Republicans are on the far wrong side of women's reproductive health

 https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/08/30/opinion/gop-abortion-common-ground/

A troubling reality for the GOP: No middle ground on abortion
There can be no consensus when you are taking rights away, and Republicans know it. Echo opinion by Joan Vennochi Boston Globe Columnist.

On the same day the Republican presidential candidates gathered for their first debate last week — minus Donald Trump — the members of the all-male South Carolina Supreme Court upheld a state law that imposes a near-total ban on abortion by a 4-1 vote.

Even those justices who supported the new law that bans abortion after embryonic cardiac activity can be detected — around six weeks — acknowledged what that meant: “To be sure, the 2023, Act infringes on a woman’s right of privacy and bodily autonomy,” Justice John Kittredge wrote for the majority. The lone dissenter, Chief Justice Donald W. Beatty, drove that point home even harder: “The result will essentially force an untold number of affected women to give birth without their consent. I am hard-pressed to think of a greater governmental intrusion by a political body.”

During the Republican candidates debate in Milwaukee, Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former ambassador to the United Nations, who calls herself “unapologetically pro-life,” tried to carve out “consensus” around some comforting middle ground that would be somewhat safe from such extreme governmental intrusion. 

But, up against the autonomy that is being taken from women — and freely acknowledged by those who are taking it — there isn’t any consensus or middle ground. Not right now.

Former Vice President Mike Pence and former Governor of South Carolina Nikki Haley in Milwaukee

In the runup to the 2024, presidential election, Republicans will try their best to make this election about President Biden’s age and the business dealings of his son. But in the end, it won’t be about that, or even about the pileup of criminal indictments against Trump. It will be about personal freedom and the eagerness of Republicans to strip it away, especially when it comes to a woman’s body.

And Republicans know it. Since the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the abortion issue has been an electoral disaster for its opponents. In Kansas, voters defeated a constitutional amendment that would have denied a right to abortion. In Ohio, voters defeated a measure earlier this month that didn’t specifically mention abortion but would have made it harder to amend the state constitution; because of that it was supported by abortion opponents. As Mona Charen, a conservative columnist and policy editor for The Bulwark writes, “It’s time for the pro-life movement to face reality: The attempt to limit abortions through the law is a failure.” She urges antiabortion activists to switch their focus from placing legal restrictions on abortion to supporting women with crisis pregnancies.

They won’t — and that means the politicians who desperately want their vote won’t, either. This was also evident in Milwaukee, when Haley’s call for consensus was immediately shot down by former vice president Mike Pence. 

In Trump's ceaseless quest for votes from antiabortion evangelicals, Pence called Haley’s consensus talk “the opposite of leadership.” 

Yet, all Haley was proposing was that since it would take 60 Senate votes — a difficult hurdle — to impose a nationwide abortion ban, Republicans should coalesce around some basic points of agreement. Such as: “Can’t we all agree that we should ban late-term abortions? Can’t we all agree that we should encourage adoptions? Can’t we all agree that doctors and nurses who don’t believe in abortion shouldn’t have to perform them? 

Can’t we all agree that contraception should be available? And can’t we all agree that we are not going to put a woman in jail or give her the death penalty if she gets an abortion?”

Pence and the other Republicans on the stage couldn’t agree with that, even as they babbled about a 15-week national abortion ban. And, to be honest, neither will abortion-rights activists. When I asked Rebecca Hart Holder, executive director of the Massachusetts-based Reproductive Equity Now, whether anything Haley said about abortion had merit, she was quick to say, via email, “I don’t.” She added, “We should not be playing ‘consensus’ with basic human rights. A 15-week abortion ban is an abortion ban, plain and simple. People need access to life-saving health care and must be able to make personal decisions about their bodies, lives and futures. 

If we’re to talk about ‘consensus,’ the consensus is clear; people overwhelmingly support abortion access.”

In his newsletter, “Arguable,” my colleague Jeff Jacoby argues that with language like that, the left sounds as intractable as the right. The problem for the right is that polling shows that a majority of Americans believe in the concept of “access,” which antiabortion extremists want to completely eliminate. In this heated political climate, with states already putting extreme abortion bans in place, even some of those who might someday share Haley’s quest for middle ground are going to be on the side of abortion access and the personal freedom and autonomy it represents. There can be no consensus when you are taking rights away.

And that is bad news for Republicans.

Trump has not unified the Republican party because he is under criminal indictments and convicted sexual abuser

What if, Knowing What They Know Now, Republicans Don’t Vote for Donald Trump?

Editorial echo opinion published in The New York Times:

After three other criminal indictments were filed against him, Donald Trump was accused on Monday in Georgia of racketeering. 

In a new indictment, Fani Willis, the district attorney of Fulton County, Ga., charged him with leading what was effectively a criminal gang to overturn the 2020, presidential election in that state.

In fact, the grand jury indictment says Trump and 18 others violated the state’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO law, established by the federal government and more than 30 states and used to crack down on Mafia protection rackets, biker gangs and insider trading schemes. The Georgia indictment alleges that Trump often behaved like a mob boss, pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to decertify the Georgia election and holding a White House meeting to discuss seizing voting equipment.

Trump and a group of associates that included his then chief of staff, Mark Meadows, and one of his lawyers at the time, the former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani, were also accused of a series of crimes that go beyond even the sweeping federal indictment filed this month by the special counsel Jack Smith. The former guy president, for example, was charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree forgery, for arranging to have a false set of Georgia electors sent to Washington to replace the legitimate ones for Joe Biden. 

Moreover, that same act also resulted in a charge against Mr. Trump of conspiracy to impersonate a public officer and a series of charges relating to filing false statements and trying to get state officials to violate their oath of office.

Taken together, these four indictments — which include more than 90 federal and state criminal charges implicating his official conduct during his term and acts afterward, as well as in his personal and business life — offer a road map of the trauma and drama Trump has put this nation through. They raise questions about his fitness for office that go beyond ideology or temperament, focusing instead on his disdain for American democracy.

And yet these questions will ultimately be resolved not by the courts but by the electorate. Republican primary voters, in particular, are being presented with an opportunity to pause and consider the costs of his leadership thus far, to the health of the nation and of their party, and the further damage he could do if rewarded with another four years in power.

Put aside, for the moment, everything that has happened in the eight years since Trump first announced his candidacy for president. Consider only what is now on reams of legal paper before the American people: evidence of extraordinarily serious crimes, so overwhelming that many other defendants would have already negotiated a plea bargain rather than go to trial. This is what he faces as he asks, once again, for the votes of millions of Americans.

“I’m being indicted for you,” the former president has been telling his supporters. “They want to silence me because I will never let them silence you.” But time and again, Trump has put his ego and ambition over the interests of the public and of his own supporters. He has aggressively worked to undermine public faith in the democratic process and to warp the foundations of the electoral system. He repeatedly betrayed his constitutional duty to faithfully execute the nation’s laws. His supporters may be just as angered and disappointed by his loss as he is. But his actions, as detailed in these indictments, show that he is concerned with no one’s interests but his own. Among the accusations against him:

He took dozens of highly classified documents, some involving nuclear secrets and attack plans, out of the White House and stored them at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida residence, where guests of all kinds visit each year. Then, despite being asked multiple times, he refused to return many of these documents, instead working with his aides and confidants to move and hide the boxes containing them and to destroy video surveillance records of those acts, even after a subpoena from the Justice Department.

He attempted to overturn the 2020, election by using what he knew to be false claims of voter fraud to pressure numerous state and federal officials, including his own vice president and top officials of the Justice Department, to reverse voting results and declare him the winner.

He sought to disenfranchise millions of American voters by trying to nullify their legally cast ballots in order to keep himself in office. In doing so, he colluded with dozens of campaign staff members and other associates to pressure state officials to throw out certified vote counts and to organize slates of fake electors to cast ballots for him.

In one example of the personal damage he caused, Trump led a scheme to harass and intimidate a Fulton County election worker, Ruby Freeman, falsely accusing her of committing election crimes. The Georgia indictment — accusing him of the crime of false statements and writings in official matters — says he falsely called her a “professional vote scammer” who stuffed a ballot box with fraudulent votes for Mr. Biden.

After having extramarital sex with an adult film actress, he falsified business records to hide $130,000 in hush-money payments to her before the 2016 election.

That list does not include the verdict, by a New York State court in May, that Mr. Trump was civilly liable for sexual assault against E. Jean Carroll. Nor does it include the ongoing asset and tax fraud prosecution of the Trump Organization by the New York attorney general, Letitia James.

Time and again, Mr. Trump has demanded that Republicans choose him over the party, and he has exposed and exploited some genuine rifts in the G.O.P., refashioning the party to suit his own agenda. The party will have to deal with those fault lines and may have to reconfigure itself and its platform. But if Republicans surrender to his demands, they may find themselves led by a candidate whose second term in office would be even more damaging to America and to the party than his first.

A president facing multiple criminal trials, some prosecuted by his own Justice Department, could not hope to be effective in enforcing the nation’s laws — one of the primary duties of a chief executive. (If re-elected, Trump could order the federal prosecutions to be dropped, though that would hardly enhance his credibility.) A man accused of compromising national security would have little credibility in his negotiations with foreign allies or adversaries. No document could be assumed to remain secret, no communication secure. The nation’s image as a beacon of democracy, already badly tarnished by the January 6th attack, may not survive the election of someone formally accused of systematically dismantling his own country’s democratic process through deceit.

The charges in the Georgia case are part of the larger plot described in the federal indictment of Mr. Trump this month. 

But, Ms. Willis used tools that weren’t available to Mr. Smith. Georgia’s RICO statute allows for many more predicate crimes than the federal version does, including false statements, which she used to bring the charge against several of the defendants in the fake-elector part of the scheme.

Altogether, the Fulton grand jury cited 161 separate acts in the larger conspiracy, from small statements like false tweets to major violations like trying to get the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, to decertify the state’s election by “unlawfully altering” the official vote count, which was in Mr. Biden’s favor. Though some of the individual acts might not be crimes themselves, they added up to what Ms. Willis called a scheme by “a criminal organization whose members and associates engaged in various related criminal activities,” all for the benefit of the former president of the United States.

Those legal tools are part of a broad American justice ecosystem that is, at its core, a mechanism for seeking the truth. It is not designed to care about politics or partisanship; it is supposed to establish facts. To do so, it tests every claim rigorously, with a set of processes and rules that ensure both sides can be heard on every issue, and then it puts the final decision to convict in the hands of a jury of the defendant’s peers, who will make the weighty decision of guilt or innocence.

And that is what makes this moment different from all the chaos of the past eight years.  Trump is now a criminal defendant four times over. While he is innocent until proven guilty, he will have to answer for his actions.

But, almost certainly before then, he will have to answer to Republican voters. His grip on the party has proved enduring, but not universal; while he is far ahead of the other candidates, a recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed that he is the choice of only 54 percent of likely primary voters. And about half of Republican voters told pollsters for Reuters/Ipsos that they would not vote for him if he was convicted of a felony.

The indictments — two brought by elected prosecutors who are Democrats, all of them arriving before the start of Republican presidential primaries — have been read by many as political, and Republicans have said without evidence they are all organized for the benefit of President Biden. 

Trump has amplified that message and used it to drive fund-raising for his campaign. Although the outcome of these indictments may have a political impact, that alone does not make them political. To assume that any prosecution of a political figure is political would, in effect, “immunize all high-ranking powerful political people from ever being held accountable for the wrongful things they do,” said Kristy Parker, a lawyer with the advocacy group Protect Democracy. “And if you do that, you subvert the idea that this is a rule-of-law society where everybody is subject to equal justice.”

Trump has repeatedly offered Republicans a false choice: Stick by me, or the enemy wins. But a healthy political party does not belong to or depend on one man, particularly one who has repeatedly put himself over his party and his country. A healthy democracy needs at least two functioning parties to challenge each other’s honesty and direction. Republican voters are key to restoring that health and balance.

Indicted Donald Trump a.k.a the former guy "No One Is Above the Law"

Echo opinion letter YAHOONews.com:  Two separate groups of everyday Americans, fulfilling their civic duty by serving on a grand jury, have now issued two separate indictments of Donald Trump for his efforts to overturn the will of voters, even after he knew he’d lost the 2020 election. These are the most serious indictments thus far because they deal with a conspiracy to overturn the foundation of our democracy: the vote of the American people.

There can be no more serious crime than a conspiracy to overturn the foundation of our democracy itself. It’s shameful how many MAGA Republicans are now rushing to defend Trump instead of standing up for our democracy and our freedom to vote. Many of them are trying to rewrite history, so it’s important to understand what Trump is accused of and why it matters.

According to both indictments, Trump deliberately lied about voter fraud and pressured local officials, like the Georgia secretary of state, to illegally overturn election results and manufacture fake slates of electors. When Vice President Mike Pence refused to toss out the legitimate results and count fake electoral votes, Trump incited an attack on our Capitol in a last ditch attempt to stop the certification of the election and cling to power.

These are serious charges. Our elected leaders of all parties must allow the trial to unfold without political interference and let a jury of everyday Americans do their job. No one is above the law, and Trump should be treated like everyone else and held accountable for his crimes against our country.

Peggy Gordon, Mansfield, Ohio

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Donald Trump is not above the law

Pro-euthanasia will wrongly coerce patients into a false sense of a "duty to die"

Echo opinion letter published in Times of Malta newspaper:

Euthanasia (aka "mercy killing) and assisted suicide (voluntary ingestion of a poisonous medical cocktail)  are matters of public concern because they involve one person facilitating the death of another. Any change in the law (Malta) would have profound effects on the social fabric of our society, on our attitudes towards each other’s deaths, and illnesses and on our attitudes towards those who are ill and have disabilities.

The pro-euthanasia and assisted suicide lobby emphasizes the importance of personal choice and autonomy.  

These pro-death groups falsely claim, "Should not patients have the right to end their lives?"  Yet, such a deadly right legislated for, might easily and unintentionally transform itself into a ‘duty’ to die. Any specific criteria laid down by law would never be enough to prevent abuse or misdiagnosed cases.

Changing the law to allow euthanasia or assisted suicide will inevitably put pressure on vulnerable people to end their lives for fear of being a financial, emotional or care burden upon others. This would significantly affect people who are disabled, elderly, sick or depressed.

Some would face the added risk of coercion by others who might stand to gain from their deaths. Fear and anxiety would be promoted rather than individual autonomy. We must never lose sight of the large number of people who are terminally ill and have exceptionally found richness and purpose in life despite the pain and hardship.

We already played God in legislating for parents to have control over how their offspring arrive in the world. Let us not also give control over how one should leave it, as we will be devaluing life. 

One of the inevitable aspects of debates about euthanasia is the reluctance on the part of advocates to confront the essence of what they propose. (Maine Writer -  In my opinion, no one has a "right to die".)

Euthanasia and assisted suicide are never acceptable acts of mercy. They always gravely exploit the suffering and desperate, extinguishing life in the name of the ‘quality of life’ itself.

Mark Said LL.D – Msida
Merciful and compassionate Malta

HeLa cells: "medical researchers and the scientific community hid Mrs. Lacks' identity"

 For what would have been Henrietta Lacks’ 103th birthday, her family got her some justice: A settlement with Thermo Fisher Scientific over the Massachusetts-based company’s use of cells obtained without her consent, seven decades ago.

Published in Stat News by Annalisa Merelli

Henrietta Lacks, née Loretta Pleasant, (born August 1, 1920, Roanoke, Virginia, U.S.—died October 4, 1951, Baltimore, Maryland), American woman whose cervical cancer cells were the source of the HeLa cell line, research on which contributed to numerous important scientific advances.

(Maine Writer-  Henrietta Lacks and her family lived in the segregated Turner Station community in Dundalk, Maryland at the time of her death.)

The story of Ms. Lacks, a Black woman whose cells have contributed to scientific breakthroughs ranging from the development of polio and cancer treatments to the mapping of the human genome, is one of the best-known tales about the exploitation of marginalized groups in the name of medical progress.

The terms of the agreement between Lacks’ family and Thermo Fisher — which initially tried to get the case dismissed, arguing that the statute of limitations had expired — are confidential. But experts in race and medicine say the settlement puts further pressure on the medical establishment to acknowledge and correct the harm that underlies much of the field’s historical practices.

“A lot of people don’t know how many groups of people were violently taken advantage of, were murdered, were experimented on, were tortured,” said Keisha Ray, assistant professor with the McGovern Center for Humanities & Ethics at UTHealth Houston. “They just don’t know that American health care and American medicine, [and the] American scientific community have these roots.”

Lacks’ place in medical history has drawn international attention since the publication of Rebecca Skloot’s 2010, best-selling book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.” In 1951, Lacks was admitted to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore with cervical cancer. A doctor at the hospital, George Gey, harvested Lacks’ tissue without her permission, which was legal at the time. Gey performed the first successful cloning of human cells and went on to use the cells — which he called HeLa cells, after Lacks — in medical research.

Lacks died later in 1951, at just 31 years old. But, the HeLa cells turned out to be immortal: While most cells die soon after being placed in a Petri dish, Lacks’ cells doubled about every 24 hours. 

In fact, the cells are still alive today, multiplying in labs all over the world, with an estimated 55 million or more used in at least 75,000 studies to date. They’ve saved countless lives and sparked the creation of the entire field of virology.

HeLa cells are also a big moneymaker. Johns Hopkins distributed them for free, but a number of biotech companies profit from products derived from the cells. Among them is Thermo Fisher, a biotech company with an annual revenue of over $40 billion. 

Lacks’ descendants sued Thermo Fisher in 2021, over its use of, and susbequent profiting from, HeLa cells in several of its products.

But until now, her family had not been compensated for their mother and grandmother’s contribution to medicine and science.

“What the settlement does is add a level of humanity that has historically been overlooked,” said Deleso Alford, a professor at the Southern University Law Center who wrote a landmark 2012, article about Lacks in the journal Annals of Health Law, and who filed an amicus brief in support of the Lacks family’s lawsuit.

Alford noted that “medical researchers and the scientific community purposefully hid Mrs. Lacks’ identity by referring to her own cells as ‘HeLa’ cells — using the first two letters of her first and last names.” The settlement, Alford said, “informs society that her unique cells cannot be disassociated from her being.”

Thermo Fisher isn’t the only company that profited from HeLa cells, and it is unlikely to be the last to face a lawsuit, the lawyers representing Lacks’ family suggest. “The fight against those who profit, and choose to profit off of the deeply unethical, and unlawful history and origins of the HeLa cells will continue,” said Chris Ayers, one of the attorneys representing the family, at a Tuesday press conference in Baltimore.

Biotech companies are also not the only ones responsible for the exploitation of Lacks’ cells, according to Ray, the author of “Black Health: The Social, Political, and Cultural Determinants of Black People’s Health.” 

Johns Hopkins is unlikely to be sued because the organization did not sell the cells, but that doesn’t necessarily absolve it from responsibility, she said.

While Johns Hopkins has acknowledged Lacks’ role in the advancement of science and has several programs to honor her, Ray said, “they don’t really admit any wrongdoing. They just sort of say, hey, this was legal. 

But legality is not the standard and can never be the standard for health care. It has to be ethical.” Johns Hopkins did not respond to a request for comment.

Thermo Fisher and the Lacks family attorneys said in separate statements that “the parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of court and will have no further comment.”

The Tuskegee study, in which the U.S. Public Health Service withheld syphilis treatment from Black men, is another egregious example of racial exploitation in the name of scientific progress, as are the brutal experiments conducted on enslaved Black women by James Marion Sims, known as the “father of gynecology.”

The Lacks settlement does not, strictly speaking, set a legal precedent for future family members and descendants of people who faced such abuses. But, it matters greatly to the broader conversation on health equity, said Camara Jones, a commissioner at the O’Neill-Lancet Commission on Racism, Structural Discrimination, and Global Health and former president of the American Public Health Association.

https://www.statnews.com/2023/08/01/henrietta-lacks-family-settlement-hela-cells/#:~:text=%E2%80%9CThe%20settlement%20is,to%20collective%20reparations.%E2%80%9D

Republicans ignore the obvious: The former guy is indicted four times with criminal charges

Echo interview published on Townsquare Sunday 1420 WBSM:

In case you haven't noticed, there is history happening right in front of our eyes. The former guy, President Donald Trump, has been indicted four times, and faces a host of criminal charges.

Donald J. Trump – Inmate Number P01135809

He's also running for president in 2024, and right now is the front-runner for the Republican nomination.

Yes, it's strange and getting stranger. This week on Townsquare Sunday, Professor Ken Manning, head of the UMass Dartmouth Political Science Department, helped to sort it all out.

On the political front, Trump's strength in the polls is quite robust right now, and he's in the pole position to win the nomination," Manning said. "On the legal front, Donald Trump is in a world of trouble and faces some very serious charges, and a conviction in just one of these cases could result in significant jail time."



If you have watched Trump in the past year, you might wonder why any of the judges in the cases haven't found the former President in contempt of court for remarks he's made about prosecutors, judges and others while on the campaign trail.

Manning's explanation: "Trump is a candidate for public office, a public personality, and a former president. He occupies a different space, frankly, than the rest of us. The treatment of speech must always be considered in its context, so I think judges are going to be very careful and cautious about trying to squelch a former president and office-seeker."

Will Donald Trump ever spend time in jail? Professor Manning says yes. "I think a conviction is likely. There will be appeals that will play out over a long time, but I do believe Trump will face some incarceration."

Read More: UMass Dartmouth Professor: Donald Trump 'in a World of Trouble' | https://wbsm.com/umass-dartmouth-professor-donald-trump-in-a-world-of-trouble/?utm_source=tsmclip&utm_medium=referral

Texas Governor Greg Abbott has a lot of ERCOT electric capaciy etxplaining to do

ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas 😕😆 ) said there was "high potential" for emergency operations, which in a worst-case scenario, involves the implementation of rolling power outages.  

(Maine Writer- to summarize what's wrong with the Abbott-ERCOT political bond, think monopoly. ERCOT has a monopoly on its customers (although El Paso is exempt) and Abbott thinks the failed electric utility is keeping the government regulators out of Texas.  Monopolies typically lead to corruption driven by greed and blocking US government oversight of the ERCOT failed electric grid is causing harm to average Texans, who have nowhere to go for their energy needs. The citizens are stuck with what Abbott has given to ERCOT. Oddly enough, because Texas is anti-government regulators, the freedom from oversight  allowed alternative energy generators to prosper! Of course, that outcome was never Abbott's intention, so he doesn't talk much about this alternative.)

Published on August 25, 2023, in RawStory by Sky Palma:

People in Texas are once again being told to prepare for rolling blackouts, prompting criticism of the state's governor, Greg Abbott, Newsweek reported.

Texans were asked on Thursday to cut down on their energy usage as experts said the high demand for power in the extreme heat could cause problem with the state's power grid.

"Avoiding the reach of federal regulators, Texas has long operated on a lone grid that is separated from the rest of the country," Newsweek's report stated. "Although the state has been able to remain exempt from federal rules, its power grid has run into issues being disconnected from the nation's other grids, meaning Texas cannot access power from other states, even in times of emergency."

Texans took to social media to slam Abbott.

"Greg Abbott has turned Texas into a developing country, routinely worried about rolling blackouts," Karthik Soora, a candidate for Texas' state Senate, wrote on X.

"Texas Republicans have been too busy banning abortions, attacking trans kids, and banning books by Black authors in schools to fix the electric grid," wrote Rebecca Marques, who runs the progressive media company Texas Signal.

While the extreme weather becomes a more frequent occurrence, the Texas grid has repeatedly become strained by heat and storms. Each time, Abbott has drawn outrage from residents who have urged him to act to prevent chaos over future energy problems.

Attorney Sara Spector posted on X: "Breaking: just got alert in TX that our energy grid is failing ! Great job Greg Abbott on fixing that grid!" alongside a caption of the ERCOT warning.

Rudy Giuliani booked in Fulton County Jail charged with the same RICO crimes as he prosecuted in NYC

James Comey revealed his experience with Rudy Giuliani in his book, "A Higher Loyalty".  Early in his development as a prosecutor, Comey admired the New York City Police Commissioner Giuliani from afar, being how, at the time, he was his subordinate. This naivety turned to cynicism as Comey became familiar with Giuliani's puffed up management style. (page 19-22 in hard cover).  This learning curve was realized when he attended a press conference with Giuliani, where he was told to stand still, not move and be quiet because, "The most dangerous place in New York is between Rudy and a microphone."

Rudy Giuliani's mug shot released by the Fulton County Sheriff's Office, confirming that the former New York City mayor had a booking photo taken after surrendering to face charges related to his and others' alleged efforts to overturn Georgia's 2020 election results.

Rudy Giuliani Was Always Like This.

Reported in The New York Times opinion by Jamelle Bouie: Giuliani is charged with 13 felony counts, including racketeering (violating the Georgia RICO Act) and false statements and writings.

Rudy Giuliani was indicted in Georgia for his role in what prosecutors called a conspiracy to overturn the results of the 2020, presidential election in that state.

The district attorney for Fulton County, Fani Willis, charged Giuliani with 13 counts related to election tampering, including “solicitation of violation of oath by public officer” and “conspiracy to commit forgery in the first degree.” The indictment names 18 other defendants, including former president Donald Trump, who have each been charged under Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (or RICO) Act. 

Of course, the irony is that Giuliani made his name as a U.S. attorney using the federal RICO Act to undermine and dismantle the mob.

It is not hard to find commentators asking a simple question about the events of the past few years: What happened to Rudy Giuliani? How did “America’s mayor” — the man who rocketed to national fame after the Sept. 11 attacks — come to disgrace and debase himself in defense of Donald Trump? 

Why would Giuliani, the archetypal tough-on-crime and law-and-order politician, embrace a lawless effort to “stop the steal”?

It’s an understandable question, but it starts from a mistaken premise. It assumes there’s something different about Giuliani — that there was, at some point, a decisive break in Giuliani’s personality or political beliefs that placed him on his current trajectory. But there wasn’t. The line from “America’s mayor” to indicted co-conspirator is a straight one. The answer to "What happened to Rudy Giuliani?" is Nothing happened. He is the same man he’s always been.

Just look at one of the formative moments of Giuliani’s political career. On Sept. 16, 1992, thousands of off-duty police officers crowded in front of New York’s City Hall to protest against Mayor David Dinkins. “The cops held up several of the most crude drawings of Dinkins, black, performing perverted sex acts,” Jimmy Breslin, the Newsday columnist, who was present at the riot, wrote. “‘Now you got a n****r right inside City Hall,’ one officer reportedly said,” Breslin continued. “‘How do you like that? A n****r mayor.’” Other officers chanted slogans like “Dinkins gotta go!” and “The mayor’s on crack!”

The cops were there to oppose a bill that would have removed the police from the city’s Civilian Complaint Review Board, an oversight body that handled allegations of police misconduct, and, crucially, would have made it independent of the Police Department itself. Faced with the prospect of potentially greater civilian accountability, New York City police officers took their anger to the streets.

Tensions were already high in the city — earlier in the summer, an officer had killed Jose Garcia, a young undocumented immigrant from the Dominican Republic, leading to protests and rioting — and fanning the flames on this particular day was none other than Rudy Giuliani, who had lost to Dinkins in the 1989 New York mayoral election.

Giuliani, the author Andrew Kirtzman recounts in “Giuliani: The Rise and Tragic Fall of America’s Mayor,” “walked to the flatbed truck outside the perimeter of the building, where thousands were gathered, and hopped up to the makeshift stage. After a handful of other politicians delivered their speeches, Giuliani took the mic and the crowd roared. Shedding his suit jacket and rolling up the sleeves of his white button shirt, he ripped into Dinkins.”

“The mayor doesn’t know why the morale of the New York City Police Department is so low,” he said, jabbing his finger in the air. “He blames it on me, he blames it on you. The reason the morale of the Police Department of the City of New York is so low is one reason and one reason alone: David Dinkins!”

Giuliani never acknowledged or condemned the racism of the police riot. And why would he? His performance galvanized supporters and almost certainly contributed to his narrow victory over Dinkins in his rematch with the incumbent mayor in 1993.

What does any of this have to do with the Rudy Giuliani of 2023? Well, if we think of Giuliani as the personification of American resilience in the face of terrorism, then his turn against democracy and the rule of law is bewildering and inexplicable. 

But, if we think of Giuliani as the scowling demagogue who stoked the flames of chauvinism and racial hatred against New York’s first Black mayor for his own gain, then there’s little other than his carefully crafted image in the press that separates the Giuliani of ’92 from the Giuliani of ’23.

And that’s the point. Even at the moment of his greatest political triumph, Giuliani was a fraught and divisive figure. 

It was the press that labeled him “America’s mayor.” That the epithet continued to stick through the subsequent decade, in the face of scandal and political failure, is only a testament to the persistence of myth in American political coverage, because it is only after internalizing the myth of Giuliani that anyone could be shocked by his steadfast allegiance to Trump.

With clear eyes, it is easy to see that the two men are of a type. They share the same demagogic instincts, the same boundless resentment, the same authoritarian manner — it is not for nothing that Giuliani reportedly tried to get the 2001 mayoral election canceled so that he could stay in office beyond the limit on his term — and the same willingness to indulge in racism and use it for their own political purposes.

If there is a question to ask in the wake of Giuliani’s indictment, it isn’t What happened to Rudy? but rather, why was it so hard for so many people to see the truth of who, and what, he always was?

Trump at the Fulton County Georgia Jail mug shot and fingerprints

Part of the grand jury indictment charges Trump with solicitation to violate his oath of office for asking late Georgia House Speaker David Ralston to call a special session of the Georgia General Assembly. Elsewhere, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and others are accused of making false claims about election fraud and pressuring members of the Georgia Senate.

Donald Trump mug shot:

An unsmiling Trump - inmate no. P01135809, according to Fulton County Jail records.

The investigation itself was launched after audio was obtained of a leaked call between Trump and Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, during which the former president urged the Republican official "to find 11,780 votes" in his favor.

The New York Times:  As soon as it was taken, it became the de facto picture of the year. A historic image that will be seared into the public record and referred to for perpetuity — the first mug shot of an American president, taken by the Fulton County, Ga., Sheriff’s Office after Donald J. Trump’s fourth indictment. Although, because it is also the only mug shot, it may be representative of all of the charges.  

A forgettable band of Republican rivals that refuse to embrace the truth: Trump is a criminal

Echo essay by Evan Osnos:

How do you campaign against a political rival for whom there is no conceivable precedent? When the Department of Justice indicted Donald Trump, last week, on counts arising from his handling of classified documents, he became not only the first former President in American history to face federal charges but also the most confounding front-runner ever in a Presidential primary. 

Based on the chaotic debate performance of August 23,  in Milwaukee, the eight band of rivals are long shots for voters to consider as the Republican candidate for president in 2024.

Trump is a candidate for Commander-in-Chief, who now faces thirty-seven counts for refusing to return material related, according to the indictment, to “United States nuclear programs; potential vulnerabilities of the United States and its allies to military attack; and plans for possible retaliation in response to a foreign attack.” Trump, who first came to power assailing his rival, Hillary Clinton, for her storage of sensitive information, is now accused of urging an attorney to “hide or destroy documents,” and of allowing unqualified civilians to see secret files. In one instance, at his golf club in New Jersey, the former President is alleged to have told visitors about a classified “plan of attack” against Iran, and was recorded on tape admitting that “this is still a secret.”

The federal indictment came two months after Trump was indicted in Manhattan on thirty-four counts related to a hush-money (paid to porn star Stormy Daniels) case. Those charges, which he denied, gave him a boost in the polls. The latest counts, which Trump also denies, could further fortify his grip on the Republican Party or, in the fullness of time, they could blast the race wide open. The effect will depend, in part, on the strategic calculations of his opponents.

In Chris Christie’s 2021, book, “Republican Rescue,” the former governor of New Jersey mapped out a high-toned way for Republicans to escape Trump’s dominance and regain the White House. “The infighting has to end. So does the wallowing in the past,” he wrote. “We need to be the party that embraces the truth even when it’s painful.” It was an incongruous message from Christie. In 2016, he called Trump a “caring, genuine, and decent person,” and, four years later, tried to insure his reëlection by prepping him for debates. Christie eventually balked at the effort to overturn the election, but his publisher nevertheless promoted him as “a key Trump insider and longtime friend.”

Maybe....maybe.....the forgettable band of rivals will start facing reality and tell the truth about Donald Trump.  

When former New Jersey Governor Christie entered the burgeoning field of Republican Presidential contenders, he ely, self-consumed, self-serving mirror hog.” The market for Christie’s metamorphosis, however, is not clear; he left office in 2018 with a favorability rating of thirteen per cent, and, in a recent CNN poll, sixty per cent of Some (sane) Republicans are saying that they would not vote for him “under any circumstances.” 

So does Christie have the independence and the rhetorical skill to change Republicans attitudes about Trump's fitness for office? He asked to be viewed anew, as a slashing apostate with a unique power to torpedo Trump’s chances. In a kickoff speech in New Hampshire, on June 6th, he condemned the former President.

"Chris Christie is right that Trump’s behavior was ‘beneath the dignity of the office’", reported the Washington Examiner.

Another long-shot Republican candidate, Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, called on Trump to “respect the office and end his campaign,” but Hutchinson barely registers in the polls. 

Will stronger candidates follow suit?

Who will break out of the pack of forgettable band of Republican rivals?

Trump’s former Vice-President, Mike Pence, is, like Christie, hoping that a bout of late-onset honesty  😏can fortify a vaporous level of popularity. Most Republican candidates have avoided talking about the violence of January 6th, but Pence, in his campaign-launch speech last week, outside Des Moines, said that Americans “deserve to know” that Trump “demanded I choose between him and our Constitution.” Voters, he added, now face the same choice: “And anyone who asks someone else to put them over the Constitution should never be President again.”

But Pence also revealed the limits of his principles. When asked at a CNN event the night before Trump’s indictment about the ongoing investigations, he declared that “no one’s above the law,” but also, wincing, urged the Justice Department not to indict his former boss, on the ground that it would be “divisive” and “send a terrible message to the wider world.” 

After the news broke, Pence said that he was “deeply troubled to see this indictment move forward.” His predicament will be familiar to another candidate for whom Trump was a patron, Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, who served as his Ambassador to the United Nations. She calls for a “new generation” of leadership, and touts her perspective as a daughter of Indian immigrants, but has avoided making a sharp break with Trump and his devoted followers. The taint of Trump is not a problem facing Ron DeSantis, who made his name mostly as governor of Florida; his problem appears to be more personal. 

Following a limp début, on a glitchy Twitter livestream, DeSantis has campaigned heavily in Iowa, but wedded himself to an angry, esoteric culture-war lexicon, as if he were focused primarily on winning support from Elon Musk and very online Republicans.

By early this month, most polls had Trump far out front, supported by at least fifty per cent of Republicans—more than double the number for DeSantis, who remains his closest competitor. And though the field has grown to twelve candidates, none of the others poll above single digits. One of the more interesting of them is Tim Scott, of South Carolina, the first Black Republican from the South to be elected to the Senate since Reconstruction. His earnest, sunny odes to Ronald Reagan and to racial progress are popular with Republican donors, which could make him an attractive Vice-President—or a surprise No. 1, if Trump becomes too encumbered by his legal liabilities and DeSantis flames out. In either case, Scott could give Democrats trouble in a tight general election.

The indictment in the documents case could be followed by others—in Washington, Georgia, or elsewhere. It’s tempting to dismiss the field of long shots for their hypocrisies or their eccentricities, but American elections are long and mercurial, and, with Trump engulfed in legal woes, it’s not inconceivable that one of them could end up in the White House. More immediately, their very presence in the race is shaping it, because they stand to split the opposition to Trump and improve his prospects. For that reason, the most vital question Americans face is not who has the confidence to enter the campaign but who will have the courage to speak frankly about Trump and, ultimately, who will have the sense to exit it. ♦

Published in the print edition of the June 19, 2023, issue of The New Yorker, with the headline “Long Shots.”

Maui in Hawaii and the Lahaina Banyan Tree

The death toll of the Maui fires, the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century, now stands at 114 people and expected to increase. 

In fact the iconic Banyan Tree is a heroic symbol of potential resurrection.

Banyan Tree: The Lahaina Banyan Tree is a banyan tree in Maui, Hawaii, United States. A gift from missionaries in India, the tree was planted in Lahaina on April 24, 1873, to mark the 50th anniversary of the arrival of first American Protestant mission. Covering 1.94 acres, the tree resides in Lahaina Banyan Court Park.

Another 1,000 people are still missing. About 1,800 in people are in temporary housing. Displaced or not, people in Maui need food, water, toiletries, and medications. And in the coming days, weeks, and months, all that and more—everything needed for a long, difficult recovery—will have to come from somewhere.

“Imagine building the entire town of Lahaina from scratch, and how many hundreds of millions—or billions—of dollars are needed to recover and rebuild,” Joe Kent, the executive vice president of Hawaii’s Grassroot Institute, a nonprofit public-policy think tank, told me. The federal government has deployed hundreds of employees to help provide shelter and other assistance to those who are tragically impacted by the horrific blaze.

Elected officials are encouraged to designate a portion of time for looking ahead and contemplating the enormous job awaiting the victims, on the horizon

Emergency teams are doing all they can to take care of immediate needs.

There’s nothing like a huge threat to bring people together. In Hawaii, this spirit is called "aloha".

It’s encouraging that many offers of federal assistance, in-person assistance and money from all over the world are being donated to begin the process of meeting the overwhelming needs.

It’s been suggested that the Front Street Lahaina town be rebuilt to look just like those original historic buildings. Wow! Spread the word. Could this be feasible?

Could Front Street in Lahina be built using recycled materials like plastic, cement, metal? (Let’s save some money and our planet 😊)

It seems as though the roots of our beloved banyan tree have survived, so we already have a place to begin our beautification.

From Kelly Stanley, in Kahului  (Hawaiian pronunciation: is an unincorporated community and a census-designated place in Maui County in the U.S. state of Hawaii.)

Fulton County Georgia indictments is evidence that Donald Trump did not act alone

Echo editorial opinion published by the Houston Chronicle:

Georgia indictment on Trump's mind? A state he thought would help save him, may sink him. (Editorial)

In early 2021, with just days left in his presidency, Donald Trump was desperate to stay in power and Georgia was a critical part of his scheme.

Read the Raffensperger-Trump full transcript on CNN here.

It made a certain kind of sense. A majority of Georgians hadn’t voted for a Democrat in nearly 30 years. The state was part of the Republican’s solid lock on the South. 

Yet, Trump had narrowly lost to Biden by a margin of just 11,779 votes. It had been weeks since the presidential election in November, but Trump was insistent he could stay in the White House if he could wrangle Georgia and a handful of other states to his side.

Well, Georgia doesn’t mess around❗😠 

Now, it is the site of the fourth and arguably most important, and strongest, of the criminal indictments that have riveted the nation. 

A Fulton County grand jury indicted Trump and 18 others on sweeping criminal charges related to a broad effort to overturn the 2020, election results there.

The charges are complex but they boil down to one point — Trump didn’t act alone.

“I just want to find 11,780 votes, ❗which is one more than we have,”😠😞 the then-president told the Georgia secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a fellow Republican, on a recorded phone call in early January 2021.

Among those who joined Trump on the call was Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. But, to Trump’s repeated frustration, some Republicans stood firm against his conniving.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump continued, pressuring Brad Raffensperger to back claims of voter fraud that Trump and a team of allies were hellbent on proving. “That’s a criminal offense,” he threatened.

Raffensperger did end up before a special grand jury — but only as a witness.

It’s Trump, currently the Republican presidential frontrunner, and his associates who face criminal charges. Among their schemes, the cabal is accused of trying to create and certify fake pro-Trump electors, tampering with voting machines, lying to officials and harassing election workers, including Ruby Freeman.

While these indictments were once unthinkable — a former president facing scores of criminal charges, including some 91 felonies ❗— they have also become almost routine. Falsified business papers. Stolen top-secret documents. Attempting to disrupt the peaceful transition of power that is a hallmark of American democracy. And now, an organized effort to muscle Trump’s way back into office. This indictment, however, has a particular sting.

It comes from a grand jury in the South and as a state case, a conviction could withstand any designs Trump might have to pardon himself if he’s elected president again. 

But, it’s also key because of the many others swept up alongside him. In addition to the 18 other named defendants, there are another 30 un-named co-conspirators mentioned in the indictment.

“You know what they did and you’re not reporting it,” Trump continued, pressuring Brad Raffensperger to back claims of voter fraud that Trump and a team of allies were hellbent on proving. “That’s a criminal offense,” he threatened.

Raffensperger did end up before a special grand jury — but only as a witness.

It’s Trump, currently the Republican presidential frontrunner, and his associates who face criminal charges. Among their schemes, the cabal is accused of trying to create and certify fake pro-Trump electors, tampering with voting machines, lying to officials and harassing election workers, including Ruby Freeman.

While these indictments were once unthinkable — a former president facing scores of criminal charges, including some 91 felonies — they have also become almost routine. Falsified business papers. Stolen top-secret documents. Attempting to disrupt the peaceful transition of power that is a hallmark of American democracy. And now, an organized effort to muscle Trump’s way back into office. This indictment, however, has a particular sting.

It comes from a grand jury in the South and as a state case, a conviction could withstand any designs Trump might have to pardon himself if he’s elected president again. But it’s also key because of the many others swept up alongside him. In addition to the 18 other named defendants, there are another 30 un-named co-conspirators mentioned in the indictment.

Georgia! 😲The state Trump once thought could save him may be the one to sink him. Though the Trump case focuses on Georgia, it includes details about similar efforts in other states. 

Fulton County District Attorney Fani T. Willis charged Trump and his co-conspirators under the state’s anti-racketeering law — the same law Willis has used to prosecute Atlanta rappers Young Thug and Gunna for their alleged involvement in a criminal street gang. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act that pieces together the many charges in Trump’s case is more commonly linked to mafia associates, not presidential ones.

It’s fitting. Trump seems to have rarely acted alone. An army of Yes Men loyalists are accused of chasing down and promoting hair-brained, and potentially criminal, schemes on his behalf. Some, like Rudy Giuliani, did so in the spotlight, a brownish hair product melting down his face as he spun his baseless fraud claims at a press conference, while others worked behind the scenes.

This latest indictment serves as a reminder that it’s the actions of people around Trump that have, again and again, allowed him to boast and scheme his way through life.

It wasn’t just Cabinet officials and inner-circle types. It also included David Shafer, Georgia’s former Republican Party leader, and Cathy Latham, the Coffee County, Ga., Republican Party leader and one of the alleged fake electors who signed falsified documents declaring Trump the rightful winner.

Their involvement has been widely reported but Monday’s indictment lays it all out: Trump doesn’t Trump alone. Without his enablers, he’d never have come so close to overthrowing a fair election. The enablers should be held accountable as well.

Trump still enjoys tremendous sway, able to turn what would have been career-destroying news for other politicians into a rallying call. Trump’s resilience seems like a super power but it’s not. He’s like a comic book villain enlisting a gang of half-witted henchmen.

The country may be growing tired of indictment news. Or perhaps frustrated at the slow pace of resolution. Even though the Fulton County DA is ambitiously seeking one trial for all defendants within six months, it could be much longer before the Georgia indictments make their way through court, and potentially years before we know the outcomes of all cases.

For now, we ask Americans to read the Georgia indictments, not just for their sweeping scope but for how the allegations affect the lives of regular people.

Sit with the question: would you have signed those fake elector papers? Would you have harassed and vilified an innocent poll worker to the point that she endured death threats for doing her patriotic duty?

Will you support the nomination and election of a man whose alleged criminal exploits to overthrow American democracy can be likened to the mafia thuggery? We Americans may be entertained by mobsters on HBO. They are less charming in real life. Even less so in the White House.

P.S. Maine Writer opinion- Georgia's 2020 election result is a Biden political miracle. Biden's victory over Trump was the result of voters who refused to vote for Donald Trump, all the while they completed their ballots without checking the presidential box! 

IOW💨 thousands ☺of Georgia Republican voters did not support Donald Trump.