The media got played!
The former president did speak at Drake Enterprises, a small non-union company outside Detroit, where he repeatedly bashed union leadership and argued United Auto Workers members had their priorities backward.
Among the outlets that got it wrong:
Source: Donald Trump Didn’t Speak To Striking Autoworkers | HuffPost Latest News
Target is removing certain items from its stores and making other changes to its LGBTQ merchandise nationwide ahead of Pride month, after an intense backlash from some customers including violent confrontations with its workers.
Target Chairman Fred Tarjay said, “If you want LGBTQ merch back in our stores, you’ll just have to man up and assault some of our employees.”
Source: Target Removes Some LGBTQ Merchandise From Stores | HuffPost Latest News
We thought that Clark Rockefeller was safely under lock and key at
San Quentin State Prison but he had us fooled. For the last few years he’s been gallivanting around Queens and Nassau County doing who-knows-what. But in 2020, he ran for Congress under his George Santos moniker, losing to incumbent Tom Suozzi. Two years later, Santos knocked off Democratic candidate Robert Zimmerman by a healthy 54.1% to 45.9% margin.
Here at BiteMe, we predict great things for freshman Congressman Rockefeller in the Republican-majority 118th Congress. Go get ’em, Clark!
Moore v. Harper involves a bizarre legal gambit known as the independent state legislature theory. It argues that the Elections Clause of the U.S. Constitution provides state legislatures the sole authority to set the “time, place, and manner” of federal elections.
Its adoption would place legislatures outside of the purview of state constitutions, effectively ending state court judicial review of election laws or congressional district maps.
. . .
The case comes before the court following more than a decade of attempts by North Carolina Republicans to draw hyper-partisan congressional maps following the decennial census in both 2010 and 2020.
. . .
The [independent state legislature ] theory arose in the controversial 2000 Bush v. Gore case when then-Chief Justice William Rehnquist endorsed it in a concurrence joined by then-Justice Antonin Scalia and current Justice Clarence Thomas. It reemerged in force in the fall of 2020 when Republicans in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin used it to argue for the Supreme Court to block election law changes adopted during the COVID-19 pandemic. The court declined to do so, but Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Thomas all showed an interest in either accepting the theory or hearing a case on it. North Carolina’s challenge presented that opportunity and these four justices took up the case, even though the North Carolina legislature specifically authorized the state supreme court to adjudicate gerrymandering disputes in exactly the manner they now wish to invalidate.
Ha! The Bitemaster heartily supports North Carolina in this case. If the Supreme Court agrees, states like New York would be able to produce congressional maps that more fairly represent the feelings of its citizens and award all the state’s 26 congressional seats to deserving Democrats. It would be a great victory, indeed.
. . . [T]he House GOP will have to steer legislation through with as few as four votes to spare while its leaders deal with an emboldened Freedom Caucus, internal finger-pointing over a disappointing midterm cycle, and a looming brawl over a 2024 presidential primary that features Donald Trump back in the mix.
“I don’t lie awake at night worrying about the bad legislation they are going to pass. Because I don’t think they’re going to pass it,” said Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.).
Awaiting the outcome of just one true toss-up race, Republicans will have a majority of either four or five — giving McCarthy the sparest of margins of any other Congress at the start of its term since 1931. Not to mention that he’s already vowed to do away with Pelosi-era proxy voting, making every potential absence a new challenge.
Do away with proxy voting? His view on that is sure to “evolve.”
As Democrats prepare their retreat into the minority, many are less-than-fondly recalling their own two years of vote-wrangling and floor delays while wishing their GOP colleagues luck.
“It was wonderful,” quipped Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.), a member of Pelosi’s whip team who remembered countless after-midnight phone calls this Congress to lock down votes for many of his party’s huge bills. “That was a regular routine, as a matter of fact.”
Source: House Dems on GOP’s thin majority: Welcome to hell – POLITICO
WASHINGTON (AP) — A group of progressive Democrats in Congress said Tuesday it had retracted a letter to the White House urging President Joe Biden to engage in direct diplomatic talks with Russia after it triggered an uproar among Democrats and raised questions about the strength of the party’s support for Ukraine.
In a statement, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Progressive Caucus, said the caucus was withdrawing the letter it sent less than 24 hours prior. It was signed by 30 members of the party’s liberal flank.
“The letter was drafted several months ago, but unfortunately was released by staff without vetting,” the Washington Democrat wrote in a statement. As chair of the caucus, Jayapal said she took responsibility for this.
So what Jayapal is saying is:
On the other hand, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) has backbone:
“I have voted for arms to Ukraine and will continue to support providing arms to Ukraine to stand up against Putin’s brutal aggression.
“At the same time, it’s my obligation to make sure we are mitigating the risk of nuclear war, that we are making sure that the conflict doesn’t escalate and that we are working toward a negotiated settlement that will be a just peace. That is the framework of the letter.”
Source: Progressives retract Ukraine letter to Biden after uproar | AP News
American student test scores plunged by historic levels during the coronavirus pandemic, prompting soul-searching among education figures to chart a future path for the country’s schools.
Ha! Nobody wants a “future path.”
Right wingers want Bible, 10 Commandments, and Jesus in school. Also vouchers, charter schools, and home schooling. Some even want to eliminate the indoctrinating public schools altogether.
Liberals want drag queens, books about unconventional families, transgender bathrooms, sex ed, Black history, Holocaust studies, Pride flags and diversity education.
It’s not going to get better any time soon.
Source: American test scores prompt ‘a moment of truth’ for schools – POLITICO
On May 24, 2022, a gunman opened fire inside Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, killing at least 19 children and two teachers.
[Afterwards,] GOP lawmakers refused to support the possibility of any gun control measures as the nation reels in the wake of the worst school shooting since the Sandy Hook massacre in 2012. Instead, the elected officials called for more armed teachers and even fortified schools meant to keep bad actors away from children, saying laws to limit access to firearms don’t work.
. . .
Police said the 18-year-old who attacked the school, identified as Salvador Ramos, was wearing body armor that made him more difficult to stop after he crashed his car through a barricade near Robb Elementary School. At least two law enforcement officers tried to engage him and were injured in the shooting, The New York Times reported.
As usual, Texas Republicans are just not up to the task. They always propose these halfway solutions, when the most effective way to stop these school shootings is to arm the students — preferably with armor-piercing bullets. A couple instances of 8-year olds turning an attempted shooter into swiss cheese and this will stop for good!
Incumbent Representative Van Taylor (R-Plano, 3rd CD) was in a three-way primary race until news of an affair got out.
Taylor, a former Marine and Iraq war combat veteran, was considered one of the Texas delegation’s most conservative members when he was elected in 2018. But he has been sharply criticized by the party’s right-wing for voting to certify the 2020 election results and supporting a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
One of Taylor’s opponents was Keith Self.
Self is an Army veteran and graduate of the U.S. Military Academy. He has claimed Taylor drifted from his conservative roots in the GOP-dominant district. He was among those who heavily criticized Taylor’s votes on the election result and insurrection investigation and Taylor’s vote to remove Confederate statues from the Capitol.
The third candidate was Suzanne Harp. She is the Vice President of Strategic Accounts in a middle-market M&A firm in Richardson, Texas. She is the sole female among the thirty-one executives in her department.
When Suzanne Harp learned of Taylor’s affair, she informed two right-wing websites, which publicized the affair. Harp said that the revelations, which she engineered, were “deeply concerning, and I’m praying for all involved. . . . Politics should build up our families, our communities, and our political parties. This story breaks my heart, both as a wife and as an American. Politics should never tear these sacred institutions apart.”
Update: In the March, 2022, five-way Republican primary, Taylor got only 48.7% of the vote and Self got 26.5%. When Taylor withdrew, the runoff was cancelled. Self will face the Democratic candidate in the heavily-Republican district in November.
[Roger Stone, the G. Gordon Liddy of the Trump era] was pardoned by Trump before he left office but not for activities linked to the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. Trump granted clemency to Stone and eventually pardoned him in late 2020 after he was convicted of seven felonies, including lying in congressional testimony and witness tampering in the investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia in the 2016 election.
Stone worked in vain after the Jan. 6 insurrection to convince Trump to enact his “Stone plan” to grant a blanket preemptive pardon to him, Trump’s congressional supporters and all members of “the America First movement” for any prosecution over their roles in trying to overturn the election, according to footage viewed by the [Washington] Post, whose reporters examined about 20 hours of film’s footage. He also lobbied Trump to pardon others — for money — including convicted mobsters.
After Trump refused, Stone blasted him in an Inauguration Day phone call as a “disgrace” who “betrayed everybody,” the Post noted.
Stone also blamed Trump’s son-in-law and former White House senior adviser, Jared Kushner, for the failure of his pardon plan. “He’s going to get a beating. He needs to have a beating,” Stone was recorded saying to an aide, referring to Kushner, the Post reported.
It’s kind of odd, but here Trump and Stone’s actions benefited our constitutional democracy.
Source: Roger Stone Reportedly Trash-Talked Trump For Denying Him Jan. 6 Pardon | HuffPost Latest News