There's a secret message buried in Trump's pardons everyone seems to have missed

On Wednesday, the Justice Department announced the indictment of three militia figures affiliated with the far-right Oath Keepers group, on charges of conspiracy to obstruct Congress.

The three defendants are Jessica Marie Watkins and Donovan Ray Crowl of Champaign County, Ohio, and Thomas Caldwell of Clarke County, Virginia. They face up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

"According to the indictment, the three defendants initiated their communications and coordination in November 2020 and continued through on or about Jan. 19, 2021, when Caldwell was arrested," said the DOJ announcement. "The exchanges vary in topics from a call to action to logistics, including lodging options, coordinating calls to discuss the plan, and joining forces with other Oath Keeper chapters. On Dec. 31, 2020, Caldwell posted, 'THIS IS OUR CALL TO ACTION, FREINDS! SEE YOU ON THE 6TH IN WASHINGTON, D.C. ALONG WITH 2 MILLION OTHER LIKE-MINDED PATRIOTS.' In a subsequent post on Jan. 2, 2021, Caldwell stated, 'It begins for real Jan 5 and 6 on Washington D.C. when we mobilize in the streets. Let them try to certify some crud on capitol hill with a million or more patriots in the streets. This kettle is set to boil…'"

Allegations about Crowl released by federal officials last week following his arrest suggested he was preparing for "literal war."

The Oath Keepers are a nationwide paramilitary organization, including many retired and active military and law enforcement, which has broadly been implicated in the assault on the Capitol that left five dead.

Republican senators may continue to cower in fear of Donald Trump, but there's a mass exodus of voters from the registration rolls of their party in key swing states.

"More than 30,000 voters who had been registered members of the Republican Party have changed their voter registration in the weeks after a mob of pro-Trump supporters attacked the Capitol," reports TheHill.com.

That statistic doesn't begin to describe the depth of the party's problem, says the Hill:

"The massive wave of defections is a virtually unprecedented exodus that could spell trouble for a party that is trying to find its way after losing the presidential race and the Senate majority.

"It could also represent the tip of a much larger iceberg: The 30,000 who have left the Republican Party reside in just a few states that report voter registration data, and information about voters switching between parties, on a weekly basis.

"Voters switching parties is not unheard of, but the data show that in the first weeks of the year, far more Republicans have changed their voter registrations than Democrats. Many voters are changing their affiliation in key swing states that were at the heart of the battle for the White House and control of Congress."

Among the key states reporting voter's scattering from the GOP since the first of the year are Pennsylvania (10,000), North Carolina (6,000) and Arizona (5,000). There is some corresponding reduction in Democratic Party rolls but that number "is a fraction of Republican defectors," reports the website.

It's possible that something about sedition and insurrection isn't sitting so well with at least a slice of GOP voters. Here's what Michael McDonald, a voting and elections expert at the University of Florida, told The Hill about the unusual amount of recent activity in voter registration moves:

"McDonald said those who would take the proactive step to change their registration are likely to be well-informed voters who both follow the news and are aware of the process by which they would change their actual registration.

"These people who are doing this activity, they are likely very sophisticated voters. They're highly participatory, most likely," he said. "If you're sophisticated enough to change your party registration, you're somebody who's likely to vote."

The exodus comes at a time the Republican Party is plagued with a widening civil war over Trump. Politico reports:

"The spate of threatened primary challenges ripping the party apart are uniformly about loyalty to Trump. The state-level intra-party spats that have made headlines in Arizona, Kentucky and Oregon are not about raising up the best political strategists to steer the local parties forward; they are about condemning Republicans who have criticized Trump. The GOP's potential 2024 aspirants are frozen in place, still being asked to respond to every scrap of Trump news and stuck in an endless cycle of political calculation about whether it's safe to unyoke themselves from him."

Here's the latest polling from Politico that illustrates the divide:

"Over half of Republican voters (56%) believe that Trump should either probably or definitely run for president again in 2024. Just over a third of Republican voters (36%) think he probably or definitely should not.

"Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters are closely split between the Republican Party and the notional Patriot Party that Trump recently floated. A third (33%) said they are more interested in being a member of the Republican Party, and 30% said they would be more interested in being a member of the Patriot Party. A small share (11%) expressed interest in neither party."

You can more here from the Hill and from Politico.

Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates has warned that the world must prepare for the next pandemic as it would for war, including the investment of tens of billions of dollars each year, in a letter released Wednesday.

"We can't afford to be caught flat-footed again," wrote the Microsoft co-founder and his wife Melinda in an annual missive.

"The threat of the next pandemic will always be hanging over our heads -- unless the world takes steps to prevent it."

To avoid future destruction on the scale of that caused by Covid-19, "pandemic preparedness must be taken as seriously as we take the threat of war," Gates said.

"Stopping the next pandemic will require spending tens of billions of dollars per year -- a big investment, but remember that the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to cost the world $28 trillion," he added.

"The world needs to spend billions to save trillions (and prevent millions of deaths)."

The American, ranked the third-wealthiest person in the world by Forbes, urged rich countries to provide the bulk of the investment, pointing out that their governments stand to benefit most.

Investments in future diagnostic and vaccination technologies should be supplemented by "a global alert system, which we don't have at large scale today," allowing epidemics to be detected and responded to early, the letter said.

Gates famously sounded the alarm about the risk of global pandemics at a 2015 TED conference.

He now advocates the creation of a team of around 3,000 fully trained, professional pandemic "firefighters" available on permanent alert.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has already invested $1.75 billion to fight the coronavirus pandemic, as well as promoting and funding inoculation projects in developing countries.

© 2021 AFP