While you were sleeping

By Washington Correspondent Nellie Bly
with Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki

Last week we reported on the Good Friday murder of the legal rights of 150 million American women by a bent whackjob judge in America's jurisprudential center, Amarillo, Texas. 

Although we are not known for our optimism, we ventured to predict that “this gruesome opinion is in our view unlikely to survive the tender mercies of even the bent Fifth Circuit.”  It turns out we were only sort of right.

The Fifth Circuit in action

The Republican-bent Fifth Circuit, unable to stomach the indefensible outcome of Amarillo Matt's “opinion,”  decided he couldn't reverse a 23-year-old decision approving mifepristone.  But to the surprise of no one, they appeared to endorse large chunks of the insane reasoning of his opinion.

As to standing, which requires plaintiffs to have a distinct and palpable injury (rather than just a sad about being on the losing side of a political or policy battle), the Fifth Circuit first reversed the burden of proof by requiring the defendants to prove that plaintiffs didn't have an injury, rather than requiring that plaintiffs allege a plausible and real injury.

Having turned standing on its head, the Fifth Circuit found merit in plaintiffs' preposterous claims that they were injured by the approval of mifepristone because some day they (supposedly doctors) might have to treat someone for complications of mifepristone, among all the other business that comes into an emergency room.  Since the incidence of such complications is proven to be extraordinarily low, the claim is inherently ridiculous.

Nonetheless, the Fifth Circuit found that these forced-birth doctors would face supposedly “enormous stress and pressure” by treating women who had taken the drug.  Whether the stress and pressure was enormouser than the usual stress of dealing with emergencies in, wait for it, the emergency room caused by anything else, like school kids whose bodies have been shredded by high powered weapons of war following an exercise of Second Amendment rights, is unknown.  

In any event, as we pointed out as long ago as last week, the complication rate from pregnancy is far higher than from mifepristone.  So use of the drug can be expected to decrease stress and pressure in the ER, and banning it will increase ER visits and the stress and pressure attendant thereto.

But the stupidity and mendacity of the Fifth Circuit didn't end there.  As a second injury, they cited the possibility that forced-birth doctors might have to treat mifepristone patients with procedures that could constitute an abortion in supposed violation of their constitutional right to deny health care to critically ill patients at whim.

That injury too is irrelevant at best.  Outlawing safe and legal abortion will lead to botched illegal abortions.  The treatments for those abortions could be the same as the ones these doctors are too full of the Holy Spirit to treat.  So granting them the relief they seek (outlawing mifepristone) won't address their supposed injury (doing their jobs).

On the supposed merits of the forced-birthers' claim, the Fifth Circuit said that their challenge to the 2016 loosening of FDA restrictions on the use and dispensing of mifepristone might well succeed. Again, they illegally flipped the burden of proof to require the FDA to prove its approval process was flawless, rather than demanding that plaintiffs prove it was arbitrary and capricious.

This was probably because the plaintiffs submitted no competent science-based evidence tending to establish that the 2016 and 2020 amendments were not well founded in science and law.  That is because there is no such evidence, either before those amendments or in the years since the conditions were changed.  

Finally, in considering the balance of equities and interests in letting the Amarillo injunction ruin the lives of women, the Court placed weight on the truly bats*** crazy argument that the 1873 Comstock Act prohibition on mailing abortion drugs had any, repeat any, relevance to the question of whether the FDA acting under its separate statutory authority properly approved mifepristone in 2000 or modified its approval in recent years or whether the FDA's science-based approval process should be set aside indefinitely.

As a final grab at the pussies of 150 million American women, the Court placed zero weight on the interests, needs, hopes, fears, and rights of those women to safe, legal medication abortion.  

"Your interests don't matter on appeal of a stay, dear."

Perhaps you are now wondering as to who appointed these clowns to the once-distinguished Fifth Circuit bench.  If you had zero Democrats on the panel (two appointed by the Tangerine-Faced Defendant and one by George W. Bush), you won!  Your bet, that is, not your legal rights.

The Department of Justice, properly appalled by this travesty of judicial review, kicked it to the Supreme Court, six of whose members took away the rights of all Americans to an abortion just last year.  What happens next is anyone's guess.

We suspect that Sulky Sam Alito and his, um, confederates are looking for some way to send the case back to Amarillo for more endless factfinding without making any ruling on the law, which if followed would require the whole mess to be rubbished, but frankly no outcome is out of the question, including a holding that the FDA itself is unconstitutional.

What's the moral of the story?  You probably have guessed it by now: none of this would have happened had not 55% of white women voted for the Tangerine-Faced Grifter in 2016, who larded the bench with eighth-rate extremists to entice forced-birth evangelicals to vote for a depraved sex offender.

It's not like we weren't warned:

Mrs. Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, seized on the court’s ruling to warn that Mr. Trump, her presumptive Republican opponent, poses a threat to women. She recalled his suggestion this year that abortion be banned and that women who violate that ban be penalized. She also said that with other states also seeking to restrict access to abortions and with Republicans seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, proponents of abortions rights could not afford to let up. 

“We’ve seen a concerted, persistent attack on women’s health and rights at the federal level,” Mrs. Clinton said in a statement. “Meanwhile, Donald Trump has said women should be punished for having abortions.” 

That was on June 27, 2016.  What were supposed advocates for women's rights saying after Hillary sounded the alarm?

A few weeks later, noted feminist Maureen Dowd laser-focused on the real issue facing women in the election, which is what Hillary had said about Monica Lewinsky 20 years earlier:

After the Monica affair, she deflected questions about Bill’s cheesy behavior by summoning up the specter of the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Now she deflects questions about the emails and foundation ethical tangles by summoning up the specter of the Vast Alt-Right Conspiracy. 

I'm sure that the women who may be forced into unsafe abortions or forced birth if Trump's bent courts outlaw mifepristone will be much comforted to recall how Hillary stood by her horndog husband when Maureen said she shouldn't, because that was the real issue facing women in 2016.

Even supposedly more progressive minds didn't appreciate the stakes of that election.  Here's a report from The Guardian on August 2, 2016:

By the way, if all of the idiots who had voted for Jill Stein had instead voted for Hillary Clinton, American women would not today be living in fear that their right to a safe medication abortion would be stripped from them.

And with the catastrophe imminent our brilliant pundits (in this case Kathleen Parker) still didn't hear the sounds of Zeroes coming in low over Diamond Head:

So she told her many devoted readers in The Washington Post on November 4, 2016.

When Trump filled the Supreme Court seat stolen from Merrick Garland with some pompous reactionary, here's what Kathleen had to say:

Watching the Senate confirmation hearings of Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch, one might easily find oneself wishing Gorsuch were president of the United States.

Alas, he's not. But Gorsuch's selection to replace Antonin Scalia is the sanest act committed by a president whose first 60 days have left him with an approval rating under 40 percent and persistent questions about his stability.

For those of you who haven't been paying close attention since then, Gorsuch was one of the six bent Republican Justices who stripped American women of their rights over their own bodies just last year.

The point is not just to drag pompous bloviators like Kevin's sister and Parker.  The point is when it comes to American democracy at this moment, don't calm down.  We won't be fine no matter who wins.  If a Democratic candidate did something you didn't like, e.g. refusing to divorce her tomcatting husband, think very carefully about the alternative.

We're sorry if your feelings are hurt.  We're sorry if you have to get off your ass and vote in each and every boring, stupid election, even the ones for the Tennessee legislature.

But we'd be even sorrier if next week we learn that thanks to our Republican-bent courts, women who thought they could obtain a safe legal medication abortion start looking at their coat-hangers with a new and desperate eye.

Legal News: 150 million women lynched in Texas

By Legal Editor Scott V. Sandford and
Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki reporting from America's Legal Capitol

AMARILLO, Tex. – The desolate windswept prairie of Amarillo, Texas seems like an unlikely forum for limiting the rights of 150 million or so American women who might become pregnant someday, but in Republican America, no forum is too obscure to take away rights or enforce minority Republican rule.  In other words, Tobago rules the world! [No one will ever get that conflicts joke so stop it – Ed.]

On the night of Good Friday, when he thought no one notice his order to crucify American women, bent Trump-appointed “judge” Anthony Comstock [Surely, Matthew Kacsmaryk? – Ed.] issued an order purporting to ban the dispensing of or prescribing one of the two drugs used for a medication abortion, a safe procedure used by women millions of times a year to exercise their right to terminate an unwanted pregnancy.

The courthouse in Amarillo rules the world!

It came as a surprise to no one that this judge in this court would issue a decision free from any taint of lawfulness.  But it's worth examining the outrage closely first so that its fatal defects can be brought into the light and second to place in the context of a country whose democracy is crumbling under the unrelenting nationwide onslaught of white extremists (Hello, Tennessee!).

Let's start by examining the judge. Certainly any federal judge would approach an abortion-related legal question with an open mind, right, Washington Post?

A few months into his freshman year, he wrote a letter to the editor of the student newspaper about abortion.

“The Democratic Party’s ability to condone the federally sanctioned eradication of innocent human life is indicative of the moral ambivalence undergirding this party,” Kacsmaryk wrote, endorsing a Republican Party platform that would grant a fetus the full legal protections of a person.

Democrats, he added, had “facilitated the demise of America’s Christian heritage” and mounted a “contemptuous assault on the traditional family.”

Faith was the “driving force and line” for Kacsmaryk growing up, said [his sister] Griffith. Raised by two born-again Christians in the suburbs of Fort Worth, Kacsmaryk and his two sisters .... all learned early that abortion was wrong.

“It was known, kind of like my faith,” Griffith said.

No wonder even spineless Susan Collins couldn't vote for this zealot (after being assured by Mitch McConnell that he had the votes without her).

How did this case with nationwide reach even get to the prairie wasteland of Amarillo rather than any one of the other 384 federal courthouses in this land of the free?  Funny story:

The lead plaintiff in the abortion pills case, the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, incorporated in Texas — with a “registered agent” in Amarillo — several months before the lawsuit was filed. While the group’s website does not include any location or contact information, records filed with the Texas secretary of state’s office show that the group’s mailing address is in Tennessee. 

Judge Kacsmaryk pulls the plug on women's right to choose

What a coincidence!

Now the fun stuff: Amarillo is located in the Northern District of Texas.  Right now there are 16 judges in that District.  What are the chances of the biggest abortion case in the land ending up in the lap of a forced-birth zealot?

How do they assign cases in the Northern District of Texas?  The answer is clear and precise, as set forth in ND Tex. Local Rule 83.3:

The district judges shall determine the method by which all cases are assigned to individual judges.

So just because a case is filed in the wilds of Amarillo doesn't mean that it has to be decided by the sole judge sitting in that tank town.  In fact you would think that a group of judges concerned about the potential for abusive “judge shopping” would ensure random assignment across the whole district.

If you thought that, all we can say is sister, welcome to Texas!  As our old friend University of Texas Law School Professor Steve Vladeck tells us, the rule that all cases filed in Amarillo are heard by one bent judge is not the law of the land, it's the whim of the 16 judges in the Northern District.  

We think that matters of fundamental importance to the entire nation, including at least 150 million women who might someday decide to terminate a pregnancy, should not be decided by 16 lazy black-robed hacks in Texas, but what do we know?

Moving on from the procedural to the substantive travesty of justice, let's just have a look at this hack's opinion.  Its fatal defect is found deep in its bowels.  Actually, we're just s***in' you.  It's on page 1.

The opinion starts with a whine about how the FDA supposedly delayed acting on the petitions of the forced-birth pressure groups who wanted it to rescind its 2000 approval of mifepristone, part of the two drug medication abortion regimen.  From the opinion itself, it is clear that the FDA eventually responded to the petitions, but not in the way that Judge Holy Roller liked.

The legal point buried under all this is that a federal judge has an unquestioned power under the Administrative Procedure Act [Stop snoring back there – Ed.] to order an agency to make a decision about something.  Once the agency does so (here, following the mountains of evidence proving that the drug is safe and effective), the judge can review its decision and if the judge finds it wanting (after according proper deference to agency fact-finding) it can order the agency to address whatever defects were supposedly found.

What a judge can't do, ever, is make its own factual findings in the place of the FDA's and then reverse the FDA's decision to approve the drug on the basis of the supposed facts it found.

And even if it could do that, it could never order the agency to take a specific enforcement action (like going after makers, sellers, or users of the drug) because the decision of what enforcement action to take if any is for the agency to decide as a matter of discretion, not as a matter for a Christian dominionist ruling from his throne of tumbleweeds. 

There are insane errors of law on every page.  We have time for only a few.

As suggested earlier, the entire lawsuit was concocted by a forced-birth pressure group.  It turns out that just because you are sad about a law you don't like, you don't actually have a claim to state in federal court.  You must have suffered a real injury, or in lawspeak, “standing.” This is an important constitutional limitation on the power of courts designed to prevent them from invalidating every law or ruling they don't like.  Like here.

Like his idol Jesus Christ turning water into wine, this whackjob miraculously turned whine into injury:

Here, the associations members have standing because they allege adverse events from chemical abortion drugs can overwhelm the medical system and place enormous pressure and stress on doctors during emergencies and complications.

(He likes to call the procedure “chemical” abortion because that makes it sound as if women are being offered Drano. Last we looked, every drug is by definition a chemical.)

But let's unpack the argument.  He says that these supposed doctors have suffered an injury because the use of mifepristone causes women to flood emergency rooms.  Aside from the falsity of the claim (mifepristone abortions are incredibly safe and complications rare, rarer than pregnancy:

 

), if mifepristone were outlawed, pregnant women would use another abortion pill, obtain surgical abortions, carry an unwanted pregnancy, or, in desperation, sicken and die from unsafe illegal abortions.

Each of these outcomes would raise the supposed pressure on the medical system.  So if the plaintiffs win their case, their purported injuries would only get worse.  That's not standing.  That's not a case.  That's Christian dominionism with a docket number.

When he finished butchering the law of standing, the “judge” turned to the merits, including a holding that the Comstock Act could be used to attack the FDA"s decision because it supposedly banned the mailing of mifepristone.

Anthony Comstock: He's tanned, rested, and ready!

Comstock?  Who he?  Until last year, Anthony Comstock was thought to be a somewhat comic figure from the distant past who fought a number of battles to harass and oppress women, and to be fair, the rest of us, by raging to outlaw birth control, free speech, art, and any number of other things he thought were obscene.

He's back, baby! As Michelle Goldberg explains:

Anthony Comstock, the mutton-chopped anti-vice crusader for whom the Comstock Act is named, is back from the dead.

Comstock died in 1915, and the Comstock Act, the notorious anti-obscenity law used to indict the Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger, ban books by D.H. Lawrence and arrest people by the thousands, turned 150 last month. Had this anniversary fallen five or 10 years ago, it barely would have been worth noting, except perhaps to marvel at how far we’d come from an era when a fanatical censor like Comstock wielded national political power. ...Until very recently, it seemed a relic. 

By its terms, the Comstock Act, which predates the law establishing the FDA by over 35 years, prohibits mailing drugs intended to cause an abortion.  Whether it survived the comprehensive drug regulation system established by the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906 is dubious, but its irrelevance to the case at hand is indisputable.

Nothing in the Comstock Act purports, or could be read, to limit the ability of the FDA to determine the safety of a drug, including a drug that may be used for abortion.  Assuming arguendo and it's a mighty big arguendo, that the Comstock Act remains in force, nothing prohibits anyone from sending FDA-approved drugs by private courier (or carrying them in the back of their car) anywhere.

We could go on and on, but this gruesome opinion is in our view unlikely to survive the tender mercies of even the bent Fifth Circuit.

But the legal news is not all good.  Even if the decision of this High Plains Tosser is rubbished on appeal, there are other legal threats on the horizon.  There is a non-frivolous argument that state bans on abortion medication are not pre-empted by FDA approval.  There is even an argument that states like Texas can prosecute criminally good people in Massachusetts who cause abortion pills to be sent to Texas, or even let it be known that they would provide medication to Texans who travel to Boston.

It all comes back to the voters (including 55% of white women) who elected the Tangerine-Faced Defendant and a motley crew of spineless extremist Senators who installed three, count 'em, three forced-birthers on the Supreme Court in just four years.  

Until the voters reverse their colossal bad judgment and elect a government that unpacks the bent Supreme Court (not to mention the law west of the Hudson), American women will live in a world aptly described by Elie Mystal:

Broken News: What Those Responsible Serious Republicans Are Up To Now

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling and
Legal Correspondent Saori Shiroseki

Arguably the press coverage that led with

may have underplayed the story a little, but the announcement that a corrupt sex offender and Russian agent had finally been indicted for at least a tasting menu of his crimes seemed to take some people rather by surprise.

We call these people “Republicans.” To a man, and that's what they mostly are, they condemned an indictment they hadn't read backed by evidence they hadn't seen as the greatest miscarriage of justice since the last time a white man faced some sort of reckoning for his misdeed, which would have been the January 2021 Impeachment II of that same Queens man.

Whether out of fear of offending the indicted leader of their Grand Old Party, or the willingness to destroy the rule of law to advance their own selfish ends, the response of supposedly prominent Republicans was to throw s*** at the walls and see what stuck.

Here's billionaire finagler Glenn Youngkin's thoughtful measured response:

Glenn Youngkin seeks fairness – for Trump!

“It is beyond belief,” raged Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, that Bragg “has indicted a former President and current presidential candidate for pure political gain.”

The careful reader will note that Youngkin’s complaint is not simply that the indictment itself is flimsy. That is not what makes the charges “political.” Rather, it’s that Trump was indicted at all. 

Keep in mind that this guy hasn't seen the evidence or read the charges.  That would never have happened in his prior gig as CEO of Carlyle, a huge slush fund of finagler money (excuse me, one of America's largest and most respected private-equity investors).  Do you think Carlyle would invest one dime without reading the term sheet and going through mountains of due diligence?  For the sake of their investors, we hope not.  

Sounds kinda extreme if not unhinged.  You would think that America's media would have warned us about someone with views this extreme, perhaps through their beloved deep reporting.

What were they saying about this raving plutocrat when he was running for Governor of Virginia two years ago?

Back then, The Washington Post was singing a more soothing tune:

But Youngkin, a wealthy political newcomer, may benefit from a political climate similar to the one that helped win the governorship for Republican Bob McDonnell in 2009, the last time the GOP triumphed statewide in Virginia.

McDonnell capitalized on a backlash against a newly elected Democratic president — Barack Obama....

Youngkin, 54, who was raised in Virginia Beach and now lives in Great Falls, appears to be an effective retail campaigner who is comfortable onstage. With a personal fortune estimated at $254 million from a career that lifted him to co-CEO of the large, D.C.-based Carlyle Group investment firm, he has plenty of money for ads and field operations.

Because we all know that one of the most important qualities a political leader must have is being comfortable onstage.  Just ask President Vanna White.

We couldn't find any other example of well-respected media outlets handing out comforting platitudes about reactionary Republicans now attempting to obstruct justice and undermining the rule of law. 

Just kidding.  Here's mainstream Republican Mother Pence now (again commenting on an unissued indictment):

“The unprecedented indictment of a former president of the United States on a campaign finance issue is an outrage,” former Vice President Mike Pence told CNN.

Mike Pence speaks out

It's only unprecedented because Ford pardoned Dick Nixon about two steps of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's grand jury, which didn't look good at the time and looks worse now.

And here's two of The New York Times's leading gasbags (Jeremy Peters and Nick Fandos) after the 2016 election: 

He is all the things Donald J. Trump could not be. A career public servant who has served in Congress and run a state. A hero to conservatives who adore his strong Christian faith and resistance to the country’s rapid social liberalization. A disciplined messenger who keeps his opinions from erupting on Twitter. 

How much influence Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, the vice president-elect, will have in a Trump White House is unknown, especially given Mr. Trump’s habit of consulting a wide circle of formal and informal advisers and then ultimately doing as he pleases. 

But given how deep mistrust of Mr. Trump runs — not only from Democrats but also from elected officials in his own party who said he was unfit to become president — Mr. Pence, 57, could become the administration figure who offers a measure of comfort in what is sure to be a highly uncertain and chaotic time.

Yeah, it worked out just like that.  

So many mainstream Republicans, so little time.  Nikki Haley, who once had the odious job of flacking for Pres U Bum at the United Nations, joins the chat:

A day earlier, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, Mr. Trump’s most prominent official challenger so far, suggested the indictment was politically motivated, writing on Twitter, “This is more about revenge than it is about justice.”

Maybe wait until you at least know what he is charged with and what evidence the DA has?  That would probably be the more constructive choice and would allow her to campaign with her dignity largely intact.  

Speaking of which, the same New York Times summed up her hideous performance flacking for Pres U Bum at the United Nations, where the country she represented was laughed at by the entire world: 

In an administration that prizes lock-step loyalty, Ms. Haley managed to hold to at least some of her own priorities, and as a result she appears to be that rarest of Trump appointees: one who can exit the administration with her dignity largely intact....Ms. Haley, who is expected to pursue the presidency one day, may eventually find herself having to defend facilitating some of President Trump’s worst policies and instincts. But she will also be able to point to more constructive roles she played. Indeed, a replacement in her mold may be the best to hope for from Mr. Trump. 

In fairness to the Times's loathsome Editorial Board, they at least admitted the possibility that she would debase herself and shred her dignity and credibility by kowtowing to the Tangerine-Faced Defendant. 

We'll serve up one more moderate mainstream Republican before we start chugging Pepto.  A graduate of Yale Law School would certainly understand the need to temper their comments until they knew what the charges and the evidence were.  Looks like Criminal Procedure is yet another subject not worthy of being taught at that cutting-edge institution:

 

He came in pretty hot.  You would think that a conservative intellectual who champions individual responsibility (like for the consequences of one's own criminal conduct) would champion the rule of law, or at least you would think that if you read The Washington Post 1,000 year ago (well, 2016):

From the perspective of a conservative, Vance paints a depressing picture of a proud, but broken, people: the cycle of dependency, the near total lack of personal responsibility, rising domestic violence, declining church attendance, laziness, etc. ...  (Reading the book inspired me to travel to his hollowed-out hometown of Middletown, Ohio, for an October big idea about how Trump really could win the election.)

J.D. Vance just wants to serve his beloved Ohioians

Rather than just collect royalty checks and give TED talks, Vance wants to do something to deal with these afflictions.

He is currently looking to re-settle from California to either Columbus or Cincinnati. His San Diego-born wife has gotten onboard, and he thinks their two dogs will adjust well.
He is filing paperwork to set up a new nonprofit group, a 501(c)(4), called “Our Ohio Renewal.”
He is scheduled to speak at about a dozen Lincoln Day dinners for county-level Republican chapters around the state in the next three months.
He recently lectured at The Ohio State University and plans to visit other campuses around the Buckeye State soon....

“.... Vance said in an interview. “The plan is to go all-in on Ohio. One of the things that concerns me is that so few people who go and get an education elsewhere … feel any real … pull for returning home. I don’t think the answer is for everyone who grows up in Middletown to come back. But we do owe something to the community.” 

In fairness, later Washington Post reporting did recount Vance's transformation from the Socrates of Butcher Holler to just another tongue-bather fighting for space in Trump's taint.  But the pre-2021 idolization of this cynical Thiel-backed narcissist didn't prepare the innocent or even the Ohio voter from the insanity and subversion Vance now exhibits.

What's the point?

The point is that any Republican who today supports Trump's campaign to escape justice and break the rule of law was never moderate, reasonable, thoughtful, or courageous.

Covering opportunistic subversive Republicans as anything but the anti-patriotic trash they are is not objective journalism.  It is wishful thinking, and its effects on the reputations of supposedly great newspapers and a democracy teetering at the brink of destruction are calamitous.

Fresh off the griddle at the International House of Hot Takes: DeSantis stumbles over his go-go boots

By Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling
with Jenny Herk in Florida

Are you old enough to remember when Assistant Urinalysis Officer and pudding lover Ron DeSantis was regarded by political savants as the odds-on favorite to win the Republican Presidential nomination?

What happened?

According to long-time Washington Post Conventional Wisdom dispenser Aaron Blake:

I was an early adopter of the idea that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) could beat Donald Trump for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination; I even put him ahead of Trump in my rankings as the most likely GOP nominee as far back as August 2022.

Virtually everything in the six months that followed seemed to bolster that view. [To whom? – Ed.] DeSantis was never regarded as a heavy favorite, but he rose steadily; he sometimes led Trump in head-to-head matchups in the polls, and his 19-point reelection victory in November — coupled with Trump’s very bad midterm Election Day — felt like it could be a turning point.

I’m less convinced now. ...the Trump-usurper armor has shown some early cracks.

DeSantis once could do no wrong, it seemed, and that threatened Trump. But the last two weeks delivered something of a reality check.

Did reporters take a hard look at his anti-democratic assault on the right to vote, the right to speak, the right to read, and the right to be treated with simple human dignity?  Of course not.  What happened was DeSantis fell off his elevator shoes when asked the most basic questions relating to U.S. national security:

DeSantis last week drew attention — and some pretty harsh rebukes from his party — by seemingly telling Fox News’s Tucker Carlson what Carlson wanted to hear about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

While DeSantis had been hawkish enough on the Russia-Ukraine issue when he was in Congress, he suddenly labeled it a “territorial dispute” and emphasized the lack of a “vital U.S. interest” in further American involvement. 

Of course, parroting the Putin/Trump party line on the criminal invasion of Ukraine should be a disqualifier, although it doesn't seem to be a problem for the Tiny Toadstool himself. But any failure to support military force regardless of the merits or lack thereof (like Iraq) is grounds for disqualification by the pundits of the Hot Air Force, always ready to direct the battle from their command post at the Metropolitan Club in Washington. 

Unleashing a reign of terror against gay and trans kids, punishing a corporation for daring to disagree, and empowering crazed vigilantes to censor books in school libraries – no problemo for this crowd.

DeSantis: “I love it!”"

Even more embarrassing was the sizzling platter of Hot Takes served up by The New York Times, desperately trying to get ol' Pudding Fingers to talk to them by attempting to mold the steaming pile of DeSantis foreign policy statements into a coherent and less-stinky mass:

A close reading of more than 200 of his speeches, votes, writings and television commentaries over the past decade, as well as interviews with his peers, reveal the makings of a DeSantis Doctrine. 

The DeSantis Doctrine?  Ayfkm?

Yeah, because there's no better way to understand what Lt. (j. pee) Ron DeSantis is up to than by reading the self-serving crap he and his flacks put out and trying to bend it like a pretzel into a supposed Doctrine, all in the most fawning, least critical way possible. 

What's really going on is that the Times, by putting out reams of hot takes purporting to take seriously the crap spewed out this subversive unpatriotic clown (while ignoring possibly relevant matters, like his involvement in torture and war crimes at Guantanamo Bay or his overarching contempt for democracy and the rule of law), is schnorring for an interview with this guy, which will generate thousands of words of uncritical stenography beginning above the fold on A1.

When will they give up?  DeSantis won't sit down with the Times for at least two reasons.  First, his brand is built largely on unjustified white grievance and hatred for a free press that might give a voice to non-bigots, non-Christians, and non-white people is a key part of that grievance.

Second, equally important, DeSantis fears that no matter how deferential the Times reporters are, he will s*** all over his nice white go-go boots, as he did when served up Ukraine softballs by reliable right-wing hack Piers Moron (apologies to Private Eye).

But we digress.  The torrents of conventional wisdom generated by Aaron Blake cannot be held just to DeSantis.  They flood every Republican who can fog a mirror.  Blake's hot takes cover what he sees as the top 10 candidates for the Republican nomination.  Since it's going to be Trump, the whole piece seems like an exercise in filling space.

Who can appeal to these very fine Republicans?

We can't cover every single one of his top 10 hot takes.  We'll limit ourselves to his choice for the number 3 slot.

Wait for it.

It's not Threeway Greene.  It's not Gym Jordan.  It's not Jeannie Pirro.  It's someone who is even less likely to win the Republican nomination:

3. Tim Scott: The senator from South Carolina is not polling like the top alternative to Trump and DeSantis; he’s usually stuck with all the others around 1 percent. But he’s doing just about everything you’d expect a would-be candidate to do, and he’s someone you can see emerging as a credible alternative to Trump — especially if DeSantis does flame out or just fades. Perhaps nobody in the field could drive the kind of happy-warrior message Scott appears likely to go with. His presence in the 2024 race could also be unusual in another way: He well might be the only senator. (Previous ranking: 3)

“I'm a Senator.” Now there's a crowd pleaser, especially to a Republican base that contemns competence and experience. 

There's one other possibly interesting thing about Sen. Scott that might be worthy of note: he's a Black man.  This actually may work in his favor, as white supremacist  Republicans get a cheap thrill out of voting for people of color, as long as they promise, like Scott, to preserve, protect, and defend white racism.

We don't really have the stomach to go through Blake's other Republican rodents.  We'll only note that in his breathless top-10 horserace ranking there's no room for discussing unimportant trivia, like what these Republican worthies advocate and stand for.

That's probably because there are in fact no differences of substance between ex-Pres. Tiny Toadstool and the other nine, except for sending weapons to Ukraine.  They all want to replace our pluralist secular social-democratic institutions with white supremacy, intolerance, Christian nationalism, and subversion of democracy.  

They all want to accomplish this by any means necessary.  If they can't win elections on the square, they'll rig the districts, disenfranchise opposing voters, lard the courts with extremist activists, and, as a last resort (as shown on January 6) launch violent insurrections to maintain their undeserved positions of privilege and power.

But DC gasbags like Blake are too busy serving up steaming hot takes to step back and smell the gunpowder.  We're on our own. 

UPDATE: After we went to press, NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen helpfully weighed in on the difference between covering the odds and the stakes of a campaign:

Not the odds, but the stakes.

That's my shorthand for the 2024 coverage we most need. Not who has what chances of winning, but the consequences if they do.

Here, the odds are centered: "Our rankings of the 10 people from among whom the 2024 GOP nominee is likely to emerge." pic.twitter.com/WYxNQMHbFw

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) March 25, 2023

Mission Accomplished, Revisited

By Post-War Correspondent Douglas MacArthur
with Meta-Content Generator A.J. Liebling

You kids out there Tik Toking and giving away your parents' entire private lives away to Chinese intelligence may not be aware of this, but once upon a time the United States started a war with Iraq, which led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and sorry and agony for millions more.

Unlike other Top-Ten hits of 2003 (including CSI, Friends, and, um, The Apprentice), though, it's fallen into the same memory hole that swallowed constitutional law, four door sedans, and Sara Lee chocolate cake.

Anyway, briefly, Republican neocons used the 9/11 attack as an excuse to invade Iraq (which had nothing to do with the attack) and overthrow and preside over the lynching of its dictator Saddam Hussein.  An orgy of pointless violence followed, including the commission by U.S. forces and intelligence services of grotesque tortures (apparently witnessed by former Assistant Urinalysis Officer Ron DeSantis).   Then shortly after U.S. forces finally left in 2011, there was another bloodbath as Sunni extremists, capitalizing on the collapse of legitimate authority in Iraq, took over huge swatches of the country.

Probably not the most shining moment in United States history (and therefore Florida students will never learn about it), but we've moved on to other things as a country, like insurrection and insanity.

It turns out though that Iraqis can't move on because they still live there, not far from their dead kin.  According to a fine report in The New York Times,

What's he so grouchy about?  We said we were sorry, didn't we? Actually, we didn't, and never have.  

We were wondering how the devastation visited on the Dhahi family was reported at the time.  You'll be pleased to know that we tried super hard to limit the number of dead civilians:

The New York Times, April 30, 2004.  

At least the Marines were out of lethal range!  That's something!

Beyond the incalculable level of human suffering is the strategic catastrophe brought on by the needless war.  Iraq today is a corrupt failed state plundered by factional leaders many of whom are under the thumb or on the payroll of what we have told is yet another Evil Empire, Iran:

The most powerful among these [Iraqi] militias have links to Iran.

Many Iraqis accuse the militias and Iran of undermining Iraq’s sovereignty and democracy because a number of them function outside Iraq’s military command and because many militias are also linked to political parties, lending a violent edge to politics....

 Sajad Jiyad...and other experts say that every party has tried to grab as much of the spoils of Iraq’s wealth and power as possible, and that over the years, corruption has become institutionalized to such an extent that it is not just the positions of ministers that are allocated by party; parties also control many lower-level jobs and contracts associated with a ministry and use them to reward supporters or curry political favor.

Cool cool cool.  Who could have foreseen that invading Iraq would be a strategic and humanitarian calamity?  Who could have known that supposed case that the Bush Administration confected to justify its war was all bollocks?

Here's my analysis piece originally published in the Spy in October 2002:

Finally a Commander-in-Chief with the rocks to do what has to be done – not like that lily-livered Harry Truman or that glad-handing Eisenhower.

Bush knows what we need to do to rid this world of the scourges of tyranny and terrorism – invade the world headquarters of Terror Incorporated. That's right: this time we're going to the Yalu to stay. 

Iraq is all well and good. I know we've got a score to settle there, but that's nothing compared to the unfinished business on the Korean peninsula. My boys in Seoul are rarin' to go and my sources tell me that the North Koreans will crumple like they did back in the fall of 1950 when confronted with the might of the United States Army, ably assisted by our many allies. 

If you think that was a bit over the top, remember that George W. Bush declared Iraq, Iran, and North Korea to be an “Axis of Evil,” but quit the job at one out of three.

By the way, whatever happened to David Frum, the Bush flack who coined that immortal phrase?  Surely he must have slunk off to obscurity or Toronto (essentially the same thing).

As devoted readers of the Spy are aware, he's thriving as a gasbag for hire, along with other warmongers like Billy Kristol and Max Boot.

Boot at least has admitted he was wrong about Iraq:

In retrospect, I was wildly overoptimistic about the prospects of exporting democracy by force, underestimating both the difficulties and the costs of such a massive undertaking. I am a neocon no more, at least as that term has been understood since 9/11. https://t.co/JhztGTgtrz

— Max Boot 🇺🇦🇺🇸 (@MaxBoot) March 10, 2023

albeit with the same insouciance that normally accompanies a confession of error in choosing Kansas and Purdue for the Final Four. 

The Times piece was accompanied by an even more devastating analysis that asks the simple question: why did George Bush invade Iraq in the first place, knowing as he must have the weapons and terror stories were just crap used to persuade the non-Bonesmen rubes [Surely, Congress and the American people? – Ed.].

Twenty years later, he's doin' fine!

The answer will not astonish you:

“If there was a hidden reason, the one I heard most was that we needed to change the geopolitical momentum after Sept. 11,” [Bush Administration flunky Richard] Haass has said of internal deliberations. “People wanted to show that we can dish it out as well as take it. We’re not a pitiful helpless giant.” 

If anyone can think of a better reason to launch a war of choice that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and showed that the United States was in fact pitiful and helpless, please pass it on to that pitiful helpless pygmy, George Bush. 

Twenty years on, America has taken a couple of lessons from the Iraq debacle.  The right lesson is that we do not send our fine young troops into mortal danger unless there is an overwhelming need for their sacrifice.

As usual, Republicans, addled by their perpetual unjustified white grievance, have drawn the wrong lesson.  They now believe that we should let Putin run rampant until he reaches whatever he believes to be the proper boundaries of the Russian Empire, which once included Alaska.  Instead, we should focus our military on machine-gunning refugees seeking legal entry at our Southern border like so many British regiments on the Somme.

There's one final lesson that can be drawn from the Iraq War and 60 years of Republican f**k ups in foreign policy and national security.  (Elsewhere on page 1 of today's Times you can learn how Republicans tried to induce Iran to stonewall resolution of the hostage crisis to grease the election of St. Ronald of Bitburg). 

The lesson is simple.  The last Republican you could trust to protect American national security responsibly and rationally was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Judge criticized in public forum; free speech dead

By Scott V. Sandford
Legal Correspondent

It's been a tough week in Silicon Valley.  First, tech's Masters of the Universe lost hundreds of millions of dollars in unguaranteed deposits of Silicon Valley Bank.  Then, these galaxy brains couldn't flee to Tahoe because the weather in the Sierra has been awful.

Worst of all, Stanford Law students heckled a federal judge.  Thus ended free speech in America, according to the usual whiners.

Judge Kyle didn't get the reception he wanted

What happened in Palo Alto?  Was this poor judge tarred and feathered and drummed off campus?  Shot in his bed like Breonna Taylor?  Denied the right to choose their fundamental identity?

Trigger warning: the following contains harrowing scenes of a white man being criticized and should only be read while lying on a chaise and drinking a Chivas.

The judge in question, a gratuitously cruel hard-right Trump appointee to the bent Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals named Kyle Duncan, was invited by the hard-right Federalist Society to blather on about the successful efforts of him and his fellow hard-right Republicans to further bigotry and disease while imposing their own policy preferences on the elected political branches [Surely, it was a talk entitled “The Fifth Circuit in Conversation with the Supreme Court: Covid, Guns, and Twitter?” – Ed.]

The first outrage was that in lieu of the fawning that federal judges expect from law schools and anyone else seeking favors from them, Duncan was confronted by a Stanford Law dean who had the temerity to express, wait for it, an opposing view:

U.S. Circuit Judge Stuart Kyle Duncan, a member of the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, in an interview said he was "offended" and "disturbed" by the "deeply uncivil behavior" of the students who derailed a speech he was set to deliver, as well as that of a law school administrator who he says "attacked" him in her introductory remarks.

So his right to free speech was crushed like a cigarette butt because someone else exercised their right to free speech?

As our Torts professor used to say, “Too bad.  So sad.”

The administrator's critique was directed at what the untutored might think was the subject of the meeting: the judge's decisions, which of course chapped Judge Snowflake's tender pink butt:

He also criticized a Stanford official, Tirien Steinbach, the law school's associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, who...addressed him and the crowd before the judge spoke.

This is how you deal with hecklers!

"For many people at the law school who work here, who study here, and who live here, your advocacy—your opinions from the bench—land as absolute disenfranchisement of their rights,” she told Duncan in the video clip.

That sounds like free expression to us, but it was too much to be borne for a judge used to fawning acquiescence from everyone he comes into contact with.

But it only got worse for this titan of white jurisprudence:

Duncan said he did not get far into his planned remarks, saying he was heckled by some of the estimated 100 protesters who he said shouted at him and were carrying "vulgar" signs in some cases critical of him.

They held up signs! Oh, the cruelty.  By the way, if you think free speech gives you the right to edit someone else's protest sign, maybe you should clerk on the Fifth Circuit.

And they also dared to express their views, just like Judge Snowflake.  Imagine!  Apparently the judge did not understand the difference between his courtroom, where he can silence anyone for any reason at any time, and a public forum, where he can't:

"I told [students] this is not going to work in a courtroom, this way of disagreement," he said. "Maybe that’s where we are going as a society, but that doesn’t work in my courtroom." 

Did he not know where he was? More likely, he thought that he was entitled to the same brown-nosed deference that he gets in court, and he was sad that he didn't get it. This may be regrettable, but it is not in fact an issue of suppression of free speech.

In case you were concerned that the protesters were uncivil, you will be pleased to know that Judge Kyle gave as good as he got, at least if you think crude insults are the quintessence of reason:

Law student Tessa Silverman, who attended the protest, told Reuters that Duncan himself appeared angry and called some students "idiots," something Duncan acknowledged and repeated during Reuters' interview.

"They are idiots," he said. "They are hypocrites and they are bullies."

Doesn't sound like a hypocritical third-rate judge trying to bully students who dared to express their disagreement with him, now does it?

By the way, is there a pervasive climate at Stanford shutting down free speech when it spews out of the mouths or right-wing bullies and hatemongers? 

Uh, no:

Heckle him? Not for long!

Right-wing political commentator Matt Walsh spoke at an event co-organized by the Stanford College Republicans (SCR) and Young America’s Foundation (YAF) at Dinkelspiel Auditorium on Wednesday night, urging the audience to reject “insane and poisonous gender ideology.”

The event came the day after Walsh joined Mississippi governor Tate Reeves on Tuesday in signing a bill that restricts youth transition-related health care. Currently, Walsh is promoting his controversial 2022 documentary titled “What Is A Woman?” The film has been criticized for its transphobic content and opposition to LGBTQ+ education in schools.

No protests materialized during the event. Instead, Walsh’s speech was countered by Community Care events hosted by several student groups on campus, including Queer Student Resources (QSR), the Women’s Community Center (WCC) and Students for the Liberation of All Peoples (SLAP).

Speaking to a crowd of around 600 people, including individuals who are not Stanford students or affiliates, Walsh said, “I’m not concerned about your feelings, I’m concerned about the truth. You are either a man or a woman. You don’t get to choose which category you belong to.”

Just pure anti-trans bigotry. And yet despite his hopes, this creep wasn't able to make a scene.  And by the way, what about the rights of kids and their parents to obtain gender-affirming treatment if they believe that's right for them?  That seems like a fundamental freedom to us, at least as fundamental as the right of a whacko judge to be kowtowed to every time he deigns to open his yip.

Cue the usual outrage about poor Judge Kyle and how his rights were cruelly abused by a no doubt very intimidating mob of Stanford law students and administrators.   We're not going to give them any air here, but look forward to another 435 pieces on the New York Times Opinion Page, The Atlantic, Bari's Big Beautiful Blog [Louise, please confirm name – Ed.], and a thousand other points of darkness.

What you won't hear from these stooges is what the students were upset about, and whether Judge Kyle is really a sterling defender of human rights.

How about the rights of trans individuals to choose their identity and request government to respect it, which seems fairly fundamental to any conception of rights based in dignity and respect?

Stuart Kyle Duncan, a judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, issued an advisory opinion Wednesday that dismissed a transgender defendant's chosen pronouns and the broader concept of gender identity, just less than two years after LGBTQ advocates warned that Duncan would not rule fairly if confirmed to the bench.... 

In his majority opinion, Duncan vacated the lower court ruling that denied Jett's appeal, saying the court lacked jurisdiction, but then he proceeded to mock Jett's court motion that she be referred to using female pronouns and her new name.

That sounds deeply uncivil to us, but of course it's different if you're not a white man (anymore).

How about the right to an abortion, which was still federally protected in 2020.  When extremist Greg Abbott tried to use the COVID pandemic as an excuse to force Texas women to birth unwanted children, guess where Judge Kyle landed?

In a 2-1 ruling, a three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a lower court order halting the restrictions, saying the previous ruling had not adequately considered the temporary burden on abortion access in light of the measure’s medical benefits.

“Given the extraordinary nature of these errors, the escalating spread of COVID-19, and the state’s critical interest in protecting the public health, we find the requirements for issuing the writ satisfied,” the majority said.

Judges Stuart Kyle Duncan, a Trump appointee, and Jennifer Elrod, a George W. Bush appointee, sided with Texas. Judge James Dennis, a Clinton appointee, dissented.

What medical benefits?  Why a mob of judges running roughshod over individual rights is OK when it happens in a Fifth Circuit courtroom, but not when it's Classroom E at Stanford Law School, is clear to Judge Kyle and his fellow defenders of free speech, but less so to us.

Stanford doesn't seem that scary to us.

Speaking of the right of life, when a lethal pandemic that has so far killed over 1,100,000 Americans raged across our land, and the democratically elected branches took effective measures to limit the catastrophic carnage, where was Kyle?

Of course, he blocked the Biden Administration from protecting workers from COVID infection by requiring vaccines despite OSHA's power to protect workers from workplace hazards.  That Kyle was upheld by an equally bent Republican Supreme Court doesn't affect the essentially ideological and lawless nature of Kyle's life-threatening actions:

Acting outside of its competence and without legal basis, the Court displaces the judgments of the Government officials given the responsibility to respond to workplace health emergencies.  

NFIB v. OSHA (21A244, Jan. 13, 2022) , dissenting op. at 2.

The point of the performative outrage over the mean things that were said to Judge Kyle in Palo Alto is twofold.  In part it furthers the narrative of reactionary white men as victims, a story that has been promulgated by white supremacists since Reconstruction.

Even more important, the endless whining helps to focus attention on the supposed white victims of intolerance and not on the real story: the attack of bent Republican judges (like Kyle) and Justices on the rule of law, the fundamental rights of minorities, and the abilities of the political branches to protect life and liberty under applicable statutes.  

We're rather more worried about whether extremist hatemongers like Florida Gov. CPeeODeSantis or Mississippi mudman Gov. Tate Reeves are free to torment trans kids and their parents than about whether grandiose Republican mediocrities get the silence and deference they don't deserve.

So were the Stanford Law students.  Good for them.

Another triumph of Republican deregulation: Children on the kill floor

By Immigration Correspondent Emma Goldman
with Financial Editor Samuel Insull

There's a lot of bloviating these days by well-educated gasbags and ill-educated Republican hatemongers about protecting children from evils as disparate as library books about Billy and his two daddies or seeking health care for gender dysphoria.  

When it comes to real issues of child abuse, whether it's sexual abuse at the hands of white Christian nationalist “pastors” or violence perpetrated by school and other police, we don't hear a peep from these valiant protectors of our children.

For example, where's the outrage at this story, from real reporter Maria Sacchetti at The Washington Post?

Triumph of deregulation

The Grand Island teens had been hired to scour blood and beef fat from the slippery “kill floor,” using high-pressure hoses, scalding water and industrial foams and acids, according to the Labor Department in federal court records. They sanitized electric knives, fat skinners and 190-pound saws used to split cow carcasses, according to court records. Some students suffered chemical burns and were so sleep-deprived after working their night shifts that they dozed off in classes, according to a local prosecutor and court records.

These teens were undocumented children aged 13-17, working the night shift at a hellish slaughterhouse in Nebraska, which apparently did not want to pay wages sufficient to attract adults to perform the gruesome work.

The employer claimed piously that it was the real victim here, and was shocked, shocked to discover that it had hired 13-year-olds.  How many 13-year-olds of your acquaintance look like adults to you?  Of course, it could have verified the kids' identity but it didn't:

Packers has faced no criminal charges, despite evidence that it failed to take basic steps to verify the age of its young employees.

The company that hired these kids did have to pay a $1.5 million fine, which must have made a deep impression on its owners:

Packers is owned by Blackstone, one of the world’s largest private-equity firms, which is valued in the market at more than $100 billion. A Blackstone official said that company, too, opposes child labor and is “pleased that PSSI has resolved this matter with the Department of Labor.” 

That's nice. By the way, it turns out that Packers just supplies warm bodies to the slaughterhouse, which is owned by another giganto corporation, JBS. They too have piously declared that they were shocked and surprised to discover that child labor was going on on their kill floor, while pocketing their winnings.

Surely, this is an isolated example and not part of a huge problem of employing undocumented children in dangerous factories.

Stop calling us Shirley:

The Times' first-rate account described the same story: contractors in charge of staffing hellish factories willingly overlook fake age claims made by children and hire them to perform dangerous grueling work for the benefit of giant corporations, like Pepsi and General Mills:

These workers are part of a new economy of exploitation: Migrant children, who have been coming into the United States without their parents in record numbers, are ending up in some of the most punishing jobs in the country, a New York Times investigation found. This shadow work force extends across industries in every state, flouting child labor laws that have been in place for nearly a century. Twelve-year-old roofers in Florida and Tennessee. Underage slaughterhouse workers in Delaware, Mississippi and North Carolina. Children sawing planks of wood on overnight shifts in South Dakota. 

 When caught the firms claim they were hoodwinked and are let off the hook:

The Labor Department is supposed to find and punish child labor violations, but inspectors in a dozen states said their understaffed offices could barely respond to complaints, much less open original investigations. When the department has responded to tips on migrant children, it has focused on the outside contractors and staffing agencies that usually employ them, not the corporations where they perform the work. 

Why is it that giant corporations believe that they can egregiously violate fundamental laws like those keeping children out of killing floors with absolute impunity?

The answer is obvious: because for the past 40 years they have, through their wholly-owned subsidiary the Republican Party, rigged the system to achieve exactly this end. 

St. Ronald of Bitburg: Child labor is freedom

Remember beloved Republican St. Ronald of Bitburg?  One of his most notorious quotes was “The most dangerous words in the English language are ‘I'm from the Government and I'm here to help.’”

This was received by all media as a brilliant populist crowd-pleasing statement, rather than an attack on our armed forces, police, and fire fighters.

But in reality it was heard by his funders and country-club buddies as a license to do whatever the f*** they wanted, including sending children to the killing floor, with impunity.  

And they got that message.  Just ask the good Republican voters of East Palestine, Ohio.

If anyone wanted to solve the problem of sweating children in factories, they could enact any number of sensible regulations.  The Labor Department could require all employers with more than say 20 full time staff to use E-Verify to determine whether the 13 year old sitting in HR claiming to be 37 can be legally hired.

And there's an even simpler way, based on the principle of economic self-interest.

In lots of cases, when people commit crimes, or even if they are suspected of committing the crimes, their assets are seized as the fruit of the supposed criminal enterprise.  These forfeiture laws are often abused and turned against the poor and powerless.

But what if they were used against the rich and mighty?  What if all violations of child labor laws were punished by the civil forfeiture of all proceeds from their use, which would be the revenues the corporation earns from the sale of goods produced with illegal child labor?  Then General Mills and JBS wouldn't be able to hide behind crooked labor contractors. Or rather, they would make the contractor hold them harmless from the costs of illegal child labor.   Let's try it and find out!

If this requires a change of law, don't bet on anything changing as long as Republicans stay in power, in large part through the votes of those harmed by lack of effective regulation, like those living downwind of or in the same watershed as toxic waste derailments.  And the Republicans depend on the financial support of plutocrats, like this guy:

Stephen Schwarzman, the founder and chief executive of Blackstone Group, also financially supported a campaign group – Georgians for Kelly Loeffler – that is alleged to later have published a Facebook ad that darkened the skin of Loeffler’s Democratic opponent, Raphael Warnock....

Public records show that Schwarzman donated about $33.5m to groups supporting Republicans in the 2020 election cycle, including $3m to Trump’s America First Action Pac, a donation he made in January 2020. Schwarzman also donated funds to political action committees supporting seven Republicans who, months later, voted to invalidate results in Pennsylvania and Arizona,...a spokesperson for Schwarzman emphasized that the CEO’s last donation to Trump’s presidential campaign was in January 2020, long before the former president was accused of inciting an insurrection, and that the two have not spoken “in over six months”.

Schwarzman’s spokesperson also emphasized that his assistance was “purely about matters related to economic policy and trade, not politics”.

But Trump engaged in controversial and racist rhetoric long before January 2020.... A spokesperson for Schwarzman said: “Of course Steve finds these statements objectionable and disagrees with them....The spokesperson said Schwarzman supported Trump during the Democratic primaries because he believed his “policy and economic agenda were the best path forward”. 

“They said they were 18!”

Blackstone Group? The same Blackstone Group that owned the labor contractor who hired desperate undocumented kids to hose down the remains of slaughtered animals?  

It reminds us of a 19th Century poem

The golf links lie so near the mill
That every single day
The children can look up from the looms
And see the men at play.

These days the golf clubs favored by rich s***s like Schwarzman aren't anywhere near the factories where exhausted children are exploited to give Schwarzman his eighth billion dollars.

Otherwise when it comes to rich Republicans getting away with sweating kids, the song remains the same.