Notices by Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im), page 13

JD Vance is a rightwing troll disguised as a populist, and
could be our next vice-president

J.D. got the nod from Don, not just for sycophancy, but for clear and present authoritarian tendencies

The junior senator from Ohio had a massive advantage that made him more similar to Trump than any other contender:
a presence in popular culture, created by "Hillbilly Elegy,"
the memoir to which both conservatives and liberals dumbfounded by Trump’s triumph turned eagerly to understand why the “left behind” were opting for rightwing populism.

People think they know Vance, because they know his narrative:
growing up in poverty in Appalachia and making it to Yale Law School and Silicon Valley,
only to then turn into "political champion of blue-collar folks."

Vance perfected what, on the right, tends to substitute for policy ideas these days:
trolling the liberals.

Mobilizing voters is less about programs, or a real legislative record (Vance has none).

Rather, it’s generating political energy by deepening people’s sense of shared #victimhood.

No one but J.D. would try to schmooze voters with an invocation of the Nazi legal theorist Carl Schmitt -- who, in the 1930s, claimed that liberals were either weaklings or prone to betray their own ideals.
(Schmitt is an obscure reference to most outside the hallowed halls of Yale Law School, but a signal to cognoscenti that Vance is all in on antiliberalism.)

As with so many self-declared rightwing champions of the working class, economics isn’t ultimately where the action is;
“elite campuses” feature much more in an increasingly feverish Maga imagination.

Vance has declared universities the enemy
and asserted that “the closest that conservatives have ever gotten to successfully dealing with leftwing domination of universities is Viktor Orbán’s approach in Hungary”.

The reality is that Orbán has simply shut down entire academic subjects which conservatives don’t like – no more gender studies – and handed over Hungarian universities to cronies;
he also managed to chase out the country’s best school, Central European University.

When pressed, Vance re-describes his Orbánism as giving taxpayers a say in how their dollars are spent in education
– a startling admission that politicians should be in control,

and of course a blatant contradiction with the free speech pieties Vance’s allies in Congress have become so good at weaponizing.

How the hillbillies of Vance’s Hillbilly Elegy will benefit from removing Judith Butler from reading lists at Harvard is anyone’s guess.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/09/jd-vance-is-a-rightwing-troll-disguised-as-a-populist-he-could-be-our-next-vice-president?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Fox's Brit Hume on H. D.Vance:

"then you think, well, is this person, how did he get the job?

Did he get it because he was really the best qualified to be president?

Or did he get it because he sucked up effectively to the nominee?

People will have questions about that."

https://www.mediaite.com/tv/foxs-brit-hume-says-voters-will-wonder-if-trump-picked-vance-as-running-mate-because-the-senator-sucked-up-effectively-to-the-nominee/

Four Colorado poultry workers diagnosed with bird flu

Four poultry workers in Colorado have been diagnosed with bird flu, health officials have confirmed.

The new cases bring the US total to nine since the first human case of the current outbreak was detected in 2022,
also in a Colorado poultry worker.
Eight of the nine were reported this year.

Their illnesses were relatively mild
– reddened and irritated eyes and common respiratory infection symptoms such as fever, chills, coughing, sore throat and runny nose.
None were hospitalized, officials said.

The other US cases have also been mild.

A fifth person with symptoms is undergoing testing, but those results are not back yet, officials said.
The workers were culling poultry at a farm in north-east Colorado, according to state health officials. All had direct contact with infected birds.

A bird flu virus has been spreading since 2020 among mammals
– including dogs, cats, skunks, bears and even seals and porpoises
– in scores of countries.
Earlier this year the virus, known as #H5N1, was detected in US livestock,
and is now circulating in cattle in several states.

Health officials continue to characterize the threat to the general public as low,
and the virus has not spread between people.
But officials are keeping careful watch because earlier versions of the same virus have been deadly to people.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has sent a nine-person team to Colorado to help in the investigation, at the state’s request, CDC officials said.
This cases earlier this year were among dairy farm workers in Michigan, Texas and Colorado.

The virus detected in the four latest cases is least partly identical to the type found in the earlier US cases,
but further genetic analysis is underway to make sure it is exactly the same, officials said.

As of last Friday, the H5N1 virus has been confirmed in 152 dairy herds in 12 states, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
Hundreds of commercial poultry flocks in more than 30 states have reported H5N1 or other types of bird flu.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/jul/15/colorado-bird-flu?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Project 2025 … and 1921, and 1973, and 1981

Terrifying blueprints for the next Republican presidency are a quadrennial tradition.

This year’s Mandate for Leadership is the ninth edition in the series.

I’ve never seen the “Mandate V” and “Mandate VI” volumes from 2000 and 2005, so I can’t say how much they contributed to George W. Bush’s own unique contributions to the deconstruction of the administrative state, and the debacles of deregulation

But I can report, thanks to Wikipedia, that the one in 2005 was a mere 156 pages,
because “according to Heritage, the shorter length reflected that
policies and ideas from the early Mandate editions had, by the time of this publication, largely become part of the mainstream debate.”

So what of this edition in the series?

What is same old same old, what’s uniquely MAGA? What’s an accumulation of decades of momentum, what’s a veering from the Reaganite course?

Where is the “Special Assignment Technique” buried within, only this time for some constitutionally fastidious attorney general or Geneva Convention–besotted four-star general?

Bottom line:
How much of it renders reasonable the fears we’ve been hearing, that this time, they finally have the federal government figured out?

👉There’s plenty. 👈

Tune in next week. Same wing-nutty time, same wing-nutty channel.

https://prospect.org/politics/2024-07-10-project-2025-republican-presidencies-tradition/

US lawmakers and analysts have been voicing concern since the 2021 US Capitol riot that increasingly bellicose campaign language was becoming a worrying contusion on the US body politic ahead of November's presidential election

Trump himself has been a major architect of the coarsening in US political discourse in recent years.
Many of Trump's targets in Congress and the government
-- from Republican Senator Mitt Romney to retired top government scientist Anthony Fauci
-- have disclosed having to take on private security after threats from Trump's supporters.
The former US president sparked fury last year when he implied that the country's top military officer should be executed, and joked about the Pelosi hammer attack.
Trump's exhortations to violence are nothing new -- he suggested that protesters should be "roughed up" at a rally in 2016, and that looters should be shot during the 2020 racial protests over the police murder of George Floyd.
He has also repeatedly described the attorneys leading the multiple civil and criminal cases he faces as "monster," "deranged" and "psycho."
And, of course, many argue he incited the deadly Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, when he exhorted his followers to "fight like hell" shortly before they stormed the seat of US government, leaving five people dead.
Republicans have in the past accused Democrats of overreacting to figurative language and ignoring leftist aggression, such as harassment of conservative Supreme Court justices and the 2017 shooting that wounded Scalise.
Still, law enforcement agencies say that while threats have proliferated from every corner, right-wing violence is the bigger threat.

Discourse that was once taboo is now commonplace on the far right, with Republican flamethrowers in Congress incorporating violent language and imagery into their stump speeches.
Threats against members of Congress of all stripes reached a record high of 9,625 in 2021, according to data provided by the Capitol Police, compared with just 3,939 in 2017.
Robert Pape of the University of Chicago has conducted several polls on political violence since the Capitol assault. In his latest last month, 10 percent of respondents said the use of force was "justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president."
"The shooting of former President Trump is a consequence of such significant support for political violence in our country," he told AFP.
"We also need to worry about threat in retribution to President Biden. Our survey shows seven percent of American adults -- 18 million -- support force to restore Trump to the presidency, half of whom own guns."
Political analyst Charlie Kolean called for Americans to stand together "in condemning such violence and work towards ensuring the safety and security of all public officials."
"Today's events are a stark reminder of the threats our leaders face," Kolean, the chief strategy officer at conservative-leaning political consultancy RED PAC, told AFP.
"An attack on the presidential candidate is an attack on our democracy."
https://www.rawstory.com/bullet-and-the-ballot-box-violent-us-rhetoric-comes-home-to-roost/

Supreme Court corruption is untouchable,

But last week Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) introduced a formal request to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for the opening of an investigation into Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.

Separately, this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York filed articles of impeachmentagainst not only Thomas, but fellow justice Samuel Alito.

Thanks to crack reporting from ProPublica, the world was made aware last year that the SCOTUS justice has been accepting millions of dollars worth of lavish vacations, yacht trips, and international jet-setting on the dime of Republican billionaire megadonor Harlan Crow, breaking with public servant laws and disclosure norms.

https://www.theroot.com/finally-justice-clarence-thomas-might-be-in-trouble-fo-1851587547

A death knell for NATO: Project 2025 calls for Trump to "restructure" US foreign policy

The plan is for Donald Trump to "reset the nation’s role in the world"

https://www.salon.com/2024/07/10/a-knell-for-nato-project-2025-calls-for-to-restructure-us-foreign-policy/

A pair of well-connected Democrats is offering an optimistic plan
that would involve the president stepping down as the nominee and the party announcing a “blitz primary” process ahead of the August convention.

The proposal is the work of Rosa Brooks,
a Georgetown University law professor who served in the Obama and Clinton administrations and as a volunteer policy adviser to the Biden campaign in 2020,

and Ted Dintersmith, a venture capitalist and education philanthropist who has donated to various Democratic campaigns.

They want Biden to flip the script on the current Washington narrative of a Democratic Party in chaos
and for the party to see the current period as an opportunity for a reset.

“In the midst of malaise and crisis, we can forge an uplifting path,” Dintersmith told Semafor.

Their idea goes something like this, according to a memo shared with Semafor that has been circulated to Democratic donors and bundlers as well as officials within the Biden campaign and administration:

• Biden would step down as the Democratic nominee in mid-July, and announce the new system, with backing from Vice President Kamala Harris.

• Potential candidates would have a few days to throw their respective hats in the ring. The Democratic Party then would begin a primary sprint in which the six candidates who receive the most votes from delegates pledge to run positive-only campaigns in the month leading up to the convention.

• The “blitz primary” would involve weekly forums with each candidate moderated by cultural icons

(Michelle Obama, Oprah, and Taylor Swift are among the names floated in the memo) in order to engage voters.

• The nominee would ultimately be chosen by the delegates using ranked choice voting before the start of the Chicago convention on Aug. 19.

• It would be announced with plenty of fanfare on the third day of the gathering. The memo imagines the nominee unveiled on stage with Biden, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

According to its authors, the country would be captivated. Donations would pour in. And Biden would be celebrated as a “modern-day George Washington,” the proponents argue

https://www.semafor.com/article/07/07/2024/blitz-primary-could-open-up-democratic-race-if-biden-drops-out

In the first half of Sen. J.D. #Vance's interview with "Meet the Press" host Kristen Welker,
the Ohio Republican waved his hands and snapped at her as she attempted to fact-check him.

During Vance's second outburst, the NBC host resorted to telling him, "I have to hit pause here."

⭐️What first set off the Ohio lawmaker was Welker pushing back at his claim that President Joe Biden is siccing the Department of Justice on the embattled Trump.

"The prosecution of Donald Trump in New York, which I think now has fundamentally been thrown in doubt by this immunity case, it was one of the main guys was a Department of Justice official of the Biden administration who jumped ship to join a local prosecutor's office to go after Donald Trump," Vance stated
Which led her to interrupt, "And yet the DOJ told Congress.." as he rambled, "...the legitimacy of the prosecution. That's a problem."

♦️"Senator, that happens all of the time, people are appointed from Washington. The DOJ told Congress
—, she instructed him just before he shouted over her.

"Are you really saying, Kristen, it happens all the time! That the number --," Vance exclaimed
Welker cut him off and explained,
♦️"Let me just finish this. It [Congress] reviewed all communications since Biden took office and found no contact between federal prosecutors and those involved with that case in New York. Can you stick to the substance of the question, though?"

⭐️In the second skirmish, Vance claimed the Biden administration wants to fund abortions up to birth, calling it "crazy,"
which led Welker to once again talk over him after putting him on "pause" and then explaining,
♦️"As you know abortions, very few abortions, take place later in pregnancy almost always because there is a medical emergency."

Watch below or at the link

https://www.alternet.org/jd-vance-2668697406/

2024 France election live updates:
Prime Minister Attal plans to resign as projections show leftists lead

https://apnews.com/live/france-election-results-updates-round-2-macron-le-pen

Trump is steeped in Project 2025 material.

Trump is out today lying and denying knowing anything about Project 2025
and not being involved with it,
and not knowing anything about the Heritage Foundation.

This is, obviously, a lie,
and your Trumpy and Trump-receptive family and friends need to know.

He’s lying about it because enough of us have been going on about it that people are starting to find it,
and they do not like what they see.

So, naturally, he is lying and pretending he’s not involved and doesn’t know what it is.

Here’s what to tell your Trumpy family and friends, some of which is sourced from here:

• Trump’s SuperPAC have been running ads not just promoting it, but calling it “Trump’s Project 2025.” They’re still doing that.
• He’s been delivering its talking points at his rallies for months
• Chief Trump advisor and “deputy President” John McEntee is a senior advisor for Project 2025, and specifically leads the project to replace career government employees with Trump loyalists
• His press secretary was in Heritage Foundation ads recruiting for Project 2025, though they seem to have taken down that video. (Or YouTube Search isn’t letting me see it, even on their own channel)
• Trump himself has appeared before the Heritage Foundation and told them how much he “needs” them.

Trump is, again, lying.

Which he always does, of course.

But he’s lying about Project 2025.

Make sure they know what he’s lying about this time

https://solarbird.net/blog/2024/07/05/trump-is-steeped-in-project-2025-material-hes-silly-with-it/

Judges order hate groups to pay millions for 2017 Charlottesville rally

A federal appeals court on Monday restored more than $2 million of damages a jury said some of the nation’s most prominent white supremacists and hate groups owed for their role in 2017’s deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.


A federal judge had previously slashed the $24 million a jury awarded eight plaintiffs in total to $350,000,

citing a decades-old state law.

But in a unanimous ruling, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit ordered that
instead of splitting the $350,000,
each plaintiff was entitled to that amount,
totaling $2.8 million.


This ruling allows plaintiffs to collect
— nearly three years after a jury said they were entitled to relief for the physical harm and emotional distress they incurred when white supremacists descended on Charlottesville in a weekend of hate.

Among the defendants was a neo-Nazi who rammed his car into a crowd of counterprotesters,
killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer
and striking four of the plaintiffs.

In total, including compensatory and punitive damages, attorney’s fees and costs, the defendants owe $9.7 million.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/07/01/unite-the-right-charlottesville-settlement/

The deluge of bonkers AI art is literally surreal

The stuff of Salvador Dali’s wildest dreams is no match for Facebook these days:
Amputee kittens using crutches. Strawberries in the shape of lifelike frogs. Bosomy conjoined twins, structurally impossible sand sculptures, snakes swallowing fully-grown lions, airplanes with human hands. An underwater Jesus covered in shrimp.


These unsettling images appear in our social media feeds, sometimes as a jump scare, and sometimes as a Trojan horse.

They might be accompanied by a manipulative caption
— “99% of people will scroll past without clicking like”
— or hashtag gobbledygook that often includes, for some reason, a combination of the words “Scarlett Johansson beautiful cabin crew.”

The replies, a medley of gullible users and likely bots, are usually full of compliments for the insane image.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/of-interest/2024/06/30/ai-art-facebook-slop-artificial-intelligence/

MAGA personalities raged at CNN when it refused to allow a Donald Trump propagandist to smear journalists on air.

They exploded again when CNN announced that the debate would be fact-checked.

We think this provides an unexpected glimpse into what Project 2025’s implementation might look like.

We talked to David Roberts about what MAGA’s hostility to neutral journalism portends for a second Trump term
—one that wrecks the professional, fact-based civil service and transforms government into a tool for manufacturing propaganda.

Listen to this episode...

https://newrepublic.com/article/183218/magas-eruptions-rage-cnn-reveal-project-2025-ominous

The larger point remains about Trump, not Biden:

It’s a disgrace that a democratic superpower would miss every single opportunity to keep a man like Trump off the debate stage,
off the convention stage,
and out of the White House.

The Founders gave us the tools they thought we’d need to prevent this recurring nightmare.

But every institution has let us down, from the GOP to (even and especially) the federal courts.

If Congress doesn’t change our laws,
and if Republicans keep equating patriotism with diehard or even lukewarm Trumpism,
those institutions will continue to fail us and the prospect of another Trump will always loom on the horizon. If not closer.

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/donald-trump-should-not-have-been-debate-stage

Trump had no business being there and his presence was stark evidence that our system is not only dysfunctional,
it is impotent when we need it most.

The guardrails
—the impeachment process,
the Twenty-fifth Amendment,
the courts
—did not hold.

They have proved to be a fairytale we spin to make ourselves feel better.

They will remain just that: a fantasy destined to implode, over and over.

Maybe as soon as in the next few days,
if the Supreme Court tells us whether Trump has immunity from prosecution for laws broken during his presidency.

Maybe a few months from now, at the polls.

Maybe next year, when his federal criminal trials will amount to something, or nothing,

but too late to matter.

By overturning Chevron, the Supreme Court has declared war on an administrative state that touches everything from net neutrality to climate change

Since the New Deal era, the bulk of the functioning US government is the administrative state
— think the acronym soup of agencies like the EPA, FCC, FTC, FDA, and so on.

Even when Capitol Hill is not mired in deep dysfunction, the speed at which Congress and the courts operate no longer seems suitable for modern life.

Both industry and ordinary people look to the administrative state, rather than legislators, for an immediate answer to their problems.

And since 1984, the administrative state largely ran on one Supreme Court precedent:
"Chevron USA, Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council" (NRDC).

That decision has now been overturned.

Admin law is not always interesting, but the simple fact is when it comes to the day-to-day, agencies are the most impactful part of the federal government.

The administrative state touches everything around us:
net neutrality,
climate change,
clean air and water,
and what scant consumer protections we have.

The true scope of this ruling will not be immediately felt,
and what replaces Chevron deference is still unclear. M

The regulatory state has been under steady attack from an increasingly conservative judiciary for a long time.

Some of the agencies we follow most closely were kneecapped even before this decision
— one expert we talked to said that Chevron had been a “dead letter for quite some time.”

Still, this is a formal turning point.

For a long time, the kind of regulation that actually kept up with the pace of technology was mostly coming out of agencies.

It is in the years to come that we will wonder,
“Why isn’t anyone doing anything?” or
“How can a court just unilaterally do that?”
about issues that range from trivial to life-threatening.

https://www.theverge.com/24188365/chevron-scotus-net-neutrality-dmca-visa-fcc-ftc-epa

US supreme court strikes down 40-year precedent, reducing power of federal agencies

The US supreme court has overturned one of its own most important precedents, the #Chevron #doctrine, that for the past 40 years has guided the work of federal government in critical areas of public life, from food and drug safety to environmental protection.

In a ruling that the Biden administration has warned could have a “convulsive” impact on the functioning of government,
the court’s hardline conservative majority delivered a major blow to the regulatory powers of federal agencies.
Voting as a block, the six rightwing justices who wield the supermajority threw out the supreme court’s own 1984 opinion in Chevron USA Inc v Natural Resources Defense Council, which has required the courts to defer to the knowledge of government experts in their reasonable interpretation of ambiguous laws.

Writing the opinion, chief justice John Roberts bluntly stated that the Chevron precedent “is overruled”.
He lambasted the legal theory laid out in the ruling, claiming it “gravely erred” and calling it was “misguided” and “unworkable” despite the fact that it has steered the functions of the federal government for four decades.

Roberts not only eradicated the Chevron doctrine, he turned it on its head.
Under his ruling, the relationship between courts and federal agencies is reversed:
in the modern era, the courts have shown deference to the expertise of agencies, but from now on the courts alone will decide.

“The constitution assigns to the federal judiciary the responsibility and power to adjudicate cases and controversies,” Roberts wrote.
“Agencies have no special competence in resolving statutory ambiguities. Courts do.”

In recent years, the Chevron doctrine has become a central target of rightwing groups that blame it for what they see as a proliferation of government regulations executed by unelected bureaucrats in the so-called “deep state”.
A key group behind the supreme court challenge, the 💥New Civil Liberties Alliance, 💥
was founded with seed money from the oil billionaire Charles #Koch.
In a raft of amicus briefs to the court, alliances of scientists, environmentalists and labor organizations warned that undoing Chevron would roll back a regulatory framework that for four decades has improved the health, safety and welfare of Americans.
It would also unravel efforts to protect the environment and fight the climate crisis.

Elena #Kagan issued a withering dissent, which was joined by her fellow liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.
She accused her rightwing peers on the bench of throwing out a precedent that had stood for 40 years as “a cornerstone of administrative law”.
Chevron had been applied over that period in thousands of judicial decisions and become “part of the warp and woof of modern government”, said Kagan.
By casting out decades of settled law, the conservative supermajority had once again asserted their authority.m

👉“The majority disdains restraint, and grasps for power,” 👈Kagan added.
The ruling was widely denounced by liberal observers. Elizabeth #Warren, the US senator from Massachusetts, said it was a “power grab by the far right to benefit the wealthy and well-connected”.
Laurence #Tribe, professor of constitutional law at Harvard law school, said on social media:
🔥“The administrative state just died. The imperial judiciary” has “relegated Congress to a secondary role”.🔥

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2024/jun/28/us-supreme-court-chevron-doctrine-ruling?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

Biden reminds people that all the stuff Trump is denying is things that people saw with their own eyes.

And that most of Trump’s cabinet and staff from his term now want nothing to do with him.

And with that, CNN cuts to commercials

Supreme court issues three major decisions surrounding Purdue Pharma, the EPA and abortion
-- but I'd quiet on Trump immunity hours before debate

The supreme court on Thursday issued three major decisions on cases involving OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma, an air pollution rule by the Environmental Protection Agency and abortion access in Idaho.

⭐️In a 5-4 decision, the conservative-majority court rejected #Purdue Pharma’s multi-billion dollar settlement that would have shielded the wealthy #Sackler family from future lawsuits over the country’s deadly #opioid epidemic, but would have also provided compensation and rehabilitation funds to victims.
In his opinion, conservative justice Neil Gorsuch wrote:
“The Sacklers seek greater relief than a bankruptcy discharge normally affords, for they hope to extinguish even claims for wrongful death and fraud, and they seek to do so without putting anything close to all their assets on the table.”

⭐️In a separate 5-4 decision, the court put on hold an attempt by the #EPA to reduce air pollution from power plants in “upwind” states that would affect air quality in “#downwind” states. Along with industry allies, Ohio, West Virginia and Indiana have been challenging the EPA’s rule.
Conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett, who joined the court’s three liberal justices, in dissent, wrote that the court “justifies this decision based on an alleged procedural error that likely had no impact on the plan.”

⭐️Meanwhile, in a victory for reproductive rights activists, the court dismissed a case over whether #emergency room doctors can perform #abortions to so save a pregnant woman’s life.
The court’s 6-3 decision marks a win for the Joe Bidenadministration, for now, as the case is returned to a lower court and potentially delays a final decision until after the election. Idaho had tried to have the procedure exempted from the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2024/jun/27/supreme-court-decision-politics-trump-biden-debate-latest-updates?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other