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Three years ago at the semiannual monetary policy hearing before Congress, Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley gave Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell a history lesson about the institution he controls. Colloquially known as the Humphrey-Hawkins testimony, the 1978 Full Employment and Balanced Growth Act requires the Fed to testify before Congress twice a year. It also fully institutionalized the Fed’s dual mandate of maximum employment and reasonably stable prices. Stunned after hearing Pressley describe how the law was won by civil rights activists like Coretta Scott King, Powell stammered, “First, thank you for that history, I didn’t know that.” He then went on to affirm the Fed’s employment mandate.
Three years later—after 16 months of mostly unabated interest rate hikes, with inflation declining—it remains questionable whether Chair Powell truly takes his employment mandate seriously and understands the economic pain among the most vulnerable that the Humphrey-Hawkins Act was designed to prevent. Indeed, the key reason Coretta Scott King and her Full Employment Action Council wanted the Fed chair to answer to Congress in the 1970s was to prevent the Fed from using unemployed people as a means to stabilize inflation. They saw it as unfair and unjust, a form of policy violence against people of color, women, the elderly, and all those who faced employment discrimination. As championed by Rep. Augustus Hawkins (D-CA), a leading member of the Congressional Black Caucus, the Humphrey-Hawkins Act sought to rein in the Fed, to keep it accountable to Congress and its statutory mandate.
It remains questionable whether Chair Powell truly takes his employment mandate seriously and understands the economic pain among the most vulnerable.
Had Powell taken this history more seriously, he would have resisted the call to hike interest rates yet again at the latest July meeting. In April, the Black unemployment rate ventured below 5 percent. April 2023 thus joined the World War II and Korean War periods as the only times in modern history that the rate has dropped below that critical benchmark. Yet over the past few jobs reports, the Black unemployment rate has ticked up again. This should be a warning sign in otherwise good jobs reports. At the same time, inflation is trending down, reducing the putative need to hike again.
In the 1960s, Hawkins, who represented the majority-Black Los Angeles community of Watts, had authored Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act to prevent employment discrimination. In the next phase of legislative struggle, he partnered with King to augment the civil rights achievement of fair employment with full employment. Hawkins and King understood that anti-discrimination law meant little if the unemployment rate for Black workers ran as high as 15 percent, as it did after the 1973–1975 recession. Traditionally, the unemployment rate for Black workers runs almost twice as high as for white workers. Soft landings—few and far between as they are—haven’t felt soft for workers who face discrimination.
The struggle for the Humphrey-Hawkins Act pointed to a different way to manage inflation, one that no longer relied on recessions or slowdowns (and thus unemployed people) to achieve price stability. While it didn’t make it into the final law, earlier versions of the legislation proposed using a combination of tax policy, anti-monopoly policies, and direct price regulation as more fair ways to address inflation. Yet despite its promise, enforcement was still lacking. Within a year after its passage, Hawkins was sounding the alarm. “The Humphrey-Hawkins Act Is Being Violated,” he titled a September 1979 article. In a May 1980 hearing, he stressed that the law that bore his name “explicitly prohibits using unemployment as a tradeoff to reduce inflation.”
The Fed has often taken wide leeway with its interpretation of the law. As Columbia Law’s Lev Menand has put it, “the Fed tends to be the final interpreter of its own enabling statute.” This was the harsh lesson that Hawkins would confront. Despite his and King’s efforts to hold the Fed accountable to Congress, under Fed chair Paul Volcker, the Fed would tell Congress that the only way to achieve long-term maximum employment was to focus on inflation. This helped set an institutional pattern of the Fed putting their employment mandate on the back burner. Volcker once summarized the situation bluntly: “I do not remember the word ‘dual mandate’ ever passing my lips in all the time that I was chairman.”
Over the past year and a half, as the Fed tightened, many worried that the rapid interest rate increases would “break something,” catalyzing a sequence of unforeseen crises and dislocations. Powell had seemed unbothered by such a prospect. Yet as it appeared that Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) might be the first domino to fall, the Fed leapt into action. It quickly introduced a new emergency program, augmenting its regular discount lending window, which allows banks to mitigate their interest-rate risk due to the Fed’s tightening. What about the millions of workers who may lose their jobs due to the interest rate hikes? Thankfully, this hasn’t happened yet. But if it does, who will create an emergency program for unemployed people, those whose job prospects were seen by the Fed as an appropriate cost of managing inflation?
As the Fed raised rates from late March to June, and again last week, each by another 25 basis points, it has become increasingly clear: the Fed has been courting a recession, once again betraying its employment mandate. “Reducing inflation is likely to require a period of below-trend growth and some softening of labor market conditions,” Powell told reporters after the March increase. Powell also conceded that the banking crisis can effectively operate as a rate hike (“the equivalent of a rate hike or perhaps more than that,” he said).
In the final weeks of March, bank lending decreased to its lowest point in 50 years. Indeed, at the March meeting, Fed staffers warned of the potential of a recession later this year. They also cautioned that “historical recessions related to financial market problems tend to be more severe and persistent than average recessions.” At the present moment, it appears that all the recession talk has been wrong, in no small part thanks to the surge in investment from the Biden administration’s fiscal policies. But given the stakes, we are correct to worry.
The Fed’s choice to use its emergency lending authority under Section 13(3) of the Federal Reserve Act to forestall the banking crisis revealed the two-tiered system under which we operate. Whose emergencies count at the Fed? “Often when the Fed says it cannot do something, what it really means is that it does not want to … Laws can be stretched,” The New York Times’ Jeanna Smialek writes in her recent book on the Fed’s COVID crisis response about its resistance to supporting states and municipalities.
Indeed, when and for whom the Fed is willing to stretch is precisely the issue. Historically and today, the Fed has stretched the employment mandate beyond recognition. On the other hand, though the inflation mandate calls for “reasonable” price stability, the Fed has remained wedded to a vision of this as 2 percent inflation, regardless of the unique circumstances of the recent inflation.
For those of us interested in economic stability for everyone, it has been hard not to see the inequities of the response to the SVB collapse. If the household balance sheets of two million workers were crushed by the Fed’s hiking trajectory, then so be it; that was basically the point. But if banks’ balance sheets were in peril, then it’s all hands on deck, emergency facility and all.
None of this means that the Fed should not have responded to the banking crisis. The point is, Congress and the Fed need to ask themselves and each other whether this two-tiered and inequitable system is the best we can come up with to manage a modern and complex 21st-century economy.
President Biden is heading into the 2024 presidential contest on firmer footing than a year ago, with his approval rating inching upward and once-doubtful Democrats falling into line behind his re-election bid, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.
Mr. Biden appears to have escaped the political danger zone he resided in last year, when nearly two-thirds of his party wanted a different nominee. Now, Democrats have broadly accepted him as their standard-bearer, even if half would prefer someone else.
Still, warning signs abound for the president: Despite his improved standing and a friendlier national environment, Mr. Biden remains broadly unpopular among a voting public that is pessimistic about the country’s future, and his approval rating is a mere 39 percent.
Perhaps most worryingly for Democrats, the poll found Mr. Biden in a neck-and-neck race with former President Donald J. Trump, who held a commanding lead among likely Republican primary voters even as he faces two criminal indictments and more potential charges on the horizon. Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump were tied at 43 percent apiece in a hypothetical rematch in 2024, according to the poll.
Mr. Biden has been buoyed by voters’ feelings of fear and distaste toward Mr. Trump. Well over a year before the election, 16 percent of those polled had unfavorable views of both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, a segment with which Mr. Biden had a narrow lead.
John Wittman, 42, a heating and air conditioning contractor in Phoenix, is a Republican but said he would vote for Mr. Biden if former President Donald J. Trump were the Republican nominee. Credit…Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times
“Donald Trump is not a Republican, he’s a criminal,” said John Wittman, 42, a heating and air conditioning contractor from Phoenix. A Republican, he said that even though he believed Mr. Biden’s economic stewardship had hurt the country, “I will vote for anyone on the planet that seems halfway capable of doing the job, including Joe Biden, over Donald Trump.”
To borrow an old political cliché, the poll shows that Mr. Biden’s support among Democrats is a mile wide and an inch deep. About 30 percent of voters who said they planned to vote for Mr. Biden in November 2024 said they hoped Democrats would nominate someone else. Just 20 percent of Democrats said they would be enthusiastic if Mr. Biden were the party’s 2024 presidential nominee; another 51 percent said they would be satisfied but not enthusiastic.
A higher share of Democrats, 26 percent, expressed enthusiasm for the notion of Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee in 2024.
Mr. Biden had the backing of 64 percent of Democrats who planned to participate in their party’s primary, an indicator of soft support for an incumbent president. Thirteen percent preferred Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and 10 percent chose Marianne Williamson.
Donald Trump. The former president is running to retake the office he lost in 2020. Though somewhat diminished in influence within the Republican Party — and facing several legal investigations — he retains a large and committed base of supporters, and he could be aided in the primary by multiple challengers splitting a limited anti-Trump vote.
Ron DeSantis. The combative governor of Florida, whose official entry into the 2024 race was spoiled by a glitch-filled livestream over Twitter, has championed conservative causes and thrown a flurry of punches at America’s left. He provides Trump the most formidable Republican rival he has faced since the former president’s ascent in 2016.
Chris Christie. The former governor of New Jersey, who was eclipsed by Trump in the 2016 Republican primary, is making a second run for the White House, setting up a rematch with the former president. Christie has positioned himself as the G.O.P. hopeful who is most willing to attack Trump.
Mike Pence. The former vice president, who was once a stalwart supporter of Trump but split with him after the Jan. 6 attack, launched his campaign with a strong rebuke of his former boss. An evangelical Christian whose faith drives much of his politics, Pence has been notably outspoken about his support for a national abortion ban.
Tim Scott. The South Carolina senator, who is the first Black Republican from the South elected to the Senate since Reconstruction, has been one of his party’s most prominent voices on matters of race. He is campaigning on a message of positivity steeped in religiosity.
Nikki Haley. The former governor of South Carolina, who was a U.N. ambassador under Trump, has presented herself as a member of “a new generation of leadership” and emphasized her life experience as a daughter of Indian immigrants. She was long seen as a rising G.O.P. star, but her allure in the party has declined amid her on-again, off-again embrace of Trump.
Vivek Ramaswamy. The multimillionaire entrepreneur describes himself as “anti-woke” and has made a name for himself in right-wing circles by opposing corporate efforts to advance political, social and environmental causes. He has promised to go farther down the road of ruling by fiat than Trump would or could.
More G.O.P. candidates. The former Texas congressman Will Hurd, Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson and the conservative talk radio host Larry Elder have also launched long-shot bids for the Republican presidential nomination. Read more about the 2024 candidates.
Among Democratic poll respondents who have a record of voting in a primary before, Mr. Biden enjoyed a far wider lead — 74 percent to 8 percent. He was ahead by 92 percent to 4 percent among those who voted in a Democratic primary in 2022.
The lack of fervor about Mr. Biden helps explain the relatively weak showing among small donors in a quarterly fund-raising report his campaign released two weeks ago.
A common view toward Mr. Biden is illustrated in voters like Melody Marquess, 54, a retiree and left-leaning independent from Tyler, Texas. Ms. Marquess, who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 as “the lesser of two evils,” was not happy about his handling of the pandemic, blaming him for inflation and a tight labor market. Still, she said she would again vote for Mr. Biden, who is 80 years old, over Mr. Trump, who is 77.
“I’m sorry, but both of them, to me, are too old,” she said. “Joe Biden to me seems less mentally capable, age-wise. But Trump is just evil. He’s done horrible things.”
Mr. Biden has recovered significantly from last summer. At the time, Democratic grumbling about his likely re-election bid had mounted, and a Times/Siena poll found that 64 percent of Democrats said they did not want the party to renominate him — including 94 percent of Democrats under the age of 30. Now only half of all Democrats said they did not want Mr. Biden to be the nominee in 2024.
The party’s enthusiasm about him began to tick up last fall after the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, better-than-expected results in the midterm elections, a string of policy victories for Mr. Biden and improvements in the economy as inflation slowed.
“Joe is Joe. He’s always kept his word. He’s done well for the country,” said David Scoggin, 61, a retired police officer from Moulton, Ala., who said he was enthusiastic about Mr. Biden’s being the nominee next year. “If he had Congress and a Senate that would work with him, he could do a lot more.”
Mamiya Langham, 38, a government analyst from Atlanta who described herself as a political progressive not aligned with a party, said Mr. Biden’s tax policy had been skewed to favor the wealthy while the middle class paid more than its fair share.
“We’re kind of smushed in the middle, and we’re taking on the brunt of the taxes for everybody,” she said.
Ms. Langham would vote for Mr. Biden again, she added, but without much gusto.
“It’s basically like I don’t have another choice, because I don’t feel comfortable not voting,” she said.
Deep pessimism persists, even among some Democrats who back Mr. Biden. Among those who want to see Mr. Biden as the party’s nominee next year, 14 percent said the country’s problems were so bad that the nation was at risk of failing.
Despite that, Mr. Biden is leading Mr. Trump among the same groups that helped solidify his victory in 2020: women, suburban voters, college-educated white voters and Black voters. But he seems to show early signs of potential vulnerability with Hispanic voters, who have shifted toward Republicans in recent elections.
Mr. Biden’s approval rating of 39 percent is historically poor for an incumbent president seeking re-election, but it has risen from 33 percent last July. The latest poll found that 23 percent of registered voters thought the country was on the right track — a low number for Mr. Biden, but better than the 13 percent of Americans who believed the same a year ago. More Americans than a year ago now think the economy is in excellent or good shape: 20 percent, compared with 10 percent in 2022.
Ashlyn Cowan, 27, a research scientist from Nashville, said she wished Mr. Biden had been more aggressive about canceling student loan debt. Even before the Supreme Court’s ruling last month overturning Mr. Biden’s attempt to forgive up to $20,000 per borrower, Ms. Cowan said she had found him to be unenthusiastic about the issue.
Nevertheless, Ms. Cowan said she would back Mr. Biden in a race against Mr. Trump.
“You have Trump that has shown characteristics that I am staunchly against, and Biden just not being the greatest person to do the job,” she said. “Ultimately, Biden is not going to harm the country as much as I believe Trump would.”
Democrats who did not want Biden to be the nominee last July were primarily focused on his age and job performance. While Mr. Biden’s age remains the leading point of discontent for Democrats who would prefer someone else to be the nominee — 39 percent cited that concern in an open-ended question — just 20 percent said Mr. Biden’s job performance was their chief worry. Another 14 percent said they would prefer someone new.
“Some of his glitches on TV, what they catch on TV, just has me worried about the president,” said Daryl Coleman, 52, a retiree in Cleveland, Ala.
Mr. Coleman, a Democrat, said he would be compelled to vote for Mr. Biden in a rematch against Mr. Trump. “If he’s the only Democrat running, if he beats everybody out, then I have no other choice but to go with Joe Biden,” he said.
T and R x 4, Ms. Benny!! 🙂 Well, Powell is doing his usual RW crap. Why Byedone won’t can this tRump moron is one reason I’m not voting for him among other reasons. We’ve got 15 months before the elections. 15 months, but the MSM like the NYT is already trying to tell us how the country will vote. Screw them and the slime mold they oozed in on. 🙁
Thanks wi, for linking the first two Eagles’ LPs for me. 🙂 It’s the first one self-titled “Eagles” that got my attention. That’s a great LP. It’s where I heard that tune I liked. Unfortunately, it’s been well over half a century so my recall is iffy. But here’s one of the finalists.
The other is better known, “Witchy Woman.” By the time their second LP was released, their fame soared. That’s when radio started playing them into the ground, and I started turning off.
I remember the Big 3 of that album, back then i was more inclined to buy the “singles” but as i got older Albums were the way to go for the hidden “Gems”. I find my self Googling lyrics to find a song when i cant remember the title and then go to you tube to see if i can find it.
The best argument against collective bargaining for government workers is that no one represents taxpayers. Union chiefs and the politicians they support sit on both sides of the bargaining table. That was demonstrated again last week when Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed a whopping new contract with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (Afscme).
The contract covers the next four years and gives 35,000 public workers 19.28% raises, outpacing the growth in private wages. That’s more than the Teamsters are getting for tenured drivers in their rich new deal from United Parcel Service, and that’s merely the increase in Afscme base pay. Many workers will get more pay increases based on job tenure.
The contract also includes a $1,200 “stipend” to every worker merely for ratifying the contract. Mr. Pritzker included these bonuses in his last contract negotiation in 2019, supposedly to compensate workers for the financial “hardship” of being a state worker under previous Governor Bruce Rauner. (Remember when a Governor tried to represent taxpayers?) The unions liked the sweetener, so now it has become an expected fillip.
Mr. Pritzker tweeted Tuesday that “Illinois is a pro-worker state through and through.” He means if you work for the government. What about workers in the private economy who are now on the hook for higher union payouts that will drive up costs for public healthcare and pensions on top of their increased wages? Mr. Pritzker says the new contract will cost $625 million over four years and the raises are 61% higher than the previous contract, according to the Illinois Policy Institute.
Afscme workers already have health-insurance plans that rarely exist in the private economy, and the new four-year contract promises that workers will have zero increases in premiums in the first year, a $10 a month increase in the second year and $8 a month in the third and fourth years. That’s a mere $26 a month over four years. Guess who will pay the difference as the cost of health insurance rises far faster.
Public pensions in Illinois are already among the most underfunded in America, and the new wage increases will make them more so. Pensions are calculated based on a worker’s wages at the end of a career, so big pay increases now translate into ballooning payments later. Mark it down: Democrats will demand a federal taxpayer bailout when Illinois pensions become unaffordable.
Unions are running the table in Illinois because Mr. Pritzker and state Democrats essentially work for the unions that provide the cash for re-election campaigns. Big raises for union workers mean more union dues payments, which mean more campaign donations for the politicians who provide the raises. This is why allowing collective bargaining for government workers is so destructive to a state’s fiscal and economic health.
Mr. Pritzker hopes to have a featured role at next summer’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and he’s likely to run for President himself if President Biden decides not to run. That’s one more reason the Governor is acting more like a union boss than as a leader for all Illinois citizens.
Beats my pay and any raises I get, but I’m not resentful. Pritzker is correct to give them raises as state pay is just so-so. Health plans have been steadily increasing thus this is a tradeoff for the union.
Yea , Any raises i got were easily offset by our greedcare system and food and gas prices. Wi DOC ,and Teachers are suffering even Today due to Snot Walkers Act 10,He had about 8 years of no Raises for state employees using his catch phrase”We’re broke” The gerrymandered State legislature was just folling his Orders. Even today thier are several state prisons with 40% vacancy rates guard wise due primarily to Act 10, those remaining are on 12 hour shifts
GOOD NEWS for WI In Wisconsin, a court that almost overturned Biden’s win flips to liberal control
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court flips to liberal control for the first time in 15 years Tuesday with the start of the term of a new justice who made abortion rights a focus of her winning campaign.
Janet Protasiewicz will mark the start of her term with a swearing-in ceremony in the state Capitol Rotunda, the type of pomp and circumstance typically reserved for governors. Protasiewicz’s win carries tremendous weight in Wisconsin, a battleground where the state Supreme Court has been the last word on some of the biggest political and policy battles of the past decade-plus.
The conservative-controlled court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s narrow win in the state in 2020, though Biden still would have had enough electoral votes to claim the presidency. More battles over voting rules and elections are expected leading up to 2024, along with challenges to the state’s abortion ban, Republican-drawn political boundary lines and a host of other hot-button political issues.
Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, ran with backing and deep financial support from Democrats, abortion rights groups and other liberals in the officially nonpartisan race. She handily defeated her conservative opponent in April, raising expectations among liberals that the new court will soon do away with the state’s abortion ban, order new maps to be drawn and ensure a long line of Democratic success after 15 years of rulings that largely favored Republicans.
FILE – Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz, right, holds hands with Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet, left, and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, blocked from view at far right, at a watch party in Milwaukee, on April 4, 2023. The Wisconsin’s Supreme Court flips from majority conservative to liberal control on Aug. 1 when Protasiewicz is set to be sworn in. (Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, File) Democrats eye Wisconsin high court’s new liberal majority to win abortion and redistricting rulings Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz, center, holds hands with Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, Rebecca Dallet, far left, and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, right, at Protasiewicz’s election night watch party in Milwaukee, Wis., on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. Protasiewicz, 60, defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state’s leading anti-abortion groups. (Mike De Sisti /Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)
New voting districts could change again in some states before the 2024 elections Even as liberals have high hopes that the new court will rule in their favor, there are no guarantees. Republicans were angered when a conservative candidate they backed in 2019 turned out to sometimes side with liberal justices.
Protasiewicz replaces retiring conservative Justice Pat Roggensack, who served 20 years, including six as chief justice.
While it may be a while before the court weighs in on some topics, a new lawsuit challenging the GOP-drawn legislative and congressional district maps is expected to be filed within weeks. And there is already a pending case challenging Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War era abortion ban, and a county judge ruled last month that it can proceed, while also calling into question whether the law actually bans abortions.
The rules for voting and elections are also expected to come before the court heading into the 2024 presidential election.
A national Democratic law firm filed a lawsuit last month seeking to undo a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last year banning absentee ballot drop boxes.
The new liberal majority was making immediate changes. Randy Koschnick, who as director of state courts has managed the statewide court system for six years, said he was informed Monday that he would be fired Tuesday afternoon.
Koschnick, a former county judge who ran for the state Supreme Court in 2009 with support from conservatives but lost to a liberal incumbent, said he was told by liberal Justice Jill Karfosky that he was being fired because the court was “moving in a different direction.”
The FBI’S secret infiltration and subversion of the racial justice movement in Colorado was challenged Tuesday in a lawsuit alleging that federal and local law enforcement officials abused their powers when they targeted left-wing activists in the summer of 2020.
The lawsuit, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Colorado, accuses the FBI, the Colorado Springs Police Department, and local police officers of overstepping their authority in infiltrating, surveilling, and requesting search warrants aimed at Colorado Springs activists. The FBI’s targeting of racial justice activists was revealed in February by The Intercept and the podcast series “Alphabet Boys.”
In a separate federal case in Denver, the Justice Department last week did not deny that the government’s initial investigation of racial justice activists was prompted by speech. That filing — the government’s first public response to revelations that the FBI infiltrated the racial justice movement in Denver using a violent felon as a paid informant — claimed that the “violent nature” of the activists’ statements “made them a legitimate subject of investigation.”
The two cases stem from the same source. During the summer of 2020, the FBI secretly hired an informant, Michael “Mickey” Windecker, to infiltrate the racial justice movement in Denver. While being paid by the FBI, Windecker accused movement leaders of being informants themselves; encouraged violence at protests; and tried unsuccessfully to entrap two Black activists in a plot to assassinate the state’s attorney general.
Internal FBI reports showed that Windecker, a tattooed, cigar-smoking white man who drove a silver hearse, first attended racial justice demonstrations in the Denver area in May 2020. Windecker then approached the FBI, claiming to have unique information about racial justice protesters. But Windecker’s tips, according to initial FBI reports, were entirely about speech. As an example, Windecker claimed one Black activist, Zebbodios “Zebb” Hall, said of the city of Denver: “We need to burn this motherfucker down.”
Based on statements he claimed to have overheard and a recording he secretly made of Hall speaking vaguely about training and revolution, the FBI enlisted Windecker as a paid informant and asked him to pose as a racial justice demonstrator.
The FBI, in its reports, stated Windecker had come forward voluntarily out of some sort of duty to protect the United States, but the bureau’s documented knowledge of Windecker complicated that claim: The FBI was aware that Windecker had prior arrests in at least four states and had been convicted of misdemeanor sexual assault and felony menacing with a weapon. The FBI also knew that Windecker had a long history of working the system as an informant, going back as far as two decades earlier, when he’d been a jailhouse snitch in a murder-for-hire case. Nevertheless, the FBI paid Windecker more than $20,000 for his work during the summer of 2020.
Windecker’s work for the FBI resulted in at least two investigations: one in Colorado Springs, led by a young female detective, and the other in Denver, led by Windecker himself. Both are now under scrutiny in federal court. “Unconstitutional Actions” While investigating racial justice demonstrators in Denver, Windecker provided information about a protester who was active in both Denver and Colorado Springs, according to FBI records. That prompted the bureau to recruit a young Colorado Springs Police detective, April Rogers, to infiltrate the activist community there. Wearing provocative clothing, the pink-haired Rogers suggested she was a sex worker named “Chelsi Kurti.” She offered to volunteer at the Chinook Center, a community space for left-wing activists in Colorado Springs.
During the pandemic summer of unrest that followed George Floyd’s murder in Minneapolis, members of the Chinook Center organized a protest near the home of a police officer involved in the fatal 2019 shooting of a young Black man, De’Von Bailey. For more than a year after the demonstration, Rogers, pretending to be an activist, secretly collected information about members of the Chinook Center; she also tried unsuccessfully to lure at least two activists into gun-running stings engineered by the FBI. The information Rogers surreptitiously collected from the Chinook Center, coupled with the use of a new FBI program called Social Media Exploitation, allowed the FBI and its local law enforcement partner to build dossiers on individual activists without warrants.
The FBI Used an Undercover Cop With Pink Hair to Spy on Activists and Manufacture Crimes
After building the intelligence files, Rogers participated in a 2021 housing rights protest organized by the Chinook Center. As The Intercept reported in March, Colorado Springs police, armed with intelligence reports created by the FBI’s Social Media Exploitation program and filled with photos from social media, eagerly awaited the protesters they planned to arrest. “Boot to the face,” a police officer, Scott Alamo, said gleefully as he flipped through the pages of activists’ photos, his body camera recording the comment. “It’s going to happen.”
The cops, dressed in riot gear, violently arrested several activists on charges related to their roles in the protest near the police officer’s home a year earlier. As police stormed in to make arrests, Jacqueline Armendariz Unzueta, an activist and Colorado-based staffer for Democratic U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet at the time, was walking her bike. She saw a cop charging toward her and reacted.
“I just threw my bike down and was like, ‘Bitch, you’re coming for me?’” Armendariz Unzueta said. “That’s the honest truth.”
The charging officer sidestepped the bike, but the encounter was captured by a police body camera.
Armendariz Unzueta was not arrested that day. In the days after, local police couldn’t determine her identity because she had been wearing a face mask and a bike helmet. But Daniel Summey, a Colorado Springs detective assigned to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, started looking for the mysterious cyclist by searching the social media accounts of known Chinook Center activists.
Summey found Armendariz Unzueta on social media, matching her bicycle helmet and shoes to photos online. He then wrote an application for a warrant to search her home, but the warrant was based on activities that are protected under the First Amendment. Summey noted, for example, that the demonstration Armendariz Unzueta participated in included red flags, which Summey claimed were a “radical political symbol.” In his search warrant application, Summey also gratuitously appended a full-page photo of Armendariz Unzueta in a bikini that had nothing to do with the investigation. “Sometimes you’ve got to laugh to keep from crying,” Armendariz Unzueta said of the photo’s inclusion.
The ACLU’s lawsuit against the FBI and Colorado Springs Police Departments alleges that the search warrant targeting Armendariz Unzueta and additional warrants to obtain private chats associated with the Chinook Center’s Facebook account and the group’s membership roster essentially criminalized First Amendment-protected activities and violated Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
“The warrants targeting Chinook and Armendariz were part of a pattern and practice of unconstitutional actions intended to teach activists a lesson: Colorado Springs police would retaliate against political expression with dragnet warrants to chill free speech,” the ACLU of Colorado alleges in its complaint, the first lawsuit related to FBI’s surveillance of activist groups in Colorado during the summer of 2020.
Policing “Violent” Speech
Remarkably, the Justice Department isn’t denying that the FBI’s investigations of activists in Colorado were related to potentially First Amendment-protected activity. In the Denver criminal case, the Justice Department acknowledged that the FBI’s investigation there during the summer of 2020 was based on speech, albeit of a “violent nature.”
The admission came last week in the criminal case of Hall, the primary Black activist targeted by the FBI and its informant, Windecker, during the summer of 2020. The Justice Department was compelled to respond to Hall’s motion to vacate his felony conviction for buying and giving a firearm to Windecker, a convicted felon who was not allowed to have a gun.
Windecker asked Hall to buy him the gun after failing to persuade Hall and another Black activist to join an FBI-engineered assassination plot supposedly targeting the state’s attorney general. Hall bought the Smith & Wesson handgun for Windecker, despite knowing that Windecker was a convicted felon, and pleaded guilty to the federal charge in January 2022. He was sentenced to three years of probation.
The FBI Paid a Violent Felon to Infiltrate Denver’s Racial Justice Movement But following the reporting by The Intercept and “Alphabet Boys,” Hall petitioned the court to vacate his conviction based on his previous lawyer’s alleged failure to investigate Windecker fully and pursue an entrapment defense. Hall claims that Windecker, who made public death threats while being paid by the FBI and claimed to have killed Islamic State fighters as a volunteer for the Kurdish Peshmerga fighting force, threatened to harm him if he didn’t buy him the gun. Windecker’s threats of violence weren’t secret. In one YouTube video, Windecker, while secretly being paid by the FBI, states: “I have a plan to kill everybody in the fucking room if need to be.”
“We believe he could have prevailed with an entrapment defense,” Lisa Polansky, a Colorado lawyer who was recently appointed to represent Hall in his effort to vacate his conviction, told The Intercept.
The Justice Department described Hall’s claims as “meritless,” but Denver federal prosecutor Rajiv Mohan acknowledged that FBI reports showed that Hall and other racial justice activists were initially targeted following Windecker’s reports about speech. Mohan claimed, however, that Hall’s decision to buy a gun for the FBI’s informant was independent of “any outrageous government conduct in relation to speech.”
The FBI’s investigation in Colorado is the first documented case of federal agents infiltrating the racial justice movement during the summer of 2020. Although the Justice Department and the FBI have said little about it, the probe has garnered attention on Capitol Hill. Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon called it “a clear abuse of authority.” Republican Rep. Dan Bishop of North Carolina quipped: “This is what the FBI does.” Republican Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio submitted The Intercept’s article about the FBI activity in Denver into evidence in his Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.
“Internal FBI reports showed that Windecker, a tattooed, cigar-smoking white man who drove a silver hearse,…” —————————– This clown is a major FBI informant in Colorado Springs? he also ran plenty of CI scams to make money. Some things never change. This type of sorry activity was going down when I was a budding political junkie back in the 1960s.
here's Jesse Watters urging House Republicans to "fast track" Biden's impeachment inquiry this fall, "because they have to tee up the impeachment itself, and get that moved in 2024." pic.twitter.com/FGIHphU90h
here’s Rand Paul making shit up on Fox News (Trump was not indicted for his statements about the election — he was indicted for conspiring to disenfranchise voters) pic.twitter.com/cHPPL4t7Jk
According to Hubster (tRump ‘expert’ 🙂 ), this 3rd and latest indictment against the Maggot will go before an Obama judge. GA is getting theirs set, too. I doubt the Byedone stuff will be nearly the media frenzy as the Maggot’s legal headaches.
This is the judge that said “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President”. Boy the GQP heads must be exploading as this judge is a black woman appointed by Obama
While most of us are gleeful…and grateful to Jack Smith for keeping things organized….
Some guests tonight on “All In” were almost a bit too gleeful about the judge appointed for the case. I think it’s important not to be gleeful on cable TV or else the Trump/GDP will claim more persecution and try to get a change of venue via the court of public opinion. Progressive media such as The Majority Report, TYT, etc, that’s different as the majority of Trumpers don’t know much about their shows or agendas.
No way will that venue nor judge be changed. The federal offense took place in D.C. Maggot will be tried there. What the judge needs to do is put a gag order on Maggot with fangs. He violates it, he will be placed in jail until trial for contempt of court. That judge has the power to put him behind bars with no bail. Plus, he’s a flight risk. If he’s so friendly with Vlad P, no problem flying to Russia in his personal 757 without a passport.
The move could cause investors to sell US Treasuries, leading to a spike in yields that serve as references for interest rates on a variety of loans, per CNN.
I proudly signed the bill allowing legal permanent residents & DACA recipients in IL to serve their communities as police officers. Our military already does it & it’s the right thing to do—no matter what lies the right-wing spreads. https://t.co/BjXHYKMk6D
Elise Joshi interrupted a White House press conference to ask the Biden Administration to stop approving new oil and gas projects at a faster rate than Trump did
Elise Joshi is a 20-year-old organizer and student at UC Berkeley. During her time as Strategy Director, she facilitated and led Gen-Z for Change’s labor actions by working with coders, content creators, and labor unions. Elise also has her own platform of over 115,000 followers on TikTok where she mobilizes her followers to vote and take action in labor, climate, and health. Elise is part of the firewall against both climate nihilism and climate denial, generating millions of views monthly towards combating both narratives and amplifying digital and on-the-ground climate actions
Just as we did with Big Tobacco, it is time to hold the fossil fuel industry accountable. It is time for the DOJ to join the fight. The future of our planet depends on it.
New York AG Letitia James' office says it's ready to proceed with a trial stemming from its $250 mil lawsuit claiming Trump, his children and the Trump Org. engaged in widespread fraud.
"The case is ready for trial," the office's senior enforcement counsel wrote in a filing.
The rich dont go to jail, How ever any pleabargin should include that any family members that were involved in any way with his admistration are banned from pubic office of anykind even dog catcher forever.
wpDiscuz
Jay Powell’s Federal Reserve: Protection for Bankers, Pain for Everyone Else
Biden Shores Up Democratic Support, but Faces Tight Race Against Trump
T and R x 4, Ms. Benny!! 🙂 Well, Powell is doing his usual RW crap. Why Byedone won’t can this tRump moron is one reason I’m not voting for him among other reasons. We’ve got 15 months before the elections. 15 months, but the MSM like the NYT is already trying to tell us how the country will vote. Screw them and the slime mold they oozed in on. 🙁
Thanks wi, for linking the first two Eagles’ LPs for me. 🙂 It’s the first one self-titled “Eagles” that got my attention. That’s a great LP. It’s where I heard that tune I liked. Unfortunately, it’s been well over half a century so my recall is iffy. But here’s one of the finalists.
The other is better known, “Witchy Woman.” By the time their second LP was released, their fame soared. That’s when radio started playing them into the ground, and I started turning off.
I remember the Big 3 of that album, back then i was more inclined to buy the “singles” but as i got older Albums were the way to go for the hidden “Gems”. I find my self Googling lyrics to find a song when i cant remember the title and then go to you tube to see if i can find it.
I hear ya. Thanks again! 🙂 I will probably put the whole LP into one of my YT music files. 🙂
from the corporate greed opinion pages
Beats my pay and any raises I get, but I’m not resentful. Pritzker is correct to give them raises as state pay is just so-so. Health plans have been steadily increasing thus this is a tradeoff for the union.
Yea , Any raises i got were easily offset by our greedcare system and food and gas prices. Wi DOC ,and Teachers are suffering even Today due to Snot Walkers Act 10,He had about 8 years of no Raises for state employees using his catch phrase”We’re broke” The gerrymandered State legislature was just folling his Orders. Even today thier are several state prisons with 40% vacancy rates guard wise due primarily to Act 10, those remaining are on 12 hour shifts
“…corporate greed opinion pages” +270 on that one. You know who owns the WSJ now? Yes, the ‘great’ and mighty greedball Murdoch family. UGH!!
GOOD NEWS for WI
In Wisconsin, a court that almost overturned Biden’s win flips to liberal control
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Supreme Court flips to liberal control for the first time in 15 years Tuesday with the start of the term of a new justice who made abortion rights a focus of her winning campaign.
Janet Protasiewicz will mark the start of her term with a swearing-in ceremony in the state Capitol Rotunda, the type of pomp and circumstance typically reserved for governors. Protasiewicz’s win carries tremendous weight in Wisconsin, a battleground where the state Supreme Court has been the last word on some of the biggest political and policy battles of the past decade-plus.
The conservative-controlled court came within one vote of overturning President Joe Biden’s narrow win in the state in 2020, though Biden still would have had enough electoral votes to claim the presidency. More battles over voting rules and elections are expected leading up to 2024, along with challenges to the state’s abortion ban, Republican-drawn political boundary lines and a host of other hot-button political issues.
Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, ran with backing and deep financial support from Democrats, abortion rights groups and other liberals in the officially nonpartisan race. She handily defeated her conservative opponent in April, raising expectations among liberals that the new court will soon do away with the state’s abortion ban, order new maps to be drawn and ensure a long line of Democratic success after 15 years of rulings that largely favored Republicans.
FILE – Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz, right, holds hands with Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Dallet, left, and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, blocked from view at far right, at a watch party in Milwaukee, on April 4, 2023. The Wisconsin’s Supreme Court flips from majority conservative to liberal control on Aug. 1 when Protasiewicz is set to be sworn in. (Mike De Sisti/Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP, File)
Democrats eye Wisconsin high court’s new liberal majority to win abortion and redistricting rulings
Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz, center, holds hands with Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice, Rebecca Dallet, far left, and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Ann Walsh Bradley, right, at Protasiewicz’s election night watch party in Milwaukee, Wis., on Tuesday, April 4, 2023. Protasiewicz, 60, defeated former Justice Dan Kelly, who previously worked for Republicans and had support from the state’s leading anti-abortion groups. (Mike De Sisti /Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel via AP)
New voting districts could change again in some states before the 2024 elections
Even as liberals have high hopes that the new court will rule in their favor, there are no guarantees. Republicans were angered when a conservative candidate they backed in 2019 turned out to sometimes side with liberal justices.
Protasiewicz replaces retiring conservative Justice Pat Roggensack, who served 20 years, including six as chief justice.
While it may be a while before the court weighs in on some topics, a new lawsuit challenging the GOP-drawn legislative and congressional district maps is expected to be filed within weeks. And there is already a pending case challenging Wisconsin’s pre-Civil War era abortion ban, and a county judge ruled last month that it can proceed, while also calling into question whether the law actually bans abortions.
The rules for voting and elections are also expected to come before the court heading into the 2024 presidential election.
A national Democratic law firm filed a lawsuit last month seeking to undo a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling last year banning absentee ballot drop boxes.
Merci dieu!
Praise the lawd and pass the pudding–funny, affirmative statement from my childhood. On Wisconsin!!!!
Trevor Aaronson, The Intercept
Lawsuit Targets FBI Probe of Racial Justice Activists
You will note Bill Barr was the AG at the time of this probe in CO.
“Internal FBI reports showed that Windecker, a tattooed, cigar-smoking white man who drove a silver hearse,…”
—————————–
This clown is a major FBI informant in Colorado Springs? he also ran plenty of CI scams to make money. Some things never change. This type of sorry activity was going down when I was a budding political junkie back in the 1960s.
LOL think the J6 charges against Trump have any influence on these mini IL Duce’s?
POX Propaganda aka ‘news.’ Nothing like appealing to dumbed down stupidity with lies and more lies.
According to Hubster (tRump ‘expert’ 🙂 ), this 3rd and latest indictment against the Maggot will go before an Obama judge. GA is getting theirs set, too. I doubt the Byedone stuff will be nearly the media frenzy as the Maggot’s legal headaches.
This is the judge that said “Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President”. Boy the GQP heads must be exploading as this judge is a black woman appointed by Obama
While most of us are gleeful…and grateful to Jack Smith for keeping things organized….
Some guests tonight on “All In” were almost a bit too gleeful about the judge appointed for the case. I think it’s important not to be gleeful on cable TV or else the Trump/GDP will claim more persecution and try to get a change of venue via the court of public opinion. Progressive media such as The Majority Report, TYT, etc, that’s different as the majority of Trumpers don’t know much about their shows or agendas.
No way will that venue nor judge be changed. The federal offense took place in D.C. Maggot will be tried there. What the judge needs to do is put a gag order on Maggot with fangs. He violates it, he will be placed in jail until trial for contempt of court. That judge has the power to put him behind bars with no bail. Plus, he’s a flight risk. If he’s so friendly with Vlad P, no problem flying to Russia in his personal 757 without a passport.
Shoo, fly!
+27 million, Governor Pritzker!!
—signed a weary Floridian leftie
Hell,i’d say half the congresscritters fall under the lead sentence of this post.
Elise Joshi interrupted a White House press conference to ask the Biden Administration to stop approving new oil and gas projects at a faster rate than Trump did
https://genzforchange.org/about/
NO 💩💩💩💩💩💩!!!!!
AMEN!
Right behind you, Senator!! 🙂
Man, would I just LOVE to see this sorry excuse for a human (plus a bunch more) behind serious prison bars!!
I wouldn’t mind the Kirshner’s getting some well deserved scrutiny.
I agree completely!
The rich dont go to jail, How ever any pleabargin should include that any family members that were involved in any way with his admistration are banned from pubic office of anykind even dog catcher forever.