December is make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising. We have a $350,000 goal that we simply cannot afford to miss. And in "No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS," we explain, as matter-of-fact as we can, how being a nonprofit means everything to us. Bottom line: Donations big and small make up 74 percent of our budget this year and are urgently needed this month, and all online gifts will be matched and go twice as far until we hit our goal. Please pitch in if you can right now.
December is make-or-break for Mother Jones’ fundraising, and in "No Cute Headlines or Manipulative BS," we hope that giving it to you as matter-of-fact as we can will work to raise the $350,000 we need to raise this month. Donations make up 74 percent of our budget this year, and all online gifts will be matched and go twice as far until we hit our goal.
Yesterday, crews who were working to remove the base of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee in Richmond, Virginia, made an exciting discovery beneath the monument: a copper box from 1887 believed to contain dozens of pieces of historic memorabilia.
As I write this, conservation experts in the state’s capital are opening and examining the time capsule’s contents, which turn out to be slightly waterlogged but in surprisingly good condition. The artifacts uncovered thus far include a small Bible, Confederate money, a book entitled Minutae of Soldier Life, a Civil War bullet called a Minié ball, and a printed image from an 1865 issue of Harper’s Weekly depicting someone grieving over Abraham Lincoln’s grave.
This isn’t the first time this month that the same team of conservators has opened a container beneath the Lee monument, which departing Gov. Ralph Northam had ordered taken down in September. Last week, they pried open a lead box found in the pedestal, but the box did not match historical descriptions of the formal time capsule. It contained few artifacts and was likely placed by the people who erected the monument.
As lead conservator Kate Ridgway prepared to slice open the side of the copper box to free its waterlogged contents today, she had some advice for anyone considering creating one. “Next time capsule,” she said, “maybe not so much stuff in it.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va. J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo
It’s official. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) said this morning on Fox News that he won’t support the Build Back Better bill, effectively killing the Democratic Party’s $2 trillion sweeping domestic policy proposal. “I tried everything humanly possible. I can’t do it,” he said. “This is a no on this legislation. I have tried everything I know to do.”
Manchin has been hinting for months that he wouldn’t support the centerpiece of President Joe Biden’s agenda, raising opposition to its overall price tag as well as measures that would have extended a poverty-busting child tax credit and paid family leave, imposed a methane fee on emissions from fossil fuel producers, and expanded Medicare to cover hearing aids for the elderly.
Democrats responded on Sunday with outrage and despair. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) told CNN’s Jake Tapper that Manchin “will have a lot of explaining to do to the people of West Virginia, to tell him why he doesn’t have the guts to take on the drug companies, to lower the cost of prescription drugs, why he is not prepared to expand home healthcare.” Sanders suggested that Democrats bring the bill to the Senate floor for a vote to force Manchin to put his “no” vote on the record. “Let Mr. Manchin explain to the people of West Virginia why he doesn’t have the guts to stand up to powerful special interests,” he told Tapper. “If he doesn’t have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world.”
"If he doesn't have the courage to do the right thing for the working families of West Virginia and America, let him vote no in front of the whole world." Sen. Bernie Sanders reacts to Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin saying "no" to Biden's Build Back Better Act. #CNNSOTUpic.twitter.com/oEQaD19tAd
The bill is loaded with extremely popular provisions designed to shore up the “care economy” to support families from birth to death, with expanded child care assistance, universal preschool and help for people caring for aging family members. The bill set aside money for pandemic prevention and would also devote $550 billion to combatting climate change. Most of it would be paid for with higher taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Read here to see just five of the good things you probably didn’t know were in the bill and which are now probably never going to happen, not because of Joe Manchin but because this is America, a failed democracy, where not a single Republican senator will support any legislation that would actually make people’s lives a little better.
Activists took the abortion pill in front of the Supreme Court while justices heard arguments for the Mississippi abortion case. Chip Somodevilla/ Getty
The Food and Drug Administration announced on Thursday that it will loosen restrictions on the abortion pill mifepristone, allowing people to receive the pill via mail or pharmacy instead of having to appear in person at a clinic or hospital.
The decision comes while the Supreme Court deliberates over a Mississippi ban on abortion after 15 weeks. The court is widely expected to use the case to roll back nearly a half century of abortion rights. The court ruled last week that an abortion restriction in Texas could remain in effect.
For almost 30 years, the FDA restricted the use of mifepristone through its drug safety program, even though the drug has long been known to be safe and effective. The new change “will allow many patients to access care earlier with fewer burdens and costs,” ACLU attorney Julia Kaye told the Washington Post.
Misoprostol, the second pill needed in medication abortion, has long been accessible at a pharmacy with a prescription. Earlier this year, the Biden Administration temporarily lifted the restriction on mifepristone to ensure abortion access continued despite the challenges of the pandemic.
According to the FDA, the restriction was modified in order to “reduce burden on patient access and the health care delivery system and to ensure the benefits of the product outweigh the risks.”
Yet the change won’t mean a whole lot in much of the country. Nineteen states, including Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama (which recently introduced a “heartbeat bill” similar to Texas’) restrict the use of telemedicine for abortion. People across the South and the Midwest will have to travel to sanctuary states like California or New York for telemedicine appointments and to receive the medication.
In North Carolina’s largest newspapers today, the News & Observer, an editorial ran calling Mark Meadows—who rode a wave of “extreme gerrymandering” to Congress; said he wanted to “send Obama home to Kenya“; co-founded the Freedom Caucus; helped shut down the government in 2013; groveled to become Trump’s chief of staff; convinced Trump to not institute a mask mandate; cast aside COVID-19 protocols himself; helped abet Trump’s attempt to retain power; pushed the Department of Justice to challenge the election’s integrity; drove us toward the insurrection; texted with Fox News hosts on Jan. 6, who were freaking out when they realized it had gone too far; lied about his role in all of that in his book; and was held in contempt last night by the House—an “embarrassment” and a “disgrace.”
Well, hard to argue with that. I agree.
So, congratulations, Mark Meadows. You’ve long embarrassed me personally as a fellow North Carolinian. But I’m glad to see so many others finally see how you’re up there with former North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms—the harbinger of all the “racist, divisive, pro-government (when it favors the wealthy), and anti-democratic” lawmakers to come—as the worst of the worst.
Months after Derek Chauvin was sentenced to 22 and a half years in prison for the murder of George Floyd, the former police officer on Monday pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation, likely extending the time he’ll spend behind bars by two and a half years.
Chauvin admitted that he had violated Floyd’s constitutional rights to be free from unreasonable seizures. Federal prosecutors will ask a judge to sentence Chauvin to 25 years in federal prison, to be served concurrently with his murder sentence. That means that even if Chauvin were to successfully appeal his murder conviction, he would still be on the hook for civil rights violations.
Chauvin also pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation for an unrelated 2017 case in which he hit a then-14-year-old boy in the head with a flashlight and knelt on his neck. Chauvin had pleaded not guilty to that case in September.
Chauvin may serve the remainder of his sentence in federal rather than state prison, which is typically safer. Legal experts, according to the New York Times, said the federal case could have resulted in a life sentence.
Floyd’s brother Philonise and the victim in the 2017 incident were both in the courtroom today. After the hearing, Philonese reportedly said, “It’s a good day for justice.”
Due to his refusal to cooperate with the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot, Mark Meadows, a former representative for North Carolina and Donald Trump’s final chief of staff, was held in contempt late Tuesday night by the legislative body in which he once served.
Meadows initially seemed to cooperate with the January 6 committee, supplying it with thousands of documents and signaling that he would sit for a deposition. At the time, Meadows’ relatively conciliatory approach cut a sharp contrast with the pugnacious attitude of Trump guru Steve Bannon, who chose to rebuff the committee at every turn. But Meadows has now joined Bannon as the second Trump associate referred to the Department of Justice for possible criminal contempt charges for refusing to comply with the committee’s investigation. Last month, the DOJ obtained an indictment against Bannon.
Meadows’ tenuous relationship with the committee collapsed when he cited a legally dubious argument that executive privilege allowed him to withhold select documents. Due to the disagreement, Meadows ceased cooperating and failed to show up for a deposition, although he told the committee that he would answer select questions in writing. In a letter to Meadows’ lawyer, committee chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) asserted that Meadows had failed to state which specific areas of inquiry he considered to be covered under executive privilege and announced that the panel would vote to recommend that the House charge him with contempt. The House echoed the committee’s recommendation Tuesday evening in a 222–208 vote, with every Democrat and two Republicans—Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.)—voting in favor.
Some of the documents Meadows did agree to hand over have already shed new light on Trump’s frantic and unprecedented efforts to overturn the 2020 election. In its referral to the House, the January 6 committee unveiled new information that it had gleaned from Meadows’ emails and personal text messages, including a chilling PowerPoint reportedly created by conspiracy theorist Phil Waldron that urged Trump to declare a national security emergency, proclaim all electronic voting invalid, and ask Congress to decide on a path forward. In addition, the document recommended that Vice President Mike Pence reject electors from “states where fraud occurred” or replace them with Republicans. Meadows’ lawyer told the New York Times that the former chief of staff had received the PowerPoint but had done nothing with it.
The material Meadows turned over to the committee also included a message in which Meadows informed someone that the National Guard would stand by to “protect pro Trump people”; a message in which an organizer of the January 6 rally asked Meadows for “some direction” because the situation had gotten out of hand; and an email discussing a ploy to appoint alternate slates of electors to keep Trump in power.
In a dramatic twist on Tuesday night, Rep. Cheney revealed to the committee a string of text messages sent to Meadows by Republicans, Fox News hosts, and even the former president’s own son, Don Jr., imploring the White House to take stronger action to quell the mob.
The Department of Justice will now have to decide whether to enforce Congress’ vote and seek an indictment of Meadows for contempt of Congress. If convicted on such a charge, he could face up to one year in prison.
On Monday, the House committee investigating the attack on the Capitol released text messages sent to Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, on January 6. These messages contained a deluge of concern from every stripe of Republican that the riot had—to quote a text that Donald Trump Jr. sent to Meadows—“gotten out of hand.”
Interesting.
Since then, we have not heard much of that from Republicans. In fact, we’ve been told it was not that bad, a “normal tourist visit.” And even if it was a semi-coup… maybe it was antifa? The FBI? And wait, sorry, it also was not really that bad—it was maybe even good.
Yet, on the day, the texts painted a different picture. They show three hosts from Fox News—Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, and Brian Kilmeade—asking for Trump to do something to stop the attack. They show Trump administration officials freaking out.
And they show Meadows—who has been on a media tour to promote his new book, even as Congress moves to hold him in contempt—agreeing he needs to get Trump to do something (“I’m pushing it hard,” he messaged) about the harsh reality that the lie the administration spread about a stolen election had sparked a violent attempt to overthrow the government.
All of this was put forward by Republican Liz Cheney as part of her statement in front of the committee. You can read all the messages, and her comments, here.
Ingraham text 2 Meadows on 1/6 (per Cheney):
“[Trump] needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home. This is hurting all of us. He is destroying his legacy."
Ingraham that night: -Leads w/ antifa -Suggests provocateurs -Suggests it was just 3 dozen ppl (McCarthy corrects her) pic.twitter.com/144lUoFdB7
It makes something clear. For a moment, the reality pierced through to Fox News, Republicans, and Trump administration officials that they had been trying to wreck democracy—and would even have to live with those consequences.
Everyone was in Meadows’ messages. They were sort of atoning and trying to fix it. Because it got too real.
Kilmeade requested Trump “get… on tv” to stop the insurrection. In the almost year since, Kilmeade has been on TV himself. In fact, he was on Fox & Friends this morning, but he didn’t bother to mention the texts today.
The same goes for Sean Hannity, who on January 6 asked Meadows if Trump could “make a statement” and “ask people to leave the Capitol.” Since then, Hannity has made a practice of soft-pedaling the insurrection to such a degree that compatriot Geraldo Riveria has said he is “gaslighting” viewers about it.
Laura Ingraham—who texted Meadows that day to say that Trump “needs to tell people in the Capitol to go home”—spent a good deal of time making clear that what happened on January 6 was not good. It was wrong, she repeatedly said. But then, in her explanation, she made sure to mention antifa could be involved. She added that maybe the election was rigged.
And, in that vein, for the past year or so, Republicans, and Fox News, have downplayed the seriousness of what happened on January 6.
But let’s remember the energy.
America watched as people rushed the Capitol in an attempt to overthrow an election to keep in power an unelected official—or, in his parlance: a loser!
Since then, they’ve tried to rewrite January 6 in whataboutisms. Any mention of the horror has to be sprinkled with a mention that antifa could’ve been involved and that the security should have been better. It can be a full out denial (Tucker Carlson) or an attempt to mention a few caveats (Ingraham), but in each case acknowledging January 6 was evil requires distancing themselves from what happened.
Because to fully explain it—without lying—would require all of them to acknowledge they fueled an attempt to topple democracy.
Emergency workers search what is left of the Mayfield Consumer Products Candle Factory after it was destroyed by a tornado in Mayfield, Kentucky, on December 11, 2021.John Amis/Getty
A deadly and rare December tornado outbreak killed dozens and left a trail of devastation across the Southeast and Midwest Friday night, with one twister suspected of ripping through four states and flinging debris over 30,000 feet in the air, the height flown by commercial airplanes. Between 70 and 100 people are estimated to have died in Kentucky alone, according to Gov. Andy Beshear, who said the storm was “the most devastating tornado event in our state’s history.”
In Mayfield, Kentucky, much of the town was leveled and a candlemaking factory was ripped apart, trapping some of the building’s 110 occupants:
In Edwardsville, Illinois, an Amazon warehouse partially collapsed, sending a wall the size of a football field and a section of roof tumbling. At least two people were killed there and others were trapped, with some still unaccounted for as of early Saturday morning.
While there were several tornadoes in the cluster, the National Weather Service is investigating whether a single twister—which is being called the “quad-state tornado”—traveled more than 230 miles as part of the storm, through Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky. If confirmed, it would set a record for the longest continuous tornado in US history, according to NBC News.
Tornado frequency is increasing in the Mississippi Valley, and research indicates that may be due to climate change, as “Tornado Alley”—the belt across the central US belt where these storms have traditionally been most common—shifts eastward. The storm formed as a cold front slammed into unusually warm weather in the region, a meteorologist explained to the New York Times. While tornadoes in December are not unheard of, a storm system this powerful normally occurs in April or May. “These are the ingredients for big storms in the spring, but not in mid-December,” Dan Pydynowski, a senior meteorologist for Accuweather, told the Times.
Around 250,000 homes in the region were without power as of Saturday morning.
In a stinging rebuke of today’s Supreme Court decision to allow Texas’ extreme anti-abortion law to remain in effect while local abortion providers sue state officials, Justice Sonia Sotomayor issued a stark warning of long-lasting consequences. “I doubt the Court, let alone the country, is prepared for them,” she wrote in a published dissentthat highlights the “catastrophic consequences” pregnant people have already endured under the law, and draws startling comparisons between the majority’s decision and Civil War–era defenses of slavery.
Joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Stephen Breyer in her dissent, Sotomayor slammed the Texas law as “an unconstitutional scheme” enacted in “open defiance” of women’s rights—a “madness” that the Supreme Court should have put to an end to months ago.By allowing the law to continue, she argued, the court “betrays not only the citizens of Texas, but also our constitutional system of government.” (The court effectively allowed the Texas law to take effect back on September 1.)
Sotomayor, who expressed similar alarm during oral arguments in another unrelated abortion case this month, described the Texas law as a “calamitous” because it empowers bounty hunters to prey upon an extraordinary range of potential victims: “a medical provider, a receptionist, a friend who books an appointment, or a ride-share driver who takes a woman to a clinic.” Beyond that, she wrote the architects of the law went to extraordinary lengths to target people involved in offering abortion care with “uniquely punitive” measures, a catalogue of norm-breaking departures from state law that amounts to “a weapon.”
In an especially gripping section of the 13-page opinion, Sotomayor wrote that Texas’ brazen challenge to federal law “echoes the philosophy of John C. Calhoun, a virulent defender of the slaveholding South who insisted that States had the right to ‘veto’ or ‘nullif[y]’ any federal law with which they disagreed.”
“The Nation fought a Civil War over that proposition,” she argued. “But Calhoun’s theories were not extinguished.”
"Handmaids" rally as the Supreme Court hears arguments over a Texas law that bans abortion after six weeks.Jeff Malet/Newscom/Zuma
Today, in what could at best be considered a mixed ruling for abortion rights, the Supreme Court decided that abortion providers may sue some state officials in federal court over an extreme Texas abortion law. But in a huge blow, the court will also allow the law to remain in effect while the case moves forward.
2) Although the decision is technically a win for abortion providers (and pregnant people) in Texas, it's a very narrow one, and potentially not enough to support effective relief on remand.
SB 8 bans abortion after six weeks’ gestation and also allows any private citizen to sue both abortion providers and anyone who “aids and abets” patients trying to obtain an abortion. As Becca Andrews wrote recently, since the law took effect this fall, it has been “causing very real harm to pregnant Texans”:
I have spent the past couple months reporting out of reproductive health clinics for a book project I’m working on, and I’ve seen Texans seeking care in Alabama, Kansas, and Tennessee. The one that sticks with me was a young woman who came to Huntsville, Alabama, after traveling to Jackson, Mississippi, where she was told she was barely over that clinic’s gestational limit. She had been traveling for almost a week and was exhausted. She told me it was only the second time in her life that she had ever left Texas.
For now, that draconian abortion law will remain in effect, but the legal fight will continue in federal courts, even though the law was designed with the intent to escape just that.
To translate, the litigation can continue against some defendants but the practical effect is abortion is still mostly banned in Texas and the public health crisis and havoc continues. #liberateabortion#BansOffOurBodies#abortionisessential
In its decision on Friday, the court ruled in two distinct but related cases, neither of which directly considered the constitutionality of the law: Whole Woman’s Health v. Jackson, brought by abortion providers that challenged the standing of the law and providers’ ability to sue in federal court, which the law was designed to evade; and United States v. Texas, in which the US Justice Department sued the state of Texas. While the court allows the providers in Whole Woman’s Health to move their case forward, it dismissed United States v. Texas, throwing into question its jurisdiction to intervene when individual states pass laws that affect the constitutional rights of citizens.
Later this year, the court will rule on a separate abortion rights case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which considers the constitutionality of a 2018 law that banned abortion in Mississippi after 15 weeks. (The law never went into effect—its enforcement was blocked in a federal appellate court.) This case has the power to overturn Roe, a fate that Becca wrote seems increasingly likely following oral arguments earlier this month.
Liz Cheney, Vice Chair, of the January 6 Committee, speaks to Rep. Jamie Raskin after a meeting. Rod Lamkey/CNP/ZUMA
On Thursday, a federal appeals court ruled against former President Donald Trump, demanding he turn over White House records to the congressional committee investigating the January 6 Capitol riot.
Over the 2021 summer, the Jan. 6 committee filed a request for a range of documents related to the riot from the period between December 1, 2020 and January 20, 2021. For the last few months, Trump and his lawyers have been waging a frantic legal battle to prevent their release.
Trump previously lost the first round before U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan, who rejected his lawyers’ argument that the documents were protected by executive privilege and ordered that he turn them over to the committee. Current president Joe Biden declined to back Trump’s claims, which would’ve thrown more weight behind his argument, and waived privilege over the documents.
Trump quickly appealed the decision to the DC Circuit, and asked Chutkan to issue a stay on her own decision. She declined, forcing Trump’s legal team to file an emergency motion with the Appeals Court, which issued a temporary injunctionhalting the documents’ release.
But the injunction was short lived, and the three-judge Appeals Court panel composed of two Obama appointees and one Biden appointee, ruled 3-0 that Trump was obliged to turn over the documents.
“On the record before us, former President Trump has provided no basis for this court to override President Biden’s judgment and the agreement and accommodations worked out between the Political Branches over these documents,” read the opinion.
This is almost certainly not the end of the legal battle. Trump now has 14 days to petition the Supreme Court to take up the case.
In a watershed moment for the recent wave of pandemic-inspired labor organizing, workers at a Starbucks in Buffalo, New York, voted today to form the coffee chain’s first union in the United States.
Despite months of opposition from company leadership, 19 workers at the Elmwood location in Buffalo voted in favor of unionizing in the election, conducted by the National Labor Relations Board. Only eight opposed.
Workers at a second Buffalo location, however, voted 8–12 against unionizing. At a third local store, workers voted 15–9 to unionize, but the outcome remains unclear pending seven challenged ballots.
Among the unionizing staffers’ major demands are steady pay increases for longtime employees and better training and staffing. The employees will join the Workers United union.
Watch workers at the Elmwood location the moment they realized they’d won:
BREAKING: Starbucks location on Elmwood Avenue in Buffalo has voted to become Starbucks’ first unionized store in the U.S., by vote of 19-8.
David Perdue getting the MAGA rally treatment during his reelection campaignRobin Rayne/Zuma
Remember that cult of personality who selfishly had his supporters commit an almost-coup about a year ago because he couldn’t accept that he lost? Well, it seems he’s still the de facto leader of the Republican party.
As Georgia heads for a gubernatorial election, a new poll of likely Republican voters suggests that former President Trump’s endorsement could sway the primary.
An initial survey of 500 Georgians found that 41 percent would vote for incumbent Brian Kemp, while 22 percent favored former Sen. David Perdue, who lost reelection to Senator Jon Ossoff earlier this year.
Then, respondents were then informed that Trump had endorsed Perdue—after that, many potential voters changed their tune. The knowledge of Trump’s endorsement tied Kemp and Perdue at 34 percent.
GA GOP Gov primary poll (Fox5/InsiderAdvantage)
Brian Kemp 41% David Perdue 22% Vernon Jones 11% Kandiss Taylor 4%
Respondents were *then* told Perdue has Trump's support and were asked their preference again:
The survey is far from definitive, but it does suggest that many Republican voters remain beholden to Trump and his opinions.
As I pointed out last week, Kemp is a staunch conservative who enacted laws suppressing voting rights and banning abortions as early as six weeks (though the latter legislation hasn’t gone into effect, pending a federal appeals court decision). But Kemp’s loyalty to Trump faltered when he refused to overturn the results of the presidential election in Georgia, and Trump has retaliated by promoting a senator whose failed campaign was roiled by controversy.
The slow death of democracy is dumber than I thought it’d be: A series of Trump press releases denouncing anyone who didn’t agree he won in 2020.
Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is leaving the US House of Representatives to take on a position as CEO of Trump Media & Technology Group, the former president’s latest nebulous enterprise.
Nunes, an ardent Trumper, has spent 10 terms in Congress. His main social media qualification seems to be that he likes to hold a petty grudge. During his tenure as chair of the House Intelligence Committee, he released an eponymous memo alleging that the FBI’s investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia was politically motivated. After his district’s biggest newspaper, the Fresno Bee, called him a “Trump stooge” in 2018 (they had endorsed him in every election from 1996 to that point), he waged war on them. Solid stuff—none of which stopped him from continuing to be reelected. But nothing shows that Nunes has the aggrieved mentality of the chronically online quite like the issue of a certain fake cow.
In 2019, Nunes took offense to a number of satirical Twitter accounts, including one purporting to be his cow, and sued both the platform and several individual users for defamation.
That’s the stuff.
Now, Nunes will lead Trump’s social media company, despite having no previous experience in tech. His departure from the House comes on the heels of new draft maps of California congressional districts that would have likely made his reelection campaign much more competitive.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick GarlandSarah Silbiger/Pool/CNP/Zuma
Months after Texas Republicans approved gerrymandered redistricting maps that diluted the voting power of communities of color, the Justice Department is suing the state for violating the Voting Rights Act.
As my colleague Ari Berman wrote, Texas’ new election maps increase the number of districts with white majorities—even though 95 percent of the state’s population growth in the last decade has come from communities of color.
This gerrymandering is a brazen attempt to cement Republican dominance in the state despite demographic change:
The maps consolidate white power as the white population is shrinking as a percentage of the state, and eliminate political competition at a time when longtime GOP strongholds are trending blue. The number of safe GOP seats would double in the new congressional maps, from 11 to 22, and the number of competitive districts would fall from 12 to just one. GOP candidates for Congress received 53 percent of the statewide vote in 2020, but are forecasted to control 65 percent of US House seats under the new map.
The suit came after the gutting of the Voting Rights Act by the Supreme Court in 2013. For the first time in nearly 50 years, the federal government did not have to approve the redistricting maps before they went into effect. The only option for Justice Department was to sue, using the parts of the VRA left intact.
“The complaint that we filed today alleges that Texas violated Section 2 by creating redistricting plans that deny or abridge the rights of Latino and Black voters to vote on account of their race, color or membership in a language or minority group,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said of the suit on Monday.
Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said that some aspects of the maps signaled “discriminatory intent.” “The Justice Department will not stand idly by in the face of unlawful attempts to restrict access to the ballot,” she said.
Garland also called on Congress to pass legislation reinstating the government’s ability to review redistricting maps before they’re enacted.
The legal assault on democracy will be—barely—punished, after all.
In 2020, attorneys Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, among others, brought baseless lawsuits against several states accusing them of election fraud in an attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Today, it was announced that these pro-Trump lawyers have been ordered to pay $175,250.37 in sanctions in Michigan. A federal judge called their actions a “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process.”
A federal judge has ordered the lawyers behind the failed "Kraken" election-overturning lawsuit to pay $175,250.37 in sanctions.
Until a federal judge in Michigan sanctioned Powell and Wood in August, it seemed unlikely that the lawyers would face any repercussions. But now, the attorneys’ misconduct has a number. Powell, Wood, and others owe $21,964.75 to Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson and $153,285.62 to the city of Detroit.
And, with ethics complaints pending in Arizona and a sanctions request underway in Wisconsin, the Michigan ruling could be just the tip of the iceberg.
On Thursday afternoon, the House passed a bill temporarily funding the government through the middle of February.
The 221–212 vote comes after several days of concern that Democrats and Republicans in Congress would be unable to agree on a funding package ahead of the midnight Friday deadline, pushing the federal government into a shutdown that would furlough thousands of government workers, upend some federally funded services, and derail the economy just a few weeks before the holidays.
While the House vote makes this less likely, the threat is not gone. The bill now moves to the Senate, where it will require unanimous agreement to quickly pass ahead of the government funding deadline on Friday. A few Republican senators, including Ted Cruz, have threatened to derail the funding bill unless it includes a measure to undo President Joe Biden’s business vaccine mandate. If they make good on this threat, they’ll tank the economy for hundreds of thousands of Americans just as they enter the holiday season. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) warned on Thursday that if this happens, it will be a “Republican anti-vaccine shutdown.”
“Democrats and most Republicans, including the Republican leader, have said they don’t want to see a Republican shutdown,” he said from the Senate floor. “We hope cooler heads will prevail.”
The last time the government shut down was in January 2019, when President Donald Trump refused to sign a budget that lacked funding for his plan to build a wall on the US-Mexico border. That shutdown’s economic impacts were enormous: It cost the US economy at least $11 billion, according to an estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, and more than 800,000 government workers went weeks without pay. Food banks around the country saw jumps in demand of as much as 20 percent, and furloughed federal workers turned to GoFundMe campaigns and shifts at McDonald’s to make ends meet.
If the government shuts down this weekend, similar results are likely. S&P Global Ratings estimated on Thursday that the shutdown would cost the US economy $1.8 billion for every week that it continues.
Remember when Republican Sen. Susan Collins broke the tie to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s to the Supreme Court in 2018?
At the time, Collins was just one of two undecided senators. Her vote of support was pivotal to putting Kavanaugh in the highest court despite many scandals, including an accusation of sexual assault. A large piece of this was that Collins—who supports abortion rights—told the public that Kavanaugh wasn’t likely to overturn Roe v. Wade; that, in fact, she would not support a nominee who “demonstrates hostility” to the precedent. In a meeting, Collins said Kavanaugh had assuaged this fear by saying Roe was “settled law.”
Well, that was three years ago and a lot has changed.
During today’s oral arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson on Mississippi’s law banning abortions after 15 weeks, Kavanaugh didn’t sound like the person who Collins described.
He asked Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart to clarify whether his state was “not arguing that the Court somehow has the authority to itself prohibit abortion…” Or, to put it in layperson terms, that if the court repeals Roe, that doesn’t mean it is outlawing abortion. Um, Brett, nobody is asking the Supreme Court to mandate an abortion ban. We’re talking about the fact that there is a fundamental right to abortion not being upheld for people in states intent on infringing upon it.
That wasn’t the end. Kavanaugh went on to list major court cases, such as Brown v. Board of Education, that overruled precedent. He said this was to show that “if we think that the prior precedents are seriously wrong,” it’s fine to overturn them. “Doesn’t the history of this court’s practice…tell us that the right answer is actually a return to the position of neutrality?” he continued.
Kavanaugh says some of the important cases in history overruled precedent.
"If we think that the prior precedents are seriously wrong … why then doesn't the history of this court's practice … tell us that the right answer is actually a return to the position of neutrality?" pic.twitter.com/axizPLJK22
Well, we know that a “position of neutrality” wouldn’t exactly be neutral. It would reverse Roe, overturning nearly 50 years of abortion rights for pregnant people.
Again, Collins, this isn’t sounding very “settled”! Her thoughts? Well, she told a reporter that she did not listen to the oral arguments.
“I did not see his questioning or hear any of the arguments. I hope to later tonight play them so I have first-hand knowledge…but so can’t comment about what I didn’t see,” she said, adding that she was “for” Roe.
Susan Collins on abortion hearing and Kavanaugh:
“I did not see his questioning or hear any of the arguments. I hope to later tonight play them so I have first hand knowledge…but so can’t comment about what I didn’t see.”
“I’m for Roe,” she said when asked about its future
This has frustrated colleagues. “I don’t know where she got that reassurance,” Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) told Mother Jones on Wednesday about Collins’ position, sounding exasperated. She cited Kavanaugh’s decision during his time as a DC Circuit judge that would have forced an undocumented minor further into pregnancy had a federal court not intervened to grant an abortion. “I have no assurances that he’s going to do much to protect a woman’s right to choose,” Hirono said. “He basically does not consider any regulatory burden so burdensome on a woman [that it should not legally exist].”
The three justices appointed under Trump—Kavanaugh, Neil Gorsuch, and Amy Coney Barrett—all appeared to signal support for Mississippi’s ban. A decision is expected next summer.
Donald Trump speaks to supporters in Pennsylvania on September 26, 2020, shortly after he reportedly tested positive for the coronavirus. Ron Adar/SOPA/ZUMA
Evidence is mounting that Donald Trump received a positive COVID-19 test shortly before attending his first debate with Joe Biden.
According to a report in the Guardian, Trump’s fourth and final chief of staff, Mark Meadows, reveals in his forthcoming book that Trump tested positive for the virus on September 26, 2020, three days before the debate. Shortly after that test, Meadows writes, Trump also received a negative result from a different test and decided to press on with a rally in Pennsylvania, a maskless event for Gold Star families where he spoke about the “value of sacrifice,” an indoor press conference, and then the debate with the 77-year-old Democratic nominee.
“Nothing was going to stop [Trump] from going out there,” Meadows reportedly writes.
Two anonymous former Trump officials have confirmed to the New York Times that Meadows timeline is accurate.
In a statement Wednesday, Trump complained about “fake news” but didn’t really deny his former chief of staff’s claim about the September 26 positive test. Instead, Trump asserted that he did not have COVID-19 “prior to, or during, the first debate” and that he received a negative test at some point before the debate. Days after the debate, Trump disclosed that he had the disease and he was eventually hospitalized, but at the time the White House infamously refused to say when he had last received a negative test.
At one point, Trump appeared to blame the Gold Star families he met with for exposing him to the virus.
“They come within an inch of my face sometimes, they want to hug me and they want to kiss me. And they do. And frankly, I’m not telling them to back up. I’m not doing it, but obviously it’s a dangerous thing, I guess, if you go by the COVID thing,” he told Fox Business.
That meeting, it now turns out, took place a day after Meadows says Trump first tested positive.
This morning, as the Supreme Court heard the most serious challenge to abortion rights in decades, Justice Sonia Sotomayor delivered a stirring series of questions challenging the attempt to upend a person’s right to choose to terminate a pregnancy.
It came as the Supreme Court heard oral arguments on a Mississippi law that bans abortion after 15 weeks. Newly rammed full of conservative Trump appointees, the court is overseeing a challenge that poses a serious risk for abortion rights across the country. Sotomayor seemed eager to make clear how such a decision could harm pregnant persons and the court—especially with Texas eager to implement its abortion ban.
“The right of a woman to choose, the right to control her own body, has been clearly set since Casey and never challenged,” Justice Sotomayor said, referencing the 1992 case Planned Parenthood v. Casey, which affirmed Roe, in response to comments by Mississippi Solicitor General Scott Stewart. “You want us to reject that line of viability and adopt something different.”
The “viability line”—drawn in 1973 by Roe and which does not allow states to ban abortions before a fetus could survive outside the womb—hasn’t been an issue for 30 years. In fact, Sotomayor goes on to say that 15 justices of varying political backgrounds have affirmed that basic viability line since 1992. Her point is that this is not a question of case law, but politics.
“Will this institution survive the stench this creates in the public perception that the constitution and its reading are just political acts?…If people actually believe it’s all political, how will the court survive?”
“Will this institution survive the stench that this creates in the public perception that the Constitution and its reading are just political acts?”
This was one one of the big moments in which Sotomayor dismantled the arguments of Stewart and conservative colleagues on the bench. But there were others.
“How is your interest anything but a religious view?” Sotomayor asked of the state’s attempt to define when life begins. Sotomayor also fought back against Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s comments on precedent. And she asked Stewart when the life of a woman and the risk she endures come into the calculus: “The state is saying to these women that we can choose to not only physically complicate your existence, put you at medical risk, make you poorer by the choice, because we believe…what?”
When she was interrupted, this happened:
Sotomayor now asks if she can finish her line of inquiry and I can feel that look back to Roberts IN MY BONES
It’s too early to say what will become of Mississippi’s abortion law, which was blocked by lower courts in 2019. But Justice Sotomayor was firm in articulating the widespread ramifications of the law if the Court allows it to take effect.
Sotomayor at this point is totally not talking to her colleagues. This is preparation for a dissent.
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