Crooked Media - What A Day: Yes we Chutkan

Disgraced former President Donald Trump was arraigned in a Washington federal courthouse today. We love that for him.
 

• Trump pleaded not guilty to charges that he plotted to overturn the 2020 election results (lol, okay pal), just blocks away from the site of the January 6 insurrection. How fitting! This was the third time Trump has pleaded not guilty to an indictment since April, but conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding is perhaps his most serious charge to date. U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan has been assigned to Trump’s case, and intends to set a trial date at the first hearing on August 28, but Judge Upadhyaya said that Trump would not be required to attend.
   

• Trump’s lawyer John Lauro raised an early objection, arguing that the magnitude of the case and the amount of materials involved would require more time, but prosecutor Thomas Windom countered that the case should proceed as normal. After exiting the courthouse and giving a perfunctory soundbite about what a “sad day for America,” Thursday was, Trump made his way to his private plane. He was only in Washington for about a grand total of three hours.
   

• Trump is facing a staggering 78(!) charges across three criminal indictments, with 44 federal charges and 34 state charges…all of them felonies. Sometimes numbers are fun, aren’t they? U.S. Magistrate Judge Moxila Upadhyaya held that Trump should face no travel restrictions and pay no cash bond on pretrial release, consistent with the light-touch treatment he’s received in other jurisdictions. She did, however, order that he not violate federal or state law while awaiting trial (which will undoubtedly be very difficult for him) and forbid him from communicating with any known witnesses except in the presence of, or through, counsel.

Despite hysterical right-wing claims that the Justice Department has popped its lid, federal prosecutors have taken a deliberate, cautious approach to changing the former president. 
 

• If you read the full indictment (God help you) you’ll have noticed that none of the charges directly accused him of being responsible for the violence that unfolded on January 6. The indictment does say that Trump “exploited the disruption,” and used it towards his effort to stop the certification of the fair election he lost. The charging document does underscore, however, that the group of lawyers and cronies in the Trump orbit that day were aware of the gravity of their coup, and the consequences that would likely unfold if they successfully pressured Vice President Mike Pence to overturn the election. 
   

• In one particularly telling scene, captured in the indictment, a senior White House adviser warned lawyer and assumed “co-conspirator 2” John Eastman that his plan to have Trump hold Pence over a barrel was “going to cause riots in the streets,” just days before the insurrection. According to the document, Eastman “responded that there had previously been points in the nation’s history where violence was necessary to protect the republic.” Wow! As if it had not already been painfully clear: these sanctimonious authoritarian assholes were extremely high on their own supply, and also ready for (other people to commit) violence. 

See you on August 28; bring the popcorn and your 3-D glasses.

What could be so important that the hosts of Strict Scrutiny called an emergency episode? Former President Trump’s latest indictment, of course. It’s not the first, and probably not the last, but the Strict Scrutiny hosts think it is definitely the most consequential indictment. Head to Strict Scrutiny for the bonus episode and hear Kate, Melissa, and Leah break down the charges, the people involved, and what happens next.

A fatal combination of pandemic-era burnout, low pay, meddling bureaucracy, and the intrusion of politics into classrooms has left many career teachers feeling compelled to throw in the towel. The burdens felt by all American teachers can be even weightier in schools serving high-poverty communities, which tend to have higher numbers of POC teachers. Philadelphia has one of the highest concentrations of Black residents in the United States, but the proportion of Black teachers there is on a steep decline. About 80 percent of American public school teachers are White, even though White students no longer hold a majority in public school populations. Researchers have found that teachers of color have less seniority and are thus disproportionately affected by layoffs. 

In Pennsylvania, Black teachers were more than twice as likely than White teachers to leave the profession after the 2021-2022 school year according to a new report from Penn State, followed closely by Hispanic and multiracial teachers. Black and Hispanic teachers are more likely to be teaching in underfunded school districts, or lack certification, which innately puts them in a more precarious professional position. Research demonstrates that students of color do better when they have teachers who look like them, so there should be strong incentives for school districts to attract and retain teachers of color. On a related note, pay all teachers more and stop letting Republicans dictate their curriculum!

The right-wing chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court, Annette Ziegler, accused the new liberal majority of a “raw exercise of overreaching power” for firing the conservative director of the state’s court system. We’re sure her opposition to raw exercises of overreaching power is very sincere. 

Russian forces occupying Ukraine have sown landmines across hundreds of miles of the Ukrainian front, which Kyiv cites as the chief reason its summer counteroffensive has not taken off. 

According to new historical data, waves are getting bigger off of California’s coast as the planet warms, and not in, like, a cool way. 

Six former police officers in Mississippi have been charged in federal civil-rights offenses against two Black men who were beaten for over an hour during a home raid before one officer allegedly shot one of the men in the mouth. All of the officers in question are White. 

Edward Mullins, the former president of the NYPD Sergeants’ Union, was sentenced to two years in prison on Thursday for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in union funds. 

Mexican officials reported on Thursday that a child from Honduras was one of two people found dead near the contested buoy barrier in Texas, which Republicans installed in the Rio Grande river to deter migrants. 

Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) wrapped up a three-day campaign trip to New Hampshire on Wednesday, where he said of federal bureaucrats “we are going to start slitting throats on day one.” Ok, psycho.

According to newly-released documents, Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s (D-CA) daughter has power of attorney—legal authorization to make decisions about her property, finances, or medical care, usually entrusted to a family member or confidant when an individual is incapable of making those decisions. (And yet!!!) Feinstein inexplicably remains a voting member of the United States Senate. Cool country!

Transcripts from the House Oversight Committee interviews with Hunter Biden’s former business partner Devon Archer were released on Thursday and wouldn’t you know it, they contradict House Republican statements made about the deposition. The transcript shows that Archer testified that then-vice president Biden checked in on Hunter every day, but never in 10 years of work at the Ukrainian energy company Burisma did he hear the elder Biden discuss the “substance of Hunter Biden’s business.” I, for one, am shocked that Reps. Jim Comer (R-KY) and Jim Jordan (R-OH) didn’t tell us the truth.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado has filed a lawsuit alleging that federal and local law-enforcement officials abused their power to target left-wing activists in the summer of 2020. The lawsuit names the FBI, the Colorado Springs Police Department, and local law-enforcement officials, who allegedly acted outside of their authority in infiltrating, surveilling, and requesting search warrants aimed at left-wing activists in Colorado Springs. In a separate federal case in Denver last week, the Justice Department did not deny that the government’s initial investigation of racial-justice activists was prompted by speech, claiming that the “violent nature” of the activists’ statements “made them a legitimate subject of investigation.

That filing was the government’s first public response to newly-unearthed information suggesting that the FBI infiltrated the racial-justice movement in Denver using a violent felon as a paid informant. Michael “Mickey” Windecker was hired by the FBI to infiltrate Denver’s racial-justice movement, where he accused other movement leaders of being informants, encouraged violence at protests, and made an unsuccessful attempt to entrap two Black activists in a plot to assassinate the Colorado state attorney general. Windecker was an informant in both the Denver and Colorado Springs cases. The ACLU’s lawsuit alleges that the FBI and Colorado Springs Police Department used unconstitutional methods of surveillance, and violated First and Fourth Amendment protections. Remember this the next time one of your MAGA relatives accuses the FBI of being full of liberal plants at the dinner table!

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Archeologists in Serbia have unearthed an ancient Roman ship. [chants] “Old ship! Old ship! Old ship!”

Some of California’s top political figures—including Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis (D-CA)—are calling on Taylor Swift to postpone her Los Angeles-area concerts in solidarity with striking hotel workers. Here’s hoping she doesn’t shake it off (I’m so sorry).