This reminds me of the way her husband, Gavin Newsom, told black people "I’m like you. I’m no better than you. You know, I’m a 960 SAT guy."

Holy shit. Gavin Newsom’s Wife Jennifer ran over and killed her own sister with a golf cart…then tells San Quentin Prisoners for Life, “Yours were probably accidents too…”

What TF is wrong with her? pic.twitter.com/rbOk6gcYMu

— Liz Churchill (@liz_churchill10) April 7, 2026

Trump answers the question "Did the CIA tell you that Ayatollah Jr. is gay?"

"They did say that. I think a lot of people are saying that, which puts him off to a bad start in that particular country. I sort of have to smile to myself when I see people trying to defend the Palestinian regime for women — women for Palestine — but they kill women if... you don't wear a certain cloth all over your face, you have no chance of living. When I look at gays for Palestine  — but they kill gays. The kill 'em instantly. They throw 'em off buildings. And I'm saying, who are the gays for Palestine? They have a significant amount of gays for Palestine. Now... you know, I did very well with the gay vote, okay? I even played the gay national anthem as my walk-off, okay? And I think it probably helped me, but I did great. No Republican has ever gotten the gay vote like I did and I'm very proud of it, I think it's great. Perhaps it is because I'm from New York City, I don't know. But the gay national anthem was my walk-off and I think it probably — but think of it, gays for Palestine, but they kill gays in Palestine. So when they hear that I think probably we can talk about it but it shouldn't be too hard."

If you like Trump answers that contain miscellaneous material, this episode of "The Five" is a feast. If Trump's weave makes you anxious/angry/insane, buckle in.

"Mr. Combs’s lawyers acknowledged that their client had assaulted women in his life, but they argued those actions did not suit the crimes he was charged with."

"Given the jury’s verdict, they have asserted that testimony about violence should play no role in the judge’s decision. 'The court cannot use acquitted conduct in any way to enhance Mr. Combs’s sentence,' they wrote in a recent filing, saying that referring to that conduct in determining the sentence would raise serious constitutional issues. Prosecutors have argued just the opposite. They asked the judge to consider the full evidence at trial when determining Mr. Combs’s sentence. 'Even with the conviction on just these two charges, there is serious, serious, relevant conduct here that will merit a lengthy period of incarceration,' Maurene Comey, one of the prosecutors, told Judge Subramanian during a bail hearing after the verdict was announced. (Ms. Comey was later fired from the Justice Department without explanation and has sued the Trump administration over her termination.)"

From "What to Know Before Sean Combs’s Sentencing/The music mogul will be in court on Friday when a judge is scheduled to announce Mr. Combs’s penalty for convictions on two prostitution-related offenses" (NYT).

The prosecution wants at least 11 years and 3 months in prison, though the probation officials say the guidelines put the upper limit at 7 years and 3 months. The defense — which says that the crimes he was convicted of involved only consensual sex — is asking for 14 months at the most. He's already been in the detention center for a year.

"I know for some people, a joke can be a cure and awaken good feelings, while for others, it can be a trigger and bring bad feelings."

"But I think it’s very unjust and even arrogant that someone’s optional pain could serve as a justification to impede the smile of others."

Said the Brazilian comedian, Leo Lins, quoted in "Brazilian comedian sentenced to 8 years in prison for ‘bigoted’ jokes/The ruling against comedian Leo Lins for jokes told in 2022 is shaping up as the next front in Brazil’s escalating struggle over freedom of expression" (WaP0).

From the judge who imposed that 8-year sentence: "Freedom of expression is not absolute nor unlimited.... When there is a confrontation between the fundamental precept of liberty of expression and the principles of human dignity and judicial equality, the latter should win out."

"A jailed Iranian musician who encouraged women to remove their hijabs has been flogged 74 times...."

"Mehdi Yarrahi’s sentence has now been completed after he was imprisoned in 2023... He had been detained days after he released the song Roosarito, which means 'Your Headscarf' in Farsi...."

From "Iranian musician flogged 74 times for hijab protest song/Mehdi Yarrahi was jailed and lashed for encouraging women to remove their veils, as the Islamic regime cracks down on artists and intellectuals" (London Times).

You can listen to "Roosarito," here, on YouTube.

Here's a word-for-word translation. Excerpt:

The cloudy sky feels blue facing you

Untie your hair, so that they drown in its waves
Pull back the curtain so that the sky feels delighted
You are the sun, so it is impossible that the night falls

No wonder the government is terrified. 

"I am happy to have a conversation with anybody in the administration as to the motivations and expectations that our community had when they overwhelmingly wanted me to bring this criminal action."

What "community"?

I'm quoting Dan Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney who won the conviction of Tina Peters. Peters was sentenced to 9 years in prison for "tampering with voting machines under her control in a failed attempt to prove that they had been used to rig the 2020 election against President Trump."

I'm reading "Justice Dept. to Review Election Tampering Conviction of Pro-Trump Clerk/The decision, revealed in a filing in a Colorado clerk’s bid to overturn her conviction, marks another example of President Trump’s Justice Department intervening to aid supporters or go after foes" (NYT).

At a sentencing hearing in October, Judge Matthew D. Barrett scolded Ms. Peters from the bench, telling her that he was imposing a stiff penalty on her because she had repeatedly advanced false claims about Mr. Trump’s defeat, and that, in so doing, she had become a celebrity among those who denied that he lost the race.

“You are no hero. You abused your position, and you are a charlatan,” Judge Barrett said, adding, “You cannot help but lie as easy as you breathe.”

"The book’s first sentence now feels brutally prescient: 'Dying really didn’t hurt,' Navalny wrote."

He later described his decision to return to Moscow, knowing that he could be arrested and killed. 'There are 1,001 simple ways you can be killed in prison,' he wrote. When Navalny flew back to Moscow from Berlin in January 2021, he was arrested at the airport, and later faced a series of trials on charges of extremism and other offenses that his supporters say were manufactured by the state. He wrote the rest of the memoir in prison.... 'I had to devise a whole clandestine operation to bamboozle the guards, involving the substitution of identical notebooks bought specifically for the purpose.'..."

From "How Aleksei Navalny’s Prison Diaries Got Published/In his posthumous memoir, compiled with help from his widow, Yulia Navalnaya, Navalny faced the fact that Vladimir Putin might succeed in silencing him. The book will keep 'his legacy alive,' Navalnaya said" (NYT)(free-access link).

"I decided to record my feelings right away, because all year I had been training for situations like today, developing what I call my 'prison Zen.'"

"Whatever way you look at it, nine years, especially in 'strict' conditions, is an extremely long sentence. In Russia, the average punishment for murder is seven years. A prisoner sentenced to an extra term of nine years is going to be upset, to say the least. When I got back to the prison, everyone—who of course already knew about the sentence—furtively gave me a particular kind of look. How was I taking it? What was the expression on my face? It is, after all, intriguing to see someone’s reaction when they have just been told they will be serving the longest sentence of anyone in the entire prison complex. And that they are going to be sent somewhere especially grim and usually reserved for murderers. Nobody is going to come over and ask how I feel, but everyone is curious to see how this plays out. It’s an occasion when a person might hang themselves or slash their wrists. But I am completely fine. Even 'my' jailer said in the course of a really annoying full strip search, 'You don’t look to me to be all that upset.' I am really O.K. I am writing this not because I am willing myself to keep up a pretense of being carefree and blasé but because my prison Zen has kicked in...."

From "Alexei Navalny’s Prison Diaries/The Russian opposition leader’s account of his last years and his admonition to his country and the world" (The New Yorker).

"If he is sentenced to probation... Trump would be required to clear any out-of-state travel — such as to campaign rallies and fundraisers — with a probation officer...."

"If Trump were to serve home confinement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., New York authorities would likely have to work with counterparts in Florida to accommodate him, the experts said.... 'If you have a probation officer, you are not supposed to travel without permission. Your home is subject to random search because you don’t have a Fourth Amendment right to your home being private. You can get drug-tested, potentially. Travel outside the country is difficult,' said Matthew Galluzzo, another former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. 'That would be super awkward for someone on the campaign trail, but not impossible,' Galluzzo said. 'If he had to go to a debate against Biden, he probably could go, but you’re supposed to make that request far in advance.'...  Merchan... could impose a financial penalty or require him to do community service or undergo counseling, some legal experts said. If the judge were to impose a more onerous penalty, such as home confinement, Trump could still find ways to continue campaigning, even if he were not on the road...."

From "If Trump were convicted in his hush money trial, here’s what he could face next/A guilty verdict for Trump in the New York trial would mean a mix of routine court processing and extraordinary logistical considerations, legal experts say" (WaPo).

Immobilizing a political opponent — have we ever seen anything like this in the United States? We will see how much this outrages Americans and turns people toward Trump. I know it outrages me. I have a strong emotional reaction. I feel as though I'm keeping a vigil for Trump today. 

***

Bonus grammar question. For the purpose of this survey, ignore the issue of whether you would opt out of grammatical correctness in this case. That's an interesting issue, but don't let it affect your answer.

Which of these is grammatically correct?

If Trump were convicted in his hush money trial...

If Trump was convicted in his hush money trial...

If Trump is convicted in his hush money trial...

If Trump were to be convicted in his hush money trial...

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?"

From yesterday's argument in Fischer v. United States, the case about charging January 6th defendants with violating a federal statute that arose out of the Enron scandal and was aimed at the destruction of documents.

What fits the statute under the government's interpretation?

JUSTICE GORSUCH: Would a sit-in that disrupts a trial or access to a federal courthouse qualify? Would a heckler in today's audience qualify, or at the state of the union address? Would pulling a fire alarm before a vote qualify for 20 years in federal prison?

The fire alarm scenario must allude to the Jamaal Bowman incident, but of course, the Solicitor General proceeds smoothly and professionally, and calls it a "hypothetical":

GENERAL PRELOGAR: There are multiple elements of the statute that I think might not be satisfied by those hypotheticals, and it relates to the point I was going to make to the Chief Justice about the breadth of this statute. The -- the kind of built-in limitations or the things that I think would potentially suggest that many of those things wouldn't be something the government could charge or prove

"This year’s peace prize also recognizes the hundreds of thousands of people who, in the preceding year, have demonstrated against Iran’s theocratic regime’s policies of discrimination and oppression targeting women."

"The motto adopted by the demonstrators — 'Woman, Life, Freedom' — suitably expresses the dedication and work of Narges Mohammadi."

Said the Nobel Committee, quoted in "Narges Mohammadi, Jailed Iranian Activist, Is 2023 Laureate The activist, who is serving a 10-year sentence in Tehran, was honored 'for her fight against the oppression of women in Iran'" (NYT).

Over the past 30 years, Iran’s government has penalized her over and over for her activism and her writing.... The last time Ms. Mohammadi heard the voices of her 16-year-old twins, Ali and Kiana, was over a year ago. The last time she held her son and daughter in her arms was eight years ago. Her husband, Taghi Rahmani, 63, also a writer and prominent activist who was jailed for 14 years in Iran, lives in exile in France with the twins....

“I sit in front of the window every day, stare at the greenery and dream of a free Iran,” Ms. Mohammadi said in a rare and unauthorized telephone interview from inside Evin in April. “The more they punish me, the more they take away from me, the more determined I become to fight until we achieve democracy and freedom and nothing less.”

"I know it’s a quaint wee village and this is a strong mural, but I did my own research into the women who were killed there, and I wanted to get people talking.

Said street artist Bobby McNamara, quoted in "'Rather insensitive': Fife council to remove menacing witch mural/Mural by Rogue One found to be not in keeping with historic area, after complaints about portrayal of women accused of witchcraft" (The Guardian).

[T]he row comes as the drive for posthumous justice for the thousands of people persecuted as witches in post-Reformation Scotland is growing, with campaigners pushing for an official pardon after the former first minister Nicola Sturgeon issued a formal apology last International Women’s Day to those tortured and often executed under the Witchcraft Act 1563.... The charity Remembering the Accused Witches of Scotland (RAWS) estimates that during the great witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries there were approximately 350 known accused witches in Fife, with up to 28 accused in Pittenweem itself, most famously Janet Cornfoot, who escaped from the local tollbooth but was caught and returned to Pittenweem, where she was lynched by a mob....

RAWS wants "respectful and dignified" "memorialisation" of the women who were unjustly accused and punished, but the mural shows a Halloween-style stereotype of a witch. Supporters of the mural are calling its critics "snowflakes" and emphasizing economics: "I think the mural is fantastic and I absolutely endorse it. It’s about time somebody was milking the place for the tourism it deserves." 

McNamara accepts the death penalty imposed on his mural: "As a street artist, you’re used to murals coming and going. I’m surprised it’s lasted this long and everyone’s got something out of it, whether that’s publicity for me, the pub, the village or for the women."

"A Saudi student at Leeds University who had returned home to the kingdom for a holiday has been sentenced to 34 years in prison for having a Twitter account..."

"... and for following and retweeting dissidents and activists. The sentencing by Saudi’s special terrorist court was handed down weeks after the US president Joe Biden’s visit to Saudi Arabia, which human rights activists had warned could embolden the kingdom to escalate its crackdown on dissidents and other pro-democracy activists.... Salma al-Shehab, 34, a mother of two young children, was initially sentenced to serve three years in prison for the 'crime' of using an internet website to 'cause public unrest and destabilise civil and national security.' But an appeals court on Monday handed down the new sentence – 34 years in prison followed by a 34-year travel ban – after a public prosecutor asked the court to consider other alleged crimes.... By all accounts, Shehab was not a leading or especially vocal Saudi activist...."

The Guardian reports.

"Canada’s supreme court has ruled that life sentences without the chance of parole are both 'cruel' and unconstitutional..."

"The court unanimously determined on Friday that sentencing killers to lengthy prison terms with little hope of freedom risked bringing the “administration of justice into disrepute.'... Acknowledging the heinous crimes of those serving multiple life sentences, Chief Justice Richard Wagner wrote that the ruling 'must not be seen as devaluing the life' of innocent victims. 'This appeal is not about the value of each human life, but rather about the limits on the state’s power to punish offenders, which, in a society founded on the rule of law, must be exercised in a manner consistent with the Constitution.'"

The Guardian reports.

"Misdemeanors are being treated like felonies."

You won't believe what they did to this man after January 6th— He joined Tucker and spilled EVERYTHING pic.twitter.com/xGzTfID2Hw

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) May 4, 2022

"There are strong philosophical arguments for opposing Judge Jackson’s nomination to the Supreme Court. And she may in fact be too solicitous of criminals. But..."

"... the implication that she has a soft spot for 'sex offenders' who 'prey on children' because she argued against a severe mandatory-minimum prison sentence for the receipt and distribution of pornographic images is a smear."

Writes Andrew McCarthy in "Senator Hawley’s Disingenuous Attack against Judge Jackson’s Record on Child Pornography" (National Review).

"The Saudi blogger Raif Badawi has been released after being imprisoned in the kingdom for a decade for 'insulting Islam,' his Canadian-based wife has said."

The London Times reports.

He had set up, in 2008, a website called Free Saudi Liberals, which discussed social issues in Saudi Arabia, promoted freedom of expression and human rights, criticised religious figures and promoted liberal views of Islam. 

After his sentencing a judge recommended that he also be tried for apostasy, which carries the death penalty, because Badawi had refused to “repent to God”. This was not pursued by prosecutors. His lawyer, Waleed Abulkhair, was sentenced to 15 years in prison for his statements denouncing severe penalties against Saudi citizens, including Badawi.

He's banned from traveling and journalism for the next 10 years. 

MEANWHILE: "Saudi Arabia has executed 81 men over the past 24 hours, including seven Yemenis and one Syrian national, on charges including terrorism and holding “deviant beliefs“, state news agency SPA said on Saturday" (The Guardian).

"Ai Weiwei recounts how his father naively argued with Mao that literature and art cannot be 'a gramophone or a loudspeaker for politics' but must instead find 'expression in their truthfulness.'"

"Unfortunately he had no way of knowing that Mao was just then readying a major political 'rectification campaign (整风运动)' against 'incorrect thought (错误思想)' that would make self-expression among Communist intelligentsia as taboo in the arts as in politics. In fact, Mao’s 1942 treatise, The Yan’an Forums on Literature and Art, which formed the basis for this movement, has guided the party’s quest for ideological unity ever since its publication. Under its shadow, writes Ai Weiwei, 'everyone sank into an ideological swamp of "criticism" and "self-criticism"' in which the bourgeois tendencies of his father’s art marked him indelibly as being politically unreliable.... Then, like half a million other intellectuals, he was 'sent down (下放)' to the Great Northern Wilderness (北大荒)....

"Could those who concocted this sentence ever recognize their kinship with the moral purifiers of Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge? Or of Mao’s Cultural Revolution?"

"Or the Stalinist interrogator Gletkin in Arthur Koestler’s 1940 novel 'Darkness at Noon'? If so, would UIC’s unconscious emulators be discomfited by the resemblance? Unlikely. Today, bureaucrats parasitic off academia’s scholarly mission outnumber actual scholars. These threat-discerners, diversity-planners, bias-detectors, sensitivity-promoters, sustainability-guarantors and other beneficiaries of today’s multibillion-dollar social justice industry are doing well during the nation’s supposed apocalypse."

George Will condemns the authorities at the University of Illinois at Chicago for their treatment of lawprof Jason Kilborn after he gave a civil procedure exam with a fact pattern about a lawsuit brought by a black woman against an employer whose managers had called her — and this is how it was written on the exam — a “n_____” and a “b_____.” 

Here's Will's column: "Even by today’s standard of campus cowardice and conformity, this repulsive episode is noteworthy" (WaPo).

For details about the what UI did to Kilborn, here's the complaint in his lawsuit against the university. You can see all the measures the university took and also the serious difficulty over Kilborn's statement that the dean might have thought that Kilborn would "become homicidal" if he saw the student petition criticizing him about the exam.

"An Iranian woman who posted heavily distorted images of herself online has been sentenced to 10 years in jail..."

"... her lawyer has said, a year after she was arrested over her social media activities.... She was charged with corruption of young people and disrespect for the Islamic Republic.... The charges against Tabar first included blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging youths to corruption. She said she had been cleared of two of the four charges against her, but did not want to comment further because she was still hoping for a pardon. Iranian state TV broadcast her confession in late October last year. Her expressions of remorse drew a great deal of sympathy."

From "Iranian teenager who posted distorted pictures of herself is jailed for 10 years/Instagram star Sahar Tabar [Fatemeh Khishvand] says she is still hoping for a pardon after conviction for corrupting young people" (The Guardian).

This beautiful woman made her face up to look shocking (but also strangely, hauntingly beautiful). This is what caused popularity on Instagram and outrage among Iranian authorities:

I hope she gets that pardon, but I understand that fear that images like that corrupt youth. Here's what seems to be an Instagram site preserving her images, which were, I believe, done with makeup and Photoshop and not plastic surgery. See Wikipedia, which adds:

[Iran] has the highest rate of nose surgery in the world. A pointed up nose – or just wearing a nose bandage – is widely seen as fashionable, both among men and women, and among progressives and conservatives. Apart from beauty standards, the motivation for surgery may include expression of social status, marriage chances, self-expression, or simple boredom in a country with otherwise restricted dress code.

For all that repression, why is all that cosmetic plastic surgery allowed? Perhaps because it's generally done in pursuit of a generic look — the idealized beauty standard — and not to deviate from the shared norm. Tabar's images make an implicit argument that looking very different and weird is good. What if all the beautiful young people got it in their head to maximize creepy strangeness? What if instead of seeking traditional married life they wiled away their time in front of the mirror and made their face as weird as possible with the goal of maximizing "likes" on line?

I can only try to approximate the fear and punitiveness that has arisen in the mind of Iranian authorities.