While Democrats won some important elections this year already in local races, there’s one race coming up on February 21 in Wisconsin that’s already being dubbed as the most important race you’ve never heard of. It’s a nonpartisan election for a state Supreme Court seat – although I say nonpartisan in only the strictest sense, as none of the four candidates running have R’s or D’s after their name on the ballot.

Right-wing donors are pouring a lot of money into the race to ensure that self-described “constitutional conservative” Daniel Kelly makes it to the runoff on April 4, to be held between the top two finishers. There’s also Jennifer Dorow who boasts her conservative credentials and is vying for the seat.

2023 gives voters a unique opportunity to reshape the alignment of this court – something they can do by preventing either of those two candidates from making it to the April 4 runoff – and even more importantly, keeping them from winning at all costs – something they can do by promoting candidates Judge Everett Mitchell and Judge Janet Protasiewicz. Mitchell is a staunch advocate for voting rights – badly needed in a state where the last Republican governor did all he could for voter suppression, and Protasiewicz is a longtime community leader who was the first liberal to enter the race.

Fortunately, Kelly has managed to create a whole bunch of scandals for himself by rambling about judicial activists and already made history as the first Supreme Court judge to lose re-election. Let’s do all we can to make sure he loses again in 2023.

The post There’s a huge election taking place next month and no one is talking about it appeared first on Palmer Report.

Meta Platforms Inc’s (META.O) social media apps were down on Wednesday for thousands of users in the United States, according to outage tracking website Downdetector.com.

More than 18,000 Instagram users reported issues with accessing the app and about 13,000 incidents were reported for the Facebook app, according to Downdetector.com. Outage reports also spiked for WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, Downdetector.com data showed.

Downdetector tracks outages by collating status reports from several sources including user-submitted errors on its platform.

Outages of Big Tech platforms are not uncommon as several companies ranging from Google to Microsoft have seen service disruptions.

Microsoft (MSFT.O) was hit with a networking outage earlier on Wednesday that took down its cloud platform Azure along with services such as Teams and Outlook, affecting millions of users globally.

Meta did not immediately respond to Reuters’ request for comment.

A former Deutsche Bank AG trader whose conviction for rigging the Libor rate benchmark was overturned has begun a $30 million legal action in New York accusing the German bank of malicious prosecution for making him a scapegoat.

Gavin Black, who worked on the bank’s money market and derivatives desk in London, said Deutsche Bank and others conspired to commit “malicious prosecution and abuse of process,” leading to his unjustified conviction.

Black wants at least $30 million plus punitive damages from Deutsche Bank and other defendants, according to a summons filed on Wednesday in a New York state court in Manhattan. A formal complaint has yet to be filed.

Deutsche Bank did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Seth Levine, a lawyer for Black, declined to comment.

The legal action came two months after Matthew Connolly, who lead Deutsche Bank’s pool trading desk in New York, filed a $150 million lawsuit also accusing the bank of malicious prosecution.

Deutsche Bank asked a judge on Jan. 13 to dismiss Connolly’s case.

Black and Connolly were convicted in 2018 for rigging Libor, but the federal appeals court in Manhattan overturned both convictions last January, citing a lack of evidence of guilt.

Libor, short for London interbank offered rate, underpinned hundreds of trillions of dollars of financial products including credit cards and mortgages before being phased out last January.

Investigations worldwide into Libor manipulation resulted in about $9 billion of fines for banks, including $2.5 billion for Deutsche Bank in 2015.

Three individuals are also defendants in Black’s case.

They include Timothy Parietti, a former managing director of Deutsche Bank’s money markets derivatives trading desk in New York who testified against Black and Connolly after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge.

Last August, a judge exonerated Parietti in the “interests of justice” because voiding Black’s and Connolly’s convictions meant there was not enough evidence to support Parietti’s plea.

Larry Krantz, a lawyer for Parietti, declined to comment.

(JTA) — Doug Emhoff’s itinerary on an upcoming trip to Poland and Germany includes a stop at the factory where Oskar Schindler saved over 1,000 Jews, a Shabbat dinner with local Jewish leaders and a visit to a United Nations center housing refugees from Ukraine.

Senior administration officials outlined the trip’s details in a call with reporters on Wednesday, a day before the second gentleman heads overseas, where he will be accompanied by Deborah Lipstadt, the U.S. special envoy for monitoring and combating antisemitism.

As the first Jewish spouse of an American president or vice president, Emhoff has made fighting antisemitism a main focus. Last month he convened a group of top Biden administration officials to discuss the topic, and he has toured Jewish college groups and other Jewish institutions in recent months. As officials noted on Wednesday’s call, the administration is working towards releasing a “national action plan” on fighting antisemitism.

Here’s a summary of the itinerary for the trip, which coincides with International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Friday

Emhoff will attend a commemoration ceremony with other government officials and some survivors to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day at the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum. The day is tied to the date in 1945 when the Nazi concentration camp where more than 1 million Jews were murdered was liberated. He will then join a Shabbat dinner in Krakow with members of the small but vibrant local Jewish community.

Saturday

In the morning, Emhoff will visit the former Schindler Enamel Factory, which now hosts two museums (one of fine art and another on the history of Krakow). It’s estimated that Oskar Schindler, immortalized in Steven Spielberg’s Oscar-winning film “Schindler’s List,” helped over 1,000 Jewish workers there avoid being sent to death camps.

After that, Emhoff will join a roundtable with Polish community leaders, antisemitism experts, religious leaders and academics who “promote tolerance, education and inclusiveness.”

Then Emhoff will visit a site run by the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Refugees, which is housing refugees from Ukraine who have fled the violence there. Emhoff will talk with refugees and UNHCR officials.

Sunday

Emhoff will tour Krakow’s historic Jewish Quarter and meet with Jewish community leaders before traveling to a southern Polish town to talk with locals about the country’s prewar Jewish history. He will then depart for Berlin.

Monday

In Berlin, Emhoff will convene a group of special envoys and coordinators working to combat antisemitism in their respective governments — Lipstadt’s “counterparts from various European and other countries.”

Emhoff will then tour the Topography of Terror Museum and the Museum of Jewish Life before participating in a dinner hosted by U.S. Ambassador Amy Gutmann, which will include German government officials and Jewish community leaders. Gutmann’s Jewish father fled Nazi Germany as a college student in 1934.

Tuesday

Emhoff will host a roundtable with Jewish, Muslim and Christian faith leaders, discussing “interfaith dialogue and understanding.” He will then visit a local synagogue and a series of memorials in Berlin, including the famed Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Along the way, he will meet with German officials and a small group of Holocaust survivors before returning to the United States.

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

The post Doug Emhoff will visit Oskar Schindler’s factory during Poland and Germany visit appeared first on The Forward.

Jack Sweeney and Getty

• Jet-tracking student Jack Sweeney is calling for people to boycott ADS-B Exchange.
• JetNet announced it had purchased the public flight-tracking site on Wednesday.
• Sweeney uses the site to share flight data on celebrities, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump.

The college student who tracks Elon Musk’s jet says he’s worried the tracking software he uses to keep tabs on celebrity aircraft could soon be yanked from the public after it was sold Wednesday.

Aviation data company JetNet said on Wednesday that it bought ADS-B Exchange, a free website that tracked thousands of commercial aircraft around the world.

Now it’s unclear whether the flight information on the ADS-B exchange will remain free to the public. Jack Sweeney, the 20-year-old student behind the @ElonJetNextDay account and other Twitter accounts that track celebrity jets, said selling the company violates the spirit of the air enthusiast community that’s powered the site. He’s even calling for a boycott.

Dan Streufert, president and founder of ADS-B Exchange, said in a statement that the deal would “meet the business needs of our users while maintaining our enthusiast roots and unfiltered data.” He didn’t respond to a request for comment from Insider.

The plane-tracking company, which was founded in 2016, uses more than 9,000 volunteer-run radios, or “feeders,” to transmit data from ADS-B-equipped aircrafts. ADS-B is a surveillance technology that broadcasts information like GPS location and altitude from one aircraft to another, and to ground stations.

The software was sold for an undisclosed amount. The website has been popularized by Sweeney, who attends the University of Central Florida. Sweeney uses ADS-B to follow certain aircraft, like those owned by Musk, Donald Trump, and Taylor Swift. He then sets up bots to automatically upload their flights to Twitter.

Sweeney took a jab at JetNet and Streufert for the sale, saying the move undermines the point of creating ADS-B Exchange in the first place. “The whole basis of the organization was that it’s a community,” he told Insider. “Everyone is choosing to give their data to make a community server, not to a private equity firm or company that is trying to make money.”

A spokesperson for JetNet did not respond to a request for comment ahead of publication.

Meanwhile, Sweeney is calling for feeders to boycott the platform, calling it a “sad day.” He said he’s looking for alternatives to ADS-B Exchange, like creating his own version or using another tracking websites, like Open Sky Network and airframe.io.

This is not the first challenge Sweeney has faced since he opened his jet-tracking Twitter accounts. In early 2022, Musk offered him $5,000 to stop sharing the information, but the then-teen upped the ante and asked for $50,000. Musk never followed up, Sweeney said.

Later, his accounts, including @ElonJet and @ZuccJet, were suspended in December after the billionaire took over Twitter, with Musk citing the jet-tracking accounts as a “physical safety violation.”

Twitter has even updated its private information policy to restrict users from sharing people’s live locations and Sweeney has begun posting flight data with a 24-hour waiting period to adhere to the social media site’s policies.

According to the FAA, sharing the public information is legal, but there are a few federal programs that can help block the tracker, however the agency acknowledges that these are not a “silver bullet” and can be skirted via ADS-B Exchange.

This week, Arizona Rep. Ruben Gallego announced he would challenge Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for her U.S. Senate seat.

Sinema, the erstwhile Democrat who recently switched her party allegiance to independent, had come under fire from her fellow Democrats for voting down the $15 minimum wage, protecting the carried-income tax loophole that gives tax breaks to hedge fund managers and private equity executives, and blocking voting rights legislation. Former canvassers have said they feel betrayed by the Senator they helped elect, and her critics in the Arizona Democratic Party have accused her of avoiding public events. Her popularity is underwater in her state, and she has the second-lowest approval rating in the Senate, according to Morning Consult.

[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]

All that has left Sinema vulnerable to a 2024 challenge. Democratic Rep. Gallego, a Marine Corps Iraq combat veteran who is serving his fifth term in Congress, is the first serious candidate to put his hat in the ring.

TIME spoke to Gallego in a coffee shop in the bowels of Rockefeller Center on Jan. 24 about his platform, his dark times after returning from the war, and how he turned from supporting Sen. Sinema to challenging her for her seat.

The following interview has been lightly edited and condensed.

TIME: Why are you challenging Sen. Kyrsten Sinema for this seat?

Gallego: She’s just abandoned Arizona. We hardly see her anywhere, she doesn’t have an unscripted moment, we see her fighting for pharmaceutical companies, for hedge fund managers. She skipped votes to go do the Iron Man in New Zealand. Her priorities aren’t the priorities of Arizonans anymore. There’s an opportunity to change that, and I’m going to do that.

What would you say are your three most important issues?

Passing the Child Tax Credit. My mom did amazing work, raising four kids on her own on a secretary’s salary; we were on school free lunch program, but she prides herself on never being on welfare or food stamps. I slept in the living room because we couldn’t afford a bigger apartment. That woman had so much stress on her. She didn’t want to raise these kids on her own, she would have loved to have stayed married, except my father was an a–hole; it was an extremely dangerous situation for her to stay with him. He was abusive to me, he was abusive to my mother. Every night I’d hear her crying because she’s just trying to figure out how to make this work. There’s millions of Americans who deal with this every day.

And for six months, we had this beautiful period where Americans had a little stress relief. I heard from parents all over the country who said for those six months, I didn’t have to worry about how I’m going to pay for childcare this month. For those six months, I didn’t have to go to overtime, I actually got to stay home with my kid. It reduces child poverty by 60%. This is the kind of thing that could be revolutionary to this country, and we just kind of gave it up.

Second, we have to deal with climate change and drought in Arizona. Our future is entirely tied with how we’re going to manage this.

And lastly, immigration reform. We can’t ignore what is happening at the border, we clearly have a refugee and asylum crisis. We can fix it, but right now everyone’s solution is one-sided. We passed three bipartisan immigration reform bills out of the House and they got to the Senate, and even though we had control of the Senate, we didn’t really because of the filibuster.

Where are you on the filibuster?

I think at a minimum, we should be reforming the filibuster. It’s clearly been abused over the last couple years, and now it’s now used as a tool of obstruction instead of to create room for compromise.

You mentioned in your launch video that there were some dark moments after you got back from serving as a Marine in Iraq. Can you tell me about that?

The biggest problem is you don’t really know who you are when you get back from the war, because you were a totally different person when you went. I was a lot more anxious, I was quick to get angry. You have survivor’s guilt. There were a couple times when I should have died instead of my friends dying because we switched places. There were times where instead of dealing with it in a smart, sane way, I decided to drink instead of going to a therapist. I never got into a DUI or anything like that, but it’s also not a healthy way to deal with anything. And instead of healthy relationships I focused on a superficial idea of success. Focusing on getting a job, getting a better job, when I was really internally just breaking apart.

It took years for me to accept where I was in terms of that problem, and finally got help. I never felt the urge for suicide or anything of that nature, but it’s a weird situation where you don’t feel like yourself anymore. Whenever I feel a flare-up coming, I go back to a therapist. But it’s never going to ever go away, it’s part of my life. A lot of times people think veterans or people with PTSD can’t function, like we’re these ticking time bombs and you can’t trust them with anything. That’s one of the reasons why I’m really open about talking about it. But it’s something you have to actively work on.

What were the most difficult periods?

The breaking point was when my son was coming, because I was afraid I was going to be a bad father. Especially coming from my background where I didn’t have a good father, it was a scary moment. I knew I was going to be a bad father if I didn’t work on my PTSD.

But you don’t really have good years or bad years, you just have years. We’re 17, 18 years removed. Sh-t, my PTSD can vote!

You used to be a strong supporter of Senator Sinema’s, what do you anticipate her pushback will be?

Nobody trusts her. She has a lot of trust to repair with voters, and she’s not gonna take the necessary steps to do that: talking to people that you’ve pissed off the last four years, people you’ve ignored, people you don’t return phone calls from. A lot of us were with her from day one. I’ve been a big supporter of hers since even before she got to the Senate. There are thousands of people in Arizona that feel that way that are gonna have their say.

What was your breaking point? Take me through your period of disillusionment.

That sounds like a Gabriel García Márquez title right there. We always knew that Sinema was maybe more conservative than we would have liked, but we all felt that when push came to shove, she was going to be with us.

But post-January 6, after talking about being friends with John Lewis and John Lewis being her mentor, she uses the filibuster to stop the John Lewis Voting Rights Act.

And then it was other things that kept on moving in that direction, whether it was rejecting the $15 per hour minimum wage or negotiating for pharmaceutical companies to keep their pricing. Or lastly, when she went to the floor to fight for private equity managers and hedge fund managers, while the poor in Arizona are hoping to get a Child Tax Credit.

So how did you get from there to deciding to challenge her?

Knowing Kyrsten, and knowing Arizona, I also knew that nobody would take her on. In Arizona she has a reputation for being a very fierce fighter. We know she has a lot of support from the money groups. At the end of the day you can complain all you want, but she doesn’t change because of that; she doesn’t really care about the opinions of Arizonans, she doesn’t care about the opinions of anybody except for a few people. And so in order to make change, we have to get her out of the way.

Obviously there’s going to be a Republican challenger, and Arizona has a lot of independents. What is your strategy to make sure Democrats come out on top?

Our first place strategy is to solidify Democrats, and we think we have that in hand already. She is really, really unpopular and has been for quite a while. There’s also a large segment of Latinos that have not been engaged, that are going to be engaged, and are going to get excited about our race. People are talking about how proud they are that there is a Latino running, and they’re proud that it’s a Latino that comes from a working class background they actually understand. And I think energizing that young base is going to be extremely important. In Arizona, close to 5-6,000 Latinos turn 18 per month, and a lot of them are registering as independents. We’re going to be able to attract that vote. We’re going to energize the Native American vote; we’re probably one of the first campaigns to ever have a kickoff on Native American land. And we’re going to talk to people in red areas, we’re going to talk to anyone who wants to come to a town hall. We’re going to hit every county in Arizona.

What happens if potential Republican challengers like Kari Lake or Blake Masters create a narrative that you’re a far-left progressive?

So the same narrative they used on Sen. Mark Kelly and every Democrat last year? And in 2018, 2020, and 2022? They can say all they want about that, but the problem is that narrative doesn’t work.

Are you a progressive?

I definitely am in some areas and in some areas I’m in the mainstream norm. My voting record is almost the same as Mark Kelly’s.

What are the areas in which you’re a progressive?

Those labels keep moving around. I feel like now they’re just thrown at anything where people just want to say ‘that person’s bad.’

What is your message to independent Arizonans?

It is not independent nor is it moderate for you to be negotiating for pharmaceutical companies in Arizona. We’ve got Arizona seniors who are driving to Mexico to get cheaper drugs in Mexico than they could at Walgreens or CVS. That’s not moderate. It’s not moderate to be negotiating for private equity managers. Your Senator is supposed to be negotiating for you, not for people who have power. You may not agree with me 100% of the time as a citizen of Arizona, but I guarantee you’re always going to know where I stand.

Facebook parent Meta is reinstating former President Donald Trump’s personal account after two-year suspension following the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The company said in a blog post Wednesday it is adding “new guardrails” to ensure there are no “repeat offenders” who violate its rules.

“In the event that Mr. Trump posts further violating content, the content will be removed and he will be suspended for between one month and two years, depending on the severity of the violation,” Meta, which is based in Menlo Park, California, said.

Trump’s spokesperson did no immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.

He was suspended on Jan. 7, a day after the deadly 2021 insurrection. Other social media companies also kicked him off their platforms, though he was recently reinstated on Twitter after Elon Musk took over the company. He has not tweeted.

Banned from mainstream social media, Trump has been relying on his own, much smaller site, Truth Social, which he launched after being blocked from Twitter.

Chevron Corp (CVX.N) on Wednesday said it would triple its budget for buybacks to $75 billion, the oil industry’s most ambitious shareholder payouts to date, as high oil and gas prices pad profits.

The oil industry has been facing calls from investors and the White House to put last year’s record earnings from sky high energy prices into more drilling, acquisitions, or to reduce prices for consumers.

Chevron on Friday is expected to report profits for 2022 doubled to $37.2 billion, according to estimates by Refinitiv. It has budgeted $17 billion on new oil and gas projects this year, up $2 billion.

It and Exxon Mobil (XOM.N) are poised to post record annual profits for 2022 of nearly $100 billion combined, analysts forecast.

Those unprecedented earnings led analysts at Citi on Wednesday to ask if one of the two might buy BP (BP.L)
, Shell (SHEL.L)
or TotalEnergies (TTEF.PA)
.

The U.S. oil majors’ valuations are about 40% above European rivals, Citi said. BP’s market value is about $108 billion, compared to Chevron’s $346 billion and Exxon’s $466 billion.

Chevron’s disclosure of the share buyback and a 6% increase in its quarterly shareholder dividend signaled it will allocate a big chunk of those profits to reward shareholders. It did not set a timetable for the buybacks.

Exxon Mobil, which led shareholder returns among oil majors last year, last month increased its buyback plan to $50 billion through 2024.

The White House last year criticized oil producers for distributing cash to shareholders instead of investing in production to reduce energy prices for consumers. It also pressed oil producers to raise investments in renewable energy.

The White House had no immediate comment on Chevron’s buyback.

U.S. oil producers overall are increasing their budgets for new energy projects this year, but the expenditures will be dwarfed by the amounts paid to shareholders.

Chevron shares rose almost 3% in after-market trade.

The energy industry last year was one of the top sectors in the S&P 500 index after trailing the broader market for years.

Editor’s note: This article contains graphic video, descriptions of physical violence and a mention of self-harm that might be upsetting to some readers.

(NewsNation) — Newly obtained videos and reports involving military police officer Denisha Montgomery offer a fragmented look at an altercation that happened weeks before her death and the conclusions military officials drew from it.

Montgomery, a 27-year-old mother of three, was found dead in her barrack last August, from what officials have called a suicide. However, Montgomery’s family is demanding answers about her 2022 death, which occurred less than a month after the military police officer disclosed the altercation.

“We are coming for justice — know that,” the woman’s aunt, Tomeka Light, said. “We are coming for justice. We will get it one way and we are Denisha Montgomery Smith.”

NewsNation obtained three videos of Montgomery’s interaction with three other officers weeks before she died.

In the first cellphone video, Montgomery is shown seated in the front passenger’s seat during an argument with another woman in the car.

When Montgomery asks to be let out of the car, an officer in the back seat appears to put his arm around her neck.

“It hurt,” Montgomery’s father, Rodney Montgomery, said. “Knowing that I couldn’t be there to help her. It hurt.”

The vehicle is stopped in the second video as Denisha Montgomery is seen trying to get away —screaming, crying and pleading to be left alone.

“Get that f—— b—- back in the car,” one officer appears to yell.

In the third video, Denisha Montgomery is seen laying on the back seat across three seated officers. One of them, holding her down, appears to cover her mouth.

“I can’t breathe,” Denisha Montgomery shouts just before another officer could be heard saying “Bro, stop holding her like that.”

Light, a Purple Heart veteran, said the scene was all too familiar.

“It looked like another George Floyd incident, where she is hollering just like he was: ‘I can’t breathe,'” Light said.

According to the Army’s CID report, the officers in the car said they “could not provide an explanation for her actions” and had to “restrain” Denisha Montgomery when she “became belligerent” and “tried to exit the car several times while it was moving.” Ultimately, the Army said the other officers “did what they could to prevent her from harming herself.”

Denisha Montgomery’s family insists the videos are proof that she was assaulted.

“We need a congressional investigation into this,” said Lindsey Knapp, the Montgomery family’s attorney. “And we also need the FBI to look into this matter immediately because what we have is the military trying to police itself. We have military police officers assaulting Denisha in that vehicle, and then 21 days later she’s found dead.”

Assigned to the 139 Military Police Company at Fort Stewart, Denisha Montgomery was stationed overseas last summer in Wiesbaden, Germany, when she made a frantic video call to her family and asked them to record it.

It was July 19 and Denisha Montgomery had bruises and open wounds on her body.

“Look what they did to me,” she said on the recording.

During a 12-minute video call with her family, Montgomery said she went with a group of military police officers from her unit off-base to a water park. They had been drinking, she said, and the altercation happened on the car ride back.

“I ain’t never been so scared in my life,” she told her family. “I legit thought I was going to die in the car.”

In and out of tears on the call, Denisha Montgomery vowed to report the incident the next day.

“I’m telling them that I don’t want to be here no more,” she told her parents. “I’ll do whatever I have to do, Mom. … I don’t trust them. I don’t trust my leadership.”

Later, in a text message to her uncle, she wrote: “They told me if I report an assault, I’ll be charged with assault, too, because I mushed the female and bit the male that was choking me.”

Twenty-one days passed, and on Aug. 9, Denisha Montgomery was found dead in her barrack. That same day, the Army told her family that she took her own life by suffocation.

‘How do you suffocate yourself?’ Denisha Montgomery’s mother, Heather Montgomery, said. “How can you possibly suffocate yourself?”

Her father Rodney also doesn’t believe his daughter took her own life.

“No doubt in my mind,” he said. “I know my kid, man.”

Following a previous NewsNation report on Denisha Montgomery’s death, U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, wrote to the Army Criminal Investigative Division, saying the woman’s death raised “serious questions” and demanded “answers to Congress.”

Grassley pointed to discrepancies between Denisha Montgomery’s comments to her family and what they later heard from the Army’s Criminal Investigations Department.

Soon after, the Army played three videos for Denisha Montgomery’s family to show what transpired in the car, claiming there was no assault. That’s despite the fact the investigating officer in Germany stated in his report that Denisha was, in fact, assaulted.

The Army’s investigation report offered some additional insight into what led up to the altercation.

A German security guard at the waterpark told officials the group was fighting because one of the officers tried to kiss Denisha Montgomery — to the dismay of others in the group, according to the report.

The guard also stated that person raised his hand as if to slap Denisha Montgomery, but didn’t.

“I am hurt,” Light said. “I am angry. You failed my niece like you have failed other service members who have went through similar things.”

Picture a sunken tropical garden. This garden is awash in vivid color and fragrant blooms. It’s so delicate, so effervescent, it looks like it could float away on a cloud. Then the groundskeeper comes in. Only he doesn’t want to preserve the delightful and lush garden of flowers. He wants to destroy them.

And the groundskeeper tries with all his might to do just that. He doesn’t see the beauty, you see. He can’t. He sees only darkness. Luckily, he is prevented from doing too much damage by others who haul him away and ensure the crazed wizard of destruction is never allowed in again. This little story is about America — and the wrongs Donald Trump tried to do to it.

He was stopped before the damage became too bad — he was stopped by you — and me. And now he waits. He waits, and he simmers. You see, the final part of the story is starting. The punishment is beginning. In reality, that mad groundskeeper I spoke of would have been punished for his attempt to destroy such beauty. And it looks like Donald Trump’s punishment is creeping ever closer.

He knows it too, which is why he went bonkers on truth social the other day and started babbling about how he did nothing wrong with his phone call to the secretary of state in Georgia. Donald once again said it was a “perfect call.”

He’s getting nervous, you see. The the screws are tightening. Georgia district attorney Fanni Willis has said charging decisions are “imminent.” She told a judge that on Tuesday morning, explaining why she did not want the Grand Jury to report released.

This story is all over the news, and I fully expect Donald Trump to have heard about it. He can’t possibly be happy. His crazed meltdowns this week have been even more deranged than usual, so perhaps he had an idea.

So keep your eyes open and stay tuned. These decisions could happen at any time. That is, of course, not including all the OTHER investigations into Trump. Donald Trump attempted to destroy America in so many different ways. He failed. We have begun to right his many wrongs. Now it is time for the next phase — where crimes occur, punishment must follow, and now we are moving into the stage of crime and punishment.

The post Crime and punishment appeared first on Palmer Report.