Jan. 30, 2024 - Illinois weighs bouncing Trump from ballot

… Illinois ballot battle … Mayorkas impeachment … Serial poisoner … IRS leak … gas stoves …

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Illinois Officials Consider Barring Trump from Ballot

The Illinois State Board of Elections meets today to consider whether to remove D4FRFP¹ Donald Trump from the ballot for the state’s March 19 primary.

The board is split on party lines. But it was a Republican, retired Judge Clark Erickson, now a hearing officer for the board, who recommended (a) leaving it up to the judiciary to decide, but also (b) that if the board did decide to act, it should,

“…find that the evidence presented at the hearing on January 26, 2024 proves by a preponderance of the evidence that President Trump engaged in insurrection, within the meaning of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment, and should have his name removed from the March, 2024 primary ballot in Illinois.”

RIP your socials, Mr. Erickson!

Of course, everyone’s waiting to see what the Supreme Court will say next week about Colorado bouncing Trump from the ballot. But here’s the outcome I’m most curious about…

…even if Trump does get removed some ballots, most likely in states he wouldn’t win anyway … then what? The Constitution doesn’t name an entity responsible for keeping insurrectionists off our sweet, precious ballots. Which means no one is allowed to let insurrectionists take office.

So my question is, if Trump wins, what does Pres. Joe Biden do on Jan. 20, 2025? Which is less constitutional: Stopping Trump from taking office? Or letting him? 

That kind of stress could prematurely age a guy!

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Disorder Rattles Border Battles

It’s a big day for border bullshit! House Republicans are holding a markup session to debate and finalize the language of their two articles of impeachment against Homeland [sic] Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. Homeland [sic] Security Committee Republicans maintain that Mayorkas committed “high crimes and misdemeanors” by not doing his job the way they wanted him to, which would have involved instantly deporting undocumented migrants via the deployment of long-range, ballistic, human catapults.

CNN reports this morning that Republicans will do a whip check this week — counting whether they have enough votes, as they can only afford to lose two. And some House Republicans up for re-election don’t want to vote to make a Latino guy with a Latino name the first cabinet secretary impeached in more than a century. Besides, it’s not like he’s Hunter Biden, history’s greatest monster.

Then there’s the legislative battle. D4FRFP Donald Trump has already pushed Pres. Joe Biden over the border of sanity into embracing both (a) Draconian measures against both undocumented immigrants and anyone who might be suspected of being one, but also (b) the bullshit, fear-mongering narrative that’s been whipped up to justify (a).

Biden is now saying he’ll not only support but instantly use new executive authority the nascent border deal would give him to deny due process — one of the ostensible things people supposedly come here for! — to asylum-seekers if too many people seek asylum from the countries that we helped turn into asylum-seeker–producers. 

Trump, of course, is now telling congressional Republicans that he — ergo, they — can’t accept any deal. Which means Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) might not have the Republican votes he needs.

“Moderate” Republicans Eye Possible Rebellion

After sitting on their hands for years — and/or under their desks on one cold day in January 2021 — the last “moderate” House Republicans still visible to the naked eye have had enough.

“Perhaps it’s time that us, rational, become radical,” Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, (R-NY) told Roll Call.

What could possibly ignite a rebellion by “moderates” who’ve gone along with twice voting against impeaching then-Pres. Donald Trump, impeaching Homeland [sic] Security Secy. Alejandro Mayorkas, and electing a Christian nationalist as speaker of the House of Representatives?

Obviously, it’s a return to the Republican principle that once undergirded all others: Tax cuts for the rich.

That’s right, they’re pissed because yesterday Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) announced he’s going to push through a new tax package that extracts a ransom of $33 billion in corporate tax credits in return for releasing about the same amount to expand the Child Tax Credit. The problem for “moderates”? Not enough money for the rich.

They want to hike the cap on federal deductions that rich and wannabe-rich can claim for state and local taxes. And dammit they’re prepared to go to the mattresses on this, no matter what the thread count!

Starting as soon as today, moderates say they’re planning to start blocking random bills out of pique. Once more unto the breach…

Undocumented Migrant to Address Religious Freedom Summit

The International Religious Freedom (IRF) Summit kicks off today, with a keynote speech that will be widely watched around the world by the legions of people dedicated to twisting religious freedom into the right to discriminate. The keynote speaker will be an undocumented migrant, Jesus Christ, who will be smuggled in through the mortal form of and speaking through the mouth of the aptly titled speaker of the House, Rep. Mike Johnson (R-LA).

You’d think with everything going on in Congress, Johnson’s plate would be full of the body of Christ, but nope, his schedule is a miracle! In fact, not only is Johnson delivering today’s IRF Summit plenary speech, but then tomorrow, bright and early, Johnson will be speaking at the National Day of Prayer and Repentance.

And why not? Johnson co-founded the event last year with Tony Perkins of the Family Research Council, because who has more to repent? This year’s event includes prayers of “serious repentance for … America’s sins,” but not the sins of violating federal and international law and State Department guidelines with the illegal sale of civilian-killing weapons.

Nosirree, Robert, because the other agenda item is to “Hear remarkable reports of what God is doing in Israel, as He fulfills prophecy.”

Israeli spoiler alert: You do not want He fulfilling prophecy.

Who’s dropping this new info from Israel? That’d be Knesset member Ohad Tal, yes, the same Ohad Tal whose prescription for dealing with Hamas after Oct. 7 was not prayer.

“The prisoners of Hamas in our jails need to be pressured,” he reportedly said. “The leaders of Hamas need to feel the pressure and … their children should not feel safe.”

Of course the other prophecy Johnson wants fulfilled is the one that never appears in the Bible about the entire continent the Bible forgot to mention because nobody’s perfect. That whole thing about making the U.S. a theocracy. As even NPR was willing to note last year, Johnson is allied with groups that want “to take conservative Christian control at every level of government.” Rapturous!

(This is all happening now, of course, because these events are both drafting off and building up Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast (NPB), and yes I’m looking at the ties here. To wit…)

LGBTQ+ Foe Joins Prayer Breakfast Board

If you missed my extra-super special edition of TFN yesterday, I ungraciously introduced you to one of the newest members of the NPB Foundation board, former Rep. Phil Roe (R-TN). Some highlights for the hordes of newsfuckers too lazy to follow me down my rabbit holes:

• Roe had zero ratings from the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood, even though as an ob-gyn he loved contraceptives and gave them out like every day was Halloween.

• Roe pushed the revisionist view of religious freedom that carves out legal exemptions for religious-based discrimination, a view Democrats have increasingly embraced even though it’s patently unfair to people who discriminate based on hate rather than magic books.

• Oh, and Roe had not-secret-anymore ties to the insider at the NPB who was both a key player in the network that helped keep an evangelical president in office in Guatemala — by destroying a UN anti-corruption task force — and also hosted 2017’s right-wing It Girl, Maria Butina.

Do you see the crazy shit I keep in my rabbit holes? But the point of noting Roe’s involvement transcends “hatey-dude joins prayer thing.” The point is that the NPB is still a vortex of and rallying point for a constellation of right-wing networks that actually change shit out in the real world — and not by praying, because they’re not saps, folks.

Crime Watch

POISONING Y’know how sometimes a fire knocks out your pollution-control systems and then you forget to fix them and so you end up breaking the law 12,000 times by spewing sulfur dioxide into the air for threee months and causing an entire county to warn residents against breathing? Hey, we’ve all been there.

As with most criminals, in this case, the recidivist offender, U.S. Steel, is a product of its environment. (Which was poisoned.)

The rich people who profited from not implementing pollution controls said yesterday they’ve agreed to pay $42 million of not their money to settle a civil lawsuit for poisoning Allegheny County, PA, for more than three months after the 2019 fire, violating their permits more than 12,000 times. 

Typically, poisoning people for more than three months would be an actual crime with actual prosecutors and actual jail time for actual people if the people hadn’t been rich and cleverly used the legal fiction of incorporation to shield themselves from culpability. The $42 million will not, of course, come from the same pockets where the pollution profits went.

MORE GAS SHIT On the subject of getting away with murder and not letting people breathe…

State Attorney General Dave Yost (R-OH) at a news conference today is expected to announce he’s cranking up the wheels of death and getting the same government bureaucracy that can’t be trusted to regulate corporations back in the business of deciding which poor people to kill. That’s right, Ohio’s looking at ending its unofficial moratorium on the death penalty, the nice term for governments killing people.

And after it took Alabama only ten minutes to asphyxiate a guy last week — with the brand-new innovatiocution of replacing the regular oxygen you breathe at home with nitrogen gas — Yost is a big fan and wants to embrace nitrogen as a way to disrupt both execution tech and breathing.

IRS LEAK The guy who leaked the tax records of more than a thousand people — including both rich people and upper-middle-class folks like D4FRFP Donald Trump — got the maximum yesterday, a sentence of as long as five years in prison. 

Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) spoke at the hearing, recommending the maximum, presumably because so many criminals get away with a slap on the wrist, like that time Scott wasn’t even charged for running the criminal cartel behind one of history’s greatest heists, stealing money from the government.

Historically, Scott has been in favor of taking government documents and illegally sharing them, as long as they’re stored securely in a Mar-a-Lago bathroom.

Four Quickies

• Pres. Joe Biden is discussing with national-security officials how to respond to the weekend drone attack that killed three U.S. troops defending the U.S. border between Jordan and Syria. Under debate is how much the U.S. should escalate militarily in order to prevent a military escalation.

• The UN relief agency that’s helping Palestinians because some of them weren’t in Israel on Oct. 7 says it’s running out of money after the U.S. and other donors pulled funding in the wake of unconfirmed accusations from un-impartial sources that some of the agency workers were in Israel on Oct. 7.

• There’s talk of talking about a cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, just so long as each side does every single thing the other side wants. It’s called compromise, people!

• The brave freedom fighters who fought to save America’s proud, sometimes deadly, climate-fucking gas stoves from an octogenarian Delaware native won their noble crusade yesterday. Pres. Joe Biden’s Energy Department yesterday released its long-feared new energy-efficiency standards for ovens and stoves. Ninety-seven percent of America’s gas stoves, perhaps the most majestic symbol of American greatness, meet the new standards. The other three percent will be rounded up and shot.

TCB

Your TFN is both late and 23% less funny than usual today because I’m also trying to get new reporting out this week before Thursday’s National Prayer Breakfast. Prithee, forgive me.

Had a blast on The Nicole Sandler Show yesterday talking about that reporting and other stuff. There’s audio and video for you masochists.

Go get ‘em, kids…

1. D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President