NAMES AND THREATS: Authorities in Fulton County, Georgia are investigating threats made against members of the grand jury that indicted former President Donald Trump and 18 other defendants for their attempts to overturn the 2020 election.

  Names of grand jurors are attached to indictments in Georgia and the names of Trump jurors have been published and threatened on right wing media. Some of those jurors have had their faces, social media profiles, and possible addresses and phone numbers shared on internet sites, in some cases with the suggestion that they should be harassed.

  Some of the names were published on Trump’s Truth Social website. One user posted some of the juror names and another urged people to make them “infamous” and to “make sure they can’t walk down the street.”

ORANGE ALERT: Lawyers for Donald Trump yesterday proposed that his federal trial on charges of illegally attempting to overturn the 2020 election should start in April … not April of next year, or 2025, but April of 2026.

  Well, as they say, there’s no harm in the asking. For the moment, Special Counsel Jack Smith wants that trial to start on January 2^nd.

  Last night Trump cancelled his promised Monday announcement that he would produce … quoting his announcement … “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia.” He has produced no evidence of fraud in nearly three years.

  Trump yesterday was lashing out at one of his biggest supporters, Fox News. On Fox & Friends, he complained that they “purposely show the absolutely worst pictures of me” and fail to broadcast flattering poll results. 

  On his Truth Social website he asked, “Why doesn’t Fox and Friends show all of the Polls where I am beating Biden, by a lot. They just won’t do it!” There is no such poll. Even Fox News has Biden up three points over Trump.

 Speculation is already beginning over who Trump might pick as a running mate in the currently likely event that he will be the Republican nominee next year. Asked by the Atlanta Journal-Constitutionwhether she might have a major role in Trump the sequel, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said, “I have a lot of things to think about. Am I going to be a part of President Trump’s Cabinet if he wins? Is it possible that I’ll be VP?”

  Greene, who claims to be a reformed believer in QAnon conspiracies, said that if Trump invites her to be his running mate it would be “an honor” and something worth “very, very heavily” considering.

PARADISE LOST: The director of Maui’s emergency services resigned yesterday, citing health reasons, a day after he defended not sounding the emergency alert sirens. Herman Andaya had said the sirens are intended for tsunamis and sounding them would have sent residents to the hills into the fires. 

  Lawyers have already filed at least four lawsuits holding Hawaiian Electric responsible for the wildfire that swept through and destroyed Lahaina on Maui.

  Early reports say that downed lines in high winds sparked grass fires that burned into tightly grouped homes and then the town center. The suits claim that the company was negligent in failure to turn off the power during periods of wind and drought, a practice common in California.

ECON 101: Thinking of buying a house? Or maybe not buying a house. Mortgage rates surged this week, rising to their highest level in 21 years.

  Mortgage rates have spiked while the Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates to drive down inflation.  

  The 30-year fixed-rate averaged 7.09 percent in the week ending yesterday, up from 6.96 percent the week before, according to data from Freddie Mac. A year ago, the 30-year fixed-rate was 5.13 percent.

THE OBIT PAGE: Paul Brodeur, whose lengthy articles in The New Yorker focused attention on such health and environmental subjects as the toxic danger of asbestos and the destructive impact of chlorofluorocarbons on the ozone layer, died earlier this month in Hyannis, Massachusetts. He was 92.

  Brodeur wrote for The New Yorker for more than 30 years, but his first article about asbestos in 1968, “The Magic Mineral,” and its connection to cancer was the bombshell.

  “There is not an automobile, airplane, train, ship, missile or engine of any sort that does not contain asbestos in some form or other, and it has found its way into literally every building, factory, home and farm across the land,” he wrote. “And, because its minuscule fibers are eminently respirable, asbestos has also found its way into the lungs of man, where, by remaining as indestructible as it does in nature, it can wreak terrible havoc.”

THE SPIN RACK: Agriculture officials say that an invasive yellow-legged hornet that preys on honeybees and other pollinators has been spotted near Savannah, Georgia. — In a terrible summer for bears in Lake Tahoe, California, 20 have been killed in vehicle collisions and 18 injured. — With wildfires closing in, Canadian authorities have told the 20,000 residents of the Northwest Territories city of Yellowknife to evacuate by noon today.

BELOW THE FOLD: While Donald Trump dominates in the polls and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is sinking, the virtually unknown Republican candidate for president, Vivek Ramaswamy, is surging. Ramaswamy, who got rich in the money business, has the support of 11 percent of Republicans. 

  He has campaigned against “woke-ism”, “climate-ism”, and “gender ideology.”

  Ramaswamy says that as president he would have the power to abolish the Education Department “on Day 1,” as part of dismantling the “administrative state.” He also wants to eradicate teachers’ unions and use the military to block fentanyl coming across the Southern border, despite the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, which prohibits the use of the military for civil law enforcement.

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