Tim Walz was right - these people are weird

ICE murder in Minneapolis: Renee Good's killer can and must be prosecuted

Doing nothing is not an option.

Lisa Needham

An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, age 37, in broad daylight in Minneapolis yesterday.

Despite Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem blathering about how ICE agents are under assault and Donald Trump’s outright fiction that Good ran over the agent and put him in the hospital, anyone with eyes can see it was murder.

There’s video, which is how we all know that DHS and Trump are lying, but seeing someone get murdered by the government is not an easy thing to watch. MPR News posted the footage, but this is just a reminder that you don’t have to subject yourself to the horror to know it is a horror.

What you see on the video it is a federal agent demanding Good get out of the car, at which point she starts driving her SUV forward at about five miles per hour. That’s when an ICE agent near the front of her car fires multiple shots into Good’s vehicle, killing her. In another video — which, again, is really tough to watch — a bystander yells that he’s a physician and asks to render aid, to which the agent responds, “I don’t care.”

So what we have here is a federal law enforcement officer firing into a car at an unarmed person driving away slowly, and then other federal officers refusing to let someone come to her aid.

It’s absolutely terrible and a disgrace to our nation. But can the officer who killed Good ever be held accountable for his actions?

Charges would have to be brought by the state

Let’s dispense with the possibility that ICE or DHS or the Department of Justice would do anything about this. There’s no path to justice that runs through this administration or the federal courts. 

Hell, Trump will probably give the shooter a medal, and would certainly give him a pardon. But is there a path to justice that runs through Minnesota?

Maybe. Sort of.

This isn’t about whether the state could successfully prosecute the shooter, but whether the state could even attempt to do so. The latter question has to be answered before the former. Stephen Miller went on Fox last October to tell ICE officers they couldn’t be touched: “You have federal immunity in the conduct of your duties. And anybody who lays a hand on you or tries to stop or obstruct you is committing a felony.”

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent
was identified as Jonathan Ross by the Star-Tribune

Is this ghoulish little creep — who, it bears mentioning, is not a lawyer — right that ICE officers can do whatever they want?

No. At least not yet. While federal officials enjoy substantial protection from state prosecutions, that isn’t absolute. 

Sure, the fact they have protection at all may be maddening, but it does make some sense within our system of federalism. That’s not to say it’s good or right or moral that such protection exists, but just that it does exist. 

The Supremacy Clause of the Constitution says that federal law “shall be the supreme law of the land,” meaning that it generally prevails over any conflicting state laws.

That, in turn, forms the basis for Supremacy Clause immunity.

Over 100 years ago, the Supreme Court held in In re Neagle that if a federal officer is performing a duty they were authorized to do by federal law and it was their duty to perform it, and if they did “no more than what was necessary and proper,” they could not be guilty of breaking any state criminal law.

Trump Threatens Child Care Funding Across the US After Bogus Social Media Claim

Child Care services nationwide de-funded based on racist claims by right-wing nut

By Sharon Zhang

This article was originally published by Truthout

The Trump administration has reportedly frozen federal child care subsidies for every state in the U.S. after a right-wing social media influencer made a debunked video purporting to show fraud in Somali-run daycares in Minnesota this week.

On Tuesday, Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) Jim O’Neill said that the agency had frozen all child care payments to Minnesota following the spread of a social media video claiming, with dubious evidence, to have uncovered over $100 million of child care fraud in the state. 

Later, reports emerged saying that the administration was freezing funding for all states until they can provide supposed verification regarding their child care programs. One outlet, Reuters, reported that one official said that no funds had been frozen, however, and that the administration was only initiating probes into fraud in Minnesota.

Federal child care subsidies fund care for 1.4 million children across the country, with over half of children receiving subsidies aged less than five years old, according to HHS’s Office of Child Care. The reported cuts come at a time when families are already facing massive shortages and an affordability crisis of child care in the U.S.

The reports came after a video by a 23-year-old right-wing influencer, Nick Shirley, circulated social media this week. In the video, Shirley visits a dozen Somali-run child care centers with a man identified only as David, knocking on their doors and demanding to see the children.

The centers refused to let them inside for reasons many commentators attributed to the safety of the children, but the men nonetheless took it as proof that the centers are fraudulent.

The video was debunked by reporters, including local news outlet WCCO. WCCO visited one of the facilities that Shirley went to for his video and claimed was empty, and instead found that there were over a dozen children there, as well as several adult staff members. Further, workers shared surveillance footage from the morning of Shirley’s visit that showed children being dropped off at the facility for a normal day of child care.

Trump's ugly Thanksgiving meltdown

It's getting so bad that even Republicans are starting to notice.

Noah Berlatsky

Thanksgiving is supposedly a holiday devoted to welcoming family, friends, and guests to eat together. So of course, Trump used it to indulge in a bizarre orgy of xenophobia and hate, culminating in a gutter attack on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, who he referred to as “seriously retarded.”

Trump’s decision to “give thanks” by spewing bigotry and slurs is not a surprise. Even by his standards, though, his harangue was despicable. It was also a disgusting effort to leverage for partisan ends the shooting of National Guard members in Washington DC.

As his popularity and influence slips, Trump seems more and more desperate. That makes him more reckless and in many ways more dangerous. It also opens up opportunities for opposition, though — sometimes from unexpected quarters.

Election 2024 Could Stir Up Another Witch’s Brew

Why do so many support a convicted felon, sexual predator, serial liar, grifter and racist?

By Gerald E. Scorse

Eight years ago, Hillary R. Clinton seemed certain to derail Donald J. Trump’s barely begun political career. Instead, a witch’s brew of misogyny, mistakes and the Electoral College gave us our second minority-vote President of the early 21^st century. 

Eight years later, here we are in the final days of a second presidential matchup with an equally possible stark and dark outcome, Trump versus Kamala Harris.  

Demented Donald would turn America into His Own Special Hell (HOSH, not MAGA). Harris would not lead us to heaven, but she’d take us to a better place and spare us from any of Trump’s shenanigans. If she wins, she’d also finally add the United States to the list of nations together enough to elect a woman to the highest office in the land. 

Now let’s examine some aspects of Election 2024, starting with the one that tops all the others: the almost-laughable axiom that character counts in the race to the White House. This year, in the large, character counts for approximately zero. 

The Republican candidate is a convicted felon, a sexual predator, a serial liar, a grifter, a racist, a poster boy for moral bankruptcy. None of which matters: unfathomably, unbelievably, tens of millions of Americans will vote to put him back in the Oval Office for another four years. 

Underlining the point—the irrelevance of character in Election 2024—the best comes last. A 449-page book by Vincent L. Sterling, published this June, argues (seriously) that Donald J. Trump has been chosen by God.  Of course, of course; how could any character-conscious voter miss the divine clues that Sterling spies? 

The Democrats pulled off a surprise by nominating little-known Tim Walz for vice-president, and he returned the favor with a surprise of his own. The headline of one news report summed it up: “Tim Walz’s simple takedown of Republicans goes viral.” 

Walz’s plain words, stinging sharply, gave the Harris-Walz ticket an exhilarating liftoff: "These guys are creepy and yes, just weird as hell.” 

When was the last time that major members of a political party openly opposed their chosen presidential nominee?  Good for you for remembering it was only four years ago, and the candidate they couldn’t and wouldn’t vote for was Donald Trump. 

Among the non-Trumpers were scores of marquee names, headed by former president George W. Bush. The nays also included three former Secretaries of Defense (William H. Cohen, Chuck Hagel and James Mattis) and Colin Powell, the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who went on serve as Bush’s Secretary of State. 

The number of Republicans repelled by Trump is only half the story in 2024, and it’s the other half that’s rocked and shocked both parties. In addition to opposing The Donald, droves of GOPers have also publicly declared they’ll be voting for Harris. 

Once again there’s a glittering roster of Republican turncoats, topped off this time by one of the most committed right-wingers ever to occupy the ranks of the Right. That would be former vice-president Dick Cheney, who finally showed just a touch of the spine of his daughter Liz. 

Cheney not only matched his daughter, he out-matched the man he served as vice-president. Former President George W. Bush has no plans to endorse anybody in 2024. According to his office, “President Bush retired from presidential politics years ago.” (Note: Bush the retiree personally revealed that his vote in 2020 went not to Trump but to Condoleezza Rice.) 

National security officials normally keep their presidential politics to themselves; not so, though, in the abnormal year of 2024. 

Hundreds of high-ranking security personnel have not only thrown their support behind Harris, they’ve described Trump as ‘impulsive and ill-informed.’ They see him as lacking in leadership and subject to a ‘scary authoritarian streak.’ There were 741 signers to the letter that lays out their views, including U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Michael Smith, the president of National Security Leaders for America. 

Come November 5, none of these ingredients will decide Election 2024; that power lies solely with the Electoral College. 

America’s Founding Fathers left us so much to be proud of. The Electoral College, on the other hand, is nothing to be proud of. It’s been with us for our entire history, ever since the country was formed in Philadelphia in 1787. It was a compromise, inserted into the Constitution essentially to appease slaveholders in the colonial South.

Constitutional law expert Wilfred U. Codrington III describes it as a lasting stain: “More than two centuries after it was designed to empower southern white voters, the system continues to do just that.”

Stay tuned for Nov. 5 (or the next day, or the next…) 

This article was originally published by Common Dreams. Gerald is a regular contributor of op-eds to Progressive Charlestown. He usually writes about taxes and economics, sometimes baseball. 

This week's news in review

Sold-out Newport event with Walz exceeds expectations for Democratic fundraisers

Rhode Island adds its bit to growing Kamala Harris-Tim Walz momentum

By Christopher Shea, Rhode Island Current

The Catholic Diocese disapproved of Salve Regina hosting the event.
Under former Bishop Tobin, the diocese frequently
supported right-wing politicians 

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz posed for photos before delivering a 17-minute speech focused on bringing joy back to American politics at a private fundraiser on the campus of Salve Regina University Thursday afternoon.

The Democratic Party’s vice presidential nominee spoke to over 300 donors who paid a minimum ticket price of $1,000 each to attend the event at Ochre Court, the Gilded Age mansion that serves as the Catholic college’s main administration building. Walz highlighted his own humble beginnings and those of the woman at the top of the ticket, in contrast to the opulent ballroom setting.

“Where else but America can she team up with a guy from the Sandhills of Nebraska, working cattle and sleeping in a bunkhouse?” he said of presidential candidate Kamala Harris. “I tell my kids that story — they think it’s the most boring episode of ‘Yellowstone.’”

Rhode Island Democrats sought to raise $500,000 for the Harris-Walz campaign’s efforts in swing states and exceeded expectations, said Rhode Island Democratic National Committeeman Joe Paolino Jr. He declined to confirm a total amount raised.

“Everybody enjoyed it — it was a lot of new faces,” Paolino said in an interview after the fundraiser. “People have just been energized that there’s a new team running.”

Here’s what Tim Walz has done as governor of Minnesota

Walz's solid record of progress for Minnesota

By Max Nesterak, Minnesota Reformer

Democrats have swiftly fallen for Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s Midwest dad persona, sharing videos of him working on a car, going on a rollercoaster with daughter Hope at the State Fair, signing a bill renaming a street in Prince’s honor in purple ink. But he’s also got a long record as governor.

Walz’s first term was largely defined by the gridlock of divided government and crisis management in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and the aftermath of the police murder of George Floyd.

But once Democrats swept control of state government in the 2022 elections with Walz at the top of the ticket, they passed one of the most significant progressive agendas in the nation’s recent history with just a single-seat Senate majority.

Walz represented a Republican-leaning district in the U.S. House and was widely seen as the more centrist of the two leading Democratic candidates for governor, but he’s become a champion of progressive policy as governor. With few exceptions, Walz supported what the Democratic majorities in the state House and Senate could muster the votes to pass.

Those bills — ranging from protecting abortion access to speeding up energy permitting to increasing protections against wage theft — have excited the nation’s Democratic base, which is beginning to learn about the trifecta’s work over the past two years.

Here’s a look at where Walz stands on the issues, based on the bills he’s signed.

Walz pick turns focus on what a VP brings to White House

The ticket

Howard Manly, The Conversation

Much is made of vice presidential choices, and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is no different.

Well known for attacking Donald Trump and JD Vance as “weird,” Walz, 60, beat out a competitive field of Democratic options, including Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly of Arizona, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg.

A moderate Democrat, Walz served as a U.S. representative from 2007 to 2019 and is considered an appealing option for potential independent voters.

Harris’ decision comes at a crucial time in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. With less than three months remaining, national polls suggest the race is very close – and Harris believes her choice of vice president will translate to votes in crucial swing states on Election Day.

The Conversation U.S. has published numerous stories on vice presidents and whether their selections helped or hurt presidential campaigns. Here are a few of them.