The most damaging legislative session in the history of Iowa politics has finally ended.

Gonna be quite the challenge to surpass some of the horrible, mean spirited actions of this group.

Mississippi North strikes again.

Sores covered nearly every inch of Eva Edl’s emaciated young body. People gagged when they came near her; bed bugs, fleas and lice were devouring her “festering body.”

These sickening details are only a fraction of the horrors young Eva suffered as a victim of the most dreaded communist death camp in Yugoslavia after World War II: Gakova. After years of living in hell, facing death daily, Eva’s family finally escaped to the U.S. They believed that America was free, and that their rights would be protected by a government with their best interests at heart.

Today, the government they trusted is fighting to throw 87-year-old Eva into prison for her pro-life advocacy.

Sadly, Eva’s plight perfectly exemplifies how dangerous the weaponization of the U.S. government has become, and how far the left will go to punish anyone who interferes with their radical agenda.

Eva is one of four pro-life advocates recently convicted under the Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act, which prohibits the use of force, threat of force or physical obstruction to prevent women from obtaining or providing “reproductive health care services.”

In March 2021, Eva and other pro-life advocates participated in a prayer protest inside a Tennessee abortion clinic. The pro-lifers stood in front of the clinic’s doors while peacefully singing Christian hymns and praying.

For this, they face up to six months in prison, five years of “supervised release” and fines up to $10,000. (Typically, FACE Act violations carry a maximum sentence of up to 11 years in prison, and up to $250k in fines.)

Meanwhile, pro-abortion rights extremists firebomb, vandalize and terrorize pro-life centers and Catholic Churches with impunity.

It is unquestionable that Eva and her pro-life compatriots’ prosecutions are intended to send a message. The FBI and Department of Justice have prosecuted nonviolent pro-life offenders with the FACE Act, while turning a blind eye to the violent, ongoing and terrifying attacks on other institutions protected by the FACE Act: churches and pregnancy help centers.

My organization has been highlighting this dangerous double-standard, warning Americans that the Justice Department and FBI are exploiting the FACE Act to target and harass individuals like Eva who stand in the way of their extremist agendas.

Just this month, a man named Elliot Bennet set fire to a Catholic Church in New Jersey. This was the third time Bennet had committed acts of violence or vandalism against the church since 2018, the 21st attack on a Catholic Church in 2024, the 274th attack since May 2022 and the 412th attack since May 2020.

Yet the same Justice Department that is fighting to throw Eva in jail failed to prosecute Bennet for these multiple and obvious FACE Act violations. It has also failed to federally prosecute a single one of the more than 400 egregious FACE Act violations against Catholic Churches since May 2020, or to meaningfully address the 90 attacks on pregnancy resource centers across the nation since May 2022.

These attacks don’t involve prayer and hymns. They’ve involved fire-bombings and arson, vandalism of pregnancy clinics and churches, spray painted threats on clinic and church walls, decapitated statues, smashed glass, disrupted masses, blocking of church entrances and even physical attacks on priests and parishioners. They have cost at least $25 million in damages to Catholic Churches, while intimidating hundreds of peaceful Catholic and pro-life communities.


That’s why we just sent a letter to the Justice Department highlighting again the disparity in its enforcement of the FACE Act. Our letter demanded that the department do its job and defend pro-life Americans from violence.

We have little reason to believe our letter will elicit tangible change.

Our past experiences calling on the Justice Department and FBI to fairly enforce the law have been met with stonewalling, empty answers and no meaningful action. At the very least, however, we hope that our letter serves as a warning to Americans and to Republicans in Congress who have the opportunity to take a stand against the Biden administration’s weaponized agencies.

Also MLB:

He isn't running for re election. Rumors are that he'll use his political science degree from Drake to become a lobbyist for the NRA at the statehouse. Anyone else hearing this? TIA

Trending on google. Iowa guy. Did anybody know him? RIP

Muscatine man sentenced for attempt to entice minor​

A Muscatine man has been sentenced to over 17 years in prison in connection with attempting to entice a minor in 2022.

Paul Kyle Quigley, 41 and a registered sex offender, was in a Facebook conversation with an undercover officer posing as a 15-year-old girl in December 2022, according to public court documents. After he learned the victim’s age, Quigley replied with requests for sex acts. After multiple days of continued conversations that were graphicly sexual in nature, Quigley planned to try to meet and flee the state with the 15-year-old girl with the intent to engage in sexual activity. Quigley was arrested on February 22, 2023 in Burlington, just before his semi-truck arrived at the established meeting place, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Iowa.
Paul Quigley (Iowasexoffenders.com)
He was sentenced on Monday, April 22 to 210 months in federal prison. After completing his term of imprisonment, Quigley must serve 15 years of supervised release. There is no parole in the federal system. United States Attorney Richard D. Westphal of the Southern District of Iowa and the Des Moines County Sheriff’s Office made the announcement.
This case is part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat child sexual exploitation and abuse. Project Safe Childhood is led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and the Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section and uses federal, state and local resources to locate, apprehend and prosecute those who exploit children online and identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, click here. For information about internet safety education, click here and click on the resources tab.

Got to take in the spring practice today, and also was at the Coach's Clinic weekend a month ago and posted on that experience and shared my perspective. I've seen them on the bookends of their spring camp.

As a general observation, the offense has made decent strides since March 26. It was evident on the field. There is still a lot of learning going on, and it will continue through the summer. They've had 15 practices to install 85% of a new offense with new language, and a TON of mental reps throughout (field, classroom). They appeared to be on schedule in terms of what one would realistically expect at this stage. Still plenty of work to put in.

I learned that the staff is actively mining the transfer portal for a QB, not necessarily to compete with Cade but rather to strengthen the room and compete for #2. The QB will have to fit Tim's eyes and what he is looking. If there is not a fit to be found, then so be it. If there is, then summer work will be more dynamic. You know that Cade, once cleared, will be leading the charge daily to nail everything down prior to fall camp - and the other QBs and skill players will need to keep pace.

Keep in mind that the offense is going up against a legit top 5 defense that shows no mercy. Phil runs his show hardcore and is out to win every single play in practice. I'm pretty sure Iowa will face only one top 5 defense in the '24 regular season - @ Ohio State (5th game, 6th week).

Other notes and thoughts from today:

• Far more open receivers than at any point last season. Refreshing to see open options. Now progression development needs to catch up.
• Quick dump passes were effective , averaging around 4-5 yards a pop. As designed. This will keep opposing defenses more honest.
• Kaleb Johnson was impressive. Beat the edge quite a few times. Looks like his burst has improved. Also better blocking and going up against new edges.
• Rhys has a VERY big leg for a 19 year old. Has distance and touch, just needs more reps to gain greater consistency. Give him a break when he shanks one here and there, and he will, when the first bullets start flying. Tough kid with a strong mind, so expecting him to adapt fairly quickly.
• Dayton Howard had a bit of a rough day, Can get open with scheme and speed/quick cuts. Fairly wide open on a couple plays but had the dropsies today. Needs to get the hands and route work in this summer. Definitely a keeper.
• Hoffman looks the part at TE, and is working on playing the part. Had a drop for a would-be TD (great separation), which looked to be over-trying or overthinking. He has the tools and should improve nicely.
• Kaleb Brown is a level above where he was last year, and he is certainly a very talented WR and a legit threat. He's the kinda guy that defenses need know where he is and account for. This offense is a great fit for his skill set. He is looking like he could have a big year.
• Washington could the next best threat we have. His orientation to the WR position is improving, and if he gets an open crease he most likely is gone. Excellent speed and open field awareness. Had a long TD, should have been tackled, but outran good angles.
• Nestor and Lutmer are flashing brightly. Good to see the added depth and the building of a succession plan.
• Lainez has improved, but still has more work ahead of him to get to #2. He's young and working with a new offense. Lots of thinking out there. Not yet comfortable enough with everything being thrown at him.
• Motions, concepts and schemes tripped up the defense quite a few times. Both sides of the ball are learning and improving with this offense installation. It's good news for the O when you fool the eyes of a top defense that is known for its structure and discipline.
• The defense is what you would expect minus a couple of hiccups. Lester's offense is keeping them honest, so they have to work like they haven't had to the past few years. All good, all around for the Hawks.

Looking forward to seeing what will happen between now and August, but I like the direction they're heading.

DB

As Elijah Higgins sat on a witness stand this week, he detailed the similarities between his experience last season as a rookie tight end for the Arizona Cardinals and the four years he had spent playing football at Stanford University.
Five or six days a week at each level of play, he was immersed in football activities: lifting weights, practice, film study, physical therapy and playing games. There is travel on charter jets. Free tickets for friends and relatives. Robust coaching staffs setting rules.
There are some differences, Higgins allowed. In the National Football League, there are no classes to attend, though at Stanford, he said, academics took a back seat to football, which is why he still has a few classes to take before earning his bachelor’s degree in psychology.
The only other distinction is that, in contrast to Stanford, he now earns a paycheck. The minimum salary in the N.F.L. last season was $750,000.
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Higgins said that at Stanford, in an environment where critical thinking was encouraged, he had begun to consider how money drove what he called the college football “system,” where even at an elite university like Stanford, the pursuit of academics was encouraged only so long as it did not interfere with football.
“I do agree with the fact that college football players are employees without status,” he said.
Higgins was the last of about two dozen witnesses who had testified over the last five months in a National Labor Relations Board hearing that bears wide-ranging consequences for a narrow question: Should football players, and basketball players, at the University of Southern California be classified as employees?
The case may not be decided for many months. But it will almost certainly end up in an appeals court, which is why there is such a voluminous record: 3,040 pages of transcripts from 21 days of testimony, along with more than 150 exhibits.

​

The record is so enormous that Eleanor Laws, the presiding administrative law judge who will determine how the National Labor Act applies to those players, granted lawyers an additional nine weeks to file their closing written arguments, which will now be due by July 31.
The charges have been brought by the N.L.R.B.’s general counsel on behalf of Ramogi Huma, the executive director of the National College Players Association, which advocates for college athletes’ rights. The defendants are U.S.C. along with the Pac-12 Conference and the N.C.A.A., which may have to classify athletes at member universities as employees even though the board has jurisdiction only over private institutions.

​

The testimony was often dry, and the hearing, which closed on Thursday, drew little attention as rafts of lawyers — as many 16 at times — haggled over picayune details of control and compensation and whether athletes had actually been given the U.S.C. student-athlete handbook. (Though U.S.C. generated $212 million in athletic department revenue in the 2022-23 fiscal year, that is not relevant to the case, only that there is compensation and control.)

At times, the elasticity of reasonable arguments was tested.
For example, Jacob Vogel, the U.S.C. marching band director, spent more than three hours discussing with boundless enthusiasm the intricate details of his program, including how band members got dressed before football games.
The argument that playing football was little different from playing the tuba then came under cross-examination from Amanda Laufer, the lead lawyer for the general counsel, who asked how many of the 300 band members had no prior musical experience.
“About 10 to 15,” Vogel said.
“No further questions,” Laufer said, satisfied that she had provided a distinction with the football team.
The case is one of several fronts in the assault on the amateur model of college athletics. Emboldened state attorneys general have chipped away at the N.C.A.A.’s rule-making authority. Antitrust lawsuits that could force universities to pay out billions in damages are working their way through the courts. And last month, the Dartmouth men’s basketball team voted to unionize after winning the right to be classified as employees, a decision the college is appealing.
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The N.C.A.A. is looking for relief from Congress, but any hope for an antitrust exemption is unlikely to come until after the presidential election — if at all.
The arguments before Judge Laws lay out contrasting visions of what college sports might look like if athletes were employees.
One is apocalyptic. The other is sanguine.
Image

Teresa Gould, the newly appointed commissioner of the Pac-12 Conference, which is losing 10 of its member universities to other conferences by August, including U.S.C., which is leaving for the Big Ten, testified that high school football stars could be subject to a draft. She also argued that poor play — say a point guard who committed too many turnovers — might lead not to the player’s being benched but to his or her being fired.
Sonja Stills, the commissioner of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, testified that her collection of historically Black — and historically underfunded — colleges and universities “can’t afford paying out students,” who in turn wouldn’t be able to afford college if their scholarships were taxed as income. She expected Olympic sports to be axed if money had to be redirected to athletes. Women’s sports could also be imperiled, she said.
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And Anastasios Kaburakis, the founder of a company that helps international athletes find opportunities to play at American colleges, described how many of those athletes would be shut out by having to obtain work visas in the United States.
Those cataclysmic assessments were waved away by another witness: Liam Anderson, a distance runner at Stanford, who characterized them as “fear mongering.” He said that not every athlete should be considered an employee and that universities would adjust — much as they have as market forces have affected big-time college sports through so-called name, image and likeness payments that are often made through booster-funded collectives.
And if college football players and players in men’s and women’s basketball could be paid as employees?
“I’d celebrate that outcome,” said Anderson, who served two years as co-president of Stanford’s student-athlete advisory committee.
Anderson’s testimony was among the more compelling during the hearing, which took place in a conference room in a nondescript office building in West Los Angeles.
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Anderson described staying at the same Las Vegas hotel last year during the N.C.A.A. tournament as the Arkansas men’s basketball team. A security guard told Anderson his job was to ensure that players did not leave their rooms — a sign of control that buttressed testimony from former U.S.C. football players, who said they had been required to check in for meals with fingerprint scans and to text photos to anonymous attendance checkers to prove they were in class.
A loophole in the board’s byzantine rules allowed Anderson and Higgins, neither of whom attended U.S.C., to testify — even after the general counsel had exhausted its list of witnesses. Because the N.C.A.A. had called upon athletes from other universities to testify, the general counsel was able to call rebuttal witnesses who also did not attend U.S.C.
Opposing lawyers did not know who would be testifying until a witness took the stand, a procedure that protects witnesses in fair labor cases from intimidation. This often set off a flurry of computer searches by lawyers with sometimes only 30 minutes or so before cross-examination.
In the case of Anderson, that led to his being pressed by Daniel Nash, the lead lawyer for the Pac-12, to explain statements he had made in The Stanford Daily that were at odds with his testimony, including an instance in which he had called the idea of paying college athletes an “obvious financial impossibility” in a 2021 op-ed piece.
“My views on this have evolved,” Anderson said.

Or have to go back to Deacon Hill, next year is going to be rough..


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For those who won't click any link that has the word "Fox" in it. He's suing Cinemark for labeling and selling 22 oz. Draft beer as "24 oz."

By Brendan Buck
Mr. Buck worked for two Republican speakers of the House.
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On Saturday, the House of Representatives approved the most consequential legislation of this Congress, a foreign aid package for American allies. More Democrats than Republicans voted in favor of the measure that allowed the package to pass. And once again the speaker’s job is at risk.
This is just the latest example of how this House of Representatives has become unmoored from the normal practices of a body that has long relied on party unity to function. The speaker, Mike Johnson, holds his role only because a few hard-line Republicans ousted the previous speaker for being too dismissive of their demands. But since the moment they threw their support behind Mr. Johnson, these hard-liners have encountered the reality that they’re irrelevant to the governance of the House of Representatives.
For all its rank partisanship, the House right now is functionally and uneasily governed by a bipartisan group of Republicans and Democrats. The House is led by a conservative speaker, but for any matter of lawmaking he cannot count on a Republican majority. Instead, a coalition has emerged that is willing to do what is necessary to save the House from itself. But still we must wonder how long a G.O.P. speaker can sustain a position he owes to Democrats. It is no small thing for any speaker to rely on the opposition party to govern.
In the last year, the House has averted a catastrophic debt default, passed foreign military aid when it seemed hopeless, and funded the government when a shutdown seemed all but inevitable. Should we expect more from Congress? Of course. But the critical items are getting done in a more bipartisan manner than would seem possible in this era of negative partisanship.
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The most conservative voices are getting shut out, and the House Freedom Caucus, ironically, has made sure of it. The sustainability of it all will be decided by whether Mr. Johnson continues down a path of realistic policymaking or feels the urge to now appease the discontents who have worked to stymie him from the start.
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To understand how broken down the normal power structures have become — and how, in the process, the hard-liners have removed themselves from lawmaking — consider the basic procedures with which the business of the House is done.
The job of the Rules Committee, often referred to as the speaker’s committee, is to bring the agenda of the majority to the floor and set terms of debate on legislation. It is not a high-profile panel, but its work is critical to the operation of the House. It has long been the responsibility of the majority party to carry the votes on these agenda-setting rules. One of the few things stressed to new members of the House is to never vote against their party on a rule.

Members of the Freedom Caucus, however, now see themselves as watchmen of the floor. They set conservative policy demands that are impossible to achieve with Democrats controlling the Senate and White House. And when these demands are inevitably not met they routinely hijack the process to stop legislation before it can even get an up-or-down vote, no matter if a measure has the overwhelming support of the Republican conference or the House.
Seven times in the last year an effort to bring a bill up for a vote through the rules process has failed, primarily defeated by conservatives. Before this Congress, it had been more than two decades since a rule had been voted down. A party unable to bring its agenda to the floor for a vote is no longer a functional majority.

​

​

​

But the business of the House must go on somehow, and Mr. Johnson has been forced to go around the blockades. When he reached a bipartisan agreement for funding the government earlier this year, he took the extraordinary step of considering the bill under fast-track procedures that limit floor debate, bar amendments and require a two-thirds vote for passage. This process, typically reserved for noncontroversial measures, is how we’re funding the entire government.
Another procedural abnormality was necessary for last week’s foreign aid package. Despite it being obvious that the House overwhelmingly supports aid for Ukraine, the Freedom Caucus vowed to block consideration of the bill. Democrats were forced to carry the rule teeing up the vote, providing more votes than Republicans.
As a result, Mr. Johnson now waits for Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the anti-Ukraine Freedom Caucus member from Georgia, to follow through on threats to force a vote to remove him from the speakership. She claims it is he who has betrayed Republicans, not the conservatives who continually undermine their own colleagues.
Some Democrats have expressed at least an openness to helping Mr. Johnson retain his speakership if it is threatened for doing what they viewed as the right thing in passing Ukraine assistance. An overwhelming bipartisan repudiation of Ms. Greene’s speaker-removal tactic would be the single best thing the House could do to regain its credibility as a deliberative body.
The Freedom Caucus’s power stems from its willingness to take out the speaker. When those tools are removed, their threats quickly become more bark than bite.
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The potential for a bipartisan rejection of the effort to oust Mr. Johnson has spawned hope for a new era of comity in the House. But this is not fairy-tale politics. There will be no sweeping compromise on immigration or the federal deficit.
A coalition only works so long as both sides are getting something from the deal. Mr. Johnson’s survival as speaker for the remainder of this Congress is aided by the fact there is very little that the House must do before the election. But he will no doubt feel extraordinary pressure to take actions to get back in the good graces of conservatives.
Kevin McCarthy, the previous speaker, lost his job because Democrats had lost faith in him as an honest broker. Mr. Johnson is not immune from a similar erosion of trust. It could happen if he were to abandon the spending agreement put in place last year by President Biden and Mr. McCarthy. He similarly may not be able to count on Democrats again if tries to impeach the president.
The speakership seems to have given Mr. Johnson, who himself rose to the job from the ranks of the discontented conservatives, a new perspective on the hard-liners, who simply cannot be counted on. And the past week has demonstrated that governance is still possible in the House if, as the speaker said last week, you “do the right thing.”
Whether it’s Mr. Johnson or Mr. McCarthy or the two previous Republican speakers for whom I worked, it has not been the Republican leadership that cut out the Freedom Caucus. The Freedom Caucus, by believing in the myth of their own power, made themselves irrelevant to legislative outcomes.

To Gov. Greg Abbott, the results of his multibillion-dollar border security initiative are clear.

In a recent television interview, Abbott highlighted a decrease in the number of migrants trying to enter the country through the Rio Grande into Eagle Pass after he ordered the state National Guard to seize a 50-acre public park there. He also noted another statistic: Texas has more than two-thirds of the U.S.-Mexico border, but has recently seen fewer illegal crossings than other border states.

"We are having a profound impact in stopping the flow of illegal immigration into the state of Texas," Abbott said in the interview, crediting Operation Lone Star, the border security initiative he launched in March 2021.

Federal statistics confirm Abbott's claim that overall more migrants were encountered by Border Patrol agents outside of Texas each of the first three months of this year. During the 2023 fiscal year, Texas on average accounted for roughly 59% of migrant encounters along the southwest border. During the first half of the 2024 fiscal year, which began in October, Texas has on average accounted for 43% of migrant encounters.


.....


However immigration and foreign policy experts say the reasons driving the recent shift — and any migration patterns changes in general — are much more complicated. And they said the numbers are likely to change again if history offers any clues.

"He can, with no evidence and no real deep analysis, claim all the credit he wants to — and good for him," said Tony Payan, director of the Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute, a nonpartisan policy research organization based at Rice University in Houston. "But those of us who have been looking at immigration for a long time would probably be a lot more skeptical."


.....


Mexico has in recent months increased its enforcement efforts by arresting or detaining more migrants from other countries, said Adam Isacson, director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America, an advocacy group for human rights in the Americas. But Mexican statistics indicate that the country is not deporting people and recent court decisions have ruled that migrants can't be detained for more than 36 hours for the most part, he said.

"They're just massively putting people on buses, it seems, and sending them to the southern part of the country and the central part and almost anywhere else that's not near the [U.S.] border in order to try to depressurize the border," Isacson said. "It's very confusing and murky but they are stopping a lot of people."


.....



Some immigration policy experts credit the Biden administration for the recent decrease, pointing to a winter visit from top U.S. officials — including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas — to Mexico to discuss immigration with their Mexican counterparts. Top American and Mexican officials have touted agreements from such closed-door meetings.

Immigration experts pointed out that apprehensions at the U.S.-Mexico border dropped during the first three months of the year — a period that would typically see an increase as migrants try to make the journey before the summer heat arrives.

What a loser

In a letter received by Republican digital vendors this week, the Trump campaign is asking for down-ballot candidates who use his name, image and likeness in fundraising appeals to give at least 5 percent of the proceeds to the campaign.

Politico

MAGA House Republicans would rather do anything but their jobs. They would rather indulge right-wing media consumers with baseless impeachments, motions to vacate the speaker’s chair (again!), fruitless hearings and parroting Russian propaganda. None of these activities serves the interests of the voters; none improves U.S. national security. For these minions of Donald Trump, chaos and paralysis appear to be the goal. Fortunately for the country, Democrats have figured out how to short-circuit the antics and humiliate Republicans.


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My Post colleague Aaron Blake described the Republicans’ impeachment of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his handling of the U.S.-Mexico border as “troubled from the start — in ways that sharply undercut the claim that Democrats are derelict in shrugging off an impeachment trial.” Additionally, Blake wrote, many Republicans admitted that “Mayorkas’s actions weren’t impeachable” and that “the party wound up lacking complete unity in both chambers in historic ways.”
Problems started in the House. The Republicans’ star legal witness and an even smattering of House and Senate Republicans conceded that there was no constitutional basis for impeaching Mayorkas. Jonathan Turley, a frequent Trump legal defender, readily acknowledged, “I don’t think they have established any of those bases for impeachment. ... The fact is, impeachment is not for being a bad Cabinet member or even a bad person. It is a very narrow standard.” Republicans never remotely reached the constitutional standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors.”




http://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...tid=mc_magnet-opcongress_inline_collection_20

In February, not long before announcing his retirement, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) wrote in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal that “incompetence doesn’t rise to the level of high crimes or misdemeanors.” He added that “if we are to make underenforcement of the law, even egregious underenforcement, impeachable, almost every cabinet secretary would be subject to impeachment.” When the impeachment vote came, Gallagher’s irrefutable reasoning drew only two other Republican “no” votes.
In the Senate on Wednesday, few expected the impeachment to go anywhere. Several Republicans openly disparaged the effort. Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) affirmed there was no constitutional basis for Mayorkas’s impeachment, yet voted against dismissing the unconstitutional measure for fear of creating a bad precedent(!). Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) voted “present” on one of the two groundless articles:

On a point of order that the Article I charges were unconstitutional because they do not rise to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, I voted present. I did so because the allegations outlined in Article I — that Secretary Mayorkas, by executing the policies of the Biden administration, committed high crimes that rose to the level of impeachable offenses, needed real debate and deliberation. We were not afforded the opportunity to debate the constitutionalities of the charges in Article I, so I was not in good conscience able to vote in the affirmative or against.

Click to expand...

She most certainly could have determined the charge did not meet the standard of “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but a solid display of independence on an impeachment vote was, perhaps, too much to ask.



In any event, Democrats — including moderates such as Sens. Joe Manchin III (W.Va.) and Jon Tester (Mont.) — were in no mood to indulge Republicans. Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) understood that conducting a full-blown trial would give undeserved credence to the House’s stunt. “The charges brought against Secretary Mayorkas fail to meet the high standard of high crimes and misdemeanors,” he said. “To validate this gross abuse by the House would be a grave mistake and could set a dangerous precedent for the future.”


In dismissing the articles of impeachment with a party-line vote, Senate Democrats ignored crocodile tears from the likes of Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) — who voted against the most meritorious impeachment in history following the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot — that dismissing an impeachment before trial would create a bad precedent (unlike letting an insurrectionist off the hook?). Schumer deserves credit for nipping in the bud the GOP-controlled House’s abuse of power.
When Republicans blatantly lie, disregard their oaths and — to borrow a phrase — weaponize government, Democrats have an obligation to call them out. That entails refusing to take Republican antics seriously. When hearings and investigations obviously lack good faith, the Democrats can uphold the stature of Congress by simply walking away and refusing to play these games.



For good measure last week, the incomparable Rep. Jamie Raskin (Md.), the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, took a verbal sledgehammer to Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), derided even by his own side for utterly failing to come up with anything remotely incriminating in his strictly partisan impeachment inquiry into President Biden:

The inquiry has been repeatedly and thoroughly discredited. Even now, Comer cannot figure out what “crime” he is investigating. And further still, Comer cannot admit failure.
Raskin’s tongue-lashing does more than provide emotional satisfaction to Democrats fed up with reckless Republican antics (although no one should dismiss the value of an occasional dollop of Schadenfreude). In a media environment in which Comer’s farce is, in some corners, treated as though it were a legitimate oversight hearing, Democrats must go out of their way to draw bright lines.



Democratic partisans often find fault with their politicians for being “too nice” or “lacking a killer instinct.” Whatever the merits of their past complaints (e.g., leaving the filibuster in place), they should acknowledge that Democratic lawmakers — especially those in the minority of a chaotic, feckless House — have learned a thing or two over the past couple of years.
Democrats have learned to give Republicans the respect they deserve — which, often, is none.

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Wood x100000

Foreign policy commentators and proponents of aid to Ukraine spent days gushing over House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) for finally bringing to the floor a bill for aid to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. Give him credit! He came around! What courage! That praise ignored the immense damage that Johnson and MAGA House Republican pro-Russian propagandists inflicted on America’s beleaguered Ukrainian allies.


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Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) put it well:

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When the vote on Ukraine aid finally came, it was overwhelming, 311-112. That raised the question: Why in the world did such a popular measure take so long? It could have been done long ago, when President Biden requested the aid in October, had Johnson simply ignored the histrionics from pro-Putin House members who take their cues from Donald Trump.

A week … a month … six months ago, the vote to deliver critical aid could have prevented countless Ukrainian deaths. Just last week, Russian missiles struck an apartment building in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv, killing 17 people and injuring at least 61. That was merely one strike among many Russia has successfully carried out in recent months while Ukraine has been hampered by munitions shortages and inadequate antimissile defenses.


The delay had serious, widespread consequences for Ukraine. Max Bergmann, a former State Department official and director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tells me, “Their power sector has been decimated by lack of air defense, which will be incredibly costly to repair.” He adds that on the front “Ukrainians have lost a lot of soldiers because if you don’t have artillery you have to hold the line with men.” In other words, Ukraine has “lost a lot of people simply because we stopped providing them ammo.”




Amnesty International, tracking one of Russia’s many ongoing human rights violations, reported just days before the vote, “In what may be cumulatively one of Russia’s most destructive series of strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure, several power facilities were attacked, resulting in further suffering and disruption to Ukrainian civilians.” The organization noted, “Deliberately attacking civilian infrastructure, such as power stations and electricity supplies, and causing overwhelming harm to civilians is a violation of international humanitarian law.” Count that among the consequences of delayed U.S. aid.

The shortages of ammunition and antimissile systems for Ukraine meant Russia paid little price for continued aggression. The American Enterprise Institute’s Kori Schake tells me that Ukrainian losses “can be counted in bodies, in lost territory, in squandered momentum on the battlefield.” Those losses are at least in part attributable to Republicans’ dithering.




The damage, in part, can be quantified. “We assess that Russian forces seized 583 square kilometers since Oct. 1, 2023, approximately 100 square kilometers more than what the Ukrainian forces liberated during the 2023 counteroffensive,” George Barros, head of the Russia and Geospatial Intelligence teams at the Institute for Study of War, tells me. He adds, “We continue to assess that material shortages are forcing Ukraine to conserve ammunition and prioritize limited resources to critical sectors of the front, increasing the risk of a Russian breakthrough in other less-well-provisioned sectors and making the front line overall more fragile than the current relatively slow rate of Russian advances makes it appear.”
Given Ukraine’s ammunition shortages, Barros says, Russia gained “flexibility in how they conduct offensive operations,” which can lead to “opportunities for Russian forces to make operationally significant gains in the future.” In particular, the Institute for the Study of War reported on Friday, “Russian forces recently made confirmed advances near Bakhmut, Avdiivka, and Donetsk City.”

Moreover, the damage attributable to this U.S. delinquency extends beyond Ukraine. “The greater loss is that of U.S. credibility, to use that old term,” veteran diplomat Daniel Fried tells me. “Trumpist Republicans have damaged it and that will not be easy to repair.” He says, “Some countries may hedge, including in Asia. Russia and China are exploiting this new opportunity. Iran as well, likely.”


These losses to Ukraine and to U.S. national-security interests were entirely avoidable. Had Johnson simply listened to U.S. intelligence experts or even traveled to Ukraine, as several House and Senate members did, and witnessed the carnage, he would have quickly grasped the urgency of a vote.
Not until last week did Johnson issue a full-throated defense of Ukraine aid. “I think Vladimir Putin would continue to march through Europe if he were allowed,” he told reporters. “I would rather send bullets to Ukraine than American boys.” He stressed, “This is a live-fire exercise for me as it is so many American families. This is not a game, this is not a joke.” And yet for months, Republicans let the fire rage; they treated their solemn obligations like a joke.

Although Johnson insisted to Jake Tapper on CNN that Republicans “know the urgency in Ukraine and in Israel,” they showed no concern for roughly six months for the price Ukraine paid for Republicans’ dawdling. Either Republicans were extremely slow to learn about the harm they were causing, or they knew all along the danger they were visiting on Ukraine but didn’t care. Johnson’s apparent fear of Trump’s wrath or an attempt to oust him as speaker — in which no Republicans other than Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) appeared much interested — seemed to outweigh concern for a U.S. ally.
The fact that Johnson finally relented merits a sigh of relief, not celebration of him as a profile in courage. If anything, Johnson and the GOP’s dillydallying have signaled to friends and enemies alike that if aggressors work fast enough, U.S. aid might not arrive until too late.

Sebastian Steudtner breaks his record dropping in on a 94' wave...that is absolutely insane.

I think we need a distraction from the mind numbing facility debate. How about some OTT predictions?

Mens freestyle:

Spencer over Fix
Yianni over Alirez
Dake over Nolf
Taylor over Brooks
Snyder over Cox
Parris over Gwiz

Women's freestyle:

Hildebrandt over Jimenez
Winchester over Parrish
Maroulis over Nette
Miracle over Nwachukwu
Elor over Larramendy
Blades over Gray

Greco:

I know nothing about Greco, so....

A Cedar Rapids man faces charges that he tried to kill his fiancee by assaulting her, causing several broken bones and other serious injuries.



Richard Gerard Brown, 47, who was arrested Saturday, is charged with attempt to commit murder, willful injury resulting in serious injury and domestic abuse assault.


According to a criminal complaint, the assault happened Friday. Cedar Rapids police officers were dispatched to UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s Hospital where they found the fiancee severely beaten and unrecognizable. She had multiple facial injuries including fractures in both orbital bones and other fractures, as well as a broken jaw. She had bruising on her face consistent with being kicked or stomped on, and she had at least seven broken ribs, the complaint said.




The woman was taken to the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, where she will require multiple surgeries, the complaint states.


Brown admitted to police that he had assaulted his fiancee and “stated she was on the floor in fetal position when he left the scene,” according to the complaint.


Brown had not had his first appearance in court yet as of Monday morning.

Gov. Kim Reynolds declares today as Iowa Hawkeyes Women's Basketball Appreciation Day​

Kate Kealey
Des Moines Register







Hawkeyes women's basketball now has a day dedicated to honoring the work of the team that made back-to-back appearances in the NCAA Tournament's championship game.
Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds declared Monday, April 22, 2024, as Iowa Hawkeyes Women's Basketball Appreciation Day in the state. Reynolds made the announcement via a video on social media Monday morning.
More:Are women's college sports getting the attention they deserve? See how Americans feel.
"They captivated fans nationwide, from lifelong Hawkeyes to Hollywood celebrities," Reynolds said in the video. "Their star power was undeniable and they demonstrated the very best of our state in every way."

This is the second consecutive year Iowa's women's team won the Big Ten tournament and became finalists in the NCAA Tournament. The Hawkeyes fell short of the title this season in the final game against South Carolina.

NEVADA — Iowa farmers told a federal trade leader this weekend that the agency should block the $3.6 billion sale of the Iowa Fertilizer Co. to Koch Industries, saying it will further consolidate the industry and drive prices higher.
Several of the roughly 100 Iowa, Minnesota and Missouri residents attending the Iowa Farmers Union listening session Saturday told Lina Khan, the Federal Trade Commission chair, that consolidation within the agriculture industry — from fertilizer to seed to farm chemicals — is squeezing already slim profits from their operations.
Iowa lawmakers and residents have criticized the sale, which received about $545 million in local, state and federal economic development incentives and tax benefits a dozen years ago to encourage the southeast Iowa plant's construction.


“Iowa invested about a half billion dollars in this plant, and at the time, the stated goal was to provide more competition within the fertilizer industry," specifically because of Koch Industries' dominance, said Aaron Lehman, the Iowa Farmers Union board president.

OCI Global, the Dutch parent of the Iowa Fertilizer Co., announced in December that it’s selling the Wever plant to Koch Fertilizer, a company owned by Koch Industries, pending regulatory approval. Farmers told Khan that it's just the latest in a series of mergers that have limited the companies they can buy farm supplies and equipment from and those they sell crops and livestock to.
Nationally, four companies account for 75% of the supply of nitrogen, a key fertilizer component, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which announced in 2022 it would invest $500 million to expand fertilizer production.

The move was part of President Joe Biden's plan to drive competition across several industries.
More:In Iowa fertilizer plant purchase by Koch, farmers and consumers lose

Fed trade chief is noncommittal; Koch is confident purchase will proceed​

While declining to say what action the Federal Trade Commission is taking, Khan said the agency can investigate proposed mergers like OCI Global and Koch's to understand if they’re “going to eliminate competition in any way that’s going to harm farmers, harm communities or harm customers."

”If we conclude that it will, then we can file a lawsuit ... go to court and try to convince the judge that this deal is illegal. And then it's ultimately up to the court," Khan said.
On Saturday, a Koch Industries spokesman said in a statement that the Kansas-based company is confident the FTC will allow the purchase to proceed after concluding its analysis. Koch is committed to “operating and growing production at the Wever facility,” the spokesman said, adding that the purchase builds on a $2 billion investment in North America to increase production and improve safety and consumer access.

In Nevada, LaVon Griffieon, a central Iowa farmer, told Khan her family must negotiate prices with giants like Bayer, a St. Louis seed and chemical company; Deere & Co., the Moline, Illinois, farm equipment manufacturer; and Nutrien, the Canadian fertilizer company.
Farmers' ability to pay seems to drive prices, Griffieon and others said, not demand and production costs. “Every time crop prices go up, their prices go up,” said Griffieon, who farms about 1,100 acres with her family north of Ankeny.
The squeeze makes it hard for her family to build wealth for future farm generations, she said. For example, her family recently bought new tractor tires, which cost $20,000. That’s close “to what my parents paid for 80 acres in 1964,” Griffieon said.
“We have land to get our sons started farming. But we really can't provide them with much” more, she said.

Farmer says U.S. capitalism is losing its competitive markets​

David Weaver, who farms near Perry, said he’s lived in about 20 different countries, and he appreciates the competitive markets of the U.S. “Being a farmer here, in a capitalistic industry, is wonderful. But we are losing it on a very daily, yearly, annual basis,” said Weaver, adding that his local ag retailer buys Iowa Fertilizer’s products because it's "competitive, even traveling over halfway across the state.”

Lehman, the Farmers Union president, read a letter from a member who said he paid 50% more for fertilizers in 2023 than in 2021 as commodity prices rose. “2023 was the most expensive crop farmers put in the ground,” wrote the Farmers Union member, whose name wasn't provided because he feared retaliation for criticizing the industry.
“I should also mention that shopping for a better price for fertilizer does not exist. When we call different distributors, the price is almost always the same,” read Lehman, noting that prices have since declined as corn and soybean prices have tumbled in recent months.
Farmers who run an independent ag cooperative in Edina, Missouri, said the Iowa Fertilizer Co.’s opening in 2017 cut costs for its members.
“This is bigger than Iowa,” said Derek England, a Northeast Missouri Cooperative Service board member. Before Iowa Fertilizer Co. opened, the cooperative could purchase fertilizer from Koch and CF Industries, another large fertilizer provider, which has a plant near Sioux City.

This spring, England said, the Iowa Fertilizer nitrogen was $70 a ton cheaper than from CF Industries. Koch doesn’t often provide pricing, he said, but when it does, it's typically close to CF Industries' costs. That makes the planned Iowa Fertilizer sale to Koch “quite worrisome,” England said.
Scott Henry, who farms with his family near Nevada, said federal officials should consider that Koch is a U.S. company while OCI Global is Egyptian. While based in Amsterdam, the company was originally based in Egypt.
"I do want to continue to support American companies, regardless" of their political beliefs, said Henry, whose family gave Khan a farm tour.

Koch brothers have been Republican mega donors​

Koch operates a plant in Fort Dodge, which employs about 85 people and underwent a $140 million expansion.
Charles Koch, the company's board chairman, and the late David Koch, have been mega donors to Republican candidates and issues.
Harold Beach, another Northeast Missouri coop board member, said the meeting Saturday is “window dressing.”

“You already know what to do,” Beach said. “I'd encourage you to be fearless and courageous and do the right thing.”
Khan told farmers that Biden is focused on creating fair markets after “huge waves of mergers and acquisitions.”
“All too often, we hear … our markets are not working for people, for regular people,” she said.
Even with products that consumers want, “your success in the marketplace is not a function of how well you're able to compete," but a “function of how a handful of giants are choosing to exercise their power,” said Khan, who told reporters she heard from farmers that they're worried about losing competition after the state invested heavily in creating it.

Fertilizer plant received over a half-billion dollars in subsidies​

In 2012, OCI received about $112 million in state incentives, about $130 million in local property tax exemptions and an estimated $300 million in tax benefits through the sale of Midwest disaster bonds.

Iowa ag groups supported the project, saying it would lower Midwest nitrogen fertilizer costs for corn and other crops.
The project, which created 260 permanent jobs and 3,500 construction jobs, was “one of the largest private sector construction projects in Iowa's history and the first world-scale, greenfield nitrogen fertilizer plant built in the United States in more than 25 years,” OCI said.
Iowa Reps. J.D. Scholten, Elinor Levin and Megan Srinivas, all Democrats who attended Saturday's event, were among about 30 other Iowa House Democrats who sent letters to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division and Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, asking them to investigate the sale.
OCI said it sold the plant to significantly reduce the company’s debt, “unlock value for shareholders” and enable it to continue building lower-carbon ammonia and green methanol platforms. Its projects include a blue ammonia project in Texas.
Donnelle Eller covers agriculture, the environment and energy for the Register. Reach her at deller@registermedia.com or 515-284-8457.







The sale is a "huge step back for competition," he said.