Biden tests positive for COVID-19, has ‘very mild symptoms’

By ZEKE MILLER and CHRIS MEGERIAN, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday and is experiencing “very mild symptoms,” the White House said, as new variants of the highly contagious virus are challenging the nation’s efforts to get back to normal after two and a half years of pandemic disruptions.

Biden tests positive for COVID-19, has ‘very mild symptoms’

Could this SCOTUS case push America toward one-party rule?

The court considers ‘Moore v. Harper’ to be a legitimate constitutional question. Critics say it’s a ‘power grab.’

Could this SCOTUS case push America toward one-party rule?

Related:

Beware the “Independent State Legislatures doctrine” — it could checkmate democracy

The Independent State Legislatures doctrine used to be a fringe theory, but not anymore. Multiple Supreme Court justices are on the record in support of it. Right-wing legal activists from the Federalist Society and its “Honest Elections Project” are pushing for it in legal briefs authored by white-shoe law firms (BakerHostetler, counsel for the Honest Elections Project, has defended Republican gerrymandering in Pennsylvania and North Carolina.) And some GOP-controlled state legislatures, including Arizona, are considering bills that would allow them to intervene in presidential elections to choose electors themselves if election results are “unclear.” If a state were to pass this type of law, it would set the stage for a court to agree that the Independent State Legislature doctrine requires that in some circumstances, state legislatures rather than voters should determine election outcomes.

As Jane Mayer reported recently, right-wing funders like the Bradley Foundation and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have been working with Republican state legislators to advance ways to re-engineer how states allocate Electoral College votes. Last year, a GOP state representative from Arizona, Shawna Bulick, sat on an ALEC-convened working group that discussed the Electoral College, and this year, she introduced a bill that would have given the state legislature power to undo the certification of presidential electors by a simple majority vote up until the inauguration.

Trump swindles the deplorables

As much as I’m enjoying the January 6th committee’s careful assembly of evidence proving former President Trump is a [douchebag]. I wasn’t seeing much in the way of a criminal offense until this week’s underreported story about how Trump used his “STOP THE STEAL” fundraising appeals to grift his supporters out of $250 million, none of which was, in fact, used to fight election fraud.

Ann Coulter: Trump swindles the deplorables

Related:

Trump’s $250 million grift: Calling Attorney General Leslie Rutledge to enforce Deceptive Trade Practices Act:

But there was also this, from the New York Times account, which bears closer scrutiny:

Investigators went further on Monday, detailing how the Trump campaign and its Republican allies used claims of a rigged election that they knew were false to mislead small donors and raise as much as $250 million for an entity they called the Official Election Defense Fund, which top campaign aides testified never existed.

“Not only was there the big lie,” said Representative Zoe Lofgren, a California Democrat who played a key role in the hearing, “there was the big rip-off.”

Money ostensibly raised to “stop the steal” instead went to Mr. Trump and his allies, including, the investigation found, $1 million for a charitable foundation run by Mark Meadows, his chief of staff; $1 million to a political group run by several of his former staff members, including Stephen Miller, the architect of Mr. Trump’s immigration agenda; more than $200,000 to Trump hotels; and $5 million to Event Strategies Inc., which ran the Jan. 6 rally that preceded the Capitol riot.

Aides said Kimberly Guilfoyle, the girlfriend of Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr., was paid $60,000 to speak at that event, a speech that lasted less than three minutes.

“It is clear that he intentionally misled his donors, asked them to donate to a fund that didn’t exist and used the money raised for something other than what he said,” Ms. Lofgren said of Mr. Trump.

Republicans aren’t even bothering to lie about it anymore. They are now coming for birth control

As much as the National Republican Senatorial Committee would like Republicans to stay away from the abortion issue except to insist they are compassionate and caring about life, it isn’t really working. That line is hardly a natural fit for a party that had a collective hysterical tantrum against Barack Obama’s Affordable Health Care Act and proposes taxing the poor anyway. They are the “Fuck Your Feelings” party, after all, not the empathy and mercy crowd.

Republicans aren’t even bothering to lie about it anymore. They are now coming for birth control