believes televised trials should be allowed, that is not the rule of the court yet and he is “still sworn to uphold the law.”

Hennepin County Judge Regina Chu told The Star Tribune she initially opposed allowing a livestream of the trial of former Brooklyn Center officer Kimberly Potter, but she changed her position because of the pandemic. Chu wrote in a court order that her decision to allow the livestream was “based solely on concerns for public health and safety given the ongoing pandemic.” After the trial, she told the newspaper that she didn’t regret the decision and that cameras weren’t disruptive to Potter’s or Chauvin’s trials.  

“I thought it was appropriate in the two cases and it went very smoothly, but I’m going to leave it to others as to what the parameters should be,” Chu said. “I forgot they were even there.”

Potter was ultimately convicted and sentenced to two years in the death of Daunte Wright, despite claims she was reaching for her Taser when she accidentally shot Wright with a gun. Chu called the case “the saddest” she has had in 20 years. 

The judge turned in a letter announcing her retirement on Feb. 15, three days before she sentenced Potter, The Star Tribune reported. Chu could have pursued a re-election bid for another six years on the bench, but Minnesota’s mandatory retirement age of 70 years old would have forced her to retire only a year and a half into her term, according to The Star Tribune.

She said her fellow judges have been “so supportive” during and after the Potter trial. Cahill, too, seems to be relying on his peers and other court administrators, specifically regarding whether he will allow the live recording of the state trial for Thao, Lane, and Kueng. The judge said he wouldn’t make a decision until the Minnesota Judicial Council meets on Thursday to weigh in.

Attorney Leita Walker, who represents several media organizations including the AP, asked Cahill to allow video coverage. “The public is just not going to understand why they got to watch that one gavel to gavel and they won’t be able to watch this one,” Walker said.

The state trial for Thao, Lane, and Kueng is set to begin in June, the AP reported.

RELATED STORY: ‘Mob rule and politics’ are to blame for indictments in Floyd’s death, defense attorneys claim

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In poll after poll over the past year, President Joe Biden’s economic plans have proven enormously popular, yet the same polls showed that barely any Americans knew what they were.

New polling from the progressive polling consortium Navigator Research finds that less than half of Americans are hearing about Biden’s economic plans. Just 15% said they had heard “a lot,” 31% reported hearing “some,” and 54% said either not much or nothing at all.

Navigator writes, “Independents and economically persuadable Americans are the least likely to have heard about the plan (65% and 67%, respectively).”

At the same time, the polling showed the economic plans of Biden and Democrats hitting an “all-time high level of support.” The Navigator question centers around Democratic efforts to expand Medicare for seniors to include hearing coverage, lower health care costs by allowing Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices, and invest in clean energy like wind and solar power.

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But the problem all along with Biden’s Build Back Better agenda has been the fact that the massive economic package is simply too broad to message in discrete ways that were easy for most Americans to digest.

Democrats have structured several bills like this for a strategic reason: They needed to pack everything into a budget bill that could be passed by 50 Democratic senators alone, because Republicans were never going to back an economic agenda that helped Americans and was so broadly popular.

In other words, Democrats were doing their level best to deliver actual legislation that would help working families across the country. But as we all know, two recalcitrant Democratic senators have singlehandedly stymied the promise of improving the lives of tens of millions of Americans.

So it’s time for a total reset. We are now in the thick of election season, and the White House absolutely must restructure their legislative priorities in a way that shifts the burden of passage away from Democrats (48 of whom are trying to help Americans) and onto to Republicans (some 50 of whom have proven they have no desire to help Americans).

Practically speaking, that means the White House would pick several enormously popular policies—such as capping insulin prices and the child tax credit that recently expired—and take them up individually in the Senate, where they will automatically require 60 votes to pass. Moving away from the 50-vote reconciliation scheme to the 60 votes required to overcome a GOP filibuster shifts the burden of passage from Democrats to Republicans in an electoral year.

As former Obama Press Secretary Robert Gibbs told The Focus Group podcast this week, “Look, if I was them, I would pick a fight on a few of these things. So you’re not going to get a $3.5 trillion piece of legislation, get into a fight about a larger prescription drug pricing bill, right. Run the vote on that.”

Exactly: Run the vote and get congressional Republicans voting against some very popular items, likely in lock step or close to it.

Importantly, all of the issues mentioned above can be framed around an effort to address voters’ No. 1 concern right now: inflation. The child tax credit, for instance, is an effort to help families who are struggling to pay for the rising costs of food, gas prices, and child care.

Capping insulin prices at $35 per month has the benefit of already being in process. House Democrats passed the Affordable Insulin Now Act two weeks ago, with 193 Republicans voting against it—nearly the entire GOP caucus.

Despite the bill’s unanimous Democratic support, a CBS News article summed up the next steps in the Senate this way:

For the legislation to pass Congress, 10 Republican senators would have to vote in favor. Democrats acknowledge they don’t have an answer for how that’s going to happen.

That’s where the messaging comes in: Democrats shouldn’t be answering for why Republicans won’t provide a mere 10 votes to pass popular bills through the Senate. When a reporter asks the question, Senate Democrats should respond, “Why don’t you ask Republican senators why they won’t vote for the bill?”

Senate Democrats must constantly drive home the fact that Republicans are filibustering these very popular common-sense items. But in order to do so, they must have single-issue bills and then run the vote in the Senate rather than strategically trying to attach them to some bigger bill.

Yes, it’s going to require a little showmanship and messaging discipline on the part of Democrats. But if the White House were driving the message from the top, it would trickle down through Congress and perhaps all the way into the districts and states that will ultimately decide who controls Congress in November.

The other benefit of the White House leading the fight is that it gives President Biden a chance to be out there championing policies that matter to working Americans—people he genuinely cares about. In both polling and focus groups alike, Americans constantly say they don’t hear enough from Biden, they don’t know what he’s doing, etc.

If Democrats and the White House were all singing from the same song sheet on several popular items, it would create a self-reinforcing echo chamber. Suddenly Biden wouldn’t seem so absent from the conversation because the White House messaging would be reverberating through Congress.  

Election season has begun in earnest, and Democrats must adjust to it in the legislative arena. Every day spent talking about Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona is a bad news day for Democrats and the White House.

If the White House sets its sights on two or three items specifically designed to help Americans weather inflation and then makes a spectacle of them, that would provide congressional Democrats with the contrast they need to prosecute an electoral campaign against Republicans and the big-money interests that control them.

One of Biden’s items, by the way, could be student debt relief, which the president could do by executive order. And if that executive action ends up in the courts, it’s another fight worth having on behalf of Americans struggling to emerge from crushing debt and the nation’s broken student loan system.   

On the Focus Group podcast, host Sarah Longwell noted that student debt cancellation comes up “all the time” in the Democratic focus groups. “Especially among young voters, nothing comes up more than that,” said Longwell, who routinely conducts the groups.

In short, Democrats need to show some fight, and to do so they must restructure their legislative battles in the Senate so the main feature becomes the contrast between Democrats fighting for working Americans versus Republicans protecting the interests of wealthy individuals and corporations. 

And by the way, if you want to see a real loser at the polls, GOP Sen. Rick Scott’s plan to raise taxes on roughly 100 million working Americans garners 27% support and 59% opposition in the latest Navigator survey.

That dystopian hellscape of a plan offers the perfect contrast for Democrats. Let Republicans fight over whether or not they would actually enact Scott’s 11-point plan if they regained their majorities. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet to articulate an alternative vision—Scott’s is the only one in writing. 

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GOP majority states are taking jab after jab on abortion rights. States across the country are passing their own versions of Heartbeat Bills or abortion bans that not only limit when abortions are possible but imprison doctors who perform them. While Texas has made headlines for its ban, Oklahoma has taken its ban even further.

Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt on Tuesday signed a bill that not only bans abortions but threatens those who perform abortions with prison time. The legislation, HB 4327, bans doctors in the state from performing abortions no matter how early in the pregnancy it is. The only exception would be if an abortion is necessary for saving a pregnant woman’s life. There is no exception for rape or incest.

“I promised Oklahomans that I would sign every pro-life bill that hits my desk and that’s what we’re doing today,” Stitt said. “We want Oklahoma to be the most pro-life state in the country. We want to outlaw abortion in the state of Oklahoma.”

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The bill “in support of protecting lives of unborn children in Oklahoma,” was first passed in the Senate last year and the House earlier this month. In addition to banning abortion, it threatens health care providers with up to 10 years in prison and a $100,000 fine, The Washington Post reported.

Oklahoma legislators have been after abortion for some time, partially due to an increase in abortion-related travel in the state. Last month, an Oklahoma Senate committee passed five anti-abortion measures, including one that barred abortion 30 days after conception, a time in which most pregnancies are not yet detected, the Associated Press reported.

The increase in abortion travel is in part to other state laws banning abortion. Daily Kos reported that Oklahoma saw a nearly 2,500% increase in Texas patients compared to the previous year after Texas’ law was enacted.

Unlike other states, the ban does not have an emergency clause that allows a bill to take effect as soon as the governor signs it. Instead, it is scheduled to take effect this summer—if the courts do not first block it.

“The ban signed today is cruel and if it takes effect this summer, will have a devastating impact on people in Oklahoma, neighboring Texans, as well as an entire region facing attacks on their rights to abortion access,” Melissa Fowler, the National Abortion Federation’s chief program officer, said in a statement, according to Reuters.

According to The Washington Post, if Oklahoma stops providing abortions, women in Texas and Oklahoma will have to seek the procedures in Arkansas, Kansas, or New Mexico. Clinics in those states are reportedly already fully booked.

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The South Dakota House of Representatives has voted to impeach state Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg in a 36-31 vote. Ravnsborg, a Republican, struck and killed a man while driving home from a Republican fundraiser on Sept.  12, 2020 but didn’t report the death until the next day, claiming that he believed his car hit a deer.

Investigators were immediately suspicious of that delay, both because it meant that Ravnsborg’s blood alcohol levels weren’t tested until long after the accident, and because Highway Patrol officers investigating the crash found the victim’s glasses inside Ravnsborg’s car. After nearly a year of delay, Ravnsborg pled no contest to misdemeanor charges, but faced no jail time. Ravnsborg had a prior history of traffic offenses and of using his position to avoid tickets when pulled over. A later investigation found evidence that he was reading a conspiracy website on his phone while driving.

Ravnsborg’s support inside the Republican-controlled House, however, continued to crumble, and when “new evidence” was presented that clarified the graphic details of “the length of time [the victim’s] body was on the AG’s car with his head inside of the AG’s car’s window,” the House reversed a March decision not to impeach. State Rep. Charlie Hoffman said the presentation by Highway Patrol officers included “irrefutable evidence” that Ravnsborg “knew exactly what he hit.” Republican Gov. Kristi Noem also called for Ravnsborg’s impeachment.

Ravnsborg will now be temporarily removed from office while the state Senate prepares for his impeachment trial. A two-thirds majority of senators will be necessary to convict him. Ravnsborg has been belligerent in his defenses, insisting both that he truly did not know that he had struck his victim and that calls for his impeachment are politically motivated.

RELATED STORIES:

GOP lawmakers consider impeaching Attorney General Jason Ravnsborg

Republican Attorney General who killed a man with his car has to answer for new evidence

South Dakota attorney general pleads to misdemeanor, avoids jail time for killing man with his car

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Conservatives will do anything to attempt to control or even disrupt elections under the guise of voter fraud, aka the Big Lie and Stop the Steal.

Make no mistake: There’s a grassroots movement brewing to disenfranchise, intimidate, and criminalize Black and brown voters across the nation. If voting rights activists don’t step up, they’ll get away with it.

A prime example is taking place in Texas, where former Houston Police Department Capt. Mark Aguirre ran air conditioner repairman David Lopez off the road, held him at gunpoint, and searched and stole his truck—all because Aguirre believed Lopez was part of a massive conspiracy of secreting 750,000 fraudulent mail-in ballots, Bolts reports.

RELATED STORY: Another Republican caught voting twice in the same election. The latest is Trump aide Matt Mowers

Last year, Lopez filed a civil lawsuit against GOP activist Dr. Steven Hotze for his part in paying for and planning the violent investigation of Lopez, which resulted in Aguirre’s arrest. Hotze runs the nonprofit Liberty Center for God and Country.

According to court documents, Aguirre told police he was part of a “group of private citizens called ‘Liberty Center,’” and that the group was “conducting a civilian investigation into the alleged ballot scheme.”

According to the arrest affidavit, Aguirre told police Lopez was “using Hispanic children to sign the ballots because the children’s fingerprints would not appear in any database.”

Police officers on the scene when Lopez was stopped and searched found nothing inside the truck besides air conditioner parts and tools—exactly the kinds of items Lopez would be expected to have.

The Houston Chronicle reports that Aguirre, who was fired from the police department in 2003 after a raid gone bad, was indicted and charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. During his indictment, the Harris County District Attorney’s office claimed Aguirre was paid “a total of $266,400 by the Houston-based Liberty Center for God and Country, with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.”

“He [Aguirre] crossed the line from dirty politics to commission of a violent crime and we are lucky no one was killed … His alleged investigation was backward from the start—first alleging a crime had occurred and then trying to prove it happened,” Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said.

Of course, Hotze’s camp denies being behind Aguirre’s investigation.

“We would never endorse that, saying go pull someone over, put a gun up to their head and make them open up their truck,” Jared Woodfill, an attorney for Hotze, has said.

But in early April, a gala organized by Hotze and his group was held in Houston to raise money to:

• Hire private detectives to investigate, identify, and expose the criminal vote fraud scheme in Harris County and across Texas.

• Ensure that poll watchers are recruited, hired, and trained for the upcoming elections.

• Fund legal defensive and offensive efforts to Stop Vote Fraud.

• Broadcast radio messages offering rewards to those who expose individuals involved in vote fraud.

Speakers at the “Freedom Gala” were listed as conspiracy theorist and Big Lie guru Mike Lindell, CEO of MyPillow; GOP Party Chair Cindy Siegel; and Texas GOP Attorney General Ken Paxton.

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Paxton has a long history of working to turn back results in the 2020 presidential election, and Bolts reports that the attorney general has increased pressure to prosecute more voting-related cases, many of which involve Black and brown voters.  

The frightening thing is that it’s not just Texas launching militia-style voter fraud Gestapo.

In January, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a militarized Office of Election Crimes and Security department that would report directly to him. And in Georgia, Gov. Brian Kemp signed a law making it illegal to hand out food and water to voters standing in lines.

Gilda Daniels, litigation director for the Advancement Project and author of Uncounted: The Crisis of Voter Suppression in America tells The Appeal, “Whether it’s an armed police officer patrolling a polling place or just having a police car with lights blaring in front of a polling place, all can serve as a form of voter intimidation and certainly can have a chilling effect, particularly in Black and brown communities.”

Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of Common Cause Texas, tells the Bolts the “possibilities are kind of endless for how that could go really badly” when someone is hired to investigate based on beliefs of a stolen election.

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Maryland has become the latest state to take steps to protect its population from the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, as is expected to happen this summer. State legislators expanded abortion rights by overriding Republican Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto over the weekend.

The new Maryland law expands which medical providers can perform abortions, allowing nurse practitioners, nurse midwives, and trained physician assistants in addition to doctors. It also calls for most insurance providers to cover abortion without deductibles or other costs, and puts $3.5 million into a new training program with the mandate to “expand the number of health care professionals with abortion care training and increase the racial and ethnic diversity among health care professionals with abortion care training.”

Maryland isn’t the only state making recent moves to shore up reproductive rights, though.

RELATED STORY: The forced birthers who’ve taken over the Supreme Court, Republican Party are not ‘pro-life’

Last week, Colorado passed the Reproductive Health Equity Act, which will ensure that the basic rights guaranteed by Roe continue in the state. “In the State of Colorado, the serious decision to start or end a pregnancy with medical assistance will remain between a person, their doctor, and their faith,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a statement.

“This bill simply maintains the status quo regardless of what happens at the federal level and preserves all existing constitutional rights and obligations,” Polis specified.

In Michigan, where a 1931 abortion ban is still on the books and could be enforced after the Supreme Court overturns Roe, a Republican-controlled state legislature means there’s no chance legislators will protect reproductive rights. Instead, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer is suing in an effort to get the state Supreme Court to overturn the state ban.

If Roe is overturned with the state ban still in effect, Whitmer tweeted as she announced the lawsuit, “nearly 2.2 million women lose access to legal abortion. Let me put that into perspective for you. They lose their reproductive freedom, economic freedom, and are denied the right to chart their own destiny.

”No matter what happens to Roe, I am going to fight like hell and use all the tools I have as governor to ensure reproductive freedom is protected,” she added. “Today in court, I represent all those who deserve the freedom to choose their own future. That’s a fight worth having.”

Planned Parenthood and the American Civil Liberties Union have also filed a lawsuit seeking to block the 1931 law from being enforced.

This shouldn’t be necessary, though. The Maryland law actually expanding abortion access would be a good thing even without the looming threat from the Trump-McConnell Supreme Court. But the purely defensive move from Colorado and the Hail Mary effort from Whitmer should not be necessary, and would not be if Republicans had not shattered norms by first holding one Supreme Court seat open for close to a year of then-President Barack Obama’s term and then rushing to fill another seat after voting had already started in the 2020 elections.

RELATED STORIES:

GOP states move from banning surgical abortions to focusing on the pill, too

The Trump-packed Supreme Court will toss Roe: Blue states, providers scramble to fill the gaps

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It’s incredibly difficult for me to understand a world where Senate candidate Herschel Walker—a man who’s touted a spray that kills COVID-19, lied about finishing college, and doubts evolution—could beat the incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock, senior pastor at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, a Democrat, and the first Black senator elected to serve in the state. But, as I’ve reported in the past, it’s Georgia, and anything’s possible.

Walker, who is fully supported by former President Donals Trump, has raised a ton of money for his campaign and is the current GOP frontrunner. The question that has currently popped up, among others, is: Where does all of his money come from?

According to Georgia Public Broadcasting (GPB), Walker’s personal financial disclosures are murky, which could make it challenging for voters to discern exactly who he’s aligned with.

RELATED STORY: ‘Why Are There Still Apes? Think About It’: Herschel Walker has his doubts about evolution

Walker’s net worth is between $29 million and $65 million, GPB reports. And his income from the end of 2020 to the end of 2021 was reportedly $4 million.

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One example of Walker’s possibly opaque reporting comes from Stephen Spaulding, a senior adviser at Common Cause, a government watchdog organization.

“According to this candidate’s financial disclosure form, no person or entity paid more than $5,000 for any services provided by him—at the same time, he disclosed an interest in an LLC valued at more than $25 million and that provides ‘business consulting and professional services,’” Spaulding told GPB. “This may raise questions for voters trying to screen for conflicts of interest who want to know more about who got what from the consulting and professional consulting firm that bears his name and pays him millions in shareholder income.”

Delaney Marsco, a senior legal counsel for ethics at the Campaign Legal Center told GPB that “The lack of sources of compensation over $5,000 definitely raises some red flags … It’s very odd that there would be somebody who has a consulting firm, has a lot of money from that consulting firm but is not reporting any clients that are paying over $5,000.”

In addition to this latest reporting, Walker has openly admitted to mental health issues, along with accusations from his ex-wife of domestic violence. According to the Associated Press, Walker also has had an ongoing issue inflating his wealth.

But beyond exaggerating or lying, Walker seems mostly unable to comprehend complex political concepts. He appeared on Fox News Sunday, calling himself a “warrior of God” and claiming that President Biden’s administration “decided to give up our energy and now we’re not energy independent anymore,” while clearly advocating for more oil drilling. Obviously, he hasn’t read or doesn’t believe the recent  climate report released on April 4 that essentially gives the planet three years to stop the worst of global warming, or else.

Meanwhile, although Walker was more than willing to chat up Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo Sunday morning, he skipped out on the first major GOP Senate debate on Saturday.

According to ArcaMax, Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black, one of Walker’s most well-known GOP opponents, called Walker’s no-show a “shame” and then brought up his domestic violence accusations, arguing that “Anyone who has put their hands on a woman, who has stalked, has threatened police with shootouts does not deserve to be in the U.S. Senate.”

Contractor and veteran Kelvin King added that “Mr. Walker not showing up and not making himself available to the people of Georgia is not serving the people of Georgia … This is an interview process and if you don’t show up for the interview process you don’t get the job.”