Bernie Sanders Backs Historic $18 Minimum Wage Ballot Measure in Portland, Maine

“Our greatest weapon in this fight is solidarity,” said the senator from Vermont. “The people of Portland, Maine have an incredible opportunity this Tuesday to continue our movement’s collective struggle by voting ‘Yes’ on Question D.”

Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont has endorsed what he calls an “important” citizen-initiated referendum in nearby Portland, Maine, telling supporters in an email Thursday that the city “has the potential to pass the most progressive, inclusive minimum wage initiative in the history of the United States.”

“A ‘Yes’ on Question D would raise the minimum wage for all workers to a living wage of $18 an hour—including tipped workers, workers with disabilities, youth, gig workers, and incarcerated workers,” Sanders wrote. “As you might expect, opposition from the billionaire class and the ultra-wealthy to Question D has been fierce.”

“Lobbyists like the National Restaurant Association, large corporations like Uber and Doordash, and real estate developers have collectively poured more than $600,000 into Portland on mailers, advertising, and misinformation campaigns,” Sanders continued, “all so they can continue to pay restaurant workers and gig workers subminimum wages.”

“As a result of their efforts, polling shows a very tight race,” he added. “And with only a few days to go until the vote is decided, it’s up to our progressive movement in Maine to stand together and fight to pass Question D.”

The Portland Press Herald reported that the proposal “was put on the ballot by the Maine chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America’s Livable Portland campaign, which has said it’s expected to raise wages for about 22,000 workers across the city.”

“Sanders is the latest in a flurry of last-minute endorsements secured by One Fair Wage, a national group focused on eliminating subminimum wages that allow certain workers, such as restaurant servers, to earn less than the standard minimum wage,” the newspaper noted. “Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, said the senator has been working with that organization for years on minimum wage issues.”

Sanders urged voters to sign a petition in support of the ballot measure. Those who do so are redirected to the Maine voter information lookup service, where they can confirm their polling location.

The federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour has remained stagnant since 2009 and provides only a fraction of what a full-time worker needs to afford a modest one-bedroom rental home in the United States. The federal subminimum wage of $2.13 per hour for tipped workers has not been raised since 1991.

According to the National Low-Income Housing Coalition, a full-time worker would need to make $17.74 per hour to afford a one-bedroom apartment in Maine, meaning the statewide minimum of $12.75 ($6.38 for tipped workers) and Portland’s current minimum of $13 ($6.50 for tipped workers) are inadequate. If Portland voters approve Question D during the November 8 midterms, the city would have an $18 hourly wage floor.

“At a time when half of American workers are living paycheck to paycheck, and millions of people earn starvation wages and struggle to put food on the table, the wealthy and powerful have never had it so good,” wrote Sanders.

The Vermont progressive expanded on that point Friday in a Fox News op-ed modeling the kind of anti-corporate profiteering and pro-working class messaging he would like to see prioritized by the Democratic Party, with which he caucuses.

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Biden Accuses GOP of ‘Rooting for Recession’ After Jobs Report

The president slammed Republicans for working to “increase prescription drug costs, health insurance costs, and energy costs while giving more tax breaks to big corporations and the very wealthy.”

President Joe Biden on Friday accused the Republican leadership of “rooting for a recession” after new Labor Department figures showed the U.S. economy added 261,000 jobs in October, more than analysts expected but down slightly from the previous month.

“Today’s jobs report—adding 261,000 jobs with the unemployment rate still at a historically low 3.7%—shows that our jobs recovery remains strong,” Biden said in a statement.

Progressive economists largely echoed that sentiment, with the caveats that hiring is cooling and wage growth is decelerating significantly, a sign that the Federal Reserve’s aggressive interest rate hikes are taking their toll on the economy and workers. Biden has declined to criticize Fed Chair Jerome Powell for actively trying to weaken the labor market, even as a growing number of Democratic lawmakers warn he is about to throw millions out of work.

In his statement Friday, the president said that “inflation is our top economic challenge” and acknowledged that “American families are feeling squeezed.”

With the midterms just days away, the president sought to draw a sharp contrast between his policy agenda and that of the GOP, which he said wants to “increase prescription drug costs, health insurance costs, and energy costs, while giving more tax breaks to big corporations and the very wealthy.”

“I’ve got a plan to bring costs down, especially for healthcare, energy, and other everyday expenses,” Biden declared. “Here’s the deal: cutting corporate taxes and allowing Big Pharma to raise prices again is the Republican inflation plan and it’s a disaster.”

The notion that the GOP is hoping for and cheering on bad economic news with the goal of capitalizing politically was echoed by other Democrats as Republican lawmakers bashed the new jobs report as “the worst of the Biden presidency” and evidence of a “Biden-induced recession.”

“MAGA Republicans’ extreme agenda would make inflation much worse: plotting to repeal lower prescription drug costs, give tax breaks to the ultra-rich, and slash Social Security and Medicare,” said House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Rep. Don Beyer (D-Va.), chair of the congressional Joint Economic Committee, added in a statement that “stronger-than-expected GDP growth in the third quarter, which made up for all the losses incurred by the declines in the first and second quarters, reflects confidence in the resilience of the U.S. economy.”

“Republicans want to choke it all off,” Beyer added, pointing to GOP threats to use the debt ceiling as leverage to cut Social Security and Medicare if they retake control of Congress.

“They are threatening debt default and economic catastrophe to gut Social Security and Medicare, which could eliminate nearly six million jobs and cost the U.S. billions of dollars in lost economic activity,” said Beyer. “Republicans are threatening to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which would raise prescription drug costs and health insurance premiums. And they are planning giveaways to big corporations and the wealthy at the expense of everyday workers and families, which would stoke higher inflation and leave most U.S. households worse off.”

Republicans have made the economy, and inflation in particular, central to their midterm attacks on Democrats. But the right-wing party’s leadership and candidates have done little to spell out an alternative agenda that would bring prices down from a four-decade high—and some of their proposals, such as making former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich permanent, would exacerbate the problem.

Los Angeles Times columnist Michael Hiltzik noted earlier this week that “a look at the GOP’s election manifesto, the ‘Commitment to America‘ recently issued by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield), reveals no specifics. Nor have Republican candidates done so during the multitude of appearances they’ve made on cable talk shows, despite specific and pointed questions by the hosts.”

“Undoubtedly, more can be done [to combat inflation],” Hiltzik continued. “President Biden is jawboning oil companies about their huge run-up in profits, but that’s just one industry. Corporate profits have soared since mid-2020 while average worker earnings have remained muted—a little-noticed spur to inflation.”

“Has the GOP embraced those ideas? Of course not—corporate managements and the big oil companies are its patrons,” he added.

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Is Trumpism This Generation’s Version of the Confederacy?

Today’s GOP, under Trumpism, is as real a threat to the survival of our republic as was the 1860’s Confederacy and reflects a worldview grounded in the white supremacy of the American south

By Thom Hartmann

Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

Donald Trump promoted a modern Civil War in America this week on his social media platform. Civil War?

Further confounding things, Republican candidates like Pennsylvania’s Kathy Barnette are openly running as ultra-MAGA candidates, having hijacked Trumpism without Trump himself. It’s causing the media and political elites to have a “Huh? What?” moment.

Trumpism without Trump?  Could it even be a thing?

Apparently so: candidates Trump has openly disavowed are claiming Trumpism as their standard, the flag they’ll carry into the election and into office if they win.

Trumpism, they proclaim, is a coherent political philosophy of its own that has replaced conservativism as the dominant system of political theory in the “new” Republican Party.

But is Trumpism really new?  

Consider its main principles:

• *Assert white supremacy
• *Fetishize rule by a wealthy elite
• *Brand the movement with its own flag and slogans separate from the country’s
• *Put the “rights” of business above those of workers
• *Marginalize and destroy trust in the media
• *Maintain a strict racial and gender hierarchy
• *Arm the movement’s foot soldiers
• *Regulate school curriculum to promote a racist worldview
• *Embrace authoritarian preachers to claim the appearance of Christianity
• *Make alliances with foreign authoritarians
• *Rig elections and prevent minorities from voting
• *Embrace a police state for all but the richest
• *Accuse political opponents of demonic or perverse behavior
• *Criminalize abortion
• *Heavily criminalize minor behaviors like drug use
• *Normalize violence as a political tool
• *Oppose worker organizing efforts
• *Claim the mantle of “the average man” fighting against the tyranny of the “deep state”
• *Make it hard for all but the wealthy to get a college education
• *Minimize government regulation of working conditions and products
• *Establish a mythology of victimhood and fear of “replacement”

This is not Barry Goldwater’s, Ronald Reagan’s, or even George W. Bush’s Republican Party.

Sure, those guys were happy to suck up to the wealthy and pass legislation favored by big business, but they didn’t go so far as to separate themselves from the mainstream of American governance.

They didn’t accuse Democrats of drinking the blood of tortured children, openly proclaim their racism, or encourage violence. Before Trumpism, Republicans had for generations opposed nations that suppressed democracy and called out murderous dictators like Hitler, Putin, and Kim.

This is something new.

Or is it? Is it possible Trumpism is simply a very old American invention making its return to the US political stage?

In the early 1800s the invention of the Cotton Gin, which could with one very expensive machine do the work of 50 enslaved people, transformed the American South. It was a technological revolution that made possible the traitorous Confederacy.

For the previous thirty or so years, the slave-holding South had been a democracy, albeit one where only white men had a say in things. But even poor white men could vote, and the region identified as “America” with the American flag and American songs and textbooks.

Wealth disparities weren’t as severe as some northern regions, particularly New York City whose bankers and traders had been made rich by the cotton export trade. (When the South seceded in 1861 the Mayor of New York City argued that the city should secede along with them, but back in 1820 there wasn’t even a whisper of what would tear the nation apart in a mere forty years.)

The Cotton Gin, invented in 1794 by Eli Whitney and widely sold in the South in the 1810s and 1820s, changed all that. Only the wealthiest plantation owners could afford to buy a Gin, and it enabled them to out-compete the hundreds of thousands of small cotton farms that dotted the South.

Large plantations, after driving smaller local farmers out of business, bought up their land and hired their former owners to work the land as sharecroppers.

Wealth inequality exploded across the South as a new, powerful aristocracy rose up and seized control of Jefferson’s Democratic Party.  By the end of the 1830s, most of the land and nearly all the wealth and political power in the South was in the hands of a few thousand families.

But that wasn’t enough for the Lords of the New Plantations in the New South of the 1840s and 1850s. They wanted total control of the entire country and were chafing under the restrictions of the American brand and its two-party system of government.

As I wrote in detail in The Hidden History of American Oligarchy, by the late 1830s, with the rise of John C. Calhoun and the Nullification Crisis, the South was firmly in the economic, political, and social hands of a small number of morbidly rich plantation-based oligarchs. 

It was no longer a democracy or a republic: the South had turned into a neofeudal state, what today we’d call a fascist state.

History Professor Forrest A. Nabors notes in his book From Oligarchy to Republicanism: The Great Task of Reconstruction, by the 1860s:

“A new generation of rulers reshaped the south around their new ruling principle…

“The development of Southern oligarchy portended the rupture of the union, regardless of the ties that bound them together, because no ties, physical, legal, or otherwise, can overcome the difference between fundamentally opposed types of political regimes.”

Nabors cites a speech to Congress by Senator Timothy Howe of Wisconsin, who argued that the oligarchy in the South had become so strong that they weren’t just trying to be left alone; they wanted to seize control of the North and end democracy in America altogether:

“Such, then, I find to be the cause and the purpose of the rebellion. It was not to secure the independence of slaveholders, but to subject you to abject dependence upon slaveholders. It was not to build a new capitol for a new government, but to place a new government in possession of your Capitol.

“It was not to frame a new constitution for a new republic, but it was to impose a new constitution upon the Republic of the United States. It was not to secure toleration for slavery within the seceding Slates, but to compel the adoption of slavery by the nation.”

Congressman John Farnsworth, representing the Chicago area of Illinois, laid it out clearly on Wednesday, June 15th, 1864 in a speech on the floor of the House of Representatives:

“The slave-owner is cutting at the heart of the nation; yes, sir, he is cutting at the throats of your sons and brothers, of your neighbors and friends; he is with mad desperation seeking to destroy the beautiful fabric of this nation, and to quench in our blood the fires of republican liberty which have burned so long, a beacon of light to other nations, and the hope of the world. All this [he] is trying to do that he may erect a slave empire instead…”

By the time of the Civil War, the oligarchs of the South had rejected all pretense of belief in democracy, a republican form of government, or even the core idea of the peaceful transition of power in the United States of America.

Instead, they:

• *Asserted white supremacy
• *Seized total control of the political systems of the South
• *Branded their movement with its own flag and slogans separate from the country’s
• *Passed laws putting the “rights” of plantation owners above those of workers, including poor whites
• *First marginalized and, by 1861, completely destroyed any opposition media (often lynching or imprisoning publishers and editors)
• *Established a strict racial and gender hierarchy, both in society and in law
• *Armed the Confederacy’s foot soldiers
• *Carefully regulated school curriculum to promote a racist worldview
• *Incorporated authoritarian preachers into the political Confederacy to claim Christianity
• *Tried unsuccessfully to make alliance with French emperor Napoleon  
• *Rigged elections to prevent all minorities from voting
• *Embraced a police state for all but the richest plantation owners who could never be prosecuted
• *Accused their political opponents in both the North and South of demonic or perverse behavior, particularly interracial or gay sex
• *Enforced anti-abortion laws when white women became pregnant
• *Heavily criminalized minor behaviors like loitering  
• *Normalized violence as a political tool
• *Crushed a generation of Southern worker organizing efforts
• *Claimed the mantle of “the average man” fighting against the “tyranny” of the North
• *Made it impossible for all but the wealthy to get a college education
• *Ended what few government regulations existed for working conditions and products
• *Established a mythology of victimhood and fear of “replacement” later known as “The Lost Cause”

In other words, Trumpism is simply the politics of the American Confederacy reinvented for the 21st century. And even now Trumpists — whether affiliated with Donald or not — are openly talking about starting a second civil war.

They’re lionizing killers for the cause like Kyle Rittenhouse.

They’re embracing foreign authoritarians like Putin and Orbán.

They’re building and funding their own media empires while destroying American’s faith in mainstream media.

And they’re successfully using the filibuster to block the passage of any legislation that may strengthen democratic principles in our republic.

Today’s Republican Party, under the control of Trumpism, is every bit as real a threat to the survival of our republic as was the Confederacy in the 1860s. 

It’s emerged from similar conditions and reflects a nearly identical worldview grounded in the fear of losing white supremacy. It’s based in the American South, as was the Confederacy.

The media needs to wake the hell up. The American government, the American people, and the Democratic Party must see the Trumpist Republican Party for the threat it is. 

The FBI and intelligence agencies need to bring the seditionists within it to ground. Democrats must loudly call out its naked embrace of racism and fascism and make clear where this will lead if unchecked. 

Every day that goes by without action brings us closer to the new Republican Party’s goal: tearing apart democracy in America and transforming this country into this generation’s version of the Confederacy, complete with its own Lost Cause mythology.

[Source]

The Rittenhouse Effect: Republicans Want a Stasi of Their Own

The government can’t suppress free speech — so ordinary conservatives are now using violence to do it

By AMANDA MARCOTTE

Pro-life demonstrators protest outside of the US Supreme Court in Washington, DC on November 1, 2021. | Kyle Rittenhouse enters the courtroom after a break at the Kenosha County Courthouse on November 11, 2021 in Kenosha, Wisconsin. | People display signs during the Kentucky Freedom Rally at the capitol building on August 28, 2021 in Frankfort, Kentucky.  (Photo illustration by Salon/Getty Images)

Despite the high-minded rhetoric from Republicans about the supposedly noble intentions behind bans on what they call “critical race theory,” progressives have suspected from the get-go that the whole thing is actually an exercise in censorship. This suspicion has been validated by the fact that the book targeted by Republican Glenn Youngkin’s gubernatorial campaign in Virginia was the Pulitzer-winning classic “Beloved” by Toni Morrison. Or the fact that North Dakota’s law bans any materials suggesting “racism is not merely the product of learned individual bias or prejudice, but that racism is systemically embedded,” language that objectively bans teaching the history of slavery or Jim Crow. Or the fact that teachers in Texas took their own “critical race theory” law to mean that they had to teach “both sides” of the Holocaust. 

One of the most prominent groups advocating for this heavy-handed censorship is the misleadingly named “Moms for Liberty,” which presents as a “parents rights” group, but is in fact a racist organization dedicated to banning books about Martin Luther King Jr. and replacing them with books that insist there was no racial component to American slavery. Now the New Hampshire branch of Moms for Liberty is taking it to the next level. As Insider reports, the group is offering a $500 bounty to any person who reports a teacher supposedly breaking the law banning “critical race theory.” 

This bounty isn’t just about the letter of the law, which is already confusing and contradictory. Consider that Moms for Liberty’s list of books they want to be censored include those that teach that events like the March on Washington or Brown v. Board of Education. By offering this bounty, they send a strong signal to teachers of New Hampshire that, if they want to keep their jobs or at least not be harassed by right-wing activists, it would be wiser to simply avoid teaching any American history that touches on race or racism. So kids will get MLK Day off from school, but teachers will be afraid to tell them why. 

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A Growing Threat is Emerging from the Theocratic Wing of the GOP — but Many Liberals are Missing It

Michael Flynn U.S. Air Force, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons 

John Stoehr

Mike Flynn and Josh Mandel do not stand at the center of the Republican Party. They do not stand at its margins either. Flynn is the former’s president’s former advisor. (He’s a pardoned criminal, too.) Mandel is Ohio’s leading Senate candidate. Both men have said in recent days they don’t believe in the separation of church and state.

I’m paraphrasing. See for yourself what they said. However, their remarks should be familiar. They reflect the GOP’s theocratic wing. For decades, it has opposed the incorporated interpretation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause. They used to be way, way out there. But, even if I’m missing something, Flynn’s and Mandel’s remarks suggest the GOP’s theocratic wing isn’t as marginal as it once was.

Liberals have always been alarmed by the theocrats. Liberals know that when they talk about so-called “Judeo-Christian” values, they don’t mean Jews of any stripe. They don’t mean the full spectrum of Christianity. Mormons are not included. Neither are Episcopalians, Methodists or Presbyterians. Unitarians, like me, are cultists. Jehovah’s Witnesses are heretics. Only “real Christians” need apply, meaning twice-born believers in Christ saving them from eternal damnation.

Liberals should be more alarmed, especially religious liberals, but they may not know they should be. After all, the theocrats keep telling us, and the Washington press corps keeps telling us, that they are merely fighting for their Constitutional right to worship as they please, however they please. Religious liberals, therefore, might be thinking their religious freedoms will be secure, no matter what happens.

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The Messy Truth About America That the Right Wing Can’t Bear to Admit

Tim Scott John Stoehr May 03, 2021

This article was paid for by AlterNet subscribers. Not a subscriber? Try us and go ad-free for $1. Prefer to give a one-time tip? Click here.

I got a second dose Saturday. I was bed-ridden Sunday. I’m feeling better today, but writing is hard labor. I won’t do the usual dissection of recent events. I’ll instead swing for the fences and see what happens. Even if I strike out, it might prove to be useful.

The president and the vice president were asked last week if Tim Scott is right. In a GOP response to the State of the Union address to the United States Congress, the United States Senator said America is not a racist country. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris agreed. America is not racist country. But, they said, there is work to do.

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Conservative Maps Out Why the ‘Derangement of the Republican Party’ is Only Getting Worse

Donald Trump supporters outside the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, Wikimedia Commons 

Alex Henderson May 03, 2021

The state of the Republican Party in the Biden era was the topic of a robust discussion on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on May 3, with a panel of guests agreeing with hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski that the GOP has become increasingly unhinged.

The guests included conservative pundit Charlie Sykes — a blistering critic of former President Donald Trump — Financial Times’ Ed Luce, the Associated Press’s Jonathan Lemire, and Eddie Glaude, Jr., a professor of African-American studies at Princeton University who is often featured as a liberal pundit on MSNBC.

Scarborough, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP congressman, noted that pro-Trump Republicans have been going after Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah and Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming with a vengeance for condemning Trump’s role in the January 6 insurrection — and that in Maricopa County, Arizona, Republicans have been conducting an overtly partisan audit of the votes in the 2020 presidential election. Those things, according to Sykes, not only illustrate “the derangement of the Republican Party” but also, the “acceleration of the derangement of the Republican Party.”

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New Poll Confirms the GOP’s Fears on Voting Rights

Rep. Kevin McCarthy // PBS NewsHour 

Kenny Stancil and Common Dreams May 03, 2021

Zero GOP lawmakers have backed the For the People Act, congressional Democrats’ comprehensive plan to strengthen U.S. democracy by making it easier to vote, curbing partisan gerrymandering, and limiting the influence of money in politics.

Republican voters, however, support many of the proposals in the 800-page bill, according to a new poll released Monday.

The survey (pdf) of 1,138 likely voters across the country—conducted from April 16 to April 19 by Data for Progress on behalf of Vox—found that, when presented without partisan cues, the voting rights and election reform bill is popular with voters across party lines. Overall, 69% of the electorate supports the For the People Act, including 52% of Republicans, 70% of Independents, and 85% of Democrats.

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Capitol Police IG Says There’s No Oversight Over the Force’s Board (+2 more)

WASHINGTON, DC – FEBRUARY 13: Fencing topped with barbed wire surrounds the Capitol Building (Photo by Jonathan Newton /The Washington Post via Getty Images)

By Kate Riga

While disparate congressional committees have chipped away at what exactly allowed a pro-Trump mob to muscle into the Capitol building on January 6, one thing has become clear: the opacity cloaking the inner workings of the Capitol police.

Much of that scrutiny has become focused on the Capitol Police Board, the overseeing body of the force comprised of the architect of the Capitol, House and Senate sergeants at arms and the chief of police in a non-voting role.

The board has authority over almost all of the security decisions made at the Capitol, but received little attention until the January 6 disaster. Calls for its reform have become a bipartisan unifier as lawmakers look to improve Capitol security. 

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Many GOPers Plan To Skip Biden’s First Speech To Congress If Invited

Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden delivers a speech at the William Hicks Anderson Community Center on July 28, 2020 in Wilmington, Delaware. (Photo by Mark Makela/Getty Images)

By Cristina Cabrera

A lot of Republicans reportedly won’t attend President Joe Biden’s first address to Congress next week if invited.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office has not yet decided how many tickets for the event will be allotted to Democratic and GOP lawmakers in both chambers, but Republican leaders told Punchbowl that there’s little desire among rank-and-file members of their caucuses to go regardless.

“I don’t think I’ll probably attend,” Senate Republican Conference Vice Chair Joni Earnst (R-IA) said, according to Punchbowl.

It’s unclear why so many GOP lawmakers wouldn’t show up if they get invited, though some of them cited logistics as a reason for their absence.

However, a handful of Republicans said they do want to attend Biden’s speech, including Trump loyalists like Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH).

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Watchdog Finds Trump Admin Created Obstacles That Delayed Relief Aid To Puerto Rico

President Donald Trump tosses paper towels into a crowd as he hands out supplies at Calvary Chapel, Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017, in Guaynabo, Puerto Rico. Trump is in Puerto Rico to survey hurricane damage. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)

By Zoë Richards

The Trump administration lined up unprecedented bureaucratic obstacles that delayed approximately $20 billion in hurricane relief for Puerto Rico, according to an inspector general report that could be released publicly as soon as Thursday.

In a 46-page document first reported by the Washington Post early Thursday, the inspector general said it found procedural hurdles created by the White House budget office that stalled recovery aid even as watchdogs were met with efforts by Trump administration officials to obstruct their investigation into the delay by the request of Congress in 2019.

Hurricanes Irma and Maria had left Puerto Rico residents without power and clean water for months after ravaging the U.S. territory in 2017.

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Proud Boys Leaders Ordered Jailed Ahead of Trial for #MAGA Riots (+2 more)

Brad Reed

Proud Boys in Washington, D.C. (Johnny Silvercloud / Shutterstock.com)

Two leaders of the far-right Proud Boys gang are now being detained ahead of their trial for their roles in the January 6th riots at the United States Capitol building.

As reported by BuzzFeed News’ Zoe Tillman, Proud Boys leaders Ethan Nordean and Joseph Biggs were ordered to go back to jail pending their trials by United States District Judge Timothy Kelly of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

In his ruling, Kelly emphasized the seriousness of the charges facing Nordean and Biggs, whom he said “stand charged with seeking to steal one of the crown jewels of our country, in a sense, by interfering with the peaceful transfer of power.”

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‘Everyone in the Capitol is Nervous’: Florida Republicans Fear They’ll Be Swept Up in Matt Gaetz Investigation, Lawmaker Says

Matthew Chapman

Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) (Photo: Gage Skidmore)​

On Sunday evening, Jordan Zarakin of Progressives Everywhere on Substack released an interview with Florida state Rep. Carlos Smith, the first gay Latino member of the Florida legislature, in which they discussed the growing sex trafficking scandal surrounding Rep. Matt Gaetz.

During the segment, Smith noted that the Florida Republican Party, behind the scenes, is terrified that the investigation could sweep up more of their members.

“The web of corruption that Matt Gaetz, Joel Greenberg, and [Ron] DeSantis are all wrapped up in is really a web that appears to tie up the entire Republican Party of Florida,” said Smith. “It seems like everyone in the Capitol is nervous about what the next revelation is going to be and who else is implicated in this sweeping saga of corruption that they’ve been a part of for so long.”

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Trump and the GOP suffer another humiliating Supreme Court defeat

Tom Boggioni

US president Donald Trump. Photograph: Mandel Ngan/AFP

According to CNN, the Supreme Court has once again declined to take up a lawsuit asserting the 2020 presidential election was tainted by voter fraud.

On Monday, the high court declined to take up a case filed by Republicans that the voting in Pennsylvania was tainted by changes to voting rules.

Noting that the latest dismissal by the court is signal that the justices want no part in Donald Trump’s assertion that he was robbed of his second term, CNN reports, “Before Monday, the justices had already declined several requests to dive into one of the most litigious elections in history, denying petitions from then-President Donald Trump and other Republicans seeking to overturn election result in multiple states President Joe Biden won.”

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Cops & Public Officials Gave Anonymous Donations & Messages of Support to Kyle Rittenhouse’s Crowdfunding Campaign (+3 more)

By Vivian Kane

Content warning: racism, police violence

Kyle Rittenhouse had so much support after allegedly shooting and killing Black Lives Matter protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin last summer, that he was reportedly able to pay the entirety of his original $2 million bond with money from various crowdfunding campaigns.

One of those campaigns was on the site GiveSendGo, which calls itself the “#1 Free Christian Crowdfunding Site.” That campaign raised nearly $600,000 and is full of messages of support from anonymous donors—messages like “You did nothing wrong,” “Thank you for protecting us,” and “Thanks for being brave.”

Thanks to a data breach at the site, shared by a group called Distributed Denial of Secrets, those anonymous donors have now had their identities revealed. And an abhorrent but not at all surprising number of them are police officers and public officials.

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Expanding the Supreme Court Is Normal and We Should Do It; And Now.

By Jessica Mason

Yesterday on the steps of the Supreme Court, Senator Ed Markey, flanked by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, Rep. Hank Johnson of Georgia and Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York, announced the introduction of a bill aimed at expanding the Supreme court from 9 to 13 seats. This was met with cries from the GOP of “court-packing” and Nancy Pelosi frustratingly said she would not bring the bill to the floor in congress.

The thing is that the Supreme Court should absolutely be expanded. And it has been before. There’s nothing in the constitution that says how many judges must sit on the Supreme Court, that’s up to congress. The court went from six to five to seven to nine to ten and back to nine in the 19th century, all for political reasons ranging from John Adams trying to screw with Thomas Jefferson’s appointments to the court all the way to trying to keep the court from ruling against Reconstruction.

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Simon & Schuster Won’t Distribute Book by Cop Involved in Breonna Taylor’s Death but That’s Not the End of This Conversation

By Vivian Kane

Just hours after the Louisville Courier-Journal first reported that one of the cops involved in the killing of Breonna Taylor had landed a book deal, Simon & Schuster said they were as surprised by its existence as anyone and that they would not be participating in its distribution.

Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly’s book, titled, The Fight for Truth: The Inside Story Behind the Breonna Taylor Tragedy, was picked up by Post Hill Press, a small conservative and “Christian” publishing house that is distributed by Simon & Schuster.

“Like much of the American public, earlier today Simon & Schuster learned of plans by distribution client Post Hill Press to publish a book by Jonathan Mattingly. We have subsequently decided not be involved in the distribution of this book,” the company wrote on Twitter.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene Backpedals Launch of White Supremacist ‘America First’ Caucus

When you’re so racist that even the GOP rejects you.

By Chelsea Steiner

Georgia republican and hillbilly Eva Braun Marjorie Taylor Greene has come under fire for trying to launch the “America First Caucus”, a white supremacist and nativist caucus designed to appeal to Trump supporters and extreme right wing conservatives. Greene organized the caucus with Arizona congressman and fellow Capitol riots instigator Paul Gosar, which aims to promote “common respect for uniquely Anglo-Saxon political traditions.”

The caucus document, which was circulated online yesterday, reads “The America First Caucus (AFC) exists to promote Congressional policies that are to the long-term benefit of the American nation,” adding that it aims to “follow in President Trump’s footsteps, and potentially step on some toes and sacrifice sacred cows for the good of the American nation.” The document is extremely nativist, and repeatedly refers to “Anglo-Saxon” traditions and supports infrastructure “that reflects the architectural, engineering and aesthetic value that befits the progeny of European architecture.”

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Like the Nazis & Fascists, the Republican Party Must Be Purged

It must not be allowed, like the Confederacy was, to live on with its own “lost cause” BS mythology

Thom Hartmann

Photo by DesignClass on Unsplash

President Joe Biden has largely given up on trying to negotiate anything with Republicans. There’s a good reason for this: the GOP is no longer a legitimate political party.

One of the most comprehensive and well respected surveys of political parties worldwide is called the Global Party Survey and came out of work done at Harvard in the US and Sydney University in Australia. The researchers note: “Drawing on survey data gathered from 1,861 party and election experts, the study uses 21 core items to estimate key ideological values, issue positions, and populist rhetoric for 1,127 parties in 170 countries.”

What they found was that the Democratic Party in the US is fairly solidly within the norms for political parties in fully developed countries around the world. It resembles normal and legitimate parties in Canada and most of Western Europe.

The Republican party, however, both behaves and is ideologically most similar to Hungary’s Fidesz party, Turkey’s AKP party and Poland’s PiS party.

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Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz: Their Unholy Trumpian Alliance Continues

Rep. Matt Gaetz speaking s at an “An Address to Young Americans” event, hosted by Students for Trump and Turning Point Action at Dream City Church in Phoenix, Arizona in June 2020, Gage Skidmore Alex Henderson April 04, 2021

Although former President Donald Trump has been gone from the White House for over two months and Democrats control both the executive and judicial branches of the United States’ federal government, Trump’s grip on the Republican Party continues —and in the U.S. House of Representatives, one of the most Trumpian alliances is that of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. With the 38-year-old Gaetz facing allegations that he was sexually involved with a 17-year-old girl — allegations he has vehemently denied — Greene is rising to his defense just as he recently rose to hers.

Gaetz finds himself caught up in a broad sexual trafficking investigation being carried out by the U.S. Department of Justice. The far-right GOP congressman and devout Trump supporter is not the main target of the probe, but the allegation that he had a sexual relationship with an under-age girl and paid her to travel with him is one of the things the DOJ is investigating.

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