A Liberal Lives In Wisconsin

     It's been a bad 21 months for Donald J. Trump. As bad as it has been, it appears the next 21 months and beyond could be even worse for him. As if the month of August being dominated by the search of his property at Mar-a-Lago in Florida wasn't enough, the future of his signature post-presidential business venture, Truth Social, has just been cast into serious doubt.      The Google Play Store, which services roughly 44 percent of mobile customers, announced that it would no longer offer Truth Social over content violations. This is not unexpected news: Truth Social, Gab, Parler, and other sites make themselves "free speech zones" free of moderation. This draws the worst fringe elements of society, people who have been barred from apps like Twitter and Facebook, with all their flaws, for hateful, violent, and false activity. The simple fact of the matter is that no company wants to be associated with this: if, as has happened before, some mass shooter were to post

       Thurgood Marshall is arguably among the most significant individuals, nonetheless African-Americans, in U.S. history. An executive of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, he argued numerous major cases as an attorney, including, successfully, Brown v. Board of Education , which ruled that the policy of segregation in schools was unconstitutional.      Appointed to numerous positions by Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, on August 30th, 1967, Marshall became the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice, serving until October 1st, 1991. He would be succeeded by Clarence Thomas, perhaps his polar opposite, who sexually assaulted Anita Hill and hates everything that moves. Marshall died on January 24th, 1993, at the age of 84.

     The past two years have been a rollercoaster of legal proceedings in the largest case of domestic terrorism in the United States until the Capitol insurrection on January 6th. Indicted in October 2020, a total of 14 men (not including FBI agents and informants) from Michigan (as well as Delaware, South Carolina, Virginia, Ohio, and Wisconsin) engaged in a coordinated effort to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and hold her for ransom in retaliation for her efforts to combat gun violence and curb the spread of COVID-19. Under the banner of the "Wolverine Watchmen" militia group, they trained with weapons and military tactics, purchased military gear like night vision goggles, scoped out Whitmer's vacation home, planned in graphic detail how they would capture and bind Whitmer before setting her adrift in Lake Michigan, and even went as far as planning to blow up a bridge nearby to distract law enforcement. Six were charged federally and eight more were charge

     Donald Trump's actions on and since August 8th have been the worst case of shooting oneself in the foot I have ever seen. The DOJ and FBI nearly always do these raids, searches, whatever you want to call them, in secret, take what they are looking for, and keep quiet. It was Donald Trump himself who leaked word that the FBI was searching Mar-a-Lago. It was Donald Trump who riled up one supporter to attack the field office of the FBI in Cincinnati and another to threaten FBI agents in Pennsylvania.      It was Donald Trump who demanded the warrant be released, and then the affidavit that made clear just how serious this investigation is. The chorus of mainstream Republicans defending Donald Trump has quieted down with the revelation that Trump quite possibly violated the Espionage Act, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and the federal statute that dictates the removal of documents from federal custody. These three laws carry a combined maximum of 23 years in prison, and each is a felony.

     Once again, a lot has happened in the case of Ann Retzlaff , the QAnon-believing, Trump-worshipping "sovereign citizen" who led police on a high-speed chase and claimed that she was rescuing someone from human trafficking, using that as an excuse to sue the police who arrested her and the first judge presiding over her trial for "kidnapping," "aiding and abetting human trafficking," and other ridiculous claims. Personally, I think a vexatious lawsuit like that is worth an additional felony obstruction of justice charge and a defamation suit from the targets. We've already highlighted how she rotted in jail, how her business is being auctioned off, and much more.      Today, more has come to light in this bizarre, sometimes humorous, but genuinely scary case of a woman who has fallen down the rabbit hole of not less than two cults. First and foremost, after months in jail, she was able to make bond of just under $17,000. To make this bond, she had

     There was a bit of blowback from progressives and centrists regarding the Supreme Court Police Parity Act. For clarification: all the law did was give Supreme Court justices the same protection as the president and members of Congress get-- no more, no less. There was also controversy on the Right with a claim that Democrats were trying to derail the bill when, in fact, the opposite is true: Democrats wanted to expand who was covered under the bill while Republicans led by Mitch McConnell threatened to filibuster such a version.      Let's make another thing clear: political violence is what happens in countries like Nicaragua, Cuba, Guatemala, and Venezuela, not the United States. That's what we said after January 6th not because of politics, but because it is true that political violence has no place in the United States. Brett Kavanaugh has no place on the Supreme Court, but even succeeding in the demented goal one man had of killing him would have had anything but a po

     They won't say it, but Republicans know it: President Biden and congressional Democrats have delivered historic results in this 117th Congress. In terms of racial justice, they confirmed the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, made Juneteenth the first national holiday in 40 years, made lynching a federal crime with the Emmett Till Antilynching Act, implemented significant reforms with the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, and signed a historic executive order on police reform. They passed the Honoring Our PACT Act to support millions of veterans, ended the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, bolstered Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression, took out the leaders of ISIS and al-Qaeda, reformed the Postal Service, passed the first significant gun safety legislation in 30 years, and much more.      The social aspects of President Biden's agenda go further: universal broadband access by 2030, the total elimination of lead pipes and paint by the same date, the cleanup of near

     This has been the worst legal week of Donald Trump's life. He sat before a deposition by New York Attorney General Letitia James and pleaded the Fifth nearly 450 times over the course of five hours. The District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, the most powerful court in the nation save the Supreme Court, ruled that Trump's taxes could be turned over to the House Ways and Means Committee, paving the way for that to happen before the end of the year. Former Virginia cop Thomas Robertson tied the record sentence of 87 months in prison for the Capitol insurrection. Then, there's the obvious: on Monday, the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago.       Trump could have just kept quiet. The DOJ and FBI never leak anything before indictments are made. It was Trump himself who played victim by claiming the FBI was "raiding" his home. His victim claims fell flat when it was revealed that he had been issued subpoenas in June and had his home visited by high-level federal agents w

       On August 10th, 1995, President Bill Clinton announced a series of new regulations designed to prevent teen smoking. Because teenagers make up 90 percent of new lifetime smoking customers, it was a contentious battle that tobacco companies spent billions of dollars opposing. However, with bipartisan support in Congress, most notably from the late John McCain, the president ordered the FDA to require IDs for tobacco purchases, banned cigarette vending machines, ended tobacco marketing toward minors in all forms, and required the tobacco industry to fund youth anti-smoking initiatives.      Since the regulations went into effect, the teen smoking rate has fallen from 36 percent to 16 percent, a 60 percent decrease in 30 years that is projected to continue and has contributed to a boost in life expectancy in the United States. This was among many initiatives targeting education, welfare, healthcare, labor, and other aspects of childhood that President Clinton was able to improve du

     What a week! The leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri, was killed in a U.S. airstrike. Congress passed the CHIPS and Science Act and the Honoring Our PACT Act, a combined $680 billion in funding for American manufacturing and veterans, respectively. The Senate approved the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO in a 95-1 vote. The Justice Department charged four officers in the murder of Breonna Taylor. The truce in Yemen was extended again, bringing a total of six months of peace to the world's worst war. An anti-abortion measure was defeated in Kansas and President Biden signed an executive order to protect travel for abortion. The number of President Biden's federal judges confirmed by the Senate surpassed 75. Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones was ordered to pay nearly $50 million for defamation to the parents of a Sandy Hook victim. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a historic trip to Taiwan. The July Jobs Report revealed that 528,000 jobs were created, bringing the total

     As much as I disagree with Joe Manchin, July and August 2022 will go down in American history as perhaps the most brilliant months politically in the history of the United States Senate. In early July 2022, I, and most Democrats, felt low. Not only had the Supreme Court just carpet bombed the country I love, but Mitch McConnell promised to block historic legislation to strengthen supply chains, lower costs, compete with China, restore science and innovation, and more even after nearly 18 months of negotiations in an act of retaliation for Democrats announcing a deal on healthcare, prescription drugs, climate, and taxes.       So, Manchin and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer pretended that negotiations broke down, as they had no less than twice before; it seemed pretty believable for everyone observing the situation from the outside and even spurred President Biden to take a handful of executive actions on climate change. Soon afterward, the Senate passed a $280 billion piece o

     With the excitement over the assassination of Ayman al-Zawahiri and the signing of the historic Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Honoring Our PACT Act, one milestone that the Biden administration hit has gotten relatively little media attention: the confirmation of U.S. ambassadors. Senator Ted Cruz was able to block the confirmation of these men and women for virtually all of 2021 over unrelated sanctions on the Nordstream 2 pipeline; once the issue was resolved, 2022 became a year of ambassadors being confirmed at breakneck pace.      In the same week that President Biden signed the Honoring Our PACT Act and CHIPS and Science Act and Congress ratified the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO and passed the Inflation Reduction Act, Congress was also busy confirming more ambassadors to foreign states and organizations. Among others, the confirmations of Carrin Pitman as ambassador to Iceland and Constance Milstein as ambassador to Malta were the 100th and 101

     When Donald Trump got COVID, he had to be airlifted to the Walter Reed Medical Center and returned looking like he had been through a tornado. When Joe Biden got COVID twice, he started off the week by announcing that an airstrike had killed Ayman al-Zawahiri. The former Egyptian surgeon was involved in violent jihad since the 1970s and had been a trusted deputy to Osama bin Laden since the very formation of al-Qaeda in the 1980s. He was involved in the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya and the U.S.S. Cole  in Yemen as well as the terrorist attacks on September 11th. He had served as leader of al-Qaeda since bin Laden was killed in 2011. His death in Kabul, completed without a single civilian casualty or injury even among al-Zawahiri's family, proved that the United States can still defend itself from the Taliban's harboring terrorists.      That wasn't the only good news to come out of the Middle East this week: the UN-negotiated, US-supported truce

     On July 31st, 2022, the United States conducted an operation that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of al-Qaeda. While the group has largely taken a backseat to ISIL in the past decade, this strike was significant for a number of reasons. The 71-year-old former surgeon has spent virtually his entire adult life involved in violent Islamic extremism in a variety of groups, including al-Qaeda since its inception in the late 1980s. Ayman al-Zawahiri was second-in-command to Osama bin Laden and played a crucial role in the bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000 as well as the terrorist attacks on 9/11. In his role as head of al-Qaeda, al-Zawahiri led the push among extremists in the Muslim world to kidnap Western tourists in Muslim countries. This strike was accomplished without injuring a single civilian or even a member of the emir's family, and it also highlighted that, even a year after the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the United Sta

       On August 4th, 1977, Jimmy Carter took critical action in combatting the Energy Crisis by signing the Department of Energy Organization Act. One of numerous significant changes President Carter made to the Cabinet, the law created the Department of Energy, which consolidated the Energy Research and Development Administration, the Federal Power Administration, and the Federal Energy Administration, among several other agencies.      The Department of Energy also helped handle Carter's nuclear policy, which would be one of his few major domestic policy contributions. Carter signed into law the "Superfund," a government program designed at cleaning up toxic waste sites, in the wake of the Three Mile Island Reactor Meltdown in 1979. Unfortunately for Carter, foreign policy became too much too handle.      With the Iran Hostage Crisis from 1979 to 1981 and the related 1979 Energy Crisis spike, Carter's numerous energy-related laws could not keep up, and it would not

     A lot has changed since I first conceived the idea for this article. The Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia v. EPA  lit a fire under the asses of climate activists while the announcement that an agreement on a climate and deficit package could not be reached between Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer seemed to leave people feeling hopeless. The announcement, apparently, was all a ruse: Senator Mitch McConnell had threatened to block a $280 billion legislative package to restore American science and manufacturing, compete with China, and secure supply chains unless Democrats dropped the deal; the announcement between Manchin and Schumer came less than an hour after this bill passed the Senate. The GOP's next move to try to block this legislation was to block the passage of the Honoring Our PACT Act, a $400 billion bill to help veterans; this move blew up in their faces immediately and the bill passed days later.       If all goes well, the Inflation Reduction Act could pa

     Today, an economic study revealed that the Inflation Reduction Act would live up to its name and save the average family $1,800 on healthcare and energy by making the wealthy and corporations pay their fair share, all while keeping President Biden's promise of not raising taxes by a single penny on anyone making less than $400,000 per year. This, however, is far from the only bill to provide relief to working families that President Biden is on track to pass.      Congress recently passed the Honoring Our PACT Act in spite of Republican attempts at obstruction. This bill will provide $400 billion in benefits to 3.5 million veterans and their families, or an average of  $3,200 per family in the United States, albeit to only a small percentage of families. The American Rescue Plan Act provided a combined $3,000 in extra money with the Child Tax Credit and $1,400 stimulus checks to two in three American families, or an average of $2,000 per family. That's on top of the fact t

     If you haven't figured it out by now or simply haven't read my work before, I hate coal. It is the single dirtiest form of energy that America uses on a large scale. Even Mitt Romney, nearly two decades ago, was proud to shut down a coal plant and point out the truth, that these plants kill people. The Supreme Court tried as hard as possible to derail climate action in West Virginia v. EPA , but that decision was not enough even to save coal. I don't know if West Virginians understand this, but they are alone in relying entirely upon coal as their source of energy. Across the country, nearly three in four coal plants have retired or announced plans to retire in the past 15 years alone, laying the groundwork for a historic clean energy transition. In spite of initial delays, it appears Joe Manchin is ready to vote for legislation that will cut America's carbon emissions 40 percent beneath 2005 levels by 2030, a historic drop that will cut energy costs, save thousand