Quoting Joe Biden

... but from about 12 years ago: "This is a big fucking deal"

Don't ever let me hear you say the Dems can't get some shit done.

NYT: (pay wall)

Democrats in Congress have had to scale back their legislative ambitions since last year, but the Inflation Reduction Act, passed by the House on Friday and sent to President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for his signature, is still a substantial piece of legislation, which will make big investments in the environment and health care, and increase taxes on some key groups.

Spending & Tax Cuts: $490 billion

Savings & New Revenue: $764 billion

• Medicare prescription drug benefit $34.2 million
• Affordable Care Act subsidies $64.1 billion
• Wind and solar tax credits $51.1 million
• Nuclear energy credit $30 million
• Indiv. green energy credits $36.9 million
• Clean manufacturing $37.4 million
• Clean electricity credits $62.7 million
• Agricultural conservation $16.7 million
• “Green bank” $20 million
• 15% corporate minimum tax $222.2 million
• I.R.S. enforcement $124.1 million
• Repeal regulation on drug rebates $122.2 million
• Drug price negotiation* $99 million
• Stock buyback tax $73.7 million
• Limits on drug price increases* $62.3 million
• Extend active loss tax limitation $52.8 million
• Medicare prescription drug benefit $34.2 million
• Affordable Care Act subsidies $64.1 billion
• Wind and solar tax credits $51.1 billion
• Nuclear energy credit $30 million
• Indiv. green energy credits $36.9million
• Clean manufacturing $37.4million
• Clean electricity credits $62.7million
• Agricultural conservation $16.7million
• “Green bank” $20million
• 15% corporate minimum tax $222.2 billion
• I.R.S. enforcement $124.1 million
• Repeal regulation on drug rebates $122.2million
• Drug price negotiation* $99million
• Stock buyback tax $73.7 million
• Limits on drug price increases* $62.3million
• Extend active loss tax limitation $52.8 million

The bill includes policies lowering the prices of prescription drugs; increasing the generosity of Medicare benefits; and encouraging the development of renewable energy and reducing the impact of climate change.

It would also raise taxes on some corporations and bolster the ability of the Internal Revenue Service to crack down on wealthy tax evaders. It would lower the federal deficit, though modestly.

The bill includes last-minute changes requested by Senator Kyrsten Sinema, Democrat of Arizona, the final holdout among her party’s 50 senators. Democratic leaders agreed to remove a tax on some wealthy hedge fund managers and private equity executives, and to include $4 billion in drought funding for her state.

What’s in the Inflation Reduction Act

Figures are in billions and over 10 years.

Spending and tax cuts: $490 billion

Health care	Cost in billions
Affordable Care Act subsidies Expanded subsidies for three years	$64.1
Medicare prescription drug benefit Increased generosity through Part D redesign and a $35 cap on co-payments for insulin	$34.2

Clean electricity	Cost in billions
New tax credits for emissions-free electricity sources and storage Including wind, solar, geothermal, advanced nuclear, etc.	$62.7
Extending existing tax credits for wind and solar power	$51.1
Tax credit for existing nuclear reactors To prevent them from closing	$30.0
Extend energy credit Through 2024	$14.0
Clean energy rebates and grants for residential buildings Rebates for installing heat pumps and retrofitting homes	$9.0
Financing for energy infrastructure Updates and expands lending programs to make energy generation and transmission more efficient	$6.8
Tax credit for carbon capture and storage	$3.2

Manufacturing	Cost in billions
Clean manufacturing incentives Incentives for companies to manufacture clean energy technologies in the U.S. rather than abroad, through tax credits and the Defense Production Act	$37.4
Reduce emissions from energy-intensive industries Such as concrete production	$5.3

Individual clean energy incentives	Cost in billions
Green energy credits for individuals Extends and increases tax credits for energy-efficient properties	$36.9

Clean fuel and vehicles	Cost in billions
Tax credits for new and used electric cars Incentives for purchasing emissions-free vehicles, with income limits, and for installing alternative fueling equipment.	$14.2
Clean hydrogen production	$13.2
Fuel tax credits Creates new credits for low-carbon car and airplane fuels, and extends credits for biodiesel and other renewable fuels	$8.6
Financing for clean energy vehicles Loans and grants for the production of hybrid, electric and hydrogen fuel cell cars	$2.9

Air pollution	Cost in billions
“Green bank” for energy investments For investments in clean energy projects, particularly in poor communities	$20.0
Other air pollution reduction Includes funding for monitoring and reducing pollution, and grants for disadvantaged neighborhoods	$14.8

Conservation, rural development and forestry	Cost in billions
Agricultural conservation Funding for agricultural practices that improve soil carbon, reduce nitrogen losses and decrease emissions	$16.7
Rural development Investments in clean energy technology in rural areas	$13.2
Forest conservation and restoration Includes funding to reduce risk of wildfires	$4.8

Transportation and infrastructure	Cost in billions
Improvements to federal buildings and highways	$5.2
Electric transmission Loans and grants to finance electricity transmission, including for offshore wind energy generation	$2.3

Other climate spending	Cost in billions
Drought resilience	$4.6
Weather and climate resilience Includes investments in coastal areas and weather forecasting resources	$4.6
Other federal research, projects and oversight Includes funding for FEMA, D.H.S. and D.O.E.	$4.2
Zero-emissions U.S.P.S. trucks	$3.0
National Park Service funding Includes funds for climate resilience and habitat preservation	$1.0
Data collection and environmental reviews	$0.8
Other	$0.7
Tribal funding Clean energy, electrification, drought relief and climate resilience for federally recognized tribes.	$0.5
Wildlife recovery and habitat climate resilience	$0.3

Savings and new revenue: $764 billion

Taxes	Revenue in billions
15% corporate minimum tax	$222.2
I.R.S. enforcement Projected net revenue raised from $80 billion in compliance and enforcement funding.	$124.1
Stock buyback tax	$73.7
Extend active loss tax limitation two years	$52.8

Health care	Revenue in billions
Repeal a regulation on prescription drug rebates This regulation has never gone into effect, so the savings are mostly just on paper	$122.2
Drug price negotiation* Medicare negotiation on prices for certain drugs	$99.0
Limits on drug price increases*	$62.3

Energy and climate	Revenue in billions
Methane reduction incentives Sets methane waste emissions thresholds and charges facilities that exceed them. (Increased revenue net of new spending.)	$4.8
Reinstatement of Superfund Increased revenue net of new spending.	$1.2
Tax to fund the Black Lung Disability Trust Fund Permanent extension	$1.2
New oil and gas leases On federal land and in the Gulf of Mexico	$0.5
Other tax adjustments	$0.3
Wind lease sales	$0.2

*These are rough estimates because of changes to the drug price provisions in the bill after cost and savings estimates were released. Savings from the drug price negotiation policy may end up being lower, and the savings from limits on drug price increases are unofficial estimates based on an analysis by Don Schneider, a former chief economist of the House Ways and Means Committee.

But if the current bill includes a lot — in spending, new taxes and policies — it also omits a lot of the Democrats’ original ambitions. Missing is an entire set of family policies that were in a bill passed by the House last year, like a generous child tax credit and paid family leave.

Certain health policies, such as an expansion of Medicaid to give more low-income adults health insurance, have been removed to pare down the bill’s cost. And though the climate policies are the most expansive passed by any Congress, they are more modest than those included in earlier versions of the legislation.

The current bill includes clean electricity incentives that are comparable in size to those in a version passed by the House last year. But it scales back spending in almost every other category, from transportation to climate resilience. Some proposed investments from earlier versions — like those for lead remediation, work force development such as a Civilian Climate Corps, and electric bicycle tax credits — did not make it into the new text. The one major exception is manufacturing: Compared with previous versions of the bill, this legislation marks a significant increase in grants, loans and tax credits to manufacture clean energy technology domestically.

But it also pairs new climate spending with several major concessions to the fossil fuel industry at the request of Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, whose support was necessary to advance the bill.

Here’s how the legislation compares with the much larger social safety net and climate bill passed by the House in November, often referred to as Build Back Better.

How the Bill Compares With Build Back Better

Figures are in billions and over 10 years

Energy and climate
Tax credits and new spending	$392	$570

Health care
Home health care through Medicaid	—	$150
Expanded subsidies for Affordable Care Act health insurance	$64	$130
New Medicare hearing benefit	—	$35
Increased generosity in Medicare's prescription drug benefit	$34	—
Health care work force spending	—	$25

Family benefits
New child care program (6 years)	—	$270
Four weeks of annual federal paid family and medical leave	—	$205
Universal preschool for 3- and 4-year-olds (6 years)	—	$110

Individual tax cuts
Child tax credit increase for one year; fully refundable after 2022	—	$190
Expanded earned-income tax credit extended for one year	—	$15
Other tax changes	—	$10

Other
Build and support affordable housing	—	$175
Immigration reform	—	$110
Other spending	—	$115
Higher education and work force	—	$40

Total	$490 billion	$2.15 trillion

Health care
Negotiation of certain drug prices and limit price increases*	$162	$160
Repeal a regulation on prescription drug rebates	$122	$145
Adjustments to uncompensated care pools	—	$20

Corporate taxes
15% corporate minimum tax	$222	$320
Stock buyback tax	$74	$125
15 percent global minimum tax and international taxation reforms	—	$280
Other	—	$105

Individual taxes
Expand the net investment income tax	—	$250
Surtax on income above $10 million	—	$230
Extension of limits on excess losses of noncorporate taxpayers	$53	$160
Increase state and local tax deduction cap through 2025	—	$15

Other revenue
I.R.S. enforcement	$124	$130
Methane fee, Superfund fee and other revenue	$18	$50

Total	$775 billion	$2 trillion

*The figure for the Inflation Reduction Act is a rough estimate because of changes to the drug price provisions in the bill after cost and savings estimates were released. Savings from the drug price negotiation policy may end up being lower, and the savings from limits on drug price increases are unofficial estimates based on an analysis by Don Schneider, a former chief economist of the House Ways and Means Committee.

The Inflation Reduction Act is projected to reduce deficits by roughly $275 billion over 10 years, while the Build Back Better plan passed by the House would have added about $160 billion to deficits.

Democrats have said the new bill’s deficit reduction, as well as the provisions aimed at lowering energy and prescription drug costs, will help address the rapid inflation over the past year. Many economists, including supporters of the bill, have said that while it may reduce price pressures, the overall effect is likely to be modest, and over the long term.

The promise of taming inflation helped bring Mr. Manchin on board, who cited concerns about rising prices when he pulled his support from the bill passed by the House last year.

In a statement last month after an agreement on a new bill had been made with Democratic leadership, Mr. Manchin announced, “Build Back Better is dead, and instead we have the opportunity to make our country stronger by bringing Americans together.”

The fact that we had to carve off an awful lot of meat that could help an awful lot of people should tell us we have to send more Dems to Washington to help Biden & Co get the rest of what we need.

If we do that, we could be flyin' this time next year.

The Cost Of Resistance

... is always less than the ultimate cost of appeasement.

The GOP has become an abusive partner, and the rest of us are playing the role of the spouse and the kids who are trying to figure out what to do about being stuck in a shitty situation with someone we used to know as "good people", but now has become an aggressive monster who's triggered and moved to violence by even the slightest inconvenience or complaint.

And as a reminder: Trump has not remade the GOP in his own image - he is the perfect reflection of what the Republican Party has been morphing into for decades.

Michelle Goldberg, NYT: (pay wall)

The Absurd Argument Against Making Trump Obey the Law

It took many accidents, catastrophes, misjudgments and mistakes for Donald Trump to win the presidency in 2016. Two particularly important errors came from James Comey, then the head of the F.B.I., who was excessively worried about what Trump’s supporters would think of the resolution of the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.

First, in July 2016, Comey broke protocol to give a news conference in which he criticized Clinton even while announcing that she’d committed no crime. He reportedly did this because he wanted to protect the reputation of the F.B.I. from inevitable right-wing claims that the investigation had been shut down for political reasons.

Then, on Oct. 28, just days before the election, Comey broke protocol again, telling Congress that the Clinton investigation had been reopened because of emails found on the laptop of the former congressman Anthony Weiner. The Justice Department generally discourages filing charges or taking “overt investigative steps” close to an election if they might influence the result. Comey disregarded this because, once again, he dreaded a right-wing freakout once news of the reopened investigation emerged.

“The prospect of oversight hearings, led by restive Republicans investigating an F.B.I. ‘cover-up,’ made everyone uneasy,” The New Yorker reported. In Comey’s memoir, he admitted fearing that concealing the new stage of the investigation — which ended up yielding nothing — would make Clinton, who he assumed would win, seem “illegitimate.” (He didn’t, of course, feel similarly compelled to make public the investigation into Trump’s ties to Russia.)

Comey’s attempts to pre-empt a conservative firestorm blew up in his face. He helped put Trump in the White House, where Trump did generational damage to the rule of law and led us to a place where prominent Republicans are calling for abolishing the F.B.I.

This should be a lesson about the futility of shaping law enforcement decisions around the sensitivities of Trump’s base. Yet after the F.B.I. executed a search warrant at Trump’s beachfront estate this week, some intelligent people have questioned the wisdom of subjecting the former president to the normal operation of the law because of the effect it will have on his most febrile admirers.

Andrew Yang, one of the founders of a new centrist third party, tweeted about the “millions of Americans who will see this as unjust persecution.” Damon Linker, usually one of the more sensible centrist thinkers, wrote, “Rather than healing the country’s civic wounds, the effort to punish Trump will only deepen them.”

The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta described feeling “nauseous” watching coverage of the raid. “What we must acknowledge — even those of us who believe Trump has committed crimes, in some cases brazenly so, and deserves full prosecution under the law — is that bringing him to justice could have some awful consequences,” he wrote.

In some sense, Alberta’s words are obviously true; Trumpists are already issuing death threats against the judge who signed off on the warrant, and a Shabbat service at his synagogue was reportedly canceled because of the security risk. On Thursday, an armed man tried to breach an F.B.I. field office in Ohio, and The New York Times reported that he appears to have attended a pro-Trump rally in Washington the night before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. The former president relishes his ability to stir up a mob; it’s part of what makes him so dangerous.

We already know, however, that the failure to bring Trump to justice — for his company’s alleged financial chicanery and his alleged sexual assault, for obstructing Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation and turning the presidency into a squalid influence-peddling operation, for trying to steal an election and encouraging an insurrection — has been disastrous.

What has strengthened Trump has not been prosecution but impunity, an impunity that some of those who stormed the Capitol thought, erroneously, applied to them as well. Trump’s mystique is built on his defiance of rules that bind everyone else. He is reportedly motivated to run for president again in part because the office will protect him from prosecution. If we don’t want the presidency to license crime sprees, we should allow presidents to be indicted, not accept some dubious norm that ex-presidents shouldn’t be.

We do not know the scope of the investigation that led a judge to authorize the search of Mar-a-Lago, though it reportedly involves classified documents that Trump failed to turn over to the government even after being subpoenaed. More could be revealed soon: Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that the Justice Department had filed a motion in court to unseal the search warrant.

It should go without saying that Trump and his followers, who howled “Lock her up!” about Clinton, do not believe that it is wrong for the Justice Department to pursue a probe against a presidential contender over the improper handling of classified material. What they believe is that it is wrong to pursue a case against Trump, who bonds with his acolytes through a shared sense of aggrieved victimization.

The question is how much deference the rest of us should give to this belief. No doubt, Trump’s most inflamed fans might act out in horrifying ways; many are heavily armed and speak lustily about civil war. To let this dictate the workings of justice is to accept an insurrectionists’ veto. The far right is constantly threatening violence if it doesn’t get its way. Does anyone truly believe that giving in to its blackmail will make it less aggressive?

It was Trump himself who signed a law making the removal and retention of classified documents a felony punishable by up to five years in prison. Those who think that it would be too socially disruptive to apply such a statute to him should specify which laws they believe the former president is and is not obliged to obey. And those in charge of enforcing our laws should remember that the caterwauling of the Trump camp is designed to intimidate them and such intimidation helped him become president in the first place.

Trump shouldn’t be prosecuted because of politics, but he also shouldn’t be spared because of them. The only relevant question is whether he committed a crime, not what crimes his devotees might commit if he’s held to account.

A Few Highlights

WaPo: (pay wall)

National Archives counters Trump’s baseless claims about Obama records

The National Archives and Records Administration issued a statement Friday in an attempt to counter misstatements about former president Barack Obama’s presidential records after several days of misinformation that had been spread by former president Donald Trump and conservative commentators.

Since the FBI search of his Florida home and club this week for classified documents, Trump has asserted in social media posts that Obama “kept 33 million pages of documents, much of them classified” and that they were “taken to Chicago by President Obama.”

In its statement, NARA said that it obtained “exclusive legal and physical custody” of Obama’s records when he left office in 2017. It said that about 30 million pages of unclassified records were transferred to a NARA facility in the Chicago area and that they continue to be maintained “exclusively by NARA.”

- more -

House sends Biden the centerpiece of his economic agenda to sign into law

The passage of the Inflation Reduction Act — a sprawling climate and health bill — marks the end of more than a year of internal debate and negotiations among Democrats over the president’s economic agenda.

Reuters:

Trump's Mar-a-Lago, a security 'nightmare' that housed classified documents

WASHINGTON, Aug 13 (Reuters) - The seizure of classified U.S. government documents from Donald Trump's sprawling Mar-a-Lago retreat spotlights the ongoing national security concerns presented by the former president, and the home he dubbed the Winter White House, some security experts say.

Trump is under federal investigation for possible violations of the Espionage Act, which makes it unlawful to spy for another country or mishandle U.S. defense information, including sharing it with people not authorized to receive it, a search warrant shows.

- more -

Drought in England, fires rage in France as heatwave persists

• Firefighters from across Europe help France with monster fire
• Drought officially declared in parts of England
• Europe hit by successive heatwaves

SAINT-MAGNE, France, Aug 12 (Reuters) - Firefighters from across Europe came to France's rescue on Friday to battle a massive wildfire, while fire also raged in Portugal and parts of England faced a severe drought, as successive heatwaves renewed the focus on climate change risks.

Much of Europe has faced weeks of baking temperatures that have also depleted water levels of the Rhine River in Germany and seen the source of Britain's River Thames dry up further downstream than in previous years.

High temperatures and a worsening drought brought a high risk of new fires breaking out in Gironde, in southwestern France, local officials said, even after an overnight reprieve held in check the wildfire that has been burning for days, scorched thousands of hectares and displaced 10,000 people.

Firefighters from Germany, Romania, Greece and beyond were on the ground to help France battle the fire in the region - home to Bordeaux wine - as well as on other fronts, including in Brittany in the northwest.

- more -

Qult45

Stochastic terrorism is a real thing, and it's one of the main weapons in the Daddy State arsenal.

So I don't have much sympathy for the rubes who've been suckered by a charismatic cult leader, but there's something to what Ms Rosenberg has to say here - something worth noting about how we need to be watchful so we're not helping to embolden these idiots, and making things worse inadvertently.

That said, I still have to lean towards "get your heads outa your asses, guys - then we can talk."

WaPo: (pay wall)

Opinion
The horror of people willing to die for Donald Trump

On Thursday afternoon, a man whom authorities have identified as Ricky Shiffer was shot and killed in a stand-off with police officers after he allegedly tried to break into a FBI office in Cincinnati. Reports suggest that he may have been motivated by a strong devotion to former president Donald Trump and by anger at the FBI’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort.

On Thursday evening, The Post reported that according to sources, the search at Mar-a-Lago was aimed in part at recovering “classified documents relating to nuclear weapons.” Trump’s response? A post on Truth Social, the platform he founded, declaring, “Nuclear weapons issue is a Hoax,” and a false suggestion that “Barack Hussein Obama” had done something similar.

But whatever we may learn about Shiffer’s motivations and the results of the FBI search, one thing is clear: The number of people who have died seemingly in service of an idol as unworthy as Donald Trump is tragic.

It’s one thing for Trump to relieve his followers of their money for dubious causes. (The former president has raked in millions of dollars ostensibly dedicated to political work, when in reality what money has been spent has gone to Trump’s personal expenses, according to Post sources.)

And goodness knows, Trump isn’t the only person whose acolytes behave wretchedly. Die-hard Johnny Depp fans and the stans who enlisted in rapper Kanye West’s online war against actor Pete Davidson are proof that nasty crusades of all types will never lack for recruits.

But it’s different when people start dying.

Four of Trump’s supporters died at the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol: Ashli Babbit, who was shot while trying to climb through a broken window; Kevin Greeson, who suffered a fatal heart attack; Benjamin Philips, who succumbed to a stroke; and Rosanne Boyland, whose official cause of death was “acute amphetamine intoxication,” but who was caught up in a crush of bodies on the Capitol grounds. Christopher Stanton Georgia died by suicide later that month after he was arrested on unlawful entry charges stemming from Jan. 6; he pleaded not guilty before his death.

Now comes the death of Shiffer, who was also apparently at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

The Post's View: After the Mar-a-Lago search, horrific violence follows reckless rhetoric

Some might be tempted to create distance from these tragedies through mockery, or by treating Trump’s devotees as oddities.

That impulse — to disparage or dismiss the weird and extreme — seems to undergird a 2020 New York Times profile of a widowed farmer in India who adopted Trump as a personal deity, then collapsed and died after taking to his room and refusing to eat when Trump tested positive for covid-19. It’s also the sentiment behind so much snide social-media chatter. For instance: “some dude woke up today and decided to commit suicide by cop bc the former host of celebrity apprentice wasnt allowed to keep the top secret documents he stole from the white house.”

It's easy to scoff. But this sort of commentary ignores the sadness running through so many of these stories.

Ashli Babbitt was looking for meaning because her military career had stalled out, and her pool company was failing. The QAnon conspiracy theory — which presents Trump as a bulwark against a secret cabal of powerful pedophiles — gave Rosanne Boyland purpose and a framework for understanding the world as she struggled with addiction.

The absurdity and maliciousness of the cause for which these people have died only compounds the horror of their deaths. How is it that no one, no institution, could offer something more substantive than the manifest hollowness of Trump and Trumpism?

An essential part of Trump’s malign magic is its impermeability. Suggest that his followers deserve better — whether that is an actual infrastructure package or a leader who appeals to their best qualities rather than their basest — and you’re accused of exhibiting the very contempt that made Trump attractive in the first place. Suggest Trump is scamming his followers, and you’re a tool of the deep state. According to Trump and his many enablers, there is no evidence that isn’t planted or manufactured, no moral act that is disqualifying, no act for which Trump himself can be held responsible.

Even the people who seek to martyr themselves in Trump’s defense can be redefined and reinterpreted through this corrupt logic: On social media, Trump fans aren’t celebrating Shiffer as a Trumpist patriot. They’re dismissing him as a false flag planted to paint the FBI in a flattering light.

Those of us who live outside the boundaries of this mad realm may be tempted to count ourselves lucky. Still, we should be concerned for the residents of Trumpland for their own safety. And if that’s not enough, we should care because the people who die for Donald Trump may someday take others with them.

That One Shitty Day

On The Lawn at UVa

Aug 17, 2017

5 years ago.

August 12, 2017 - "...very fine people..."

This one is restricted because of the footage showing the asshole James Fields running his car into a crowd of counter-protesters - viewer discretion is advised:

Hours of video at YouTube

Today's Wingnut

We are not now, nor have we ever been, a Christian nation. Not officially, and not un-officially, and not with a wink and a nod. Never.

Ever.

RWW Blog:

Saving Us

I don't know that I can call it more than a slow roll right now - though it may well be an honest-to-golly trend - but there are signs of a (continuing) power shift.

Remember back in 2017, when the Pussy Hat Gang rose up to warn "conservatives" that electing Trump was prob'ly going to turn out to be a big mistake, and then proving it by bringing down the hammer in the 2018 midterms, and then stomping him in 2020, in spite of all the shit the GOP tried to pull.

So yeah - it could be a trend.

People Magazine:

Miss America 2018 Cara Mund, Inspired to Protect Women's Rights, Launches Bid for Congress in North Dakota

Mund, a 28-year-old recent Harvard Law School graduate, is collecting signatures to get her name on the November ballot as an independent. “I'm not a party — I'm a person,” she says

The 28-year-old announced her candidacy Saturday and quickly began gathering signatures to get her name on the November ballot. She'll need to collect 1,000 from North Dakota residents and hand them over to the secretary of state by Sept. 6, according to The Forum, a Fargo-area newspaper.

She hopes to run as an independent for her state's only seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. If she wins, she'll make history.

"On the 57th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, I am proud to announce that I am seeking to be North Dakota's first female in the U.S. House of Representatives," Mund said in a Facebook post on Saturday.

5 Things to Know About the New Miss America Cara Mund

It will be tough, though, in North Dakota, where Republicans hold every statewide office and conservative values run deep.

"I already know it's an uphill battle, and some people likely aren't even going to vote for me because they think there's no shot, but you don't know until you try," Mund told The Bismark Tribune. "I think the best part is I can take the best of both parties and find what's best for North Dakotans."

Mund says she decided to join the race out of concern for the waning reproductive rights of American women since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ending the constitutional guarantee of abortion access across the country.

She told the AP that the ruling for her was "just a moment where I knew we need more women in office."

Most abortions are set to become illegal in North Dakota later this month. The AP reports that the state's only abortion clinic is preparing to move from Fargo to a location across the border in Minnesota.

Forcing people seeking an abortion "to travel across state lines is going to impact women, and women of lower social economic status," Mund told the AP.

"I don't think the government should be in your bedroom. I don't think the government should be in your doctor's appointments. It's your right to privacy, and as the first woman running for this position, I recognize the importance of that and the importance of having a woman's voice heard," Mund said in an interview with The Forum. "It's an individual's choice."

Mund, who's entering the race just months before Election Day, will be her own campaign manager and reportedly lacks the fundraising capabilities of her would-be opponents, Democrat Mark Haugen and Rep. Kelly Armstrong, the Republican incumbent who won reelection in 2020 in a landslide, according to The Forum. The GOP has held North Dakota's House seat since 2011.

But Mund, a Bismark native who attended Brown University and recently graduated with honors from Harvard Law School, is up for the challenge and feels most comfortable running as an independent. "I'm not a party — I'm a person," she said, adding that she agrees with Republicans on some issues and with Democrats on others.

She points to her experience representing her state at countless public appearances during her reign as Miss North Dakota and later as Miss America.

Also, Mund believes she has essential skills that apply to business and public service thanks to a nonprofit fashion show she started at age 14 that benefitted the Make-A-Wish Foundation during its 10-year run.

As an undergrad at Brown University, Mund sought leadership positions at various extracurricular groups, The Forum reports. And at Harvard Law School, she performed more than 1,000 hours of pro bono work and won an award for "her commitment to justice, her advocacy, compassion for her clients, and stellar representation of each of those clients."

Mund is in it to win it but said there are other benefits to launching a long-shot bid for Congress. Campaigning will give her the opportunity to hear from voters across North Dakota and to hold elected leaders accountable, she noted to The Forum.

"I want women in our state, especially after the [Supreme Court's] Dobbs decision, to know that they have an avenue to be heard," she said.

Here's Beau's take:

It's possible

that women will save us -

if we can just stay the fuck

out of their way.

Today's WTF

During his deposition in a civil case,

Donald Trump felt the need

to plead the 5th over 400 times.

In a CIVIL case.

They're Losing

...but with this caveat:

Even when it's obvious the other side is losing, it doesn't mean you're winning.

You have to step up and take it.

I've been walkin' 40 miles of bad road

If the bible is right, the world will explode

I've been trying to get as far away from myself as I can

Some things are just too hot to touch

The human mind can only stand so much

You can still lose with a winnin' hand.

-- Bob Dylan

The Professional Left

Luke 12: 2

There is nothing concealed that will not be disclosed, or hidden that will not be made known.

Kyrsten Sinema is Ransomware dressed up to look like a US Senator.

The Trump campaign lost another one - they lost last year in their attempt to enforce Omarosa's NDA, and they've capitulated in their fight against another staffer (via The Hill). It seems that all of the NDAs are now null and void, and we can probably expect a flood of memoirs dishing the dirt.

Ka-Boom

Holy fuck.

WaPo: (pay wall)

FBI searched Trump’s home to look for nuclear documents and other items, sources say
Attorney General Merrick Garland wouldn’t discuss the search but said he personally signed off on asking a judge to approve it

Garland announces DOJ request to unseal Mar-A-Lago warrant

Classified documents relating to nuclear weapons were among the items FBI agents sought in a search of former president Donald Trump’s Florida residence on Monday, according to people familiar with the investigation.

Experts in classified information said the unusual search underscores deep concern among government officials about the types of information they thought could be located at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club and potentially in danger of falling into the wrong hands.

The people who described some of the material that agents were seeking spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation. They did not offer additional details about what type of information the agents were seeking, including whether it involved weapons belonging to the United States or some other nation. Nor did they say if such documents were recovered as part of the search. A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department and FBI declined to comment.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said he could not discuss the investigation on Thursday. But in an unusual public statement at the Justice Department, he announced he had personally authorized the decision to seek court permission for a search warrant.

Garland spoke moments after Justice Department lawyers filed a motion seeking to unseal the search warrant in the case, noting that Trump had publicly revealed the search shortly after it happened.

“The public’s clear and powerful interest in understanding what occurred under these circumstances weighs heavily in favor of unsealing,” the motion says. “That said, the former President should have an opportunity to respond to this Motion and lodge objections, including with regards to any ‘legitimate privacy interests’ or the potential for other ‘injury’ if these materials are made public.”

Analysis: Garland seeks to call Trump's bluff

Material about nuclear weapons is especially sensitive and usually restricted to a small number of government officials, experts said. Publicizing details about U.S. weapons could provide an intelligence road map to adversaries seeking to build ways of countering those systems. And other countries might view exposing their nuclear secrets as a threat, experts said.

One former Justice Department official, who in the past oversaw investigations of leaks of classified information, said the type of top-secret information described by the people familiar with the probe would probably cause authorities to try to move as quickly as possible to recover sensitive documents that could cause grave harm to U.S. security.

“If that is true, it would suggest that material residing unlawfully at Mar-a-Lago may have been classified at the highest classification level,” said David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence section, which investigates leaks of classified information. “If the FBI and the Department of Justice believed there were top secret materials still at Mar-a-Lago, that would lend itself to greater ‘hair-on-fire’ motivation to recover that material as quickly as possible.”

The Monday search of Trump’s home by FBI agents has caused a political furor, with Trump and many of his Republican defenders accusing the FBI of acting out of politically motivated malice. Some have threatened the agency on social media.

As Garland spoke Thursday, police in Ohio were engaged in a standoff with an armed man who allegedly tried to storm the Cincinnati office of the FBI. The man was killed by police later that day; authorities said negotiations had failed.

Trump property search bring simmering threat of violence to the fore

State and federal officials declined to name the man or describe a potential motive. However, a law enforcement official identified him as Ricky Shiffer.

According to another law enforcement official, agents are investigating Shiffer’s possible ties to extremist groups, including the Proud Boys, whose leaders are accused of helping launch the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. Both officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

A person using Shiffer’s name on TruthSocial, Trump’s social media site, posted a “call to arms” message shortly after Monday’s FBI search became public.

“People, this is it,” the message said. “Leave work tomorrow as soon as the gun shop/Army-Navy store/pawn shop opens, get whatever you need to be ready for combat. We must not tolerate this one. They have been conditioning us to accept tyranny and think we can’t do anything for 2 years. This time we must respond with force.”

The Washington Post could not confirm whether the account actually belonged to Shiffer.

In his statement on Thursday, Garland defended FBI agents as “dedicated, patriotic public servants” and said he would not “stand by silently when their integrity is unfairly attacked … Every day they protect the American people from violent crime, terrorism and other threats to their safety while safeguarding our civil rights. They do so at great personal sacrifice and risk to themselves. I am honored to work alongside them.”

It was Garland’s first public appearance or comment since agents executed the warrant at Mar-a-Lago Club, taking about a dozen boxes of material after opening a safe and entering a padlocked storage area. The search was one of the most dramatic developments in a cascade of legal investigations of the former president, several of which appear to be growing in intensity.

The investigation into the improper handling of documents began months ago, when the National Archives and Records Administration sought the return of material taken to Mar-a-Lago from the White House. Fifteen boxes of documents and items, some of them marked classified, were returned early this year. The archives subsequently asked the Justice Department to investigate.

Former senior intelligence officials said in interviews that during the Trump administration, highly classified intelligence about sensitive topics, including about intelligence-gathering on Iran, was routinely mishandled. One former official said the most highly classified information often ended up in the hands of personnel who didn’t appear to have a need to possesses it or weren’t authorized to read it.

That former official also said signals intelligence — intercepted electronic communications like emails and phone calls of foreign leaders — was among the type of information that often ended up with unauthorized personnel. Such intercepts are among the most closely guarded secrets because of what they can reveal about how the United States has penetrated foreign governments.

A person familiar with the inventory of 15 boxes taken from Mar-a-Lago in January indicated that signals intelligence material was included in them. The precise nature of the information was unclear.

The former officials and the other individual spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

This spring, Trump’s team received a grand jury subpoena in connection with the documents investigations, two people familiar with the investigation, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss details, confirmed to The Post on Thursday. Investigators visited Mar-a-Lago in the weeks following the issuance of the subpoena, and Trump’s team handed over some materials. The subpoena was first reported by Just the News, a conservative media outlet run by John Solomon, one of Trump’s recently designated representatives to the National Archives.

People familiar with the probe have said it is focused on whether the former president or his aides withheld classified or other government material that should have been returned to government custody earlier. The people, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation, said that as authorities engaged in months of discussions on the subject, some officials came to suspect the Trump team was not being truthful.

Pressure had been building for Garland to say something so that the public understands why the Justice Department — and a federal magistrate judge — believed the extraordinary step of executing a search warrant at the home of a former president was necessary. But Garland has stuck with his practice of not discussing ongoing investigations.

“Upholding the rule of law means applying the law evenly without fear or favor,” Garland said Thursday. “Under my watch, that is precisely what the Justice Department is doing.”

Trump and his allies have refused to publicly share a copy of the warrant, even as they and their supporters have denounced the search as unlawful and politically motivated but provided no evidence to back that up.

Lawyers for the former president can respond to the government’s filing with any objections to unsealing the warrant, leaving it to the judge overseeing the case to decide. He also could publicly release the warrant himself.

The judge ordered the Justice Department to confer with lawyers for Trump and alert the court by 3 p.m. Friday as to whether Trump objects to the unsealing.

After Garland’s appearance, Trump took to his own social media network to again decry the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. But he made no indication of whether he would lodge an objection to the government’s filing.

If made public, the warrant would probably reveal a general description of what material agents were seeking at Mar-a-Lago and what crimes they could be connected to. A list of the inventory that agents took from the property would also be released. Details could be limited, however, particularly if the material collected includes classified documents.

In addition to the anti-law enforcement threats and vitriol on social media sites and elsewhere this week, the furor over the search warrant has led to threats against the judge who approved the warrant request.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association — the professional association representing 31,000 federal law enforcement officers and agents — said in a statement Wednesday evening that its agents had received “extreme threats of violence” this week.

“All law enforcement understand their work makes them a target for criminal actors,” wrote the group’s president, Larry Cosme. “However, the politically motivated threats of violence against the FBI this week are unprecedented in recent history and absolutely unacceptable.”

Republicans around Trump initially thought the raid could help him politically, but they are now bracing for revelations that could be damaging, a person familiar with the matter said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.