Month: September 2022

Here’s an informative rundown of what will happen if these election deniers win in November. Yikes…

Midterm ballots in nearly every state include candidates who believe the 2020 election was fraudulent or “stolen.”

That leaves American election systems at a pivotal moment: If people who deny Joe Biden won the presidency win their own elections on Nov. 8, could they really execute their plans and dismantle the machinery that keeps American democracy running?

Elections expert Sylvia Albert of Common Cause predicted the scenario is inevitable: “We will see somebody who denies the 2020 election win office. We will.”

The candidates’ ideas for reform are varied, but radical. Some want to end voting by mail or early voting. Pennsylvania’s Doug Mastriano floated the idea of requiring voters to re-register if he’s elected governor. Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake proclaimed her primary victory and posed with a sledgehammer she said was intended to be used on electronic voting machines (the same kinds of machines that were used to tabulate her victory).

Could hand-counted ballots and in-person-only voting really be the future?

Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state, said election experts need to raise the alarm about how these proposed changes could alter U.S. elections. But individual officials are not all-powerful.

“Just because a denier is elected to an office, doesn’t mean that the denier has free rein to create chaos or subvert the will” of the voters, said Grayson, a Republican.

Many voting rights, such as the right to a mail ballot, are established in state law and cannot be changed unilaterally by one governor or one secretary of state. That said, there are ways in which some of these candidates could use their offices to significantly impact some mainstays of American voting systems.

How might that look? We delved into these campaign ideas to see just how far people who deny the legitimacy of the 2020 election results could go if elected.

State officials can’t unilaterally ban voting by mail, but they could limit it

President Donald Trump showered the 2020 campaign trail with false claims about what he described as the fraudulent nature of voting by mail.

Fraud by mail ballot is statistically rare — and there is no evidence fraud contributed to Biden’s win — but the mail-in ballot still serves as a popular talking point for candidates seeking favor with the pro-Trump electorate.

A multi-state coalition of candidates has been vocal in its opposition to widespread mail voting.

That position comes with inherent contradictions.

Take Nevada secretary of state candidate Jim Marchant, leader of the America First Secretary of State Coalition. He opposes most mail voting but accepted that he won the Republican primary in August through an election where more than half of Nevada’s voters cast mail ballots.

Another member, Arizona secretary of state candidate Mark Finchem, was a state lawmaker who traveled to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, when Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to protest the congressional certification of the 2020 election. During a July campaign speech, Finchem said, “I don’t believe in mail in ballots at all. That’s where the fraud happens.”

Many of these candidates indicate they oppose a system that allows anyone to get a ballot ahead of Election Day. But they said they are willing to make exceptions for the military, for example.

Finchem’s path to undo mail voting would be difficult — a 30-year-old state law allows any voter to cast a ballot by mail. And about 75% of Arizona voters right now are on a recurring list to get a mail ballot.

Similarly, in Michigan, the right to vote by mail has been constitutionally protected since 2018, when voters there approved a constitutional amendment providing all voters access to absentee ballots for any reason.

That means any wholesale changes to the law would require the support of state legislators — people who won their own offices under a system that allows mail balloting.

But there are some ways Finchem and other statewide officials could add barriers to voting by mail without legislation.

One: They could change some states’ election procedure manuals.

Arizona’s manual is drafted by the secretary of state for approval by the attorney general and governor. An official could write a manual with onerous requirements for verifying signatures on ballots, for example.

Any sweeping changes to rules or laws would likely face legal challenges. But election deniers in office will have the power of their voice.

“They have an official megaphone to amplify election conspiracy theories and continue to sow doubt about the election system and that makes a crisis much more likely,” said Ben Berwick, counsel at Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded in late 2016 that says its mission is to prevent the U.S. from “declining into a more authoritarian form of government.”

In Michigan, drop boxes are on the ballot in more ways than one

Ballot drop boxes are another point of contention for some of these candidates. Dinesh D’Souza falsely singled them out in his “2000 Mules” film as being a means of corruption. There’s no evidence of that; they’re often more secure than standalone mailboxes.

In Michigan, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon said that if she wins against Democrat incumbent Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, she would ban these receptacles from being used for ballot collection.

That would require legislation, said Christopher Thomas, a fellow with the Bipartisan Policy Center and former election director for secretaries of state of both parties in Michigan. “If she had a Republican legislature, she might be able to pull that off,” Thomas said.

That’s not out of the question.

Republicans have control of Michigan’s House and Senate. Newly drawn voting districts offer Democrats a better-than-before chance of wresting control from the GOP, but everything rests on Election Day.

Michiganders’ November ballots also include a measure to expand drop box access. Proposal 2 would require that the state provide at least one drop box for every 15,000 voters in a municipality. It would also establish at least nine days of early voting and require the state to pay postage for absentee applications and ballots.

Any efforts to block election certification would likely face litigation

Some candidates said they would have refused to certify the 2020 election, Nevada’s Marchant and Arizona’s Finchem among them.

This raises concerns that, if elected, they would use their power to try to manipulate results in 2024.

Any efforts to refuse certification of results would face legal challenges, just as they did in 2020. In New Mexico, Otero County refused to certify the 2022 primary results as commissioners said they didn’t trust the machines. In June, the state’s Supreme Court ordered the county to certify results.

Pennsylvania’s Mastriano vowed to decertify election machines he believes were rigged. Mastriano is also aligned with the America First Secretary of State Coalition and was outside at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. His campaign funded buses for people to travel to the rally that occurred before the attack.

If Mastriano won against Democrat Josh Shapiro, he would have the power to appoint the person who could decertify machines, which would mean that those machines could no longer be used. Unlike most states where the secretary of state is elected to oversee elections, Pennsylvania’s chief elections officer is appointed by the governor through a position known as the secretary of the commonwealth.

As a state senator, Mastriano in 2020 sought to delay certifying the election results and pushed to give the General Assembly control of which electors to send to Washington, rather than follow the will of the voters. State Republican leaders rejected that idea. Such a move, along with his suggestion to “restart” voter registration, would face litigation.

Attorney Kevin Greenberg represents the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. He is unapologetically opposed to Mastriano’s proposals on grounds they would violate state and federal laws.

If Mastriano as governor “does even a fraction of what he said he is going to do on voter registration lists and voting machines, we will have chaos, attempted voter suppression and years of litigation,” Greenberg said. “It will make the litigation of 2020 and even 2022 seem like child’s play.”

Federal law could prohibit wiping voter rolls, but one official could make changes

The America First coalition calls for “aggressive voter roll clean up.” Mastriano was more specific when he said that as governor he would have the authority to “restart” voter registration.

Wiping the voter rolls would violate the purpose of the National Voter Registration Act, Eliza Sweren-Becker, a lawyer for the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University, previously told PolitiFact. The law sought to increase voter registration, and maintaining voter rolls without requiring everyone to actively re-register prior to a specific election ensures greater access.

But Marchant has vowed that as secretary of state he would remove Nevada from a consortium known as the Electronic Registration Information Center. More than half of the states, including Republican-led Florida and Alabama, belong to the consortium in part because it provides an efficient means of sharing data about voters who have moved or died.

Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill, a Republican, said that his state uses the database to “preserve a clean and accurate voter list.” Since 2016, the state has used it to remove tens of thousands of voters who died, moved or had duplicate registrations.

As secretary of state, Marchant would need only to provide written notice in order to withdraw. Marchant falsely claimed the consortium is linked to liberal billionaire George Soros.

The dangers of officials replacing machines with hand counts

After Trump lost in 2020, voting machines became fodder for meritless conspiracy theories that machines “flipped” results or deleted Trump votes.

The Bipartisan Policy Center found that machines lead to faster, more accurate results. Electronic tabulators are used by about 90% of jurisdictions nationwide.

Lake and Finchem filed a lawsuit to get rid of Arizona’s longtime use of election machines, but a judge dismissed it, in part due to lack of standing. In his ruling, the judge wrote that officials take steps to ensure security of election machines including “testing by independent, neutral experts.”

The Arizona state legislature authorized the use of electronic voting systems in 1966; but state law does not require them. Arizona’s secretary of state has the power to decertify the machines, meaning they can eliminate them. So if Finchem wins that seat, it’s possible he could decertify machines and refuse to certify new equipment.

But any effort to eliminate voting machines could face significant hurdles — not the least of which would be adapting to the alternative: hand counting.

Counting millions of ballots statewide by hand would pose a series of logistical challenges, and could drag on for months. That could run afoul of state laws that require official results by a certain date in order to meet certification deadlines.

When contractors hired by Arizona Republicans counted the presidential and Senate races on Maricopa County ballots, they started in April 2021 and it took until September for them to release their findings (which confirmed Biden won).

In Nye County, Nevada, longtime Republican election clerk Sam Merlino retired earlier than planned in protest over a change to count ballots both by hand and electronically. His replacement is a Marchant ally, Mark Kampf, who told PolitiFact he is working to recruit up to 40 volunteers to help with the hand count.

“We have so many checks and balances it seems like we are going backwards,” said Merlino. “I’ve been doing it for 20 years, and I trust the system.”

Sadmira Ramic, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada, predicts problems.

“A hand count will not only possibly lead to inaccurate results, but people who are possibly election deniers are counting the votes, which opens up the possibility of tampering,” she said.

There’s no doubt about it. We’ve already seenGOP election workers tampering with machines, some of them even under indictment for doing so. Their living god, Donald Trump, is on tape asking a Secretary of State to “find” enough votes for him to win. Of course, they will cheat. And they will justify it by pretending that they are only reciprocating for the non-existent Democratic cheating. They will not accept losing.

David Ignatius:

“In the event of a threat to the territorial integrity of our country … we will certainly make use of all weapons systems available to us. This is not a bluff,” Putin said in a speech broadcast Wednesday morning. His nuclear umbrella appears to include Ukrainian territory that Russia has seized or plans to annex.

How should President Biden and other world leaders respond to this outrageous blackmail? The answer cannot be to capitulate. That would scar the global future as horribly as this war has already damaged Ukraine. As Biden said Wednesday: “Russia has shamelessly violated the core tenets of the United Nations Charter.”

Leaders must think now with the same combination of toughness and creativity that President John F. Kennedy showed during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Because that’s the only parallel within most of our lifetimes…

Kennedy succeeded in the Cuban missile crisis for two reasons. First, he showed that he was prepared to risk nuclear war to stop a reckless move by Moscow. Second, through a secret back channel, he found a face-saving way to avoid the ultimate catastrophe. Biden should study both lessons.

Actually, there’s a third reason that the Missile Crisis ended without a catastrophic exchange of doomsday bombs. And by far, this reason is the most important one. According to Ignatius’s own paper:

Have we avoided unwanted nuclear explosions, and nuclear war, because we have adequately managed and controlled weapons and crises … or because we have been lucky?

Luck, in this context, seems to mean the exact opposite of control. It’s all that prevented bad outcomes when things could easily have gone in a different direction, no matter what anybody wanted. The historical policymakers who have invoked “luck” have included Robert S. McNamara, who was defense secretary during the Cuban missile crisis; Dean Acheson, special envoy of President John F. Kennedy at the time; ambassador Gerard C. Smith, chief U.S. delegate to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks in 1969; former defense secretary William Perry, former secretary of state George Shultz, former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former chairman of the Senate’s Armed Services Committee, Sam Nunn, and former head of Strategic Air Command and Strategic Command, Gen. George Lee Butler.

Most people know the Cuban missile crisis was considered by those involved to be “lucky” — as McNamara put it, years later, in an interview with Errol Morris: “At the end, we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” 

If you doubt how important luck was back in ’62, go ahead and read up on the Missile Crisis (Here and here are some good places to start — and btw, RFK’s 13 Days is totally unreliable; skip it). And be sure to Google the name “Vasili Arkhipov.”

Anyone feeling lucky in 2022?

An FBI Agent “conscientious objector” to the J6 arrests

The NY Post tells the story of an FBI whistleblower who complains that the DC Bureau office is “cooking the books to exaggerate the threat of domestic terrorism, and ­using an “overzealous” January 6 ­investigation to harass conservative Americans and violate their constitutional rights”

He was declared absent without leave last month for refusing to participate in SWAT raids that he believed violated FBI policy and were a use of excessive force against Jan. 6 ­subjects accused of misdemeanor ­offenses.

This American hero, the father of two small children, has blown up his “dream career” because he could not live with his conscience if he continued to be part of what he sees as the unjust persecution of conservative Americans.

“I have an oath to uphold the Constitution,” he told supervisors when he asserted his conscientious objection to joining an Aug. 24 raid on a J6 subject in the Jacksonville, Fla., area. “I have a moral objection and want to be considered a conscientious objector.”

Friend, who did not vote for Donald Trump in the 2020 election, said he told his immediate boss twice that he believed the raid, and the investigative process leading up to it, violated FBI policy and the subject’s right under the Sixth Amendment to a fair trial and Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.

Ryan Reilly has a little context the Post forgot to include:

This New York Post opinion column hides the ball, but it would appear that the conservative FBI special agent here wanted to be a “conscientious objector” to… the arrest of members of a militia group who were at the western tunnel on Jan. 6.

The New York Post opinion column mentions an Aug. 24 raid, and says the FBI special agent objected to the planned arrests on Aug. 19.

That’s three days after a magistrate judge, on Aug. 16, signed off on arrest warrants for five members of the Florida-based militia group.

Here’s my Aug. 24 story on those arrests:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/feds-charge-members-b-squad-militia-allegedly-run-former-gop-house-can-rcna44621

There were five individuals arrested in connection with that case. Three of them were arrested in Florida. There are no other Capitol attack arrests in Florida on Aug. 24 in the Justice Department database.

Now, the NYP story twice mentions that he objected to using standard FBI arrest tactics on a Jan. 6 defendant charged with misdemeanors.

Two out of three of the militia members arrested in Florida on Aug. 24 were facing a felony count.

So let’s say that this FBI special agent was, on Aug. 24, supposed to help arrest a misdemeanor-only Jan. 6 defendant.

That would be Tyler Bensch. In addition to dressing like this and spraying someone in the face with a chemical irritant on Jan. 6, the feds say he had a GoPro.

Setting all else aside, you can see here why the FBI might want to, say, get a copy of that critical GoPro footage rather than issuing a summons and giving him an opportunity to delete the incriminating evidence!

Here’s what the feds say the only misdemeanor Capitol defendant arrested in Florida on Aug. 24 did. This is the guy who this FBI special agent apparently thought should’ve gotten the kid-glove treatment, such as with a court summons.

Anonymous #SeditionHunter just now: “I did check to see if I could find the agent on j6 no luck🙂”

Can’t imagine why the New York Post didn’t include these photos in their story!

Also seems clear that the misdemeanors were likely just the opening salvo from DOJ. They’ve only been charged by criminal complaint. Just imagine what a grand jury can do with this with a boatload more evidence when it comes time for the indictment.

“The notion that the FBI isn’t, in essence, a conservative-leaning organization is really silly…”

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/doj-bets-future-handles-search-trumps-mar-lago-resort-rcna42298

Me when the conservative-leaning FBI is portrayed as some liberal enclave: pic.twitter.com/pQ5RvLM4ST

— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) August 9, 2022

Originally tweeted by Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) on September 23, 2022.

I’m sure there are plenty of others like this guy (who says he didn’t vote for Trump but I doubt it.) The FBI is full of white male conservatives. Many are probably straight arrows who don’t like the January 6th violence and the other lawbreaking. But there are surely more than a few who are full-fledged Trumper wingnuts like this guy. It’s inevitable. I’m surprised we haven’t seen more of a revolt to be honest.

Last week when I wrote about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ sadistic little trolling exercise — coercing asylum seekers to board a plane for Martha’s Vineyard, purely to own the libs — I speculated that Donald Trump must have been gnashing his teeth over  his former protégé stealing the idea from him. That was true, as it turned out. Rolling Stone reported that Trump was furious, claiming that he’d tried to do something similar as president but the bureaucrats wouldn’t let him. Of course, Trump was also livid that DeSantis was getting all the attention on right-wing media.

Well, he needn’t have worried about losing the spotlight. This week all the attention pivoted back to Trump as numerous legal crises descended upon him and DeSantis faded into the background. Which was a lucky break for the Florida governor, honestly. Some rather unsavory facts have emerged in the last few days about his Martha’s Vineyard stunt, shedding light on who may have profited from it as well as what he had hoped to achieve with an aborted flight to Delaware — President Biden’s home state — that was supposed to happen a few days later.

This story is still unfolding, but the more we learn, the uglier the whole thing looks. Payments for the Martha’s Vineyard flight apparently went to some big-donor cronies with connections to the DeSantis administration, and no one has yet figured out who hired the shadowy characters in Texas who made all kinds of false promises to asylum seekers to get them on the plane. The Miami Herald is all over this and I’m sure their reporters will dig up more very soon.

As for the Delaware flight, it was originally scheduled to take off from San Antonio on Tuesday, with the same shady characters luring unsuspecting migrants onto the plane. Then it was abruptly canceled, possibly because word got out and authorities in Delaware government were prepared to receive them. Some in the press have swallowed the line that the plan was to “punk” the Delaware libs by making them get ready for a bunch of migrants and then landing an empty plane in New Jersey, which strikes me as ridiculous. Potential passengers had already been recruited, who were left high and dry when the plan was canceled at the last minute. It seems far more likely that DeSantis and his accomplices started to feel the heat and decided to call the whole thing off.

This whole ruse was designed to get the media talking about immigration and the border just ahead of the midterm elections, and I suppose it may have achieved that end. But it also exposed DeSantis, once again, as a snotty troll, and his act may be wearing thin with people who don’t have the emotional development of 12-year-old bullies. Naturally, the hardcore Trump base loved it. But can he sustain that love the way Trump has?

The New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie wrote recently about DeSantis’ culture-war stunts, from his war on Disney for being “woke” to ordering Florida schools to indoctrinate students with the right-wing propaganda version of American history. It seems to be pretty much the only thing DeSantis does these days, and he certainly attracts tons of attention flitting from one invented battleground to another without pausing for breath.

But Bouie pointed out that DeSantis’ most recent maneuvers haven’t work out the way he hoped. Sure, he got his photo-ops and national media attention, which he craves more than anything, but the results weren’t likely to play well with normal people. His “election police” arrests of alleged illegal voters turned out to represent failures by his own officials, who had registered a small number of voters who weren’t eligible. And the Martha’s Vineyard ploy, rather than showing horrified liberals screaming to get the Latinos off their lawns, instead showed a small community responding with empathy and compassion, which undercut the desired narrative about hypocritical liberal elites. In Bouie’s view, DeSantis isn’t ready for prime time:

Yes, when viewed from the perspective of partisan media, DeSantis looks almost unstoppable. But to a typical person — someone who may have heard about these stunts but doesn’t know much about DeSantis otherwise — he looks a lot like a bully, someone willing to play high-stakes games with people’s lives for the sake of his own ego and advancement.

Well, you might say, Donald Trump is a bully, too. Yes, he is. But Donald Trump is also a lifelong celebrity with a public persona that is as much about “The Apprentice” and even “Home Alone 2” as it is about his political career. What’s more, Trump has the skills of a celebrity. He’s funny, he has stage presence, and he has a kind of natural charisma. He can be a bully in part because he can temper his cruelty and egoism with the performance of a clown or a showman. He can persuade an audience that he’s just kidding — that he doesn’t actually mean it.

That’s an astute observation. Trump is a nasty piece of work: a crybaby, a braggart and an ignorant fool. To his large and devoted following, he’s also wildly entertaining, which is a huge part of his appeal. In fact, that’s the most important part of his appeal. Yes, he has given former fringe elements on the right permission to let their freak flags fly and flaunt their hatred. But when he says “there’s nothing more fun than a Trump rally,” for his fans that’s absolutely right. Trump’s roadshow is their rolling Woodstock, their Grateful Dead.

Now tell me if this guy has an ounce of fun in him:

Emperor Desantis gives his absurdly false version of how he expects history to be taught: “It was the American Revolution that caused people to question slavery. No one had questioned it before we decided as Americans that we are endowed by our creator with unalienable rights.” pic.twitter.com/Nw8SMmGCUw

— Ron Filipkowski (@RonFilipkowski) September 22, 2022

DeSantis gave a speech to big donors about two weeks ago in which he telegraphed his plans to send migrants to Martha’s Vineyard and made clear that he plans to run for president in 2024 as an unreconstructed culture warrior. His speech sounds like Pat Buchanan, back in the latter’s glory days of the ’80s and ’90s. But Buchanan in person could be garrulous and funny, a classic Irish-American backslapper and glad-hander, which made up somewhat for his hardcore hate-mongering. DeSantis has none of that personal charm:

DeSantis did not joke with the crowd, or thank his hosts, or even wait for applause at times as the audience cheered him, according to multiple people familiar with the gathering. In a private roundtable with top donors, he mainly gave the same speech he gave to the larger group. He was at the retreat for about three hours. Several people familiar with the event said he received mixed reactions from donors, who liked his broader message but wished he would connect more personally.

Say what you will about Trump, but his celebrity glamour definitely works on some people and no one would claim he lacks a gift for showmanship. DeSantis, on the other hand, is a creepy, dour, unlikable jerk. While the Trump cult does love an asshole, they want one in the vein of a wrestling “heel,” who makes them feel good about being bad.

Ron DeSantis wants to be president and he’s adopted the latest right-wing ideological fad, “Orbánism,” meaning the doctrines of “illiberal democracy” borrowed from the current regime in Hungary. That’s definitely dangerous. But there is a political graveyard full of Republican Great WhiteBread Hopes who felt sure they could be elected president until they came face to face with actual voters: Scott Walker, Tim Pawlenty, Lamar Alexander(!) the list goes on. Ron DeSantis may well be the next member of that ignominious club. 

Salon

Beware- your brain may no longer be the boss!

“Men- our greatest fear is realized- we are under attack from superior consciousness.”

Steven Hotze, a Texas-based religious-right activist and doctor, says that those who have received COVID-19 vaccines "become connected to the internet of things and you can be mind-controlled by artificial intelligence through maybe 5G." pic.twitter.com/BjpBqbPqja

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) September 22, 2022

Mass insanity.

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Cranks and kooks and ass-kissers, oh my

“Alarm as Koch bankrolls dozens of election denier candidates,” reads The Guardian’s landing page this morning. But who is left to be surprised? Charles Koch, the multibillionaire, oil-and-chemicals, libertarian kook is bankrolling the same right-wing fringe he’s bankrolled for decades through his PACs and Americans for Prosperity Action. Does anyone not recognize the type by now, even if he doesn’t own a penis-shaped rocket?

Koch has since 2021 poured over $6 million into campaigns supporting election deniers, per data gleaned from Open Secrets:

Although the Koch-funded Super Pac AFP Action had suggested it would not back election deniers after 6 January, analysts aren’t shocked given Koch’s lobbying and legislative priorities, which include fighting various tax and regulatory measures related to fossil fuel issues including climate change that affect the company’s bottom line.

Koch spent $12.2m last year on lobbying – more than any other oil and gas company during 2021.

“Like other corporations pledging change following January 6, Koch Industries has returned to business as usual,” said Sheila Krumholz, who leads OpenSecrets.” Without repercussions and continued public attention, companies will go back to funding politicians who support their agenda.”

Reporters did find one former Koch-funded activist (emphasis on former) with concerns:

“When the only elected officials who will carry your political water are proto-fascists, what is one to do?” said Jerry Taylor, a former vice-president at the Cato Institute in DC where he oversaw climate and energy issues. “Charles Koch has made his choice. This self-proclaimed voice of freedom and liberty has apparently decided that advancing the public policies he desires is more important than democracy.

“His choice is not unlike the choices that most German industrialists made in the Weimar Republic.”

Get a rocket, how bout it, Charlie?

Thankfully, writes Mark Leibovich in The Atlantic, in most states “it’s nearly impossible to pass yourself off as an election-denying January 6 truther and still be taken seriously by a majority of voters.”

Still, “Ain’t no Jack S. like OUR Jack S.!” has pertained since before Al Capp’s Sen. Jack S. Phogbound. The residents of Lower Slobbovia can be expected to reelect the Marjorie Taylor Greenes and Lauren Boeberts even if their districts are not grossly gerrymandered.

Leibovich eaxmines how Republican Senate candidates Marco Rubio, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and J.D. Vance each reached the “tipping point of stupid” in their efforts to win election. Each had to swap kissing babies for kissing Donald Trump’s ass. They have much to answer for. Don’t count on MAGA voters to make them answer. As for the majority? We’ll have to wait for November.

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Youngkin, Good and Spanberger

This makes it clear that the term GOP moderate is a lie. They’re all wingnuts. At least one Democratic moderate, on the other hand, is still wedded to reality:

The Virginia congressional delegation’s bipartisan monthly meeting Monday started out cordial enough, with Rep. Bob Good (R) asking special guest Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) to lead the delegation in a prayer before sitting down to a Chick-fil-A lunch.

But then Youngkin’s new policy for transgender students came up — ultimately leading to a heated exchange between Good and Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D), according to multiple aides with first- or secondhand knowledge of the meeting, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly.

Youngkin’s administration this weekend unveiled a new directive restricting the rights of transgender students in schools, ordering all 133 school districts to adopt policies that would require transgender students to use facilities and participate in activities corresponding with their sex assigned at birth. It would also bar students from changing their names or pronouns at school without parental permission, putting Virginia at the center of a national debate about the relationships between schools and parents when it comes to kids’ gender identities.

Responses to the policy — which would go into effect after 30 days of public comment — have been deeply divided. Republicans and parental rights advocates have applauded it as the right thing to do for families, while Democrats and LGBTQ advocates have sharply criticized it, saying the measure will lead to bullying of vulnerable children who are already marginalized and need support at school.

Monday’s meeting with Youngkin starkly captured those emotional divides.

In between talk of economic development and infrastructure, Rep. Jennifer Wexton (D) brought up her concerns to Youngkin about the new policy’s mental health impact on transgender students, according to the aides. Data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has showed that about 2 percent of high school students identify as transgender, and 35 percent of those have attempted suicide. For Wexton, whose niece is transgender, the issue is personal, and she had previously publicly called the policy “a vile and disgusting attack on vulnerable trans kids” of which Youngkin “should be ashamed.”

Spanberger and Rep. Don Beyer (D) built on Wexton’s concerns, ranging from higher risks of suicide among transgender students to the constitutionality of the policy and its impact on inviting business to Virginia, aides said. Youngkin described the policy as a statement on parental rights in education, according to one of the people.

Youngkin’s restriction on trans students’ rights is probably illegal, experts say

When it was Good’s turn to speak, he defended the governor and his administration’s new policy as the right thing to do for children. In Good’s view, schools and teachers were “grooming” children to change their gender, and he argued they are being forced into gender transitions.

Good argued that rather than bullying of trans students contributing to suicide, “the fact that these kids are killing themselves is because of grooming,” aides recounted, and the congressman said they were being “forced” to undergo gender-affirming surgeries — comments that the aides said raised the temperature in the room.

Spanberger responded forcefully, telling Good, “That’s not f—ing true.”

Good stood his ground and insisted he was the one telling the truth, according to people familiar with the exchange, before Sen. Tim Kaine (D) stepped in to calm things down by reciting a Bible verse, Matthew 25:40: “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

A spokeswoman for Good did not respond to requests for comment, but Good confirmed the tense exchange occurred in an interview with Punchbowl News, saying that when it was his turn to speak he sought to refute Spanberger, accusing Democrats of supporting “grooming” of children and the “mutilation of children” through gender-affirming surgeries. He then said Spanberger yelled out and cursed at him, calling him a liar, though he said she was the one lying about Democrats’ position.

A spokesman for Spanberger said in a statement that she “always appreciates the opportunity to have a candid conversation with the Governor about the issues facing Virginia’s Seventh District,” noting she discussed emergency preparedness, Chesapeake Bay watershed conservation needs — and “her perspective as a parent related to recent education policy announcements made by the Governor’s administration.”

“Separately, she will always stand up against conspiracy theories that harm or attack Virginia’s students, their parents, and their educators — as was the case when one of her congressional colleagues did just that,” the statement added.

Spanberger had previously said after Youngkin’s policy was released that the move “will hurt children, especially LGBTQ children who already suffer higher rates of depression and are at greater risk of suicide.”

These GOP “Christians” are monsters. I cannot think of a more vulnerable group of people than transgender kids. To go out of your way to ostracize them and marginalize them, take away their basic rights as a human being, is one of the cruelest things I’ve seen them do.

Good for Spanberger for standing strong on this. She’s a centrist and it would have been easy enough for her to try to walk the line, knowing that it’s an emotional issue for some confused people in her district. But she doesn’t do that, she stands strong — for the truth. Good for her.

This is just getting silly

Last night Trump said that he thought the FBI might have been looking for Hillary Clinton and Russia investigation documents when they searched his beach club. Everyone scratched their heads wondering what in the world he was talking about.

Well, apparently, this is it:

Reports out now that the Trump declassified Crossfire Hurricane records naming Obama, Clinton & Biden are the real DOJ priority in the Mar-a-Lago raid case.

Their priority – make sure the public never sees them despite Trump’s deliberate declassification to expose actual crimes pic.twitter.com/yXq8Efncqi

— Rasmussen Reports (@Rasmussen_Poll) September 22, 2022

We knew about this declassification. And, by the way, Biden could have just reclassified them when he came back in. But the conspiracy theory suggests that these were the documents Trump took in order to prove to the world that Clinton, Obama and Biden had committed treason.

I guess he’s been so busy during the last 18 months that he just didn’t have time to get to it.

What this does prove is that there is a process for declassification which Trump followed while he was still president. He didn’t declassify them by “thinking about them” as he said last night.

They are seriously grasping at straws. Anyone who thinks he would have kept his mouth shut about what these documents were aren’t paying attention. But I’m sure it makes sense to the cult. They’ll believe anything.

They are brainwashed

This is why, of course:

In this single clip Trump tells Hannity about his process of telekinetic declassification (not a thing) then speculates the FBI might’ve been looking for Hillary’s emails in Mar-a-Lago (he didn’t really seem to be joking). Wild stuff. pic.twitter.com/ehX8QqTnmB

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) September 22, 2022

The NY Times reported today. Nothing can move them:

The American public’s views of former President Donald J. Trump have remained remarkably stable across a number of different measures in recent months, even as he faces multiple investigations and as he remains a central figure in the midterm elections, according to the most recent New York Times/Siena College poll.

Voters held nearly identical views from those earlier in the summer on whether they had a favorable view of Mr. Trump, whether they thought he had committed serious federal crimes, and whom they would support in a hypothetical 2024 Trump-Biden matchup.

Overall, 44 percent of voters viewed Mr. Trump favorably, and 53 percent viewed him unfavorably. The recent poll was fielded early this month, after news of the Justice Department’s inquiry into Mr. Trump’s handling of confidential documents but before the New York attorney general announced she was suing Mr. Trump and his family business.

That level of Trump support has effectively been unchanged since the last Times/Siena poll, which was fielded in July amid televised hearings by the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol. It was also fundamentally similar to levels of support Times/Siena polls and other surveys found in recent years.

Are people going to stand for this?

It’s very bad in Ohio:

At least two more minors made pregnant by sexual assault were forced to leave Ohio to avoid having their rapists’ babies, according to sworn affidavits filed by abortion providers.

The affidavits were filed in Cincinnati as part of a lawsuit aimed at stopping enforcement of Ohio’s strict new abortion law, which it temporarily did last week. Originally paused for two weeks, on Tuesday the enforcement delay was extended to at least Oct. 14.

If true, the affidavits show that a Columbus 10-year-old was not the only child or teen rape victim forced to leave the state. They also describe more than two dozen other instances in which the abortion law put women under extreme duress.

The descriptions include those of three women who threatened suicide. They also include two women with cancer who couldn’t terminate their pregnancies and also couldn’t get cancer treatment while they were pregnant. 

Another three examples were of women whose fetuses had severe abnormalities or other conditions that made a successful pregnancy impossible. Even so, they couldn’t get abortions in Ohio. 

And in three cases, debilitating vomiting was caused by pregnancy — so bad in one case that a woman couldn’t get off the clinic floor. But neither could these women get abortions in Ohio, the affidavits said.

The documents were filed in the case Preterm-Cleveland v (Ohio Attorney General) Dave Yost. Having already gotten a temporary order restraining enforcement of the abortion law — Senate Bill 23 — clinics across Ohio are now seeking a preliminary injunction.

In doing so, they’re arguing that SB 23 is so onerous that it violates women’s due-process rights under the Ohio Constitution. 

[…]

There are many victims

In July, when Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost was raising unfounded doubts about the existence of a 10-year-old rape victim, there were plenty of data indicating that the story was all too plausible.

In 2021, Ohio’s Children’s Advocacy Centers saw 6,717 cases of sexual abuse against Ohioans between infancy and adulthood. And in 2020, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 571 girls aged 17 or younger received abortions in Ohio, according to the state department of health. Fifty-two of them — or one a week — were 14 or younger.

Sadly, the affidavits filed in late August and early September by workers at abortion clinics provide further evidence that child and teen rape and subsequent pregnancy is a problem in Ohio. But so long as fetal cardiac activity is detected, S.B. 23 requires such victims to either have those babies or scramble out of state and try to find an abortion.

Adarsh E. Krishen, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood of Greater Ohio, told of a minor who had been sexually assaulted and had to travel to Michigan for an abortion because of S.B. 23. Krishen’s organization operates clinics in Columbus and Cleveland.

“This patient experienced immense trauma from the assault itself and then endured further trauma from a forensic interview alongside a physical exam to collect evidence for the ongoing police investigation,” Krishen said in his affidavit. “This trauma was further exacerbated by needing to wait over three weeks for her appointment. In each step of this process she felt the complete denial of bodily autonomy and safety, something all people, especially children, should unequivocally have at all times.”

Another example shows how S.B. 23 makes police investigation of child and teen rapes more difficult.

Aeran Trick, operations manager of Women’s Med Center of Dayton, told of “a 16-year-old girl living in Southwestern Ohio who had become pregnant after being sexually assaulted by a family member.”

As with the 10-year-old from Columbus, Trick said this teenager was forced to go to Indianapolis for an abortion.

“The local Ohio law-enforcement agency — which was already involved at the time the clinic was contacted about the patient — had to drive to our Indianapolis clinic to retrieve the tissue for crime lab testing related to the sexual assault investigation,” Trick’s affidavit says. “I am concerned that Ohio’s ban and the need to travel increasingly far distances to obtain abortion care not only causes unimaginable harm to these young victims, but could also hamper law enforcement’s ability to investigate and prosecute these cases in the future.”

It doesn’t get any more cruel than this:

The affidavits filed as part of the effort to stop S.B. 23 describe two cancer patients put in the most impossible of situations by the law. 

Both seem to illustrate doctors’ reluctance to terminate pregnancies despite the law’s exceptions for maternal health — exceptions that doctors say are woefully ill-defined. With potential penalties that include felony charges and the loss of professional licenses, some doctors have refused to terminate even though their patients’ health is at risk.

In the days after S.B. 23 took effect, a pregnant 25-year-old went to a clinic operated by Planned Parenthood of Southwest Ohio, said Liner, the medical director there. The patient had recurrent cancer and was undergoing chemotherapy when she learned that she was pregnant.

Chemotherapy is dangerous during the first 12 weeks of pregnancy and this patient had already skipped one treatment. But when the clinic determined that she was eight weeks pregnant, workers there said they couldn’t perform an abortion, Liner said.

“Due to the patient having cancer while pregnant, we sought documentation to support a medical exception to S.B. 23 for this patient,” Liner said in her affidavit. “Her provider of care did not feel comfortable providing this and the patient had to travel out of state for an abortion to resume her cancer treatment, which caused further delay.”

The effect of delaying chemotherapy on the patient’s health might be hard to determine, but it seems unlikely that it was good.

Just three days after S.B. 23 took effect, a 37-year-old suffering stage III melanoma went to Women’s Med Center in Dayton, Trick, the operations manager there, said. The woman was told by her doctors that she had to terminate her pregnancy before they could treat her, so she, too, would have to leave the state, Trick said. 

“Upon learning that she would need to travel out of state to have her abortion, the patient broke down and cried inconsolably despite the attempts of multiple staff members, including myself, to console her,” Trick said in her sworn affidavit.

Women with unviable fetuses are also having problems:

In addition to those cases, women with conditions that made successful pregnancies impossible had problems getting doctors outside the clinics to treat them, David Burkons, medical director of Northeast Ohio Women’s Center said. Two patients at the clinic said they had tubal, or “ectopic,” pregnancies “but the doctors (at emergency rooms) were afraid to treat them without being absolutely certain there was no intrauterine pregnancy,” Burkons wrote in his affidavit.

“In one case, the patient’s fallopian tube ruptured, and surgery (was needed) rather than medical management, which would have been possible if they had acted sooner,” he said. “In the other, my nurse intervened to convince a physician to treat the patient, but only several days later, which was emotionally wrenching for the patient.”

The affidavits also detail cases of fetal abnormalities and other problems so severe that pregnancies can’t result in a successful birth. One patient at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Southwest Ohio had a fetus with abnormalities including “a lack of lower extremities and the contents of the fetus’s abdomen, including possibly the heart, protruding through a defect in the abdominal wall,” Liner, a doctor, said in her sworn statement.

Because S.B. 23 doesn’t allow women in such cases to abort their pregnancies if they don’t pose an imminent threat to their health, they either have to leave the state for an abortion or carry the fetus to term — even though that “can be extremely distressing for patients,” Liner said.

In another case, this one in Dayton, a woman was 13 weeks pregnant but had no amniotic fluid, prompting her doctor to tell her the pregnancy was “nonviable.”

“However, because the fetus still had fetal heart tones, the physician discharged her with instructions to call the office if she developed a fever,” Trick said in her affidavit. “The patient was very distressed and expressed to (clinic) staff that she felt abandoned by her physician during an incredibly difficult experience. I’m concerned that confusion over the meaning of S.B. 23’s health exceptions has led physicians to avoid providing medically necessary care out of caution, and I worry about patients in similar positions who aren’t able to independently find an accessible abortion provider without their physician’s help.”

Clinic workers also reported cases of incessant vomiting caused by pregnancy, including in a high-school senior who found it impossible to attend class and finish her diploma. 

Another girl, 16, had vomited so much that she lost 20 pounds, Trick, of the Dayton clinic, reported. The girl’s mother didn’t have a reliable car, so she had to rent one to take her daughter to Indianapolis for an abortion, Trick said.

At the same clinic, another patient was “so sick she was lying on the floor vomiting into a bucket,” Trick wrote. 

The woman wasn’t only afraid that her condition would prevent her from making it to Indianapolis, Trick said. The woman had four kids to care for and she was the manager of a large retail store.

“She was concerned that she was going to lose her job because of all the time she had to take off to travel to and from the clinic for abortion care in addition to her repeated absences due to being hospitalized for her condition,” Trick wrote.

Proponents of S.B. 23 meant to dramatically curtail the number of abortions in Ohio. But the clinic workers said that for some patients, it’s having the perverse effect of rushing them to terminate pregnancies before they’ve had a chance to decide whether that’s what they really want.

Pierce of Preterm-Cleveland said that at five to six weeks, “these patients are very early on in their pregnancies and many of them have not had a chance to wrap their minds around the fact they are pregnant. A number of patients have told me that they wish they had more time to think about whether to continue the pregnancy.

“For example, I recently spoke with a patient with a young baby at home who had become pregnant again only months after giving birth,” Pierce’s affidavit continues. “She had experienced many postpartum health issues, and she was not sure if she was physically or mentally ready to go through a pregnancy again so soon. She wanted time to work through this decision but was terrified that if she waited she would no longer be able to have an abortion.”

In their lawsuit, the abortion clinics seem to be contending that in forcing such an early decision, S.B 23 denied that woman’s due-process rights under the Ohio Constitution. They seem to be asserting the same rights for the other women they describe in the affidavits as being injured by S.B. 23.

Whether Ohio’s court system agrees will be decided in the coming months.

All of this is a nightmare which these zealots either didn’t think through or are simply evil misogynists. The only “life” they value is a life that isn’t born. The rest of us are totally disposable.