Today's Keith

Smith has Trump's DMs and drafts, and that's a bigger deal than it sounds.

More Comin'

Way too many of us still don't quite understand how close we came to losing it all.

And way too many of use are still way too complacent about the ongoing efforts to fuck us over.

Previously Secret Memo Laid Out Strategy for Trump to Overturn Biden’s Win

The House Jan. 6 committee’s investigation did not uncover the memo, whose existence first came to light in last week’s indictment.

A lawyer allied with President Donald J. Trump first laid out a plot to use false slates of electors to subvert the 2020 election in a previously unknown internal campaign memo that prosecutors are portraying as a crucial link in how the Trump team’s efforts evolved into a criminal conspiracy.

The existence of the Dec. 6, 2020, memo came to light in last week’s indictment of Mr. Trump, though its details remained unclear. But a copy obtained by The New York Times shows for the first time that the lawyer, Kenneth Chesebro, acknowledged from the start that he was proposing “a bold, controversial strategy” that the Supreme Court “likely” would reject in the end.

But even if the plan did not ultimately pass legal muster at the highest level, Mr. Chesebro argued that it would achieve two goals. It would focus attention on claims of voter fraud and “buy the Trump campaign more time to win litigation that would deprive Biden of electoral votes and/or add to Trump’s column.”

The memo had been a missing piece in the public record of how Mr. Trump’s allies developed their strategy to overturn Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory. In mid-December, the false Trump electors could go through the motions of voting as if they had the authority to do so. Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence could unilaterally count those slates of votes, rather than the official and certified ones for Mr. Biden.

While that basic plan itself was already known, the document, described by prosecutors as the “fraudulent elector memo,” provides new details about how it originated and was discussed behind the scenes. Among those details is Mr. Chesebro’s proposed “messaging” strategy to explain why pro-Trump electors were meeting in states where Mr. Biden was declared the winner. The campaign would present that step as “a routine measure that is necessary to ensure” that the correct electoral slate could be counted by Congress if courts or legislatures later concluded that Mr. Trump had actually won the states.

It was not the first time Mr. Chesebro had raised the notion of creating alternate electors. In November, he had suggested doing so in Wisconsin, although for a different reason: to safeguard Mr. Trump’s rights in case he later won a court battle and was declared that state’s certified winner by Jan. 6, as had happened with Hawaii in 1960.

But the indictment portrayed the Dec. 6 memo as a “sharp departure” from that proposal, becoming what prosecutors say was a criminal plot to engineer “a fake controversy that would derail the proper certification of Biden as president-elect.”

“I recognize that what I suggest is a bold, controversial strategy, and that there are many reasons why it might not end up being executed on Jan. 6,” Mr. Chesebro wrote. “But as long as it is one possible option, to preserve it as a possibility it is important that the Trump-Pence electors cast their electoral votes on Dec. 14.”

Three days later, Mr. Chesebro drew up specific instructions to create fraudulent electors in multiple states — in another memo whose existence, along with the one in November, was first reported by The Times last year. The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 riot also cited them in its December report, but it apparently did not learn of the Dec. 6 memo.

“I believe that what can be achieved on Jan. 6 is not simply to keep Biden below 270 electoral votes,” Mr. Chesebro wrote in the newly disclosed memo. “It seems feasible that the vote count can be conducted so that at no point will Trump be behind in the electoral vote count unless and until Biden can obtain a favorable decision from the Supreme Court upholding the Electoral Count Act as constitutional, or otherwise recognizing the power of Congress (and not the president of the Senate) to count the votes.”

Mr. Chesebro and his lawyer did not respond to requests for comment. A Trump spokesman did not respond to an email seeking comment.

The false electors scheme was perhaps the most sprawling of Mr. Trump’s various efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. It involved lawyers working on his campaign’s behalf across seven states, dozens of electors willing to claim that Mr. Trump — not Mr. Biden — had won their states, and open resistance from some of those potential electors that the plan could be illegal or even “appear treasonous.” In the end, it became the cornerstone of the indictment against Mr. Trump.

If you've been shit-talking AG Garland because you think he's been slow on the uptake, just know that he had an awful lot of pest control and varmint removal to do before he could even put the machinery in gear.

How long would it take you to root out the authoritarian assholes who've spent their whole careers militating for a Unitary Executive, and doing everything possible to torpedo any effort to unfuck a major department that's been increasingly fucked up by a Daddy State-leaning cadre happily scheming and hacking away at the government from the inside?

While another lawyer — John Eastman, described as Co-Conspirator 2 in the indictment — became a key figure who championed the plan and worked more directly with Mr. Trump on it, Mr. Chesebro was an architect of it. He was first enlisted by the Trump campaign in Wisconsin to help with a legal challenge to the results there.

Prosecutors are still hearing evidence related to the investigation, even after charges were leveled against Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter. The House committee last year released emails its investigators obtained showing that Mr. Chesebro had sent copies of the two previously reported memos, one from Nov. 18 and another from Dec. 9, to allies in the states working on the fake electors plan.

But he did not attach his Dec. 6 memo to those messages, which laid out a more audacious idea: having Mr. Pence take “the position that it is his constitutional power and duty, alone, as president of the Senate, to both open and count the votes.” That is, he could resolve the dispute over which slate was valid by counting the alternate electors for Mr. Trump even if Mr. Biden remained the certified winner of their states.

Mr. Chesebro, who is described as Co-Conspirator 5 in the indictment but has not been charged by the special counsel, addressed the second memo to James R. Troupis, a lawyer who was assisting the Trump campaign’s efforts to challenge Mr. Biden’s victory in Wisconsin.

By the next day, the indictment said, Mr. Chesebro’s memo had reached Rudolph W. Giuliani, Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer.

According to the indictment, Mr. Giuliani, who is referred to as Co-Conspirator 1, spoke with someone identified only as Co-Conspirator 6 about finding lawyers to help with the effort in seven states. An email reviewed by The Times suggests that particular conspirator could be Boris Epshteyn, a campaign strategic adviser for the Trump campaign who was paid for political consulting. That day, Mr. Epshteyn sent Mr. Giuliani an email recommending lawyers in those seven states.

As he had done in the earlier memo, Mr. Chesebro cited writings by a Harvard Law School professor, Laurence H. Tribe, to bolster his argument that the deadlines and procedures in the Electoral Count Act are unconstitutional and that state electoral votes need not be finalized until Congress’s certification on Jan. 6. Mr. Chesebro had worked as Mr. Tribe’s research assistant as a law student and later helped him in his representation of Vice President Al Gore during the 2000 election.

Calling his former mentor “a key Biden supporter and fervent Trump critic,” Mr. Chesebro cited what he described as Mr. Tribe’s legal views, along with writings by several other liberals as potential fodder for a messaging strategy. It would be “the height of hypocrisy for Democrats to resist Jan. 6 as the real deadline, or to suggest that Trump and Pence would be doing anything particularly controversial,” he wrote.

But in an essay published on Tuesday on the legal website Just Security, Mr. Tribe said Mr. Chesebro’s Nov. 18 memo “relied on a gross misrepresentation of my scholarship.”

For one, Mr. Chesebro quoted a clause from a law review article by Mr. Tribe about Bush v. Gore as support for the idea that the only real legal deadline is Jan. 6. That was taken out of context, Mr. Tribe wrote, saying he was only narrowly “discussing the specifics of Florida state law.” Mr. Chesebro, by contrast, made it sound as if he was putting forward “a general proposition about the power of states to do what they wish regardless of the Electoral Count Act and independent of the deadlines set by Congress,” he added.

For another, Mr. Chesebro cited a constitutional treatise in which Mr. Tribe wrote that a past Congress cannot bind the actions of a later Congress, which Mr. Chesebro used to buttress his proposal that parts of the Electoral Count Act are unconstitutional. But Mr. Tribe wrote that what he meant was Congress can pass new legislation changing such a law.

The indictment also accuses Mr. Trump and his unindicted co-conspirators of acting with deception in recruiting some of the fraudulent electors. That included telling some of them that their votes for Mr. Trump would be used only if a court ruling handed victory in their state to Mr. Trump.

The Dec. 6 memo dovetails with that approach. Mr. Chesebro wrote that Mr. Pence could count purported Trump electors from a state as long as there was a lawsuit pending challenging Mr. Biden’s declared victory there. But he also proposed telling the public that the Trump electors were meeting on Dec. 14 merely as a precaution in case “the courts (or state legislatures) were to later conclude that Trump actually won the state.”

Mr. Chesebro also suggested he knew that even that part of the strategy would draw blowback.

“There is no requirement that they meet in public. It might be preferable for them to meet in private, to thwart the ability of protesters to disrupt the event,” he wrote, adding: “Even if held in private, perhaps print and even TV journalists would be invited to attend to cover the event.”

A New Wrinkle

Special Counsel Obtained Search Warrant for Trump’s Twitter Account

The warrant, obtained in January, adds a new dimension to the scope of the federal inquiry into the events of Jan. 6, 2021.

Prosecutors working for Jack Smith, the special counsel who has twice brought indictments against former President Donald J. Trump, obtained a search warrant early this year for Mr. Trump’s long dormant Twitter account as part of their inquiry into his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, according to court papers unsealed on Wednesday.

The warrant, which was signed by a federal judge in Washington in January after Elon Musk took over Twitter, which is now called X, adds a new dimension to the scope of the special counsel’s efforts to investigate the former president.

The court papers, which emerged from an appeal by Twitter challenging the judge’s decision to issue the warrant, did not reveal what prosecutors were looking for in Mr. Trump’s Twitter account, which the tech company shut down just days after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

But the papers indicate that prosecutors got permission from the judge not to tell Mr. Trump for months that they had obtained the warrant for his account. The prosecutors feared that if Mr. Trump learned about the warrant, it “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior, [or] notify confederates,” the papers said.

The existence of the warrant was earlier reported by Politico.

Trials

Somewhere deep down in his brain - like at a sub-lizard level where not even the most adventurous of theoretical psychology nerds dare to go - Trump knows he can't win. He can't win at anything anywhere anytime again anyone.

He never has.

So that sub-lizard kernel of primordial brain-like substance sends a message up the chain, telling him he has to scheme and connive his way through life, doing whatever is necessary to avoid having to go head-to-head with any opponent - because he knows he's not going to win if he stands by the rules and behaves honorably.

He "beat" Hillary in 2016, by salting the earth (amping up the efforts of House Republicans), enlisting and taking full advantage of Russian dis-information techniques on social media, accepting (IMO) illegal contributions of foreign money laundered through the NRA, and by counting on enough people to be so sure Hillary would win that they threw their votes away in one way or another.

We got a little bit hip to the tricks, which meant he lost bigger than expected in 2018, got his ass kicked in 2020, lost pretty big again in 2022 as Republicans barely eked out a House Majority and lost a seat in the Senate.

He lost 62 of 63 court challenges filed regarding the 2020 election.

He lost to E Jean Carroll - twice - and he's about to lose another one to her.

His best good buddy CPA took the fall for him, and spent time in jail for business fraud.

and

and

and

For more than 70 years, he's done whatever he's wanted to do, and never once really faced the music - while learning the art of Life In Smarmspace®.

Opinion

Trump’s far-fetched defenses aren’t actually aimed at the courtroom

You do not need a law degree to understand that conspiring with someone to commit a crime isn’t protected by the First Amendment, despite thrice-indicted former president Donald Trump and his lawyer claiming the opposite. This is only one of their many half-baked defenses and extraneous excuses.

Trump’s defenses are far-fetched. So why make them?

Let’s start with the First Amendment. As former federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti tweeted,

“Many crimes involve speaking to others. Fraud is one of them. It is well-settled in the law that freedom of speech does not give you the right to commit fraud or engage in criminal conspiracies.”

Two Sunday talk show hosts made the same point when interviewing Trump lawyer John Lauro. NBC’s Chuck Todd (“You’re not allowed to use speech, though, in order to get somebody to commit a crime”) and CNN’s Dana Bash (“But you can’t break the law … like approving fake electors”) didn’t need law degrees to puncture that Lauro canard.

Moving on to Lauro’s and Trump’s professed desire to move the trial in the election case from D.C. to West Virginia (because it’s more “diverse”?!), the relevant case in the circuit that has been followed in other cases related to Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. v. Haldeman, holds that only if an impartial jury cannot be found during voir dire is the defendant “entitled to any actions necessary to assure that he receives a fair trial,” which might include a change of venue. However, in cases of such national notoriety, there is no place unaffected by pretrial publicity (which Trump constantly drives). Trump does not have a right to find a more MAGA-friendly state for his trial.

Moreover, the alleged crimes occurred in D.C. — and D.C. residents have every right to have the case decided in their backyard with their fellow residents as jurors.

We’ve also heard Trump’s usual claptrap that the judge is biased. He has smeared and insulted every judge (and prosecutor) — except U.S. District Judge Aileen M. Cannon (who has been roundly criticized by others and whose ruling on outside review of classified documents was harshly reversed by the 11th Circuit). Disqualification, as was discussed in connection with Cannon’s assignment to the Mar-a-Lago case, is governed by a statute. Under Section 455 of Title 28 of the U.S. Code, a party must show the judge’s “impartiality might reasonably be questioned,” for example with a showing of “personal bias or prejudice.” There is zero evidence of any such bias on the part of U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan; no reasonable person could question her impartiality. Whether Lauro thinks he can make a good-faith claim for recusal, without violating his ethical obligation to forgo frivolous arguments, remains an open question.

Other excuses do not seem to meet the straight-face test. It’s no defense to say that Trump did not “order” then-Vice President Mike Pence to overthrow the election. It will be enough to prove Trump attempted to engage him in an illegal plot to overthrow the election.

Lauro’s claim that Trump’s alleged arm-twisting of Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to “find” 11,870 votes was merely “aspirational” is a real head-scratcher. Most conspiracies are aspirational (e.g., “I’d like to rob a bank”). But, of course, Trump allegedly implicitly threatened Raffensperger if he didn’t “find” the votes: (“It is more illegal for you than it is for them because, you know, what they did and you’re not reporting it. That’s a criminal, that’s a criminal offense. And you can’t let that happen. That’s a big risk to you and to Ryan, your lawyer.”) Arguing that a “technical” constitutional violation is not necessarily a criminal violation, as Lauro did, is equally perplexing. Surely, he knows some actions — such as depriving others of the right to have their vote counted — can be both criminal and constitutional violations.

Somewhat more serious, we have heard many Trump apologists raise the defense that he was simply following advice of counsel. That dog won’t hunt, either.

As a factual matter, attorneys — his White House counsel, Justice Department officials, including then-Attorney General William P. Barr, and even those conspiring with Trump — told him the plan wouldn’t fly. Paragraph 11 of the indictment documents numerous instances in which attorneys told him no fraud was detected. Even “Co-Conspirator 2” (John Eastman) wouldn’t say the plan was legal, only that it had never been tested (Paragraph 93). Moreover, the indictment says, “After that conversation, the Senior Advisor notified the Defendant that Co-Conspirator 2 had conceded that his plan was ‘not going to work.’” Yes, even the author of the phony elector plan conceded it would lose overwhelmingly at the Supreme Court.

As a legal matter, an advice of counsel claim defense fails if the lawyers are part of the illegal scheme and/or if the advice is unreasonable. The so-far unindicted co-conspirators Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Jeffrey Clark and Kenneth Chesebro cannot shield Trump from the crime they allegedly were committing together. Given that Trump’s entire campaign staff, Justice Department and vice president knew the plan was bonkers, it’s fair to say reliance on the Eastman scheme could not have been reasonable. (Legal scholars and case law have clarified that you cannot shop around for legal advice to justify illegal conduct. If you do, you’re obviously looking to find a stooge, not independent legal advice.)

Likewise, the argument that Trump really thought he won is both wrong and irrelevant. Both the indictment and the Jan. 6 House select committee testimony underscored that at times Trump dropped the facade and acknowledged Joe Biden had won the presidency. Moreover, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth already rejected the “but he really believed it” defense in the case of another Jan. 6 defendant. He found that even if the Jan. 6 defendant “genuinely believed the election was stolen and that public officials had committed treason, that does not change the fact that he acted corruptly with consciousness of wrongdoing.” Lamberth added: “Belief that your actions are serving a greater good does not negate consciousness of wrongdoing.”

So, what is going on here? Norman L. Eisen, a co-author of a Just Security model prosecution memo, practiced at the same criminal defense firm, Zuckerman Spaeder, with Lauro. Eisen speaks highly of Lauro’s legal skills. Eisen told me, “He will have tricks up his sleeve by the time we get to trial, which I think will be as soon as the first quarter of ’24. Don’t expect to hear these cartoon versions of the defenses but something more sophisticated.”

Why, then, make these arguments? Trump’s legal strategy in all three criminal cases so far — the Mar-a-Lago documents case pending in Florida, the state-level business records case pending in Manhattan and the election case — has rested not on winning in court but on delaying and then winning the election. To do the latter, he feels compelled to give his supporters some rationale, however specious and silly, to excuse their voting for him.

Fortunately, if the election case moves briskly ahead and Trump is convicted, only the most bamboozled MAGA voters will be left to parrot his excuses.

Way To Go Buckeyes

Ohio voters reject higher bar for altering constitution, a win for abortion rights supporters

Ahead of a November vote on abortion rights, Republican lawmakers wanted voters to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution

Ohio voters rejected a measure Tuesday that would have made it more difficult to amend the state constitution ahead of a November vote to ensure access to abortion.

For more than a century, Ohioans have been able to amend the state constitution with a simple majority. The failed measure would have changed that threshold to 60 percent.

With about 88 percent of votes counted Tuesday night, 56.5 percent voted against the proposal, while 43.5 percent supported it. The Associated Press projected the measure would fail.

Republican state lawmakers decided to try to make it tougher to amend the constitution as reproductive rights advocates gathered signatures of support this spring for a November measure that would guarantee access to abortion. Because of those stakes, Tuesday’s election became a proxy fight over abortion, which is expected to again be a defining issue in the 2024 election.

From the start, Republican leaders were clear that they wanted to make the abortion rights measure more difficult to pass, but they also embraced the proposal more broadly, arguing that modifications to the state constitution should have overwhelming support. Opponents of changing the rules called the measure anti-democratic, saying the nation is founded on the idea of majority rule.

“People showed up, they were fired up, and quite frankly they were fed up,” said Rep. Shontel M. Brown (D-Ohio), an opponent of the ballot measure. “I think this demonstrated that issues are still important, messaging still matters and the power still belongs to the people.”

When the race was called, cheers went up at the Northwood Cider Company in suburban Cincinnati, where Democrats gathered to watch results roll in. They clinked their glasses in celebration and said they would quickly turn their attention to passing the abortion rights measure in November.

“Tomorrow we sleep, and Thursday we get back to work,” Isaac Goff-Mitchell, the executive director of the Hamilton County Democratic Party, told the crowd of about 100.

The antiabortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America called the results “a warning for pro-life states across the nation,” arguing that Republicans had not done enough to persuade voters to change the rules for amending the constitution.

“So long as the Republicans and their supporters take the ostrich strategy and bury their heads in the sand, they will lose again and again,” the group said in its statement.

The measure, known as Issue 1, was the only item on the ballot. Supporters and opponents spent millions of dollars on their campaigns, and early turnout was high for an election held during a normally sleepy political season. More than 600,000 people voted early, more than twice as many as voted early in the May 2022 primary for U.S. Senate.

The special election drew national attention. Mike Pence, the former vice president seeking the GOP nomination for president, released a video Tuesday urging Ohioans to vote “yes” so they could block the November abortion rights amendment, “stop the radical left” and “save Ohio.” Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), meanwhile, in a Twitter post called on voters to cast “no” ballots because “voting rights and reproductive freedoms are on the line.”

Since the Supreme Court last year ended a nationwide right to abortion, voters in three states backed state constitutional amendments ensuring access to the procedure: Michigan, Vermont and California. In addition, voters in two conservative-leaning states, Kansas and Kentucky, rejected referendums that would have changed their constitutions to explicitly say they do not provide a right to abortion.

Tuesday’s vote could foreshadow the outcome of the abortion measure in November. According to a July poll from USA Today and Suffolk University, 58 percent of likely voters in Ohio supported the abortion rights ballot measure.

Voters had abortion on their minds as they went to the polls Tuesday.

Retired attorney Richard Russeth, 67, voted against the measure Tuesday at an elementary school in Middletown, a city of 50,000 between Cincinnati and Dayton.

“I am not against having a supermajority, but they are only doing this to defeat abortion,” he said. “They are changing the rules in the middle of the game and that doesn’t fly with me.”

Several miles away, in rural Wayne Township, Jim Gentry, 84, said he voted for the measure because of his opposition to abortion.

“I don’t want them fooling with the constitution,” said Gentry, a retired truck driver.

In recent years, Republicans in a handful of states have sought to make it more difficult to pass citizen-led initiatives after a string of liberal policies — from expanding Medicaid to raising the minimum wage — have been placed on the ballot.

Last year, such efforts to raise the voter threshold failed in South Dakota and Arkansas, and attempts to schedule a similar vote in Missouri were unsuccessful this spring. In Arizona, voters narrowly approved a state constitutional amendment requiring 60 percent of voters to greenlight measures enacting a new tax.

“Ohio is going to shape the contours of this conversation going forward,” said Sarah Walker, the policy and legal advocacy director at the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center, which helps with liberal ballot measures.

Speaking before the race was called, she said: “If it’s a resounding defeat, it will send a very strong message that it is not in the interest of policymakers to attempt to restrict the citizen-initiative process.”

In Ohio, millions of dollars flowed to both opponents and proponents of the measure, from within the state and outside it. Groups that support the November abortion rights effort and those opposing Tuesday’s ballot measure have raised about $25 million. Those on the other side have secured about $20 million, according to campaign finance filings.

Michael Gonidakis, the president of Ohio Right to Life, lobbied the state legislature for months to try to make it harder to pass constitutional amendments. Those efforts were successful in May, and since then, he has traveled across the state pitching the argument that powerful out-of-state groups want to wield outsize influence on Ohio.

“Bottom line is we’re going to have to work harder now — we know that,” Gonidakis said Tuesday night.

He added: “I think Ohioans are going to regret not taking this opportunity to protect our constitution because hundreds of millions of dollars are going to be poured in this state.”

Supporters of Tuesday’s measure argued that raising the threshold for constitutional amendments was about more than abortion. They pointed to an array of other liberal-leaning issues that could appear on future ballots, such as raising the minimum wage and legalizing marijuana. They contended that it is too easy to amend the state constitution and that there should be a high bar for modifying it like there is for the U.S. Constitution.

“A simple 50 percent-plus-one majority shouldn’t be able to change the rules that we use to govern our state,” said Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Republican secretary of state, who has launched a bid for U.S. Senate. “This is about protecting our state constitution.”

Abortion rights advocates banded with other groups to reject Tuesday’s measure, and they cheered the results.

“Seeing this Issue 1 go down in this crushing defeat just is proof that these extremists are out of touch with what the people of Ohio want,” said Lauren Beene, executive director of Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights.

Her group and others are now turning their attention to November.

“This is the first step, but it was an important step,” said Kellie Copeland, the treasurer of Ohioans United for Reproductive Rights. “We have our work cut out for us, and we’re confident that we’re going to win in November, but there’s a lot of miles to go before we get there.”

Other groups largely avoided discussion of abortion when they talked about Issue 1, and they argued that it is unfair to let a minority block the will of the voters.

“This ability to take something to the ballot and have a constitutional amendment is our last line of defense,” said Melissa Cropper, the president of the Ohio Federation of Teachers. “That’s the beauty of being in Ohio, is that we have the ability to go to the ballot and make a change. And we shouldn’t be sacrificing it.”

Tim Burga, the president of the Ohio AFL-CIO, said Issue 1 failed because of “massive overreach by the legislative backers.”

“They just disregarded the will of the people,” he said. “They overstepped and overplayed their hand in epic proportions.”

Translated: Republicans know they're losing so they're taking steps to make a majority not a majority. They want 57% of the votes not to count, so they can "win" with the other 43%.

The GOP has made it impossible for me to vote Republican ever again - on anything.

Ever.

The day the Supreme Court overturned the constitutional right to an abortion, a ban went into effect in Ohio on abortion after fetal cardiac activity is detected, often at six weeks of pregnancy. But nearly three months later, in September 2022, a Hamilton County judge blocked the abortion ban, and a lawsuit is wending its way through the courts.

More recently, abortion rights supporters gathered signatures at places like grocery stores, religious centers, large concerts and festivals in a quest to get a measure protecting access to abortion on the ballot this November. The secretary of state determined in July that their effort was successful. Two Republicans have sued to try to block the November election.

The focus of Tuesday’s vote was on the higher threshold it would set for passing future constitutional amendments. But the measure would also have made it tougher to place initiatives on the ballot in the first place by requiring signatures to be gathered in all 88 of Ohio’s counties instead of just 44.

Brenda Perkins, 66, voted against the measure at Rosa Parks Elementary School in Middletown. Perkins, a retired teacher, reflected on the national attention on the special election.

“The whole world,” she said, “is watching Ohio.

Twitter Jail

I guess I can consider it a badge of honor - I just don't quite understand the rules.

The Nazis and the white supremacists and the MAGA freaks are all over the fuckin' place - but I bitch about Apple trying to fuck me over for a lousy 99¢, and I'm the bad guy who needs to sit in the corner.

Finally

This time - finally - he's in serious legal trouble.

Tiny Desk

How do you turn Hip Hop into real music?

Action Bronson

Tunes

Dmtri

Live from the Moon

Latin Grammys

Terry

Baby Blue

Players

Action Bronson: vocals, effects

Matt "Yung Mehico" Carrillo: keys, saxophone

Nicholas Coleman: bass

Wahkiba "9Ether" Julion: drums

Red Walrus: percussion

Julian Love: guitar

If It Feels Big

... if it feels momentous - that's because it is.

Leave People Be