Pro-choice PAC Emily’s List will cease support for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema over voting rights: ‘She will find herself standing alone in the next election’

Insider

Pro-choice PAC Emily’s List will cease support for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema over voting rights: ‘She will find herself standing alone in the next election’

Erin Snodgrass January 18, 2022

Sen. Kyrsten Sinema
Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
  • A prominent pro-choice political action committee said it will stop supporting Sen. Kyrsten Sinema.
  • Emily’s Choice issued a statement slamming the senator for blocking voting rights legislation.
  • The group warned that Sinema will “find herself standing alone” in her next election.

One of the largest pro-woman, pro-choice PACS in the country has pulled its support for Sen. Kyrsten Sinema over the Arizona lawmaker’s refusal to support changes to the filibuster that would allow Democrats to pass voting rights legislation.

The president of Emily’s List, a political action committee focused on electing Democratic pro-choice women, announced Tuesday the organization plans to no longer support Sinema in future elections.

“Right now, Sen. Sinema’s decision to reject the voice of allies, partners, and constituents who believe the importance of voting rights outweighs that of an arcane process means she will find herself standing alone in the next election,” Laphonza Butler wrote in a statement.

The announcement comes days after Sinema effectively killed President Joe Biden’s push to pass legislation that would protect voting rights across the country. Doing so would have required every single Democrat in the 50-50 Senate to vote in favor of overhauling the filibuster, but Sinema and Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia – two moderate Democrats who have long been opposed to gutting the Senate rule – reaffirmed their resistance last week.

“While I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country,” Sinema said in a Thursday floor speech.

In Tuesday’s statement from Emily’s List, Butler said the group contributed to Sinema’s 2018 campaign but has not funded her since she was elected. The organization added that it has lobbied Sinema to support voting rights legislation in the Senate ahead of the impending 2022 elections.

“So far those concerns have not been addressed,” Butler wrote.

The organization said the country has reached an inflection point in the fight for both voting rights and reproductive freedom and emphasized the necessity of “free and fair elections” in their push to elect pro-choice Democrat women.

“So, we want to make it clear: If Sen. Sinema can not support a path forward for the passage of this legislation, we believe she undermines the foundations of our democracy, her own path to victory and also the mission of Emily’s List, and we will be unable to endorse her moving forward,” Butler wrote.

A spokesperson for Sinema did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.

In the aftermath of her Thursday floor speech, Sinema has faced an onslaught of criticism from progressives and voting rights activists, including Martin Luther King Jr.’s family, who called on the Arizona lawmaker to “ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way” of voting rights.

Her critics are fundraising off her speech and looking for a challenger to primary her in 2024, with Arizona Democrat Rep. Ruben Gallego, emerging as a favorite.

Ron DeSantis Opens Antibody Centers That Are Useless Against Omicron

Daily Beast

Ron DeSantis Opens Antibody Centers That Are Useless Against Omicron

Opinion by Michael Daly – January 18, 2022

If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis were a responsible leader dedicated to the well-being of his constituents, he would have made clear that the Regeneron monoclonal antibody being administered at his five new treatment sites is all but useless in the current COVID-19 surge.

But DeSantis is DeSantis and therefore his own top priority. He is happy to offer false hope in the middle of a pandemic—as his state breaks infection records week after week—if he believes it is to his political advantage.

Last month, DeSantis held a press conference outside Ocala Medical Center with a sign reading “Early Treatment Saves Lives” and touted monoclonal antibodies as the answer to COVID crisis. His surgeon general, Joe Ladapo, described vaccines, masks, and testing as a “trifecta” of “lunacy.”

Omicron had already begun to spread in Florida and elsewhere, so quickly that it was soon responsible for the overwhelming majority of new cases. The federal government stopped distributing two of the three mjaor monoclonal antibody treatments—Regeneron and bamlanivimab—on the grounds they were ineffective against the new variants. The third treatment, sotrovimab, remains in such short supply it is reserved for only the most vulnerable people.

DeSantis accused the Biden administration of falling victim to “hysteria.” Lapado made public a letter he wrote to Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra saying, “The federal government is is actively preventing the effective distribution of antibody treatments in the U.S.” Never mind that it was because the treatments themselves are ineffective.© Provided by The Daily BeastRon DeSantis has been pushing Regeneron instead of masks and vaccines. Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty

On Jan. 3, DeSantis tweeted a video of himself standing with the “Early Treatment Saves Lives” sign outside at Broward Health.

“Instead of keeping a stranglehold on monoclonal antibodies, the federal government must release its stockpiles to states who want them and allow states to purchase these medications directly,” he said.

On Jan. 4, he posted a video of himself with the well-traveled sign in Jacksonville.

“Governor DeSantis is in Jacksonville ready to open a monoclonal antibody treatment site IF the federal government would provide the supply Florida needs,” he declared.

On Jan. 5, he insisted, “With Omicron, there’s not enough evidence to say that Regeneron and the bamlanivimab work. There’s not enough evidence to say if it’s going to be as effective or more against Delta, we just don’t know.”

In fact, there was already considerable evidence to the contrary. Prominent medical experts were reaching a consensus that Regeneron and bamlanivimab do not work against Omicron.

“It’s equivalent to giving them a placebo,” Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo, director of Infectious Disease at University of Alabama Medicine, told the Daily Beast. “We just assume there’s not going to be any benefit to using them.”

But on Jan. 7, the Biden administration caved. DeSantis reported that Florida had secured 15,000 doses of Regeneron. He announced that they would be distributed at five new sites.

“Free Monoclonal Antibody Treatment,” signs outside read.

By all reports, there was a big turnout. A registered nurse at the Lake Worth location told a TV reporter, “We can slow down the transmission of the virus from getting into the cells if you do it sooner.”

If it was the Delta variant, sure. But with Omicron this was just the waste of a nurse when there is a critical shortage of them in hospitals statewide. That gives rise to the issue of squandering precious resources while the health care system nationwide is overused and exhausted.

“To me, it’s diversion at best,” Marrazzo said.

Another important question is whether the people who arrive are being given false hope to further the illusion that DeSantis is addressing the pandemic in a way that is acceptable to his anti-vax, anti-mask base.

DeSantis himself may hope the monoclonal sham will help people forget that he allowed a million at-home kits to expire while people were waiting hours in line to get tested. He initially denied that such a stockpile existed and was joined by Ladapo in scoffing at people who clamored to get tested.

When the truth came out, DeSantis and Ladapo suddenly began talking about getting the tests to people in nursing homes. And of course he continued his mantra of monoclonal, monoclonal, monoclonal.

One research scientist, Tom Hladish of the Emerging Pathogens Institute at the University of Florida, suggested to The Daily Beast that reliance on monoclonal antibodies would be poor public health policy even if they work against Omicron.

One shortcoming is what he termed “a volume problem.”

“It’s not like you can get a jab in the shoulder and five minutes later they’ll be doing the next one,” he said.

Another hitch is that monoclonal antibodies do considerably less than vaccines to reduce the spread.

“When people are receiving monoclonal antibodies, they’re already symptomatic,” he noted. “And so they’ve already done most of their transmitting.”

He said the resulting reduction in the spread of the virus is only linear, whereas with vaccines it is exponential.

“The vast majority of epidemiologists feel that the best intervention we have right now is vaccines,” he said. “And it’s because vaccines, even against Omicron…they still likely reduce transmission somewhat. They make it somewhat less likely that you’ll get infected. You tend to be infected for a shorter period of time. And so you still see a greater than linear benefit as you vaccinate more and more people.”

A leader such as the people of Florida deserve would tell anybody who shows up at those five new sites to go get vaccinated. And, as even former President Trump is saying, to be sure to get the booster.

DeSantis will still not say whether or not he got the booster. But the greater shame is his failure to tell the truth about the five new placebo centers.

Chinese have most trust in institutions, Americans near bottom, and Russians dead last, new survey shows

The Week

Chinese have most trust in institutions, Americans near bottom, and Russians dead last, new survey shows

Grayson Quay, Weekend editor January 18, 2022

U.S. Capitol
U.S. Capitol Drew Angerer/Getty Images

A new survey suggests people living under authoritarian regimes increasingly trust their major institutions more than citizens of democratic countries trust theirs, Axios reported Tuesday.

According to the 2022 Edelman Trust Barometer, which surveyed 35,000 respondents across 28 countries, trust in NGOs, business, government, and the media fell most sharply in Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, South Korea, and the United States since 2021.

China and the United Arab Emirates saw the biggest gains. Average trust in institutions stood at 83 and 76 in the two nations, up 11 and nine points, respectively, from last year. Saudi Arabian institutions also improved on an already high score, with trust rising from 69 in 2021 to 72 in 2022

South Korean institutions scored a 42 in 2022. Institutions in the U.S. did only one point better.

Developed democracies, especially Western democracies, occupied most of the bottom two-thirds of the trust index rankings, but one authoritarian regime — Russia — finished dead last, with an average trust rating of only 32.

Those surveyed were asked, for each institution, to indicate on a nine-point scale “how much you trust that institution to do what is right.”

The survey spanned 35,000 respondents across 28 countries via online interviews held between November 1-24, 2021. The margin of error is 2.9 percentage points.

Dozens of former Trump officials including John Kelly and Stephanie Grisham are formulating plans to thwart their former boss in 2022 and 2024

Business Insider

Dozens of former Trump officials including John Kelly and Stephanie Grisham are formulating plans to thwart their former boss in 2022 and 2024

Cheryl Teh January 18, 2022

donald trump touching head
President Donald Trump at the National Prayer Breakfast at a hotel in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2018.MANDEL NGAN/AFP via Getty Images
  • Dozens of former Trump staffers had a conference call to figure out how to thwart him, CNN reports.
  • The call was said to have included John Kelly, Anthony Scaramucci, and Alyssa Farah Griffin.
  • Stephanie Grisham had said the goal was to “do some things to try and stop” the ex-president.

About three dozen former US officials who served under President Donald Trump jumped on a conference call this week to figure out how to thwart Trump’s efforts in the 2022 and 2024 elections, according to CNN.

Jake Tapper reported on the call, which was said to have taken place last Monday and involved high-profile Trump officials including John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff. Also on the call, per CNN, were the former White House staffers Alyssa Farah Griffin and Anthony Scaramucci, the former Department of Homeland Security official Elizabeth Neumann, and Chris Krebs, the former director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.

CNN noted that the people associated with the call were known critics of Trump. Kelly has made several statements about Trump, saying the former president “doesn’t know any history at all, even some of the basics on the US.” He also said in August 2020 that informing Trump that the things he planned to do were illegal was like “French kissing a chainsaw.”

Scaramucci, who held the role of White House communications director for less than two weeks, has broken with Trump and repeatedly feuded with the former president. Griffin, a former spokeswoman for Vice President Mike Pence who also served as Trump’s communications director, was ridiculed by the president, who called her a “clown.” She also commented in January that the Republican Party was “morally in disrepair” because of the GOP’s failure to acknowledge the January 6 Capitol riot was a “big deal.”

According to Tapper, Miles Taylor, a Trump official turned prominent Trump critic, helped lead the call and told CNN the participants were “overflowing with ideas” on how to stop Trump. Ideas, according to Tapper, included “shining a light” on the former president’s financial backers and figuring out how to defeat Trump-endorsed candidates running in 2022 and 2024.

“We all agreed passionately that letters and statements don’t mean anything,” Taylor told CNN. “The two operative words are ‘electoral effects.’ How can we have tangible electoral effects against the extremist candidates that have been endorsed by Trump?”

Taylor is best known for anonymously writing a scathing 2018 New York Times op-ed article titled “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration.”

The Trump-era White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham was said to have missed the call because of a COVID-19 infection but told CNN she was still engaged with the group. Grisham signaled the group’s plans earlier this month, saying on January 6 that the group planned to meet to talk about how they could “formally do some things to try and stop” Trump.

The group — which has not released its name or published a list of members — is among several GOP-linked organizations that have expressed opposition to Trump. In October, a Republican group called Republicans for Voting Rights put up several billboards across the US, including in Times Square, to remind the former president that he lost the 2020 election. The Lincoln Project, founded by current and former Republicans, also worked during the 2020 election to prevent Trump’s reelection.

Trump has not yet announced a 2024 presidential run and said in November that he would “probably” wait until after the 2022 midterm elections to confirm his decision on a 2024 presidential bid.

We Have Breached the Planetary Boundary for Plastics and Other Chemical Pollutants, Scientists Say

EcoWatch – Science

We Have Breached the Planetary Boundary for Plastics and Other Chemical Pollutants, Scientists Say

Olivia Rosane January 18, 2022

Plastic pollution on a Panama beach.

Plastic pollution on a Panama beach. Photo credit: LUIS ACOSTA / AFP via Getty Images

Humanity is currently releasing more chemical and plastic pollution into the environment than Earth can support.

That’s the conclusion of a first-of-its-kind study published in Environmental Science and Technology Tuesday, which argues that the planetary boundary for novel entities has been exceeded by human activity. The researchers defined “novel entities” as manufactured chemicals that do not appear naturally in large quantities and have the potential to disrupt Earth’s systems. 

“There has been a 50-fold increase in the production of chemicals since 1950. This is projected to triple again by 2050,” study co-author Patricia Villarubia-Gómez from the Stockholm Resilience Centre(SRC) at Stockholm University said in a press release emailed to EcoWatch. “The pace that societies are producing and releasing new chemicals and other novel entities into the environment is not consistent with staying within a safe operating space for humanity.”

In 2009, a team of researchers identified nine planetary boundaries that have led to a stable Earth for the last 10,000 years. These include greenhouse gas emissions, the ozone layer, forests, freshwater and biodiversity. The new research builds on this foundation by quantifying the planetary boundary for novel entities. 

The researchers concluded that the boundary had been breached because production and release of plastics and other chemicals now surpasses the ability of governments to assess and monitor these pollutants.

“For a long time, people have known that chemical pollution is a bad thing,” study co-author Dr. Sarah Cornell of the SRC told The Guardian. “But they haven’t been thinking about it at the global level. This work brings chemical pollution, especially plastics, into the story of how people are changing the planet.”

Scientists have previously concluded that humanity has exceeded the planetary boundaries for global heating, biodiversity loss, habitat loss and nitrogen and phosphorous pollution. 

The researchers noted that there are around 350,000 different types of manufactured chemicals on the global market, with almost 70,000 introduced in the last decade. Among them are plastics, pesticides, industrial chemicals and pharmaceutical products. 

Plastics are especially concerning, the study authors said. They now weigh more than double the mass of living animals and around 80 percent of all the plastics ever produced persist in the environment instead of being properly recycled. Further, plastics are made up of more than 10,000 other chemicals that can enter the environment in new combinations when they degrade. 

In order to address the risk posed by plastics and other chemical pollutants, the study authors argued that it is important to curb their production and release into the environment. 

“We need to be working towards implementing a fixed cap on chemical production and release,” study co-author Bethanie Carney Almroth from the University of Gothenburg said in the press release. 

They also supported calls for a circular economy.

“That means changing materials and products so they can be reused not wasted, designing chemicals and products for recycling, and much better screening of chemicals for their safety and sustainability along their whole impact pathway in the Earth system,” Villarubia Gómez said in the press release. 

2022 Planetary Boundaries Novel Entities · Owen Gaffney

Op-Ed: Arizonans need Kyrsten Sinema to stand up for their voting rights

Los Angeles Times

Op-Ed: Arizonans need Kyrsten Sinema to stand up for their voting rights

Sonja Diaz January 17, 2022

In this image from Senate Television, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, Jan. 13, 2022. President Joe Biden is set to meet privately with Senate Democrats at the Capitol, a visit intended to deliver a jolt to the party's long-stalled voting and elections legislation. Before he arrived Sinema blunted the bill's chances further, declaring she could not support a "short sighted" rules change to get past a Republican blockade. (Senate Television via AP)
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) speaks on the floor of the U.S. Senate on Thursday, saying she would not support a change in the Senate’s filibuster rule. (Associated Press)

A little over a year ago, a violent insurrection, fueled by disinformation and hate, threatened to destroy our fragile democracy. Soon, our lawmakers may finish what the insurrectionists began if they cannot find a way forward on common-sense federal voting rights legislation.

The 2020 census made clear that America is at a demographic tipping point, and standing in the way of securing our democracy is a dysfunctional Senate that has failed to effectively govern for a generation. Even as we celebrate Martin Luther King Jr. — who was hated, brutalized and assassinated for his efforts to expand the vote — senators are faced with a critical decision that will determine the future of America and our standing as a representative democracy.

Republican senators are now set to use the filibuster to block the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would protect voting rights for all Americans. Yet two Democrats, Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, along with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, are refusing to put us on the road to progress by changing Senate rules to pass the legislation.

Since the Supreme Court’s 2013 Shelby County vs. Holder decision, which gutted a core provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, an avalanche of voter suppression tactics from closing polling places to purging voter rolls to passing restrictive voter ID laws have been employed across the country. In the face of unprecedented voter turnout amid a global pandemic, 49 state legislatures introduced 440 pieces of legislation in 2021 that sought to limit access to the ballot box. This year isn’t shaping up to be much better, with 152 billed carried over into 2022 legislative sessions and 72 bills pre-filed last month.

When it comes to anti-voter legislation, Arizona takes the cake for most creative. State lawmakers have passed bills — fueled by the big lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen — that discourage voting through various tactics, including expanding voter roll purges and making it harder for voters to fix a mail-in ballot. Some of their most audacious ideas were not signed into law last year, like Arizona House Bill 2720, which sought to allow lawmakers to overrule the state’s popular election results and choose its own slate of presidential electors, and House Bill 2792, which would have made it a felony for an election official to send a voter an early ballot unless that voter requested it.

The partisan nature of these efforts coupled with the increasing importance of voters of color, who lean Democrat, cannot be understated. But Sinema — who represents a state with a growing population of Latinos that helped to elect her in 2018 and to flip Arizona blue in 2020 — is refusing to take action that would not only support her reelection but would strengthen our democracy, starting with her home state.

Sinema said that her refusal to end the filibuster, even for the voting rights legislation, is in the name of democracy and an effort to reduce division. The reality is that her unwillingness to unite with her own party is holding back voting rights and election integrity practices that voters broadly support. Unfortunately, her inaction allows the will of a minority of the population to have an outsized influence on who can participate in our democracy.

We are facing an all-out assault on free and fair elections that coincides with the growth and consequence of voters of color. Communities that have historically been disenfranchised by poll taxes, vote dilution and voter identification laws are being left behind in the face of intersecting crises, including COVID-19, income inequality and climate change.

The 2020 census, flawed as it was, showed that these communities are the future of not only Arizona, but of all of America. The census found that while the country’s white population is declining, Latinos and Asian Americans — both youthful populations — are growing, driving a significant shift in the under-18 population. America’s future prosperity depends upon the very populations that far too many lawmakers are trying to cut out of our democracy. Sinema has a role to play in giving equal political voice to all Americans, not a minority of lawmakers who defy their constituents and subvert the U.S. Constitution.

Nearly 60 years ago, members of Congress put the will of the people first and answered a call to take courageous action to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. They did so in a nation at a crossroads with race, war and inequality. Congress went on to reauthorize that law five times, the last time in 2006. Each time, it acted to expand access to the ballot and take a step to fortify our democracy. Now, Sinema faces the same choice. She, too, has the power to take decisive action that puts Arizonians and the American people first. The question is, will she act?

Sonja Diaz is a civil rights attorney and the founding director of the UCLA Latino Policy and Politics Initiative.

Martin Luther King Jr.’s family calls on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to ‘ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way’ of voting rights

Business Insider

Martin Luther King Jr.’s family calls on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to ‘ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way’ of voting rights

Connor Perrett January 15, 2022

Kyrsten Sinema
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., arrives for a Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee markup in Dirksen Building on Wednesday, October 6, 2021.Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call Inc. via Getty Images
  • Relatives of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. marched Saturday in Arizona.
  • They marched in support of expanding voting rights, a priority of Democrats.
  • Martin Luther King III called on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema “to urgently pass federal voting rights legislation.”

Family members of the civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr.’s organized in Phoenix, Arizona, on Saturday to call on Sen. Kyrsten Sinema to support efforts to expand voting rights.

Martin Luther King III, the late civil rights leader’s eldest son, was joined Saturday by his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and by his daughter, Yolanda Renee King. Several prominent lawmakers were also in attendance, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, and Rep. Joyce Beatty, an Ohio Democrat who serves as the chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, according to a press release from Deliver for Voting Rights.

“Arizona, in one sense, is near ground zero, I say near because unfortunately, there are 19 states that have passed regressive laws, including our own state of Georgia,” King III told MSNBC’s Vaughn Hillyard on Saturday ahead of the rally.

He added: “And we believe that as it relates to getting this, these bills passed, that Senator Sinema has been one of the challenges. And so it made sense to come to Arizona. Some regressive laws, we feel, have been put in place that make it harder for people to vote.”

Ahead of the march Saturday, King III in a press release said the Saturday event was organized “to call on Senator Sinema to urgently pass federal voting rights legislation and ensure that the Jim Crow filibuster does not stand in the way,” The Hill reported.

After speeches, the King family led a march through the city of Phoenix, CNN journalist Sara Boxer reported on Twitter.

As Insider previously reported, Sinema, a Democrat representing Arizona, on Thursday took to the Senate floor reaffirmed her support for her support of the 60-vote threshold and her opposition to making changes to the Senate rules on a party-line basis.

Democrats, including President Joe Biden, have called for the elimination of the filibuster to allow Democrats, who hold a narrow majority in the Senate, to pass key legislative priorities — like the expansion of voting rights — without interference from members of the GOP.

House Democrats this week passed a pair of bills to advance voting rights. One of the bills is a sweeping voting-rights and democracy-reform bill while the other aims to refortify parts of the Voting Rights Act that were struck down or weakened by federal courts, Insider previously reported.

“These bills help treat the symptoms of the disease, but they do not fully address the disease itself,” Sinema said on Thursday. “And while I continue to support these bills, I will not support separate actions that worsen the underlying disease of division infecting our country. The debate over the Senate’s 60-vote threshold shines a light on our broader challenges.”

King III earlier this week said history would remember Sinema “unkindly,” Insider previously reported.

“While Sen. Sinema remains stubborn in her ‘optimism,’ Black and Brown Americans are losing their right to vote,” said Martin Luther King III in a statement. “She’s siding with the legacy of Bull Connor and George Wallace instead of the legacy of my father and all those who fought to make real our democracy.”

MSNBC guest: Manchin and Sinema ‘are the white people Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about’.

Raw Story

MSNBC guest: Manchin and Sinema ‘are the white people Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about’.

David Edwards January 17, 2022 

MSNBC guest: Manchin and Sinema 'are the white people Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about'

Manchin and Sinema finally feel the heat as Democrats battle over Biden’s agenda

Elie Mystal, a justice correspondent for The Nation, asserted over the weekend that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) “are the white people that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about.”

During a Sunday interview on MSNBC, Mystal reflected on Democrats’ failure to pass voting rights legislation.

“People like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, these are the white people that Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about,” Mystal explained. “These are the white liberals who have no sense of urgency, commitment or integrity when it comes to the progress of justice in the country. And that’s just a fact.”

“I don’t know if they can live with themselves with that, but that is the reality,” he added.

Mystal also called Supreme Court Justice John Roberts the “chief architect of this assault on voting rights” because he helped to strike down parts of the Voting Rights Act.

“It is he that has been an enemy of voting rights and racial equality from his very first job out of law school, which was to oppose the 1982 amendments to the Voting Rights Act,” he observed. “This has all been done by Federal Society conservatives that have been put on the Supreme Court.”

Wake Up America! Norwegian killer begins hearing with Nazi salute

Reuters

Norwegian killer begins hearing with Nazi salute

January 18, 2022

Breivik, a far-right extremist, killed 77 people in Norway’s worst peacetime atrocity in July 2011. He killed eight with a car bomb in Oslo and then gunned down 69, most of them teenagers, at a Labour Party youth camp.

With a shaven head and dressed in a dark suit, Breivik made a white supremacist sign with his fingers before raising his right arm in a Nazi salute to signal his far-right ideology as he entered the court.

He also carried signs, printed in English, including one that said “Stop your genocide against our white nations” and “Nazi-Civil-War”.

He was later told to stop displaying them as the prosecution presented its case.

“I don’t want to see anything of the kind when the prosecution speaks,” Judge Dag Bjoervik said.

Breivik shook his head several times as the prosecution made its case, which included a passage from the original 2012 verdict which said that even after serving for 21 years in prison the defendant would still be a very dangerous man.

Breivik will address the court later on Tuesday. His lawyer Oeystein Storrvik has said Breivik is intent on eventually securing his release.

Miami Florida will be under water within 10 years, so huckster trump plans on building 2,300 new homes at the struggling Doral resort.

Associated Press

Associated Press

Miami Florida will be under water within 10 years, so huckster

trump plans on building 2,300 new homes at the struggling Doral resort

Benard Condont. January 18, 2022

FILE – In this Nov. 20, 2019 file photo, the entrance to the Trump National Doral resort is shown in Doral, Fla. Donald Trump plans to build thousands of new luxury homes at his struggling Doral golf club in hopes of reviving the fortunes of the Miami-area property. The club is the biggest revenue generator in his golf business, but has suffered from a one-two punch of a divisive presidency that led groups to cancel events followed by coronavirus shutdowns. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee, file)

NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump plans to build 2,300 luxury homes at his Doral golf resort in the Miami area, part of a flurry of recent moves to revive a family business suffering from the one-two punch of a divisive presidency and coronavirus shutdowns.

In a news release Monday, the 45th president called the plans for his sprawling Trump National Doral resort “perhaps the most exciting development in the country” but was short on details such as the size of the homes and what they may cost. The release said the plans called for the construction of retail and commercial space as well.

The Doral, the biggest revenue generator among Trump’s 17 golf properties, has been a drain on the business in recent years.

In 2019, Trump announced plans to hold the global meeting of Group of Seven leaders at the resort, a potential big money maker for hosts. But he had to cancel after a bipartisan outcry over self-dealing and a possible violation of a constitutional ban on presidents receiving gifts or payments from foreign leaders.

The resort had hoped to regain ground after the PGA and other organizations pulled events there, but finances have only gotten worse since. Revenue plunged more than by $33 million over the next two years, down more than 40%, according to financial statements filed with a federal government ethics office. As of last year, the Trump company had $125 million borrowed on the property.

The Trump Organization did not reply to requests for comment.

The press release had an official U.S. government seal with an American eagle at top, an unusual use given the release was promoting a private business venture. Former presidents can use the seal for matters involving their former office, but are not allowed to profit from it. Under federal law, the seal can only be used for official government business.

The Trump Organization’s plans for Doral are part of a string of recent business moves after months of relative quiet.

In September, several news outlets reported that the company had struck a preliminary deal to sell the lease underlying its Washington, D.C., hotel to Miami-based CGI Merchant Group for $375 million, much more than many hotel experts had expected for the money-losing property.

In October, Trump announced a new rival to Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms that had banned him after his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 last year. The business said it is will give voice to others who’ve been taken off social media sites as part of “cancel culture.” Last month, it said it had raised $1 billion from unnamed investors and plans to launch the messaging app called Truth Social early this year.