Stewart Rhodes

Dear Commons Community,

Oath Keepers extremist group founder Stewart Rhodes was sentenced yesterday to 18 years in prison for orchestrating a plot that culminated in his followers attacking the U.S. Capitol in a bid to keep President Joe Biden out of the White House after winning the 2020 election.

Rhodes, 58, is the first person charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack to be sentenced for seditious conspiracy, and his sentence is the longest handed down so far in the hundreds of Capitol riot cases.

It’s another milestone for the Justice Department’s sprawling Jan. 6 investigation, which has led to seditious conspiracy convictions against the top leaders of two far-right extremist groups authorities say came to Washington prepared to fight to keep President Donald Trump in power at all costs.  As reported by the Associated Press.

In a first for an insurrection case, the judge agreed to apply enhancement penalties for “terrorism.” That decision could foreshadow lengthy sentences down the road for other far-right extremists, including former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who have also been convicted of the rarely used charge.

Before announcing Rhodes’ sentence, U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta described a defiant Rhodes as a continued threat the United States who clearly “wants democracy in this country to devolve into violence.” Mehta expressed fear that what happened on Jan. 6 could be repeated, saying Americans will “now hold our collective breaths every time an election is approaching.”

“The moment you are released, whenever that may be, you will be ready to take up arms against your government,” Mehta told Rhodes.

Rhodes did not use the chance to express remorse or appeal for leniency, but instead claimed to be a “political prisoner,” criticized prosecutors and the Biden administration and tried to play down his actions on Jan. 6.

“I’m a political prisoner and like President Trump my only crime is opposing those who are destroying our country,” Rhodes told Mehta.

It was one of the most consequential cases brought by the government, which has sought to prove that the riot by right-wing extremists such as the Oath Keepers was not a spur-of-the-moment protest but the culmination of weeks of plotting to overturn Biden’s victory.

Prosecutors had urged 25 years for Rhodes. They said he was the architect of a plot to forcibly disrupt the transfer of presidential power that included “quick reaction force” teams at a Virginia hotel to ferry weapons into the nation’s capital if they were needed. The weapons were never deployed.

The judge agreed to the department’s request for the “terrorism enhancement” under the argument that the Oath Keepers sought to influence the government through “intimidation or coercion.” Judges had previously rejected such requests in Jan. 6 cases, but Rhodes’ was unlike any others so far that have reached sentencing.

Prosecutors argued that a lengthy sentence was necessary to deter future political violence.

Another Oath Keeper convicted of seditious conspiracy alongside Rhodes — Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs — was also sentenced yesterday to 12 years behind bars.

Meggs said he was sorry he was involved in the riot that left a “black eye on the country,” but maintained that he never planned to go into the Capitol.

The judge found Meggs doesn’t present an ongoing threat to the country the way Rhodes does, but told him “violence cannot be resorted to just because you disagree with who got elected.”

Rhodes should have received 25 years but we will take the 18!

Tony

Tina Turner performs at Madison Square Garden.  (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine, File)

Dear Commons Community,

For those of us growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, Tina Turner was the most dynamic female performer of the rock era.  She mesmerized audiences with her singing, dancing and staging of songs like Proud Mary.  Later, hits such as What’s Love Got to Do with It and We Don’t Need Another Hero cemented her as an entertainment icon.  She died yesterday at the age of 83.  Below is an obituary, courtesy of the Associated Press. She was “Simply the Best”!

Tony

——————————————————————————

Tina Turner, ‘Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll’ whose triumphant career made her world-famous, dies at 83

By Hillel Italie

Tina Turner, the unstoppable singer and stage performer who teamed with husband Ike Turner for a dynamic run of hit records and live shows in the 1960s and ’70s and survived her horrifying marriage to triumph in middle age with the chart-topping “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” has died at 83.

Turner died Wednesday, after a long illness in her home in Küsnacht near Zurich, according to her manager. She became a Swiss citizen a decade ago.

Few stars traveled so far — she was born Anna Mae Bullock in a segregated Tennessee hospital and spent her latter years on a 260,000 square foot estate on Lake Zurich — and overcame so much. Physically battered, emotionally devastated and financially ruined by her 20-year relationship with Ike Turner, she became a superstar on her own in her 40s, at a time when most of her peers were on their way down, and remained a top concert draw for years after.

“How do we say farewell to a woman who owned her pain and trauma and used it as a means to help change the world?” Angela Bassett, who played Turner in the 1993 biopic “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” said in a statement.

“Through her courage in telling her story, her commitment to stay the course in her life, no matter the sacrifice, and her determination to carve out a space in rock and roll for herself and for others who look like her, Tina Turner showed others who lived in fear what a beautiful future filled with love, compassion, and freedom should look like.

With admirers ranging from Mick Jagger to Beyoncé to Mariah Carey, the “Queen of Rock ‘n’ Roll” was one of the world’s most popular entertainers, known for a core of pop, rock and rhythm and blues favorites: “Proud Mary,” “Nutbush City Limits,” “River Deep, Mountain High,” and the hits she had in the ’80s, among them “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” “We Don’t Need Another Hero” and a cover of Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.”

Her trademarks included a growling contralto that might smolder or explode, her bold smile and strong cheekbones, her palette of wigs and the muscular, quick-stepping legs she did not shy from showing off. She sold more than 150 million records worldwide, won 12 Grammys, was voted along with Ike into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991 (and on her own in 2021 ) and was honored at the Kennedy Center in 2005, with Beyoncé and Oprah Winfrey among those praising her. Her life became the basis for a film, a Broadway musical and an HBO documentary in 2021 that she called her public farewell.

Until she left her husband and revealed their back story, she was known as the voracious on-stage foil of the steady-going Ike, the leading lady of the “Ike and Tina Turner Revue.” Ike was billed first and ran the show, choosing the material, the arrangements, the backing singers. They toured constantly for years, in part because Ike was often short on money and unwilling to miss a concert. Tina Turner was forced to go on with bronchitis, with pneumonia, with a collapsed right lung.

Other times, the cause of her misfortunes was Ike himself.

As she recounted in her memoir, “I, Tina,” Ike began hitting her not long after they met, in the mid-1950s, and only grew more vicious. Provoked by anything and anyone, he would throw hot coffee in her face, choke her, or beat her until her eyes were swollen shut, then rape her. Before one show, he broke her jaw and she went on stage with her mouth full of blood.

Terrified both of being with Ike and of lasting without him, she credited her emerging Buddhist faith in the mid-1970s with giving her a sense of strength and self-worth and she finally left in early July 1976. The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was scheduled to open a tour marking the country’s bicentennial when Tina snuck out of their Dallas hotel room, with just a Mobil credit card and 36 cents, while Ike slept. She hurried across a nearby highway, narrowly avoiding a speeding truck, and found another hotel.

Tina Turner performs at New York’s Madison Square Garden on Aug. 1, 1985. (AP Photo/Ray Stubblebine, File)

“I looked at him (Ike) and thought, ‘You just beat me for the last time, you sucker,’” she recalled in her memoir.

Turner was among the first celebrities to speak candidly about domestic abuse, becoming a heroine to battered women and a symbol of resilience to all. Ike Turner did not deny mistreating her, although he tried to blame Tina for their troubles. When he died, in 2007, a representative for his ex-wife said simply: “Tina is aware that Ike passed away.”

Ike and Tina fans knew little of this during the couple’s prime. The Turners were a hot act for much of the 1960s and into the ’70s, evolving from bluesy ballads such as “A Fool in Love” and “It’s Going to Work Out Fine” to flashy covers of “Proud Mary” and “Come Together” and other rock songs that brought them crossover success.

They opened for the Rolling Stones in 1966 and 1969, and were seen performing a lustful version of Otis Redding’s “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” in the 1970 Stones documentary “Gimme Shelter.” Bassett and Laurence Fishburne gave Oscar-nominated performances in “What’s Love Got to Do with It,” based on “I, Tina,” but she would say that reliving her years with Ike was so painful she couldn’t bring herself to watch the movie.

Ike and Tina’s reworking of “Proud Mary,” originally a tight, mid-tempo hit for Creedence Clearwater Revival, helped define their sexual aura. Against a background of funky guitar and Ike’s crooning baritone, Tina began with a few spoken words about how some people wanted to hear songs that were “nice and easy.”

“But there’s this one thing,” she warned, “you see, we never ever do nothing nice and easy.

“We always do it nice — and rough.”

But by the end of the 1970s, Turner’s career seemed finished. She was 40 years old, her first solo album had flopped and her live shows were mostly confined to the cabaret circuit. Desperate for work, and money, she even agreed to tour in South Africa when the country was widely boycotted because of its racist apartheid regime.

Rock stars helped bring her back. Rod Stewart convinced her to sing “Hot Legs” with him on “Saturday Night Live” and Jagger, who had openly borrowed some of Turner’s on-stage moves, sang “Honky Tonk Women” with her during the Stones’ 1981-82 tour. At a listening party for his 1983 album “Let’s Dance,” David Bowie told guests that Turner was his favorite singer.

“She was inspiring, warm, funny and generous,” Jagger tweeted Wednesday. “She helped me so much when I was young and I will never forget her.”

More popular in England at the time than in the U.S., she recorded a raspy version of “Let’s Stay Together” at EMI’s Abbey Road studios in London. By the end of 1983, “Let’s Stay Together” was a hit throughout Europe and on the verge of breaking in the states. An A&R man at Capitol Records, John Carter, urged the label to sign her up and make an album. Among the material presented was a reflective pop-reggae ballad co-written by Terry Britten and Graham Lyle and initially dismissed by Tina as “wimpy.”

“I just thought it was some old pop song, and I didn’t like it,” she later said of “What’s Love Got To Do With It.”

Turner’s “Private Dancer” album came out in May 1984, sold more than eight million copies and featured several hit singles, including the title song and “Better Be Good To Me.” It won four Grammys, among them record of the year for “What’s Love Got to Do With It,” the song that came to define the clear-eyed image of her post-Ike years.

“People look at me now and think what a hot life I must have lived — ha!” she wrote in her memoir.

Even with Ike, it was hard to mistake her for a romantic. Her voice was never “pretty,” and love songs were never her specialty, in part because she had little experience to draw from. She was born in Nutbush, Tennessee in 1939 and would say she received “no love” from either her mother or father. After her parents separated, she moved often around Tennessee and Missouri, living with various relatives. She was outgoing, loved to sing and as a teenager would check out the blues clubs in St. Louis, where one of the top draws was Ike Turner and his Kings of Rhythm. Tina didn’t care much for his looks the first time she saw him, at the Club Manhattan.

“Then he got up onstage and picked up his guitar,” she wrote in her memoir. “He hit one note, and I thought, ‘Jesus, listen to this guy play.’”

Tina soon made her move. During intermission at an Ike Turner show at the nearby Club D’Lisa, Ike was alone on stage, playing a blues melody on the keyboards. Tina recognized the song, B.B. King’s “You Know I Love You,” grabbed a microphone and sang along. As Tina remembered, a stunned Ike called out “Giirrlll!!” and demanded to know what else she could perform. Over her mother’s objections, she agreed to join his group. He changed her first name to Tina, inspired by the comic book heroine Sheena, Queen of the Jungle, and changed her last name by marrying her, in 1962.

In rare moments of leniency from Ike, Tina did enjoy success on her own. She added a roaring lead vocal to Phil Spector’s titanic production of “River Deep, Mountain High,” a flop in the U.S. when released in 1966, but a hit overseas and eventually a standard. She was also featured as the Acid Queen in the 1975 film version of the Who’s rock opera “Tommy.” More recent film work included “Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome” and a cameo in “What’s Love Got to Do with It.”

Turner had two sons: Craig, with saxophonist Raymond Hill; and Ronald, with Ike Turner. (Craig Turner was found dead in 2018 of an apparent suicide). In a memoir published later in 2018, “Tina Turner: My Love Story,” she revealed that she had received a kidney transplant from her second husband, former EMI record executive Erwin Bach.

Turner’s life seemed an argument against marriage, but her life with Bach was a love story the younger Tina would not have believed possible. They met in the mid-1980s, when she flew to Germany for record promotion and he picked her up at the airport. He was more than a decade younger than her — “the prettiest face,” she said of him in the HBO documentary — and the attraction was mutual. She wed Bach in 2013, exchanging vows at a civil ceremony in Switzerland.

“It’s that happiness that people talk about,” Turner told the press at the time, “when you wish for nothing, when you can finally take a deep breath and say, ‘Everything is good.’”

Dear Commons Community,

The AAUP issued a preliminary report reviewing recent political attacks on the colleges and universities in the state of Florida.  It concluded that academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face an assault unparalleled in US history. Below is a brief summary and access to the report as shared by Afshan Jafar and Hank Reichman, Cochairs of the AAUP Special Report Committee.

Tony

—————————————————————————————–

Dear Anthony,

Earlier this year, the AAUP invited us to chair a special committee established to review the apparent pattern of politically, racially, and ideologically motivated attacks on public higher education in Florida. Today, after interviewing dozens of faculty members at multiple public colleges and universities in the state, the committee has released a preliminary report concluding that academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance in Florida’s public colleges and universities currently face a politically and ideologically driven assault unparalleled in US history. If sustained, this onslaught threatens the very survival of meaningful higher education in the state, with dire implications for the entire country.

See the full report.

The report includes four main findings:

• The Florida governor and state legislature are using their swift, aggressive, and ongoing “hostile takeover” of New College of Florida as a test case for future encroachments on public colleges and universities across the country. This “takeover” has proceeded through Governor DeSantis’s appointment of a slate of six highly partisan trustees, five of whom live outside the state and are publicly known as right-wing activists, to New College’s board of trustees. Their goals are to transform New College into a flagship right-wing institution by restructuring the administration and academic departments, developing a “new core curriculum,” and eliminating all diversity, equity, and inclusion programs.
• Academic administrators throughout Florida’s public university and college systems, from the highest to the lowest levels not only have failed to contest these attacks but have too frequently been complicit in and, in some cases, explicitly supported them. While some individuals are leaving as a matter of conscience, those who remain face the prospect of serving as pawns in DeSantis’s corrupt patronage system.
• The Florida legislature has passed a series of bills that, taken collectively, constitute a systematic effort to dictate and enforce conformity with a narrow and reactionary political and ideological agenda throughout the state’s higher education system. These efforts grievously undermine basic and long-standing principles of academic freedom, tenure, and shared governance. A key component of this agenda has been an effort to destroy college and university programs that serve minority communities and to banish from classrooms ideas and information about race, gender, and sexual identity that fail to conform to the prejudices of politicians.
• Although several pieces of legislation proposed by the DeSantis administration have been stalled by legal challenges, the resulting self-censorship and fear are damaging the quality of public higher education in the state and are now spilling over into private institutions in Florida.

The committee is continuing its work, interviewing faculty members and others, as events in Florida continue to unfold. This preliminary report will be followed by a more comprehensive final report, expected by fall.

Afshan Jafar and Hank Reichman
Cochairs, AAUP Special Committee

Dear Commons Community,

I have just finished reading Jason Wingard’s The College Devaluation Crisis: Market Disruption, Diminishing ROI, and an Alternative Future of Learning (Stanford Business Books, 2022).  Wingard is a college administrator who recently resigned as President of Temple University after a very short tenure. In The College Devaluation Crisis, he posits that the “golden age” of college education lies behind us. Between World War II and the Great Recession of 2008, a college degree reliably led to higher salaries and upward mobility. Today, however, the landscape has changed, and the “value of a college degree” — understood in terms of “return on investment,” or ROI — is collapsing.  By 2030, Wingard predicts, college “will be replaced as the dominant pathway for the kind of talent development that presages professional readiness and career success.”  Here is an excerpt of a review from The Chronicle of Higher Education Chronicle.

“Wingard’s recent book on the future of higher education serves as an excellent introduction to an ambitious vision shared by a host of higher-education reformers. The book advocates a turn away from traditional curricula toward alternative pedagogies that emphasize marketable skills. The future it sketches teems with business-minded academic reforms, outsourced course content, and the substitution of high-cost human teaching with cheaper technological alternatives.

It might be tempting to dismiss the writings of a failed university president as irrelevant, but that would be a mistake. Wingard’s book advances a broad program that extends beyond the deans, presidents, and trustees who promoted his career through the academy. That program is supported by high-level policymakers from both major political parties, by CEOs and financial executives who serve on university boards, by influential investors, and by sympathetic  

These ideas will not die with a single resignation. Unless a broader coalition mobilizes to stop them, they will continue marching across the landscape of higher education like zombies, transforming the content and purpose of curricula in the image of our post-industrial, financialized moment.”

I agree with The Chronicle’s assessment.  The combination of political leadership, state governing bodies, and corporate America, especially those companies who will benefit financially from Wingard’s vision, are moving rapidly to transform American higher education.  Technology will be the vehicle by which they will possibly succeed!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

USA Today is reporting that a a multi-year investigation into child sex abuse by members of the Catholic clergy in Illinois found at least 1,997 children across the state were sexually abused.

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul Tuesday released a comprehensive report detailing decades of child sex abuse by members of the Illinois Catholic dioceses, which includes Belleville, Chicago, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford, and Springfield.

The nearly 700-page report features detailed narrative accounts of child sex abuse committed by Catholic clerics.

Many of the narratives were written in consultation with survivors, are based upon their experiences, and told from the survivor’s point of view.

“I was raised and confirmed in the Catholic church and sent my children to Catholic schools. I believe the church does important work to support vulnerable populations; however, as with any presumably reputable institution, the Catholic church must be held accountable when it betrays the public’s trust,” Raoul said.

Although the report formally concludes the investigation the Attorney General’s office opened in 2018, it contains 50 pages of the office’s recommendations to the dioceses for the handling of future child sex abuse allegations.

Before Raoul’s investigation, the Catholic dioceses of Illinois publicly listed only 103 substantiated child sex abusers. By comparison, Raoul’s report reveals names and detailed information of 451 Catholic clerics and religious brothers who abused at least 1,997 children across all of the dioceses in Illinois.

Of the 451 clerics in the report, 330 have died, according to Raoul.

The Archdiocese of Chicago, and the dioceses of Belleville, Joliet, Peoria, Rockford and Springfield issued a joint statement regarding the findings.

“The Catholic Church in Illinois has been at the forefront of dealing with sexual abuse of minors for many years,” said Cardinal Blase J. Cupich, Archbishop of Chicago and Metropolitan of the Chicago Province.

“At this time, working with the Office of the Attorney General of Illinois, the leaders of all six Illinois dioceses endeavored to make clear and update our approach, mindful of our lived experience and best practices in this field. Our common goals in doing so are to ensure we offer pastoral support to those affected by this tragedy and to work diligently to prevent it from occurring again.”

The Illinois dioceses’ said for years their procedures include, among other things:

• The diocesan website publication of the names of its clerics credibly accused of sexual abuse of minors.
• Policies for handling allegations of sexual abuse of minors against clerics incardinated in their dioceses.
• Diocesan policies for handling such allegations against deceased, laicized and religious order priests.
• Processes for dealing with allegations that arise during criminal investigations or civil lawsuits.

The Illinois Catholic dioceses serve 3.4 million Catholics, comprising approximately 27 percent of the total state population, through more than 900 parishes.

This is  horrible mark on the Church and its leaders!

Tony

Deepfake images of Trump being arrested!

Dear Commons Community,

Sawdah Bhaimiya, a tech writer for Business Insider, has an article this morning, describing ways that can be used to tell if an image has been generated by artificial intelligence software.  Here is her piece.

“In recent months a number of deepfake images of major figures in unlikely scenarios, such as a viral picture appearing to show the Pope in a stylish white puffer coat and a bejeweled crucifix, have circulated online.

Like many such images, the picture of the Pope was actually made with an AI program called Midjourney, which David Holz founded last year.

The program, which creates images based on textual descriptions provided by users, has been used to produce misleading images of well-known figures including some of former president Donald Trump being arrested.

In late March, Midjourney suspended free trials “due to a combination of extraordinary demand and trial abuse,” Holz said at the time.

Yet that does not mean an end to fake images, according to Henry Ajder, an AI expert who is on the European advisory council for Meta’s Reality Labs. He said tools such as OpenAI’s Dall. E 2 and Stable Diffusion had this capability.

“The only way that realistic fakery has been possible in the past to the level we’re seeing now daily was in Hollywood studios,” Ajder said. “This was kind of the cream of the crop of VFX and CGI work, whereas now many people have the power of a Hollywood studio in the palm of their hands.”

He warned that the consequences of deepfake images will range from fake news about politicians to nonconsensual pornographic images.

For instance, in April a face swap app called Facemega was used to promote a sexually suggestive ad using actor Emma Watson’s face.

However, it’s not just the “bombastic fakes” people need to worry about, Adjer said. The more subtle ones like Pope Francis can “slowly just chip away at our trust in visual media and make it harder to navigate the truth.”

He and another expert offered four tips to help distinguish AI-generated images from the real thing.

Some AI-generated images have a “plasticky” appearance

One telltale sign that an image was on Midjourney is a “plasticky” appearance, but the platform may iron out this issue as it develops.

Ajder said Midjourney was a tool developed with artists in mind: “A lot of the images have a very stylized, almost smooth kind of shiny, plasticky appearance.”

Although this isn’t consistent with other AI platforms, it’s something to keep an eye out for.

Look out for aesthetic inconsistencies

Ajder pointed out that AI programs generally struggle with “semantic consistencies,” such as lighting, shapes, and subtlety.

Some examples include checking whether the lighting on a person in an image is in the right place; whether someone’s head is slightly too big; or even over-exaggerated eyebrows and bone structure.

Other inconsistencies include smiling with lower sets of teeth in an image because usually “people smile with their top teeth, not their bottom.”

Not every single image will have these signs, but they’re useful pointers.

Alexey Khitrov, founder of biometric security company ID R&D, said the image of Pope Francis is the “artifact of something that’s completely unnatural,” and contained some “physically impossible” features.

The crucifix the Pope appeared to be wearing in the image had a chain is attached to only one side, for example.

Other errors included the strange shape of his ears as well as the distance between his glasses and their shadow on his face.

Context is key

Aesthetic factors are not always enough to identify deepfakes, especially as AI tools start to become more sophisticated.

Khitrov advised questioning suspicious images: “Try to do a search on the image like you’re doing a search on the information that you’re receiving.”

Ajder agreed context was critical, making it worth trying to find an “authoritative source.”

“We need to be aware that if something seems outrageous or sensational, there’s a good chance that there might be something awry. In that context, it’s about going to the organizations that have known capacity, for fact-checking and verification.”

He advises asking questions like: “Who’s shared it? Where has it been shared? Can you cross-reference it to a more established source with known fact-checking capabilities?”

Try a reverse image search

If all else fails, Ajder suggested using a reverse image search tool to find the context of an image.

“If I did a reverse image search on the Trump getting arrested images, it might take me to all of the news websites where it’s been shared in articles. So it’s essentially a way to sort of trace back [the image] or like a mind map coming off that image.”

Ajder recommended Google Lens or Yandex’s visual search function for reverse image search capabilities.”

Deepfake is going to be fun during the upcoming presidential election!

Tony

2. Dear Commons Community,
4. An amended lawsuit seeking  $10 million in compensatory damages was filed in Manhattan by lawyers for E. Jean Carroll, who says remarks by Trump in response to her rape allegations so spoiled her reputation that she lost her longtime job as an Elle magazine advice columnist.They said in the rewritten lawsuit that he “doubled down” on derogatory remarks about Carroll at a CNN appearance a day after the verdict.

   “Trump’s defamatory statements post-verdict show the depth of his malice toward Carroll since it is hard to imagine defamatory conduct that could possibly be more motivated by hatred, ill will, or spite,” the lawyers wrote. “This conduct supports a very substantial punitive damages award in Carroll’s favor both to punish Trump, to deter him from engaging in further defamation, and to deter others from doing the same.”

   A nine-person jury two weeks ago decided Trump had sexually abused Carroll at an upscale Manhattan department store in early spring 1996.

   Carroll, who testified during the trial, first revealed in a 2019 book her claims that Trump raped her in a dressing room. The jury decided Carroll hadn’t proved she had been raped, but found that Trump had sexually abused her.

   Joe Tacopina, a Trump lawyer, declined to comment on the new claims.

   The lawyers filed the new claims in amending a defamation lawsuit that was put on hold as an appeals court was deciding whether Trump could be held liable for remarks he made in 2019 while he was still president. The U.S. Justice Department has supported his lawyers’ claims that the United States should be substituted as the defendant.

   In the new claim, Carroll’s lawyers said Trump, “undeterred by the jury’s verdict, persisted in maliciously defaming Carroll yet again” the next day during a “town hall” event hosted by CNN.

   “He doubled down on his prior defamatory statements, asserting to an audience all too ready to cheer him on that ‘I never met this woman. I never saw this woman,’ that he did not sexually assault Carroll, and that her account — which had just been validated by a jury of Trump’s peers one day before — was a ‘fake,’ ‘made up story’ invented by a ‘whack job.’  Those statements resulted in enthusiastic cheers and applause from the audience on live TV,” the lawyers wrote.

5. Sue, Jean, Sue!
   Tony

Dear Commons Community,

The NAACP’s Board of Directors issued a travel warning about Florida that accuses the state, and specifically Governor Ron DeSantis, of being “openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals.”

“Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color,” the notice issued Saturday states. As reported by the Huffington Post.

The civil rights organization specifically accuses DeSantis, a possible 2024 Republican presidential candidate, of aggressively attempting to erase Black history and “restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools.”

Under DeSantis’ leadership, the state has placed restrictions on how racism and other aspects of history can legally be taught in schools and workplaces. His Stop WOKE Act, signed into law in 2022, is currently being challenged in court.

DeSantis has also passed legislation that expands the state’s ability to restrict books in public schools, resulting in the removal of books about race and LGBTQ+ identities.

“Let me be clear, failing to teach an accurate representation of the horrors and inequalities that Black Americans have faced and continue to face is a disservice to students and a dereliction of duty to all,” NAACP President & CEO Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “Under the leadership of Governor Desantis, the state of Florida has become hostile to Black Americans and in direct conflict with the democratic ideals that our union was founded upon.”

In terms of LGBTQ+ rights, DeSantis most recently also banned gender-affirming care for minors, banned using a bathroom aligning with one’s gender identity, and banned drag queen performances in public places, resulting in the cancellation of local Pride events.

Equality Florida, an LGBTQ+ civil rights group, issued a similar travel advisory for the entire state last month due to DeSantis’ actions.

“We understand everyone must weigh the risks and decide what is best for their safety, but whether you stay away, leave or remain we ask that you join us in countering these relentless attacks,” said Nadine Smith, Equality Florida’s executive director. “Help reimagine and build a Florida that is truly safe for and open to all, and where freedom is a reality, not a hollow campaign slogan.”

Sad situation in Florida!

Tony

Dear Commons Community,

A blue heron has been a morning visitor to the areas in and around my house.  This morning it perched itself on top of my boat while looking for its breakfast.

Tony