Breaking: Travel bans proposed in Tennessee & Oklahoma

Tennessee Republican Rep. Jason Zachary introduced a travel ban yesterday—legislation that would make it a Class C felony to take a minor out-of-state for abortion care. That means a friend, aunt or grandmother who helps a teenager get an abortion could be sent to prison for 15 years. In Oklahoma, state Sen. Nathan Dahm introduced a similar bill that would punish anyone who helps a teen obtain care with up to 5 years in prison.

I want to be clear: When I say these laws target anyone who “helps” a teen get an abortion, I don’t just mean someone who physically takes them out of the state. You could be arrested for lending a teenager gas money, or texting them the url of an out-of-state clinic. That’s because both Tennessee’s HB1895 and Oklahoma’s SB1778 deliberately define ‘abortion trafficking’ as broadly as possible. Anyone who “recruits, harbors, or transports” a minor for the purpose of getting an abortion is guilty of ‘trafficking’.

In fact, that’s the exact issue at the center of the legal fight over Idaho’s ‘abortion trafficking’ law—which is currently blocked because a judge ruled it violated the First Amendment. An amicus brief filed by 20 Attorneys General in opposition to Idaho’s travel ban offered this example:

“A teenage girl in Moscow, Idaho, calls her aunt in Pullman, Washington, less than ten miles away, to say she is pregnant and feels she cannot safely tell her parents. If the aunt tells her niece about a clinic in Pullman that offers abortion care and counseling, is that ‘recruitment’? What if the aunt texts her niece a web link to the clinic’s informational material? Or if the niece books an appointment and the clinic’s office manager emails her a preappointment information sheet? If the aunt pays for her niece’s bus ticket to Pullman, is that ‘transportation’—or, as the Idaho law would have it, ‘trafficking’?”

This broad language isn’t just meant to scare off a teen’s friends and family from helping her; it’s about targeting abortion funds. Whether you’re talking about Idaho’s travel ban, the ordinances being passed in Texas counties, or the new proposed legislation in Tennessee and Oklahoma—all of these laws are about stopping funds from helping people, and making it possible to prosecute them.

Dear Oreocookiezzz,

That sounds familiar.

I don't like thinking about that time.

Usually, children that are witnesses to a murder are given an Amicus Attorney. I had one when I testified in Simon's defense.

She was amazing! She let me draw, color and play with blocks.

- Athena Cykes

Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson made a "mathematically absurd claim" about Black newborns in her dissenting opinion in the affirmative action decision, attorney Ted Frank wrote in a Wednesday Wall Street Journal op-ed. 

Jackson argued in her dissent that diversity "saves lives" and that it was essential for "marginalized communities."

"It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color. Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication). For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die," she wrote.

Frank responded to the argument in his Journal opinion piece: "A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week. But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%." 

Frank, a senior attorney at Hamilton Lincoln Law Institute, filed an amicus brief in support of the petitioners in SFFA v. Harvard, according to the WSJ.

"How could Justice Jackson make such an innumerate mistake?" he wrote. 

Frank wrote that Jackson's claim came from a 2020 study, according to a footnote in the dissent, but added that the study didn't match Jackson's claim. 

"The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians)," he said. 

The Supreme Court rejected the use of race as a factor in college admissions at the end of June, citing a violation of the 14th amendment. 

In a 6-3 decision, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that, "A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrim­ination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination."

Frank said the study cited in Jackson's dissent was "flawed."

"So we have a Supreme Court justice parroting a mathematically absurd claim coming from an interested party’s mischaracterization of a flawed study. Her opinion then urges ‘all of us’ to 'do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together.' Instead we should watch where we’re going," Frank continued. 

Wall Street Journal article here for ya if you don't like fox

big news for bathroom rights

attorney generals in 21 states just filed an amicus brief stating that bathroom bans for transgender people are unconstitutional with a bunch of legal and scientific precedent and support, including the fact that public schools with bathroom protections for trans students in all 21 states have reported no incidences of trans students harassing cis students in bathrooms, or students pretending to be trans to access bathrooms, and that systemic reviews of incidence reports have found no difference in instances of harassment in restrooms between areas that have transgender bathroom protections and those that don't. meanwhile, the brief establishes that guaranteeing equitable bathroom access to transgender produces significant and noticeable positive effects and that preventing this access produces significant and noticeable harm.

the full brief is here. it's a whopping 30+ pages filled with constitutional precedent including established interpretations of title ix, scientific study and review, and personal firsthand experiences.

Today, the US Supreme Court will hear a case that will determine whether the government can communicate with social media companies to flag misleading or harmful content to social platforms—or talk to them at all. And a lot of the case revolves around Covid-19 conspiracy theories.

In Murthy v. Missouri, attorneys general from Louisiana and Missouri, as well as several other individual plaintiffs, argue that government agencies, including the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), have coerced social media platforms to censor speech related to Covid-19, election misinformation, and the Hunter Biden laptop conspiracy, among others.

In a statement released in May 2022, when the case was first filed, Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt alleged that members of the Biden administration “colluded with social media companies like Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to remove truthful information related to the lab-leak theory, the efficacy of masks, election integrity, and more.” (The lab-leak theory has largely been debunked, and most evidence points to Covid-19 originating from animals.)

While the government shouldn’t necessarily be putting its thumb on the scale of free speech, there are areas where government agencies have access to important information that can—and should—help platforms make moderation decisions, says David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit digital rights organization. The foundation filed an amicus brief on the case. “The CDC should be able to inform platforms, when it thinks there is really hazardous public health information placed on those platforms,” he says. “The question they need to be thinking about is, how do we inform without coercing them?”

At the heart of the Murthy v. Missouri case is that question of coercion versus communication, or whether any communication from the government at all is a form of coercion, or “jawboning.” The outcome of the case could radically impact how platforms moderate their content, and what kind of input or information they can use to do so—which could also have a big impact on the proliferation of conspiracy theories online.

In July 2023, a Louisiana federal judge consolidated the initial Missouri v. Biden case together with another case, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Children's Health Defense, et al v. Biden, to form the Murthy v. Missouri case. The judge also issued an injunction that barred the government from communicating with platforms. The injunction was later modified by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which carved out some exceptions, particularly when it came to third parties such as the Stanford Internet Observatory, a research lab at Stanford that studies the internet and social platforms, flagging content to platforms.

Children’s Health Defense (CHD), an anti-vaccine nonprofit, was formerly chaired by now presidential candidate, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. The group was banned from Meta’s platforms in 2022 for spreading health misinformation, like that the tetanus vaccine causes infertility (it does not), in violation of the company’s policies. A spokesperson for CHD referred WIRED to a press release, with a statement from the organization’s president, Mary Holland, saying “As CHD’s chairman on leave, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. points out, our Founding Fathers put the right to free expression in the First Amendment because all the other rights depend on it. In his words, ‘A government that has the power to silence its critics has license for any kind of atrocity.’”

Different arms of the government have been in touch with social media companies for years, particularly regarding threats to elections or emergencies, like the Covid-19 pandemic. In the wake of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company was “actively working with the US government on its ongoing investigations.”

In a statement before the House Judiciary Committee in 2020, FBI director Christopher Wray noted the ways in which terrorist organizations and foreign countries could weaponize social media to spread disinformation and undermine trust in democratic institutions. “Over the last year, the FBI has met with top social media and technology companies several times, provided them with classified briefings, and shared specific threat indicators and account information, so they can better monitor their own platforms,” he said at the time.

But there's a difference between providing information and requiring content moderation.The US solicitor general’s brief even notes that the plaintiffs were unable to “point to any evidence that the government ever imposed any sanction when platforms declined to moderate content the government had flagged.”

The case could not be surfacing at a more critical moment. Generative AI has only amplified existing election threats when it comes to disinformation, even as tech companies have shrunk their trust and safety teams and rolled back some of their earlier protections.

Senator Mark Warner of Virginia highlighted the Murthy v. Missouri case as one of the four major threats to election integrity going into the 2024 presidential election. “All throughout the Trump administration there was voluntary sharing [between the government and social media platforms], so if the NSA or CISA found evidence of foreign malign influence, that could be shared,” said Warner.

David Greene, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, says the most likely outcome is that the court will issue a new test to assess whether the government was, in fact, coercive against social platforms, and pass the case back down to a lower court to rule on again.

“I think the Supreme Court will look at the nature of how the information is transmitted rather than what the content is itself,” he says.

It was only a matter of time before they got to this.

Keep fighting. Don't let them win.

From the article:

"Florida's attorney general is claiming that the state’s public school libraries are 'a forum for government speech' and 'not a forum for free expression,' in a chilling argument that appears to be gaining steam on the right...

"'Florida’s public-school libraries are a forum for government, not private, speech,' Moody argues in the brief, comparing the removal of LGBTQ+ books like Tango to school policies against Nazi propaganda. Although Moody admits in the brief that appeals courts have 'not yet addressed' the legal argument she makes, she cites semi-related precedents — such as whether a state can refuse to display a religious monument — to conclude that 'the compilation of library materials is government speech.' For that reason, she continues, removing any library materials cannot constitute viewpoint discrimination.

"In response, a group of 23 First Amendment scholars filed an amicus brief of their own in September, saying Moody’s argument stands in opposition to decades of First Amendment law. 'Defendant’s arguments would effectively nullify' existing limits on government speech, the brief contends, and 'government speech' analyses have 'no place in public school library book removal decisions.' The authors went on to argue that the court should use different analytical tools, specifically 'forum doctrine,' a principle in U.S. law used to determine reasonable restrictions on public speech, and one which has been used in cases involving libraries since the 1970s.

"...'Should schools be preparing individuals to be broadly educated, to be able to make their own decisions about their lives?' [American Library Association's Office for Intellectual Freedom director Deborah Caldwell-Stone] asked USA Today rhetorically. 'Or should schools be indoctrination centers for only one viewpoint that may not even represent the viewpoint of the majority?'"

Oooo we get to ask about Ace Attorney stuff? Don't mind if i do!

What are Courtney and Emma's favorite games out of the entire franchise? That and what would be the rest of the main 6 of Amicus Curiae's favorite game of the series ( or if they would even play those games)

ooo let's see! disclaimer that i have not played/watched playthroughs of aa5, aa6, aai2, and dgs.

emma - her fav is aa1 it's a classic! phoenix and edgeworth are at their peak rivalry! her fav character lana is in the last case! mia is very briefly alive!

courtney - she loves the trilogy as a whole but her favorite game is aa2 (minus turnabout big top) because there's lots of franziska and the last case SLAPS (courtney is a little salty that franziska didn't get to prosecute aa2-4 and beat phoenix) aa3 is her second favorite game bc she really likes bridge to the turnabout

alejandro - it's not really his thing but he'll watch courtney play sometimes and he got disproportionately invested in the aa4 story solely because of the gavin brothers (haha him? projecting? nooooo) (but he does enjoy the story and apollo and trucy as protagonists)

kitty - she's not a big fan of visual novels, she much prefers games where she can shoot/move/do stuff, but when emma's playing she'll voice all the weirdgirl assistants and emma will end up voicing phoenix and they have fun (kitty is just waiting for emma to ask her if they can cosplay mia and maya together. she doesn't realize that emma relates more to lana and ema)

noah - also not a big player for similar reasons to kitty but he likes to watch emma play aai1 and come up with theories/logic as well as make fun of the game mechanics. sometimes he'll voice edgeworth and kitty will voice kay and emma can't decide whether she loves it or if she's incredibly annoyed by it

owen - not invested enough to have a favorite game but pearl is his favorite character he would protect her with his life. loves the wacky vibes of the game. he only half pays attention when someone else plays it but when they're struggling with finding the right piece of evidence/logic owen will blurt out a ridiculous line of reasoning that always turns out to be correct because his mind somehow operates on the same wavelength as phoenix's

Stalking is so closely correlated with lethal violence that experts refer to it as “slow motion homicide”: More than half of all female homicide victims in the U.S. were stalked before they were killed. Despite the terrifying and dangerous consequences, many victims of stalking do not report the abuse to law enforcement for fear they will not be taken seriously.

The reasonableness of that fear was vividly illustrated by the Supreme Court oral arguments in Counterman v. Colorado on Wednesday morning, as members of the highest court of the land joked about messages sent by a stalker to his victim, bemoaned the increasing “hypersensitivity” of society, and brushed aside consideration of the actual harm of stalking to focus on the potential harm of stalking laws.

For nearly two years, Billy Raymond Counterman sent thousands of unsolicited and unwanted Facebook direct messages to C.W., a local musician, ultimately driving her to abandon her career and leave the state. Counterman, who had previously served time in federal prison for making violent threats against his ex-wife and her family, argues that his conduct towards C.W. was free speech protected by the First Amendment. Counterman maintains, supported by amicus briefs from influential civil libertarian organizations such as the ACLU, the EFF, and FIRE, that stalking cannot be criminally prohibited except when the government can prove that the stalker subjectively intended to terrify his victim. The state of Colorado, supported by amicus briefs from First Amendment scholars, stalking experts, and domestic violence victim advocates, argues that it is enough to prove that the stalking would be terrifying to a reasonable person in light of the totality of the circumstances. If the court rules in Counterman’s favor, delusional stalking—no matter how objectively terrifying or threatening—will be transformed into an inviolable constitutional right.

During oral argument, Chief Justice John Roberts quoted a handful of the thousands of unsolicited messages Counterman sent to C.W. “Staying in cyber life is going to kill you,’” Roberts read aloud. After a pause, he joked, “I can’t promise I haven’t said that,” prompting laughter from other justices and the audience. Picking out another message, which he described as an “image of liquor bottles” captioned as “a guy’s version of edible arrangements,” Roberts challenged Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser to “say this in a threatening way,” leading to more laughter from the court. And the laughs didn’t stop there: Counterman’s attorney, John Elwood, shared with the court that his mother would routinely tell him to “drop dead” as a child, but “you know, I was never in fear because of that.”

(continue reading)

Dear Oreocookiezzz,

Usually, the police take them in and their parents are required to hire them a lawyer. Not a Defense Attorney, but an Amicus Attorney.

There are exceptions, but usually children have lawyers.

- Mia Fey

"The selection of Mike Johnson as speaker of the House of Representatives represents the final stage of the takeover of the party by its white Evangelical fringe-right group which reflects a blend of politics last seen in Europe in the mid-seventeenth century. At its core is an intense hatred for science and higher education and a passionate drive for the subjugation and suppression of women and minorities. In many respects, it's a trip back to the America that antedated the civil war. But the most dangerous aspect of this group, well reflected in the conduct of Johnson, is a deeply anchored opposition to democracy, and a preference instead for "God-anointed" leaders like Trump and Johnson, whose identity is revealed not at the polls, but in the minds of its white male leaders."

[NZZ:: Robert Scott Horton]

* * *

 House Republicans collapse.

          House Republicans elected MAGA extremist Mike Johnson from Louisiana as the Speaker of the House. The election of Johnson represents a collapse and surrender of the several dozen remaining non-MAGA extremists to the minority MAGA fringe of their party. It is a debacle for the tattered remnants of the GOP, a fact confirmed by the crowing of Matt Gaetz, who conflates winning a brawl and governing a nation. Gaetz said,

MAGA is ascendant and if you don’t think that moving from Kevin McCarthy to MAGA Mike Johnson shows the ascendance of this movement, and where the power of the Republican Party truly lies, then you’re not paying attention.

          Matt Gaetz is correct that the “power of the Republican Party” lies in the MAGA extreme, but he couldn’t be more wrong in claiming that “MAGA is ascendant.” The extremist views of Mike Johnson, Matt Gaetz, and Marjorie Taylor Greene are badly out of step with the views of the strong majority of Americans.

          Republicans could not have chosen a worse emissary of the GOP message heading into the 2024 elections (except for the reviled Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene). As soon as Mike Johnson was elected, his extremist views came into sharp focus. See Talking Points Memo, Best Way To Make Someone’s Quiet Extremism Widely Known? Elect Them Speaker.  

          As explained in TPM, Johnson has been a key player in a far-right Christian organization (The Alliance Defending Freedom) that was behind Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health (overturning Roe v. Wade) and 303 Creative (legalizing discrimination against LGBTQ people). Per TPM:

The newly elected Speaker of the House once worked as an attorney for a far-right Christian legal group whose work you are almost certainly familiar with. The Alliance Defending Freedom — where Johnson was once an attorney and a spokesperson — is the group behind many of the most recent legal attacks on reproductive rights and the LGBTQ community. Most recently, the group represented the plaintiff in 303 Creative v. Elenis, in which the Supreme Court sided with the plaintiff arguing the First Amendment allows businesses to discriminate for religious reasons if the business offers “expressive” services. ADF was also part of the team defending Mississippi’s 15-week abortion ban before the Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the case where the Supreme Court ultimately overturned Roe v. Wade.

          Johnson has published editorials that claim homosexuality is “inherently unnatural” and a “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and possibly even destroy “the entire democratic system.” He favors the imposition of a nationwide ban on the reproductive liberty of women. Johnson was the leader in drafting a brief asking the Supreme Court to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The brief is here: Texas v. Pennsylvania | Amicus Brief of 126 Members of House of Representatives.

          Republicans have made a grievous mistake in electing Mike Johnson, who is already being batted around by Matt Gaetz and other extremists who are claiming that Johnson made “doomed-to-fail” deals in order to become Speaker.

          For example, Matt Gaetz claimed that Johnson won’t propose a continuing resolution because “It’s not part of the plan,” even though Johnson sent a “Dear Colleague” letter that presupposes a continuing resolution by the end of November. Gaetz also claims that Johnson will not advance a bill funding Ukraine’s defense. (The substance of the prior sentences is derived from Punch Bowl News, which is behind a paywall.)

          Republicans elected Johnson because they were exhausted and because his record was below the radar. In a few hours on Wednesday evening, it became clear that Johnson will be an albatross around the neck of every vulnerable Republican in districts won by Joe Biden in 2020.

[Robert B.Hubbell]

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has a history of harsh anti-gay language from his time as an attorney for a socially conservative legal group in the mid-2000s.

In editorials that ran in his local Shreveport, Louisiana, paper, The Times, Johnson called homosexuality a “inherently unnatural” and “dangerous lifestyle” that would lead to legalized pedophilia and possibly even destroy “the entire democratic system.”

And, in another editorial, he wrote, “Your race, creed, and sex are what you are, while homosexuality and cross-dressing are things you do,” he wrote. “This is a free country, but we don’t give special protections for every person’s bizarre choices.”

At the time, Johnson was an attorney and spokesman for Alliance Defense Fund, known today as Alliance Defending Freedom, where he also authored his opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas – which overturned state laws that criminalized homosexual activity between consenting adults.

ADF wrote an amicus brief in the case which supported maintaining criminalization.

“States have many legitimate grounds to proscribe same-sex deviate sexual intercourse,” Johnson wrote in a July 2003 op-ed, calling it a public health concern.

“By closing these bedroom doors, they have opened a Pandora’s box,” he added.

Now, Johnson is the Speaker of the House at a time when a majority of Americans are strongly supportive of gay rights.

In the House Republican Conference’s voting for their speaker nominee, Tom Emmer, who initially beat out Johnson, came under fire from conservatives for voting to codify same-sex marriage in 2022.

Johnson, according to Punchbowl News, reportedly made an issue of Emmer’s vote. Johnson voted against the bill. In 2022, Johnson also introduced a bill that some describe as a national version of what critics have called Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill.

In the mid-2000s, Johnson’s anti-gay rhetoric was harsh. In September 2004, Johnson wrote in support of a Louisiana amendment banning same-sex marriage saying it could lead to people marrying their pets.

“Homosexual relationships are inherently unnatural and, the studies clearly show, are ultimately harmful and costly for everyone,” he wrote. “Society cannot give its stamp of approval to such a dangerous lifestyle. If we change marriage for this tiny, modern minority, we will have to do it for every deviant group. Polygamists, polyamorists, pedophiles, and others will be next in line to claim equal protection. They already are. There will be no legal basis to deny a bisexual the right to marry a partner of each sex, or a person to marry his pet.”

Johnson added that allowing same-sex marriage could be the downfall of the democratic system.

“The state and its citizens have a compelling interest in preserving the integrity of the marital union by making opposite-sex marriage the exclusive form of family relationship endorsed by the government,” he wrote. “Loss of this status will de-emphasize the importance of traditional marriage to society, weaken it, and place our entire democratic system in jeopardy by eroding its foundation.”

In another 2004 column, Johnson again predicted same-sex marriage could doom America.

“If you were shocked by the moral lapses at the Super Bowl you ain’t seen nothin’ yet,” Johnson wrote. “Experts project that homosexual marriage is the dark harbinger of chaos and sexual anarchy that could doom even the strongest republic.”

I was told early in my career that lying to reporters was the unforgivable sin. Spin was accepted and expected, but lying was a career ender. Lie to a reporter and not only would that reporter never trust you again but would ensure his fellow scribes knew of the transgression and would avoid you as a source.

Case in point: As director of Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of Justice in February 2004, I was routinely asked by reporters if the department had opened an investigation into the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame’s identity. On Friday, Feb. 6, I informed them that no investigation was open, only to learn the criminal division had opened one late that night without notifying anyone. Even the attorney general’s office was caught unaware.

When the story about the investigation was leaked and broke Tuesday morning, I arrived at my office to a crowd of angry reporters led by USA Today’s Toni Loci, who berated me with a barrage of four-letter words which were enthusiastically endorsed by her colleagues. And then she branded me a bleeping liar.

When she finished and the grumbling subsided, I explained the timeline and that I hadn’t lied, and the career attorney who launched the investigation vouched for me. I was forgiven, but it’s not an experience anyone on either end of the government-media relationship wants to experience. At least that’s what I thought.

I have defended reporters my entire career because I believed an adversarial press was important to accountability and transparency – that an adversarial press was this republic’s last line of defense against government tyranny. I’d always considered myself a middleman, the conduit of information from the people’s government to the free press who deliver it to the American people – the rightful owners of that information. I’ve even filed amicus briefs in federal court defending the right of reporters to protect their sources.

A lot about journalism has changed in 20 years, and perhaps I was naïve, but what should not have changed is the fundamental principle that reporters should expect sources to tell the truth and should impose severe penalties when sources violate that principle. And yet here we are.

How else can the press explain their ongoing relationships and use of intelligence officials as named sources in their reporting who flat out lied about Hunter Biden’s laptop bearing the “classic hallmarks” of a Russian disinformation campaign? Former CIA Director Michael Morel lied. Former CIA Director James Brennan lied. Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied.

These liars lied to the press to prop up the political campaign of Joe Biden. These former intelligence chiefs lied to the press fully expecting reporters would lie to the American people. Yet these liars still hold lucrative gigs on the cable networks as expert commentators, are regularly used as on-the-record, and no doubt off-the-record, sources to the entire cadre of Beltway journalists. These liars will frequent the White House Correspondents Dinner and all the exclusive cocktail parties this weekend hosted by news organizations.

They are liars, the reporters know that they were deceived by them and … nothing has changed.  

How has this happened that the national press corps is now slavishly willing to share misinformation and false information? It’s not the first time or perhaps even the worst example. After all, almost a century later, the New York Times still has not fully rejected its relationship with Walter Duranty, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Moscow correspondent whose stories in the Times covered up the great Russian famine and propped up Josef Stalin and his slaughter of millions of his citizens.

Yet, even today, as new revelations about the Biden laptop and efforts to mislead the media and the public continue to arise, the same news outlets burned in 2020 betray whatever “journalistic ethics” they still possess by failing their fellow citizens and not presenting unvarnished facts about their elected, appointed, and career government officials.

Perhaps just a decade ago, the Hunter Biden laptop story and the role of foreign money and foreign influence-peddling would have been a journalist’s or TV news operation’s ticket to stardom and public appreciation. But for some reason, the national media now looks the other way, fearful of being the dog that catches up to the car it is chasing.

According to a 2022 Gallup poll, the media’s credibility with the public is at an all-time low, with only 34% of Americans having even a fair amount of trust in journalists. This isn’t because of a Russian or Chinese disinformation campaign – though much of American media was happy to participate in those efforts as well. No, this low bar of trust is the fault of the reporters, editors, and bureau chiefs who continue to allow their sources to lie to them and amplify those lies in an all-out, ends-justify-the-means political battle.

“But Trump!” is not a legitimate excuse to be complicit in lies and disinformation to the public. If in your arrogance you believe we, the people, will make the wrong decision if we have the full set of accurate facts, then you are the problem and have rightly earned our scorn and with it, your eventual obsolescence. _______________

Link submitted anonymously

I suppose the question now is, do the press even care if we believe them or not anymore, so many people out there willing to push whatever narrative they want and so long as someone with a long enough reach says it, they feel fine in spreading lies and half truths because it serves them.

Wonder how many of the people rooting for the demise of the US realize that it's taking them with it if it happens. On a global scale

“Near and far, Anishinaabe people have united to protect the Great Lakes,” said President Whitney Gravelle of the Bay Mills Indian Community. “We stand behind Attorney General Nessel because we know that shutting down Line 5 is the only way to protect everyone who depends on the land, water, and natural resources within the Great Lakes, including Anishinaabe people exercising our treaty rights.” Not only do the Great Lakes provide fresh drinking water to more than 40 million people, but in the creation stories of the Anishinaabe, the Straits of Mackinac are where the Great Turtle emerged after a flood to create the North American continent, which the Anishinaabe refer to as “Turtle Island.” Bay Mills and other Tribal Nations have hunted, fished, and gathered medicines in the Straits for thousands of years — since time immemorial.  In 1836, they ceded vast acres of land and water including the Straits to the U.S. government. “That 1836 treaty guarantees these Tribes the right to maintain their way of life in the ceded territory — a right that will be irrevocably destroyed if an oil spill from the dual pipelines contaminates the waters and aquatic life of the Straits,” said Managing Attorney David Gover of Native American Rights Fund (NARF).

Stoodis.