Totally unfit for elected office, his staff knows it, his campaign knows it, yet they all keep trying to get him elected. This is the country we have now, this is the republican party. Hugs
Herschel Walker’s campaign said he had never tried to hide his children. He did—to his own campaign even.
Roger Sollenberger
Political Reporter
EXCLUSIVE
Photo Illustration by Thomas Levinson/The Daily Beast/Getty
When Herschel Walker’s campaign aides approached him this winter to discuss whispers that Walker had a secret child, the Georgia GOP’s Senate candidate told his campaign the rumors were false.
Walker’s aides already knew he was lying.
They had expected him to lie, and had obtained documents in advance of that conversation verifying that Walker did indeed have another child, The Daily Beast has learned. They handed the documents to him, and after some more back and forth, Walker finally admitted it was true. His aides asked if there were any other children they needed to know about. Walker insisted this was it.
When the Daily Beast learned about the existence of that 10-year-old child in June and went to the campaign for comment, campaign manager Scott Paradise prepared a statement. But first, he went to Walker with a question: Be honest—are there any other kids?
No, Walker said.
Paradise then put out a statement insisting that Walker—who at that point had only publicly acknowledged one child, his adult son, Christian—was “proud of his children.”
“To suggest that Herschel is ‘hiding’ the child because he hasn’t used him in his political campaign is offensive and absurd,” Paradise said in a statement.
The very next day, The Daily Beast reached out again, asking about yet another undisclosed child, a 13-year-old. The campaign approached Walker and asked again. This time, he acknowledged the teen was his.
The campaign verified that the 13-year-old was Walker’s son, and that he had yet another child—a daughter from his college days about 40 years ago.
This account of Walker lying to his own campaign about his children comes from a closely connected adviser and was verified by communications that the source turned over to The Daily Beast. We are not quoting from the messages out of concern that they could potentially expose the source’s identity.
The communications reveal a campaign and a candidate in chaos.
Emails and texts show advisers discussing how they don’t trust Walker—both to tell the truth to them and to handle campaign events properly—and harboring concerns that he isn’t mentally fit for the job.
He spouts falsehoods “like he’s breathing,” this adviser said—so much so that his own campaign stopped believing him long ago.
“He’s lied so much that we don’t know what’s true,” the person said, adding that aides have “zero” trust in the candidate. Three people interviewed for this article independently called him a “pathological liar.”
The Walker campaign declined comment.
Walker has, in fact, racked up a staggering record of falsehoods. He has claimed he was a trained FBI agent and worked for law enforcement, neither of which is true. He has told a preposterous series of lies about his academic record—forcing his campaign to delete claims from his official bio. He has grossly overstated his businesssuccess. He has falsely taken credit for founding a veterans support program. And, most recently, he claimed that former President Donald Trump had never said the 2020 election was stolen.
The campaign source painted a picture of an operation that for months has been at the mercy of a volatile, deceitful candidate.
“A campaign’s worst nightmare,” the source said. “It’s like a shitshow on a train in the middle of a wreck.”
But if the campaign is headed for a disaster, the Republican Party appears to be in the dark about just how bad it is.
In conversations with GOP higher-ups, senior Walker campaign aides have held back on their ongoing struggles with containing, directing, and cleaning up after Walker—even if, internally, they believe he’s a serious liability, according to this source who is familiar with those conversations.
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University of Georgia Bulldogs’ running back Herschel Walker #34 poses for the camera in front of Lovett Stadium in 1981. Herschel Walker was elected to the College Football Hall of Fame in 1999.
Focus On Sport
The revelations come at a critical time. The national party—with the all-important blessing of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and National Republican Senatorial Committee chair Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL)—has lined up behind Walker after his easy primary win last month. The GOP is now investing in major political and fundraising operations across The Peach State.
Many establishment Republicans were lukewarm on Walker from the jump. When the first reports broke last summer detailing Walker’s checkered personal history, influential GOP figures balked. Some hoped that “somebody else” would take over the closely watched race, which will likely determine which party controls Congress heading into the 2024 presidential election.
“Some of it’s pretty bad, obviously: physical abuse and pulling a gun on his wife, if that’s true,” Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) told Politico last July, adding, “I’d prefer to have somebody else.”
(Walker has denied these claims.)
But the skeptics couldn’t stave off the MAGA-fueled boost Walker got as Trump’s handpicked candidate. The two men have been friends since the 1980s, when Trump showcased the phenom running back as a main attraction in his NFL knock-off, the USFL. And with Trump’s early endorsement last September, the popular athlete was quickly out of reach, quickly going dollar-for-dollar against Democratic incumbent opponent Sen. Raphael Warnock, the top fundraiser in Congress. By April, Cornyn had forked over his personal endorsement.
ATHENS, GA—Heisman Trophy winner and Republican candidate for U.S. Senate Herschel Walker speaks at a rally on May 23, 2022.
Megan Varner/Getty Images
The party now appears all-in. When The Daily Beast recently asked Scott, the NRSC chair, whether he felt his organization had failed to vet Walker, Scott called him a “good candidate” and predicted a win.
But while NRSC contacts have been checking in with Walker advisers over the last several months, the campaign source said, staffers haven’t been forthright about the internal turmoil.
Donors are jumping ship, the campaign source said, pointing to Home Depot founder and GOP megadonor Bernie Marcus, who has already contributed more than a million dollars to a pro-Walker super PAC. According to the source, Marcus recently told a top Republican fundraiser that he doesn’t feel comfortable going through with another planned seven-figure gift in light of the revelations about the children.
The Daily Beast reached out to Marcus for comment, but did not immediately receive a reply.
While those revelations may have taken backers by surprise, they weren’t news to the campaign.
Aides have secretly derided Walker for months, according to this person and internal communications seen by The Daily Beast. They have ridiculed his intelligence. They fear his mood swings and instability. And staffers worry he could embarrass himself at any moment, setting the campaign back yet again and burning energy on damage control.
The overriding concern is that the stress and pressures of campaigning—criticism and backlash in particular—might make him “just not mentally stable,” the source said.
But this person noted that the months of bombshell reports about Walker’s trumped-up business record, erratic personal life, and the legions of lies and ludicrous exaggerations have so far clouded the mental health issue in the media.
The strategy now is to keep Walker off television and on script, this person said. “Except he doesn’t listen,” the campaign source said. “He doesn’t take direction, because he comes from a place where he says, ‘I have built myself up in the media for years.’”
In a meandering 40-minute phone interview with The Daily Beast the evening before The Daily Beast reported on his second and third previously undisclosed children, Walker tried to duck the issue more than a dozen times, preferring instead to grill this reporter on topics ranging from gas prices and climate change to the “definition of a woman” and abortion.
Eventually, Walker acknowledged both sons in a statement, in which he stated plainly, “I have four children. Three sons and a daughter.”
(Two people with direct knowledge of the events told The Daily Beast that Walker took a DNA test for the daughter, whom he fathered in college but only met in the mid-2000s.)
Walker’s instinct to lie has shredded the campaign’s trust in its own candidate, according to the adviser and communications reviewed by The Daily Beast. Over the following weeks, the source said, allegations of more children poured in. Most of them were readily dismissed—but one stood out. Because senior staff no longer trust Walker’s denials, the campaign has quietly investigated the anonymous allegation behind the candidate’s back, The Daily Beast has learned.
While staffers often exercise tight control over a candidate’s schedule, in Walker’s case, the reasons behind those efforts appear unique. With Walker, the campaign source said, any public interaction carries enormous risk, which aides try to mitigate with curated public appearances and strict media gatekeeping.
“He screws up on Fox News where people agree with him, so the idea of him taking an adverse interview or interacting with people who don’t agree with him is a non-starter,” the adviser said, likening the prospect to sending him “into the lion’s den.”
Walker’s top staffers bring years of experience to the table, but they struggle to keep him on message and don’t trust Walker to speak coherently, according to communications obtained by The Daily Beast. Aides establish guardrails, but Walker blunders over them.
Currently, Team Herschel is reckoning with three potential debates against Walker’s incumbent opponent, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA), a number they hope to whittle down to one, the source said—and only if it is on their terms.
The campaign hired a renowned debate coach, who prepped former President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson—two men who had their own rhetorical hurdles to clear.
Walker recently called on Reverend Warnock to “name the place and the time” for the debates, and has been champing at the bit since last fall.
Still, several sources in Georgia said that, among the GOP rank and file, Walker’s controversies don’t seem to be making a dent.
Jason Shepherd, a longtime party leader in the state, told The Daily Beast that Republicans aren’t talking about Walker’s secret children, and if they do, it’s to blame the media for “highlighting what many are seeing as a personal issue.”
But when it comes to Walker’s opponent, who himself is involved in a custody dispute, Republicans—including the national party—haven’t been afraid to highlight that issue, accusing the pastor of “ignoring the financial needs of his own children,” despite the fact that Warnock is not accused of evading child support.
The Walker campaign has recently trained much of its resources on countering the reports of the secret children. The team released its first general election ad on Tuesday, framing Walker as a “uniter,” and aides have been angling for public appearances with his closest family members: his wife, Julie Blanchard Walker; his ex-wife, Cindy Grossman; and his 22-year-old son, Christian Walker—a brash right-winger who profits off of swag promoting his father’s candidacy.
While Julie Walker is a continual presence on the campaign trail, both Grossman and Christian Walker have resisted the campaign’s entreaties in the wake of The Daily Beast reports.
It’s still unclear when Grossman and Christian Walker first knew about the two other sons. Previously, Christian, an aspiring MAGA world influencer who has made campaign appearances with his father, frequentlytargetedabsentee dads in social media rants. The focus of those attacks, however, appeared to shift after the Daily Beast reported his half-brothers.
With just four months until Election Day, it’s unclear whether the Walker campaign and its candidate can right the ship—but it’s not out of the question.
Walker, who grew up poor and shaped himself into one of the most stunning all-around athletes of his era, achieved much of that success through sheer determination. (“Most people who know Herschel believe he willed himself into his current condition,” reads a 1981 New York Timesprofile.)
So far, Walker and the campaign appear to have run a strong race since he got out of the blocks last August—quickly raising tens of millions of dollars, and coasting through the primary with about two-thirds of the vote.
And while the general election contest against Warnock shows no signs of being anything less than brutal, the campaign, like Walker, is projecting an air of confidence.
“Do we have problems? Yes! Can we solve them? Yes!,” Walker says at the end of his new campaign ad. “Georgia is my family. The United States is my family. So I’m going to fight and take care of them.”
Sam Brodey contributed reporting.
Donors are allegedly bailing—including Home Depot megadonor Bernie Marcus, who threatened to pull a million-dollar gift after the kids were revealed. Worse, campaign officials have apparently been lying for months to higher-ups in the Republican Party about how bad this all is.
— Roger Sollenberger (@SollenbergerRC) July 7, 2022
This is long but describes an incredible intertwining of the religious fanatic justices with the religious legal hate group arguing cases in front of them to restrict rights for others and expand them for religion. Things the court then did. Also when the court has refused to restrict protesting at abortion clinics they did severely limit demonstrations at their court establishing an exclusion zone that this religious group had headquarters with in. This is where the long game came in, the religious right just kept working their way in until they won. Hugs
A right-wing evangelical activist was caught on tape bragging that she prayed with Supreme Court justices. The court’s majority cited a legal brief that her group filed while overturning Roe v. Wade
Peggy Nienaber, left, the vice president of the Faith & Liberty evangelical group, prays outside the Supreme Court in 2009. Next to her is the Rev. Rob Schenck, who led the group’s predecessor organization, Faith and Action, for years before leaving in 2018.
Jewel Samad/AFP/Getty Images
At an evangelical victory party in front of the Supreme Court to celebrate the downfall of Roe v. Wade last week, a prominent Capitol Hill religious leader was caught on a hot mic making a bombshell claim: that she prays with sitting justices inside the high court. “We’re the only people who do that,” Peggy Nienaber said.
This disclosure was a serious matter on its own terms, but it also suggested a major conflict of interest. Nienaber’s ministry’s umbrella organization, Liberty Counsel, frequently brings lawsuits before the Supreme Court. In fact, the conservative majority in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, which ended nearly 50 years of federal abortion rights, cited an amicus brief authored by Liberty Counsel in its ruling.
In other words: Sitting Supreme Court justices have prayed together with evangelical leaders whose bosses were bringing cases and arguments before the high court.
Nienaber is Liberty Counsel’s executive director of DC Ministry, as well as the vice president of Faith & Liberty, whose ministry offices sit directly behind the Supreme Court. She spoke to a livestreamer who goes by Connie IRL, seemingly unaware she was being recorded. “You actually pray with the Supreme Court justices?” the livestreamer asked. “I do,” Nienaber said. “They will pray with us, those that like us to pray with them.” She did not specify which justices prayed with her, but added with a chortle, “Some of them don’t!” The livestreamer then asked if Nienaber ministered to the justices in their homes or at her office. Neither, she said. “We actually go in there.”
Nienaber intended her comments, broadcast on YouTube, to be “totally off the record,” she says in the clip. That’s likely because such an arrangement presents a problem for the Orlando-based Liberty Counsel, which not only weighed in on the Dobbs case as a friend of the court, but also litigated and won a 9-0 Supreme Court victory this May in a case centered on the public display of a religious flag.
The Supreme Court did not respond to a request for comment. Liberty Counsel’s founder, Mat Staver, strenuously denied that the in-person ministering to justices that Nienaber bragged about exists. “It’s entirely untrue,” Staver tells Rolling Stone. “There is just no way that has happened.” He adds: “She has prayer meetings for them, not with them.” Asked if he had an explanation for Nienaber’s direct comments to the contrary, Staver says, “I don’t.”
But the founder of the ministry, who surrendered its operations to Liberty Counsel in 2018, tells Rolling Stone that he hosted prayer sessions with conservative justices in their chambers from the late-1990s through when he left the group in the mid-2010s. Rob Schenck, who launched the ministry under the name Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, described how the organization forged ministry relationships with Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, and the late Antonin Scalia, saying he would pray with them inside the high court. Nienaber was Schenk’s close associate in that era, and continued with the ministry after it came under the umbrella of Liberty Counsel.
Louis Virelli is a professor at Stetson University College of Law who wrote a book about Supreme Court recusals. He’s blunt in his assessment: “Praying with a group that filed an amicus brief with a court,” he says, “is a problem.”
Peggy Nienaber, right, at an event outside the Supreme Court led by Christian faith organizations on the eve of the Supreme Court arguments on President Obama’s health care legislation in 2012.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP Images
In the shadow of the high court, across the street from its chambers, sits a cluster of unassuming row houses known only to the initiated as “Ministry Row.” The strip is host to evangelical political groups that have spent the past several decades pushing Beltway conservatives to embrace the religious right’s political causes — and, most of all, reverse Roe v. Wade. The street view offers few clues as to what transpires behind the painted brick facades, save for a granite slab inscribed with the Ten Commandments planted in the grassy patch before a modest cream-colored Victorian with maroon trim.
The home serves as Faith & Liberty’s headquarters. The Ten Commandments statue had been placed there by Schenck, an evangelical minister famous for orchestrating high-profile anti-abortion stunts, such as shoving an aborted fetus in a plastic container into the face of former President Bill Clinton during the 1992 campaign. Schenck had opened the ministry in the 1990s as Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, a nonprofit dedicated to ending federal abortion rights. The organization operated on a “utopian ‘trickle-up’ theory” of influence: building access “higher and higher up within the government, until we got to the top, my ultimate target — members of Congress, U.S. senators, cabinet secretaries, Supreme Court justices — even presidents,” Schenck wrote in his 2018 autobiography.
The group established a strong foothold in both chambers of Congress and, eventually, the White House. But Faith and Action ultimately directed its energies toward the judicial branch. “There were no pro-life groups directly approaching the judges and justices, who shaped abortion law simply by their precedent-setting decisions,” Schenck wrote. “We knew we were stuck with members of the federal bench — they were appointed for life — so why not convert them while in office?” (Schenck has since reversed course: He is now a fierce critic of evangelical politicking and says Liberty Counsel assumed Faith and Action’s operations in 2018. He says he has no knowledge of the group’s inner workings after he left.)
At first, the high court regarded Faith and Action and its peer organizations as nuisances, according to Schenck. “Justice Thomas would say to me, ‘You know those groups outside? Are they crazy or are they good people?’” Schenck recalls in an interview with Rolling Stone. When Schenck first began his approach in 1994, prayer activities on the Supreme Court’s property was considered an act of demonstration, and therefore illegal. Eventually, Justices Alito, Scalia, and Thomas would embrace Schenck, he says, and pray with him in various corners of the high court’s grounds — including, occasionally, in their chambers. (Chief Justice John Roberts, meanwhile, remained more guarded and skeptical of such groups’ influence.)
To pray with the justices was to perform a sort of “spiritual conditioning,” Schenck explains. “The intention all along was to embolden the conservative justices by loaning them a kind of spiritual moral support — to give them an assurance that not only was there a large number of people behind them, but in fact, there was divine support for very strong and unapologetic opinions from them.” Prayer is a powerful communication tool in the evangelical tradition: The speaker assumes the mantle of the divine, and to disagree with an offered prayer is akin to sin. “It’s just not common to interrupt or challenge a prayer,” Schenck explains. “That’s not something a devout Supreme Court justice would ever consider doing.” That was true even for the devout Catholic justices, such as Scalia, who joined the evangelical Faith and Action members in prayer, Schenck says.
Sometimes the prayers would be general; other times, on specific subjects, such as ending abortion, according to Schenck. He says Faith and Action took assiduous care to avoid speaking blatantly about cases in the Supreme Court’s pipeline, discussing the political agenda only in broad strokes. Even so, under the time period Schenck describes, prayers with the justices occurred as Faith and Action signed onto several amicus briefs for landmark SCOTUS cases such as Gonzales v. Planned Parenthood, which ultimately upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003.
Schenck walked away from his life on the Hill after receiving a late-career doctorate on the teachings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor who questioned the collaborative relationship between Adolf Hitler and 1930s German evangelicals. He drew parallels between the Republican Party and American evangelicalism, concerned that he’d weaponized worship to fuel a hate-filled agenda. No longer an anti-abortion activist, Schenck views his past efforts with regret. “Prayer is a positive exercise, until it’s politicized — and too many prayers that I and my colleagues offered in the presence of the justices were political prayers,” he explains. He also believes the work “contributed to the internal moral and ethical corruption of the justices at the court,” he says.
“I was sure, while we were doing it, it would be a positive contribution to our public life,” Schenck says. “It didn’t have the effect I thought it would. In some ways, it set the stage for the reversal of Roe, which I now think of as a social catastrophe.”
When Liberty Counsel absorbed Faith and Action in 2018, Peggy Nienaber, who had worked alongside Schenck since at least 2005, continued with the group. In a July 2021 conversation with Staver, Liberty Counsel’s founder, Nienaber described the group’s new incarnation as similar to Faith and Action’s mission. It’s “the ministry right here on Capitol Hill,” she said, devoted to “changing the hearts and minds of not only our elected officials, but the staffers all the way down.” Nienaber highlighted Faith & Liberty’s proximity to the court by pointing to the window of the conference room where the justices decide their cases. ”When you’re sitting in that conference room, you cannot miss those Ten Commandments,” she said. (Faith & Liberty sits so close to the Supreme Court, in fact, that it has been included in the “buffer zone” surrounding the high court, shut off to protesters and the public. There’s irony here, given that Liberty Counsel has for decades litigated to abolish buffer zones near abortion clinics.)
“There’s a lot of things that Faith & Liberty does — and that you do — that obviously we can’t put in an email, can’t put in a newsletter, can’t put in a press release,” Staver said to Nienaber during their chat, “because it’s private relationships that are spiritually transformative.” Nienaber’s social media accounts show her hobnobbing with high-profile Republicans such as Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.) and former Vice President Mike Pence. She hung close to the confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018: She posted photographs from inside the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing room, as well as a screenshot of her invitation to Kavanaugh’s swearing-in ceremony.
Nienaber told Rolling Stone, “I do not socialize with the justices.” Yet she has posed for photos with Justices Kavanaugh and Thomas, calling the latter a “friend” in a Facebook post, praising him for “passing by our ministry center to attend church and always taking time to say hello.”
In addition to her proximity to conservative power players, Nienaber has championed the plaintiffs who have brought right-wing religious causes before the Supreme Court. Ahead of oral arguments, she prayed with Joe Kennedy, the football coach who recently succeeded in his suit to allow prayer during football games. Liberty Counsel also filed an amicus brief in that case, calling on the court to rule that the school district “engaged in viewpoint discrimination against Coach Kennedy’s private speech.”
Nienaber was recorded telling the livestreamer that she prayed with Supreme Court justices on June 27, the Monday after the high court issued the Dobbs ruling. She was at a celebration she helped organize with Sean Feucht, a prominent Christian-worship musician. Nienaber identifies herself only as “Peggy” in the footage, but she references the ministry she runs behind the court and its 850-pound replica of the Ten Commandments. For most of the interview, Nienaber is not on camera. But when the video pans on her briefly, she can be seen wearing the same dress and necklace she has on in a selfie with Feucht posted to Faith & Liberty’s website.
Last week, Rolling Stone spoke to Patty Bills, the director of constituency affairs at Faith & Liberty. Bills did not want to discuss Faith & Liberty’s ministry practices, citing privacy concerns. Bills would not, however, deny that Faith & Liberty ministers to Supreme Court justices. “I never said we didn’t — I just said we provide privacy,” she said.
Staver, in denying that members of Faith & Liberty prayed with Supreme Court justices, says that such prayers would have been inappropriate, especially given Liberty Counsel’s litigation efforts. “That’s why we wouldn’t do that,” he says. “And especially on cases that are pending before the Supreme Court, we would make a very clear firewall. We just would never do something like that.”
In a written statement to Rolling Stone, Nienaber says of her hot-mic comments: “I do not recall making such a statement. I listened to the livestream, and I did not hear such a statement.” She adds that Covid restrictions have limited public access to the Supreme Court: “The public has not been allowed access, and I am no different.” When she has had access to public areas of the court, she says, “I will generally silently pray for the justices, their staff, and the Court.”
But after this story was published, Nienaber acknowledged her remarks and conceded she has prayed personally with Supreme Court justices. Despite speaking in the present tense on the livestream, Nienaber asserted, “My comment was referring to past history and not practice of the past several years.” Nienaber added: “During most of the history up to early 2020, I met with many people who wanted or needed prayer. Since early 2020, access to the Supreme Court has been restricted due to COVID. It has been many years since I prayed with a Justice.”
Liberty Counsel was founded in 1989 by Staver. The organization is an uncommon hybrid of religious ministry and legal practice, dedicated to “advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the family through strategic litigation.” Staver is the organization’s senior pastor as well as its top litigator. This mix of law and religion is central to Staver’s career; he previously served as dean of the law school at Liberty University, founded by the televangelist Jerry Falwell.
Staver has argued numerous cases in front of the Supreme Court. He started in 1994 in a case that struck a blow against protest-limiting buffer zones near abortion clinics. In the court’s most recent term, Staver argued and won a 9-0 judgment in Shurtleff v. Boston, a case in which the court ruled a Christian flag couldn’t be excluded from a public flagpole that displayed a rotating assortment of secular flags.
Staver also wrote an amicus brief in the Dobbs case that purports to tie abortion and birth control to eugenics. Calling Roe “the low watermark in this Court’s history,” it argued that Dobbs was ”an ideal vehicle for the Court to finally overrule Roe v. Wade and its progeny, which have constitutionalized eugenic abortions as a fundamental right.”
In the Dobbs majority opinion written by Justice Alito, he cited this brief to impugn the motives of pro-abortion-rights advocates, arguing that “some such supporters have been motivated by a desire to suppress the size of the African American population,” adding, “it is beyond dispute that Roe has had that demographic effect,” because “a highly disproportionate percentage of aborted fetuses are Black.”
When Roe v. Wade was reversed, Staver was triumphant: “I have dedicated my life to defend life and overturn the bloody decisions of Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey,” he wrote. “This global earthquake will impact the world.”
Prayer unto itself in no way presents a conflict of interest for the justices, says Russell Wheeler, a visiting fellow of governance studies at the Brookings Institution, not even with a group like Faith & Liberty that has business before the court. Justices are allowed to visit there with whomever they’d like in their private chambers, and have socialized with interested parties throughout the court’s history. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, for example, routinely played cards with the high court’s magistrates, and Scalia went duck hunting with former Vice President Dick Cheney. What would amount to an ethical concern would be if they’re discussing those cases as they pray — “or if the prayer sessions would influence how justices rule in a particular case,” says Adam Winkler, a Supreme Court expert at the University of California Los Angeles.
But even among legal experts troubled by the court’s ties, they acknowledge there are few remedies to address ethical conflicts. A federal statute governs when judges and justices should step away from cases, but the Constitution leaves questions of partiality to the justices themselves. Their general unwillingness to step aside isn’t necessarily a bad thing, Virelli, the Stetson law professor, says: When justices recuse themselves from a case, no one replaces them, a scenario that can create more problems than it solves. “The court changes shape,” he explains. “That makes the decision to recuse difficult.”
That the justices are their own keepers in regard to those rules creates complications, however, says Steve Vladeck, a constitutional-law expert at the University of Texas Law School. The relationship between Faith & Liberty and Liberty Counsel, as described by Rolling Stone, “could make a reasonable observer worry about the appearance of partiality,” he says. But the concerns the scenario raised shouldn’t be about recusal. “What that really reveals is how problematic it is that there isn’t an objective mechanism to resolve these sorts of questions.”
For Winkler, the greater concern is not prayers, but the “religious-themed” decisions he’s seen come down from the high court this term, pointing to not only the Roe reversal but also opinions that permit unchecked free exercise of First Amendment rights. “The problematic aspect isn’t whether they’re praying,” Winkler says, “but that several justices seem committed to reading their religion into the Constitution.”
Let’s just get one thing straight: there are 5 rogue SCOTUS justices and 1 more not too far behind them. They are going to take power away from state courts next year and that will be the end of democracy. And nothing is going to be done about it. So plan accordingly.
Distractions are working but more importantly the gravity of the situation either hasn’t hit with the right people or they don’t care/are in on it (Manchinema).
“So, why didn’t anyone raise an alarm? Well, maybe because he didn’t stand out. Maybe because there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act a lot like this guy.
“And of course, they’re angry. They know that their lives will not be better than their parents’. They’ll be worse. That’s all but guaranteed. They know that. They’re not that stupid.
“And yet the authorities in their lives – mostly women – never stop lecturing them about their so-called privilege. ‘You’re male, you’re privileged!’
“Imagine that. Try to imagine an unhealthier, unhappier life than that. So, a lot of young men in America are going nuts. Are you surprised?” – Tucker Carlson, last night.
Tucker Carlson just blamed the 4th of July mass shooting on “mostly women” who “never stop lecturing [men] about their so-called male privilege.” He also blamed “social media, porn, video games,” and “government-endorsed weed.” (h/t @acyn) pic.twitter.com/jpmMstbuvV
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) July 6, 2022
there are a lot of young men in America who suddenly look and act a lot like this guy. “And of course, they’re angry.
Because they and their parents have been carefully indoctrinated by Fox “News”, the Republicans and the entire right wing bubble.
Blacks are taking your jobs Mexicans are taking your jobs Drag queens / liberals / teachers / Hollywood are grooming your children Obama / liberals / deep state want to take your guns Vaccines have micro ships etc. etc. etc.
The right wing echo chamber indoctrinates for thoroughly and effectively than ISIS.
Right; I’m thinking of the many people around the world whose situation is truly hopeless. Being white, American, and lectured doesn’t rank high on that list.
It’s anything but white supremacist propaganda and the easy availability of military-grade weapons that leads these people to kill folk. Anything. It’s so desperate it would be funny if it wasn’t for the pile of bodies.
So which is it? Strong mothers used to be accused of creating gay men (for some reason these creeps never seem to obsess over lesbians) NOW strong mothers create mass murderers?
Tucker Carlson Spent A Week In Brazil Slobbering Over Strongman President Bolsonaro
“We can add Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro to the list of right-wing authoritarians who make #TraitorTucker Carlson swoon as he poops all over the U.S. while on foreign soil.
“Tucker Carlson’s vicious anti-Americanism is disturbing enough, especially coming from a network that presented tweets about enjoying Memorial Day Weekend, from President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as insufficient love for the troops and America. Not so coincidentally, Carlson actually smeared the troops on the next day, Memorial Day, saying on the air, “Our military, at times, does not seem interested in protecting the country.”
So if you can’t be a coddled white supremacist who should consider the privileges from the accident of your birth and consider how others can be helped to improve their lives, killing random people with a military weapon is justifiable?
Stop and think that about how it is those very people–entitled, white, rich–in search of ever greater profit and damn the consequences for “little people” who created this world where you might not do as well as your parents.
And then consider that the anti-social cynicism, expressed by this clown is just a trick to keep you watching the advertising that pays for this.
“They know that their lives will not be better than their parents’. They’ll be worse. That’s all but guaranteed. They know that.”
Notably, Tucker neglected to point out that the depressing future he describes for those kids is almost entirely due to Republican policies that have pushed all economic gains to the top 1/10th of 1%.
He should rename his show the “Tucker Carlson Nightly Disinformation and Propaganda Spectacular”
There is an entire world of discourse in those four words. We should definitely blame women for the poor choices of these poor, stupid, snowflake, violent, unmanly boys. We can take the blatant misogyny all the way back to the very first poor, stoopid, Snowflakey, unmanly boy.
“The woman you made for me gave me of the fruit of the tree, and I did eat.”
It is hard to tell whether Cucker‘s low opinion of males is exceeded in bottomlessness only by his low opinion of AMerican women.
In this brilliant new rant for MeidasTouch, Texas Paul breaks down how GOP governors and leaders would make the the worst business leaders and CEOs. Texas Paul uses governors like Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis as examples and asks us to imagine a CEO who instead of solving the business issues facing the company, blamed the corporate problems on the LGBTQ community or immigrants instead of solving the problems before them and how quickly they would get fired. Texas Paul concludes by discussing the importance of competent leadership so that government can function for the people. It’s time to get rid of these incompetent Republican leaders.
CNBC’s Kate Rogers joins Shep Smith to report the Great Salt Lake in Utah is shrinking, and concerns it could be the equivalent of an environmental nuclear bomb.
Hello Everyone. I know I left off yesterday in a really bad state and some of you may wonder how today is for me. I was up until 3:30 in the morning. I went to bed with Ron but couldn’t stay there. I was far too anxious and upset. So I stayed in my office watching videos and trying to distract myself. Ron came out to check on me twice. I got up at 7:30 AM and I couldn’t walk without support. My back feels very weak and like it won’t hold me up. I went back to bed for an hour to get my back under control. Because of all the extra medication I took yesterday my stomach is a bit off, not bad but for most of the morning I wondered if I would be able to eat. It seems to have settled down now. I am in a lot of pain today. So that is the physical side. The emotional side is raw. I feel raw, I feel stronger than yesterday but that is because I am avoiding triggers as best as I can. I am trying hard to avoid things that might call or activate the vortex. But it is hard to do with the news today. The story of the little 7 year old girl who had her medication taken away from her by the adults in her life came very close to pushing me to the edge again. By last night I was in a very bad state and I don’t want to go there today. So that is where I am at. My mental state is not stable, I am very close to the edge right now. I keep feeling like I want to cry some more / again. I am not sure what activity to do to keep strong and to avoid falling back into the bad places. I may just stop on the computers for today and play Xbox and Halo. Thanks everyone. Hugs
The gun was legally bought! Law abiding people shouldn’t have their 2nd amendment rights hindered is the talking point of the right. It is a dodge. All gun owners are law abiding until they break the law. Right. The issue is the guns. This country has too many guns that are far too easy to get. Full stop. The new ruling from SCOTUS ensures more guns carried in public by more people. Of course the Justices don’t care, they are well protected by several police forces, people can not even protest near their homes, they have personal security details, and they never have to go out among the unwashed masses. The rest of us do not have that protections, we have to be out in the community wondering who is carrying a gun and having a really pissy day. Who came out armed after a fight at home or with the neighbors? The fact is the gun situation is going to kill the US economy. We have a service economy built on people shopping and eating out. Already people started buying online. A lot of people won’t go out of eat, to movies, to events if the are afraid of the gun violence. So that stuff stops. People will gather at home in small groups, they will leave the public spaces to the young and the gangs. This is going to radically change the way people in the US live. Plus schools may end up going fully remote. As a parent do you want to send your kid to a building that is regularly attack and kids die? What about going to the office to work? Who there is carrying a gun? People will want to work from home. See the effect of that one weapon on the entire society that the protected elite don’t care about? Hugs
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering said while she didn’t know where the gun used in Monday’s mass shooting in her city came from, she told NBC, “I do know that it was legally obtained.”
Rotering said she had known the shooting suspect, Robert E. Crimo III, as a child. “I know him as somebody who was a Cub Scout when I was the Cub Scout leader,” the mayor told NBC. “He was just a little boy.”
Rotering said the focus in the discussion about the shooting should be about “the fact that there are weapons of war on our streets, that people can legally obtain these and then take out dozens of people.”
Any gathering of any crowd is now a risk of a shooting. We had one in Philly last night at The Welcome America concert on the Parkway. No one was killed.
The mayor said he was going to be happy to not be mayor when his term is up having to deal with the shooting rates in Philly. One big problem is the state won’t let Philly write a gun control law for the city.
Bambino🇺🇦🌻•3 hours ago•edited The fact that it was legally obtained, what does that says about assault rifles that belong in the war zone are okay to be use in a civilize society?
It’s as clear and obvious as it can possibly be that GQP politicians *WANT* massacre victims within our borders to sustain war injuries. They’re not happy unless everyone is thoroughly engaged with their continuous, endless war. Without this war they can’t win the hearts and minds of their target demographic: evangelicals who worship a genocidal deity.
And why do they want it? Because they are paranoid that a Democrat president will take away their guns. So they need to guns to protect their right to own guns.
Yes, that’s what we’ve been saying for years, no one should possess a weapon of war, legally or otherwise. That’s what we’ve been screaming into the deaf GOP ears and they just make it easier for people to get their hands on one.
I came here to say similar. I liken it to the nightly body count during Vietnam where even we lost Walter Cronkite to help turn the public against the senseless war. Emmitt Tills’ mother insisting his body be shown to make the public aware of the brutality.
At this point I’m beyond caring what either a democrat or republican says about gun control, It’s too fucking late to try closing the barn door now. There’s literally millions of assault style weapons or actual weapons made for theatre’s of war out there to try to put a lid on it now. The population as a whole would need to be on board with confiscating and destroying those already obtained WoW and that just isn’t going to happen, no matter how horrific the body count goes, there are a significant number of 2A zealots out there that will fight tooth and nail to keep their precious symbols of “freedumb”. This problem is our new reality, trying to educate or legislate away having and keeping these guns is a fallacy in today’s America. There is a lot to be said about serious mental health care and spotting the behaviors of those that have been responsible for the thousands of mass shootings in the past. But until we has a nation respond to it, that won’t change either.
Grenades and rocket launchers, also known as bazookas, are considered “destructive devices” by the National Firearms Act. They are also classified as firearms and are therefore legal with proper registration.
I’ve told this before, but I have a nephew in Missouri who honestly believes that the 2nd amendment allows all Americans to be free to own any type of weapon, up yo and including atomic bombs. He scares me. He also has a bug out place hidden somewhere in the Ozarks that only he, his wife, parents and younger brother know the location. Sadly, in this part of the world that isn’t uncommon. I’ve often wondered if he belongs to some of the nationalist groups the Ozarks is full of.
Twelve members of a religious group in Toowoomba have been arrested after the death of an eight-year-old girl, who Queensland police say was allegedly denied life-saving medication in the belief she would be healed by God.
Elizabeth Rose Struhs had type 1 diabetes and died in her family’s Rangeville home, west of Brisbane, on 7 January. Police allege her parents, who have previously been charged with murder, began withholding insulin six days earlier.
Police allege paramedics were not called to the scene until 5.30pm the next day, with the Courier Mail reporting members of the church group believed she would be resurrected.
Her dad, Jason, 50 and mum, Kerrie, 46 allegedly chanted prayers and hymns with up to 20 members of their breakaway Christian church who surrounded their child rather than get her life-saving medication.
Some of the members of the group, who call themselves ‘The Saints’ as they believe they are at the height of Christianity, even played the guitar as the little girl lay dying and no one called an ambulance.
The parents have now been charged with murder, torture and failing to provide the necessities of life for the youngster – alongside 12 other members of the group who were taken into custody for murder charges on Monday (July 4).
Queensland police arrest 12 members of religious group over death of eight-year-old Elizabeth Rose Struhs https://t.co/cs2d41KLWp
Fundamentalism is the ultimate expression of narcissistic hubris. They pray and they claim God speaks to them. Think about that for a second. They prey. And then they believe the voice inside their own head is the literal voice of the creator of the universe. They believe their own thoughts are God.
Let’s just be honest here, there are people who are fundamentally broken, or lost, or in such pain that they’ll gladly reach out to anything that gives them some solace or structure. Then there’s just the large swath of folks who want to feel like they’re in on something special (see QAnon)… thus Kabbalah, numerology, a sparkling variety of cults and quasi-cults, and groups like these.
And that doesn’t even get to the people whose whole social structure is based on their church membership, and the churches are designed intentionally for that purpose. Why else have a church with a theater, day care, gym, and so on if not to make it near impossible for people to leave because they’d have to give up just about everything?
A legitimate question is where do their religious rights ends, and the state’s interest in protecting the child begin. I thought, and all of you thought that we knew where that boundary is. I’m not sure that we do any more.
I was taught in the fourth grade (back in the ’50s) that my right to swing my fist ends just before it hits another person. In other words, as I read the constitution, I cannot use MY rights to suppress or deny another person THEIR rights. The Handmaid’s SCOTUS just blew up the wall of separation between church and state.
Under the new regime a woman’s uterus and any byproducts thereof (i.e. children) are considered the property of the nearest male relative and are exempt from state oversight, since men can do whatever they want with their own property.
This is the result of the Republicans unwarranted attacks on gay people / the LGBTQ+. This is what they want, gay people especially kids too scared and afraid to come out of get found out as gay. They want it to be terrifying. It doesn’t make more kids straight, but it does make gay kids / people stay in the closet. To hide and not be visible. And the Republicans and religious leaders know this, they understand what they are doing. DeathSantis understands he is making LGBTQ+ kids targets, the writer of the don’t say gay bill admitted that was what he wanted when he wrote it, and erasing LGBTQ+ people from the public view. Out of sight out of mind. Hugs
Police said the teens had been talking on social media since February when they agreed to meet in person for the first time.
A 19-year-old Florida man has been arrested after police say he shot and killed his online boyfriend because the victim might reveal he is gay.
Jakari Webb was taken into custody Tuesday night by the Daytona Beach Police and charged with fatally shooting Telan Mann, also 19, who was gunned down just before 2 a.m. on June 23.
Police said the teens had been talking on social media since February when they agreed to meet in person for the first time at the spot where Webb allegedly pulled out a gun and shot Mann multiple times.
Officers were patrolling in the vicinity when the shooting took place and heard the gunshots. They arrived to find Mann “in a pool of blood with multiple bullet wounds on his body,” according to a statement from police. Mann died at the scene.
A neighbor in the vicinity said she heard at least seven gunshots.
Jakari Webb Daytona Beach Police
Police arrested Webb Tuesday while executing a search warrant at a home on Garden Street, where they also found a handgun. Webb was charged with first-degree murder and is being held without bond at Volusia County jail.
“Our homicide unit has been working this case non-stop since Telan was fatally shot,” DBPD Police Chief Jakari Young said in the statement. “I commend them for a job well done and for providing Telan’s family some closure. It doesn’t replace his life, but I hope it does give his loved ones some measure of peace moving forward.”
On Wednesday, police revealed they have evidence showing Webb and Mann, who was out, were involved in the online relationship for about four months, and that Webb was fearful Mann would expose their relationship and out Webb as gay on social media.
“There was some concern that Telan either had or was going to post something on social media kind of outing the suspect,” Young said.
Mann’s grandmother, Deborah Mann, posted pictures of Webb to social media, asking for the public’s help finding her grandson’s killer.
According to Chief Young, investigators scoured Mann’s text and social media messages and viewed over 120 hours of security cam videos to track Webb’s movements.
In addition to first-degree murder, Webb has been charged with a probation violation and resisting arrest after he tried to flee from SWAT and K-9 officers. Young said officials are exploring additional hate-crime charges in the case.
Friends and neighbors of the victim said Mann was a joyful person.
“He always wanted everybody to be on good terms,” said one friend who requested anonymity. “He always was the positive one around the group. He never wanted any bad energy at all.”
“It just breaks your heart to see things happen because that’s two lives gone. Not just one, so I don’t understand,” said Eula Hicks, a neighbor.
At Wednesday’s press conference, Chief Young called the crime senseless. “It’s extremely tragic and it’s just completely unnecessary.”
GLAAD released an alarming report on Wednesday about LGBTQ Americans who feel they still face discrimination in their daily lives. Seven out of 10 LGBTQ Americans state they face discrimination when interacting with their local community. That is up 11 percent from GLAAD’s report last year.
During a year when anti-transgender sports and bathroom bills are sweeping the nation, along with bills such as Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, it’s hard to argue with these statistics. Right now, LGBTQ people are facing some of the worst discrimination in recent history. And unfortunately, this representation is spilling over into how the public view LGBTQ people.
Sarah Kate Ellis, GLAAD’s President & CEO, issued a statement on Wednesday regarding the findings. She found the statistics “distressing, but not surprising.”
“Legislation targeting LGBTQ people and youth, including censorship in classrooms, book bans, bans on evidence-based healthcare and access to school sports, has ballooned since 2020 to nearly 250 bills introduced in statehouses across the nation,” Ellis said.
Ellis mentioned anti-LGBTQ legislation, like Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill that prohibits students and teachers to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity in school. These bills decrease LGBTQ representation and opponents argue that they give a blanket statement to people across the nation that LGBTQ people are second-class citizens due to misinformation and lack of support.
“Misinformation and false rhetoric from anti-LGBTQ lawmakers have real-life consequences,” Ellis said Wednesday, “and gives a permission slip to discriminate against LGBTQ people and target them.”
When looking at the subgroups of LGBTQ people, there are some parts of the community that face more discrimination than others.
More than half of transgender and nonbinary people face harsher discrimination and feel less safe in their neighborhoods and communities versus 36 percent of other LGBTQ people.
LGBTQ people of color also face higher rates of discrimination compared to white LGBTQ people. These individuals felt that they were discriminated against not only because of their race but also because of their sexuality or gender identity.
“Every LGBTQ person and ally must use this information to speak up and hold elected officials, news media, and social media platforms accountable to actions and rhetoric that make everyone less safe,” Ellis said.
Nearly 80 percent of LGBTQ people feel that they need better legal protections and federal legislation to combat the discrimination they face on a daily basis.
And a lot of that is contributed to feeling better represented in media and the public eye, including public officials who represent them. 75 percent of LGBTQ respondents feel that representation is “essential to equality and acceptance.” LGBTQ respondents also feel “proud and supported” when they feel represented by public officials or in a positive way in the media.
EXCLUSIVE
Scottie's Playtime 