Out d’Coup | Plot to Kidnap MI Gov; Debate Fly; Trump’s COVID Outbreak; EPA Strips Tribal Land Rights; Toomey Out; Q-Friendly Doug Mastriano for PA Gov; CRISPR; Levante and Free Will Brewing Releases

In news from our slow slide into autocracy, six militia members were arrested and charged with planning to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. They planned to try her for treason in a kangaroo court. The penalty for treason, of course, is death. The plot included attempts to recruit 200 armed men to storm the Capitol building in Lansing and taking hostages, including Gov. Whitmer. An additional seven men affiliated with the extremist group, “Wolverine Watchmen” were also arrested for threatening to “start a civil war leading to societal collapse.” Can’t make this shit up. 

The militia plot is just one more stark example of how Trump and the Republican party have fanned the flames of white supremacy and wannabe fascists. Last week Trump called on the Proud Boy fascists to “stand back and stand by.” When right-wing protesters, many of them heavily armed, descended on the Michigan Capitol back in April and May, Trump tweeted the encouraging words: “LIBERATE MICHIGAN.” 

Get used to it, I guess. Turns out up until 2017 the Republican National party was restricted from using “poll monitors” because of a campaign of voter intimidation in New Jersey. 

Yes, the fly was the star of the Vice Presidential debate on Wednesday. 

Oh, yeah, Trump is flying high on steroids and looking to give all his Big Pharma pals a taste of the action as he hocks Regeneron’s antibody treatment REGN-COV2.

Meanwhile the White House super-spreader event in the Rose Garden marches on. 

EPA grants Oklahoma control over Tribal Lands so they can be further exploited. This strips from 38 tribes in Oklahoma their sovereignty over environmental issues. It also establishes a legal and administrative pathway to potential environmental abuses on tribal land, including dumping hazardous chemicals like carcinogenic PCBs and petroleum spills, with no legal recourse by the tribes, according to a former high-level official of the EPA.

Senator Pat Toomey announced on Monday that he will not be running for reelection in 2022 nor will he be running for Governor, which leaves the door wide open for Q-Anon conspiracy theorists like Doug Mastriano to take the nomination.  This opened a ton of speculation as to which progressives are looking to run. Names already include Helen Gym and Summer Lee. 

Unions are “all in” for Republican Brian Fitzpatrick in Bucks County, once again relying on a strategy to court more moderate Republicans instead of build power on the left. 

PA Stands Up and other progressive groups get the shout out in Vanity Fair for organizing independently of the Biden campaign that seems more interested in increasing the percentage of white conservative Democratic men who voted for Trump in 2016, than expanding the electorate and getting out the vote in strong Democratic areas. Helen Gym the progressive, populist city council member in Philly, told the magazine, “It doesn’t matter what the Biden campaign is doing—groups are mobilizing on the left, and statewide they’re united as PA Stands Up...Many of these groups are absolutely ignored by both parties, but we’re moving at the local level, and we’re making hundreds of thousands of phone calls across the state. We have proven to be very effective at winning at the margins.”

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry went to Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of the CRISPR/Cas9 genetic scissors. CRISPR makes it possible to snip out very precise segments of genetic code which has revolutionized molecular life sciences and contributed to promising therapies for cancer and inherited diseases. This is the first time two women jointly won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry, and the 6th and 7th women to win the prize. 

It’s almost here! Season 3 of Star Trek Discovery returns to CBS All Access next Thursday, October 15th. The opening scene was released this week. It looks like it’s going to be a hell of a season. 

Kevin just got another shipment from Levante Brewing and Free Will Brewing is getting ready to release this year's Sharing Size. So awesome.