Chef Jose Andres publicly mocks Trump’s claims about D.C. restaurants

Chef Jose Andres with World Central Kitchen visits a temporary shelter for the victims of the Southern California wildfires at the Pasadena Convention Center in Pasadena, Calif., Thursday, Jan. 9, 2025. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes)

Celebrity chef and local D.C. icon Jose Andres is pushing back against Trump’s claim that his federal takeover and law enforcement surge in the nation’s capital has resulted in a “boom town” for the city’s restaurants.

Trump on Monday rejected reports that the flood of federal agents and National Guard troops had hurt D.C. restaurant and nightlife industry.

“Half the restaurants closed, because nobody could go, because they were afraid to go outside,” Trump said. “Now those restaurants are opening and new restaurants are opening up. It’s like a boomtown.”

Andres, in a Tuesday post on X, directly and sarcastically addressed Trump, saying: “I understand why you are confused…all your time in DC you haven’t eaten ONCE outside the White House or your own hotel. I’ve lived here for 33 years, and it’s a flat out lie that half the restaurants have closed because of safety…but restaurants will close because you have troops with guns and federal agents harassing people…making people afraid to go out.”

The Spanish-American restaurateur and founder of the global food charity World Central Kitchen and Trump have exchanged public hostilities in the past.

https://apnews.com/live/donald-trump-news-updates-8-26-2025#00000198-e816-d22d-ad9e-ec165b060000

IL Gov. JB Pritzker Speaks For Many Of We The People

Kinda thinkin’ of moving to Chicago. I still have some relatives around there; not to live with, but that I know people who know me.

Video is embedded on the page, for those who prefer to watch/listen.

Full text of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker’s speech at news conference on reported Trump military plan for Chicago

By CBS Chicago Team Updated on: August 26, 2025 / 9:16 AM CDT / CBS Chicago

Illinois Governor JB Pritzker spoke at a news conference Monday afternoon, addressing reports President Trump is planning to send the military to Chicago. Here is the full text of his remarks.

I want to speak plainly about the moment that we are in and the actual crisis, not the manufactured one, that we are facing in this city, and as a state, and as a country. If it sounds to you like I am alarmist, that is because I am ringing an alarm, one that I hope every person listening will heed, both here in Illinois and across the country.

Over the weekend, we learned from the media that Donald Trump has been planning, for quite a while now, to deploy armed military personnel to the streets of Chicago. This is exactly the type of overreach that our country’s founders warned against, and it’s the reason that they established a federal system with a separation of powers built on checks and balances.

What President Trump is doing is unprecedented and unwarranted. It is illegal. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American.

No one from the White House or the executive branch has reached out to me or to the mayor. No one has reached out to our staffs. No effort has been made to coordinate or to ask for our assistance in identifying any actions that might be helpful to us. Local law enforcement has not been contacted. We have made no requests for federal intervention. None.

We found out what Donald Trump was planning the same way that all of you did: We read a story in The Washington Post.

If this was really about fighting crime and making the streets safe, what possible justification could the White House have for planning such an exceptional action without any conversations or consultations with the governor, the mayor, or the police?

Let me answer that question: This is not about fighting crime. This is about Donald Trump searching for any justification to deploy the military in a blue city, in a blue state, to try and intimidate his political rivals.

This is about the president of the United States and his complicit lackey, Stephen Miller, searching for ways to lay the groundwork to circumvent our democracy, militarize our cities and end elections.

There is no emergency in Chicago that calls for armed military intervention. There is no inter- insurrection. There is no insurrection. Like every major American city in both blue and red states, we deal with crime in Chicago. Indeed, the violent crime rate is worse in red states and red cities.

Here in Chicago, our civilian police force and elected leaders work every day to combat crime and to improve public safety, and it’s working.

Not one person here today will claim we have solved all crime in Chicago, nor can that be said of any major American metro area. But calling the military into a U.S. city to invade our streets and neighborhoods and disrupt the lives of everyday people is an extraordinary action, and it should require extraordinary justification.

Look around you right now. Does this look like an emergency? Look at this. Go talk to the people of Chicago who are enjoying a gorgeous afternoon in this city. Ask the families buying ice cream on the Riverwalk. Go see the students who are at the beach after school. Talk to the workers that I just met taking the water taxi to get here. Find a family who’s enjoying today sitting on their front porch and ask if they want their neighborhoods turned into a war zone by a wannabe dictator. Ask if they’d like to pass through a checkpoint with unidentified officers in masks while taking their kids to school.

Crime is a reality we all face in this country. Public safety has been among our highest priorities since taking office. We have hired more police and given them more funding.

We banned assault weapons, ghost guns, bump stocks, and high-capacity magazines. We invested historic amounts into community violence intervention programs. We listened to our local communities, to the people who live and work in the places that are most affected by crime and asked them what they needed to help make their neighborhoods safer.

Those strategies have been working. Crime is dropping in Chicago. Murders are down 32% compared to last year and nearly cut in half since 2021.

Shootings are down 37% since last year, and 57% from four years ago. Robberies are down 34% year over year. Burglaries down 21%. Motor vehicle thefts down 26%.

So in case there was any doubt as to the motivation behind Trump’s military occupations, take note: 13 of the top 20 cities in homicide rate have Republican governors. None of these cities is Chicago.

Eight of the top 10 states with the highest homicide rates are led by Republicans. None of those states is Illinois.

Memphis, Tennessee; Hattiesburg, Mississippi have higher crime rates than Chicago, and yet Donald Trump is sending troops here and not there? Ask yourself why.

If Donald Trump was actually serious about fighting crime in cities like Chicago, he, along with his congressional Republicans, would not be cutting over $800 million in public safety and crime prevention grants nationally, including cutting $158 million in funding to Illinois for violence prevention programs that deploy trained outreach workers to deescalate conflict on our streets. Cutting $71 million in law enforcement grants to Illinois, direct money for police departments through programs like Project Safe Neighborhoods, the state and local Antiterrorism Training Program, and the Rural Violent Crime Reduction Initiative, cutting $137 million in child protection measures in Illinois that protect our kids against abuse and neglect.

Trump is defunding the police.

To the members of the press who are assembled here today, and listening across the country, I am asking for your courage to tell it like it is.

This is not a time to pretend here that there are two sides to this story. This is not a time to fall back into the reflexive crouch that I so often see, where the authoritarian creep by this administration is ignored in favor of some horse race piece on who will be helped politically by the president’s actions.

Donald Trump wants to use the military to occupy a U.S. city, punish his dissidence, and score political points. If this were happening in any other country, we would have no trouble calling it what it is: a dangerous power grab.

Look at the people assembled before you today, behind me. This is a full cross-section of Chicago’s leaders from the business world, the faith community, law enforcement, education, community organizations, and more. We sometimes disagree on how to effectively solve the many challenges that our state and our city face on a daily basis. But today, we are standing here united, in public, in front of the cameras, unafraid to tell the president that his proposed actions will make our jobs harder and the lives of our residents worse.

Earlier today in the Oval Office, Donald Trump looked at the assembled cameras and asked for me personally to say, “Mr. President, can you do us the honor of protecting our city?” Instead, I say, “Mr. President, do not come to Chicago.”

You are neither wanted here nor needed here. Your remarks about this effort over the last several weeks have betrayed a continuing slip in your mental faculties and are not fit for the auspicious office that you occupy.

Most alarming, you seem to lack any appropriate concern as our commander-in-chief for the members of the military that you would so callously deploy as pawns in your ever-more-alarming grabs for power.

As a governor, I’ve had to make the decision in the past to call up members of the National Guard into active service, and I think it’s worth taking a moment to reflect on how seriously I take that responsibility, and on the many things that I consider before asking these brave men and women to leave their homes and their communities to serve in any capacity for us.

As I’ve said many times in the past, members of the National Guard are not trained to serve as law enforcement. They are trained for the battlefield, and they’re good at it. They’re not trained to arrest people and read them their Miranda rights. They did not sign up for the National Guard to fight crime. And when we call them into service, we are reaching into local communities and taking people who have jobs and families away from their neighborhoods and the people who rely upon them.

It is insulting to their integrity and to the extraordinary sacrifices that they make to serve in the Guard to use them as a political prop, where they could be put in situations where they will be at odds with their local communities, the ones that they seek to serve.

I know Donald Trump doesn’t care about the well-being of the members of our military, but I do and so do all the people standing here.

So let me speak to all Illinoisans and to all Chicagoans right now. Hopefully the president will reconsider this dangerous and misguided encroachment upon our state and our city’s sovereignty. Hopefully rational voices, if there are any left inside the White House or the Pentagon, will prevail in the coming days. If not, we are going to face an unprecedented and difficult time ahead.

But I know you Chicago, and I know you are up to it. When you protest, do it peacefully. Be sure to continue Chicago’s long tradition of nonviolent resistance. Remember that the members of the military and the National Guard who will be asked to walk these streets are, for the most part, here unwillingly. And remember that they can be court martialed and their lives ruined if they resist deployment. Look to the members of the faith community standing behind me today for guidance on how to mobilize.

To my fellow governors across the nation who would consider pulling your National Guards from their duties at home to come into my state against the wishes of its elected representatives and its people, you would be failing your constituents and your country. Cooperation and coordination between our states is vital to the fabric of our nation and it benefits us all. Any action undercutting that and violating the sacred sovereignty of our state to cater to the ego of a dictator will be responded to.

The State of Illinois is ready to stand against this military deployment with every peaceful tool we have. We will see the Trump administration in court. We will use every lever at our disposal to protect the people of Illinois and their rights.

Finally, to the Trump administration officials who are complicit in this scheme, to the public servants who have forsaken their oath to the Constitution to serve the petty whims of an arrogant little man, to any federal official who would come to Chicago and try to incite my people into violence as a pretext for something darker and more dangerous: we are watching and we are taking names.

This country has survived darker periods than the one that we are going through right now, and eventually the pendulum will swing back, maybe even next year. Donald Trump has already shown himself to have little regard for the many acolytes that he has encouraged to commit crimes on his behalf.

You can delay justice for a time, but history shows you cannot prevent it from finding you eventually. If you hurt my people, nothing will stop me, not time or political circumstance, from making sure that you face justice under our constitutional rule of law.

As Dr. King once said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Humbly I would add, it doesn’t bend on its own. History tells us we often have to apply force needed to make sure that the arc gets where it needs to go. This is one of those times.

What We Can Do, And What We Can Help Our Leaders Do-

Linked on TenBears’s blog.

A key point: Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

======================================

As Real As It Gets

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 25, 2025

Something Jason Sattler wrote yesterday needs repeating this morning:

Everything we do makes it easier for our neighbors to stand up or sit down for this regime. We all know there’s a crisis coming that will force all who pay attention to make a choice that could define the rest of their lives.

Will people do it? In most cases, it depends on what they see us doing next.

SEE us doing. That’s the key.

How the less-engaged make up their minds about political matters, Anand Giridharadas observed (based on Anat’s work), is more akin to how they decide to buy pants: What’s everyone else wearing this year? What are normal people like me doing? Not in one-and-done big rallies but every day. Your resistance must be visible and persistent for that to work and give the less engaged permission to join the resistance movement. Calling your senator five days a week is fine, but which of your neighbors sees that?

Plus, if you want people to join your party, throw a better party. We’re out in the streets multiple times a week now. I bring dance music.

A friend pointed to this TikTok by someone going by @logicnliberty. She advocates a unified front by blue-state governors with trifectas. It’s not that they are not already unified, coordinating, and suing. They are. Govs. Gavin Newsom, JB Pritzker, Kathy Hochul are speaking out and holding press conferences. (State AGs too.) But not necessarily as a team. Are they leveraging their trifectas proactively to erect firewalls in their states against Trump’s gutting of the Constitution? They should.

(snip-TikTok video embedded on the page)

Would the press cover it if they did? We are already in the slow civil war Jeff Sharlet described. The blue and the gray meets the blue and the red. Run with it. The press loves controversy. Generate more, blue state governors.

Josh Marshall has been writing about how to leverage the separate sovereignty of the states against Trump. “Strategic depth,” he calls it, from military studies:

There are key areas where Democrats in Congress may have moments of power, the ability to slow a few things down. But to a great degree, the battle is already lost within the federal government until the next election. It’s only in the states where opponents of Donald Trump hold executive power outside the reach of and the hierarchies of the federal government. That’s where the whole game is. It is strategic depth not in extent or remoteness of territory but in the structure of government and the state. And states have vast amounts of power, far more than we tend to realize because we’ve never been in a position where the mundane daily activities of state and local government have become so critical — its taxing powers, its policing powers, the ways in which the federal government actually struggles to effectively extend its powers to the local level at scale without the active participation of local government.

Understanding the critical role of the sovereign powers of the states as a redoubt beyond the reach of Trump’s increasingly autocratic power is really the entire game right now, at least for the next 18 months and, in various measures, almost certainly through the beginning of 2029. People can march, advocate, campaign, donate to candidates, all the stuff. But in many ways the most important thing right now is both communicating to and demanding of state officials that they act on this latent power.

And those actions must be not only public, but in-your-face public. Their actions and yours.

Update: Read it. It’s where your neighbors are.

The human heart hangs on to hope until there’s no other choice. People will not fight back in the ways that will work, until they realize there is no other choice, until the only other choice is their own imprisonment or death, or that of someone they love. For many of us, that moment is already here. But for most of us, it’s not.

* * * * *

Have you fought dicktatorship today?

50501 – Labor Day events
May Day Strong Labor Day Events
No King’s One Million Rising movement
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink – Search on Labor Day events near you
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense

Hear Ye, Hear Ye; This Is At Least Of Interest–

To me, it seems damned important. We the people have all become owners/stockholders of Intel. What I get for avoiding the Friday evening news dump; it is in today’s newsletter.

Trump turns $11.1B in US government funds into a 10% stake in downtrodden Intel

By MICHELLE L. PRICE and MICHAEL LIEDTKE Updated 5:55 PM CDT, August 22, 2025

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday announced the U.S. government has secured a 10% stake in struggling Silicon Valley pioneer Intel in a deal that was completed just a couple weeks after he was depicting the company’s CEO as a conflicted leader unfit for the job.

“The United States of America now fully owns and controls 10% of INTEL, a Great American Company that has an even more incredible future,” Trump wrote in a post.

The U.S. government is getting the stake through the conversion of $11.1 billion in previously issued funds and pledges. All told, the government is getting 433.3 million shares of non-voting stock priced at $20.47 apiece — a discount from Friday’s closing price at $24.80. That spread means the U.S. government already has a gain of $1.9 billion, on paper.

The remarkable turn of events makes the U.S. government one of Intel’s largest shareholders at a time that the Santa Clara, California, company is in the process of jettisoning more than 20,000 workers as part of its latest attempt to bounce back from years of missteps taken under a variety of CEOs.

Intel’s current CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, has only been on the job for slightly more than five months, an d earlier this month, it looked like he might be on shaky ground already after some lawmakers raised national security concerns about his past investments in Chinese companies while he was a venture capitalist. Trump latched on to those concerns in an August 7 post demanding that Tan resign.

Women Have Had The Right To Vote For 105 Out Of 249 Years & More, in Peace & Justice History for 8/18

https://www.peacebuttons.info/E-News/peacehistoryaugust.htm#august18

From Joyce Vance

Moving The Window by Joyce Vance
Read on Substack

The Overton Window is a model that describes the range of policies considered acceptable at a given time by the public and policymakers. It’s the spectrum of ideas that are legitimate, feasible choices, and anything that falls outside of the window is considered too extreme for serious consideration. For instance, the idea of deploying the National Guard, or even the military, on American streets to control the local population is something we would have considered far outside of the Window for decades.

Think of what Donald Trump is doing in the District of Columbia in these terms. He’s made up a crisis—a wave of crime that doesn’t exist. The law in the District is different from how it is elsewhere because of limited home rule and a law that was drafted, at least arguably, to give the president alone the ability to declare an emergency that would permit control of local law enforcement. Trump tried it in Los Angeles, but ran into issues, like the Governor’s objection and the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents direct law enforcement by the Guard and the military. But in the District of Columbia, Trump has asserted the ability to seize control of the Metropolitan Police for at least thirty days and longstanding DOJ interpretation of the law says Posse Comitatus doesn’t apply in D.C.

Trump is using the quasi-federal status of the District to socialize the idea that he can:

make up an emergency and no one can challenge his thinking
seize control of local law enforcement
use the National Guard for direct law enforcement purpose

For the casual observer of American politics, he’s creating a new normal and shifting the Overton Window to include a presidential takeover of American cities.

Next stop, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Oakland, New York and Chicago, all cities Trump said were “bad, very bad,” without explanation. All cities where the law is less friendly to a Trump takeover than it is in the nation’s capital. But Trump has been more than willing to brazen it out in court and live to fight in the Supreme Court, where he hopes for, and has frequently been rewarded with, a decision that hands over more power to the unitary executive. To be able to last out the appeal, Trump needs to make sure that the public isn’t so outraged that he has to pull back. Hence, the need to move the Overton Window.

A potential pitfall for Trump is that outside D.C., he’ll need to convince courts, where his moves will certainly be challenged, that his determination of an emergency or other condition necessary to allow him to interfere with state and local control is not reviewable. Since his first day in office, when he declared an emergency at the border, Trump has been relying on that notion, that contrary to the checks and balances the Founding Fathers set up, any decision he makes that there is a national emergency can’t be challenged in the courts. Then, he declared an emergency that permitted him to make the (false) claim that the Venezuelan drug cartel Tren de Aragua was invading the United States, which set up his inhumane deportations of people to CECOT prison in El Salvador without due process. Most recently, it has been tariffs, predicated on the claim that “foreign trade and economic practices” have led to a “national emergency.” In each instance, Trump has faked an emergency, while pushing the courts to say that they cannot review his decisions. So far, the lower federal courts seem to be skeptical. At some point, that issue will make its way to the Supreme Court. If SCOTUS lets him get away with that, our position becomes that much more precarious.

Understood this way, what’s happening this weekend in the District of Columbia is a matter that should concern all of us. We cannot afford to let the Overton Window move. Our conversations with the people around us matter and it’s a moment where we need to make real the spectre of armed and masked troops marching through our streets—not just those in other people’s neighborhoods.

Last week, we discussed how small of a force the D.C. National Guard is. There are reports that early this week, National Guard troops from other states, Trump-friendly red states like West Virginia, Ohio, and South Carolina, will arrive to assist in whatever it is that Trump thinks he’s doing—surely not fighting crime, since these troops aren’t trained to do that. If Trump wanted to help reduce crime, he’d be funding data-driven best practices that are shown to work and that have, in fact, been bringing down crime in the District, as then-interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin announced Trump had done during his first 100 days in office. Make sure you point out the incredible hypocrisy by Trump when he justifies his actions by claiming crime is out of control.

The most important news is that Americans are not giving way to Trump. As the pictures sent to me by protestors show, people were out in the District of Columbia today, refusing to be intimidated by a president who wants to convince us that sending out masked law enforcement agents and armed troops on the streets of the nation’s capital, and any other city for that matter, is within his power. It is not. We will not tolerate his creeping totalitarianism. We are not obligated to accept his power play or make any of this easy for him, as he takes a well-worn page from every authoritarian’s playbook. We are not that country and he is not a king—nor a dictator.

On Friday, Judge Ana Cecilia Reyes, born in Uruguay and appointed to the district court in D.C. by Joe Biden in 2023, wasted no time in scheduling a hearing after the District filed a lawsuit challenging Trump’s attempt to exceed the power granted by the home rule law in his attempt to take over the Metropolitan Police. The previous night, Attorney General Pam Bondi tried to replace the D.C. Chief with the head of the DEA.

You have to like a judge who has this picture of herself with her pup on Wikipedia and reportedly brings her dog to work. Such a breath of fresh air during an administration where the president has no pets and the Secretary of DHS admitted that she shot hers.

Judge Reyes began the hearing by clarifying that she was not holding an evidentiary hearing and would not get into issues that would require development of the facts, like whether there was actually an emergency or a legitimate federal purpose behind Trump’s takeover. For purposes of the hearing, she assumed that Trump was correct on those points, saying she would go into them this coming week if necessary, before delving into the legal issues surrounding Trump’s order.

In the end, Attorney General Pam Bondi backed down, agreeing to let Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith continue to run the Department’s day-to-day operations under Mayor Muriel Bowser’s orders. She wrenched a concession from the district, directing Bowser to order the police department to assist in federal immigration enforcement. There is likely another legal confrontation coming where that process may conflict with laws passed by the District, which is a sanctuary city.

And as for Trump’s claim that he was worried about crime? Chief Smith wrote in an affidavit accompanying the District’s lawsuit that, “If effectuated, the Bondi Order would upend the command structure of MPD, endangering the safety of the public and law enforcement officers alike.” Imagine your local police department being run by the attorney general or his designee instead of the people who know your city and its needs the best. We’ve come full circle to where we started: Trump is making up the need for any of this. It’s about moving the Overton Window to give him the opportunity to seize more power, in more places, in a distinctly un-American fashion.

We shouldn’t forget about what was on the front pages before Trump started all of this and his embarrassing knee-bending exercise with Putin in Alaska on Friday. Trump has something to hide. And, apparently, he’s willing to take some hits to try and knock it off the public’s radar screen. Let’s not let anyone forget about it: Trump could release the Epstein files tomorrow.

(snip)

We’re in this together,

Joyce

Reblog From Annieasksyou

Please Watch This Urgent Conversation Between the Historian and the Governor!

Snippet:

“You can make the argument that you are supporting these institutions, not undercutting them...

Newsom observed that “Donald Trump will represent this nation on our 250th anniversary, and he’s up to this?”

Richardson’s response was “We’re going to represent the nation. The most important office is that of citizen. ‘We the people’ is foundational.”

Newsom quickly seized that assessment. “You’re reminding Americans they do have agency,” he said. “It’s not what happens to us; it’s how we respond to what happens to us. He [Trump] can’t take it away from us if we don’t allow it.”

Sarasota Republicans call for Tom Edwards’ resignation, but he brushes that off as a distraction

Sarasota Republicans call for Tom Edwards’ resignation, but he brushes that off as a distraction

This is more of the rights push to erase the LGBTQ+ from society. They are trying to return to the past when people could be fired simply for being gay. These people really carve the society of the 1950s when the LGBTQ+ were not in public society and the normal was considered straight and cis with any divergence considered an illness. I think it is because they can’t imagine something if they don’t feel it or understand it. They are straight so straight should be what everyone feels, to feel differently is weird and yucky to them. They view same sex acts as yucky because it doesn’t appeal to them, but they don’t stop to think that is how gay people feel about mixed sex relationships. Hugs

——————————————————————————————————————–

Jacob OglesAugust 13, 20258min

The 2-term School Board member just took over as Executive Director of Project Pride SRQ.

Sarasota County School Board member Tom Edwards just joined a nonprofit promoting diversity programs. Now, local Republicans say he should resign his public office, but the incumbent brushed that off as a desperate attempt to distract from other bad news for the GOP.

Project Pride SRQ last week announced that Edwards, a second-term School Board member, had taken over as Executive Director of the Sarasota organization.

“Project Pride envisions a silo-free community that is proud, resilient, and unified by shared values, not tribal policies,” Edwards said last week. “I am so excited that Project Pride has given me this platform to do this important work.”

But the Republican Party of Sarasota (RPOS) immediately called out Edwards’ new job as a conflict.

“In his new role, Tom Edwards will have overt conflicts of interest. The press release announcing this new job said Edwards will work to establish multiple programs in the schools and after school to further this radical ideology rejected by the vast majority of Americans,” reads a statement from the party.

“Tom Edwards can do whatever that he wants in his private life. But this position leverages him as a School Board member to push programs in the public, taxpayer-funded schools of which he has enormous influence. He cannot hold this position and look out for the well-being of all students. He clearly is incentivized to prioritize a small minority.”

Edwards made clear he has no intention of stepping away from his new work.

“Mr. Brill, is this a political ploy created as another distraction from the (Jeffrey) Epstein files? Or perhaps, with the upcoming School Board elections, you are concerned about two of your previously-endorsed School Board members’ reputations spoiling the chances of election for their replacements? If that’s the case, is it the one who was embroiled in the ‘Throuplegate’ scandal along with her husband, who was terminated as the State Republican Party chair because of rape allegations? Or is it the one who behaved like a spoiled child, refusing to return to her post and complete her term after losing her election? I must have missed it when you called for their resignations,” Edwards said in a statement.

“Only you can answer what keeps you up at night. In the meantime, I will continue to do the good School Board work that the community – from both sides of the aisle – overwhelmingly reelected me to do. Additionally, I will use my new position at Project Pride SRQ to build a stronger, kinder, more resilient community that can respond to the bullying tactics frequently deployed on members of the LGTBQ+ community. I remain steadfast in building coalitions that foster inclusivity and stand against the elimination of human rights for any element of the population.”

Edwards, who is openly gay, has faced criticism since his election to the School Board in 2020, when he defeated incumbent School Board member Eric Robinson. Gov. Ron DeSantis listed the School Board member as a top target in the last election cycle, but Edwards won re-election regardless.

Edwards walked out of a School Board meeting in 2023 after members of the public hurled homophobic slurs at him. A few months later, he was among those members calling for fellow School Board member Bridget Ziegler to resign amid her own sex scandal; she remains on the board.

Now, Republicans want Edwards to step down, and labeled his agenda as extreme.

“School Board Member Tom Edwards is a supporter of radical LGBTQ beliefs and has pushed them as a School Board member — completely out of touch with what the Sarasota County community of parents want,” reads a statement sent out by RPOS Chair Jack Brill. “But now he has been named Executive Director of Project Pride SRQ, which consistently pushes ideas far outside the mainstream.”

Project Pride SRQ leaders had a different take on Edwards’ record.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Tom as our new executive director,” said Justyn Hunter-Ceruti, Project Pride SRQ Board President. “His leadership, experience, and deep ties to the community will be invaluable as we step into this next chapter. I look forward to working with Tom to advance our mission and ensure that Project Pride continues to be a powerful force for inclusion, connection, and resilience in Sarasota and beyond.”

Added Harry Cicchetti, Vice President of the organization’s board: “Tom brings a passion for our mission, a wealth of experience, and a dedication to advancing equity, justice and inclusion not only for LGBTQ+ people but for all who face barriers, which our organization is committed to addressing at this pivotal time in our culture. The board looks forward to working with Tom as he leads our organization into our next chapter of growth and impact.”

Regardless, the fact that the organization also said Edwards will work on issues like a peer-to-peer Support Squad of students to identify bullying and mobilize around victims has GOP leaders concerned.

“We call on Tom Edwards to resign his School Board seat if he wants to be Executive Director of this organization,” reads the RPOS statement. “Holding both positions is antithetical to ethical behavior and harmful to public school students.”

Jacob Ogles

Jacob Ogles has covered politics in Florida since 2000 for regional outlets including SRQ Magazine in Sarasota, The News-Press in Fort Myers and The Daily Commercial in Leesburg. His work has appeared nationally in The Advocate, Wired and other publications. Events like SRQ’s Where The Votes Are workshops made Ogles one of Southwest Florida’s most respected political analysts, and outlets like WWSB ABC 7 and WSRQ Sarasota have featured his insights. He can be reached at jacobogles@hotmail.com.

From The TPM Morning Memo:

This is hugely pertinent to our interests. And the history callback of Dobbs/Roe is spot on!! This needs we the people’s work sooner rather than later. The story linked within is important background for working on this. Seriously: pick one or two (or more!) rights organizations and do what you can with them, now, while it’s not still too late, and stick with it until the other side is defeated. Please don’t wait until this is in court. Then:

A very sound scheme is to check in with your states on their legislative websites, see what the laws are right now, and what’s in the chute. Overturning Obergefell can’t/won’t change state laws regarding marriage, just as overturning Roe didn’t change state laws regarding repro rights. But knowing what could be coming, especially in red states, is imperative for getting ourselves protected, and protecting others. If your state is safe, well, pick another state that isn’t, and help them out. If your state has no law at all, lobby hard to get one, ASAP. And thanks! -A.

This Could Be Roe all Over Again

Some of Trump’s judicial nominees have refused in confirmation hearings to acknowledge that the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, striking down state bans on same-sex marriage as unconstitutional, was correctly decided. According to an analysis by JP Collins at the legal website Balls and Strikes, Eric Tung, who Trump nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, said only, “the Supreme Court granted such a right.” William Mercer, a nominee to the U.S. District Court for the District of Montana, said Obergefell is “binding precedent,” but declined to “grade the Supreme Court.”

As Collins points out, these verbal gymnastics to avoid saying the case was correctly decided mirror those of Trump’s first term Supreme Court nominees who said Roe v. Wade was precedent but would not say it was correctly decided — and then voted to overturn it.

One might say marriage equality is different from abortion. Obergefell is just 10 years old, and Roe was decades old. But the most important feature that both decisions share is the enmity of the Christian right, and its determination to overturn them, no matter how many years or decades it takes.

Even before the court decided Obergefell in 2015, the Christian right was already planning to treat it just like Roe. The Supreme Court’s 1973 decision, they argued, was not the end of the abortion issue but rather the beginning. They used money, media, political might, religion, and relentless organizing to use abortion to drive politics and shape the judiciary. Their plans for Obergefell and LGBTQ rights are no different.

Photo by Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images

But Of Course!

Here’s to people staying off Democrats’s necks as they fight this in the same fashion. Gerrymandering hurts my heart; I live in a state gerrymandered to just barely inside the law. I don’t like it for any state no matter the majority, but. If one’s gonna do it, they all ought to.

Of course, if we had instant runoff voting and no parties, this wouldn’t be a thing. Everyone would have someone to vote For. And we’d be a democratic republic today. -A

Gerrymandered Balls by Clay Jones

Republicans are cheating again Read on Substack

What do Republicans cheat at more, golf or elections? It’s a tough call. But cheating at one of those things means that they’ll cheat at the other.

Republicans in Texas are trying to reshape their congressional districts, even though it’s not the time redistricting is normally done. Usually, that’s shortly after the results of the census are published (which is once a decade), and states redistrict according to the new population size, and to fit with possible changes, such as new districts or losing them.

During the last census, Texas picked up two congressional seats because its population grew during the 2010s. Since the Texas legislature is controlled by Republicans, they were able to draw up the district maps. Naturally, they redraw them to favor Republicans. It’s not like they would do it honestly. They’re Republicans.

This is called gerrymandering, and Texas is one of the most gerrymandered states in the nation. Wisconsin is number one.

Texas now has 38 congressional districts, with 25 of them going to Republicans, 12 going to Democrats, and one is currently vacant. But even after winning a huge majority after gerrymandering, 25 congressional seats are not enough for Texas Republicans, so they want to redraw the lines again in their favor.

Texas will be blue someday, or at least a swing state. The best way to keep people from sending Democrats to Congress is to take away Democratic candidates. After gerrymandering, voters are not choosing the candidate. The candidates are choosing the voters. It’s horrible, rotten, unfair, and neither party should do it. But Republicans don’t care if they cheat.

After Joe Biden won the presidency in 2020 in what experts say was the most secure election in American history, Republicans cried foul and set out to change election laws in every state. In Georgia, for example, where Biden won in 2020, and Blue areas are growing, Republicans changed voting laws, and Trump won over Kamala Harris in 2024 by just 2.20 percent. In Texas, they focused on changing the laws, not for every district, just the districts that had a majority of Black voters. They tried to make it as hard as hell to vote in Houston.

Republicans said all these changes were for election “integrity.” But how much integrity do you have when you make it illegal to give an old lady a bottle of water while she’s waiting in line for nine hours in the Georgia heat? It’s a fact that when fewer people vote, Republicans win.

The 2024 election, which Trump “won,” had fewer voters than in 2020, when Biden won. (snip-MORE)