Category: News & Comment

Excerpt from the report: As set forth in the original and superseding indictments, when it became clear that Mr. Trump had lost the election and that lawful means of challenging the election results had failed, he resorted to a series of criminal efforts to retain power. This included attempts:

• to induce state officials to ignore true vote counts; to manufacture fraudulent slates of presidential electors in seven states that he had lost;
• to force Justice Department officials and his own Vice President, Michael R. Pence, to act in contravention of their oaths and to instead advance Mr. Trump’s personal interests; and,
• on January 6, 2021, to direct an angry mob to the United States Capitol to obstruct the congressional certification of the presidential election and then leverage rioters’ violence to further delay it.

In service of these efforts, Mr. Trump worked with other people to achieve a common plan: to overturn the election results and perpetuate himself in office.

Read the rest of the report, which is widely available online, including at this link [PDF].

AP: No state has a longer, more profit-driven history of contracting prisoners out to private companies than Alabama. With a sprawling labor system that dates back more than 150 years — including the brutal convict leasing era that replaced slavery — it has constructed a template for the commercialization of mass incarceration.

Best Western, Bama Budweiser and Burger King are among the more than 500 businesses to lease incarcerated workers from one of the most violent, overcrowded and unruly prison systems in the U.S. in the past five years alone, The Associated Press found as part of a two-year investigation into prison labor. The cheap, reliable labor force has generated more than $250 million for the state since 2000 through money garnished from prisoners’ paychecks.

[…]

Nature Magazine: A survey of faculty members working in US southern states shows that a significant majority frequently witness or experience political interference that affects morale and is causing many to look for positions in other regions or to leave academia altogether.

The survey, which ran in August 2024, was distributed mostly by the southern regional chapters of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and garnered responses from 2,924 self-selected participants. Of these, 51% identified as female, 17% identified as non-white and more than 60% held tenured positions. The survey found that nearly 60% of respondents could not recommend their state as a desirable place to work. Nearly 50% said that politics and policy changes had reduced the numbers of job applicants to their institutions.

“This is an issue that faculty members are worried about, and that’s going to become a bigger problem for state institutions in large parts of the country,” says Amy Reid, who until August led New College of Florida’s gender-studies programme in Sarasota.

AP: The House of Representatives has rejected President-elect Donald Trump’s new plan to fund federal operations and suspend the debt ceiling a day before a government shutdown.

Almost three dozen Republicans joined Democrats to vote against Trump’s sudden demands and the quick fix cobbled together by GOP leaders. The bill fell 174-235, failing to earn even a majority of votes.

There’s No You in United Health

There’s an office in a building and a person in a chair
And you paid for it all though you may be unaware
You paid for the paper, you paid for the phone
You paid for everything they need to deny you what you’re owed

There ain’t no you in United Health
There ain’t no me in the company
There ain’t no us in the private trust
There’s hardly humans in humanity
[…]