Dallas Woodhouse Now in Charge of Election Integrity in North Carolina

 

Woodhouse

News came last week that the state Auditor Dave Boliek, the newly established Republican overlord of voting in North Carolina, appointed Dallas Woodhouse to a special role enforcing "election integrity" (the code word) via "election policy and proper oversight." What exactly that "oversight" means, especially considering Woodhouse's history and the clear undertow of Republican ambitions to limit voting ahead of the midterms rather than encouraging it, has many progressives and independents alike very concerned.

Who the Hell Is Dallas Woodhouse?

Woodhouse is famous as a hard-charging Republican operative with a history of chair-flinging partisanship. Ahead of the 2014 senatorial contest between Thom Tillis and Kay Hagan, Woodhouse created a 501(c)(4), Carolina Rising, ostensibly under IRS rules as a tax exempt "social welfare" org, but most of the $4.9 million he raised went to a single political media firm in Virginia for ads mentioning Thom Tillis favorably. Carolina Rising listed a single anonymous donor for all that money. The donor later turned out to be Karl Rove's super-PAC, Crossroads GPS. Complaints were filed with the IRS that Carolina Rising was clearly a partisan operation. I don't know if anything substantive came of those complaints. Probably not. (On the night of Tillis's election in 2014, Woodhouse appeared before cameras famously and slurringly quite inebriated, bragging that he had spent well over $4 million to get Tillis elected. That video may still be on YouTube.)

In October of 2015 Woodhouse was hired as executive director of the NCGOP. In that role, in August of 2016 Woodhouse famously sent an email to all Republican members of county boards of election reminding them that with Pat McCrory as governor, they had the power to manipulate early voting plans for "Party-line" outcomes. Both McCrory and Donald Trump would be on the ballot that fall, and Woodhouse was doing his due diligence to manufacture wins for those guys by helping to suppress Democratic votes where possible, particularly Sunday voting favored by many Black churches, and student voting, facilitated by polling places on college campuses. McCrory lost but Trump won that year, so partial success for Woodhouse's team.

After Woodhouse stepped down from executive director of the NCGOP in 2019 -- damaged flotsam from the bribery scandal involving party Chair Robin Hayes (Woodhouse was never implicated) -- he joined both the John Locke Foundation and the Civitas Institute as a paid consultant/staffer. Those two influential North Carolina purveyors of big-money conservative orthodoxy kept Woodhouse in the inner-circle of the Republican establishment. The old Tea Party types, best represented by the opinion stylings of Brant Clifton at the Daily Haymaker, don't like him, don't trust him, especially after Woodhouse managed to oust Hasan Harnett from the GOP chairmanship less than a year into his term).

(Use the search engine, top left, for many more instances and details recorded on this blog during the last decade for assuming that Woodhouse's appointment as overseer/enforcer of voting rights statewide will mean an open field day for suppressing the Democratic vote everywhere possible, all the time, forever.)

How Do the Republican Members of the State's BOE Feel About Woodhouse's Appointment?

Dunno. But I can speculate. 

There are three Republican members of the SBOE, all appointed by the aforementioned Dave Boliek in his new role as Elections Czar: 

Stacy "Four" Eggers IV from Watauga; 

Ex-Senator and Yankee transplant Robert Rucho, who can justifiably wear the label of "wacky right-wing hothead." DeLuca had a huge hand in fashioning the "Monster Voting Law" in 2013, which was soon defeated in court for suppressing the vote of Black citizens; 

Francis X. DeLuca, a one-time congressional candidate and former boss of Art Pope's right-wing Civitas Institute -- the org which, according to NCNewsline, "has long and passionately championed dozens of extreme (and sometimes downright strange) causes," including suppressing access to voting in the interests of "election intrigrity."

I've been listening to SBOE meetings via Webex. Most recently I heard Chair DeLuca suggest that Federal elections law (the HAVA Act) is probably "insane." He had just been told, in fact reassured by SBOE legal counsel, that the procedures by which the SBOE is repairing the missing data from several thousand voter registrations is entirely by the book and according to the law). Robert Rucho had complained that the law wasn't strict enough and implied that all sorts of fraud is going on all the time.

How does Four Eggers feel about the appointment of Dallas Woodhouse, and how is Eggers parsing who gets to demand what? Boliek's memo appointing Woodhouse implied but didn't spell out that Woodhouse has some sort of fiat over not only the county boards but the SBOE itself. Is Eggers going to bend the knee to an "election intrigrity compliance dictator" who's been put in above him and the SBOE? What are the legal ramifications when Woodhouse goes mucking about with 2024 early voting plans that include polling sites on college campuses?

 

A Genuine Hero Joins the NC11 Republican Primary for Congress

 

Nearly a year after Hurricane Helene caused $60 billion in damage across North Carolina, most local governments still haven’t received anywhere near the amount of money they’ve been promised by the federal government, with estimates coming in at less than 10%.

--Cory Vaillancourt, Smoky Mountain News

Adam Smith, getting a B12 shot in his backside in October 2024, inside the
Harley Davidson dealership operations HDQs for Savage Freedom
Photo Khadejeh Nikouyeh for the NandO

Congressman Chuck Edwards from Flat Rock, who took over Mark Meadows' old House seat after beating Madison Cawthorn in the Republican primary, has drawn his own primary challenger -- a big man with a huge reputation, Adam Smith, a former Green Beret and a local hero all around Swannanoa and throughout Buncombe County and now well beyond. He organized on-the-ground and in-the-air relief operations following Hurricane Helene, eventually named and capitalized it as the non-profit Savage Freedom Operations, with helicopters delivering supplies to people cut off by landslides and washed-out roads. It grew quickly into a large-scale relief effort operating out of a Harley-Davidson parking lot in Swannanoa, where Smith built a make-shift heliport. Smith eventually recruited a couple thousand more volunteers who were willing and capable of performing all sorts of work -- rebuilding private bridges, restoring roads, clearing debris. Adam Smith was their leader, their organizer, their trouble-shooter. He obviously knows how to get stuff done. Which makes like a formidable guy for Chuck Edwards to beat next March. (Take a look at his website.)

The Savage Freedom origin story has all kinds of cinematic appeal. When Hurricane Helene struck Western NC, Adam Smith's own wife and three-year-old daughter were up visiting friends on the Broad River outside Asheville -- in a house not more than 30 yards from the river. “I legitimately didn’t think there was any hope,” Smith said, but he was determined and resourceful like a Green Beret. With buddies who flew helicopters. And get them out he did.

What began as a mission to save his family quickly expanded when he realized the full scale of the disaster. Witnessing countless others trapped and desperate for help, Smith was joined by fellow veterans, volunteers, and resources under the banner of Savage Freedoms Relief Operations.

In the days that followed, the team grew into an agile, grassroots force—dubbed the “Redneck Air Force”—flying critical supplies into cut-off communities, conducting search-and-rescue missions, and restoring communication with STARLINK systems. Savage Ops became the lifeline for those forgotten by traditional disaster response, cementing its role as a symbol of resilience, ingenuity, and community-driven action. (Savage Freedom website)

"Savage Freedom’s response to Helene was the largest grassroots relief effort in the region, with thousands of volunteers, hundreds of air sorties, millions of pounds of supplies and nearly $700,000 raised in a month" (Vaillancourt).

When Trump was in Swannanoa following the storm to promise stuff he had no intention of delivering and to mime how concerned he was with the plight of people, Adam Smith got to introduce him at the podium and just incidentally lay the philosophical groundwork for challenging MAGA trooper Chuck Edwards next year and implicitly ding what Trump 2.0 was about to do via DOGE and presidential ExecOrders to not only disaster relief in Western NC but to all sorts of other agencies the people rely on. Smith said to Trump, “The biggest fear that Western North Carolina is sitting on right now ... is being forgotten. To have you here and have an opportunity to have this conversation at a national level will keep Western North Carolina on the map and not leave the communities holding the bag on the back end of this.”

Chuck Edwards

Holding the bag is exactly what's happened to the western mtns. The statistics in the headnote to this post don't even mention that the $110 billion relief bill passed by Congress last December -- much ballyhooed by Congressman Edwards, who claimed to have written it specifically for his district -- will dole out a paltry $15 billion to NC11 (at most -- $9 billion is more likely). Governor Stein recently begged the Trump people for some $13.5 billion -- quick! Quick ain't happening.

So Adam Smith is running against Edwards' handling of the disaster and his absence from accountability. Vaillancourt did a lengthy interview with Smith for the Smoky Mountain News. Smith comes across as a level-headed straight shooter, not a MAGAtron robot with a predictable hard line. He's clearly intelligent and offered Vaillancourt an interesting national bond idea for lowering the national debt. Of course he supports Trump on tariffs (really?) and immigration, but I don't see him parroting Trump like the rest of that tribe are pleased to do, slavishly without thinking, just as reflex.

The Man Who Burned the Flag Pleads Not Guilty

 

Remember a Western North Carolina vet named Jay Carey who recently burned a flag across the street from the White House immediately after Jethro signed an exec order requiring the Justice Department to investigate and prosecute people for burning the American flag? I wrote about Jay Carey at that time. He has an interesting backstory as a Democrat activist and general gadfly, so it wasn't any surprise he'd stick his thumb right in Jethro's eye. 

Last Wednesday he pleaded not guilty to Federal criminal charges of "igniting a fire in an undesignated area" and "lighting a fire causing damage to property or park resources" -- not for specifically burning a flag. See, Trump's handlers know very well that the Supreme Court ruled long ago that burning the American flag is protected speech, so they've made up some shit to punish Jay Carey anyway for saying eff you to the would-be tyrant in the White House. Carey is being prosecuted by newly installed US Attorney Jeanine Pirro, another of those Fox News personalities that Jethro admires.

But who is Jeanine Pirro really? She was hilariously caricatured by SNL cast member Cicely Strong, who made an indelible impression:

If I read the Cardinal & Pine report on Carey's court appearance correctly, the Federal judge in charge of his case as much as invited Carey to make it a Constitutional issue: "Chief Judge James Boasberg set an Oct. 17 deadline for Carey’s lawyers to file a motion to dismiss the case on constitutional grounds." Judge Boasberg is famous for ordering the planes carrying brown people to a gulag in Venezuela to turn around, because their very existence exceeded the Constitutional power of the president. Trump hates Boasberg viciously, and MAGA troops in Congress want to impeach his ass.

But by Gawd, he knows an unconstitutional act when he sees one.

The Corruption of Imprisoning People for Profit

 

Hertford County, NC

According to a big investigation in today's NandO, the GEO Group, a worldwide private prison operator and impresario of confinement, "is in talks with Trump officials about reopening prisons, including the Rivers Correctional Institute in Hertford County." The facility was built in 2001, and featured multiple buildings, recreational areas, a central programs building, and a prison industries building. At the time of its closing, it housed about 1,000 Federal prisoners and employed almost 300 local residents. 

In 2021, President Biden signed an executive order phasing out federal private prison contracts, "citing a desire to reduce the financial incentive to put people in prison for profit." That was the (temporary) end of Rivers Correctional Institute. The company has reportedly and unsuccessfully tried to market its shuttered facilities to other corrections agencies. Prospects brightened considerably with the election of Donald Trump. After all, a lawyer who had been on the GEO Group payroll, Pam Bondi, was destined to preside over all American justice as Trump's Attorney General. That change of government was a lightning strike bringing plenty of rain: Just over a month after Trump’s inauguration, ICE awarded the GEO Group a 15-year contract to hold its detainees in a 1,000-bed New Jersey prison. And in June, it modified an existing GEO Group contract to repurpose more than 1,800 beds in a Georgia prison facility. According to a GEO press release, over the last eight months GEO Group has been awarded multiple government contracts, one of them worth more than $1 billion.

GEO knew how to get there:

GEO Group donated millions of dollars of political contributions through its subsidiaries, political action committee and employee contributions during the leadup to last year’s presidential election, according to the company’s 2024 political activity report. The vast majority went to Republican candidates and conservative political committees, OpenSecrets reports. That includes a $1 million donation to Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc, and a $775,000 donation to the Congressional Leadership Fund.

Hertford County is mainly a sparsely populated coastal plain way up on the Virginia border. No ocean-front to draw tourists. Not even a major road pointed at the coast. A perfect out-of-the-way and desperate-for-revenue place to put a large prison. Its potential reopening, even with the burden of hundreds of brown detainees, makes local electeds fairly giddy. The prison comes under the heading of economic development. Salaries, services, life's blood. The county seat of Winton supplies its water when the prison operates, and the town would like that income. 

According to the NandO's report, GEO Group representatives met with U.S. Rep. Don Davis, who represents the district where the prison is located, in December 2024, before the Trump admin was installed. 

Truth About the 2 Places I Know Best

 

Not Exactly Holding My Breath

 

US Senate Democratic leaders (Schumer et al.) promised two days ago that they would not provide the votes to get to the needed 60 to pass the Republicans’ stopgap spending plan needed to fund the government past Sept. 30, because the Republicans never involved them in negotiating and writing it. Democratic phones did not ring. Meanwhile, the House is sure to pass the plan, maybe today, with a majority margin of 3 probably, but if the Senate balks -- if Schumer actually follows through and leads a revolt against a thoroughly corrupt system, then we got ourselves an interesting moment in history. My folklore on corporatism sez that high-ranking Democrats always end up supporting the status quo, and they have high-minded goals to justify the vote: It's for the common good. It's to save government itself. It's also the embarrassing weakness of going-along-on-a-bad-sleigh-ride to a shindig where you and your values are irrelevant -- in fact, insulted and stomped on. 

I'm watching this standoff to see if Democrats hang together and actually buck this time.

Schumer offered the Republicans a compromise, hilarious on its face: You'll get Democrats' votes after you add $1 trillion (you read that right!) to the spending plan -- so that we can permanently extend Obamacare subsidies (set to expire at the end of the year) and repair the breach to Medicaid and other health programs inflicted on the public by the BBB (NYTimes). Negotiation counter-punch. And why not start with a very big number? And apply it to programs that Republicans absolutely hate for their proximity to socialism? I'm assuming that Schumer has that caucus unified. It would take only 8 Democratic senators to break ranks to pass the Republican CA.

If there's a government shutdown because Senate Democrats for once refuse to go along and help the Republicans get to 60 -- what's the fallout? Your guess counts with mine. Do Democrats get blamed and booed for wrecking the economy, like the Freedom Caucus did in the government shutdown of 2013? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe they'll be celebrated for being strong, and for throwing a wrench into a system that has already been effectively subverted, corrupted, and wrecked, where people are targeted for elimination, where there is growing chill over the freedom of speech, and the highest court is an enabler of arbitrary power, which is not allowed in our Republic (but is). 

The Rain in Maine Gets Heavier

The candidate briefly seen at the end of this YouTube video and reportedly a Chuck Schumer recruit to take on Sen. Susan Collins and flip the seat blue (see the AP story below), Maine guv Janet Mills would make total sense as a potential winner if you only think like an establishmentarian. A 77-year-old, lifelong politician who recently defied Trump in public with cameras present -- "I'll see you in court!" -- looks like the perfect, experienced (plugged into power already) Democratic prospect:

Great respect for that woman. In a room of cowering male sycophants, she was the one person with cojones. The president of the United States sez to your face, "If you don't do as I say, I'm gonna cut you off in a day of judgment," and you reply "Eff you, you punk," only you can't say the eff word, but it means the same thing when you say, "I'll see you in court!" So I can applaud that tough lady as a potential winner. 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Maine Gov. Janet Mills [77] is taking steps toward running for the U.S. Senate in 2026, sources tell The Associated Press, adding another big-name Democrat to the list of candidates expected to vie for key Republican-held seats next year.

Mills, who is term-limited next year, has made calls to prospective campaign managers, according to two sources with direct knowledge of her efforts. They spoke on condition of anonymity because Mills has not formally announced her candidacy.

Graham Platner 

Democrats would still face a difficult path to regaining the majority in a 2026 midterm election when they need to win a net of four seats, with most of the races on the ballot in states Republican President Donald Trump won comfortably last year.

I don't know, my brethren. Would Janet Mills, at 77 years old, be taking on the heavy lift of a senate campaign if Schumer hadn't promised her major Party help? Her entry will have huge impact on Graham Platner, the Maine oysterman with star quality who's already in the race and already attracting major rebel money. I profiled Platner. He's caused some genuine excitement.

Maybe Janet Mills beats him (and two or three other lesser-knowns) in the primary. And maybe she then beats Susan Collins. I'll applaud. But I'll do more than just applaud when my Party backs determined and clear-eyed workingmen and -women who know intimately the failings of the corporate establishment. 

 

What They Do in the Shadows

 

The shadow docket provides no rationale for overruling the detailed and persuasive opinions of the district court and the court of appeals. Instead, lower court judges are left to “guess” why the reactionary majority overruled the lower courts.

--Robert Hubbell on Substack 

What Happens When Six Justices on the US Supreme Court Go Slimy?

The Six on the Supreme Court are using their "shadow docket" to pet and enable Trump. It's alarming and fucking infuriating.

The Court has for a very long time had an "emergency docket" for true emergencies, like for example, last-minute appeals from deathrow seeking a stay of execution. The bright lawyer who called it the shadow docket -- a nickname that stuck -- saw the darker implications of unsigned opinions issued on much weightier, Constitutional matters. It's the "shadow docket" because its deeds are shady in the moral and ethical sense.

According to ScotusBlog, in the past two months, the Court has issued a number of important rulings on its shadow docket concerning the legality of actions by President Donald Trump. Virtually all have been 6-3 rulings, with Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissenting.

May 22, in Trump v. Wilcox, the Court overturned a preliminary injunction by a district court that prevented Trump from removing Gwynne Wilcox from serving as a commissioner on the National Labor Relations Board and Cathy Harris from the Merit Systems Protection Board. The law says they can't be fired without “cause,” but there was no claim that standard was met.

June 6, in Social Security Administration v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, the Court paused the district court’s preliminary injunction blocking Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team members and affiliates from accessing Social Security Administration record systems.

June 23, in Department of Homeland Security v. D.V.D., the Court lifted a district court order that prevented immigrants from being deported to countries not listed on their removal orders. The district court had found that the individuals were not given due process. Without explanation, the Court allowed the deportations to go forward while the case winds its way through the justice system, which could take years. On July 3, the Court reaffirmed this, allowing individuals to be sent to South Sudan even though they had no contact with anyone there.

July 8, in Trump v. American Federation of Government Employees, the Court issued a stay of a district court’s preliminary injunction preventing firings of government employees in many federal agencies.

July 14, in McMahon v. New York, the Court lifted a district court’s preliminary injunction against mass firings at the Department of Education. 

July 23, in Trump v. Boyle, the Court overturned a preliminary injunction preventing the firing of three members of the Consumer Product Safety Commission who were protected from removal except for “cause.” No cause was given.

Sept. 8, last Monday, the Court granted Trump's goon squads at ICE the ability to use racial profiling to detain anyone in America. The Court sez that ICE can rely on factors such as “apparent race or ethnicity,” accent, employment status, or generalized location to detain someone they believe to be a non-citizen. In a rare signed postscript, Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested that ICE agents can simply rely on their “common sense.”

New Texas Senate Candidate: We Need a 'Mindset Shift'

[This young new candidate in Texas for US Senate] disagrees with fellow Democrats who have been campaigning on “defending democracy” against Trump. “I am not interested in defending this broken political system,” he said. “I’m interested in transformation, not preservation, and I think that is a fundamental mindset shift that has to happen in the national Democratic Party."

--James Talarico, 36, announcing he will run in the 2026 Democratic primary for US Senate in Texas, in the WashPost

Stop saying "Defend Democracy"? Stop marching in parades carrying signs? For energized Democrats right now, that's heresy, and it's shocking to hear it come out of the preacher's mouth -- for Talarico is studying to be a pastor. He's also one of the heroic "Texas absconders" who fled the state and exposed the gerrymandering corruption. Talarico's media exposure made him a kind of instant political sensation, a devout Christian and a Democrat whose policy views are stubbornly progressive, who speaks clearly and forcefully while looking so young, so scrubbed, so righteous, so (frankly) Republican. It's kind of surreal. That's a face you might expect to see leading an anti-abortion protest.

But really -- "defending Democracy" translates in many working-class ears to "defending the establishment," "preserving the status quo." In short, condoning the corruption of money and power that has the working world in its claws (and always has?).

I can see the need to think like MAGA, admit that the whole system is fucked and needs major renovation, and doesn't it? Starting with that whole Electoral College deal, with its lopsided obeisance to maps, with equal numbers of senators whether your map is largely empty of permanent residents or is crowded with big cities. There's something just basically unfair too about a president who couldn't win the popular vote but won the electoral college.

I'll be watching Talarico. He's a former middle school teacher who has served in the Texas House since 2018 and is studying to become a Presbyterian pastor. "With appeals to the Christian faith, he has gone viral for his impassioned speeches against Texas Republicans’ policy priorities, particularly their recent proposals for school vouchers and the required display of the Ten Commandments in public schools." His grilling of the Republican sponsor of the Texas Ten Commandments law shows him sharp but respectful, like a good Christian should be:

Talarico appeared on Joe Rogan's podcast. Rogan came around in the conversation and offered that Talarico should run for president. I believe he was sincere.

Here's the rub: Talarico enters a primary that already includes former congressman Colin Allred, the party’s 2024 nominee for Senate in Texas. According to WashPost, Allred lost by 9 percentage points, "but he attracted the national Democratic support that Texas Democrats have long craved and outperformed the party’s presidential ticket in the state." Allred's been campaigning all this year, raising money and forming a team. Talarico is going to look like a spoiler coming into the race right now, and the Party establishment in Texas may punish him. I want him for our side.

Labor Needs Seats at the Table

Annie Karni in today's New York Times sees (and explores in some depth) the rise of impressive candidates who have been laborers and who know how to relate to the working class. Many or most of these new candidates on the Democratic side are running for US Senate seats, and they represent a real departure from the typical kinds of people Democrats have recruited in recent years to win elections -- "educated professionals with sterling pedigrees, including prestigious national security credentials." That's the elite, fussbudget image the Democratic Party wears like an opera cape.

Karni writes about many of the working-class candidates whose names I recognize, because I've written about them too, like Dan Osborn, industrial mechanic at the Kellogg’s plant in Omaha, or Graham Platner, an oysterman from the tiny town of Sullivan, Maine, or Nathan Sage, a car mechanic who was raised in a trailer park in Mason City, Iowa. These guys are attracting attention as mold-breakers and their blunt speech has energy and sting. Some of them are raising impressive money, like Graham Platner, running for Susan Collins' Senate seat. Yet the Democratic establishment has refused to endorse any of them, which is frankly infuriating. Sen. Chuck Schumer's machine in the Senate wants "safer" candidates (like a 77-year-old former governor in Maine rather than Graham Platner). (And granted, Dan Osborn is running as an Independent in Nebraska, which makes him forbidden fruit to the Party establishment. That shying away from Independents is also a policy that needs to change in certain circumstances, especially when and where Democrats don't have a viable candidate of their own and aren't likely to find one.)

Reporter Karni understands the numbers: "The halls of Congress are still, by and large, populated by career politicians, lawyers and wealthy businessmen. About 78 percent of senators currently serving in office hold an advanced degree, according to Congressional Quarterly. More than 30 percent of House members and 47 percent of senators hold a law degree."

So make no mistake. It's a class issue, which Bernie Sanders has been warning us about: 

“The Democratic leadership [Mr. Schumer, call your office] has got to make a choice whether they stand with their billionaire friends and corporate backers or whether they stand with the working class. The leadership much prefers the comfort of wealthy people rather than working-class people and grass-roots organizing. That’s a profound mistake.”

Meanwhile, the candidates profiled by Karni understand struggle, which makes them potent if not outright revolutionary for saving the Democrats: “We work nonstop every day, over and over, and it seems like all we do is survive, right?” Nathan Sage told voters at a recent event in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. With Sage's "right," he punctuated his connection to his audience's reality, and the crowd roared their fellow-feeling. They had found a champion. What differentiates a Nathan Sage from MAGA is that progressive labor doesn't want to burn it down. It wants to reform and build it stronger to uphold the social contract.

Trump Sees Himself as Dirty Harry. We See a Super-Villain

 

David French, this morning:

President Trump has done it again.

He is attacking a genuine and serious problem recklessly, heedless of the consequences and, in this case, of human life.

On Tuesday I watched Trump proudly display grainy footage of a military strike on what he said was a boat full of narco-terrorists on their way to the United States with a load of drugs.

Typically, when the Coast Guard or another branch of the military or law enforcement spots a boat suspected of carrying drugs, we seek to stop the boat, search it, seize any drugs and arrest and question the crew. If these drug smuggling suspects open fire, American forces can respond, but they cannot simply execute someone on the mere suspicion of drug trafficking.

We do not kill those suspected of being criminals from the air.

 

Whatever Became of Don Blankenship's Defamation Lawsuit? A Tiny History of Coal Baron Hubris

**For this update on some recent political history that got personal for me, I tried out a new A.I. platform named Perplexity, which aggregates sources from the entire Web. Much of the language under "Key Legal Points" belongs to Perplexity. But I added detail, because I was personally involved.

After West Virginia coal baron Don Blankenship's failed 2018 Senate race in West Virginia (which I followed here and here), he sued some 150 writers/broadcasters/media outlets/random political enemies for a grand total of $8 billion for defamation, claiming that all those media influencers (including, incidentally WataugaWatch and yours truly) had maliciously labeled Mr. Blankenship a felon, or had mistakenly said he was convicted of a felony (when in fact it turned out to be a misdemeanor, though he still spent a year in Federal prison). His lawsuit alleged we had individually and collectively damaged his reputation and hurt his chances of beating Senator Joe Manchin for the West Virginia Senate seat.

Oh, the company WataugaWatch was keeping! Some of the others named as defendants: the Washington Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Daily Beast, Esquire magazine, Wonkette, the Huffington Post, Breitbart News -- the list of defendants ran on for pages. I feel pretty sure that somebody working for Blankenship must have done universal Web searches for every incidence of the words Blankenship and felon (or felony) appearing together in print. If there was a Google search behind this lawsuit, it certainly ensnared me, an otherwise obscure blogger in the backwoods of North Carolina. (My two uses of Blankenship and felon are archived at the links above. My written correction to those posts is here.)

It took months -- years, actually --for the Federal judge in Charleston to dismiss Blankenship's suit for failing to reach the high bar of proving actual malice. 

Key Legal Points Assembled by Perpexity:

Blankenship, former CEO of Massey Energy, served a year in prison for misdemeanor conspiracy related to mine safety violations leading up to the deadly 2010 Upper Big Branch mine explosion that killed 29 miners.

The courts found that defendants' errors were not made with the requisite "actual malice" standard necessary for public figures to prove in defamation cases, particularly given Blankenship's high-profile 2018 Senate campaign.

West Virginia District Court Judge John Thomas Copenhaver Jr. granted summary judgment to all defendants in 2022. That summary judgment was affirmed by the appellate court in 2023. The U.S. Supremes declined to consider Blankenship's final appeal -- allowing the district court ruling to stand.

 

The Ghost of Christmas Present

 

You Can Always Depend on Foxx To Make the Burden Heavier

I had not focused enough on what happens when the coal seam runs thin:

As Appalachian coal deposits have dwindled over recent decades, miners have had to cut through more and more sandstone rock. This has exposed miners to very high levels of respirable silica dust and caused rates of black lung to rise to epidemic levels, with younger miners being particularly afflicted.

With that fact as background, the following fact looks just plain gross and cruel -- cruel for no good reason, except what you might milk from the mining industry because you're a member of the ruling party in Congress. 

On July 29, Congresswoman Virginia Foxx of North Carolina joined six other Republican members of Congress in sending a letter to the Mine Safety & Health Administration (MSHA), asking the agency to develop a new, more industry-friendly rule about acceptable levels of silica dust, and describing the agency’s efforts to curb silica exposure as placing “undue and excessive burdens” and “unwarranted and costly obligations” on mining companies. 

According to AppVoices, "The letter does not acknowledge the epidemic level of black lung in Central Appalachia, or the fact that the disease is affecting younger miners than in previous generations." Because those things, like many other species of human suffering, are of little interest to the congresswoman from the Fifth District of North Carolina. 

Shutdown Showdown (Again). Will Democrats Cave (Again)?

Time for another government shutdown showdown. Last one was in March, when Schumer caved, leaned on fellow Democratic senators to end the filibuster so the Republicans could have their continuing resolution, and thus he launched a pretty raunchy rebellion among the Democratic base. And once again, according to Heather Digby Parton, "what Republicans are proposing this time around is so odious that Democrats cannot be seen to have voted for it."

What exactly is the Democratic leadership in the Senate -- Schumer -- and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries -- doing to stand up to ... this..?

Republicans are not acting in good faith. Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, has pulled the trigger on his plot to usurp the power of the purse from Congress. The president, he has asserted, has the power to cancel congressionally-approved spending by using a “pocket rescission,” which would see the administration refusing to spend money on programs it doesn’t support .... This action is unprecedented, and it would effectively grant the president absolute monarchical power....

Reportedly, Schumer and Jeffries have written strongly worded letters to the Republican leadership. Those letters have become a joke on late night TV. Journalist Brian Beutler pointed out that “They make no demands. The closest they come is to request a meeting, in the hope of getting answers to questions. Not to establish conditions for Democratic votes, just to see how uncompromising Republicans intend to be. This is, if anything, a weaker posture than they adopted in March [during the last shutdown showdown], before folding and igniting an enormous grassroots backlash.”

To kick up a bit of a fuss before ultimately allowing the thing to pass has become the Democratic "brand," and the base is sick of it. Schumer and Jeffries are not unreasonably afraid of what the shutdown can cause for the people causing the shutdown -- as Freedom Caucus Republicans learned during past shutdowns. Because, they argue, in all likelihood -- if history is any teacher -- the shutdown will be over in two, three, six weeks with nothing substantial gained, because the opposition always has to "save" government by sacrificing values. Maybe it's time to break that mold. Doesn't seem likely that's going to happen, but wouldn't it be interesting to watch?

"The consensus is that, like last time, Democrats will end up caving in the end."

Zach Wahls -- The Young Man Who Stood Up

 

On January 31, 2011, Zach Wahls, at the time a 19-year-old engineering student at the University of Iowa, delivered some impassioned and articulate testimony before the Iowa House Judiciary Committee, which was considering an anti-gay marriage amendment to the state's constitution. Video of Wahls's speech went viral, because in it he confessed he was the child of lesbian parents and that no one could find any harm that had come to him as the son of a gay marriage. Wahls's words and demeanor were in fact a tribute to the raising those two women had given him. The Economist described his speech: "This is what it looks like to win an argument." Remind yourself of it to have an appreciation of this kid's power of persuasion.

Zach Wahls, now a 33-year-old credit union vice president and member of the Iowa Senate, has set his sights on Joni Ernst's US Senate seat, which she is vacating, and Wahls made a point of highlighting his viral fame from 2011 when he announced his candidacy. (You can watch his announcement video here.) He was and remains an advocate for LGBTQ rights, though he himself is straight with a wife and new baby. He jokes that though he doesn't fit any of the LGBTQ labels, maybe there should be a new category for "Queer-Spawn."

Wahls ran for his seat in the Iowa Senate in 2018, the Blue Wave year of Trump's 1st mid-term. Wahls easily won the seat in a safe Democratic district and faced no opposition in his reelection to a second term in 2022. He was voted the youngest Senate Minority Leader by his Democratic caucus for 2020-2021, but then got booted from that role by a caucus that wouldn't go along with some sweeping changes to policy which included firing a couple of people from the caucus operation. Getting crossways with his own caucus may hurt him in a Democratic primary, but that sort of trouble could also play very well with Independents. Iowa went for Trump in 2024 by almost 56%. The Cook Political Report still rates it R-plus Infinity -- "Likely Republican" -- even after Ernst's announcement.

So Wahls's declaration for the Senate seat on June 11th had no likely influence on Joni Ernst's bowing out. Some might want to suppose that Wahls's name recognition and youth might have spooked Ernst just a little. I don't know. I doubt it, but I can always hope. Stupid, blind, ever-deluded hope.

Now that J.D. Scholten has dropped out of the Democratic primary, Wahls would appear to be the frontrunner in a still crowded field of three other long shots and also-rans. The Iowa primary will be in June, and this is a race to watch.