Jan. 6 defendants may receive decades in prison, Trump bails on the primary debate
Plus, massive fines for Florida abortion clinic and wildfire revisionism.
WHAT YOU MISSED
Wisconsin Republicans have yet to find a proper opponent for Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D), who is up for re-election in 2024. Neither U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Green Bay) nor U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-Minocqua) accepted to challenge Baldwin despite the state GOP finding them to be the strongest candidates.. As of writing, the only contender so far is Rejani Raveendran, a 40-year-old college student who chairs the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point College Republicans. A true heavyweight!
This means the Badger State’s GOP will likely have to field someone like former Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke, a stalwart Trump supporter who used draconian policing and carceral methods during his tenure — thus making him a hero to punitive, law-and-order types. Clarke (who is, of course, now a reactionary podcaster) polled more favorably than the aforementioned Gallagher and Tiffany.
In an act of blatant revisionism, Montana GOP Senate candidate Tim Sheehy, who founded a company that specializes in combating wildfires, appears to have removed any mention of climate change from the company’s website. For example, language about how Sheehy’s operation was committed to “fighting on the front lines of climate change” is no longer present.
Sheehy, who would face Sen. Jon Tester (D) in a general election should he win his primary, has become a vocal opponent of environmental activists who have sued the state for neglecting the climate crisis. This is despite cut-and-dry evidence that increases in global temperatures increase the occurrence and intensity of wildfires.
“We must fight back and take a strong stand against the climate cult and their job-killing agenda,” he wrote on the social media site X (formerly Twitter).
The DeSantis administration is levying huge fines against an abortion clinic in Orlando. Such fines are in relation to a Florida policy, passed in 2015 but implemented in 2022, that mandates abortion clinicians to allow for a 24-hour waiting period before providing the procedure.
The state’s Agency for Health Care Administration announced earlier this week that the Orlando Women’s Center had defied the statute 193 times and would be fined $1,000 per violation for a total of $193,000. Such penalties are three times higher than what a Florida judge recommended this spring.
Donald Trump will not attend the first primary debate. Instead, he will take part in a one-on-one by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who famously said he hated Trump “passionately.” Whether or not Trump would appear on the debate stage in Milwaukee was ambiguous for months and is, frankly, a little surprising: Trump’s initial rise to power was based in part due to his ability to dismantle his 2016 primary opponents.
The former president maintains a seemingly impassable lead over his GOP opponents, other contenders are apparently banking on the most indicted man on Earth to be removed by judicial fiat.
DOJ attempting to impose the largest sentences in Jan. 6 convictions
The Department of Justice announced today that it will pursue a 33-year sentence for Enrique Tarrio, the former national chairman of the neo-fascist Proud Boys group, which was crucial in organizing their presence at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Tarrio, who was not present at the Capitol that day but had instructed a large number of Proud Boys paramilitaries to assist with the insurrection, had been found guilty for seditious conspiracy in early May and has been incarcerated since his arrest in March 2022.
Justice Department officials also requested the same sentence for fellow organizer Joseph Biggs. Tarrio’s other Proud Boys co-defendants, Dominic Pezzola, Ethan Nordean and Zachary Rehl, were recommended sentences of 20, 27 and 30 years imprisonment respectively.
If imposed, these sentences would well surpass the most punitive punishment for Jan. 6 — 18 years for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes, whom a federal jury found guilty of the same crime.
“They unleashed a force on the Capitol that was calculated to exert their political will on elected officials by force and to undo the results of a democratic election,” prosecutors wrote in their filing. “The foot soldiers of the right aimed to keep their leader in power. They failed. They are not heroes; they are criminals.”
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