Wyoming Governor Mark Gordon signed a bill Friday prohibiting abortion pills, making it the first state to ban abortion medication independent of an overall ban on abortion. Separate legislation, which Gordon did not sign but allowed to become law, put a near-total abortion ban into place. 

The majority of abortions are performed with medication. Wyoming’s only clinic exclusively performs medication abortion and would be shut down by the new law, which goes into effect in July. Thirteen other states have bans on the medication, but also ban all abortions. Another 15 states have partially restricted access to the pills. 

While the law wouldn’t affect doctors and clinics outside of Wyoming, the state does control who can offer online medical care to residents. That means it could limit their ability to get the medication through telehealth or Internet mail-order. (The law does not go as far as legislation pending in Texas which would make it a crime to host, create, or manage a website that provides information about or access to abortion medication.) 

The abortion restrictions which Gordon allowed to become law without his signature would make performing the procedure a felony, leaving only narrow exceptions for cases involving rape, incest, or threat to the mother’s life. In a letter accompanying his signature on the medication bill, Gordon wrote that he “acted without bias and after extensive prayer, to allow these bills to become law.”

Earlier this week, a federal judge in Texas heard arguments in a case to ban the medication mifepristone, which is one of two drugs used in medical abortions—and which is banned by Wyoming’s new law. In that case, a Christian legal group has asked the judge to overturn the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the drug for use in medical abortions, saying the FDA didn’t consider all side effects when it approved it 23 years ago. The judge, a conservative Donald Trump appointee, appeared open to the idea and is poised to issue a ruling that could include a nationwide ban any day.

Donald Trump and his family members accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of gifts from foreign leaders as they travelled the world and welcomed dignitaries to the White House. But according to a new report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, the former president and his family failed to properly report many of those gifts, including many from leaders of countries with high-stakes and sometimes contentious relations with the United States—like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

While presidents—and sometimes their families—are regularly offered gifts in the course of diplomacy, they aren’t allowed to keep any worth more than $450. And everything has to be reported to the State Department and properly accounted for by the federal government. In total, according to Friday’s report, internal White House records indicate the Trumps failed to report 117 gifts worth at least $291,000.

Trump is widely know as a man who is extremely susceptible to flattery, and he and his family received a lot of gifts that would hold little appeal to anyone else. The president of El Salvador, for example, sent a life-size portrait of Trump. Shinzo Abe, then prime minister of Japan, presented Trump with high-end clubs when the two golfed together.

But no matter how personal seeming the gifts were, US law requires them to be reported. They may then be purchased back from the government if a president or his family wants to keep them. Nearly all of the unreported gifts Trump and his family received have been accounted for—some are with the National Archives, some have been sold to the Trumps, and some have been sold at auction. But not all have been accounted for—like the portrait of Trump, which government records indicate may have been moved to one of his Florida properties. 

The report does raise the possibility that there are other gifts for which absolutely no records exist—gifts that could not, therefore, be tracked. National Archives and Records Administration documents show that the Trump administration’s interest in reporting gifts seemed to tail off as his term went on. In 2017, for instance, the White House reported a total of 74 foreign gifts to Trump, First Lady Melania Trump, Ivanka Trump, or her husband Jared Kushner. Every year after that, the number of reported foreign gifts declined. In 2020, the four family members reported having received just one foreign gift.

Former president Donald Trump posted on his social media platform early Saturday morning that he expects to be arrested on Tuesday in New York City—and that he wants his followers to protest.

Trump has been under investigation in multiple jurisdictions around the country for years. But action seems near, as this week it was reported that a grand jury called by Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg was close to handing down an indictment. Early Saturday morning, Trump took to Truth Social, the Twitter alternative he founded, with an all-caps screed that started with a section on his belief that America has become crime-ridden and impoverished, before dropping his claim that he would be arrested on Tuesday.

“THE FAR & AWAY LEADING REPUBLICAN CANDIDATE & FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, WILL BE ARRESTED ON TUESDAY OF NEXT WEEK,” Trump wrote. “PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!”

Bragg is investigating whether Trump made improper hush money payments to adult film star Stormy Daniels in the weeks before the 2016 election to try and cover up an alleged extra-marital affair the two had in the early 2000s. Trump’s former attorney and fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to making the payments, but the investigation into Trump’s role has dragged on. Trump has denied having an affair with Daniels; his Saturday morning rant called it “AN OLD & FULLY DEBUNKED (BY NUMEROUS OTHER PROSECUTORS!) FAIRYTALE.”

It’s not clear why Trump thinks he will be arrested on Tuesday, or what he thinks that might look like. Trump needs to be indicted before he can be arrested, and for now, Bragg’s grand jury, which operates in secret, appears to still be working. While Cohen, who is likely to be the key witness for Bragg, testified on Friday, Daniels has yet to appear. White collar criminals are typically given the opportunity to turn themselves in, and any courthouse appearance by Trump would be a highly choreographed affair involving the Secret Service, worked out well in advance. It’s worth nothing that in his post on Truth Social, Trump credited the news of his arrest to “ILLEGAL LEAKS FROM A CORRUPT ‘& HIGHLY POLITICAL MANHATTAN DISTRICT ATTORNEYS OFFICE”—not communications to his attorneys.

Before last year, the public monthly meetings of the board of Sarasota Memorial Hospital in Sarasota, Florida, were sleepy affairs, typically drawing just a handful of attendees. The hospital, a 98-year-old public healthcare system that serves more than a million patients a year, was considered a crown jewel of the community: A highly rated public safety net institution composed of two hospital buildings and several clinics, its core mission is to serve people who are uninsured or underinsured. At a typical board meeting, members would discuss the hospital’s priorities, from finding healthcare providers who practiced in specialties that the community lacked to building a new cancer center.

So it came as a surprise late last year when attendance at the board meetings began to grow: More than a hundred people showed up in December’s monthly board meeting, then 200 in January, and 300 in February. The attendees, some traveling from hours away, lambasted the hospital for adhering to the CDC’s recommended Covid protocols, accusing emergency care physicians of murdering patients. “We were getting people complaining, and they’ve never even had a family member in the hospital, and they’re talking about the horrible treatment they’ve received,” Dr. James Fiorica, the hospital’s chief medical officer, told me. “You wonder if there is a different agenda than how we treated the particular patient.”

Indeed, the campaign against Sarasota Memorial appears to be part of a coordinated effort of a varied constellation of right-wing groups and individuals. Some have deep ties to the anti-vaccine movement; others are part of the “parents’ rights” movement that has sought to stack school boards with conservative members; a few are ardent Big Lie promoters with ties to the January 6 insurrection. The result is an increasingly unhinged and threatening campaign against the very healthcare workers who saw the community through the worst of the pandemic, says a hospital spokesperson, Kim Savage. “Our board meetings are open to the public, and for the first time, we feel like we have to wand people,” she says. “We worry that the language these groups use might incite someone who is not stable.”

In years past, the Sarasota Memorial Hospital Board hasn’t been a political group—most of the members were retired executives of local businesses who wanted to give back to their community. But in 2022, recalls Savage, the burgeoning medical freedom movement—which opposed pandemic restrictions such as mask and vaccine mandates and which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also has championed—was having a moment. Four hospital board candidates ran on a so-called medical freedom platform, and three of them successfully unseated former board members. “People were not sure what ‘health freedom’ stood for, but it sounded good,” Savage says.

The Sarasota Memorial Hospital had already developed a reputation in the medical freedom community. In 2021, a woman named Michelle Tavares went on a few right wing shows to accuse Sarasota Memorial of mistreating her father, who was critically ill with Covid. Tavares, it turns out, had been protesting pandemic restrictions since 2020: She was the executive assistant of Sherri Tenpenny, a leader in the anti-vaccine movement who drew media attention for her outlandish claim that Covid vaccines make people magnetic. Tenpenny, who was named a member of the Disinformation Dozen by the Center for Countering Digital Hate, appears to have been part of an effort behind the first protest at Sarasota Memorial in August 2021.

In late November 2021, Steve Bannon appeared in a live broadcast on GTV, a media outlet that he’d helped his friend Guo Wengui launch a year earlier. Bannon used the appearance to celebrate HCoin, a supposed cryptocurrency that Guo was selling. The currency, Bannon said, was a “monumental” and “extraordinary” success. Bannon also hailed the Himalaya Exchange, Guo’s purported platform for trading digital assets like HCoin. Bannon lauded GTV. He even touted Guo’s fashion company. These ventures, Bannon suggested, were an opportunity for Guo’s fans, mostly Chinese emigres, to hurt China’s rulers. “If you look at institutionalization of the counteroffensive to Chinese Communist Party, it’s pretty impressive,” Bannon gushed.

That was just one of numerous occasions in which Bannon has heaped praise on Guo and his companies, often in venues where his words mostly reach Guo’s anti-Communist followers.

On Wednesday, federal agents arrested Guo and accused him, along his former financier William Je, of stealing more than a $1 billion from thousands of Guo’s own supporters by soliciting investments in some of the same companies that Bannon has promoted. Prosecutors said those companies were mostly fraudulent. An early HCoin valuation at a preposterous $27 billion, they said, was completely fake, as was the blockchain technology Guo and Bannon claimed supported it. Guo—who fled China in 2014 ahead of separate criminal charges there—allegedly used investors’ money to fund a lavish lifestyle, including a Ferrari, two $36,000 mattresses, and a yacht on which Bannon himself has lived. Guo allegedly did this while claiming in federal bankruptcy court to have almost no assets. Guo, who did not receive bail Wednesday, has pleaded not guilty.

In multiple indictments and an SEC complaint Wednesday, federal law enforcement also offered a broader critique of the joint project Bannon and Guo have taken on over the past five years. Prosecutors suggested that an entire constellation of companies and nonprofits that Bannon and Guo have launched together, which they collectively dub the “whistleblower movement,” was largely a con. That “counteroffensive to Chinese Communist Party” that Bannon touted was just a means for Guo to line his pockets, the feds said.

Bannon has not been charged with any crimes related to Guo. Bannon, his lawyer, and a spokesman did not respond to repeated inquiries. Bannon is not mentioned in any of the federal charging documents. And no evidence has emerged showing that he knew about the alleged diversion of investor funds at the heart of the charges against Guo. 

Last week, Silicon Valley Bank, one of the most prominent banks used by the venture capital and startup sectors, collapsed.

SVB’s rapid crash—the largest such failure since the 2008 financial crisis—grabbed headlines and generated concern: How could a bank with nearly $210 billion in assets fall apart in just a matter of days? And, perhaps more to the point: How worried should I be?

Ross Levine, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley business school who specializes in banking and finance, believes SVB’s collapse is a manifestation of other problems within the banking system, and among federal banking regulators, that have been growing for years.

In the last week, many experts have focused on the 2018 legislation passed by the Trump administration to deregulate banks like Silicon Valley Bank. Its CEO, Greg Becker, engaged in an expensive, multi-year lobbying campaign to help pass this law, which raised the threshold for banks subject to additional risk checks—also known as “enhanced supervision”—by the Federal Reserve from $50 billion in assets to $250 billion, a line that SVB never crossed ahead of its collapse. The theory goes that this deregulation contributed to SVB’s failure.

Levine, who’s co-written two books on banking regulation in the United States and abroad, thinks that argument is both far too simple and absolves federal banking regulators of responsibility for the mistakes they continue to make in overseeing the banking system, going back as far as their response to the 2008 financial crisis. Here’s more of our conversation from earlier this week, edited for clarity and length:

During the Silicon Valley Bank collapse, people in tech started to realize something: a lot of people really don’t like them.

Since the bank started to buckle late last week, tech luminaries have taken time out of their busy schedules of doing innovation to tweet about how everyone rooting against a bailout of Silicon Valley Bank simply doesn’t get it. Silicon Valley had birthed “the greatest wealth generation engine this country has had for the last 2 decades,” said Austin Federa, a spokesperson for the crypto blockchain Solana, and a bailout was essential to save a cornerstone of the American economy. 

While getting ratioed in their own tweet threads, the wizards of tech seethed that so many didn’t see what they could. “The events of this weekend change things. The bank run isn’t actually the biggest thing—the reaction to it is,” tweeted Flo Crivello, a former Uber product manager who is now CEO of a remote work tool company. “It’s making me and a lot of people realize that the media’s coordinated anti-tech campaign over the last 6yrs has been a lot more effective than we thought.”

Helen Min, a co-founder of a tech venture capital firm tweeted a less conspiratorial version of the same diagnosis: “VCs [are] now realizing Silicon Valley has a public image problem.” Indeed, prominent venture capitalist David Sacks, astutely noted that many were resistant to bailing out Silicon Valley Bank because it “has the name Silicon Valley in it.” If the situation were a little bit different, Sacks posited during an interview with UnHerd, people would get it; say, Sacks argued, “this was a farmers’ bank and it was 40,000 farms, small business farms that were on the hook, everybody would understand.” 

Without realizing it, Sacks crystalized people’s real beef with Silicon Valley: if people felt like Silicon Valley actually improved or sustained their lives, they would defend it. More people would be up in arms about a bank for farmers collapsing because farmers make food that they like and literally need to survive. The region that once produced microprocessors, personal computers, internet search, and web browsers, kind of doesn’t really do that stuff as much as it used to, and people are noticing. 

Hungary, the landlocked Central European country of about ten million people, has become an unusual role model for US conservatives, with Tucker Carlson describing it as a place “with a lot of lessons for the rest of us.”  Since 2010, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has transformed the democratic country into a right-wing autocracy, or in his words “illiberal democracy,” by delegitimizing the independent press, building a militarized wall along the country’s southern border, expelling asylum seekers in potential violation of international treaties, separating migrants from their children, essentially outlawing gay adoption, and banning schools from teaching LGBTQ content to students under 18. After meeting with him at the White House, former president Donald Trump was inspired to say Orbán was “probably, like me, a little bit controversial, but that’s OK.”

If Orbán’s policies sound similar to the Build-the-Wall, Don’t-Say-Gay brand of American conservatism, his penchant for bolstering the birth rate and rewarding large families appear to be yet another Hungarian-inspired social policy blueprint some Republicans are pining to adopt. The Hungarian government covers the cost of In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) treatments, provides up to three years of paid maternity benefits, doles out discount coupons for minivans, and grants forgivable interest-free loans to young couples who plan to procreate.

In the US, where birth rates have also fallen about 16 percent in the last decade, the imitators are lining up. Earlier in March, former President Donald Trump floated “baby bonuses for a new baby boom” at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. “You men are so lucky out there!” Trump added, offering an unsubtle reference to how this government policy would enhance men’s sex lives.

Also this month, Senator J.D. Vance, an Ohio Republican who reduces his views on reproductive and family policy to the concise “babies are good” declarative sentence, suggested to reporters on Capitol Hill that the cost of childbirth should be paid for by the government. Previously, Vance has lauded Orbán for his forgivable loan program for married couples, in which they can get interest-free loans dependent on their promise to have kids.  “Why can’t we do that here?” he asked, speaking to a conservative think-tank in July 2021. “Why can’t we actually promote family formation?”

Orbán often says that his pro-natalist policies stem from a desire to bolster the size of the country’s declining population and labor force through a baby boom rather than through immigration. Some countries “want as many migrants to enter as there are missing kids so that the numbers will add up,” Orban said in 2019. “We Hungarians have a different way of thinking. Instead of just numbers, we want Hungarian children. Migration for us is surrender.”

Guo Wengui, a far-right mogul on the run from criminal charges in China, has worked for years with Steve Bannon to promote charitable organizations and for-profit ventures that the men say are collectively aimed at destroying the Chinese Communist Party.

By claiming to be an outspoken Chinese dissident, Guo, who also uses the names Miles Guo and Ho Wan Kwok, won a large and ardent following in the international Chinese diaspora. And his fans have showered his enterprises with investments and donations.

But his project was largely a scam, the Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission alleged on Wednesday. FBI agents arrested Guo early Wednesday morning, and prosecutors charged him with 12 criminal counts, including wire fraud, securities fraud, bank fraud, and money laundering.

 “As alleged, Ho Wan Kwok, known to many as ‘Miles Guo,’ led a complex conspiracy to defraud thousands of his online followers out of over $1 billion dollars,” Damian Williams, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, said Wednesday. “Kwok is charged with lining his pockets with the money he stole, including buying himself, and his close relatives, a 50,000 square foot mansion, a $3.5 million Ferrari, and even two $36,000 mattresses, and financing a $37 million luxury yacht.”

Federal prosecutors also charged a longtime Guo associate, William Je, with taking part of many of the same crimes. Je, who reputedly lives in London, was not in custody as of Wednesday evening. Guo’s personal assistant, Yanping Wang, was also charged in a separate case with wire and securities fraud for her role in some of the same transactions.

Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA, is a 52-year-old Swiss-Italian with dark eyebrows and an intensely round, perfectly bald head, like a soccer ball that had a dream of becoming an accountant. He splits his time between Zurich, Doha, and anywhere in the world that wants him—a stadium ribbon-cutting in Mauritania; a second-division match in England; a G-20 luncheon in Indonesia. Infantino has been a ubiquitous figure in the sport for years; before he was in charge, he enjoyed cult status as the guy who pulled names out of a box to determine the matchups at major tournaments. At last year’s men’s World Cup, TV cameras cut to his seats in the V.V.I.P. section so often it seemed as if they were under a contractual obligation to do so. Which, it turned out, they were.

But one morning last November, Infantino woke up and felt like an entirely new man.

“Today I feel Qatari,” he announced at a press conference in Doha. “Today I feel Arab. Today I feel African. Today I feel gay. Today I feel disabled. Today I feel [like] a migrant worker.” Infantino, looking out at a room of journalists from behind an array of sponsored sports drinks, was none of those things, he helpfully clarified. But as a child in Switzerland, he had been bullied for his red hair and freckles. “Plus, I was Italian,” he said, “so imagine.”

Fed up with criticism of the host nation’s labor record, infuriated by the desire of some national teams to wear armbands asserting their support for LGBTQ equality, and genuinely angry that actual discussions of human rights were overshadowing FIFA’s broad platitudes about human rights, he delivered an hour-long apologia for autocracy. He railed against “what we Europeans have been doing the last 3,000 years.” He endorsed a future World Cup in North Korea. And he praised the good soccer was doing for women’s rights in Iran, where the regime was at that moment violently suppressing protests for women’s rights.

Infantino’s remarks drew swift condemnation. Activists called his comments “crass” and dismissive—an “insult” to the lives of workers. In an on-air response that went viral, Melissa Reddy, a Sky Sports reporter, argued that the speech offered a glimpse of soccer’s new reality. “This will be the World Cup that really underpins just how dirty the game is,” she said.

The Conservative Political Action Conference, the New York Times reported on Saturday, is not what it used to be. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis skipped out on what has for years been the conservative movement’s premier cattle call. Mike Pence will be at a donor retreat instead. Fox News will not be streaming the event, nor will its popular hosts be speaking from the stage. Matt Schlapp, the chairman of the American Conservative Union, which organizes the event, was recently accused by a Republican campaign aide of groping, and his star is, it’s fair to say, somewhat diminished.

But if CPAC has fallen from its pedestal, it remains a useful barometer for gauging where the conservative base is, and where it is headed. And the future, right now, looks grim as hell.

Here’s Michael Knowles, a commentator at Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire, receiving a loud cheer for saying that “transgenderism must be eradicated from public life.”

Michael Knowles tells CPAC that "there can be no middle way in dealing with transgenderism. … Transgenderism must be eradicated from public life entirely." https://t.co/57hJF4frgq pic.twitter.com/szvnC1qWrP

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) March 4, 2023

Donald Trump has been running for president for more than three months, but it has sometimes been easy to forget. Fox News, which lent him an endless supply of on-air advertising during his last two campaigns, has all but blacklisted him, offering hours of free programming instead to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. Although Elon Musk’s Twitter reinstated the former president’s account, Trump is still posting his half-baked thoughts on his preferred social-media site, Truth Social, instead. There is just a lot less of Trump in the news these days, which is good for most people—who frankly deserve a break—but is perhaps of a troubling sign for a man who has been powered by publicity for most of his adult life. 

What is the point of a third Trump campaign, beyond settling an (admittedly quite large and ever growing) number of scores? What is “The Wall,” now that he’s already built one? On Friday, Politico offered a glimpse at Trump’s new policy direction: He’s going to become an urbanist. 

Per Politico:

​​Trump’s plan…calls for holding a contest to design and create up to ten new “Freedom Cities,” built from the ground up on federal land. It proposes an investment in the development of vertical-takeoff-and-landing vehicles; the creation of “hives of industry” sparked by cutting off imports from China; and a population surge sparked by “baby bonuses” to encourage would-be-parents to get on with procreation. It is all, his team says, part of a larger nationwide beautification campaign meant to inspire forward-looking visions of America’s future.

Futuristic cities on federal land with flying cars. No notes!

Earlier this week, Florida State Sen. Jason Brodeur introduced a bill that would require bloggers to register with the state government when they are paid to write about the governor and other political figures. After registering, bloggers would be forced to file monthly reports listing every one of their posts, how much they were paid for them, and where the money came from. Those who fail to do so could be fined up to $2,500 for each missing report.

That sounded like something that might have originated elsewhere. Florida’s blogger registration bill is curiously similar to a section of a Hungarian law that requires media organizations to register with the government. The law, which was passed at the start of Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s tenure in 2010, initially required news outlets to register before beginning to publish. (After blowback from the European Union and press freedom groups, it was amended in 2011 so that media organizations have to register within 60 days of starting up.) Could it be a basis for the proposed Florida law?

It wouldn’t be the first time Florida looked to Hungary. Orbán’s authoritarian government is in vogue on the American right and its illiberalism has already served as a template for Gov. Ron DeSantis and fellow Florida Republicans. The state’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay Law” was reportedly modeled in part on similar Hungarian legislation. And Rod Dreher, a right-wing figure who lives in Budapest, explained during an interview last year that a reporter told him they had “talked to the press secretary of Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida and she said, ‘Oh yeah, we were watching the Hungarians, so yay Hungary.’”

There are also parallels between Orbán and DeSantis’ efforts to push universities to the right. In 2018, for example, Orbán banned gender studies programs at universities. Last week, Florida Rep. Alex Andrade, a DeSantis ally, introduced a bill that would bar public universities from offering the major. Steve Bannon has called Orbán “one of the great moral leaders in this world.”

Still, Brodeur did not respond to a request for comment on where he had gotten the idea for his potential blogger registration law.

LIV Golf advertises itself as “Golf but louder.” Since its debut last year, LIV (which is not an acronym; it’s a Roman numeral) has sought to take over the market from the PGA Tour by playing music over the loudspeakers during tournaments, shooting t-shirts into the crowd, cozying up to Donald Trump, and—mostly—paying famous golfers disgusting sums of money to compete at their events.

But unless you’re really into the idea of rock-and-roll golf, the story of LIV is the money behind it— the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, a nation that in recent years has used investments in international sporting events as a form of soft power. With nation-state backing, and a nation-state’s incentives, LIV can basically print money for as long as it wants, and the PGA views it as an existential threat. The PGA barred golfers who compete at LIV events from also competing at PGA events, and in response, 11 LIV golfers filed an antitrust lawsuit against the organization last August. In January, the PGA filed its own lawsuit against the PIF, seeking to depose the fund’s governor, Yasir al-Rumayyan, who is also a minister in the Saudi government. The PIF claimed that it and al-Rumayyan were protected by “sovereign immunity.” A judge sided with the PGA. 

All of which is interesting even if you don’t really care about golf; the lawsuit over the Saudi state investment fund’s attempt to blow up an American sports monopoly could yield some pretty interesting stuff, and the LIV–PGA war has already taken on a pronounced political vibe. (Do you know who’s running comms for LIV? It’s Ari Fleischer!) But what’s really noteworthy about the “sovereign immunity” claim on behalf of the PIF and al-Rumayyan is that it’s seemingly the opposite of what the Saudis argued in 2021, when the PIF acquired a majority stake in the English soccer club Newcastle United. 

Back then, the Premier League went to great lengths to assure critics that Newcastle would be wholly independent of any national entity. At the time the PIF made its first bid, as leaders of a consortium that also included the British investor Amanda Stavely, the Saudis were engaged in an economic blockade of Qatar, and the rival Gulf state lodged a formal complaint seeking to block the takeover. It accused Saudi Arabia of pirating Premier League broadcasts—for which the Qatari-owned network, beIN Sports, had spent half a billion dollars for the regional broadcast rights. The bid fell through. The Guardian reported at the time that the Premier League considered the PIF a part of the Saudi state, and it believed that the Saudi piracy of Premier League games therefore violated the league’s rules that prospective owners can’t participate in activities that would be illegal in the UK.

Saudi Arabia eventually got out of beIN’s way, and the consortium moved to buy the club again, but there was still the elephant in the room: The PIF is a sovereign wealth fund, and its chairman, Muhammed bin Salman is, well, the sovereign. And MBS is not just any head of state; according to the US government, he personally ordered the murder of a journalist, Jamal Khashoggi, in Turkey in 2018. His role, and his government’s horrific human rights record, was a major issue at the time.

Tina Peters, the former Colorado election official who has been charged with election fraud, could be going to jail for obstructing a government operation.

Peters made national headlines last year when she pleaded not guilty to numerous felonies related to her alleged participation in a scheme to prove that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. In her position as Mesa County clerk, Peters allegedly attempted to copy software from voting machines in a ploy that allowed sensitive voter information to wind up online.

While under indictment, she launched an unsuccessful run for Colorado Secretary of State. Peters finished third, but is hoping for better luck in her ongoing bid for chair of the state Republican Party. In the unlikely event that Peters were to win the March 11 election, she could spend a some of the two-year term behind bars.

On Friday, Peters was found guilty of obstructing government operations, a charge that stemmed from her February 2022 refusal to hand over an iPad that prosecutors say she had used to videotape a court hearing. Officers had a warrant to seize the iPad. Peters was acquitted of another charge of obstructing a peace officer. Body cam footage of Peters’ arrest at a Grand Junction, Colorado, bagel shop shows Peters repeatedly yelling, “Let go of me!” as officers attempt to handcuff her.

Tina Peters Arrest 2-8-22
Synched with Police Bodycam pic.twitter.com/hiWePelBKl

In early February, days after a Norfolk Southern freight train carrying toxic chemicals including vinyl chloride, butyl acrylate and isobutylene derailed in the town of East Palestine, Ohio, authorities opted to burn off the materials to avoid an explosion. This prompted an evacuation of residents close to the site and images seen around the world of thick black smoke rising over homes and farmland.

When residents in the town of 4,700 returned, many complained of headaches, skin irritation, and respiratory issues. More than 43,000 aquatic animals were found dead in creeks within five miles of the derailment. While officials maintain that the air, water, and soil is safe, residents fear what longterm effects might lay ahead.

One concern is that the burning vinyl chloride may have produced dioxins that could linger in and around local homes and farmland. The compounds, which can take decades to fully break down, can cause cancer, interfere with hormones, and cause damage to reproductive and immune systems. The EPA on Thursday ordered Norfolk Southern to test the area for dioxins.

Michelle Graef, who lives three miles from the derailment, saw her livelihood dry up overnight. Now, she fears, no one will want to stay at any of the five Airbnb listings on her property, where guests get to ride horses and eat fresh eggs and blueberries she grows. She dreads the delivery of a cabin she recently purchased for upwards of $80,000 to expand her short-term rental income—she can no longer afford the price.

Audrey DeSanzo lives paycheck-to-paycheck within one mile of the derailment with her 9- and 10-year-old daughters. She says she wants to leave as soon as possible, but with her $14-a-hour job, lacks sufficient resources to relocate. On a recent school night, she debated whether to send her 10-year-old daughter, Nevaeh, back to school after keeping her home for the day. Nevaeh has been suffering from headaches, stomachaches, and congestion, since they returned to East Palestine. Was the air safer at home—or at school?

In a scathing letter to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Norfolk Southern worker and Teamsters union rep denounced the rail company’s cost-cutting business model, alleging that workers who were deployed to clean up February’s vinyl chloride spill have experienced adverse health effects.

“I am writing to share with you the level of disregard that Norfolk Southern has for the safety of the railroad’s Workers, its track structure, and East Palestine and other American communities where NS operates,” Jonathon Long, who said he had been employed with Norfolk Southern for 28 years, wrote. “I am also imploring you as the Governor of the State of Ohio to use your influence and power to stop NS’s reckless business practices that endanger the public and their Workers.”

Concerns about Norfolk Southern’s cost-cutting, anti-labor policies have been spreading for weeks, but Long’s letter paints the most vivid picture yet of the company’s apparent disregard for its workers’ safety. In the letter, Long identified the implementation of “precision scheduled railroading,” or PSR, a system that he says involves increasing the lengths of trains while slashing the number of employees, as one of the primary ways that the company has prioritized profit over the safety and well-being of its workers. “The new business model of PSR is implemented by freight rail carriers not to benefit America’s supply chain through the timely delivery of good,” he wrote, “but solely for the advancement of railroad executives, shareholders, and Wall Street hedge fund investors in the form of record profits, dividends, and stock buybacks.”

In addition to systemic issues, Long criticized Norfolk Southern’s immediate response to the spill of toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio. Long wrote that workers assigned to clean up the spill were not provided personal protective equipment and that many “continue to experience migraines and nausea, days after the derailment, and they all suspect that they were willingly exposed to these chemicals at the direction of NS.” (Norfolk Southern insisted in a statement to CNBC that “hazardous material professionals…were on site continuously to ensure the work area was safe to enter and the required PPE was utilized.”)

Following the letter, leaders of 12 rail unions met with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Federal Railroad Administration administrator Amit Bose in Washington, DC, on Wednesday. In addition to paid sick leave, the unions are fighting for regulatory changes to ensure railroad safety.

A Republican lawmaker has filed a bill that, if passed, would, apparently, eliminate Florida’s Democratic Party.

On Tuesday, Florida state Sen. Blaise Ingoglia filed the “Ultimate Cancel Act“—a bill that doesn’t mention the Democrats by name but would require the state’s Division of Elections to “immediately cancel” the filings and official status of any political party whose platform had “previously advocated for, or been in support of, slavery or involuntary servitude.”

Democrats, especially in the South, supported slavery up to and then during the Civil War. The Democrat party backed Jim Crow laws for decades following emancipation. Famously, the so-called “Southern strategy” saw whites in the South, aggrieved by the Civil Rights Movement, courted by the Republican party.

Hey @NikkiFried…Florida Dems should be thankful I’m not asking them to return all the money they’ve raised previously from their Jefferson/Jackson Dinners. @BrendonLeslie @PeterSchorschFL @Mdixon55 @fineout @NEWSMAX @FoxNews

— Blaise Ingoglia (@GovGoneWild) February 28, 2023

Editor’s note: The below article first appeared in David Corn’s newsletter, Our Land. The newsletter is written by David twice a week (most of the time) and provides behind-the-scenes stories about politics and media; his unvarnished take on the events of the day; film, book, television, podcast, and music recommendations; interactive audience features; and more. Subscribing costs just $5 a month—but you can sign up for a free 30-day trial of Our Land here. Please check it out. And please also check out David’s new New York Times bestseller, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy.

Freedom—it’s what Republicans and conservatives have long insisted they care most about. At campaign rallies and conservative shindigs, they get all weepy when Lee Greenwood sings, “I’m proud to be an American, where at least I know I’m free.” For decades, they have accused their political foes of seeking to destroy freedom by imposing socialism, communism, Bolshevism, collectivism, or whatever upon the US of A. This has been a ruse. The right has often been an enemy of freedom. For instance, conservatives have sought to limit the reproductive choices of women and prevent Americans from marrying the people they love. In recent weeks, we have seen a very specific assault on freedom in Florida waged by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is not yet a 2024 presidential candidate but who already seems to be competing with Donald Trump for the GOP leader most committed to authoritarianism—and who yesterday released a book with a highly ironic title: The Courage to Be Free.

Last week, two bills were introduced in the Florida legislature that would advance DeSantis’ crusade and limit important freedoms for Floridians. The first continues DeSantis’ long-running attack on the Sunshine State’s education system, which has included banning math textbooks that he claimed included “woke” ideology, prohibiting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, thwarting the introduction of an AP African American studies course (and threatening to kill all AP courses), and deriding “liberal indoctrination” in the school system. The laws he has already passed have led to book banning in some school districts.

This new measure would block public colleges and universities from offering major or minor degrees in gender studies, intersectionality, or critical race studies. (Several Florida schools offer gender studies majors; it’s unclear whether any does so for critical race theory.) The measure also would compel colleges to offer general education classes that do not “suppress or distort significant historical events or include a curriculum that teaches identity politics.” These courses must “promote the philosophical underpinnings of Western civilization.”

This legislation, filed by GOP state Rep. Alex Andrade, a DeSantis ally, establishes the state government as an education censor, preventing schools, faculty, and students from determining the contours of college education. Andrew Gothard, president of United Faculty of Florida, the union representing instructors at Florida schools, described the bill to Higher Ed Dive as a state-sponsored form of indoctrination. He called it “fascism in its purest form.”

Using Coinbase to facilitate racism and hate is apparently no longer against the cryptocurrency platform’s rules under little-noticed revisions the company made to its terms of service several years ago. 

Until August 2021, the “Prohibited Uses” section of Coinbase’s user agreement banned customers from wielding the platform to “incite, threaten, facilitate, promote, or encourage hate, racial intolerance, or violent acts against others.” That month, Coinbase stripped that section from the agreement.

“Coinbase quietly removing hate speech and racism clauses from its terms of service sends a clear message: Coinbase does not care about the safety and well-being of Black people who use their site,” said an emailed statement from Jade Magnus Ogunnaike, a vice president at Color Of Change, a civil rights group focused on inequity and technology. “Without strong content moderation policies, Coinbase will continue to put Black consumers, their own employees and stakeholders in harm’s way in order to enact a long broken vision for Big Tech.”

Coinbase’s move to strip its user agreement of language explicitly barring hate took place about a year after the company, amid national racial justice protests, banned internal discussion of nominally external political issues and promptly faced public accusations of racism from Black employees.

Financial tech companies, including both PayPal and Square, often have language in their user agreement policies banning their use to promote “hate” or “racial intolerance.” White nationalist Richard Spencer, for example, was banned from receiving money on Paypal in 2017 following the violent Unite the Right white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virgina. Prominent Islamaphobe Laura Loomer has also been banned from the digital payments platform.