Uncategorized

The government is preparing to quietly amend the definition of disruptive protest in ‘chilling’ change already rejected by peers

We have news that the head of the DOJ counter-espionage department is asking the questions at this Florida Grand Jury which seems … odd. They questioned Tayler Budowich, former a spokesman for Trump now running one of his Super Pacs today, so who knows what it all means? This informative piece by Andrew Weissman and Ryan Goodman sheds some light on what we might expect: If special counsel Jack Smith hands down an indictment, we will be keeping an eye on many open issues that might indicate how strong a case the government believes it has. Here is what is on our checklist of things to note: Retention vs. dissemination Look to see whether the charges include not just illegal “retention” of national defense information, but also a separate allegation of “dissemination.” Both charges are violations of the Espionage Act and are central to U.S. national security law and protecting the country’s most sensitive secrets. But a dissemination case is particularly egregious, as an illegal retention case deals only with the risk of improper dissemination, not the actuality.

The silver lining is the young women have become slightly more liberal during the same time period. Why? I think this is probably the best explanation: Just remember kids. Many of the hated baby boomers were liberal at one time too.

He’s going nowhere fast: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis has seen his approval rating fall dramatically two weeks after announcing his 2024 presidential bid. According to online polling company Civiqs’ dynamic approval rating graph, DeSantis currently has a net approval rating of negative 19 points, with an average of 55 percent of respondents disapproving of him, compared with 36 percent who have a favorable view of the Republican. The data shows DeSantis has a major unfavorable rating from those aged 18-34 (63 percent), women (62 percent), as well as African Americans (85 percent), and the Hispanic/Latino population (68 percent). [I wonder why]m, In comparison, the Florida Governor’s overall approval and disapproval rating was tied at 47 percent in early December. Around this time, suggestions that DeSantis should be the one to lead the GOP in 2024 were gaining momentum after many—including those in the Republican Party—blamed Donald Trump for the party’s poor midterm performance. A number of candidates endorsed by the former president lost their races in elections across the country.

For weeks we’ve been hearing that either Congress raises the debt ceiling or the US faces a catastrophic default — potentially as soon as this week, Yellen said. Now an 11th-hour deal between Biden and the Republicans (which still needs to be rubber-stamped by Congress) has averted default in the nick of time — or …

Continue reading

The Biden administration, after successfully convincing Europe, against the latter’s own interests, to join America’s proxy war against Russia, is now hard at work to bring the EU on board with Washington’s increasingly aggressive anti-China policy — which involves not only economic decoupling (or “de-risking”, as it’s now called), by restricting trade and investment flows …

Continue reading

He didn’t have much luck doing that with Trump, however, and was soon out of the race. Yesterday he announced that he was going to give it another shot although it’s highly unlikely he will get past the starting gate. But it would be nice if he could get his message out to at least a few people who have never heard any of it before. Some highlights of his announcement: I don’t know if he has any credibility with Republicans but he might have some with GOP leaning Independents. And maybe his words will somehow make it into the fever swamp, you never know. Trump, by the way, responded in kind:

How many moral panics in our lifetimes? Five years ago Pride Month was not an issue. And now? Now trans panic is the Satanic ritual abuse panic for the early 21st century. Except the latter never really went away. But it is now joined and amplified by trans panic, fears of “grooming,” etc. CBS News: Protests outside a Glendale school district meeting turned violent as groups began several brawls as administrators discussed recognizing Pride Month, while the public debated gender and sexual identity studies. Demonstrations outside of the Glendale Unified School District building stayed relatively civil throughout the day. However, scuffles between the around 200 protesters and counter-demonstrators began after 6 p.m. School administrators said many of the protesters did not have students in the district. The city’s police department deployed around 50 officers to the meeting to prevent scuffles among the groups. After several brawls, officers ordered the protesters to disperse and threatened to use less-than-lethal force to break up the crowd.  The attempts to de-escalate the crowd failed, prompting officers to arrest at least three people.

Capitalism takes no prisoners This is just breaking. CNBC reports that after little more than a year, CNN CEO Chris Licht is leaving. Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said executives Amy Entelis, Virginia Moseley, Eric Sherling and David Leavy will lead CNN until a replacement is found. “Unfortunately, things did not work out the way we had hoped – and ultimately that’s on me. I take responsibility,” Zaslav said in a memo: Licht drew heated criticism in recent weeks after the network hosted a town hall with Donald Trump that was packed with scores of the former president’s cheering fans. While the event drew 3.3 million viewers, CNN’s ratings plummeted afterward. Two days after the town hall, CNN’s prime-time viewership came in below right-wing outlet Newsmax, a much smaller network. But it was an unflattering 15,000-word profile of Licht in The Atlantic – titled “Inside the Meltdown at CNN” – that might have sealed his fate. He apologized to staffers Monday morning, but top brass at CNN’s parent company, Warner Bros.

Now that the debt ceiling has been raised and all the smoke has cleared, it’s worthwhile to step back as assess the political fallout from the first major test of Kevin McCarthy’s speakership — and the clout of the House Freedom Caucus. I certainly didn’t think it would end with a whimper, not a bang, but that’s exactly what happened. Considering how nuts the MAGA Republicans are, it was fair for most of us to assume they would hold McCarthy’s speakership hostage if he capitulated on any of their demands. After all, that was the whole point of the speakership battle back in January — they wanted the ability to dictate what bills would be voted out of the rules committee and come to the floor. And they guaranteed that by loading the committee with Freedom Caucus members and demanding that any one member could file a motion to vacate the Speaker’s chair and require Kevin McCarthy to endure another election.