Is Cruel and Unusual Punishment Required for Elite Amateur Athletics?

 

“I blame Larry Nassar and I also blame an entire system that enabled and perpetrated his abuse… [The USA Gymnastics and the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee] “knew that I was abused by their official team doctor long before I was ever made aware of their knowledge.”

Teary-eyed Simone Biles in her testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee in September of 2021. Pictured above.

It’s just the most glaring example of the physical and sexual abuse endured by elite athletes competing in high school, college, league, national and international sports. Young competitors are belittled, often punched, slapped or kicked, and as the above quote suggests, sexually abused – from unwarranted touching to so much more. Such abusers range from fellow athletes to coaches, trainers and team doctors… and the shocking reality is how many participants are in such athletic programs with serial abuse… and choose to keep their mouths shut for fear of losing opportunities to advance in a world of sports program supervisors seemingly linked in a vow of silence to even the most obvious criminal activities. Even for those athletes who advance to elite championship status, the emotional scares are all but impossible to erase.

Let’s start with horrific events that elicited Ms Biles’ testimony quoted above. “Female athletes have stated they complained to authorities – including various employees at Michigan State University – about [team doctor and athletic trainer, Larry] Nassar's behavior starting in at least 1997, with some athletes stating abuse occurred in 1994 but USA Gymnastics did not take action against him until 2015. According to court filings and interviews, Maggie Nichols and her coach, Sarah Jantzi, reported Nassar to USA Gymnastics officials on June 17, 2015, after the coach overheard Nichols and another gymnast talking about Nassar's behavior.

“In September 2016, USA Gymnastics cut ties with Nassar ‘after learning of athlete concerns’. On September 20, 2016, The Indianapolis Star had reported that Rachael Denhollander and another former gymnast had accused Nassar of sexual abuse. After having been reassigned from clinical and teaching duties in August, Nassar was fired by Michigan State University on September 20, 2016.

“Lawrence Gerard Nassar (born August 16, 1963) is an American serial child rapist and former family medicine physician. From 1996 to 2014, he was the team doctor of the United States women's national gymnastics team, where he used his position to exploit and sexually assault hundreds of young athletes as part of the largest sexual abuse scandal in sports history.

“In 2016, Nassar was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting at least 265 young women and girls under the guise of medical treatment. His victims included numerous Olympic and United States women's national gymnastics team gymnasts… Nassar was sentenced to 60 years in federal prison on December 7, 2017, after pleading guilty to possession of child pornography and tampering with evidence on July 11, 2017. On January 24, 2018, Nassar was sentenced to an additional 40 to 175 years in Michigan State Prison, after pleading guilty in Ingham County to seven counts of sexual assault. On February 5, 2018, he was sentenced to an additional 40 to 125 years in Michigan State Prison after pleading guilty to an additional three counts of sexual assault in Eaton County.” Wikipedia.

The system did not out Nassar, who was abusing in plain site; it took an exposé in The Indianapolis Star. It would be shocking, even if this were a rare and isolated incident. But although happening less frequently today, it is and was anything but rare. Writing on behalf of the Yale University School of Public Health on July 29th, particularly referencing that University’s Sports Equity Lab and its recent report, Matt Kristoffersen says: “A former Ghanaian track star who founded the Sports Equity Lab at the Yale School of Public Health, Tuakli-Wosornu [MD, PhD] leads an interdisciplinary group of students, faculty, and scholars whose research has addressed some of the most important challenges facing athletes today.

Her team’s most recent report, Policy and Legal Frameworks for Preventing Interpersonal Violence in Elite Sport, suggests that a commitment to athlete-centered sports governance among major sports organizations is essential to protecting athletes from the harmful interactions that can uniquely arise in sports settings. The report was produced in collaboration with the Global Health Justice Partnership, an initiative of the Yale Law School and Yale School of Public Health, and the Schell Center for International Human Rights at Yale… ‘We need to flip the script,’ Tuakli-Wosornu said. ‘We must start from the perspectives and experiences of athletes, because at the end of the day, they're the experts and most valuable people on any sports field. Nothing happens if we don't lace up. Nothing happens if we don't show up for practice or competition.’..

“The inherent power imbalance between many athletes and the authority figures in their sports can lead to a variety of abuses ranging from physical, financial, and sexual to psychological and emotional, the report states. It can also foster unfair working conditions that breach international standards. The existing structures of sports organizations make it difficult for athletes to bring negative experiences forward, exacerbating their feelings of disempowerment, the report states.

“The International Olympic Committee and other bodies need to be reformed, Tuakli-Wosornu said, because they remain largely institution-centered, untouchable by public law regimes, and often use internal arbitration methods to settle disputes. By using well-documented public health practices such as implementation science, trauma- and violence-informed practice, and community engagement, sports organizations can better translate research findings into real-life applications, humanely engage athletes, and prioritize qualitative data to better understand athletes’ real concerns. By doing this, Tuakli-Wosornu and her team believe the current hierarchy of sport organizations can be improved so that athletes’ needs and experiences are prioritized.”

Even today, the hierarchies in sports, very much including the various Olympic governing bodies, have a horrendous tradition of looking the other way, even as the physical and psychological damage inflicted on athletes linger for years, if not forever. Simone Biles’ “timeout for mental reassessment,” as she dropped out of the last Summer Olympics, is the clearest example of the lasting trauma of this abuse-followed-by-silence syndrome. She certainly came back strongly this summer… as her medal count mounted… but her message reverberated across the Olympic Village… and to the training facilities of young athletes everywhere.

I’m Peter Dekom, and all young athletes deserve safety and integrity in their training and competitions… and we can and must do so much better.

How Deep is Your Fake?

 

“I’m worried as we move closer to the election, this is going to explode… It’s going to get much worse than it is now.”

Emilio Ferrara, computer science professor at USC Viterbi School of Engineering.

Who knew that Taylor Swift, with all those Swifties, was a major supporter of Donald Trump? I mean there was a picture of Ms Swift, in a patriotic pose wearing an Uncle Sam outfit, seeming to endorse Donald Trump for President. “Taylor Wants You To Vote For Donald Trump,” purportedly says Swift. Wow! Who knew? And that photo above makes a pretty strong impression. But neither were remotely true.

Artificial intelligence can put words in anyone’s mouth, and with a few perfectly designed strokes of the keyboard, can add very credible images to boot. Old hat these days, but increasingly user-friendly AI software puts the power to create these “deep fakes” into the hands of anyone who cares to apply them.

It may have accelerated with motion pictures like Avatar and other special effects productions, but the now ubiquitous basic (simple version) technology puts this AI computing power in the hands of a lot of people… some of whom cleverly post a small disclaimer somewhere on the “fake” post. “Amid the surging interest in OpenAI, the maker of popular generative AI tool ChatGPT, tech companies are encouraging people to use new AI tools that can generate text, images and videos.” Queenie Wong and Wendy Lee for the August 21st Los Angeles Times.

Indeed, we’ve seen even some early fakes using Barack Obama’s voice and image years ago, but today, it’s literally everywhere. As for that Swift-as-Uncle-Sam post, “Over the weekend [mid-August], Trump amplified the lie when he shared the image along with others depicting support from Swift fans to his 7.6 million followers on his social network, Truth Social.

“Deception has long played a part in politics, but the rise of artificial intelligence tools that allow people to rapidly generate fake images or videos by typing out a phrase adds another complex layer to a familiar problem on social media. Known as deepfakes, these digitally altered images and videos can make it appear someone is saying or doing something they aren’t… As the race between Trump and Democratic nominee Kamala Harris intensifies, disinformation experts are sounding the alarm about generative AI’s risks…

“Platforms such as Facebook and X have rules against manipulated images, audio and videos, but they’ve struggled to enforce these policies as AI-generated content floods the internet. Faced with accusations they’re censoring political speech, they’ve focused more on labeling content and fact-checking, rather than pulling posts down. And there are exceptions to the rules, such as satire, that allow people to create and share fake images online.

“‘We have all the problems of the past, all the myths and disagreements and general stupidity, that we’ve been dealing with for 10 years,’ said Hany Farid, a UC Berkeley professor who focuses on misinformation and digital forensics. ‘Now we have it being supercharged with generative AI and we are really, really partisan.’… Farid, who analyzed the Swift images that Trump shared, said they appear to be a mix of both real and fake images, a ‘devious’ way to push out misleading content… ‘People share fake images for various reasons. They might be doing it to just go viral on social media or troll others. Visual imagery is a powerful part of propaganda, warping people’s views on politics including about the legitimacy of the 2024 presidential election, he said.

“On X, images that appear to be AI-generated depict Swift hugging Trump, holding his hand or singing a duet as the Republican strums a guitar. Social media users have also used other methods to falsely claim Swift endorsed Trump… X labeled one video that falsely claimed Swift endorsed Trump as ‘manipulated media.’ The video, posted in February, uses footage of Swift at the 2024 Grammys and makes it appear as if she’s holding a sign that says, ‘Trump Won. Democrats Cheated!’”

The problem, of course, is the sheer volume of such fakes… and the near impossibility of tracking them all. The problem is compounded by those using the First Amendment and the “safe harbor” for intermediary platforms, under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, as shields against liability. Sure, there can be “take down” notices and the underlying poster may have individual liability, but good luck finding and tracking it all. Even when those take down notice are sent, by the time the fake is removed, the damage has already been done. These fakes undermine the elections themselves, for example, as fuel for another possible Trump claim that the whole election was rigged. The harsh reality that without holding the platforms more responsible for their content, this issue is spiraling out of control.

But even where fakery is not at issue, using music from songwriters and performers with strong political beliefs, in support of political campaigns for people they oppose, is making news. Mike Gavin, writing for NBC News on August 21st, asks: “From Celine Dion to Kid Rock, can political rallies use music without the artist's permission?... Just as a politician might not listen to the music of an artist they aren't a fan of, musicians might not want their work used by a political party they aren't affiliated with.

“In many cases, campaign organizers pay an annual fee to obtain a blanket license from performance rights organizations to play or perform any work within a rightsholder's entire catalog… ‘The campaign will use it for live performances only, which means when they're outside somewhere or they're in an arena where they're just gonna put out the song live, no one's recording it, it's not being simulcast, it's not being streamed, none of that,’ said Kenneth Freundlich, a business, entertainment and intellectual property attorney ‘That implicates only one right… You do not need to license the master recording of the song for a live performance only. So, what would normally happen is when you go to a concert, the venues themselves get what's called a blanket license from the performance rights organizations.’… But even with that license, an artist or license holder can still object. So, campaign organizers often just press play on a song and hope it doesn't anger those holding the rights to it.”

It’s getting to the point where radical followers accept as truth that the fake and underlying music are both accurate and evidence of support for the candidate or issue in question. They just cannot “unsee” or “unhear” those snippets even if they contain disclaimers or have been taken down as false. This plague is beginning to infect our election process big time.

I’m Peter Dekom, and how much easier is it to question election integrity or cry “stolen election” where so much of what we see and hear is indeed fake, subconsciously manipulative and/or pervasive?

But Raising Cats is So Much Cheaper than Raising Children

 

Actuarial predictions, suggesting that by 2030 half of our child-bearing women will not have children, is very much reflected in the current US birthrate: 1.62 live births per woman, noting that replacement level, needed to keep the population steady, is 2.1 live births per woman. Without replenishment from immigrants (an unpopular choice), this trend projects fewer consumers, fewer workers in the longer term, fewer taxpayers in our immediate future with a serious hit to the cost of living (expensive workers remain) and our overall economic growth.

The decline in our fertility rate is relatively recent. J.D. Vance, Trump’s increasingly unpopular running mate, argues that citizens without children should have fewer voting rights than those with kids, because, he believes, those without children have less of a stake in our body politic. He argues that incenting external childcare, no-fault divorce and allowing abortions and IVF are antithetical to a solid, faith-family-driven society. He also thinks deportation of undocumented immigrants – a mega-billion-dollar effort – will be good for us all.

I thought the Make America Great Again vector was targeting returning the United States to the pre-civil rights litigation/legislation era – to the 1950s/60s. J.D. Vance’s proposals seem to be focusing on returning the United States to the values and standards of life in the 18th and 19th centuries, which rubs not only childless cat ladies the wrong way but most of modern Americans.

Where GOP mandates vaporize the right to abortions, women are now having babies when they are too young, totally unprepared and unable to support or afford the cost of raising a child… and not one penny is being authorized by these rightwing judges and legislators to provide financial and social support to these abandoned mothers. That’s forgetting about those states where rape and incest are no excuse, plus the resulting spillover resulting the denial of medical care by doctors afraid of overzealous rightwing prosecutors looking for criminal convictions.

There are so many reasons couples that would have fallen into the parenting pattern a decade or two ago but are today forgoing having children. When they would have normally planned a pregnancy. There are political reasons. The hateful polarization has become so pronounced that we seem to be living in two countries… and it not getting better. Climate change is making life increasingly difficult, from record-breaking heat to more mega-billion disasters (tropical storms, tornadoes, coastal storm surges and rising tides, flooding in some regions with wildfires in others, the migration of dangerous animals and insects and the material impact on agricultural land). Guns are now the leading death among children and teens, just a rightwing judges make gun ownership increasingly easier.

J.D. Vance bizarre 19th century values may have provoked a litany of responses, but I will concentrate on one individual’s summary of what Gens Y and Z seem to face. Writing for the August 15th BuzzFeed, Alana Valko looked at how one 29-year-old summarized the biggest issue, well beyond that “childless cat lady rubric”: “[O]thers are not so quick to blame cat ladies and Beyoncé fans — many argue that it's not that millennials don't want children; it's that they can't in the current environment. This is the case for 29-year-old Charlie Fitzgerald, who goes by she/they/he pronouns, and who went viral for laying out why millennials aren't having kids…

“Charlie began, ‘I'm gonna drop some opinions on the whole 'millennials aren't having kids' thing as a working-class millennial.’… It absolutely baffles me that the government is pretending like they don't know why we're not having kids because, frankly, it is glaringly obvious. The economy is a [$%^*] tire fire right now. The cost of groceries , the cost and availability of baby formula , the cost of diapers, the cost of childcare , the cost of giving birth in the United States… Statistically speaking, when you're born poor in this country, you're probably gonna die poor, and your kids are gonna be in the same boat. Being poor [$%^*] sucks. I don't want that for my kid.’ This is a common phenomenon known as the poverty trap , or the cycle of poverty…

“Having a child in the US is notably not cheap — Business Insider found that raising one small child in 2024 will cost at least $25,714 (up 42% since 2016). In comparison, the average annual salary nationwide is about $59,428. That means you'd spend 43% of your income on your child alone, not including your own expenses like rent, food, healthcare, or taxes… ‘It's not that we didn't try to have better lives,’ Charlie said. ‘A lot of us went to college and what did that get us? A bunch of us have debt that we're never gonna be able to pay off. A lot of us have degrees that are almost irrelevant because the jobs that we were told were there when we got our degrees aren't really there, as it turns out. Or they are there, and the people that are in those positions can't afford to retire, so they're just gonna stay where they're at…

“‘Where does that put the rest of us?’ Charlie asked, regarding people who cannot find a job right now, with or without a degree. ‘Entry-level jobs, retail, food, customer service. In the state that I live in, that averages, like, $11 to $15 an hour.’… Charlie continued, ‘And before y'all hit my comments saying that people making that little money shouldn't have kids, that's most of us.’ A 2023 survey found that 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, meaning one missed paycheck or unexpected cost could put them in a tough spot.

“As well as the costs of caring for a child, which prevent many millennials from having children, Charlie also pointed out that many parents don't have paid maternity leave. ‘[This] opens up a whole slew of issues because you can't afford to take that time off, so you gotta go right the [$%^*] back to work,’ she said. While the US Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) protects eligible employees up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, there is no federal paid maternity leave in America, and many people can't afford to take unpaid leave even if it's offered.”

The housing affordability crisis is just an ugly mirror of the demise of upward mobility, and despite MAGA demands to end all or most abortions, just about all the possible programs to help younger families, from childcare and medical coverage to educational costs, are on the GOP chopping block. What’s worse, tax cuts for the rich will decimate the few remaining programs that might survive… and the Trump pledge to assess a minimum 10% tariff on all imports will push costs, mostly into the homes of those who can afford it least. Think the homeless issue is all about the lazy, the addicted and the mentally ill? Take another look at those in that category who hobble to low-paying work every day… or have been looking for a job as best they can.

I’m Peter Dekom, and anyone who believes only in winning a culture war should take a long hard look at the impact of those “fighting words” on their day-to-day quality of lives… and ask exactly what kind of country are they really voting for.

 

The Hidden War We Don’t Care About

 

The Hidden War We Don’t Care About

Where starvation, sexual violence and mass slaughter rule

It looks like Gaza, maybe even a bit like Haiti or even much of Ukraine, but it rages out of control with little or no notice. Most recently, violence exploded to a new horrific level. You can search for it on social media, newspapers and mainstream media; it is there. But it is a secondary story, buried in the back pages, of an extreme example of polarization. What happens when two warlords (opposing generals) decide to duke it out with absolutely no concern for civilians. The battleground is urban and rural. It is everywhere. Desertification already has made growing crops exceptionally difficult; this internal war has made growing anything but hatred and fear nearly impossible.

The country is the Sudan, and this civil war has been raging for a year and a half… but it recently escalated as this report from the August 17th Reuters describes: “Fighters from Sudan's paramilitary group rampaged through a central village, looting and burning and killing at least 85 people, including women and children, authorities and residents said Saturday, the latest atrocity in the country’s 18-month devastating conflict.

“The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces began attacking [the town of] Galgani in the central province of Sennar late in July and last week [2nd week in August] RSF fighters ‘indiscriminately opened fire on the village’s unarmed residents’ after they resisted attempts to abduct and sexually assault women and girls, Sudan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement. More than 150 villagers were wounded, it said.

“The RSF has been repeatedly accused of massacres, rapes and other gross violations across the country since the war started in April last year, when simmering tensions between the military and the group exploded into open fighting in the capital Khartoum and elsewhere.” It’s an anything-goes struggle that no one with power really cares to end. Atrocities are the new normal from both sides, but the death toll is staggering. Writing for the August 15th The Morning newsfeed from the New York Times, Declan Walsh describes this country in ruins:

“Only five years ago, Sudan was the source of euphoric hopes, when crowds of young people gathered to oust President Omar Hassan al-Bashir, the country’s dictator of three decades. For once, it seemed that a popular revolution in an Arab country might succeed… Artists flourished. Politics opened up. Western governments offered to cancel billions of dollars in debt. Al-Bashir went to jail, convicted on corruption charges… Those dreams were dashed after just two years, in 2021, when Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary group known as the Rapid Support Forces, unwilling to cede power to civilians, united to overthrow the government in a coup.

“But the alliance was short-lived. The coup leaders — the army chief, Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the R.S.F. commander, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan — fell out over how to merge their forces. Then they went to war…. When the first shots rang out on the streets of the capital, Khartoum, in April 2023, many residents figured it wouldn’t last long. Sudan had experienced dozens of coups, more than any country in Africa, since it won independence in 1956. Most were short-lived and bloodless.

“But the military found that the R.S.F., a force it had once helped to create, was now a formidable adversary with fighters more battle-hardened than its own forces. By December, the R.S.F. had seized most of Khartoum and the country’s breadbasket region, Jazeera State, as well as much of Darfur, the western region that suffered a genocide two decades earlier.

“General Hamdan, the R.S.F. leader, claims to be fighting for Sudan’s marginalized and has sought to distance his force from its roots in the Janjaweed militias that terrorized Darfur in the 2000s. But his lofty speeches are at odds with the massacres, rape and ethnic violence that human rights groups say his fighters commit… The Sudanese military is also guilty of war crimes, U.S. officials say, including indiscriminate bombing and the use of starvation as a weapon of war…

“[The] toll in Sudan is heartbreaking: thousands killed, millions scattered and cities besieged or destroyed across a vast nation three times as large as France. Much of the capital lies in rubble. This month [August], international officials declared that part of Sudan was in a famine. At least 100 people die of hunger every day… And there are signs it could soon get much worse… Despite all that, the conflict has received scant attention from world leaders or money for humanitarian aid. But its soaring human cost is making it ever harder to ignore. U.N. experts warn that Sudan is again spiraling into genocidal violence, as it did in the early 2000s. Samantha Power, the head of USAID, says it is ‘the single largest humanitarian crisis on the planet.’

“One faint glimmer of hope lies in tentative peace talks, mediated by the United States, that started in Switzerland yesterday [8/14]… Sudan’s military didn’t even send a team of negotiators. But officials alarmed by the spiraling hunger crisis say there is little choice but to try. Millions of lives could be on the line.”

Those civilians who are strong enough to flee have crossed into neighboring nations, most of which are ill-equipped to handle the tens of thousands of refugees seeking safety, shelter and whatever food they can scrounge. But back in Sudan, raw power is battling raw power for control of this historically violent nation. Life is not held in high regard there; but military force is.

Civil wars are generally driven by anger, bigotry and egotistical “I’m right and only I can fix it” leaders. Those who oppose each of these “choose sides” demanding factions, are simply dehumanized and dismissed as vermin. Death and sexual violence are thus justified. Sudan’s struggle is mostly lost on the West (even as the US attempts to mediate), consumed with the Palestinian/Israel War (and all the battling Iranian surrogates), the Putin attack on Ukraine and the spate of recent and pending left vs rightwing elections all over the world. Who cares if a distant land, seemingly devoid of commercial value to the West and one with one of the worst track records on internal strike on earth, is off killing its own dark-skinned citizens? Is ignoring this slaughter just one more form of racism? Without foreign intervention, can this ignominious slaughter end?

I’m Peter Dekom, and not only are there lessons in this conflict for Americans as well, but are we also being reminded that looking the other way and letting genocide triumph lessens all of us?

Axis of Evil, Part Two: Russia, China, North Korea and Iran

“No, I would not protect you… In fact, I would encourage them to do whatever the hell they want.

You got to pay. You got to pay your bills.” 

Donald Trump, to NATO nations who did not do as he demanded, literally days before Vladimir Putin ordered Russian forces to invade and conquer Ukraine

Just as track and field star Jesse Owens – a 4-gold-medalist Black athlete from Ohio at the 1936 Berlin Olympics, who showed up Hitler’s not-quite-so-superior Aryan Germanic race – so too have recent US elections slammed Russian and Chinese propaganda expectations as they castigated the United States as a place where African Americans were and always would be marginalized. Then Barack Obama was elected President, and now biracial Kamala Harris has become the front-runner for the November election.

China and Russia also pledged to bury the US and fly past us in economic strength and size. Yet Russia is nothing more than a one-trick economic pony, with its major manufacturing export being military hardware and the balance of its economy dependent on the oil and gas market. See my July 2nd Russia as a Banana Republic Resource Extraction Economy blog. And as for China, that centralized economic planning, usurping the hitherto successful de facto capitalist growth, was finally showing that its one-trick-economic pony, under Xi Jinping’s autocratic control, was failing at an alarming rate. See my June 13th Xi Jinping is Not a Taipei Personality blog for the details.

Those failures are profound, but they also motivate autocratic rulers in those four Axis nations to distract their populations from their economic woes by refocusing on military grandeur and successes on the battlefield. Iran, which now controls fellow Shiite Iraq even as Americans believe Baghdad is an ally, is laughing as its surrogates (including Hamas in Gaza, Houthis in Yemen, Hezbollah in Lebanon, etc.) hammer away at Israel and her western allies… and have convinced much of the rest of the world to look at Israel as a pariah state. With Donald Trump once the likely victor in November – given the Donald’s bromance with autocrats everywhere – policy planners in each of these enemy nations are now stumbling over each other to figure out what to make of the radical shift in US presidential politics over the last few months.

Indeed, Kamala Harris’ nomination acceptance speech was heavily laden with support against these enemy states, emphasizing NATO and building up American military capacity, followed by a pledge to support Ukraine until Russia gives up its quest to conquer that nation. Trump is/was malleable, susceptible to manipulation through flattery and his own desire to have autocratic power, and wildly predictable. That the US economy survived the pandemic to reassert her place as the best performing economy on Earth, hammered home that these toxic autocrats’ assumptions about the downfall of the United States, which they pictured as on the verge of a civil war, were simply wrong.

Yet there is so much happening that we have to ask, even as the United States has an unexpected advantage over these foes, what can we do about all these challenges? “The current moment is uniquely complicated, with multiple crises around the world increasingly interconnected. Bloody wars in Ukraine and the Middle East are showing no signs of abating, Iran is contemplating a military response against Israel, China is engaging in low-level sea clashes with the Philippines and intimidating Taiwan, and North Korea is ramping up provocations against South Korea.

“Retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served in senior national-security roles in the Trump White House, compared the state of the world to a game of whack-a-mole—with all the moles now up. ‘Because the crises erupt at the same time, the capability is not there to handle all simultaneously, and it gets out of control,’ he said. ‘The ability to react is limited. You’re stretched, and you never want to be stretched.’

“Though still by far the biggest military power, the U.S. is hard-pressed to deal with the world on fire, especially as China keeps growing its military muscle, some strategists warn. While the U.S. and the European nations have moved to increase military production, including at brand-new ammunition plants, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, these steps are nowhere near sufficient for the requirements of modern conflict, they say… ‘We are already involved in two wars, and we are struggling right now to keep up providing munitions and equipment to our allies. If we get involved in a global war, we would be significantly challenged to deal with our adversaries and the capabilities that they have,’ said retired Gen. Jack Keane, a former vice chief of staff for the Army.” The Wall Street Journal, August 24th.

The falling Chinese economy is a profound embarrassment to its leadership. “Beijing’s solution to a weak Chinese economy—putting the country’s factory sector on steroids—is squeezing businesses around the world and raising the specter of a new global trade war… The European Union’s recent decision to impose tariffs on imported Chinese electric vehicles is only the latest sign of deepening tensions. The U.S. earlier this year hiked levies on Chinese steel, aluminum, EVs, solar cells and other products. Turkey has jacked up duties on Chinese EVs, while Pakistan raised tariffs on Chinese stationery and rubber.

“Other countries have opened antidumping investigations to see whether Chinese goods are being sold below fair value. India is examining Chinese pigments and chemicals. Japan is looking at electrodes. The U.K. is investigating imports of excavators and biodiesel, while Argentina and Vietnam are probing Chinese microwave ovens and wind towers.

“Behind it all is a bold but risky calculation by Beijing that investing more in manufacturing can restore the country’s economic vitality and build up its industrial resilience without triggering so much international pushback that it threatens China’s future... Interviews with policy advisers in Beijing and people who have consulted with Chinese officials show that China’s leadership faced a pivotal crossroads last year, as the country’s real-estate bust brought the economy to one of its weakest points in decades.” The Wall Street Journal, August 22nd.

But as much as China is taking on the United States, its dumping of less expensive manufactures is hurting developing nations the most. As in this example: “Thousands of miles away, in Chile, iron ore miner and steelmaker CAP is grappling with Beijing’s continued commitment to low-end commodity manufacturing, as an onslaught of cheap Chinese metal hits its shores. The firm said this month that it would shutter its giant Huachipato steel mill in central Chile indefinitely, with the loss of some 2,200 jobs. The company said it can’t compete with low-price Chinese metal even after the government raised tariffs on steel bars and other imported products.” And smaller nation do not have counter-leverage or the ability to protect themselves from China’s bully economics.

I’m Peter Dekom, and if Donald Trump’s presidential and post-2020 track record are any measure, we should realize both that Trump is the least likely leader to counter these autocratic efforts and that his stated intentions would weaken the United States both as to influence and economic power.

 

Amarillo Slim – The Chances of Getting a Neutral Judge in This Federal District

 

Forum shopping – filing lawsuits in easy-to-access courts in notoriously biased judicial districts to secure that biased judge – has always been a problem, but now, it has become a national epidemic, particularly with federal judges appointed by Donald Trump. Plaintiffs’ lawyers often want to inconvenience a defendant by filing in a jurisdiction far from the plaintiff, requiring lots of travel, the necessity to engage a local attorney with less of a track record or experience than in the plaintiff’s locale, perhaps even far from all the relevant events, witnesses and evidence.

A competent and neutral court would, in such circumstances, invoke the “inconvenient forum” option. According to the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute, “Forum non conveniens refers to a court's discretionary power to decline to exercise its jurisdiction where another court, or forum, may more conveniently hear a case.” But these Amarillo federal appointees – and more than a few other Trump-appointed judges – want to make national policy and simply refuse to let go of an important case that is vastly more appropriate elsewhere.

Trump appointees with limited experience – like the Miami federal judge (Aileen Cannon) presiding over the Trump documents criminal trial – also refuse to let go of case well beyond their clear ability to handle them. This, despite strong suggestions from more experienced judges in that district to move the case to a judge who has the relevant experience… and even after multiple reversals from the conservative Federal Circuit Court of Appeals above her.

Trump’s Supreme Court appointments, which have shifted that panel to rather pronounced 6-3 rightwing tribunal, has developed a pattern of sustaining these biased trial court decisions, in reversing decades of Supreme Court precedents, from abortion rights, gun control, voting and civil rights even to moving complex matters requiring deep expertise away from Congressionally approved expert federal administrative agencies to judges with strong biases but no particular expertise.

The poster judicial district for forum shopping, with an amazing track record with the US Supreme Court, is the Northern District of Texas. Writing for the August 1st Journal of the American Bar Association, Anna Stolley Persky drills down into the facts: “Since being appointed to the bench in 2019, federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, who sits in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas in Amarillo, has become known for rulings affecting efforts to ensure minors’ access to birth control and expand LGBTQ+ rights.

“Recently, he’s been in the spotlight for a nationwide injunction suspending the federal approval for mifepristone, a medication described as an abortion pill because it allows a woman to terminate a pregnancy in its early stages. In June, a unanimous U.S. Supreme Court found that the plaintiffs who challenged the Food and Drug Administration’s loosening of how the drug could be prescribed lacked standing, keeping access to the drug available [but without rejecting the underlying basis for Kacsmaryk’s ruling].

“Also, in December 2022, Kacsmaryk blocked a nationwide effort to end an immigration program started during then-President Donald Trump’s administration that requires some asylum-seekers from Mexico to be sent back while their immigration cases are ongoing.

“How does one judge end up handling so many high-profile cases? The answer is found in the way in which some federal courts distribute case assignments… In most of the country’s 94 federal district courts, cases are assigned to judges randomly. But the Northern District of Texas assigns cases by where they get filed, allowing parties to choose their judge. The district has 11 judges and is split into seven divisions. While some divisions are large, others, like Amarillo, are notably small. Kacsmaryk takes the bulk of the cases in the Amarillo division.

“Lawyers who practice in federal courts know that, and Kacsmaryk has become the judge of choice for conservative activist lawyers, says Alice Clapman, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law… What’s happening in Texas is ‘forum shopping on steroids,’ Clapman says. ‘It encourages gamesmanship and more extreme legal theories taking hold because plaintiffs can find and get completely receptive judges to make big policy decisions.’

“But Josh Blackman, a constitutional law professor at the South Texas College of Law Houston and an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, says judge shopping is ‘as old as the federal courts,’ and the real issue is the ability of a single judge to render a nationwide injunction… Concerns about judge shopping got so noticeable that the Judicial Conference of the United States jumped into the question of case assignment in March, and Congress is looking into the issue… ‘The concern, of course, is that people shouldn’t be able to pick a particular judge for his or her point of view,’ says Judith Resnik, a constitutional law professor at Yale Law School and the founding director of the Arthur Liman Center for Public Interest Law.”

Indeed, many of these form-shopped cases feature Biblical quotes and raw rightwing dogma as if these excerpts double for statutory or case law. What you see is isolated courts, where a single rightwing judge with bias virtually tattooed on his or her forehead, usurps “those arrogant” bastards in the seat of the federal government, Washinton, D.C. where most of the evidence, expertise and witnesses reside. What you get is chaos and instability where any action taken in the relevant venue (e.g., D.C. for government regulations, NYC and Delaware for major corporate matters, etc.) can be rent asunder by a distant and isolated judge, lacking underlying experience or expertise with a self-directed mission to take down laws and administrators, makes a major ruling that impacts the entire United States.

I’m Peter Dekom, and political dogma has infected all three branches of government, where doctrinaire extremes replace logic and the established rule of law to erode some of the most fundamental aspects of our national identity, rejecting the very notion of governing for “what’s best for the nation.”

Not All Evangelicals are Trumpers

 

“Happy Holy Week! Let’s Make America Pray Again… As we lead into Good Friday and Easter, I encourage you to get a copy of the God Bless The USA Bible.” 

Trump’s Easter Message on Truth Social (Wanna buy a Bible?)

Though the die is far from cast, Donald Trump’s seeming lock on the presidency running against Joe Biden has significantly eroded in the face of the Harris-Walz reconfigured Democratic ticket. However, looking at his campaign tactics, Trump’s latest efforts, underscored by his radically rightwing and unpopular VP choice, Trump appears engaged in “the great double down” philosophy that he used in his 2016 and 2020 runs. But it all sounds tired, old, rehashed and assumes that the America of today has not changed much in the intervening years. There have been some demographic shifts in his favor to be sure – like gaining traction from those Black men who are retro-unhappy at the prospect of a woman president – but even some of his most reliable followers are questioning the viability of his candidacy.

This has led one of his greatest supporters, a major conservative evangelical spokesman Charlie Kirk, executive director of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), to castigate pastors assembled at his recent faith-driven political training event in a Dallas suburb, to stop whining and mobilize their congregations to deploy in key swing states. “Mimicking pastors who have expressed reservations about Trump, Kirk said, ‘ ‘But, but Charlie, I don’t think Trump is a very good role model for our church.’ I have no patience for you anymore, people. I am sick of this.’

“The event, named Igniting the Remnant Pastors, featured prominent rightwing speakers, including retired Lieutenant General and conspiracy theorist Mike Flynn. The conference, which charged $199 per pastor and $49 per wife, aimed to ‘mobilize the body of Christ to take meaningful action’ in support of Trump… The gathering underscores the Trump campaign’s efforts, alongside allies like TPUSA and the America First Policy Institute, to energize evangelical voters for the 2024 election. Kirk’s address emphasized a strategy of transforming church leaders into informal Trump advocates who would then engage their congregations in grassroots efforts.” The Express Tribune, August 15th. But truly, Trump is hardly the best messenger of God’ mandate, even if those rightwing evangelical pastors believe that is true.

As noted in my August 14th blog, God Wants Donald Trump to be America’s Leader!, there has been a continuing and long-standing effort by a majority of American evangelicals, often mandated as “God’s will” by their pastors, to support Donald Trump’s ascension to President and then supreme leader in recasting the United States as a fully Christian nation. Why one of the worst examples of a “Christian man” has achieved this seemingly unbreakable status is well discussed in that blog. For those of us who have read the New Testament (the book of Christianity), been raised in the Protestant family (like me), even without the Bible’s mandates of kindness, “love thy brother,” practice tolerance and do not sit in judgment of others, I believe too many Christians are lost in that Old Testament (the Torah) sin of worshipping false gods – the Golden Calf idol syndrome – that has elevated Donald Trump as the effective “messenger of God.”

Indeed, back in 2015, Trump placed himself even above the teachings of the New Testament when he said he does not ask God for forgiveness… during a 2015 interview at the Family Leadership Summit. But a new movement from the evangelical movement is organizing. “Now, Evangelicals for Harris are highlighting his statement in a new attack ad… released a new ad targeting Christians in swing states…. The organization, made up of Evangelical Christians who are mobilizing support for Vice President Kamala Harris this November, released the ad on Wednesday [8/14] morning… The organization’s goal is to bring together moderate and progressive Christians ‘who feel like the conversation on spirituality has been hijacked by the Christian right,’ organizer John Pavlovitz told NPR.

“In 2020, 85 percent of white evangelical protestant voters who attended church regularly voted for Trump, according to the Pew Research Center. Trump also garnered more support among white evangelical protestants from 2016, when he earned only 77% of their vote while running against Hillary Clinton…. Biden, meanwhile, had high support from white Catholics, Black protestants and those who are not religious, the Pew Research Center reports.

“This isn’t the first time Trump, who has compared himself to Jesus Christ on multiple occasions, has been accused of religious hypocrisy… In June 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, Trump and several staffers walked to Washington, DC’s St John’s Church (pictured above) — which was vandalized — after riot police cleared largely peaceful demonstrators in nearby Lafayette Square using tear gas.

“There, Trump stood silently and was photographed holding up a Bible, which some speculated was upside down. Several opponents — including President Joe Biden — accused him of using the book as a prop. Asked by a reporter whether it was his Bible, he replied that it was ‘a Bible.’… Then, earlier this year, Trump began selling the ‘God Bless the USA’ Bible for $60.” Katie Hawkinson, writing for the August 14th Independent. Trump’s double down on these worn policies might work, but I believe the tide is turning even among the evangelical community… just enough to make a difference.

I’m Peter Dekom, and as older Trump supporters pass, they are being replaced in greater numbers by younger, more progressive voters who just weren’t alive to experience Trump’s references to that “Great America” (myth anyway) from decades ago.

The First One to Figure It Out Rules the Earth or…

 

As I have written in several blogs, the first nation to generate a workable, reliable and sustainable plasma computer – moving from what has become the ubiquitous but increasingly obsolete binary “digital” standard (everything requires translation into 0s and 1s in order to process) – will be able to process thousands, if not millions, of times faster that the fastest supercomputers we have today. Working instead on a multilevel, simultaneous calculation platform, using qubits instead of binary digits, future plasma/AI systems can ply through the most sophisticated encryption systems… a piece of cake. Blockchain? Seriously? Toast.

Combined with an increasingly, self-building world of artificial intelligence, that winner of the plasma computer race can plunge into any nation’s most guarded secrets, can invade our entire financial system and perhaps even take over or manipulate any system relying on automation that is part of any linked system (including weapons control, GPS, banking and exchange platforms, gathering personal data on steroids, etc.). Second only to climate change as a human-induced existential threat, this future world remains a toxic, multinational race to global domination. When that master switch is enabled, this force could also turn off any parallel efforts elsewhere to create the same capabilities that might threaten that first mover.

Given the volatility of political systems the world over, the segmentation of self-interest and desire for supremacy everywhere, the most necessary global cooperation required to stop that toxic technology race defies our ability to create and enforce global standards with everyone on board. Nuclear restriction treaties, climate accords and cooperation against a loosely defined threat of global “terrorism,” etc. fall by the wayside all the time. As a movement against global cooperation finds resistance from major political forces in many nations – like the MAGA movement right here in the United States – is there any hope of containing this looming virulent threat that hangs over all of us?

While plasma computing remains in the back pages of our mass media, even though it remains a major component of possible single-nation domination, the battle for uniform standards and limitations on actively ubiquitous and growing artificial intelligence, the other major component of that tech takeover, is in the headlines every day. Big government and big tech are all over it, touting alliances and advances that we do not yet fully comprehend. It merits taking a closer look at how uncertain necessary global standards and limitations battle over AI alone. Labeling this uncoordinated and dangerously unregulated competitive world “AI Nationalism,” Adam Satariano and Paul Mozur, writing for the August 14th The Morning New York Times feed, describe the dangerous chaos:

“As artificial intelligence advances, many nations are worried about being left behind… The urgency is understandable. A.I. is improving quickly. It could soon reshape the global economy, automate jobs, turbocharge scientific research and even change how wars are waged. World leaders want companies in their country to control A.I. — and they want to benefit from its power. They fear that if they do not build powerful A.I. at home, they will be left dependent on a foreign country’s creations.

So A.I. nationalism — the idea that a country must develop its own tech to serve its own interests — is spreading. Countries have enacted new laws and regulations. They’ve formed new alliances. The United States, perhaps the best positioned in the global A.I. race, is using trade policy to cut off China from key microchips. In France, the president has heaped praise upon a startup focused on chatbots and other tools that excel in French and other non-English languages. And in Saudi Arabia, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is pouring billions into A.I. development and striking deals with companies like Amazon, I.B.M. and Microsoft to make his country a major new hub… ‘We must rise to the challenge of A.I., or risk losing the control of our future,’ warned a recent report by the French government…

“The race to control A.I. started, in part, with a board game. In 2016, computers made by Google’s DeepMind won high-profile matches in the board game Go, demonstrating a breakthrough in the ability of A.I. to behave in humanlike ways. Beijing took note. Chinese officials set aside billions and crafted a policy to become a world leader in A.I. Officials integrated A.I. into the country’s vast surveillance system, giving the technology a uniquely authoritarian bent… Still, China’s best firms were caught off guard by OpenAI’s release of ChatGPT in 2022. The companies raced to catch up. They’ve made some progress, but censorship and regulations have hampered development…

“The U.S. has advantages other countries cannot yet match. American tech giants control the most powerful A.I. models and spend more than companies abroad to build them. Top engineers and developers still aspire to a career in Silicon Valley. Few regulations stand in the way of development. American firms have the easiest access to precious A.I. chips, mostly designed by Nvidia in California… The White House is using these chips to undercut Chinese competition. In 2022, the U.S. imposed new rules that cut China off from the chips. Without them, companies simply cannot keep pace.

“The U.S. is also using chips as leverage over other countries. In April, Microsoft worked with the U.S. government to cut a deal with a state-linked Emirati company to give it access to powerful chips. In exchange, the firm had to stop using much of its Chinese technology and submit to U.S. government and Microsoft oversight. Saudi Arabia could make a similar deal soon…

“Looming over the development of A.I. are lessons of the past. Many countries watched major American companies — Facebook, Google, Amazon — reshape their societies, not always for the better. They want A.I. to be developed differently. The aim is to capture the benefits of the technology in areas like health care and education without undercutting privacy or spreading misinformation.

“The E.U. is leading the push for regulation. Last year, it passed a law to limit the use of A.I. in realms that policymakers considered the riskiest to human rights and safety. The U.S. has required companies to limit the spread of deep fakes. In China, where A.I. has been used to surveil its citizens, the government is censoring what chatbots can say and restricting what kind of data that algorithms can be trained on.

“A.I. nationalism is part of a wider fracturing of the internet, where services vary based on local laws and national interests. What’s left is a new kind of tech world where the effects of A.I. in your life may just depend on where you live.” In short, this multinational spate of complex regulations, along with industrial and traditional spying, has ramped up to new uncoordinated and perhaps dangerous levels. Toxic alliances against US interests, like the new China-Russia-North Korea cabal, will press against that level playing field. With a gridlocked Congress, even domestically, we are increasingly forced to rely on state rules (usually led by California) and the global reach of regulations being posited by the European Union against US entities doing just about anything that reaches the EU.

I’m Peter Dekom, and accelerating technology and reconfigured global alliances simply do not wait for a dysfunctional polarized United States to find a path to unity and functionality; many other nations are actually betting that we do not.

We Might Have Elections Like They Have in Russia and Venezuela – Very Efficient

 

“I love you, Christians. I’m a Christian. I love you, you got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”

Donald J. Trump at the Turning Point USA Believers Summit in West Palm Beach, Fla., June 21st.

“The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous and grave than the threat from within… the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.” 

Trump speech in Claremont, NH on November 11, 2023

“Now, if I don’t get elected, it’s gonna be a bloodbath. That’s going to be the least of it… It’s going to be a bloodbath for the country.” 

Donald Trump during a rally near Dayton, Ohio, March 11th

Architected and vetted by Donald “dictator for a day” Trump and a significant body of his former White House staffers, despite Trump’s efforts at distancing himself, the 900+ page rightwing Project 2025 remains the manifesto for Trump’s purported second term. For those who remotely cherish freedom, it’s a hard, even terrifying, read. His staffers tell him to go “mum” on the “a” word (“abortion,” reflecting an exceptionally unpopular ruling from the Supreme Court by his appointees), yet when he is with his evangelical peeps, he just cannot stop himself from taking credit for that decision.

But the Harris/Walz “Mind your own damned business” ticket is beginning to make serious inroads, even in the swing states that Trump was certain were in his MAGA bag. While in private Trump is fuming, even the best laid insults and threats of mice and MAGAns are not producing the numbers he wants (even crowd density comparisons). Still, he has a magnificent fallback in his own “deep state,” particularly among recently elected or appointed election officials, most notably in the “must win” swing states.

If anything, Trump has good reason to smile with Georgia on his mind. At a rally in that state on August 2nd, with a genuinely massive turnout, Trump delighted the MAGA masses by calling out three Georgia election officials in attendance, knowing that they would do their duty. Why were those who are supposed to remain neutral by reason of their sensitive jobs even at a Trump rally? Marc Elias, writing for the August 7th Democracy Docket, tells us: “Trump praised [those] three members of the Georgia State Election Board. Calling them ‘pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency, and victory,’ Trump lavished praise and attention on these members of the obscure state agency — by name.

“The odd exchange raised more than a few eyebrows. When I wrote about it earlier this week, I suggested that the least damning explanation was that the ‘three who Trump mentioned from the stage: Janice Johnston, Rick Jeffares and Janelle King have refused to acknowledge that Joe Biden won Georgia in 2020.’ We now know that the real reason for Trump’s support for the election officials was far more sinister.

“Late yesterday [8/6], the [Georgia state election] board approved a new rule that seeks to expand the role and authority of county boards of election in the certification process. This new rule redefines the certification process to include ‘reasonable inquiry’ into whether the results are ‘complete and accurate.’” Indeed, the above iteration of facts and quotes suggest that there is a determined effort to ensure that, where possible especially in the election critical swing states (and that includes Georgia where Trump and the GOP are feuding over the latter’s insistence in the 2020 election of certifying accurately), Trump won’t lose. It is all part of a greater MAGA commitment to marginalize Democrats and foist MAGA voters to the fore… even if that requires a little rigging along the way.

Anna Kutz, writing for the August 11th NewsNation Prime, explains: “Dozens of local election officials in America’s key battleground states believe former President Donald Trump ‘s stolen election conspiracies and could threaten democracy this November, independent journalist Justin Glawe told ‘NewsNation Prime.’ … Glawe, creator of the American Doom newsletter, penned his findings in a recent Rolling Stone exclusive titled: ‘These Swing State Election Officials Are Pro-Trump Election Deniers.’

“The piece rounded up almost 70 pro-Trump authorities across the U.S., including county election board officials from Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada… The entire list is composed of officials who have either already refused to certify results or have expressed belief in election conspiracy theories on social media… ‘I should note that this isn’t really coming directly from the Trump campaign, Glawe clarified. ‘This is what I kind of think of as a decentralized network of pro-Trump Republicans who are also local election officials.’” I have to admit that I am a little skeptical over Glawe’s statements about the direct non-involvement by the Trump campaign in light of Trump’s highlighting of those biased election officials who attended his rally as noted above.

Kutz continues: “Glawe explained that the election certification process is ‘ministerial,’ meaning it’s ‘not really up to the discretion of these election officials.’ But that won’t stop them from trying… ‘I think that if there are mass refusals to certify, they’ll sort of get struck down in court relatively quickly,’ Glawe said. ‘But I think the larger point is that those refusals to certify could really do some pretty significant damage to the public’s trust in elections, and that, I think, is the larger danger.’

“Most of the believers are in appointed, not elected, positions, a fact Glawe hopes America’s voters can monitor in the future… ‘I think the best thing that people can do is pay attention to what their county election boards are doing, and who is staffing those boards, and whether or not some of these election deniers are on their boards,’ he said.” I am not nearly as sanguine about probable fairness in judicial challenges to such refusals to certify actual election results. Trump’s legal team are experts in delaying, and if the “get out of jail free” presidential immunity card from the Supreme Court (if there is any color of an “official act”) is any evidence, Trump just might trump the Court’s 2000 “hanging chad” ruling in the Bush vs Gore, which made GW Bush the winner… and ignore the actual numbers to win by… “a rigged election.” Are we about to witness a magnified repeat? We’re almost there. Each party is putting phalanxes of lawyers on red (and blue?) alert.

I’m Peter Dekom, and the “deep state” Trump wants to appoint if elected will indeed vitiate the need for any further elections… as we listen to his own words!

You Ain’t Like Us, So You Cain’t Vote

You Ain’t Like Us, So You Cain’t Vote

They’re not our kind!

Speaking to CBS News August 19th on whether he will accept the November results, Trump repeated: “If I see that we had a fair and free election, which I hope to be able to say, but if I see that, I will be.… You will never see anybody more honorable than me. I am an honorable person.”

The CBS reporter: “But you didn’t accept the results of the last election.”

“Well, that’s right, because there were many problems with the last election. You know it, so do they, and so does everybody…I think things have been done over the last four-year period that will make this a free and fair election, and certainly if for some reason I lose, and I think if I lose, this country will go into a tailspin, the likes of which it’s never seen before, the likes of 1929.”.

In 1830, under the Indian Removal Act, the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Muscogee, and Seminole nations (known as the "Five Civilized Nations”) were rounded up and slow marched over the next two decades to areas in the Southwest where less valuable land (“Indian Territory”) was ceded to them. This notorious and cruel Trail of Tears, which also included some extra “ethnic cleansing,” moved 60,000 indigenous peoples from the homeland of the ancestors to a new world that was strange an unfamiliar to them. Thousands died as the marched, and even when they were settled, they were repeatedly displaced again; treaties signed with them were ignored.

Today many still live on those western reservations/pueblos, some with limited access to running water, electricity, medical care or even decent schools. Many of these people have been kept away from the benefits of modern life, and I suspect if you visited some of these pueblos, if the residents even let you in, you would be ashamed of the quality of their lives. Many were not born in hospitals, have no birth certificates, but their ancestors were in what became the United States long before the European invasion of North America.

There are lots of pueblos in Arizona, and while many Native Americans have found some power in the right to vote (I have stories of the efforts in my beloved adopted State of New Mexico), the Republican-controlled AZ legislature – certain that these people are highly unlikely to vote for their candidates – have passed legislation that most certainly will deprive these people of a right they have had for a very long time, as US citizens: the right to vote. That legislature has created “proof of citizenship” laws imposing new voting restrictions that make it exceptionally difficult, if not impossible, for non-GOP minorities to vote.

As reported by David Savage for the August 19th Los Angeles Times, GOP legislators are using the Republican National Committee for an emergency petition to the US Supreme Court to uphold voting restrictions that would purge over 40,000 voters from the existing Arizona voting rolls: “Republican state lawmakers say these voters did not provide proof of their citizenship when they were registered and now they should be barred from voting in person or by mail… Although Congress made it easier for Americans to register to vote, those federal rules cannot override ‘the Arizona Legislature’s sovereign authority to determine the qualifications of voters and structure participation in its elections,’ they said in an emergency appeal filed Aug. 9…

“After a 10-day trial, U.S. District Judge Susan Bolton in Phoenix blocked enforcement of the new proof-of-citizenship requirement, citing the federal motor voter law and the state consent decree [under 2013 Supreme Court ruling in Arizona v. Inter Tribal Council of Arizona]. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, by a 2-1 vote, refused to lift her order Aug. 1…The fast-track appeal may signal whether the conservative court is ready to intervene in partisan election disputes…

The Arizona Republicans asked for a decision by Thursday [8/22] because counties will soon begin to print ballots… Arizona Secretary of State Adrian Fontes [a Democrat] said the appeal should be rejected… ‘There is no evidence of fraud and undocumented voting. The 2024 election is weeks away and acting now to restrict the voting rights of a large group of Arizona’s voters is undemocratic,’ he said in a statement… Many of the affected voters are ‘service members, students and Native Americans who did not have birth certificates while registering,’ Fontes added.

“On Friday [8/16], Biden administration lawyers also urged the court to turn down the appeal. ‘Thousands of voters have already registered to vote by filing the federal form without accompanying documentary proof of citizenship,’ said Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar. ‘Judicial intervention at this stage would produce unnecessary confusion and chaos on the cusp of an election.’” Donald Trump’s above quotes repeat that the 2020 presidential election, which also happened to elect a GOP majority to the House, was rigged… but he is more than happy that his lockstep MAGA minions are doing their best to rig the November election on his behalf.

OK, how does the Supreme Court handle such cases? Well, until they granted Donald Trump a wide swath of immunity not anchored anywhere in the Constitution, I would say this is a slam-dunk loss for the GOP. But we know that the Trump configured Court is bound neither by its own precedents nor the Constitution itself. Rightwingers are using “election integrity” to push likely Democrats off the voting roles. “[In] 2004, Arizona required newly registered voters to provide ‘documentary proof of citizenship.’… The ACLU and civil rights advocates sued to challenge that requirement. They cited estimates that more than 13 million Americans lacked access to a birth certificate or other such documents.

“They won in the lower courts, [and in the Supreme Court in Inter Tribal Council] that the federal motor voter law preempted or overrode the state’s law… Justice Antonin Scalia spoke for the 7-2 majority and said the federal law requires states to ‘accept and use’ the standard federal form in federal elections… In response, Arizona adopted a two-track system of voter registrations. To vote in state and local elections, new registrants were required to show proof of their citizenship with a driver’s license or a birth certificate. Those who registered through the federal form were allowed to vote only in federal elections. They are referred to as ‘federal only’ voters. The state later agreed in a 2018 consent decree to give full registration to new voters whose residence and citizenship could be confirmed through its motor vehicles department database.

“But two years ago, the Republican-controlled Legislature passed a new law that prohibits registered voters who do not provide proof of their citizenship from voting by mail or in a presidential election... The Justice Department sued to challenge the laws.” LA Times. “According to an expert who testified in the RNC case, ‘approximately one-third of a [percent] of non-Hispanic White voters [in Arizona] are Federal-Only Voters, while a little more than two-thirds of a percent of minority voters are Federal-Only Voters.’

“This racial disparity likely explains why the Republican Party is now asking the Supreme Court to further restrict this small percentage of Arizona voters. 2020 exit polls showed Republican Donald Trump winning white voters in Arizona, but losing the state as a whole due to President Joe Biden’s strong performance with Latinos. Biden’s margin of victory in Arizona in 2020 was about three-tenths of a percent, and even a tiny shift in the state’s population of eligible voters could tip the balance.” Ian Millhiser writing for the August 19th Vox.com.

And although this case has been used to lengthen the period for court ruling on voting issues where it benefits them, they are now pretending it never worked that way. “[In] Purcell v. Gonzales (2006), the Court warned that ‘federal courts ordinarily should not alter state election rules in the period close to an election.’ While the Court has never stated precisely when the ‘period close to an election’ begins, its Republican majority has read Purcell quite aggressively in the past.” Vox. But just not in this case. They want it nice and short. Outrageous!

Late Breaking News: In a 5-4 decision today, the Supreme Court allowed the citizenship-document-proof to remain as to state-candidate/issue ballots but not on those “federal only” ballots. We are creating second class-citizens with a reduced right to vote… even when they have been voting for decades.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it’s bad enough that the Electoral College has allowed five presidents to win an election despite losing the popular vote (in 1824, 1876, 1888, 2000, and 2016), now the party in power (in Arizona and a host of other red states) is fomenting a pre-stolen election (for Trump and his MAGA minions) this November by purposely culling the voter roles of voters likely to vote Democratic… because… oh, they don’t want elections to change their freedom-killing mandates.