Texas Progressives Surge In Primaries:
Jessica Cisneros, a progressive endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), forced Rep. Henry Cuellar into a runoff. The subject of an FBI raid during the campaign, the longtime incumbent ran well in his Rio Grande Valley stronghold but got clobbered in the sizable part of the seat in the San Antonio region. A third candidate, Tannya Benavides, also ran as a progressive, which suggests that Cuellar could fall in the May 24 runoff.
State Rep. Jasmine Crockett, a member of the progressive group Our Revolution, also easily topped the field in the open, deep-blue 30th District in the Dallas area.Crockett was surely helped by the endorsement of outgoing Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-Tex.) but is still decidedly on the left within the Democratic spectrum. She narrowly missed winning outright with 48 percent and will be heavily favored in the runoff against Jane Hope Hamilton, who was statewide director for Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign.
This was the reason I sent off a contribution to the Working Families Party yesterday–we can go three for three here. Help make it happen.
House Panel: Trump Likely Violated Federal Laws:
WASHINGTON — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol said on Wednesday that there was enough evidence to conclude that former President Donald J. Trump and some of his allies might have conspired to commit fraud and obstruction by misleading Americans about the outcome of the 2020 election and attempting to overturn the result.
In a court filing in a civil case in California, the committee’s lawyers for the first time laid out their theory of a potential criminal case against the former president. They said they had accumulated evidence demonstrating that Mr. Trump, the conservative lawyer John Eastman and other allies could potentially be charged with criminal violations including obstructing an official proceeding of Congress and conspiracy to defraud the American people.
The filing also said there was evidence that Mr. Trump’s repeated lies that the election had been stolen amounted to common law fraud.
Time for another plea to the mouthbreathers to pay for his legal bills and his opulent lifestyle.
How Steve Bannon And His Acolytes Aim To Remake The Catholic Church. You know, take it back from the progressive Pope:
At around the fifth hour of November’s “Enough Is Enough” prayer rally, hosted by the Catholic right media outlet Church Militant, event emcee and fallen alt-right star Milo Yiannopoulos bounded onstage to reveal a dramatic wardrobe change. Gone were the rock-star white suit and purple shoes he’d been wearing since morning, replaced by a black shirt, black suit, and heavy crucifix, which gleamed from the jumbotrons all the way to the back of Baltimore’s Pier Six Pavilion, where the concert venue jutted into the city harbor. The bleached-blond tips of his floppy hair—fashy-short on the sides and Donald Trump combover-long on top—had been shorn in a final makeover after his year of ostentatious renunciation.
At the podium, Yiannopoulos assumed an air of exaggerated modesty. “The path to salvation is a series of baby steps,” he told a crowd of some 1,500 predominantly white, mostly middle-aged rallygoers. “I’m glad I got to share one of them with you today.” Whooping and whistling, the audience rose in a standing ovation. And throughout the day, as Yiannopoulos interspersed homophobic slurs—like calling the Catholic bishops meeting next door “sodomites” and Covid masks “fag muzzles”—with banter about Versace loafers and demands for more flattering stage lighting, the crowd roared with laughter, all of them in on the joke.
On one level, Yiannopoulos was making the most of his fall from public grace. In 2015, the right-wing, gay, British provocateur gained notoriety as one of the chief devotees of the then-fledgling alt-right, using billionaire Republican donor Robert Mercer’s money and Steve Bannon’s Breitbart News platform to recast the white nationalist movement as edgy rebellion. Book deals, magazine profiles, and speaking gigs rolled in until comments he’d made minimizing child sexual abuse—defending sexual encounters between adolescents and adults as “enriching” rather than abusive—were publicized. That proved too much even for Milo fans who’d reveled in his offensiveness, and in 2017, he was drummed out of the ascendant far right.
Does that make you wanna read more? Read it. You won’t be disappointed. Oh, one more little tidbit that will give you pause:
Although the Catholic right represents a minority of the US church, it wields an outsize influence through a well-funded network of advocacy institutions and a parallel media ecosystem. Conservative and right-wing Catholics are highly represented in the US judiciary, and dominate the Supreme Court—seven current Supreme Court justices, including all three of Trump’s scotus picks, were raised Catholic, and six of those seven represent right-wing Catholic ideology.
‘Impenetrable’ Border Wall Penetrated Thousands Of Times. Perhaps Trump thought that cheap power tools were beyond the means of said penetrators. They weren’t. Nor was ‘tinted putty’, used to seal and disguise the holes in the wall.
Russia’s ‘Looming Economic Collapse’. Say what you want–the West’s economic response to the invasion of Ukraine is unprecedented. And it’s working.
One Teacher, Making A Difference. Her name? Melissa Tracy. Check out her story.
Loads Of State Jobs Go Unfilled. Remember that the next time Rethugs tout tax cuts and Gov. Carney touts budget smoothing. State can’t get by on the cheap any more.
What do you want to talk about?