A Liberal Lives In Wisconsin

       On January 31st, 1995, President Bill Clinton authorized the Treasury Department to provide $20 billion in emergency loans to Mexico after Congress failed to authorize his $50 billion package. In response to the U.S. taking the first step, other world leaders in Canada and the international community announced $29 billion in loans. This $49 billion aid prevented the collapse of the peso and the Mexican economy, which would have severely hindered the U.S. economy (NAFTA had entered into force the prior year). Mexico repaid the loans early, and the United States received $600 million in interest from the emergency loan.      Clinton would later offer billions in loans to Indonesia to stave off an economic collapse in Southeast Asia on Halloween 1997, although this would prove less effective in restoring economic stability than the global intervention in Mexico; Indonesia's president would resign in 1998.

Police Reform: Last month, President Biden announced forthcoming executive action to revive the issue of police reform. One of his five biggest campaign promises was to create a national commission to bring activists and law enforcement together to pass police reform, which can be done via executive order. While the DOJ has undone the Trump administration's restrictions on police reform, Congress should pass the budget multiplying the DOJ's ability to conduct pattern-or-practice investigations, and the DOJ should announce more than one of these investigations this month. President Biden should also sign a second executive action increasing DOJ oversight of police and perhaps a third overhauling the federal policing system, which would fulfill his major campaign promises on policing and spur action on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act.  Appoint U.S. Marshals: President Biden has been appointing federal judges and U.S. attorneys at record pace. However, he has only appoi...

     The updates on the case of the fraudulent electors in at least seven states-- Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania-- who tried to overthrow the 2020 election is heating up by the hour. In an interview on MSNBC, New Mexico Attorney General Hector Balderas said that if the DOJ decides not to charge the individuals they are investigating, his office will, the second state AG to make such a declaration after Dana Nessel of Michigan.      Meanwhile, people are calling on Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul to make the same statement. A nonpartisan election group found that the state's 10 fraudulent electors may have committed at least eight felony offenses each: forgery, punishable by up to six years in prison; false swearing, punishable by up to six years in prison; falsely assuming to act as a public officer, punishable by up to 42 months in prison; simulating legal process, punishable by up to 42 months in prison; ...

     David Walls-Kaufman is a prominent man. A Washington, D.C., resident, he attended Palmer College of Chiropractic Medicine from 1977 to 1980 and worked as chiropractor at Capitol Hill Chiropractic from 1994 to 2004. Since then, he has continued to work as a chiropractor just blocks away from the United States Capitol, publishing works of fiction and nonfiction that incorporate politics and spiritualism and speaking at public events around the country; he even has a website . So too is Taylor F. Taranto, a Navy veteran from Washington state who is the webmaster for the Franklin County Republican Party and run an unsuccessful campaign for school board in the county seat of Pasco in 2018. That year, he was featured in a photo with then-President Trump at a Lincoln Day celebration.       On January 6th, 2021, during the Capitol insurrection, Taranto handed a black self-defense cane to Walls-Kaufman, who used it to repeatedly strike Capitol Police Offic...

     Last November, two associates of Matt Gaetz, Keith Ingersoll and James Adamczyk, were charged with 40+ federal felonies each in relation to an international real estate fraud ring. This was after the ringleader of the global criminal group that committed hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of financial, sex, and drug crimes, former GOP Seminole County Tax Collector Joel Greenberg, pled guilty to six felony crimes in exchange for a sentence of 12 years in prison with lifetime probation and sex offender registration, repeatedly asking to have his sentence pushed back for nearly eight months while he continues to cooperate with authorities in their investigation. This also comes as Gaetz's ex-girlfriend testified against him before a grand jury just weeks ago.      Now, it's gotten even worse for Gaetz. His friend, Joseph "Big Joe" Ellicott, who once worked as a "shock jock" (which is slang for an asshole, usually a conservative, who screams over t...

     Justin Stoll is a pathetic excuse for a human being. On January 6th, 2021, he joined the thousands in the angry mob who followed up on attending Trump's rally at the Ellipse by marching to the Capitol. He walked past barricades torn down by angry rioters and had fun hurling obscenities at the U.S. Capitol Police. Interestingly enough, he technically didn't break any laws that day, and he knew it.      It's what he did after the insurrection that got him into trouble. He published videos of the violence on his YouTube channel. A viewer said that they had saved the videos and reported them to the authorities and that Stoll would likely be going to prison. Stoll, 41, username "The3RealHuckleberry," replied: "Well, that shows your fucking ignorance because, clearly the capitol building is owned by the people, so again, nothing will happen. Secondly, I never admitted I went into it, did I? Go watch the video again. Daddy's not stupid. [Wink.] Third, if yo...

     The United States is the only nation in the Americas that has conducted an execution in the last 15 years. However, with the majority of states now having abolished, placed a moratorium on, or simply not conducted executions in recent years, the number has fallen drastically, from 36 in 2017 to 22 in 2019 to 17 in 2020 and 11 in 2021. This has mostly been a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this included the only two years in decades in which the federal government has executed people: the federal government executed 13 people out of the 28 put to death during those two years.       In 2022, 14 people are currently scheduled to be executed. Some of the states most eager to execute people are seeing legal setbacks. Ohio has announced it will not be able to execute people until at least 2024 because of trouble getting the drugs used in lethal injection. Louisiana and Kentucky have not executed people in over a dozen years a piece, and, while...

     The time between November 7th, 2020, and January 6th, 2021, seemed confusing but almost humorous. Rudy Giuliani alone farted in a court hearing while a Karen screamed, gave a press conference in which his hair dye ran while the Kraken lawyer ran her mouth, and held a press conference between a crematorium and a dildo factory at the wrong Four Seasons.       So, it makes sense that, when a video emerged of some Republican officials asking to be let into the Michigan Capitol, claiming they are the real electors while a lone officer kindly told them to go fuck themselves, it seemed like more obnoxious political theater... until January 6th. As it unfolded on live TV, as the world wondered whether members of Congress were killed or injured, it seemed like the worst thing to happen to America. Until the January 6th committee was formed, the GOP talked trash: it was just a riot with a relatively low number of people killed, almost all of whom were riote...

     Democrats already hold control of the U.S. Court of Appeals for D.C. by a margin of seven to four and are likely to hold it: two Clinton appointees and one Bush, Sr. appointee in their late seventies or early eighties are set to retire. Since President Biden took office, Democrats have flipped the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals and, with the current vacancies, have a chance to flip the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. If Democrats can hold the Senate in 2022, by 2024 they will likely also flip the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes multiple conservative justices in their late eighties, and the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which, upon the confirmation of Biden's nominee, will be 5-7 for Democrats, or one away from a tie and two away from a majority. If this can be accomplished, Democrats will have secured a majority...

       Even with a legislature long controlled by Republicans, Tony Evers has managed to take action on climate change.      In February 2019, he joined the United States Climate Alliance, a bipartisan coalition of 25 governors dedicated to maintaining the commitment of the United States to the Paris Agreement after President Trump withdrew in 2017. President Biden has since rejoined the agreement.      In August 2019, Evers announced the goal of carbon neutrality for Wisconsin by 2050.      In October 2019, he established the Governor's Task Force on Climate Change, which spent a year coming up with 55 recommendations for executive actions, budget proposals, and pieces of legislation designed to achieve carbon neutrality. The report was completed and released in November 2020.      Encompassing justice, energy, transportation, agriculture, resilient systems, a clean economy, education, food systems, and for...

     In a stunning turn of events, it has been revealed by reporting done by Politico and the Arizona Republic that was later broadcast by MSNBC, CNN, the Washington Post , and other major news media that a coup attempt was at the center of the buildup to January 6th, 2021. This so-called "Green Bay Sweep" went viral after top Trump advisers like Peter Navarro and Boris Epshteyn admitted on live TV to the coup attempt designed to force the results of the 2020 election to the House of Representatives, which would then hand the votes to Trump.      This is part of a series of revelations released in the past week after the Supreme Court denied Donald Trump's request to keep White House records from January 6th secret. It was revealed that Trump had written a draft executive order authorizing the military to seize voting machines and appointing "Kraken" attorney Sidney Powell to head a White House "election integrity" task force. Powell was not mentioned ...

     Bolstering professional and personal diversity on not just the federal bench but also in America's legal system as a whole is a key aspect of a more just society for all. Women, black women, Native Americans, Hispanic men and women, and AAPI men and women are underrepresented on the federal bench.      Of Biden's 81 appointees to the federal bench, 80 percent have been women and the majority have been people of color, making it the most diverse and prolific slate of federal judges in any year in U.S. history. Since taking office, President Biden has appointed three Native Americans to the federal bench, more than any president in U.S. history. At the current rate, he will appoint more Native Americans to the federal bench than all prior presidents combined. (Four were appointed before this: one by Jimmy Carter, one by Bill Clinton, one by Barack Obama, and one by Donald Trump. Interestingly, Carter's appointee did not even learn of his Native American ...

     For 49 years, Roe v. Wade has provided tens of millions of women in the United States with safe access to reproductive healthcare. For 49 years, the GOP has attacked it. It looks like this may be the year they succeed, with the Christian fundamentalist Supreme Court allowing Texas SB8 to go into effect three separate times while blocking a vaccine mandate. So much for pro-life: banning abortion doesn't stop it; it merely makes it more dangerous. The Supreme Court is going to suffer consequences for doing this: 69 percent of Americans support the landmark 1973 decision, and the Supreme Court's low public trust is going to plummet this summer. Let's hope that gives America the momentum it needs to finally reform the Supreme Court.      President Biden has done some extraordinary work to protect the right to choose. Since he took office, he has rescinded the Mexico City Policy, as all Democratic presidents do, and repealed the Title X Gag Rule, restoring ...

     Tomorrow, I will have more big news on the fake elector scheme spanning at least seven states. Today, there is a little less significant but still satisfying news: the University of Rhode Island officially revoked the honorary degrees they had bestowed to Rudy Giuliani and Michael Flynn years ago. This is not the first time Rudy Giuliani has lost an honorary degree. In 2021, Drexel University and Middlebury College revoked the honorary degrees they had given Giuliani. While awards can't be rescinded, honorary degrees can, and this should serve as a template: in spite of Giuliani having three degrees revoked and Flynn losing one, they still have two and one, respectively. If you have time, please email The Citadel Military College in South Carolina and Loyola University in Illinois urging them to revoke the honorary degrees they gave Giuliani and The Institute of World Politics to urge them to revoke the honorary doctorate they gave Michael Flynn. On the same day this...

     Today is a historic day in the fight to abolish the death penalty around the globe with the announcement that Papua New Guinea has become the first nation of 2022 to abolish the death penalty. The last execution in Papua New Guinea, a beautiful peninsular nation located between Australia and Indonesia, was performed by hanging in 1957. It was formally abolished in 1970, before the nation gained independence in 1975. However, in 1991, the death penalty was reestablished for murder. Not a single death sentence was handed out, with judges not having dealt with death penalty cases before.      Oceania, a region that comprises Australia, New Zealand, and the South Pacific island nations, has relatively low crime rates, which means sentences for death have been very rarely handed out and only in cases of particularly egregious murder or treason. The Solomon Islands and Tuvalu abolished the practice in 1978, Kiribati in 1979, Vanuatu in 1980, Australia in 198...

     President Donald Trump kept a total of 34 percent of the 100 biggest campaign promises he made, the worst rate in modern presidential history. President Joe Biden, however, has kept 23.5 percent of the 100 biggest campaign promises he made in his FIRST YEAR. If Congress passes the Freedom To Vote: John R. Lewis Act and the Build Back Better Act, President Biden will have achieved the majority of his agenda in two years.       Here are the promises he has kept. A compromise or a promise that has been partially fulfilled counts as 0.5 percent, while a promise kept counts as one percent. This is the same criteria used to judge Donald Trump's rate of promises kept: Rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement. President Biden has done better than that, restoring American climate diplomacy and bolstering it with the help of Climate Envoy John Kerry. Cancel the Keystone XL Pipeline. After signing this executive order, the last legal challenges to the pipeline w...

       On January 21st, 1977, his first full day in office, Jimmy Carter began his crusade for peace by pardoning all Vietnam draft evaders. While Gerald Ford had created a board to grant clemency to people who worked public service jobs for two years, Carter's executive order applied to those who had fled to Canada to avoid the draft as well as those who did not work public service; only deserters were not pardoned. However, in total, more than 95% of the hundreds of thousands of people facing trouble for avoiding military service were given a second chance.      Carter also sought to heal the nation from executive abuse. While President Ford undoubtedly had integrity, he lost public trust when he pardoned Richard Nixon. While Jimmy Carter was unable to address stagflation, he succeeded in restoring public faith in the presidency after Watergate, as even those who disagreed with his policy had no doubt he was a good-natured Southerner who didn't have ...

     2022 needs to be the year the GOP is finally held accountable, and it's off to a promising start. The phony audits in Arizona and Wisconsin are being flipped on their heads. Matt Gaetz's ex-girlfriend testified against him in a federal sex trafficking probe. OAN was dropped by DirecTV, the source of 90 percent of its viewership, effectively rendering it dead. Mike Lindell was dropped by multiple banks because of reputation risks, worsening his poor financial situation. Civil lawsuits against Donald Trump and far-right groups like the Oath Keepers were allowed to proceed, the latter entity facing a very real possibility of being bankrupted, and Oath Keepers have been indicted on the first sedition charges of the U.S. Capitol insurrection. Donald Trump is facing criminal charges related to the phone call he made to interfere with the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. A group of activists from North Carolina are working on preventing Madison Cawthorn, who w...

     The December 2021 Jobs Report was good news for President Biden on several levels. First, unemployment fell to 3.9 percent, down from 4.2 percent in in November and 4.6 percent in October. Between January 2021 and December 2021, unemployment fell from 6.7 percent to 3.9 percent, or 42 percent, the largest single-year drop in unemployment in U.S. history. Unemployment was 3.4 percent before the pandemic, meaning that unemployment will likely reach its pre-pandemic levels this spring. Unemployment insurance claims hit a 50-year low for weeks straight.      The addition of more than 200,000 jobs means that President Biden created 6.4 million jobs in 2021, the highest number of jobs created by any president in any year in U.S. history. This makes him among the top 10 presidents for job creation in U.S. history: Calvin Coolidge created 7.1 million jobs, Harry S. Truman created 8.1 million, Richard Nixon created 9.2 million, Jimmy Carter created 10.4 million...

     The Roosevelts are both deservingly remembered for their role in redefining the White House. Teddy Roosevelt was the first president to visit a foreign nation (which was a good indicator of his foreign policy) and wielded executive authority for such projects as antitrust suits and the protection of wilderness areas more aggressively than any president up to that point while also pursuing consumer protection and global peace efforts. His cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, saw Teddy as a role model. He used executive authority to end the Great Depression, guided America through World War II while securing peace in Latin America and establishing the basis of international law, secured the most comprehensive labor laws in history, reorganized the executive office, established Social Security, increased antitrust enforcement and wilderness protection drastically, and more.       Woodrow Wilson, too, redefined the White House, and his landmark achievements...

     On January 13th, 2022, 11 people were charged with sedition, or trying to obstruct or overthrow the government of the United States by force, a charge rarely levied but one that has been discussed since the day of the January 6th insurrection. All 11 were Oath Keepers, and nine of these individuals already faced other charges related to the Capitol riot: Thomas Caldwell, 67, of Berryville, Virginia, has been charged with seditious conspiracy, obstruction of an official proceeding and aiding and abetting obstruction of an official proceeding, destruction of government property and aiding and abetting destruction of government property, entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds, and tampering with documents or proceedings. If convicted on all counts, he faces one to 86 years in prison. Caldwell recently appeared on Tucker Carlson's program to claim the Capitol riot was a matter of good versus evil. That may be true, but Mr. Caldwell was not on the side...

       On January 18th, 1966, Robert C. Weaver took charge of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, a historic day for two reasons. The department, which President Kennedy had sought to create, was newly-established for the purpose of assisting in the resolution of America's growing infrastructure and housing needs.       Secondly, it was the first time an African-American was appointed to a cabinet-level, Senate-confirmed position, a major victory for civil rights in the United States. 

       Will Milwaukee host the 2024 Democratic National Convention? The question is up in the air, but the city's hosting of the 2020 convention was a unique experience, to say the least.      Originally intended to be the gathering site of the delegates, the coronavirus pandemic led to the event being downsized from 5,000 attendees to 250. Most of the speeches were given remotely. However, under the guidance of Wisconsin Democrats like Tony Evers, Mandela Barnes, Tom Barrett, and Gwen Moore, the city served as the hub for the event.      Although Milwaukee's experience hosting a major party convention was not ideal, there will never be anything like it again.

     Jordan Klepper confronted Matt Gaetz on the one-year anniversary of January 6th. In a video that has since gone viral, the Daily Show correspondent famous for highlighting the idiotic ideals of Trump supporters for the past six years went to a press conference organized by Gaetz in which he and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as they told the convicted and recently indicted felon Steve Bannon on his podcast, said they would march from the Ellipse to the U.S. Capitol, the same route the thousands-strong mob took on January 6th, 2021. Instead, Gaetz and Greene got in their cars and drove off. Before that, however, Klepper was able to corner Gaetz and ask the most brutal questions any politician in recent memory has ever received. Klepper asked: "If you're going to reenact January 6th, who's going to take a shit in the rotunda? Who's going to build the gallows?" As Gaetz, visibly irritated but not responding, continued getting into his car while guards shoved Klepper ba...

     It cost the Cyber Ninjas $5.7 million to reaffirm the fact that Joe Biden won the state of Arizona. BY A LOT. While I find it funny that Trump supporters forked over $5.55 million of that money, I find it less funny that the Arizona Senate spent $150,000 of taxpayer money and even less funny that this "audit" is part of a grander scheme to sow doubt about American democracy. Now, however, while 2021 was the year of this phony "audit," 2022 is the year the Cyber Ninjas are beginning to pay for their actions, and I mean that literally. The Cyber Ninjas were the subject of a public records request by the Arizona Republic in June 2021 and, to this day, seven months later, have yet to turn over any relevant documents. Whether these documents even exist is a valid question, because this "company" was a group of partisan amateurs with no real experience in business or elections. In any case, it cost them big. The aforementioned paper requested that the judge...