@ravchief.bsky.social
Exercising my right not to remain silent while I still can. Criminal defense and 1st Amendment attorney. Blue in red state. Cyclist. Weekly blog. Warning: could be satire. No DMs please.
I watched and listened to Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s elegantly crafted and delivered speech at Davos. It would have been appropriate but unnecessary for Mr. Carney to stand up at the end of Trump’s speech and declare, “I rest my case.”
richardvanwagoner.medium.com/speeches-at-...
25.01.2026 03:55 — 👍 15 🔁 8 💬 1 📌 0
20.01.2026 03:00 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1
18.01.2026 20:59 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
The First Amendment has Taken a Beating Nationally and Locally by Elected Officials and their Minions. First Amendment Freedoms Must Withstand the Authoritarian Onslaught. Using Them to Expose Lawlessness and Inhumanity May Be the Only Way to Combat the Administration’s Campaign Against Them.
11.01.2026 20:54 — 👍 6 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Robert Redford’s line from Spy Game, “If I’m walking into a shit storm I wanna know which way the wind’s blowing,” explains why Republicans’ held Jack Smith’s deposition behind closed doors. GOP subcommittee members quickly learned the stuff on their faces wasn’t just egg.
04.01.2026 20:39 — 👍 6 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
Cloaking political power in the robes of constitutional necessity, the Utah legislature is now angling to have its way with the judiciary by bringing courts under the supermajority’s political control. Dangerous!
richardvanwagoner.medium.com/utahs-superm...
I will consider watching 60 Minutes again so long as the segments were banned then bootlegged.
23.12.2025 02:21 — 👍 22 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Please enjoy 33 gorgeous pieces of my father's art (he died 12/25/2013). (Never a paywall.) I'm taking a short break from posting about right-wing extremism and other nonsense.
richardvanwagoner.medium.com/33-gorgeous-...
Holding anti-MAGA sentiments may put you on a secretive list of “domestic terrorists.”
Extrajudicial killings on the high seas of alleged members of what Trump has designated “foreign terrorist organizations” show us what happens to people on his lists.
You do the math.
The FIFA Peace Prize goes to the sulking child in the front row.
Bongino accidently tells the truth, blowing a hole in right-wing propaganda's cover
Lee Beamon who allegedly filmed himself having sex with hookers and had fourth wife watch them as "training films" checks all administration boxes
With the Trump administration and some of its lawyers operating at the highest levels of incompetence, dishonesty, and malevolence, many courts no longer presume regularity and are, at least implicitly, presuming the opposite, i.e., procedural irregularity, lies, deception, and pretext.
30.11.2025 21:13 — 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 1
Impeaching a judge for holding the legislature's gerrymandered map violates Utah law would confirm that the constitution, the rule of law, voting rights, and the courts are mere obstacles to overcome for Republicans in reaching their goal of holding onto power and using that power never to let go.
16.11.2025 19:45 — 👍 11 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 1
He only does best. Does America’s authoritarian need a high body count to secure his place among the world’s best dictators? The best ones have high numbers. He’s on his way to join their ranks but has some work to do.
richardvanwagoner.medium.com/people-live-...
The shooting death of Afa Ah Loo during the June 14 “No Kings” rally in SLC was preventable had the Utah Legislature refused to allow AR-15 style assault rifles at emotionally-charged events such as political rallies with thousands of protesters and counter-protesters in attendance.
Disgraceful.
You were more passionate and with a greater sense of urgency tonight than I’ve seen you before. This is my latest blog post on gerrymandering and congress abdicating its responsibilities.
richardvanwagoner.medium.com/congresss-ge...
Trump is transforming the White House’s neoclassical architecture into a style inspired by the Magpie Syndrome. A helpless Congress watches from their home districts. And Utah’s red legislature is determined to choose which voters get to elect the state’s eunuchs to serve in Trump’s royal court.
26.10.2025 17:55 — 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
The Telegram group chat portends a future Republican Party reveling in racism, antisemitism, misogyny, violence, white supremacy and nationalism, the decimation of human and civil rights, and extrajudicial killings.
I am sorry to break the news, but that future Republican Party is now. It’s here.
They stand before cameras with straight faces — except the speaker who presents with the smug smirk of pious certitude he was born with — and lie vociferously with talking points spoon fed them by White House propagandists and with as much staged conviction as their soulless eyes can muster.
13.10.2025 22:18 — 👍 7 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Utah’s congressional delegation profess the Constitution was divinely inspired and god’s plan was for people to have free will. They choose to erase their god’s handiwork, turning the Constitution into a shell where power isn’t in the people but in a tyrant to whom they have pledged their loyalty.
11.10.2025 13:29 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
The recent executive orders and speeches to the generals were unabashed incitements to political violence against Americans to suppress lawful dissent in his campaign to accumulate power.
He expects military top brass to devote loyalty to him over their sworn oaths to the Constitution. Will they?
Trump declared negative coverage of him is now illegal with no 1st Amendment protection: “When 97 percent of the stories are bad about a person, it’s no longer free speech.”
Some might say the media’s reporting of Trump, according to his own assessment, was nearly perfect — off by only 3 percent.
Dear Gov. Cox:
Your description of the assassination fairly characterizes DJT's murder of “the American experiment,” his “attack on our ideals” which “cuts to the very foundation of who we are, of who we have been, and who we could be in better times.”
richardvanwagoner.medium.com/dear-utah-go...
The message it sends to the international community is that the United States is not a country that can be trusted, is not a country of laws, does not honor or respect its treaties and alliances, does not respect constitutional due process, and has zero regard for human or civil rights.
07.09.2025 19:31 — 👍 14 🔁 6 💬 1 📌 0
The U.S. senate knowingly placed world-class agencies dedicated to life-saving research in the hands of a wildly dangerous conspiracy theorist, a medical charlatan, a fraud who used his family name and dynasty to make millions off quackery, threatening the lives, health, and safety of Americans.
01.09.2025 20:45 — 👍 9 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0
