“Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan said Tuesday he is concerned by Gov. Greg Abbott’s recent vow to veto a section of the state budget that funds the Legislature, citing how the move to block such pay could impact staffers and legislative agencies. ‘I understand the frustration the governor has in [lawmakers] not passing those emergency items – they were priorities of the governor, they were priorities of mine, priorities of many members of the Legislature,’ Phelan, a Beaumont Republican, said in an interview with The Texas Tribune. ‘My only concern is how it impacts staff, especially those who live here in Austin, which is not an inexpensive place to live and raise your family and children.’ Abbott’s vow came after a Democratic walkout in the House late Sunday night blocked passage of SB 7, his priority elections bill that would overhaul voting rights in Texas.”

“‘No pay for those who abandon their responsibilities,’ Abbott said in a tweet. Phelan also said he thinks that, under the Constitution, lawmakers would still have to be paid even if Abbott carried out his veto. Lawmakers are paid $600 a month in addition to a per diem of $221 every day the Legislature is in session, both during regular and special sessions. The governor has said he will summon the Legislature back to Austin for an overtime round to pass the bill, though he has not yet specified when he plans to do so. Lawmakers are already expected to return this fall for a special session to redraw the state’s political maps. Phelan said if Abbott carries out the veto, which he has until June 20 to do, lawmakers could be back for an earlier-than-anticipated overtime round to deal with the issue, since the budget at issue covers the fiscal year starting Sept. 1” – Texas Tribune.

Daily Beast: “The Secret Service is spending nearly $35,000 to rent portable toilets for the next four months in Bedminster, New Jersey – where former President Donald Trump is reportedly summering – according to federal procurement data reviewed by The Daily Beast. ‘BATHROOM TRAILERS BEDMINSTER,’ the expenditure states. ‘A NOTICE TO PROCEED WAS GIVEN ON MAY 24, 2021.’ The contract will run through Sept. 30, which works out to rental costs of about $8,500 per month. Imperial Restrooms of Saugerties, New York, is supplying the rolling commodes.”

“Trump moved in late May from his winter digs at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, to his Bedminster golf club, sources told CNN. He will reside there until early fall, the outlet reported, citing a senior member of Trump’s team. On May 22, Trump appeared at a fundraiser at the Bedminster club for Make America Great Again Action, a pro-Trump super PAC run by former campaign manager and longtime adviser Corey Lewandowski. Tickets for the dinner and reception reportedly started at $250,000. ‘Even now, taxpayers continue to spend many thousands of dollars to facilitate Donald Trump’s businesses,’ Noah Bookbinder, executive director of watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington and a former federal prosecutor, told The Daily Beast. ‘He is of course entitled to protection, but from the beginning, it has been about his advancement and convenience, rather than what is good for the country. Forcing taxpayers to spend all of this money for porta potties at a business that surely has sufficient bathrooms is confounding.’ The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment by The Daily Beast.”

“A cyberattack on JBS SA, the largest meat producer globally, has forced the shutdown of some of world’s largest slaughterhouses, and there are signs that the closures are spreading. JBS’s five biggest beef plants in the U.S. – which altogether handle 22,500 cattle a day – have halted processing following a weekend attack on the company’s computer networks, according to JBS posts on Facebook, labor unions and employees. Those outages alone have wiped out nearly a fifth of America’s production. Slaughter operations across Australia were also down, according to a trade group. One of Canada’s largest beef plants was idled for a second day” Bloomberg reports.

This one’s too easy for the cult. Last month they were simultaneously caterwauling about Biden wanting to ban meat due to carbon emissions (which is not now and never was an actual Biden policy proposal, but that didn’t stop them) as well as the Colonial Pipeline cyber attack and the resulting gasoline shortage (which was in no small part due to panic buying by MAGA dumbasses). Really all they need to do is combine those two genres of white nationalist panic tweets. No doubt they’ll go further and “connect the dots” so that it’s a false flag attack that was ordered by Biden himself and executed by China, Soros, Jews, Dominion, Venezuela, etc to shrink the beef industry.

NY Times:  “The Biden administration on Tuesday will suspend oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge that were issued in the waning days of the Trump administration, according to two people familiar with the matter.  Interior Secretary Deb Haaland will publish a secretarial order formally rescinding the leases, according to the people, who were not authorized to speak about the matter because it had not yet been publicly announced.  The move was widely expected and follows President Biden’s Inauguration-Day executive order to place a moratorium on new Arctic drilling.”

A group of Trumpian Pennsylvania Republicans will tour the Arizona site where a private firm is undertaking a recount of Maricopa County ballots in a GOP effort to undermine election integrity and throw the state to Donald Trump.

KPNX reporter Brahm Resnick tweeted that Pennsylvania state senators Doug Mastriano and Cris Dush, as well as state legislator Rob Kauffman, will meet with Arizona state Republican leaders before being taken on a tour of recount site at Veterans Memorial Coliseum.  All three Keystone State Republicans have endorsed debunked claims of election fraud which allowed Democratic President Joe Biden to assume office.

The recount, being conducted by Cyber Ninjas, a private firm with no experience in elections or ballot recounts, has been widely criticized for lax security, questionable procedures and general sloppiness.  At one point, the groups was widely mocked for claiming that bamboo in the composition of the paper used for ballots would definitely prove a conspiracy theory that they were printed in China.  And the recount just restarted after a week’s hiatus because the arena housing the recount was previously booked to host high school graduations.

“The Federal Election Commission (‘Commission’) has considered the allegations contained in your complaint dated February 20, 2018. The Commission found reason to believe that respondents David J. Pecker and American Media, Inc. knowingly and willfully violated 52 U.S.C. § 30118(a). The Factual and Legal Analysis, which formed a basis for the Commission’s finding, is enclosed for your information. On May 17, 2021, a conciliation agreement signed by A360 Media, LLC, as successor in interest to American Media, Inc. was accepted by the Commission and the Commission closed the file as to Pecker and American Media, Inc. A copy of the conciliation agreement is enclosed for your information. There were an insufficient number of votes to find reason to believe that the remaining respondents violated the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended (the ‘Act’). Accordingly, on May 20, 2021, the Commission closed the file in MUR 7324” – Letter from FEC to Common Cause VP Paul S Ryan. Read more at Common Cause.

Arkansas Online: “A fundraiser has been started to help a Gravette man arrested in connection with the Jan. 6 breach of the U.S. Capitol. It’s called the Richard ‘Bigo’ Barnett Legal Defense Fund, according to the fundraiser’s website. For contributions of $100 or more, Barnett will, ‘as a token of his appreciation,’ send a personally inscribed, autographed picture of himself sitting at a desk in the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, according to the website. One of the most well-known photographs from the Capitol incursion shows Barnett with his foot propped on a desk in Pelosi’s office suite. ‘Richard Barnett’s picture at Speaker Pelosi’s desk has become the face of the new anti-federalist movement,’ according to the fundraiser website. ‘We will not go gently into that good night.'”

“Also, ‘as a token of his appreciation for contributions of $25 or more,’ Barnett will email the donor a copy of the court filing that resulted in his release from jail, according to the website. ‘We are raising money to ensure a robust defense against the biggest prosecution in the Department of Justice’s storied history because the poor and middle class should not lose on the legal battlefield for lack of money,’ said Barnett’s attorney, Joseph D. McBride, Esq., of New York City. ‘We will not allow the federal government to bully Richard simply [because] it has an unlimited budget. This is the story of David v. Goliath, and we intend on defeating the giant.’ Robert Steinbuch, a law professor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, said there is probably nothing illegal about Barnett’s fundraiser. ‘If being a jackass were a crime, there would be a lot more people in jail,’ Steinbuch said. ‘There are some prohibitions in some jurisdictions on profiting from a crime during incarceration. Otherwise, it’s generally free enterprise. Remember, Barnett has not been convicted of a crime.'”

Bloomberg: “New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a New York court to order Eastman Kodak and its chief executive officer, James Continenza, to turn over evidence in advance of a planned insider-trading lawsuit against them. Kodak and Continenza violated New York securities law when he bought 46,737 shares of the company’s stock on June 23, James claimed in court papers filed in state court in Manhattan Tuesday. James said she ‘has determined to commence an action’ against the company and Continenza. The company disclosed James’s threatened lawsuit last month. Continenza’s alleged trades came about a month before the stock soared after the Trump White House announced a deal to loan the company $765 million to produce drug ingredients amid the coronavirus pandemic.”

Miami Herald reporter Samantha Gross tweeted a screenshot of the paperwork, dated Tuesday, June 1st, 2021, filed by Nikki Fried, the current agriculture commissioner and the only Democrat currently holding statewide office in Florida, who’s been eyed as a challenger to Ron DeSantis in 2022. “To be designated” is listed as her campaign treasurer.

👽

— OREO Cookie (@Oreo) June 1, 2021

The Independent: “A last-gasp legal challenge by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to thwart a bid by a rival rightist to head a new government was rejected on Tuesday as his opponents raced to seal a pact that would unseat him. Naftali Bennett, Netanyahu’s former defence minister, announced on Sunday he would join a proposed alliance with centrist opposition leader Yair Lapid, serving as its premier first under a rotation deal. They have until midnight Wednesday to present a final pact to Rivlin, who handed Mr Lapid the task of forming a new government after Netanyahu failed to do so in the wake of a close election on 23 March. Hoping to beat the deadline, Lapid, Bennett and other party leaders convened to clinch coalition agreements, sources briefed on the talks said. In a letter to the legal counsels of the presidency and parliament, Netanyahu’s conservative Likud said Lapid was not authorised to cede the premiership to Bennett.”

“On behalf of the TruNews team and the Wiles family, thank you so very much for your prayers as they continue to navigate this difficult situation. Rick is very much in need of your continued prayers. Today, he was taken to the emergency room, and under medical advice, was admitted to the hospital. He is currently on oxygen and is expected to remain there for a number of days. Susan remains ill, but also needs your prayers as well. We would request that you would pray for healing for her body, but that you will also pray that the Lord will give her peace regarding Rick’s condition.”

“Already, the naysayers and mockers have started with their taunts. Let them speak their foolish words and let them mock. It will only serve to be used to fuel their flames of torment in hell, unless they repent. If I know Rick, and I believe I do, this attack of the enemy will only serve to strengthen his resolve to speak against the forces of darkness. We will say it again: NO weapon formed against us shall prosper! NONE!” says an announcement from TruNews that sounds pretty fucking panicked and already knows the obvious conclusion that people are going to draw from the possible impending death of a guy who recently called the Coronavirus vaccines “global genocide”.

“Major League Baseball is being sued over its move of next month’s All-Star game out of Atlanta. A 21-page lawsuit by conservative small-business advocacy organization Job Creators Network, filed Monday in federal court in New York, demands the immediate return of the game to Atlanta and $100 million in damages to local and state small businesses. The suit also seeks $1 billion in punitive damages. MLB, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, the MLB Players Association and MLBPA executive director Tony Clark are named as defendants in the suit.”

“MLB announced April 2 that it would move the All-Star game, which had been scheduled for Truist Park, out of Georgia in response to the state’s new voting law. The July 13 event was awarded to Denver the following week. ‘MLB robbed the small businesses of Atlanta – many of them minority-owned – of $100 million, we want the game back where it belongs,’ Alfredo Ortiz, president and CEO of the Job Creators Network, said in a news release late Monday night announcing the litigation. ‘This was a knee-jerk, hypocritical and illegal reaction to misinformation about Georgia’s new voting law which includes Voter-ID. Major League Baseball itself requests ID at will-call ticket windows at Yankee Stadium in New York, Busch Stadium in St. Louis and at ballparks all across the country.’ The Players Association has no comment on the lawsuit, a spokesman said Tuesday. The MLB commissioner’s office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Manfred previously said he ‘decided that the best way to demonstrate our values as a sport is by relocating this year’s All-Star game,’ adding: ‘Major League Baseball fundamentally supports voting rights for all Americans and opposes restrictions to the ballot box'” – Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Daily Beast: “The daughter-in-law of British political and business titan Lord Michael Ashcroft was charged Monday with manslaughter by negligence in the shooting death of a top police officer in Belize. The arraignment of Jasmine Hartin, 38, comes three days after she was initially detained – after being found spattered with blood on a dock where she and Superintendent Henry Jemmott had been socializing alone after curfew, police said. Jemmott, 42, was found dead in the water with a gunshot wound behind his ear. Police said the weapon used was his service pistol. According to local reports, Hartin initially suggested to responding officers that Jemmott might have been shot by a passing boat, then stopped cooperating with investigators while one of the country’s top lawyers was retained for her. However, police reportedly told 7 News Belize that Hartin started talking again when local authorities threatened her with cocaine possession charges.”

“She reportedly admitted that she shot the officer when handing him his pistol while giving him a massage, and then pushed him into the water in a panic after his lifeless body fell on her. After she was arraigned Monday night, bail was denied by the magistrate, though she can ask a higher court to release her, according to reports. Belize Police Commissioner Chester Williams told reporters that Hartin provided a statement but he declined to provide details of her account. ‘We cannot say we have a clear understanding of what happened because we were not there,’ he said. Hartin, a Canadian who lives in Belize, is the wife of Andrew Ashcroft, the youngest son of Lord Ashcroft. The elder Ashcroft is a billionaire known as a top donor to the U.K. Conservative Party who also has massive business interests in Belize and recently donated a fully equipped gym to the police department. Hartin, who reportedly has two children with the younger Ashcroft, was the director of lifestyle and experience at the Alaia Belize, a luxury resort developed by her husband.”

https://youtu.be/lDk51-Jcutg

In a fitting way to start LGBTQ Pride Month, boaters who harassed another boat that was flying a pride flag suddenly exploded, forcing the three bigots into the water to seek help from the LGBTQ people on the boat they were targetting.

In video and photos posted by @retro_ushi_, who identifies in his Twitter profile as “trans & queer,” a boat is shown circling another boat, flipping them the middle finger and shouting gay slurs, on Lake Moses, Washington.  The harassers’ boat is then shown in flames, with the three boaters swimming to the boat that flew the LGBTQ flag.

“We, the undersigned, are scholars of democracy who have watched the recent deterioration of U.S. elections and liberal democracy with growing alarm. Specifically, we have watched with deep concern as Republican-led state legislatures across the country have in recent months proposed or implemented what we consider radical changes to core electoral procedures in response to unproven and intentionally destructive allegations of a stolen election. Collectively, these initiatives are transforming several states into political systems that no longer meet the minimum conditions for free and fair elections. Hence, our entire democracy is now at risk.”

“When democracy breaks down, it typically takes many years, often decades, to reverse the downward spiral. In the process, violence and corruption typically flourish, and talent and wealth flee to more stable countries, undermining national prosperity. It is not just our venerated institutions and norms that are at risk – it is our future national standing, strength, and ability to compete globally. Statutory changes in large key electoral battleground states are dangerously politicizing the process of electoral administration, with Republican-controlled legislatures giving themselves the power to override electoral outcomes on unproven allegations should Democrats win more votes. They are seeking to restrict access to the ballot, the most basic principle underlying the right of all adult American citizens to participate in our democracy. They are also putting in place criminal sentences and fines meant to intimidate and scare away poll workers and nonpartisan administrators. State legislatures have advanced initiatives that curtail voting methods now preferred by Democratic-leaning constituencies, such as early voting and mail voting. Republican lawmakers have openly talked about ensuring the ‘purity’ and ‘quality’ of the vote, echoing arguments widely used across the Jim Crow South as reasons for restricting the Black vote.” Read more of the ‘Statement of Concern: The Threats to American Democracy and the Need for National Voting and Election Administration Standards’ at NewAmerica.org.

Gunshots were fired at the Connecticut state capitol building in Hartford over Memorial Day weekend, with three bullet holes discovered in the building Tuesday morning, the Hartford Courant reports.  No one was injured in the attack.

The bullet holes, one of which hit a glass transom above a public entrance to the building, were discovered on the south side of the building as workers returned to the capitol Tuesday morning.  They could have been fired at any time from Sunday night through Tuesday morning, when the building was largely empty.

Democratic Governor Ned Lamont was working at the Capitol Tuesday, and no significant increase in police presence was observed.  State Police, major crimes investigators from the Hartford Police and Capitol Police are investigating the incident.

“Whenever you hear of something like this it is obviously concerning,’’ said Max Reiss, a spokesman for Lamont. “We are looking to learn more from the investigation.”

“Gladys Sicknick, the mother of Brian Sicknick – the U.S. Capitol Police officer who died after supporters of former President Trump stormed the building on January 6 – said her final interaction with her son was brief. ‘He texted me, he says, ‘I’m busy right now, I can’t talk,” she told CBS News’ Nikole Killion. ‘And that was the last I heard from him.’ Sicknick and her son’s longtime partner Sandra Garza were on Capitol Hill last week to lobby lawmakers to vote for an independent commission to investigate what happened on January 6. Senate Republicans blocked the effort on Friday. The two women say they will keep fighting for answers over the events which they think led to Officer Brian Sicknick’s death. As he defended the Capitol that day, he had been attacked with chemical spray and collapsed later in the day. Garza recalled the fateful call to rush to the hospital – but she didn’t get to say goodbye. ‘They would not let me back to see Brian,’ she said.”

“‘It was only then, when the emergency physician and the charging nurse came out to tell me, that you know, he was on a ventilator. And I knew. I knew then that he wasn’t fine.’ In the months since, consolation has come through cards from complete strangers. Sicknick said they kept coming even when she thought they’d be done, ‘from all over the country and the world.’ ‘There are good people in this world,’ she said. Despite their best efforts, Garza and Sicknick watched as the Senate struck the commission down 54-35, just shy of the 60-vote threshold. ‘I’m disgusted that the Republican senators, that decided to vote no. It’s a spit in the face to Brian, it’s a spit in the face to all the officers that were there that day,’ Garza said. She said the senators who did not even show up for the vote committed a ‘dereliction of duty'” – CBS News.

The Atlantic: “Right now we are lurching into another of our periodic crises over drinking, and both tendencies are on display at once. Since the turn of the millennium, alcohol consumption has risen steadily, in a reversal of its long decline throughout the 1980s and ’90s. Before the pandemic, some aspects of this shift seemed sort of fun, as long as you didn’t think about them too hard. In the 20th century, you might have been able to buy wine at the supermarket, but you couldn’t drink it in the supermarket. Now some grocery stores have wine bars, beer on tap, signs inviting you to ‘shop ’n’ sip,’ and carts with cup holders. Actual bars have decreased in number, but drinking is acceptable in all sorts of other places it didn’t used to be: Salons and boutiques dole out cheap cava in plastic cups. Movie theaters serve alcohol, Starbucks serves alcohol, zoos serve alcohol. Moms carry coffee mugs that say things like this might be wine, though for discreet day-drinking, the better move may be one of the new hard seltzers, a watered-down malt liquor dressed up – for precisely this purpose – as a natural soda.”

“Even before COVID-19 arrived on our shores, the consequences of all this were catching up with us. From 1999 to 2017, the number of alcohol-related deaths in the U.S. doubled, to more than 70,000 a year – making alcohol one of the leading drivers of the decline in American life expectancy. These numbers are likely to get worse: During the pandemic, frequency of drinking rose, as did sales of hard liquor. By this February, nearly a quarter of Americans said they’d drunk more over the past year as a means of coping with stress. Explaining these trends is hard; they defy so many recent expectations. Not long ago, Millennials were touted as the driest generation – they didn’t drink much as teenagers, they were ‘sober curious,’ they were so admirably focused on being well – and yet here they are day-drinking White Claw and dying of cirrhosis at record rates. Nor does any of this appear to be an inevitable response to 21st-century life: Other countries with deeply entrenched drinking problems, among them Britain and Russia, have seen alcohol use drop in recent years.”