In case you were wondering if there was anyone whose endorsement Trump would not eagerly embrace, think again
"what digby sez..."
Digby's Hullabaloo Posts
For-profit means not for you
Please indulge this local story. It’s not as local as it first seems.
Ever since for-profit HCA Healthcare Inc. bought our local nonprofit hospital system in 2019, patient and staff complaints about understaffing have soared. Hundreds of veteran doctors and nurses have resigned. N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein, Democratic candidate for governor in 2024, has faced repeated questions from locals for approving the deal. Stein had limited authority to halt the $1.5 billion sale, his office says, so long as legal I’s were dotted and T’s were crossed. Stein, however, negotiated additional concessions in the purchase agreement and has has since sued HCA for failing to live up to its standards for patient care.
Asheville Watchdog, an online investigative site staffed by “retired” local reporters (some, Pulitzer winners), has leaned into the story:
Mission Hospital risks losing Medicare and Medicaid funding because of deficiencies in care that were so severe, state inspectors concluded last month, that they “posed immediate jeopardy to patients’ health and safety,” Asheville Watchdog has learned.
“Immediate jeopardy” is the most serious deficiency possible for a hospital. The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services has recommended that Mission lose its participation in Medicare unless it quickly corrects the deficiencies, according to a letter obtained Thursday by The Watchdog.Failure to correct the deficiencies could threaten the financial viability of the hospital system. The majority of patients in Western North Carolina are on Medicare, Medicaid or uninsured.
Locals warned this would happen. A longtime friend has sued Mission over his wife’s inadequate care during their son’s birth (Sep 26, 2022):
In an attempt to seek justice for “egregious acts of medical and corporate negligence,” Canton’s first family‚ Mayor Zeb Smathers, his wife, Ashley, and son, Stone, are taking on the most powerful healthcare system in America.
In the medical negligence and medical malpractice court action filed Sept. 23 in Buncombe County, the Smathers family is demanding a jury trial in the case against HCA Healthcare Inc, its corporate structures and Mission Hospital. The family is represented by the Raleigh law firm Zaytoun Ballew & Taylor, PLLC.
The lawsuit details a grisly account of how a joyous couple expecting their first child entered Mission Hospital at 6:10 p.m. March 19, 2020. Baby Stone wasn’t born until 3:54 a.m. March 21.
By that time, Ashley Smathers was “on the brink of death,” and baby Stone had experienced permanent hypoxic brain damage, the lawsuit states.
These are friends. I was horrified.
Here’s a more recent headline: Lawsuit: Mission Hospital negligent post-op care led to patient death. The patient was admitted for what Columbia University Medical Center considers a low-risk spinal procedure.
The Watchdog continues:
The Dec. 19 letter from NCDHHS to Mission CEO Chad Patrick cites nine incidents over 19 months that highlighted deficiencies in care and states that “the hospital nursing staff failed to provide a safe environment for patients presenting to the emergency department (ED) by failing to accept patients on arrival, resulting in lack of or delays with triage, assessments, monitoring, and implementation of orders, including labs and telemetry.
“ED nursing staff failed to assess, monitor and evaluate patients to identify and respond to changes in patient conditions,” the letter states. “The hospital staff failed to ensure qualified staff were available to provide care and treatment for patients who arrived in the ED. The cumulative effects of these practices resulted in an unsafe environment for ED patients.”
Mission Hospital and HCA spokesperson Nancy Lindell did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ regulations define immediate jeopardy as noncompliance that “has placed the health and safety of recipients in its care at risk for serious injury, serious harm, serious impairment or death…[It] is the most serious deficiency type, and carries the most serious sanctions…An immediate jeopardy situation is one that is clearly identifiable due to the severity of its harm or likelihood for serious harm and the immediate need for it to be corrected to avoid further or future serious harm.”
The clousure of rural hospitals, especially in states that reject ACA Medicaid expansion, has received lots of attention. Corporate consolidation of remaing hospital systems has received less.
NCDHHS investigators visited the hospital over three weeks in November and December in response to complaints, the letter states. The investigation “resulted in an Immediate Jeopardy identification on December 1,” as a result of seven incidents from April 2022 to October 2023.
The investigation identified immediate jeopardy again on Dec. 9 as a result of two incidents in November, including one that occurred the week inspectors were at the hospital.
The details of the nine incidents are not yet public. CMS is reviewing the state inspectors’ findings and will issue a “statement of deficiencies.” At that point, Mission has 23 days to respond.
Union nurses at Mission and doctors who have left the system after HCA purchased it in 2019 say that the hospital corporation has purposefully understaffed the hospital and gutted it of resources, leading to risks and patient harm.
Mission nurses have sent formal complaints to NCDHHS since 2022, The Watchdog reported in late August. At that time, NCDHHS had not visited the hospital, citing its own staff shortages.
Over the border in Tennessee, angry residents are still protesting a hospital merger that gave Ballard Health a monopoly in that part of Appalachia. This story is from September:
Five years ago, rival hospital companies in this blue-collar corner of Appalachia made a deal. If state lawmakers let them merge, leaving no competitors, the hospitals promised not to gouge prices or cut corners. They agreed to dozens of quality-of-care conditions, spelled out with benchmarks, and to provide hundreds of millions of dollars in charity care to patients in need.
Today, Ballad Health’s 20 hospitals remain the only option for hospital care for most of about 1.1 million residents in a 29-county region at the nexus of Tennessee, Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. But Ballad has not met many of the quality benchmarks nor provided much of the charity, spurring discontent among those with no choice but to rely on Ballad for their care.
Two dozen states, from Florida to Washington, have at some point passed so-called COPA laws that allow hospital systems to merge into monopolies, disregarding warnings from the Federal Trade Commission that such mergers can become difficult to control and may decrease the overall quality of care. In the case of Ballad, the nation’s largest-known COPA deal, public records suggest that is exactly what happened.
Rural organizer and activist Dani Cook has been a thorn in Ballard’s corporate backside over the merger. Ballard blocked her last summer on Formerly Twitter.
This is for-profit medicine under hospital monopolies. Caveat emptor.
Making it into an art form
“When you want to take their books away, they’re children. When you want them to work, they’re adults,” said r/LateStageCapitalism (A One-Stop-Shop for Evidence of our Social, Moral and Ideological Rot) on reddit in reference to a proposed Florida bill.
Actually, the two statements dovetail. Royalists want their lessers to serve the economy and not know enough to question it.
In the name of freedom, they want to take yours.
If you missed my post earlier this week on the nationwide Republican/corporate effort to roll back child labor laws, find it here.
A Florida Republican’s bill aims to silence accusations of racism, homophobia, sexism, transphobia, or any other allegations of discrimination, making them “defamation” under the law and potentially costing the person who made them up to $35,000 in the state known for its “Don’t Say Gay” law.
The sweeping legislation also appears to void journalists’ right to not reveal sources, and, chillingly removes the long-standing requirement that a public figure needs to show “actual malice” to win a defamation lawsuit.
“In cases of alleged homophobia or transphobia, defendants charged with defamation are not allowed to use the plaintiff’s religious or scientific beliefs as part of their defense. If they are found liable for defamation, the defendant could be fined at least $35,000,” The New Republic reports, noting it “would silence basically any accusations of discrimination.”
“The bill applies to statements made in print, on television, or on social media. It also states that someone who is caught in a viral video engaging in allegedly discriminatory behaviors does not qualify as a ‘public figure,’ giving those people even more grounds to sue.”
LGBTQ activist Erin Reed, who first reported on the legislation, writes: “A person could not call, for instance, a fiercely anti-gay or anti-trans pastor transphobic. The pastor would be able to sue their accusers for $35,000 and their accusers could not use the pastor’s ‘religious expression or beliefs’ to prove that the pastor is transphobic or homophobic. Similarly, if a shopkeeper kicks a transgender person out of a shop while citing ‘God’s word’ or their ‘scientific beliefs’ and the video goes viral, the shopkeeper could claim that they were acting under their ‘constitutionally protected religious expression or beliefs’ or their ‘scientific beliefs.’ It would bar anyone from calling that shopkeeper transphobic.”
Florida Democratic state Rep. Anna V. Eskamani decried the legislation, writing: “More attempts to chill free speech in the ‘free’ State of Florida.”
The real homophobia comes from people who point out homophobia. People must be protected from this rampant discrimination. Sure, the Nazis and KKK are protected by the first Amendment but that’s completely different. Nothing is more harmful than calling a homophobe homophobic. It must be stopped.
Also blogging:
The legislation is being sponsored by Republican state Senator Jason Brodeur, who last year “introduced a bill that would require the registration of bloggers who are critical of the state’s government,” leading a columnist at the right-wing National Review to call him a “moron” and an “idiot.” It’s unclear if that would be considered defamation under Sen. Brodeur’s new bill.
Florida is truly becoming a dystopian hell state. I’m glad I live in California because I fully intend to keep criticizing it whether they pass that silly bill or not.
Trump keeps saying that trying to overturn a legal election and obstruct the peaceful transfer of power was part of his official duties as president. But that’s not what his lawyers said after the election as you can see by that Supreme Court filing above.
Politico reports that he’s now saying that the election was “long over” and he was acting in his capacity as president:
In the months after the 2020 election, Donald Trump leaned on his campaign to launch ad blitzes and legal challenges to the results, insisting to his supporters that the election was “ a long way from over.” He even told state and federal courts he was suing in his capacity as a political candidate.
Now, in a bid to derail criminal charges, he’s saying the opposite. At least six times in the past two weeks, Trump has declared that the election was “ long over” by the time he began pushing state officials and then-Vice President Mike Pence to overturn his defeat.
It’s a new piece of rhetoric that’s meant to bolster Trump’s assertion of “presidential immunity” from his criminal charges for interfering with the transfer of power. He wasn’t a candidate anymore, Trump’s new theory goes, so he must have been doing his job as president to ensure elections are fair.
But there’s a problem: It flies in the face of the legal arguments Trump made three years ago, during his frenetic push to subvert the election results. Even after the votes had been counted and certified, Trump filed lawsuits contesting the results — and he claimed he was doing so not as the outgoing president, but as a candidate.
It’s even what he told the Supreme Court in a Dec. 9, 2020 brief filed by his lawyer at the time, John Eastman. “He seeks to intervene in this matter in his personal capacity as a candidate for reelection,” Eastman wrote.
The contradiction could cause headaches for Trump and his current lawyers as they now press appellate courts to accept an aggressive immunity theory — a gambit that could hinge on whether Trump’s attempts to overturn Joe Biden’s victory can somehow count as official presidential acts or whether they were nakedly political.
“It certainly has at least some rhetorical force that even Trump has been inconsistent about the role in which he was acting,” said Steve Vladeck, a national security law expert at the University of Texas.
He and other legal experts say that what Trump says on the trail isn’t all that relevant to the legal finding. But I have to assume that filings to the Supreme Court might be.
This piece in Politico by Michael Kruse is a tour de force and I highly recommend reading the whole thing if you have time. This topic is something that’s been discussed a lot but I’ve never seen this put together in quite this way. Trump has been trying to blow up the American system of justice for decades. And now he has a fairly good chance of doing exactly that:
What happened in Room 300 of the New York County Courthouse in lower Manhattan in November had never happened. Not in the preceding almost two and a half centuries of the history of the United States. Donald Trump was on the witness stand. It was not unprecedented in the annals of American jurisprudence just because it was a former president, although that was totally true. It was unprecedented because the power dynamic of the courtroom had been upended — the defendant was not on defense, the most vulnerable person in the room was the most dominant person in the room, and the people nominally in charge could do little about it.
It was unprecedented, too, because over the course of four or so hours Trump savaged the judge, the prosecutor, the attorney general, the case and the trial — savaged the system itself. He called the attorney general “a political hack.” He called the judge “very hostile.” He called the trial “crazy” and the court “a fraud” and the case “a disgrace.” He told the prosecutor he should be “ashamed” of himself. The judge all but pleaded repeatedly with Trump’s attorneys to “control” him. “If you can’t,” the judge said, “I will.” But he didn’t, because he couldn’t, and audible from the city’s streets were the steady sounds of sirens and that felt absolutely apt.
“Are you done?” the prosecutor said.
“Done,” Trump said.
He was nowhere close to done. Trump’s testimony if anything was but a taste. (In fact, he said many of the same things in the same courtroom on Thursday.) This country has never seen and therefore is utterly unprepared for what it’s about to endure in the wrenching weeks and months ahead — active challenges based on post-Civil War constitutional amendments to bar insurrectionists from the ballot; existentially important questions about presidential immunity almost certainly to be decided by a U.S. Supreme Court the citizenry has seldom trusted less; and a candidate running for the White House while facing four separate criminal indictments alleging 91 felonies, among them, of course, charges that he tried to overturn an election he lost and overthrow the democracy he swore to defend. And while many found Trump’s conduct in court in New York shocking, it is in fact for Trump not shocking at all. For Trump, it is less an aberration than an extension, an escalation — a culmination. Trump has never been in precisely this position, and the level of the threat that he faces is inarguably new, but it’s just as true, too, that nobody has been preparing for this as long as he has himself.
Trump and his allies say he is the victim of the weaponization of the justice system, but the reality is exactly the opposite. For literally more than 50 years, according to thousands of pages of court records and hundreds of interviews with lawyers and legal experts, people who have worked for Trump, against Trump or both, and many of the myriad litigants who’ve been caught in the crossfire, Trump has taught himself how to use and abuse the legal system for his own advantage and aims. Many might view the legal system as a place to try to avoid, or as perhaps a necessary evil, or maybe even as a noble arbiter of equality and fairness.
Not Trump. He spent most of his adult life molding it into an arena in which he could stake claims and hunt leverage. It has not been for him a place of last resort so much as a place of constant quarrel. Conflict in courts is not for him the cost of doing business — it is how he does business. Throughout his vast record of (mostly civil) lawsuits, whether on offense, defense or frequently a mix of the two, Trump has become a sort of layman’s master in the law and lawfare.
It’s bad enough to see a former president and current defendant standing outside the courtroom crudely insulting the judge, the prosecutor and the judges clerk. You see this from defense attorneys sometimes but it’s still jarring even though it’s Trump and he’s just a blatant jackass in all circumstances. But I have to say I was shocked to read that he had acted the same way on the witness stand. Then yesterday he seized the opportunity to do it again. I kept thinking, who the hell does he think he is?
Obviously, he thinks he’s a dictator, even out of office and after January 6th he believes he has an army that will defend him if he’s held accountable. Just this week he threatened “bedlam” if these cases don’t go his way.
Read the whole article if you have time. How in the world did this country sink so low that we ended up with a corrupt miscreant like this?
Here we go again. The House Republicans are running around in circles, unable to agree among themselves about what they were sent to Washington to do and we are once again on the cusp of a government shutdown. No matter who’s in charge or what the circumstances are, they just can’t get anything done. And for some reason they believe this is a winning election year strategy.
The week started out on a hopeful note. I was pleasantly surprised to see that Speaker Mike Johnson and House Majority Leader Chuck Schumer had come to an agreement on a top-line budget number. This seemed to signal that Johnson and his team were serious negotiators who might actually be able to avoid a government shut down. Of course, the framework was already in place from the deal struck last spring between then Speaker Kevin McCarthy and President Biden to raise the debt ceiling, but it still spoke well of his successor that he could be practical enough to recognize that he was going to have to negotiate.
The MAGA crazies on the far right had rejected that deal at the time and it was passed with Democratic votes, eventually bringing about McCarthy’s ouster in October when he once again was forced to rely on Democratic votes to pass a temporary funding extension to keep the government open. Johnson had a little honeymoon that allowed him to pass another short term spending bill without being defenestrated by the crazy caucus.
Unfortunately for him and the country, that honeymoon is definitely over. After announcing the top-line spending deal that would have set the levels until September 30th, everyone understood that it was still going to take a lot of work to agree on the details and that would require yet another short term extension. The MAGA hardliners are a hard no on all of it.
Johnson is a hardliner himself so you would think he’d know how this was going to go over. He seems to think that by “listening” and having “thoughtful conversations” he would have enough credibility with the Freedom Caucus that they would go along. He thought he could tell them “I think it’s the best possible deal that conservatives and Republicans could get under these circumstances” and that would be that. Is he living in a dream world?
He must know that they truly believe that if they shut down the government the Democrats will throw up their hands in surrender and give them everything they want. And if they don’t, the Democrats will all be defeated in November because the government will have been shut down for 10 months, the economy will be in ruins and they will be blamed. In their addled minds, it’s a win-win either way.
Needless to say, that is irrational nihilism but that’s who they are. According to the Washington Post, they want Johnson to renege on the funding agreement and go back to the Senate with their new top line number, destroying any credibility he has with the Senate and the White House. The Freedom Caucus must also be given a say in how any funding is allocated which is the Appropriations Committee’s job or a 1% cut across the board. Oh, and they also demand new draconian immigration restrictions before they will agree to any short term spending bill.
After a meeting on Thursday morning between Johnson and the rebels, the members emerged saying that Johnson was with them. Johnson disagreed, telling reporters, he’s made “no commitments” — and that “if you hear otherwise, it’s just simply not true.” Nobody really knows what Johnson is doing. It’s a mess:
The MAGA extremists are talking about ousting him as they did McCarthy.
Don’t tell anyone but with their tiny majority there’s a good chance that if they do this we’ll be looking at a Speaker Hakim Jeffries. Somebody may just crack.
In case you’re wondering why these zealots think this is such a good idea and that it’s going to work for them, look no further than the “intellectual leader” of the MAGA cult, Steve Bannon. Media Matters reported that he has begun an effort to oust Johnson after having successfully led the effort to depose Kevin McCarthy in October. They report that “although Bannon and his guests have been criticizing Johnson since November — just weeks into the new speaker’s tenure — the attacks have escalated in recent days.”
On Thursday he interviewed Russell Vought, one of the new MAGA gurus who is working on all those dystopian plans for Trump’s second term at the MAGA “think tank” Center for Renewing America, who told him “I am one of the biggest critics of Mike Johnson right now. He is bowing to the fear of a government shutdown within his own ranks. I think he should stand up to that fear, like Congresswoman Greene would have him do, but he’s not.”
Vought is said to be very influential in Trump’s inner circle which may explain why Johnson told Hugh Hewitt he was planning to talk to Trump about this situation but Trump has been a little busy. If he’s counting on his support he should probably have a chat with his predecessor who did everything in his power to curry favor with the Dear Leader and it did him no good at all when push came to shove. Trump has always been for a government shutdown.
Perhaps the most ominous part of Vought’s comment is the fact that he extolled the virtues of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is asserting her power as a MAGA leader. Media Matters reports that she also appeared with Bannon on Thursday and said,
If I was speaker of the House, I’d finish the job in the House. I’d pass the appropriation bills, and then I’d tell Chuck Schumer in the Senate, ‘It’s your job now, buddy. You do your work and then we’ll talk.’ But right now, Mike Johnson is getting rolled in meeting after meeting after meeting.
When he is talking to Jake Sullivan and Chuck Schumer every day and impressed with these four corners meetings, but he’s not talking to me and other important members in our Republican conference at all about any of the negotiations and any of the plans and exactly what we want to see done, he’s failing on the job.”
She certainly sounds like someone who thinks she’s the right woman for the job, doesn’t she? I suspect that there are more than a few Republican House members who would happily vote for Hakim Jeffries over Greene. But you never know. The House Republicans have been infected with MAGA fever and there doesn’t seem to be a cure.
Time will tell if Mike Johnson is able to corral these rebels, keep the government open and hold his seat. But the pressure from the MAGA base, incited by Steve Bannon and others, to blow up the system is going to be relentless. They’ve tasted the power that comes from deposing a leader and they want more. The only thing that will stop them is the loss of their majority. If there is any justice in this world, that will happen next November. Until then, it’s going to be a very turbulent time in the US House of Representatives.
Update: It’s getting worse.
And say anything
Donald Trump believes Americans who gave their lives in defense of their country are “suckers” and “losers.” What must he think of his fans who will believe any lie he tells?
Paul Waldman responded to Donald Trump’s Wednesday town hall on Fox News:
Trump has always employed this very simple strategy: Dish out the most preposterous hyperbole and lies, but do it with the utter conviction that only an experienced con artist can muster. It’s what he did as a businessman, what he did when he ran for president in 2016, and what he has done ever since.
Trump’s shtick has worn thin, Waldman believes, but it’s the only one he’s got. Trump went to it again upon leaving a New York City courtroom on Thursday. Trump stood before reporters and lambasted N.Y. Attorney General Letitia James.
Presiding Judge Arthur Engoron (who received a bomb threat at his Long Island home on Thursday) will determine how large of a fine the Trump Organization will pay for committing decades of fraud in New York. Engoron mentioned Bernie Madoff’s case at the end of the day, reported Susanne Craig of the New York Times. Madoff was ordered to pay $170 billion in restitution to his Ponzi fraud victims.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle corrected the record on Exxon misinformation Trump has repeated over and over.
Marc Elias of Democracy Docket tweeted a quote in response to the same Exxon misinformation:
“Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow.” – Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
Here’s how the New York Times deconstructed just one Trump speech in October 2020:
The sad fact is that the GOP and its MAGA base have been conditioned to lap up the lies as a sign of belonging and to repeat them as casually as an evangelical working the drive-thru window might wish you “a blessed day.”
Only “a blessed day” is mighty harmless compared to the flood of conspiracy theories that sadly did not culminate in the sacking of the U.S. Capitol. MAGA Republicans have been conditioned to lie and “to believe the worst, no matter how absurd.”
This was Rep. Clay Higgins (R) of Louisiana in 2020:
This was MAGA influencer (and former @Project_Veritas operative) Laura Loomer attacking Trump challenger Nikki Haley on Thursday night:
And they vote.
Raskin and Markey will need increased security
.jpg){kind=link}
“Democrats Propose Bill to Neuter Militias” is how Vice News described it:
Militias who like to spend their weekends training to overthrow the government could find themselves running afoul of federal law, under new legislation being proposed in the House and Senate Thursday that seeks to curtail paramilitary activity.
The “Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act” is being introduced by Senator Ed Markey from Massachusetts, and Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland, both Democrats.
Here’s the bill.
Here’s Raskin’s statement:
Washington, DC – Following the anniversary of the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol, Congressman Jamie Raskin (MD-08) and Senator Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) introduced the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act,legislation that wouldcreate a federal prohibition on paramilitary groups through civil and criminal enforcement. The prohibition would hold individuals liable who directly engage in certain types of conduct, including intimidating state and local officials, interfering with government proceedings, pretending to be law enforcement, and violating people’s constitutional rights, while armed and acting as part of a private paramilitary organization.
There are currently no federal laws that address paramilitary activity or protect millions of Americans whose rights are threatened by this type of violent anti-democratic intimidation. Although all 50 states prohibit private paramilitary conduct, these laws are far too often outdated, underenforced, or ignored. Private military organizations pose a threat not only to national security, but they also present a public safety problem that extends beyond any single state; for example, private paramilitary actors like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers traveled across state lines on January 6th.
“Patrolling neighborhoods, impeding law enforcement and storming the U.S. Capitol, private paramilitary groups like the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters and the Proud Boys are using political violence to intimidate our people and threaten democratic government and the rule of law,” said Congressman Raskin. “Our legislation makes the obvious but essential clarification that these domestic extremists’ paramilitary operations are in no way protected by our Constitution. I’m grateful to Senator Markey for his partnership on this critical effort to protect the rule of law, deter insurrection and defend our democracy.”
Here’s an excerpt from Markey’s backgrounder:
Legislation Overview: This legislation builds on existing state anti-paramilitary laws to create a new prohibition on unauthorized private paramilitary activity, with both civil and criminal enforcement mechanisms. The prohibition does not bar mere association with paramilitary groups; instead, it holds individuals liable if they engage in certain types of conduct while armed and while acting as part of a private paramilitary organization, which is narrowly defined as a group that is organized in a military-style command structure for the purpose of engaging publicly in pseudo-military or law enforcement-style operations. The categories of prohibited conduct address dangerous conduct engaged in by private paramilitaries:
(1) publicly patrolling, drilling, or engaging in deadly paramilitary techniques;
(2) interfering with or interrupting government proceedings;
(3) interfering with the exercise of someone else’s constitutional rights;
(4) falsely assuming the functions of law enforcement and asserting authority over others; and
(5) training to engage in such behavior.The legislation creates different tiers of criminal penalties based on whether violations result in injury or property damage; provides harsher penalties for repeat offenders; and allows for a probationary sentence for first-time offenders. Importantly, it also creates civil remedies by authorizing the Department of Justice to seek injunctive relief against paramilitary activity and by creating a private right of action for individuals harmed by paramilitary activity to seek injunctive relief and/or damages. The legislation also contains clear exceptions for activities such as historic reenactments, state-sanctioned trainings, and veterans’ parades.
Penalties for violating the act ramp up from a year of probation for violators with no prior convictions to fines and 5 years for violations involving bodily injury and fines and life imprisonment for violations involving death.
There’s more: they could forfeit their private aresnals under Section 413 of the Controlled Substances Act:
But wait! There’s even more. Members could face civil penalties:
Any person injured as a result of any violation of section 2742 may bring a civil action, individually or jointly with other aggrieved persons, in an appropriate district court of the United States for preventive relief, including an application for a permanent or temporary injunction, restraining order, or other order, or for damages incurred as a result of any violation of section 2742, including reasonable attorney fees and costs.
One weakness is that for any of Items 1-5 (above) to be a violation, actions have to be taken “while acting as part of or on behalf of a private paramilitary organization and armed with a firearm, explosive or incendiary device, or other dangerous weapon.” In the Jan. 6 insurrection photo at the top, no one is openly displaying weapons as militiamen did in 2020 when they occupied the Michigan state capitol to protest COVID closures. But at least it could deter a repeat of events like that.
In 2022, a federal judge “ordered armed members of a group monitoring ballot drop boxes in Arizona to stay at least 250 feet away from the locations following complaints that people wearing masks and carrying guns were intimidating voters.” Pass the Preventing Private Paramilitary Activity Act and it might not get that far. Unless the U.S. Supreme Court sides with the domestic terrorists and their inevitable freedom challenges.
“If enacted, the PPPA will provide tools necessary to deter and prevent paramilitary efforts to undercut our democratic processes and the free exercise of constitutional rights,” said Mary McCord, Executive Director of the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection at the Georgetown University Law Center.
For militia types who might wear a couple years in jail as a badge of honor, threatening jail may not be as effective as threatening to confiscate their toys.
I usually do animals but I thought this was pretty heartwarming for a cold January night:
JV Last at the Bulwark featured this. It’s about a minor league hockey team, the Hershey Bears, which has a fundraising event in which locals bring stuffed animals for donation. When the team scores its first goal they throw them on to the ice.
Last wrote:
This year, Hershey fans donated almost 74,599 stuffies during the game and you have to see the video to believe it. The rain comes slowly at first and then it picks up. But then it just keeps going, a flood-tide of plush.
Watch and bask in the warmth of people being good.
It’s out there. We just have to look for it.