Stephan: The United States' Congress at this time has an unusually high number vulgar, corrupt, vile individuals. Here are twelve who voted against medals for the people who protected them. Really. They are that bad. Oh, and don't forget 172 Republicans voted against the Violence Against Women Act. Yes, really, they did.
Andy Biggs, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Louie Gohmert Credit: Salon/Getty
A dozen House Republicans on Wednesday voted against awarding Congressional medals to police departments that protected them during the deadly Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
The House voted 413-12 to award Congressional Gold Medals to the Capitol Police and D.C. Metro Police, as well as a third medal for the Smithsonian Institution to display in honor of other law enforcement agencies that assisted in response to the Capitol attack. The bill was scheduled for a vote last week but some Republicans used procedural measures to delay the vote. The resolution now heads to the Senate, which already voted to award a Congressional Gold Medal to Officer Eugene Goodman, who led rioters away from the Senate chamber.
House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., lashed out at Republicans who opposed the bill, accusing them of trying to “erase the events of January 6 and deny the responsibility of a far-right, insurrectionist mob incited by former President Trump.”
The 12 GOP members who voted no featured an all-star cast of far-right Trump supporters: Andy Biggs of Arizona, Marjorie Taylor […]
Stephan: This won't get much if any attention at the national level, but I am running it because it is yet another proof that to rise in the Republican Party, on the basis of the evidence, you have to be a racist, a grifter, or a christofascist or all three. Kobach was the Secretary of State of Kansas and part of the team that did so much damage to the state.
In a conversation for the Kansas Reflector podcast, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach says he is confident the reshaped U.S. Supreme Court will approve of his requirement that new voters show a birth certificate before registering. Credit: Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector
NEW YORK, NEW YORK — In early October, Kris Kobach, Kansas’ former Secretary of State, and Daniel Drake, a Wichita-based venture capitalist-turned-CEO, made a sales pitch to Kansas legislators. The duo wheeled in what looked to lawmakers like a “refrigerator” — a shiny metal box Drake called a “revolutionary” device that would “kill COVID” and bring “several hundred jobs back to Wichita.”
This project was a collaboration between the Kansas Reflector and Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. The students who led this reporting were part of a fall investigative journalism program, which is part of the Masters of Science degree at the journalism school. Questions about the reporting can be directed […]
Stephan: The data is unimpeachable: if the United States Had a Civilized health care system instead of an illness profit greed system hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens would still be alive. Is that clear enough for you? Don't you think it is time for America to join the rest of the civilized world and create a universal birthright single-payer system, Medicare for all?
Registered nurses conduct a demonstration in Lafayette Park to read aloud names of healthcare providers who have contracted Covid-19 and died as a result of treating infected patients on Tuesday, April 21, 2020. Credit: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call/Getty
A new report released Tuesday morning by consumer advocacy group Public Citizen makes the case that the United States’ fragmented for-profit healthcare system hampered the nation’s coronavirus response “at every turn,” resulting in millions of Covid-19 infections and hundreds of thousands of deaths that likely would have been prevented under a Medicare for All system.
, - OFFICE OF THE DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE
Stephan: Read this. What do you conclude? Here is the truth as I see it. America has a White male problem, and it is very serious. Almost all of this domestic violence variously centers on some combination of White supremacy, christofascism, or male dominance. But the one virtual universal is it always involves White males. Something is deeply wrong with American culture, and it is time to talk about it and fix it.
Executive Summary (U) The IC assesses that domestic violent extremists (DVEs) who are motivated by a range of ideologies and galvanized by recent political and societal events in the United States pose an elevated threat to the Homeland in 2021. Enduring DVE motivations pertaining to biases against minority populations and perceived government overreach will almost certainly continue to drive DVE radicalization and mobilization to violence. Newer sociopolitical developments—such as narratives of fraud in the recent general election, the emboldening impact of the violent breach of the US Capitol, conditions related to the COVID-19 pandemic, and conspiracy theories promoting violence—will almost certainly spur some DVEs to try to engage in violence this year. (U) The IC assesses that lone offenders or small cells of DVEs adhering to a diverse set of violent extremist ideologies are more likely to carry out violent attacks in the Homeland than organizations that allegedly advocate a DVE ideology. DVE attackers often radicalize independently by consuming violent extremist material online and mobilize without direction from a violent extremist organization, making detection and disruption difficult. (U) The IC assesses that racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists (RMVEs) and militia violent extremists (MVEs) present […]
Stephan: Donald Trump is a mass murderer. He didn't pull the trigger, but he created the circumstance that led his followers to do the deed. "China Virus." "Wuhan virus." "Kung flu." Just the sort of inflammatory language that would stir his White male followers to violence. And that is exactly what it did.
A man holds a sign that reads “Racism is a Virus” during the “We Are Not Silent” rally against anti-Asian hate in response to recent anti-Asian crime in the Chinatown-International District of Seattle, Washington, on March 13. Credit: Jason Redmond/ Getty
Before a series of shootings in the Atlanta area this week that disproportionately targeted people of Asian descent, members of the Asian American community spent months expressing alarm that high-profile figures — including then-President Donald Trump — were inciting violence by telling Americans to blame China for the coronavirus pandemic.
Their warnings largely went unheeded. And despite Trump’s departure from office and evidence of rising violence against Asian Americans, influential voices from politicians to foreign policy experts are still speaking of an existential competition with Beijing in ways that could spur violence towards people perceived as being linked to China.
“Our community has been facing a [relentless] increase in attacks and harassment over the past year,” Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.), the chairwoman of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, tweeted […]
