The Jan. 6 committee has amassed so much evidence in the nearly 500 days since Donald Trump incited an insurrection at the U.S. Capitol that congressional investigators are weighing a criminal referral to the Department of Justice for the twice-impeached ex-president.
Whether they ultimately issue that referral is a question that hangs heavy in the air over the probe and members are internally split on the path ahead, according to a report by The New York Times from Sunday.
Nonetheless, after some 800 interviews and extensive cooperation from those orbiting the Trump White House and campaign in the runup to Jan. 6, the committee’s bipartisan leadership has said the evidence strongly indicates Trump illegally obstructed Congress—again—and committed fraud against the American people as he and those who sought to keep him in power worked to pull off a scheme that hinged on his lies about the outcome of the 2020 election.
During an interview on CNN following the Times report, committee Vice Chair Liz Cheney, a Republican ousted from GOP leadership for her participation in the probe, brushed off the notion that division was stewing among members.
The sources in the Times said some lawmakers on the committee are at odds over whether it is actually necessary to throw their weight behind a criminal referral for the ex-president to the Department of Justice.
That referral is mostly symbolic as the committee has acknowledged countless times over the last year in court and to the press that it simply does not have the authority to prosecute Trump.
A criminal referral could also potentially trigger a lengthy series of delay tactics from Trump or his allies in Congress that would draw time and resources away from key areas of the probe.
From the Times:
The members and aides who were reluctant to support a referral contended that making one would create the appearance that Mr. Garland was investigating Mr. Trump at the behest of a Democratic Congress and that if the committee could avoid that perception it should, the people said.
This assessment on optics reflects, at least in part, the scars left in Washington from the deeply contentious and circus-like atmosphere created in the wake of Trump’s first impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress.
Prosecution in this case, as a matter of constitutional fact, must be left to the proper—and separate—channels at the Department of Justice.
To that end, over the sprawl of its inquiry the select committee has issued subpoenas aplenty and filed lawsuits to claw back or expose various records from integral Trump White House and campaign officials. In this process, it has left a trail of morsels for the Department of Justice to consider as that department conducts its own separate and massive review of Jan. 6.
Take the case of John Eastman, the Trump attorney who wrote a memo proposing how to overturn the election through an unconstitutional pressure strategy involving former Vice President Mike Pence.
When a federal judge in California finally reviewed the emails Eastman sought to keep away from the committee during his tenure at Chapman University, the judge found information that led him to believe Trump and Eastman “more likely than not” engaged in a federal crime.
The ruling was a boon for transparency overall, to be sure, but it also provided the Department of Justice with something deeply important, at least in the eyes of some members of the Jan. 6 committee: A federal judge’s ruling, they reportedly said, would simply mean more in the eyes of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Once the committee completes its investigation, it will issue a report on its complete findings and recommendations. That report alone may have so much information and relevant evidence in it that the Department of Justice could use it as its guide to bring criminal charges.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who previously served on both impeachment inquiries for Trump and for former President Bill Clinton, now sits on the Jan. 6 probe. She is of the opinion that a criminal referral isn’t the end all be all to accountability or justice.
When asked whether the select committee would issue a criminal referral for Trump, Lofgren told the Times, “Maybe we will, maybe we won’t.”
“It doesn’t have a legal impact,” Lofgren said.
Other panel members like Rep. Elaine Luria of Virginia have been insistent, however, that it is about the principle of the matter, political ramifications of the criminal referral be damned.
“This committee, our purpose is legislative and oversight, but if in the course of our investigation we find that criminal activity has occurred, I think it’s our responsibility to refer that to the Department of Justice,” Luria recently told MSNBC.
This weekend, Cheney told CNN “there’s not really a dispute on the committee” over the referral and emphasized that members are working in a “really collaborative way.”
The committee, reportedly, has not yet met formally to discuss issuing a referral to the Department of Justice for Trump, however, and there may not be a meeting in the mix any time soon.
Public hearings are expected this summer, potentially in May and June, and according to committee member and Rep. Pete Aguilar, the probe is not interested in “presupposing” what will be in its final report.
As of April 6, the Department of Justice has made nearly 800 arrests in its investigation of the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Two big stories hit the wires today, and reading between the lines in them, it seems like everybody is fed up with Sen. Joe Manchin’s back-stabbing of fellow Democrats, and they’re increasingly willing to talk about it. Obliquely and cautiously, of course, but nonetheless on the record. It seems that fellow Democrats are now willing to talk about just how untrustworthy he is.
The White House has been burned so many times by Manchin that they’re not going to say anything specific about how or whether they are proceeding with negotiations over rebuilding Build Back Better, the big climate and domestic investments bill that Manchin scuttled last year. “I would quite explicitly not comment on the conversations that are happening,” Brian Deese, Biden’s National Economic Council director, told reporters recently. “I don’t think that has served anyone particularly well.”
It has indeed not, since Manchin has reneged time and time again. At this point, everyone involved is very carefully not saying anything about what Manchin has told them he’s willing to do, because every time they’ve gone out on a limb about what’s he’s committed to, he denies it. The most the White House would say is what Manchin has gone on record talking about as his priorities. “There are things like prescription drugs and lower utility bills that people understand are popular—are practical,” Deese told Politico. “If we can get movement, it will be in exactly that frame.”
So the White House and Democrats are at the point of telling Manchin to write the bill himself, and saying nothing more about it. “This is really up to Joe,” one person involved in the process told Politico. “It’s basically going to be the Manchin reconciliation bill when all is said and done.” Another said “This is a matter of Joe Manchin coming up with a bill that he’s comfortable with. … He is the way he is.”
That’s no guarantee of getting Manchin on board, however, as his fellow moderate Democrats in the Senate well know. That’s what they did with the voting rights effort. Manchin was the single Democratic senator who opposed HR 1, the For the People Act the House passed early in 2021. So they had him write his own bill, one that he promised he would get Republicans to support. That didn’t turn out so well.
Rolling Stone has the other big new Manchin story about how he scuttled this effort, and it’s not a flattering portrayal from fellow Democrats interviewed—more than 30 key people inside and outside of Congress who worked on the voting rights legislation. It starts with Sen. Jon Tester, the Montana Democrat who has been spending way too much time trying to get Manchin to play along, telling Colorado Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet, “I think we’re gonna get this voting-rights thing done.”
Yeah, right. Tester—along with Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Angus King (I-VT)—had been painstakingly working with Manchin not just to draft the bill, but to get him to agree to a process that would let it pass. And Tester really thought that they were there, that Manchin really wanted what he said he wanted—“some good rule changes to make the place work better.”
Here’s how it went: “At the end of one of their calls, Tester recalls saying that with everyone in agreement on a filibuster deal, all they had to do was put the finishing touches on the voting legislation itself and they were ready to proceed. ‘Yeah,’ Manchin replied, according to Tester.”
Kaine spent the most time working with Manchin on the process, including the night he spent in his car, stranded in a snow storm out side of D.C. He told Rolling Stone that he too had thought Manchin was on board making the changes to the filibuster necessary to get it passed. “I thought we were there a couple of times,” Kaine says. “But maybe that was just me.”
“It was like riding a roller coaster,” Sen. Tester told Rolling Stone. “There were many nights when I went to bed and I thought, ‘This thing is done. We just have to hammer out the details.’ But then something would always happen,” he added. “I don’t know what happened. I can guess. But I don’t know.”
In the meantime, the other back-stabber in the caucus was apparently feeling neglected. Her spokesman, John LaBombard, says as much. He told Rolling Stone that no one was paying her enough attention, assuming that she wouldn’t ultimately stand alone against the reform if they got Manchin on board. Team Sen. Kyrsten Sinema wants the world to know that she’s as much of a diva as Manchin. “It would be a mistake on anyone’s part to engage in any wishful thinking that Sen. Sinema’s policy or tactical positions are somehow contingent on the positions of other colleagues and are not sincerely held,” LaBombard says.
So that’s why she gave that big, obnoxious floor speech—the longest one in her career—against changing the filibuster to save democracy. She was peeved that Manchin was getting all the attention, apparently.
Which is also a thing to remember when working with Manchin on the other stuff: Sinema. Some of the stuff Manchin has said he would agree to (and again, all of that has to be taking with several blocks of salt) are thing Sinema has already nixed. Namely, raising taxes on super rich people and corporations, since they’re presumably paying her way these days.
The level of frustration with Manchin openly expressed by White House staff and Democratic senators suggests that they’ve reached the end of their capacity for patience with him. They all came as close to saying he can’t be negotiated with in good faith as they’re going to with him being a colleague and this being the Senate.
As far as Sinema is concerned, who the hell knows. At this point there truly is just one solution: Increase the Democrats’ majority and make them obsolete. Meanwhile, the two of them are doing everything they can to sabotage the 2022 midterm election for Democrats.
In a years-in-the-making win for immigrants and their advocates last month, the Biden administration announced that it would no longer be jailing immigrants at the disreputable Etowah County Detention Center in Alabama. The site was initially recommended for closure more then a decade ago, but evaded it under pressure from right-wing lawmakers. No more.
But mirroring events following closures in a number of other states, rather than just releasing immigrants detained at Etowah, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials are instead transferring them elsewhere. In this case, to a privately operated prison in Louisiana with its own “history of neglect and reported abuses,” The Advocate reports.
Legal representatives told The Advocate that nearly a dozen asylum-seekers have been moved to the GEO Group-operated LaSalle Correctional Center in Jena, which has been the center of major complaints within the past five years. That includes a 2017 civil rights complaint finding the site “had the highest number of sexual and/or physical abuse incidents in the country.”
“Now, ICE has begun holding people in solitary confinement at LaSalle, as the jail is over capacity,” said advocacy organization Freedom for Immigrants. “Solitary confinement is a torturous, inhumane, and cruel practice.” The Advocate reports that nurses in 2019 filed a lawsuit against GEO Group alleging that they got sick from mold and other toxins at the facility. But a judge threw out most of the cases.
“The years of ongoing abuse at LaSalle underscore what we’ve already known to be true: All immigration detention is inherently dehumanizing and abusive,” Freedom for Immigrants continued. “It’s not enough to move people from one jail to another.”
But that’s exactly what ICE has done in response to numerous people-powered wins against the mass detention agency. In New Jersey last fall, Bergen County was the remaining locality in the state to continue holding a federal immigration contract when the commissioner board voted unanimously to end the agreement. Like in Alabama, it was the culmination of years of organizing by immigrants and advocates.
But rather than releasing them, ICE moved them hundreds of miles away to New York. It was the same in Illinois earlier this year following implementation of state law that effectively ended immigration detention in the state. Injustice Watch reported nearly three dozen immigrants were instead sent to facilities in Indiana, Kentucky, Oklahoma, and Texas. “The rest were deported or transferred to other law enforcement agencies.”
“They’re just taking me farther and farther from the family,” one of the immigrants, Armando Cazares, said in the report. “I didn’t even wanna tell my mom where I’m at. I’m scared. I’m breaking my mom’s heart.”
Remember: Data indicates most people in ICE custody “do not have a single criminal conviction,” and ICE has discretion to allow them to pursue their cases from their own homes and communities.
“In March 2020, in fact, more than six out of ten (61.2%) had no conviction, not even for a minor petty offense,” TRAC Immigration said. In an unprecedented move, the Department of Homeland Security watchdog recently urged the removal of all people detained at the Torrance County Detention Facility in New Mexico, citing inhumane conditions. But ICE’s reaction was to instead attack the integrity of the report, including accusing the inspector general’s office of staging photos.
“Human rights abuses are inherent to the immigration detention system, and all immigration detention centers are abusive,” Freedom for Immigrants Director of Visitation Advocacy Strategies Sofia Casini told The Advocate. “That’s why it’s not enough to transfer people from one abusive jail to another. This is not some shell game: We are talking about peoples’ lives.”
In a troubling report obtained by KUTV, investigators failed to find enough evidence that a 10-year-old Black girl was harassed because of her race and disability, and committed suicide after allegedly dealing with prolonged bullying at a majority-white Utah school. Although the child’s family attorney, Tyler Ayres, told Deseret Newsthat Isabella “Izzy” Tichenor was bullied at Foxboro Elementary School in North Salt Lake for being Black and autistic, a team of three independent investigators hired by the school district alleged the attorney did not make the same allegation when emailing the school district’s general counsel. Ayres allegedly said in the email that the district was “deliberate[ly] indifferen[t] to reports of bullying made by Izzy and her family” but did not specify that the bullying was due to Izzy’s race or disability.
Isabella’s mother, Brittany Tichenor-Cox, told The Salt Lake Tribuneafter her daughter’s death last November that a teacher told Izzy’s class that some students smelled bad and that the girl’s classmates used the comment to threaten her and tell her that she stunk because of her skin. Still, the Davis School District was allowed to limit the scope of investigators’ work to bullying that happened only on the basis of the child’s race or disability. “The Team was not authorized to investigate Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s allegations that Izzy may have been bullied on any ground that was not race or disability,” investigators wrote in their report.
Investigators said they found no direct evidence supporting allegations that Izzy was “bullied on the basis of her race or disability … While many interview subjects reported that students and teachers made comments to Izzy about her hygiene, no witness recalled that she was expressly bullied for being Black or autistic,” investigators wrote. They also concluded there was “no direct evidence to support allegations” that Foxboro or district officials “knew and failed to respond to the alleged bullying on the basis of Izzy’s race or disability.”
“The only allegations the Team could find came from Mrs. Tichenor-Cox, who alleged after Izzy’s death that Izzy was bullied for being Black or autistic,” investigators wrote.
They did, however, note that “issues relating to race, disability, and poverty sometimes intersect and when they do, can further complicate already challenging situations.”
“It can be very difficult to extricate one from the others,” investigators wrote.
They reviewed more than 2,600 pages of documents, including Izzy’s educational assessments, Individualized Education Plan, and emails between Foxboro and the district. Investigators also interviewed 47 witnesses, not including Izzy’s mother, who investigators alleged declined through her attorney.
The Davis School District received the report of the investigation on March 29, yet waited until just before 5:30 PM the day before its spring break to release the findings and an attached statement to media, KUTV reported.
“Once again, the Davis School District expresses its sorrow and sincere, heartfelt condolences to the family of Izzy Tichenor,” District Spokesman Chris Williams said in the statement. “We thank the Independent Review Team for its work and its diligence. We are studying the report and reviewing its recommendations. We are taking it seriously.
“We vow to continue our ongoing and extensive efforts to foster a welcoming environment for all students in the Davis School District.”
There have long been reports from students of color and their parents of a toxic environment in the district. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) reviewed more than 200 incident files containing allegations of racial harassment and other discrimination, according to findings the DOJ released last September. “The Department’s investigation uncovered systemic failures in the District’s handling of complaints of racial student-on-student and staff-on-student harassment, discipline of Black students, and refusal to allow Black students to form student groups,” the DOJ wrote.
The agency reported that the district was “deliberately indifferent to known racial harassment,” including white students repeatedly calling Black students the N-word. “We learned of incidents in which white students referred to Black students as dirty, asked why they did not wash their skin, and commented that their skin looked like feces,” the DOJ reported. “White students also called Asian-American students pejorative slurs, such as ‘yellow’ and ‘squinty’ and told them to ‘Go back to China.’”
The report regarding Isabella’s experience is only the latest incident of reported racism at the school. Investigators recommended the district provide training to identify and address bullying, diversity and equity, and trauma-informed poverty as well as establishing “clear protocols” regarding record keeping. “As described above, Foxboro did not document Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s complaints that Izzy was being bullied until after they were informed that Izzy had attempted suicide,” investigators wrote in the report. They also said the school failed to identify Isabella’s family as the complainant when her mother reported that another student had called Isabella’s sister the N-word on or around Oct. 25, 2021.
“The District did not learn who the complainants were until November 3, 2021 — the day Mrs. Tichenor-Cox told Foxboro that Izzy had attempted suicide,” investigators wrote in the report. “That same day, the District reviewed the Izzy’s Encore file, which, by that time, Foxboro updated to include Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s complaints that Izzy’s sister had been bullied for her race.
“If the District had been alerted to Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s concerns sooner, the District could have investigated the allegations and taken corrective action against the perpetrator earlier.”
Investigators concluded in the report that while the school cared about the Tichenor-Cox family and provided resources to assist with its housing instability, it ultimately failed to protect Isabella. “Mrs. Tichenor-Cox reported at least one incident that she believed constituted bullying to Foxboro,” investigators concluded. “Foxboro had an obligation and responsibility to Izzy to investigate Mrs. Tichenor-Cox’s report. Yet, Foxboro dismissed and failed to timely document her concern. As a result, Foxboro failed to conduct the investigation that Izzy was due and deserved.”
Darlene McDonald, an advocate with the Utah Black Roundtable and the Utah Educational Equity Coalition, told The Salt Lake Tribune she wishes investigators had gone further in their report after the only evidence of racial harassment cited was regarding Izzy’s sister.
“As a community, as a state, as people of color, we must look at this and ask how we don’t keep going through this year after year after year,” she said.
After his father-in-law left the White House, Jared Kushner got a $2 billion golden parachute—from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Kushner predictably started a private equity firm despite his lack of experience in private equity, and went to the main Saudi sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), asking for an “investment.”
The professionals in charge of screening possible investments for the PIF raised a series of objections only to be overruled days later by the fund’s board, which is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, with whom Kushner became close during his time as a senior White House adviser.
The objections to investing in Kushner’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners, included “’the inexperience of the Affinity Fund management’;the possibility that the kingdom would be responsible for ‘the bulk of the investment and risk’; due diligence on the fledgling firm’s operations that found them ‘unsatisfactory in all aspects’; a proposed asset management fee that ‘seems excessive’; and ‘public relations risks’ from Mr. Kushner’s prior role as a senior adviser to his father-in-law, former President Donald J. Trump, according to minutes of the panel’s meeting last June 30,” The New York Times reports.
The reason given internally was that Kushner was worth the risk despite his inexperience and potential public relations problems, in order to “capitalize on the capabilities of Affinity’s founders’ deep understanding of different government policies and geopolitical systems.” That’s a lot of words when you could just say “buying access and influence.”
As a measure of how much the eventual bin Salman-led decision to hand over $2 billion to Kushner was driven by relationships, Steven Mnuchin, the former Trump treasury secretary, also started a private equity firm and went to Saudi Arabia asking for money. He got $1 billion despite having relevant experience in the field. Kushner is also getting a higher asset management fee from the PIF than Mnuchin is.
Few other investors have bought what Kushner was selling. According to public filings, the main fund at Affinity Partners had just $2.5 billion invested. It sounds like he’s basically owned by Saudi Arabia at this point. But then, he did a lot to earn this kind of loyalty when he was in a position to do so.
In a side note on the brokenness of the traditional media, check out this framing: “Ethics experts say that such a deal creates the appearance of potential payback for Mr. Kushner’s actions in the White House — or of a bid for future favor if Mr. Trump seeks and wins another presidential term in 2024.”
Guys. You really don’t need ethics experts to tell you that. Everyone can see it. Nor do you need to include the waffling “the appearance of.” It’s blatantly corrupt, even if we don’t know if it’s more of a thank you for Jared’s help providing cover on the murder and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, or more of a down payment on future services should Trump make it back to the White House. And it’s business as usual for all of Team Trump.
A Texas district attorney announced on Sunday that a 26-year-old woman charged with murder for a “self-induced abortion” should never have been indicted, and prosecutors will be filing a motion to dismiss the indictment on Monday. Lizelle Herrera was arrested on Thursday by the Starr County Sheriff’s Office and held on a $500,000 bond after the sheriff’s office reported that she “intentionally and knowingly cause the death of an individual by self-induced abortion.” She was held in the Starr County jail in Rio Grande City, which is on the U.S.-Mexico border, NPR reported. Now it seems District Attorney Gocha Allen Ramirez is attempting to correct the wrong by asserting in a Facebook post that “Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.”
“Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family,” Ramirez wrote in the post. “To ignore this fact would be shortsighted. The issues surrounding this matter are clearly contentious, however based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.”
Read the district attorney’s complete Facebook post:
“Yesterday afternoon, I reached out to counsel for Ms. Lizelle Herrera to advise him that my office will be filing a motion dismissing the indictment against Ms. Herrera Monday, April 11, 2022. In reviewing applicable Texas law, it is clear that Ms. Herrera cannot and should not be prosecuted for the allegation against her.
In reviewing this case, it is clear that the Starr County Sheriff’s Department did their duty in investigating the incident brought to their attention by the reporting hospital. To ignore the incident would have been a dereliction of their duty. Prosecutorial discretion rests with the District Attorney’s office, and in the State of Texas a prosecutor’s oath is to do justice. Following that oath, the only correct outcome to this matter is to immediately dismiss the indictment against Ms. Herrera.
Although with this dismissal Ms. Herrera will not face prosecution for this incident, it is clear to me that the events leading up to this indictment have taken a toll on Ms. Herrera and her family. To ignore this fact would be shortsighted. The issues surrounding this matter are clearly contentious, however based on Texas law and the facts presented, it is not a criminal matter.
Going forward, my office will continue to communicate with counsel for Ms. Herrera in order to bring this matter to a close. It is my hope that with the dismissal of this case it is made clear that Ms. Herrera did not commit a criminal act under the laws of the State of Texas.”
Stephen Vladeck, a University of Texas law professor, told NBC-affiliated KXAN-TV before the motion to dismiss that homicide “doesn’t apply to the murder of an unborn child if the conduct charged is ‘conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child.'”
Vladeck later tweeted of the news Sunday that it is a “sobering reminder, among other things, to *always read the statute.*”
“It sure looks like the prosecutors just … forgot … that Texas’s murder statute expressly exempts from its scope a pregnant woman who terminates a pregnancy,” Vladeck said in the tweet, linking to Texas penal code.
It sure looks like the prosecutors just … forgot … that Texas’s murder statute expressly exempts from its scope a pregnant woman who terminates a pregnancy.https://t.co/dmUSultd6N A sobering reminder, among other things, to *always read the statute.* https://t.co/QUr6pECX5M
The penal code states that criminal homicide “does not apply to the death of an unborn child if the conduct charged is:
“(1) conduct committed by the mother of the unborn child; (2) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent, if the death of the unborn child was the intended result of the procedure; (3) a lawful medical procedure performed by a physician or other licensed health care provider with the requisite consent as part of an assisted reproduction as defined by Section 160.102, Family Code; or (4) the dispensation of a drug in accordance with law or administration of a drug prescribed in accordance with law.”
Herrera’s arrest seems to exemplify exactly the kind of harm abortion rights activists have been warning of following a toxic Supreme Court decision last December. That’s when the court ruled to allow a Texas ban on abortions after six weeks with the provision that abortion providers have the right to challenge the Texas law in federal court. Many considered it early evidence of the high court’s inclination to overturn the groundbreaking Roe v. Wade decision protecting abortion rights.
“My disagreement with the Court runs far deeper than a quibble over how many defendants these petitioners may sue. The dispute is over whether States may nullify federal constitutional rights by employing schemes like the one at hand. The Court indicates that they can, so long as they write their laws to more thoroughly disclaim all enforcement by state officials, including licensing officials. This choice to shrink from Texas’ challenge to federal supremacy will have far-reaching repercussions. I doubt the Court, let alone the country, is prepared for them.”
Russia expended considerable efforts to take Kyiv in the first five weeks of the war, for all the obvious reasons: Regime decapitation, propaganda value, cutting off supply routes to Ukrainian forces in the east, and so on.
However, the effort quickly ran into trouble. The prong from the northwest, through Chernobyl, stalled at Bucha and Irpin. From the northeast, Russia’s inability to take Chernihiv fixed Russian forces just over their border. Thus, desperate to encircle Kyiv, Russia stretched itself out from Sumy, all the way to the capital’s eastern outskirts.
March 13 map.
You can see the two long, billowy east-west supply lines from the Sumy region. Maps marked those roads as Russian controlled, but the reality was quite different. For weeks, Ukraine feasted on supply convoys attempting that trip (here, here, here, here, here, and here, are just a few examples), until at the end of March, Russia cried “uncle!” and that was that. Those forces were withdrawn. Well, what shards of them remained.
Why bring up this old bit of news?
New York Times: Russia will likely wage an offensive between Izium and Dnipro. U.S. analysts predict Russian troops will carry out a major offensive from Izium to the central city of Dnipro, a strategic target in Donbas region, unnamed U.S. military officials said on April 10.
— The Kyiv Independent (@KyivIndependent) April 11, 2022
U.S. intelligence has been mostly good this entire war, so it’s hard to dismiss it out of hand. But … wut?
The obvious goal is to try and enact a pincer maneuver from Izyum in the north, to Mariupol in the south, to trap the third (or so) of the Ukrainian army currently holding defensive entrenched positions on the border with the purple separatist-held area. Efforts to breach those defensive positions head-on have repeatedly failed, all the way back to 2014, hence the effort to surround them and cut them off from supplies and reinforcements.
Russian pincer maneuver can be hit on both its flanks.
The pincer maneuver is tough enough, requiring Russia to stretch out around 200 kilometers (~120 miles). This opens them up to the same resupply issues they faced up in their Sumy-to-Kyiv effort, while simultaneously exposing themselves to flank attacks from both the east and the west.
I noted over the weekend that there is little indication Russia can mass the kind of forces needed to make a real go at this. The existing, obvious plan is already a bit of a Hail Mary pass, as Russia desperately tries to notch any success in time for Vladimir Putin’s precious WWII commemorative parade on May 9.
Yet despite the difficult odds, Russia is supposedly looking to additionally march on Dnipro? Let’s get a close-up of the route Russian forces would have to take:
First of all, there is no direct highway to Dnipro. Shortest route would be to head west through Hrushuvakha (pop. 800), down through Lozova (pop. 55,000), take a right at Pavlohrad (pop. 109,000), then push through Novomoskovsk (pop. 70,000), and the rest of the eastern suburbs to Dnipro (pop. 966,400). Total distance? 231 kilometers (144 miles).
Or Russia could head east, through tiny Hrushuvakha again, all the way out to Sakhnovshchyna (pop. 7,000), to the outskirts of Krasnohrad (pop. 20,000), then directly south toward Dnipro until they hit Novomoskovsk. Dramatically smaller population centers! But the distance is now closer to 300 kilometers (186 miles). Both routes would suffer from the same exposed flanks as the pincer. And looking at the satellite imagery of the route, it’s all like this:
That’s wide-open agricultural fields, punctuated by the occasional wooded forest. Meanwhile, Ukrainian artillery would sit in Dnipro and hammer any approaching columns, while those woods would provide natural ambush sites. Ukrainian drones could operate far from most Russian air defenses. It would look like more of this:
And say Russia gets to the outskirts of Dnipro, then what? It won’t enter. Russia can’t even take cities on its border with zero supply lines to worry about. Are we really going to pretend that Russia would have a chance against a much bigger city than Kharkiv, Sumy, or Mariupol, except at the end of a long, extended, and vulnerable supply line?
U.S. intelligence is fallible. It has, at various times, and multiple times, claimed Belarus was about to directly enter the war, and that Odesa faced an amphibious assault. And sure, I bet Russian generals are currently hovering over a map of Ukraine, fantasizing about taking Dnipro. But we would be so lucky if Russia attempted to pull that trigger. It won’t. Just like their fantasies of taking Kyiv and Odesa will never be realized.
Shifting gears slightly, I’ve noted multiple times, including yesterday, how Russia is incapable of attacking with more than 1-2 Battalion Tactical Groups at a time. Here’s additional evidence:
Not completely satisfied with how all these units are jumbled together at Izium. I think the number is “about” right, 4 to 6 BTGs in this general area, but maybe only 1 to 2 south of the Siverskyi Donets at any given time as it looks like they may be rotating in and out of combat pic.twitter.com/MT27r7dCHP
They’ve got six BTGs in Izyum. At full-strength, each would have 800 soldiers, or 4,800 total. (Remember, a big chunk are support, but let’s pretend Russia is throwing everyone into the meat grinder.) Why not mass that force and punch through Ukrainian defenses south of Izyum? Or better yet, why not wait for the rest of the reinforcements from the Kyiv and Sumy operations to arrive in the area, and slam the hell out of Ukrainian defenses? Because they can’t. And as we saw yesterday, those BTGs aren’t even at full strength. Nowhere near it, in fact. Ukraine gets to handle the drip-drip of Russian attacks, because the former superpower is incapable of turning on the spigot.
And actually, we really don’t have to pretend that Russia is throwing support personnel into the meat grinder, because we know they are. We have evidence:
Three lieutenants, three officers, means they are out of contract soldiers to crew armored personnel carriers (APC). Remember, Russia doesn’t have a non-commissioned-officer corps to bridge the gap between the officer corps and lower enlisted personnel. So apparently, it was either untrained uneducated conscripts, or three officers.
But they weren’t even combat officers, with experience handling such equipment! One was a weather guy, likely there to help inform aviation efforts. But since so few planes and helicopters are flying, I guess it made him expendable. So yeah, the support guys, including officers, are being thrown into the same meat grinder as the (likely also dead) conscripts who were in the back of that APC. I doubt my 15% rule is operative anymore.
Russia is running low on skilled soldiers and can’t manage a half-coherent attack a few kilometers south of Izyum. So no, they’re not going to now push 230-300 kilometers to Dnipro. That’s the dumbest shit I’ve heard all war, in a war so f’n stupid, that if it was a movie, we’d all groan and give it a thumbs down for being so unrealistic.
The Daily Kos Elections Morning Digest is compiled by David Nir, Jeff Singer, Daniel Donner, and Carolyn Fiddler, with additional contributions from David Jarman, Steve Singiser, James Lambert, David Beard, and Arjun Jaikumar.
Politico’s Bill Mahoney wryly writes of the disgraced former governor, “If his supporters covertly knocked on tens of thousands of doors in recent weeks and every one of the people they interacted with kept it a secret, then he could still appear on the primary ballot if he put the signatures in a mailbox on Thursday and they arrived at the board by Monday — which is the final deadline.” Needless to say, even Agent Mulder would question the existence of a clandestine statewide signature-gathering conspiracy, but if Cuomo wanted to challenge Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul as an independent, he would have until May 31 to submit petitions.
It will still take a little time before we know exactly who’s on the June ballot for governor and U.S. House seats, though. New York allows statewide candidates to earn an automatic place in the primary by taking at least 25% of the vote at their respective party conventions, but the only gubernatorial candidates to hit that threshold were Hochul and Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin.
Everyone else running to lead the state needed to submit 15,000 petitions (with at least 100 each coming from half of the state’s 26 congressional districts), though Mahoney explains that because “it’s fairly easy to get a lot of these thrown out for irregularities, the long-standing rule of thumb has been that the goal should be about 30,000.” Indeed, New York campaigns have long been aggressive about going to court to challenge the validity of their opponent’s signatures. “Fuck them!” former Brooklyn Democratic Party leader Frank Seddio recently said of anyone who might get knocked off the ballot this way. “Breathing shouldn’t be the only qualification for running for office.”
Two Democrats, at least, are prepared to show they can do more than inhale and exhale: New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and Rep. Tom Suozzi each said they turned in 40,000 signatures in their quest to deny Hochul the nomination. For the GOP, wealthy businessman Harry Wilson announced that he’d submitted 36,000, while 2014 nominee Rob Astorino’s team said he’d filed 20,000 “solid signatures.” Former Trump aide Andrew Giuliani, meanwhile, wouldn’t reveal how many petitions he gathered, while Lewis County sheriff Michael Carpinelli acknowledged his campaign was kaput because he’d fallen short.
Major party candidates for the House, meanwhile, need to turn in 1,250 valid petitions, though they too want to provide considerably more to guard themselves against challenges. The state does publish a list of candidates who’ve filed for Congress, but it doesn’t include all House seats: Candidates running for a district that is contained entirely within either a single county or New York City file with their local election authorities, while everyone else files with the state. Under the new congressional map, 10 districts (the 6th through the 15th) are located wholly within the city, while the lone single-county seat anywhere else in the state is the open 4th District in Nassau County.
Election officials can take a few weeks to release their lists of contenders, so it’ll be a little while before we know exactly who will be running for Congress in all 26 districts. We’ll be taking a look at the state of play in each competitive congressional race after first quarter campaign finance reports are in following the FEC’s April 15 deadline.
1Q Fundraising
MN-01: Jeff Ettinger (D): $148,000 raised (in 17 days)
TN-05: Beth Harwell (R): $350,000 raised (in five weeks)
VA-02: Elaine Luria (D-inc): $1.18 million raised, $3 million cash-on-hand
WA-08: Kim Schrier (D-inc): $1.1 million raised, $4.7 million cash-on-hand
Senate
●NC-Sen: The Republican firm Cygnal is the latest pollster to find Trump-endorsed Rep. Ted Budd taking the lead over former Gov. Pat McCrory ahead of the May 17 Republican primary. Cygnal’s survey for the conservative John Locke Foundation (which merged with the Civitas Institute last year) has Budd ahead 32-21, which is a big shift from McCrory‘s 24-19 edge in its January numbers. The last poll we saw giving the former governor the advantage was, ironically, from an early March internal for Budd.
●PA-Sen: Penn Progress, the James Carville-backed super PAC that got its inaugural TV ad yanked from the airwaves the day it debuted for making false claims about Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, has now released a revised version. Instead of calling Fetterman a “self-described socialist”—he in fact has never described himself that way—the spot now says that Fetterman “sought the Democratic Socialists’ endorsement.”
Fetterman did indeed solicit the support of the Pittsburgh chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America in 2017 when he was running for lieutenant governor, but “sought” is the key word, because Fetterman did not receive DSA’s backing. Of note is Fetterman’s response to a DSA questionnaire, obtained by Politico reporter Holly Otterbein, in which he was asked, “Do you identify as a socialist?” His response: “No, I don’t consider myself a socialist.”
Governors
●GA-Gov: A group called Get Georgia Right is airing an ad that bludgeons Gov. Brian Kemp with the Big Lie ahead of the May 24 Republican primary. As ominous drums sound, the narrator claims, “Kemp refused to call a special session before the [Senate] runoff, and the widespread illegal ballot harvesting continued, electing two Democrat [sic] senators. If Kemp can’t beat voter fraud, he won’t beat Stacey Abrams.” There is no word on the size of the buy.
●KY-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in for the first quarter of the year, and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear raised $1 million and has $2.2 million stockpiled ahead of what will be a challenging 2023 re-election bid in this conservative state. The incumbent begins with a massive financial advantage over his declared GOP foes, but as we’ll discuss, there are plenty of other Republicans who are eyeing this contest.
State Auditor Mike Harmon announced his campaign back in July, but he doesn’t appear to have made good use of his head start. Harmon informed the Lexington Herald Leader this month he’s raised a mere $30,000 so far and had $14,000 on hand, though he insisted he’s “still in the early stages” when it comes to collecting money and understood that “the closer we get, the more I’m going to have to put a lot more focus on fundraising.” The field also includes Eric Deters, an attorney whose license has been suspended several times, who told the paper that he’s willing to self-fund more than $1 million; so far, though, Deters has thrown down just $23,000 of his own money and raised another $12,000.
Neither Harmon or Deters, though, will likely deter many fellow Republicans from getting in (no pun intended). Attorney General Daniel Cameron, who is a former legal counsel to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, recently made news when he once again declined to rule out a campaign against Beshear, saying, “we’re looking at everything that’s on the table.” Cameron is the Bluegrass State’s first Black attorney general, and he’d make history again if he were elected to the top job in 2023.
Former Ambassador to the United Nations Kelly Craft, who has long been one of the state and national GOP’s most prominent donors, also reiterated in February that she was “leaning heavily toward running for governor.” Commissioner of Agriculture Ryan Quarles, state Sen. Max Wise, and Somerset Mayor Alan Keck each previously expressed interest last summer.
Rep. James Comer also said at that time he had “no plans on running for governor at this moment” and intended to stay in Congress, which he even acknowledged wasn’t quite a no. “My goal for Kentucky is to get a good conservative governor, said the congressman, who lost an excruciatingly close 2015 primary for this office to eventual winner Matt Bevin, adding, “And if I see a good candidate out there that I’m friends with that I think can win, then I’ll certainly support that candidate.”
Secretary of State Michael Adams also declined to rule it out last year, though he said it was unlikely, while the Herald Leader adds that state Rep. Savannah Maddox hasn’t said no either. Finally, while Bevin doesn’t appear to have said anything about running to avenge his narrow 2019 loss to Beshear, political observers have speculated about that idea for some time.
The filing deadline is set for the first week of 2023, and if the last two governor races are any indication, we won’t know for sure who’s running until then. In 2015 Bevin, who had just badly failed to deny renomination to McConnell, announced his ultimately successful bid on the very last day possible. Four years later, the unpopular governor delayed filing to run again despite announcing he was in, which led to plenty of talk that he’d pull the plug on his re-election campaign. Comer, who had lost the primary to Bevin by 83 votes, also made it known he was considering a rematch if the incumbent did run.
Bevin did indeed make it clear he was running just days before the 2019 deadline, though he also used that occasion to announce he was dropping Lt. Gov. Jenean Hampton from his ticket in favor of adding state Sen. Ralph Alvarado. Comer, for his part, finally announced two days later he had “zero desire to run against a multi-millionaire incumbent Governor in a Primary regardless of how unpopular he was.” It would have almost certainly been better for Republicans if they’d swapped Bevin out for Comer (or pretty much anyone else) as Beshear narrowly unseated the incumbent.
●MS-Gov: State House Speaker Philip Gunn last summer made plenty of news when he refused to rule out a 2023 Republican primary bid against Gov. Tate Reeves, and while he’s said little publicly since then, Mississippi Today’s Adam Ganucheau recently wrote that the speaker “is still flirting” with the idea.
●NE-Gov: State Sen. Brett Lindstrom earned an endorsement late last month from Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert ahead of the May 10 Republican primary.
●OK-Gov: Oklahoma Department of Veterans Affairs Director Joel Kintsel announced Thursday that he would challenge his boss, Gov. Kevin Stitt, in the June Republican primary, arguing that “the Stitt administration is rife with corruption, self-dealing and cronyism, and Oklahomans deserve another choice.” Kintsel, who is a former state House parliamentarian but has never run for office before, did not point to any specific allegations in his launch statement.
There’s been little indication that Stitt, who self-funded his successful 2018 bid, is vulnerable to an intra-party challenge. His allies at the RGA, though, recently announced that it would spend $577,000 to support him this month through its State Solutions Inc. affiliate.
●PA-Gov: Campaign finance reports are in covering the period of Jan. 1 to March 28, and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette has collected the numbers from the main Republicans competing in the May 17 primary:
Former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain: $1.4 million raised, $546,000 spent, $1.7 million cash-on-hand
State Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman: $590,000 raised, $2.38 million spent, $271,000 cash-on-hand
Former Rep. Lou Barletta: $431,000 raised, $318,000 spent, $356,000 cash-on-hand
State Sen. Doug Mastriano: $373,000 raised, $326,000 spent, $1.09 million cash-on-hand
Four other Republicans are also running, but none of them took in more than $150,000 during this time. McSwain, meanwhile, has also benefited from an additional $5.8 million in spending from Commonwealth Leaders Fund, a group funded by the state’s wealthiest man, Jeff Yass.
Democrat Josh Shapiro, who has no intra-party opposition, raised $4.53 million, which is almost as much as those five Republicans put together. The attorney general spent $1.9 million and had $16 million on-hand.
●IN-01: Air Force veteran Jennifer-Ruth Green, a Republican we hadn’t previously mentioned, is running a spot where she touts her military service and pledges to “advance President Trump’s America first policy.” Green faces frontrunner Blair Milo, who is the former mayor of LaPorte, in the May 3 primary to take on Democratic incumbent Frank Mrvan in a seat that Biden would have carried 53-45.
●NY-22, NY-24: Army veteran Steven Holden has left the June Democratic primary for the open 22nd District to instead challenge Republican Rep. Chris Jacobs in the reliably red 24th.
●OR-06: A new group called Justice Unites Us is spending at least $847,000 to support economic development adviser Carrick Flynn in the May 17 Democratic primary for this new seat. Flynn has already benefited from $4.79 million in aid from the crypto industry-aligned Protect Our Future PAC.
Legislatures
●Special Elections: Here is a recap of Thursday’s contest in New York:
NY AD-20: With about 7,100 votes counted, Republican Ari Brown holds a huge 66-34 lead over Democrat David Lobl in a Long Island seat Trump took 52-47 in 2020. Uncounted mail-in votes may shift the margin, but Brown has declared victory in this GOP-held seat.
Many thanks for all the kind comments last week! And as always, if you enjoy this work, please consider helping me keep it sustainable by joining my weekly newsletter, Sparky’s List!
Monday House Democrats begin a two-week “district work period.” House Republicans begin a two-week “cocaine party” period.
Rachel Maddow returns to The Rachel Maddow Show. You won’t believe what she learned to do with nunchucks while she was away.
Tuesday The latest small business optimism index is released. As usual, there’s not much optimism among the smallest businesses, mostly because people keep accidentally stepping on them.
A group of plucky Ukrainian grandmas surround a platoon of Russian troops and apron-snap them to the nearest detention facility.
Continued…
Wednesday Oh poo. Another day, another day JFK Jr. doesn’t show up anywhere.
Mitch McConnell suffers a brief pang of conscience. It quickly passes and his office cancels the 911 call.
All week: Ukrainian farmers continue to harvest their new bumper crop.
President Biden announces another round of initiatives that will help the poor and middle class in the areas of health care, gas prices, child care, and national security. His poll numbers drop six points.
Thursday President Biden cancels his helpful Wednesday initiatives and announces new punitive ones that will make life more miserable for everyone but the rich. His poll numbers go up ten points.
America’s Republican governors issue a joint statement of apology to their citizens and Fox News after they realize they’ve gone a full day without signing a piece of anti-woman, anti-Black, or anti-LGBTQ legislation into law.
Friday The University of Michigan announces the consumer sentiment index for April. Analysts are puzzled as America’s mood swings from rebarbative to effulgent.
The spring fiddlehead forecast is released and, once again, experts are torn between “boiled” and “pickled.”
Saddle up and let’s get this foolishness over with by suppertime.
And now, our feature presentation…
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Cheers and Jeers for Monday, April 11, 2022
Note: Today is National Pet Day. Be sure to give all your furry and feathered family members a big hug. Or, if your pet is a porcupine or a skunk, perhaps a friendly wave.
CHEERS to feeling the heat…again, maybe? I don’t know what the hell they’re doing over at the Manhattan DA’s office, but it’s just weird. First the previous DA vowed he was going after Trump with guns blazing for “slam dunk” real estate fraud. Then he seemed to slow it down. Then the new DA vowed to speed it up again. Then two prosecutors quit because the new DA told them he was dropping the investigation entirely. Then there was deafening silence. And now, two weeks later, the blazing guns machine is maybe ramping up again:
The Manhattan district attorney, in an unusual statement Thursday, sought to assure the public that his criminal investigation of former President Donald Trump and the Trump Organization is continuing despite the resignations of two prosecutors who were leading that probe. […]
This is Alvin Bragg. Get your shit together, buddy.
[Alvin] Bragg’s statement came two weeks after the disclosure of a letter to him by Mark Pomerantz, who with Carey Dunne, resigned in February from leading the Trump probe after Bragg reportedly told them he had doubts about indicting Trump. “The team that has been investigating Mr. Trump harbors no doubt about whether he committed crimes—he did,” Pomerantz wrote in the letter.
So the on, then off, then on again, then off again investigation of the former president and criminal mushbrain is back on. If only they’d caught him selling loose cigarettes on the street he’d be workin’ the rock pile at Rikers Island by now.
SACRE BLEU! to kicking the goose-steppers right in the ‘ol baguette. The world was on pins and needles Sunday. The planet’s despots were praying that Nazi-not-so-lite Cruella Le Pen would steal France’s soul and leap to first place in the first round of the presidential elections, while democracy-loving nations were hoping that sensible centrist and current wielder of the Roquefort scepter and Brie sash Emmanuel Macron would prevail. Happily…
Macron topped Sunday’s first round of the French presidential election with 28.5% of the vote, ahead of Le Pen’s 23.6%, according to initial projected results.
Biden’s guy came out on top and will easily defeat Trump’s gal on the 24th.
He scored higher than his result in the first round five years ago, and clearly gained support in the final hours of the campaign after his harsh warnings to voters to hold back the far right and protect France’s place on the international diplomatic stage amid the war in Ukraine.
All major candidates, except for the far-right TV pundit Éric Zemmour, immediately called for French people to vote tactically to keep out Le Pen in the second round.
Round two happens on April 24. May good triumph over evil like a steamroller flattening a wheel of camembert. Drolly, of course, with a cigarette hanging off its lip.
CHEERS to landmark legislation. One week after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., President Johnson signed a companion bill into law 54 years ago today called the Civil Rights Act of 1968, aka the Fair Housing Act. The following housing issues became no-no’s:
Johnson signs the 1968 Civil Rights Act.
1) Refusal to sell or rent a dwelling to any person because of his race, color, religion or national origin.
2) Discrimination against a person in the terms, conditions or privilege of the sale or rental of a dwelling.
3) Advertising the sale or rental of a dwelling indicating preference of discrimination based on race, color, religion or national origin.
The law was expanded in 1988 to include disability and family status, and again in 1993 to prohibit the throwing of lawn darts at the Re/Max blimp.
JEERS to non-refundable tickets. 110 years ago this week, the unsinkable RMS Titanic set off for New York from Southampton, England. That cruise, as we all know, turned out to be a disaster. By all accounts the caviar was much too salty.
JEERS to the law of unintended consequences. This headline from Axios is alarming:
Holy mother of god, you know what this means? Voting for Ketanji Brown Jackson gives you COVID!!! I knew President Biden was up to something—he’s stealthily killing off a majority of the Senate so he can declare himself “King Joey” and give everyone health care, parental leave, reproductive freedom, voting rights, an expanded Supreme Court, free community college and ice cream, and a climate policy that’s the envy of the world. And all I can say about this brazen, unilateral liberal power grab is…please proceed.
P.S. Not to be outdone, the Great State of Maine is making its own bit of judicial history up here. One of our state district court judges—Rick Lawrence—just cleared the legislature’s judiciary committee, putting him one step closer to becoming Maine’s first Black state Supreme Court justice. The only significant hurdle remaining: demonstrating he can eat a lobster bib-less without spilling any butter on his tie.
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Ten years ago in C&J: April 11, 2012
JEERS to Rickrolling. Looks like we won’t have Santorum to kick around anymore, now that he’s officially leaving the campaign trail. But I say it was inevitable. After all, the golden rule is: whoever wins in South Carolina always becomes the nominee. Always. And since you asked, here’s how I expect it to go down: Ron Paul bows out for medical reasons, Mitt Romney turns back into an Easter Island statue, and Newt Gingrich sails to the nomination and a humiliating 90%-10% defeat at the hands of Obama. This thing is so baked. Wake me up when it’s November 7th. [4/11/22 Update: Ten years later, President Gingrich’s signature achievement, Moon Base Alpha, is doing wonders for America’s child astronaut labor sector. Dig faster, you damn kids—there’s precious metals in them thar craters.]
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And just one more…
CHEERS to doin’ a little Monday morning endorphin dance. Nothing will come of this. It’s false hope. Don’t put your Easter eggs in this basket. It’s just Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown again. On the other hand, I’ve been wrong a time or two. (See our flashback above.) So maybe this will be our Cinderella story:
A federal judge signaled Friday that she’ll likely allow a group of Georgia voters to move forward with their constitutional challenge against GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, which claims she can’t run for reelection because she aided the January 6 insurrectionists. […]
Cross ‘em if ya got ‘em.
The 14th Amendment of the US Constitution prohibits officeholders from returning to elected positions if they supported an insurrection. The challengers claim that Greene can’t run for reelection because she “aided” the January 6 insurrection, allegedly planned with protest organizers and “encouraged” the violence that disrupted the Electoral College certification.
If the challenge is dropped, we’ll have to dislodge her in a way befitting her performance in Congress for the last year and a half: bug spray.
Have a tolerable Monday. Floor’s open…What are you cheering and jeering about today?
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Today’s Shameless C&J Testimonial
“If you’re in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, don’t be a jerk. Also if you are not in the Cheers and Jeers kiddie pool, don’t be a jerk.”
