A Texas judge temporarily blocked the state from investigating the parents of a transgender teen, a day after they sued Gov. Greg Abbott (R) over his abrupt directive against care for trans youth in the state last week. One of the parents who sued Abbott works for the state agency carrying out the governor’s order.
Continue reading “Judge Temporarily Stops Texas From Investigating The Parents Of A Transgender Child”READ: Newly Public Jan. 6 Docs Show Eastman Calling For ‘Minor Violation’ Of Law
The congressional Jan. 6 committee released some incredible documents Wednesday evening, as part of a court filing in which the committee alleged, among other things, that then-President Trump violated the law when he attempted to overturn the 2020 election results.
Continue reading “READ: Newly Public Jan. 6 Docs Show Eastman Calling For ‘Minor Violation’ Of Law”First Sedition Guilty Plea Reveals New Details Of Oath Keeper Leader’s Role In Jan. 6 Attack
One of the members of the far-right Oath Keepers who’ve been charged with seditious conspiracy in connection to the Capitol insurrection pleaded guilty on Wednesday, making him the first Jan. 6 defendant to admit to those more serious charges.
Continue reading “First Sedition Guilty Plea Reveals New Details Of Oath Keeper Leader’s Role In Jan. 6 Attack”Ducey Shuts Door On Senate Run In Yet Another High-Profile McConnell Disappointment
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) officially put an end to speculation that he may run against Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ) in 2022 Thursday in a letter to donors.
Continue reading “Ducey Shuts Door On Senate Run In Yet Another High-Profile McConnell Disappointment”The Interesting Role of China
Yesterday, as you no doubt saw, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly to denounce Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 141 countries voted for the resolution. The 5 who voted against it were an unsurprising list: Russia, two countries Russia essentially owns (Belarus and Syria), another country opposed to any sanctions against bad regimes (North Korea) and Eritrea. The really interesting list though was the 35 abstainers. That list looks like a view into the future, in part because the bulk of the countries abstaining looked less like they were seeking to avoid criticism of Russia than they were following the diplomatic lead of China — the most prominent abstainer on the list.
Continue reading “The Interesting Role of China”Trump Just Endorsed An Oath Keeper’s Plan To Seize Control Of The Republican Party
This story first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.
Former President Donald Trump has officially endorsed a plan, created by a man who has self-identified with the Oath Keeper militia, that aims to have Trump supporters consolidate control of the Republican Party.
The plan, known as the “precinct strategy,” has been repeatedly promoted on Steve Bannon’s popular podcast. As ProPublica detailed last year, it has already inspired thousands of people to fill positions at the lowest rung of the party ladder. Though these positions are low-profile and often vacant, they hold critical powers: They help elect higher-ranking party officers, influence which candidates appear on the ballot, turn out voters on Election Day and even staff the polling precincts where people vote and the election boards that certify the results.
“Just heard about an incredible effort underway that will strengthen the Republican Party,” Trump said Sunday in a statement emailed to his supporters. “If members of our Great movement start getting involved (that means YOU becoming a precinct committeeman for your voting precinct), we can take back our great Country from the ground up.”
Trump’s email named Dan Schultz, an Arizona lawyer and local party official who first developed the precinct strategy more than a decade ago. Schultz spent years trying to promote his plan and recruit precinct officers. In 2014, he posted a callout to an internal forum for the Oath Keepers militia group, according to hacked records obtained by ProPublica.
“Why don’t you all join me and the other Oath Keepers who are ‘inside’ the Party already,” Schultz wrote under a screen name. “If we conservatives were to do that, we’d OWN the Party.”
Federal prosecutors in January charged the leader of the Oath Keepers and 10 of its other members with seditious conspiracy in last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol. One of them pleaded guilty, as have several members of the group in related cases who are cooperating with the investigation. The group’s leader, Stewart Rhodes, pleaded not guilty.
There is no indication that Schultz had any involvement in the Capitol riot.
Schultz told ProPublica he never became a formal member of the Oath Keepers organization. “I have taken oaths to support and defend the Constitution as a West Point cadet, as a commissioned U.S. Army officer and as a practicing attorney,” Schultz said in a text message. “Those oaths do not have expiration dates, by my way of thinking, and I have kept my oaths. In that sense, I am an ‘oath keeper.’”
According to experts on extremist groups, the Oath Keepers recruit military and law enforcement veterans using the idea that their oath to defend the Constitution never expired. The group then urges people to resist what they say are impending orders to take away Americans’ guns or create concentration camps.
“I don’t ever want to be pulling the trigger on an AR-15 in my neighborhood,” Schultz said in a 2015 conference call with fellow organizers, referring to the semi-automatic rifle. “Oath Keepers, I love them for instilling the oath. But what they need to do also, I think, is spread the message that hey, we can do stuff politically so we never get to the cartridge box.”
In more recent interviews on right-wing podcasts and internet talk shows, Schultz has repeatedly described his precinct strategy as a last alternative to violence.
“It’s not going to be peaceful the next go-round, perhaps,” Schultz said in a June interview with the pro-Trump personality David Clements. “But it ought to be, and the way to ensure that it will be is we’ve got to get enough of these good decent Americans to take over one of the two major political parties.”
It was not clear whether Trump or his aides were aware that Schultz has self-identified with the Oath Keepers. Trump’s spokesperson, Liz Harrington, did not respond to requests for comment.
Schultz has spent months trying to get his idea in front of Trump. Steve Stern, a fellow movement organizer, told ProPublica that he met a former Trump administration official for lunch at Mar-a-Lago, the ex-president’s private club in Palm Beach, in December. While there, Stern said, he got a chance to briefly mention the project to Trump.
Then, last month, Schultz and Stern landed an interview on a talk show hosted by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow CEO who promotes conspiracy theories about the 2020 election. Lindell said he would discuss the plan with Trump personally. Schultz and Stern followed up with a conference call with Harrington and Bannon, according to Stern. Harrington previously worked at Bannon’s “War Room” website.
“I know the president’s very jacked up about it,” Bannon said on his podcast, speaking with Schultz after Trump released the endorsement. “Help MAGA, help the America First movement, right? Help the deplorables, help President Trump, help yourself, your country, community, your kids, grandkids, all of it. Put your shoulder to the wheel.”
Bannon, who led Trump’s 2016 campaign, originally lifted the precinct strategy to prominence in a podcast interview with Schultz last year. After the episode aired, thousands of people answered Bannon’s call to become precinct officers in pivotal swing states, according to data compiled by ProPublica from county records and interviews with local party officials.
As of last August, GOP leaders in 41 counties reported an unusual increase in sign-ups since Bannon’s first interview with Schultz, adding a total of more than 8,500 new precinct officers. The trend appears to have continued since then. New precinct officers started using their powers to remove or censure Republican leaders who contradicted Trump’s election lies and to recruit people who believe the election was stolen into positions as poll watchers and poll workers.
Bannon received a last-minute pardon from Trump after the former adviser was charged with financial fraud. He has pleaded not guilty to contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack. Bannon’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
In addition to Bannon and Lindell, the precinct strategy has won support from pro-Trump figures such as former national security adviser Michael Flynn, who urged Trump to impose martial law, and lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, who led some of the lawsuits seeking to overturn the election results. Right-wing groups such as Turning Point Action, which organized buses to transport rallygoers on Jan. 6, also joined the effort to recruit precinct officers.
While Stern said he’s thrilled about Trump’s written statement endorsing the precinct strategy, he said he hopes to hear it from Trump’s own lips at an upcoming rally. Stern said he plans to be there with tables to sign more people up.
Unpacking The Big Jan. 6 News
A quick followup on the news from last night that the Jan. 6 committee claims it has a good faith basis for believing President Trump broke the law when he pressured Mike Pence to reject the electoral vote count.
As I explained in the Morning Memo, this arose in the context of the committee trying to overcome an attorney-client privilege argument being raised by John Eastman, the Trump adviser who is fighting a committee subpoena for his emails.
Continue reading “Unpacking The Big Jan. 6 News”Boom! Jan. 6 Committee Cranks Up The Pressure On Merrick Garland
A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.
Where Is DOJ?
In an important new court filing last evening, the House Jan. 6 committee alleged that President Trump committed crimes in pressuring Vice President Pence to overturn the result of the 2020 election.
Trump’s criminal culpability, according to the committee, includes: (i) obstruction of an official proceeding, (ii) conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and (iii) common law fraud.
Why now? Some context:
- The committee is trying to obtain documents (mainly emails) from John Eastman, the lawyer who advised Trump on the scheme to get Pence to refuse to count electoral votes when Congress convened on Jan. 6.
- Eastman filed suit in federal court in California, asserting attorney-client privilege and work-product privilege in refusing to comply with the committee subpoena.
- One of the committee’s arguments (it has many) is that if you’re using the attorney-client relationship to commit crimes, the attorney-client privilege evaporates. To support that argument, the committee had to lay out which crimes it alleges were committed. It did so in last night’s filing.
To be clear, the alleged crimin’ by Trump and Eastman were not the centerpiece of the Jan. 6 committee’s filing, but it’s an explosive argument and the most newsworthy.
More than a year after the near-coup, with no public sign that the Justice Department is investigating the higher-ups in the conspiracy to subvert the 2020 election, the Jan. 6 committee is laying down an important marker for judging the performance of Attorney General Merrick Garland. Is he up to it?
Jan. 6 Defendant Pleads Guilty To Seditious Conspiracy For First Time
On Wednesday, an Oath Keeper named Joshua James became the first person in all the Capitol insurrection criminal cases to plead guilty to seditious conspiracy in the attack.
Humanitarian Crisis Balloons In Ukraine
Today marks one week since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and more than 1 million Ukrainians have fled the country since then, according to the U.N.’s refugee agency.
- The Washington Post: “What it looks like at Ukraine’s borders as refugees try to flee”
- New York Times: “Newly released satellite images show the effects of war on Ukraine’s civilians.”
- Wall Street Journal: “Russia Batters Ukraine’s No. 2 City Kharkiv, as Kyiv Offensive Stalls”
Bid To Get Cawthorn Kicked Off Ballot Relaunches
The North Carolina voters who mounted a legal challenge against far-right Rep. Madison Cawthorn’s (R-NC) candidacy are starting over after the North Carolina State Board of Elections pulled the plug on their first attempt last week.
- Two voters who live in the district Cawthorn’s running in, North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District, initiated a new lawsuit on Wednesday. One of them is a former GOP county commissioner, according to Free Speech For People, the nonpartisan election reform group that’s been backing the challenges.
- The elections board had decided that the first challenge was invalid after a North Carolina court established a new district map that moved the district Cawthorn was running in at the time (North Carolina’s 13th Congressional District) away from the voters who’d filed that lawsuit.
- A brief summary of what happened during the first fight before it got shut down:
- The challengers argued that Cawthorn’s role in stoking the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection disqualifies him from running for office
- Cawthorn’s lawyer argued that his client is protected by a 19th-century amnesty act for Confederate soldiers
- The North Carolina attorney general’s office argued that amnesty that was granted to Civil War-era Confederates doesn’t apply in the year 2022
- The state elections board confirmed that it has the authority under state law to disqualify Cawthorn if it chooses to do so
Setting The Stage For SCOTUS Confirmation
The Senate Judiciary Committee announced yesterday that the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court Justice nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson will start on March 21 and wrap up on the 24th.
The Right-Wing Media Cesspit
Fox News host Tucker Carlson is demanding to see Jackson’s LSAT score so the Black lady can prove whether she really belongs on the Supreme Court.
Navarro Blows Off Jan. 6 Panel Hearing
Former Trump trade adviser Peter Navarro didn’t show up for his scheduled deposition with the House Jan. 6 committee yesterday, claiming that he is an Executive Privileged Boi who won’t let the committee “bully” him with its subpoena, no sir!
- Navarro claimed that Biden’s refusal to grant him executive privilege is “illegitimate” and has “exposed the weak underbelly” of the committee’s investigation.
- He’s very confident that “that unconstitutional dog won’t hunt at the Supreme Court,” which has already shot down two of Trump’s attempts to block the committee’s investigation.
- Navarro plotted a coup that totally wasn’t a coup with Steve Bannon on Jan. 6.
Trump’s Border Wall Has Been Breached More Than 3,000 Times
Mexican smugglers have cut through the ex-president’s “very powerful” wall more than 3,000 times over the past three years, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection records obtained by the Washington Post.
DeSantis Disgusted By Mask-Wearing Brats
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) had this very normal reaction upon seeing a group of students wearing masks at his press conference at the University of South Florida yesterday:
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Russians Intensify Shelling Of Ukrainian Cities As Nation Pleads For Help
It’s now been almost one week since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Since then, the Kremlin has failed to take the country’s two biggest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv. Both have faced assaults from Russian troops invading from the nearest borders, 20 miles away in the case of Kharkiv and roughly 60 miles away from the Belarusian border, in the case of Kyiv.
Over the past several days, Russia has began to bomb government buildings and civilian infrastructure. The mayor of Mariupol, a city on the Sea of Azov in Ukraine’s east, told Ukrainian TV that an entire residential block was flattened by an artillery strike during heavy fighting.
“We cannot even take the wounded from the streets, from houses and apartments today, since the shelling does not stop,” he said.
Kharkiv, an old capital of Ukraine, has also faced periodic missile strikes and heavy rocket bombardments.
With all that, U.S. officials appear to have changed their assessment of how long the Ukrainians may hold out. When the war began, they predicted that Kyiv would likely fall within four days of the invasion.
Now, per CBS News, Pentagon officials briefed lawmakers that Russia could take Kyiv in 30 days, and that a “tactical seizure” of Ukraine may be complete in six weeks. From that point, lawmakers were told, the war could last from 10 to 20 years.
Where Things Stand: Complicated, 11th Hour Affair Allegation Ends Texas GOP Incumbent’s Reelection Bid
“She was just annoyed at having to see her ex-lover’s face on billboards as she drove around Plano.”
According to the Dallas Morning News, that was Plano, Texas resident Tania Joya’s justification for spilling the beans about an affair she had with incumbent Rep. Van Taylor (R-TX) to one of his opponents ahead of Tuesday’s primary.
Look, we’ve all been there.
But there’s a lot of other stuff going on here — far more, in fact, than Joya’s very valid logic. Let’s unpack.
Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Complicated, 11th Hour Affair Allegation Ends Texas GOP Incumbent’s Reelection Bid”