<A spokesperson for Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes told Axios that their office recently received two subpoenas - one during the previous administration and another in the current - which seek information regarding lawsuits filed by former President Trump and the Arizona Republican Party.

Although Joe Biden won the state in the 2020 presidential election with over 10,000 votes [sic], the Trump campaign and Republican allies filed multiple lawsuits claiming that voter fraud and errors caused Trump to lose. All the cases have since been either dismissed or abandoned.

Several Arizona officials have come forward with claims that the Trump campaign and attorneys put pressure on them in an attempt to subvert the results.

Over the weekend, a new report came out alleging Trump called Arizona's governor at the time Doug Ducey after election results were finalized. It claimed Trump demanded Ducey look into unfounded claims of election fraud in the state with the intention of challenging the outcome.

Surprisingly, Smith still has yet to subpoena Ducey.

Smith, who is also leading the investigation into Trump's mishandling of classified documents, may decide to indict the former President yet again in coming months.>

<Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) triggered mockery earlier this week with a Fourth of July Christian Nationalist post that falsely attributed a quote from an anti-Semitic, white nationalist magazine to founding father Patrick Henry.

“It cannot be emphasized too strongly or too often that this great nation was founded, not by religionists, but by Christians; not on religions, but on the Gospel of Jesus Christ,” said the fake quote posted to Twitter by Hawley. “For this very reason, peoples of other faiths have been afforded asylum, prosperity, and freedom of worship here.”

Princeton historian Kevin Kruse followed up with a thorough takedown of Hawley's claim.

"While Hawley’s proven to be especially inept at this game, this is a familiar routine by now," wrote Kruse on his personal Substack. "Someone linked to the Religious Right claims that America really is, or should be, a 'Christian nation' and we’re off on a thrilling game of Quote/Counterquote as conservatives and liberals go on a scavenger hunt looking for lines from letters and speeches to justify their own position on the role of religion in American government. The wide range of opinions trotted out in these debates never leads to any consensus, which, of course, is why we play this dumb game over and over again."

In reality, several founding fathers at all ends of the spectrum, from John Adams in the Treaty of Tripoli to Thomas Jefferson in the letter to the Danbury Baptists, made clear the laws of the country were not based on Christian theocracy and the law was entirely secular — but you don't even have to look at them, Kruse said.

"Even before we get to the Bill of Rights, there is in the main body of the Constitution a ban on any and all religious tests for office holders. Article VI, Clause 3 states quite clearly that 'no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.' The Founders were extremely clear on this point and quite united, too, for they had learned through hard experience that state meddling in religion and religious influence in government could only lead to crises," wrote Kruse. "And then, of course, in the First Amendment, we get the other two explicit references to religion, which say quite clearly that the federal government would not establish any kind of state religion and, moreover, that it wouldn’t do anything to interfere with the choice of individual citizens to worship or not worship as they saw fit."

"For the last two days, Senator Josh Hawley has been busy stepping on one rake after another, trying to find some quotation from the founding generation that supports a Christian nationalist vision of America," wrote Kruse, concluding that there is no need to parse this or that quote to prove theocrats like Hawley wrong. "Show them the Constitution," he said.>

<Special counsel Jack Smith "made a smart strategic play" by requesting a December trial date for Donald Trump in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, according to a legal expert.

The government has 70 days from the date of arraignment to try the former president under the Speedy Trial Act, which provides for periods of "excludable time" and other delays that often benefit the defendant, but Trump's lawyers will likely seek even further delays to possibly push the case past next year's presidential election, wrote former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance on her Civil Discourse page on Substack.

"It’s a bit of a double-edged sword for Trump," Vance wrote. "He could agree to the December date, which he won’t do, at least not without the intention of asking for a continuance as that date gets closer. If Trump objects to a December trial and asks for a date after the first of the year, the government will undoubtedly demand a ruling that he cannot use rallies, campaign events, and primary dates as an excuse for further delay. Since it would be entirely reasonable, under the government’s proposed schedule, to try the case in December, if Trump asks for additional leeway and the Court grants it, there is no reason it shouldn’t come with conditions that ensure the people get their right to a speedy trial."

Prosecutors have argued in court filings that the case is neither unusual or complex because it involves only two defendants and does not present any novel questions of fact or law, so there's little reason for Trump to argue that the trial should be delayed into late 2024 or beyond.

"Unless Trump can identify one, it would be a red flag if the judge gave Trump preferential treatment, in terms of continuing to delay proceedings while campaigning, that other defendants can’t receive," Vance wrote.

The government has moved quickly to turn over non-classified evidence to defense attorneys as part of the discovery process, so federal judge Aileen Cannon would only invite scrutiny by agreeing to delay the trial.

"There’s no legitimate reason for an extended delay before trial and certainly no reason to delay it until after the 2024 election, more than a year off," Vance wrote. "A ruling to that effect from Judge Cannon would likely provoke renewed concern about her ability to handle the case in a fair and unbiased way. Expect Trump to make the motion, but a decision by the judge to move the trial that far off would be unprecedented.">

<Echoing the Republican Party's attempt to impeach former President Bill Clinton, which led to bolstering his popularity, the drive by current GOP House members to impeach President Joe Biden and various members of his cabinet may help to seal his re-election prospects.

According to the New Republic's Walter Shapiro, the obsession by what he called the "nutjob squad" in the House, which is obsessed with retaliating for Donald Trump's two impeachments, will likely solidify support for the current president and hurt Donald Trump who is already behind in the polls.

As Shapiro wrote, the divisions over going after Biden are already apparent among House Republicans, particularly those representing swing districts, to say nothing of the widely-publicized squabbles between Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) over whose impeachment motion should get priority. That type of turmoil is not helpful going into the 2024 election.

"Rather than quaking in terror, Democrats should be shouting, 'Bring it on.' Impeachment fever may be emotionally satisfying for the Republicans, but the frenzy comes with political costs for the GOP in 2024 and beyond," Shapiro wrote. "In general election terms, impeachment is a boon for the Democrats, which is why [House Speaker Kevin] McCarthy is desperately trying to slow walk these simpleminded drives for vengeance."

The New Republic columnist added that impeachments on "flimsy" charges will do nothing to bring back the independent voters the GOP badly needs for Trump, the presumptive nominee.

Add to that, impeachment proceedings against Biden would once again put the House Republicans under the spotlight after a series of hearings under Chairs James Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) that have flopped so far.

"Since taking over the House in January, the Republicans have provided scant evidence that they know how to run a compelling congressional hearing. So it strains credulity that the so-called evidentiary hearings leading up to a House vote on impeachment of Biden or a Cabinet member would sway anyone who doesn’t already live in the right-wing fever swamps," he wrote before adding, "When Elise Stefanik, who is supposed to be the telegenic voice of the House Republican leadership, routinely talks of 'the Biden crime family,' you get a sense of how over-the-top GOP rhetoric would be during an impeachment hearing (especially one led by Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, who is known for intemperate antics and a disdain for suit jackets).">

<White-collar criminal defense attorney Michael Bauchner shed light on the severity of the charges against former President Trump aide Waltine “Walt” Nauta. Nauta’s charges include obstruction and unlawful retention of defense information, which are linked to the alleged handling of classified documents at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

Michael Bauchner elaborated on the seriousness of the situation during a recent interview on Fox News. Bauchner explained, “The Espionage Act also just punishes people who retain documents that are confidential, that belong to the United States of America and haven’t returned them upon appropriate request.”

Bauchner noted that Trump’s defense—that he was entitled to these documents because they were either his own or that he declassified them—will be challenging to argue, especially given a tape recording in which Trump apparently states that he is aware some of these documents are classified.

Bauchner also hinted at the possibility of further charges being brought in New Jersey based on allegations of similar obstructive conduct by Trump in relation to documents maintained at his Bedminster golf course. “The saga is certainly not over as far as this is concerned,” he said.

There is speculation that more charges will be leveled against others involved in this case, given the number of people who seemingly had access to the documents during the alleged mishandling.

Generally speaking, prosecutors make cases by trying to cooperate lower level individuals going against the higher level individual… there probably are a number of people who have either already been charged or have been already been immunized…

In a recently unsealed affidavit in Florida, there is a reference to someone called “witness number five” moving boxes and documents. Mr. Bauchner says that there is an inference that this is Mr. Nada.

I understand that efforts were made by Jack Smith, the prosecutor, to have him cooperate in the investigation. Who knows what kind of deal he could have gotten. Perhaps he could have gotten immunized. Perhaps he could have gotten a non-prosecution agreement. But that apparently fell through.

Bauchner says that prosecutors made efforts to get Mr. Nauta to cooperate in exchange for leniency, but they were unsuccessful.

And this young man who is 40 years old, who seems like a stalwart trooper and a good guy in many ways,… now going to be wed to Mr. Trump’s hip. So whatever happens to Mr. Trump, I think will happen to Mr. Nauta.>

<First off, if you have access to a Netflix account, watch the short documentary Eldorado as soon as you possibly can. Then re-read this article. It will take on a new meaning.

President Biden and a large swath of the federal government have been legally barred — under threat of federal prison — from communicating with Twitter, Facebook, and other social media about lies and misinformation that “conservatives” may have posted on those sites.

At first blush, it seems like just another crackpot decision by a crackpot Qanon-style Trump-appointed judge who, in 2021, was the guy who cited multiple naked lies and myths about Covid vaccines to block mandatory vaccination of healthcare workers.

After all, Louisiana District Judge Terry Doughty had gone so far as to falsely claim, in that and two other 2021 cases, that vaccines “do not prevent transmission of the disease,” and that, “the virus has achieved an immune escape from COVID-19 vaccines.”

He even agreed with attacks on Dr. Anthony Fauci for saying that Hydroxychloroquine didn’t cure Covid, and cited Fauci’s assertions that the drug didn’t work in one of his legal opinions as evidence that the Biden administration was lying to the American people.

But this may also be the opening salvo in the disinformation wars that are most likely soon to be a big part of the 2024 presidential election.

Judge Doughty ruled — on the Fourth of July, by way of showing his patriotism — that when the Biden administration reached out to identify or highlight lies that social media sites may choose to take down or at least flag because they could be destructive to the public health or democracy itself, they were actually engaging in a broad “censorship” worthy of a George Orwell novel.

The Republican positions and lies posted on social media that Judge Doughty claims were censored included, he wrote in his ruling:

“[O]pposition to the validity of the 2020 election; opposition to President Biden’s policies; statements that the Hunter Biden laptop story was true; and opposition to policies of the government officials in power.”

Outraged and indignant, Doughty fumed that:

“All were suppressed. It is quite telling that each example or category of suppressed speech was conservative in nature. This targeted suppression of conservative ideas is a perfect example of viewpoint discrimination of political speech.”

And when I mentioned Orwell, I wasn’t reaching for an extreme metaphor to describe a federal judge with a lifetime appointment and clear connections to the GOP who’s gone off the deep end. In his summary enjoining the Biden administration from communicating with social media companies he lays it out in language worthy of a John Birch Society tract:

“[T]he evidence produced thus far depicts an almost dystopian scenario. … [T]he United States Government seems to have assumed a role similar to an Orwellian ‘Ministry of Truth.’”

So this isn’t just about Covid (although Covid mythologies, falsehoods, and rewrites of history play a large role in his 155 page ruling). The judge specifically ruled that a long list of federal officials, from President Biden on down to the FBI, other federal intelligence agencies, and the CDC:

“ARE HEREBY ENJOINED AND RESTRAINED from taking the following actions as to social-media companies:

“(1) meeting with social-media companies for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner the removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms

“(2) specifically flagging content or posts on social-media platforms and/or forwarding such to social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;

“(3) urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to change their guidelines for removing, deleting, suppressing, or reducing content containing protected free speech,

“(4) emailing, calling, sending letters, texting, or engaging in any communication of any kind with social-media companies urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner for removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content containing protected free speech;....>

<....“(5) collaborating, coordinating, partnering, switchboarding, and/or jointly working with the Election Integrity Partnership, the Virality Project, the Stanford Internet Observatory, or any like project or group for the purpose of urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner removal, deletion, suppression, or reduction of content posted with social-media companies containing protected free speech;

“(6) threatening, pressuring, or coercing social-media companies in any manner to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content of postings containing protected free speech; ...

“(7) taking any action such as urging, encouraging, pressuring, or inducing in any manner social-media companies to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce posted content protected by the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution;

“(8) following up with social-media companies to determine whether the social-media companies removed, deleted, suppressed, or reduced previous social-media postings containing protected free speech ;

“(9) requesting content reports from social-media companies detailing actions taken to remove, delete, suppress, or reduce content containing protected free speech; and

“(10 notifying social-media companies to Be on The Lookout (BOLO) for postings containing protected free speech.”

At no time, in any circumstances under either Trump or Biden, had any social media companies been ordered by our government to remove political or public health content or threatened with consequences if they failed to do so.

There was literally no “censorship” by the federal government, and there is no ongoing attempt to establish anything like it.

Most of Doughty’s arguments reach back to the days of Covid (much of it under Trump), when the CDC was desperately trying to get the help of social media companies to at least flag or otherwise get control over a flood of lies about Covid — many promoted by the Russian government and the GOP — that literally led to the unnecessary deaths of at least a half-million Americans.

In April of last year, the Biden administration announced the creation of what they called a “Disinformation Governance Board” to, as CNN noted, “coordinate department activities related to disinformation aimed at the US population and infrastructure.”

The board has no authority or police powers; it’s merely advisory. Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told Congress the board was primarily designed to flag “Russian cyber and election misinformation.” As he testified during the last week of April, 2022:

“We have just established a mis- and disinformation governance board in the Department of Homeland Security to more effectively combat this threat, not only to election security but to our homeland security.”

But Republican politicians, who regularly rely on lies about “open borders,” phony crime statistics, false depictions of the state of the economy, claims of “stolen elections,” fantasies about the danger of vaccines and efficacy of hydroxychloroquine, and wild claims of the “danger of trans people” and the “safety of guns,” went nuts.

Senator Josh Hawley (R-FistBump&Run), tweeted:

“Rather than police our border, Homeland Security has decided to make policing Americans’ speech its top priority.”

Reporting on Hawley and other Republican hysteria, The New York Times dryly wrote:

“It’s also worth noting that the Trump administration’s DHS undertook similar efforts; in 2018 it created the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which dealt extensively with the spread of misinformation online — including both foreign interference in elections and the domestic spread of coronavirus misinformation.”

So, nothing here, right? But, no.

Hawley, Jordan, Judge Doughty, and other Republicans who have gone berserk about the Biden administration’s efforts to flag online dis- and mal-information seem to be trying to block in advance any efforts by a Democratic administration to flag viral lies. But why?

They know their history.

Social media — particularly Facebook — was the key to putting Donald Trump into the White House in 2016, and both Vladimir Putin and Yevgeny Prigozhin knew it because they helped make it happen.

So too, now, do Republicans broadly know it. And it appears they’re just fine with it, so long as the lies help Republicans and hurt Democrats....>

<....Putin’s former employee Paul Manafort was running Trump’s 2016 campaign at the time the Mueller Report documented numerous contacts between that campaign and Russian agents. Dozens were indicted. Manafort was pardoned by Trump.

Manafort was passing along internal campaign information to Russian intelligence agents via a connected oligarch who’d previously paid him tens of millions of dollars to successfully install Putin’s puppet Viktor Yanukovych as president of Ukraine.

That campaign information from Manafort allowed Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency’s (I.R.A.) trolls and bots operating out of St. Petersburg to micro-target individual American voters, apparently mostly on Facebook, but broadly across all social media, with messages designed to discourage them from voting. (Yeah, that Prigozhin: the one running the private army in Ukraine.)

Mueller’s report and multiple journalistic investigations have noted that the most common message out of Russia then was directed at Black Americans and was, essentially, “both parties are the same so it’s a waste of time to vote.”

A report from Texas-based cybersecurity company New Knowledge, working with researchers at Columbia University, concluded, as reported by The New York Times:

“‘The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,’ the report says. Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.

“The report says that while ‘other distinct ethnic and religious groups were the focus of one or two Facebook Pages or Instagram accounts, the black community was targeted extensively by dozens.’ In some cases, Facebook ads were targeted at users who had shown interest in particular topics, including black history, the Black Panther Party and Malcolm X. The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers.

“The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us.”

And it appears to have worked in suppressing the Black vote in swing states.

A 2018 bipartisan Senate report found the Russian efforts consequential, as the BBC headline on that analysis summarizes:

“Russian trolls’ chief target was ‘black US voters’ in 2016.”...>

<....The news story summarizes:

“A Senate inquiry has concluded that a Russian fake-news campaign targeted ‘no single group... more than African-Americans.’ …

“Thousands of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and You Tube accounts created by the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency (IRA) were aimed at harming Hillary Clinton’s campaign and supporting Donald Trump, the committee concludes.

“More than 66% of Facebook adverts posted by the Russian troll farm contained a term related to race.

“African-American community voters were discouraged from voting, and from supporting Hillary Clinton.”

Between the information compiled by Oxford Analytica and the details passed along from the GOP to Prigozhin via Manafort, a mere margin of 43,000 votes across a handful of swing states —all mictotargeted by Russia — handed the electoral college to Trump, even though he lost the nationwide vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million ballots.

Now, it appears, Trump, Putin, and the GOP are going to try it again, this time with the help of a Trump-appointed federal judge who was the perfect patsy because he’d previously drunk the Qanon and GOP Kool-Aid on Covid, masks, horse de-wormer, and vaccines.

Will history repeat itself?

Will Judge Doughty succeed in preventing our intelligence agencies from even informing social media companies about massive viral lies, supported by Putin and amplified by click- and outrage-driven social media algorithms? If so, will that throw the election to the GOP?

Has this case just revealed the core kernel of the Republican Party’s main 2024 electoral strategy — to reinvent “truth” across multiple social media platforms and pound on it so hard that it becomes reality — with no possibility that the federal agencies with the legitimacy and expertise to debunk them can even speak out?

Are we about to see another massive campaign of highly targeted lies — amplified by foreign, malicious actors — designed to put Donald Trump back in the White House and Republicans in charge of Congress?

Will they again target Black Americans, or will this campaign be broader and even more insidious? Are we seeing its early foundation laid with GOP hate campaigns directed at the LGBTQ+ community?

Is Judge Doughty helping them set it up a year in advance?

As they used to say on TV, “Watch this space.”>

<Republicans who voted to impeach Texas attorney general Ken Paxton can expect primary challenges in an intra-party battle that mirrors the national GOP's dynamic around Donald Trump.

Paxton has been embroiled in criminal investigations and legal battles for nearly his entire tenure as attorney general, but he was finally impeached last month after asking the state to pay off his $3.3 million settlement in a whistleblower lawsuit. Hardline conservative factions are seeking retribution for the 60 GOP legislators who backed the move, reported the Washington Post.

“We have never seen the grass roots this mad!” posted Julie McCarty, CEO of the hard right True Texas Project, shortly after the vote. "They are being eviscerated by you … as they should be!”

State Rep. Terry Wilson has heard plenty from those angry GOP voters, hundreds of whom have called his office in Austin or confronted him directly at public events, and some of them tied their support for Paxton to the attorney general's efforts to overturn the former president's 2020 election loss to President Joe Biden.

“Not everybody was a supporter of Paxton, we were questioning the process,” said Cathy Jaster, a precinct chair in Williamson County. “He stood up to the illegal overthrow of our government by Biden.We wanted Attorney General Paxton to have a fair shake.”

Wilson reminded his constituents that Paxton would stand trial in the state Senate, where he would be able to testify and present his own witnesses and evidence in his defense, but Democrats are hopeful the GOP rift over impeachment will give them an advantage in next year's elections.

“The Republican Party is in a lot of disarray," said Joel Montfort, a Democratic consultant based in North Texas. "You’ve got the extreme wing of it working feverishly to try to take it over and they’ve had a lot of success to the frustration of us Democrats ... There is definitely an opportunity for Texas Democrats to benefit from what the GOP is doing to itself. They are eating themselves alive.”>

<A conservative tax group is turning up the heat on a handful of Senate Republicans with a multimillion-dollar campaign targeting their support for reforming a key part of the drug pricing system, ahead of an expected health care package vote this month.

The Council for Citizens Against Government Waste is setting its sights on Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., along with Republican senators Katie Britt of Alabama, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, Mike Braun of Indiana and Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi, Fox News Digital has learned, for speaking out against Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs).

"The Bernie Sanders-led effort to expand government control over our healthcare system should be anathema to every American and fiscal conservative in Congress.," said CCAGW President Tom Schatz. "CCAGW has fought for decades to prevent a government takeover of the healthcare system and is launching this latest multifaceted effort to prevent the enactment of any legislation that would move the country closer to socialized medicine."

The fiscal watchdog’s campaign will consist of a combination of grassroots activism, online messaging and other forms of media outreach.

PBMs have come under bipartisan scrutiny recently as lawmakers face more pressure to help stymie the rising price of prescription drugs and other medicines. PBMs like CVS Caremark act as a middleman between pharmaceutical manufacturers and insurance companies to negotiate drug costs for millions of Americans.

There’s little public insight into their practices or standards. It’s prompted Democrats like Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-VT, a public healthcare advocate and chairman of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, to seek to impose more regulatory barriers on PBMs’ work.

But some conservative groups like CCAGW believe that restricting PBMs’ work would put an undue burden on millions of patients who rely on their services, as well as U.S. taxpayers who would have to foot the bill for the federal government’s involvement. CCAGW is the lobbying arm of the nonprofit Citizens Against Government Waste, which has received funds from groups like the Bradley Foundation, ExxonMobil and Johnson & Johnson in recent years, charity transparency reports show.

A 30-second ad shared with Fox News Digital shows the group urging voters to dissuade their GOP senators from supporting PBM reform by linking them directly to Sanders.

"Bernie Sanders is at it again, this time with a radical plan to increase government control of your pharmacy benefits. Even worse, some Republicans are supporting it," a voiceover says.

"Sanders’ socialist plan is not just an attack on your health benefits. It’s his next step toward government-run health care, shattering your pharmacy benefits, increasing drug costs and threatening private health insurance. Call [Alabama Republican Sen.] Katie Britt, tell her to oppose Bernie's radical health care takeover."

Sanders’ bill would impose price transparency measures on PBMs as well as ban tactics that he argues unfairly hike up drug prices. PBM supporters claim that this would hinder them in negotiating the kinds of discounts these middlemen are currently able to get.

The legislation is part of a wider health package the Senate is expected to take up this month.

PBM reform as a whole has bipartisan support. Hawley spoke out against PBMs earlier this year when introducing legislation to lower drug prices.

"Our prescription drug market is rigged in favor of Big Pharma and Big Insurance and patients are paying the price. Americans foot the bill for the most costly prescription drug prices in the world—all while middlemen negotiate backroom deals to extract financial kickbacks that drive prices further up and prevent lower-cost alternatives," he said in April.

Meanwhile, Tuberville wrote in a May 2021, op-ed in the Washington Times, "PBMs claim they help patients by negotiating lower prices from drug manufacturers. But the fact is PBMs rarely, if ever, pass those savings on to patients.">

Next target in Smith's sights--The Oval Office Meeting:

<CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins scooped that Special Counsel Jack Smith’s team is drilling down on the bonkers Oval Office meeting at which, among other things, Trump entertained the idea of declaring martial law to hold on to power.

The reporting team of Collins, Zachary Cohen, Paula Reid, Sara Murray, and Katelyn Polantz dropped a report Thursday night detailing the investigative thread that Smith’s probe is pulling on — namely, the now-infamous December 18, 2020 meeting at which Mike Flynn, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, and others floated zany and dangerous ideas to Trump.

On Thursday night’s edition of CNN Primetime, Collins opened the show by breaking her exclusive reporting on Smith’s ever-expanding probe:

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN HOST: Good evening. I’m Kaitlan Collins.

And, tonight, we are learning more about what the special counsel, Jack Smith, is zooming in on in what is believed to be the closing stretch of his January 6 investigation. This is exclusive reporting tonight, new reporting on CNN.

Our sources are telling us that Jack Smith and his team have signaled a continued and seemingly renewed interest in what was one of the most chaotic meetings to ever happen inside the Oval Office. This was December 18 in 2020, six weeks after Trump had lost that election, as the lawyer Sidney Powell, Trump’s former National Security Adviser Mike Flynn, and the former CEO of Overstock.com floated some of the most desperate suggestions to keep Trump in power.

Martial law was brought up. So was the proposal to have the U.S. military seize voting machines. You may remember hearing about it from the people who were there and later testified before the January 6 congressional committee.

PAT CIPOLLONE, FORMER TRUMP WHITE HOUSE COUNSEL: I was not happy to see the people in the Oval Office.

QUESTION: Explain why.

CIPOLLONE: I don’t think — I don’t think any of these people were providing the president with good advice.

DEREK LYONS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE STAFF SECRETARY: I mean, at times, there were people shouting at each other, hurling insults at each other.

SIDNEY POWELL, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT TRUMP: Cipollone and Herschmann and whoever the other guy was showed nothing but contempt and disdain of the president.

ERIC HERSCHMANN, FORMER WHITE HOUSE ATTORNEY: I think that it got to the point where the screaming was completely, completely out there.

RUDY GIULIANI, FORMER ATTORNEY FOR PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I’m going to — I’m going to categorically describe it as: “You guys are not tough enough.”

Or maybe I put it another way, “You’re a bunch of (EXPLETIVE DELETED).”

COLLINS: Tonight, we are learning that federal investigators are asking about that very meeting. And they have asked several witnesses about it, including Rudy Giuliani when he sat down with them voluntarily last month.

We are told that was in two back-to-back days where Giuliani went before them. He was asked about multiple incidents, but that was one of them. They have also asked about those outsiders that were there, as I noted, Sidney Powell, Mike Flynn, the former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne.

This meeting is also notable because it came four days after members of the Electoral College met in all 50 states to officially cast their ballots, declaring that Joe Biden was indeed the winner. After that chaotic meeting, as it ended late into the evening, that was when Trump sent this tweet about the January 6 rally that was going to happen in just a few weeks, saying it “will be wild.”>

<The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Thursday that a public-university faculty member can be punished for the “lack of collegiality” he purportedly showed when he criticized a higher-ed-degree program for prioritizing social justice over scholarship.

To academic-freedom advocates, the decision is a blow, and there are fears the “collegiality” rationale could chill unpopular speech at universities throughout the country.

By a vote of 2-1 in Porter v. Board of Trustees of North Carolina State University, the court ruled against professor Stephen Porter of NCSU, who had been removed from a degree program for complaints he made during a 2016 department meeting, in a spring 2018 email to colleagues, and in a personal blog post written that fall.

According to Porter, “the field of higher education study is abandoning rigorous methodological analysis in favor of results-driven work aimed at furthering a highly dogmatic view of ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘inclusion.’” He also called an academic conference in his field a “woke joke.”

Porter was accused of “bullying” his colleagues, and it was suggested he leave the degree program in question. The professor was soon forcibly removed. Porter also claimed his colleagues were making it impossible for him to recruit new doctoral advisees, jeopardizing his tenure.

In Garcetti v. Ceballos, the Supreme Court held that “when public employees speak pursuant to their official duties, the employees are not speaking as citizens for First Amendment purposes, and the Constitution does not insulate their communications from employer discipline.” However, the Court made the exception for public-faculty speech “related to scholarship or teaching.”

The Fourth Circuit held on Thursday that comments and critiques of shared institutional governance and decision-making are not protected under the First Amendment.

Judge Julius Richardson dissented, writing: “Contrary to the majority’s terse conclusions, each one of Porter’s three speech instances . . . constitutes protected speech. That is because, in each instance, he was speaking as a citizen on a matter of public concern.”

Richardson wrote that there has unquestionably been a growing and wide-ranging public debate about how colleges ought to emphasize diversity, equity, and inclusion.

The judge also found it was clear that Porter’s colleagues had retaliated against him.

“For those who disagree with Stephen Porter’s message, he might indeed sound like an unpleasant agitator, disturbing the peace. But transgressions of tone tend to ring loudest when we disagree with the speaker’s views,” wrote Richardson, adding that the majority should have recognized that this case was not a “close call.”

“[Professors] saying unpopular things at department meetings could be severely sanctioned or even fired. Write that ‘dear colleague’ email at your own peril,” Princeton University politics professor Keith Whittington wrote on Twitter.

While Porter was not dismissed from his position, Ohio Northern University Law recently gave Professor Scott Gerber an ultimatum to resign or be fired. He too was accused of not being collegial, and the two cases indicate that a trend may be taking hold: Gerber, like Porter, expressed contrary viewpoints during his time at the law school.

Whittington said he doubts the Supreme Court will agree to review this case if it is appealed.

However, since the decision narrowly affirms the scholarship and teaching exception when it comes to the classroom, it should not have bearing on ongoing litigation against Florida’s Stop Woke Act.

While that recently enacted law shares a skepticism of recent initiatives on race and gender, its restrictions on classroom instruction on these subjects appears to violate the exception expressed in Garcetti, academic-freedom advocates have argued.>

<Members of Congress keep struggling to comply with a decade-old financial disclosure and transparency law — the latest, two federal lawmakers who were late reporting stock and U.S. Treasury transactions.

For the third time in 14 months, Sen. Tom Carper (D-DE) missed a 45-day disclosure deadline imposed by the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act.

Carper was as much as two weeks late in reporting his spouse’s U.S. Treasury bill purchases and sales totaling up to $345,000, as well as a PayPal stock sale up to $15,000, according to a June 30 federal financial report reviewed by Raw Story. The STOCK Act only requires legislators to disclose their own, their spouse’s and dependent children’s transactions in broad ranges.

“There was a clerical error,” Natasha Dabrowski, Carper’s communications director, told Raw Story. “Senator Carper is working with the Ethics Committee so he can fully resolve the matter.”

The STOCK Act — passed in 2012 to stop insider trading, curb conflicts-of-interest and enhance transparency — requires prompt reporting of most purchases, sales and exchanges of stocks, bonds, commodity futures and cryptocurrency by key government officials, particularly members of Congress.

Raw Story reported in March that Carper was more than a year late in disclosing his wife Martha Ann Stacy’s $2,991.98 sale of stock in Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Ltd. Carper, as chairman of the Senate Finance Subcommittee on International Trade, advocated for Taiwan's inclusion in the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Carper's team also indicated a "simple clerical error" at that time.

Carper was also months late in disclosing Stacy’s $1,124 sale of stock in international mining company, Barrick Gold Corp., in November 2021, Insider reported last year.

“Senator Carper and his wife, Martha, have always been careful to ensure that their financial investments are handled separately by a financial advisor who makes decisions and transactions independently,” Dabrowski said. “Senator Carper supported the STOCK Act, and he fully supports ongoing conversations in Congress on how to strengthen the legislation and improve transparency and accountability for our elected officials.”

Carper announced in May that he will not seek reelection for fifth term, marking an end to his nearly 50-year career in politics, The Washington Post reported.

Raw Story’s review of congressional financial disclosures also indicates that Rep. Glenn Grothman (R-WI) was more than a year late in reporting two purchases of U.S. Treasury Series I savings bonds totaling up to $30,000, according to a June 27 federal financial disclosure.

Grothman’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The standard fine for violating the STOCK Act is $200, but the House Committee on Ethics and Senate Select Committee on Ethics have historically waived the fees for many violators.

“If you had a higher penalty, I think it would get the attention of lawmakers a lot quicker,” Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics at nonpartisan government watchdog organization, Campaign Legal Center, told Raw Story last month.

“That $200 penalty is from the 1970s. If you change that to just adjust it for inflation, I think then you'll start to get people's attention.”

In a recent interview with Raw Story, one of the STOCK Act’s original authors, former Rep. Brian Baird (D-WA), blasted Congress for its continued excuses for failing to abide by the law.

“I mean, come on. ‘The dog ate my homework,’ aren’t we a little more grown up than that?” Baird said. “If we're capable of voting on whether or not to raise or lower taxes or send people to war, I think we can report when we make an investment.”

Epidemic of violations

Dozens of members of Congress have failed to comply with the STOCK Act. During the 117th Congress from 2021 to 2022, at least 78 members of Congress — Democrats and Republicans alike — were found to have violated the STOCK Act's disclosure provisions, according to a tally maintained by Insider....>

<....Raw Story has this year identified at least 16 members of the 118th Congress who have broken the federal conflicts of interest law, including the new addition of Grothman.

The ongoing violations come at a time when a bipartisan group of lawmakers have introduced several similar bills aimed at banning congressional stock trading.

The most recent bill to be introduced this session — the Bipartisan Restoring Faith in Government Act — is co-sponsored in part by political rivals in Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and Matt Gaetz (R-FL).

Other materially similar bills include the Ending Trading and Holdings in Congressional Stocks (ETHICS) Act, the TRUST in Congress Act and the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments (PELOSI) Act.

In the decade since the STOCK Act’s passage, the push for a total ban on lawmakers trading stocks while in office gained but then lost momentum last year when the Democratic-led House, then led by Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi, decided not to conduct a hearing on any of stock-ban bills and never brought it to the House floor for a vote.

News organizations including the New York Times, Insider, NPR and Sludge have documented rampant financial conflicts of interests among dozens of members of Congress, such as those who bought and sold defense contractor stock while occupying positions on congressional armed services committees or otherwise voting on measures to send such companies billions of federal dollars. The executive and judicial branches are riddled with similar financial conflict issues, too, as the Wall Street Journal has reported.

The Wall Street Journal won a 2023 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation into financial conflicts among officials who work in federal agencies while Insider won the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sunshine Award for its reporting on congressional financial conflicts.>

<Reacting to a claim by a former Department of Homeland Security official that Donald Trump shared secret documents related to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi with reporters, former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade suggested special counsel Jack Smith has one more charge he can use to bolster his case against the former president under the Espionage Act.

Speaking with MSNBC host Katie Phang, McQuade was asked about the NBC report based on a book by Miles Taylor, a top aide to Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, about Trump's mishandling of documents that alarmed Trump's then-national security adviser John Bolton.

"NBC is releasing exclusive reporting about ex-Trump aide Miles Taylor in which Miles alleges in 2018, Trump's press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders described an incident with Trump displaying to reporters classified documents related to journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death."

"Do you think Jack Smith has already had a lead on this? I mean, we keep on hearing these things pop up here and there. We saw in the indictment about Bedminster and the writing of a book, and journalists being present, even a PAC person like Susie Wiles. I mean, is this the kind of stuff we think Jack Smith would have a bead on it already?"

"He might, Katie," the attorney replied. "It could be valuable as what you know is 404(b) evidence; that is evidence of the person's common scheme or plan."

"And so, even if he doesn't charge it, you can use that as evidence to show that Trump is very reckless when he handles classified information. So, every piece of evidence brings value," she added.>

<The state official in charge of Oklahoma’s schools is facing calls for impeachment, after he said teachers should tell students that the Tulsa race massacre was not racially motivated.

In a public forum on Thursday, Ryan Walters, Oklahoma’s state superintendent of public instruction, said teachers could cover the 1921 massacre, in which white Tulsans murdered an estimated 300 Black people, but teachers should not “say that the skin color determined it”.

Walters is a pro-Trump Republican who was elected to oversee Oklahoma education in November. He has consistently indulged in rightwing talking points including “woke ideology” and has said critical race theory should not be taught in classrooms. Republicans have frequently conflated banning critical race theory with banning any discussion of racial history in classrooms.

At the forum in Norman, Oklahoma, Walters was asked how the massacre could “not fall” under his broad definition of CRT.

“I would never tell a kid that because of your race, because of your color of your skin, or your gender or anything like that, you are less of a person or are inherently racist.

“That doesn’t mean you don’t judge the actions of individuals. Oh, you can, absolutely. Historically, you should: ‘This was right. This was wrong. They did this for this reason.’

“But to say it was inherent in that … because of their skin is where I say that is critical race theory. You’re saying that race defines a person. I reject that.

“So I would say you be judgmental of the issue, of the action, of the content, of the character of the individual, absolutely. But let’s not tie it to the skin color and say that the skin color determined it.”

The Frontier, an Oklahoma-based investigative journalism organization, reported Walters’s comments.

Speaking to the Guardian, Alicia Andrews, the chair of the Oklahoma Democratic party, described Walters as “ridiculous”.

“How are you going to talk about a race massacre as if race isn’t part of the very cause of the incident?” Andrews said.

“I would love for him to be impeached, because he’s forgotten that his job is superintendent of public instruction. Most of his actions have been with his direct intent of destroying public education in favor of shoring up private and charter schools on public tax dollars. To me that’s a clear dereliction.”

According to the Oklahoma Historical Society, a state-run agency, the massacre is “believed to be the single worst incident of racial violence in American history”.

The massacre saw white mobs burn down the Black neighborhood of Greenwood, in Tulsa, and kill hundreds of Black people.

About 10,000 Black residents lived in Greenwood, which had a thriving business district, known as Black Wall Street, and was one of the most affluent Black neighborhoods in the US.

After a 19-year-old Black man was falsely accused of sexual assault, white people, some conscripted by the state, launched an offensive on Greenwood, destroying homes and businesses across 35 city blocks.

A Red Cross investigation found that more than 1,000 homes were burned during the massacre.

“Thirty-five city blocks were looted systematically, then burned to a cinder,” the report said. “And the 12,000 population there scattered like chaff before the wind.”

In a text, Walters, who has previously pushed a conspiracy theory that schools had installed litter boxes in classrooms to accommodate children who identified as cats, said “the media is twisting” his remarks.

He provided two audio files which, upon review, confirmed what he said at the forum on Thursday.

Walters said: “[The media] misrepresented my statements about the Tulsa race massacre in an attempt to create a fake controversy.

“Let me be crystal clear that history should be accurately taught.

“1. The Tulsa race massacre is a terrible mark on our history. The events on that day were racist, evil, and it is inexcusable. Individuals are responsible for their actions and should be held accountable.

“2. Kids should never be made to feel bad or told they are inferior based on the color of their skin.”

Kevin Stitt, the Republican governor of Oklahoma, did not respond to questions regarding Walters’s position.

Andrews said Walters was “intentionally watering down history”.

“As a Black woman, as a Black woman who lives in Tulsa, those remarks hit particularly hard and close to home,” Andrews said.

“The Tulsa race massacre was absolutely motivated by race. Absolutely, 100%, motivated by race.

“And I don’t even I don’t know how you pretend to talk about it without mentioning its motivation. How are you going to talk about a race massacre as if race isn’t part of the very cause of the incident?”

<The existential crises of the past decade, polarizing electoral politics, attempted insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, pandemic deaths, lasting health consequences, women's fight for reproduction rights, destructive carbon climate changes, Afrophobia violence, and a mental health crisis intersecting a gun violence epidemic are overwhelming our national psyche.

Fear reigns in a culture war turf battles for power and supremacy. Recognizable on all fronts of incivility, communities in the social paranoia of a culture war are trapping innocent children, families and communities into a dangerous, gun death-dealing epidemic.

This epidemic is part and parcel a production of a culture war, religiously and politically, fueled by nationalistic misleading definitions of reality based on "myths and lies" of “Make American Great Again” exceptionalism.

The epidemic reveals more profoundly inescapable realities demanding a new vision of democracy and a commitment to justice and love beyond threats of losing white racial privilege. Unfortunately, today justice is severely entangled in a toxic power struggle, a vicious culture war weaponizing fear, politics and religion. Combining a psychotic crisis with the cruelty and social brokenness of a paranoiac public, the proliferation of fear rhetoric increasing profits from gun purchases is why the erratic triggers of gun violence are escalating.

How do Americans move past a culture of fear?

On edge, on the cliff of existential despair to the ruin of public trust, we are searching for a moral response. What is the public role of religion and politics when the brokenness of public consciousness lives in fear?

Transforming a culture of fear requires a moral "social contract" where equity, justice and love build community, compassion and solidarity. A way forward is encouraging the passionate energies of the nation's young people to reserve the logic of culture wars toward building alternative democratic possibilities.

Can American politics survive this? Will Biden allow Trump to go to prison? US politics is at a danger point.

In the hostile days of racial segregation and violence, religious mystic Howard Thurman wrote about the corrosive force of fear that leads to hate. Fear, Thurman wrote, activates and moves us into a reactive mode of functioning that often overrides rationale to protect the survival of an organism.

It is a powerful emotional and biological impulse that can be manipulated to maintain power, scuttling the opportunity to consider empirical facts and solutions. A culture of fear is easy to stir up in today's world. The outcome is an increase in the sale of security systems and guns and a hyper-aware state of any threats around one.

It destroys community as we come to fear one another rather than cultivate trust, connection and a sense of individual identity critical to community well-being.

But many of the fears we confronted are resurfacing

Restoring the cultural power to the nationalistic "myth of Christian America" is recycling and fueling age-old forms of racism, sexism and xenophobic fears. An intolerant, authoritarian use of power against the flourishing of a rich cultural plurality is the greatest threat to democracy in our fraught contemporary moment of a culture war.

Sadly, what’s happening among the Tennessee legislators is a culture war driven by fear. The state's rich diversity and relational and communal qualities lie on partisan altars of biases, hatred and conservative ideologies of religion and political nationalism.

Antisemitism is on the rise: Roseanne Barr's Holocaust denial, call for violence against Jews is an 'unpardonable sin'

Americans have come a long way, confronting the dominant fears of history – racial phobias, antisemitism, homophobia, genderism and xenophobic hatred. The energies of these fears are resurfacing today with determined authoritarianism. Why?

Many are drinking the mixture of an old poisonous cocktail mixture of white supremacy fear, cultural "ism," a dystopia of power against acceptance of our country’s growing wealth of human differences....>

<....Gen Z is showing us a way forward In the shadow of the recent killings in Nashville, Kentucky, Alabama, and the shooting of a Black teenager in Kansas City who rang the door of a wrong address, the shooting of cheerleaders mistakenly opening the wrong car door in a grocery store parking lot, and the killing of a young female whose only mistake was driving up a wrong driveway –it all intertwines with tragic episodes of culture war, the epidemic of fear and gun violence.

What we are hearing through the voices and seeing in the protests of Nashville's teens and young college people across the country is their resistance to a culture of fear. They demand a new vision for developing the best policy practices of justice for healing the heart of our democracy.

They will not let a culture of fear silence their voices for justice, the voices of the poor, Black, white, brown, LBGTQ+ and immigrant communities.

They resist having political authoritarianism dictate their education and what they learn and default their aspirations to the mentality of a white supremacy understanding of democracy and morality. They know that a violent gun culture does not discriminate. Our response to hatred requires moral consistency to dash its cruelty, violence and ugly evil.

Is America safe for kids? If the US won't protect children from gun violence, should I protect mine by leaving?

We need a new moral language and politics of love

A recent national survey indicates that few people are unaffected by the epidemic of gun violence. But gun violence is a component of a deeper culture war, a social conglomerate of conservative religious and political nationalism that fears outsiders encroaching on privileged positions of power.

Its energy comes from deep-situated cultural fears in the forms of religion and political rhetoric dominating the media news airwaves. The Dominion and Fox News out-of-court settlement is the iceberg tip of this culture war of fear. Profits over people and power over principle have become the daily cultural diet feeding the American psyche. Thus, we have created a culture of fear that diminishes creative alternatives for advancing a "social contract" of justice and love.

When a culture of fear becomes systemic, people must work to replace it with new moral language and politics of love for the sake of the common good. You cannot claim to love children, families and neighborhoods while supporting or accepting systems that crush, exploit and traumatize them.

Liberating a culture from the psychological ill effects of fear is a task not only for the public role of religion and politics but also is the responsibility of every citizen. We must remember that history has shown us that the collective power of the human spirit is not easily defeated.

We must choose the politics of love and justice over conditions of fear. The nation's young people refuse to accept the passing on of intergenerational trauma or the recycling of the social temperament of a violent gun culture. They will not be silent until there is an end to unchecked purchases of an array of guns and assault weapons by anyone, regardless of a criminal background and a mental health assessment.

We need a revolution of values

If the violent gun epidemic has taught us anything, it is that action for change directed only against the external condition of violence is not enough.

Creating a culture and philosophy of nonviolence requires education, training and an ethical revolution of values. The mental health crises and toxic conditions of racism, sexism and homophobia require us to face our fears.

During the Tennessee “Moral Monday” event in April, Bishop William Barber stated that “sometimes death intensifies our will to live.”

We are in such an intense moment of choice – the courage to create politics worthy of the human spirit, the will to live in safety and community flourishing for all, or see our democracy come to ruin in the moral chaos of culture wars, fear and gun violence.

I hope Tennesseans will unite for a “Justice Summit for Democracy” to cultivate a healthy understanding of community flourishing over fear.>

<Cybersecurity analysts uncovered two file management apps available on the Google Play Store that are actually spyware, putting the privacy and security of up to 1.5 million Android users at risk. So if you have one of the best Android phones with these apps installed, delete them right away.

The fishy apps are File Recovery & Data Recovery and File Manager, according to an alert this week from Pradeo, a leading mobile cybersecurity company. The apps, both from the same developer, are programmed to launch without any input from the user and quietly send sensitive user data to servers based in China.

File Recovery & Data Recovery was downloaded more than 1 million times, and roughly 500,000 people installed File Manager, according to screenshots of their respective Play Store pages shared in Pradeo's report. Per Bleeping Computer, Google only recently kicked the apps off the Play Store.

While the apps say they don't collect any data from the user's device, it turns out this wasn't the case. Pradeo's behavioral analysis engine found the apps exfiltrate the following data: contacts saved in your device; email and social network contacts; pictures, audio and video compiled in the app; real-time user location; device brand and model; mobile country code; network provider name; and operating system version number. All without ever requesting permission to collect this information.

While the apps may have a legitimate reason to collect some of the data above to optimize performance and ensure compatibility across devices, most of it is not required for file management and data recovery operations. Even more alarming is the sheer amount of data being transferred while the user's none the wiser. Each app performs more than a hundred transmissions, "an amount that is so large it is rarely observed," Pradeo notes.

The apps can also abuse the permissions the user approves during installation to restart the device and quietly launch in the background. And deleting them off your phone comes with its own hoops. The apps conceal their home screen icons to make uninstallation more of a hassle, as users have to go to their application list in the Settings menu to delete them.

So if you have either File Recovery & Data Recovery or File Manager installed and you don't see them on your home screen, head to your Settings menu ASAP to get rid of them. While you're at it, consider equipping your phone with one of the best Android antivirus apps to help keep your device safe from malicious apps moving forward. Google also rolled out several new updates to its Android ecosystem in June, including a handy little security feature that lets you see if your Gmail address has been exposed on the dark web.>

<As a longtime owner of a technology consulting firm I have something to disclose publicly: I discriminate. I have turned down new clients and fired existing clients. I’ve never refused to do business because of the color of someone’s skin, sexual orientation or their religion. But I have refused to do business with people that behaved rudely, unprofessionally or were jerks to either myself or my employees. It had nothing to do with the services requested or their ability to pay. It was just my decision. I chose not to do business with these people.

Putting individual jerks aside, when it comes to last week’s supreme court ruling that allows businesses to discriminate against a whole class of people, I’d urge small businesses to think twice.

In this case, a web designer in Colorado didn’t want to perform services for an LGBTQ+ customer because of religious convictions. This is not the first time this has happened. California and Colorado bakers opted not to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding. There are numerous other examples where businesses turned away customers and all for a myriad of reasons. One music store in Ohio refused to serve a supporter of Donald Trump. As long as they’re within the law, that’s their prerogative.

But if you’re a small business owner, be aware. You can decide not to work with a whole class of people if your beliefs don’t jive [sic] with them. But you do so at your own peril.

We need every customer we can get. Every dollar counts, at least for me. And it doesn’t just count for me. Small business owners aren’t just responsible for themselves. They are responsible for others. Their employees, customers, partners, suppliers and even their community. My family relies on my business for the income it provides. All of these people also rely on my business for the income it provides to them and their families. Turning away work just because you don’t agree with someone’s sexual orientation hurts not just those people (which is bad enough) but everyone that relies on that business for their livelihoods.

Big brands, retail stores and restaurant chains don’t question the religious beliefs or sexual orientation of every customer who walks in the door or buys a product because they have shareholders and investors. Even Chick-fil-A, whose public mission statement is “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us” will still sell a Spicy Chicken Sandwich to an atheist.

Because of their religious beliefs, the Colorado web designer has now pissed off the LGBTQ+ community, all their friends, allies and families. People talk. Small businesses live off of referrals and businesses of all sizes go out of their way to be seen favorably by the public. They advertise. They seek media attention. They sponsor events. They avoid controversy. The web designer in Colorado, is now famous. But not in a good way. Sure, there are some that are going to take their side. But when a business publicly does something in the name of politics or religion, they’re pretty much guaranteed of upsetting a significant number of both current and prospective customers.

So go ahead and discriminate. Scotus says it’s fine. But do so at your own peril.>

<Over the past year and a half, eight Republican-led states quit a nonpartisan program designed to keep voter rolls accurate and up to date.

Top Republican election officials in those states publicly argued the program was mismanaged. The conspiracy theorists who cheered them on falsely insisted it was a front for liberals to take control of elections.

But experts say the program, known as the Electronic Registration Information Center, was among the best nationwide tool states had to catch people trying to vote twice in the same election. Now, those Republican-led states who left — and other states who lost access to their data — are scrambling to police so-called “double voters” ahead of the presidential election in 2024.

In recent months, elections officials in Ohio — one of the states that led the flight from ERIC — and elsewhere have been quietly convening leaders from dozens of states to talk about ways they can still work together to try to catch double-voters.

“The whole goal is to have something in place, state-to-state, prior to the 2024 election,” Amanda Grandjean, the state’s elections director, told POLITICO, the first time she has spoken publicly about the efforts.

The scramble by states to fill a security gap left open by exiting ERIC comes at a critical time. Elections officials face ongoing scrutiny about the accuracy of voter rolls after extensive — and untrue — accusations of widespread fraud in the past two election cycles. The 2024 elections are getting closer.

Grandjean said 27 states have expressed interest in the effort, with varying degrees of commitment.

But actually getting it off the ground is a different matter.

Grandjean declined to share a complete list of participants, but said there has been a “bipartisan” working group which also includes states that remain active members of ERIC. She said states have been meeting weekly to discuss the structure of the program. States she mentioned that have been actively involved in conversations include West Virginia, Florida and Virginia — three states that left ERIC — as well as Georgia, which remains in ERIC and whose Republican secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, has been one of the organization’s chief public defenders.

In a text message, a spokesperson for Raffensperger confirmed that his office is “trying to work out agreements with several non-ERIC states,” but said they had no further details to share. A spokesperson for the Virginia elections department told Virginia Public Media in May — shortly after the state announced its intention to pull out of ERIC — that it had “been participating in talks with other states for several months” on a potential double-voter program, but declined to answer further questions about the effort.

Interstate double voting — someone successfully or trying to cast a ballot in the same election in two different states — is widely believed by election officials to be rare. But it does happen. Election officials, and Republican politicians, have praised ERIC in the past as a key tool that has helped them catch cases.

In the interview, Grandjean stressed that the new effort she is trying to rally support for is “not meant to be something that’s comparative” to ERIC. It would be structured entirely differently, based on individual states signing data sharing agreements with one another, and not a more centralized database structure.

“There's no bylaws, there's no membership agreement,” she said. “It's just sharing information with each other.”

But that also means that any arrangement will be much more limited in practice than ERIC. One of ERIC’s biggest values was serving as a central clearinghouse for states’ data that they used to update voter rolls, either by scrubbing out-of-date registrations or finding potentially eligible but unregistered voters. Those two things are much harder, if not impossible, to replicate with one-on-one agreements between states.

The future of ERIC also remains uncertain....>

<....The states that left have denied that the attacks from conspiracy theorists had anything to do with the rush for the exits. Grandjean, who at one point chaired ERIC’s board, said she did not want to “relitigate” the fight but that it was “unfairly” portrayed in the media. Instead, most of the states that left said it was due to a fight over efforts to change the composition of ERIC’s board to remove a non-voting member and disagreements over what member states had to do with the data collected and distributed by the organization — something that many of the remaining states dismissed as a false pretense put forward to justify an exodus and score political points.

Twenty-six states and the District of Columbia are currently members of the organization — a number that includes Virginia, whose resignation is set to take effect next month. Efforts are underway in New York and California to potentially join the organization, but that number could further dwindle in the future as well.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, signed a law late last month that would allow the state to leave the program.

And Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams — a Republican who has also vocally defended ERIC — recently acknowledged his state is also looking at alternatives.

In a statement late last month, Adams said ERIC has been weakened because there are less participating states contributing data, increasing costs and decreasing utility to remaining states.

“While my administration will never cave to conspiracy theorists, it nevertheless is true that the value of ERIC to us going forward is a debatable question,” he said. “Kentucky is about to pay a lot more money to get a lot less information.”>