<Marjorie Taylor Greene purchased up to $15,000 in Lockheed Martin stock two days before Russia invaded Ukraine.

"War is big business to our leaders," the congresswoman tweeted two days later.

"Add this to the list of why members of Congress should never be allowed to trade stocks," said Omar.

Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia is facing criticism after purchasing thousands of dollars worth of stock in a major defense contractor two days before Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

According to a financial disclosure made public on Monday, Greene purchased between $1,000 and $15,000 worth of stock in Lockheed Martin corporation on February 22, two days before Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a far-reaching military campaign against the sovereign nation.

The document also reveals thousands of dollars worth of investments Greene has made in Caterpillar, Chevron, Clorox, and NextEra Energy, among others.

"Add this to the list of why members of Congress should never be allowed to trade stocks," quipped Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota on Twitter. Omar has been a frequent target of Greene's, with the Georgia Republican repeatedly insinuating that the Minnesota Democrat, among the first Muslim women elected to Congress, is a terrorist. Greene has also falsely claimed that Omar married her own brother.

Greene has repeatedly blamed profit-seeking private companies for exacerbating violent conflicts.

"War is big business to our leaders," the congresswoman declared in a tweet thread after the Russian invasion began.

Ilhan Omar faces backlash from liberal journalists

But Lockheed Martin, together with Raytheon, manufactures the Javelin anti-aircraft missile that Western countries have been supplying to Ukraine's military to defend against the Russian invasion.

In a statement to Insider, Greene said her investment advisor made the trade and touted Lockheed Martin as an "American company."

"Our investment advisor has full discretionary authority over our accounts," said Greene. "We have owned this American company for years and this small investment was part of our overall investment strategy. This was purchased along with other companies like Clorox, Walgreens, and Caterpillar to name a few."

Following Insider's Conflicted Congress investigation — which found that dozens of lawmakers and nearly 200 senior congressional staffers had failed to disclose stock purchases in a timely manner in violation of federal law — momentum is growing for banning lawmakers from trading stocks altogether.

Insider also revealed how several other lawmakers with purview over the military hold significant investments in war-related industries and companies.

Omar has cosponsored both the TRUST in Congress Act and the HUMBLE Act, two of a myriad of proposals that would ban the practice. The House Committee on Administration is meeting March 16 to explore stock trading reforms in Congress.

Greene, who ranks among Congress' most active stock traders, would not say whether she supports a stock trading ban for lawmakers.

Greene — a firebrand Republican congresswoman with a history of incendiary remarks who's been removed from her committee assignments and recently spoke at a white nationalist conference — has a fairly colorful stock trading history. For example, she's invested in companies that back the Black Lives Matter racial justice movement, despite claiming that the movement represents "the strongest terrorist threat in our county." She also invested in COVID-19 vaccine makers despite refusing to get vaccinated herself. >

<Fox News host Maria Bartiromo was just asking questions on Sunday morning when she wondered whether or not the White House wanted to see Ukraine “taken down” and was looking to “sell out” the country.

Bartiromo’s curious questions came less than an hour after she asserted on air that “some people” had told her that the White House doesn’t see Russian President Vladimir Putin as an enemy but rather a “partner” throughout the Ukraine crisis.

During an interview with Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures, the South Carolina lawmaker seemingly revealed himself to be one of the Trump-boosting anchor’s sources of her claim that President Joe Biden is kowtowing to Putin throughout the war because of their mutual interests.

“The Biden administration looks at Putin as a partner for climate change and an Iran Deal maker rather than a war criminal,” Graham declared. “Biden is more afraid of Putin losing than he is excited about Ukraine winning. Let you hear it from me. Victory for Ukraine!”

Describing the United States’ strategy on Ukraine as a “slow walk,” Bartiromo then asked the Republican senator if the U.S. and its NATO allies could do more “without turning this into World War III.” Graham, for his part, insisted that concerns about a potential world war were overblown.

“This is all a bluff. Putin knows it. No one wins a nuclear exchange,” he replied. “I am calling for the crushing of the Russian economy. Even though our war and fight is not with the Russian people, it is with Putin.”

Graham then doubled down on his calls for the Russian leader to be assassinated, adding that “the only way this war ends is with Putin going to jail or being taken out by his own people.”

After the hawkish senator blasted the administration for stopping the transfer of Polish jets to Ukraine over concerns it “could be mistaken for an escalatory step,” Bartiromo then brought up Israel’s attempt to broker peace talks between Russia and Ukraine. Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett has spoken to both countries’ leaders and even reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to surrender. (Both Ukraine and Israel deny those reports, and Israel’s foreign minister has since condemned Russia’s unprovoked invasion.)....>

Da rest ta follow....

<....Graham, meanwhile, said that he understood the position Israel is currently in, pointing out that the country relies on Russia to provide security coordination within Syria as Israel carries out counterterrorism strikes on Iranian and Hezbollah targets. At the same time, the senator said he opposed any ceding of Ukrainian territory to Russia.

“It cannot end with the sellout of Ukraine,” he said. “It cannot end where we give half of Ukraine to Putin. What he will do is consolidate his power and a year or two from now take the rest. Because he does not want a buffer from NATO. He wants to reconstruct the Soviet Union.”

Graham continued: “I think the Ukrainians can win, but what breaks my heart is it appears Biden is more worried about Putin losing than Ukraine winning. And that is despicable and sad!”

Piggybacking off of Graham’s remarks, Bartiromo then asked the Trump lackey an extremely loaded question that suggested the White House is actively working against an American ally as an adversary wages an increasingly bloody war against it.

“So you think this is a sellout of Ukraine by both the Biden administration as well as the Israelis, potentially wanting to see Ukraine taken down?” Bartiromo exclaimed.

Graham, though, wanted to clarify that he didn’t think that was the case with Israel. As for the White House, well, not so much.

“I’m not saying it about Israel, I am saying that they have discussions with Putin—he is a war criminal,” he proclaimed. “He wants all of Ukraine, eventually, and he will take it if we do not stop him here.”

Graham added: “I’m not suggesting that Israel is selling out Ukraine, I am suggesting that the Biden administration has no stomach for this fight. The reason they are slow-walking military aid to the Ukrainians is they never expected Putin to lose and they cannot embrace the idea that he would lose!”

Over the past few weeks, Bartiromo—along with many of her Fox News colleagues—has been all over the map with her commentary on the rising international crisis. Just days before Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in fact, Bartiromo repeatedly suggested that the White House was fabricating the threat of war in order to distract from Fox News’ relentlessly misleading coverage of Special Counsel John Durham’s latest filing.

<Fox News has remained mum as Kremlin-backed state media used clips of the network's host Tucker Carlson defending Russian President Vladimir Putin amid his invasion of Ukraine.

As Carlson faced scrutiny for his comments about Putin in the United States, several clips from his show have been used in Russian news, and an apparent new memo alleges the Russian government has requested media, including RT, to play his clip.

One clip played on RT showed Carlson' defense of Putin, where he rhetorically asked: "Has Putin ever called me a racist? Has he threatened to get me fired for disagreeing with him? Has he shipped every middle-class job in my town to Russia? Did he manufacture a worldwide pandemic?"

Another featured a conversation between Carlson and retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor, who predicted Russia would "annihilate" Ukrainian troops if they did not surrender.

On Sunday, progressive news outlet Mother Jones reported on a memo alleging the Kremlin sent talking points to Russian media organizations requesting they use "as much" footage of Carlson "as possible," noting his criticisms of the United States and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Carlson was the only Western journalist reportedly named in the memo.

He did tone down his rhetoric after the invasion last month, conceding that "Vladimir Putin started this war. So whatever the context of the decision that he made, he did it, he fired the first shots, he is to blame for what we're seeing tonight in Ukraine."

However, he later continued to blame NATO and President Joe Biden for the war on Ukraine.

His defenses of Putin have received widespread condemnation, including from fellow Republicans. GOP Representative Liz Cheney criticized him for "praising Putin," while a spokesperson for Newsmax—the pro-Trump news network rivaling Fox—wrote the network "strongly criticized Fox News' top host Tucker Carlson for supporting Putin and Russia's invasion of the Ukraine."

But as criticisms continue to roll in, Fox News has remained quiet about his remarks. The network has not issued an official statement about the use of his show in Russian propaganda, and Newsweek reached out to five different Fox News spokespeople who did not respond in time for publication.

Carlson has faced a number of controversies in the past, with Fox News often coming to his defense.

When Carlson was sued for defamation against Karen McDougal, the channel said his show serves as "opinion commentary" and is "not reasonably understood as being factual" in court.

After a man confronted Carlson at a Montana fishing ship, calling him "the worst human being" last year, the network issued a statement in his defense, writing: "Ambushing Tucker Carlson while he is in a store with his family is totally inexcusable—no public figure should be accosted regardless of their political persuasion or beliefs simply due to the intolerance of another point of view."

The Anti-Defamation League called on the company to fire Carlson over comments about the "great replacement" theory. But Chief Executive Lachlan Murdoch defended Carlson, writing in a letter to the ADL: "A full review of the guest interview indicates that Mr. Carlson decried and rejected replacement theory. As Mr. Carlson himself stated during the guest interview: 'White replacement theory? No, no, this is a voting rights question.'"

He also defended Carlson's remarks about the COVID-19 vaccination, which experts have assailed as misinformation.

"He basically just went into the CDC data, right?" Murdoch told Insider. "So there's nothing the CDC itself isn't saying."

But the network has also remained quiet on other controversies, including criticism of Carlson's special Patriot Purge, which suggested the January 6 riot was a "false flag" even as two commentators left over the series—accusing the network of amplifying "false claims and bizarre narratives."

Some at the network have publicly pushed back on Carlson's claims about the war on Ukraine.

The network's national security correspondent Jennifer Griffin dismissed his claims that Biden is responsible for the invasion, saying: "How we got to this point is a long story, and it predates the Biden administration. It includes mistakes made by every U.S. president since the Soviet Union fell apart.">

<Former President Donald Trump's presidential campaign was ordered to pay more than $300,000 in legal fees and expenses to former staffer Alva Johnson, according to an order entered this month in a nonpublic arbitration case.

Johnson, who worked as a staffer in Alabama, will be awarded the fees and expenses after an arbitrator ruled that the campaign tried to enforce a legally unsound nondisclosure agreement (NDA), BuzzFeed News was first to report.

Alva Johnson, who filed a lawsuit against the Trump campaign in 2019, accused the former president of grabbing her and kissing her without her consent during a campaign stop in Tampa, Florida, in 2016.

A federal judge questioned her accusation after a video of the alleged incident appeared to show no inappropriate conduct.

In early September 2019, Johnson decided not to pursue the case, citing ongoing threats to her safety, family reasons, and the difficulty of pursuing justice against a person with "unlimited resources," CNN reported.

Donald J. Trump For President, Inc consequently filed an arbitration complaint on September 23, 2019, saying that Johnson had breached the confidentiality and non-disparagement provisions of an NDA during the legal battle.

The arbitrator, retired federal magistrate Judge Victor E Bianchini, dismissed the arbitration claim in November, calling the provisions of the NDA "vague and unenforceable," The New York Times reported.

Johnson's lawyers subsequently made a motion demanding that Trump's campaign cover her legal fees and other expenses, the newspaper said.

The March 10 order, which was made public this week, said that Trump's presidential campaign could not invoke the NDA because it had already been determined to be "unconstitutional" in the cases of Jessica Denson, Omarosa Manigault Newman, and Mary Trump.

Judge Bianchini ordered that the Trump campaign pay $303,285 to cover her legal bills. It must also cover other costs involved in the arbitration.

Johnson's lawyer Hassan Zavareei told Insider that the campaign uses "unenforceable" NDAs to "bully and silence" critics. "I think the whole idea behind the agreement is to shut people up," he said.

Referring to the money being awarded to Johnson by the former president's campaign organization, Zavareei said that "it's a shame that normal Americans are being forced to pay for Trump's abusive tactics."

Trump spokesperson Liz Harrington provided a statement to the media outlet calling the outcome "pathetic and totally contrary to the rule of law and any reasonable sense of fairness."

Trump's press office did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment on Saturday morning.>

<The former US ambassador to Ukraine said Rudy Giuliani was a "personal dirt-digger" for former President Donald Trump and worked with corrupt actors in Ukraine to bring about her unceremonious ouster in 2019.

Marie Yovanovitch testified about some of these details during Trump's first impeachment inquiry, which focused on his efforts to pressure the Ukrainian president into publicly announcing investigations targeting the Bidens while withholding vital military aid and a White House meeting.

But Yovanovitch strikes a much more candid tone in her book, "Lessons From The Edge," where she outlines how Ukraine's corrupt former top prosecutor, Yuriy Lutsenko, used Giuliani as a tool to spread disinformation in the US ahead of the 2020 election and engineered her abrupt firing in the spring of 2019.

She says that Lutsenko was aware that Giuliani wanted to paint then-Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden as corrupt and sought to "undermine" his candidacy in the 2020 election. So Lutsenko "had concocted a tale of lies and half-truths to oblige Giuliani," Yovanovitch writes. "Lutsenko reshaped actions that Biden had taken to hold corrupt Ukrainians to account and twisted them into the opposite."

She goes on to detail how Lutsenko falsely claimed that Biden had ordered the firing of a former Ukrainian prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, to stop him from investigating the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings, whose board Biden's son, Hunter, worked on. In fact, the opposite was true.

"Shokin was not actively investigating corruption at Burisma, or anyplace else for that matter, which was why the entire donor community had come to believe that Shokin was corrupt and needed to go," the book says. "This Orwellian construct was just one of the many ludicrous elements of the Giuliani-Lutsenko conspiracy theory."

Giuliani's and Lutsenko's other focus, the book says, was getting Yovanovitch fired from her post as Ukraine ambassador because both men had a vendetta against her — but for different reasons....>

<Anyone looking for signs that embattled and isolated Russia might soften its position would not have found much hope in the increasingly belligerent words of President Vladimir Putin.

With his invasion of Ukraine floundering and his economy teetering, Putin doubled down Wednesday — turning his baleful glare on Russians who are against the invasion or who sympathize with the West.

"The Russian people will always be able to distinguish true patriots from scum and traitors, and will simply spit them out like an insect in their mouth onto the pavement," he said, shoulders hunched and staring down the barrel of the camera.

It was the latest speech that has surprised and alarmed many who study Putin. He has adopted what they say is an emotional, ranting tone since he invaded Ukraine three weeks ago, a departure from the calculating persona of this former KGB officer.

"He's clearly angry, emotional and feels the need to speak in this very aggressive tone," said John Lough, an associate fellow at London’s Chatham House think tank....

....Putin touched on now-common themes, comparing the West to Nazi Germany and alleging, without evidence, that Ukraine has been committing genocide against ethnic Russians. But he adopted even more hard-line rhetoric when turning his attention to Russians themselves, whom he has subjected to a sweeping crackdown on anti-war dissent in recent weeks.....

....Putin’s tone contrasted with the Russian and the Ukrainian negotiating teams, which signaled tentative progress in peace talks. Some experts saw his speech as a chilling sign.

“Putin in an Orwellian way has divided the citizens of Russia into clean and unclean,” Andrei Kolesnikov, a Moscow-based political analyst, said on Twitter.

Constanze Stelzenmüller, a senior fellow at the Washington think tank Brookings Institution, compared Putin’s speech to Adolf Hitler’s fictional tirade from the bunker in the 2004 film “Downfall,” whose subtitles have generated countless memes.

“Strrronngg ‘Der Untergang’ vibes here,” she tweeted, using the film’s German title.

Putin reserved special ire for Russian oligarchs, many of whom are Kremlin-linked billionaires who made their fortunes amid the carve-up of the former Soviet Union and now spend much of it on yachts and other luxuries in the West. Some of them have recently broken cover and distanced themselves from Putin's war.

Without naming anyone specifically, Putin referred to "national traitors" who "have villas in Miami or the French Riviera, who cannot make do without foie gras, oysters or gender freedom, as they call it" — referencing his apparent disdain for liberal values.

He criticized their "servile mentality" of being too Western "in their minds, and not here with our people and with Russia."

Putin also called for “a natural and necessary self-detoxification of society,” which would “strengthen our country, our solidarity and cohesion.”

Much of the rest of Putin’s speech detailed the drastic economic countermeasures his government is introducing to combat sanctions and boycotts by Western governments and companies.

“Indeed, it is difficult for us at the moment,” he acknowledged.

Lough, who was the first NATO official posted to Moscow in the 1990s, says his contacts there are privately conveying “surprise, shock and disbelief that Russia" is engaged in the war.

There is now an “acceptance that this is going to usher in a period of extreme isolation of Russia, as well as impoverishment and a return, frankly, to many of the features of the Soviet Union,” he said.>

<Russia launched a war intending to change the government in Kyiv. It openly says it is seeking “denazification” and “disarmament” of Ukraine. However, a comment by US President Joe Biden has now been taken as evidence that the US wants “regime change” in Moscow.

“For God’s sake, this man [Russian President Vladimir Putin] cannot remain in power,” Biden said in an impassioned speech.

US officials have walked back that quote, noting that “the president’s point was that Putin cannot be allowed to exercise power over his neighbors or the region. He was not discussing Putin’s power in Russia, or regime change.”

However, the critique of Biden’s comments seems to ignore the reality of the war in Ukraine. Russia is the aggressor.

It is Russia that invaded Ukraine. In fact, Russia has invaded Ukraine twice: once in 2014, when it annexed Crimea and carved out two small separatist states; and again in 2022, when it launched an unprecedented and unprovoked attack on Ukraine. This attack has shocked Europe and caused many to reconsider their previous ties to Russia.

However, the misinterpretation of Biden’s comments appears to be an attempt to set a trap for the US and prove a theory many had already: that the US is embarking on escalation in Ukraine and that this fits a pattern going back decades. However, the critics are wrong about this claim. Russia is the one that launched the war.

The US is providing defensive support for Ukraine, and US policy has been cautious. Against that policy are arrayed a number of far-right and far-left voices who have claimed the US is involved in pushing for “World War III” and that the US is somehow an “imperialist” power opposing the victim Russia. The US “provoked” Russia by wanting to extend NATO to Ukraine. These same voices claim a US “no-fly zone” could lead to “war” with Russia.

Now, these voices have jumped on Biden’s comments to prove that the US wants “regime change.” Furthermore, the comments are taken to now prove that Putin was right to be wary of US policy.

This puts the cart before the horse. Russia invaded Ukraine. Had it not invaded Ukraine, Ukraine wouldn’t have come close to being part of the EU or NATO. Ukraine faced and continues to face many hurdles to become part of the EU or NATO. But Russia’s attacks have now led many countries to seek US protection, and many European countries are plowing money into defense to avoid being treated like Ukraine.

The claim that Putin now can be affirmed in his concern about the US wanting regime change seems to ignore that Russia is the one actually doing regime change, trying to destroy Ukraine.

According to Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, “Putin will see it as confirmation of what he’s believed all along. Bad lapse in discipline that runs risk of extending the scope and duration of the war.”

The assertion that Putin, who ordered an invasion of a foreign country, can then take any comment slamming his actions as “confirmation of what he’s believed” appears to mean the US needs to try to appease Putin and make him think the US doesn’t want his warmongering replaced by peaceful leadership. It makes no sense and would be like arguing that Saddam Hussein, after invading Kuwait, is now “confirmed” in his views by the US putting together a coalition to remove him from Kuwait.

It reverses the action-and-reaction sequence. Russia invaded Ukraine under Putin. Iraq invaded Kuwait under Saddam. The US is reacting. That the US president thinks Putin is a danger makes sense in this regard.

The onus is on Russia to walk back its escalation and attacks. The narrative that posits the US engages in “regime change” should be squared with the fact that other countries, like Russia, also engage in “regime change.” If the critique of “regime change” wars is authentic, then the condemnation of Russia’s regime-change war would come first.

The reality is that Russia is not often held to the same standards as the US, despite being on the UN Security Council and ostensibly following the same international rules-based order as the US is supposed to follow.

Biden’s comments don’t affirm Putin’s concerns. Russia launched a war on Ukraine that was an unprovoked escalation and provocation.>

<....Cruz shouted, asked inane questions, seemed to search Twitter for himself, and even went after his fellow senators. It was such a grotesque performance that it was hard not to want to comment on the spectacle. But after we finish being distracted by the confirmation hearing car wreck, Cruz's behavior opens up a door to a far more significant takeaway — one that offers Democrats a strong strategy for midterm victory, if they pay attention.

To fully appreciate the gift Cruz handed his opposition, consider that the same week that Cruz was using his time to question Judge Jackson by ranting about children's books, we also received a pivotal opinion from Federal Judge David Carter. Carter had been asked to rule on whether or not the House committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, could obtain emails from Donald Trump's lawyer and political advisor John Eastman. In his opinion, Carter remarked that Trump and Eastman "launched a campaign to overturn a democratic election, an action unprecedented in American history."

The anti-democratic nature and civics stupidity of the GOP has been gaining momentum.

The evidence has been in plain sight for some time. From Mitch McConnell blocking Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee in 2016 to GOP efforts to suppress votes to a party base that hates Democrats more than they love their country, the anti-democratic nature and civics stupidity of the GOP has been gaining momentum.

Thus far, Democrats have not capitalized on that fact and have instead tended to focus on the GOP's racism, misogyny, xenophobia and extremism. Think of it this way: As debates have raged over the question of critical race theory (CRT) in K-12 education, Democrats have alternately pointed out that the GOP doesn't understand CRT, that it isn't taught in K-12 schools and that those critical of CRT are racist.....>

<WASHINGTON – Donald Trump's supporters give him credit for lots of things, but a Michigan member of Congress went way beyond reality in falsely claiming that Trump "caught" Osama bin Laden.

"Caught Osama bin Laden and Soleimani, al-Baghdadi," said Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., during a Trump rally Saturday in Washington Township, Mich., in a speech in which she attacked President Joe Biden's foreign policy.

Trump was a private citizen in 2011, when President Barack Obama authorized the mission that killed bin Laden, the al-Qaida leader and architect of the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Biden was vice president at the time, and opposed the raid during internal deliberations because of uncertainty over whether bin Laden would be at the location of the raid.

During his presidency, Trump authorized military operations that led to the deaths of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Iranian military commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, and accused terrorist Hamza bin Laden – the son of bin Laden.>

<Florida governor Ron DeSantis has pitched himself to the Republican elite as the candidate of “competent Trumpism” — a form of authoritarian populism for conservatives who worried that Donald Trump was squandering his power not abusing it. A picture of what that would look like in operation can be seen in DeSantis’s thuggish effort to bully Disney into supporting, or at least refraining from opposing, his “Don’t Say Gay” law.

Last week, DeSantis declared at a press conference that Disney “crossed the line” by saying it would support the repeal of DeSantis’s cherished anti-gay legislation. “We’re going to make sure we’re fighting back when people are threatening our parents and threatening our kids,” he warned.

“Fighting back” turns out not to mean refuting or organizing against Disney’s opposition to the law. It means DeSantis using his legislative majority to punish Disney on unrelated legal issues. On Friday, he claimed he was “shocked” to discover Disney has been granted sweeping autonomy to operate in his state:

“I was shocked to see some of the stuff that’s in there. They can do their own nuclear power plant. Is there any other private company in the state that can just build a nuclear power plant on their own? They’re able to do certain things that nobody else is able to do. So I think they’re right to be looking at this and reevaluating and having an even playing field for everybody, I think is much better than basically to allow one company to be a law onto itself.”

Given that this legal status has been widely known for many decades in the state where DeSantis grew up and now serves as chief executive, the governor was no doubt shocked — the same way Captain Louis Renault was shocked to discover gambling in Casablanca.

One obvious tell that DeSantis doesn’t actually care about Disney’s legal status is that his pretext for punishing the firm has changed. On Friday, he cited Disney’s special legal autonomy. The day before, the “special treatment” was a bill regulating social media that exempted theme-park operators.

Another tell is that the latter bill was signed into law by DeSantis with specific input from his staff, as the Tampa Bay Times reports. If Disney’s legislative clout is leading to outrageous favoritism, voters should be furious with DeSantis.

DeSantis is barely making any effort to hide his intentions. As he tells Fox News, “Six months ago, it would have been unthinkable” that Florida Republican legislators “would be willing to reevaluate those special privileges.” It’s almost as if the special privileges have nothing to do with the reason Republicans are looking to punish Disney! Perhaps there is something Disney can put in DeSantis’s hand that would make the thing in his other hand go away.

What’s relevant to this threat is neither the merits of DeSantis’s school regulations nor of Disney’s status in Florida. Even if you think DeSantis’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill is wonderful and Disney’s legal status is awful, the governor’s thuggish linkage of the two ought to terrify you.

DeSantis is trying to establish an understanding that major corporations can expect favorable treatment from the government as long as they play along with the ruling party’s political agenda. They are allowed — nay, encouraged — to get involved in politics on the condition that they take the correct position. But should they take the wrong position, they will find themselves under legal scrutiny. Suddenly, the regulatory noose will tighten.

This is the method Donald Trump used to intimidate firms with employees who gave him a hard time. Amazon lost a lucrative Pentagon contract in retribution for Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Washington Post, and Trump attempted to block a merger by CNN’s parent company to finish the network.

This is also a method that Trump’s favorite dictators — like Viktor Orbán and Vladimir Putin — use to control the political debate in their countries. DeSantis spokesperson Christina Pushaw has fired off more than a dozen tweets celebrating Orbán’s victory in Hungary and ridiculing the idea that his regime is repressive or dangerous in any way. When American conservatives tell us Orbán’s version of competitive authoritarianism is the form of government they aspire to, then show us what it would look like in practice, we’d best believe them.>

<....Trump responded by insisting he is “innocent.”

“This is just a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt of all time, by a failed Attorney General, who continues to use her office for political gain,” he said in a statement Thursday.....

....James’ office has been investigating whether to file a civil suit against the Trump Organization over allegations that it inflated financial statements for over two years. In court filings, her office alleged that it has “uncovered substantial evidence establishing numerous misrepresentations in Mr. Trump’s financial statements provided to banks, insurers, and the Internal Revenue Service.”....>

<Vladimir Putin has embarked on the path he always wanted: restoration of the Soviet Union. He said the collapse of the USSR was the greatest geopolitical mistake of the 20th century.

Since becoming president, he has inherited imperial power of every Russian and Soviet dictator expansion, violence and suppression. An adviser to the czar said: "If Russia does not expand, it will rot.” Stalin built on that, freely exterminating peoples wherever he felt it necessary, and the Ukrainians bore the brunt of this, as was nearly 7 million Ukrainians were killed in collectivization and starvation in the 1930s. Stalin became the world’s first “nation-killers,” as the sovereignty of states, international affairs governed by rules and diplomacy, and humanitarian aims were swept aside.

We are witnessing a replay of this as Putin is content to have Russian troops fire on women and children under the Red Cross. Ukrainians have no choice but to resist, and the West cannot tolerate genocide. From the darkest corners of the continent came the phrase “never again.”

....With nuclear reactors now at play (whose radiation will spread through the West), it is not clear this holds for nuclear weapons. The slaughter of innocents — Putin is showing us he revels in it. Moreover, Europe over the past two centuries shows that great powers come and go, meaning the balance of power is purely a temporary resting point in international politics — something the Soviet Union/Russia has exploited. If this behavior is not resisted and the cause removed, everything that has been achieved will be lost.

Another problem, which Stalin’s understood: a country's power is more than a combination of military and economy as it carries its ideology wherever it goes. It’s what gave the Cold War its sharp edge: If we lose, the essence of our freedom and the ability to choose our path disappear. Against this, stood Marxism-Leninism espoused by the USSR. Now, however, Russia has no ideology to offer the world — it traffics solely in violence and brute force, attacking our very credo....

....A complicating factor has been the West’s belief that the Russians were masters of strategy. But that covers over huge mistakes every decade or so in the foreign policy of the Soviet Union/Russia. Think back to the last czar who in 1914 thought he could declare a “partial mobilization” against Austria-Hungary, even though no such thing exists. The result was the First World War. In 1948 Stalin cut West Berlin off from any access to the West, not expecting a U.S. response. But Truman did respond, and we witnessed one of the frightful events of the Cold War as the two powers stood face to face for over a year before the Soviet dictator relented.

In 1962, Nikita Khrushchev attempted to place missiles on the island of Cuba, and we were once again facing nuclear war. In 1979 Leonid Brezhnev attempted to capitalize on the collapse of U.S. presence in Iran by invading Afghanistan. After 10 years of war, the Soviets withdrew as insurgents in armed United States Stingers defeated them. Even Mikhail Gorbachev, who thought a little political openness and economic perestroika could be restricted to the party soon found Soviet society engulfed in a desire for change, just in time for Chernobyl to blow up....

....Putin’s goals have always been the same: reduce the presence of the United States and Europe and split those powers on the continent into a collection of squabbling states. This has been greatly helped by his ability to insert the divisiveness within states, undermining unity. Under President Donald Trump, this seems almost within reach as we had an American president give up on NATO and Western intelligence and stake everything on Putin. But as the fighting goes on in Ukraine, frightening claims are put forward: Putin is claiming that “Ukraine does not exist” using the language of the Nazis. Language like that has not been heard in Europe since the time Adolf Hitler spoke them.....

....We cannot sit still as history is opening a grisly opportunity to move toward freer, just, and more peaceful world. The last time this happened, we did not act, and Lenin took over the reins of history. The world has paid for it ever since. Our choice now has nothing to do with a balance of power; it is between a return to a brutal past or step into a better future.>

<WASHINGTON — While power and ego are typically enough to drive most would-be presidents, Donald Trump could soon have a far more compelling motive to want his old job back: staying out of prison.

With a grand jury in Atlanta convening next month to focus on Trump’s attempted coercion of Georgia officials and federal prosecutors in Washington appearing to build a conspiracy case around the attempt to block the election certification on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump may have more reason than ever to seek the protection against prosecution enjoyed by an incumbent president....

....Which means that a man who made history by openly soliciting and accepting help from a foreign adversary to win power, then a second time by trying to overthrow the American republic in order retain that power, could do so yet again by running for the presidency while under an active criminal prosecution...

....Actually being in prison prior to Election Day 2024, of course, is not likely even in the improbable scenario that Trump is indicted in the immediate future. Defendants who can afford substantial legal fees, even those not as notoriously litigious as Trump, are typically able to drag out prosecutions for years if they choose.

....Indeed, in a related civil case, a federal judge in California ruled that Trump and John Eastman, one of Trump’s outside advisers pushing the plan to overthrow the election, “dishonestly conspired to obstruct the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021,” and called the scheme “a coup in search of a legal theory.”...

Trump has made clear since his final days in office that he feared prosecution based on his actions leading up to and on Jan. 6. He was reportedly considering pardoning himself and his family before deciding against it, and was actually planning to be in Scotland at the moment of Joe Biden’s inauguration, at one of his golf courses there, until the first minister of that country announced that he would not be welcome.

More recently, Trump told a rally audience: “They want to put me in jail,” before telling his followers that they should prepare to hold “the biggest protests we have ever had” in Atlanta, Washington and elsewhere.

The approach repeats Trump’s pattern of attempting to delegitimize all investigations and investigators looking into his activities as corrupt and politically motivated. During his years in office, he called both the special counsel probe into the assistance his campaign received from Russia as well as the impeachment for his attempt to extort Ukraine “a hoax,” and got most Republicans to go along with it....

....Thus far, only two potential Trump rivals in 2024 have been willing to criticize his behavior up to and on Jan. 6 as they make their pre-campaign visits: former Vice President Mike Pence and former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, and only Christie has been consistently vocal about it....

....One former top Trump White House official, though, said there was a difference between Jan. 6 coming up as a campaign issue and Trump personally facing an actual prosecution, and that the latter could wind up actually helping him.

“I don’t think a constant reminder of the events of Jan. 6 are beneficial to him,” the former official, who remains active in Republican politics, said on condition of anonymity. “But an actual indictment, that could end up making him look like more of a victim.”

Eisen said he hopes the general election electorate, should Trump make it that far, sends a clear message. “The campaign would become a referendum on his criminality,” he said. “Most Americans would view it with repugnance.”

Trump, despite losing to Biden by 7 million votes nationally and 306-232 in the Electoral College, became the first president in more than two centuries of elections to refuse to hand over power peacefully. His incitement of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol — his last-ditch attempt to remain in office ― led to five deaths, including that of one police officer, injured another 140 officers and led to four police suicides....>

<Great news, everyone. Former president and somehow-not-disgraced Florida man Donald Trump is dialing down the rhetoric and isn’t likely to cause problems for Republicans in the upcoming midterm elections!

At least that’s what Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell suggested to USA TODAY while, I assume, not under the influence of any hallucinogenic substances.

Commenting on Trump’s routine, lie-filled endorsements of GOP candidates, McConnell said: “So far this cycle, he's been rather restrained in his nominations. So I don’t see it as a problem.”

Cool, Mitch. It’s reassuring to know the modern Republican Party isn’t sweating a conspiratorial cocktail-lounge act masquerading as a former president traipsing around the country demanding everyone – EVERYONE, I TELL YOU! – acknowledge the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him, which, I’ll remind everyone for the 3,457th time, it most definitely was not.

Nothing to see here, please disperse

McConnell continued to speak optimistically about the midterms: “It depends on not doing and saying foolish things that disqualify you.”

Has he met Trump? Has he met a terrifyingly large swath of his own party?

Enough already: Ginni Thomas' texts show the Big Lie has metastasized into a Big Delusion.

Saying foolish things, for MAGA-aligned Republican lawmakers and candidates, seems mandatory. We witness what appears to be a daily competition among them to see who can out-outrageous the other.

But Trump remains the crown king of the unhinged. The same day USA TODAY published the interview with McConnell, Trump released an anti-endorsement of Republican Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate William McSwain, a former U.S. attorney who committed the unforgivable act of not looking into ginned-up voter fraud allegations.

In his statement, Trump said: “It was there for the taking and he failed so badly.”

Nothing says “not a problem” quite like a former president accused of trying to overturn a free and fair election writing out and sharing a sentence that clearly states he wanted to overturn a free and fair election.

It was there for the taking! If only our system of government hadn’t survived!

Trump lies and lies and lies and lies

At his rally last weekend in North Carolina, the mountebank of Mar-a-Lago flatly said: “The presidential election was rigged and stolen.”

It was not. At all. In any way, shape or form. That’s a lie. An enormous lie. A lie that, every time it’s spoken, erodes faith in our democracy.

“The truth is,” Trump said, “I ran twice. I won twice.”

That’s not truth. It’s hokum. He knows it. The candidates he endorses know it. And McConnell absolutely knows it.

In December 2020, McConnell said: “Our country has officially a president-elect and a vice president-elect. The Electoral College has spoken. So today I want to congratulate President-elect Joe Biden.”

So I’m not quite sure how McConnell doesn’t see Trump “as a problem.”

I voted for Trump twice. He shouldn't run again.

It’s like if everybody in town is talking about how your grandfather keeps running around the streets buck naked screaming about ghosts in the sewer pipes, and you respond by saying, “The family’s doing fine! Everything’s totally normal.”

That’s not helping grandpa, the town or your family. It’s not helping anyone.

McConnell's appalling lack of concern
McConnell knows Republicans stand a good chance of regaining the House and possibly taking back the Senate in the midterms, with or without the officially defeated former president muscling candidates into embracing the lies that shield his fragile ego. Actual President Joe Biden’s poll numbers are bad, inflation is overshadowing positive employment numbers and midterms generally favor the party not in power.

But what should burn every truly patriotic American’s biscuits is the fact that McConnell is waltzing along knowing a huge faction of his own party has adopted a dangerous fiction in service to an utterly unworthy individual, one who only stops conning people long enough to ring for another Diet Coke.

I am the last of the Obama Republicans. But I still have hope for lasting change.

There’s nothing “restrained” about Trump. Every day, we’re learning more and more about the role he, members of his family and others in his orbit played in attempting what amounts to a coup.

If McConnell gave a damn about America, that would matter.

It clearly doesn’t.

Maybe that’s something that should concern us all.>

<What’s particularly striking about the text messages obtained by CNN sent from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) to President Donald Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows in the weeks after the 2020 election is how ready they were to think rampant fraud had actually occurred.

For months before Election Day, Trump and his team had been warning that such fraud was imminent, elevating quickly debunked claims about impropriety and pointing at old research on mail-in balloting as evidence that the structure undergirding the vote was shaky. Trump generated an appetite for stories about ballots being found in the garbage or burned up in mail trucks or what-have-you, and the conservative media scrambled to meet the demand. But all of it was objectively unfounded — as one might have expected a senator or a representative to understand.

That Lee didn’t is explained somewhat by the news sources he shares with Meadows as he tries to help shape the White House’s post-election strategy: an article from Breitbart, one from the Washington Examiner, a tweet from a right-wing pundit. Within that bubble, the run-up to the election was a period of rampant scheming and dishonesty aimed at stealing the election.

But then the election happened, and it very quickly became obvious that none of this had happened.

Roy and Lee each pushed for Trump and the White House to release proof of rampant fraud, in their own ways.

On the day the election was called for Joe Biden, Roy insisted to Meadows that “we need ammo. We need fraud examples. We need it this weekend.” Two days later, he demanded “a message that isn’t wild-eyed” — seemingly a tacit excoriation of Trump’s eager embrace of whatever nonsense he came across that smelled at all like fraud. And then, a few days after that, Roy inquired about where he might find a catalogue of fraud claims, something that did exist but which was filled with the sort of wild-eyed nonsense he sought to avoid.

Lee’s approach was more technical, centered on creating alternate slates of electors that — importantly — upheld the letter of state law, which Trump’s didn’t. (Lee also touted attorney Sidney Powell, an error in judgment that will haunt his dreams for decades.) But he, too, told Meadows that the White House would need “a strong evidentiary argument” to compel senators.

It’s a reminder that Trump had no such thing. That he has no such thing. That his insistences before the election that fraud would happen were simply replaced with insistences that fraud would be proved, an unending con job that continues to this day.

At the end of November 2020, three weeks after the election had been called, I wrote an article making this point as gently as possible. Trump had made a massive number of claims about fraud in speeches, in interviews and on social media and, to a one, they had been rejected upon examination. Sometimes that led to Trump simply no longer talking about them. Sometimes he ignored the reality, as with the ballots that were removed from a container in Georgia and which Trump insisted were somehow fraud despite the actual, innocent explanation being available for weeks. He raised that one in his infamous call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) — despite Raffensperger’s office having helped debunk the claim!....>

<Former President Trump blasted Democrats in Easter messages on Sunday morning, including one aimed at “radical left maniacs” and another calling New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) a “failed gubernatorial candidate.”

Trump Easter messages skewer Democrats

“Happy Easter to failed gubernatorial candidate and racist Attorney General Letitia James,” Trump said in a message sent via his Save America PAC. “May she remain healthy despite the fact that she will continue to drive business out of New York while at the same time keeping crime, death, and destruction in New York!”

Trump and the state official have recently clashed as James has tried to have Trump and his adult children sit for depositions. James and the Manhattan district attorney’s office are investigating whether Trump lowered property values on his tax forms but raised them in paperwork for lenders.

Trump has repeatedly attacked the investigation spearheaded by James and labeled it as a politically motivated witch hunt. He has filed a federal lawsuit asking for an injunction against the probe.

In another message on Sunday directed at Democrats, the former president said “Radical Left Maniacs” are “doing everything possible to destroy our Country.”

“May they not succeed, but let them, nevertheless, be happy, healthy, wealthy, and well!” he added.

The GOP field has in the recent months competed intensely for Trump’s endorsement in the upcoming midterm races, and Trump, who is also weighing another bid for the White House in 2024, has stepped up his travel schedule in recent weeks.

His statements come as the Labor Department said last week that the consumer price index, which tracks inflation, increased by 1.2 percent in March and 8.5 percent over the past 12 months and as President Biden’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest point in the latest CBS News and YouGov poll.>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to appear in court tomorrow, after a suit claiming she violated the Constitution’s 14th amendment was allowed to move forward. And Greene is appearing to have a bit of a meltdown leading up to her appearance.

The complaint comes from a group called Free Speech for People, which is alleging Greene violated the Constitution’s “disqualification clause,” which says lawmakers cannot “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking their congressional oaths. If found in violation, they would be barred from ever running for office in the future. (A similar suit was recently brought against North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn.) The clause was originally written to keep former Confederates from holding office after the Civil War but it definitely seems like it should apply to any and everyone who played a role in the January 6 insurrection.

Greene requested a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to delay the case, which was denied by Georgia District Judge Amy Totenberg. That means Greene is required to show up tomorrow to testify under oath regarding her role in and leading up to the Capitol attack.

As Rolling Stone writes:

Greene seems a little worried, perhaps because she’s built her entire career on pushing lies and unfounded conspiracy theories — from Jewish-funded space lasers starting the California wildfires to the 2020 election being stolen — and has little experience telling the truth, which she’ll now have to do lest she open herself up to perjury charges.

In recent interviews and videos posted to Twitter, Greene has railed against the non-partisan, non-profit political advocacy group behind the suit, calling them “dark money” “leftists” who hate the people of Georgia. But her biggest foe, as she sees it, is the media, whose expected presence in the courtroom clearly terrifies her.

“I really hope you guys get a camera in that courtroom,” she told the extreme right-wing network One America News this week. “You know what the Democrats and the media are going to do: They’re going to click and cut and paste so they can sell a lie on their networks every night.”

She repeated that prediction on the Jenna Ellis Show, hosted by Trump’s former lawyer. “It’s absurd what they are claiming and lying about,” Greene said. “They’re going to allow the press in the courtroom. They’re going to allow the whole thing to be videoed live, out in anywhere in the world they want to. You know what that’s going to look like. The Democrats and the nasty mainstream media—you know, the ones that lie about me constantly anyways—are going to be able to twist and turn and clip out any little piece they want.”

Greene’s concern over the media’s presence in court is strange, considering all the most incriminating things she’s said and done have been done so publicly—like how she’s repeatedly called violent, convicted and/or indicted insurrectionists patriots and “political prisoners” and defended their actions as an attack on “tyrants.”

Honestly, the only reason any media outlet would have to “clip out any little piece” of Greene’s testimony tomorrow is likely because there will just be such an overwhelming amount of incriminating material to choose from.>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to appear in court tomorrow, after a suit claiming she violated the Constitution’s 14th amendment was allowed to move forward. And Greene is appearing to have a bit of a meltdown leading up to her appearance.

The complaint comes from a group called Free Speech for People, which is alleging Greene violated the Constitution’s “disqualification clause,” which says lawmakers cannot “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” after taking their congressional oaths. If found in violation, they would be barred from ever running for office in the future. (A similar suit was recently brought against North Carolina’s Madison Cawthorn.) The clause was originally written to keep former Confederates from holding office after the Civil War but it definitely seems like it should apply to any and everyone who played a role in the January 6 insurrection.

Greene requested a preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order to delay the case, which was denied by Georgia District Judge Amy Totenberg. That means Greene is required to show up tomorrow to testify under oath regarding her role in and leading up to the Capitol attack.

As Rolling Stone writes:

Greene seems a little worried, perhaps because she’s built her entire career on pushing lies and unfounded conspiracy theories — from Jewish-funded space lasers starting the California wildfires to the 2020 election being stolen — and has little experience telling the truth, which she’ll now have to do lest she open herself up to perjury charges.

In recent interviews and videos posted to Twitter, Greene has railed against the non-partisan, non-profit political advocacy group behind the suit, calling them “dark money” “leftists” who hate the people of Georgia. But her biggest foe, as she sees it, is the media, whose expected presence in the courtroom clearly terrifies her.

“I really hope you guys get a camera in that courtroom,” she told the extreme right-wing network One America News this week. “You know what the Democrats and the media are going to do: They’re going to click and cut and paste so they can sell a lie on their networks every night.”

She repeated that prediction on the Jenna Ellis Show, hosted by Trump’s former lawyer. “It’s absurd what they are claiming and lying about,” Greene said. “They’re going to allow the press in the courtroom. They’re going to allow the whole thing to be videoed live, out in anywhere in the world they want to. You know what that’s going to look like. The Democrats and the nasty mainstream media—you know, the ones that lie about me constantly anyways—are going to be able to twist and turn and clip out any little piece they want.”

Greene’s concern over the media’s presence in court is strange, considering all the most incriminating things she’s said and done have been done so publicly—like how she’s repeatedly called violent, convicted and/or indicted insurrectionists patriots and “political prisoners” and defended their actions as an attack on “tyrants.”

Honestly, the only reason any media outlet would have to “clip out any little piece” of Greene’s testimony tomorrow is likely because there will just be such an overwhelming amount of incriminating material to choose from.>

<Former President Donald Trump made governors flatter him personally for federal aid after natural disasters, a new book says.

The revelations are made in an upcoming book, "This Will Not Pass: Trump, Biden, and the Battle for America's Future," by New York Times reporters Jonathan Martin and Alex Burns, according to The Independent.

In the book, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, a Republican, said Trump told governors who wanted aid: "You have to call and ask me nicely."

Hogan claimed that Trump had a policy in which only Texas and Florida, two states with governors Trump considered close allies, would be given federal aid when needed without question.

Governor Ned Lamont of Connecticut, a Democrat, recounted a similar experience, The Independent reported.

Lamont said he asked the White House for assistance in obtaining federal disaster aid after a storm in August 2020 left parts of Connecticut without electrical power.

He was surprised when he received a call from then-President Trump himself hours later, who said: "There's something you want me to ask about FEMA?"

When Lamont replied that he wanted to ask about FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) aid, Trump reportedly said: "Well, ask me nicely."

The governor told the book authors that he felt like Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the infamous 2019 call in which Trump pressured him to investigate Joe Biden while withholding vital military aid.

Lamont said he decided to play along and flatter Trump into agreeing, telling him "it would mean a lot to the people" if Trump "could bring it upon himself" to authorize the aid, The Independent reported.

The flattery worked, and Trump reportedly replied: "You got it."

Trump has long had a reputation for demanding and rewarding devotion to him.

As president, he publicly demanded that governors show deference to the administration during the COVID-19 crisis, saying, "I want them to be appreciative."

He also implied that he told his Vice President Mike Pence not to take calls from state executives that "don't treat you right.">

<Insurrections aren’t everyday, casual affairs. That should go without saying, but somehow, perhaps as a symptom of our current political dysfunction, anti-democratic developments feel almost normal. Or perhaps we’re just numb. But either way, there are a number of candidates running for office in the 2022 midterms who, like Georgia’s Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, were engaged in peddling Trump’s big lie that voter fraud, not the will of the voters, was responsible for his loss in 2020. The resulting effort to prevent the Senate from confirming Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory, of course, culminated in the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Somehow, perhaps as a symptom of our current political dysfunction, anti-democratic developments feel almost normalized. Or perhaps we’re just numb.

Some of Greene’s constituents don’t believes she deserves a spot on the ballot this year. In a hearing the stretched on for hours on Friday, lawyers for a coalition suing Greene, called Free Speech for the People, pointed out that the Constitution doesn’t normalize insurrection. In fact, Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted following the Civil War, explicitly prohibits people who engage in an insurrection, after taking an oath to support the Constitution, from holding office in the future:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress … who, having previously taken an oath … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.

Reading this text, it might seem like Greene should have been drummed out of the Republican Party for her brazen conduct. Instead, she has become one of the many faces of a party controlled by Trump. And while some of her constituents are appalled by her behavior, it’s unlikely that this challenge to her candidacy will have any teeth.

Not that the hearing wasn’t illuminating. Greene smirked her way through hours of examination, dodging questions with claims of memory lapses. When lawyers for Free Speech for the People asked whether she’d advocated for imposing martial law on the country in conversations at the White House, she responded that she couldn’t recall. It was a strikingly casual response for a hypothetical conversation most living, breathing human beings would presumably remember for the rest of their lives.

Nevertheless, attorneys for the voters seemed to fall short of establishing — their burden in this proceeding according to the administrative law judge’s order — Greene’s participation in a violent insurrection. It was far from a clean bill of health for the first term Georgia congresswoman. But there’s plenty of “play in the joints” for a decision-maker who is looking to avoid throwing Greene off the ballot. Without getting too deep in the legal weeds, Georgia Republicans eager to avoid intra-party conflict should be able to argue her challengers failed to meet their evidentiary burden.

The judge promised to have a ruling out by next week. After that, a final decision will be made by Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (who Trump infamously pressured to reverse his state’s election results). It’s hard to imagine that Raffensperger, who is running for re-election without Trump’s endorsement in the primary, wants to draw more ire by ending the candidacy of one of the former president’s favorite lawmakers. Even if he goes out on a limb and removes Greene, Raffensperger’s decision can be appealed up through Georgia’s state courts. With the primary slated for May 24, it’s hard to see how a decision against Greene could be final in time....>

Da rest ta follow....

<....Georgia’s Republican officials might be happier without Greene and the unseemly controversies she promotes in their conference. But, having lacked the courage to separate themselves from Trump at the height of his excesses, it’s unlikely they’ll deal with Greene themselves. They’re far more likely to leave the political fate of Trump’s local stand in to the voters. Those voters, who reside in Greene’s northwest Georgia district along the Alabama border, haven’t been bothered by her behavior, including her support for baseless QAnon conspiracy theories, in the past. She won with 74.6 percent of the vote in 2020.

Greene has remained popular despite stunts like calling House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a traitor: a statement she first denied (under oath) on the witness stand on Friday, only to quickly back peddle once it became clear the lawyer had her exact statement to that effect in front of him. It would have been a funny sound bite if it wasn’t so wildly dishonest. As her questioner was easily able to prove, Greene had indeed said in 2019 that Pelosi was guilty of treason, additionally suggesting that the crime of treason was punishable by death. Not the least of the entire sad affair was the utter shamelessness of a woman who occupies a position of trust on Capitol Hill.

Do we really need the courts to tell us people who participate in insurrections against the government don’t belong in office? Is that the sad state of our politics in 2022? The answer to those questions highlights the real challenge presented at Marjorie Taylor Greene’s hearing. Because Greene’s conduct isn’t really in question — no matter how many times she rolls her eyes and tries to will her own words away. Her testimony presented a stark picture of someone who seems intent on turning democracy into cosplay, engaging in a mockery of what public service is supposed to be about.

Using this particular Civil War-era constitutional amendment to hold Greene accountable is fraught. Even if it happens, there will be lengthy delays as issues of first impression are litigated in the courts. Some scholars have gone so far as to suggest the states lack the ability to enforce Section 3 without congressional action. Ultimately, lawsuits like this may not be enough to keep people who sought to undo one of the most sacred traditions of our government, the peaceful transfer of power, out of positions where they can do still more damage to democracy.

Do we really need the courts to tell us people who participate in insurrections against the government don’t belong in office?

There is (some) good news. Democratic institutions that were stress tested by the four years of the Trump presidency can’t come all the way back overnight. But increasingly, we’re seeing the tools of government being used, from congressional investigations that promote civic education and uncover the truth to prosecutions that build accountability.

<....“How many of the women rallying against overturning Roe are over-educated, under-loved millennials who sadly return from protests to a lonely microwave dinner with their cats, and no bumble matches?” Gaetz wrote on Twitter Wednesday morning.>

In like fashion to his first cousin <kudzu antonin>, the not so honourable member of Congress makes himself look a fool without really trying.

<When Politico first published a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade on Monday night, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri was the first US senator to publicly weigh in, focusing on the extraordinary breach in court norms.

"The left continues its assault on the Supreme Court with an unprecedented breach of confidentiality, clearly meant to intimidate," he tweeted at 9:05 pm, within an hour of the story's publication. "The Justices mustn't give in to this attempt to corrupt the process. Stay strong."

He followed up shortly thereafter with praise for Associate Justice Samuel Alito's draft opinion, which he called "voluminously researched, tightly argued, and morally powerful."

By the next day, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell was echoing Hawley's assumption, arguing in a statement that "by every indication" the nearly unprecedented leak constituted "yet another escalation in the radical left's ongoing campaign to bully and intimidate federal judges and substitute mob rule for the rule of law."

And by Wednesday, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas had confidently declared that "there was one woke little left-wing twit" at the high court who had decided to "sneak it out in order to put political pressure on justices."

But no concrete evidence has emerged in the public domain that points towards the left — or the right, for that matter — as the source of the leak.

"I never said I know who the leaker is," Hawley said on Thursday when Insider pressed him for evidence to support his claims.

Still, a slew of prominent Republican lawmakers in Washington have raged at the political left over the leak, in some cases insisting that the leak itself is more important than the possible revocation of a constitutional right....

....Asked by Insider for evidence behind his theory on Wednesday, Cruz said it was "common sense" that the leak came from the left, given Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's declaration in 2020 that justices would "pay the price" for voting to overturn abortion rights, as well as calls from progressives to add more justices to the court.

When presented with the possibility that it came from a conservative clerk, Cruz dismissed it as a "left-wing talking point" while pointing to the fact that the leak was immediately met with praise from Brian Fallon, the executive director of the pro-court expansion group Demand Justice.

"I think the odds are overwhelming, it is a law clerk for one of the three liberal justices. That's a universe of 12 people," said Cruz. "The urgency with which those on the left, including in the media, have tried to say no, no, no, this is really a conservative — I think it's cute, but I think the odds are vanishingly small."

Hawley, on the other hand, denied that he ever blamed the left for the leak at all.

"Well I don't know where it came from," he told Insider. "But I can see how the left is using it, which is to threaten the justices, to go after them and their families, and try to influence the deliberations of the court."

In addition to several tweets insinuating that the leak was part of a "coordinated" effort by both the White House and Democratic senators, Hawley argued in a Fox News op-ed on Wednesday that the leak "looks like an effort to derail" Alito's opinion — which is "everything a constitutionalist could hope for" — from becoming final.

"Listen, this could easily be solved," Hawley told reporters on Tuesday. "All of the Supreme Court justices should talk to all of their clerks and staff, and they should all issue statements today saying whether or not they leaked it."

On Thursday, Hawley was adamant that he hadn't assigned any blame for the leak, despite his initial insinuation. "Asked and answered," he quipped as he boarded an elevator....>

<President Vladimir Putin takes Russian anniversaries seriously. It was no coincidence that his invasion of Ukraine came a day after Defender of the Fatherland Day, a celebration of Russia's military achievements. It was on that same occasion in 2014 that Putin took the first step in annexing Crimea from Ukraine, through orchestrated pro-Russian protests on the peninsula.

The leader had clearly hoped to have more to celebrate by this Victory Day on Monday, the country's most patriotic of dates, marking the Soviet Union's role in defeating Nazi Germany in World War II. It was on May 8, 1945, (May 9 in Moscow's time zone) that Germany signed its Instrument of Surrender in Berlin, ending the fighting in Europe. The USSR suffered the biggest losses of any nation -- around 27 million soldiers and civilians died.

Russia's justification for war in Ukraine suggested a deadline for success by Victory Day. Putin and his government have repeatedly said the aim of their so-called "special operation" is to "denazify" Ukraine, and that freeing the country of Nazis is a matter of Russian survival. It's an argument that has no real weight; a blatant cover for Russian revanchism.

Even though the Kremlin's well-oiled propaganda machine has been going at full steam since the February invasion, it will be difficult for Putin to twist Russia's losses into true victory on Monday.

If anything, the operation in Ukraine has been an embarrassment for him -- at least on the international stage....>