Invisible Hands Make Evil Magic

 

A provision tucked into the proposed budget passed by the North Carolina House of Representatives last week would apply only to Buncombe and to Watauga counties. The provision would create an exemption from local codes for state building projects at UNC-Asheville and Appalachian State University -- only, of all the universities in the state.

According to Jack Evans in the Asheville Watchdog, the exemption provision first applied uniquely only to UNC-A; Watauga got added mysteriously as "part of a package" when the bill went through amendments in the House Appropriations Committee.

There's currently a controversy going on in Buncombe over UNC-A's administration's announcement earlier this year that it will seek to tear down a wooded area on campus in pursuit of an as-yet-unannounced project, which triggered a movement among Asheville voters to quash the development via zoning laws. Oops. This secret budget provision takes care of that -- by rendering public opinion, let alone local development ordinances, of no consequence whatsoever.

Bring It

 

Yellowstone National Park is actually a very active supervolcano that last blew its top some 631,000 years ago, creating the current caldera that is approximately 45 miles wide in one place and 30 miles in another, taking up space in three Western states -- Idaho, Wyoming, and Montana -- and making the Yellowstone supervolcano one of the biggest in the world. Hyper-active with hot spots, geysers and bubbling mud and other emanations. The ground under Yellowstone is constantly deforming, swelling up inches and then declining, as though the supervolcano were breathing deep, like an old man trying to calm himself down. Two magma chambers underlie Yellowstone roughly 5-7 miles underground, each measuring 30-plus miles across.

If Yellowstone exploded it would put enough ash into the air to stop all air travel, blot out the sun world-wide, kill most plant life including food crops, introduce a perpetual winter, and it would end Donald J. Trump. Like maybe nothing else can. Congress is worthless. The Supreme Court is squishy, the rest of the judiciary under constant threat.

Like maybe nothing else can.  Well, there's one thing -- a reconstituted Congress. That's the midterm challenge for next year. Put Virginia Foxx back in the god-blessed minority.

Lotta Love For Doomsday

The English Pilgrims who famously landed at Plymouth Rock were essentially a doomsday cult.

--Jane Borden, "Cults Like Us: Why Doomsday Thinking Drives America"

Borden attributes to those Pilgrims seven key elements of belief that have shaped America. I'm not saying which of these seven apply very much to moi, but some do. Because I evolved from the same social reality as everyone else. Our history shapes our propensity for self-destruction. (I've used as a source an interview with Borden by Paul Rosenberg in Salon.)

1. "Our innate desire for a strongman to fix our problems and punish those who aggrieve us."

The story so far: "A small Edenic community is under threat and unable to save itself. The police are inept. The politicians are corrupt. What are we going to do? Then suddenly out of nowhere appears this outsider, or sometimes this loner from within the community. This person saves the community through violence."

 2. "The temptation to feel chosen."

The idea of being a chosen people.

The whole of exceptionalism.

God wants us to help get there, and we have the ability to do so.

If we listen to and follow our Fathers.

3. "Both knee-jerk anti-authoritarianism and anti-intellectualism."

"Classic American conspiracy theory always has an evil leader or group of leaders behind it, who are unfathomably powerful, typically world leaders -- a.k.a., the story of the Antichrist. These evildoers are also brainiacs, apparently incredibly intelligent. They use that intelligence — which is part of what corrupted them — to prey on more simpleminded folk who are virtuous."

But there's something the simpleminded folk can do about it, dammit.

 

After all, the word protest is the base of Protestant.

4. "Our impulse to buy and sell salvation on the open market."

"The Puritans were also obsessed with self-investigation. They literally made themselves sick with the practice -- mostly self-investigating to figure out if they were chosen. They believed no one knew who was and wasn't chosen, but they were pretty sure they were, and that they could find out if they just looked within. So these trials of self-investigation have always been with us and self-help is now a $5 billion industry."

5.  "Hard work is holy, while idleness is a sin."

"This idea that work is holy became a justification for acquisitiveness. Because if you're working a lot to show how much you love God, you're naturally going to accrue wealth. Isn't that wealth just a sign also that God loves you in turn? And if that's true, wouldn't it also be true that those who don't have money are not loved by God, or are not working enough to worship God?"

Sin should be punished, not rewarded. The down-and-out caused their own poverty. 

The flipside -- the wealthy deserve what they have.

"I believe the American dream has become a pyramid scheme. I don't think it was always that way. I think the American dream used to be realizable by a huge and booming middle class, and that's been pilfered. We see this in a variety of ways — lobbying for tax breaks and removing regulations for risky behavior, moving manufacturing overseas. All these things that facilitated the redistribution of wealth occurred, in my opinion, because of this doctrine that work is holy and therefore wealth is a sign of being chosen and poverty is a sign of sin."

6. "How quickly and easily we fall into us-versus-them thinking."

"The first thing to acknowledge is that cults increase during times of crisis. Times of technological upheaval, social upheaval, general crisis, natural disasters -- all these things that cause someone's world to wobble and shift can lead us to cult-like thinking."

"When cult-like thinking is being utilized, it's usually by a demagogue who's just trying to activate people to behave in a way that benefits the person pushing those buttons."

"We evolved in kin-based communities, usually with one patriarch or small group of patriarchs in charge. Those kin-based communities had an instinct to fear outsiders, and they managed firm boundaries. Kin-based communities were and are very cult-like. We evolved as a species in these kinds of groups."

7. "An innate need for order, which makes us vulnerable to anyone screaming, 'Chaos!' and then offering control."

Sadist

 

Last Friday, what's left of Trump's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) slammed the door in North Carolina's face, saying that Gov. Josh Stein's request for an extension of 100% of the federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene were "not warranted."

The president and his henchmen have swept away so much that was good about the Federal government. They did so with relish, with obvious joy at the destruction. The man himself always gloats when he causes others much pain. Take his Oval Office ambushes of Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Cyril Ramaphosa, meant to inflict the maximum of embarrassment and discomfort and actual anguish. That's what he loves: the embarrassment and discomfort and actual anguish of others.

We call that sadism, the delight in the pain that can be induced in others. I have little capacity for understanding why a man this twisted has become the idol of millions, worshipped not for his good deeds but for the size of other people's misery. Until we vote. Until we vote.

Until we vote I go to my garden and bury my hands in soil. On my knees I take care of plants. But don't be fooled by my kneeling posture, because I am only bending to nurture, not bending to the sadist, this evil, incredibly evil man. I am praying to all the earth gods and the sky gods to give me and every other resister in this nation the resolve to stand when the time comes and vote against every person who holds allegiance to that man by belonging to the same sadist party.

I know no other way to salvage any goodness in this world.

Crooked as a Dog's Hind Leg

 

Reporting by David Yaffe-Bellany and Eric Lipton:

STERLING, Va.President Trump gathered Thursday evening at his Virginia golf club with the highest-paying customers of his personal cryptocurrency, promising that he would promote the crypto industry from the White House as protesters outside condemned the event as a historic corruption of the presidency.

The gala dinner held at the Trump National Golf Club in suburban Washington, where Mr. Trump flew from the White House on a military helicopter, turned into an extraordinary spectacle as hundreds of guests arrived, many having flown to the United States from overseas.

At the club’s entrance, the guests were greeted by dozens of protesters chanting “shame, shame, shame.”

It was a spectacle that could only have happened in the era of Donald J. Trump. Several of the dinner guests, in interviews with The New York Times, said that they attended the event with the explicit intent of influencing Mr. Trump and U.S. financial regulations....

Mr. Trump and his business partners organized the dinner to promote sales of his $TRUMP cryptocurrency, a memecoin launched just days before Mr. Trump’s inauguration. A memecoin is a type of digital currency tied to an online joke or mascot; it typically has no function beyond speculation. But Mr. Trump’s coins have become a vehicle for investors, including many foreigners, to funnel money to his family....

Maybe 2026 Will Be the Year of the Blue Collar

 

I tend to think that a lot of the Democrats’ problems can be solved through candidate recruitment, and just recruiting people who come from the communities that they want to represent, who sort of are fluent in the cultural norms of the places that they come from.

--Michelle Goldberg

Dan Osborn

Goldberg brought Nebraskan Dan Osborn to my attention. A tough ex-Navy and rock-hard union man whose social compact virtues make him also attractive to the Left (in a state where there's barely any Left left) -- he's liberal on abortion and on the rights of organized labor -- yet he ran for Federal office as a hard-nosed critic of both Democratic and Republican machines and said he agreed with Trump about the border and about confronting China. He presented as an irritable independent, a somewhat shocking emanation of working-class anger, running for US Senate in Nebraska in 2024 against a two-term Republican incumbent, Deb Fischer. No one took him seriously at first. The Democratic Party was initially more than merely cool toward him, but with no Democratic candidate on the ballot, the Party reportedly offered to endorse Osborn. Osborn rejected it. His determination not to be beholden to any damn clique was the final straw for the Democratic Party establishment, but many registered Democrats nevertheless discreetly flocked to his campaign. Osborn became a phenomenal money-raiser -- almost $8 million, just from out-of-state donors alone. How did he do that? (And by the way and to give away the ending, Osborn scared the wits out of Sen. Fischer and took 46.52% of the vote in 2024. He's already formed a campaign to try again in '26 against the other incumbent Republican Senator, Pete Ricketts.) 

Osborn set out to hold a series of at least two and possibly three in-person events in every single county in Nebraska, getting out among the people in a way his Republican opponent never did. The breakthrough came in September, in the heat of the campaign. A new poll suddenly put Osborn ahead of Fischer, turning a lot of heads. Boom! Osborn is appearing in a lengthy interview on MSNBC, and everybody wants to get him on camera. Money came in.

A beneficent cash-flow allows you to compete, and Osborn didn't pull punches in his TV ads.

Not only is Osborn running again in '26 -- a recent 2025 poll showed him leading the incumbent Ricketts -- but he's also now financing other authentic working-class candidates with a new PAC, the Working Class Heroes Fund, aimed at candidate recruitment, whether Republican, Independent, or Democratic. The Fund is "dedicated to uniting and mobilizing working people across party lines to give the working class a seat at the table" (website).

 

Shit-Canning Donald J. Trump

 

The most common modern usage of “86” is as a verb, meaning to throw out, dismiss or eject. Customers who are tossed out of an establishment for being too drunk, having a history of walking out on the check or generally acting obnoxious, for example, are said to be 86’d.

--"What Does '86' Mean?" 

Former FBI Director James Comey took a photo of some shells arranged on a beach and understood it as a political message about Donald J. Trump. He posted the picture. The MAGA crowd went nuts, including Watauga Watch's own resident troll Wolf's Head. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem, who oversees the Secret Service, described the post on Thursday as a “threat” and a call to assassinate Trump. Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, said on Fox News that Comey should be put behind bars. By Friday, the Secret Service had launched an investigation and interviewed Comey in D.C. FBI Director Kash Patel said his agency would “provide all necessary support” as part of the investigation.

The accusations are preposterous bullshit. This isn't about anything but the suppression of speech and Trump's "retribution" tour to get even with people who have crossed him or proved insufficiently subservient.

Pot, meet kettle. Last year Trump posted a video on social media showing an image of President Joe Biden tied up in the back of a truck, a much more direct and palpable threat of violence against a sitting president. Did the Biden Justice Department rush to open an investigation over that speech?

Bi-partisanship Worth Praise

 

I'm a partisan Democrat. Never tried to deny it. My druthers are totally out in the open. But I hope I'm not a "partisan hack" -- one of those robotic hatchet-men who can always be depended on to cheerlead the Party, no matter how wack, and attack the other side, no matter how sensible and sane. Partisan as I am, I know a really good bi-partisan deed when I see one.

The best recent example: The agreement between the Watauga County Commission and the Boone Town Council to build a bridge at Brookshire Park to link the county's walking path with the Town's 30 acres of public land, which will have trails and plantings along the South Fork of the New River. A good idea, well executed.

Chair Braxton Eggers led the initiative on the County Commission, and Boone Mayor Pro Tem Dalton George led the Town Council. This proposed new infrastructure will benefit the wide population who enjoy the outdoors at Brookshire Park and the adjacent soccer fields.

This Is Worth Watching

 

Back in April, Democrat Nathan Sage beat everybody to the punch by announcing his candidacy first in what might end up being a crowded Democratic primary to take on veteran Iowa Republican Senator Joni Ernst in '26. I've kinda had a thing for Iowa Democratic candidates on this site for years now. (Don't believe me -- use the search engine, upper left.) Nathan Sage catches my attention for this: "He said his campaign will be about repairing the party’s connection to working-class voters" (Iowa Public Radio). 

Sage's introductory video is both a vindication of working-class as a valuable designator and a sort of bitch-slapping of establishment Democratic attitudes -- a direct challenge to a ruling class that looks down on blue-collar grunts. "We built the damn table," Sage says. "We need a seat at it!"

Sage doesn't talk like an establishment Dem, doesn't look like an establishment Democrat. He projects a smart, bullshit-detecting analytical understanding of exactly how the deck has been stacked against workers.  And Sage's video production reminds us what a little early campaign money can buy (money, which is often the hurdle for any brilliant working-class candidate, like for example Darren Staley who ran as a Democrat for the NC Senate down in Wilkes last fall -- Senate Dist. 36, one of the most heavily Republican districts in the state. If Darren had only had the early money like Nathan Sage clearly does!)

He's Rotten to the Core

 

How long will citizens accept the brazenness of his self-interest and obvious corruption?

Headlined this morning in the WashPost: "Trump’s Middle East trip marked by potential private business conflicts -- The Trump Organization has entered into real estate deals in all three countries the president plans to visit this week."

President Donald Trump kicks off the first major international trip of his second term Tuesday in a region where his family business has grown significantly in recent months, presenting his administration with more potential conflicts of interest than ever.

The president’s sons, who head the Trump Organization, have spent the past few weeks crisscrossing the Middle East, laying the groundwork for deals that will benefit the company and, in some instances, Trump himself. Government watchdogs, presidential historians and other critics say it is an escalation of unethical and even unconstitutional conflicts between the interests of the United States and its president.

 

If You Think Trump Is Greedy and Corrupt, Get a Load of Elon!

Interesting intel in a series of posts on BSky by @altnps, an anonymous Federal worker in the National Park Service:

Elon Musk’s regulatory troubles [with Federal regulators]? Vanishing fast. Since Trump returned to the White House, federal agencies that once scrutinized Musk’s empire are being gutted or redirected. At the USDA, Trump fired the official investigating Neuralink.

At the CFPB [Consumer Financial Protection Bureau] and beyond, Trump and Musk allies are slashing staff weakening regulators that once held Tesla and X accountable. In recent months, Trump’s DOJ dropped a case against SpaceX. Labor Department canceled a civil rights review of Tesla.

And a separate SpaceX case is quietly moving into settlement talks with the NLRB [National Labor Relations Board]. Meanwhile, more than 40 other federal investigations into Musk have gone silent with no public updates in months. It’s starting to look less like oversight and more like a cover-up.

 

What's the Good of Public Corruption?

 

On January 25, 2021, the Supreme Court put an end to lawsuits alleging that President Donald Trump violated a constitutional anti-corruption prohibition by profiting from his business empire while in office -- particularly from that big luxury hotel in DeeCee a few steps from the White House where foreign governments rented very expensive blocks of rooms, drank over-priced cocktails in the lounge, and ate not very good but super-dear food in the restaurant. The Supreme Court declined to answer whether Trump's private profit amounted to a violation of the emoluments clause of the Constitution, declaring the issues moot because Trump had been thrown out of office. In other words, the stupid Supremes opened the door to massive new corruption. Plus they thoughtfully decided that a second coming of Trump could never be charged with crimes. 

Right now today this very minute...

Anyone, including foreign actors, can enrich the Trumps by buying up shares in Trump Media & Technology Group, the owner of Truth Social, or through any of the family’s several cryptocurrency schemes.

Also now:

So how can the royal family of Qatar give Trump a $400 million “flying palace” of a plane, one that will act as Air Force One during his presidency but remain his afterward?

I have no appetite for the shit being dished by that man, and I'll be damned and split hell wide open if even sizable parts of MAGA also have a sensible big problem with public corruption, particularly when it's so spectacularly open. 

My God, people!

Corruption Does Not Slack Off. Corruption Does Not Sleep

The breath-taking, totally-out-in-the-open grift and graft of Trump 2.0 has not yet come into focus for far too many low-info voters. So I'm especially grateful for compilations like this one by Heather Digby Parton:

Politics was immensely lucrative for the Trump family during the first term, but that looks like chicken feed compared to what they're doing now. This time it's no holds barred, straight-up grift and corruption in the billions, featuring foreign governments, sleazy scam artists and a big play in the arcane world of cryptocurrency.

Mind you, some things don't change: Trump is still promoting his properties every chance he gets. This time he's also involved in LIV Golf, which is also funded by the Saudis and holds several of its tournaments at Trump's golf resorts. Trump makes money from the tournaments coming and going, both as an investor and as the host. It's a sweet little grift that gives the Saudi sponsors an easy way to stuff more money into Trump's pockets. But honestly, that's nothing compared to the rest of Trump's ongoing involvement in the Middle East....

But that's not where the real action is. The Trump sons are heavily involved in crypto and are using every bit of their access to make some serious bucks. Lipton and company have reported extensively on their play with the presidential memecoin called $TRUMP, which seems like a quick and dirty con that has resulted in thousands of ordinary people losing lots of money while Trump and a few other investors made a bundle. Now they've taken it to another level, holding an auction in which whoever buys the most craptastic coins gets to have dinner with Trump and a select few get to visit the White House. This could hardly be a more obvious way for rich people to siphon money directly into Trump's coffers, and so much more convenient than a paper bag full of cash.

And then there's the Trump-owned crypto company, World Liberty Financial. Its co-founders, alongside Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., include the son of real estate magnate Steve Witkoff, who happens to be Trump's designated envoy to Russia, Israel, Iran and almost everywhere else. These guys have their hands different areas of the crypto world, but World Liberty's primary goal is to get the type of cryptocurrency called a stablecoin officially recognized as a legitimate financial instrument.

Trump has called on Congress to pass something called the GENIUS Act, which would do just that. Immediately thereafter, World Liberty started selling its own stable coin known as USD1; its price went through the roof, netting the Trumps another bundle. At the time, it was widely assumed that Congress would going to pass the law, but after the reporting in the Times, Democrats who'd previously backed it balked (along with a couple of Republicans) and this week the bill failed in the Senate. Apparently the stench of Trump at both ends of this deal — as the regulator in chief and the financier being regulated — was just too pungent.

 

Our Stable Genius

 

Kai Ryssdal

‪@kairyssdal.bsky.social‬

I just really need everybody to understand that everything that’s happening in and to the global economy now (and all the businesses and people in it) is the entirely predictable result of the intentional decisions of one guy who doesn’t understand how the global economy works.

May 10, 2025 at 10:53 AM

How an Ulcerated Board of Elections (Mis)Behaves

 

Four Eggers

Video surfaced of the grim closing moments of yesterday's meeting of the new State Board of Elections. "New" in the hair-raising sense that it's now and very suddenly dominated by a 3-2 Republican majority (counting Watauga's Four Eggers) --  all appointed by a newly elected Republican hack Council of State member, Auditor Dave Boliek, just because the Republicans in the General Assembly still have a lot of revenge flowing through their capillaries, and they love torturing our new Democratic governor.

The moment the video memorializes is immediately after the Republican majority has terminated the employment of SBOE Exec. Dir. Karen Brinson Bell, who has run the operation only since June 2019 and who has been attacked by right-wing election deniers as a partisan Democratic operator, which is absurd. By every metric Brinson Bell was even-handed and above-board, and I might remind the election deniers that it was under her six years directing elections that Republicans maintained and extended their hegemony in the General Assembly. (I realize the tit-for-tat history behind Brinson Bell's appointment in 2019: The Democratic majority summarily fired the Republican Exec. Dir. at the time, Kim Strach, who had also been a fair and even-handed administrator (IMO). So I get the revenge, even though I don't believe in it.

So ... teeing up the video ... Brinson Bell has just been fired. One of the Republicans quickly moves for adjournment, and Brinson Bell requests a minute of their time to make a comment on her tenure as executive director. Instead of saying a gentlemanly "sure you may speak!" Four Eggers quickly seconds the motion to adjourn, and the Republican members all stalk out, like milk cows going to stall, while Brinson Bell begins reading her statement.

Worried that blindly and maliciously partisan drones have taken over the administration of voting and of voters and of elections in North Carolina? You bet I'm worried. Here's a very serious open question involving the barest operation of any imagination: What would have happened in the Jefferson Griffin v. Allison Riggs case if the Four Eggers crowd had been in control the whole time? When Griffin first started his bizarre legal theorizing -- that elections can be overturned by rewriting the rules later -- he made his argument about throwing out 60,000+ ballots first to the State Board of Elections -- 3-2 Democratic at the time -- which quickly rejected Griffin's arguments as belonging in the "You've Got To Be Kidding Me!" bin. 

BREAKING: Jefferson Griffin Concedes

 

Bryan Anderson just blasted out the news that sore loser Jefferson Griffin has conceded his misguided attempt to steal the NC Supreme Court race from Justice Allison Riggs.

No doubt, the sledgehammer opinion written by Fed Judge Richard Myers had a good deal to do with it.

The Return of Col. Moe Davis

 

In 2020, retired Air Force Col. Morris "Moe" Davis attracted a good deal of attention running in the Democratic primary for the 11th Congressional District and then in the fall election that year against that vivid train wreck, Madison Cawthorn. Cawthorn won the race by 12 points, but Davis brought some Democratic heat and raised a respectable $2.5 million for his campaign.

He says he's back for 2026, running for the same seat now occupied by Chuck Edwards, the former state senator who ousted Cawthorn in the 2022 Republican primary.

Davis ran a combative (some nervous liberals thought too combative) campaign against Cawthorn, highlighting the post-teenager's moral and ethical black holes. (Full disclosure: I contributed more than once to Davis's campaign.) Davis retired from the US Air Force at the rank of colonel and already had a high pre-candidacy national profile. He served two years as Chief Prosecutor of the Military Commissions at Guantanamo Bay and resigned in protest because his superiors in the Air Force Judiciary and the General Counsel of the Department of Defense overruled his decision to disallow evidence obtained via CIA torture. In resigning his position, Davis declared that he wasn't going to take orders from people who think "waterboarding is A-Okay."

In other words, he's a hard-nose with a spine. He's got a clear pattern of courting controversy, or at least not skirting around it when it blocks his path of moral certitude (he said the Supreme Court was "meddling" when it chose to review the Military Commissions Act). He's not afraid to defy authority when he thinks he's right, and you've got to admire his fortitude. He's been on all the broadcast and cable news programs as a recognized expert in national security, especially security from terrorists who he thinks should be prosecuted the fair way and not via the CIA torture wheel, but he's also defended Guantanamo as a "humane" detention center (which makes him suspicious to some liberals).

He was a "risk" candidate in 2020, at a time when too many Democrats wanted "safe." But times have changed, and more Democrats are in a fighting mood and want their candidates served raw. Cory Vaillancourt points out that in 2020 Davis actually polled best in the rural counties of CD11. And the incumbent looks weakened after Hurricane Helene ravaged his district, and the Trump admin hasn't done much to bolster Edwards' popularity. Vaillancourt:

Edwards has increasingly come under scrutiny for his performance while in office, most notably in failing to acquire the $60 billion North Carolina says it needs to recover from Hurricane Helene. A bill Edwards claims he authored last December will instead deliver between $9 billion and $17 billion; however, a Smoky Mountain News investigation in March revealed that most local governments hadn’t yet received any money from the federal government six months after the storm.

In a March 13 town hall, Edwards faced fierce opposition. During his speech to delegates at the NC-11 GOP convention on April 26, Edwards touted his proximity to Trump on nearly every issue, claimed “we’re winning” and mocked Democrats.

I'm up for a Moe Davis/Chuck Edwards contest.

 

Great Day in the Morning

 

RALEIGH -- Chief U.S. District Judge Richard E. Myers, an appointee of Donald Trump, ruled that Jefferson Griffin, a judge on the state Court of Appeals, cannot “change the rules of the game after it had been played.” 

Myers ordered the state Board of Elections not to throw out any votes and to certify the results of the election as they were at the close of the canvass period, with Democratic incumbent Allison Riggs winning by 734 votes.

On the issue of absentee votes from overseas, one group that Jefferson Griffin had targeted because they weren't required to present photographic proof of identity, Judge Myers wrote (annotated by me):

The North Carolina Board of Elections (the "State Board"), on a bipartisan and unanimous basis [including the vote of Republican member "Four" Eggers], exempted those voters from the voter ID law; on April 1, 2024, the State Board, pursuant to its rule-making authority under state law, promulgated a final rule which provided that overseas military and civilian voters were not required to submit a copy of their photo ID with their absentee ballot. An identical temporary administrative rule had already been in effect for eight months before promulgation of the final rule. The final rule was then on the books for over seven months prior to the election, and it went unchallenged. In the months leading up to the election, the State Board also publicized guidance to overseas voters which informed them that they were exempt from the voter ID law. Thousands of overseas voters then, on election day, relied on the State Board's rule and its guidance. In fact, they had to. Overseas voters submit their ballots through an online portal that lacked any mechanism for a voter to attach a copy of their photo ID.

Here's the kicker that Judge Myers highlighted: Griffin challenged only the absentee overseas ballots from a select number of counties -- not all of the 100 -- counties like Wake which are heavily Democratic. Myers pungently points out that the Republicans on both the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court had actually agreed with Griffin's bizarre selective targeting. Both of those courts had ordered that Griffin's hit list of voters must somehow "cure" their votes by proving their identities to the State Board of Elections; otherwise, their votes would be thrown out.

Is he still smirking
this morning?

Judge Myers wrote (and don't you just love the use of effectuation?):

...the court finds that effectuation of the North Carolina Court of Appeals and Supreme Court's orders would violate the equal protection and substantive due process rights of overseas military and civilian voters.

Griffin can, and probably will appeal Judge Myers -- given Griffin's history of self-immolation. But how a higher court would turn aside Myers' clear legal logic is a question for your Magic 8 Ball. And how Jefferson Griffin shakes off the devastating memory of his incredible arrogance when he's up for reelection to the NC Court of Appeals in 2028 -- that's a project for all of us. We shall not forget.

NCGOP's Wet Dream of Controlling Elections Becomes Real

 

Four Eggers
Photo Jesse Barber

Four Eggers is so proud.

After a 3-judge panel of Superior Court judges ruled the Republicans' elections takeover law unconstitutional last week, three anonymous Court of Appeals judges (Jefferson Griffin rumored to be one of them, so there's a possible explanation for the secrecy) on Wednesday set that lower-court ruling aside (in an unsigned two-sentence ruling that offered no legal reasoning whatsoever) and completely green-lit the takeover of the State Board of Elections by a Republican hack, Dave Boliek, the new state Auditor.

What had once been the right of the duly elected governor to appoint the members of the State Board is now a part of the portfolio of a totally inexperienced but highly partisan official who is guaranteed to please his GOP bosses. The decision came from the Court of Appeals with no oral arguments, no public explanation or discussion, and no acknowledgment that this appallingly partisan decision has been previously considered unconstitutional by numerous courts who have understood a power grab when they saw it.

Yesterday, the new elections czar Boliek immediately appointed the three most partisan Republicans he was told to appoint, including the notorious Watauga County attorney Stacy C. Eggers IV ("Four") as the voting majority on the board. Boliek will also be privileged to appoint the chairs of all county boards, which are guaranteed to also turn majority Republican.

In addition to the travesty of judicial over-reach, we can now look forward to early voting plans that intentionally disable voting blocs disfavored by Eggers and his chums, among other mischief. There is also worry, naturally, that the new GOP power structure will find a way to award that Supreme Court seat to Jefferson Griffin.

The 10 Worst Examples of Trump Corruption

 

Thankful to Sen. Adam Schiff for compiling this list:

#1 - The Memecoin 

Effectively posting his Venmo for the entire world to buy favor, Trump's memecoin is the most egregious, and most lucrative example of political corruption in modern history. In fees alone, Trump has seen hundreds of millions of dollars flow into his personal bank account and that of his kids, including money from foreign interests looking to buy influence.

#2 - The DOJ as Personal Attorneys 

He hired his top criminal lawyers to lead the department. The result? Cases against Trump allies dropped. Investigations into critics launched. The DOJ under Trump hasn't just been politicized — it has been weaponized to reward loyalty and punish dissent.

#3 - Picking Apart the Law Firms 

Trump publicly threatened law firms which employed lawyers or represented clients he didn’t like, chilled legal opposition to his policies, and extorted hundreds of millions in free legal work for his pet causes. A literal racket.

#4 - Spending Tax Dollars at His Own Properties 

So far, Trump has made 63 visits to his own properties costing taxpayers millions of dollars that go directly into his pocket. At least half of those were golf visits, including while he sent the stock market tumbling. I guess that's par for the course.

#5 - Billionaire Favoritism 

Trump’s FAA threatened to cancel a long-standing contract with Verizon in hopes of replacing it with a contract with Elon Musk-owned Starlink. No open bidding. No oversight. Just blatant favoritism for a billionaire donor and buddy.

#6 - Musk's Insider Info 

Elon Musk and his DOGE bros gained access to enforcement data at OSHA, and the private information of millions of Americans held by the IRS and other agencies. He now holds the data to power his AI, or to weaponize against his competitors. Under Trump, access to your data is a perk of friendship.

#7 - Anti-Bribery Laws Out The Window 

Trump ordered the DOJ to pause enforcement of anti-bribery laws, making it easier for U.S. companies to bribe foreign officials. Not just turning a blind eye to corruption. Tacitly authorizing it.

#8 - Quid Pro Quo …Again 

Indicted NYC Mayor Eric Adams got his charges dropped in what appeared to be a quid pro quo for pledging to do Trump’s dirty work on unrelated immigration policy. Numerous DOJ officials resigned in protest, and justice was never served.

#9 - Gutting the Watchdogs 

Trump has acted to dismantle or manipulate regulatory agencies, like the NLRB and CFPB, that are, in many cases, investigating companies owned by Musk and Trump's other billionaire buddies. With no watchdogs, corruption becomes policy.

#10 - The Tesla Ad 

During a Tesla stock crash and days after Elon Musk infused $100m into Trump's political operation, the two stood on the South Lawn of the White House, posing for the cameras while the President purchased a Tesla. Pay to play and product placement on the White House lawn.