News: Chevron deference; A warning about demagoguery; Elite support for demagoguery

American Progress comments about the pending USSC case that authoritarian radical right elites hope will end Chevron deference, thereby gutting the power of federal agencies to regulate businesses and protect consumers and civil liberties:

The U.S. Supreme Court seems poised to overrule 40 years of precedent, which may allow individual judges to implement their partisan policy preferences instead of abiding by agency expertise.

At issue in both Loper Bright v. Raimondo and Relentless v. Department of Commerce is a challenge to a regulation created by the National Marine Fisheries Service, under the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act, requiring commercial fishing vessels to pay for federal monitors who collect data to ensure that fisheries remain sustainable and viable for decades to come. Rather than address the narrow and technical question on this regulation, however, the Supreme Court opted instead to take up the broader and far more existentially threatening question of whether to completely do away with 40-year-old precedent known as Chevron deference.

The stakes of these cases could not be higher. The conservative legal movement’s efforts to use the legal system to serve the interests of billionaires and corporate behemoths at the expense of the American people has come to fruition. Indeed, ending Chevron deference may prevent agencies from effectively serving the American people and empower corporations to flout vital oversight. Moreover, the outcome could affect nearly every policy area, including health care, civil rights, workers’ rights, education, environmental justice, and financial regulation, to name only a few.

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The NYT writes about federal judge who issued a warning from the bench:

A Republican-appointed judge on Thursday denounced as “shameless” the attempts by prominent Republican politicians to recast the Jan. 6 riot in a positive light, including by portraying the Trump supporters who sacked Congress as having done nothing wrong and by calling those convicted of crimes political prisoners or hostages.

“In my 37 years on the bench, I cannot recall a time when such meritless justifications of criminal activity have gone mainstream,” wrote Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the Federal District Court in Washington. “I have been dismayed to see distortions and outright falsehoods seep into the public consciousness.”

The remarks, made in a seven-page filing that Judge Lamberth described as notes for what he had said on Thursday at a resentencing hearing for a Jan. 6 rioter, amounted to a scathing and extraordinary broadside against a vast web of conspiracy theories and falsehoods about the Capitol attack that have permeated the right.

Criticizing the rioter, James Little, for displaying “a clear lack of remorse,” the judge used the occasion to also “set the record straight” about what he portrayed as a broader disinformation campaign, citing the evidence he has absorbed from presiding over many Jan. 6 prosecutions.

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A NYT article reports about X and election lies and misinformation it is spreading:

Elon Musk Is Spreading Election Misinformation, but X’s 

Fact Checkers Are Long Gone

In the spring of 2020, when President Donald J. Trump wrote messages on Twitter warning that increased reliance on mail-in ballots would lead to a “rigged election,” the platform ran a corrective, debunking his claims. 

This month, Elon Musk, who has since bought Twitter and rebranded it X, echoed several of Mr. Trump’s claims about the American voting system, putting forth distorted and false notions that American elections were wide open for fraud and illegal voting by noncitizens.

This time, there were no fact checks. And the X algorithm — under Mr. Musk’s direct control — helped the posts reach large audiences, in some cases drawing many millions of views.

Since taking control of the site, Mr. Musk has dismantled the platform’s system for flagging false election content, arguing it amounted to election interference.   

The platform’s algorithm — which dictates how posts are circulated on the site — also now gives added promotion to those who pay to be “verified,” including previously banned accounts.

Among them is @KanekoaTheGreat, a once-banned QAnon influencer who this month circulated a 32-page dossier promoted by Mr. Trump that recounted a barrage of false charges about the 2020 election.

It drew nearly 22 million views.

There you have it as clear as it can be: lies are honest, patriotic and democratic, while inconvenient truth is dishonest, tyrannical and authoritarian. According to corrupt authoritarian radical right elites, asking for truth amounts to election interference. 

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From the Crackpots, Cranks, Creeps & Weirdos Files: 

GOP Chairwoman Says “Satan” Now Using 

Taylor Swift to Re-Elect Joe Biden

Kandiss Taylor, [a crackpot and] former Georgia school teacher who ran in the Republican primary for Governor in 2022 and who is now the GOP Chair of Georgia’s 1st congressional district, is back in the news with more Taylor Swift criticism. Taylor’s latest Swift attack was triggered by the Kansas City Chiefs winning their conference final matchup on Sunday, sending the team to the Super Bowl — their fourth in five years.

After warning earlier in the fall that Taylor Swift was having a “demonic” effect on today’s youth, the MAGA adherent Taylor still can’t shake it off, as it were — especially since she sees Swift’s role as having grown even more nefarious from a MAGA standpoint. Swift’s latest machinations, according to Taylor, include the singer’s working with “Satan” to “elect Joe [Biden] back into the White House to destroy what’s left of America.”

Taylor’s charge was unverifiable — Satan did not return our calls.

Agent of Satan (but cute!)

The US betrays and abandons the Ukraine? (Looks like it)

PD cited this video in some of his comments. It speaks for itself:

“Redefining success in Ukraine” smells

rather like the Vietnam failure sold to us as

Peace With Honor

 

It sure sounds a lot like the MSM starting to pound the American public with propaganda to soothe consciences about abandoning the Ukraine to the Russians. The goal is to justify the catastrophe that the Ukraine is going to experience once Putin’s Russia overruns the whole country, committing genocide in the process. If this marks the beginning of American abandonment of the Ukraine, it makes me ashamed to be an American. 

Good job, two-party system! 

Well done!

So, of the two parties, who gets the credit for this moral and human disaster? Repubs, maybe ~75% and Dems, maybe ~25%? ~80-20? ~50-50? 

Q: Does this reflect the morality and belief of most Americans, assuming (i) we are going to abandon the Ukraine, and (ii) average Americans understand what is happening?

Some key points in a brief filed in DJT's insurrection case

Some points from the 70 page brief that CREW filed with the USSC, arguing that DJT is an insurrectionist and not eligible to run for president:

These are the issues

according to CREW

Trump identifies no plausible basis to evade disqualification under Section 3. His brief gives only perfunctory treatment to the central issue—whether he engaged in insurrection. He does not show why the detailed 150-paragraphs of trial court factual findings were somehow clear error, and he fails to even acknowledge (much less to rebut) the most damning evidence against him. Section 3 does not give a free pass to insurrectionist Presidents; they are “officers” because they hold an “office.” And states’ broad authority to regulate presidential elections allows them to exclude constitutionally ineligible candidates from the ballot.

The thrust of Trump’s position is less legal than it is political. He not-so-subtly threatens “bedlam” if he is not on the ballot. Petr. Br. 2. But we already saw the “bedlam” Trump unleashed when he was on the ballot and lost. Section 3 is designed precisely to avoid giving oath-breaking insurrectionists like Trump the power to unleash such mayhem again.

As the Colorado Supreme Court correctly held, any plausible definition of that phrase “would encompass a concerted and public use of force . . . by a group of people to hinder or prevent the U.S. government from taking the actions necessary to accomplish a peaceful transfer of power in this country.” .... (“insurrection” means “rising of any body of the people, within the United States, to attain or effect by force or violence any object of great public nature” or “to resist, or to prevent by force or violence, the execution of any statute of the United States.”); United States v. Hanway, 26 F. Cas. 105, 127-128 (C.C.E.D. Pa. 1851) (similar); .... 

B. Trump engaged in the insurrection

1. The Court should decline Trump’s invitation to re-weigh the facts concerning his involvement in the insurrection. This Court does not overturn plausible factual findings even if it is “convinced that [it] would have decided the case differently,” particularly where, as here, “an intermediate court reviews, and affirms, a trial court’s factual findings.” Glossip v. Gross, 576 U.S. 863, 881-882 (2015) (quotations omitted); see also Hernandez v. New York, 500 U.S. 352, 366 (1991) (plurality opinion) (“[I]n the absence of exceptional circumstances, we would defer to state-court factual findings, even when those findings relate to a constitutional issue.”). (emphasis added)

Trump continued inciting the mob. At 2:24 pm—an hour after he learned the Capitol was under violent attack—Trump tweeted:   

Given the trial court’s emphasis on Trump’s 2:24 pm tweet, Trump’s failure to mention it anywhere in his brief confirms how divorced his narrative is from reality. Trump finally told the mob to leave at 4:17 pm, in a message that praised the attackers and justified their actions.

Hours later, Trump celebrated the violence again:

3. Trump contests almost none of this evidence.

4. Finally, Trump advances a perfunctory legal argument that he cannot have “engaged in” insurrection unless he personally committed violent acts. See Petr. Br. 35-36. That is wrong.

The USSC might let DJT run for office again, claiming he was not an “officer” or by some other “reasoning.” I can see two opposing political considerations the six radical authoritarian Republicans are faced with in this lawsuit. 

On the one hand, the authoritarians like corrupt dictatorship, while loathing democracy, civil liberties and transparency. A decision in DJT’s favor has got to be quite enticing. But on the other hand, holding for DJT gives him a lot of power. That poses a serious threat to the court's own ongoing massive power grab in a profoundly corrupt political plutocracy-Christian theocracy framework.

It will be a very interesting decision. To me, either outcome seems to be about equally likely. 

News: DJT evades taxes; Greedflation; GOP liars, bigots & haters

The Daily Beast reports about an apparent example of tax evasion by DJT that has gone on for years:

Trump’s $50 Million Mystery Debt Looks Like ‘Tax Evasion’

Former federal judge Barbara Jones, the court-appointed special monitor in Donald Trump’s New York business fraud case, just planted a financial bombshell that legal experts say suggests Trump lied knowingly and repeatedly on his federal financial disclosures about a major loan that never existed—and may have evaded taxes on $48 million in income.

But Jones tucked a major revelation into footnote 6, writing that a massive chunk of debt Trump has claimed to owe one of his own companies for years apparently does not exist, and never did.

“When I inquired about this loan, I was informed that there are no loan agreements that memorialize the loan, but that it was a loan that was believed to be between Donald J. Trump, individually, and Chicago Unit Acquisition for $48 million,” Jones wrote, referencing the name of Trump’s LLC that held his debt.

The Trump Organization denies this and says the loan is real. But two different experts who looked at the facts conclude DJT intentionally and knowingly committed tax evasion because he had chances to correct his tax filings but never did.

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Truthout reports about an analysis of sources of inflation:

The progressive organization Groundwork Collaborative, found that, in the past two economic quarters alone, 53 cents out of every dollar of inflationary price increases were due to corporate profits.

Since the start of the pandemic, corporate greed and profits accounted for close to one-third of all inflation, the group discovered — resulting in a phenomenon that is oftentimes called “greedflation.”

“Corporate profits as a share of national income have skyrocketed by 29% since the start of the pandemic,” the report says. “While our economy has returned to or surpassed its pre-pandemic levels on many indicators, workers’ share of corporate income has still not recovered.” 

“Costs have come down substantially, and while corporations were quick to pass on their increased costs to consumers, they are surprisingly less quick to pass on their savings to consumers,” said Liz Pancotti, strategic adviser for Groundwork Collaborative and a co-author of the report.

Assuming the analysis is accurate, this should be a major talking point for Dems. Whether it will be is an open question. Given the low quality of Dem messaging, it probably won’t be used much by Dems. Repubs will never use it, but they will blame inflation all on Biden and the Dems. Such is the way of incompetent vs competent messaging.  

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The Sacramento Bee reports about more garden variety, easily debunked Republican lies:

Some conservatives say transgender people regret surgery. 

A new study says otherwise

A common refrain among anti-transgender activists and politicians, including in California, is that many trans and gender-diverse people experience regret after obtaining gender-affirming surgery.

Last spring, self-described “de-transitioner” Chloe Cole came to Sacramento and told rally-goers at the Capitol that there are too many “bodies and minds falling apart in the aftermath of transition.”

However, that argument is not supported by the science, according to a new article published Wednesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association by three researchers from Johns Hopkins University. The researchers conducted a retrospective look at all available evidence and found that the “regret rate” for gender-affirming surgery is less than 1%. “This rate of surgical regret among (transgender and gender diverse) patients appears to be substantially lower than rates of surgical regret following similar procedures among the broader population, including cisgender individuals,” the report summary said, in part.

The Los Angeles Blade reports about garden variety, public, bigoted Republican hate of, and attacks on, LGBQT people:

GOP in audio: “Endgame” is to ban trans care “for everyone”

In audio released Friday evening, GOP lawmakers from Ohio and Michigan revealed the “endgame” is to ban transgender care “for everyone”

Towards the end of the Twitter Space [post], the conversation shifts to a plan for the “endgame,” where Republican legislators and anti-trans activist Prisha Mosley discuss various plans aimed at “banning this for everyone,” referring to gender-affirming care.

LGBQT Nation reports about radical authoritarian Republican support for hate:

Angry Republicans are going to protest against a “Hate has no 

home here” flag in a classroom

A Republican organization in Florida is demanding a school teacher take down a flag that says, “Hate has no home here.”

“The issue at hand is that the district needs to get out of having any type of political influence on our children,” said Lee County Republican Executive Committee chair Michael Thompson as his group announced that they would be protesting an upcoming Lee County School Board meeting.

Example of what Republicans call

illegal political influencing 

Does that include images of Jesus, the cross and 

the 10 Commandments?

Does that include pictures of 

non-White people or the Christian flag?

Christian flag

What about the American flag,

also political?

The confederate flag?

This one?

"My Fellow Palestinians: It's Time to Get Rid of Our Leaders and Accept Israel's Offers for Peace"

The history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regarding a two-state solution reveals a harsh reality: Israel has consistently made genuine efforts toward peace, only to be met with rejection, treachery, and blood-curdling violence by the Palestinian side. This pattern of refusal, particularly epitomized by groups like Hamas, has been the real obstacle to peace.

It's time to acknowledge this truth bluntly. Those who claim to desire peace must confront and challenge the rejectionist elements within Palestinian society, including Hamas. We need to get rid of the Palestinian establishment who have ruled for 15 years without actually representing the Palestinian people. Only then can we hope to forge a path toward a peaceful, two-state future.

Eid is a Palestinian human rights activist. He lives in the West Bank.

https://www.newsweek.com/my-fellow-palestinians-its-time-get-rid-our-leaders-accept-israels-offers-peace-opinion-1864654

Some people never/can't learn...

Take DJT.  He doesn’t learn from his mistakes.  He wants revenge (“I am your retribution.  I am your retribution.”) for anything (any mistakes) he’s made or that went wrong in his life.

The perfect example is the latest E. Jean Carroll case.  That repeated mistake will cost him over $83 million.  Will he learn from that mistake and not do it again?  Or will there be a third Carroll “mistake?”  Talk about the jury’s decision in the latest E. Jean Carroll trial.  

How about you? Do you learn from your mistakes, or do you get revenge for your mistakes?  How do you deal with mistakes you’ve made in your life?