Independent News
OANN says John Oliver calling them a ‘ragtag band of fascists’ breached its AT&T contract
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On Sunday, Comedian John Oliver’s HBO news show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver had a fun time with One American News Network’s (OANN) recent lawsuit against DirectTV, AT&T, and AT&T Chairman William Kennard. OANN has been facing an existential business crisis as of late. DirecTV announced that it would no longer carry the ultra-right-wing media outlet Herring Networks’ OANN or A Wealth of Entertainment (AWE) after their contracts ended this month.
OANN contests that their whole operation is dependent on DirectTV—making up around 90% of its generated revenue—and is arguing that the exclusive ad sale deal with DirecTV taking them into 2024 is proof that they are contractually obligated to renew the lapsing carrier deal. At the same time, OANN founder Robert Herring Sr. swore in the deposition of an earlier case that OANN was AT&T’s idea, and that they asked for the network to be created. None of this matters for the moment. What does matter is that Oliver’s satirical news and politics show was named in the lawsuit.
This is going to be good.
Oliver begins by pointing out that AT&T, which did own HBO, ended its direct ownership with the new merger of Discovery and Warner Brothers (Warner Bros. Discovery Inc.). “Let me just say this,” Oliver says, putting up his two middle fingers and saying that as of Friday, AT&T no longer had any control over the channel his show streams on. Referring to his two middle fingers, he said: “Which, frankly, is two more bars than you’ve ever had.”
RELATED STORY: Reuters uncovers deeper connections between deadly hoax network OAN and corporate giant AT&T
Oliver talked about how Last Week Tonight has talked about OANN a lot over the last couple of years because it was Trump’s favorite outlet, because of the wild COVID-19 misinformation they have put out there, and finally because of how appalling their recent coverage of the invasion of Ukraine has been. Referring to OANN host Pearson Sharp (supposedly his real name) as “Fascist Vin Diesel,” Oliver showed a clip of Sharp suggesting the shelling of a maternity hospital in Ukraine by Russia never happened. That it was—like Alex Jones talking about the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary school—a hoax, with “crisis actors” making up all of the images shown the world.
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It is a reminder that while you may have not been paying any attention to OANN recently, they are exactly as venal as you remember. Oliver then explains that among the many claims in OANN’s lawsuit against AT&T is one saying that AT&T “violated a non-disparagement provision.” Their contention is that because shows that existed on AT&T-owned stations were critical of OANN, this constituted a violation of that agreement. Oliver then lists off the court-filed grievances of the things Oliver’s said:
- Comparing OANN to “Fox News with even less shame and even fewer scruples.”
- Calling OANN a “ragtag band of fascists”—Oliver went on to finish this beautiful piece of writing, “that are happy to give a platform to batshit election fraud theories from America’s most out of breath pillow fetishist.”
Oliver does lament that the lawsuit doesn’t site the fact that Oliver called Sharp “decaf Pittbull,” saying, “Frankly, I want that entered into the legal record!” Then, in a pretty koan-like bit of writing, Oliver refers back to Sharp’s grotesque handling of the casualties of war, saying: ”I do get that they (OAN) are upset here, just as I get that they are an intellectually bankrupt organization full of opportunistic grifters who’ve done nothing but make this country a worse place. But perhaps this isn’t the time for that and perhaps I am sorry for taking joy in their misfortune and kicking them when they are so clearly down. But on the other hand, perhaps I am not.”
The segment begins at the five-minute mark. Definitely enjoy.
'We are not going to be props again': Venezuelan activists target Rubio over immigration inaction
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Florida Republican Marco Rubio’s response to valid criticism that he’s done nothing to permanently protect Venezuelan immigrants in the state is to say that Venezuelans calling him out on his inaction aren’t really Venezuelan.
“I would like to ask Mr. Rubio why he did not support HR 6,” the House-passed legislation that would put Temporary Protected Status (TPS) holders on a path to legalization, Casa de Venezuela founder William Diaz told Miami Herald. It’s a good question, and it deserves an answer—but not according to Rubio.
“These are Democrat groups that are more Democrats than they are Venezuelan, that have been Democrats before and they will continue being Democrats after,” he told Miami Herald. But the outlet reports Diaz is a former supporter of Republican Rick Scott.
RELATED STORY: Marco Rubio’s anti-LGBT record continues on, following defense of Florida GOP’s ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill
Both Rubio and Scott have steadily failed to advocate for immigrants in their states, by refusing to support numerous pieces of legislation that would put temporary holders onto a pathway to permanent status.
Both did support the Biden administration’s popular decision last year to grant temporary relief to thousands of Venezuelan immigrants already here, but really only because the administration was going to go through with this well-received policy, whether or not Rubio and Scott approved. So they figured they might as well say they agreed with it.
But when it comes to something he can lead on himself, Marco continues to be a failure, slamming advocates for wanting “to turn the topic of Venezuela into an immigration issue,” Miami Herald continued. Rubio then dusted off an old talking point Republicans have used as an excuse to not act on humane immigration proposals (like the 2013 Senate immigration bill that Marco co-wrote but then disowned as part of his epically pathetic bid for the presidency).
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“It is impossible—and I say it with all sincerity—it is impossible to do absolutely anything about immigration while this emergency we have right now continues to exist,” he said, according to the report. Imagine this guy being sincere about anything.
The fact is that the GOP will never acknowledge a secure anything at the border if the president is a Democrat. Republicans were mimicking the language of an anti-immigrant hate group from the start of the president’s term.
Marco Rubio is creative only in the sense that he’s found ways to be a massive disappointment to humanity on multiple fronts, last month defending the harassment of LGBTQ children by supporting the state GOP’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.
Rubio won’t even defend his own policy stances and decisions. We know he betrayed immigrant communities by turning his back on his immigration bill, but we also don’t discuss nearly enough how Rubio broke his promise not to run for reelection. He used the Pulse mass shooting as his excuse. He’s not only failed to combat gun violence since then, but he’s also given the thumbs-up to targeting LGBTQ kids. Shameful and pathetic.
Now again up for reelection in 2022, Miami Herald reports that Rubio joined New Jersey’s Bob Menendez in urging an extension of protections for Venezuelans—but still no pathway to legalization. “We are not buying it, we are not going to be props again in his political game,” Venezuelan American Caucus executive director Ade Ferro said in the report.
RELATED STORIES: Evergreen: Marco Rubio is awful
Two dozen groups call on Marco Rubio and Rick Scott to support legalization for TPS holders
Biden admin to offer temporary protections to hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans currently in U.S.
Locked in cells ‘23 hours at a time, no lights, no exercise’: Activists want youth center shut down
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Journalists and activists have been reporting on the dismal conditions children are subjected to at Louisiana’s Acadiana Center for Youth at St. Martinville for weeks. Now they’re calling on Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to shut down the youth detention facility, located about two hours west of New Orleans.
Activist Tamika Mallory shared a video on Monday posted by the charity Us or Else, which was founded by rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris. In the caption of the post, the charity paints a grim picture of the daily lives of those children who end up at the facility.
RELATED STORY: Incarcerated voices: Why do they matter?
That grim picture:
“Your child makes a mistake. He’s sent to Juvenile Detention to be reformed. You have no choice but trust the system to protect him.
He’s locked away in a small cell for 23 hours at a time
No lights
No exercise
Abusive guards
No court ordered classes
No reform
No help
Some kids were so desperate they dug through concrete walls to escape!
That’s exactly what is happening to KIDS at Acadiana Youth Detention Center in Louisiana! The mental torture that they are experiencing is disgusting! Their only interaction with people was through their meal slot! How is any of this rehabilitation for these kids? We are not going to step aside while this facility creates a pipeline to prison for our kids!”
In partnership with ProPublica and NBC News, the journalism nonprofit the Marshall Project reported on how judicial officials in one courtroom found out about the facility, described as a “high-security lockup,” opened in secrecy last summer. A 15-year-old being held in solitary confinement around the clock at the facility was shown from a courtroom screen having been detained for “joyriding in a stolen car,” the Marshall Project reported.
“He was getting no education, in violation of state and federal law, nor was he getting court-ordered substance abuse counseling, according to two defense attorneys present,” journalists Beth Schwartzapfel, Erin Einhorn, and Annie Waldman wrote. “And no one in the room that day—not the judge, not the prosecutor, not the defense lawyers—appeared to have heard of the facility where Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice was holding him: the Acadiana Center for Youth at St. Martinville.”
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The journalists’ project relied on hundreds of pages of incident reports, emails, videos, education records, and emergency response logs, as well as dozens of interviews.
They wrote that, while the state of Louisiana treats solitary confinement as a “last resort,” teens at the Acadiana Center, including those diagnosed with mental illness, were held in their cells for at least 23 hours a day for weeks. “They were shackled with handcuffs and leg irons when let out to shower, and given little more than meals slid through slots in their doors,” Schwartzapfel, Einhorn, and Waldman wrote. “Some teens took those brief moments of human contact to fling their feces and urine at the guards.”
“At least two of the teens in the facility harmed themselves so badly that they required medical attention. Some destroyed beds and shattered light fixtures, using the metal shards to hack holes in the cinder block walls large enough for them to escape.”
Two teens actually did escape the detention center in January and were later apprehended. Two more teens escaped in February, ABC-affiliated WBRZ reported. “My tolerance level has pretty much met or is pretty close to the threshold,” Sheriff Becket Breaux told the news station at the time. “We have a meeting with juvenile justice to discuss this and come up with ways of stopping this.”
The sheriff’s conversation with WBRZ didn’t cover the conditions the teens were fleeing at Acadiana Center.
Rashad, a 15-year-old held at the detention center, told the Marshall Project “you have to have a strong mind” to survive at the facility. Rashad was identified by his middle name for his protection. “You can’t think about it,” he said. “If you think about it, it will make you sad.” He said he was in his cell all day and had clothes, but no socks, books, paper, or pencils.
Peter Dudley, Rashad’s attorney, told the Marshall Project his “jaw dropped” when he learned of the conditions his client was being kept in. “You’ve got a child that we’re supposed to be trying to rehabilitate. He’s basically being housed like a death row inmate,” Dudley said.
The nonprofit Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights filed a complaint with the Louisiana Department of Education last November claiming that the Acadiana Center “systemically deprived the children at St. Martinville of their legal right to a free appropriate public education.”
The Marshall Project reported that following that complaint, the detention center added educational classes though they still didn’t meet the bar set by state law that students receive six hours of daily instruction.
“Clearly these facilities are underresourced. They’re undermanned,” state Rep. Royce Duplessis told the Marshall Project. “We need to make sure the guards are paid, and these are not facilities that kids want to tear up and jump on the guards and just be destructive.”
Duplessis filed proposed legislation to limit solitary confinement in juvenile facilities to four hours, and requires that the child’s guardians and attorney be notified when a juvenile is held in solitary confinement under any circumstances. The bill states:
“Juveniles in solitary confinement shall be continuously monitored. Facility staff shall engage in continued crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques and make visual and verbal contact with each youth in solitary confinement at least every ten minutes. The intent and purpose of this intervention is to help de-escalate the juvenile’s behavior so the juvenile can rejoin the general population as soon as possible.”
The bill was last referred to the Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice in March.
Ukraine update: Russia faces myriad challenges in Donbas front, and here's the primer
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With Russia massing its troops in Eastern Ukraine for a major offensive to take the entire Donbas region (or maybe stupidly drive into central Ukraine), there is increased chatter about the state of Russian forces. Specifically, what do they even have left to send there, and in what condition? And even if they amass all that combat power, would they even be able to coordinate a massive all-out offensive? In short, I’ve identified the five following key problems bedeviling Russia today.
- Russia was undermanned even before the war began
- Russia has suffered grievous losses
- Some of those shredded units are being recommitted to the Donbas front too quickly, and without proper rest or reinforcement
- Russia is out of experienced troops
- Russia can’t attack with massive force
So I’ll try to concisely explain each one of those issues, since that’ll be foundational to the events that take place in the weeks ahead.
The Russian Battalion Tactical Group (BTG)
The BTG is Russia’s basic combat maneuver unit. On paper, it has anywhere between 600 to 1,000 soldiers, so it’s usually rounded out to 800. A BTG is supposed to have 10 tanks and 40 infantry fighting vehicles (IFV). Three BTGs make up a regiment (which has additional resources, like artillery). Of the 800 soldiers, only 200 are infantry, and according to a U.S. Army analysis, “as many as 50 percent of infantry soldiers can be required for local security and routine administrative tasks. This leaves relatively few infantrymen available for mounted squads.” As I’ve repeatedly written, the bulk of soldiers in an army are in support roles, and don’t fire or shoot anything.
Russia undermanned their BTGs, even before the war began
U.S. intelligence estimated that Russia had 120 BTGs at the start of the war. That means 1,200 tanks, 4,800 infantry fighting vehicles, and 96,000 troops. The other ~100,000 Russian troops massed in the area were likely additional support units, combat aviation, engineering detachments, etc. Note that some estimated Russian strength up to 130 BTGs, so it’s not a precise count.
Thing is, we’re not even sure that many BTGs deployed. Turns out that the BTG system was a fantastic vehicle for corruption and graft. A regiment commander could keep one of his three BTGs fully operational for deployments like Syria or to squash a rebellion in Kazakhstan. The other two could be pilfered from the top, for Italian villas and super yachts, in the middle for a country dacha, to the lowliest supply officer, for vodka. Just a few checkmarks on a spreadsheet, and no one would ever need to know. That’s what Russia’s nukes were for—to make sure they never had to fight a real war!
Furthermore, a big part of a pre-war BTG infantry was conscripts doing their one-year-and-out. While we know that many ended up deploying to Ukraine, contrary to Russian law, apparently many did not. Makes sense that various units across such a vast country would handle the situation unevenly.
So there’s a good chance that up to a third fewer BTGs ended up in Ukraine than those original estimates of 120-130, and the ones that did go in were undermanned and under-equipped.
Russia has suffered grievous losses
Ukraine claims 20,000 Russian dead. Last I saw, Western estimates were around 60,000 dead or wounded and out of the fight—a frighteningly high number. Russia obviously won’t release any numbers, not even bullshit ones, though Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson admitted that “[w]e have significant losses of troops and it’s a huge tragedy for us.”
The BBC reported that “the number of Russian battalion tactical groups (700-1k soldiers each) rendered combat ineffective in the Ukraine war so far has been reassessed at 37-38 according to a western official, leaving 90 operational.” Meanwhile, the Pentagon is saying that “Russia has more than 60 battalion tactical groups currently inside of Ukraine” and another 20 are “regrouping” in Russia and Belarus. Okay, so between 80-90 are left.
However, get this: All it takes for a BTG to become combat ineffective is a loss of 30% of its armor. According to the Oryx database of visually confirmed Russian losses, Russia has lost 475 tanks—the equivalent of entirely wiping out the tanks of 47 or 48 BTGs! And remember, a BTG only has to lose three tanks to be rendered combat ineffective. So presumably, even more BTGs are affected.
Likewise with infantry. Assuming the BTG’s entire 200-man infantry contingent is deployed (which the U.S. Army says doesn’t happen, but let’s assume a desperate Russia is pushing everyone to the front), only 60 need to be killed before the BTG is combat ineffective. So if 60,000 Russians soldiers are out of the war … you can see how that would affect far more BTGs than 37 or 38.
So how does this square with Western estimates? It seems clear that even more BTGs have been knocked out of the war, though it’s very plausible that reinforcements have arrived, others have been combined, bringing the number of available BTGs back up to 80-90.
But given that Russia only had around 170 BTGs in their entire armed forces to start with (assuming that Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu wasn’t lying or exaggerating), they don’t have a limitless supply.
Some of the those shredded units are being recommitted to the Donbas front too quickly, and without proper rest or reinforcement
Lots of news like this the last two weeks:
Radio Svoboda published images of a document on April 10 that it reported was issued by the Russian Ministry of Defense on April 2 offering specific bonuses for Russian troops in Ukraine. The document specifies large payments including 300,000 rubles [$3,600 at the official rate] for destroying a fixed-wing aircraft, 200,000 for destroying a helicopter, and 50,000 for armored vehicles and artillery. Radio Svoboda stated the payments are intended to coerce units withdrawn from the Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions to reenter combat. We have previously reported several instances of Russian soldiers refusing orders to return to Ukraine after being pulled back.
Russian troops around Kyiv, Chernihiv, and Sumy regions got absolutely mauled. They just lost a battle, saw unspeakable things, committed unspeakable things, and want nothing more to do than get their war loot and themselves back home. There are ample stories of desertion and mutiny, and while they are usually sourced to Ukrainian intelligence (which are listening in on cell phone calls and other unencrypted communications), stories like the one above lend supporting credence. (That’s a big part of trying to see through the fog of war, finding corroborating evidence for such assertions.)
But even if such reports were not true, you just can’t take a broken, traumatized unit, and send them to a new front in the span of a couple of weeks. You can’t take two broken units, smush them together, and call it an operational unit. Training matters—even the most talented musicians need to practice their symphony before performing before an audience, and they don’t have to worry about dying if they get a note wrong.
Russia is out of experienced troops
Western intelligence estimates that Russia still has 80 to 90 of its BTGs available, and the U.S. estimates 60 of them are in the country. However, the U.S. also says that only 20 BTGs are currently in the Donbas region. If you’re asking yourself, where the hell are the other 40 if Donbas is the main axis of attack, join the club! We know there are around six near Kherson in the south, and another six trying to take Mariupol. Beyond that, the math doesn’t add up. UA War Data, an open-source effort tracking all Russian units in Ukraine, has found around 40 51 BTGs in the country [see update below]. Doesn’t mean there aren’t more! Just that no one has found visual confirmation of their existence inside Ukraine. But if all that combat force is available near Donbas, you’d think that U.S. satellites would pick them up.
We also know that Russia is resorting to some extreme measures to maintain combat operations. There was this anecdote which I included in my morning update:
Three officers to crew an armored personnel carrier? Ludicrous. Three officers, none of them in the combat arms? Unfathomable. But it was clearly either that, or turn the vehicle over to poorly educated conscripts or other non-combat arms contract soldiers. They don’t have experienced crews left to operate their equipment.
We also saw Russia’s troop and equipment shortage in another anecdote I’ve previously discussed:
Click here if you want my full analysis of the implications of that ambush, but in short, it was a BTG-sized attack with a fraction of the vehicles that BTG was supposed to have. Indeed, it was combat ineffective the second it rolled out of its staging area to the front lines. Instead of 10 tanks and 40 IFVs like it’s supposed to have, it rolled out with around six tanks and 25 IFVs.
Now check this out:
I sat there and counted. It’s not gigantic. It’s a BTG. Except that instead of 40 IFVs, I counted 30 or so (the camera work isn’t always steady). No tanks, but let’s assume those are assembling elsewhere, otherwise this BTG is in even worse shape. Lots of supply cargo and fuel trucks—a reminder that most of the BTG’s manpower isn’t firing guns. But ultimately, it’s an undermanned BTG. On paper, it looks impressive. Driving along the road, it seems massive. But it’s already down 25% of its supposed IFV allotment.
Russia can’t fully man its BTGs, and what they do send out aren’t experienced contract soldiers who know what they’re doing. Is it any wonder that Ukraine has so far been able to chew them up?
Russia can’t attack with more than one or two BTGs at a time.
This is the big one. During this entire war, we haven’t seen Russia attack with more than two BTGs at a time. Maybe it’s happened! Fog of war and all. But we have no public evidence of it. All the way back on March 9, barely two weeks into the war, the analysts at the Institute for the Study of War were already doubting Russia’s ability to take Kyiv for this precise reason:
Individual Russian attacks at roughly regiment size reported on March 8 and March 9 may represent the scale of offensive operations Russian forces can likely conduct on this axis at any one time. The possibility of a larger and more coherent general attack either to encircle Kyiv or to assault it in the coming days remains possible, but the continued commitment of groups of two to five battalion tactical groups (BTGs) at a time makes such a large-scale general attack less likely.
They said two to five, but they were being generous. Two really seems to be the magic number.
I mean, think about it—they have four to six BTGs around Izyum, they’re stuck trying to push further south, and they can’t just roll that entire contingent south? Okay, maybe leave one BTG to hold Izyum, or better yet, park some separatist scrubs in some foxholes there. Regardless, they have a fair amount of combat power around the city, yet they rotate them so only one or two of them are on the offensive at any given time. As I noted earlier:
[W]e see it time and time again. The small, ineffective probes with little power, and no follow up elements to exploit any breakthroughs. Early in the war, observers thought these were “reconnaissance probes,” trying to suss out the location of defensive positions. Turns out, they were actual attacks, the most Russia could muster.
Thus, Ukraine continues to play rope-a-dope, letting the attacking BTG punch through, then slamming it from all sides. Nothing else is coming to its aid. And these attacks happen daily along this [Donbas front] line. Three such attacks yesterday, which was a relatively quiet day, seven on Friday, at least four on Thursday, seven on Wednesday, and so on. Imagine if Russia took those 20+ attacks, and combined them into one massive push? What a crazy idea! It would inevitably be far more effective! Instead, Ukraine continues to benefit from Russia’s rank incompetence
Ukraine gets to handle the drip-drip-drip of Russian attacks, because their enemy can’t open up the spigot. Everyone is expecting a massive Russian offensive in Donbas. No one should underestimate Russia, and NATO needs to hurry up with promised weapons shipments, while making new promises, daily. (That’s starting to happen now, but more urgency is needed.) Ukraine is obviously preparing for a worst-case scenario.
But do I think it’s going to happen? I’ve seen no evidence that Russia is capable of anything “massive’ other than killing civilians. They’ve got that down to a science. But taking and holding contested ground is a whole different skill set. And here’s hoping that they can’t fix their issues—new supreme commander notwithstanding—given their severe equipment and personnel shortages.
Oh, and weather. Check out Izyum for the next week:
Don’t expect much territory to change hands this next week, but lots and lots of Ukrainian ambushes as Russia is forced to stay on easy-to-target roads.
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Putin purges one of his intelligence services, with the head sent to prison.
In an article for The Moscow Times, Soldatov suggested that it was possible Beseda was suspected of having passed information to the CIA.
Before taking over the Fifth Service, Beseda worked in counter-intelligence, a role that involved close liaison with the CIA station in Moscow. Were he to be a double agent, it would explain the Kremlin’s suspicions as to how US intelligence had been so accurate in the build-up to the invasion.
Soldatov said he did not believe Beseda was a double agent, but said it suited Putin’s purposes to suggest so.
“It’s good to be able to blame things on a traitor. It’s a very Russian thing to do,” he said.
55 from Kherson all the way to Luhansk in the northeast. That’s still a lot less than 90, and there’s nowhere else for Russia to stash forces, except a handful of BTGs around Kharkiv.
Schlottman runs the UA War Data site which I mention in the story.
Once again, just two BTGs.
Buffalo officers who pushed 75-year-old man to the ground during Black Lives Matter protest cleared
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It’s difficult to even remember all of the horrific violence that took place during the Black Lives Matter protests following the murder of George Floyd, much of it at the hands of police.
One episode, in particular, took place during a protest in Buffalo, New York, when video captured a 75-year-old protester shoved to the ground by two police officers in riot gear. Martin Gugino fell and hit his head. Blood was seen pouring from his ear. The video, shot by Buffalo radio reporter Michael Desmond, sent shockwaves around the world.
In the days that followed, officers Aaron Torgalski and Robert McCabe were suspended without pay and then arrested and charged with second-degree felony assault. Last year, a grand jury dismissed the case. On Friday, arbitrator Jeffery M. Selchick officially cleared the officers of any wrongdoing, The Buffalo News reports.
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“Upon review, there is no evidence to sustain any claim that Respondents (police officers) had any other viable options other than to move Gugino out of the way of their forward movement,” Selchick wrote of the June 4, 2020 incident in his 41-page arbitration.
The officers testified that Gugino refused to move, and Torgalski said he was both afraid of getting COVID-19 from Gugino and that the elderly man had gotten too close to his firearm. Torgalski claimed he wasn’t sure why Gugino fell.
Selchick surmised in his decision that Gugino fell because he was holding something in his hands, and due to his age and because the force of the officers took him by surprise, he simply “lost his balance.”
Gugino has sued the Buffalo Police Department over his injuries, which include a fractured skull and required a month-long hospital stay. The suit is pending.
Gugino’s attorney Melissa D. Wischerath told The Buffalo News they were “not aware of any case where this arbitrator has ruled against on-duty police officers, so his ruling here on behalf of the police was not only expected by us, but was certainly expected by the union and city who selected and paid him. His decision has absolutely no bearing on the pending lawsuit.”
Thomas H. Burton, an attorney representing the Buffalo Police union, claimed the arbitrator’s ruling was “the right victory and an across-the-board victory for Buffalo Police officers.” Burton added: “Evidence from the hearing showed that they simply were trying to back him off … if Mr. Gugino had simply moved away and left, none of this would have happened.”
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A few months after the incident, Gugino told WGRZ-TV that when it comes to Buffalo police, “it’s not a situation of a few bad apples, this is a bad barrel. A couple of bad barrels.”
He added:
“These are not two especially bad officers, the whole system is wrong. They’re all taught to do the wrong thing. That’s the problem that has to be fixed… And the chief of police, whatever training he gave these guys is not right. You’re allowed to protest on the sidewalk. Protest is the American way. That’s the feedback that the government needs.”
Fox News is spewing fresh queerphobia with the latest grooming accusations against LGBTQ people
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Republicans are no stranger to queerphobia and anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric and legislation. But in the last year alone, conservatives at the local and state levels have pushed a stunning number of anti-queer bills, some of which have already been signed into law. Much of this legislation has targeted transgender folks, including trans youth, especially when it comes to access to safe, gender-affirming health care and sports.
Conservatives have consistently presented trans people—especially trans women—as predators, which becomes immediately familiar if you revisit anti-trans arguments about bathroom access that were popular several years ago. LGBTQ+ people have been branded as creeps and predators going decades back, actually, and thanks to conservatives like Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, that rhetoric is getting a revival. According to conservatives, young people shouldn’t be exposed to LGBTQ+ topics or identities in the classroom, and as DeSantis Press Secretary Christina Pushaw spewed, anyone who opposes such guidelines is basically a predator. Yikes!
And it’s not only Florida. A handful of comparable Don’t Say Gay bills are popping up around the country. And no matter where you live, if you watch Fox News, you’ve probably seen grown adults go on air to … argue that male teachers are predators and pontificate about why men aren’t beating up teachers who discuss LGBTQ+ issues. Yes, really. Let’s see some of these horrifying moments below.
RELATED: Chris Murphy just showed every progressive how to call out transphobes like Marjorie Taylor Greene
A recent example on Fox News comes from a conversation between host Mark Levin and writer David Mamet, where Mamet boldly suggested that male teachers are “inclined” to pedophilia, as highlighted by the New Civil Rights Movement.
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“We have to take back control,” he stated. “There’s no community control of schools. What we have is um, kids being not only indoctrinated but groomed in a very real sense by people who are … Whether they know it or not, sexual predators. Are they abusing the kids physically? No, I don’t think so. But they’re abusing them mentally and using sex to do so.
“This has always been a problem with education. Teachers are inclined, particularly men, because men are predators, to pedophilia. And that’s why there were strict community strictures about it, thank god. So this started to break down when the school said, ‘You know what? We need to teach kids about sex because what if they don’t do it at home?’”
Surprising no one, he offered no studies or research to back up his outrageous claims. The use of the word “grooming,” of course, is a signal that we’re really talking about here is gay people (and particularly gay men) manipulating and abusing youth. It suggests that an event talking about sexual identity or having sex ed is an opportunity to have some kind of sexual activity or engagement, when it’s actually just about educating on sexual health, identities, and (hopefully) important topics like consent, how to report abuse, and so on.
Painting cisgender men as predatory also feeds into the narrative that trans women are actually cis men pretending to be women in order to access women and girls in places like the bathroom and locker room. It’s all connected.
As highlighted over at Media Matters, Tucker Carlson recently wondered aloud why fathers aren’t storming classrooms and beating up teachers who talk about identity.
“Teachers pushing sex values on your third grader, why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher?” Carlson said in part while blabbering on Fox News. “Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?”
So now it’s cool to incite violence against educators? Though folks were already physically attacking teachers over mask mandates, so it’s really nothing new in this day and age. And it’s especially not new from Fox—but it’s still disgusting and shameful.
At the end of the day, grooming is a serious form of abuse and sexual violence. It is never okay for an adult to coerce or manipulate a young person, whether or not that involves emotional, physical, or sexual contact. It’s not okay, period. The characterization of LGBTQ+ people as being more likely to be predators or the idea that queer people only want to talk to youth about sexual orientation or gender identity is to “turn” them queer is inaccurate, offensive, and hateful. Nothing backs these claims except for the hate of the person spewing them.
And all the while, conservatives are eager to change laws so they can marry minors. But again, they want to call us the predators …
Escobar says Abbott's plan to get asylum-seekers out of Texas is more 'politics of hate and cruelty'
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Texas Rep. Veronica Escobar is slamming right-wing Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent announcement seeking to bus asylum-seekers to Washington, D.C., as his usual, but no less disgusting, political theatrics. She ties this latest plan to another border scheme that has treated both migrants and deployed soldiers with disregard.
“If a person is a soldier or a migrant, he doesn’t care,” Escobar tells Border Report. She represents the El Paso region. “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 STORY: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott peddles horrific plan to kidnap immigrants, then backtracks
As noted last week, while Abbott puffed up his chest for cameras and threatened that he would kidnap forcibly move asylum-seekers across state lines as retribution for the Biden administration’s just decision to stop enforcing Stephen Miller’s anti-asylum policy at the southern border, Abbott was notably sedate in the official statement, which said the busing would actually be voluntary.
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“I don’t know if he’s really going to do what he says—I don’t think so,” Escobar commented to Border Report. “But if he wants to go through with this treatment of vulnerable people, I think someone will take him to court.”
But what she knows for sure is that Miller’s Title 42 order has been an abject failure, quadrupling crossings, experts have said. “We have 1,900 miles of wall. That has not stopped, curbed, or deterred migration,” Escobar continued to Border Report. “We’ve now had almost three years of Title 42. That has not stopped curbed or deterred migration.”
Escobar had vocally urged an end to the policy, and called for the administration to “re-envision our immigration policies to be more strategic and humane,” including creating a pilot program “for processing vulnerable populations using civilian personnel instead of law enforcement.” Border state advocates have also said they’re ready to welcome asylum-seekers.
“Our community in Arizona is welcoming to refugees and asylum seekers; it has been for many years,” said Their Story is Our Story Assistant Director of Advocacy Christy Bishop.
“Finally, Congress has an obligation to act on reforming outdated immigration laws,” Escobar said last month. “Calls for vulnerable populations to ‘get in line’ or ‘do it the right way’ reflect an ignorance about the limited legal opportunities that exist. It falls on those of us in Congress to create those legal opportunities that would go a long way in addressing the challenges and opportunities we face at our nation’s front door and beyond.”
In the aftermath of the horrific mass shooting by a white supremacist terrorist in El Paso in 2019, Escobar has relentlessly used her platform to call attention to the dangers of racist rhetoric commonly used by Abbott and other right-wing politicians.
Escobar late that year chaired a field hearing on anti-immigrant rhetoric and domestic violence that was skipped by Republicans. “Unnamed Republican representatives had planned to attend, Escobar said, but ‘backed out at the last minute’ for unknown reasons,” the El Paso Times reported. Probably because the anti-immigrant rhetoric of so many in their party is no different than racist mass murderers. Several years later, they’re just getting worse, just openly threatening to kidnap people.
RELATED STORIES: ’Matter of life and death’: Escobar chairs hearing on anti-immigrant rhetoric and domestic terrorism
In absence of presidential leadership, Rep. Escobar becomes a comforter in chief for El Paso
GOP states waste no time suing over Biden admin’s termination of anti-asylum Title 42 policy
Roger Stone, former OANN host among right-wing pundits losing their minds over Trump backing Dr. Oz
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It’s not that the GOP frontrunner for Pennsylvania’s open Senate seat didn’t try to sell his soul to the devil, it’s just that the devil wouldn’t take it.
Instead, Donald Trump endorsed a guy whose soul status, as it were, was never in question—celebrity TV healther Dr. Memet Oz. Oz currently trails hedge fund manager David McCormick by several points in the GOP primary, so getting Trump’s nod surely stands to give the bad doctor a little boost.
“This is all about winning elections in order to stop the radical left maniacs from destroying our country,” Trump said in his statement. Amid touting Oz’s many dubious credentials, Trump added, “He even said that I was in extraordinary health, which made me like him even more (although he also said I should lose a couple of pounds!).”
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Trump’s very carefully considered pick is generally good news for Democrats. Last month, an internal poll leaked by a super PAC supporting Democratic Senate candidate Connor Lamb showed Democratic frontrunner John Fetterman beating Oz by 9 points, but trailing McCormick by 3. That’s an internal poll by a pro-Lamb group trying to cast doubt on the electoral prospects of another Democrat, so grain of salt. But it’s still noteworthy in terms of which Republican is likely to fare better in the general election.
Certainly, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell didn’t seem super jazzed about the news. Asked about Trump’s pick on Fox News Sunday, McConnell offered only, “We’ll see. I think we’ve got a good choice of candidates in Pennsylvania. I think we’ve been in a good position to win that race regardless of who the nominee is. I guess we’ll find in the next few weeks how much this endorsement made a difference.”
But however well Oz may or may not play in the general election, Trump’s endorsement of him is blowing the minds of right-wingers—and not in a good way.
Former Trump associate Roger Stone posted a pic to Telegram of Oz on set with former First Lady Michelle Obama and queried, “Wait ? President endoresd this guy ?” [Sic for that whole quote.]
“I have enormous respect for President Trump,” wrote Trump’s first endorsee for the seat, alleged wife abuser Sean Parnell, who dropped out after losing custody of his children. “But I’m disappointed by this. Oz is the antithesis of everything that made Trump the best president of my lifetime.”
Former One America News Network (OANN) host Liz Wheeler tweeted, “Trump endorsing Dr. Oz confirms what Trump supporters fear for 2024. … His worst thing was surrounding himself with idiots, suck ups & deep state. We worry, has he learned his lesson or will 2024 be a repeat? Endorsing Oz? The same.”
Right-winger John Cardillo posited, “Even money odds Dr. Oz will eventually switch parties and f’k over PA voters. Do NOT trust this guy.” Cardillo further called the endorsement “inexcusable,” charging that Oz would be Mitt Romney 2.0. Trump “just put his political capital behind an anti-gun pro-abortion open borders Hollywood liberal,” he added.
Conservative radio host Erick Erickson lamented, “It’s like Donald Trump’s staff is sabotaging Trump by convincing him to make the worst possible endorsements.”
But the money quote came from Breitbart Editor Joel Pollak, who predicted: “This endorsement could divide MAGA in the only way that matters: he could lose America First conservatives over it.”
From his lips to god’s ears.
Anyway, impressive pick by Trump—snubbing his extremist base while passing over the guy who likely has the edge with suburbanites. Kudos.
The end of rape and incest exceptions for abortion make it clear: Forced birthers are not 'pro-life'
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Here’s what happens when you give in rhetorically to the far right’s rhetoric on social issues: you lose. When you say abortion should be “safe, legal, and rare” and codify that in laws to create exceptions in bans for rape and incest. Instead of taking the stance that every person who can get pregnant has the right to choose to continue that pregnancy or not within the bounds decided upon by the U.S. Supreme Court in Roe v. Wade. Because when you start making exceptions, when you start conceding that maybe some abortions are justified while some are not, you’re losing ground.
That ground has been gobbled up by the extremists that are now the mainstream of the right and of the U.S. Supreme Court. Because, as Jennifer Haberkorn writes in the LA Times, those “good” abortions—the rape and incest ones—are increasingly being tossed along with the rest. By the Supreme Court.
There is no exception for rape and incest in the Texas abortion ban, the vigilante law that the Supreme Court is allowing to stand while it is challenged in court. The Mississippi law that the court heard in December, and almost certainly will uphold, also includes no ban for rape and incest.
RELATED STORY: At least 13 states have introduced legislation to limit or ban abortion since the year’s start
“When there are no exceptions for a person who survived rape or incest, it means the state is coercing that person into a pregnancy they don’t want,” Michele Goodwin, a UC Irvine professor who studies law and health and is founding director of the Center for Biotechnology and Global Health Policy told the LA Times. Survivors have already been through one harm, “but here’s the state rubber-stamping a second harm.”
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Goodwin is a survivor of incest and of an abortion at 12. Her father impregnated her, then lied about her age to get a legal abortion for her. Seeing that option being shut off for other children is worrying, to say the least. “I tried to put myself in the deepest corners of closets as a child,” she said. “One of the key steps of being a survivor is to be able to get your freedom back, to be able to get your autonomy back, to be able to get your decision-making back.”
For decades, forced birthers wouldn’t dare go after rape and incest survivors because such huge majorities believe survivors should have access to legal abortion. Back in 2012, when that poll was conducted, there were 13 Republican Senate candidates who agreed with the Republican National Coalition for Life that they were “unconditionally pro-life” and “recognize the inherent right to life of every innocent human being, from conception until natural death, without discrimination.” Two of them are in the Senate now: Ted Cruz (TX), and Deb Fischer (NE). They are among the extremists who helped cram the Supreme Court with forced birther justices.
That’s why a decade later we’re at the point where states feel like outlawing abortion completely, no exceptions, is going to work. “There’s now the opportunity to overturn Roe vs. Wade, overturn abortion rights at the Supreme Court, and that is sort of emboldening these state legislators to move well beyond where a lot of people thought they could go 10 to 15 years ago,” Elizabeth Nash, who tracks state abortion legislation for the Guttmacher Institute, told the LA Times.
That’s extremely convenient for current Senate Republicans, from Leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy to firebrands like Sens. Josh Hawley (MO) and James Lankford (OK) who can say they believe the exceptions should be kept, but have to build a Supreme Court that will allow them to be eliminated in their states.
Even so, it’s not as though having those exceptions has eased the way for survivors seeking abortion care. The states that have tried to outlaw abortion and keep the exceptions don’t make it easy to use them, creating red-tape barriers like requiring police reports or doctor’s signatures. A child who’s been raped by a family member isn’t going to have easy access to officialdom. Plenty of rape survivors have plenty of reasons to refuse to report their assault. While little data on the use of these exemptions exist, Guttmacher studied abortion in assault survivors in 2005, finding “just 1% of patients getting an abortion did so because of rape and less than 0.5% did so because of incest.”
“There are so many practical reasons that a rape exemption doesn’t pan out for survivors, and so it serves to feel like a salve on abortion restrictions,” said Juliana Gonzales, senior director of sexual assault services at the SAFE Alliance, an Austin, Texas-based nonprofit. “On a practical level, the exceptions don’t do anything. That’s the honest truth.”
What they have served as is a way for the extremists to pretend that they are compassionate toward survivors, to pretend that they care about the person carrying a fetus. They’re even increasingly giving up that façade. Google “life of the mother exceptions” and you’ll find link after link from the forced birther groups and their allies attesting to the fact that they don’t care, rejecting the idea that a fully realized person’s life is equal to that of a fetus, much less more important.
There are still some lower courts and law enforcement officials who recognize that, as of now anyway, there’s a constitutional right to abortion. In Idaho, the state Supreme Court has temporarily blocked its new Texas-style abortion ban which was scheduled to be implemented in a few weeks. And in Texas, District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez dismissed an indictment against Lizelle Herrera, who had been arrested for murder for having an abortion.
That’s a dim ray of hope, with a packed Supreme Court poised to do its worst. Which means two things have to happen—we have to elect enough Democrats who will fight like hell to regain all that lost ground and codify abortion protections, and expand the U.S. Supreme Court to get it out of the hands of dangerous ideologues.
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Ukraine update: NATO dramatically expands Ukraine weapons shipments after Russia's war crimes
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In a previous update, we noted that the United States and NATO allies have been pointedly dropping the distinctions between “defensive” and “offensive” weaponry that sharply limited what sorts of equipment NATO countries were willing to send to Ukrainian forces. Body armor, ammunition, and anti-armor drones and missiles were readily handed over; armored vehicles and especially military aircraft were right out.
The distinction was made in an effort to not be seen as providing anything that could be used to attack Russian territory directly, out of fear that Russian autocrat Vladimir Putin would insist that NATO was now attempting to attack Russia itself. That would lead to Putin ordering retaliatory attacks on whatever NATO member he declared to be most involved, which would trigger NATO’s reciprocity agreements and turn the war directly into one between NATO and Russia. The Biden administration was especially fierce about limiting such aid, knocking away proposals from NATO countries (read: Poland) that wanted jets or other offensive tools handed over—even as Ukraine’s president stumped furiously for such assistance.
There are still a whole lot of reasons why Ukraine probably won’t be getting planes anytime soon, but that other equipment? It’s flowing. Our own speculation was that this was a direct result of Ukraine forcing a dramatic Russian retreat in the captured towns north of Kyiv, a retreat that left behind a landscape of Russian war crimes. Pictures showed evidence of the torture and summary execution of civilians, the indiscriminate targeting of civilians, and a Russian focus on looting that went past obsession to something bordering on pathetic. The evidence of those crimes was enough to goad NATO nations into taking more aggressive action; it became clear that every passing hour of Russian occupation, in the lands presently under their control, is another hour in which Russian troops are committing new war crimes in the places they still can.
Mother Jones picks up on this too, and provides some corroborating evidence from the Sunday shows confirming that yes, Russia’s exposed war crimes are the reason the U.S. is now dropping its previous objections to offensive weapons delivery. Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan used Meet the Press to link the two directly:
“Given the nature of the battle, how things have shifted and adjusted and what the Russians have done, frankly, killing civilians, atrocities, war crimes, we have gotten to a place in the United States and across many members of the NATO alliance where the key question is: What does Ukraine need and how can we provide it to them?”
Sullivan even boasted that the U.S. deserved some of the credit for the Russian retreat, asserting on Face The Nation that Russia “failed chiefly because of the bravery and skill of the Ukrainian armed forces, but they also failed because the United States and our partners put in the hands of those armed forces advanced weapons that helped beat back” Russian forces. That’s a long way from previous administration’s insistence that the United States mainly was a third party to the war—on the contrary, it’s a public boast that NATO involvement is a big part of the reason Russia faced heavy enough losses to force a retreat.
It’s also clearly an intentional move. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin made a public show of speaking with Ukrainian soldiers being trained on the use of U.S.-provided Switchblade drones in Biloxi, Mississippi, highlighting the direct U.S. training of Ukrainian troops that was no doubt being provided all along but which defense officials were circumspect in talking about. Now it’s not just out in the open, the U.S. is very nearly rubbing it in the faces of their Russian counterparts.
Sullivan’s statement also hints at the second reason NATO is suddenly being much more aggressive in the sort of weapons they’re willing to provide Ukraine, enough so that talk of “offensive” or “defensive” weapons has largely dropped from the discourse. Sullivan lauded the “bravery and skill” of Ukraine’s forces in pushing back Russia’s Kyiv advance; those Ukrainian forces have shown such dramatic success that NATO countries are now much more confident that if they do take the step of supplying heavy offensive weapons, provoking likely Russian rage, it won’t just be pissing into the wind. Those weapons will be used and used effectively and might even make the difference between Ukrainian defeat, long-term stalemate, or outright routing of Russia’s forces.
In balancing the risks of “provoking” Putin against the potential gains of providing those weapons, the scales have now tipped heavily toward the gains. NATO now sees Russian occupation of Ukrainian towns as far more intolerable, due to the documentation of war crimes, and sees the odds of Ukraine’s military being able to kick those occupiers out as being quite high, compared to what NATO’s own military analysts were expecting in the early days of the war.
So Ukraine gets the weapons, and the United States is now much more willing to poke Putin in the eye.