Daunte Wright's parents Arbuey and Katie react after Kim Potter's sentencing Friday. Nicole Neri/AP

This morning a Hennepin County judge sentenced Kim Potter—the police officer who shot and killed a 20-year old Black man named Daunte Wright last April in the Minneapolis suburb of Brooklyn Center—to 16 months in prison and eight months on supervised release. She will also be fined $1,000.

It is a lighter sentence than some expected. A 26-year veteran of the department, former police union president, and a field training officer, Potter claimed to have been reaching for her Taser when she pulled out her gun and shot and killed Wright. My colleague Samantha Michaels wrote about so-called “weapons confusion” last year. “It’s not ’causes’—it’s just a simple root cause,” an expert in police weapons training told her of the problem. “It’s because they designed the Taser like a gun in order to take advantage of the firearms training that officers do.”

In December, Potter was convicted of first- and second-degree manslaughter. The state sentencing guidelines for first-degree manslaughter charges are up to 15 years imprisonment. The prosecution team, led by Attorney General Keith Ellison, had requested seven years, closer to the guidelines for someone with no criminal record. But, in her closing statements, Judge Regina Chu went below both. Chu said that guidelines can change “depending on the particular facts of the case.” 

The particular facts of this case that warranted a “downward departure” from the typical sentencing guidelines according to the judge can be summarized like this: Being a cop is hard.

Chu explained, almost crying, that cops have to make quick decisions in tense and chaotic situations. She noted Potter meant to reach for her Taser. And the judge even took time to differentiate Potter’s charge from the other officers tried in the same court—Derek Chauvin, who killed George Floyd, and former MPD officer Mohamed Noor, who killed a woman named Justine Damond in 2017—because unlike those cases, “this is a cop who made a tragic mistake.”

“White women’s tears trump justice,” said Katie Wright, Daunte’s mother, of the sentence. “I thought my white woman tears would be good enough because they’re true and genuine. But when they’re coerced, coached, and taught by the defense attorney, I guess we don’t have a win in this at all.”

Wright gave testimony at the hearing, urging the judge that the maximum sentencing be applied. Through tears, she read a statement where she referred to Potter not by name but as “the defendant,” because, she explained, Potter continually referred to her son as “the driver” throughout the trial, further dehumanizing him, she said. “For that I’ll never be able to forgive you,” she said. “And I’ll never be able to forgive you for what you’ve stolen from us.” 

Daunte Wright’s brother Damik Bryant, who recently confronted pro–Kim Potter protesters outside of the jail where Potter has already served 58 days, read a letter he wrote to Daunte. “I promise I’ll never give up fighting for you because that’s what big brothers do,” he said. 

Wright’s father, Arbuey Wright, remembered his time with Daunte as a young child. “I would always tell him, no matter what, I got you,” said Arbuey Wright. “From the day he was born until April 11, I had him. I was always there for my son. Daunte’s life was cut short by Kim Potter, who claims she thought she had her Taser.” 

Potter gave her own tear-filled testimony to the family of Wright in which she said she hoped they’d one day find a way to forgive her.

After she read Potter’s sentencing, Judge Chu spoke about the case and shared a quote from former President Obama on empathy. “Learning to stand in someone else’s shoes to see through their eyes is how peace begins,” she said. Judge Chu was not asking observers to imagine what it must feel like to be the mother, father, older brother, or young son of Daunte Wright. Judge Chu was urging empathy toward Potter. “That I granted a significant downward departure does not in any way diminish Daunte Wright’s life. His life mattered,” she said. 

In a press conference after the hearing, civil rights attorney Ben Crump expressed surprise at the decision. “I thought we reached a new precedent in America where we were going to see equal justice regardless of the ethnicity of the offending party and the victims,” he said. Wright’s family called the sentence far too lenient, and that it was further evidence of the criminal justice system’s racist double standard applied when white police officers kill Black civilians. 

“I feel cheated,” said Arbuey Wright. “They were so tied up in her feelings they forgot about my son getting killed.”

Cheriss May/Zuma

If you ever had the great misfortune of visiting Melania Trump’s official website, you would know that the former first lady is very into NFTs now. What exactly an NFT is is not clear. But Melania’s first entry into the boom, as typical of her and as usual for crypto, is certainly tacky as hell. Who on earth would want to own this thing?

Apparently no one. Bloomberg reports that the winning bid on the auction for Melania’s NFT collection, which received just five bids last month, came from the same digital wallet belonging to the entity that created the auction. In other words, it seems like Melania or someone tied to the former first lady bought the NFTs themselves. From Bloomberg:

Transactions reviewed by Bloomberg News show that on Jan. 23, the digital wallet listed as the creator of Trump’s NFT transferred 372,657 USDC, a stablecoin pegged to the U.S. dollar, to a second wallet that later sent 1,800 SOL to a third address. That third one is listed as the winner of the auction on Trump’s website.

On Jan. 27, the original wallet sent 1,800 SOL back to the second wallet address, according to blockchain transactions. The record of transactions was earlier reported by Vice.

In response to the report, Melania’s office said that the NFTs were purchased on behalf of a third party. But that claim, already dubious, was met with further skepticism on Thursday after Melania announced a new line of NFTs titled the POTUS NFT Collection.

Official POTUS TRUMP NFT Collection // Launching Presidents Day pic.twitter.com/fHht5vQesL

— MELANIA TRUMP (@MELANIATRUMP) February 17, 2022

So, was this a wash-sale stunt? Or was Melania just sad that no one wanted what she was selling? Did she actually get a third-party buyer? Judging from the Trump family’s long record of grift and fraudulent charity-giving, it’s hard to imagine it’s not whatever of these options is the stupidest.

Joshua Roberts/ZUMA

President Biden has shot down Donald Trump’s claim of executive privilege over White House visitor logs from January 6, a critical win for the House select committee investigating the attack on the US Capitol. 

“The president has determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the best interests of the United States, and therefore is not justified, as to these records and portions of records,” White House counsel Dana Remus wrote in a letter addressed to the National Archives. “The records in question are entries in visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were processed to enter the White House complex, including on January 6, 2021.”

The National Archives now has 15 days to turn over the documents, which could potentially fill in the gaps of who Trump may have spoken to as the attack unfolded.

Biden’s decision on Tuesday, the latest blow to Trump’s efforts to stall the committee from obtaining the visitor logs, comes amid renewed allegations that the former president routinely violated presidential record-keeping rules, by either improperly storing documents in boxes at Mar-a-Lago or flushing papers down the toilet. (Trump has denied clogging the White House toilet.)

Trump has long held a broad and rather loose approach to executive privilege, invoking the power throughout his impeachment proceedings in order to routinely block testimony from members of his administration. Which all begs the question of what exactly Trump is so frequently hoping to hide from the public.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) speaks to the media on Capitol Hill on February 9, 2022. Gripas Yuri/Abaca via ZUMA

Former Judge J. Michael Luttig said in a New York Times opinion piece yesterday that the current Republican Party is cleaved in two. On one side are those who believe the last election was legitimate, including Luttig, a prominent conservative appeals court judge from 1991 to 2006. The other side are those who, loyal to Trump, insist the 2020 election was stolen—and includes at least two of Luttig’s former clerks, John Eastman and Ted Cruz.

Luttig helped nurture both men’s careers; for more than a year now, he’s been trying protect the country against them.

In the lead-up to the January 6 insurrection, Luttig found himself pitted against Eastman. Trump was putting pressure on Vice President Mike Pence to delay certification of the election that day. One of his lawyers, John Eastman, was the architect of this insane legal strategy. He wrote a memo to Pence outlining his supposed authority to stop the certification of Biden’s win. Under pressure, Pence turned to Luttig for advice, and Luttig refuted Eastman. When Pence announced on January 6 that he would not interrupt Congress’ counting of the electoral votes, he quoted Luttig. Eastman, meanwhile, stood beside Rudy Giuliani and whipped up the crowd at the “Save America” rally with bogus allegations of election fraud. Today, Eastman is in a legal struggle with the January 6 committee, which is seeking access to his communications with Trump about overturning the election. 

Inside the US Capitol, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), another former Luttig clerk, was also working to subvert American democracy, by urging his colleagues to delay proceeding so they could investigate specious claims of election fraud. Even after the Capitol was violently breached, Cruz exploited the Electoral Count Act to object to certification. Now, Luttig is trying to clean up that mess, too, so that his former protege cannot use it to try to derail democracy a second time. 

Luttig is advising multiple Republican Senators on reforming the Electoral Count Act, according to the Times. In his Times op-ed, Luttig pointed, by name, to Cruz’s and his efforts on January 6:

After the 2020 election, Republican senators like Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri tried to capitalize on those ambiguities in the law to do Mr. Trump’s bidding, mounting a case for overturning the results in some Biden-won states on little more than a wish. …

Trump acolytes like Mr. Cruz and Mr. Hawley should appreciate the need to reform this unconstitutional law. 

Before they found themselves on opposite sides of the Trump divide, Cruz was not just an ex-clerk but something of a Luttig acolyte. According to a 2016 Times article, Cruz has described Luttig as “like a father to me.” The two deeply bonded while Cruz clerked for Luttig on the Fourth Circuit Appeals Court, where the future presidential candidate reportedly developed his zeal for the death penalty. In his 2016 campaign, Cruz, complaining about John Roberts, said he would have nominated a “rock-ribbed” conservative like Luttig as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

But yesterday, Luttig was a long way from displaying that sort of appreciation, writing that what Cruz did on January 6 would threaten American democracy if repeated in 2024. “The clear and present danger to our democracy now is that former President Donald Trump and his political allies appear prepared to exploit the Electoral Count Act of 1887, the law governing the counting of votes for president and vice president, to seize the presidency in 2024 if Mr. Trump or his anointed candidate is not elected by the American people,” he warned. 

As Luttig advises Republican senators on reforming the law that could abet an election heist in three years, Cruz is loudly opposed to effort. Earlier this month, Politico reported he came out “most forcefully against the group’s ongoing work to raise the bar for challenging elections in Congress.” 

Perhaps Luttig was thinking of his former clerk when he wrote the last lines of his op-ed: The “only members in Congress who might not want to reform this menacing law are those planning its imminent exploitation to overturn the next presidential election.” 

Vehicles are parked outside the Tesla plant, in Fremont, Calif., on May 12, 2020. California sued Tesla Inc. on Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2022, over allegations of discrimination and harassment of Black employees at its San Francisco Bay area factory. Ben Margot/AP

They heard racial slurs from their fellow workers and supervisors. They saw racist graffiti on the walls. They spoke up but their voices were unheard. The factory in Fremont, California, where they worked, was nicknamed “the plantation.” This was the life of a Black worker at Tesla’s main factory in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to a new civil rights lawsuit filed by California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing.    

On Thursday, the state agency that examines civil rights complaints filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk’s multi-billion dollar electric car company, alleging that the company failed to appropriately respond to complaints by Black workers who faced a barrage of racist abuse and workplace segregation. 

In the suit, the details of which became public on Friday, California attorneys characterized Tesla, a company whose jobs have long been seen as a “golden ticket” to stability and whose ethos is defined by its pursuit of a more socially conscious future, as a place “that profits from an army of production workers, many of whom are people of color, working under egregious conditions.” They claimed that Tesla “failed to take effective remedial measures in response to complaints of discrimination and harassment,” noting that workers were discouraged from complaining and that they could face “retaliatory harassment, undesirable assignments, and/or termination.”

The lawsuit follows a three-year investigation by the California agency and numerous other lawsuits filed against Tesla by former workers in the Fremont plant—in October 2021, a federal judge ordered Tesla to pay $137 million to Owen Diaz, a Black Fremont factory contractor who faced racist abuse by his supervisor and others and who accused the company of failing to address the abuse.

The new suit focuses on the sprawling Fremont factory, where the company’s electric cars were originally produced, and is a disturbing window into life as a Black factory worker at Tesla. According to the complaint, 20 percent of assembly line workers are Black, yet the executive suite lacks any Black representation. What’s more, Black workers are not only overrepresented among Tesla’s lower-level workers, they are also severely underrepresented among the very managers and senior officials who would be tasked with addressing complaints of racism. The alleged racism is shocking:

Because the factory was racially segregated, Defendants’ workers referred to the areas where many Black and/or African Americans worked as the “porch monkey station.” Defendants’ workers with tattoos of the Confederate flag made their racially incendiary tattoos visible to intimidate Black and/or African American workers. Racial slurs were also dispensed in Spanish and included “mayate” and “negrita.” Additionally, Defendants’ workers referred to the Tesla factory as the “slaveship” or “the plantation,” where Defendants’ production leads “crack[ed] the whip.” Many Black and/or African American workers understood these terms to be references to how Defendants treated its Black and/or African American workers. One Black worker heard these racial slurs as often as 50-100 times a day.

In a company blog post, Tesla, noting it opposed all forms of discrimination and harassment, described the state’s lawsuit as “unfair and counterproductive” and pointed out that the lawsuit focused on accusations raised at its Fremont factory between 2015 and 2019, suggesting the issues had been resolved. The company claimed that the California agency “has never once raised any concern about current workplace practices at Tesla.” (In the lawsuit, California attorneys argue that contrary to the company’s claims, the Department of Fair Employment and Housing and Tesla’s workers have repeatedly complained about racial harassment and discrimination for years, noting “complaints were filed as recently as 2022.”) A day after state officials filed the lawsuit to Alameda Superior Court, Elon Musk tweeted:

The duty of a leader is to serve their people, not for the people to serve them

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 11, 2022

You can read the lawsuit here. Even with the racial slurs peppered throughout the complaint, perhaps the most damning piece is how familiar and systemic they are—how Black workers were baited into confrontations and seen as “aggressive,” how Black workers were denied promotions and disproportionately faced disciplinary action and relegation compared to their peers, how Tesla allegedly failed to listen to Black workers’ complaints over the years and instead retaliated against those who spoke up. 

Here are the most horrific allegations: 

Daily harassment

Throughout the day, every day, Black and/or African American workers heard Defendants’ workers, leads, supervisors, and managers make racial slurs and comments about Black workers. Examples of the racist language include the n-word, “porch monkey,” “monkey toes,” “boy,” “hood rats,” and “horse hair.” Defendants’ workers, including production leads and supervisors, made references to Black and/or African Americans in racist comments and racist jokes such as “N[ ] word out of the hood,” “from the ghetto,” “Tesla [was] hiring lazy coons,” and “go back to Africa.”

Wyverne Flatt and his pot-bellied support pig Ellie.Hans Pennink/AP

In Chinese political philosophy, the ancient school of legalism promoted strict adherence to the letter of the law, sometimes issuing draconian punishments for minor infractions. The idea, wrote astrologer Sima Tan, was to be “strict and have little kindness,” in order to bring a fairness that does “not distinguish between kin and stranger.” 

I had to wonder, today, if there are serious adherents to this doctrine in the upstate New York village of Canajoharie—because they’re being pretty aggressive about saying a seemingly nice guy can’t have a cute pet pig.

In fact, Wyverne Flatt, the upstate man and pig owner, could go to jail for refusing to give away his emotional support pig because it violates “zoning laws” that prohibit having farm animals in the town.

Flatt told the Associated Press that he’s raised black pot-bellied pig Ellie since she was a piglet and that she helped him handle a divorce and the death of his mother. Ellie’s presence, he claims, helped him get his anxiety under control and wean himself off medication. However, the Disney villains on the Canajoharie village board are threatening him with jail time unless he gets rid of her. Flatt currently faces a criminal trial and a potential sentence of up to six months in jail. On top of that, a civil case could fine him $20 for every day he’s had Ellie at his house—about $18,000 in total. 

“I could never dream of giving away somebody who’s part of my family,” Flatt told the Associated Press. “She’s very smart. She’s more intelligent than my dogs. I think she can kind of hone in on you when you’re feeling bad because she’ll want to come in and snuggle with you.”

There’s a lot here. Sending this man to jail would be a gross, and emblematic, example of the overcriminalization of life. The zoning law citation makes this one of the weirdest examples of NIMBYism I’ve ever read. But mostly, I just want to say: Ah fuck man I’m crying, this guy just loves his pig, don’t take it!

And these cops are making it sound like he’s trying to speed societal collapse.

In a court filing, a lawyer for the village described tolerating Ellie’s presence in the village as the first step toward total anarchy, writing “if every citizen were to openly scoff at the Village zoning codes…we would live in a lawless society.”

But nobody else seems to mind Ellie except the hall monitors on the village board. Some of Flatt’s neighbors have signed affidavits saying that they like the pig. Others even accompanied Flatt to his court appearance and to a village zoning board hearing, where they held a small protest. Flatt told the Daily Gazette that he’s “dumbfounded” that officials have pursued the case with such single-minded devotion. 

“My pig is not a farm hog,” he said. “It’s not used for meat. It’s a companion animal. And yet we’re still going through with this. There is nobody being bothered by this pig. All this pig is here to do is help me.” 

The court fight hinges on whether Ellie can most reasonably be characterized as an emotional support animal or as livestock. Flatt does seem to be on shaky ground here: the only evidence he’s presented is a laminated card that he reportedly obtained online for a fee, and which doesn’t carry much legal weight. However, the legal question here is distinct from the human one, namely: will anyone benefit from locking Flatt in jail for six months and taking his pig away from him? 

The story appears to be an entry in what my colleague Inae Oh likes to call “the fucked up, bizarre criminalization of everything” beat. State laws are overflowing with obsolete statutes that range from the stupid (“horses on the highway must wear sleigh bells”) to the harmful. In New Jersey, police have stopped Black cyclists “acting suspiciously” and cited a 19th-century law mandating that all bikes must be equipped with bells as justification. 

But look, I might also be missing something. I’m an outsider, and I don’t know if this village has been traumatized before by pig-related shenanigans. But that caveat aside, this whole situation seems very sad. And it’s frankly insane to criminalize, with the threat of potential jail time, having a pig. In fact, I want this guy to keep his pig. Unless there are herds of wild pigs stampeding through Canajoharie on a regular basis, I am pro-pig and likely to stay that way.

Wear a real mask, dude. I know you can afford one.Imago/Zuma

California is suing Tesla after the state says it has received “hundreds of complaints” from workers about a “racially segregated workplace” at its main factory near San Francisco.

California’s Department of Fair Employment and Housing filed a complaint Wednesday alleging that Black workers at the plant were routinely discriminated against. DFEH found evidence that workers “are subjected to racial slurs and discriminated against in job assignments, discipline, pay, and promotion,” the agency’s director, Kevin Kish, said in a statement.

The details of the case have not yet been made public, but the agency said it would post the complaint to its website on Thursday.

Tesla has tried to get ahead of the scandal, releasing a statement yesterday calling the lawsuit “misguided” and referring to the accusations as “a narrative spun by the DFEH and a handful of plaintiff firms to generate publicity.” (It’s unclear what a state agency tasked with protecting workers’ civil rights would have to gain from publicity.)

This isn’t the first time Tesla has found itself in hot water for promoting a racist working environment.

Late last year, the company was ordered to pay $136.9 million to a Black former elevator operator at the plant who said he faced “daily racial epithets” that supervisors failed to stop. The man, Owen Diaz, said that Tesla employees graffitied swastikas and racial slurs around the plant. Combined with a history of overworked factory employees, these accounts suggest a darker picture of the electric car behemoth than Elon Musk would like you to see.

Ross D. Franklin/AP

Donald Trump’s bizarre obsession with household water pressure, which had the former president complaining that Americans are forced to flush their toilets 10 to 15 times a bathroom session, may finally get the context we did not deserve.

Maggie Haberman reports in her forthcoming book Confidence Man that White House staffers regularly discovered flushed clumps of paper clogging a White House toilet, a plumbing nightmare that led many to believe that Trump may have been attempting to destroy documents.

“The engineer would have to come and fix it, and what the engineer would find would be wads of clumped up wet, printed paper—meaning it was not toilet paper,” Haberman told CNN this morning.

It’s unclear what exactly the user of this toilet was so desperate to dispose of. After all, Trump barely reads. But Haberman’s reporting comes as Trump’s long record of allegedly mishandling of White House documents, possibly in violation of the Presidential Records Act, has fallen under renewed scrutiny after the former president handed over 15 boxes of documents he had been keeping until last month. Of course, Republicans, who for years clung to the issue of Hillary Clinton’s emails, largely shrugged off that news cycle. But this new report—which has already produced a swift denial from our former president—may finally force Republicans to plunge into the issue. 

Greg Nash/AP

As the number of new Covid cases continues to plunge across the country, Dr. Anthony Fauci has offered his most hopeful assessment of the pandemic yet, telling the Financial Times this week that the United States was “certainly” exiting the most dangerous phase. He also expressed optimism that Covid restrictions, including mask mandates, could soon be lifted.

“As we get out of the full-blown pandemic phase of Covid-19, which we are certainly heading out of, these decisions will increasingly be made on a local level rather than centrally decided or mandated,” Fauci said in a new interview. “There will also be more people making their own decisions on how they want to deal with the virus.” 

The remarks come as more states, and notably, Democratic-leaning ones, lift Covid restrictions—with some like New Jersey easing mandates in schools and others loosening mandates on businesses. For now, the White House has stood by the CDC’s recommendations on mask-wearing in schools. But the Biden administration is increasingly under pressure to deliver a road map for what the end of the pandemic could look like.

Pandemic-weary Americans are sure to welcome the new signs of hope. But some on the right, particularly GOP politicians who have cast the nation’s top expert on infectious diseases as a political bogeyman, have already weaponized Fauci’s cautious optimism as evidence that their vociferous opposition to Covid restrictions was justified all along. 

That, of course, fails to recognize the inherently evolving nature of what it means to be in a pandemic. Nor does it take into account the success that scientifically backed Covid safety measures have had in helping to reduce new infections. But that isn’t the point of any of this now, is it?

Why are none of these hypocrites wearing masks? https://t.co/zsJ6fO2MmI

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) February 9, 2022

Glenn Youngkin campaigned on ending mask mandates and won.

And now suddenly, Democrat politicians are dropping their mask mandates too.

Science!

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) February 9, 2022

Isuzek/ Getty

Facing mounting bipartisan pressure, the Internal Revenue Service announced yesterday that it’s walking back plans to deploy facial recognition software to identify taxpayers.

In November, the IRS signed an $86 million contract with identity verification startup ID.me, announcing that it would require taxpayers to provide personal, identifying materials, including selfies, to access their tax records. Privacy and civil rights advocates responded immediately, forming a coalition of close to 20 groups—from the National Lawyers Guild to the Council on American-Islamic Relations—that criticized the “destructive results of facial recognition technology…from police using it to track Black Lives Matter protesters, to wrongful arrests, to manipulative marketing.” The IRS plan, those groups said, “would have expanded the scope of these harms and impact the lives of millions more people.”

Opponents have found support on both sides of the aisle. 15 Republican and five Democratic senators have demanded an accounting from IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig, along with members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, who followed suit with a separate letter. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, of Oregon, raised facial recognition’s history of bias in a separate letter, calling it “simply unacceptable to force Americans to submit to scans using facial recognition technology as a condition of interacting with the government.”

The 15 Republican senators opposing the plan called ID.me’s verification process “intrusive,” arguing that a government clearinghouse of “personal information on a reported 70 million individuals, including biometric data, ID.me could be a top target for cyber-criminals, rogue employees, and espionage.” 

ID.me attempts to verify users of digital services by collecting a variety of personal documents, from government-issued IDs, passports, and birth certificates to “video selfies” and interviews with ID.me employees. In addition, the company would have compelled taxpayers to sign three separate, binding contracts, including a “Biometric Data Consent and Policy” which would allow the company access to users “fingerprints, voiceprints, scans of a hand, facial geometry recognition and iris or retina recognition.” 

Companies using biometric data and facial recognition technology to verify identities share a history of discriminating against—and sometimes excluding—Black people, other people of color, trans and gender-non-conforming individuals, and women generally. Black computer scientists Joy Buolamwini and Timnit Gebru found that facial analysis algorithms misclassify Black women 35 percent of the time, despite a near-perfect match rate for white men. The same technology, deployed by police departments, has led to wrongful convictions of Black people.

“We understand the concerns that have been raised,” Rettig, the IRS head, said in a public statement. “Everyone should feel comfortable with how their personal information is secured, and we are quickly pursuing short-term options that do not involve facial recognition.”

While the IRS has halted plans to use ID.me’s facial recognition technology, the company still has contracts in effect with nine other federal agencies, including the Social Security Administration and Department of Veterans Affairs, and works with 30 state unemployment offices. Digital rights group Fight for the Future, which led the anti–ID.me coalition, now plans to focus on opposing those contracts as well.

Supreme Court Associate Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. Jabin Botsford/AP

In a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court on Monday halted a lower court ruling that had required Alabama to redraw a gerrymandered congressional map. The move signals the new conservative majority’s willingness to eviscerate one of the last remaining components of the Voting Rights Act: the provision that bars the use of racial gerrymanders to dilute the voting power of Black Americans. The order functionally guarantees that in 2022, Black residents of the state will be able to elect their preferred candidate in only one out of seven congressional districts, despite making up 27 percent of the state’s population. 

In January, a panel of three federal judges blocked a congressional map drawn by the Alabama Legislature, which folded most of the state’s Black voters into a single, creatively shaped district. The panel, which included two Trump appointees, ordered that the map be redrawn to include an additional district “in which Black voters either comprise a voting-age majority or something quite close to it.”

Instead of rushing to draw up a new map, Alabama officials filed a petition asking the Supreme Court to stay the lower court’s decision on the grounds that it would cause a “massive disruption” to the state’s elections. Yesterday, the Court agreed to issue a stay, practically reinstating the discriminatory maps and ensuring that they will be used in the upcoming congressional election. 

The order was so extreme that Chief Justice John Roberts—one of the main architects of the long campaign against voting rights by the court’s conservative justices—joined the liberals in voting against it. In his dissent, Roberts argued that the court should have taken up the case but that there was no reason to stay the lower court’s ruling in advance of the 2022 elections, writing that the three-judge panel had properly applied existing law “with no apparent errors for our correction.” 

In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett Kavanaugh, who joined the conservative majority to impose the stay, justified the order by arguing that changing election procedures close to the deadline would be hard on “candidates, political parties, and voters.” 

“Late judicial tinkering with election laws can lead to disruption and to unanticipated and unfair consequences,” he wrote. 

Yesterday’s order was a quintessential example of what law professor William Baude has deemed the “shadow docket,” a range of orders and decisions handed down with little explanation or advance notice. The shadow docket allows the Supreme Court to functionally change the law without having to justify its reasoning, before a case has been fully briefed and argued. 

In a furious dissent joined by fellow liberals Stephen Breyer and Sonia Sotomayor, Justice Elena Kagan attacked the conservative majority for using its shadow docket to alter the law “in a disconcertingly long line of cases.” 

The court’s order “does a disservice to Black Alabamians who under that precedent have had their electoral power diminished—in violation of a law this Court once knew to buttress all of American democracy,” she wrote. 

Amir Locke's parents, Andre Locke and Karen Wells, have called for a full ban on no-knock warrants in Minneapolis. Glen Stubbe/AP

As they grieve their son, the parents of Amir Locke are calling on Minneapolis to commit to a full ban on no-knock warrants—the dangerous tactic employed by the police who killed their 22-year-old son last Wednesday in an apartment downtown.

A former St. Paul Como Park High School football player and aspiring musician who was planning to move from the Twin Cities to Dallas, Texas, Locke was shot and killed by Minneapolis police officer Mark Hanneman as a SWAT team served a no-knock search warrant. Locke was not named in the warrant.  

“The no-knock warrant is what caused Amir’s death,” his father, Andre Locke, told CNN’s Omar Jimenez. 

“As professional people that carry guns and are supposed to protect and serve a community, they didn’t protect my son that day,” said Karen Wells, Locke’s mother. “They chose not to do that. And they took him from me and I am angry,” she said. 

No-knock warrants have undergone intense criticism and scrutiny since Breonna Taylor was shot and killed as Louisville police served a no-knock warrant in May 2020. As I wrote on Friday, Mayor Jacob Frey had falsely claimed to have “banned” no-knock warrants during his reelection campaign this fall. In reality, the city had introduced a new policy regulating no-knock warrants, and this year alone the Minneapolis police department had been granted 13 no-knock warrants. 

At a press conference on Monday, Nneka Constantino, a cousin of Locke, spoke out about the cyclical nature of police killings of Black men, something residents of Minneapolis and St. Paul have become all too familiar with. “Our family is not naive, so we understand that it was not necessarily a person, but a system of injustice, that has killed Amir Locke,” Constantino said. “It’s a layered system of injustice that starts with so many inequalities and abuse. Shame on you is not enough of a condemnation.”

An even mix of proponents and opponents to teaching Critical Race Theory are in attendance as the Placentia Yorba Linda School Board discusses a proposed resolution to ban it from being taught in schools. Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/Getty

From a Tennessee school board banning Maus to a proposed Florida law that would prohibit teachers from making students “feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race, color, sex, or national origin,” the moral panic over critical race theory shows no sign of abating.

It can feel hard to understand what the hell is going on. But for activist and author Kimberly Latrice Jones, it’s not all that complicated. She cut through the bullshit when she appeared on The Breakfast Club podcast on Monday, offering what she thinks is the real reason why the anti-CRT craze has taken hold: White parents want to avoid having difficult conversations with their children about race.

"The truth is, Ruby Bridges, who integrated school, is only in her sixties," says @kimlatricejones. "We want to be convinced that it was so long ago. It was last night. It’s today." pic.twitter.com/SdkQnq7RBE

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) February 7, 2022

“The truth is, Ruby Bridges, who integrated school, is only in her sixties,” Jones, who co-authored the 2019 book I’m Not Dying With You Tonight, said. “So what it is is that you don’t want your kids, your grandkids, to know that you spit at her. You don’t want your grandkids to know that you witnessed lynching. You don’t want your grandkids to know that some of those family heirlooms that’s in the will are things from atrocities that happened to Black people.”

“We want to be convinced that it was so long ago,” she concluded. “It was last night. It’s today.”

Shawn Thew/Pool/CNP/Zuma

Rand Paul does not like Dr. Anthony Fauci. During Senate hearings on the coronavirus over the past two years, the Republican senator from Kentucky has been obsessed with hounding the nation’s top public health official over his handling of the pandemic.

Now, Paul has promised will formalize that fight if Republicans win back the Senate in the midterms.

“If we win in November, if I’m chairman of a committee, if I have subpoena power, we’ll go after every one of his records,” Paul said in an interview with podcaster Lisa Boothe. “We’ll have an investigator go through this piece-by-piece because we don’t need this to happen again.”

Paul’s gripes aren’t completely insane. He is a politician doing his duty to question those within the government who hold power. And Fauci, as the head of pandemic response, has immense power. But his particular gripe seems to mostly home in on the idea that Fauci is hiding evidence of the lab leak theory.

Paul’s contention, outlined in this Fox News opinion piece, is that Fauci authorized, and then covered up, research in a Wuhan lab that could have led to the creation and leak of the novel coronavirus. “I do not know whether COVID-19 originated in a lab,” Paul writes. “My point is that our government’s bureaucrats brutally squashed any attempt to discover the truth of the origins of the virus because doing so conflicted with their self-interests.”

The problem here isn’t Paul’s espousal of the lab leak hypothesis, which, while unlikely and unconfirmed, is one possible explanation for the virus’s origins—as Fauci’s leaked emails show. It’s that Paul’s attacks on Fauci are more of a political game than an attempt to hold him to account. (As Fauci has pointed out, Paul has tried to fundraise on the “Fire Fauci” slogan.) Public record requests have already uncovered thousands of pages of Fauci’s emails from the early days of the pandemic, and they broadly paint a picture of an at time deeply flawed but well-intentioned man faced with the impossible task of navigating the public health system’s response to a new and deadly virus.

If Republicans win back Congress in 2022, they’ve made the plan clear: They’ll investigate everything. In preparation for the next presidential election, there will be an “onslaught of Biden probes.” And, in the drip-drip of paperwork, memos, and legalese, they hope to catch Democrats looking foolish. That’s no way to hold Fauci to task. It runs the risk of delegitimizing the urgent need of these committees to look into those like Fauci (who should be questioned) in the name of scoring points by beating up a new boogeyman.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin speaks during a news conference about an executive order establishing K through 12 lab schools at the Capitol Thursday Jan. 27, 2022, in Richmond, Va.Steve Helber/AP

It’s only been a week since Gov. Glenn Youngkin launched a tip line that allows parents to report any teachers or school administrators teaching “divisive” subjects, like critical race theory, in Virginia schools. Within days, the tip line was spoofed on Saturday Night Live and flooded with fake tips. And now the governor’s office is refusing to make the complaints public.

Its reasoning? All the emails sent to this tip line are “working papers and correspondences” for Youngkin’s “personal or deliberative” use. 

On January 26, Margaret Thornton, a post-doctoral scholar at Princeton whose research focuses on segregation in schools, filed a public records request to see the emails. Five business days later, her request was denied. The governor’s office cited Section 2.2-3705.7, which basically means that the records are protected under executive privilege.

Turns out that @GovernorVA is claiming all the emails sent to helpeducation@governor.virginia.gov are his own correspondence. pic.twitter.com/sMP4xYUduQ

— Margaret Thornton, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) (@MaggieEThornton) February 2, 2022

As a native Virginian, Thornton wanted to see what parents were saying and it how it could affect Virginia’s teachers and students. “I was a high school teacher in Virginia for many years. I graduated here in Virginia,” Thornton told me. “I care so much about education in our commonwealth. And I’m concerned that this tip line is going to have a chilling affect on teachers and teaching. I’m an educational researcher, so of course I support teacher accountability, but I don’t think an anonymous tip line is the way to go about it.” 

And she wasn’t the only one whose request was denied: Several local publications, like the Daily Progress and the Virginian Pilot, received either the same response or no response at all. (I filed a request under the Virginia Freedom of Information Act on February 1 and have not heard anything back.) Under Virginia law, the governor’s office has up to five business days to respond to such requests. 

The Governor’s office seems to think it is above well-established Virginia laws, including VA FOIA. It is not. pic.twitter.com/oj93TrRxFH

— Patrick Elliott (@WhereIsPatrick) February 2, 2022

Meanwhile, Virginia Democrats have jumped all over Youngkin for the tip line and the denied records requests. “This is now how FOIA works,” tweeted Democratic state Sen. L. Louise Lucas. “If the Governor wants to set up a tip line to report teachers who mention Black History, he shouldn’t be hiding what he ‘finds.'” 

And it doesn’t appear that the controversy will go away anytime soon: On Thursday, seven Virginia organizations representing educators released a statement calling for Youngkin to scrap the tip line entirely. 

INBOX: Pretty much every education group in the state is calling on Youngkin to rescind EO 1 and shut down the tip line. pic.twitter.com/u4k38m8qYm

— 🗯 Katherine Knott (@Knott_Katherine) February 3, 2022

If parents are genuinely curious about what’s being taught in their children’s classrooms, Princeton’s Thornton recommends they talk to their children’s teachers directly through a phone call or email, not through the hotline. “Reaching out and having that dialogue can do wonders. When I was a classroom teacher, I loved to hear from parents,” she said. “Even if they were disagreeing with something that went on the classroom, just knowing that they are invested in their students’ education was really helpful.”

Iowa Gov. Kim ReynoldsJerry Mennenga/Zuma

Iowa just took “done with Covid” to a whole new level. On Thursday, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds announced her plan to end the state’s disaster declaration and shut down its case count and vaccination websites later this month, the Des Moines Register reports.

“We cannot continue to suspend duly enacted laws and treat COVID-19 as a public health emergency indefinitely,” Reynolds said in a statement. “After two years, it’s no longer feasible or necessary. The flu and other infectious illnesses are part of our everyday lives, and coronavirus can be managed similarly.”

Still, in a state where less than two-thirds of the population 5 and above are fully vaccinated, it boggles the mind that the government would shut down a website aimed at making it easier for people to get their shots. No one knows what the next phase of the pandemic will look like—whether the virus will fizzle out entirely, or return with a vengeance in the form of another variant. But if the last year has taught us anything, it’s that it’s in our best interest to make it as easy as possible to vaccinate as many people as possible.

The reasoning for ending the emergency declaration makes more sense. Many states have already discontinued theirs, and as Omicron case counts plummet maybe there is a chance to reallocate resources to other purposes (though it’s not clear what those may be).

For Iowans looking for it, the Covid data will still be accessible through the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s Covid Data Tracker. But Iowa’s Covid case counts won’t be displayed on a convenient dashboard that makes it easy to see that there are almost 800 Covid patients currently hospitalized in the state.

John Minchillo/AP

On Thursday, President Joe Biden came to New York City to meet with Mayor Eric Adams—former cop, current crypto influencer, vegan, and potential “future” of the Democratic Party—to make clear that the administration is cracking down on violent crime.

Gun violence has increased across the country over the past year. The Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated many of the factors that can make communities more susceptible to gun violence, including poverty, access to mental health care, and housing insecurity, and also distanced at-risk individuals from social networks that can help prevent them from resorting to violence. In 2021, the number of shootings in New York City climbed to 1,562, the highest in 15 years.

This has led to legitimate concern for a need to curtail violence. But the discussion has also been dogged by an outsize, and reactionary, idea that crime is at an all-time high. (It’s not.) And that Biden is doing nothing to stop crime—or that he is in favor of defunding the police. (He has, in fact, consistently pushed back on the idea of defunding police departments and even encouraged state and local officials to use stimulus money to hire more officers.) 

Biden used his trip to New York City today to align himself clearly with Adams, who has no trouble convincing people he likes the police. Adams, for his part, spoke about a crackdown.

A former police officer who has publicly disavowed stop and frisk, Adams called today for a “9/11-type response.”

But what does that mean exactly? 

NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) calls for a "9/11-type response to address the domestic terror that is pervasive in this city and country."

"He is here," Adams says of Biden in NYC today, to "give New Yorkers the backup we need." pic.twitter.com/wbybOVx9Ba

— The Recount (@therecount) February 3, 2022

The answer can be found in a gun violence prevention plan that Adams unveiled last week, which mixes aggressive policing policies and rollbacks to criminal justice reform with programs designed to invest in communities and build up neighborhood institutions.

“Over the longer term, it will require a transformation of our city: growing economic opportunities, improving the education of every child, providing more access to mental health support, and so much more,” the plan reads. “Yet immediately…we must address the crisis of guns on our streets.”

The blueprint contained some important proposals that would help empower communities to combat gun violence, including a plan to expand the use of violence interrupters—community members, often with criminal histories, who keep an eye to developing conflicts and attempt to dissuade people from resorting to violence. The plan would also expand the city’s mental health infrastructure and establish a summer youth employment and engagement program partnered with New York City businesses and corporations, which would provide youth with paid internships to occupy them during the summer months, when rates of gun violence tend to spike.

However, the blueprint also reverses a series of police reforms implemented in the wake of the 2020 George Floyd protests and contains a series of controversial proposals that could easily lead to police abuse, including a plan to expand the use of “new technologies and software to identify dangerous individuals and those carrying weapons,” a plan to roll back bail reform, and a plan to charge 16- and 17-year-olds who commit gun offenses in criminal rather than family court. 

Perhaps the most contested part of Adams’ program involves the reestablishment of plain-clothes anti-crime units under the new name “Neighborhood Safety Teams.” New York City plain-clothes units were disbanded during the George Floyd protests, because their aggressive tactics led to a series of highly controversial police killings. According to the Intercept, NYPD plain-clothes officers were responsible for almost a third of fatal police shootings despite making up only 6 percent of the police force. In 2014, Daniel Pantaleo, a plain clothes officer in an anti-crime unit, killed Eric Garner by placing him in an illegal chokehold. Garner’s death was captured in a viral video that helped build momentum for police reform. 

Adams has been insistent about his intentions to improve the plain-clothes units rather than reconstitute them in their previous form, but the blueprint lacks details as to what will be different. In a press conference, Adams said the anti-crime units will wear body cameras and clothing identifying them as police officers, but it’s unlikely that this change will be broad enough to prevent any unjustified shootings from occurring.

Mother Jones illustration; Zuma; Unsplash

In early January a reporter spotted Pope Francis walking toward his Fiat 500 with Vatican plates. He was leaving an unexpected place: a Roman record store. The surprise visit turned into a sort of news event. Reporters flocked to the shop to learn that “the Holy Father,” as the record shop owner explained, “is passionate about music.” During his time as a cardinal, he would regularly visit to buy CDs.

Even better: Those of us wondering what Jorge Bergoglio might unwind with post-vespers over a nice glass of malbec or yerba mate are in luck. Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, president of the Pontifical Council for Culture, published a little taste and description of Il Papa’s collection of more than 2,000 CDs and 19 vinyl albums. While we yearn for more specifics, Ravasi told Italian reporters that the bishop of Rome enjoys a mix of mostly classical, interspersed with the greatest hits of Edith Piaf, gospel hymns performed by Elvis Presley, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, the tango music of his native Argentina.

With nothing else to do on a snowy weekend, I decided to cozy up and enjoy music a la Bergoglio. Would these jams be immaculate, or papal bull? I curated my playlist with the help of some media writers and my own sleuthing through Papa Frankie’s previous interviews. (If you want some pontifical tunes but don’t want to put in that kind of legwork, I suggest checking out America writer Keara Hanlon and her dope papal Spotify playlist.) 

And I have to come to a weird conclusion: This music is overwhelming romantic. Forgive me Father if thinking so is a sin but…I can explain! 

Classical Music

In the realm of classical music, Francis has been upfront about his love of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. I, too, like Mozart. (I am always in the mood to watch Amadeus, always.) In 2013, Pope Francis revealed that he especially loves “Et Incarnatus Est,” from Mozart’s Great Mass in C Minor (originally performed by Wolfgang’s fiancée, Constanze—adorable!). This music, according to Francis, “is matchless…it lifts you up to God.”

I can truly agree with the Holy Father here. There I was, running to the grocery store, so absorbed in the transcendent soprano that I’m crossing streets without a care, cars honking and swerving around me—this music almost had me literally lifted to God and removed from the US Census.

Another favorite is Beethoven’s “Leonore Overture No. 3.” Originally composed for his only opera, Fidelio, which the composer spent a decade writing, this overture was scrapped for being too dramatic. Beethoven’s piece explores the triumph of light over darkness and jubilation of freedom. It’s scary and sensual. I freaking loved it. Holy vibe!

Tango and Astor Piazzolla

Of course, an Argentine has to like tango, and Astor Piazzolla is specifically mentioned in the papal collection. A controversial tango legend, Piazzolla pushed the limits of the genre by incorporating elements of jazz, an influence the Argentine composer picked up as he grew up in New York. Maybe it makes sense that a somewhat unconventional pope would gravitate toward a rather unconventional musician.

When I first heard Piazzolla’s “Libertango,” I thought of Pink Floyd or Jethro Tull from the way the piano pounded and the staccato flute flew over the persistent percussion—no wonder Piazzolla is known for his influence on rock, pop, and funk.

This music was dramatic, erotic, mischievous, and everything you’d expect the tango to be.

Elvis Presley and Gospel Music

This was tough for me. Do I think the King had a sultry voice? Yeah. Do I get down to a little bit of “A Little Less Conversation” and “Hound Dog”? Hell yes. But while it’s debated the extent to which Presley appropriated or elevated Black music, and whether or not he groomed Priscilla before their marriage (who was just 14 when they met)…I also just wasn’t feeling it. When it comes to lifting my soul, give me some Mahalia Jackson or the songs of Thomas A. Dorsey instead. I smell some papal bull here.

Edith Piaf, Official Chanteuse of France

Oh, be still my heart! I speak no French, but does one need it for Piaf? With songs so lushly romantic and mournful, she has you missing a lover you’ve never met. Her enduring legacy comes through music that hints at a love that may never last and a world where beauty and sadness hold hands. I can imagine how, even after Francis undertook his vow of celibacy, Piaf might still resonate. And as I sat there drinking my tea and dreaming, I couldn’t help but wonder: Does the pope pine for a lost lover when he hears “La Vie en Rose”?

Overall: Immaculate Vibes!

All in all, the Holy Father has some great musical taste.

Honestly, the one word that comes to mind when thinking about this music is “sensual.” Maybe that’s unexpected for a celibate octogenarian! But, as the saying goes, it takes all types. It was triumphant, mournful, and erotic—all over the course of an hour. The pope may have been critical of people who choose to have pets instead of children but maybe he should just do less talking, bump his music, and see if that helps with the Catholic procreation issue. Turn up, DJ Frankie!

Zach Gibson/Zuma

A Trump endorsement for former Sen. David Perdue didn’t sway Georgia voters in 2021, when the incumbent Republican lost to Democrat Jon Ossoff in a runoff election that helped hand control of the Senate to Democrats.

But second time’s the charm?

Perdue is now campaigning for governor against incumbent Republican Brian Kemp, whom Trump has disavowed ever since he refused to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia. And Perdue, unlike Kemp, has Trump’s “complete and total endorsement.” 

To prove it, Perdue’s first campaign ad is Trump bashing Kemp and extolling Perdue’s virtues. “David Perdue is an outstanding man,” he says. “He’s tough, he’s smart, he has my complete and total endorsement.” Meanwhile, a series of imperatives flashes on the screen: “STOP STACEY. SAVE GEORGIA. VOTE PERDUE.”

Yes, this ad is literally just a video of Trump talking at a camera. Perdue is included only as stock photo.

I guess that’s one way to prove you’re a leader.

It’s unclear how far a Trump endorsement will take Perdue, but Trump is certainly confident in his campaign-boosting abilities. In a statement released today, Trump said, “The Failing New York Times refuses to acknowledge that the power of the Trump endorsement is far stronger today than ever before—it is virtually unblemished!”

It remains to be seen whether a fairly popular incumbent or a Trump-backed former senator would fare better against Stacey Abrams, the presumptive Democratic candidate who narrowly lost to Kemp in 2018. One thing’s certain: This is going to be an essential race to keep on eye on in the 2022 election cycle.

Chris Dorst/AP

A feud with Bette Midler, in which the actress was forced to apologize for calling West Virginia “backward” as she condemned Joe Manchin last month, has landed in just the place such dumb, non-controversies deserve: the humiliation of a dog and her butthole on official state grounds.

That’s what happened Thursday when Republican Gov. Jim Justice pushed back on Midler during his second state of the state address, telling critics of West Virginians to kiss his bulldog’s “hiney.” 

“They told every bad joke in the world about us,” Justice said. “So from that standpoint, Babydog tells Bette Midler and all those out there, kiss her hiney!”

He then held up Babydog’s rear end for emphasis, sending cameras flashing as photographers captured snaps of the bulldog’s butthole.

The crowd seemed to love it, though it’s unclear how wielding his dog’s butt will earn West Virginians the respect Justice says they deserve. But I guess that was never the end he desired.

.@WVGovernor Jim Justice closes his state of the state address: "Babydog tells Bette Middler, and all those out there, 'kiss her hiney.'" pic.twitter.com/eVsSRt004c

— CSPAN (@cspan) January 28, 2022