WASHINGTON — Construction workers, airport baggage handlers, letter carriers, and other outdoor workers — many of whom traveled to Washington, D.C., from Texas — gathered at the steps of the Capitol on Tuesday. They were joined by labor organizers and lawmakers for what was billed as “a vigil and thirst strike” to protest a law Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently signed, which…
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has indicated that he will defy an order from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to remove barbed wire buoy barriers in the Rio Grande, an action that has prompted a federal lawsuit against him and other Texas officials. The barriers are part of Abbott’s so-called “Operation Lone Star” program, which seeks to deter migrants from entering the U.S.
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Mary Ann Ortiz has deep roots on Vega Verde Road, which runs along the Rio Grande west of Del Rio. Ortiz was born and raised in this border town of 35,000 in Val Verde County, a couple of hours southwest of San Antonio, where her father owned a sizable ranch on the north side of the road. When he passed away, the ranch was sold off in various parcels. She bought her 16 acres of land in the 1990s…
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In the first year of abortion being nearly fully banned in Texas, infant mortality rose for the first time in seven years, nearly entirely undoing years of progress on infant mortality in a single year, new data shows. According to preliminary data obtained from the Texas Department of State Health Services by CNN, infant mortality increased by 11.5 percent in 2022 over the previous year. Overall…
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A hearing in a lawsuit over Texas’s abortion ban was put on pause on Wednesday after a woman who recounted her traumatic pregnancy and birth threw up during her heart-wrenching testimony. In a county courthouse in Austin, Texas, Samantha Casiano took the stand to describe how she was denied an abortion after learning that her baby had a fatal condition, forcing her to carry and give birth to a non…
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At least once a day Dr. Ximena Lopez sees a parent crying in her clinic. They’re crying because Lopez just told them they need to find a new way to get transition-related care for their children — by leaving Texas or sourcing treatments outside the state — because the state outlawed these treatments for trans youth. After a yearslong barrage by activists and lawmakers, the state has won the battle…
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Five families of transgender youth in Texas, plus three health care workers, are suing the state in an attempt to block its ban on gender-affirming care for minors from taking effect at the start of September. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas and national legal groups are leading the lawsuit, which was filed late on Wednesday and names the state, the Texas attorney general and state…
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This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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We take a closer look at the impact of the massive heat dome in Texas, where extreme heat is bearing down on some of the state’s most vulnerable populations, including workers and prisoners. At least three people have died after working in triple-digit heat, just as Republican Governor Greg Abbott signs into law a new measure that overrides mandatory water breaks for workers. Meanwhile, 32 people have been reported to have died in Texas prisons, most of which lack air conditioning and are prone to increased rates of heat-induced cardiac events. We are joined on Democracy Now! by Steven Monacelli in Dallas, who is The Texas Observer’s special investigative correspondent. His recent piece is headlined “Texans Die from Heat After Governor Bans Mandatory Water Breaks.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
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The city of Houston is suing the state of Texas over a new law that severely restricts the kinds of ordinances and regulations that can be enacted by municipalities. House Bill 2127 became law last month after it was signed by Gov. Greg Abbott (R). It is often described as the “Death Star” law by its critics, who use the term — based on a fictional space station from the Star Wars franchise that…
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This content originally appeared on The Laura Flanders Show and was authored by The Laura Flanders Show.
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Those who are familiar with Catholic theology will have heard of the “seven deadly sins” enumerated by Pope Gregory I — pride, greed, wrath, envy, lust, gluttony and sloth, all dire moral failings that are thought to lead to further transgressions. As the Bible says, “You cannot serve both God and money” (Matthew 6:24). It’s ironic, then, that the highly paid executives running the Ascension…
Concern about rising fascism and hate-fueled violence is now widespread in queer communities across the country. Sixty-one percent of LGBTQ+ people in the United States say they have avoided public spaces or a public event due to fear of discrimination or violence, according to a new survey of 1,000 adults by the nonprofit group SafeHome.org. That means an alarming majority of LGBTQ+ people say…
Today marks the first day of summer, and a stubborn heat dome parked over Mexico has much of that country and the southern United States sweltering in brutal heat and coping with storms and other impacts. Heat indices — a measure of how temperature and humidity feels on the body — beneath that dome topped triple digits, with the heat and related problems killing at least nine people since Sunday.
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Far right Gov. Greg Abbott (R) signed a bill last week that nullifies local laws mandating water and heat breaks for construction workers as work-related heat deaths in the state are rising and temperatures are hitting record highs. The provision is part of a bill called the “Death Star bill” by its opponents, which nullifies a host of local regulations that enact additional protections for…
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has signed into law a bill that restricts local governments in the state from enacting and enforcing their own ordinances on a wide variety of issues. House Bill 2127, dubbed the “Death Star bill” by its opponents (after the space station in the movie series Star Wars that the films’ antagonists use to destroy planets within the empire)…
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It’s been nearly one year since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark ruling that protected abortion rights for half a century. Many states have passed laws severely restricting or banning abortion. And in states like Texas, pregnant patients are being put in peril.
Freelance journalist Sophie Novack reports on the hard decisions Texas doctors and nurses are making in the aftermath of the state’s ban. Providers are facing impossible choices when it comes to caring for pregnant patients with medical complications. Some fear that performing an abortion, even to save the life of a mother, could lead to criminal prosecution.
Reveal reporter Laura C. Morel has spent the last year investigating anti-abortion crisis pregnancy centers. Now that abortions are severely restricted or banned in much of the country, these centers are trying to fill some of the health care gap that’s emerged in conservative areas. In states that continue to allow abortions, crisis pregnancy centers have doubled down on their mission to discourage patients from terminating their pregnancies – often using deceptive practices to lure them into their facilities. Morel talks to a Florida woman who describes her experience at a Jacksonville crisis pregnancy center, where a volunteer deceived her into thinking it was an abortion clinic. As Morel and episode host Nadia Hamdan discover, deceiving pregnant women is part of these centers’ long history.
Finally, we explore how a 2018 U.S. Supreme Court decision has made it harder to regulate anti-abortion centers – and how the lack of regulation harms clients. Morel tells the story of an anti-abortion nurse in Kentucky who reported infection control problems at the crisis pregnancy center where she volunteered, only to find that the facility is allowed to operate in a regulatory gray zone.
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Even though President Biden has positioned himself as more tough on immigration than MAGA Republicans — even claiming that “MAGA House Republican proposals would slash funding for border security” — several GOP governors have found a new way to escalate their war on migrants. Over 13 Republican governors have sent or are planning to send National Guard forces and state troopers to the southern…
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For months, Texas lawmakers were on track to spend millions of taxpayer dollars to continue distributing child identification kits to Texas schoolchildren, a program championed by state officials.
In April, both the Texas House and Senate approved preliminary budgets that included money for the National Child Identification Program’s kits.
But less than a month after a ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigation found no evidence the kits have helped locate missing children, lawmakers quietly zeroed out the funding.
The news outlets also found that the Waco-based company that distributes the kits had used exaggerated statistics as it sought contracts in Texas and other states. And the investigation revealed that Kenny Hansmire, a former NFL player who leads the company, had a string of failed businesses, had millions of dollars in outstanding federal tax liens and had previously been barred from some finance-related business in Connecticut by banking regulators because of his role in an alleged scheme to defraud or mislead investors.
“After review and consideration, the House and Senate budget conferees agreed to remove this specific funding request for the upcoming biennium,” said state Sen. Joan Huffman, a Republican from Houston, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee. Huffman did not elaborate on the closed-door discussions of the lawmakers who had been appointed to work out differences between the two spending plans.
A 2021 law states that the Texas Education Agency, which was tasked with purchasing the kits, isn’t required to continue providing them if the Legislature stops the funding. In a statement, a spokesperson said the agency isn’t aware of any “alternative funding sources for the program.”
Hansmire, who did not respond to emailed questions for this article, has said the kits help law enforcement find missing children and save time during the early stages of a search. But none of the Texas law enforcement agencies contacted by the news outlets could recall the kits having helped to find a missing child.
Hansmire previously said that his legal disputes, including his sanction in Connecticut, had been “properly resolved, closed and are completely unrelated to the National Child ID Program.” He also claimed to have “paid debts entirely,” but did not provide details.
Texas lawmakers were among the first in the nation to enshrine into law a requirement that the state purchase the kits. The kits contain an inkpad and a piece of paper where parents can record their children’s physical attributes, fingerprints and DNA. Parents can store the form in their homes and present it to law enforcement if their child goes missing.
In April 2021, state Sen. Donna Campbell, the New Braunfels Republican who authored the law, said Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Hansmire had brought her the legislation.
The Legislature allocated about $5.7 million to purchase kits despite numerous government agencies and nonprofits providing similar kits for free or at a lower cost. The envelopes contained the claim that 800,000 children go missing every year. Experts say the figure, which is based on a 1999 study, is inflated and out-of-date in part because it includes hundreds of thousands of children who were reported missing for benign reasons like coming home later than expected.
Hansmire previously told the news outlets that his company’s messaging has shifted away from what he called the “historically high” number of missing children.
Patrick did not respond to requests for comment, but he previously told the news outlets that the company’s broad base of support among the football community and its long history in Texas gave it credibility. He said he didn’t remember meeting Hansmire before the businessman pitched the kits in 2021 alongside former Chicago Bears player and NFL Man of the Year Mike Singletary, who has helped promote the company.
Patrick and Campbell were among a group of politicians honored by the company at an October 2021 Green Bay Packers game.
Working largely with state attorneys general, Hansmire has landed contracts and partnerships in at least a dozen states, including South Carolina, Iowa, Utah and Delaware. Only officials from Delaware responded to requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Delaware Lt. Gov. Bethany Hall-Long, whose office announced the state’s partnership with the company, called the state’s fledgling child ID program “an effective tool” in helping families prepare for the “unimaginable.”
Asked if the state’s partnership with the company, which launched May 24, would change upon learning of Texas’ action, communications director Jen Rini said: “Just like any program we initiate, we will monitor and adjust as necessary.”
Kiah Collier contributed reporting.
This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations – ProPublica and was authored by by Jeremy Schwartz.
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Texas students have faced increasing restrictions in recent years on their education, from limiting discussions about race and gender in the classroom to regulating books in school libraries. The latest move by Texas politicians is hidden in plain sight under an existing 2021 ban that targets the teaching of “inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive” groups. The law, HB 3979…
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Defying a last-minute appeal by former President Donald Trump, the Texas House voted overwhelmingly Saturday to impeach Attorney General Ken Paxton, suspending him from office over allegations of misconduct that included bribery and abuse of office. The vote to adopt the 20 articles of impeachment was 121-23. The stunning vote came two days after an investigative committee unveiled the articles…
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The rise of organized attempts to censor school curricula and materials available in school libraries is proving to be a fertile training ground for a new generation of student activists. Facing the removal of books about LGBTQ+ and BIPOC experiences, students are demanding the right to read in schools across the country. Nowhere is this truer than in Texas, a state where equal access to a range…
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Despite his innocence, Mr. Day pleaded guilty, fearing a 99-year sentence if he went to trial and lost.
05.24.23 By Innocence Staff
Tyrone Day is exonerated on May 24, 2023 in Dallas, TX. (Image: Montinique Monroe for the Innocence Project)
(May 24, 2023 – Dallas, TX) Tyrone Day, one of the Innocence Project’s longest-standing clients, was exonerated today after the Dallas County District Attorney dismissed a 1990 sexual assault charge against him, based on new evidence of his innocence.
Mr. Day, who was just 19 years old at the time of his arrest, had accepted a plea deal and was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He was incarcerated for nearly 26 years, before being released on parole and required to register for life as a sex offender. In a reinvestigation by the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), DNA testing excluded Mr. Day from the scene of the reported assault and confirmed the identity of two alternate suspects. The CIU’s investigation also revealed that the woman who reported the sexual assault hadn’t actually seen Mr. Day’s face when she identified him as one of her attackers. Instead, she had identified him from a far distance based only on a hat, which she said resembled one worn by one of her assailants.
“He pleaded guilty because it appeared to offer the most compelling chance to reunite with his daughters.”
Though he had steadfastly maintained his innocence, Mr. Day pleaded guilty after his attorney told him that he would likely be released on parole after four years in prison if he accepted the plea, and cautioned him that he could face a life sentence if he went to trial and lost. The threat of a longer sentence, if a case is lost at trial, drives too many innocent people to plead guilty. In fact, 26% of known exonerees accepted a guilty plea. At the time, Mr. Day was experiencing significant health issues and had two young daughters to whom he wanted to return home, so he accepted the plea and ended up spending nearly three decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
“This exoneration has been a long time coming for Mr. Day, who first wrote to the Innocence Project in 2000 and has relentlessly fought for his innocence over the last 33 years,” said Vanessa Potkin, director of special litigation for the Innocence Project. “Like so many people accused of crimes, Mr. Day had no real choice. If he did not plead guilty to a crime he did not do, he would have faced a trial in a system stacked against him, and risked spending the rest of his life in prison. He pleaded guilty because it appeared to offer the most compelling chance to reunite with his daughters, who were just 2 and 3 years old, sooner. But that was tragically not the case, and he spent 26 years locked away from them. Since his release on parole, Mr. Day has worked to build a beautiful life with his family and given so much to the Dallas community through his work as a food justice advocate and horticulturist at Restorative Farms.”
“Today, I am focused on my family and my passion for sustainable farming.”
“I want to thank the Dallas County Conviction Integrity Unit for bringing this to a conclusion. It has been a long, hard journey for my family and me, but I never lost faith that my innocence would be proven,” said Tyrone Day. “Today, I am focused on my family and my passion for sustainable farming. I was born and raised in South Dallas, and the opportunity to bring fresh produce here, where it’s scarce, and train the next generation of farmers is so meaningful to me.”
“This case is another example of how wrongful convictions can be corrected when a prosecutor’s office works with Innocence Project attorneys to find the truth,” said Gary Udashen of the Innocence Project of Texas, one of Mr. Day’s attorneys. “The work of Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot, as well as Conviction Integrity Unit Chief Cynthia Garza and her staff, was essential to justice being achieved for Tyrone Day.”
“This case has been a humbling experience, and one that stands out in my 29 years of practice,” said Paul R. Genender, a partner in Weil’s complex commercial litigation practice group and leader of the firm’s litigation practice in Texas. “While Mr. Day’s justice was delayed, the District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit and everyone involved in this case made sure that it was ultimately not denied.”
Eyewitness Misidentification
On Oct. 25, 1989, the Dallas Police Department responded to calls for assistance from an 18-year-old woman in the Fair Park area who said she was the victim of a sexual assault. According to police reports, the woman, who is white, deaf, and has a speech disability, was walking with her friend when they were approached by a man who offered them drugs. The woman reportedly refused the offer and was subsequently pulled into a nearby vacant apartment where she was sexually assaulted by three unknown males.
While communicating with police via handwritten notes after the attack, the woman saw Mr. Day, who is Black, walking by and identified him as one of her assailants. This identification was apparently based on the fact that Mr. Day was wearing a white hat, which the woman said looked like a hat one of her assailants had worn. A sexual assault kit was collected, but based on the woman’s on-the-street identification, the police arrested Mr. Day the night of the incident. The woman never saw Mr. Day’s face and never gave an official statement to the police; he was identified solely on the basis of his hat. Upon reinvestigation by the Dallas CIU years later, the woman said she had been about 50 feet away from Mr. Day when she identified him as her attacker and that she had never gotten out of the police car to take a closer look.
Eyewitness misidentification has contributed to approximately 63% of the 243 wrongful convictions that the Innocence Project has helped overturn. Factors that contribute to it include challenges associated with cross-racial identification.
The Guilty Plea Problem
When Mr. Day was arrested in 1989, he was held in the Dallas County Jail. He had two young daughters to whom he wanted to return home and a medical condition that was not being treated during his detention. His attorney cautioned him that if he took the case to trial, the State would seek the maximum sentence of 99 years in prison. He incorrectly told him that if he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 40 years, he would likely be released on parole after four years. As a Black man accused of sexually assaulting a white woman in Texas, Mr. Day believed he would never be able to convince a jury that he was innocent. So, he took his lawyers’ advice and accepted a guilty plea with the hopes of being released in four years.
False guilty pleas, in which innocent people plead guilty to crimes they didn’t commit, are more commonplace than they may seem. Of the more than 3,000 innocent people who have been exonerated since 1989, 26% pleaded guilty. When the vast majority of cases in a criminal legal system are resolved through plea deals instead of jury trials, pleading guilty, despite being innocent, becomes the only rational choice in an impossible situation all too frequently.
Like many others faced with this choice, Mr. Day pleaded guilty and received a 40-year sentence in state prison. He was released on parole on Jan. 6, 2015, after serving nearly 26 years and was required to register for life as a sex offender. Being a registered sex offender significantly impeded his life and freedom, including preventing him from living in the same house as his wife.
DNA Excludes Tyrone Day
Mr. Day first wrote to the Innocence Project on July 18, 2000, and his case was accepted in 2004. By this point, he had made several requests for DNA testing, which had been denied by the courts.
In 2008, the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office CIU agreed to extensive DNA testing of the evidence — including of the vaginal swabs and cuttings from the women’s clothing. The testing revealed DNA from two unknown male profiles, as well as a third, low-level male contributor. Mr. Day was definitively excluded as a contributor. Further, after a comparison of DNA to the national DNA database maintained by the FBI, Combined DNA Index System (CODIS), two other men were identified as the contributors. Mr. Day was again conclusively excluded as the source of any DNA from semen associated with any of the vaginal specimens collected from the woman.
Hope Grows in the Garden
Since his release from prison, Mr. Day has been system manager and lead horticulturist at Restorative Farms, which he helped found.
Born and raised in South Dallas, Mr. Day worked on his grandmother’s farm as a child. While incarcerated, he revisited his roots and studied horticulture at the Trinity Valley Community College, where he graduated at the top of his class. He also worked in the prison greenhouse for 19 years.
When he was released, Mr. Day went back to South Dallas and saw a food desert — an area with little access to affordable, fresh vegetables and other nutritious food. So, he decided to apply his passion for gardening to help his community and created Restorative Farms with the mission of fostering a vibrant and viable community-based urban farm system. Restorative Farms has a seedling and training farm in South Dallas, which teaches residents how to cultivate their own food and donates fresh produce to communities living in food deserts. It has donated more than 40,000 plants to community gardens and 220 portable gardens to the community, according to news reports.
Mr. Day is represented by Vanessa Potkin at the Innocence Project and Gary Udashen of the Innocence Project of Texas. In addition, Paul Genender and Jenae Ward of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP represented Mr. Day.
The post Tyrone Day Exonerated in Dallas, 33 Years After Wrongful Conviction appeared first on Innocence Project.
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Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew widespread condemnation from legal experts after he said Saturday that he is “working as swiftly” as the law allows to pardon a man who was convicted the previous day of murdering a racial justice protester in 2020. Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, was convicted by an Austin jury on Friday of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the fatal…
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The relentless state-based attacks on Black people in the U.S. and the war being waged against public and higher education are not unrelated. In the present political and ideological climate, far right political leaders, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) have declared a war on institutions of public and higher education…
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Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott drew widespread condemnation from legal experts after he said Saturday that he is “working as swiftly” as the law allows to pardon a man who was convicted the previous day of murdering a racial justice protester in 2020.
Daniel Perry, a U.S. Army sergeant, was convicted by an Austin jury on Friday of murder and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon for the fatal shooting of 28-year-old Garrett Foster, an armed Air Force veteran participating in a Black Lives Matter protest in the Texas capital following George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police.
After tweeting that he “might have to kill a few people on my way to work” as an Uber driver, Perry accelerated his car into a crowd of racial justice protesters in downtown Austin on July 25, 2020. As Foster, who was pushing his fiancée’s wheelchair, approached Perry’s vehicle carrying an AK-47 rifle in accordance with Texas law, Perry opened his window and shot Foster four times in the chest and abdomen with his .357 Magnum pistol. When asked by police if Foster had pointed his rifle at him, Perry admitted that he did not, but said that “I didn’t want to give him a chance to aim at me.”
After an eight-day trial and 17 hours of deliberation, the Austin jury rejected Perry’s claim of self-defense. However, Abbott tweeted that “Texas has one of the strongest ‘stand your ground’ laws of self-defense that cannot be nullified by a jury or a progressive district attorney,” a reference to Travis County District Attorney José Garza, a Democrat.
\u201cLess than 24 hours ago Daniel Perry was convicted by a jury of murder\u2014after he shot a protestor point-blank during a BLM rally blocks away from the state Capitol.\n\nGreg Abbott says he is working to pardon Perry one day later. Absolutely insane.\u201d— Sawyer Hackett (@Sawyer Hackett) 1680986531
“Unlike the president or some other states, the Texas Constitution limits the governor’s pardon authority to only act on a recommendation by the Board of Pardons and Paroles,” Abbott wrote. “Texas law does allow the governor to request the Board of Pardons and Paroles to determine if a person should be granted a pardon. I have made that request and instructed the Board to expedite its review.”
“I look forward to approving the board’s pardon recommendation as soon as it hits my desk,” he added.
Rick Cofer, a partner at the Austin law firm of Cofer & Connelly, noted that “Garrett Foster was killed protesting the killing of George Floyd,” and that “in 2022, the Texas Board of Pardons unanimously recommended that Floyd be pardoned for a drug charge, in which a crooked cop planted drugs.”
“Facing pressure, Abbott got the board to yank the recommendation,” Cofer added. “Now the man who killed Garrett Foster, while Foster protested George Floyd’s murder, will be pardoned. George Floyd’s pardon is still stuck with the Board of Pardons. If a fiction author wrote this, no one would believe it.”
\u201cDaniel Perry murdered 28-year-old Air Force veteran Garrett Foster. A jury convicted him on Friday. But Texas\u2019s Republican Governor Greg Abbott plans to pardon him because he killed a Black Lives Matter protester.\n\n\u201cLaw and order\u201d is a lie. It\u2019s open season for racism in America.\u201d— Keith Boykin (@Keith Boykin) 1681044617
David Wahlberg, a former Travis County criminal court judge, said he has never heard of a case in which a governor sought to pardon a convicted felon before their verdict was appealed.
“I think it’s outrageously presumptuous for someone to make a judgment about the verdict of 12 unanimous jurors without actually hearing the evidence in person,” Wahlberg told the Austin American-Statesman.
Wendy Davis, an attorney and former Texas state lawmaker and Fort Worth city councilmember, called Abbott’s move “nothing more than a craven political maneuver.”
“Our democracy is imperiled when any branch of government moves to usurp another,” Davis argued on Twitter. “And it’s happening all over this country on a regular basis.”
Garrett Foster is seen here with his fiancée Whitney Mitchell, who was present when Foster was murdered. (Photo: Garrett Foster/Facebook)
Abbott’s announcement came less than 24 hours after Fox News opinion host Tucker Carlson sharply criticized the governor on his show, claiming that “there is no right of self-defense in Texas.”
The governor also faced pressure from right-wing figures including Kyle Rittenhouse, who was acquitted of murder and other charges after he shot dead two racial justice protesters and wounded a third in Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020.
Abbott has also threatened to “exonerate” 19 Austin police officers indicted for attacking and injuring Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020, asserting that “those officers should be praised for their efforts, not prosecuted.”
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
In a potentially devastating blow for abortion access nationwide, a federal judge in Amarillo has suspended the approval of mifepristone, an abortion-inducing drug that has been on the market for more than 20 years. U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s ruling will go into effect in seven days, to allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration time to appeal the decision. “The Court does not second…
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Austin, Texas—With bright yellow hair and a black blazer splashed with color, transgender artist and performer “Key Ring” leaned into the microphone on the floor of the Texas Senate chamber on March 23 to address members of the State Affairs committee during hearing about Senate Bill 12. “The language of this bill is … incredibly vague when it comes to defining what exactly a drag performer is and…
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On a Saturday when dark clouds and even killer tornadoes were wending their way over huge swathes of the United States, the sun rose brightly over Waco. On a dusty patch of land in a central Texas town tagged by historic infamy, Donald Trump’s army of supporters came early and in surprisingly large numbers on the first weekend of an uneasy American spring.
In the shadow of massive pro-Trump flags—”Trump Or Death 1776 2024″ read one fastened to the front bumper of a blue Jeep—flew the undercurrent that the runaway front-runner for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination has sparked in a recent speech. Call it vengeance, or retribution, or old-fashioned smiting your enemies.
On this day, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg—the Black, progressive-minded prosecutor who may win an indictment of Trump as early as this week—was the new Public Enemy No. 1. “Alvin Bragg is overstepping his boundaries,” a man in a Trump hat, brandishing a T-shirt with a picture of the New York prosecutor reading “ARREST ALVIN BRAGG,” told a conservative news network. “We the people are calling for the arrest of Alvin Bragg for crimes of treason and election interference—I don’t even know if election interference is a crime—but election interference, obstruction of justice, even lying to a grand jury. Trump done nothing wrong. We’re here to show support for the greatest president ever.”
This random dude’s words were echoed by the more powerful in attendance, such as Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who increasingly sits at the right hand of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. “We have to stop allowing Democrats to abuse us,” said Greene of Bragg, echoing the call for his arrest, while also calling him a puppet of Jewish billionaire George Soros in an antisemitic trope. She pled victimization: “It’s like we are a beaten spouse.”
None— (@)
Moments later, the jet rebranded as “Trump Force One” flew in for its dramatic landing, now accompanied by a favorite from the 1980s’ Top Gun soundtrack. Kenny Loggins blared from the loudspeakers: “Ride into the danger zone…”
Danger zone, indeed. Do not be fooled by the calming blue of a Texas big sky: the 747 of American democracy is flying on a collision course toward a steep mountainside. With the weight of four separate criminal probes dealing with Trump’s outrageous behavior before, during and after his disastrous 45th presidency coming down on him, the hero of America’s authoritarian right is gaining altitude in utter defiance of political gravity.
With every headline about porn star payoffs, or threatening phone calls demanding that Georgia politicians find him votes, or a more aggressive federal investigation of his attempted coup on Jan. 6, 2021, Trump seems to rise another point or two in the polls—building a huge early lead in the race to win the GOP’s 2024 White House nod. The only candidate who’s shown signs of mounting an intraparty challenge—Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—looks increasingly like a frozen deer on the Trump runway, unable to respond to attacks, caught between his me-too, Trump-lite policies and his need to appease traditional Republican fat cats and inside backers like Jeb Bush.
No one knows how a scenario like this ends. But it clearly cannot end well. Will America really see a 2024 campaign where one party’s leading candidate isn’t jetting around to rallies on Trump Force One but instead is flown between courtrooms in New York, Atlanta, and Washington by armed marshals, wearing an ankle bracelet? And what if the Republican nominee is convicted? How serious to take Trump’s prediction in a recent Truth Social post of “potential death & destruction” if he’s charged? What to expect from fans vowing “Trump or Death”?
None— (@)
“They’re not coming after me, they’re coming after you,” Trump said Saturday after ambling to the Waco stage, unveiling what ought to be his 2024 campaign slogan. The candidate’s occasional rambles into policy—a likely abandonment of Ukraine’s defense of democracy, or a fascist level of state control over the classroom—are not what this campaign is about.
Trump’s only real promise is a red wedding of revenge, against a “deep state” that ranges from the FBI to Covid bureaucrats, against the army of prosecutors who happen to be Black, against anybody really—school teachers and college professors, or white-coated doctors, or journalists—that people willing to stand for eight hours in Texas dust think are looking down on them.
Why is this working? Don’t ask the pundits who get paid a handsome six figures to talk about politics, who seem just as clueless today about Trump and, more importantly, his appeal—maybe more so—than when he cruised down that Trump Tower escalator in 2015.
“You know what I don’t get, and I’m going to look stupid on TV for saying this, but I haven’t gotten this for the last five or six years,” John McWhorter, the Columbia University linguist and New York Times op-ed contributor, a frequent critic of the left, said recently on HBO‘s “Real Time with Bill Maher.” “Is it really true that there are really these people quote unquote sitting in diners with their hats on, et cetera, who are existentially upset that people like us in blue America look down on them? It seems to me most people aren’t caring what the wider world thinks about them—they’re buying their groceries… I don’t believe they think about us.”
John, you need to get out of the Upper West Side more often. They are absolutely thinking all the time about you, and your Columbia colleagues, and op-ed writers like me and you—even when you’re intellectualizing their hatred of college campuses—and climate scientists and bureaucrats like Anthony Fauci (successful grandson of immigrants who once would have been lauded by conservatives) and of course lawyers like Alvin Bragg. Anyone who brandishes a diploma and tells them what they don’t want to hear. Bonus points for anyone who tells them what they don’t want to hear while Black, or while female.
Their movement isn’t defined by what they want but by whom they hate, and Donald Trump is the first politician who could articulate that rage with crude bluntness.
I’ve spent a lot of time since the 2000s listening to people on the right—on my car radio, or at Tea Party gatherings and outside Trump rallies—and their message is pretty unambiguous. Their movement isn’t defined by what they want but by whom they hate, and Donald Trump is the first politician who could articulate that rage with crude bluntness. McWhorter also said on HBO that Trump is “charismatic,” but he’s not—not in the sense of JFK or the Gipper. It’s only that he hates the right people, that he is the enemy of their enemy.
For people fearful that whites or churchgoers are becoming a minority in America, or angry that cosmopolitan elites were redefining society as a rigged meritocracy where people without diplomas could be viewed as losers, Trump’s hokey 2016 message that “I am your voice” resonated. But the perceived slights of the seven years since then—peaking in 2020 with the massive Black Lives Matter protests, the social controls needed to fight a pandemic, and Trump’s Big Lie around his election defeat—have inspired 2023’s much more dangerous message, that he is “your retribution.”
No wonder that Trump’s looming potential indictments—by two Black big-city prosecutors that Fox News regularly blames for urban crime, and by the “deep state” of the U.S. Justice Department—are making him stronger by the day. No wonder his Waco throng stood with Trump in a sick musical celebration of the jailed thugs who attacked police officers in their Capitol Hill insurrection, Beer Hall Putsch martyrs for a new millennium.
In an unreality zone called MSNBC, producers have reinvented the Trump saga as a political version of the O.J. Simpson trial—sometimes giving the whole hour to breathless coverage of the legal dramas for a shrinking audience in McWhorter’s “blue America.” Those viewers remain certain that Bragg or Jack Smith or Fani Willis will finally take down Trump despite seeing that the Access Hollywood tape and two impeachments and everything else did not.
Here’s what’s real: American democracy has been in a doom loop ever since 2015. That’s because the establishment keeps reaching into the traditional toolbox for the things—hard-hitting investigative reporting, congressional hearings, special prosecutors, and even impeachment—that always took down the bad guys of yesteryear, like Richard Nixon. The tools don’t work on a movement based around hatred of journalists and prosecutors and even the FBI.
Today, we stand on the banks of the Rubicon, and I would argue that the Alvin Braggs and Fani Willises and all of us treading water in a faith in democracy and the rule of law have no choice but to cross it. Prosecuting Donald Trump for both his high crimes and his misdemeanors is necessary to keep the republic—even if the consequence is some kind of “Trump or Death” civil war. We are on the highway to the danger zone, but there’s no exit ramp.
This post was originally published on Common Dreams.
During a four-hour hearing last week that could eliminate nationwide access to a common and widely used abortion pill, federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, of the Northern District of Texas, signaled his conservative Christian beliefs early and often. Speaking from the bench in a courtroom in Amarillo, Texas, Kacsmaryk repeatedly used language that mimicked the vocabulary of anti-abortion activists.
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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