UK court rules that the flimsy assurances the US has given that it might not mistreat Assange are enough to extradite him. Assange lawyers will appeal. https://t.co/36VWJwFL3k

— Ryan Grim (@ryangrim) December 10, 2021

How do you dismantle an academic powerhouse? Follow the University of Florida’s example | Editorial https://t.co/mMgby5xoFp

— Michael McDonald (@ElectProject) December 9, 2021

https://www.thedailybeast.com/tennessee-medical-board-buckles-under-pressure-on-covid-misinformation-warning

Tennessee’s medical licensing board voted Tuesday to delete a policy opposing coronavirus misinformation from its website due to fears a powerful conservative lawmaker would otherwise dissolve the board and replace its members.

The policy, unanimously adopted by the Board of Medical Examiners in September, establishes that doctors who spread demonstrably untrue information about COVID-19 vaccines could have their licenses suspended or potentially revoked. Members voted 7 to 3 to delete — but not rescind — the policy.

The deletion was spurred by Rep. John Ragan, R-Oak Ridge, a co-chair of the Joint Government Operations Committee, who insisted board members don’t have the authority to create a new disciplinary offense without the approval of lawmakers on his committee.

Jamie Raskin: "I don’t see why our Democratic incumbent colleagues in states like North Carolina and Georgia are in a struggle to survive this redistricting, but somehow members like Andy Harris get a relative free pass." https://t.co/sJnRUYok0e

— Jim Newell (@jim_newell) December 10, 2021

In the late night hours following the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, Maryland Rep. Andy Harris found himself in the middle of a fight.

The hard-right member, and the only Republican in Maryland’s delegation, had spoken out against certifying Pennsylvania’s electoral votes during a debate on the House floor. Later that night, Pennsylvania Rep. Conor Lamb said in a speech that the Republican objectors should’ve been “ashamed” of their “lies,” especially after what they had seen earlier in the day. A shouting match, and then a confrontation in the aisle between the two sides, ensued, prompting the deputy sergeant-at-arms to get in the middle and break things up. The whole thing was defused before coming to blows, but Harris would later vote with 137 of his House Republican colleagues to uphold the objection. A couple of weeks later, after new security measures had been put in place at the Capitol, Harris was caught by security carrying a gun outside of the House floor.

This is a member of Congress whom Maryland Democrats, in complete control over their redistricting process given their state legislative supermajorities, had a chance to draw into oblivion ahead of the next election cycle. In doing so, they could not only have gotten rid of a representative Democrats consider one of the worst of the worst, but they could’ve helped the national Democratic Party counteract Republicans’ national redistricting advantage ahead of the 2022 midterms. Democrats have only a few states where they can play offense in redistricting, and Maryland is one of them.

And yet. When Maryland Democrats sat down to draw a new map, one that could have gone from a 7–1 Democratic advantage to an easy 8–0 shutout, they flinched. The map that the state’s General Assembly passed this week would make Harris’ district more competitive, but FiveThirtyEight still rates it as Republican-leaning, as does the Cook Political Report.

The decision not to go all-out split Maryland Democrats, some of whom had district interests they wanted to protect, and some who were just uncomfortable pursuing a maximal gerrymandering strategy in their state while the national party has spent years trying to ban partisan gerrymandering.

And it’s left national Democrats furious.

Why, they ask, when Republicans are using their redistricting advantage liberally across the country, are Maryland Democrats extending a lifeline in the ’22 midterms to Andy Harris? Why, if Republicans insist on blocking the national partisan gerrymandering ban that Democrats have been pushing, shouldn’t Maryland go for the jugular?

“Moderates” and “pragmatists” are code words for bought and paid for.

https://www.businessinsider.com/senate-democrats-leave-out-billionaires-tax-biden-spending-plan-wealth-2021-12?utm_source=reddit.com

Senate Democrats are not sticking with their previous plan for a billionaires’ tax in their $2 trillion social and climate spending bill as they race to finalize the details and approve it before Christmas.

Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, the Senate Finance Committee chair, said his panel would release new bill text on Friday.

He’s long pushed a tax on billionaires’ assets, introduced in late October. But the Oregon Democrat conceded it would not form part of the new Senate legislation.

“I do not expect that it will be,” Wyden told Insider on Thursday evening. “I have continued to talk to my colleagues and there is widespread awareness that this is the largest amount of money that has been scored by the Joint Committee on Taxation.”

The plan had run into immediate opposition from Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who argued it was “divisive,” as well as from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who privately assailed it as a public-relations stunt.

“I think there’s a wide swath of moderates and pragmatists in the caucus concerned about the second-order effects of this,” a Senate Democratic aide granted anonymity to speak candidly told Insider.

https://jacobinmag.com/2021/12/seattle-kshama-sawant-reelection-socialism-city-council-capitalist-strategy

In a razor-tight race, Seattle’s socialist city council member Kshama Sawant beat off a recall attempt bankrolled by the city’s business interests. She won by just over two hundred votes in a race that went down to the wire. The outcome wasn’t determined until two days after the election, as mail-in ballots streamed in after election day. Six hundred ballots have been challenged and could still be counted, but they are not expected to change the recall’s outcome.

Sawant won largely based on a concerted effort to get out the youth vote. Among all demographics, the eighteen to twenty-five cohort was the only one which increased its turnout from the most recent election, held only one month earlier. Three hundred more voters in that age group voted in this election compared to last month, and those three hundred were largely the margin of victory. To indicate the level of interest in the race: last month’s general election turnout was 43 percent. Turnout for the Sawant recall — a single-candidate special election — was 53 percent.

Seattle’s capitalists have tried repeatedly to stamp out Sawant and her socialist politics from City Hall since her election in 2014. Repeatedly, they have failed.

The victory over the Seattle recall takes some of the sting out of the defeat of progressive candidates for mayor and city attorney in November’s general election. It confirms that an avowedly progressive socialist message still resonates among Seattle voters.

Those defeats were, in part, a backlash against last year’s Black Lives Matter protests, in which activists occupied the heart of the city’s Capitol Hill in June 2020. Two of the incidents emphasized by the recall proponents against Sawant were her participation in a march on City Hall, in which she used her key to open the building for the protesters. Separately, the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter organized a march on Mayor Jenny Durkan’s home for which Sawant was blamed.

Concurrent with the Capitol Hill occupation, the city’s corporate power structure was running a competing campaign portraying the city as “dying” due to crime, vandalism, and homeless encampments “invading” schools and neighborhoods. The city’s Sinclair Broadcasting affiliate, KOMO News, produced a special with the death-rattle title “Seattle Is Dying,” drawing national attention to these right-wing talking points.

The TV evening news showed hundreds of stories of gang violence, shootings, and murders. They produced stories about fires, drug dealing, and murder at homeless encampments. The Seattle Times, owned for a hundred thirty years by a single wealthy Republican family, breathlessly hyped these developments on its news and editorial pages.

During the year between the Capitol Hill occupation and the November election, the anti-homeless media campaign had a major impact. The city council, passed a 20 percent cut to the police department budget. But the mayoral candidate who ultimately won in the November election opposes any cut at all. By November, the enthusiasm and commitment which the Capitol Hill Organized Protest (CHOP) had infused into Seattle had dissipated. That explains the electoral defeats mentioned earlier.

The good news is that Sawant’s victory has arrested the momentum of the corporate elite. There will be no stampede to rid the city of its homeless population. The Left still has a strong voice in Seattle.