Month: May 2023

DeSantis knows these are the new rules and he’s taking advantage of it:

Officials who work for Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration — not his campaign — have been sending text messages to Florida lobbyists soliciting political contributions for DeSantis’ presidential bid, a breach of traditional norms that has raised ethical and legal questions and left many here in the state capital shocked.

NBC News reviewed text messages from four DeSantis administration officials, including those directly in the governor’s office and with leadership positions in state agencies. They requested the recipient of the message contribute to the governor’s campaign through a specific link that appeared to track who is giving as part of a “bundle” program. 

“The bottom line is that the administration appears to be keeping tabs on who is giving, and are doing it using state staff,” a longtime Florida lobbyist said. “You are in a prisoner’s dilemma. They are going to remain in power. We all understand that.”

NBC News is not naming the specific staffers who sent the text messages because it could out the lobbyists who received the messages and shared them.

DeSantis’ office did not return a request seeking comment, but one administration official acknowledged that they were fundraising for the campaign.

“I’m not sure what every EOG staffer does on their free time and after hours, with their first amendment rights, but I wouldn’t be shocked if team eog somehow raised more money than lobbyists,” the administration official said in a text message, referring to an acronym for the governor’s office. “I can confirm I (and many other staff) personally donated.”

“What the f— am I supposed to do? I have a lot of business in front of the DeSantis administration.

FLORIDA LOBBYIST

Generally, political staffers are charged with raising money for political campaigns, and aides on the official side are walled off from those operations.

The legality of the solicitations depends on a series of factors, including whether they were sent on state-owned phones, or if they were sent on state property. A longtime Florida election law attorney said that even if the DeSantis aides are fundraising for the campaign in their personal capacity, off the government clock, it still raised ethical questions.

“At a minimum, even if they are sitting in their home at 9 p.m. using their personal phone and contacting lobbyists that they somehow magically met in their personal capacity and not through their role in the governor’s office, it still smells yucky,” the attorney said. “There’s a misuse of public position issue here that is obvious to anyone paying attention.”

But the practice was still jaw-dropping for those who have long been involved in Florida politics.

NBC News spoke with 10 Republican lobbyists in Florida, all of whom said they couldn’t remember being solicited for donations so overtly by administration officials — especially at a time when the governor still has to act on the state budget.

That process that involves DeSantis using his line-item veto pen to slash funding for projects that the same lobbyists whom they are asking for political cash have a professional stake in. Most of the lobbyists said they felt pressure to give to the governor’s campaign.

I’m pretty sure that’s the point, aren’t you?

Using the power of the office to ensure loyalty by pulling people into a corrupt scheme is right out of the Trumpian playbook. It’s how the mob works and DeSantis has paid close attention.

The Democratic members at least

No Labels has long been a malevolent force in American politics since its inception. This conceit of being above all the partisan mucky muck is insufferable. It’s basically a money making operation for its founders and has never accomplished anything.

Finally, some of the Democrats affiliated with its equally useless House caucus, the “Problem Solvers” have had enough. It took them trying to put Trump back in the White House to do it:

A group of House Democrats with ties to No Labels is turning on the centrist group after it attacked one of their founding members.

On Tuesday, No Labels texted people who live in the district of Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Ill.), criticizing the congressman for scoffing at their idea for a unity presidential ticket and claiming it could result in Donald Trump’s return to the presidency.

In its message, No Labels said it was “alarmed to learn that your U.S. Rep. Brad Schneider recently attacked the notion that you should have more choices in the 2024 presidential election.” They called Schneider “out of step” with his voters.

“No Labels is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — reelecting Donald Trump as President.”Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.)

The missive did not go over well with Schneider, who is a member of the Problem Solvers Caucus that No Labels helped start on the Hill.

“No Labels’ attacks are the kind of division the country needs less of right now, and it’s a betrayal of every moderate and every problem solver in Congress,” Schneider said in a statement to POLITICO. “I helped form the Problem Solvers Caucus six years ago to reach across the aisle and find common ground, not to abandon my principles. I am as committed today as I’ve always been to the principles that reflect the values and priorities of my district, and to reaching across the aisle for the good of our country.”

Schneider was quickly joined by other members of the Problem Solvers Caucus in chastising No Labels for attacking one of their own and pushing a unity ticket.

“No Labels is wasting time, energy, and money on a bizarre effort that confuses and divides voters, and has one obvious outcome — reelecting Donald Trump as President,” said Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) in a statement. “Now, the organization has decided to go one step further and attack a decent, well-respected, and hardworking member of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus for the apparent sin of calling them out on their bogus plan.”

Rep. Dean Phillips (D-Minn.) said in an interview that the attack on Schneider was “in poor taste” and ran “counter to the very principles that certainly are worth pursuing, which is respectful disagreement.” He added that the move against Schneider had roiled the caucus.

“I speak for most of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in the Problem Solvers Caucus that we deeply believe in the mission and are grateful for creating space in place for thoughtful dialogue in a time we need it more than ever, but disappointed in this initiative against Brad Schneider,” he said.

Despite the anger with attacks on Schneider, neither Phillips nor his fellow offended Problem Solvers Caucus members said that they would be leaving the caucus. Asked whether he had conveyed his concerns to No Labels or to its co-founder and president Nancy Jacobson, Phillips declined to share any private conversations.

The Problem Solvers Caucus is currently co-chaired by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.) and Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.). A spokesperson for Fitzpatrick did not respond to a request for comment, but Gottheimer said in a statement that he opposed No Labels’ 2024 efforts.

“Like Brad, this is not an effort I’m personally involved with or supportive of,” he said. “I also believe constructive conversations are the best way to solve problems and resolve disagreements — not personal attacks.”

No Labels defended its message to voters in Schneider’s district.

“Two-thirds of Americans don’t want a rematch of the 2020 election and No Labels is the only organization responding to what they do want, which is more voices and choices in our political process,” No Labels co-executive director Margaret White said in a statement. “Outside the Washington bubble, No Labels’ 2024 presidential insurance project is striking a chord and we’re going to keep working to get ballot access in states across the country. America’s common sense majority is waking up and ready to be heard.”

No Labels has said that it’s raised or received commitments for tens of millions of dollars for its “unity” ticket that it is considering running next year if it deems both the Democratic and Republican presidential candidates to be too extreme. The group has insisted that it will pull the plug on the venture if it looks like it will become a “spoiler” and result in Trump’s election. But the group’s effort has also received heavy pushback from the moderate Democratic group Third Way, which says it is poised to precisely play that spoiler role.

No Labels has pushed back aggressively at its critics. And its decision to go after Schneider underscores the degree to which it has become singularly focused on its 2024 campaign venture over all other functions, including building alliances on the Hill.

In the message to voters in Schneider’s district, the group suggested a sample email that recipients could send to Schneider’s office. A spokesperson for Schneider said as of late Thursday afternoon, only eight form letters have been sent to the office.

The pushback from some of No Labels’ natural allies adds to the recent turmoil the group has faced. It lost its top communications adviser Mark Halperin earlier this spring and has been roiled by internal staff turmoil.

The group seems to be serious about getting on the ballot in swing states and are trying to recruit someone like Joe Manchin to run as the No Labels candidate. There’s no other way to interpret that than as a move to re-elect Donald Trump. They are clearly hoping to split the Democratic vote.

It’s long past time for the Democratic centrists to understand that these people are objectively pro-Republican. They always have been.

There’s a lot of Trump legal news these days, what with the E. Jean Carroll verdict, the Manhattan hush money indictment, the news that Fulton County, Georgia, D.A. Fani Willis has put local authorities on notice to anticipate “something” coming in August, and a cascade of reporting on special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, with some suggestions evidence that will come to a conclusion very soon.

The possible Jan. 6 case against Donald Trump himself remains more obscure, but with the sentencing of Oath Keeper Stewart Rhodes to 18 years in prison for plotting the insurrection on Thursday, it’s hard to see how Trump, who incited the riot, isn’t equally implicated in what happened that day. But for some reason one obvious case has gotten very little media attention and, as far as we know, very little attention from investigators: Trump’s cozy financial relationship with the Saudi-sponsored Public Investment Fund, the desert kingdom’s massive sovereign wealth fund. (Its assets are estimated at more than $620 billion.)

It’s not at all surprising that the Republican House isn’t looking into this. They’re busy trying to find disappearing informants in the Hunter Biden laptop case and digging through the Biden family finances. Why the Democratic-led Senate hasn’t bothered is another question. But it’s obvious that Trump and his family are deeply financially involved with the Saudi government, and considering the fact that Trump is running for president yet again, it’s shocking that nobody seems to care. 

It’s unclear how much money has actually changed hands, but Trump admits that he’s been paid a fee, which he calls “peanuts,” by the sponsoring Public Investment Fund, the same Saudi government entity that “invested” in Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner’s business to the tune of $2 billion just a couple of months after he left the White House. (That’s a deal that makes Hunter Biden’s alleged transgressions look like kids gambling for nickels in the lunchroom.) These tournaments generally bring in millions to the clubs that host them so those are some pretty big peanuts.

According to USA Today, a reporter asked Trump whether his resorts have gotten these tournaments because of his favorable policies toward Saudi Arabia as president. He flippantly replied, “Not at all.” Apparently, his defense of the Saudi government’s assassination and dismemberment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi wasn’t significant. They just love him, and his golf courses.

Trump extolled the virtues of the LIV Golf tour (a rival to the long-dominant PGA), telling reporters, “They have unlimited money, and they love it. And it’s been great publicity for Saudi Arabia. They’ve been great for golf. The Saudis have been fantastic for golf. And … inside their country, they’re going to do some great courses.” Indeed, he has signed at least one development deal to license a golf and hotel complex in the Gulf state of Oman, financed by a Saudi firm.

LIV Golf is a key part of the Saudi regime’s program of “sportswashing,” meaning as a nation’s attempt to use massive investment in sports to cover up for its human rights abuses. (The Saudi fund also took control of the English soccer club Newcastle United in a controversial 2021 deal.) Even aside from the Khashoggi atrocity, many of those horrors happened during Trump’s term, as Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman took control of the ruling family by force, rounding up more than 400 members of the Saudi elite and torturing them.

Trump, as you may recall, was very impressed.

JUST IN: President Trump meets with Saudi Crown Prince bin Salman at G-20 in Japan, calls him "a friend of mine" and says that he's done "really a spectacular job" and that it's a "great honor" to meet with him. pic.twitter.com/cKvZ8qWFQc

— MSNBC (@MSNBC) June 29, 2019

“It’s like a revolution in a very positive way,” he said. That’s the kind of support from a U.S. president that lots of money can buy.

Trump has huge investments in his golf course empire, which has suffered because of his Big Lie and the ripple effects of Jan. 6. The PGA tour pulled out of hosting its championship at Trump’s club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and the British Open definitely isn’t coming back to Turnberry, Trump’s Scottish resort. LIV is the only game in town for Trump these days.

This kind of corruption has been going on since Trump entered politics. He never divested from his businesses after he was elected president and people currying favor with him spent many millions at his various properties, including the golf resorts. The Trump International Hotel in Washington (which he sold last year and is now a Waldorf Astoria) was the social center of Republican politics, channeling money directly into Trump’s pockets. The political press occasionally remarked on how unseemly that was and the Democratic Congress clutched its pearls, but of all Trump’s scandals, this one never seemed to bother anyone all that much.

There is some evidence suggesting that special counsel Jack Smith may be looking into Trump’s connections to LIV Golf in connection with the Mar-a-Lago case. The New York Times reported this a couple of weeks ago:

One of the previously unreported subpoenas to the Trump Organization sought records pertaining to Mr. Trump’s dealings with a Saudi-backed professional golf venture known as LIV Golf, which is holding tournaments at some of Mr. Trump’s golf resorts.

Just this week, the Times also reported that the subpoena also asked for the Trump Organization’s real estate licensing and development deals in China, France, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and Oman since 2017, when Trump became president. Most of the D.C. punditocracy has dismissed this as nothing more than Smith “dotting his I’s and crossing his T’s” before he makes his case. Maybe they’re right. But at least someone is finally taking a look at what exactly was going on while Trump was running his business out of the Oval Office.

It’s never been easy to separate Trump’s financial motivations from his massive ego. He’s excessively subject to flattery and that’s often enough to gain his support. But his relationship with the Saudis clearly has a major financial component, as does Jared Kushner’s, and all of that seems to be tied to their time in the White House.

If Trump were just retiring to his golf resorts and taking advantage of all the contacts he made while president, it might be reasonable just to let it go in the interest of never having to think about him again. But he’s the clear frontrunner for the 2024 Republican nomination and he’s openly helping the Saudi regime “sportswash” its human rights record while taking unknown millions from it. 

Let’s hope that unlike Robert Mueller, who refused to exceed his mandate and look at Trump’s finances, Jack Smith sees this for the blatant corruption it is. Otherwise, we’re just accepting that it’s perfectly OK for presidents and presidential candidates to do big favors for autocratic foreign governments in exchange for money. Are we really that far gone?

Salon

A very unimpressive debut:

Within hours of Gov. Ron DeSantis’s announcement of his presidential run on Twitter on Wednesday, participants in the audio event celebrated the achievement.

David Sacks, a venture capitalist who moderated the Twitter conversation, declared it “by far the biggest room ever held on social media.” Afterward, Mr. DeSantis, a Florida Republican, said in a podcast interview that he thought by later that day “probably over 10 million people” would have “watched” the event, called a Twitter Space, or a recording of it.

They were wrong on both counts.

According to Twitter’s metrics, the audio event — which was initially marred by more than 20 minutes of technical glitches before it was restarted — garnered a high of about 300,000 concurrent listeners, or those who simultaneously tuned in as Mr. DeSantis made his announcement. As of Thursday, 3.4 million people had listened to the Space or a recording of it, according to Twitter’s numbers.

Those figures fell short of 10 million people and were far from being “the biggest room ever held on social media” compared with past livestreams.

Consider that a 2016 Facebook Live event, featuring two BuzzFeed employees placing rubber bands around a watermelon until it exploded, drew more than 800,000 concurrent viewers and a total of five million views within hours of its conclusion. The 2017 livestream of a pregnant giraffe on YouTube brought in five million viewers a day.

The event with Mr. DeSantis was even dwarfed by past audio livestreams on Twitter. Last month, more than three million people at one point concurrently listened to an interview of Elon Musk, Twitter’s owner, by a BBC reporter in a Twitter Space, according to the company’s numbers. A recording of that Space said 2.6 million listeners had ultimately “tuned in.” (Twitter did not explain the discrepancy between the concurrent listener count and the “tuned in” figure.)

“Getting a few hundred thousand people to do something for some number of minutes is not that big of a deal,” said Brian Wieser, a longtime media analyst who runs Madison and Wall, a strategic advisory firm. “I’m not quite sure that using Twitter to announce a presidential campaign was the most impactful environment, though maybe Twitter could become that.”

It was impactful. It cemented the impression that DeSantis is a terrible poitician.

All the way to Idaho

NPR:

The U.S. Supreme Court Court on Thursday significantly curtailed the power of the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate the nation’s wetlands and waterways. It was the court’s second decision in a year limiting the ability of the agency to enact anti-pollution regulations and combat climate change.

The challenge to the regulations was brought by Michael and Chantell Sackett, who bought property to build their dream house about 500 feet away from Idaho’s Scenic Priest Lake, a 19-mile stretch of clear water that is fed by mountain streams and bordered by state and national parkland. Three days after the Sacketts started excavating their property, the EPA stopped work on the project because the couple had failed to get a permit for disturbing the wetlands on their land.

Now a conservative Supreme Court majority has used the Sackett’s case to roll back longstanding rules adopted to carry out the 51-year-old Clean Water Act.

Heather Cox Richardson:

This decision will remove federal protection from half of the currently protected wetlands in the U.S, an area larger than California. Homeowners, farmers, and developers will have far greater latitude to intrude on wetlands than they did previously, and that intrusion has already wrought damage as wetlands act like a sponge to absorb huge amounts of water during hurricanes. From 1992 to 2010, Houston, for example, lost more than 70% of its wetlands to development, leaving it especially vulnerable to Hurricane Harvey, a category 4 hurricane that in 2017 left 107 people dead and caused $125 billion in damage.

The decision said that the EPA had overreached in its protection of wetlands as part of the Clean Water Act, and that Congress must “enact exceedingly clear language” on any rules that affect private property. This court seems eager to gut federal regulation, suggesting that Congress cannot delegate regulatory rulemaking to the executive branch. As investigative journalist Dave Troy put it, “If [the] EPA can’t enforce its rules, what federal agency can?”

Justice Elena Kagan warned that by destroying the authority of the EPA, both now and in the West Virginia v. EPA decision last June that restricted the agency’s ability to regulate emissions from power plants, the court had appointed itself “as the national decision maker on environmental policy.”

Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog:

Four justices – Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Brett Kavanaugh, and Ketanji Brown Jackson – agreed that the CWA does not apply to the wetlands on the Sacketts’ lot, but they disagreed with the majority’s reasoning. In an opinion joined by the three liberal justices, Kavanaugh contended that “[b]y narrowing the Act’s coverage of wetlands to only adjoining wetlands, the Court’s new test will leave some long-regulated adjacent wetlands no longer covered by the Clean Water Act, with significant repercussions for water quality and flood control throughout the United States.” For example, Kavanaugh noted, under the court’s new test, the wetlands on the other side of levees on the Mississippi River will not be covered by the CWA, even though they “are often an important part of the flood-control project” for the river. Moreover, Kavanaugh added, the court’s new test “is sufficiently novel and vague” that it will create precisely the kind of regulatory uncertainty that the majority criticized.

Yeah, so? says the majority.

Seven years after his death this is still Justice Antonin Scalia’s court, argues Richard J. Lazarus of Harvard’s law school. Scalia wanted to gut the law in 2006 but fell short of the votes (Washington Post):

None of this was compelled by law. Even Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh rejected Alito’s majority view, announcing that he “would stick to the text.” Congress spoke clearly in the Clean Water Act about its ambitions and backed that intent up with deliberately sweeping language to provide the EPA with the discretionary authority it needed to realize those goals. Our nation’s waters are far cleaner as a result. Yet, for the second time in less than a year, an activist Supreme Court has deployed the false label of “separation of powers” to deny the other two branches the legal tools they require to safeguard the public.

Scalia might have been pleased. Our nation should not be.

Thank, Mitch McConnell.

Not necessarily a bad thing

Like many of you, I’m still catching up with people and places not visited since the pandemic hit in early 2020. Daily rituals have filled the gap, pecking along here on a schedule being one of them. Daily walks being another. The expression “even keel” comes to mind.

Memorial Day rituals are back on in full, finally, and perusing all the local events this weekend, I may when finished here scratch out a list of events to stop by. “Keep Asheville Weird,” the bumper sticker says, but even normal weird feels good.

Headed for a beer.
Shirtless guy in a kilt pushing a stroller to my left.
Groundhog on his hind legs eating a banana peel to my right.
Typical day in the neighborhood.

— @TomSullivan@mstdn.social (@BloggersRUs) May 20, 2023

Brian Klaas argues that rituals contribute to social, not just personal, stability. They are “a potent force, sometimes enlisted for good, other times not,” but for that not to be ignored: How about some pro-democracy rituals?

Here’s the problem: the political right and authoritarian movements have perfected the art of the ritual. They have tapped into this ancient wisdom, harnessed it, used it to mobilize their members and fasten them together. And it works.

The political left and pro-democracy movements, by contrast, have often unilaterally disarmed, jettisoning rituals, even looking down upon them, then scratching their chins with perplexed bafflement as to why they keep losing battles that they should be winning. “We’re the party of reason,” some will say. Congratulations! But reason isn’t fun.

Sure, rituals like Nazi salutes are associated with some of mankind’s worse moments and lock-her-ups smack of brainwashing, conformism, and jettisoning of critical thought. On the other hand, Klaas argues, “If we don’t satisfy our intrinsic craving for them, demagogues may swoop in and fill that void,” as you may have noticed.

“Donald Trump is a ritualistic ringmaster,” Klaas writes, his instinct for it “an impulse emanating from the lizard-like parts of our brains, unthinking, an impulse that he follows even if he couldn’t explain why he does it or how it works.”

Trump rallies are rife with ritual. The song list, the hats, the chants, the ritual vilification of the press and, of course, THEM. They are a natural binding agent for believers, “authoritarian super glue.” They build cohesion, a sense of community. They define a movement.

This, Klaas argues, the left has lost to its detriment.

I humbly submit to the skeptics that your energy is best spent not on opposing rituals that people enjoy, appointing yourself the anti-ritualistic Fun Police, but rather making sure that rituals are used to celebrate the right things: inclusive, democratic nationalism, heroic public service, and true patriotism, not the fake kind. Too often, the political left attacks problematic rituals—for good reasons—but fails to come up with alternatives that could fill that human need we all have to be part of something larger.

Throughout human history, we’ve turned to ritual to reflect our values and reinforce ideas. In the past, religion was the bastion of ritual. It still is today, for some. But for others who have no church, or who care about our civic church, we need to provide replacement rituals. In America, for example, Martin Luther King Jr. Day was a great idea (though I wish rituals around it were more widely celebrated).

The New Age movement of the 1990s seemed driven in part by a need on the left to replace the ritual and symbolism once provided by older religions. Stripped of our myths by science, believers scrambled frantically to reconstruct their interior landscape from a pastiche of mystical icons. Modern otherwise, we are perhaps navigating the 21st century with a pre-Enlightenment collective unconscious. The keel that keeps us stable lies partly in our genetic memory, in our discounted lizard brains.

Klaas concludes:

Democracy, too often, is treated as a static feature of the status quo. That’s completely wrong. We speak of constitutions and institutions as though they have magical properties, hallowed features that will automatically endure. But ideas, institutions, and values are only as strong as the people who actively uphold them. When a democracy is under threat, as many are today, pro-democracy movements require more than the business-as-usual “I’ll do my bit and vote every few years” approach.

We need to recognize our mistake: criticizing problematic rituals should not lead to eliminating them altogether. To fight for democracy, and to reclaim patriotism and nationalism from those who make a mockery of what those concepts are supposed to mean, we need to produce new hubs of collective effervescence. And this is where studying flawed rituals rather than just condemning them is worthwhile.

The Trump Rally is not a template, but it does offer a lesson.

Netroots Nation (in Chicago this year in July) has its own rituals that cement the progressive tribe. There are appearances by political celebrities, of course: Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, and Tennessee State Reps. Justin Jones and Justin Pearson, plus Rep. Maxwell Frost, Rep. Chuy Garcia, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Barbara Lee, Rep. Summer Lee, and Rep. Ilhan Omar, among others. My friend Anderson Clayton, the new Gen Z chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, will be there along with three other women leading state parties.

"A small group of people coming together can really make something happen if they believe in it."

North Carolina Democratic party chair @abreezeclayton shares her journey into the political sphere and how she plans to tackle voter outreach. pic.twitter.com/sP2fFj3elj

— GMA3: What You Need To Know (@ABCGMA3) May 25, 2023

But even the foolish nonsense builds community. The annual Pub Quiz with its silly team names, costumes, and won almost every time by the California team. Leaving with a sense that in all the awfulness there are thousands like yourself working every day to preserve our freedoms.

The 2022 elections, Anat Shenker-Osorio emphasized in a Thursday Zoom briefing, was a referendum on FREEDOMS. The left needs to reclaim the word from those threatening them in the name of freedom. We abandon patriotic ritual to the right at our peril.

Some Texas pols are apparently surprised to learn that the state Attorney General is a crook:

The head of a Texas House panel was aghast Tuesday after investigators laid out wide-ranging corruption allegations against scandal-soaked Attorney General Ken Paxton, calling them “alarming to hear.”

“It curls my mustache,” said Rep. Andrew Murr, a fellow Republican, who no doubt was already familiar with the accusations that have swirled around Paxton for years.

Paxton, a staunch conservative in his third term as the state’s top prosecutor, now finds himself facing possible impeachment proceedings—on top of an ongoing FBI investigation and a long-stalled indictment.

His response has been to attack House Speaker Dade Phelan, accusing him on Tuesday—when word of the probe emerged—of drinking on the job. On Wednesday, after the litany of allegations was unveiled during a three-hour hearing, Paxton claimed Phelan, a Republican, is a “liberal” who wants to “sabotage my work.”

The investigators led the House committee through years of alleged misconduct that they believe broke the laws Paxton is sworn to uphold.

At the heart of of the matter are claims that Paxton used his office to assist a donor—real-estate developer Nate Paul—who then allegedly helped him remodel his home and hired his mistress.

Four Paxton aides who flagged the AG’s intervention in Paul’s affairs were fired.

“Each of these four men is a conservative Republican civil servant,” investigator Erin Epley told the House committee. “Interviews show that they wanted to be loyal… and they tried to advise him well and strongly. When that failed, each was fired after reporting General Paxton to law enforcement.”

As the FBI opened an inquiry, the aides filed a whistleblower suit against Paxton, who asked the state to pay them a $3.3 million settlement. Phelan balked at that, and the committee investigation was launched in March.

Shockingly, Paxton was accused of crimes long before this episode. In 2015, the rookie AG was indicted on securities fraud charges in a case that has been tied up in appeals ever since; Paxton denies the allegations and voters re-elected him twice since his indictment.

Paxton has also been named in a lawsuit by the State Bar for Texas, which accused him of misconduct for claiming voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election and asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn Joe Biden’s win in several states.

What happens next to Paxton is murky. The House Committee took no action, and the Legislature’s session ends on Monday.

Will he ever be held accountable? I doubt it. Texans re-elected this monster as Attorney General knowing that he’s a criminal. Apparently, that’s what they like about him.

I know that’s hard to believe but here it is

Gingrich: One of Trump’s great advantages is he talks at a level where 3rd, 4th, and 5th grade educations can say “oh yeah, I get that.” pic.twitter.com/wigU4DJmHZ

— Acyn (@Acyn) May 25, 2023

It’s a fact:

An analysis of the President’s first 30,000 words uttered in office found Mr Trump speaks at a third- to seventh-grade reading level – lower than any other President since 1929. Mr Trump’s vocabulary and grammatical structure is “significantly more simple, and less diverse” than any President since Herbert Hoover, the analysis found.

The comparison is based on interviews, speeches and press conferences for every president dating back to 1929, compiled by online database Factba.se. Analysts at Factba.se studied the “off-script” remarks of all 15 men – essentially, everything but their prepared speeches – to compare and contrast their speaking skills.

The most explosive claims from a new book about Trump’s white house

Analysts ran the records through eight different tests for vocabulary complexity, diversity, and comprehension level. In every single test, Mr Trump scored the lowest.

Mr Trump averaged significantly fewer syllables per word than the last 14 Presidents, and used significantly fewer unique words. The gaps appeared when comparing all available remarks, and when comparing only the first 30,000 words of each presidency. Social media posts were excluded from the data.

“Compared to the 14 presidents who preceded him, by every measure, [Mr Trump’s] use of words when off script are significantly less diverse, and simpler, than all presidents who preceded him back to Herbert Hoover,” wrote Factba.se CEO Bill Frischling.

His favorite words are strong, powerful, unfair and hoax. That’s all his people need to hear.

These are the same people who think they should be personally dictating what’s taught in the classroom. If they don’t understand it, it’s got to be bad.

I won’t even go into the war on science…

Ok this is 4 minutes that sums up what the actual stakes of the debt ceiling fight are. Please share! https://t.co/pEVWLkWhJ6

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) May 25, 2023

You may think that battle is over, but they don’t

I know you are dying to hear more about today’s right wing worldview so I thought I would share this article from a 2022 Claremont Fellow and Federalist writer entitled:

Pride Month — formerly known as June — is right around the corner, and with that comes the annual rainbow lighting of the White House, heaping of praise upon people like the Nashville shooter, and the continued denigration of religious institutions by American corporations.

In this instance, and countless others, the public and private sectors work hand in glove to advance both an ideological and political agenda. When, recently, Ohio Republican Sen. J.D. Vance said that “[t]here is no meaningful distinction between the public and the private sector in the United States of America,” he was describing situations like this, in which state and corporate entities move in lockstep towards common, predetermined goals with such strength and vigor that dissent becomes impossible.

Whether we call it economic fascism (stripping the 20th-century relic of its emphasis on national identity) or corporatism, the point remains the same: members of the managerial elite who fill out the ranks in government and corporate America alike use their respective spheres of influence to form a public-private regime dedicated to immanentizing a disordered eschaton.

For decades now, American institutions, ideologically captured by the left, have collaborated to establish a new system of social priorities while preventing dissent from challenging their grip on power.

Things like ESG scores, the Corporate Equality Index, the LGBT indoctrination of children by public schools and entertainment conglomerates like Disney, and pronoun struggle sessions at the State Department make this apparent. Wanting the same outcomes, these institutions invest their vast resources, time, and manpower to coerce the public’s behavior. Your business will have the same commitments as a Fortune 500 firm, your children will have the same worldview as Greta Thunberg, and you will be happy about it. 

Sexuality just happens to be one of the more obvious instances in which these people have let their mask slip. Nevertheless, you must get on board or get crushed. You are no longer allowed to opt out; we saw this when Big Tech attacked Gays Against Groomers, presumably for the crime of highlighting the predatory behavior of pederasts. 

Objectors to the outcomes of this synthesis of power are met with censorship, violence towards them is treated with nonchalance, and they have their careers and reputations ruined. Loyalty to the regime, of course, is rewarded — as we saw with Jen Psaki’s transition to MSNBC after her stint as White House press secretary.

Deeply entrenched federal bureaucrats worked with executives in Big Tech to astroturf political narratives benefiting the Democratic Party by throttling stories — notably Hunter Biden’s “laptop from hell” — that would benefit Republican candidates; the State Department knowingly used bogus intel provided by NGOs to monitor dissident online speech; and the most popular payment processor in the world, PayPal, is willing to levy hefty fines on users who spread “misinformation.”

There simply is no longer a distinction between the private and public sectors; they carry out each other’s goals and enforce them as though they are part of the same body — because they are different only in name. And only by spreading their message can you reap the benefits; opposing it drastically increases the odds you get your teeth kicked in. 

Roughly 10 years ago, comedian Sam Hyde, adorned in plastic centurion armor, lampooned the self-important nature of TED Talk-style lectures with an elaborate prank in which he delivered a speech titled “2070 Paradigm Shift.” Throughout the bit, Hyde mocked the onanistic optimism of TED Talks by suggesting the audience should look forward to a tolerant era of “state-enforced homosexuality.”

Hyde’s remarks were tongue-in-cheek, but in today’s climate where the only truly acceptable choice is the endorsement of the public-private regime’s messaging, its embrace of “alternative lifestyles,” and denigration of everything else, they ring true.

The U.S. government is committed to flying LGBT pride flags at its embassies around the world except in places like Saudi Arabia, where it can’t afford to offend the local population’s cultural sensitivities. The Vatican, on the other hand, is fair game. Similarly, with the coming of Pride Month comes the annual changing of corporate branding to rainbow iconography in a show of solidarity with this agenda, but these corporate entities are sure to omit this initiative from their Middle Eastern marketing campaigns.

What’s the point of all this? 

Clearly, it isn’t to destigmatize homosexuality in the West; that has already been done. It’s the same reason why the Anti-Defamation League says “grooming” — the normalization and cultivation of deviant behavior in impressionable people like 12-year-old drag queens who pantomime snorting ketamine —  is a “bigoted lie targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”

It’s to stop you from saying no while the most powerful institutions in the history of the world — the federal government and corporate America — collaborate to force it upon you and your community.

It is, in fact, state-enforced.

They are getting very excited over all the transgender bashing and it’s getting some traction. Right wingers threatened workers at Target over a Pride display and got Target to remove the merchandise in their stores. Florida’s DeSantis has banned all discussions of LGBTQ in classrooms and wingnut parents all over the country have decided it must be a taboo topic. This is happening right here in LA:

A group of parents at Saticoy Elementary School in North Hollywood are urging families to “keep your children home and innocent” on Friday, June 2, when the school is holding a pride-oriented assembly that will include discussion of LGBTQ+ parents.

The opposing parents plan to protest outside the school on June 2 at 8 a.m., according to posts on an Instagram page that expressed outrage that the school plans to teach children about LGBTQ+ identities during a book reading. Conversely, LGBTQ+ advocates are upset by the parents and support the school’s effort to educate students about different sexual identities.

According to a district spokesperson, the event at Saticoy Elementary will include a reading of The Great Big Book of Families by Mary Hoffman, which cites family types including multi-cultural families, multi-racial families, single parent families and — to the chagrin of protesting parents — families with LGBTQ+ parents.

The group called Saticoy Elementary Parents on its Instagram page says the school has a significant  population of Armenian and Hispanic families who “share conservative values” and “don’t feel this material is appropriate to teach to the children.”

“We respect everyone, but some things are appropriate for children (of) that age, and some things are not,” Saticoy Elementary School parent George Dzhabroyan told KTLA on Tuesday, May 23. “Hopefully the message gets across and people understand that parents should be the primary contact of what their children should be exposed to and shouldn’t be exposed to.”

Noah Reich, a San Fernando Valley-based LGBTQ advocate and co-founder of the non-profit organization Classroom of Compassion, thinks the reading is a good way to introduce young students to the topic of sexuality.

“I don’t think anyone is ever too young to learn about a world that reflects and welcomes them,” he said. “I don’t know if there is a more innocent way to begin a conversation about LGBTQ+ people not only being parts of our family but also being worthy to create families.”

He was echoed by Kevin Perez, president and co-founder of Somos Familia Valle, an LGBTQ+ support group in the East San Fernando Valley.

“Even in the San Fernando Valley, there are a lot of LGBTQ+ parents. That is certainly what we need to accept,” Perez said.

When asked what he would say to parents who object to an assembly focused on the book, he responded: “I would say, ‘have an open mind and an open heart.’ There are many different family units that exist and have always existed. This is nothing new.”

An LAUSD spokesperson said the district is committed to creating a safe and inclusive learning environment that reflects and embraces the diverse population it serves.

“As part of our engagement with school communities, our schools regularly discuss the diversity of the families that we serve and the importance of inclusion,” LAUSD said in a statement. “This remains an active discussion with our school communities and we remain committed to continuing to engage with families about this important topic.”

Naturally, these are MAGA freaks:

The conservative parent group at Saticoy Elementary was also active in opposing the school district’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. In October 2021 about a dozen staff and parents held an anti-vaccine protest outside the school.

Luckily California isn’t going to ban pride events in schools just because some right wing nuts don’t like it. But you can see that this idea is percolating among the MAGA faithful. It’s not just trans. It’s LGBTQ in general. And we should have seen it coming.

I want to send this to every voter in America. They simply don’t know what this is about.

Here it is.

Here’s Ronna McDaniel on Fox News saying that a possible debt default “bodes very well” for the Republican presidential field pic.twitter.com/J6R9pPJVsf

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) May 25, 2023