<[Event "20th Queen City Open"] [Site "Manchester NH"]
[Date "1996.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Sciacca, Patrick"]
[Black "Schalk, Alan P"]
[Result "1-0"]
[ECO "B07"]
[WhiteElo "2050"]
[BlackElo "2100"]

1.e4 d6 2.d4 Nf6 3.Nc3 g6 4.Bc4 Bg7 5.Qe2 Nc6 6.e5 Nxd4 7.exf6 Nxe2 8.fxg7 Rg8 9.Ngxe2 Rxg7 10.Bh6 Rg8 11.O-O-O e6 12.h4 Qe7 13.Nf4 c6 14.Ne4 d5 15.Bg5 Qc7 16.Nf6+ Kf8 17.Bh6+ Rg7 18.Bxd5 cxd5 19.Bxg7+ Ke7 20.N4xd5+ exd5 21.Nxd5+ Kd7 22.Nxc7+ Kxc7 23.Be5+ Kb6 24.Rd8 1-0>

<[Event "20th Queen City Open"] [Site "Manchester NH"]
[Date "1996.??.??"]
[Round "1"]
[White "Turalic, Sulejman"]
[Black "Curdo, John"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "C71"]
[BlackElo "2400"]

<A group of anti-Trump Republicans in Nebraska announced an ad blitz Monday against a potential change to the state’s Electoral College votes, which could net the former president an additional electoral vote if passed.

The effort to change Nebraska from a split district to a “winner-take-all” state for electoral votes is backed by Trump, Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (R) and Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-Neb.). It failed a key vote in the state’s unicameral Legislature last week, though the issue could still be pursued in a special session later this year.

Defending Democracy Together, founded by a group of prominent anti-Trump Republicans in 2019, said that the Electoral College change would dilute the state’s voting power. “Nebraskans take pride in their ability to exercise their voting power to make their congressional district’s voice heard,” spokesperson Gunner Ramer said in a statement.

“When voters feel that their presidential vote truly matters, our democracy is better for it. That’s what makes Nebraska’s current system so powerful. Lawmakers in Lincoln need to uphold that pro-democratic principle.”

Only Nebraska and Maine split their Electoral College votes. In most presidential elections, Republicans take two districts easily in Nebraska, but District 2 — which comprises Omaha and its suburbs — is tightly contested and has gone blue in two of the past four elections. The state’s remaining two electoral votes are given to its popular vote winner, generally the Republican candidate.

If the bill were to go into effect for the 2024 election, it could cost President Biden an Electoral College vote; Trump won about 58 percent of the vote in Nebraska in 2020, meaning the GOP candidate would likely get the state’s entire slate of electoral votes in a winner-take-all system.

Defending Democracy Together will run digital ads throughout the state’s 2nd District, it said, encouraging voters to contact their state legislators about the issue and urge them to oppose it.

The electoral vote change failed a procedural vote last week, which would have likely seen it passed. The legislative session ended at the end of last week, meaning a special session would be required to pass the measure before the 2024 election.

The bill’s failure split the Nebraska GOP, with conservative activists clashing with some more moderate legislators who opposed the effort.

Every registered Republican in the nonpartisan Legislature would have to support the bill for it to have enough votes to avoid a filibuster. Multiple Republicans have publicly stated they will not consider an Electoral College change before the 2024 election.>

We'll see if there's a repair job this afternoon for maintenance, or a massive disappearance.>

<Univision’s Enrique Acevedo asked President Joe Biden what he believes “constitutes the primary threat to freedom and democracy” in the United States.

Biden had a simple answer.

“Donald Trump,” the president replied in a lengthy interview that the Spanish language network aired Tuesday.

“Seriously,” he added.

Biden then pulled few punches as he tore into his predecessor’s use of authoritarian rhetoric, support of the violent mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 and derogatory comments about minority populations.

The four-times-indicted presumptive GOP nominee “uses phrases like if you’re going to eviscerate the Constitution, he’s gonna be a dictator on day one,” Biden noted.

“The idea that he would sit […] off the Oval Office and watch for hours the attack on the Capitol, and the destruction and the mayhem and people were killed, the police officers who died, and call them political heroes, to call them patriots, and say that if he gets elected he’s going to free them all, because they’re being held illegally?” he added.

“I can’t think of any other time in my lifetime, in history that’s occurred, that you’ve had somebody who’s had this kind of attitude,” said Biden. “He says he’s going to be a dictator on day one? No one doesn’t believe him.”>

<It’s no secret that Sen. Ted Cruz has a special affection for his podcast. His 2024 rival, Democratic Rep. Colin Allred, told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell last year, “He’s honestly busier being a podcaster — which he does three times a week — than actually being a senator.”

But the problem with the Texas Republican’s media project isn’t just the amount of time he spends behind a microphone. As The Texas Tribune reported, Cruz is also now facing a campaign finance complaint “over money sent from the company that syndicates his podcast to a political action committee supporting his re-election bid.”

This is a story with a few moving parts, but stick with me for a minute, because this appears to be a story with real potential.

As my MSNBC colleague Ja’han Jones noted last week, Cruz receives a generous salary as a sitting U.S. senator, but the Texan insists that his work as a podcast host is unpaid. By all appearances, that’s true: While a media company called iHeartMedia has a deal with the Republican to produce, market, and syndicate his podcast to hundreds of radio stations, Cruz does not receive financial compensation from the company directly.

But — and you had to know a “but” was coming — The Houston Chronicle recently noted that while iHeartMedia hasn’t sent any checks to the senator for his work, the media company has sent $630,850 to something called the Truth and Courage PAC.

And what’s the Truth and Courage PAC? It’s the super PAC supporting Cruz’s re-election campaign.

In other words, iHeartMedia isn’t paying the Republican senator, but it has made generous contributions to a super PAC backing the Republican senator ahead of his bid for a third term.

It doesn’t help matters that Cruz is the ranking member on the Senate committee that oversees regulations of the public airwaves, and he appears to have taken an interest in protecting AM radio. iHeartMedia, meanwhile, owns hundreds of AM radio stations.

Complicating matters further, The Washington Post flagged a quote from an iHeartMedia spokesperson, who told Forbes last month that Cruz does not get paid for the podcast, but the company sells advertising on the podcast and the super PAC donations are “associated with those advertising sales.”

The GOP senator recently described questions surrounding this burgeoning controversy as “left-wing Democrat [sic] attacks.” I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one.>

Note to the twin axes of evil: got a problem with the content here? No-one is forcing you to infest this page.

<Donald Trump on Tuesday reiterated an antisemitic trope he pushed just weeks ago, and argued the Jews and Black people vote for Democrats purely “out of habit.”

“Any Jewish person that votes for Biden does not love Israel, and frankly should be spoken to,” Trump told right-wing radio host Wayne Allyn Root on The Root Reaction.

Last month, Trump claimed on another program that “any Jewish person that votes for Democrats hates their religion”—a remark that the Biden administration condemned.

Trump also told Root what he believed was the reason for Jews and Black people tending to vote for Democrats over Republicans. Not anything to do with policy, but rather just “habit.”

“Jewish people, by habit, they just—they vote for the Democrat,” Trump said. “And Black people, by habit, vote for the Democrat.” Trump’s efforts to appeal to Black voters have also seen the former president compare himself to the community, claiming his various criminal cases show that even he faces discrimination.

“A lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me: because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” he said at a February rally. “It’s been pretty amazing. But possibly, I don’t know. Maybe there’s something there.”>

<House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul was surprisingly candid last week about one of his party’s most serious problems. “I think Russian propaganda has made its way into the United States, unfortunately, and it’s infected a good chunk of my party’s base,” the Texas Republican lamented.

Five days later, House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner, an Ohio Republican, echoed the sentiment, conceding that some of his GOP colleagues are peddling rhetoric that’s “directly coming from Russia.”

It was against this backdrop that right-wing Sen. Tommy Tuberville appeared on Newsmax yesterday to condemn U.S. aid to Ukraine as “waste.” The Alabama Republican added, in reference to Ukrainian leaders, “These people can’t buy any more houses than what they’ve bought. They’ve got beach houses all over the world.”

The idea that Ukrainian officials are buying luxury goods with American taxpayers’ money is not new. It’s also pro-Russia disinformation.

Making matters worse, of course, is the larger pattern involving the coach-turned-hapless-politician. Two years ago, the Alabaman insisted that Vladimir Putin launched an invasion of Ukraine in order to acquire “more farmland,” because “he can’t feed his people.” The idea that Russia was incapable of feeding its population was plainly wrong. The GOP senator either didn’t know or didn't care.

In the months that followed, Tuberville repeatedly said Ukraine couldn’t prevail in a conflict against Russia — a line favored by the Kremlin — so it made sense for the United States to simply let Moscow prevail.

A couple of months ago, after Putin told Tucker Carlson he’s interested in “peace,” the Republican lawmaker suggested that Russia’s authoritarian leader deserved the benefit of the doubt. Tuberville argued soon after that it was the United States that “forced” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Around the same time, the Alabaman appeared on a radio show and said, “You can tell Putin’s on top of his game.” After complaining again that the United States was responsible for pushing Russia into a military offensive, Tuberville added in reference to Putin, “I can understand what he’s talking about.”

All of which leaves me with a lingering question: Why, exactly, is Tommy Tuberville still on the Senate Armed Services Committee

Between his 2023 blockade that undermined his own country’s military, Tuberville’s ongoing disparagement of the American armed forces, his willingness to shift responsibility for the war in Ukraine away from Russia, and his newfound interest sharing absurdities about Ukrainian leaders, it’s hardly outlandish to think senators should have a conversation about whether it’s time to revisit his committee assignments.>

<The federal judge overseeing Donald Trump's classified documents case has ruled against the former president, preventing him from disclosing the identities of potential government witnesses.

U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon issued her 24-page ruling Tuesday, following protracted litigation that began earlier this year when special counsel Jack Smith asked for information about government witnesses to be redacted in publicly published court documents over fears they could become victims of harassment.

With the order, identifying information of some two dozen potential witnesses will remain sealed from the public. The court document stipulates that each government witness will be referred to with either a pseudonym or a description, such as John Smith or NARA Employee 1.

The ruling follows what Cannon described as a "lengthy procedural history" that began in mid-January when the former president's legal team filed a motion to compel discovery that included exhibits with unredacted information that Smith took exception too [sic].

Beginning March 1, Cannon heard arguments on the matter. Smith offered examples of threats or concerning communications directed at judicial officers and law enforcement agents connected to the case.

The ruling is a reversal of an earlier Cannon ordered on the issue, and comes amid feuding between her and the special counsel who has questioned some of her uncommon legislative rulings.

Cannon, a Trump appointee, used her order Tuesday to criticize the special counsel, calling his request "sweeping in nature" in that it applies to all government witnesses while lacking precedent.

She also criticized how he went about his request, stating "the special counsel could have, and should have, raised its current argument previously."....>

<Despite facing backlash from civil rights activists and Democratic lawmakers, Republicans in conservative-leaning Nassau County, New York, are moving forward with a plan to form an armed, civilian militia that the local government could operate as a de facto police force during “emergencies.”

The plan, proposed by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman, has local opponents comparing the "special deputies" to other government-backed militias throughout history, including some Ku Klux Klan chapters and the Nazi brownshirts. Blakeman has taken umbrage to the comparison; according to the Long Island press, he suggested that “This is not only a personal insult to me, as a Jew, but it is a personal insult on humanity."

By executive order, Blakeman has assembled a list of more than 100 civilians he wants to train to act as “special deputies,” or what is essentially a back-up police force. All members are required to have a firearms license and Blakeman has said they will undergo a background check and mental health evaluation, though what either of those entail could be quite subjective.

“God forbid there is an emergency, do you want me to have to scramble at that point to try and find people?” Blakeman said in defense of the plan, according to PIX11.

Since conservatives have made a point of portraying nonviolent protests as threats to state and national security, PIX11 asked Blakeman if his civilian militia could be used to crack down on civil rights demonstrations. And he didn't say no:

In recent years, conservatives have become more vocal in support of armed vigilante and militia groups that share their draconian and oftentimes illiberal view of criminal justice. This has been most evident in Republicans' involvement with groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, both of which sought to overturn the 2020 election in Trump’s favor. Trump has even portrayed the violent militiamen who fomented insurrection on his behalf as "patriots" and said their jailing has made them "hostages." And Kyle Rittenhouse has become a cause celebre among conservatives after he was acquitted for killing two men after he had joined up with a militia group that had stationed itself outside a used car lot in Wisconsin in 2020.

We’ve seen Republican leaders in states as varied as California, Michigan, Nevada, and Florida throw their support behind civilian-led militia groups, as well, which scholar Rachel Kleinfeld wrote about in this 2022 article for Just Security. (Kleinfeld, a distinguished scholar who ran the Truman National Security project and served on the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Policy Board, reports that some GOP-led counties have even relied on such militia groups to provide security at events.)

Kleinfeld discussed this increasingly common alliance in a WBUR interview that year.

She said:

What we’re seeing in Nassau County is a continuation of the conservative movement’s troubling infatuation with vigilantes and other civilian forces that are even less accountable and subject to oversight than ordinary police.>