Lessons of History and Trying To Avoid the Same Mistakes

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Opinion | Trump would hate the one change John Durham suggested for the FBI

The only change that the special counsel recommended for the FBI is one that former President Donald Trump would hate.

www.msnbc.com

 

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This story, reported this weekend, began Thursday last, at the tony unit 4102 of Trump Tower III, in Sunny Isles Beach, Miami FL. The FBI raided the apartment seeking further evidence into something. The owners of the condo were identified as two Russian businessmen, partners in a shell company MIC-USA LLC..

The target of the search, Unit 4102, is owned by a shell company, MIC-USA LLC, which is controlled by Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Agunda Konstantinovna Makeeva, according to state records.

Last August, Oleg Patsulya, a Russian citizen living near Miami, emailed a Russian airline that had been cut off from Western technology and materials with a tempting offer.
He could help circumvent the global sanctions imposed on Rossiya Airlines after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by shuffling the aircraft parts and electronics that it so desperately needed through a network of companies based in Florida, Turkey and Russia.
“In light of the sanctions imposed against the Russian Federation, we have been successfully solving challenges at hand,” Mr. Patsulya wrote, according to a criminal complaint filed Friday with the U.S. District Court in Arizona.

Apparently, the efforts of Oleg Patsulya and his business partner were quite successful, while they lasted. Millions of dollars worth of the parts, made by the likes of Boeing, Honeywell and Airbus — amongst others — all made their way to Russia. Passage was eased by transiting the exports through Russia friendly hands in Turkey, the gulf states and elsewhere. While some of the sales simply transferred parts of US origin already on the shelf offshore, others were first sold, direct from the US, into the friendly intermediary’s hands.
In any event, all of their efforts have now been halted. Thursday Oleg Patsulya and his business partner were arrested by the FBI, then later charged with violating U.S. export controls and international money laundering.

Some important evidence of Patsulya’s work came via aggregated import-export data gleaned by Import Genius, using a mix of aggregated public and private trade information. It is known that the Patsulya’s efforts is not the only example of a group or individual actively working to skirt trade sanctions associated with aerospace parts (and doubtless other classes of materials, equipment and technology).

Thus, it is highly likely that Patsulya’s arrest may not be the last of the type. Merely one of the first.

Now we know what the Feds were after in their Miami Trump Tower III condo raid

This story, reported this weekend, began Thursday last, at the tony unit 4102 of Trump Tower III, in Sunny Isles Beach, Miami FL. The FBI raided the apartment seeking further evidence into something. The owners of the condo were identified as two...

www.dailykos.com

 

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The word “blessed,” defined as being “endowed with divine favor and protection,” has no place coming out of the mouths of military base gate guards as they admit service members, civilian employees, and visitors onto their base. But recently at Joint Base Andrews, well-known as the home of Air Force One, several gate guards — armed, uniformed airmen — have adopted “Have a blessed day” as their salutation to personnel passing through the gate — wishing base personnel “divine favor and protection” whether they want it or not. And many absolutely do NOT want it, fifteen of whom, eight of them Christians, have come to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to get this religious greeting committee to knock it off.

The greeting “Have a blessed day” is commonplace in the South. It is also distinctly Christian. People of no other religion use it. In fact, it is seen by many, like the poster who wrote the following on Democratic Underground, as code for “I’m a Christian.”

What Does It Mean When Someone Says To Me "Have A Blessed Day"??
… For some reason, that phrase strikes me as being a bit pretentious. I feel like it's not a sincere wish that my day be "blessed", but instead it is a way of signaling to me that they are a Christian.
Are they testing me? I wonder if this phrase is something like a secret-handshake. I also wonder what the "correct" response would be from someone who wanted to signal-back that they too were a Christian.
Are they just assuming that I'm a Christian? If they knew I was an atheist, would they STILL want me to have a blessed day?
Would this be considered "flaunting" their Christianity? I suppose that saying "have-a-blessed-day" (4 words) gets the point across much more succinctly than "have-a-nice-day-and-by-the-way-I'm-a-Christian-are-you-one-too-and-if-you're-not-I'm-a-better-person-than-you" (25 words).

Responding to the above post, another poster wrote:

I don't know about everywhere
But in eastern KY saying "Have a blessed day" IS, in fact, some creepy Christian code. Seriously.

There are posts on websites such as askamanager.org, which fields questions about workplace issues, answering questions like:

Is it appropriate to end your professional voice mail greeting with the phrase “Have a blessed day”? I find it jarring to encounter in the context of work as a non-Christian.

To which the answer was:

I find it mildly jarring too (also as a non-Christian), although it’s a really, really common thing to say/hear in the south … so common that a lot of people would be surprised to hear that anyone takes issue with it (which is a problem and reflects the privilege of the dominant faith to not even be aware that some of its words and trappings aren’t secular).
Outside of work, it’s easier to simply take the phrase as a general expression of well wishes. At work though, the bar is higher; people should keep religious statements — even mild ones — out of work communications (including their outgoing voicemail messages). You’re going to have an uphill battle arguing that among most of its adherents though.

MRFF has fought this “uphill battle” before, in 2015, after receiving complaints from Robins Air Force Base in Georgia, where the gate guards had also adopted the “Have a blessed day” greeting. While initially being successful in getting the base to instruct its gate guards not to use the phrase, that decision was unfortunately later reversed by the Air Force, leaving the gate guards free to use their I’m-a-Christian code phrase.

While it’s understandable that this is an uphill battle in the civilian world, it should absolutely not be an uphill battle in the military, where regulations such as Air Force Instruction 1-1, section 2.12 of which clearly states (emphasis added):

“Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for their own free exercise of religion, including individual expressions of religious beliefs, and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. They must ensure their words and actions cannot reasonably be construed to be officially endorsing or disapproving of, or extending preferential treatment for any faith, belief, or absence of belief.”

It was also decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in Parker v. Levy that members of the military do not have the same unrestricted right to freedom of speech as those in the civilian world. From the majority opinion, authored by ultra-conservative Justice William Rehnquist (emphasis added):

“This Court has long recognized that the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society... While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment, the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections. The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it ... Speech that is protected in the civil population may nonetheless undermine the effectiveness of response to command. If it does, it is constitutionally unprotected.” 417 U.S.733 (1974)

It should be a no-brainer that gate guards at a U.S. military base can’t greet people by essentially saying, “I’m a Christian. Are you?”

And yet MRFF is now fighting the battle against this religious greeting, described around the web as “jarring” and “creepy” by non-Christians, at the high-profile Joint Base Andrews, with MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein writing the following to Vice Wing Commander of the 316th Wing at Joint Base Andrews-Naval Air Facility Washington, Colonel Parkin C. Bryson:

They’re driving onto a military base, not visiting a religious retreat!

The word “blessed,” defined as being “endowed with divine favor and protection,” has no place coming out of the mouths of military base gate guards as they admit service members, civilian employees, and visitors onto their base. But recently at Joint...

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A First Amendment lawsuit got filed in Florida today. It’s not a First Amendment lawsuit over the new Florida law we discussed earlier this week—the one where Governor Ron DeSantis stripped academic freedom out of the classroom in Florida’s public colleges and universities and banished consideration of diversity. But it’s still a First Amendment lawsuit. Likely not the last one a unit of government in Florida will see this year.

The lawsuit was brought against the Escambia County School Board by the publisher Penguin Random House, PEN America, five authors, and two parents after the school district removed books about race and LGBTQ people from shelves. The lawsuit alleges that banning books in school libraries violates the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause.

The school district must have good reasons for banning books, right? Apparently not even a shadow of one. The complaint alleges, “The School District and the School Board have done so based on their disagreement with the ideas expressed in those books.” You can read the full complaint here. NBC’s Antonia Hylton reported that she was able to reach a school board member, who expressed surprise they had been sued because so many school districts in Florida are doing the same thing.

Do First Amendment lawsuits matter? Absolutely. They are fundamental to protecting not only rights that are currently in peril but to erecting a barrier between us and the slippery slope that would diminish our rights even further. This is a good start.

The plaintiffs have asked the court to issue preliminary and permanent injunctive relief requiring the school district to restore removed books to libraries in the school district. They also asked the court to prevent the district from removing any more books or restricting access to ones they’ve targeted. Expect more suits like this. Between restrictions imposed on teachers and DeSantis’s effort to force a whitewash on the state’s social-studies textbooks so that they suit him, at the expense of actual history, Florida is looking like a full employment plan for First Amendment lawyers. DOJ may even show up. But there is reason for optimism here. As outrageous as the conduct of state and local government has been, there is every reason to believe the federal courts in the 11th Circuit will uphold the law and put an end to the nonsense of at least the worst of it. In the meantime, DeSantis is likely doing more to motivate Democratic voters ahead of next year’s elections than anyone else.


(full article online)

A Little Optimism in the Middle of a Lot of Mess

A First Amendment lawsuit got filed in Florida today. It’s not a First Amendment lawsuit over the new Florida law we discussed earlier this week—the one where Governor Ron DeSantis stripped academic freedom out of the classroom in Florida’s public colleges and universities and banished...

joycevance.substack.com

 

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U.S. Supreme Court leaves in place Illinois assault weapons ban

The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday left in place a Democratic-backed ban on assault-style rifles and large capacity magazines enacted in Illinois after a deadly mass shooting in Chicago's Highland Park suburb in 2022, handing a setback to gun rights advocates.

www.reuters.com

 

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“This is a trend that is baked into the demographic change of the country, so [it] is likely going to accelerate over the next ten years,” explained McDonald, author of the recent book “From Pandemic to Insurrection: Voting in the 2020 Presidential Election.”

Brownstein points out that despite their declining shares nationwide, white voters without a college degree still account for more of the electorate in key battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. They are also a dominant force in red states whereSenate Democrats face their most daunting challenges: protecting seats in Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia.

But even in those GOP strongholds, the white non-college voting share is shrinking, and McDonald's analysis suggests the downward trend could accelerate in 2024, even as the voting share of Democratic-friendly demographics increases.

“We are right now at the teetering edge of the influence of the baby boomers,” McDonald added. “They are just starting to enter those twilight years in their turnout rates, while other [more diverse] groups are maturing. So we are right at that cusp – that critical point of where things are going to start changing.”

And here's where next year’s presidential contest gets really sticky for Republicans: Turnout of non-college whites was actually fairly strong in 2022 even though their voting share declined. That's because despite turning out at high levels, non-college whites are simply dwindling as a share of the overall voting pool. What makes that dynamic even more ominous for Republicans in 2024 is the fact that turnout among voters of color fell in 2022. Since Black voters historically turn out at relatively high levels in presidential years, as they did in 2020, the lackluster GOP showing in the midterms could be compounded next year by high turnout among Black voters, provided Biden-Harris and the DNC can re-energize this core base.

Tom Bonier, chief executive of pro-Democratic data firm TargetSmart, imagined that declining vote share among non-college whites in a year where their turnout was relatively strong “has to be a huge cause for concern for Republicans at this point." Bonier said it's quite possible Republicans could see an even "steeper decline" in vote share among non-college whites next year and thus a further decline in their electoral influence.

The entire dynamic suggests that Republicans could be reaching an electoral ceiling, or perhaps already have.



(full article online)

GOP faces demographic doomsday

Immediately after Barack Obama's historic presidential win in 2008, progressive pundits and analysts flooded the news with commentary declaring a demographic doomsday for Republicans. The Obama coalition of non-white voters, single women, and young...

www.dailykos.com

 

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[Hispanic De Santis may be keeping Hispanics away from Florida ]

May 18, 2023

A leading Hispanic civil rights group warned immigrants on Wednesday not to travel to Florida, and vowed legal action against the state in response to Gov. Ron DeSantis’ (R) ongoing immigration crackdown.

During a livestreamed press conference on Facebook, the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) issued a travel advisory warning immigrants and their families to avoid traveling to the state of Florida due to the potential threat it poses to them.

“Florida is a dangerous, hostile environment for law-abiding Americans and immigrants.” LULAC President Domingo Garcia said.

“If you bring your tía (aunt) to Disney World ... to Miami or Universal Studios, they are going to charge you with a felony for bringing your undocumented friend or relative to Florida,” Garcia said.

The warning comes after DeSantis signed Bill 1718 into law earlier this month. The new rule, which will take effect in July, intends to stop the flow of illegal immigrants by enacting stricter employment requirements and harsher punishments against those who smuggle them into the state. It also allocates $12 million for the transport of migrants to other states.

The measure mandates that businesses with 25 or more workers utilize the federal E-Verify system to determine whether or not a potential employee is legally able to work in the United States.

The legislation is already having an impact on local businesses in the state, with some company owners saying that long-term workers are quitting their jobs and leaving the state, WPBF reported.

LULAC said it is taking “unprecedented action” in Florida in response to the law and will not tolerate “acts of fear-mongering, scapegoating and immoral policies hurting Latinos that divide Americans for political gain.”

DeSantis, who is planning a presidential bid in 2024, is among the Republicans who have chastised President Joe Biden over his immigration policies.

Title 42, a pandemic-era policy that made it easier to expel migrants, expired last week, which DeSantis said could worsen the already exploding flood of illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border. Border crossings have dropped by half since the expiry, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told CNN on Sunday.


(full article online)

Hispanic Rights Group Advises Against Florida Travel Amid DeSantis Immigration Crackdown

“Florida is a dangerous, hostile environment for law-abiding Americans and immigrants,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

news.yahoo.com

 

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GOP “FBI Politicization” Hearing Features Witnesses Paid by Trump Adviser

Surprise, surprise, Republicans’ big investigation into the FBI is a sham.

newrepublic.com

 

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Ted Cruz wants Congress to investigate Bud Light for working with Dylan Mulvaney

Republicans seize on ongoing transphobic outrage over an Instagram video

www.independent.co.uk