Notices by Chuck Darwin (cdarwin@c.im), page 14

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

Election denialism isn’t gone. Trump’s backers are probing for weaknesses.


The Carter Center, founded by former president Jimmy Carter, normally sends election observers to countries such as Sierra Leone, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

⭐️This fall, the group will deploy nonpartisan monitors in Michigan, Arizona and, yes, Georgia ⭐️
— not the country but the state where the group is based.

Such vigilance, in the world’s oldest democracy, reflects 💥the corrosive downstream effects of former president Donald Trump’s years of relentless election denialism.💥


Mostly under the radar, 🔥Trump backers in some key states are probing for weaknesses in the nation’s decentralized election administration system. 🔥

For example, Mr. Trump’s allies appear to be exploring whether county-level officials can block the certification of vote tallies, if the election doesn’t go their way.


The United States has more than 3,000 counties. Dragging out certification in one could create a cascading problem in which a state is unable to certify its results by the Dec. 17 deadline to cast its electoral votes so that they can be sent to the Capitol for counting on Jan. 6, 2025.

If no candidate receives 270 electoral votes, the House might be forced to pick the president
— with each state’s delegation getting one vote,
a system that favors Republicans.


The Electoral Count Reform Act that passed in 2022 addressed weaknesses exposed by Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

State legislatures will find it harder to block certification, and the threshold is higher for members of Congress to block the counting of electoral votes a state submits.

Yet, while significant and valuable, the bipartisan measure did not address every vulnerability.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/26/2024-election-certification-denial/

Trump’s Shameless, Corrupt Wooing of Plutocrats Is Suddenly Backfiring

A media narrative has somehow taken hold that CEOs are stampeding toward Trump.

The full story isn’t nearly so simple.

While a media narrative has taken hold that corporate elites are rushing to support Trump
—shelving misgivings about his threats of authoritarian rule
—the reality is much more complex.
His corrupt entreaties appear to be contributing to a sense that a second term would be unsettlingly chaotic and disruptive to the business climate
—and this has emerged as a key argument that President Biden’s allies outside the White House are quietly making to business leaders in urging them not to back Trump.

In an interview, White House chief of staff Jeff Zients said that he and other administration officials have been meeting one-on-one with CEOs in what he called an “all-hands effort.”
“The most important thing for U.S. economic growth and for progress and good fortune,” Zients told me, in describing the pitch he makes to CEOs,
is “to have a stable, predictable environment.”
Zients said he argues that “you might not agree with everything that’s done,” but “there’s an opportunity to talk things through, and there aren’t surprises.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/183147/trumps-shameless-corrupt-wooing-plutocrats-suddenly-backfiring

I went to trade school during law school. It left me stunned.

The future of American prosperity depends not only on lawyers and executives
but also on machinists, welders and all skilled tradespeople who are the backbone of our economy.

But we must reshape the narrative around skilled trades and foster a cultural appreciation for these essential careers.

Government initiatives such as President Biden’s American Jobs Plan,
which included $300 billion in manufacturing expenditures,
are doomed if they do not do this.

There is real concern that many of the new factories developed as part of Biden’s “Manufacturing Renaissance” will become white elephants because of an under-skilled U.S. workforce
and a lack of awareness about the benefits of careers in advanced industry.


You may be wondering what exactly I plan to do with my own two diplomas.

I plan to build a software-driven recruitment company that helps people find good careers in the skilled trades and advanced industry.

I want to pave the way for a new generation of workers who can thrive in the advanced manufacturing renaissance, driving innovation and growth for decades to come.

But I also like to finish what I start — so I will take the New York bar exam in 2025. You never know when some legal expertise might come in handy.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/06/24/law-school-skilled-trades-machining/

Readers Don’t Trust Dirty Tricks

What worked for British tabloids won’t work for The Washington Post.

-- Anne Applebaum

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/06/washington-post-will-lewis-publisher/678755/?gift=B65VRQjMMsZQilGgdT7IHDwF7YMBJS4y86abh_iGPLE

The Republican National Committee’s attempt to have the state of Nevada 👉purge voters 👈from its rolls will not move forward after a federal court dismissed the case late Tuesday. 

The RNC, the Nevada Republican Party and a voter alleged that Nevada’s voter registration records are “inaccurate” and “bloated with ineligible voters” in violation of the National Voter Registration Act.

Although the parties requested an order requiring Nevada to develop and implement a new list maintenance program, the court declined to order one.

The judge gave the RNC two weeks to file a new complaint after finding that the committee’s first complaint was deficient for several reasons. 

⭐️Ensuring voters will not be wrongfully purged from the rolls ahead of 2024 will be a key concern for pro-democracy groups as the right continues a relentless legal effort to either make vote records publicly available or purge voters from state’s voter rolls. ⭐️

Pro-democracy groups including Rise Action Fund, the Institute for a Progressive Nevada and the Nevada Alliance for Retired Americans quickly intervened in the case and asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit.

The Democratic National Committee filed a “friend of the court” brief also asking for the case to be dismissed arguing that
💥 the RNC  ”resurrected that failed strategy by preemptively filing lawsuits like this one around the country, challenging voter registration list maintenance programs based on flawed interpretations of the National Voter Registration Act… and obviously erroneous data.” 💥

https://www.democracydocket.com/news-alerts/federal-court-rejects-rnc-lawsuit-over-nevadas-voter-rolls/

A Guy Says He Was Questioned On A Plane For Doing Math During
A Flight

A woman sitting next the Ivy League economist told flight crew she had security concerns about the man, after seeing him write in a foreign script.

It turned out to be a differential equation.

• @TetraspaceWe...
Replying to @_fembOt:

Suspected of ties to Al-Gebra

Gilead’s twice-yearly medicine to prevent HIV succeeded in a Phase 3 trial.
None of the roughly 2,000 women in the trial who received the #lenacapavir shot contracted HIV.
Gilead needs to replicate the results in another Phase 3 trial before seeking FDA approval. The company expects to share more data later this year or early next year.
If the results are positive, lenacapavir for PrEP could reach the market as soon as late 2025

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/20/gilead-prep-lenacapavir-succeeds-in-phase-3-trial.html

MI5 refused to investigate ‘Russian spy’s’ links to Tories, says whistleblower

MI5 repeatedly refused to investigate evidence that an alleged Russian spy was attempting to cultivate influence with senior Conservative politicians
and channel illegal Russian funds into the party, a Tory member has alleged in a new complaint lodged with the investigatory powers tribunal (IPT).

Sergei Cristo, a Conservative Party activist and a former journalist with the BBC World Service, has lodged a complaint with the investigatory powers tribunal,
filing the case after corresponding with the chair of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, Conservative MP Julian Lewis,
who recommended he take the information to the authorities.

The committee’s Russia report claimed in 2020 that the security services had turned a blind eye to “credible evidence” of Russian interference
and Cristo’s allegations offer potentially explosive new evidence that confirms its findings.

Labour MP Ben Bradshaw said “allegations that the security services ignored evidence from a Conservative whistleblower exposing Russian infiltration at the highest levels of the party are truly shocking”
and claimed the “Conservative party’s Russia problem” was an ongoing threat to Britain’s national security.

Cristo says that it was reading the Russia report that made him “suddenly aware that maybe the story I had was more significant than I thought”
and, at Lewis’s suggestion, he wrote to Cressida Dick, then commissioner of the Met police.

He received a response from the counter-terrorism command (SO15) who said it was not a matter for the Met and advised him to take it to the IPT
– which oversees the security services
– which he has now done.

The allegations centre around the formation of a group called
🔸Conservative Friends of Russia 🔸in 2012, and its relationship with a Russian diplomat, #Sergey #Nalobin.

In August of that year, the Russian ambassador, #Alexander #Yakovenko, hosted a lavish launch party for the group in the gardens of his residence in Kensington
with guests who included the former minister of culture, media and sport, #John #Whittingdale,
and Boris Johnson’s now wife, #Carrie #Symonds.

The Russian government also funded an all-expenses-paid trip to Moscow
for a handpicked group of members including the future CEO of Vote Leave, #Matthew #Elliott.

Cristo says his suspicions about Nalobin, who was the political first secretary at the embassy, had been aroused two years earlier
when he was approached by the diplomat and they met at the Carlton Club.

When Nalobin learned that Cristo was a volunteer with the treasurers’ department of the Conservative campaign headquarters (CCHQ), he said he could
“make introductions to Russian companies who would donate money to the Conservative party”.

“I knew straight away that what he was suggesting was illegal under UK law,” Cristo wrote in a letter to Lewis last year.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2023/jan/21/mi5-refused-to-investigate-russian-spys-links-to-tories-says-whistleblower?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other