Report exposes delayed pandemic preparation due to government machine having to focus fully on avoiding a crash-out exit from the EU without a deal.
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Right? If you think this isn’t an assault on democracy and our system of government you would be wrong: Florida GOP governor Ron DeSantis has plans to tear down and rebuild the Department of Justice and the FBI, even removing large parts of them and relocating FBI headquarters out of Washington D.C. DeSantis has stated he will replace much of the personnel at the DOJ and its subsidiaries, and implement a “disciplined” and “relentless” strategy so the Justice Department resembles what the “Founding Fathers envisioned.” . . . “We’ve seen throughout this country that the DOJ and the FBI are controlled by one faction of our society,” DeSantis said, noting that the federal agencies were “going after pro-life activists,” investigating parents at school board meetings “who are concerned about things like critical race theory and forcing kids to wear masks,” and “colluding with tech companies to censor information such as what they did with the 2020 election.” Reps.
More and more people want to keep it legal The intensity around the abortion issue is actually growing. Gallup posted this: -A record-high 69% say abortion should generally be legal in the first three months of pregnancy. The prior high of 67% was recorded last May after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization draft was leaked, showing that the court planned to nullify constitutional protection for abortion. -Most Americans oppose abortion later in pregnancy, but the 37% saying it should be legal in the second three months of pregnancy and 22% in the last three months of pregnancy are the highest Gallup has found in trends since 1996. -Gallup’s oldest trend on the legality of abortion finds 34% of Americans believe abortion should be legal under any circumstances, nearly matching last year’s record-high 35% and above the 27% average since 1975. Another 51% currently say abortion should be legal under certain circumstances, while 13% (similar to the all-time low of 12%) want it illegal in all circumstances. -Fifty-two percent of Americans say abortion is morally acceptable, matching last year’s all-time high.
I know, I know …
The Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) released of the latest labour force data today (June 15, 2023) – Labour Force, Australia – for May 2023. The May result reverses two consecutive months of weaker results from the Labour Force survey. Employment rose by 75.9 thousand (a strong monthly result), participation rose by 0.1 point to…
Did the GOP lose its moral compass or ever have one? Thomas Friedman ponders how this country got to where it finds itself by posing several “what ifs”: What if Mitch McConnell, at the close of his scalding speech on the Senate floor blaming Donald Trump for the riot that occurred at the Capitol on Jan. 6, had promised to use his every last breath to ensure that Trump was convicted on impeachment charges and could never, ever become president again? What if Melania Trump, after the porn star Stormy Daniels said Trump had unprotected sex with her less than four months after Melania gave birth to their son, had thrown all of Trump’s clothes, golf clubs, MAGA hats and hair spray onto the White House lawn with this note, “Never come back, you despicable creep!” What if the influential evangelical leader Robert Jeffress, after Trump was caught on tape explaining that as a TV star he felt entitled to “grab” women in the most intimate places — or after Trump was found liable by a Manhattan jury of having done pretty much just that to E.
Just another word for nothing left to know MSNBC hosts often contrast the fact-based reality here on “Earth One” with the Bizarro World inhabited by the denizens of the Trump personality cult, a parallel universe of “alternative facts.” Dante Atkins this morning reminds Twitter that conservative reactionaries’ efforts to “control the narrative,” as it were, are about more than political spin. They are about more than creating a world where facts don’t matter. They are about imposing a reality where all knowledge is proscribed, by them, where freedom to know and do things is eliminated, where freedom means its opposite. When they rail against “grooming,” Atkins suggests, what they really object to “is existing in public, because merely existing in public imparts knowledge that they do not want you to have.” This is the impulse behind the religious right’s home-school movement. Should parents have the right to educate their own children?
Judge Michael Luttig: There is not an Attorney General of either party who would not have brought today’s charges against the former president. He has dared, taunted, provoked, and goaded DOJ to prosecute him from the moment it was learned that he had taken these national security documents. On any given day for the past 18 months — doubtless up to and including the day before the indictment was returned — the former president could have avoided and prevented this prosecution. He would never have been indicted for taking these documents. But for whatever reason, he decided that he would rather be indicted and prosecuted. After a year and a half, he finally succeeded in forcing Jack Smith’s appropriately reluctant hand, having left the Department no choice but to bring these charges lest the former president make a mockery of the Constitution and the Rule of Law. I’m actually pretty sure that ship sailed when they had to issue a warrant to get the rest of the documents. After all, they didn’t charge him for any of the documents he returned, even under a subpoena.
And the establishment is full MAGA Happy Birthday Donald Trump. Today is the first day of the rest of your life. A mere lad of seventy-seven, you have a very exciting year ahead of you, running for president for the third time while facing multiple felony charges in both New York and Miami (and very likely Washington DC and Atlanta too!) And you will be the center of attention once again, just the way you like it. Yesterday, Donald Trump was arraigned on 37 federal felony charges for his decision to abscond with extremely sensitive classified documents, store them haphazardly in his wide-open beach club and then refuse to give them back to the government when asked politely to do so. Unless the special counsel’s office has found some evidence that will explain this bizarre behavior we will probably be left arguing about his motives forever. Was it a psychological need to hoard them or simply a product of his extreme mental disorganization? Did he see a monetary value in them or perhaps he had it in mind to use them as leverage for his political future, as he did when he extorted the Ukrainian president to to help him sabotage Joe Biden’s campaign?
It’s a shame that we can’t even have audio recordings of the legal proceedings against Donald Trump since the events are of great political and historical importance but it does not appear that is going to be. So it will be up to media in the courtrooms to tell us what happened. I heard lots of bits and pieces yesterday but didn’t really have a sense of how it actually unfolded. This from Anna Bower at Lawfare is most straightforward narration of the arraignment yesterday that I’ve come across. (She waited in line for 27 hours to get in!) When I finally enter courtroom 13-3, 27 hours later, Trump is already seated at a table on the right-hand side of the room. Overhead, a warm white light appears to shine directly on the former president, casting his orange-blonde hair in a golden hue. He is, both literally and metaphorically, in the limelight. Yet it strikes me that Trump—the man who positioned bigness as a central issue of American politics (“hugely,” “bigly,” “little Marco”)—looks unmistakably small. The courtroom is large, almost cavernous, adorned with slabs of creamy marble and caramel wood.