Blue 812 News Issue 88 - October 4

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have you made a plan to vote? on election day or by early vote? what location?

Being a woman who pays attention to the news this week has been rough, but at least Tuesday, Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt made an absolute utter fool of himself in front of the whole country! The party of “protecting women’s sports” apparently forgot that women’s basketball exists yesterday when they tried to catch Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Donald Trump, in a gotcha moment. If you missed it, here’s what happened: during a four-hour Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Schmitt (R-MO) started a smug line of questioning about Smith having attended an Atlanta Hawks basketball game in February 2024, implying that Smith had been colluding with the local district attorney in Atlanta, Fani Willis. His thinking: they were both in Atlanta, one of the US’s biggest cities, at the same time, therefore collusion. His stunt was made all the more ridiculous by Smith’s blank stare of confusion. Eventually, Schmitt’s colleague Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) held up the poster Schmitt brought showing texts between Smith’s staff about his seats at a basketball game. Schmitt confidently accused Smith of perjuring himself and really made a meal out of the moment, calling Jack Smith a “dirtbag.” Then something beautiful happened: Sen. Amy Klobuchar realized that Schmitt had confused the Atlanta Hawks with the Iowa Hawkeyes. It turns out Jack Smith had indeed attended a basketball game on the day that Schmitt was accusing him of colluding with Ms. Willis in Atlanta, but the game was in fact in Maryland. Smith said he did recall going to see then Iowa Hawkeyes player Caitlin Clark play at the University of Maryland. The CSPAN cameras zoomed in on Senator Katie Britt’s face as she realized what was happening, while Schmitt had a full-on meltdown. Armed with subpoena power in Congress and a friendly Justice Department on their side, Republican lawmakers have spent two years promising to expose former special counsel Jack Smith as the leader of an anti-Trump witch hunt that morphed into a full-blown attempt to take down the Republican establishment, and they couldn’t even fact-check their own conspiracy.

While that was the fun part, and a major source of my dopamine last week, the best part was when Smith told lawmakers that he won’t be silenced by threats of persecution from the Trump administration. “Our investigation developed proof beyond a reasonable doubt that President Trump engaged in serious crimes against our nation,” Smith said of his federal indictments brought against Trump. “If asked whether to prosecute a former president today based on the same facts, I would do so regardless of whether that president was a Republican or a Democrat.”

During the hearing, Smith made his most forceful case yet that the probe he led was actually fueled by Republican witnesses who broke from Trump over his handling of the 2020 election. “It’s very hard to understand how our investigation can be viewed as partisan when the strongest witnesses, the people who were the difference between the rule of law and not, were Republicans,” Smith said. When Sen. Darline Graham (R-S.C.) ripped into Smith for secretly obtaining her late brother Lindsey Graham’s phone records as part of his inquiry, Smith hailed him as a “patriotic public servant” and who likely would have been a featured witness in Trump’s trial — because he eventually concluded Trump’s election fraud claims were false.

There’s a 50 percent chance that in any group of 23 people, two people will share a birthday. Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.

It’s been nearly nine months since the ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renée Good in Minneapolis and called her a “fucking bitch.” On Thursday, Good’s family announced they are suing Ross, plus Gregory Bovino, Kristi Noem, Tom Homan, Stephen Miller, and more! Good’s family’s lawyers have invoked an 1871 law meant to fight the Ku Klux Klan in one of their two civil lawsuits seeking accountability for Good’s killing during Operation Metro Surge, saying, “The day of accountability has arrived for our own U.S. government and its governmental agencies… Our government is killing our citizens without any legal justification.” Good’s lawyers also said that Congress had passed the anti-KKK law at the time “because masked men were going in disguise on the highway to terrorize their neighbors on account of their race… One hundred fifty-five years later, armed men went in disguise on Portland Avenue. They went as part of a campaign to terrorize people based on the way they looked — and now Renee Good is dead.” Renée Good’s wife, Becca Good, also spoke to reporters, saying, “I don’t hate the people that took Renee from us. But I want them to understand this: Every single day, they get to look at their children, their wives, and their sisters and know what they took from our family. They took a mother away from her children. They know that. And they will carry it forever.” Becca Good doesn’t have to hate the people that killed her wife, but I can do it for her!

Indiana AG’s Todd Rokita's office signed an agreement with ICE to obtain greater authority in pursuing immigration enforcement actions. “Partnering with federal law enforcement is a key part of how we deport illegal aliens under the FAIRNESS Act, which we helped write and support,” Rokita said.

The FAIRNESS act, which went into effect July 1, establishes state-level penalties for employers who knowingly hire or employ unauthorized workers and mandates local government cooperation with federal immigration authorities. It’s unclear why, with Rokita an ardent supporter of ICE, it took so long for the attorney general’s office to create the partnership. Maybe it’s all their bad press? A spokesperson from the Office of the Attorney General provided a statement saying, “This agreement is part of our implementation of the new law. We would have entered into this sooner if the FAIRNESS Act’s passage wasn’t hindered by the Sheriffs’ Association and [Senate Judiciary Committee Chair] Liz Brown.” Those pesky sheriffs, famously always getting in the way of law enforcement!

While any Indiana sheriff could partner with ICE in this way, Rokita said only a handful have done so. “The fact that only six of our 92 sheriffs have signed an agreement like this shows there are missed opportunities for Indiana to enhance the tools they have to protect and serve,” Rokita said. “The Indiana Sheriffs’ Association should be working to make sure all 92 offices are in this program.”

A list of all Indiana police agencies now partnering with ICE can be found (behind a paywall) at IndyStar, but I’m sure you all know ways around it. Vigo County is not on the list, and there is no public record or announcement indicating that the Vigo County Sheriff's Office has entered into a Section 287(g) partnership agreement with ICE.

By a 6-0 vote, the Vigo County School Board on Friday censured board member Ken Warner, citing social media comments he made violating board ethics and failing to act in the best interest of Vigo County School Corp. children. Warner was not present at the meeting.

Warner made his online comments in response to other comments related Life Community Church’s then-Pastor Daniel Willis’ arrest late last month on charges of child sex abuse material. He faces 10 counts of possession of child sex abuse material, eight counts as Level 4 felonies and two counts as Level 6 felonies, according to court records available online. He remains jailed.

Warner wrote, in response to others’ comments, “If he is guilty, then he will pay the price, but innocent till proven guilty. There will be a trial, that’s where facts come out, not on social media. … Having illegal materials on your computer is not the same as doing the crime.” He later wrote, again responding to other comments, “Yes, just as illegal, but not just as bad. Nothing is as bad as hurting or exploiting a child and you don’t bash the [congregation] and starting talking about the parsonage or cars.”

During Monday’s school board meeting, Warner did not address the criticism, but said after the meeting, “I never defended him (the former pastor). I defended the Wesleyan church that they were attacking. That church is hurting… Somebody had to stand up for that church.”

On Friday, Warner responded to the censure in a written statement, a full copy of which is available on TribStar.com, the majority of which is just copy/paste to support his claims that: “[b]oth the Indiana Code and US Code agree with what I said as illustrated by the different felony levels and terms/levels of punishment.”

In addition to the censure, Amy Lore, Stacy Killion and Carey Labella — speaking as individual board members — said Warner should resign. The board as a governing body has no authority to make Warner resign. Warner represents District 4. While he’s up for re-election in November, he is running unopposed.

Among the speakers during a public comment period was Elizabeth Hood Swalls, who has started a petition on change.org calling for Warner’s resignation from the board.

On Tuesday, the Vigo County Council Committee on School Funding (along with…all the other members of the council) met to ask county commissioners, school board members, oversight board members and financial consultants from Crowe Consulting questions that they couldn’t be bothered to formulate in the last several months. It was a marathon 4.5 hours that included political posturing, redundant questions, lines of questioning chasing minute details (water drainage?) and Steve Ellis being taught how budgets work.

The debate also came down to philosophy: whether to secure funding before designing the project, or draft the plan first to determine the cost. Himsel addressed questions about the difference between county and school construction processes, saying, “Well, I think that there’s a number of people who don’t understand the rules and the regulations and the laws that we as schools have to follow. And they are more restrictive than many other entities. So the county has a different format that they go through when they go to do construction than what we do because they’re under a completely different set of rules and so forth. So I think that was part of it. That’s not unusual. Schools are unique in that regard. There are regulations and restrictions that we have that other entities simply do not have. And so therefore, if you’re not involved in the schools, it’s very... it’s typical for them to be unaware. We’ve got community members who have had similar kinds of thoughts.”

Ellis said he hopes to reach a resolution in November, noting that December is typically difficult for scheduling due to holidays. The school committee meets again on Oct. 15 and Oct. 26.

*Paid subscribers, do not fear - the full recap is coming. I’m about 2.5 hours in!

I listen to a lot of political podcasts, but they rarely talk about Indiana. However, last week, Politico Playbook interviewed Alex Degrasse, a GOP strategist, and he can’t keep the Hoosier state out of his mouth. He’s the general consultant for Max Engling’s SoS race, but instead of touting the benefits and bone fides of his candidate, he spent the whole time trashing Beau Bayh: “you've got a son of the former governor and senator running with his dad's money and political operation… he's already spent about three and a half million and we expect he'll spend over six once he puts his dad's 2.2 million in… obviously his dad was mentioned in the Epstein files…” Who else is in those files, let’s say, 38,000 times across at least 5,300 individual files?

Speaking of the practically genetically-engineered candidate, Bayh sat down with IndyStar for their latest "Meet the Candidates" interview.

Last week we were given the opportunity to hear from the opposed school board candidates. Of course, who supports Option 6.2 was the first question. Most of the candidates were strongly in favor, except for Rosemarie Scott, who prefers rebuilding North and South on the same sites and keeping both east-side high schools, and Imer Holman, who refused to answer and just said “we need to get it right the first time.” Ken Warner was also the subject of audience queries, as well as the question of public trust in the school board in general. All participants acknowledged school board issues past and present that have eroded trust in the board as a whole. The entire forum, and earlier iterations, can all be viewed on the VCPL YouTube page.

State Parties across the country and the DNC are training volunteers to serve as Democracy Protectors—volunteers outside polling locations to help voters and to serve as a friendly face during what might be a stressful time in our elections.

Sign up for a Democracy Protectors training - they take place every Wednesday at 8 PM ET / 7 PM CT. You only need to attend one training. You will then be sent a toolkit and you get plugged into the election protection program.

Over the past few years, we’ve seen how important clean water and healthy wetlands are to Indiana. From filtering the water coming out of our taps to absorbing floodwaters during severe weather, our local waterways protect our health and our homes every single day. Right now, that protection is under direct threat. The EPA and Army Corps of Engineers are proposing a supplemental rule that would strip federal Clean Water Act protections from thousands of miles of seasonal streams and millions of acres of wetlands across Indiana.

Indiana relies on strong guidance from the EPA to protect our water quality and mitigate flood risks. If this rollback moves forward:

The EPA is accepting public comments until October 9, 2026. Take Action Now: Submit Your Comment to the EPA. Indiana Conservation Voters has prepared personalized comment templates on their landing page that you can easily copy, customize and submit in just two minutes.

visit the Blue812News Local Events calendar to see all upcoming events

Tuesday, October 6th at 5pm: Vigo County Council Meeting in the Council Chambers in the Vigo County Government Center, 127 Oak Street. The meeting packet is available here. Paid subscribers get my comprehensive notes!

Wednesday, October 7th at 7pm: Secretary of State Debate Live on WFYI Public Television, streamed on WFYI’s YouTube channel, and streamed at www.indianadebatecommission.com.

Thursday, October 9th at 6pm: Terre Haute City Council Meeting at City Hall.

Tuesday, October 13th at 3pm: Mingle with the Mayor at Grand Traverse Pie Co. At this informal and relaxed gathering, various topics will be covered each month with opportunities to ask questions and voice concerns. Free pie and coffee will be served courtesy of Clinton Gardens.

Tuesday, October 15th at 5pm: Vigo County Council Meeting in the Council Chambers in the Vigo County Government Center, 127 Oak Street

Thursday, October 15th at 6:30pm: Mary Allen Town Hall Terre Haute - Wabash Valley Hoosiers, Mary wants to hear from you! She is hosting town halls across the 8th District to listen to you. Join her to discuss the issues that matter to you most, share your perspective, and make sure your voice is heard. 6:30 - 7:30pm at the Vigo County Public Library.

Major League Baseball dropped its proposal to build a ballpark in Grand Teton National Park after public backlash. “It has become clear the local community does not want us to continue evaluating Grand Teton National Park as a potential site,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote in a letter. A major organization listening to the will of the people? You love to see it.

Indiana is deploying $400 million in federal broadband funds to improve internet access across the state. The funds represent half of Indiana's total allocation and stem from a program enacted under former President Joe Biden in 2021.

A judge permanently dismissed the Trump administration’s case against Olympian David Hearn, who had been charged with vandalizing the Reflecting Pool (despite the total lack of evidence that he did so).

Riley Gaines, the odious transphobe grifter who’s been making a career out of tying for 5th place with a trans athlete in 2022, had her lawsuit against the NCAA dismissed. It turns out there is no tying for 5th in the justice system; you’re actually just a loser.

Last week, the Trump administration was found in contempt of court for wrongfully deporting a young Salvadoran man last month TWICE.

A federal judge called Flock ‘indiscriminate mass surveillance’ that violates the fourth amendment. While this ruling does not create a binding precedent, it is one of the first times a federal judge has ruled that a Flock search is unconstitutional.

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