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Trump has sued almost everyone over almost everything - but he’s never sued anyone over accusations of child sex abuse.

tl;dr:

Shutdown and staff cuts are hindering US government response and information analysis. But flu cases in UK are 3x what they were last year, flu cases in Japan are 6x what they were last year, flu cases rising sharply in Canada.

“The annual flu shot doesn’t prevent people from getting infected with the flu. It’s mainly used to lessen the severity of the illness. […] This year’s vaccine is up to 40% effective in preventing hospitalization among adults.” Get vaccinated, try to avoid exposure.

He made a post on reddit like five years ago, doing a brain dump on various features and stuff.

The fact that the Democrats want to keep the filibuster to keep progressives in check just makes their cave-in even worse.

Also, by acknowledging that this was the reason for their submission, it makes it first what we suspected: despite his denials, this move was orchestrated by Schumer, and the “defectors” were specifically chosen because they were either retiring or not up for re-election for so long that other “good deeds” for the manufactured to give them cover when they are up for re-election.

At this point, I’m only staying with the Democrats so I can pull them as far to the left in the primaries, after that they’re on their own.

Yeah, we already knew that, ffs they tried to slip a backdoor nationwide ban into their proposal last week. I am so sick of their shit …

Also putting his mattress and pillows into an allergen case.

The aftermath hasn’t been pretty, and it feels like the bad guys won.  Cody was allowed to continue on the job for about 3 more months before public pressure finally convinced the City Council to fire him - they didn’t want to have to pay out the penalty required by his contract.  He got to keep his pension from Kansas City and quietly slipped away for a while in the aftermath.  He was eventually tracked down and he’s currently up on a felony charge - not for the raid itself, or lying about the search warrants, or anything like that.  He’s being charged for encouraging the restaurant owner to delete some texts they’d exchanged.

The restaurant owner got her liquor license approved, even though Kansas law should have prevented one from being issued to someone with an unresolved DUI.  Joan Meyer died from the stress of the raid.  Several of the Record’s employees ended up quitting, also due to the stress of the raid as well as the local harassment they got afterward.  The deputy mayor, who was only peripherally involved, was voted out of office in the next election; and the judge who signed off on the illegal search warrants was easily re-elected.  And Eric Meyer lost his mother, lost his staff, divided his town and his county, and has become an unwilling icon for standing up for rights against a corrupt government and the lax systems that enable them.

For people who might have missed the original event, not followed it closely enough for the various details the emerged, or just want a refresher, I’ve written the following from things that I remember from the original case (this is from memory, so minor parts of this may be wrong, but the overall story should be correct):

There was a restaurant where some local politician was holding some kind of meet-and-greet, and he’d explicitly invited the Record to cover the event. The restaurant owner didn’t like The Record (they dug up and reported news, not just fluff like who won the Little League game and who was getting married) and kicked them out of the restaurant. The paper wrote that they’d been kicked out, which upset the restaurant owner more because it made both her and her restaurant look bad at a time that she really really wanted to look good to the public.

The restaurant owner was getting divorced, and her husband anonymously mailed The Record proof that she’d had (?multiple?) DUIs sometime like 15 years earlier, had never completed the formalities to “complete” the DUI sentence and get her license reinstated, and had been knowingly driving illegally for the past 15 years or so. The restaurant owner was desperate that this not get out, as she was in the process of applying for a liquor license for her restaurant which, if granted, would substantially raise her profits. Between the politician dust-up and the potential DUI story, she was anxious and ready to go after the Record.

The paper received the tip-off about the restaurant owner’s DUI and confirmed it with a search on the state’s open record database, something that any member of the public can freely do. However, they suspected the tip came from the husband and were concerned about the legality of his actions, and reported the tip to the local cops. They did not publish anything about the illegal driving until that information came out in the aftermath of the raid.

Gideon Cody, the police chief, was new on the job, having freshly retired from the Kansas City police force, saying he was interested in working someplace less hectic. In truth, he was under investigation in Kansas City for sexually harassing his co-workers and subordinates in the force (and, imo, had also likely harassed suspects in the past as well). He “retired” just before they would have kicked him off the force and, since he “retired”, he got to keep his pension.

Several people who had worked with Cody in Kansas City contacted the Record when it was learned he was applying for the job in Marion. The Record did an initial investigation and Meyer tried to warn the city council to do a more thorough background check on Cody before hiring him, but they hired him anyway. The Record felt that the story still wasn’t complete enough to justify publishing yet and were continuing to work on the story.

Cody had found out about their investigation. When he found out about the restaurant owner’s driving record being searched, he decided to use it as a justification to target the Record. He convinced the restaurant owner to complain about the intrusion into her life (I can’t remember how official the complaint was). He approached the county attorney [who happens to be a cousin of the restaurant owner and knew about her applying for the liquor license] and told them he needed a search warrant. Iirc, Cody phrased it as an urgent matter, that the newspaper might “destroy records”, and he’d get the actual evidence for the search warrant to the County Attorney in the next day or so. In casual good ol’ boy fashion (and ignoring the heightened burden of proof needed to target journalists and publishers) the attorney approved the search warrants for the deputy mayor and her house (the restaurant owner wrongly suspected her of being the leak); the newspaper itself; and the house of Joan Meyer, the 98 year old former head of the paper (and still nominally involved), where her son Eric (the current head of the paper) had moved in to help take care of her.

Having obtained illegal (no burden of proof documents provided, and not meeting the higher burden of proof needed for journalists), the search warrants still needed to be signed off on by a judge. He went to the County Judge (a position that, incidentally, doesn’t need to have a background in law) that night and convinced her to sign off on the illegal warrants. iirc, they raided the paper a few hours later. I’ll note here, as it doesn’t seem to quite fit anywhere else, that the judge had also had a prior conviction for drunk driving, which I found slightly ironic.

Having gotten the illegal search warrants, the raids went forward. Instead of targeting just the journalist who was working on the story, they targeted the entire paper because Cody wanted to know how far the paper was on the story about him, and also who had been snitching on his sexually harrassive past. And it just exploded from there.

As someone who followed this case very closely back in the day, thank you for posting this!

“This is just the first shoe of two shoes to fall. This is the county portion of it. The city was the main instigator of this raid.”

Marion County has about 12000 people in it, so that’s about $250 per person. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but it’s per person meaning a family of 4 with 2 kids owes $1000, in a county where the annual median income is under $35000. None of which will be covered by insurance, since the raid was illegal.

The settlement with the city is going to be worse: they have notably more liability in the raid, and the town only has about 1100 residents, so any settlement is going to be extraordinarily painful for the people living there - especially as they’ll be paying for both the county settlement and the city settlement.

The raid has essentially torn the town apart. There are still a lot of people who view Meyer as a meddling outsider; who vehemently support the police chief and the restaurant owner; who believe the guardrails the judge and county attorney were minor things; and who think Meyer should just let things go once the cops were caught out. And there’s a bunch of people who think Meyer is just being a good journalist; who vehemently support freedom of the press; who think that everyone who didn’t conduct due diligence contributed to the failures seen; and who think that, unless there are substantial penalties, segments of the population will continue to view it as a minor matter blown entirely out of proportion, and that authoritarians and good ol’ boy networks will be emboldened in a time of decreasing freedoms.

Eric Meyer himself has been torn on the penalties, saying that he has to live there, see the little this affects every day, and knows how hard life there can be; but that noticable and painful penalties have to be pursued as a deterrent against similar actions in the future. He taught journalism and journalism ethics for years, and the combined responsibilities and freedom of the press is something that he believes very strongly in.

Again, thank you for posting this article!

USPS has something called a “Mail Imaging program”, where they photograph the outside of every piece of mail that goes through their system. They use it to process the mail, but law enforcement does request copies of all stored images related to people and addresses they’re investigating.

They also have the “Mail Covers program”, where law enforcement will proactively request USPS to monitor and forward information on all mail to and, as far as possible, from a given person or address. That information is limited to the outside of the envelope but, if they see something they deem suspicious, they can get a warrant to open the mail. I’ll also note that privacy guardrails on the program are notoriously lax: something like 20% of covers were approved without the necessary paperwork, and 15% weren’t adequately justified.

If you’re wondering what the big deal with getting data from the outside of the envelope is, you might be interested in “Finding Paul Revere”.

They’re just waiting for a better case before overturning it.

'I always get the money from someplace regardless, it doesn’t matter,’

Funny how he can find the money for ATC but not SNAP.

Honestly, given his personality changes, I would not be surprised to hear that he’s become verbally or possibly even physically abusive at home.

Fucking finally!

Duffy said that ATC resignations and retirements rose from about 4-per-day before the shutdown, to about 15-20 every day now. No it’s not going to get better quickly.

In case anyone who lives in these states wants to call and express their opinions, in case there’s any chance of influencing them: Dick Durbin - Illinois - not running for re-election Jeanne Shaheen - New Hampshire - not running for re-election Maggie Hassan - New Hampshire - could face primary in 2028 Catherine Cortez-Masto - Nevada - could face primary in 2028 Jacky Rosen - Nevada - could face primary in 2030 Angus King - Maine - (Independent) - could face Democratic opponent in 2030 John Fetterman - Pennsylvania - could face primary in 2028 Tim Kaine - Virginia - could face primary in 2030

I wonder if the bill still has the nation-wide shadow abortion ban in it. I bet it does …

God. Fucking. Damnit!

20 a day right now, and that number is going to escalate. They’re working without pay, bills and rent/mortgage are overdue, savings are disappearing, and trump has said he thinks government workers who are working through the shutdown don’t deserve to be paid for that work when it ends. It’s a cascade effect, where every retirement increases pressure on those who remain, some of whom will also chose to leave, increasing pressure, etc.

At some point, there isn’t going to be much to stop the cascade, and we were already short on ATC recruitment before all this.