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A Year After Breonna Taylor's Killing, Family Says There's 'No Accountability' : NPR - 0 views

  • Before Breonna Taylor's name became synonymous with police violence against Black Americans, she was an emergency medical technician in Louisville, Ky.The 26-year-old Black woman's friends and family say she was beloved, and relished the opportunity to brighten someone else's day.
  • Exactly one year ago, Louisville police gunned her down in her home. Now, her name is a ubiquitous rallying cry at protests calling for police reforms, and many social justice advocates point to her story as an example of how difficult it can be to hold police accountable for violent acts. The Louisville incident unfolded during a botched narcotics raid, when officers forced their way into her apartment in the early morning hours of March 13, 2020. Taylor was not the target of the raid and the suspect police were searching for was not at Taylor's home.
  • A year after Taylor's death, none of the officers who fired their service weapons — a total of 32 rounds — face criminal charges directly over Taylor's killing. At least three officers with connections to the raid have been terminated from the force.
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  • Some advocates are calling for Kentucky's Republican-controlled legislature to pass "Breonna's Law," which would ban no-knock warrants statewide. The Kentucky Senate passed a bill late last month restricting such warrants in certain situations, which many activists and Democratic lawmakers say does not go far enough. They had introduced a similar bill in the House in August, called "Breonna's Law," but the House Judiciary Committee voted on Wednesday to move forward with the Republican-sponsored proposal, according to WFPL.
  • But many advocates believe justice has not been done, citing the lack of criminal charges and saying they want to see broader criminal justice reform. Demonstrators plan to gather in downtown Louisville on Saturday to mark the anniversary of Taylor's death, member station WFPL reported. Activists say they hope to keep her memory alive and renew calls for justice, after the winter dampened on-the-ground protests.
  • In September, the city of Louisville announced a $12 million settlement in the wrongful death lawsuit filed by Taylor's family, which also included several police reforms.
  • Louisville Democratic Rep. Attica Scott, the primary sponsor of Breonna's Law, told NPR's All Things Considered on Friday that committee officials have said they will consider proposed amendments that would bring the two bills further into alignment.She also said she had written a letter to newly-confirmed Attorney General Merrick Garland this week, asking him to fully investigate Taylor's killing.
  • Ju'Niyah Palmer, Taylor's sister, wrote on Instagram earlier this year that her heart was "heavy because we are only 2 months away from me not hearing, seeing or cuddling you for a whole year." Her mother, Tamika Palmer, recently filed complaints with the police department's professional standards unit against six officers for their role in the investigation that included the raid. In an Thursday interview with a Louisville CBS affiliate, Palmer expressed her frustration with the lack of accountability in the case and called on the community to continue demanding justice.
  • Last September, after months of protests in and around Louisville, the city was braced to hear whether a grand jury would hand down criminal indictments for LMPD officers Brett Hankison, Jonathan Mattingly and Myles Cosgrove. At a press briefing Sept. 23, Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron announced no charges directly tied to Taylor's death. The grand jury handed down three criminal counts of wanton endangerment to Hankison, over shooting through Taylor's apartment into a neighboring residence.
  • The grand jury did not charge Mattingly, who shot six times, and Cosgrove, who fired a total of 16 rounds, including what federal investigators determined to be the round that ultimately killed Taylor.
  • Cameron, whose office took over as special prosecutor in the case in May, said at the press conference that both Mattingly and Cosgrove "were justified in their use of force."After the two officers forced their way into Taylor's apartment, her boyfriend Kenneth Walker fired on them. Walker, a licensed gun owner, has maintained that he did not hear the officers announce themselves before entering and mistook them for intruders. He fired a shot, which hit Mattingly in the leg.
  • Cameron, Kentucky's first Black attorney general, told reporters that "evidence shows that officers both knocked and announced their presence at the apartment." He cited the officers' statements and one additional witness as evidence, but also acknowledged there is no video or body camera footage of the officers executing the search warrant.
  • Cameron's announcement sparked fresh outrage and demonstrations in Louisville, Atlanta, Denver, and Portland, among other cities. It added fuel to an already tense period in American society, where national protests focusing on racial justice inequities became a near-daily occurrence following high-profile police incidents with Black Americans, including George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Jacob Blake, Daniel Prude and others who were killed or seriously injured.
  • Days after Cameron's press conference, Taylor's mother, Palmer, said she was "reassured ... of why I have no faith in the legal system, in the police, in the law. ... They are not made to protect us Black and brown people."
  • In that same press conference, Crump raised questions about what evidence Cameron presented on behalf of Taylor to the grand jury. He also publicly called for the release of the transcripts of the proceedings, something that is extremely rare in grand jury cases. The court did so several weeks later, after some jurors took issue with Cameron's explanation for why no officer was directly charged in Taylor's death.
  • Hankison was terminated from LMPD in June, after the department found he fired "wantonly and blindly" into Taylor's apartment. In January, some nine months after Taylor's killing, the department formally terminated Cosgrove and another officer connected to the incident.
  • Both Cosgrove and Detective Joshua Jaynes, who secured the warrant for the raid on Taylor's home, were found to have violated department protocols, according to the termination letters made public on Jan. 6.
  • LMPD officials said that for Jaynes, "the evidence in this case revealed a sustained untruthfulness violation based on information included in an affidavit completed by you and submitted to a judge."LMPD said Cosgrove violated the department's protocols on use of deadly force and failed to activate his officer-worn body camera.
  • In that same batch of documents, LMPD also said that Mattingly, who was shot during the raid, was exonerated on both counts of violating department procedures on use of deadly force and de-escalation. It added, "no disciplinary action taken and the complaint will be dismissed." The disciplinary documents were released the same day Fischer, the Louisville mayor, formally announced that Erika Shields would be the city's next permanent police chief.
  • Shields resigned her post as Atlanta's police chief in the immediate aftermath of the killing of Rayshard Brooks, a Black man who was shot in the back during an encounter with white officers in a Wendy's parking lot in June.
katherineharron

US diplomat Bill Taylor directly ties Trump to Ukraine quid pro quo - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • The top US diplomat in Ukraine, Bill Taylor, testified Tuesday that he had been told President Donald Trump would withhold military aid to the country until it publicly declared investigations would be launched that could help his reelection chances — including into former Vice President Joe Biden, according to a copy of Taylor's opening statement obtained by CNN.
  • Taylor's explosive testimony is likely to add fuel to Democrats' impeachment inquiry into Trump and Ukraine, with Democratic lawmakers leaving the closed door session before three House committees declaring Taylor's testimony was damning for the President. The testimony also undercuts White House assertions that there was no "quid pro quo" tying security assistance with the opening of an investigation, as Taylor says he was told repeatedly that the two were linked.
  • Taylor testified that US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland told him he'd made a mistake by telling the Ukrainian officials that a White House meeting with Zelensky "was dependent on a public announcement of the investigations."
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  • Text messages between Taylor and Sondland and provided to Congress show that the two discussed the aid being frozen on the phone, amid concerns Taylor had raised that it was being held up in order to help Trump politically.
  • "I argued to both that the explanation made no sense: the Ukrainians did not 'owe' President Trump anything, and holding up security assistance for domestic political gain was 'crazy,' as I had said in my text message to Ambassadors Sondland and Volker on September 9," Taylor added.
  • Asked about Taylor's comments that Sondland had told him the aid was tied to an investigation, a source familiar with Sondland's testimony said that Sondland cited multiple reasons the security aid was frozen, including because the Europeans weren't giving Ukraine enough and corruption in general. The source said Sondland was only speculating when he referenced the political investigations into the 2016 election and Burisma.
  • Taylor says he was told by a National Security Council official that Trump told Sondland he had insisted Zelensky "go to a microphone and say he is opening investigations of Biden and 2016 interference."
  • Taylor, who testified before the three House committees leading the Democratic impeachment inquiry, planned to lay out the reasoning behind his different WhatsApp text messages in his opening statement Tuesday, the source said. Taylor planned to include a chronology of events, according to the source, dating back to June, when Taylor assumed his post, through October.
  • "I think Gordon Sondland may very well have to come back. He's got some explaining to do," said Democratic Rep. Gerry Connolly of Virginia.
  • Taylor did not bring any new documents to the committee, and he planned to just reference those that have already been made public, the source said. Volker, who is no longer at the State Department, provided the texts to Congress. Other witnesses who have appeared, including Sondland, have been prevented by the State Department from providing documents.
  • Taylor, as the US chargé d'affaires in Ukraine, was in a difficult and delicate position testifying Tuesday, the source said. Taylor's view was that he is there to speak to committee and answer their questions, and he was not looking to issue his own statement publicly. His full opening statement did eventually become public.
  • After the meeting, Taylor texted back and forth with Volker, and among other things he asked why Volker would not want to take the job. Volker said he was better off in his current role -- covering Ukraine as well as Washington and allies and NATO. Taylor was on the ground in Ukraine, serving as de-facto ambassador, about a month later.
carolinehayter

Breonna Taylor Grand Jury Recording Released: Live Updates - The New York Times - 0 views

  • An audio recording of the grand jury inquiry into the killing of Breonna Taylor was made public on Friday, a rare disclosure that shed light on the evidence jurors considered in the proceedings.
  • 15 hours long
  • captured interviews with witnesses, audio of 911 calls and other evidence presented to jurors over two and a half days.
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  • He has insisted that the 12 jurors were given “all of the evidence” and were free to pursue additional charges.
  • As is customary in the recording of Grand Jury proceedings, juror deliberations and prosecutor recommendations and statements were not recorded, as they are not evidence,
  • The audio files do not include statements or recommendations from prosecutors about which charges they think should be brought against the officers. Mr. Cameron has said that jurors were told that the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor were justified in their actions. Ultimately, the jurors indicted a former officer last week on three charges of endangering Ms. Taylor’s neighbors by firing into their home during a raid of her apartment in March, but did not charge either of the officers who shot her.
  • Grand jurors are given broad powers to request evidence, call witnesses and determine which charges to pursue, but prosecutors often closely guide the jurors, presenting them with certain charges and telling them about their own roles. The process almost always remains secret.
  • grand jurors indicted Brett Hankison, a former detective, on three counts of “wanton endangerment” last week, saying Mr. Hankison had recklessly fired his gun during the raid after Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend — who has said he thought intruders were entering the apartment — shot an officer in the leg.
  • Mr. Hankison’s rounds did not hit anyone, investigators have said, but some of them flew into an apartment behind Ms. Taylor’s, leading to the three charges.
  • Detective Myles Cosgrove, who the F.B.I. said fired the shot that killed Ms. Taylor, described a disorienting scene of flashing lights as officers breached the door and seemed to suggest uncertainty about exactly what happened.
  • But, he added, “It’s like a surreal thing. If you told me I didn’t do something at that time, I’d believe you. If you told me I did do something, I’d probably believe you, too.”
  • Detective Cosgrove said he also saw a shadow of a person, a “larger than normal human shadow,” when they raided the apartment and he saw flashing lights.
  • The first witness was an investigator for the Attorney General’s office, who presented photos and videos of the scene, including the body camera videos of three officers who arrived after the shots were fired
  • Grand jurors asked whether Kenneth Walker, Ms. Taylor’s boyfriend, had been named in the search warrant (he had not), what exactly the officers saw when the apartment door opened, and whether the officers executing the warrant were aware that the police had already found Jamarcus Glover, who was the target of an illegal drug investigation.
  • Mr. Glover was Ms. Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, and he was in custody by the time they raided her apartment. At times, the jurors’ questions suggested they were skeptical of what they were being shown: one asked about the time stamps on the video. Another asked why they had not seen the room where the gun was found; the investigator said that would be shown in a different video.
  • Grand jurors heard at least two Louisville police officers who were at the raid on Ms. Taylor’s apartment say the group knocked and announced their presence several times before breaking down the door, according to a recording of the proceedings released on Friday.Those accounts, which have been questioned by several of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors and her boyfriend, were included among roughly 15 hours of audio filed by the attorney general on Friday, which includes interviews heard by the grand jury over several days last week.
  • The unidentified neighbor yelled at them, “something about leave her alone, there was some girl there,” Detective Cosgrove said in an interview with police investigators last month that was played for the grand jury.
  • He said officers were outside knocking for 90 seconds, and that the volume escalated from “gentle knocking” to “forceful pounding” to pounding while yelling “police.”
  • Detective Nobles, who held the battering ram that broke through Ms. Taylor’s door, said he stood at the door, knocking and announcing himself as police for one or two minutes before he used the battering ram to force his way into Ms. Taylor’s apartment. His interview was also played for grand jurors. He said it took three knocks with the battering ram to break down the door completely.The first blow hit the handle, he said. The second broke the door, but left it still on the hinges. The third broke down the door completely. When he entered, Mr. Nobles said it was “pitch black,” and that Sgt. John Mattingly, one of the officers who shot Ms. Taylor, was quickly shot in the leg after the team entered the building.
  • In previous interviews with The Times, 11 of 12 of Ms. Taylor’s neighbors said they never heard the police identify themselves. One neighbor said he heard the group say “Police,” just once.
  • Grand jurors were played recordings of radio calls from Mr. Hankison, the detective who fired blindly from outside the apartment and has been charged with wanton endangerment, as well as 911 calls that came in after the shooting began.
  • The calls suggest that Mr. Hankison, who was fired after the shooting for violating department procedure, believed that Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly had been wounded by someone with an “A.R.” who was “barricaded” inside the apartment. Mr. Hankison’s reference to an “A.R.” on the call appears to be a reference to either an assault rile or the AR-15, a type of a military-style semiautomatic rifle.
  • The only charges brought by the grand jury were three counts of “wanton endangerment in the first degree” against Mr. Hankison for his actions during the raid.
  • Under Kentucky law, a person commits that crime when he or she “wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person,” and does so “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life.” Other states may use terms like “reckless endangerment” for an equivalent offense.
  • But the charges against Mr. Hankison are not for killing Ms. Taylor. None of the 10 shots he fired are known to have struck her. Instead, the Kentucky attorney general said the former detective was charged by the grand jury because the shots he fired had passed through Ms. Taylor’s apartment walls into a neighboring apartment, endangering three people there.
  • The crime is a Class D felony in Kentucky, which means it can carry a sentence of up to five years in prison and a fine on conviction for each count.
  • A person can be guilty of wanton endangerment even if they did not intend to harm anyone or to commit a crime; it is sufficient to recklessly disregard the peril that one’s actions create.
  • Mr. Hankison was fired from the force. During the raid, he fired into her apartment from outside, through a sliding glass patio door and a window that were covered with blinds, in violation of a department policy that requires officers to have a line of sight.
  • The name Breonna Taylor has echoed across the nation for months as demonstrators demanded the police be held accountable for her death.
  • The police killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died in May after being handcuffed and pinned to the ground by a white police officer’s knee, brought renewed attention to deadly episodes involving the police, including Ms. Taylor’s death, and fueled Black Lives Matter protests that persisted throughout the summer.
  • In September, when the grand jury announced no charges against the officers who killed Ms. Taylor, protesters poured into the streets of Louisville with renewed strength and anger, demanding stronger charges. The protesters called for all three officers, who are white, to be held to account for Ms. Taylor’s death. Ms. Taylor’s family, too, has pleaded for justice, pushing for criminal charges against the officers. Ms. Taylor’s case has also been the center of campaigns from several celebrities and athletes, some of whom have dedicated their seasons to keeping a spotlight on her case.
katherineharron

Republicans refuse to purge their party of lies and hateful rhetoric - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • After four years of refusing to hold Donald Trump accountable for his lies, conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric, Republicans passed up another chance to purge those forces from their ranks Thursday when they overwhelmingly opposed Democrats' efforts to rebuke Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
  • (CNN)After four years of refusing to hold Donald Trump accountable for his lies, conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric, Republicans passed up another chance to purge those forces from their ranks Thursday when they overwhelmingly opposed Democrats' efforts to rebuke Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.
  • Despite national outrage about Trump's undemocratic actions, only 10 House Republicans voted to impeach him last month. And most Republicans balked Thursday at punishing Greene for espousing the dangerous lies and violent rhetoric that threaten the future of their party, with only 11 House Republicans joining Democrats in voting to kick Greene off her committees.
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  • Greene compiled a long list of unhinged comments and social media posts, including endorsement of violence against and assassinations of top Democrats, 9/11 trutherism and denials of school shootings.
  • Paradoxically, by seeking to punish Trump and Greene, Democrats may actually be helping to perpetuate the cycle of victimhood and complaints about "cancel culture" that each uses to crank up the anger of their radical base.
  • Greene has seized Trump's mantle by remaining defiant and insisting that she will not apologize for her mistakes in interviews and social media posts
  • "The entire Marjorie Taylor Greene disaster has been a meteor headed directly at the GOP conference since she won her primary. She should have been put on the bench then," said Republican strategist Rob Stutzman. "But the President liked her -- and liked the Q crazies because they liked him. GOP leadership needs to get onto cutting this craziness out of the party or it will proliferate."
  • Trump has long used the idea of victimhood as an anchor of his appeal to grassroots supporters who feel ostracized from the Washington establishment. In fact, one of the pillars of his defense in his Senate impeachment trial next week will be an argument that Democrats are trying to cancel his right of free speech -- which he used to discredit a fair election and to send a mob to sack the Capitol. That's a message Greene echoed with her mask on Thursday, which read, "Free Speech."
  • Greene's loss of her committee assignments may actually give her an opportunity to portray her rebuke as the result of standing up to liberals and even "establishment" members of her own party. She has told her supporters she has raised at least $1.6 million during the uproar over the past week.
  • While just 11 House Republicans voted to remove Greene from her committee assignments Thursday night, 61 voted the night before to remove Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney, the third-ranking member of the conference, from her leadership position over her vote to impeach Trump.
  • Rather than taking full responsibility for her actions in her Thursday speech, Greene said the media that exposed her lies and lunacy is as bad as the QAnon conspiracy theory she espoused. She called Democrats -- rather than Trump's rioters who invaded the Capitol on January 6 -- a "mob."
  • Greene told The Washington Examiner that in removing her from her assignments Democrats "don't even realize they're helping me. I'm pretty amazed at how dumb they are."
  • "Think of Greene as a virus. Forceful and decisive action has to be taken to prevent the spread,"
  • Republicans could have taken more forceful action to drive Greene and her radical sentiments from their party at any time in the last few months -- or over the past year when she was running for Congress. Instead, Greene got a standing ovation from many in the House Republican Conference meeting Wednesday night.
  • The former President on Thursday declined to answer for his seditious behavior, turning down a request by House impeachment managers to testify for his trial.
  • The furor over Trump and Greene shows that even with the ex-President out of office, most of the Washington GOP is not willing to take issue with the radical fringe that festers among its most loyal voters.
  • "In the House, I tell you what I think's going on. I think they're trying to play both sides," former Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich said on CNN's "The Situation Room" on Thursday. "They don't want to aggravate the people who sort of sign up to QAnon and these conspiracy theories. They don't want to aggravate them but they also want to win the majority. It's all a fight for power."
  • For many in the party, Trump's unrepentant departure after trying to tear democracy down with false claims of vote fraud and Greene's rocket to fame as a "Make America Great Again" heroine are a nightmare scenario.
  • "I do think as a party we have to figure out what we stand for, and I think we've got to be a party of ideas and policies and principles and get away from members dabbling in conspiracy theories," South Dakota Republican Sen. John Thune told CNN's Manu Raju on Thursday. "I don't think that's a productive course of action or one that's going to lead to much prosperity politically in the future."
  • "The House Republican Conference has been taken over by QAnon caucus, the crackpot caucus and the conspiracy caucus at the same time," Democratic House Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries told CNN's Erin Burnett Thursday night.
  • "The party of Lincoln is gone. The party of Reagan is gone. The party of John McCain is gone. This is now the party of Marjorie Taylor Greene."
tsainten

Miles Taylor, a Former Homeland Security Official, Reveals He Was 'Anonymous' - The New... - 0 views

  • Miles Taylor, the former chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security, was the anonymous author of The New York Times Op-Ed article in 2018 whose description of President Trump as “impetuous, adversarial, petty and ineffective” roiled Washington and set off a hunt for his identity, Mr. Taylor confirmed Wednesday.
  • “undisciplined” and “amoral” leader whose abuse of power threatened the foundations of American democracy.
  • On Wednesday, Mr. Trump claimed not to know who Mr. Taylor is, despite the fact that there are numerous pictures of the president with Mr. Taylor in meetings.
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  • He has been on personal leave from the company for the past several months after endorsing Mr. Biden and has been organizing other Republicans to campaign against Mr. Trump’s re-election.
  • He responded with a short but telling tweet: ‘TREASON?’” Mr. Taylor wrote in his statement.
  • Mr. Taylor’s decision to assail the president anonymously in the Times article created a sensation in Washington because of its claims about the president’s lack of character and inability to govern.
  • In the book, Mr. Taylor said he decided to remain anonymous because he believed revealing his identity would have allowed Mr. Trump and his allies to distract attention from the substance of the critique he leveled against the president.
  • Ms. Nielsen’s resistance to some of Mr. Trump’s demands — including shutting down the border with Mexico and shooting people crossing the border illegally in the legs to slow them down — eventually led to her dismissal.
hannahcarter11

Marjorie Taylor Greene may be politically safe, but her conservative Georgia constituen... - 0 views

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene has turned herself into one of the most visible Republicans in the country -- stoking an endless stream of controversies that has caused headaches for a defeated party trying to find its footing while she rakes in campaign cash without fear of consequences.
  • Greene's political security in the district -- where 75% of voters supported former President Donald Trump last November -- doesn't mean that all of her constituents are relishing her role as the GOP's flamethrower or that they approve of the recent anti-Semitic comments that she has used to rally her supporters.
  • Some questioned the motives behind Greene's attention-seeking maneuvers and said they were open to supporting a different Republican for her seat -- though no formidable challenger has emerged yet.
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  • She's already been stripped of her committee assignments by a vote in the House, rendering her an essentially ineffective legislator, but she's largely gone undisciplined by party leadership in Washington, DC, as congressional Republicans bow to Trump.
  • Unbowed by reprimands from her GOP colleagues, she made a fresh comparison between Democrats and Nazis, claimed that the cartels "love" President Joe Biden during a discourse on immigration, and then did a racist impression in what she described as her "really bad Mexican accent."
  • nside the Oakwood Cafe that morning, 78-year-old Phil Neff, who supported Trump, paid for his breakfast amid the morning bustle. Afterward, he told CNN he believes that Greene "has more interest in herself than serving the community," but added with a note of resignation: "That's what the people chose."
  • "I don't think anybody should be comparing anything for the Nazis and the Holocaust. It's different worlds," White said during an interview in Rome, Georgia, hours before Greene's rally. "She has been ineffective, and she'll continue to be ineffective as long as she is as controversial as she is. She doesn't garner support of other Republicans."
  • But Greene also has plenty of defenders within the Republican base -- despite her past embrace of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, racist and Islamophobic rhetoric, and past Facebook comments and videos unearthed by CNN's KFile in which she indicated support for executing prominent Democrats.
  • In the few short months she's been in Congress, Greene has created major headaches for her party, not just by lobbing her inflammatory criticisms at Democrats, but also by undermining Republican leaders in the GOP conference.
  • But just as Republican voters often excused Trump's outlandish statements as proof of his authenticity, some voters in this conservative Georgia district praise Greene for her candor.
  • "I don't necessarily agree with that statement," Deal said in an interview in Rome with CNN's Martin Savidge when asked about Greene's comparisons between mask requirements and the Holocaust. "But I do agree with her right to say it."
  • "It does feel like people are getting some of the rights taken away that they're used to," Shults said.Sandra Campbell, another Georgia voter, said she believes Greene and Trump are representative of the "real America."
katherineharron

Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene team up to battle political opposition - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Republican Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Matt Gaetz of Florida have a lot in common
  • They've now formed a joint fundraising committee and are making plans to travel the country together on what they are calling an "America First" tour.
  • As the pressure on each grows, they have formed an unsurprising bond, often seen talking to each other on the floor of the House of Representatives, and they back each other up when others in the GOP aren't rushing to their defense.
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  • Earlier this month, when Greene flirted with the idea of forming an "America First" caucus, a leaked flier promoting the caucus received sharp criticism for using inflammatory rhetoric. While many Republicans -- even some from the far-right Freedom Caucus -- were quick to distance themselves from the document and the caucus itself, Gaetz proudly proclaimed he was ready to sign up.
  • Greene has returned the favor. When news broke of a federal investigation into Gaetz, which includes allegations of sex trafficking and prostitution, many Democrats and even fellow GOP Rep. Adam Kinzinger of Illinois called for him to resign. But Greene defended her Florida colleague.
  • "I have proudly defended Matt Gaetz from the beginning because I know he has done nothing wrong and I recognized this playbook right from the start,"
  • Now the two are solidifying that alliance through the joint fundraising committee -- which generally allows politicians to secure a single, larger check from a donor and then split the money among several committees -- and their "America First" tour, which is set to kick off next Friday with an event at the Villages, a retirement community that is in neither of their congressional districts.
  • "There are millions of Americans who need to know they still have advocates in Washington D.C., and the America First movement is consistently growing and fighting," Gaetz said in a statement announcing the tour.
  • "I think these people get too much attention. I don't really want to elevate or amplify their voices. They're not the Republican Party that I am excited to be a leader within," one Republican lawmaker, speaking on the condition of anonymity to speak more freely, told CNN. "For me, it'd be better if these guys just go away."
  • "This is part of the Republican Party's internal struggle about, you know, is this the party of Trump or is this the party of conservative values? And you know, Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene are many things, but you know, conservative Republicans they are not," the lawmaker said.
  • Greene has also become a fundraising force, despite being kicked off her congressional committees. The Democratic-controlled House voted to remove her in February in the wake of recently unearthed incendiary and violent past statements from the congresswoman that triggered widespread backlash. But the freshman raised an unprecedented $3.2 million in the first quarter of 2021, which largely came from an online spigot of small-dollar donations from people across the country.
  • Some Democrats have called on Gaetz to be removed from his committees as well because of his legal troubles.
  • Some Republicans fear that the more the pair are under attack, the stronger their base of support becomes. A separate GOP member of Congress argued that removing Greene from her committees left her only one option: waging a public relations war."I tell the Democrats, who ask me what we are going to do about MTG, that this situation is one of their own creation," the Republican lawmaker told CNN.
  • "It's obviously a bad look for the party. This is not who we are. This is not how we get the majority back. It's a distraction that's only going to hurt our efforts to talk about our agenda and talk about policy," said a GOP congressional aide.
katherineharron

McConnell: Marjorie Taylor Greene's views are a 'cancer' for the GOP - CNNPolitics - 0 views

  • Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday issued a tacit rebuke of controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, slamming the Georgia Republican's "loony lies and conspiracy theories" as a "cancer" for the party.
  • "Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality. This has nothing to do with the challenges facing American families or the robust debates on substance that can strengthen our party."
  • While McConnell did not name Greene directly, his statement stands as a scathing rebuke of the freshman Republican House member.
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  • Greene quickly shot back on Twitter, asserting that "the real cancer for the Republican Party is weak Republicans who only know how to lose gracefully. This is why we are losing our country."
  • Greene has faced backlash since a CNN KFile report last week found that she had repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress.
  • In a separate statement to CNN, he expressed support for Republican Rep. Liz Cheney's vote to impeach President Donald Trump as some Trump loyalists seek to remove her from leadership.
  • Greene now faces potentially serious consequences in light of her prior comments, with House Democrats moving expeditiously to remove her from her committee assignments.
  • CNN previously reported that McCarthy is slated to meet with Greene this week, as many House Republicans have been silent about her newly resurfaced incendiary comments.
  • McConnell's short but pointed rebuke Monday night came the same day the Kentucky Republican waded publicly into another controversy threatening party unity.
  • The freshman congresswoman has a track record of incendiary rhetoric, including past comments using Islamophobic and anti-Semitic tropes, as well as ties to the baseless and thoroughly debunked QAnon conspiracy theory.
  • Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell on Monday issued a tacit rebuke of controversial Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, slamming the Georgia Republican's "loony lies and conspiracy theories" as a "cancer" for the party.
Javier E

Slavery at Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia: Students who beat and raped ensla... - 0 views

  • Last year, the university produced a 96-page report that concluded slavery was “in every way imaginable . . . central to the project of designing, funding, building, and maintaining the school.”
  • U-Va.’s efforts come as dozens of universities across the country undertake similar examinations — and as America marks the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first enslaved Africans in Jamestown. The dark milestone has spurred a reckoning with the awful reality of slavery and the myriad ways it shaped the nation.
  • Jefferson — who by then had served as both U.S. president and vice president — envisioned U-Va. as a breeding ground for the next generation of the country’s political elite, beneficiaries of his educational program molded in his image, Taylor said. Still, he wanted students to differentiate themselves in at least one important way: He wanted them to end slavery in America.
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  • “The central paradox at the heart of U-Va. is also the central paradox of the nation, the unresolved paradox of American liberty,” McInnis said. “How is it that the nation that defined the natural rights of humankind did so within a system that denied those same rights to millions of people?”
  • The vast majority of the student body — numbering between 100 and 150 people each year — hailed from wealthy, Southern slaveholding families. Plantation-owning parents clamored to send their sons to U-Va., lauded as a prestigious alternative to the Northern schools they feared as dangerous hotbeds of anti-slavery sentiment, according to Taylor.
  • Instead, early U-Va. graduates became “leading voices in the pro-slavery movement, soldiers in the Confederate Army, and political leaders in the Confederate States of America,” McInnis wrote in “Educated in Tyranny.”
  • efferson insisted, the up-and-coming generation should fix the problem by “emancipating the enslaved and deporting them to Africa,” Taylor said
  • Ultrarich Southerners were also some of the only Americans able to afford tuition at U-Va., then “the most expensive college” in the country, Taylor said.
  • “Jefferson physically designed a campus that internalized everything he had learned living on plantations,” McInnis said. “It is architecturally set up to be a landscape of slavery.”
  • Enslaved people also catered to students’ daily whims. “Every afternoon, an enslaved servant called on his assigned student,” Taylor wrote in “Thomas Jefferson’s Education.” The enslaved person then “[took] orders for errands on the grounds or in town.”
  • At U-Va. — as at every Southern university in America during this era — bullying the enslaved formed “part of daily existence,” McInnis said. It was also performance art, Taylor added: a way for rich young men to prove their mettle to their peers.
  • “The episodes we do know of, other students are watching and applauding,” Taylor said. “This was a whole generation of men who just behaved monstrously.”
  • There’s a broad understanding that 'slavery is bad, people got whipped,’ but there’s also an urge to compartmentalize it: ‘That was bad, but it’s over with, and we should focus on the good stuff like U-Va.’s cutting-edge education and science,’ ” he said.“We’re not trying to ruin people’s day — but if you want to understand society, you’ve got to understand how everything is woven together, the good with the bad.”
hannahcarter11

Live Breonna Taylor News Tracker: Suspect Charged in Shooting of 2 Officers - The New Y... - 0 views

    • hannahcarter11
       
      So terrible that a literal wall matters more than Breonna's life. While the shooting was reckless period, the officers should've been charged about her murder.
  • plans to plead not guilty to the charges in the indictment
  • Breonna Taylor’s case as both the tragic death of a young woman, and the continuation of a long pattern of devaluation and violence that Black women and men face in our country, as they have historically,
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    • hannahcarter11
       
      It's astonishing how they're so quick to attempt to arrest the person who shot the police officers yet have done everything to not face the consequences for their own actions.
  • “We need our whole city to come out,”
  • Ms. Helm said that she was nervous for the safety of protesters, especially after seeing the significant law enforcement presence that was patrolling Louisville on Wednesday evening
  • Shortly after midnight, the police declared the protest unlawful and ordered people to disperse.
  • Anger over Ms. Taylor’s killing and the prosecutors’ handling of the case has spread far from Louisville, with protests on Wednesday night drawing crowds in New York, Chicago and Seattle. Some rallies, like those in Portland, Maine, and Memphis, were small but vocal.
  • “There are Breonnas everywhere.”
  • the people want justice even if the system doesn’t,
  • “I don’t want this incident to get swept under the rug and everybody forgets about all the innocent lives that have been taken
  • female athletes have been instrumental in directing attention to the investigation.
  • This isn’t a bad apple, it’s a rotten tree.”
  • The lack of a murder or manslaughter indictment against any of the officers involved in the shooting death of Breonna Taylor was an outrage to many — but not a surprise.
  • A grand jury indicted a former Louisville police detective on Wednesday for endangering Breonna Taylor’s neighbors with reckless gunfire during a raid on her apartment in March, but the two officers who shot Ms. Taylor were not charged in her death.
  • Three officers fired a total of 32 shots
  • Ms. Taylor’s name and image have become part of the national movement over racial injustice since May, with celebrities writing open letters and erecting billboards that demanded the white officers be criminally charged.
  • Angry demonstrators took to the streets on Wednesday after a Kentucky grand jury did not charge police officers with killing Ms. Taylor. A suspect was in custody, accused of shooting two Louisville officers.
  • The city erupted in angry demonstrations Wednesday after a grand jury decided not to bring charges against the police officers who shot and killed Breonna Taylor during a botched nighttime raid on her apartment in March.
hannahcarter11

Who Is Miles Taylor? - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Miles Taylor, who revealed on Wednesday that he was the anonymous author of a New York Times Op-Ed article in 2018 that was critical of President Trump, is a lifelong Republican whose service as a senior Homeland Security official in the Trump administration led him to endorse former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Democratic nominee, for president this year.
  • Mr. Taylor anonymously described what he called Mr. Trump’s “amorality,” writing that he witnessed the president’s dysfunctional behavior as part of a “quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first.”
  • Mr. Taylor was frequently in meetings with top White House officials and sometimes with the president.
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  • Taylor served as a national security adviser on the committee and was a leading contributor to the task force report on combating terrorist and foreign fighter travel, which the committee released in 2015.
  • He faced criticism from some of the company’s employees because of his role in the administration when Ms. Nielsen helped enable the separation of migrant children from their families at the border.
carolinehayter

Pelosi Blasts GOP Leadership Over Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene's Remarks : NPR - 0 views

  • House Speaker Nancy Pelosi took aim Thursday at Republican leadership, saying the GOP had ignored a wave of threats and comments by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a promoter of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and placed her on the House Education Committee despite her questioning of school shootings.
  • Some House Democrats have called for Greene to face repercussions amid the new reports over Greene's comments, including purported threats on Facebook against Pelosi in which she suggested the speaker be "executed for treason."
  • garnered fresh attention this week when CNN reported on a video showing her in 2019 accosting a survivor of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla. Greene has said that shooting, which left 17 dead, as well as the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, which left 26 dead, including 20 children, were both staged events.
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  • Pelosi cited Greene's remarks in her criticism of the GOP leadership, calling it "absolutely appalling."
  • the Republican leadership in the House of Representatives who is willing to overlook, ignore those statements, assigning her to the Education Committee when she has mocked the killing of little children at Sandy Hook Elementary School, when she has mocked of killing of teenagers in high school at the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School
  • "These comments are deeply disturbing and Leader McCarthy plans to have a conversation with the congresswoman about them," the spokeswoman said.
  • Hours after Pelosi's comments, acting U.S. Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman said that in the wake of the agency's security failures, they will ask for new measures, including a permanent fencing system and the availability of "ready, back-up forces in close proximity to the Capitol."
  • California Rep. Jimmy Gomez said Wednesday that he would introduce a resolution to expel Greene from Congress. Also Wednesday, Massachusetts Rep. Jake Auchincloss said that if Greene doesn't resign, she needs to be expelled.
  • "What could they be thinking?" Pelosi told reporters. "Or is 'thinking' too generous a word for what they may be doing?"
  • supplemental funding to raise security measures for lawmakers — to address new security concerns among members, especially "when the enemy is within the House of Representatives.
  • "It means that we have members of Congress who want to bring guns on the floor and have threatened violence against on other members of Congress."
  • "If you don't understand that calling for the murder of political rivals is a threat to democracy, you shouldn't be allowed to represent one," Auchincloss said in a tweet.
  • The union representing U.S. Capitol Police officers says the force's leadership failed to relay the known threat of violence adequately ahead of the Jan. 6 deadly riot, calling the acting chief's recent admission of prior knowledge of the threat to Congress "a disclosure that has angered and shocked the rank-and-file officers."
  • By January 4th, the Department knew that the January 6th event would not be like any of the previous protests held in 2020. We knew that militia groups and white supremacists organizations would be attending. We also knew that some of these participants were intending to bring firearms and other weapons to the event. We kne
  • event
  • other
katherineharron

Opinion: The fight over Marjorie Taylor Greene poses a threat to the entire country - CNN - 0 views

  • he civil war raging inside the GOP may look like a problem for the Republican Party, but it is much more. It is a flashing red light for the entire country, warning America that if it continues on this path, it will become a country without guardrails against extremist ideologies.
  • The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech, and there's no prohibition against believing crazy ideas.
  • It's no wonder the venerable former Republican Sen. John Danforth said the GOP has become a "grotesque caricature" of what it used to be.
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  • that was before House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy declined to punish the execrable Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, other than a statement condemning her views. The QAnon follower's embrace of baseless conspiracy theories, along with violent, racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic statements are repulsive not just to many Americans, but to decent people around the world.
  • McCarthy presided over a meeting weighing the fate of Greene and of Rep. Liz Cheney, who committed the grave sin of condemning former President Donald Trump for inciting a mob to attack the Capitol in an assault on American democracy so stunning that even McCarthy briefly found his spine and criticized Trump.
  • Cheney survived a vote to remove her from leadership by a vote of 145- 61. And Greene, after apologizing to her colleagues in the closed-door party meeting Wednesday night, was not penalized, but met with a standing ovation.
  • Greene offered what largely amounted to a non-apology, expressing regret for some of her past comments. Hours later, in a dramatic Congressional session, 219 House Democrats, along with 11 Republicans, did what McCarthy should have and stripped Greene of her committee assignments.
  • By embracing Greene, Republicans are moving the Overton window, the range of views that are considered politically acceptable. Unfortunately, that has an impact on the entire country, however much the Democrats try to correct for the moral failings of Republicans.
  • After the closed-door meeting on Wednesday, McCarthy justified his inaction on Greene by saying, "This Republican Party's a very big tent, everyone's invited in."
  • But the tent is becoming increasingly comfortable for racists, anti-Semites, conspiracy theorists and reality deniers.
  • It's the party of the twice impeached Trump, a man who Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham described in 2015 as "a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot," who "doesn't represent my party."
  • Graham, as we know, did a 180 on Trump. He, too, found integrity too politically risky, and debased himself by embracing Trump.
  • It was the tolerance of Trump's rhetoric -- which was previously considered beyond the pale -- that paved the road to Greene's election and the attack on the Capitol last month.
  • Just two years ago, Republicans stripped Rep. Steve King from all committee assignments. King, who had made countless racist statements, had asked in an interview with the New York Times, "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization -- how did that language become offensive."
  • "That is not the party of Lincoln," he declared, "and it's definitely not American."
  • The party has changed.
  • Like many elected Republicans, Greene rejected the incontrovertible fact that President Joe Biden won the election. But she goes much further. She repeatedly showed support on social media for assassinating prominent Democrats, shared an image of herself holding a gun alongside other congresswomen with a caption that mentioned going "on the offense against these socialists" and claimed the 2018 California wildfires were deliberately set by a Jewish financier using a space laser.
  • When Greene was still a candidate running for Congress, the Republican Party initially distanced itself from her.
  • Rep. Steve Scalise, the House Republicans' number two, went even further, calling her statements "disgusting," and added they "don't reflect the values of equality and decency that make our country great."
  • But then Trump threw his arms around his fervent admirer, calling her "a real WINNER," and a "future Republican star."
  • On Wednesday, McCarthy defended Greene and said, "I think it would be helpful if you could hear exactly what she told all of us -- denouncing Q-on, I don't know if I say it right," McCarthy disingenuously claimed, "I don't even know what it is.
  • Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, of all people, seems to be an outlier among Republican leadership in condemning Greene. "Loony lies and conspiracy theories are a cancer for the Republican Party and our country. Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK Jr.'s airplane is not living in reality."
  • The GOP welcomed into the fold an extremist, during a time when Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has ordered an urgent examination of extremism in US military ranks; during a time when Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas says the threat of domestic terrorism is "persistent."
  • The new domestic terrorist threat comes from the extremist fringes that espouse the same ideas that McCarthy seemed to welcome into the GOP's "very big tent."
  • Extremists and their supporters are winning battles in the Republican civil war, and the entire country is paying a price.
katherineharron

Rep. Jim Himes says Bill Taylor's 'startling' testimony was 'most detailed, specific' s... - 0 views

  • A Democratic member of the House Intelligence Committee said Wednesday that testimony he heard from Bill Taylor, the top US diplomat in Ukraine, about President Donald Trump's dealings with the country was "startling" and the most "detailed (and) specific" he's heard so far in the impeachment inquiry. "Well, John, it was pretty startling testimony. You know, when the ambassador got done with his opening statement -- which is now public so we can talk about it under the rules -- you could hear a pin drop in the room," Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut told CNN's John Berman on "New Day."
  • On Tuesday, Taylor testified before three House committees that he had been told Trump would withhold military aid to Ukraine until it publicly declared an investigation would be launched that included Burisma, the company whose board Joe Biden's son Hunter sat on, and Ukraine's alleged involvement in the 2016 election, according to a copy of Taylor's opening statement obtained by CNN
  • "I know we're having this long conversation about what the definition of a quid pro quo is, but there's no question from his testimony that everything in the words of Ambassador (to the European Union Gordon) Sondland are contingent on the Ukrainians agreeing to go after Burisma, agreeing to go after Biden and all the other sort of things they asked for," Himes said on Wednesday.
delgadool

The Breonna Taylor Decision: Live Updates and Analysis - The New York Times - 0 views

  • A grand jury didn’t charge any officers with shooting Ms. Taylor in her Louisville apartment. A former officer, accused of firing recklessly, was indicted on three counts of “wanton endangerment.”
  • “If we simply act on outrage, there is no justice — mob justice is not justice. Justice sought by violence is not justice. It just becomes revenge.”
  • Many legal experts said before the charges were announced that indictments for killing Ms. Taylor would be unlikely, given the state’s statute allowing citizens to use lethal force in self-defense. John W. Stewart, a former assistant attorney general in Kentucky, said he believed that at least Sergeant Mattingly and Detective Cosgrove were protected by that law.
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  • “It tells people, cops can kill you in the sanctity of your own home,” Linda Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist, said as she wiped tears from her face.
  • After protesters marched loudly but peacefully through the streets for more than two hours, they were stopped by a line of officers in riot gear in the Highlands section of town.
  • 2a”If anyone can get killed how Breonna got killed by the police, there’s no way we should live in a society where that’s possible,” he said.
  • “our criminal justice system is fundamentally broken.”
  • Under Kentucky law, a person is guilty of the crime when “under circumstances manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life, he wantonly engages in conduct which creates a substantial danger of death or serious physical injury to another person.”
  • For months, Ms. Taylor’s death has been a rallying cry. Michelle Obama and Kamala Harris, the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, called out her name during the Democratic National Convention. Oprah Winfrey paid for billboards demanding the officers be charged, writing in her magazine, “We have to use whatever megaphone we can.”
knudsenlu

Who Was Recy Taylor? - The Atlantic - 0 views

  • Recy Taylor died 10 days ago, just shy of her 98th birthday. She lived as we all have lived, too many years in a culture broken by brutally powerful men. For too long, women have not been heard or believed if they dare speak the truth to the power of those men. But their time is up. Their time is up.
  • If we know that enslaved women were used for their productive and reproductive labor—if they were raped with impunity in the system of slavery—then what happened after Emancipation? Did those practices and the institutions that upheld those practices—the men and their sons and their cousins—end those practices just because of Emancipation?
  • So I started looking for cases, which were hard to find because marginalized people are hard to find in the archives. Their stories are not remembered, they’re not saved, and they’re not considered worthy of being archived so often. Those stories were hard to find, but the black press actually printed a lot of black women’s testimonies about sexual violence at the time.
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  • Newkirk: Having met and spent time with her, what’s your sense of how Recy Taylor fought all this, and how she processed what happened to her? Did she see herself as an activist?McGuire: No. She was not an activist. After she was assaulted, she immediately told what happened. She told her father, her husband, the sheriff, and then she went home. And then the family was terrorized, and her house was firebombed.
  • If someone threatens to kill you in Alabama in 1944, that’s real. There’s no consequences for that. The threat is very real. Her speaking out was just incredibly brave. And when I asked her in 2009 why she spoke out—why did she say anything, wasn’t she scared?—and she looked me right in the eye and said ‘I just didn’t think that I deserved what they did to me.’ I just thought that she had an incredible sense of self-worth and dignity.
  • I was raised to believe, like too many people are today, that Rosa Parks was a tired old lady who tiptoed into history. Because she had an ‘emotional response’ to her exhaustion and it changed the world. But, in 1998 I was working on my master’s thesis, and I listened to an NPR story about Montgomery Bus Boycott veterans. The editor of The Montgomery Advertiser, Joe Azbell, was talking about the boycott and he said that Gertrude Perkins had never been mentioned in history, but she was the most important in the boycott. It took my breath away, and I didn’t know who that was.So I went looking in microfilm for the newspaper, and I found her story. She was a black woman who was kidnapped by the police in Montgomery and raped.
yehbru

If Republicans don't denounce Marjorie Taylor Greene's extremism, they'll own it (opini... - 0 views

  • CNN's review this week of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene's Facebook account from 2018 and 2019 -- before she was elected to Congress --revealed that she had repeatedly advocated executing prominent Democratic politicians.
  • Greene "liked" a comment that said "a bullet to the head would be quicker" to remove House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and other comments about executing so-called "deep state" FBI agents.
  • "Stage is being set. Players are being put in place. We must be patient. This must be done perfectly or liberal judges would let them off."
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  • In a way, her online behavior is less troubling than the fact that hundreds of her congressional Republican colleagues have stayed silent about it.
  • Senators have privately expressed "disdain" about Trump's conduct both in undermining the result of the 2020 election and in the run-up to the deadly January 6 riot at the US Capitol that put all of their lives in danger. Still, it is widely reported that they are concerned about how a vote to convict Trump might lead to a political backlash.
cartergramiak

Opinion | Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She's Doing - The New York Times - 0 views

  • Marjorie Taylor Greene is the QAnon congresswoman, a far-right influencer and gun fanatic who dabbles in anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim bigotry. She endorsed violence against congressional leaders, claimed that the Parkland and Sandy Hook shootings were faked and once shared an anti-refugee video in which a Holocaust denier says that “Zionist supremacists have schemed to promote immigration and miscegenation.”
  • She showed a little contrition on Wednesday with a qualified apology to her Republican colleagues. For this, she received a standing ovation. On Thursday, after an afternoon of deliberation, the House of Representatives voted to strip Greene of her committee assignments. Or rather, Democrats voted to strip her of her committee assignments. All but 11 Republicans voted in her favor.
  • The hard right wasn’t at the front of the charge, but it wasn’t purged either. Instead, it served as part of the mass base of activists and voters who propelled conservative leaders to prominence and conservative politicians to victory.
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  • What’s distinctive right now isn’t the fact that someone like Greene exists but that no one has emerged to play the role of Buckley. A longtime Republican leader like Mitch McConnell can try — he denounced Greene’s “loony lies and conspiracy theories” as a “cancer” on the party — but after he served four years as an ally to Donald Trump, his words aren’t worth much.
  • Those once-porous borders, in other words, now appear to be nonexistent, and there’s no one in the Republican Party or its intellectual orbit to police the extreme right. Representative Greene is the first QAnon member of Congress, but she won’t be the last and she may not even ultimately be the worst.
anniina03

An Envoy's Damning Account of Trump's Ukraine Pressure and Its Consequences - The New Y... - 0 views

  • William B. Taylor Jr., the top American diplomat in Ukraine, laid out in visceral terms the stakes of what he saw as an illegitimate scheme to pressure the Kiev government for political help by suspending American security aid.
  • Mr. Taylor described a president holding up $391 million in assistance for the clear purpose of forcing Ukraine to help incriminate Mr. Trump’s domestic rivals.
  • the Ukraine scandal also extends to matters of life and death, as well as geopolitics on a grand scale.
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  • “If Ukraine succeeds in breaking free of Russian influence, it is possible for Europe to be whole, free, democratic and at peace,”
  • “We must support Ukraine in its fight against its bullying neighbor,” he told House investigators. “Russian aggression cannot stand.”
  • Yet in the publicly released portion of his testimony, Mr. Taylor neither described any direct conversation with Mr. Trump himself nor made any reference to documents or recordings that would explicitly implicate the president. Instead, he provided a road map for investigators by quoting others around Mr. Trump describing his actions and statements.
  • He recalled being stunned to learn during a secure video conference call on July 18 that the aid to Ukraine had been delayed with no explanation other than that “the directive had come from the president to the chief of staff to” the Office of Management and Budget.
  • “I and others sat in astonishment,” he testified. “The Ukrainians were fighting the Russians and counted on not only the training and weapons, but also the assurance of U.S. support.”
  • 13,000 Ukrainians had been killed in the war, one or two a week. More Ukrainians would undoubtedly die without the U.S. military assistance.”
  • Mr. Sondland explained that Mr. Trump saw it through a transactional lens. “When a businessman is about to sign a check to someone who owes him something, he said, the businessman asks that person to pay up before signing the check,” Mr. Taylor said, quoting Mr. Sondland. Mr. Volker “used the same terms several days later.”
mattrenz16

Opinion: Just when you think GOP couldn't get more extreme, along comes Marjorie Taylor... - 0 views

  • Despite the fact that there are still so many unanswered questions surrounding the events on January 6, it's likely McConnell is more concerned that a commission will hurt the Republican Party's chances in the upcoming 2022 midterm election. That's mainstream Republicanism in a nutshell: do whatever is necessary to protect the power of the party.
  • Then there is Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has a track record of spewing anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, racist, and conspiratorial statements. She sunk to a new low this week when she compared the implementation of public health initiatives to steps the Nazis took as they sought to destroy the Jewish population during the Holocaust. When her comments were met with harsh criticism, Greene simply doubled down.
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