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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been in a pitched battle with his Republican legislature for weeks over his desire for a new gerrymander that eliminates Democratic House seats with large Black representation. On Monday, the legislature gave in, ceding the map drafting to DeSantis.

DeSantis vetoed an unusual “two-map” bill that had one option that would have carved up the 5th District, held by Democratic Rep. Al Lawson Jr. It was created last time around by the state Supreme Court during redistricting litigation and has a large Black population: about 43%. The map presented to DeSantis back in February would have a 35% Black population. In case that map didn’t pass muster with the state constitution, the legislation had a backup map that preserved the 5th District but made changes elsewhere and still shuffled the population into 18 Trump districts and 10 Biden districts. DeSantis rejected that plan, insistent on obliterating this and another heavily Black and Democratic district, the 10th.

Now the legislature has given up. Senate President Wilton Simpson and state House Speaker Chris Sprowls released a statement Monday indicating that the “Legislative reapportionment staff is not drafting or producing a map for introduction during the special session.” They essentially handed the project over to DeSantis, regardless of their responsibility for redistricting under the state constitution.

RELATED STORY: Morning Digest: Florida House GOP proposes ‘two-map’ bill for Congress, but will it soothe DeSantis?

“We are awaiting a communication from the Governor’s Office with a map that he will support. Our intention is to provide the Governor’s Office opportunities to present that information before House and Senate redistricting committees,” they continued. “We look forward to working with you next week as we complete our constitutional obligation for the 2022 redistricting process.”

Lawson blasted them for “caving to the intimidation of DeSantis and his desire to create additional Republican seats in Congress by eliminating minority-access districts.”

A map already drafted by DeSantis would eliminate the 5th District as well as the 10th, another Democratic district represented by Val Demings. About 28% of its population is Black. That map, critics and the legislature said, is a clear violation of the state constitution’s Fair Districts amendment, passed by voters in 2010. It requires lawmakers to give minority communities the ability to “elect representatives of their choice.”

That could be precisely what DeSantis has in mind: using the current makeup of both the state Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court to overthrow the state amendment and the federal Voting Rights Act, or what’s left of it after previous Supreme Court eviscerations. That’s what state Rep. Joseph Geller, the ranking Democrat on the House redistricting committee, told The Washington Post is going on.

Cecile Scoon, president of the League of Women Voters Florida, condemned the legislature’s cowardice. “It’s very disappointing to see them folding their cards and abdicating their high and honorable responsibility of creating a congressional map,” Scoon said. “They want to stay on the good side of a powerful leader. People are afraid to cross him.”

A former prominent Republican strategist in the state who left the party after Trump was elected had strong words. Mac Stipanovich condemned the state Republicans for “prostrating themselves” for DeSantis. “The legislature has abdicated its responsibility, the leaders in the Republican Party in the legislature have abandoned all principle. It’s just all about maintaining and acquiring power and holding on to office,” said Stipanovich. “What we’re witnessing is a mile marker on the road to one-man rule in Florida, at least for the time being.

“This decision is a function of two things by Republicans. Their ambition, and their fear of being primaried,” Stipanovich said. “DeSantis is as powerful in Florida as Trump was and still is among Republicans nationally. When that sort of thing happens, this is what you get. Gutless, spineless, sycophancy.”

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As Daily Kos continues to cover, Texas Republicans are stomping down hard on some of the most vulnerable people in the state: trans youth. While there is (sadly) much to cover when it comes to anti-trans legislation across the nation, Texas is in a somewhat unique circumstance when it comes to the supportive families of trans youth being investigated on grounds of child abuse.

As a review, we know that Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has directed state agencies to investigate families who support trans youth receiving gender-affirming, safe, and age-appropriate medical care. Abbott’s direction is based on an opinion—which is an analysis of existing law—from Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. Some families say they’ve already been investigated, but a handful of child welfare workers for Texas Child Protective Services (TCPS) told the Texas Tribune in an interview that they’ve already resigned or are actively looking for other work because they don’t want to bend their personal ethics and carry out dirty work on behalf of evil.

RELATED: Fox News is spewing fresh queerphobia with the latest grooming accusations against LGBTQ people

Most social workers who spoke to the Tribune did so anonymously for obvious reasons. It’s a deeply difficult choice, though. On the one hand, people don’t want to investigate into families and send the message to already vulnerable children that there is something potentially wrong with them or their home. On the other hand, by leaving these roles, others may come to fill their shoes, and they might not be as accepting or affirming. And for the workers, there’s also the reality that changing jobs is not an easy feat, especially not if you’re someone who lives with any number of marginalizations that could impact your hiring process. 

One worker, however, did speak to the Tribune on the record. Morgan Davis, an openly trans man, said he ultimately joined the agency to serve as an advocate for young people. He told the outlet that his supervisors, upon assigning him one of these cases, offered to reassign it, but Davis was conflicted. 

“If somebody was going to do it,” Davis told the outlet. “I’m glad it was me.” Davis went on to share that the person who reported the family in question didn’t even agree with the directive, but reported them because of their role as a mandated reporter. He visited once and reported that the family seemed loving and the home seemed safe and clean. He noted that he saw no evidence of abuse or neglect. But that doesn’t mean the family’s case is closed. 

As Davis explained to the Tribune, as well, the family’s lawyer didn’t see it as a potential comfort that a trans man would be doing the investigation, but rather that he condones it.

“It hit me like a thunderbolt,” Davis recalled, adding that by being there “for even a split second, a child could think they’ve done something wrong.”

Shortly after this, Davis resigned, and four other people in his unit have reportedly put in resignation notices, as well. They’re far braver than most Republicans in office will ever be, but it’s up to all of us to speak up in defense of trans youth.

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

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While Justice-designate Ketanji Brown Jackson was vowing to recuse from a Harvard affirmative action case the U.S. Supreme Court will hear next term, walking ethics violation Clarence Thomas was supposedly recovering from whatever undisclosed illness that had him hospitalized for a week, and presumably making plans for this, his first public appearance since the illness.
 

That’s not problematic at all, right? It’s just the Supreme Court justice whose wife was egging on a Trump insurrection just a little over a year ago, hanging out with a Trump-endorsed Senate candidate, in the middle of the campaign. The tweeter there is Walker’s campaign spokesperson, who followed up with typical Republican obnoxiousness: “If you are offended that two men who happen to be Black are conservative, you might be racist.” Because of course a Republican isn’t going to be bothered by obvious political corruption.

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The event at which Thomas decided to reappear was for Walker’s award from the Horatio Alger Association, on whose board Thomas sits as an honorary member. How that happened, how Walker—the confessed domestic abuser with violent tendencies that have put him in conflict with law enforcement—qualified for an award based on “perseverance, integrity, and a commitment to excellence,” is slightly mysterious.

That Thomas would pose for a photograph with him, which was then made public by his campaign staff, is less mysterious. Thomas is a rabid partisan, as rabid as his wife, who continues to thumb his nose at the very idea that Supreme Court justices should be bound by any kind of ethics concerns. Like any other Republicans, he pretends to be deeply hurt by the mere suggestion that he’s taking his politics to work every day.

Last September, he complained about the impression that he and his fellow conservatives were playing politics on the court. This, immediately after the court decided in an unsigned, unargued, unprincipled shadow docket ruling to let Texas’s unconstitutional abortion ban continue even as it was being challenged in the courts.

“I think the media makes it sound as though you are just always going right to your personal preference,” Thomas said, at Notre Dame University in Indiana. “So if they think you are anti-abortion or something personally, they think that’s the way you always will come out. They think you’re for this or for that. They think you become like a politician.

“That’s a problem. You’re going to jeopardize any faith in the legal institutions.”

Yes, it’s the media’s fault that the hyperpartisan Supreme Court is losing legitimacy with the American public. That people are talking about reforming the Supreme Court and making it accountable. “You can cavalierly talk about packing or stacking the Court. You can cavalierly talk about doing this or doing that. At some point the institution is going to be compromised,” Thomas said at an event last month. That event? At the foundation created by former Republican Senator Orrin Hatch in Salt Lake City.

“By doing this,” Thomas said, “you continue to chip away at the respect of the institutions that the next generation is going to need if they’re going to have civil society.”

Or you just have a coup and overturn Congress and the White House, sort of like the coup that Mitch McConnell and Donald Trump achieved at the Supreme Court, and you could call it “civil society” while you systematically impose fascism.

Listen and subscribe to Daily Kos Elections’ The Downballot podcast with David Nir and David Beard

The Supreme Court needs to be reformed. Clarence Thomas is Exhibit A of that need. Congress needs to impose ethics standards—it has deemed itself above the rules the rest of the judiciary has to abide by. Congress needs to expand the court.

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Some of the police officers attacked by the mob former President Donald Trump incited on Jan. 6, 2021 are only now regaining greater mobility in their bodies—461 days since the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.

But according to a new report by ABC, attorney for Trump John Eastman took a meeting with a Republican state assembly official in Wisconsin just a few weeks ago. While there, Eastman pushed the official to overturn the 2020 election results by “reclaiming” those electoral votes that went to President Joe Biden. 

RELATED STORY: Jan. 6 committee wrestling with criminal referral for Trump

The meeting was reportedly held on March 16 between Eastman and Robin Vos, the GOP speaker for the Wisconsin state assembly, as well as a number of pro-Trump activists, including right-wing activist Jefferson Davis. Davis has been a vocal advocate of election fraud conspiracy theories central to Trump’s push to overturn the 2020 results. 

Other attendees reportedly included Douglas Frank, a friend to pro-Trump MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell; Shawn Smith, one of Lindell’s reported financial backers; and Ivan Raiklin, a U.S. Army Reserve lieutenant colonel with close ties to Michael Flynn, Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser and Q-Anon enthusiast. Raiklin’s political advocacy put him under an internal review by the Army in December 2021.

Lindell did not attend the meeting with Eastman, Frank, Smith, and Raiklin. 

Eastman told ABC he would not discuss the meeting.

“By explicit request from Speaker Vos, that meeting was confidential, so I am not able to make any comment,” he said Tuesday. 

An attorney for Eastman did not immediately respond to a request for comment by Daily Kos, nor did Vos. 

The Jan. 6 committee declined to comment to Daily Kos on Tuesday.

For the last several months, the committee has been slogging it out in court with Eastman as he fought to keep thousands of emails away from the probe. He rebuffed an initial subpoena from the committee, but the probe maneuvered around him and subpoenaed his professional emails from his tenure at his ex-employer, Chapman University.

Ultimately, a federal judge cut Eastman’s obfuscation short and in the course of reviewing some of the attorney’s emails, found information that led him to believe Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” engaged in a federal crime by trying to stop Biden’s victory from being certified. 

Eastman’s March 16 engagement is not his first get-together with Trump allies or election fraud conspiracy theory peddlers since he was first subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee. 

As noted by ABC, a month before his appointment in Wisconsin, Eastman was in Castle Rock, Colorado, meeting with activists bent on ousting the state’s Democratic secretary, Jena Griswold. Republicans in the Colorado legislature have been stumping hard on election fraud conspiracy for weeks to reverse their defeats. 

All the while, Trump has continued to push bunk election fraud claims and call for new investigations by state officials.

A day after Eastman’s meeting with Vos, Trump issued a statement through his chief spokeswoman, Liz Harrington, on Twitter.

Vos “just said there was widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election but that the state legislature cannot do anything about it. Wrong!” Trump said on March 17. 

The twice-impeached ex-president continued: “If you rob the diamonds from a jewelry store, if you get caught, you have to give the diamonds back,  votes should be no different.” 

Trump demanded that Vos “do the right thing and correct the crime of the century—immediately.” 

Meanwhile, the government watchdog group American Oversight has successfully sued Vos for access to tens of thousands of pages of emails from the Wisconsin state assembly. The oversight group was interested in reviewing the many inquiries that were made to the assembly about the 2020 election.

On Monday, the Wisconsin Examiner reported in-depth on Vos’ communications during that time. Many of the emails had been deleted, 

Emails showed messages sent and received between Vos and Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and other election fraud conspiracy theory-peddling lawyers like Victoria Toensing. 

Giuliani was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 committee this Jan. 18 for his records and deposition. The former New York City mayor was often the public face of Trump’s plan to install “alternate electors”  and according to at least one prosecutor in the 2020 election battleground state of Michigan, Giuliani also pressured him to seize voting machines and send them to Trump’s team.

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The White House is unveiling new policies to bring down gas prices following President Joe Biden’s March announcement that the administration would release 1 million barrels of oil a day from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Tuesday’s announcement, coming as Biden visits an Iowa ethanol plant, will be an Environmental Protection Agency waiver allowing the summer sale of E15, gas blended with ethanol. E15 is usually barred from summer sales due to air pollution rules, but the White House believes that its use will lower gas prices by 10 cents a gallon. 

“At the end of the day prices are too high, American families are feeling that,” Brian Deese, director of the National Economic Council, said Monday. “We need to take every action we can to try to make things more affordable and provide some relief as the Fed acts the way we anticipate it will.” Average gas prices have already dropped from $4.33 a month ago to $4.11 on Monday, but clearly more relief is needed.

Inflation remains a major economic concern for people in the U.S., and a major political concern for the Biden administration. Prices in March were 8.5% above March 2021, and 1.2% above February 2022. There had been signs earlier in 2022 that inflation was beginning to ease, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has instead driven it up for energy and food in particular. Shutdowns of some Chinese manufacturing facilities due to COVID-19 have also kept inflation high.

Food and energy are major expenses for most households, so inflation in those areas hits particularly hard. One significant area in which inflation is easing, though, is used cars, which dropped 3.8% in March. With new car availability affected by supply chain issues—in particular a semiconductor shortage—prices for used cars have spiked. 

Some supply chain issues have appeared to be easing, but the lockdown in Shanghai, which is a major manufacturing and export hub for China, is not a promising sign.

While all of this is very real bad news for U.S. consumers, we do also have to talk about what gets talked about less.

And when we talk about the effect of rising prices on U.S. households, we also have to talk about the longer-term effect of stagnating wages. As just one example, the federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, and has been for well over a decade—because Republicans block any attempt to raise it. The minimum wage isn’t the only factor in stagnating wages, but it’s a damn good example of the problem.

This isn’t the only way that Republican—and Sen. Joe Manchin’s—obstruction of Democratic policy priorities is making inflation hit families harder. For six months, the expanded child tax credit was a major boost to 36 million families with kids. Democrats other than Manchin wanted to extend that, while every single Republican opposed it. Biden also had plans to help with affordable housing and child care, but again, Manchin and Republicans have tanked that. So when we hear about inflation, we’re hearing about its impact after a long list of policies that could help working people deal with inflation have been knocked out as possibilities. With the environmentally problematic E15 waiver, Biden is working with what he has given Republican obstruction in Congress. 

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Multiple people were shot this morning at the 36th Street stop in Sunset Park. 

Preliminary reports indicated that five people were shot, a law enforcement official said. The police were seeking a man with a gas mask and an orange construction vest, the official said.

Initial reports say several undetonated devices were found inside the subway station.

Stay tuned for more details, we’ll update this story as they become available. 

WARNING: GRAPHIC IMAGES BELOW

The suspect threw smoke grenades and still has not been apprehended. From NBC New York:

Police described the suspected shooter as a man about 5 feet 5 inches tall and 180 pounds. He fled the scene and has not been caught. Cops believe he acted alone. A motive is under investigation, though the manhunt for the gunman is the top priority.

Another detail from the NBC New York report:

Some of the wounded jumped on another train to flee to the next station, sources said.

Video shows a train arriving at the station filled with smoke and injured people.

NYPD says there are no active explosive devices, pushing back on the initial reports.

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Tucker Carlson is at it again. From hating on women to hating on the homeless, he’s now targeting teachers who discuss gender identity. In a segment of Tucker Carlson Tonight that aired Friday, Carlson said anyone talking about sex to kindergartners ‘should be beaten up.’

Calling for parents to resort to violence, he said: ”I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teacher’s pushing sex values on your third grader. Why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?”

The comment came as he defended new legislation in Florida, coined the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, that blocks teachers from discussing issues of gender identity and sexual orientation with children in kindergarten through third grade. Both Carslon and Republican Ohio Senate candidate J.D. Vance were discussing the bill and gender topics in the classroom. Vance, like other GOP officials, took to accusing Democrats of “sexualizing” children by discussing issues of gender.

“If you don’t want to be called a groomer, don’t try to sexualize 6-, 7-year-old children. It’s really that simple,” Vance said. “At the end of the day, like you said, this is about parental rights. What kind of country do you want to live in—where families control what values their children grow up in, or where Joe Biden and the pharmaceutical companies get to do that?”

The comments made are not a surprise. Carlson has been targeting teachers for some time and has always encouraged violence on his show toward those who don’t agree with his views.

He made similar comments in a March segment.

“You shouldn’t be talking to kindergartners about gender identity, especially if you’re not their parents. That’s creepy,” Carlson said. “You should be arrested for that, in fact. You talk to a normal person’s kids about sex in kindergarten, you get beaten up. You should be beaten up, please.”

The March comment came out in conversation with Matt Walsh, a political commentator for the conservative news site The Daily Wire.  They both referred to the topic of gender identity in schools as “madness,” and accused teachers of grooming children.

“Look, there’s a reason why Democrats are treating this bill like it’s the apocalypse,” Walsh said. “All we’re telling them is you can’t groom young children and to them it’s Armageddon, and that’s because they know they have to indoctrinate the kids into this madness very, very young.”

Carlson agreed at the time, responding: “You can’t commit sexual abuse against my kindergartners, and that’s what this is. It’s sexual abuse. You’re not allowed to commit it, and if you do, there are consequences. There should be real consequences. Like for real, I think.”

But Carlson is not the only one advocating harm to teachers. 

Multiple people associated with Fox News have made comments condemning teachers who not only teach about gender but LGBTQ issues and critical race theory. 

Some have even gone as far as making social media content that spreads false information to evoke violence.

Conservatives seem to have no boundaries and will stop at nothing to spread hate in the country.

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A jury’s refusal late last week to convict four Michigan militiamen for plotting to kidnap and assassinate Gov. Gretchen Whitmer—with two men acquitted outright, while the jury was hung on the other two—may have come and gone from the national media radar already. But it’s a decision that will have long-term ramifications for public safety and national security, particularly law enforcement’s ability to effectively deter and prevent domestic terrorism.

The verdict was disturbing in no small part because nearly the entirety of the evidence in the case was presented by prosecutors. The defense rested after only a relative handful of witnesses, arguing throughout that the whole affair was a case of entrapment—and it was disturbing and damning, showing a group of men who not only freely indulged in violent fantasies but set about making them realities.

But the outcome did not happen in a vacuum. It was only the latest in a string of similar verdicts in which prosecutors have failed to bring right-wing extremists to justice, revealing both how deeply these beliefs and behaviors have become normalized as well as how poorly equipped law enforcement is to deal with the challenges they present.

Evidence in the trial included audio of the men setting off explosives and discussing how they hoped to hogtie Whitmer across a table and make a video. There was also abundant evidence showing the men’s real-world preparations for making their violent fantasies a reality, including creating a mockup of Whitmer’s summer house for practicing extraction, running reconnaissance on that residence, and taking preparatory steps to blow up a local bridge to cover their escape.

Defense attorney Michael Hills insisted after the verdict that this was nothing but “rough talk.” He told reporters that he considered calling a defense witness to assert that he’s “heard worse from pregnant mothers up on the Capitol.”

“If I don’t like the governor and it’s rough talk, I can do that in our country. That’s what’s beautiful about this country. That’s what’s great about it,” Hills said. “So hurrah, freedom in America. It’s still here.”

Unsurprisingly, it was celebrated widely by the right, including Donald Trump himself.

Trump talked about the verdict in his Saturday rally in Selma, North Carolina, inverting reality in his usual fashion: “And in the quite famous Michigan trial, where people were supposedly going to kidnap the very unpopular governor … two were just found not guilty and two others just ended in a hung jury,” he said. “So there is something going on down there. There is something going on. The radical Democrat party will do anything to stop our movement no matter how illegal, immoral or insane.”

Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green saw the verdicts as an opportunity to attack the FBI, tweeting:

The FBI and DOJ need a complete and total cleansing.

It must be one of our top priorities.

All the rot must be removed and these agencies must be restored.

Setting up people, like in the Whitmer alleged kidnapping plot, doesn’t appear to be a solo event.

Democrats voiced their concern about the consequences of the verdict. JoAnne Huls, Whitmer’s chief of staff, issued a statement decrying the outcome: “Today, Michiganders and Americans—especially our children—are living through the normalization of political violence. The plot to kidnap and kill a governor may seem like an anomaly. But we must be honest about what it really is: the result of violent, divisive rhetoric that is all too common across our country. There must be accountability and consequences for those who commit heinous crimes. Without accountability, extremists will be emboldened.”

A Democratic Michigan legislator, state Sen. Dayna Polehanki of Livonia, voiced her dismay in a tweet: “They also allegedly wanted to storm the Michigan Capitol, take out police officers, and execute my colleagues and me on live TV. Looks like I’ll be keeping my bulletproof vest under my desk on the senate floor,” she wrote.

Residents of the community near where the plotters planned to abduct Whitmer were disturbed. “My biggest concern is that a non-guilty verdict may embolden some far-right activists, and at this point at what is happening in the world, I feel as Americans we all need to come together,” said Jeffery Herman of Elk Rapids.

Herman was particularly disturbed by the plan to blow up a local bridge: “It is a shot right to the heart to me because I’ve been up here my whole life,” said Herman. “To me, that is like a strike against our own country and our state, and the amount of hatred a person must have to attack ourselves is really something as a nation we need to look at.”

However, the location of the trial in the Trumpist stronghold of Grand Rapids, with a jury comprising rural Michiganders with a record of antipathy to Whitmer—as well as a Bush-appointed judge who insisted that politics-related evidence, including any discussion of the ideology the “Boogaloo” movement to which the men subscribed, be excluded—played a powerful if not decisive role in the outcome.

Bill Swor, a veteran criminal defense attorney, observed to the Detroit Free Press: “The jurors may have known people like this, who are a lot of talk. And the jury may have decided that these guys were just running around being busy, and didn’t have any focus.”

The defendants had a lot of material to work with in constructing an entrapment defense. The FBI deployed 12 undercover informants in its investigations, and at least one of them—a man nicknamed “Big Dan”—played a key role in providing the group with paramilitary training as well as acting as a second-tier leader for the “Watchmen.” Three of the FBI agents involved in the case are no longer part of the prosecution’s witness lineup in large part because they have run afoul of the agency for behavior mostly unrelated to the militia case.

It’s just the latest in a series of failures, mostly by federal prosecutors, to deliver convictions of far-right extremists planning or perpetrating political violence, dating back at least to the 2016 acquittals of Ammon Bundy and his cohort for leading the armed standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon by a jury of Oregonians who found credible the defendants’ insistence that they didn’t believe they were doing anything illegal.

Similarly, prosecutors in Seattle in 2019 were unable to overcome the presence of pro-Trump jurors who declined to convict a husband and wife, both alt-right Milo Yiannopoulos fans, who were charged with the January 2017 shooting of an antifascist. More recently, jurors acquitted Kyle Rittenhouse, accused of murder in the shooting deaths of two people at a Black Lives Matter protest in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020.

The latter case was widely celebrated on the right as a vindication of their politics of menace. The Whitmer kidnapping verdict was also seen as evidence supporting the right-wing conspiracy theory that the FBI orchestrated the Jan. 6 insurrection: “Whitmer Kidnapping plot concocted by the FBI,” tweeted one Patriot. “Now let’s do Jan. 6th events.”

Prominent Trump supporters tried to claim the whole thing was an election-year smear of Trump. “The Whitmer ‘kidnapping’ caper was the 2020 version of Russiagate, the FBI interfering in a presidential election to sabotage Trump and help a Democratic nominee for president,” tweeted right-wing pundit Julie Kelly.

More responsible voices expressed concern that as with the Rittenhouse verdict, violent extremists will interpret it as a green light. Democratic Congresswoman Debbie Dingell of Michigan called for an end to “the hatred and division in this country,” adding that she is “deeply concerned that today’s decision in the Whitmer kidnapping trial will give people further license to choose violence and threats.”

Certainly the trend of juries seeming to bend over backwards to acquit white men in terrorism cases reflects an unfortunate reality about Americans’ susceptibility to stereotyped perceptions that struggle to conceive of such crimes being committed by someone who looks like the guy next door. Heidi Beirich, executive director of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, says that reality is in many ways a hangover of the “War on Terror” years of the early 2000s, when Americans were conditioned to think of terrorists as Arab radicals.

“Prosecutors should pay more attention to this, but of course the mainstreaming of antigovernment sentiments and hate ideologies could be playing a role here,” she told Daily Kos. “Large parts of the conservative, or Trump base, share the ideas now of these groups, such as the Great Replacement or Stop the Steal, etc. The frame around this type of extremism is so radically different than the beliefs of ISIS or Al Qaeda, which were never going to find a home among even a tiny fraction of Americans. But white supremacy and antigovernment ideas are deeply rooted in our history and culture, and now among many conservatives, and that can potentially affect juries. We saw it during the civil rights movement obviously.”

The War on Terror approach also infected the law enforcement handling of domestic terrorism cases, says Michael German, a national security analyst with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University. German, a former FBI agent, had himself played a central role in a well-known case in the 1990s involving a militia group in western Washington state that also claimed entrapment after he had provided the men with a meeting space that doubled as a bomb-building classroom—and was filled with cameras that recorded everything.

Although German had scrupulously followed FBI rules, the entrapment defense had some effect in that case—several defendants walked on the conspiracy charge after a mistrial in the first round—but the central players eventually were all convicted on various charges.

He’s followed the trial of the Wolverine Watchmen closely, and told Daily Kos via email that “the Michigan case was undermined by misconduct committed by the agents assigned to the investigation, and the misuse/overuse of informants.”

More broadly, though, German is concerned that the strategies the FBI developed after 9/11 and found effective against Islamist radicals—which problematically reflected distorted priorities by federal law enforcement on domestic terrorism as they ignored and deprioritized political violence by white right-wing extremists for over two decades—no longer work.

“The tactics of an FBI undercover operation have changed significantly in that the agents and informants manufacture plots and provide the weaponry necessary to achieve them,” German explained. “In the 1990s that wasn’t allowed. But the FBI had increasing success with these tactics in targeting Muslims after 9/11 and have broadened their use.”

He notes that “the Michigan case wasn’t nearly as egregious as the Liberty City 7 case or the Newburgh sting, which were successful I believe because the defendants belonged to groups the public was taught to fear after 9/11. With white supremacist or far-right militant groups, the FBI has been less successful with this technique, but agents continue to use them, I think because they forgot how to do proper undercover operations.”

German says the Michigan case—particularly the heavy use of informants—reflects these misbegotten strategies. “So what the FBI seemed to have learned from the difficulty they had winning convictions in the Liberty City 7 case was that they should spice up these sting operations with more elaborate plots that could only be achieved by the government introducing and providing more dangerous weapons,” he said.

“In the Washington case the investigation focused on the criminal activity the group was already engaged in, namely possessing, manufacturing, and trafficking in illegal weapons and explosives for use in a prospective conflict with federal law enforcement,” he explained. “There wasn’t a government effort to generate a more elaborate plot, and the defendants made, possessed, and transferred the illegal weapons and explosives themselves, the government didn’t provide them.

“I think if the FBI agents stayed focused on investigating the crimes that were occurring, rather than trying to manufacture an elaborate plot, they would have been more successful. I think the overuse of the extreme tactics now typical of terrorism sting operations has generated some public backlash that undermined the government’s credibility. The general loss of credibility for the FBI has been a growing problem as well, both because of true errors and abuse and because of the Trump administration’s less factual campaign against its leadership.”

Beirich warns, however, that there is also an undeniable component involving ethnic prejudice that affects how juries behave. “Speaking generally, there is obviously a huge difference in how juries viewed the treatment of people accused of Islamic-inspired terrorism and how they view white supremacists,” she told Kos. “There were dozens of cases in the early ‘00s where entrapment by federal agents seemed more obvious of such suspects than what has happened with juries dealing with cases of antigovernment and/or white supremacist extremists. The domestic extremists seem to get more of a break from juries than folks associated with other forms of extremism, a situation that likely has a racial element or at least an ‘othered’ element to it.”

Beirich foresees a continuation of the right-wing gaslighting campaign around these issues, “as is happening right now in Congress over the domestic terrorism bill.”

“It seems that only when there is serious violence, usually with mass casualties, is this issue taken seriously on the right, which is really unfortunate,” she said. “Look how Jan. 6 is being minimized among elected officials and others on the right. It’s a tragedy that there is little consensus over what our government calls the No. 1 domestic terrorism threat: white supremacists and militia types.”

Michigan state House member Laurie Pohutsky, a Democrat, noted on Twitter that the threatening environment has long-term consequences for democracy as well.

“The next time you ask why we can’t get good people to run for office, consider today’s verdict. The man that threatened to kill me in 2020 was acquitted,” she said, adding, “This won’t be taken seriously until someone dies.”

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Jurors reached a verdict late Monday in the trial of Thomas Robertson, a former police officer from Virginia who intended to stop the certification of the 2020 election when he stormed the complex on Jan. 6, 2021 with fellow off-duty cop Jacob Fracker.

Fracker, who entered a guilty plea just before Robertson’s week-long trial in Washington, D.C., began, agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department’s gigantic probe of the attack in exchange for leniency at sentencing. That decision forced Fracker to testify against Robertson, a man he considered a “mentor” and “father figure” who is now facing up to five years in prison. 

Robertson did not testify on his own behalf and though his defense attorney Mark Rollins conceded that the ex-Rocky Mount, Virginia, cop was “absolutely guilty” of entering the Capitol illegally, he argued Robertson never came to D.C. with plans to stop Congress from doing its duty on the path to a peaceful transfer of power. 

U.S. attorney Lisa Berkower told jurors before they sequestered themselves that just wasn’t so. 

They agreed.

Robertson, Berkower successfully argued, put himself in the thick of it on Jan. 6 because he believed former President Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election and arrived armed and ready to fight.

Robertson’s trial was the second-ever jury trial for Jan. 6 defendants and the verdict Monday marks the second time that the Justice Department has successfully reached a conviction on all counts.  

RELATED STORY: Trial for ex-cop who stormed the Capitol underway in Washington

“I absolutely hate this,” Fracker said as questioning opened last week. “I never thought it would be like this. I’ve always been on the other side of things. The good guys’ side, so to speak.”

Robertson, he told jurors, urged him and an unidentified neighbor to travel to D.C. on Jan. 6. Robertson brought a large wooden stick and a trio of gas masks. They went first to the Washington Monument to listen to speeches and then to hear Trump’s speech at the Ellipse before marching to the Capitol. 

Once there, things devolved quickly, according to Fracker. As they prepared to breach police barricades around the building’s exterior, they were separated. Fracker got in first and before long the men were reunited inside, where they proudly snapped a selfie. 

Fracker told jurors he saw police try to stop rioters when they were outside. He also admitted that he was aware in the moment that he was trespassing. But once inside, he was “full of adrenaline,” and believed if they and other rioters would “make a big enough fuss,” Congress would be forced to stop the proceedings. 

The men did not come to any sort of “verbal agreement” to obstruct proceedings that day, Fracker said.

But there was no need to spell it out or say it aloud, he added.

According to NBC, Fracker said the entire mob “pretty much had the same goal” in mind when they arrived, and their group was no exception. 

Defense attorney Rollins insisted during closing arguments that Robertson never had an organized plan to stop Congress from certifying the vote. As for the large wooden stick prosecutors say Robertson used to keep Metropolitan Police at bay as he forced his way in, that, according to the defense, was just his walking stick. 

A U.S. Army veteran who served as a private contractor in Afghanistan, he was shot in the thigh over a decade ago. Robertson needed it to get around, Rollins said.

But during an earlier point in the trial, when prosecutors heard testimony from officers who were on the scene, they said Robertson wasn’t using the stick to brace himself.

Instead, he was seen holding it in a defensive stance known as the “port arms position” before wielding it against officers. 

Fracker said neither he nor Robertson wanted to help the police that were desperately overwhelmed and outnumbered by the mob. 

“I think, as a cop, I felt they should have been on our side. Like, marching with us,” Fracker said during examination by Berkower. 

There were also questions posed about a generous sum of $30,000 that Robertson sent to Fracker after their initial arrest. 

Fracker insisted it was not given to him to keep quiet or secure his testimony. It was meant to keep him afloat after he lost his job with the Rocky Mount Police Department. 

The department fired both Robertson and Fracker after their arrests. 

Prosecutors also showed jurors several messages Robertson sent long after the insurrection unfolded. One message undercut the claim that Robertson brought the wooden stick to help his mobility. 

Describing his physical fitness in a text three months after Jan. 6, Robertson boasted: “I’m 48. My kids are adults and I can still run a 16 minute 2 mile with a 30lb pack. I am as dangerous as I’ll ever be.” 

Jurors deliberated for just over 10 hours. 

Robertson’s trial was the second Jan. 6 jury trial to unfold. Guy Reffitt went first in early March and was found guilty on all counts including obstruction of an official proceeding, transporting firearms amid a civil disorder, being in a restricted area while armed, interfering with law enforcement during a civil disorder, and obstructing justice. 

Robertson not only faced charges related directly to his conduct on Jan. 6 but for conduct occurring well after he breached the Capitol.

After his arrest and indictment and while he was on pretrial release, Robertson ordered more than two dozen firearms through a dealer in Virginia, dropping $50,000 on the stash. This violated terms of his release and prosecutors threw him back in jail in July. 

It was not immediately clear on Monday night when Robertson would be sentenced. 

RELATED STORY: Guy Reffitt, first Jan. 6 defendant to stand trial, found guilty on all counts