Jake Hoffman’s Twitter account now shows as suspended; Twitter told The Republic it is permanently suspended. Hoffman has said he is the president of and CEO of Rally Forge, the firm that was banned, which he called “one of the nation’s top conservative digital agencies” in the Center for Arizona Policy’s voter guide.
The firm created accounts that were engaging in “coordinated inauthentic behavior” — essentially trolling by posting comments that appeared to be real people commenting on news and sharing right-wing opinions.
The Washington Post broke the story on what some experts characterized as a “troll farm” where teenagers wrote posts on social media on behalf of Turning Point Action, a conservative group working to elect Republicans and led by Charlie Kirk.
NEW In Arizona, journalism can be a team sport. GOP State Rep. Jake Hoffman refused to answer 12News photojournalist's question (which I provided) re why he signed phony declaration in 2020 that Arizona electors voted for Trump. Watch as AZRepublic's @ruelaswritings folos up… pic.twitter.com/Qp3YOLyBl9
Anything to promote capitalism and stop any restraint on the ravages of capitalism on the people who struggle to survive. They are trying to head off any suggestions that the government should use taxpayer money for the people. They will claim anything the government does for the public is “communism or socialism”.
Students in Florida could soon observe a “Victims of Communism Day” under a measure OK’d Thursday by a House subcommittee. Under the proposal (HB 395), government and public schools would begin observing “Victims of Communism Day” on Nov. 7, 2023. The measure would require public school students to receive 45 minutes of instruction on communist leaders and the suffering of victims under their rule.
Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution, Joseph Stalin and the Soviet System, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, Vladimir Lenin and the Russian Revolution, are among the leaders and topics listed in the measure. The House Secondary Education and Career Development Subcommittee unanimously passed the proposal. Republican Rep. David Borrero of Sweetwater is the bill sponsor.
Rep. David Borrero reminds us of Matthew 20:26 & encourages us to stand up and be leaders for just causes like the unborn. #floridafpcpic.twitter.com/jiLTreC9Ae
— Florida Family Policy Council (@FLPolicyInsider) March 16, 2021
But that’s not all. Centner Academy has been meeting hub for the far-right — hosting racist anti-vaxxer Chris Nelson and a Sept 14 event with Micheal Flynn which included Proud Boys, QAnon types, fascist social media influencers and FL Rep David Borrero. pic.twitter.com/ehhJwxOis7
Nan sent me this suggesting I might post it for those that have yet to see / hear it. There are clips of it in video on YouTube channels like CNN. Thank you Nan for sending me the link. Scottie
Some Republican leaders are trying to move on from former President Donald Trump’s failed attempt to overturn the 2020 election that he lost.
“While there were some irregularities, there were none of the irregularities which would have risen to the point where they would have changed the vote outcome in a single state,” Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D., said Sunday on ABC’s This Week. “The election was fair, as fair as we have seen. We simply did not win the election, as Republicans, for the presidency. And if we simply look back and tell our people don’t vote because there’s cheating going on, then we’re going to put ourselves in a huge disadvantage.”
But Trump — who has endorsed dozens of candidates for the 2022 midterm elections and still holds by far the widest influence within the GOP — is trying hard not to let them move on.
“No, I think it’s an advantage, because otherwise they’re going to do it again in ’22 and ’24, and Rounds is wrong on that. Totally wrong,” Trump told NPR in an interview Tuesday, referring to his false and debunked claims that the 2020 election was stolen.
The interview was six years in the making. Trump and his team have repeatedly declined interviews with NPR until Tuesday, when he called in from his home in Florida. It was scheduled for 15 minutes, but lasted just over nine.
After being pressed about his repeated lies about the 2020 presidential election, Trump abruptly ended the interview.
Trump’s mixed messages on getting vaccinated
The interview began with the pandemic and vaccinations.
Trump, whose administration oversaw the development of the COVID-19 vaccines, recommended that people get vaccinated but said he’s firmly against mandating that they do so.
“[T]he mandate is really hurting our country,” Trump claimed, adding, “A lot of Americans aren’t standing for it, and it’s hurting our country.”
He continued, “The vaccines, I recommend taking them, but I think that has to be an individual choice. I mean, it’s got to be individual, but I recommend taking them.”
The opposition to mandates is popular with Republicans, and the Supreme Court is currently weighing the Biden administration’s vaccine-or-test mandate for large employers. But his comments come during the record omicron surge, as the unvaccinated are far more likely to be hospitalized or die from the disease, and as Republicans are far more likely to be unvaccinated.
Epidemiologists and health experts warn that if more people don’t get vaccinated and the virus continues to morph, it could prolong the pandemic — and delay any sense of getting back to normal.
The former president said he wants to see therapeutics, used to treat the virus after someone is infected, produced and distributed more widely.
Trump’s firm grip on the Republican Party, but tenuous grasp on reality
Trump is not just any former president.
Even many members of his own party have blamed him for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, but since then Trump has only tightened his grip on the GOP.
He remains one of the most popular figures in the Republican Party and is considered the front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, if he decides to run again.
When he ran in 2016, Trump was seen as having a shoestring campaign, fighting an uphill battle with few allies among Republican elected leaders.
Today, it’s a different story. Trump’s political organization has become a juggernaut. Not only are most Republican elected leaders falling in line, but he has also installed allies controlling many levers of political power across the country. In state after state, Trump allies are running local Republican parties, serving as state representatives and in charge of political action committees.
It’s a political army ready to be mobilized at his beck and call. What he says — what his message is to them — matters because they follow.
To secure his power, he will do whatever he can to cast aside those who don’t show fealty. That includes threats, bullying and intimidation, like badgering and name-calling.
Referring to South Dakota’s Rounds in a statement after he appeared on ABC, for example, Trump said Rounds “just went woke,” called him a “jerk,” “weak,” “ineffective” and questioned whether he was “crazy or just stupid.”
He also called him a RINO, an acronym for an insult some conservatives reserve for more moderate Republicans they disagree with — Republicans in name only.
In the interview with NPR, he partially blamed Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell for Rounds and other senators feeling as though they can speak out and say — correctly — that Trump lost the election.
“Because Mitch McConnell is a loser,” Trump said.
Trump has called McConnell worse — and all because the Kentucky Republican has crossed Trump, blaming him for the insurrection on Jan. 6 and saying President Biden won, even if McConnell doesn’t do so forcefully every day.
It’s par for the course for Trump, who has demanded unflinching loyalty — and who chafes at truths he disagrees with, especially about him losing.
Trump has blasted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, all because the Kentucky Republican has crossed the former president.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Won’t accept losing an election he lost
Many Republicans prefer to focus on Biden as this year’s congressional elections approach. Trump is pressing candidates in a different direction.
Josh Mandel, a pro-Trump Republican from Ohio, launched his campaign for U.S. Senate just weeks after Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol last year.
“I think over time we’re gonna see studies come out that [show] evidence of widespread fraud,” Mandel, a former state treasurer who is angling for Trump’s endorsement, told WKYC-TV.
In the year since Mandel made that prediction, the opposite has happened.
Even more evidence shows a free and fair election.
In one disputed state, Arizona, Trump allies held a widely criticized review of millions of ballots, but even Doug Logan, who led Cyber Ninjas, the firm that ran the review, couldn’t find much.
“The ballots that were provided to us to count in the Coliseum very accurately correlate with the official canvass numbers,” Logan said.
As he does with any information or person he doesn’t like or disagrees with, Trump dismissed the findings in the NPR interview.
“Lying or delusional”
In the interview, Trump repeated a number of false claims about voting systems in the U.S., including that the discredited GOP-led ballot review in Arizona showed evidence of malfeasance — despite the fact that it also reaffirmed Biden’s victory.
Republican officials in Maricopa County, however, debunked the characterizations of Trump and his allies in a 93-page rebuttal issued last week.
“The people who have spent the last year proclaiming our free and fair elections are rigged are lying or delusional,” said Bill Gates, the GOP chair of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors.
Asked why even Republicans in the state accepted the findings, Trump reverted to an old attack.
“Because they’re RINOs,” he said, “and frankly, a lot of people are questioning that.”
Tammy Patrick, a former Maricopa County election official and now an elections expert at Democracy Fund, was presented by NPR with a number of Trump’s claims about voting and noted that in the 14 months since the election, no proof of any of his claims has come to light.
“It hasn’t been presented in any of the courts. It hasn’t been surfaced in any official election audits, not by the Department of Justice, not by the FBI,” Patrick said. “Allegations of fraud hinge upon being able to produce actual instances of fraud — not merely thoughts, feelings or beliefs about it.”
To Republicans who know how elections work, the election has always been obvious.
“The facts show that it was President Biden who won fair and square,” said Trey Grayson, who used to run elections as the Republican secretary of state in Kentucky. “It wasn’t rigged.”
He’s thinking about those Republican T-shirts that said, “F*** your feelings.”
“And here we are looking at the 2020 election,” Grayson said, “and we are the ones who are basing it on feelings, not on facts, not on the law.”
The Pennsylvania example
Most Republican voters now say they feel the election was stolen, according to surveys. That gives Trump leverage with Republican candidates who want to win primaries this year.
In Pennsylvania, numerous Republicans are running for governor and senator. They’ve made lots of moves to prove their fealty to the former president. One candidate for governor is Bill McSwain, who happened to be a U.S. attorney during the 2020 election.
Former U.S. Attorney Bill McSwain, a Republican running for Pennsylvania governor, has appealed for Trump’s support.
Matt Rourke/AP
“Bill McSwain left office without announcing any investigations or outcome of investigations for the 2020 election in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” said Chris Brennan of the Philadelphia Inquirer, who has covered his story.
But then McSwain prepared to run for office. Last summer, he produced a letter for Trump, appealing for his support — and implying that he was blocked somehow from investigating unspecified claims of fraud.
“But it doesn’t actually say that,” Brennan said. “So even he, when you carefully read it, does not claim that he was blocked from investigating fraud.”
Trump nonetheless made the letter public and gave his own interpretation at multiple rallies.
“We have a U.S. attorney in Philadelphia that says he wasn’t allowed to go and check,” Trump said at a rally in Florida.
Grayson has watched similar stories unfold in multiple states.
“I think he’s been really active in moving 2022 candidates toward his point of view,” Grayson said. “The way I look at it is, I can’t imagine that the party on its own would be pushing this narrative if he weren’t pushing it.”
Repeatedly in the interview, Trump presses his party to adhere to his point of view and false claims, and he adapts his arguments to account for more and more proof that he lost. That’s a typical strategy among purveyors of disinformation and misinformation.
Trump did correctly note in the interview that he received more votes than any sitting president ever. But his broader point that that is somehow evidence that he won in 2020 is nonsensical, said Patrick, seeing as the election saw record turnout.
“Each election compares those candidates facing off in that election — it doesn’t matter how the numbers compare to the last election,” Patrick said. “It doesn’t matter how many points a team scored the last game or how many times Alabama has won the national championship. What matters is who has the most points or votes at the end of the game.”
For the record, the University of Georgia won the college football national championship Monday, defeating Alabama, 33-18. And Biden got 7 million more votes than Trump in the popular vote in 2020 and got 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.
Repeated losses in the independent judiciary
Trump doesn’t have a case of widespread fraud.
He and his lawyers tried to prove that he did — and they failed. Many judges, including some appointed by him, ruled that way in dozens of cases.
Here’s a section of the interview on this:
NPR’S STEVE INSKEEP: Let me read you some short quotes. The first is by one of the judges, one of the 10 judges you appointed, who ruled on this. And there were many judges, but 10 who you appointed. Brett Ludwig, U.S. District Court in Wisconsin, who was nominated by you in 2020. He’s on the bench and he says, quote, “This court allowed the plaintiff the chance to make his case, and he has lost on the merits.”
Another quote, Kory Langhofer, your own campaign attorney in Arizona, Nov. 12, 2020, quote, “We are not alleging fraud in this lawsuit. We are not alleging anyone stealing the election.” And also Rudy Giuliani, your lawyer, Nov. 18, 2020, in Pennsylvania, quote, “This is not a fraud case.” Your own lawyers had no evidence of fraud. They said in court they had no evidence of fraud. And the judges ruled against you every time on the merits.
TRUMP: It was too early to ask for fraud and to talk about fraud. Rudy said that, because of the fact it was very early with the — because that was obviously at a very, very — that was a long time ago. The things that have found out have more than bore out what people thought and what people felt and what people found.
When you look at Langhofer, I disagree with him as an attorney. I did not think he was a good attorney to hire. I don’t know what his game is, but I will just say this: You look at the findings. You look at the number of votes. Go into Detroit and just ask yourself, is it true that there are more votes than there are voters? Look at Pennsylvania. Look at Philadelphia. Is it true that there were far more votes than there were voters?
INSKEEP: It is not true that there were far more votes than voters. There was an early count. I’ve noticed you’ve talked about this in rallies and you’ve said, reportedly, this is true. I think even you know that that was an early report that was corrected later.
TRUMP: Well, you take a look at it. You take a look at Detroit. In fact, they even had a hard time getting people to sign off on it because it was so out of balance. They called it out of balance. So you take a look at it. You know the real truth, Steve, and this election was a rigged election.
When pressed, it was excuse after excuse — it was “too early” to claim fraud, his attorney was no good, things just seem suspicious.
But it all comes back to the same place: He has no evidence of widespread fraud that caused him to lose the election.
The tone of the interview changed. Trump then hurried off the phone as he was starting to be asked about the attack on the Capitol, inspired by election lies.
A judge is considering whether Trump can be held liable for his actions in court.
If he can be, then Trump or his lawyers would someday have to answer the questions he didn’t answer before he cut short his conversation with NPR.
Audio for this story was produced and edited by Taylor Haney, Lilly Quiroz, Amra Pasic and H.J. Mai.
Ron just went and picked up his one month prescription of JARDIANCE . It cost him $522.00 because our insurance has a 420 dollar co-pay before they kick in. In two weeks I have to do the same. another $522.00 for a 30 day supply of medications. We can not afford a $1044.00 hit in one month just for one medication each on our fixed incomes. The drug companies are making record profits, the insurance companies are making record profits, all the costs are going up while the incomes are stagnate or going down as inflation rises. The people need help. The country is run by the wealthy and large corporations and they are sucking the very life out of the public. This is worse than any vampire movie. They are draining the country of its vitality, and the people of any resources to live. Scottie
Assuming this 14% holds across the whole Kroger workforce, that's around 65,000 people working at the fourth-largest private employer in the US — ranked 17th on the Fortune 500 — who've been homeless while keeping the country's grocery stores running, in a pandemic. https://t.co/9RWLYvduap
The painful truth. Concentrated wealth and power are tremendously unhealthy.
Kill the filibuster. Kill the legacy of white supremacy.
Kill the filibuster.
Projection. Every GOP accusation is an admission of guilt.
“As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.”
Get them all under oath. Then send them to prison for treason.
If you are a Republican who cares about the Constitution, you should be outraged. #Arizona
These are forged documents used by Trump cronies, yet they will lie and say Biden stole the election. This is just disgraceful.
Ted Cruz is trying to blame the FBI for J6 when Trump was President on Jan 6.
[Ray Epps is Arizona Oath Keeper chapter president and massive Trump supporter.]
the fakes make up news
FOX has ratings based on predetermined narratives. Their hosts do one thing and say another, just to create resentment and fear.
Republicans attack the messenger. They have no policy insights or actual ideas.
My favorite Tony Fauci is the one who’s had it with Rand Paul’s bullshit.
Although studies claim Omicron to be mild, there is no plausible reason to think that the highly-transmissible variant will not cause long Covid conditions among survivors. Though much remains unknown about omicron, experts say the variant could lead to long Covid, even with a mild case. Patients with long-term symptoms can experience crushing fatigue, irregular heart rhythms and other issues months after their initial Covid infection. The highly infectious Omicron coronavirus variant causes less severe disease than the Delta strain but it remains a “dangerous virus”, particularly for those who are unvaccinated, the head of the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Wednesday. Scottie
Anti-transgender attitudes have long made bathrooms a dangerous place for trans men and women — a problem only made worse by the latest round of bathroom hysteria. But other women are also getting swept up by anti-trans discrimination, as bathrooms turn into places of harassment for anyone who doesn’t conform to rigid views of gender.
In a recent case that went viral, a cisgender (non-trans) woman was insulted while in a Walmart bathroom after another woman confused her for a trans woman, apparently because of her short hair. The incident, the woman said, led her to confront the kind of harassment and discrimination that trans people have faced in bathrooms for a long time.
That the current hysteria over bathrooms is leading to women, trans or not, getting harassed in bathrooms is, on top of plain awful, ironic. After all, harassment is one of the things those who oppose letting trans people use the bathroom for their gender identity supposedly want to prevent. They claim trans-friendly policies will allow men to disguise themselves as women, go into women’s bathrooms, and harass or assault women.
The claim is a myth: Multiple investigations have found states and schools that have had legal protections for trans people for years have never linked an instance of sexual assault or harassment in a bathroom to trans-friendly policies. (The only bathroom harassment historically related to trans people, in fact, seems to be harassment and discrimination against trans people.)
But it does seem like the bathroom hysteria is leading to some women getting harassed — not in the way opponents of trans rights worry about, but more along the lines of the discrimination and harassment trans people have faced for a long time while trying to use the bathroom. Here are a few examples.
Aimee Toms was washing her hands in the women’s bathroom at Walmart in Danbury Friday when a stranger approached her and said, “You’re disgusting!” and “You don’t belong here!”
After momentary confusion, she realized that the woman next to her thought — because of her pixie-style haircut and baseball cap — that she was transgender.
Toms, a 22-year-old from Naugatuck who works at a retail store in the Bethel-Danbury retail area around Walmart, posted a video “rant” about her experience on Facebook Friday that had been viewed more than 12,000 times by Sunday evening.
“After experiencing the discrimination they face firsthand, I cannot fathom the discrimination transgender people must face in a lifetime,” she said. “Can you imagine going out every day and having people tell you you should not be who you are or that people will not accept you as who you are?”
Case in point: the man who, um, heroically barged into a women’s restroom at Baylor Medical Center in Frisco on Thursday to make sure that Jessica Rush, who manages a local health-food takeout place, was peeing in the proper place.
She was, for the record, and her situation isn’t particularly complicated. Rush was born and identifies as female and has no plans to change that. “I look very much like a girl,” she says. “I’m not trying to transition, nothing like that.”
But Rush wears her hair in a bleached blond fauxhawk and dresses androgynously. On Thursday, she was wearing a T-shirt from her alma mater, Texas Tech, with basketball shorts. As the man at Baylor explained after walking into the restroom behind her, it’s all very confusing. …
“When I saw you enter I thought you was…” the man says.
“A boy?” Rush offers.
“Yeah, it was kind of confusing.” Certainly she can see why. “You dress like a man,” he says several times as he walks away.
In the video, the unnamed woman tries to convince the two male officers and one female officer present that she is a woman, her friends shout in her support “she’s a girl”, which the officers ignore.
The police then ask the woman for identification to prove her sex. She rejects their demand, offended. The male officers then manhandle her out of the restroom, whilst calling her “sir”.
The police eventually tell the woman’s friends, who are still vouching for her female identity, “you can all leave if you want”.
Trans women and men have faced harassment and violence in bathrooms for a long time
Back in 2011, Chrissy Lee Polis captured national attention when teenagers attacked her after she used an empty women’s bathroom at a McDonald’s in Maryland. The Baltimore Sun reported:
There was a time when it seemed people from all over the country were talking about the 24-year-old. Many wanted to help her; others condemned her.
Polis became an unwitting symbol of the transgender community and the struggle for transgender rights when she stepped into a Rosedale McDonald’s one April evening. Two teen girls beat her that night. When an employee caught the assault on his cell phone, the video went viral, making headlines nationwide.
In a more recent case, in May, a security guard at a Washington, DC, grocery store allegedly pushed a trans woman out of the business after she tried to use a bathroom. The guard was later charged with simple assault. NBC4 Washington reported:
Ebony Belcher, 32, said she went to the Giant in northeast D.C. with a friend to pick up a delivery from the Western Union.
While at the Giant, she asked a store employee to point her to the restroom and passed a female security officer standing in the hallway.
The officer came into the restroom and told her to get out, according to Belcher.
“She opened the door and came in and started calling me derogatory names,” Belcher said.
She said the officer put her hand on her shoulder and arm, grabbed her and pushed her out of the store.
These are just two examples of the discrimination trans people face in bathrooms on a regular basis.
A 2013 survey published by the Williams Institute, for example, found that 70 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents in the Washington, DC, area faced a negative reaction while trying to use a public bathroom, including 9 percent who reported physical assault. The 2011 National Transgender Discrimination Survey found that 26 percent of trans and gender nonconforming respondents across the country reported denial of access to gender-appropriate bathrooms in educational settings, and 22 percent faced such denial in the workplace.
The same surveys also show that trans people face a lot of discrimination, harassment, and violence more broadly — at home, work, and school. So the harassment cisgender women are now dealing with in bathrooms is just a small sample of the discrimination that has plagued the trans community for years and years.
Understand this is entirely about if someone thinks you look as they think a woman should look. Are you feminine enough to satisfy them? They demand others conform to their standards of male and female. It’s part of an entitlement feeling when someone can demand to know person’s genitals, their private body parts. What a weird violation of culture norms now excepted is that a person has the right to demand to know or verify someone else’s covered private reproductive organs. How is that not a sexual offence? Scottie
My spine shots were Monday. Yesterday and today my blood sugars are uncontrolled no matter how I try to control my food intake to minimize sugar intake. I have been trying to not sleep all the time. My blood sugar at 4 PM was 400. The doctor says that steroids keep the medications from removing the excess sugar from my system. If it stays high for a couple more days then I will go on insulin. In the meanwhile I will be struggling to think and to stay awake. The roundup may be late or missed entirely. Scottie
I repeat: The filibuster isn't in the Constitution. Arguably, it's unconstitutional. The Framers did not allow a minority of Senators to obstruct the majority. https://t.co/d1UW5rdL1c
Biden points out that 16 *current* Republican Senators voted to approve the last voting rights act and questions why so many of them seem to have lost their voices now.
Let’s get one thing straight: The changes in voting laws by Republican state legislatures aren't a response to voter fraud (which is non-existent) but to voter turnout (which they want to suppress).
My 12-year-old had appendicitis. The ER was overwhelmed with unvaccinated Covid patients and we had to wait 6+ hours. While waiting, his appendix ruptured and had to spend 5 days in hospital; just got hmo bill of $5000. So yeah, your decision to not vaccinate does affect others.
this is such an important point. the people who dismiss police killings of unarmed Black people as statistically insignificant ignore the fact that police abuse is a continuum of behavior. few people get shot, yes. but many do get hassled, harassed, pushed around, even beaten. https://t.co/DMoC2qvzfU
Quick anecdote about the trans bathroom moral panic: I used to look like the pictures below (very cool).70% of the time I’d pass as a guy depending on what clothes I was wearing. One time I was in Queens at a dive bar waiting to take a piss in the women’s bathroom and a woman 1/3 pic.twitter.com/dkhXK7fuUQ
accosted me. Screamed at me and grabbed me by the shoulder because I was allegedly a trans predator in the woman’s restroom. This scared me and I was also pissed the fuck off. Needless to say we had words and I was so shook up by the whole thing I left the bar. 2/3
You transphobic feminists think you’re all out here saving women but you’re hurting women, trans and cis. You’re actively making the world more unsafe for us and I fucking resent you for it! 3/3
I am once again reminded of the 1995 Alison Bechdel comic. People really have been gatekeeping bathrooms and not being feminine enough for what feels like forever pic.twitter.com/9SBs1CzLWu
— ?Jowmuni¿ | BLM – Defund the Police (@noj4888) January 12, 2022
I’ve literally saw this same scenario in a restaurant in Alabama. A butch woman was accosted for being trans in the women’s room. She wasn’t trans. This nonsense is another arm of patriarchy and it even affects little girls playing sports. This is harming all women.
Every medical expert in the field of Virology and immunology agreed this was not a gain of function that the US had anything to do with. The US / NIH did not fund a gain of function on a coronavirus called SARS-CoV-2. Rand Paul not only doesn’t have the medical qualifications to understand / address this issue, he has misrepresented it for political gain and profit. Every time he attacks Dr. Fauci he turns out a fund raising pitch and it works for him. All he is doing is trying to enrage his voting base. Just because I can do basic cooking doesn’t make me a chief nor a chemist. Scottie
Oh my great dogs, the stupidity of this cartoon plus the complete antisemitism to it is stunning. The right blames everything they don’t like as being paid for by George Soros. He is their big boogieman. Even as a billionaire there is no way he could pay for all the things the right claims he is paying for. What is the issue with the DA’s? Well both right wing and left wing DA’s have decided to implement reforms that have been in the works for years. They changes / improvements are needed because courts are over loaded, the DA’s are over worked, the prison system is crashing with over population all because many non-violent crimes were being prosecuted with long harsh prison sentences. Things that are not really crimes are being treated as civil tickets instead of major crimes. Others are not being prosecuted at all such as possession of minor amounts of cannabis. These are common sense changes the right wing media rails against because it curbs racism abuses and lowers the for profit prison slave system. The right insists they need to make a profit of the bodies of the poor and helpless. Other things these reforms do is fund the placing of the mentally ill in other treatment than simply jailing them. Scottie
He has no use for the Law Enforcement people who died later. One from a stroke due to injuries and others who killed themselves over it!! But hey Henry is only pro life if you are a few cells old. Five people died as a result of Jan. 6, not counting the four officers who subsequently died by suicide. I think we all know we were lucky the number wasn’t higher.
Our democratic republic almost died that day and was prevented from happening with a single bullet. If the traitor Ashley Babbitt made it through the broken window and dozens of her fellow traitors followed, what would have happened to the congress members down the hall.
The vaccines and boosters allow the ones who catch any of the Covid virus and its variants from getting so ill they need hospitalization and nursing care. Hospitals all over the country are overwhelmed and red state governors are begging Biden for medical personal from the military because of the overwhelming numbers unvaxxed . The healthcare system in the US is failing, crashing. People with other than Covid needs are dying because of lack of beds for them because hospital beds are full of ill anti-vaxxers. This is not about some mythical freedom or control of people lives talking points. It is about very real consequences of people’s behavior in not getting vaccinated that harms others in many ways including causing death to other people and causing economic problems country wide. Scottie
The Spotsylvania County School Board wasted no time Monday making its mark in the at-times contentious first meeting of the year, which included fiery jabs at the new chairman and squabbles between members.
It began with a vote to name Livingston district member Kirk Twigg the new chair. Twigg supported banning and even burning some sexually explicit books from school libraries in November. His win gives conservatives a majority on the school board.
The move to appoint him drew the ire of the outgoing chair, Dawn Shelley, who delivered a scorching criticism of Twigg.
“He has spoken about confidential [human resources] matters in open session. He is constantly using his AOL account to send and read emails throughout school board meetings. He wants to burn books,” Shelley said.
The board voted 4-3 in favor of ousting Baker over protests of the minority members who said the action was taken illegally. It is still unclear who will serve in that role while the search for a replacement begins.
“You have not stated any justification or ability to fill the position. You cannot even properly chair a meeting, but yet you’re going to terminate a superintendent for no reason,” Nicole Cole, a member from the Battlefield District, said. “How is this good for the students, the children of Spotsylvania County? How does this make sense? Spotsylvania citizens please recognize that you have not been given any valid reason.”
While both Cole and Shelley spoke, other board members attempted to interrupt them and pushed back against their comments.
Even the ceremonial formality of the passing of the gavel from the outgoing chair to the new one was fraught with tension. Twigg appeared to want to take the seat from Shelley, who refused to yield it.
According to a parent who spoke at the meeting, the rancor was nothing new. She said she believes chaos is Twigg’s goal.
“It has been that way for several months. In this moment people are trying to shout me down, so I think people should be aware that that’s happening,” she said.
The Spotsylvania County School Board fired Superintendent Scott Baker without cause during an unruly meeting Monday.
The board voted to approve Baker’s termination without cause after coming out of a closed session that may have violated Virginia’s open meeting requirements.
Virginia Code states that no closed meeting shall be held unless the public body first approves a motion that states the subject matter and purpose of the meeting, as well as the applicable exemption from open meeting requirements.
“A general reference to the provisions of this chapter, the authorized exemptions from open meeting requirements, or the subject matter of the closed meeting shall not be sufficient to satisfy the requirements for holding a closed meeting,” Virginia Code states.
The closed session, during which Baker’s position was discussed, was the second closed session of the meeting and was not on the approved agenda.
Board members did not vote on a motion to enter the second closed session, as is required by Virginia Code.
Salem District representative Lorita Daniels asked for a legal opinion on whether the second closed session would violate the Freedom of Information Act, but Twigg did not respond to her request.
Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) went after Dr. Anthony Fauci during a Senate hearing on Tuesday, in which Paul accused Fauci of “using his salary to attack scientists” who disagree with him.
“Dr. Fauci, the idea that a government official like yourself would claim unilaterally to represent science and that any criticism of you would be considered a criticism of science itself is quite dangerous,” Paul said, setting the tone for his questioning of the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Paul declared that Fauci “rules by mandate” and later in his opening cited an email in which Paul claims Fauci agreed with a colleague to work to “create a quick and devastating published takedown of three prominent epidemiologists from Harvard, Oxford, and Stanford.”
Fauci, denying that the email says what Paul claims it does, shot back right away, saying that Paul is “incorrect as usual.”
“You are incorrect in almost everything you say,” Fauci continued before Paul interrupted him.
“Do you think words like a conspiracy theory should be in a scientific paper?” Paul shot back in a lengthy response.
“Senator, I never used that word when I was referring to it. You are distorting virtually everything,” Fauci hit back.
“You keep distorting the truth. It is stunning,” Fauci added.
Fauci moved on from the email and took to defending his motives as driven solely by protecting the public from Covid-19, arguing that “everything I have said has been in support of the CDC guidelines. Wear a mask, get boosted…” Paul spoke over Fauci as he continued, interjecting, “ And you’ve made it coercive and done by mandate. You’ve advocated your infallible opinion by dictated by law.”
The two continued to battle back and forth with Fauci eventually accusing Paul of a continued campaign of personal attacks against him as a tool for fundraising. Fauci pointed out that the “Fire Dr. Fauci” box on Paul’s website that solicits campaign donations.
“You are making a catastrophic epidemic for your political gain!” Fauci charged, holding up a photo of Paul’s website. Paul hit back saying, “You have politically attacked your colleagues in a politically reprehensible way.”
Dr. Fauci, in another contentious exchange with Sen. Rand Paul, says Paul's attacks against him "kindles the crazies out there, and I have threats upon my life, harassment of my family and my children."
"In usual fashion, senator, you are distorting everything about me … you keep distorting the truth. It's stunning" — Dr. Fauci and Rand Paul are going at it again.
Fauci: Why would a Senator want to do this? Go to Rand Paul’s website and you see fire Dr. Fauci with a little box that says contribute here. So you are making catastrophic epidemic for your political gain pic.twitter.com/8dvxZ5ELxp
Former President Donald Trump announced guest speakers today for his Saturday rally in Arizona, and most of them share a common trait: they led efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
Why this matters: Trump, who remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party, is making his false claims about the 2020 election the centerpiece of the GOP platform.
Between the lines: Trump has made clear to all who seek his endorsement that if they want his blessing, they need to make overturning the 2020 election as much of a priority as subverting future elections.
The details: The guest list for Trump’s Arizona rally is a who’s who of election deniers.
The headliner, Kari Lake, who Trump endorsed for Arizona’s gubernatorial race, told OAN she wouldn’t have certified Biden as the victor if she’d been governor.
State Rep. Mark Finchem, Trump’s endorsed candidate to oversee Arizona’s elections as Secretary of State, not only denies the 2020 election result but attended “Stop the Steal” rallies in January.
Arizona Reps. Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs and Debbie Leskoall voted on Jan. 6 to object to the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Kelli Ward, chair of Arizona’s Republican Party, pushed the false conspiracy theory that foreign powers manipulated Dominion voting machines to secure Biden’s election victory.
Boris Epshteyn, who co-hosts Steve Bannon’s podcast, uses his platform to promote Trump’s claims about a stolen election.
And Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, is arguably even more committed than Trump is to overturning the 2020 election. He says he has spent $25 million so far on his campaign to undermine and subvert the election.
The one outlier in the speaking line-up is Alveda King, who is Martin Luther King Jr.’s niece. She is an outspoken Trump supporter, but unlike the other speakers, has not made it her mission to overturn the 2020 election.
The big picture: Trump is also working to install Republicans in election administration positions who could be well-positioned to overturn future elections.
And he is methodically driving out and destroying all Republicans who say President Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
What we’re seeing: To enforce party-wide obedience, Trump is jumping on anyone who contradicts his claims about election fraud. He punishes even the smallest of deviations.
On Sunday, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that after investigating the 2020 election they found no evidence of fraud that “would have changed the vote outcome in a single state.”
On Monday, Trump sent out an email statement blasting Rounds as “woke” and a “RINO” (Republican In Name Only) and promising to never again endorse him.
These attacks come at a high cost. Republicans who’ve contradicted Trump on the 2020 election — from the highest-profile like Liz Cheney down to obscure state officials — have been inundated with threats to themselves and their families from angry Trump supporters.
The bottom line: Trump’s goal, his advisers say, is to either make life so miserable for them that they quit or end their careers by backing a successful primary challenge.
Trump’s efforts are working. His few remaining opponents in the party are mostly either quitting out of exhaustion or choosing to keep their dissent to themselves.
The Justice Department is forming a new domestic terrorism unit to help combat a threat that has intensified dramatically in recent years, a top national security official said Tuesday.
Matthew G. Olsen, the head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, announced the unit in his opening remarks before the Senate Judiciary Committee, noting that the number of FBI investigations of suspected domestic violent extremists — those accused of planning or committing crimes in the name of domestic political goals — had more than doubled since the spring of 2020.
Olsen said the Justice Department already had counterterrorism attorneys who worked both domestic and international cases, and that the new unit would “augment our existing approach” to prosecuting those cases.
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