The Parliamentarian is tasked with issuing rulings to determine which provisions of the bill are subject to the “Byrd rule” and thus not eligible to be passed by simple majority using the reconciliation process. However, Thune and the Senate Republican majority recently took steps to override the Parliamentarian’s guidance on the Congressional Review Act, another fast-track legislative mechanism, to pass a measure by simple majority that otherwise would have required 60 votes.

“While the signatories to this letter have a range of views on the ongoing utility of the Senate filibuster, there is a unifying principle upon which we all can agree: the law as it stands must be followed,” the letter reads. “Indeed, you acknowledged as much earlier this Congress, when asked whether you would advise against moving to override the Senate Parliamentarian’s determinations under Byrd, stating, ‘[T]hat’s totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can’t go there. People need to understand that.’ This public stance would be heartening, had you not made similar assurances on maintaining the integrity of CRA process and followed them up by improperly extending that Act’s expedited procedures to the disapproval of any executive branch action, forging a primrose path around the filibuster in the process. Such depredations on law, precedent, and the institution of the Senate must end.”

“The Senate majority has already demonstrated it is willing to follow or ignore the rules based entirely on their preferences. But lives hang in the balance depending on the outcome of this bill, and it would be inexcusable for the majority to again burn the rulebook in the service of the destructive Trump agenda,” added Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen.

“The leadership in the Senate is heading down a dangerous path of ignoring the rules to get what it wants. If the Senate majority disregards the existing rules again for its massive tax bill, that would do incalculable damage to law, precedent, and the institution of the Senate,” added Kyle Jones, director of federal affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Federal and state officials in Minnesota have announced murder and stalking charges against Vance Boelter, the man accused of assassinating Democratic state lawmaker Melissa Hortman and her husband in their home, as well as for shooting state Senator John Hoffman and his wife. Authorities say Boelter visited the homes of two other lawmakers on the night of the killings and had a hit list that included Planned Parenthood centers and the names of more Democratic politicians. One of the names on that list was Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison, who joins Democracy Now! to discuss how the shootings have shaken his state, the risk of spreading political violence, and his own friendship with Hortman. “Right up until we lost her, she was fiercely fighting for people,” says Ellison, who faults President Trump for exacerbating political tensions. “We must stop political violence.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Republicans are stealing health care from 13.7 million Americans to give trillions in tax handouts to billionaires.

House Budget Committee Republicans only voted against this plan because they want to make it even crueler. Make no mistake, Republicans still plan to bring it to the House floor next week.

Their plan will kill people. It will close hospitals, especially those in rural areas and inner cities, across the country. It will also close nursing homes, since Medicaid pays for over 60 percent of nursing home care.

The ripple effect of these cuts will hit every single person in this country. The hospital closest to you may close. If not, it will become more overburdened as uninsured people are forced to use the emergency room for care.

Unless you are a billionaire, your standard of living and your health care will get worse if this despicable plan becomes law.”

Further reading: Republicans Plan to Rip Medicaid Away from Millions of Seniors — All to Give Tax Cuts to Billionaires

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Israel is in a weak position and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s extremism knows no bounds. The only other way around an eventual regional war is the ousting of the Israeli prime minister.

US President Donald Trump has closed his line of communication with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to various reports citing officials.

This comes amid alleged growing pressure on Israel regarding Gaza and the abrupt halt to American operations against Ansarallah in Yemen. So, is this all an act or is the US finally pressuring Israel?

• READ MORE: Israeli protesters in Tel Aviv demand an end to war on Gaza
• Other Israeli war on Gaza reports

On May 1, news broke that President Donald Trump had suddenly ousted his national security advisor Mike Waltz. According to a Washington Post article on the issue, the ouster was in part a response to Waltz’s undermining of the President, for having engaged in intense coordination with Israeli PM Netanyahu regarding the issue of attacking Iran prior to the Israeli Premier’s visit to the Oval Office.

Some analysts, considering that Waltz has been pushing for a war on Iran, argued that his ouster was a signal that the Trump administration’s pro-diplomacy voices were pushing back against the hawks.

This shift also came at a time when Iran-US talks had stalled, largely thanks to a pressure campaign from the Israel Lobby, leading US think tanks and Israeli officials like Ron Dermer.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere, Trump publicly announced the end to a campaign designed to destroy/degrade Yemen’s Ansarallah-led government in Sana’a on May 6.

Israeli leadership shocked
According to Israeli media, citing government sources, the leadership in Tel Aviv was shocked by the move to end operations against Yemen, essentially leaving the Israelis to deal with Ansarallah alone.

After this, more information began to leak, originating from the Israeli Hebrew-language media, claiming that the Trump administration was demanding Israel reach an agreement for aid to be delivered to Gaza, in addition to signing a ceasefire agreement.

The other major claim is that President Trump has grown so frustrated with Netanyahu that he has cut communication with him directly.

Although neither side has officially clarified details on the reported rift between the two sides, a few days ago the Israeli prime minister released a social media video claiming that he would act alone to defend Israel.

On Friday morning, another update came in that American Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth would be cancelling his planned visit to Tel Aviv.

Can Trump and Netanyahu remake the Middle East?       Video: Palestine Chronicle

Is the US finally standing up to Israel?
In order to assess this issue correctly, we have to place all of the above-mentioned developments into their proper context.

The issue must also be prefaced on the fact that every member of the Trump government is pro-Israeli to the hilt and has received significant backing from the Israel Lobby.

Mike Waltz was indeed fired and according to leaked AIPAC audio revealed by The Grayzone, he was somewhat groomed for a role in government by the pro-Israel Lobby for a long time.

Another revelation regarding Waltz, aside from him allegedly coordinating with Netanyahu behind Trump’s back and adding journalist Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat, was that he was storing his chats on an Israeli-owned app.

Yet, Waltz was not booted out of the government like John Bolton was during Trump’s first term in office, he has instead been designated as UN ambassador to the United Nations.

The UN ambassador position was supposed to be handed to Elise Stefanik, a radically vocal supporter of Israel who helped lead the charge in cracking down on pro-Palestine free speech on university campuses. Stefanik’s nomination was withdrawn in order to maintain the Republican majority in the Congress.

If Trump was truly seeking to push back against the Israel Lobby’s push to collapse negotiations with Iran, then why did Trump signal around a week ago that new sanctions packages were on the way?

He announced on Friday that a third independent Chinese refiner would be hit with secondary sanctions for receiving Iranian oil.

Israeli demands in Trump’s rhetoric
The sanctions, on top of the fact that his negotiating team have continuously attempted to add conditions the the talks, viewed in Tehran as non-starters, indicates that precisely what pro-Israel think tanks like WINEP and FDD have been demanding is working its way into not only the negotiating team, but coming out in Trump’s own rhetoric.

There is certainly an argument to make here, that there is a significant split within the pro-Israel Lobby in the US, which is now working its way into the Trump administration, yet it is important to note that the Trump campaign itself was bankrolled by Zionist billionaires and tech moguls.

Miriam Adelson, Israel’s richest billionaire, was his largest donor. Adelson also happens to own Israel Hayom, the most widely distributed newspaper in Israel that has historically been pro-Netanyahu, it is now also reporting on the Trump-Netanyahu split and feeding into the speculations.

As for the US operations against Yemen, the US has used the attack on Ansarallah as the perfect excuse to move a large number of military assets to the region.

This has included air defence systems to the Gulf States and most importantly to Israel.

After claiming back in March to have already “decimated” Ansarallah, the Trump administration spent way in excess of US$1 billion dollars (more accurately over US$2 billion) and understood that the only way forward was a ground operation.

Meanwhile, the US has also moved military assets to the Mediterranean and is directly involved in intensive reconnaissance over Lebanese airspace, attempting to collect information on Hezbollah.

An Iran attack imminent?
While it is almost impossible to know whether the media theatrics regarding the reported Trump-Netanyahu split are entirely true, or if it is simply a good-cop bad-cop strategy, it appears that some kind of assault on Iran could be imminent.

Whether Benjamin Netanyahu is going to order an attack on Iran out of desperation or as part of a carefully choreographed plan, the US will certainly involve itself in any such assault on one level or another.

The Israeli prime minister has painted himself into a corner. In order to save his political coalition, he collapsed the Gaza ceasefire during March and managed to bring back his Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir to his coalition.

This enabled him to successfully take on his own Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, in an ongoing purge of his opposition.

However, due to a lack of manpower and inability to launch any major ground operation against Gaza, without severely undermining Israeli security on other fronts, Netanyahu decided to adopt a strategy of starving the people of Gaza instead.

He now threatens a major ground offensive, yet it is hard to see what impact it would have beyond an accelerated mass murder of civilians.

The Israeli prime minister’s mistake was choosing the blocking of all aid into Gaza as the rightwing hill to die on, which has been deeply internalised by his extreme Religious Zionism coalition partners, who now threaten his government’s stability if any aid enters the besieged territory.

Netanyahu in a difficult position
This has put Netanyahu in a very difficult position, as the European Union, UK and US are all fearing the backlash that mass famine will bring and are now pushing Tel Aviv to allow in some aid.

Amidst this, Netanyahu made another commitment to the Druze community that he would intervene on their behalf in Syria.

While Syria’s leadership are signaling their intent to normalise ties and according to a recent report by Yedioth Ahronoth, participated in “direct” negotiations with Israel regarding “security issues”, there is no current threat from Damascus.

However, if tensions escalate in Syria with the Druze minority in the south, failure to fulfill pledges could cause major issues with Israeli Druze, who perform crucial roles in the Israeli military.

Internally, Israel is deeply divided, economically under great pressure and the overall instability could quickly translate to a larger range of issues.

Then we have the Lebanon front, where Hezbollah sits poised to pounce on an opportunity to land a blow in order to expel Israel from their country and avenge the killing of its Secretary General Seyyed Hassan Nasrallah.

Trigger a ‘doomsday option’?
Meanwhile in Gaza, if Israel is going to try and starve everyone to death, this could easily trigger what can only be called the “doomsday option” from Hamas and other groups there. Nobody is about to sit around and watch their people starve to death.

As for Yemen’s Ansarallah, it is clear that there was no way without a massive ground offensive that the movement was going to stop firing missiles and drones at Israel.

What we have here is a situation in which Israel finds itself incapable of defeating any of its enemies, as all of them have now been radicalised due to the mass murder inflicted upon their populations.

In other words, Israel is not capable of victory on any front and needs a way out.

The leader of the opposition to Israel in the region is perceived to be Iran, as it is the most powerful, which is why a conflict with it is so desired. Yet, Tehran is incredibly powerful and the US is incapable of defeating it with conventional weapons, therefore, a full-scale war is the equivalent to committing regional suicide.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

House Republicans appear to be backing off some, but not all, of the steep reductions to the Medicaid program as part of their big tax breaks bill, as they run into resistance from more centrist GOP lawmakers opposed to ending nearly-free health care coverage for their constituents back home.

This is as a new report out Wednesday from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that millions of Americans would lose Medicaid coverage under the various proposals being circulated by Republicans as cost-saving measures. House Republicans are scrounging to come up with as much as $1.5 trillion in cuts across federal government health, food stamp and other programs, to offset the revenue lost for some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks.

“Under each of those options, Medicaid enrollment would decrease and the number of people without health insurance would increase,” the CBO report said.

The Republican President Donald Trump presented to Congress on May 2 his proposed federal budget for 2026.

On May 2nd the U.S. White House — which has made clear that it’s beating the drums for war against China — headlined “Office of Management and Budget Releases the President’s Fiscal Year 2026 Skinny Budget” and reported that “The Budget, which reduces non-defense discretionary by $163 billion or 23 percent from the 2025 enacted level, guts a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security. … Defense spending would increase by 13 percent, and appropriations for the Department of Homeland Security would increase by nearly 65 percent, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources they need to complete the mission.” His budget “guts a weaponized deep state while providing historic increases for defense and border security,” and health care for the poor is part of that “weaponized deep state” he is referring to, which Republicans say must be cut in order to provide these “historic increases for defense and border security.”

All of those increases would go towards paying the suppliers (such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, etc.) to the enormously militarized police-state, at the very same time that the health, education, and welfare, of the voters, will be reduced by $165 billion or 23% below the current level.

Here are some more details regarding what that “weaponized deep state” (to use the White House’s phrase for it) consists of:

The White House’s May 2 “Major Discretionary Funding Changes” says that:

For Defense spending [ONLY the Defense Department, NOT including the approximately $700 billion yearly of annual U.S. military spending that is being paid out from OTHER federal Departments], the President proposes an increase of 13 percent to $1.01 trillion for FY 2026; for Homeland Security, the Budget commits a historic $175 billion investment to, at long last, fully secure our border. Under the proposal, a portion of these increases — at least $325 billion assumed in the budget resolution recently agreed to by the Congress — would be provided through reconciliation, to ensure that our military and other agencies repelling the invasion of our border have the resources needed to complete the mission. This mandatory supplement to discretionary spending would enable the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security, among others, to clean up the mess President Trump inherited from the prior administration and harden the border and other defenses to protect America from foreign invasion.

Therefore, approximately $1.7T of total military spending is being sought by Trump (including the 13% increase to the Defense Department), while he is proposing to cut all other discretionary spending (which had previously constituted the other 47% of all U.S. Government annually appropriated federal spending (and which was previously around $800B per year) to be cut down now by $165B to around $635B total, or about 37% of all annually appropriated federal spending. Only the +13% for the Pentagon, and the +65% for the Department of Homeland Security, are increased, while everything else is getting cut drastically in order to make those increases possible.

So, while around $1.7T will be going to the military, only around $635B will be going to pay all of the other discretionary spending (including any non-military portion of the DHS). That will cut the percentage of the Government’s discretionary spending on non-military purposes down from its prior approximately 47% of the federal budget, down to approximately 37% of all of the Government’s discretionary spending.

Medicaid — health care to the poor — is on their chopping block so that the Defense Department portion of that $1.7T military cost that the U.S. Government will be paying in 2026 will be increased by 13% (and so that any non-military portion of the 65% increase to the DHS will also be paid).

Looking further at WHAT is being cut the most, the White House document shows that the only part of the Department of Education that will be increased — by $60 million — is “Charter Schools,” the part that privatizes public-school education, which is the part that billionaires want to increase (since their hedge funds etc. will be owning much of it). Meanwhile, Title 1 and K-12 federal spending will be reduced by $4.535 billion; and the program to incentivize colleges to “to engage with low-income students and increase access” will be cut by $1.579 B.

The Department of Health and Human Services will cut $4.035 from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP), $1.970B from the Refugee and Unaccompanied Alien Children Program, $1.732B from AIDS and financial-assistance health programs, $3.588B from CDC and Prevention programs, $17.965B from NIH, $1.065B from programs working with addicts to help them reduce their addictions.

The Environmental Protection Agency will be cut $2.460B for Clean and Drinking Water State Revolving Loan Funds, and under a billion dollars each for such programs as the Hazardous Substance Superfund.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development will be cut by $26.718B that goes to programs for the poor.

The Treasury Department will be cut by $2.488B for the IRS.

The National Science Foundation will be cut by $3.479B and by an additional $1.130B for “Broadening Participation.”

Most of the other cuts will be below a billion dollars.

Are these massive reallocations away from programs to the needy (and from some other areas such as scientific research), into instead the military and border security, reflections of the public’s will in a democracy?

On February 26, I reported that:

On February 14, the AP headlined “Where US adults think the government is spending too much, according to AP-NORC polling,” and listed in rank-order according to the opposite (“spending too little”) the following 8 Government functions: 1. Social Security; 2. Medicare; 3. Education; 4. Assistance to the poor; 5. Medicaid; 6. Border security; 7. Federal law enforcement; 8. The Military. That’s right: the American public (and by an overwhelming margin) are THE LEAST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on the military, and the MOST SUPPORTIVE of spending more money on Social Security, Medicare, Education, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid (the five functions the Republican Party has always been the most vocal to call “waste, fraud, and abuse” and try to cut). Meanwhile, The Military, which actually receives 53% (and in the latest year far more than that) of the money that the Congress allocates each year and gets signed into law by the President, keeps getting, each year, over 50% of the annually appropriated federal funds.

An important point to be made here is that both #s 4&5, Assistance to the poor, and Medicaid, are “discretionary federal spending” (i.e., controlled by the annual appropriations that get voted into law each year), whereas #s 1&2 (Social Security and Medicare) are “mandatory federal spending” (i.e., NOT controlled by Congress and the President). So, Trump and the Republicans are going after the poor because they CAN; they can’t (at least as-of YET) reduce or eliminate Social Security and Medicare. However, by now, it is crystal clear that Trump’s Presidency will be an enormous boon to America’s billionaires, and an enormous bane to the nation’s poor. The aristocratic ideology has always been: to get rid of poverty, we must get rid of the poor — work them so hard they will go away (let them seek ‘refugee’ status SOMEWHERE ELSE).

Trump is increasing the military and border security, and decreasing education, assistance to the poor, Medicaid, federal law enforcement, and even Social Security and Medicare (the latter two by laying off many of the people who staff those bureaucracies).

Therefore, the Republicans’ effort to cut health care to the poor is merely a part of their overall effort to cut Governmental help to the nation’s poor; and all of this is being done in order to increase federal purchases of armaments from corporations such as Lockheed Martin, who make all or most of their profits only by selling to the U.S. Government and to its allied Governments.

However, on many levels, the greatest amount of “waste, fraud, and abuse,” and sheer corruption, is actually in the only federal Department that has never been audited: the Defense Department. This means that Republicans are reallocating from the neediest to the greediest. (NOTE: I have equal contempt for both of America’s political Parties, but this reallocation is specifically a Republican specialty. So, this isn’t merely a matter of opinion. It is a historical fact.)

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Eric Zuesse.

“Elon Musk and Donald Trump, with the quiet help of Frank Bisignano, have spent the last few months taking a chainsaw to Social Security. This vote was an opportunity for the Senate to reject the decimation of Social Security, and demand that Trump nominate a commissioner who will stop the bleeding. Instead, every Senate Republican just signed off on the DOGE destruction of Social Security.

Bisignano has zero Social Security expertise or experience. But this self-described “DOGE person” is a Wall Street CEO with a long history of slashing the companies he runs to the bone, including massive layoffs.

He is also a liar. He claims he was not involved in all the chaotic and destructive changes at the Social Security Administration: the hollowing out of the agency, the stealing of our most sensitive data, the harmful and poorly rolled out policy changes, their sudden reversals, and more. However, there are well over a dozen long-serving civil servants, identified by a brave whistleblower, who can validate that he is lying.

With Bisignano’s increased power as a confirmed Commissioner, he will accelerate the destruction of our Social Security system. One ray of hope is that the DOGE henchmen running Social Security have reversed course on some of the biggest cuts in the face of massive public outrage. They know how popular Social Security is with voters of all parties.

Together, we can save Social Security from Trump, Musk, and Bisignano. It’s going to take millions of people in the street raising our voices together, saying hands off our Social Security.”

Last night, lawmakers, Social Security beneficiaries, and advocates held a rally at the Senate swamp opposing Bisignano. The full rally, along with shorter clips, can be viewed here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Sensing the offense of counterrevolutionary forces, the pro-republican protest, organized under the Socialist Front, an alliance of the four opposition left parties, aimed to counter what they call reactionary and regressive forces. While the republican demonstration remained peaceful, the monarchists turned violent, vandalizing public and private property and attacking security personnel. In the aftermath, two people lost their lives, and several were injured.

The violent pro-monarchy demonstration sparked intense debate. Republicans claim the monarchists attempted to create chaos and exploit the crisis while the government also accused them of inciting violence. The monarchists, however, argue they faced suppression from the police.

Pro-monarchy protestors turn violent in Tinkune and Kathmandu. Source: Online People’s News

Recognising the impact of March 28 protests, inside and outside Nepal, the monarchists are planning nationwide protests and have already formed a joint coordination committee. Meanwhile, after the monarchists vandalised the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Socialist) [CPN (US)] headquarters and damaged properties, the Socialist Front has committed to defend the achievements of the peaceful People’s Movement of 2006, which abolished monarchy and paved the way for a socialism-oriented constitution. Uncertainty remains, but two things are evident: Monarchists are uniting and mobilising aggressively, while republican forces remain firm. This could strengthen left unity, though questions persist about division within the largest parties, the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist–Leninist) [CPN (UML)]) and Nepali Congress (NC) on republicanism.

NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba may support the Republic, but it is an open secret that many others within his party favour Hindu nationalism and monarchy, and oppose the federal structure of Nepal. There many who question the ruling CPN (UML) asking if its top leadership is pro-monarchy, even while acknowledging that majority oppose the monarchy within the party. The fourth-largest party, the independent Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), and Kathmandu’s mayor, rapper Balen Shah, are exploiting the situation to challenge traditional parties and the current political system. There are reports that the monarchists are backed by Indian forces – the ruling regime, the Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh’s (RSS) active role in Nepal, and the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath – who are supporting financially, politically, and even militarily. The republicans struggle in Nepal for defending constitutional democracy will not be that easy.

Mekha Limbu(Nepal), We are on the way to death, 2012.

Historical Context and Dialectics

Nepal’s unpredictable politics cannot be understood without historical, dialectical, and global perspectives. Its geopolitical location, India-China rivalry, Hindu fundamentalism, US influence, and EU interests, the recent populist tendencies, etc. have turned Nepal into a battleground for power struggles. When leftist coalitions emerge to govern the country India in alliance with the US and right-wing forces, works to weaken them. Internal party rifts further destabilize the government. Therefore, it may be seen that all the forces within the nation and outside, will unite to weaken Nepali state and create further crisis.

Political instability has been a great challenge of Nepalese democracy. Nepal’s political instability is evident in its frequent government changes – 32 since multiparty democracy was restored in 1990, and 13 since Nepal became a republic in 2008. The current government that ruling Nepal is the 14th.

On top political instability, the republicans in Nepal underestimated the monarchy’s revival. Even leftist forces overlooked the resurgence of counterrevolutionary elements. Some self-proclaimed theoreticians focused solely on comprador bourgeoisie as the enemy of Nepal’s working class while ignoring conservatives, reactionaries, and fundamentalists. As previously noted, after overthrowing the monarchy, there was no significant effort to transform production relations in Nepal and create alternative cultural structures, leaving ample space for people to aspire for the monarchy’s return.

Mass media and social media blame top leaders Deuba, K. P. Sharma Oli, and Prachanda, who have collectively ruled for decades, for the crises. Deuba has been prime minister six times, Oli four, and Prachanda three. Other former PMs still lead parties and remain active. These aging leaders have dominated Nepal’s politics for 30 years. However, deeper systemic issues are more influential than people or parties.

Socialist Front rallies at Bhrikuti Mandap. Source: Online People’s News

Why Is This Happening in Nepal?

A.) Political Instability and Systemic Crisis

Nepal faces severe political instability, deep inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, weak industrialisation, mass migration, poverty, food insecurity, and rising debt. Climate crises and disasters add to these challenges. Various forces exploit these crises for their interests. Government changes bring only new rulers, not solutions. People are increasingly frustrated with political parties and the system itself. The 2015 Constitution of Nepal, which established a federal democratic republic, is under threat. Federalism is criticised, republicanism is questioned, and neo-fascism and populism are on the rise. Pro-monarchist forces are capitalising on this turmoil. While most acknowledge Nepal’s problems, reactionary forces blame political parties and the republican system itself. They falsely claim that restoring monarchy, re-establishing a Hindu state, and ending federalism as the solutions. It is prudent to note that many of these groups receive political and financial support from Hindutva-aligned conservatives.

B.) Failure of the Government to Deliver
The current government holds a two-thirds majority, with two parties who have been historically rivals uniting. Its failure to govern effectively is seen as proof that Nepal’s political system itself is failing. This perception fuels calls for alternative governance models, including a return to monarchy.

C.) Corruption, Bad Governance, and Impunity

Recent scandals—such as the Gold Scam, Bhutanese Refugee Scam, and Giri Bandhu Tea Estate Scam—have exposed massive corruption within the state. People now believe that no political leader is clean, as all have been in power at some point. Lack of rule of law, poor governance, and impunity for corrupt leaders have enraged the public. The perception that all top leaders are involved in scandals has made accountability almost impossible.

D.) Public Frustration and Growing Anti-Establishment Sentiment

Government failure, rising unemployment, and foreign labour migration have fuelled widespread frustration. Reactionary and populist forces frame their movements as a revolt against the political establishment. This anti-establishment sentiment explains the rise of figures like Durga Prasai and Kathmandu Mayor Balen Shah. Shah’s election was largely due to public anger toward traditional parties. People are increasingly rejecting established political structures, creating space for monarchists and other challengers.

Shashi Bikram Shah(Nepal), Royal Massacre Series, 2001.

E.) Lack of Development Agendas and Weak Leadership

Nepali leaders lack a vision for national development. They show little concern for public suffering, employment opportunities, or economic growth. Instead, they are focused on power, corruption, and alliances with corporate and comprador elites. Leadership incompetence is another major issue. Most leaders have failed to demonstrate effective governance. Though they may be politically experienced, they lack the ability to transform Nepal’s economy and society.

F.) Weakening of the State and Attacks on the Left

There is lot of ideological degeneration in Nepal’s Left movements as they are heavily infiltrated by conservatives. Also, political revisionism has made the Left on the whole indistinguishable from the bourgeois parties. Many leftists have abandoned class struggle, allowing right-wing forces to gain ground. Anti-communist elements are actively working to defame Nepal’s left, weakening national sovereignty and progress. A corrupt judiciary and penetrated bureaucracy further ensure that genuine reformers are isolated or sidelined. Crime networks and muscle power dominate the political scene, making systemic change difficult.

Amid this crisis, pro-monarchy conservatives and reactionaries are exploiting public frustration. While systemic failures are widely acknowledged, these groups falsely present monarchy, Hindu nationalism, and the abolition of federalism as solutions. Many suspect these efforts are backed by right-wing Hindutva groups.

Major political parties’ failure to offer a development agenda has left a vacuum that reactionary forces are filling. The 2015 Constitution, which established Nepal as a federal democratic republic, now faces threats from both political actors and street movements. Federalism is under scrutiny, republicanism is questioned, and neo-fascist and populist movements are growing.

Urgent responses from the government and political parties are necessary. Nepal’s crisis is deeply systemic, with instability and foreign interference fuelling continued failure. Without addressing corruption, delivering reforms, and safeguarding democratic institutions, Nepal risks further regression. The world watches as one of the youngest republics struggles to navigate this precarious moment.

First published at Tricontinental Asia.

The post Challenges to Nepal’s Republican Structure from Monarchists and Why? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Pramesh Pokharel.

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• Senate to vote Saturday on Republican budget measure, Dems plan amendments against “bailout for billionaires”
• Thousands expected to join Saturday march on Washington against Trump agenda, other rallies in Oakland, San Francisco and across nation
• UN blasts killings of 15 medics and aid workers in Gaza, apparently shot exection-style
• Supreme Court hears challenge to South Carolina plan to block Medicaid funding for Planned Parenthood
• Myanmar earthquake amid civil war leads to calls for international action, UN calls for peace and international solidarity

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]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/04/04/senate-plans-saturday-vote-on-republican-budget-plan-thousands-expected-at-saturday-rallies-against-trump-agenda-april-4-2025/feed/ 0 523914 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/22/every-single-house-republican-voted-to-cut-medicaid-aoc-speaks-out-at-bernie-sanders-rally/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/22/every-single-house-republican-voted-to-cut-medicaid-aoc-speaks-out-at-bernie-sanders-rally/#respond Sat, 22 Mar 2025 01:24:46 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=74785cd6fd1ba65ae436fb1b2688c968
This content originally appeared on Laura Flanders & Friends and was authored by Laura Flanders & Friends.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/22/every-single-house-republican-voted-to-cut-medicaid-aoc-speaks-out-at-bernie-sanders-rally/feed/ 0 520814 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/republican-says-economic-downturn-wont-affect-working-people-his-reason-will-surprise-you/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/republican-says-economic-downturn-wont-affect-working-people-his-reason-will-surprise-you/#respond Fri, 14 Mar 2025 17:41:44 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=37efa868126091f3d386a3b82d480008
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/republican-says-economic-downturn-wont-affect-working-people-his-reason-will-surprise-you/feed/ 0 519134 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/06/democrats-say-republican-budget-cutting-plan-would-devastate-medicaid-ag-bonta-sues-trump-admin-for-6th-time-in-6-weeks-march-6-2025/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/06/democrats-say-republican-budget-cutting-plan-would-devastate-medicaid-ag-bonta-sues-trump-admin-for-6th-time-in-6-weeks-march-6-2025/#respond Thu, 06 Mar 2025 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1026a7312288595268a56ad4a075e353 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Representative Al Green censured by Congress for disrupting Trump speech, Dems sing “We Shall Overcome” as House speaker reads censure resolution
• California attorney general sues Trump administration for 6th time in 6 days, this time over $148 million cut to education grants
• Producers of Broadway musical Hamilton cancel next year’s performance at Kennedy Center,citing Trump take-over and purge of staff at the cultural center
• Democratic lawmakers say Republican budget-cutting plan would devastate Medicaid health care for millions
• World Health Organization says US aid cuts threaten decades of progress against Tuberculosis, world’s deadliest communicable disease

The post Democrats say Republican budget-cutting plan would devastate Medicaid; AG Bonta sues Trump admin for 6th time in 6 weeks – March 6, 2025 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/06/democrats-say-republican-budget-cutting-plan-would-devastate-medicaid-ag-bonta-sues-trump-admin-for-6th-time-in-6-weeks-march-6-2025/feed/ 0 517046 https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/20/democrats-lost-by-going-republican-lite-on-immigration/ https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/20/democrats-lost-by-going-republican-lite-on-immigration/#respond Mon, 20 Jan 2025 19:03:21 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=a45fff0b75d45c316d35d268ed63f814
This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by The Intercept.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2025/01/20/democrats-lost-by-going-republican-lite-on-immigration/feed/ 0 510405 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/03/republican-elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-social-security/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/03/republican-elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-social-security/#respond Tue, 03 Dec 2024 15:41:41 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/republican-elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-social-security Last night, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) wrote a blueprint for destroying Social Security. Lee’s thread was quickly amplified by Elon Musk, the richest man in the world, who Donald Trump has put in charge of slashing our earned benefits.

The following is a statement from Alex Lawson, Executive Director of Social Security Works, on the blueprint:

“For 89 years, through war and peace, boom time and bust, health and pandemics, Social Security has never missed a single payment. Compared to the risky alternatives on Wall Street, Social Security is a rock of retirement security. If billionaires like Elon Musk paid into Social Security at the same rate as the rest of us on all of their income, we could expand benefits for everyone and pay them in full forever.

This is a declaration of war against seniors, people with disabilities, and the American public. The Republicans are coming for your Social Security, which they call a ‘nightmare.’ Elon Musk’s commission is a plot to destroy our Social Security by giving it to Wall Street executives — so that you get nothing and they get everything.

We’ve seen this play again and again. When Republicans destroyed defined benefit pension plans, they claimed that the market would be able to create amazing returns for everybody. Instead, workers got pennies, while Wall Street managers got billions. That is always the plan.

We will defeat this Republican effort to steal our earned benefits. The money is ours, Mike Lee, Elon Musk, and Donald Trump. You’re not going to get a penny of it.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/12/03/republican-elon-musk-just-declared-war-on-social-security/feed/ 0 504499 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/13/south-dakotas-john-thune-elected-next-republican-senate-leader-november-13-2024/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/13/south-dakotas-john-thune-elected-next-republican-senate-leader-november-13-2024/#respond Wed, 13 Nov 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=1f174ffce54217e76c3707db85a3ba6f Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• South Dakota’s John Thune elected next Republican Senate leader.
• President-elect Donald Trump meets with President Joe Biden at White House, pledging a smooth transition.
• Senate Judiciary Committee debates gun legislation on bump stocks and conversion devices, with Chair Durbin calling the Supreme Court’s overturn of bump stock bans “wrong-headed.”
• San Jose health advocates rally at city hall, urge HCA Healthcare to prioritize community needs over profit in Good Samaritan expansion.
• Ahead of planned strike, UCSF healthcare and technical workers hold picket sign party, citing unfair labor practices.

(U.S. Senator John Thune speaking with attendees at the Republican Jewish Coalition’s 2023 Annual Leadership Summit at the Venetian Convention & Expo Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. / Gage Skidmore, flikr)

The post South Dakota’s John Thune elected next Republican Senate leader – November 13, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/13/south-dakotas-john-thune-elected-next-republican-senate-leader-november-13-2024/feed/ 0 501797 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/05/republican-kimberlyn-king-hinds-wins-delegate-race-in-cnmi/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/05/republican-kimberlyn-king-hinds-wins-delegate-race-in-cnmi/#respond Tue, 05 Nov 2024 23:28:34 +0000 https://asiapacificreport.nz/?p=106473 By Mark Rabago, RNZ Pacific Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas correspondent

Kimberlyn King-Hind, from the CNMI Republican Party, won the race for the CNMI’s lone non-voting delegate in the US House of Representatives on Tuesday.

The delegate position was one of 61 races up for grabs in the 2024 CNMI general elections.

The former Commonwealth Ports Authority chairwoman and lawyer from Tinian received 4931 votes (40.34 percent) of total ballots cast.

• READ MORE:  How the US election may affect Pacific Island nations
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• View the complete CNMI results

Democratic Party of the Northern Mariana Islands’ candidate Edwin Propst finished second, 864 votes behind with 4067 (33.27 percent).

Independent candidates John Oliver Gonzales, James Rayphand, and Liana Hofschneider gained 2282, 665, and 280 votes, respectively.

Even before the results of the 2024 general elections were certified about 5.20am on Wednesday, Propst conceded defeat and congratulated King-Hinds in a social media post.

“Congratulations to Kim King-Hinds, delegate-elect. I wish you the very best,” he wrote.

“To my amazing committee, I cannot thank you enough for your hard work and support. To our supporters, thank you for your votes, messages of support, donations, and kindness. To Daisy and Kiana, Devin, Kaden, and Logan, I love you more than anything in this world. Thank you for always being there for me,” he added.

Other electoral results
In other races, Senate President Edith DeLeon Guerrero, who ran as an independent, lost her Saipan seat to Representative Manny Castro of the Democratic Party, as the latter took 52.89 percent of the votes (5178) compared to the former’s 43 percent (4210).

For Tinian, incumbent Senator Karl King-Nabors of the GOP ran unopposed and was elected in by 803 voters.

Incumbent and longtime Senator Paul Manglona, meanwhile, lost his Senate post to fellow independent Ronnie Mendiola Calvo, 476-441.

There was not much shakeup in the House of Representatives races, as only incumbent Vicente Camacho, a Democrat, among the incumbents lost his seat. Newcomers in the incoming lower house include Elias Rangamar, Daniel Aquino, and Raymond Palacios — all independents.

Associate Judge Teresita Kim-Tenorio was also retained, receiving 9909 “yes” votes (84.21 percent) compared to 1858 (15.79 percent) “no” votes.

The US territory also elected members of the CNMI Board of Education and councillors for the municipal councils for Saipan, the Northern Islands, Tinian, and Rota.

This article is republished under a community partnership agreement with RNZ.

This content originally appeared on Asia Pacific Report and was authored by APR editor.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/11/05/republican-kimberlyn-king-hinds-wins-delegate-race-in-cnmi/feed/ 0 500597 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/08/republican-victory-in-2024-could-escalate-mass-incarceration/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/08/republican-victory-in-2024-could-escalate-mass-incarceration/#respond Tue, 08 Oct 2024 22:10:24 +0000 https://progressive.org/latest/republican-victory-in-2024-could-escalate-mass-incarceration-lightroth-20241008/
This content originally appeared on The Progressive — A voice for peace, social justice, and the common good and was authored by Kevin Light-Roth.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/10/08/republican-victory-in-2024-could-escalate-mass-incarceration/feed/ 0 496845 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/19/republican-senator-insults-arab-american-leader-at-hearing-on-hate-crimes/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/19/republican-senator-insults-arab-american-leader-at-hearing-on-hate-crimes/#respond Thu, 19 Sep 2024 18:00:21 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=15397c72c07ba53f53f0d51a47e9003f
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/19/republican-senator-insults-arab-american-leader-at-hearing-on-hate-crimes/feed/ 0 494187 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/19/republican-senator-sparks-outrage-at-hate-crimes-hearing-with-racist-questioning-of-arab-leader/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/19/republican-senator-sparks-outrage-at-hate-crimes-hearing-with-racist-questioning-of-arab-leader/#respond Thu, 19 Sep 2024 14:59:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=8f33f223f2c4d86a54b1af88bc2d29f9
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/19/republican-senator-sparks-outrage-at-hate-crimes-hearing-with-racist-questioning-of-arab-leader/feed/ 0 494149 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/17/house-republican-leadership-is-letting-maga-extremists-risk-a-shutdown/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/17/house-republican-leadership-is-letting-maga-extremists-risk-a-shutdown/#respond Tue, 17 Sep 2024 20:11:49 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/house-republican-leadership-is-letting-maga-extremists-risk-a-shutdown House Republicans are expected to vote Wednesday on a government funding extension through March 2025 that includes a harmful poison pill, the SAVE Act, and allows key programs to expire – harming public health, farmworkers, and border security. Lisa Gilbert, co-president of Public Citizen and co-chair of the Clean Budget Coalition, released the following statement:

“After weeks of internal chaos, House Republicans are no closer to a funding extension that can pass both chambers and win approval from the White House. With each passing day, House Republicans are bringing us closer to a costly, disruptive, and painful government shutdown that nobody in either party wants, especially not weeks before a high-stakes election. This is no way to govern.

“Speaker Johnson is letting MAGA extremists call the shots and sabotage the CR with a culture war poison pill that cannot become law. The SAVE Act is the ultimate poison pill, a destructive piece of policy that pretends we have a problem of non-citizens voting in this nation. This premise is categorically untrue.

“A clean CR is the only way forward. That was true weeks ago, true today, and will still be true if Congress breaches the September 30th funding deadline. The only question is how long it will take for Speaker Johnson to stand up to the MAGA extremists in his ranks and join the rest of the country – including Senate Republicans – in support of a clean, bipartisan bill.”

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/17/house-republican-leadership-is-letting-maga-extremists-risk-a-shutdown/feed/ 0 494139 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/05/georgia-school-shooting-follows-republican-efforts-to-loosen-gun-laws/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/05/georgia-school-shooting-follows-republican-efforts-to-loosen-gun-laws/#respond Thu, 05 Sep 2024 15:49:02 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=2df123aeef9576588908f11592ad77ee
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/09/05/georgia-school-shooting-follows-republican-efforts-to-loosen-gun-laws/feed/ 0 491973 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/why-we-investigated-matthew-trewhella-the-far-right-wisconsin-pastor-influencing-republican-politics/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/why-we-investigated-matthew-trewhella-the-far-right-wisconsin-pastor-influencing-republican-politics/#respond Fri, 02 Aug 2024 09:00:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/investigating-matthew-trewhella-wisconsin-pastor by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

In the fall of 2022, Phoebe Petrovic, an investigative reporter at Wisconsin Watch and a member of ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network, noticed a pastor and his church appearing in local news coverage for their anti-LGBTQ+ protests. Looking closer revealed Pastor Matthew Trewhella’s startling history. And digging even deeper, she noticed an untold story: his broader influence on modern Republican politics. His rise helps illustrate the growing power of the Christian right in the Republican party. Here, Petrovic describes how she reported the story and what she learned.

What were the key takeaways from your reporting?

• A few decades ago, Trewhella was known as a militant anti-abortion activist. Today, he’s got a different reputation: thought leader on the far right, increasingly welcomed by Republicans.
• Trewhella helped to rehabilitate his reputation through his 2013 self-published book, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which uses a 16th-century Protestant doctrine to argue that government officials have a God-given right and duty to defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” under “the law of God.”
• He’s preached this doctrine to county Republican parties and local groups across the country, even to the National Sheriffs’ Association, a preeminent law enforcement organization.
• His book has influenced Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions. At least 10 measures across the country refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” for him.
• A prominent booster of debunked election conspiracy claims is using Trewhella’s book to disrupt future elections.

How does Trewhella fit into the election? What does he say about his work?

• In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election, Trewhella is not rallying crowds the same way as Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes, providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and causes.
• Trewhella says that he promotes nonviolence. But after an activist killed an abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder of these doctors as “justifiable.”
• In a brief interview, I asked Trewhella about his reputational shift over the decades. He responded: “Most people will always only care about three things in life: me, myself and I. … It’s only because of their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an extremist. That’s my answer.”
• Trewhella did not respond to over a dozen attempts to set up a second interview. He did not answer written questions by email and refused a certified letter containing them.

What did experts tell you about Trewhella?

• Frederick Clarkson, a senior research analyst at Political Research Associates, which studies threats to democracy and human rights, has tracked Trewhella for decades. Clarkson said, “All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.”
• Another extremism researcher, Devin Burghart, said, “I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat, who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.” Burghart is president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, which tracks the far right.

What are some details that didn’t make it into the story?

• Trewhella has given sermons about violence, saying that pacifism is “heresy” and that “violence is a tool.” After the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, he gave a sermon titled “A Gathering of Patriots” in which he said, “Tyrants must be confronted with force or violence at times because that is the only way to defeat them and to cause their harm and their injustice to others to stop.”
• Timothy Bachleitner, a member of Trewhella’s church, is the chair of the Republican Party of Fond du Lac County. Reached by phone, Bachleitner said he received Trewhella’s blessing before seeking the position and that he has brought the doctrine of the lesser magistrates into his role.
• Trewhella is focused on counties. He organized a conference called “County before Country” with the goal of “expanding God’s Kingdom through Christian localism.”

This story took a lot of research. What else do you want to share about this subject?

Some Republican operatives in Wisconsin questioned why we were doing this story. They said Trewhella was old news from the ’90s. That’s not what our reporting showed. We found him cited by county commissioners, state lawmakers and former Trump administration officials, all in the past several years. In my home state of Wisconsin, the Republican Party of Waukesha County, the heart of the state’s Republican politics, has invited Trewhella to speak twice and promotes his teachings and book on its website, although its leaders downplayed the link when asked for comment.

“I just can’t imagine that they’d support this person,” said Bill Kruziki, a Republican former sheriff in Waukesha County, Wisconsin. “You can quote me on this: I think it’s a shame they do that.”

The reporting process itself was one of the most interesting I’ve had. One of my first steps entailed sending records requests to local officials who served in areas where Trewhella had given presentations. Within days, Trewhella had obtained a copy of the request and shared it on his social media profile and email newsletter, writing, “The wicked are trembling!”

And in the final stages of the reporting, I requested an interview with Republican Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, who cited Trewhella when defending his calls to ignore federal law that violated “God’s word.” An aide denied my request and included in his email “a brief gospel exhortation,” urging me and my readers “to turn from sin, run to Christ, trust Him, and enjoy fellowship with him forever.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/08/02/why-we-investigated-matthew-trewhella-the-far-right-wisconsin-pastor-influencing-republican-politics/feed/ 0 486881 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/30/trump-media-quietly-enters-deal-with-a-republican-donor-who-could-benefit-from-a-second-trump-administration/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/30/trump-media-quietly-enters-deal-with-a-republican-donor-who-could-benefit-from-a-second-trump-administration/#respond Tue, 30 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/trump-media-truth-social-jedtec-james-davison-conflict-of-interest by Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

This month, former President Donald Trump’s media company announced it was making its first major purchase: technology to help stream TV on Truth Social, its Twitter-like platform.

There was a mystery at the center of the deal: One of the companies on the other side of the transaction, which went unmentioned in Trump Media’s press release but was named in securities filings, is an obscure entity called JedTec LLC. Based in a North Louisiana village, the company has virtually no public footprint and no website, and it is unknown to streaming technology experts.

Interviews and public records reveal that the man behind JedTec is Louisiana energy magnate James E. Davison. A major Republican donor, he is known for his immense influence in state and federal government, including personal friendships with past presidents, and for using his wealth to benefit people in politics.

The acquisition will put Trump’s company in a business relationship with someone with numerous interests before the federal government. Davison, for example, owns a major stake in Genesis Energy, a large oil pipeline and mining firm. A trade group representing Genesis and other publicly traded pipeline firms previously lobbied the Trump administration and lawmakers for a tax break and on environmental issues. Davison’s family also has a stake in a regional bank and owns a small defense contractor. And Davison could benefit if the 2017 Trump tax cut provisions, which expire after next year, are extended.

Davison also has a record of influence with the Trump White House, successfully leveraging connections there in 2019 to win a $17 million federal grant to build roads, according to one Louisiana official.

The streaming deal crystalizes the sort of conflicts that Trump’s business interests pose as he vies for a second term.

Before his first term, Trump rejected calls to divest from his business. Trump’s years in the White House were marred by controversy as political groups and foreign governments spent millions of dollars at his properties.

Get in Touch

Do you have any information about Trump Media or its partners that we should know? Justin Elliott can be reached by email at justin@propublica.org or by Signal or WhatsApp at 774-826-6240. Robert Faturechi can be reached by email at robert.faturechi@propublica.org and by Signal or WhatsApp at 213-271-7217.

But his stake in Trump Media, created after he left office, has the potential to eclipse those concerns. His shares of the company, a meme stock that has soared despite the company generating almost no revenue, are valued at more than $3 billion. That makes up more than half of his estimated net worth. Ethics experts have warned that advertisers, vendors or investors who have political agendas could try to use Trump Media to curry favor.

The deal with Davison poses just that potential for undue influence, said Virginia Canter, a former government ethics lawyer.

It could give Davison access to a future president and an advantage in extracting favors from Trump, Canter said. “It puts them in a more favorable position to get their perspectives before the president or other members of his administration.”

The Trump Media deal suggests an ongoing business relationship between the companies: It calls for the full price — roughly $170 million in cash and shares, at the stock’s current value — to be paid out based on a series of milestones. It’s difficult to assess whether the price being paid by Trump Media is fair because the companies involved are little known in the industry and the filings don’t offer much detail about the technology and services they’ll be providing.

Filings don’t disclose what portion of the purchase price will go to JedTec, the Louisiana company involved in the deal. Business records show Davison as the person behind JedTec. And interviews and records show that Davison has a longtime relationship with one of Trump Media’s board members. But in a brief call with ProPublica, Davison denied he personally played a role in the sale, before hanging up.

“I’m not really involved with that,” he said. “I haven’t been part of it.”

Davison didn’t respond to follow-up questions sent in writing.

Trump hasn’t said whether he would divest from Trump Media & Technology Group if elected, but his spokesperson has said he would “follow ethics guidelines.”

A Trump Media spokesperson declined to answer detailed questions about the deal with Davison, saying that the company “believes its partners can deliver the best technology for TMTG’s platform, encompassing a unique, uncancellable tech delivery stack for streaming.”

The spokesperson also suggested that the company might take legal action in response to this article: “The assertions and insinuations in this story, including of any ethical improprieties whatsoever or any material omissions from TMTG’s disclosures, are false, defamatory and a textbook example of a fake news story that will land the left-wing shills at ProPublica in court.”

Davison turned down a job offer out of college, instead helping his father at his small trucking company in rural North Louisiana. Over the years, he transformed the company from a two-truck operation to one with hundreds of trucks, hundreds of employees and business lines across the energy industry, including petroleum storage, fuel procurement and refining operations that removed sulfur from sour gas streams.

As Davison’s business empire grew, so too did his political influence.

In Louisiana, he is known as a philanthropist for local institutions and is considered a political kingmaker. “Members of Congress, governors, state lawmakers, they’re sitting in front of him asking for his support, asking for his advice, asking if they should run or not,” said Rick Hohlt, former publisher of the Ruston Daily Leader, the newspaper for Davison’s hometown. “He’s a powerhouse.”

His influence extends beyond Louisiana. Davison, now 86, has counted presidents as friends, including both Bushes. He would “refer to presidents by their number,” one associate recalled. “‘I was spending time with 41 the other day.’” Davison helped lead fundraising efforts in the state for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign.

In 2019, when Trump was president, the mayor of Ruston credited Davison’s influence with the White House for securing the $17 million federal grant to build roads in the city. “He is well connected in D.C. He knows everybody that’s a player,” the mayor, Ronny Walker, said in an interview with ProPublica, adding that he flew with Davison on the businessman’s private jet to Washington for lobbying trips.

Davison has donated an estimated $3 million to federal Republican candidates and causes in the last decade, including more than $90,000 to Trump committees for his previous two campaigns.

Davison’s connections to people in politics have sometimes raised ethical questions. Last year, after the state’s now-governor was questioned about not disclosing private flights provided by campaign donors, the state Republican Party disclosed several such trips, including from Davison. In 2014, a Louisiana congressman’s chief of staff was arrested for driving drunk. The aide was reportedly driving a Mercedes registered to one of Davison’s businesses.

Davison’s business interests are vast. In 2007, Genesis Energy, a Houston-based pipeline company, bought Davison’s trucking company and other businesses in a deal worth about $560 million. The Davison family got a large stake of Genesis as part of the deal, and both Davison and his son are on its board.

The trade group that represents publicly traded pipeline businesses including Davison’s lobbied during the Trump presidency on its signature tax legislation. The industry won a carveout in the 2017 legislation that allowed its investors to get a large tax break.

That tax break is set to expire after 2025, when Trump, if he wins the election, would be in his second term. Trump has promised to extend the tax law.

Genesis Energy’s agenda is not limited to taxes. Its operations are regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency, and its fortunes can hinge on who’s in the White House. In a public filing, the company credited Trump with easing regulations related to the Clean Air Act, including on methane emissions for oil and gas companies. President Joe Biden, the company noted, restored those regulations.

When Trump Media announced the streaming TV deal July 3, the company said its plan is to host news shows and religious channels at risk of “cancellation.”

“We are rapidly pushing forward with our plans to launch a high-quality streaming service that we believe cannot be canceled by Big Tech,” CEO Devin Nunes said.

The deal announced by Trump Media involves a series of largely unknown small players. Trump Media’s disclosures about the deal describe a nesting doll of companies that leave many questions unanswered about its new business partners.

The sellers include a pair of Louisiana companies: Davison’s JedTec LLC along with another called WorldConnect IPTV Solutions.

The ultimate provider of the technology is a British firm called Perception Group, which has offices and engineers in Slovenia. The clients listed on its website are far less prominent than Trump’s social media site. They include a telecom in Slovenia, an entertainment service for crews on commercial ships and an Arabic-language streaming service in Sudan.

JedTec does not have any online footprint. Davison, in the brief phone interview with ProPublica, acknowledged he knew about the deal but said WorldConnect was behind it.

Industry experts said they had never heard of WorldConnect. The phone numbers listed on WorldConnect’s website are disconnected. The most recent press release was eight years old. One item from 2012 celebrated China Central Television, the Chinese government’s propaganda channel, launching on a streaming platform in the United Kingdom. WorldConnect listed just seven staffers on its website. (Hours after ProPublica sent the company and its executives questions, the company website was taken down entirely.)

Both its CEO, Dr. Jarrett Flood, and president, Von Boyett, are serial entrepreneurs.

In his biography, Flood describes himself as being “trained as a medical doctor and critical thinker.” Flood’s social media pages list other roles including owner of a medical center and Flood International Consulting Agency. (It’s not clear where Flood went to medical school, and searches in medical license databases for his name turn up no results.)

Boyett says in his biography he has decades of experience in multiple industries: petrochemicals; telecoms; medical equipment; and product sourcing. He cites working with Russian state energy giant Gazprom in the 1980s and brokering the Soviet Union’s first foreign TV programming deal.

Boyett and Flood are also named as executives in another company that lists just five employees but says on its website it is involved in a dizzying array of businesses, including purchasing power plants, medical technology, education and solar energy.

Boyett and Flood did not respond to requests for comment.

The Trump Media spokesperson said that the company had done “extensive beta testing and due diligence” for the deal.

A person familiar with the history of WorldConnect told ProPublica that the company entered into a joint venture with Davison in 2017 to buy the rights to sell Perception’s TV technology in the United States. Davison put up most of the money for the deal, the person said.

Both companies are private, so their finances and the details of their ownership are not public.

How Davison got involved in the Trump Media deal is unclear. But even before the deal was announced, he did have one clear link to the company.

Trump Media’s board is composed almost entirely of high-profile allies of the former president, including his son Donald Trump Jr. and former cabinet members in his administration such as Linda McMahon and Robert Lighthizer.

One board member who does not fit that profile is W. Kyle Green, a lawyer from the Ruston area with a much more modest background. According to his Trump Media biography, he runs his own small law firm. Previously, he served as Ruston’s city prosecutor for eight years “where he successfully prosecuted more than 20,000 criminal defendants.” (A longtime district attorney in the area told ProPublica that a tally of prosecutions that enormous in a city with a population of just over 20,000 likely included traffic tickets, which is in line with the kind of low-level issues that office handles.)

Green is Davison’s lawyer, Davison’s wife told ProPublica. He’s listed as the registered agent on state business filings for JedTec, and he did the legal paperwork to create the LLC in 2017. If Green has an ownership stake in JedTec, or plays a significant role in the company, Trump Media may have been required to disclose his connection in public filings. The company didn’t do this.

Green didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Trump Media’s streaming deal could close as early as this month. In filings, the company said it expects to pay up to 5.1 million shares of stock — about $150 million at current market value — plus $17.5 million in cash. Its payment to the companies involved will be staggered, with roughly half of the stock in the deal — more than 2 million shares — delivered only when the streaming software is implemented at greater and greater scales.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Justin Elliott, Robert Faturechi and Alex Mierjeski.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/30/trump-media-quietly-enters-deal-with-a-republican-donor-who-could-benefit-from-a-second-trump-administration/feed/ 0 486341 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/donald-trump-to-speak-at-the-final-day-of-the-republican-national-convention-july-18-2024/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/donald-trump-to-speak-at-the-final-day-of-the-republican-national-convention-july-18-2024/#respond Thu, 18 Jul 2024 18:00:00 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=d46a7ae75ff64c19828897754dd55646 Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• Donald Trump to speak at the final day of the Republican National Convention.
• Democrats are blasting what they see as Republican candidate Donald Trump’s agenda for a second term as president. Democratic lawmakers are taking aim at “Project 2025,” a plan for a second Trump term in the White House.
• The Biden administration is canceling an additional $1.2 billion in student loans for borrowers who work in public service through changes to an existing forgiveness program.
• Just as California finally began to cool off after baking under a record-breaking heat dome for more than a week, another spell of sweltering weather is set to hit the state in the coming week.
• The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors drummed up support for a new governance and ethics reform package for the November ballot. They said the package would create more representation for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in LA County.
• Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price announced motions for re-sentencing three death penalty cases following a review that revealed prosecutors excluded Black and other jurors from serving on such cases.

The post Donald Trump to speak at the final day of the Republican National Convention – July 18, 2024 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/donald-trump-to-speak-at-the-final-day-of-the-republican-national-convention-july-18-2024/feed/ 0 484616 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/more-radical-than-maga-politicos-ian-ward-on-j-d-vance-the-future-of-the-republican-party/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/more-radical-than-maga-politicos-ian-ward-on-j-d-vance-the-future-of-the-republican-party/#respond Thu, 18 Jul 2024 16:09:22 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=f85c04adbbd102fcd14516bc49bb1728
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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Politico reporter Ian Ward interviewed Ohio Senator J.D. Vance at length for a recent profile and joins us to discuss Vance’s biography and ideology after he formally accepted the Republican vice-presidential nomination to run with Donald Trump, whom he once staunchly opposed.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/18/more-radical-than-maga-politicos-ian-ward-on-j-d-vance-the-future-of-the-republican-party-2/feed/ 0 484595 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/16/republican-delegate-blames-dems-for-trump-shooting/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/16/republican-delegate-blames-dems-for-trump-shooting/#respond Tue, 16 Jul 2024 15:00:59 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=cf342302050d19e1413a13f84a6ce919
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/16/republican-delegate-blames-dems-for-trump-shooting/feed/ 0 484174 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/15/rnc-delegates-believe-civil-war-is-possible-taya-graham-live-at-republican-national-convention/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/15/rnc-delegates-believe-civil-war-is-possible-taya-graham-live-at-republican-national-convention/#respond Mon, 15 Jul 2024 19:54:28 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=7aac7ad28c8a0eb46a5c61bb1fa5b19b
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by The Real News Network.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/15/rnc-delegates-believe-civil-war-is-possible-taya-graham-live-at-republican-national-convention/feed/ 0 484025 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/12/trump-lovefest-expected-at-republican-convention-amid-talk-of-scaling-back-aid-to-ukraine/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/12/trump-lovefest-expected-at-republican-convention-amid-talk-of-scaling-back-aid-to-ukraine/#respond Fri, 12 Jul 2024 14:24:33 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=eef3706ed6bd9b8d5bf2f8dd03d7501c
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and was authored by Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/12/trump-lovefest-expected-at-republican-convention-amid-talk-of-scaling-back-aid-to-ukraine/feed/ 0 483581 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/10/the-gospel-of-matthew-trewhella-how-a-militant-anti-abortion-activist-is-influencing-republican-politics/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/10/the-gospel-of-matthew-trewhella-how-a-militant-anti-abortion-activist-is-influencing-republican-politics/#respond Wed, 10 Jul 2024 10:00:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/matthew-trewhella-pastor-activist-republican-politics by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with Wisconsin Watch. Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

Wisconsin Pastor Matthew Trewhella has an affable routine when he’s trying to persuade government officials to abolish abortion, ignore gun laws and question election results.

The 63-year-old opens his talks with a photo of “Trewhella nation”: his wife of over 40 years, their 11 home-schooled children and dozens of grandchildren. He cracks jokes. He quotes history and scripture. He floats secession as a regretful possibility. With half-rim glasses and collared shirts, Trewhella looks and sounds more like a professor than a provocateur.

But when addressing his congregation at an Embassy Suites in suburban Milwaukee, he sneers and shouts, deriding his enemies as wicked dogs, whores and tyrants.

“When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little squirrels, judgment is in the land,” Trewhella said during a 2020 sermon.

Last year, he said homosexuality should be treated as a crime, noting that the Bible called for the death penalty for “the filth of sodomy.”

For much of his public life, Trewhella has made a career of denouncing the law while railing against abortion and gun restrictions. Twenty years ago, that made him a political pariah. His reputation for blockading abortion clinics, calling for churches to form militias and defending the murder of abortion providers was so extreme that two state chapters of Right to Life, the anti-abortion group, condemned him.

But today, the world has changed. He has been invited to speak by local Republican parties and other groups across the country. He gave a prayer breakfast sermon to one of the nation’s preeminent law enforcement associations. And a prolific booster of election conspiracy theories has used his work as the basis for a campaign to disrupt elections.

Trewhella’s ability to tailor his message for different audiences has helped. He’s gracious to the women who introduce him at political events but tells his congregation that the idea of women in government is “sickening” and “perverse.”

In the cast of characters who might influence the upcoming election, he’s not rallying crowds like Steve Bannon, the former Donald Trump strategist, or Charlie Kirk, the founder of the conservative student group Turning Point USA. Trewhella is more behind the scenes, providing a religious justification for some far-right policies and causes. With the political establishment shifting, he exemplifies how in this splintered landscape, even the most fringe figures can become influencers.

When you see sodomy running rampant, when you see women in government, when you see men behaving like effeminate little squirrels, judgment is in the land.

—Pastor Matthew Trewhella in a 2020 sermon

Trewhella gained his newfound acceptance with a self-published 2013 book, “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates,” which relies on a theory developed by 16th-century Calvinists seeking holy justification for fighting political oppression amid the religious wars of the Protestant Reformation. Trewhella has applied it to today’s political battles, writing that government officials have a divine “right and duty” to defy any laws, policies or court opinions that violate “the law of God.”

To him, that means outlawing abortion and same-sex marriage, or even violently resisting the government if necessary, noting in his book that there are times when men “must redden their swords.”

In recent years, Trewhella’s teachings have popped up in legislatures and local boards as the Christian right has increasingly influenced Republican politics. A Missouri state representative applied the doctrine when he proposed banning abortion in 2020, when Roe vs. Wade was still in effect. Commissioners in western North Carolina invoked it when they declared their county a “gun sanctuary” to protest state laws.

Former President Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has praised Trewhella’s book several times, extolling it as a “masterful blueprint showing Americans how to successfully resist tyranny.” And a member of Trump’s 2020 campaign legal team, Jenna Ellis, cited Trewhella’s work as a solution to government overreach in her 2015 book advocating for a biblical interpretation of the Constitution.

Trewhella’s acceptance into more mainstream circles has surprised extremism researchers who have tracked him for decades. It’s important to pay attention to a man “creating the ideological rationalizations for these ideas,” said Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a nonprofit that tracks the far right.

“I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community,” Burghart said.

In Wisconsin, Trewhella has forged a close relationship with the Republican Party of Waukesha County, the stronghold for state GOP power. His book is the only one the group promotes on its website. Twice in the past two-and-a-half years, the party has invited him to speak at events, including one where he addressed local candidates. A young leader in Trewhella’s church gave the opening prayer at a county GOP dinner, and the party paid that member to do political canvassing just a month after he was charged in state court for calling in a bomb scare against an LGBTQ+ event. The member is awaiting a plea hearing in August and said his lawyer advised him not to comment.

I think that the public needs to know that he’s a dangerous theocrat who would fundamentally alter the United States in irreparable ways that would harm many, including women, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

—Devin Burghart, president of a group that tracks the far right

During a speech to the Waukesha GOP last year, Trewhella focused on how local officials were best positioned to safeguard Americans’ most cherished freedoms.

“You may have to do things in the future you’re not authorized to do,” Trewhella told them. “The country is breaking apart. Counties are becoming important in the process. Counties may secede from one state and join an adjoining state as things break apart. Several adjoining counties may end up leaving a state and forming their own state. Remember, this happened during the Civil War.”

The Waukesha GOP chair declined to comment through executive director Kathy Pape, who wrote in response to repeated interview requests, “We are done with this.”

Approached near a suburban strip mall at one of his regular anti-abortion street protests in May, Trewhella smiled when asked by a reporter about his reputational rehabilitation. Dozens of his followers spread out at an intersection beneath a punishing sun, handing out pamphlets and displaying 5-foot signs of aborted fetuses.

Trewhella, center, distributes signs for an anti-abortion street demonstration in Wisconsin in April. (Sara Stathas, special to ProPublica)

“Most people will always only care about three things in life: me, myself and I,” he said. “It’s only because of their mundane, self-absorbed lives that they would think someone like me is an extremist. That’s my answer.” He chuckled and returned to his flock.

Trewhella’s Transformation

Trewhella tells his own life story in biblical terms: a fallen man finds redemption. Trewhella said he wrote it all down in a 23-page conversion testimony after his 5-year-old son asked him, “Dad, when are you going to write a book where you can tell us how you went from being a bad guy to a good guy?”

Growing up in a Catholic family, Trewhella wrote, he was forced to attend “nearly unbearable” Sunday Masses. He described his mother as a “classic merciful mom” and his father as “short on words and quick on corporal punishment.” When Trewhella was 11, his parents divorced, which he called an “ugly thing” that “removes all innocence.”

As a bad guy, Trewhella wrote, he joined a Detroit gang and “dealt drugs, stole cars, firebombed houses, robbed businesses, burglarized homes, fought other gangs, and fenced stolen items to the Mafia.”

Then, he said, he landed in an evangelical rehab program at 17 and had an epiphany during church.

“Understand, I had told the shrink at the psyche ward just three days earlier that I would burn down more houses when I got out of jail,” Trewhella wrote. “But sitting there — I saw my sin for how truly reprehensible it was. I was in the presence of a holy God.”

As a good guy, Trewhella got married, graduated from a Pentecostal college and, in 1989, founded Mercy Seat Christian Church in the Milwaukee area.

He also became one of the nation’s most militant anti-abortion activists. He joined the so-called rescue movement, in which activists blockaded clinics. In 1990, he founded his own organization, Missionaries to the Preborn, whose members chained themselves to cars parked in front of clinic entrances.

First image: In a still from a video posted on YouTube by an anti-abortion activist, Trewhella is seen handcuffed at Milwaukee’s 2003 Summerfest after police said his group was loitering. Second image: Trewhella’s long history of provocative actions have been a source of media attention for many years. A photograph of Trewhella at an anti-abortion demonstration in Rapid City, South Dakota, in 2006. (First image: YouTube screenshot by ProPublica. Original video posted by Dan Holman. Second image: Rapid City Journal via newspapers.com. Original photo by Bill Harlan/Rapid City Journal.)

Trewhella racked up arrests and jail time for misdemeanor convictions, though other charges were dropped. By 2007, the group took credit for permanently closing down six of eight Milwaukee clinics.

Trewhella has professed nonviolence. But after an activist killed an abortion provider in 1993, he signed a document describing the murder of these doctors as “justifiable.” Around the same time, Planned Parenthood recorded Trewhella urging churches to form militias and telling parents to teach their children to assemble weapons blindfolded: “This Christmas, I want you to do the most loving thing. I want you to buy your children an SKS rifle and 500 rounds of ammunition.”

A man who reportedly used Trewhella’s group’s address on his driver’s license shot and killed a physician who performed abortions in 1998. The group fundraised for the families of people imprisoned for anti-abortion violence, according to a 2001 book. And Trewhella wrote that in 2003 that he visited a man awaiting execution for murdering an abortion provider, saying that “when abortion is outlawed,” future generations would view the man “as the sanest and bravest man of our age.”

It all made Trewhella persona non grata. Republican politicians disregarded him. Wisconsin Right to Life said Trewhella’s group had scant support from “the mainline right-to-life people.” Vermont Right to Life called his group’s statements “disturbing.” And by the time Trewhella’s group announced a tour through Montana in 2001, the state’s Right to Life organization warned its supporters to steer clear.

“They’re really out there,” Steven Ertelt, head of the Montana group, said at the time. “They know we won’t give them the time of day.”

After Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica’s initial interview with Trewhella, the pastor did not return more than a dozen calls, emails and text messages seeking a follow-up interview. The news organizations tried to speak with Trewhella at another protest and at his church service, but he was not there. He did not respond to emailed questions and refused receipt of a certified letter containing them.

Through his anti-abortion militancy, Trewhella came across an idea that would give him a religious foundation for his crusade: the doctrine of the lesser magistrates.

For years, the theory had circulated among Christian Reconstructionists, who believe that all of society — including government, education and culture — should follow their strict reading of Old Testament law. Its adherents included some of the most violent members of the rescue movement.

Trewhella recalled in an interview first encountering the lesser magistrates doctrine during a talk by a minister in 1990. It drew from the Bible to claim that those vested with political power could actively resist tyranny on behalf of the people — including, in extreme cases, with lethal violence.

“Immediately that made sense to me because I was very involved on behalf of the preborn,” he said. Then, at a 2007 prayer meeting, the spirit moved Trewhella to do more. “I just felt from the Lord,” he said, “that I should write a book on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, make a website for it, teach it to the government officials and the people of America.”

The obsession led him to a 1550 German Lutheran text called the Magdeburg Confession, which he claims is the doctrine’s first formalization. Trewhella commissioned an English translation, releasing it in 2012.

The next year, he self-published his book, in which he beseeched readers to deploy the doctrine against “abhorrent” issues such as same-sex marriage and abortion. The back cover called it “a hopeful blueprint for freedom.”

Following Trewhella’s presentation in Iowa, people line up to purchase copies of his book “The Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrates” and other merchandise from his wife, Clara Trewhella, second image, left. (James Year, special to ProPublica) Trewhella’s Embrace

After his book came out in 2013, Trewhella hustled. He used his blog and talks to spread the doctrine across the religious right. He seized on controversy and the attention it brought.

Often, he veiled the more extreme elements of his philosophy in American patriotism, asserting that the doctrine influenced framers like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. In interviews with half a dozen academics, including conservative, Christian professors of government and religion, all but one disputed Trewhella’s claim. Two leading scholars on the revolutionary period and constitutional law said they had never even heard of the doctrine. All of them considered its application in modern-day America inappropriate and dangerous. But to those of a certain political or religious persuasion, Trewhella has proved convincing.

The book helped Trewhella attract the ear of high-level officials.

In 2015, in a remarkable turnabout, Republican lawmakers welcomed Trewhella to the Montana Capitol for a sermon in which he discussed the doctrine.

Following a 2015 sermon, Trewhella speaks with Republican state Sen. Jennifer Fielder in the rotunda of the Montana Capitol. (Terence Corrigan/Independent Record)

“The federal government has already attacked and abridged liberty; they are now in the process of plundering the American people,” he said. “The phalanx of laws created by the state to invade our domestic affairs, disarm the people, seize our property and harass our persons all point to the growing tyranny in America.”

Trewhella’s message resonated in the rotunda and in the nation’s politics, coming in the period between the Tea Party’s rise and Trump’s election.

That speech, Trewhella later said, helped put his book “on the map.”

In 2017, Kentucky’s then-Gov. Matt Bevin met with Trewhella and Operation Save America, an abortion abolition group now run by Trewhella’s son-in-law.

“We were able to pray for him and challenge him with the Doctrine of the Lesser Magistrate and the abolition of abortion,” a group blog post said. “He told Pastor Matt Trewhella and the rest of us that he read the book and has passed it to others.” Bevin did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

In 2019, Missouri state Rep. Mike Moon, now a state senator, helped run a conference on the doctrine of the lesser magistrates, where Trewhella spoke. A few months later, Moon introduced a bill to completely outlaw abortion in the state, leading Trewhella to claim credit on social media. Moon and his office did not return repeated requests for comment.

Trewhella’s ideas also gained favor among gun rights activists, as a wave of counties declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” some of which state that local law enforcement will not act on any gun laws they deem unconstitutional. The hard-line Gun Owners of America has consistently cited Trewhella and his book in its support of such resolutions. At least 10 resolutions across the country specifically refer to lesser magistrates. One of the earliest, issued in 2019, was authored by a county commissioner who has described reading Trewhella’s book as a “turning point” in his leadership.

Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica identified numerous examples of Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions that include almost identical language and refer to “lesser magistrates.” The first of these three appeared in Cherokee County, North Carolina, where the author said he incorporated language from Trewhella’s book. (Obtained by Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica. Highlighted by ProPublica.)

“It gave me the foundation I needed as a county commissioner to be the big brother to protect my constituents,” Dr. Dan Eichenbaum, a Republican in Cherokee County, North Carolina, said on his podcast. In an interview, Eichenbaum said his Second Amendment resolution inspired several other jurisdictions to take action. He said he was not aware of the details of Trewhella’s anti-abortion activism, including that Trewhella had defended the murder of abortion providers. “I can’t make excuses for that,” he said.

Like many leaders on the right, Trewhella suddenly found a much larger audience when the COVID-19 pandemic took hold. As some people questioned public health measures like masks and vaccines, they began looking for ways to resist government officials they saw as trampling their rights.

They found answers in Trewhella, who pumped out short-form videos and spoke on conservative podcasts and other platforms.

“In light of the tyrannical acts by the state regarding COVID-19, we are rebooting our efforts,” he posted on social media in April 2020.

The doctrine appeared in local meetings in Indiana and Tennessee as officials challenged public health measures. Andy Ogles, then-mayor of Maury County, Tennessee, south of Nashville, invoked the doctrine when he took steps to allow unvaccinated health care workers to keep their jobs. Ogles is now a Republican member of Congress. His office did not respond to requests for comment.

Frustrated by pandemic measures like restaurant closures and masking in schools, Republican activists in Ottawa County, Michigan, west of Grand Rapids, invited Trewhella to speak several times. In 2022, one group that invited him, Ottawa Impact, helped flip the county board of commissioners to Christian control.

Since then, the board has tried to fire its health administrator and declared Ottawa a “constitutional county.” The largely symbolic resolution states the board will not enforce any measure that it believes infringes on constitutional rights.

Trewhella called Ottawa “a blueprint for counties across America.”

Two Ottawa Impact founders denied that Trewhella influenced their work. But that sort of denial is common: When asked about their relationship with Trewhella or his ideas, people often distance themselves or are reluctant to give him credit.

Last spring, conservative activist David Clements made the 44th stop on his “Greater Magistrates Tour” in northwestern Wisconsin. The tour, which took its name from Trewhella's book (revising it to promote the voters as “greater” magistrates), blended Christianity and conspiracy theory to encourage disrupting future elections.

I just can’t imagine that [the county GOP would] support this person … You can quote me on this: I think it’s a shame they do that.

—Bill Kruziki, a former Republican sheriff in Waukesha County, Wisconsin

As about 200 people listened on, Clements ran through the familiar debunked claims about the “rigged” system, urging attendees to demand their local officials withhold certification of voting machines and results. Using Trewhella’s playbook, Clements said, they might save their country county by county.

Referring to certain voting machine vendors, Clements told the crowd, Jesus Christ had been resurrected to “restore you to a place where there are no tears, there is no suffering, there are no Dominion or ES&S machines.”

Throughout his tour, Clements had the company of some of the nation’s most prominent election denialists, including Bannon and Mike Lindell, the founder of MyPillow. Joe Oltmann, an activist who concocted the baseless claim that a Dominion Voting Systems employee had rigged the election, appeared several times. Oltmann has hosted Trewhella on his podcast and told his Telegram channel that Trewhella’s book is “required reading for all freedom minded Americans.”

Clements said he would only do an interview if Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica allowed him to record a video and broadcast it in its entirety. Oltmann had similar terms. The news organizations did not agree, and neither Clements nor Oltmann answered written questions.

Trewhella’s name has previously come up in attempts to challenge the 2020 election. Pennsylvania state Sen. Cris Dush, a Republican who led a legislative investigation into election results, called upon the doctrine of the lesser magistrates when he “urged people to take action against the certification of presidential electors,” the Pennsylvania attorney general said in a court filing.

Republican state Sen. Cris Dush of Pennsylvania referenced the doctrine of the lesser magistrates when challenging the 2020 election results, Pennsylvania’s attorney general said in a state court filing. (Obtained by Wisconsin Watch and ProPublica. Highlighted by ProPublica.)

In an interview, Dush said the doctrine resonated with his military training, which permitted him to disobey an unlawful order.

Extremism researchers and pro-democracy groups say Trewhella’s influence on attempts to disrupt elections is particularly concerning because he claims some of his most vocal supporters have been sheriffs.

Sheriffs wield significant law enforcement power in much of America. Some have claimed they have the power to seize voting machines should they believe there’s fraud. A faction known as “constitutional sheriffs” claim that within their jurisdictions, they have the sole authority to interpret the constitutionality of state and federal laws. Leaders of the movement have promoted election conspiracies and urged sheriffs to investigate possible fraud. They have also celebrated Trewhella, name-dropping him at conferences and giving his book to attendees.

All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.

—Frederick Clarkson, extremism researcher

Trewhella also spoke last year at a prayer breakfast at a conference held by the National Sheriffs’ Association, which represents thousands of law enforcement officers across the country. Trewhella said he spoke at their invitation.

The organization did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But former Daviess County, Kentucky, Sheriff Keith Cain, a past board member who coordinated the prayer breakfast, said by email that Trewhella had asked to give the sermon after registering a booth. Cain said he requested Trewhella stick to spiritual matters.

Trewhella did not abide.

He told a group of about 40 — each with a complimentary copy of his book placed in front of them — that sheriffs are “ministers of God first” and must defy laws, policies or court opinions deemed “unjust or immoral” under the law of God.

“America is languishing under the blithe compliance of the lesser magistrates,” he told them. “The filth of Sodom is paraded down the streets.”

Now, with a presidential contest looming, what worries Frederick Clarkson, an extremism researcher who has tracked Trewhella for decades, is not the pastor’s influence on who wins, but the impact he’ll continue to have on state and local politics.

“There’s a tectonic shift that’s gone on in American public life and politics,” he said. “All of those county commissioners and mayors and whatnot who are entertaining this stuff, they’re putting people’s lives and the entirety of civil order at risk by playing footsie with Matt Trewhella.

Mollie Simon contributed research.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Phoebe Petrovic, Wisconsin Watch.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/07/10/the-gospel-of-matthew-trewhella-how-a-militant-anti-abortion-activist-is-influencing-republican-politics/feed/ 0 483173 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/10/republican-hubris-in-courting-black-voters/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/10/republican-hubris-in-courting-black-voters/#respond Mon, 10 Jun 2024 05:34:32 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=325046 There’s a breathtaking hubris at work when a political party seeks to suppress the votes of an entire people, then claims its leaders are the champions of that same people. You don’t have to look far to find such hubris in the Republican Party today. When Donald Trump travels the country, telling African Americans that More

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Image by Unsplash+ and Getty Images.

There’s a breathtaking hubris at work when a political party seeks to suppress the votes of an entire people, then claims its leaders are the champions of that same people. You don’t have to look far to find such hubris in the Republican Party today.

When Donald Trump travels the country, telling African Americans that they’re “on my side now” because they identify with the unfair treatment he says he’s gotten from the justice system, he neglects to mention the injustices his own party has meted out: policies and laws that have suppressed the votes of African Americans for years.

Try visualizing an elephant as the GOP symbol. Then consider the real elephant in the room: voter suppression.

As our nation has become more diverse over the past few decades, a number of Republican strategists and leaders in the early 2000’s argued for making the party more inclusive, particularly in the wake of Barack Obama’s victories in the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections. But another faction of the party won out, drawing on an appeal to white voters that had long roots in Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” i.e., the cultivation of a white backlash to civil rights advances. Ronald Reagan carried the strategy forward, opposing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and helping reinforce an ideological pattern that extended into the late 20^th Century and early 21^st Century.

Policies and laws resulting from these strategies led to new efforts to shrink the electorate, particularly that part of the electorate comprising minority voters. No state required photo identification prior to 2005, but by 2016, 13 states – all led by Republicans – had passed laws requiring photo ID. The justification for photo ID was to prevent voter fraud, but evidence of such fraud – despite conspiratorial claims to the contrary – is virtually non-existent. As political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt noted, photo ID laws constitute a “solution without a problem.”

And photo ID laws have impacted elections, disproportionately reducing voter turnout by poor people and people of color. One study, for example, of two counties in Wisconsin (Milwaukee and Dane Counties) found that 11 percent of registered voters in these high-minority areas were deterred from voting in the 2016 presidential election because they lacked an acceptable ID.

But photo ID is hardly the only tool in the vote suppression toolbox. Other measures have included eliminating same-day registration, shortening early voting periods, and simply reducing the number of polling places in predominantly minority areas, resulting in long lines. Georgia’s Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, had overseen the closing of 214 polling places by the time he faced off against Stacey Abrams for the state’s governorship in 2018. He had also purged more than two million registered voters from voting rolls, and declined to recuse himself, while running for governor, from his role as chief election administrator of the state.

When Abrams was defeated, she declared: “to watch an elected official – who claims to represent the people of this state – baldly pin his hopes for election on the suppression of the people’s democratic right to vote has been truly appalling.”

But even the above measures don’t fully exhaust the myriad ways Republicans have attempted to suppress Black voters. In 2013, a conservative Supreme Court majority gutted a key provision of the 1965 Voting Rights Act requiring states with long histories of discrimination to get voting changes approved by the federal government (Shelby County v Holder). Most recently, the court’s conservative majority ruled that the redistricting of a South Carolina congressional district showed “no direct evidence” of racial gerrymandering, even though 30,000 Black voters were moved out of the district by the state legislature’s Republican majority.

In 2021, a Republican Senate majority blocked passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would have expanded and protected voting rights of all Americans. And, of course, there were the many attempts by Donald Trump to suppress votes in the 2020 presidential election, from the days immediately following the election to the January 6 insurrection.

When you connect all the dots of these and other vote suppressive efforts, and place them next to Donald Trump’s recent efforts to skim off Black voters, you see a picture emerging of a most cynical kind of con.

The cynicism and hubris have not deterred groups like Black Voters Matter and the New Georgia Project from continuing their work in broadening access to the ballot and ensuring voting rights for Black Americans and all historically marginalized groups.

Nor have they deterred individuals from speaking truth to corrupt power. Last August, some Trump supporters found uplift in the defiant mug shot their leader took after being booked in Atlanta on charges of election fraud and other crimes.

Commenting some months later on Trump’s attempt to woo Black voters, the Rev. Al Sharpton stated, “He got a mug shot for trying to rob us of our right to vote. What does he think we are, ignorant?”

The post Republican Hubris in Courting Black Voters appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Andrew Moss.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/10/republican-hubris-in-courting-black-voters/feed/ 0 478774 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/04/what-idahos-republican-primary-tells-us-about-americas-culture-wars/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/04/what-idahos-republican-primary-tells-us-about-americas-culture-wars/#respond Tue, 04 Jun 2024 09:00:00 +0000 https://www.propublica.org/article/idaho-republican-primary-election-culture-wars by Audrey Dutton

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

For years, Idaho has been at the vanguard of the culture wars that are playing out in conservative states across the country.

It was the first state to attempt to restrict transgender girls and women from competing on women’s athletic teams, passing legislation that became a model for states across the country. It was among the first to explicitly ban “critical race theory” from public schools and target diversity, equity and inclusion efforts in public institutions. And the Idaho Freedom Foundation, a far-right Idaho political group, took an early lead in a nationwide campaign to remove books from libraries based on their content.

But Idaho Republicans have increasingly disagreed over how far to take these efforts. Capitol police in Boise had to intervene in a 2022 fight over proposed “parental freedom” legislation that, among other things, would have created a $1,000 fine if a school didn’t give parents what they want. This year, two prominent far-right Republicans were recorded quarreling over the party’s direction — an exchange that InvestigateWest said illustrates “a fracture among key far-right figures in Idaho politics, in a state where many races turn on contests of conservative purity.”

The Idaho Republican primary on May 21 continued the Legislature’s march to the right. Candidates who were aligned with the highly conservative Idaho Freedom Foundation picked up a net of eight seats, according to the group’s own tally. And in a state with so few Democrats, GOP primary winners are typically all but a lock to win in November’s general.

Yet these GOP purists fell short of one important milestone: enough members to outright control the legislative agenda. Some moderates fended off challengers from the right. Some incumbent hard-liners lost their seats.

The primary results were the latest reminder that Idaho Republicans remain far from united. And there are signs that the rift is leading frustrated Idaho voters to reject incumbents in general — conservative and moderate alike.

Here are some takeaways, based on local news reports and ProPublica’s interviews with experts in Idaho politics.

Incumbents Are at Risk

A surprising number of incumbents were knocked out of office in May. Almost all of the 87 Republicans in office were on the ballot. Of the 47 who faced challengers, 15 lost their seats.

It wasn’t the largest-ever purge, but it included the historic takedown of the GOP Senate leader by a newcomer to Idaho with no legislative experience.

Ron Nate, president of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, wrote in a blog post that the primary was “a good night for friends of liberty and a bad night for establishment good-old-boys.”

He noted that 11 of the ousted GOP incumbents had F grades on the group’s “Freedom Index,” while three of the losing incumbents had an A grade going into the election.

But this apparently resounding victory for the group’s ideas seems less so considering that prior to the election, the Freedom Foundation gave F’s to 47 Republicans who were on the ballot and A’s to only 10. In other words, about 23% of the foundation’s least-favorite lawmakers lost reelection races, while 30% of its favorites lost.

At least some of this housecleaning may reflect voter disgust with both warring camps in the Legislature.

“There’s a lot of people who are just frustrated, and so some of it kind of went into an anti-incumbent” wave, said Jaclyn Kettler, associate professor of political science at Boise State University.

Jaclyn Kettler, a political science associate professor at Boise State University, has studied Idaho elections for years. After last month’s GOP primary, she says, “things will shift more conservative, but there were some high-profile defeats and wins in both factions” of the Republican Party. (Sarah A. Miller for ProPublica)

Kettler pointed to a recent survey of about 1,000 Idahoans. Although it found that a majority of Republicans thought Idaho was headed in the right direction, a substantial minority — 30% — said it was on the wrong track.

Urban Conservatism Is Real

Some of the most important losses for moderates happened in the populous Treasure Valley region, home to Boise and its fast-growing suburbs.

It’s one of few parts of Idaho where Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans have traditionally held power, but its electorate has changed with the arrival of more and more right-leaning voters from California.

Sen. Chuck Winder, R-Boise, the highest-ranking Republican in the Senate with eight terms of service, lost his seat to Josh Keyser, who was raised in Southern California and moved to Boise in 2018. Keyser’s website said he was vice principal at a Christian school.

Winder had clashed with legislators to his right and was a critic of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which has pushed to slash government spending across the board, worked to repeal the Idaho Medicaid expansion that was enacted by voters, claimed that Idaho’s schools are indoctrinating children into leftist politics, and more.

Stephanie Witt, professor of public policy, administration and political science at Boise State University, told ProPublica the upset for Winder and other Boise-area incumbents illustrated a stark new reality.

“It’s hard to overstate the number of California relocations and their interest,” Witt said.

"We’ve had people that were good legislators, very conservative, in the Treasure Valley,” she said, “but they’re being painted like they’re Bernie Sanders acolytes.”

Winder noted the changing politics of Idaho in an interview with the Idaho Press after the election.

“I think we’ve had a huge influence from out-of-state people moving here,” he told the publication. “All in all, Idaho is going to be fine, but good mainline Idaho people are going to have to get more involved in the party.”

Some Less-Populated Areas Snub the Far Right

In contrast to the wins for right-wing candidates in the capital city and its suburbs, several legislators far from Boise won reelection by wide margins, despite attacks from their county GOP committee claiming they failed to support the Republican platform.

East Idaho, known for agriculture, a national nuclear laboratory and a large membership in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, also narrowly voted to oust a hard-line conservative incumbent. Julianne Young, an East Idaho Republican who introduced legislation to make “gender” and “sex” synonymous in state law, trailed her opponent by two votes, though she says she will request a recount.

In rural North Idaho, voters kicked out Sen. Scott Herndon, a conservative firebrand whose legislative agenda included making abortion illegal for rape victims. Herndon lost to former legislator Jim Woodward, who said he wants to see some health-related exceptions to the state’s abortion ban, according to Politico.

This year’s results revealed that some conservative Idahoans went into the voting booth with a “traditional Idaho trait: that you don’t like to be pushed around,” said Jim Jones, a Republican who previously served as attorney general and chief justice of the Idaho Supreme Court.

Jones, an outspoken critic of polarized Republican politics, is pushing for a ballot initiative this fall that would replace party primaries with a single, nonpartisan primary. The top vote-getters would then face off in a ranked-choice vote in the general election. Jones says the initiative would take power away from the fringes and put a premium on appealing to all voters.

Jim Jones, a former chief justice of the Idaho State Supreme Court, speaks to volunteers working in support of a Idaho open primaries ballot initiative. (Kyle Green/AP) Attacking Libraries Can Backfire

The outcomes also offered a partial verdict on one of the most explosive issues in America’s culture wars.

Idaho’s GOP last year held a no-confidence vote against 14 legislators statewide who in 2023 failed to support letting parents sue libraries over books considered “harmful to minors.” (The no-confidence vote also swept in Idaho’s Republican governor.) Nine of the 14 survived the GOP primary.

Kettler said the state and local Republican Party members who condemned incumbents over the library issue might be “more ideologically extreme” than most voters.

Idaho GOP Chair Dorothy Moon did not respond to interview requests from ProPublica. According to the Idaho Statesman, Moon said in her election night speech, “I think we’re fighting for the heart and soul of the party and the heart and soul of Idaho."

The Idaho Public Policy Survey — the survey of about 1,000 residents conducted in November — found overwhelming support for libraries. About 62% of the 374 self-identified Republicans who responded said they trust the choices of libraries and librarians.

Of the lawmakers who survived the primary despite their party’s censure of their library vote, about half were from East Idaho.

“My view is that, in eastern Idaho, the voters were sick and tired of all of the culture war fighting,” said Jones.

The Jury on Public Education Is Still Out

One of the highest-profile losses for incumbents was a Boise-area Republican who thwarted tax-funded vouchers that would allow parents to send their children to private school using public funds — a central policy goal of right-wing purists who describe it as “school choice.”

Julie Yamamoto led Idaho’s House Education Committee when it rejected voucher legislation. Challenger Kent Marmon, who embraces school choice, painted Yamamoto as a liberal.

A Virginia-based political action committee called Make Liberty Win produced fliers saying Yamamoto voted to support “porn in school libraries being shown to minors,” Idaho Education News reported, a claim she called “garbage.”

The losses for voucher foes like Yamamoto weren’t uniform. The Senate’s education chair, who has questioned the benefits of voucher proposals, retained his seat. And the Senate lost a key voucher supporter in Herndon, the North Idaho Republican; his challenger has spoken out against public support for private education, according to Idaho Education News.

It is unclear what the outcome portends for Republicans when they take up school spending issues next year.

Idahoans regularly list public education as a top priority. In sparsely populated parts of Idaho, which often lack private schools, the public schoolhouse is a gathering place for football games or performing arts — the “heart of the community,” as Jones says.

But advocates for “school choice” in Idaho appear to be finding an audience.

The recent state policy survey found that 60% of Republicans favored letting Idaho parents use $8,000 of public school money to enroll their student in private or religious school. About twice as many Republicans said they “strongly favor” that idea as “strongly oppose” it.

Kettler said national conservative groups seized on that sentiment and spent heavily on Idaho’s primary races this year, seeing Idaho as a place to advance conservative school policies such as vouchers.

These groups decided, Kettler said, that “it’s worth investing.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Audrey Dutton.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/06/04/what-idahos-republican-primary-tells-us-about-americas-culture-wars/feed/ 0 477855 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/01/friends-of-the-earth-statement-on-house-republican-and-senate-democrat-farm-bill-proposals/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/01/friends-of-the-earth-statement-on-house-republican-and-senate-democrat-farm-bill-proposals/#respond Wed, 01 May 2024 20:17:30 +0000 https://www.commondreams.org/newswire/friends-of-the-earth-statement-on-house-republican-and-senate-democrat-farm-bill-proposals After months of delay, House Republicans and Senate Democrats unveiled dueling Farm Bill priorities today. The House’s bill slashes nutrition programs and climate-focused conservation funding in order to boost commodity crop production. It also includes the EATS Act, which is opposed by 200 Members of Congress and more than 150 organizations. The EATS Act could wipe out many existing states’ environmental, health and safety laws related to agriculture, effectively overturning a Supreme Court ruling to uphold California’s Proposition 12, which bans extreme forms of animal confinement.

In contrast, the Senate’s Farm Bill summary provides a starting point to advance a more just, healthy and sustainable food system by protecting nutrition programs, investing in popular conservation programs, and recognizing procurement as a critical lever to improve the food system.

In response, Friends of the Earth’s senior program manager Chloe Waterman issued the following statement:

House Republicans have proposed a dead-on-arrival Farm Bill framework that puts Big Ag’s profits over everyone else: communities, family farmers, consumers, states and local rule, farmed animals, and the planet. Senate Democrats are off to a much better start than the House, but they have also fallen short by failing to shift subsidies and other support away from factory farming and pesticide-intensive commodities toward diversified, regenerative, and climate-friendly farming systems. We are particularly concerned that millions of dollars intended for climate mitigation will continue to be funneled to factory farms, including to support greenwashed factory farm gas.

Friends of the Earth recently published a report, Biogas or Bull****?: The False Promise of Manure Biogas as a Methane Solution, that documents ways in which manure biogas production undermines environmental justice and exacerbates industry consolidation – for methane reduction benefits that are overstated by the U.S. government, inadequately tracked, and insufficient to meet global methane targets.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/05/01/friends-of-the-earth-statement-on-house-republican-and-senate-democrat-farm-bill-proposals/feed/ 0 472582 https://grist.org/regulation/republican-attorneys-general-epa-civil-rights-law/ https://grist.org/regulation/republican-attorneys-general-epa-civil-rights-law/#respond Thu, 25 Apr 2024 08:45:00 +0000 https://grist.org/?p=636102 For much of its 53-year history, the Environmental Protection Agency let civil rights complaints languish. From Flint, Michigan to the industrial corridors of the Deep South, communities attempting to use federal civil rights law to clean up the pollution in their neighborhoods were largely met with years of silence as their cases piled up in the agency’s backlog. That changed in 2020, after a federal judge ruled that the EPA must conduct timely investigations of civil rights complaints, and staffers began looking into cases where they identified potential discrimination. 

Now, a slate of red-state attorneys generals are trying to stop the EPA from taking race into account at all. Twenty-three Republican attorneys general filed a petition with the Biden administration’s EPA last week asking the agency to stop using Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to regulate pollution. Advocates described the move, spearheaded by Florida’s Ashley Moody, as an attempt to strip the EPA of an avenue for tackling environmental justice, which the agency defines as “the just treatment and meaningful involvement of all people, regardless of income, race, color, national origin, Tribal affiliation, or disability, in agency decision-making.” In their petition, the Republican attorneys general argued that in practice, environmental justice “asks the States to engage in racial engineering.”

The petition “reads as the next step in a series of actions designed to undermine our civil rights laws,” said Debbie Chizewer, an attorney at Earthjustice leading the organization’s efforts on Title VI. She described petitions to the EPA as important legal mechanisms to compel the agency to act. “It’s a real tool,” she said. “This is an abuse of that tool.”

Moody’s office told the Associated Press that the attorneys general would sue the EPA if it didn’t change its ways. 

The most recent high profile civil rights complaint submitted to the EPA came from residents of Cancer Alley, the stretch of land on the lower Mississippi River in southeast Louisiana home to hundreds of industrial facilities, including a notorious plant owned by the Japanese chemical giant Denka. Starting in the fall of 2022, the EPA spent months negotiating with Louisiana’s environmental and health regulators about how to ease the toxic pollution around Denka and other plants that surround the region’s predominantly Black towns. But the whole process was called off after then Louisiana attorney general  Jeff Landry (now the state’s governor) filed suit in May 2023.

Landry’s lawsuit attacked decades-old policies on environmental racism, challenging the EPA’s authority to regulate under Title VI. Even though the EPA dropped the complaint in June, the state pursued its litigation, and a federal judge ruled in Louisiana’s favor in January. Judge James Cain said that Louisiana and its “sister states” had found themselves “at the whim of the EPA and its overreaching mandates.” 

Considered one of the most important provisions of the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act, Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, and national origin in any program that receives funding from the federal government. This includes state agencies, which use federal dollars to administer pollution prevention laws such as the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act. Chizewer described the provision as vital because “our environmental laws are not protecting all communities. Zip codes determine your exposure to environmental harms and Title VI provides a backstop to eliminate that.” 

Recent attacks on the EPA’s use of Title VI can be traced back to the final days of the Trump administration, when the Department of Justice attempted to push through a rule that would have changed the interpretation of Title VI to only cover intentional discrimination. For decades, federal agencies like the EPA have interpreted Title VI to include in their definition of discrimination “disparate impacts,” the idea that a policy or agency decision can disproportionately hurt a specific group of people, regardless of whether it’s deliberate. The legal argument underpinning the Trump administration’s rule, as well as the Louisiana lawsuit and the most recent petition, is based on the Supreme Court case Alexander vs. Sandoval. The 2001 decision, written by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, said that private citizens do not have the right to sue parties under Title VI, meaning the law’s protections could only be advanced by agencies like the EPA. The Republican attorneys general now want to peel back the agency’s ability to use Title VI, too. 

Claire Glenn, a criminal defense attorney with a background in civil rights law, told Grist that the disparate impact interpretation of Title VI is necessary for keeping communities safe, since companies are wary of appearing discriminatory. 

“We’re in an era where intentional discrimination is increasingly hard to prove, but discriminatory impacts are not going away,” Glenn said.

Title VI is one of a handful of federal regulations that can be used to protect communities from toxic pollution. The Clean Air Act requires states to regulate plants by industry, with each type of facility required to abide by certain standards that limit their emissions. But when companies try to build plants in already polluted areas, Title VI can be used to stop local governments from granting them permits. Over the past five years, the chemical industry has made a concerted effort to expand its footprint in Louisiana. Since the EPA dropped its Title VI case there, residents and advocates have had to find new ways to fight the expansion. 

The EPA has not yet acknowledged Florida’s petition publicly. Chizewer said that the agency could choose to reject it out of hand, or accept it and start a process to change its own regulations. 

“I think it’s a test for the EPA,” Chizewer said. “The EPA needs to stand firm and show the importance of this tool.”

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline Republican attorneys general mount a new attack on the EPA’s use of civil rights law on Apr 25, 2024.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Lylla Younes.

]]> https://grist.org/regulation/republican-attorneys-general-epa-civil-rights-law/feed/ 0 471508 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/29/how-workers-are-defying-republican-officials-in-the-south/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/29/how-workers-are-defying-republican-officials-in-the-south/#respond Thu, 29 Feb 2024 06:55:53 +0000 https://www.counterpunch.org/?p=314666 Tanya Gaines and her co-workers launched a union drive in 2014 because it was the only way to win livable wages, fair treatment, and safe working conditions at the Golden Dragon copper tube manufacturing plant in Pine Hill, Alabama, one of the state’s poorest areas. Workers anticipated management’s opposition, but they felt blindsided when Alabama’s Republican governor More

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Photograph Source: takomabibelot – CC BY 2.0

Tanya Gaines and her co-workers launched a union drive in 2014 because it was the only way to win livable wages, fair treatment, and safe working conditions at the Golden Dragon copper tube manufacturing plant in Pine Hill, Alabama, one of the state’s poorest areas.

Workers anticipated management’s opposition, but they felt blindsided when Alabama’s Republican governor at the time, Robert Bentley, also came out against the organizing drive and wrote a letter demanding they vote against the union.

Gaines and her colleagues stood up to Bentley’s bullying, joined the United Steelworkers (USW), and began building better lives.

More and more workers across the South seek the same path forward that union membership provides. But they’re still forced to defy Republican officials who’d rather toady to wealthy corporations than support workers’ fight for a fair economy.

Autoworkers in Alabama, for example, vowed to stay the course in January 2024 after the state’s current governor, Republican Kay Ivey, publicly rebuked their efforts to unionize a Mercedes-Benz plant.

Equally furious USW members and other workers in South Carolina demanded that Republican Governor Henry McMaster correct course after he bragged during his state-of-the-state address in January 2024 that he’d oppose unions “to the gates of hell.”

Unionizing is entirely the workers’ choice, a right guaranteed under federal law. And yet Ivey and McMaster stuck their noses where they didn’t belong, just like Bentley did with the workers at Golden Dragon in 2014.

“It was like a slap in the face,” Gaines, who grew up in a union family and learned the power of solidarity at a young age, said of Bentley’s interference.

“We’re here on site, doing the job. He had no idea of the problem it was to work here,” she added, recalling the exploitation that workers faced. “We need a voice. This is our voice.”

Gaines said she and her co-workers continue battling Golden Dragon over safety and other issues—a fight she can’t imagine waging without the protections and resources the USW provides.

“They know better,” Gaines, vice president of USW Local 00176, said of company bosses. “They just don’t do better.”

When workers begin organizing, companies regularly go on the attack.

Employers squander hundreds of millions of dollars every year on anti-union consultants and force workers into captive audience meetings where they disparage organized labor and threaten union supporters. Companies flood workers’ social media and cell phones with anti-union propaganda. They post anti-union messages and videos throughout workplaces, even in restrooms.

Instead of standing up for workers who face these kinds of abuses, Republicans in the South pile on.

In early February 2024, Georgia’s Republican-controlled Senate passed a bill aimed at creating additional obstacles for workers seeking to unionize. Among other restrictions, the bill—championed by Republican Governor Brian Kemp—threatens to withhold state grants and other resources from forward-thinking companies that would prefer to voluntarily recognize unions instead of forcing workers to go through an additional drawn-out election process.

Meddling by elected officials helps to explain historically low union membership in the South. But now, not even desperate measures like the Georgia bill can stem the wave of workers forming unions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They’re seeing what the union has to offer. They’re seeing some of the advantages of being in the union,” said Reggie Thomas, president of USW Local 572, which represents hundreds of workers at Graphic Packaging in Macon, Georgia.

Thomas traveled to nearby Fort Valley, Georgia, in 2023 for rallies supporting the union drive at Blue Bird Corp. When 1,400 workers at the bus company voted overwhelmingly to join the USW, he said that victory sent a message to others throughout the South: “If the workers at Blue Bird can do it, I can, too.”

As workers empower themselves, they also build a stronger economy and healthier communities.

USW members and their counterparts in other unions advocated for the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which unleashed $1.2 trillion for upgrades to transportation, communications, and energy systems nationwide.

Republican officials—including Ivey, McMaster, and Kemp, hypocritically welcomed these investments while attacking the union workers who helped to bring the money home.

“Beware the messenger before you listen to the message,” William “Bump” Roddey, a member of USW Local 1924, said of Republicans’ anti-worker scheming.

“Look at where some of the big donations come from,” said Roddey, who works at the New-Indy mill in Catawba, South Carolina, and serves on York County Council. “They come from CEOs, the people who have a vested interest in keeping wages low.”

While career politicians like McMaster have no problem making ends meet, that isn’t the case for average South Carolinians applying for jobs at New-Indy.

Roddey said new hires, many of them first-time union members, marvel at the life-changing wages, workplace safety measures, and work-life balance, among other benefits their USW contract provides.

“It’s an eye-opening experience,” said Roddey, who often hears new union members make remarks like, “I didn’t have that at my last job. I didn’t have that opportunity.”

And when these workers tell others about what the union does for them, support for labor only snowballs in spite of Republicans’ plotting.

“The other side can’t define us,” Roddey said. “People are looking to make their lives better, and it can only come through the union, because the job pays your mortgage, pays your rent, pays your light bill, feeds your family. Unions are the backbone of the economy.”

This article was produced by the Independent Media Institute.

The post How Workers Are Defying Republican Officials in the South appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David McCall.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/29/how-workers-are-defying-republican-officials-in-the-south/feed/ 0 461250 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/01/yes-republican-states-are-now-starting-to-emulate-the-civil-war-era-south/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/01/yes-republican-states-are-now-starting-to-emulate-the-civil-war-era-south/#respond Thu, 01 Feb 2024 14:05:48 +0000 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/usa-texas-greg-abbott-civil-war-confederates-biden/
This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Chrissy Stroop.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/02/01/yes-republican-states-are-now-starting-to-emulate-the-civil-war-era-south/feed/ 0 456312 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/24/what-cable-news-channels-get-wrong-about-the-republican-primaries/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/24/what-cable-news-channels-get-wrong-about-the-republican-primaries/#respond Wed, 24 Jan 2024 12:02:57 +0000 https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/5050/2024-us-presidential-election-donald-trump-nikki-haley-new-hampshire-republican-primaries-normal/
This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Chrissy Stroop.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/24/what-cable-news-channels-get-wrong-about-the-republican-primaries/feed/ 0 454568 https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/03/this-is-the-republican-party-khalil-gibran-muhammad-says-nikki-haleys-slavery-flub-was-no-accident/ https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/03/this-is-the-republican-party-khalil-gibran-muhammad-says-nikki-haleys-slavery-flub-was-no-accident/#respond Wed, 03 Jan 2024 13:34:07 +0000 http://www.radiofree.org/?guid=ee4c2e009fd849127837bc2322353e65

Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley is facing backlash after she failed to cite slavery as a cause of the Civil War during a town hall event in New Hampshire last week. She later clarified that “of course the Civil War was about slavery,” but her initial reluctance to say so is indicative of how Republican leaders have long avoided reckoning with the country’s past, says Harvard historian Khalil Gibran Muhammad. “Nikki Haley has consistently denied the relevance of the history of racism in this country and the presence of racism in this country,” he says. “This is the Republican Party.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2024/01/03/this-is-the-republican-party-khalil-gibran-muhammad-says-nikki-haleys-slavery-flub-was-no-accident/feed/ 0 449226 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/21/republican-house-member-calls-for-the-jailing-of-journalists/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/21/republican-house-member-calls-for-the-jailing-of-journalists/#respond Thu, 21 Dec 2023 18:08:07 +0000 https://pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/republican-house-member-calls-for-the-jailing-of-journalists/

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote in a Dec. 15, 2023, social media post that journalists and Democrats should be jailed for the investigations into former President Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, joining a chorus of Trump allies calling for the imprisonment of media figures.

“Democrats and their propagandists in the media put America through hell trying to take out President Trump,” Greene wrote. “These thugs and criminals need to be held accountable — even jailed — for what they did to Trump and our great country.”

Greene, who told the Guardian in August 2023 that she is “on a list” of potential vice-presidential picks for Trump, has joined other Trump allies in mirroring the rhetoric used by Trump throughout his presidency and current candidacy.

The New York Times also reported that in early December two former top Trump political advisers openly discussed plans to target the press. Kash Patel, a former National Security Council adviser who is expected to serve under a second Trump administration, said that a Trump White House would “come after” what he called “conspirators” in the government and media.

“Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But yeah, we’re putting you all on notice,” Patel said. “We’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.”

Trump himself has called on the government to pursue charges against the media and, in a late-night Nov. 28 post to the social media site Truth Social, accused MSNBC without evidence of baselessly attacking him to interfere with the 2024 election.

The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker is collecting and cataloging reports of press freedom aggressions by candidates and their teams running in federal elections in 2024. Find that specialized tracking project here.

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/21/republican-house-member-calls-for-the-jailing-of-journalists/feed/ 0 447278 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/04/shock-poll-shows-independent-nebraska-union-leader-beating-republican-senator/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/04/shock-poll-shows-independent-nebraska-union-leader-beating-republican-senator/#respond Mon, 04 Dec 2023 22:28:47 +0000 https://theintercept.com/?p=453678

A Nebraska labor leader running for the U.S. Senate as an independent could best the Republican incumbent, according to a recent poll of voters in the Cornhusker State.

Dan Osborn, a 48-year-old military veteran who helped lead the 2021 strikes against food giant Kellogg’s, launched a challenge against 72-year-old Nebraska Republican Sen. Deb Fischer in October. A poll commissioned by Change Research, a liberal research firm, shows Osborn leading Fischer by a margin of 2 points. Nebraska has voted for a Republican president every year since 1964, and the survey, conducted in November, shows that respondents favor former President Donald Trump over President Joe Biden by a margin of 16.

Osborn’s slight edge in the poll — 40 percent to Fischer’s 38 percent — comes despite 59 percent of respondents saying they had never heard of him before. Fischer, meanwhile, has represented Nebraska in the Senate for a decade and sits on the influential Armed Services and Agricultural committees. In response to a question that described both Osborn’s and Fischer’s backgrounds, 50 percent of respondents said they’d vote for Osborn, while only 32 percent said they’d vote for Fischer.

“Nebraskans have had it with Washington. We’ve been starving for honest government that isn’t bought and paid for,” Osborn told The Intercept. “This poll shows that Nebraska’s independent streak is alive and well.”

Democrats have so far not fielded a candidate in the Senate race. In October, shortly after Osborn’s announcement, Nebraska Democratic Party Chair Jane Kleeb said state Democrats were considering supporting his bid. Kleeb told The Intercept that the state party would make an endorsement decision in February and that Osborn could win if “the money is there.”

He could appeal to populists and progressives, Kleeb said, with many Nebraska voters tired of one-party control in the state. “Makes politicians lazy when you have only one party in control and more beholden to corporate interests since they don’t have to answer to voters,” she wrote.

Osborn’s candidacy comes as Democrats face a challenging battle next year to retain their razor-thin Senate majority. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., has announced that he will not run for reelection, all but guaranteeing a Republican pickup in West Virginia, while Sens. Jon Tester, D-Mont., and Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, are vying to defend seats in states Trump won in 2020. 

Democrats are also defending seats in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Arizona (where Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego seeks to beat Kyrsten Sinema, who recently changed her party affiliation from Democrat to independent, and Republican Kari Lake in a three-way race), while Republicans are playing in defense in Florida and Texas, where they have had strong showings in recent statewide elections.

Osborn has focused his campaign on labor and economic issues and the cross-partisan coalition he aims to build. “I will bring together workers, farmers, ranchers, and small business owners across Nebraska around bread-and-butter issues that appeal across party lines,” he pledged when he announced his candidacy.

His platform spans from raising pay for servicemembers and taking on agricultural consolidation to legalizing medical marijuana and pledging to “never supporting handing huge pharmaceuticals a blank check.” The independent also calls to reform railroad safety, with measures like requiring two-person crews and increasing fines for violating rail safety laws — mirroring some of the reforms that were floated after the disastrous Norfolk Southern derailment in East Palestine, Ohio, earlier this year.

Osborn’s platform appears to be popular among would-be voters in Nebraska. Pollsters asked a series of questions regarding his policy platform, after which 53 percent of respondents said they’d vote for him, compared to 30 percent for Fisher. Thirty-three percent of poll respondents were Democrats, 14 percent independent, and 53 percent Republican; 53 percent said they voted for Trump in 2020, while 35 percent said they voted for Biden.

“This poll shows that Nebraska’s independent streak is alive and well.”

Osborn has served as the president of the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers International Union Local 50G and garnered national attention two years ago when he helped lead workers in a strike against Kellogg’s that lasted more than two months and also included factories in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee.

“It’s exciting to be a part of something bigger than yourself, knowing that we’re not alone,” the 18-year Kellogg’s veteran said at the time. 

In his campaign launch video, Osborn spoke about the strike. “Two years ago, I successfully led the strike to preserve 500 middle-class jobs here in Nebraska,” he said. “It didn’t matter what party you belonged to. We came together to find solutions and move forward.”

During the strike, the company had threatened to replace all 1,400 workers. At its conclusion, workers won an agreement that included a $1.10 per hour raise, a new cost-of-living pay increase, and a pathway for lower-tier workers to “graduate” into a higher tier of pay.

As an independent, Osborn has no party structure to tap into for campaigning or fundraising. As of September 30, Fischer had $2.6 million on hand; Osborn announced raising $100,000 in two months as of November 16.

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Prem Thakker.

]]> https://www.radiofree.org/2023/12/04/shock-poll-shows-independent-nebraska-union-leader-beating-republican-senator/feed/ 0 443766 https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/19/last-republican-on-philly-city-council-fired-staffer-who-reported-sexual-harassment-says-lawsuit/ https://www.radiofree.org/2023/11/19/last-republican-on-philly-city-council-fired-staffer-who-reported-sexual-harassment-says-lawsuit/#respond Sun, 19 Nov 2023 11:00:00 +0000 https://theintercept.com/?p=450614

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

• Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection on Tuesday, while Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. In Virginia, Democrats swept legislative elections in a blow to GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
• As casualties mount in the Israel-Hamas war, calls are growing for attention to the more than 2 million civilians in the blockaded Gaza Strip. The Biden administration says it supports a narrow humanitarian pause in the fighting to allow for the movement of humanitarian supplies but opposes a wider cease-fire.
• The House Judiciary Committee held a hearing on the state of free speech on university campuses amid reports of a rise in antisemitism across the country.
• Ukraine claims responsibility for killing a Russia-backed official in Luhansk by a car bomb.
• Civil rights lawyers and equity advocates came together today to discuss the dangers that artificial intelligence poses to democracy and explore the steps that can be taken to protect vulnerable communities from the harmful misinformation, disinformation, and voter intimidation.

Issue 1 supporters celebrate as Rhiannon Carnes, executive director, Ohio Women’s Alliance, speaks at a watch party, Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2023, in Columbus Ohio. Ohio voters have approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion and other forms of reproductive health care. The outcome of Tuesday’s intense, off-year election was the latest blow for abortion opponents. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)

The post Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves won reelection on Tuesday, while Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right to an abortion and other forms of reproductive health care – Wednesday, November 8, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

To that end, the president's executive order—which he says must be backed by congressional legislation—requires "developers of the most powerful AI systems" to inform the federal government of safety test results and other key data. The National Institute of Standards and Technology will also be tasked with drafting AI safety and security standards.

"It's hard to say that this document, on its own, represents much progress."

The order also aims to prevent AI from engineering dangerous biological materials "by developing strong new standards for biological synthesis screening," while directing the U.S. Department of Commerce to "develop guidance for content authentication and watermarking to clearly label AI-generated content," an effort to protect consumer from fraud and deception.

Caitlin Seeley George, campaigns and managing director at the advocacy group Fight for the Future, called Biden's order "a positive step."

"However, it's hard to say that this document, on its own, represents much progress," she asserted.

Seeley George continued:

Agencies like the [Federal Trade Commission] have already taken some action to rein in abuses of AI, and this executive order could supercharge such efforts, unlocking the federal government's ability to put critical guardrails in place to address harmful impacts of AI. But there's also the possibility that agencies do the bare minimum, a choice that would render this executive order toothless and waste another year of our lives while vulnerable people continue to lose housing and job opportunities, experience increased surveillance at school and in public, and be unjustly targeted by law enforcement, all due to biased and discriminatory AI.

"It's impossible to ignore the gaping hole in this order when it comes to law enforcement agencies' use of AI," said Seeley George. "Some of the most harmful uses of AI are currently being perpetrated by law enforcement, from predictive policing algorithms and pre-trial assessments to biometric surveillance systems like facial recognition."

Noting that AI systems used by police "deliver discriminatory outcomes, particularly for Black people and other people of color," Seeley George added that "we cannot stress enough that if the Biden administration fails to put real limits on how law enforcement uses AI, their effort will ultimately fail in its goal of addressing the biggest threats that AI poses to our civil rights."

Maria Langholz, director of communications at Demand Progress, said in a statement that the advocacy group applauds Biden "for his leadership in advancing the national conversation on comprehensive AI regulation."

Langholz continued:

Given the long history of Big Tech companies like Facebook, Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon abusing their monopoly power in areas from cloud computing to worker surveillance, Americans should be deeply concerned about corporate consolidation of AI technologies. We have already seen the tech giants begin to sweep up small innovators, and we expect that this will continue in the absence of a major intervention.

"In the coming months, Demand Progress will work to ensure the Biden administration and Congress' emerging AI frameworks have teeth to meaningfully rein in Big Tech corporate consolidation, to thoughtfully monitor and restrain military and law enforcement applications, and to protect against undue surveillance and consumer privacy violations," she added.

At the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen, president Robert Weissman said in a statement that "today's executive order is a vital step by the Biden administration to begin the long process of regulating rapidly advancing AI technology—but it's only a first step."

The order, Weissman continued, "builds on the White House's Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights and the administration's important move last week to ensure its trade policy does not preempt AI and technology-related policymaking."

The White House said Monday that it will take additional action including,

• Providing "clear guidance to landlords, federal benefits programs, and federal contractors to keep AI algorithms from being used to exacerbate discrimination;"
• Addressing algorithmic discrimination "through training, technical assistance, and coordination between the Department of Justice and federal civil rights offices"; and
• Ensuring fairness in the criminal justice system "by developing best practices on the use of AI" through every stage of the law enforcement, sentencing, carceral, and post-incarceration process.

"As much as the White House can do on its own, those measures are no substitute for agency regulation and legislative action," Weissman added. "Preventing the foreseeable and unforeseeable threats from AI requires agencies and Congress take the baton from the White House and act now to shape the future of AI—rather than letting a handful of corporations determine our future, at potentially great peril."

Following Biden's signing of the executive order, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said that "executive orders are limited, and the president and I agree we need legislation."

Schumer—who has hosted two recent AI forums—added that a bipartisan working group would meet with Biden Tuesday "to move forward on AI legislatively" with "urgency" and "humility."

"This is about the hardest thing I've attempted to undertake legislatively," he said.

The executive order comes during preparations for a global AI safety summit in the United Kingdom next month, ahead of which two dozen experts warned that policymakers must act now to prevent "societal-scale" damage from the technology.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

One of President Joe Biden’s very first executive orders in January 2021 directed agencies to recalculate the social cost of carbon — currently placed at $51 a ton while the government finalizes its revised estimate. In the meantime, Republican state attorneys general have been flinging lawsuits at the administration in an attempt to block its ability to use the metric in evaluating regulations.

But their plans were thwarted by Tuesday’s order from the conservative-dominated Supreme Court. Without any explanation, the justices declined to hear Missouri v. Biden, a case in which 12 states alleged that Biden’s executive order violated the constitutional separation of powers. A federal appeals court ruled last year that the states suing over the use of the estimate didn’t have legal standing because they couldn’t show they’d been harmed by the way agencies had applied the metric.

It’s the second time the Supreme Court has declined to take up a challenge to the social cost of carbon. Last year, the justices blocked a similar request led by Louisiana.

The social cost of carbon is likely to have cascading effects on agriculture, power plants, oil and gas leases, and more. That’s because federal agencies have to weigh the costs and benefits of any regulation they adopt. If the government accounts for the true costs of emitting greenhouse gases — lost lives, dying crops, homes swallowed by rising seas — then decisions that result in more carbon emissions start to look a lot more expensive, while those that reduce emissions look like a smart deal.

The Obama administration, the first to require agencies to use this metric in assessing rules, placed the social cost of carbon at $43 a ton — a move that helped justify things like stronger emissions standards for vehicles. The Trump administration calculated the number differently and, in typical fashion, slashed the number down to a couple bucks per ton. Last year, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed $190 a ton, nearly four times higher than the estimate the Biden administration currently uses. (The EPA’s number is in line with estimates from independent experts.)

Because the social cost of carbon is so influential in developing climate policy, some Republicans consider it a paragon of the “radical climate agenda.” In response to the Supreme Court’s rejection of Missouri’s challenge, Andrew Bailey, the state’s attorney general, vowed to “continue to combat government overreach at every turn.” 

Analysts say the fight isn’t over yet. In a note to clients, the research firm ClearView Energy Partners said the ruling doesn’t preclude states — or anyone else — from suing over specific agency actions and rules that rely on the social cost of carbon, E&E News reported.

In recent months, the White House announced that it was considering applying the social cost of carbon more broadly across agencies, in everything from annual budgets and permitting decisions to fines for violating environmental regulations. It represents a sea change in how the government approaches climate policy: For decades, policies to reduce emissions had been cast as an economic burden, a narrative propelled by oil industry-backed studies that made legislation look prohibitively expensive. Now, the frame has switched: Carbon emissions are viewed as the economic harm, and climate policy is the balm.

This story was originally published by Grist with the headline The Supreme Court rejected a Republican challenge to Biden’s climate math on Oct 11, 2023.

This content originally appeared on Grist and was authored by Kate Yoder.

The post The Morbid Decline of the Republican Party appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Alan Kanner.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Ryan Grim.

"The fight for voting rights has never been more urgent," she argued, explaining that the legislation—named for the late Democratic Georgia congressman and civil rights leader—aims to restore and modernize the full protections of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA), which was gutted by the U.S. Supreme Court a decade ago in Shelby County v. Holder.

The bill is backed by every House Democrat but faces tough odds in both chambers. Early last year, Democratic right-wing Sen. Joe Manchin (W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), who switched from Democrat to Independent in December, worked with Republicans to block a megabill that included the Freedom to Vote Act and the John Lewis legislation.

Still, U.S. advocacy groups on Tuesday applauded the lawmakers' renewed push for federal voting rights reforms—as they did in July, when Democratic leaders reintroduced the Freedom to Vote Act.

"The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is key in preserving democracy, full stop," declared Public Citizen executive vice president Lisa Gilbert. "A decade after the Supreme Court gutted 'preclearance' protection in the Voting Rights Act, more than half of U.S. states have passed over 90 laws that make it harder to vote for communities of color, in particular."

"Without this legislation, we risk further entrenching anti-democratic, partisan forces that want to choose their own voters," Gilbert warned.

According to the Declaration for American Democracy coalition:

In the last decade since the Shelby County v. Holder Supreme Court decision gutted key enforcement mechanisms in the Voting Rights Act, at least 29 states have passed 94 laws making it harder to vote, with at least 11 states enacting 13 restrictive voting laws in 2023 alone.

Attacks on our freedom to vote disproportionately impact Black, Latino, Asian, Native, and other voters of color. Since Shelby v. Holder, the racial turnout gap has grown significantly in 5 of the 6 states previously covered by the preclearance sections of the Voting Rights Act.

Sylvia Albert, Common Cause's director of voting and elections, stressed that "this ongoing effort to suppress the vote harkens back to the shameful Jim Crow era. At that time, it took the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and rigorous enforcement by the U.S. Department of Justice to curb the wholesale abuses and attacks on the freedom to vote."

"Today it will take passage of the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to curb this new generation of assaults on the freedom to vote and to strengthen the ability of the Department of Justice to protect that sacred freedom with the tools it used for decades," she asserted, specifically calling out Republican-controlled state legislatures that have tried "to silence Black and Brown voters after they showed up to vote in record numbers during the 2020 election."

Noting that the VRA "has a long history of bipartisan support," Leslie Proll of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights said: "We applaud our elected officials who have responded to the call of the majority of people in this country who support new legislation to protect the vote. We need federal action now."

Michael Waldman, president and CEO of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law, also highlighted previous bipartisan support for the VRA, pointing out that "the last time the Voting Rights Act was reauthorized, in 2006, it gained 98 votes in the Senate." He called on Congress to swiftly pass the "urgently needed" John Lewis bill and the Freedom to Vote Act.

Organizations focused on key issues like abortion rights and the climate emergency also demanded action on the proposal.

"This legislation is long overdue," said a 15-member coalition that included Clean Water Action, Climate Hawks Vote, the Climate Reality Project, Earthjustice, EDF Action, Environmental Law & Policy Center, Greenpeace USA, Interfaith Power & Light, League of Conservation Voters, the National Wildlife Federation, NextGen America, Sierra Club, Union of Concerned Scientists, WE ACT for Environmental Justice, and Zero Hour.

"We cannot effectively tackle the critical issues our nation faces—like combating the climate crisis, advancing environmental justice, and protecting our air, lands, waters, biodiversity, wildlife, and oceans—without fixing the broken system that caters to corporate polluters and disenfranchises too many voters," the coalition argued.

Meanwhile, NARAL Pro-Choice America said on social media that "voting rights and reproductive freedom are deeply intertwined."

"Anti-abortion extremists attack voting rights knowing that it is critical to electing repro champions," the organization added. "Congress MUST pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Act."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Prem Thakker.

Georgia is intensifying its crackdown against opponents of Cop City, with the state’s Republican attorney general announcing sweeping indictments of 61 people on racketeering charges over protests and other activism related to the $90 million police training facility planned to be built in Atlanta. The RICO charges were approved by the same grand jury that indicted former President Trump and 18 others on RICO charges in the same county by the Democratic district attorney, and come after many of the same people were earlier charged with domestic terrorism and money laundering as part of the Stop Cop City movement, which is still seeking to block construction of the new police complex. “They are choosing to use the legal process in an essentially violent way to target protesters,” says attorney Devin Franklin with the Southern Center for Human Rights, which is organizing legal representation for the defendants in the case. We also speak with Keyanna Jones, a Stop Cop City organizer with Community Movement Builders, who notes the indictments are dated from May 25, 2020, the day Minneapolis police killed George Floyd. “Since that date, this country has been upended by governments across the nation trying to build Cop Cities in order to quell protest,” says Jones. “The government is simply upset that people seek to … use their First Amendment right to protest when we see injustice coming from those in authority.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

Photograph Source: DonkeyHotey – CC BY 2.0

“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”

—Ruby Freeman, Georgia election worker

“Hey, you stupid slave nigger…You are in our sights, we want to kill you. If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch.”

—Abigail Jo Shry, Texas Trump cultist’s threat to Judge Tanya Chutkan

“They must serve as examples for their crimes. They must serve as examples so that others will think long and hard before committing a crime or an act of violence.”

—Donald Trump on the Central Park Five

“Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.”

—Richard Nixon,

Revenge porn is the GOP’s new black.

“I am your retribution,” Donald Trump, America’s bloated, bloviating Batman, declares.

“We’re going to start slitting throats on day one,” promises Ron DeSantis, glitchy governator of Florida, the state where history goes to die, and being comatose is touted as a virtue.

Meanwhile, in congressional hearings, the queen of laptop porn, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, parades explicit photos of a naked Hunter Biden and his redacted junk to score MAGA points against President Joe Biden. This conduct is relatively tame for the rabid Greene, who has labeled Pelosi a “traitor,” advocated for her assassination, and spread baseless innuendos when a homicidal home intruder fractured Paul Pelosi’s skull with a hammer.

It seems that Trump and his supporters will not be satisfied until MAGA cultists take down his political enemies and, ultimately, the country.

They are encouraged by Trump, who has always spoken, unfiltered, the language of vengeance and violence. In 1989, as a real estate mogul, he demanded the death penalty for the Central Park Five, the Exonerated Five since 2002, although Trump, who was found liable for sexual assault in the E. Jean Carroll case, refuses to acknowledge their innocence or to apologize. As a 2016 presidential candidate, he boasted of sexually assaulting women and condoned an attack on a Black Lives Matter protester at one of his campaign rallies. As president, he “joked” that police should rough up suspects they take into custody and once asked former Defense Secretary Mark Esper why White House demonstrators protesting the murder of George Floyd couldn’t just be shot.

Trump’s language, however inciteful, is protected by the First Amendment. His actions are not. And while Trump is many deplorable things – racist, psychopath, pathological liar, xenophobe, misogynist, and cis-supremacist – a fool is not one of them. He may notoriously boast that “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters,” but, like the mafia dons he channels, he knows that rather than risk the consequences of committing such an act himself, it’s best to leave the dirty work to others. That is what minions and co-conspirators are for. After all, this is the bone-spurred no-show who promised his followers on January 6 that he would join them at the Capitol.

Despite his threats and intimidation, Defcon Don remains an imperiously impervious and untouchable pariah who, his 20-minute, whirlwind excursion to the Fulton County Jail aside, may never see the insides of an actual jail cell. The norms of the criminal justice system simply do not apply to him: mugshots are optional, perp walks are negotiated, arraignments are breezily expedited. Does anyone doubt that, unlike social media influencer Kai Cenat, if Trump had conjured up a flash mob in front of Trump Tower for a giveaway of mugshot¹ NFTs and a riot broke out, he and his followers would have been allowed to leisurely broker their arraignment dates, not arrested on the spot?

According to the Prison Policy Initiative, more than 400,000 Americans are currently being detained pretrial – but not the quadruplely indicted Trump. In Georgia, the “billionaire” braggart’s bond was set at a mere $200,000, $300,000 less than that of his former fixer Michael Cohen who was convicted of hush money payments to a porn star on Trump’s behalf. One would think that conspiring to subvert democracy is a more serious offense.

Trump has already orchestrated one insurrection and is determined to incite another. Yet he remains not only a free man but the GOP presidential frontrunner, converting his many indictments into political currency. Of the eight “law and order” Republican presidential hopefuls on the debate stage in Milwaukee, all but two declared they would support Trump for party nominee even if he were “convicted in a court of law.” These duplicitous defenders of the Constitution see nothing wrong with backing a man for president who has proven himself incapable of upholding and protecting it.

After much stalling, it appears that with Trump’s Georgia booking our system of justice is finally beginning to work. But we have gone through the motions before, including two impeachments and a civil case, only to see him evade accountability.

This matters little to his supporters who hold his First Amendment rights and their Second Amendment rights more important than the rule of law, despite the threat of inciting stochastic terrorism Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric poses to the nation.

Trump has made no secret about whom he deems to be his enemies. His words have already endangered the lives of Georgia election workers Shaye Moss and Ruby Freeman, Fulton County D.A. Fani Willis, New York County D.A.Alvin Bragg, New York A.G. Letitia James, and Washington, D.C. Judge Tanya Chutkan. Encouraged by their puppet master, Trump supporters wasted no time doxing the Fulton County grand jury. That most of his targets are black and women should surprise no one.

Fulton County Jail’s nominal “inmate” No. P01135809 has been repeatedly warned about his threats. Yet despite a few tentative toe-dips in the shallow pool of judicial equity, everything so far indicates that Trump is above the law, where he will remain so long as optics takes precedence over principle and the equal application of justice.

The optics of concern here is not that of a two-tiered justice system. Rather, it is that the sight of Trump’s conviction and imprisonment would send the wrong message to the world that America has become a Third World “shithole country.” Sadly, concern over such optics overrides any about the fate of our democracy should his crimes go unpunished.

Some seem to think that Trump’s disgrace and humiliation are punishment enough. The media point to the dilapidated, overcrowded conditions of the Fulton County Jail, which are good enough (or bad enough) for mundane criminals but apparently too “extreme” for the former president. Crocodile tears fully primed, the media mouths concern about the “nightmarish public health” conditions at the jail, fully aware that the odds of Trump spending a night – or any time – behind its bars are nil. And even if Trump were incarcerated, does anybody believe that he would be treated like any other inmate or come to share the same fate as LaShawn Thompson, whose body was found “dehydrated, malnourished, and infested inside and out with insects”? Or would maggot removal be added to the roster of duties of the Secret Service?

For some, the optics of Trump’s booking and scowling mugshot might inspire optimism that the system is finally beginning to work. But we have gone through the motions before with Trump, only to witness the gravity-defying farce of trickle-up justice. Of course, it has yet to be proven in a court of law that Trump conspired to steal the election, but the question remains: What consequences will he face if and when it is proven beyond a reasonable doubt that he has? Moreover, what happens if Trump is convicted of his felonies in New York and Georgia but wins the Republican primary and the general election? Will he be imprisoned? Will the big house become the new White House?

The threat remains that if Trump is not convicted, he will run for president in perpetuity if only to stay out of prison. As early as August 2020, years before his serial indictments, Trump telegraphed his intent to cling to the presidency “4eva.” The means to thwart his authoritarian ambitions exist, but their use will require a measure of political will that those currently in a position to act lack.

Some comfort may be taken in the fact that legal scholars have revisited the theory that Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, the so-called disqualification clause, which bars elected officials who have violated their oath to uphold the Constitution and engaged in insurrection against the United States from running for and holding political office, could be invoked to derail a Trump dictatorship that would see him and his allies enact political retribution against individuals and institutions responsible for his present predicament.

Realpolitik, however, reveals that its successful use is far from guaranteed. Except for New Mexico County Commissioner Couy Griffin, attempts in 2022 to invoke the clause to remove insurrectionist Republican officials from office have uniformly failed. In Georgia, the non-profit group Free Speech for the People invoked the clause in a suit to remove Marjorie Taylor Greene’s name from the ballot there. Similar campaigns were launched against North Carolina Rep. Madison Cawthorn, Indiana Rep. Jim Banks, and Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar. None succeeded. And while Republican New Hampshire Secretary of State David Scanlan is reportedly listening to those advocating use of the clause to block Trump’s name from appearing on ballots in his state’s presidential primary, and Florida lawyer Lawrence Caplan has filed a federal lawsuit challenging Trump’s 2024 presidential bid, it is unlikely that other Republican secretaries of state will cooperate in these efforts and far more likely that they will move to stymie them.

Still, a bevy of legal scholars and jurists, including Lawrence Tribe and J. Michael Luttig and William Baude and Michael Stokes Paulsen, have argued that the disqualification clause is “self-executing,” claiming violators are automatically disqualified from running for and holding political office and that disqualification does not require a criminal conviction. As Luttig explained on CNN,

All officials, federal and state, who have a responsibility to put on the ballot candidates for the presidency of the United States…are obligated under the Constitution to determine whether Donald Trump qualifies to be put on the ballot. That is, they must determine themselves whether he is disqualified from being listed on the ballot by Section 3. Now, here’s how this will work: Any secretary of state or other state election official who’s charged with that responsibility will make the determination. Now, whether that person decides that former President Trump is qualified or whether he or she determines that he is disqualified by Section 3 and therefore doesn’t list him, that decision will be immediately challenged in federal court, and it will quickly move to the Supreme Court of the United States, where this decision will have to be made prior to the 2024 election.

Nonetheless, some serious doubts temper any optimism. Congress, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, can remove the disqualification, something it has done twice: In 1872, in the name of national reconciliation, it enacted the Amnesty Act, which lifted restrictions barring former Confederates from voting and holding office, and in 1898, it voted to end Section 3. The only other time Congress invoked the clause was in 1919 when it refused to seat socialist Victor Berger for his opposition to U.S. involvement in World War I, a decision that was later overturned (Berger eventually served three terms). On the other hand, in the 1970s, Congress passed joint resolutions to grant Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis posthumous Section 3 amnesty. Here, too, the aim was national reconciliation in the wake of Watergate and the Vietnam War. According to New York City Bar, there is currently no congressional legislation to enforce Section 3.

Given its rightwing majority, placing one’s faith in the Supreme Court seems criminally naïve. Aside from the fact the initial intent of the clause has repeatedly been nullified by a desire for “national unity,” and with rumors of impending civil war now indelibly a part of the zeitgeist, it seems unlikely that Congress or SCOTUS will rise to the challenge.

Note

1. The Fulton County mugshots have proven anticlimactic, as they are little more than mostly dour DMV portraits. I had envisioned front view and side view shots, height backdrops, and handheld slates with names and inmate numbers on them. But I guess what’s good for Young Thug is good for Old Thug and his gang of eighteen.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by John G. Russell.

The first Republican presidential primary debate highlighted “deep divisions within the Republican Party about foreign policy,” says The Nation's national affairs correspondent John Nichols. He says the nationalist “America First” ideology championed by former President Donald Trump is now being pushed even further by Vivek Ramaswamy and Ron DeSantis, who are critical of U.S. funding to Ukraine, while more establishment candidates like Nikki Haley insisted on continued support for the country's defense against Russia.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Photograph Source: Governor Glenn Youngkin – CC BY 2.0

Virginia’s plutocrat Republican governor Glenn Youngkin has not so far declared himself a candidate in the 2024 presidential election even as he goes out of state for appearances where, to all intents and purposes, he conducts himself as a presidential campaigner.

Youngkin campaigned in 15 states last year for Republican gubernatorial candidates– only 5 of his candidates won, and 4 of those were in solid red states. At least 2 of these candidates promulgated Trump’s fabrications about the 2020 “stolen election”. Youngkin’s PAC dispenses largesse to “stolen election” liars and supporters of the 1/6 insurrection.

At the same time Youngkin plays a delicate balancing act with Trump and his supporters. He accepted Trump’s endorsement for the governorship but did not invite Trump to his campaigns. Youngkin sucked-up to Trump by criticizing the FBI raid of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property in search of illegally removed classified documents, calling it “a stunning move by the DOJ and FBI”. Youngkin also refuses to say whether Trump should cease pushing the 2020 election lie, though he also accepts with some wavering here and there that Joe Biden won the presidency legitimately.

Fox News now touts Youngkin as a presidential candidate and has had him in at least 6 live interviews on FN in the period from this mid-June to mid-July — twice on Hannity, and once each on Fox & Friends, Fox & Friends Weekend, America’s Newsroom, and Fox News Tonight.

In these FN appearances Youngkin caters to right-wing Republicans by boasting about how he’s taking on “progressive liberals”, while in his in-state public appearances he confines himself to his more moderate-sounding pitch about raising standards in schools (while proposing budget cuts for public schools in order to fund vouchers for home-schooling and private education—thankfully the Democrats nixed this in the state legislature); giving parents more rights; and reducing people’s taxes (he’s proposed a package of $4bn tax cuts, which is easy to do because Virginia is currently running a large surplus).

Youngkin has a proclivity for gesture politics. He banned the teaching of Critical Race Theory in Virginia schools even though it is not taught there, and he set up a tip-line for people to rat on teachers who taught “divisive concepts”. The tip-line had to be discontinued after a few weeks when it was swamped by a large number of hoax calls.

Next month Youngkin will attend a fund-raising party on Long Island hosted by Wilbur Ross, Trump’s controversial commerce secretary, who appears to have switched his political allegiances away from his former boss.

Doubtless fat-cat Youngkin fans will be prodded by Wilbur to open their wallets for the Virginia governor who resembles  a Trumpster in more ways than one (albeit as someone who is always careful to lead Trump supporters from the back).

Youngkin, with his trademark tech bro fleece vests, but unlike the boorish Trump, gives the appearance of an affable and couth country-club Republican. However, this belies his 25-year-long career with the Carlyle Group—Youngkin ended up as co-CEO of this hardened and at times criminal corporate-raiding outfit from 2018 to 2020.

Forbes estimated his wealth to be about $440million in 2021, $165 million of which Youngkin loaned to his own gubernatorial campaign. Youngkin makes no reference to his enormous wealth and only says he was a “financier” before entering politics.

Youngkin, however, has continuing legal problems relating to his previous career as a “financier”. According to NBC News:

In January 2020, Glenn Youngkin… got some welcome news. A complex corporate transaction had gone through at the Carlyle Group, the powerful private equity company that Youngkin led as co-chief executive. Under the deal, approved by the Carlyle board and code-named “Project Phoenix,” he began receiving $8.5 million in cash and exchanged his almost $200 million stake in the company for an equal amount of tax-free shares, according to court documents.

The Project Phoenix payout came on top of $54 million in compensation Youngkin had received from Carlyle during the previous two years, regulatory records show….

NBC News says the lawsuit filed against Carlyle by the city of Pittsburgh Comprehensive Municipal Pension Trust Fund, a Carlyle stockholder, charges that

         the $344 million deal harmed Carlyle’s stockholders, who received nothing in return when they funded the payday….  the Carlyle insiders who received the payouts escaped a tax bill that would have exceeded $1 billion, according to the complaint, which accuses Rubenstein , Youngkin and other Carlyle officials of lining their own pockets at the expense of people like police officers and firefighters.

Youngkin clings to the typical Republican pose as a friend of law enforcement, and it will be interesting to see if this and other legal issues related to the “financier’s” complex employment past come to light should he be a candidate for the presidency. The Democrats would be fools if they did not focus on his chequered past if they have to campaign against the “financier”.

(I have detailed some of Carlyle’s legal problems when Youngkin was employed there in a previous CounterPunch piece.)

Youngkin, if he decides he wants to be president will probably campaign, in the Republican primaries at any rate, by rehashing his relentless preoccupation with wedge “culture wars” issues– albeit undertaken by him without Trump’s feverishly unhinged bombast and Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s snarling soullessness.

Youngkin uses the benign sounding notion of “parent’s rights” to enact an array of right-wing education policies.

Youngkin’s predecessor as governor, the Democrat Ralph Northam, implemented policies that permitted some Northern Virginia school districts to let students decide on the names and pronouns they wanted to use in class. Youngkin’s new policy hands back control of the way students express their gender identity to their parents. In addition, school activities are to be based on biological sex at birth, rather than gender or gender identity.

Youngkin’s attempted whitewashing of Virginia’s history curriculums turned out to be a fiasco. The templates for the new curriculums, created by shadowy right-wing think tanks, excluded lessons about Martin Luther King Jr. and the Juneteenth Holiday, as well as referring to indigenous people as America’s “first immigrants”. Ronald Reagan was referred to in numerous places, but there was no mention of Barack Obama; and the history of Algonquian chief Powhatan long featured in Virginia civics education was excised.

After a huge public outcry, the state Board of Education sent the templates back for revision before voting on February 23 this year to advance the revised syllabuses, though final adoption isn’t expected until later this year.

Youngkin nominated a former coal lobbyist and Trump administration Environmental Protection Agency chief, Andrew Wheeler, for a cabinet position overseeing Virginia environmental policy. When Wheeler did not receive confirmation from the Virginia legislature, Youngkin made him a senior adviser.

As Trump’s star starts to fade overall while his legal woes mount, and his appeal is confined increasingly to his cult-like base, and DeSantis plods on with his flatlining campaign, the Republican establishment may decide that Youngkin is the horse they want to ride to the White House (oh well– he owns a 30-acre luxury horse farm in Fairfax county, Virginia).

Youngkin will probably get a fairly easy ride in the early stages of the Republican primaries. Trump is a well-recognized crook who can’t challenge Youngkin on the latter’s legally volatile business career (though he could say Mr Fleece Vest is not up to the rough and tumble of a presidential campaign, a la his jibe against a “low energy” former governor of Florida in a previous presidential run), and the milque-toast DeSantis has confined himself so far to saying Trump’s legal issues do no more than distract Republicans in the run-up to the 2024 election.

DeSantis is miles behind Trump in the opinion polls, and his only hope, without saying so in public, is that the legal system will take care of his orange-hued opponent before the presidential race intensifies.

Meanwhile, Trump hopes a successful presidential bid will enable him to side-step his legal woes by getting his lawyers to invoke some kind of presidential immunity.

Youngkin could perhaps be sharing DeSantis’s hopes on this issue since—phew!– he will no longer have to tip-toe round Trump and his more feral supporters.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

Betselm describes how the Israeli government encourages the settlements

Most of the settlements in the West Bank are defined as national priority areas. Accordingly, the settlers and other Israeli citizens working or investing in the settlements are entitled to significant financial benefits. These benefits are provided by six government ministries: the Ministry of Construction and Housing (generous loans for the purchase of apartments, part of which is converted to a grant); the Israel Lands Administration (significant price reductions in leasing land); the Ministry of Education (incentives for teachers, exemption from tuition fees in kindergartens, and free transportation to school); the Ministry of Industry and Trade (grants for investors, infrastructure for industrial zones, etc.); the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (incentives for social workers); and the Ministry of Finance (reductions in income tax for individuals and companies).

Benefits are an inducement and not an excuse to acquire stolen property and are no reason to harass neighbors in an extreme and violent manner. Criminally attacking innocent Palestinians in adjacent villages gives the settlers a feeling of being all-powerful, all-commanding, all-authoritative, and having the right to murder, rob, and torch anyone they want.

The world treats the settlers as ultra-nationalists, as people with overzealous prophecies who are eager to fulfill a commitment to their God. They run amok because their beliefs are amok. Their violence must be stopped and, hopefully, legal and moral forces will subdue them. The word, as usual, is naive.

These hilltop villains arrive with a twisted mission — to bring their select group back to a land they fanatically believe God has given to them. People are entitled to their myths and ahistorical stories as a central focus to hold their ethnicity together; they are not entitled to take fantasy, pose it as a reality, and use the subverted reality for diabolical purposes. The settlers’ existence depends upon denying existence to others. The settlers’ principal purpose in life is to disturb the lives of others. They have often operated as a murderous contingent, completely unattached to reality, and finding pleasure in dominating their victims.

The settlers play the role of shock troops for the government. Not wanting the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), a euphemism for the Israel Offensive Forces (IOF), to be identified with the intended genocide of the Palestinian people, the Israeli government has purposely selected and conveniently installed the Orthodox Jews to commit the mayhem and carry out the vicious deeds. The ever-alert and just-around-the-corner police and military forces always arrive too late to halt the crimes committed against Palestinian villagers. No matter how severe the crime, the criminals, are rarely apprehended, and if apprehended, never severely punished.

After decades of suffering under extreme oppression, with no end in sight, with oppressors who could live as well in other places, the destruction of the Palestinian people has unique qualities that defy rational thought. Particularly unique is the Western world’s assistance to the destruction, where, for the first time in history, external forces support and encourage mass violence against an established community, done in solicitation from Israel and in cooperation with foreign groups.

Examine the attacks from the promotions by the underwriters to the actions of the perpetrators and we learn that the attacks are a conspiracy of the unsettled and the deadly strikes on the Palestinians reverberate throughout the world; we are all menacingly affected and do not realize it.

Religious Right evangelists, multitudes of Jewish organizations, compromised political hacks, and the easily deluded, without compunction and without care of the damage they do to others, actively assist Israel in its deliberate repression of the Palestinians. The calamities that these partners in crime inflict upon the Palestinians are identifiable; their effect upon much of the rest of the world’s population is not understood. Political and policy subversion, financial corruption, moral degradation, harmful machinations against individuals that feature false charges of anti-Semitism, indoctrination, and unnecessary military actions are some of the calamities perpetrated against American citizens.

Military Actions

In the invasion of Iraq, the U.S. government fooled its population and Americans suffered casualties from the treachery. The “intelligence assessment” that Sadaam Hussein was prepared to finalize the development of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and visit them upon the United States proved false and the reasons for the invasion were a hoax. Not revealed was that the hoax was a hoax. The George W. Bush administration’s reason for the invasion was not due to its fear of Hussein acquiring advanced weapons of mass destruction, it was due to the Israel-friendly neoconservatives — Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, and Elliot Abrams — convincing the administration that a strong Iraq could become the central military power of the Middle East, be able to confront Israel, and should be defeated. How do we know this?

It is ridiculous to assume that a government and its intelligence agencies could believe that Sadaam Hussein was “secretly creating biological agents using mobile laboratories in “road-trailer units and rail cars.” Laboratories for biological agents are fixed in tightly controlled and specifically designed buildings to maintain clean air and prevent escape of the deadly agents. How was this “secret operation” discovered? It wasn’t; it came from a supposed interview by German intelligence with one person, an Iraqi dissident, Rafid Alwan, known as Curveball. CNN investigated Curveball.

Just days after Powell’s presentation, U.N. weapons inspectors presented evidence they said disproved those claims. But six weeks later, on March 20, 2003, the United States launched its invasion, toppling Hussein’s government in three weeks but locking itself in a war against an insurgency that has cost more than 4,000 American lives.

… No biological weapons, no germ labs, no weapons of mass destruction of any kind were found in Iraq after the invasion.

… Subsequent U.S. investigations into the intelligence failure around the claims found that German intelligence considered the defector “crazy” and “out of control,” while friends said he was a “liar.”

Did Saddam Hussein try to acquire uranium yellowcake or aluminum tubes for developing nuclear weapons? He did not, but even if he did, the Iraqi leader did not have the equipment for enriching the uranium. What did he need and how long would it take to enrich the yellowcake? Iran claimed to have converted a few tons of yellowcake in 2004 and they still do not have sufficient uranium for a nuclear weapon.

Why did the U.S. government and its expert intelligence agencies believe Hussein was manufacturing biological weapons and seeking material for making a nuclear weapon? They could not and they did not believe the ridiculous propositions; it was just a way to trick the populace into thinking evidence was available that proved Hussein sought weapons of mass destruction and to justify the invasion without disclosing the real reason.

The neocons were intimately involved with Israel and promoted Israel’s interests. They had already produced a 1996 policy paper titled “A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” for Israeli PM, Benjamin Netanyahu, and the document recommended the removal of Saddam Hussein. Couple the fact that the United States had no reason to attack Iraq with the constant urgings by the influential neocons in the Bush administration to topple Hussein and we have the reason for the unreasonable invasion of Iraq.

International Terrorism

International terrorism has caused havoc to Americans. This violent phenomenon would exist apart from Israel, but Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians has strengthened the terrorist ranks. How has Israel contributed to international terrorism? Osama bin Laden clarified that conjecture

“Osama Bin Laden Warns America,” CBS News by Joel Arak, October 30, 2004:

He (bin-Laden) said he was first inspired to attack the United States by the 1982 Israeli invasion of Lebanon in which towers and buildings in Beirut were destroyed in the siege of the capital.

“While I was looking at these destroyed towers in Lebanon, it sparked in my mind that the tyrant should be punished with the same and that we should destroy towers in America, so that it tastes what we taste and would be deterred from killing our children and women,” he said.

From Lawfare

Recently declassified information from the first-ever interrogation of someone presumed to be a senior al-Qaeda operative captured after 9/11 provides dramatic new insights into Osama bin Laden’s plans for a follow-up attack to Sept. 11. Specifically, bin Laden was plotting a major attack in Israel, a move consistent with his obsession with the Arab-Israeli conflict and U.S. support for Israel. The attack was thwarted at the last minute.

The Middle East Institute connects Israel to the rise of Jihadists

A number of jihadist groups have made Palestine a central tenet of their political goals. Over the years, Al Qaeda, one of the most powerful global jihadist outfits, has often mentioned Palestine in its various communications.

… Consequently, the [ISIS] narratives target the United States, as a key ally of Israel and a direct contributor to the plight of the Ummah. Several European nations, along with Australia and Canada are also criticized for their recent calls to boycott the United Nations conference on racism — aimed at demonstrating Israel’s apartheid on Palestinians.

Financial

The American public rebels at swollen government budgets, huge government deficit spending, and punishing government debt, all intended to help the American nation, and refrains from voicing anger at the unnecessary government contributions to the foreign nation of Israel and its people.

As part of an agreement, signed by former president Barack Obama in 2016, the U.S. taxpayers pledged to give the Israel war machine $3.8 billion annually until 2029. The agreement releases Israel from budgeting funds for its military and diverts those funds to build settlements. In effect, Obama told Netanyahu, “You build the settlements and we’ll supply the weapons for militarizing them.”

As of Mar 1, 2023, the Congressional Research Service documents that the “United States has provided Israel $158 billion in bilateral assistance and missile defense funding.” The Jewish Virtual Library has a similar figure of $152 billion until the year 2022.

Unknown to most of the American public is how it subsidizes the settlements. The Washington Post had  a revealing opinion story on the subject

From 2009 to 2013, more than $220 million was sent across the ocean and into schools, synagogues and playgrounds dotting the hills of Judea and Samaria. Millions of tax-subsidized dollars have gone to Jewish settlements in Hebron, helping to sustain a grim reality in the segregated part of the city, where Palestinian movement is sharply restricted and their economic life has been suffocated.

Political System

In 2020, 28% of voters referred to themselves as white evangelicals. Overwhelmingly, they cast their votes for Republican candidates. The two most important issues for these churchgoers are Right to Life and support for Israel. The former is more talk than walk; candidates who run on a platform that includes women’s rights to abortion have done well. The later issue, which is losing adherents in a younger bloc of the “saved,” serves Israel well; many politicos have lost the evangelical vote and elections because they lacked unwavering support for Israel. Trump would be in Nowheresville if he defied the evangelicals and criticized Israel.

Led by Pastor John Hagee, founder and chairperson of Christians United for Israel (CUFI), dozens of spokespersons for the evangelical community spend prime time praising Israel to the faithful. In 2013, a Pew poll showed that 82 percent of white evangelicals agreed with the statement, “Israel was given by God to the Jews.”

Former Israel Prime Minister, Menachem Begin courted the American evangelicals and Benjamin Netanyahu solidified the courtship after meetings with the most popular evangelical personalities, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. Each July, thousands of conservative evangelicals gather in Washington, DC for an annual summit of CUFI. Besides voting massively for candidates who support Israel, estimates have the conservative evangelical community contributing between $175 and $200 million annually to apartheid Israel.

The evangelist community votes are insufficient to assure Israel gets its chosen candidates into office. Individual Political Action Committees (PAC) operating under the umbrella of The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), pro-Israel groups, such as United Democracy Project (UDP), Democratic Majority for Israel, Republican Jewish Coalition, and Pro-Israel America, and wealthy Jewish individuals supply campaign contributions in big numbers. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, gambling casino operator, “Sheldon Adelson, and his wife, Miriam, spent $123 million on the 2018 midterm elections, all of it benefiting Republicans.”

PACs allied with AIPAC “poured more than $24m into defeating Democratic primary candidates critical of Israel. Last month it celebrated defeating former congresswoman Donna Edwards, who was the favorite to win a Maryland seat until the UDP spent $7m to unleash an advertising blitz against her.” The UDP also spent more than $4m to defeat Andy Levin, an Israel supporter who “dissented from AIPAC’s support for hardline Israeli policies,” in the 2022 Democratic primary for a congressional seat in northwestern Detroit.

No argument with individuals and PACs legally contributing to the campaigns of candidates they favor and feel will propose policies benefitting the American people. AIPAC and its allied Jewish organizations and individuals contribute to the campaigns of candidates that favor the policies that benefit a foreign government, Israel, and, often, purposely steer elections for one narrow reason — to defeat candidates who may be rewarding to the American electorate but criticize Israel.

Reshaping U.S. policies

In 2010, the FBI uncovered 10 unregistered Russian agents living in the U.S. as ordinary citizens, engaged in harmless activities, such as meeting people in high places in order to influence their attitudes and reporting American views on foreign and domestic affairs to Moscow. Multiply the number of discovered Russian agents by thousands and you will have the number of Israeli expatriates in the U.S. who do the same for Israel and more; by becoming U.S. citizens they vote for Israel-friendly candidates.

In 2014, the Israeli government ministries and the Los Angeles-based Israeli American Council, which represents Israelis across the United States and promotes their interests, estimated between 500,000 and 800,000 Israelis lived in the U.S., about 150,000 living in the New York area, 120,000 in Los Angeles, and 80,000 in Miami. What are the more important voting areas in the United States? New York, California, and Florida are significant. Enough dual-citizen American-Israelis can shape the ballot in those regions and may have done that in Florida during the disputed 2000 presidential election.

Has Israel purposely selected citizens to emigrate to the United States and influence voters? I have known Israelis living and working in the United States. They have invited people into their homes and propagandized for Israel, persuaded synagogues to display the Israeli flag, and collected statistical information for Israel. Others went to Israel, became allied with a known Israeli institute, returned with a grant from a Jewish institution, and, due to previous ties with a recognized Israeli institute, became scholars at recognized think tanks.

Aside from its allied PACS efforts to steer American elections, AIPAC’s function is to lobby Congress. Funding annual trips to Israel for senators and representatives is an essential part of the “wooing” of Congress. According to Legistorm, “AIPAC’s charity arm has spent $15.7 million on congressional visits to Israel since 2000. On gift travel disclosures, AIPAC says the purpose of these trips is ‘educating policymakers about the U.S.-Israel relationship.’”

At its annual convention in Washington, which important congressional leaders attend, AIPAC displays its influence in shaping the federal government and its policies. During the Covid epidemic in 2020, AIPAC convention speakers included Vice President Mike Pence, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Democratic Sens. Chuck Schumer and Cory Booker, Democratic Rep. Nita Lowey, and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. These influential political figures must have a reason (getting elected?) for paying homage to the Lobby for Israel group.

Harmful machinations against individuals

Unable to respond to the obvious reality of an Israel built upon the theft of Palestinian lands and oppression of the Palestinian people, Israel’s supporters resort to slander and vicious attacks on Americans to deter the population from understanding the Middle East crisis.

Canary Mission, AMCHA Initiative, anti-Defamation League, and other Jewish organizations ferret out groups and persons that support the Palestinians and harass and defame them with the usual charge of anti-Semitism. The attacks lead to the proposition that Anti-Zionism equals Anti-Semitism, an identity that has become the final resting place of the word “anti-Semitism.”

Stealing another community’s lands, ethnically cleansing a population, and instituting a severe repression that terrorizes the communities, makes them immobile, purposely denies agriculture, water rights, and fishing rights, willfully ruins cherished olive and orange groves, interferes in acquiring livelihood and employment, and reduces ontological security, which defines the Zionist intrusion into the land of Palestine, is a Goddamn awful way to behave.  Being against Zionism is a positive and meritorious action. No sound person can argue with that recommendation.

If anti-Zionism is a positive and meritorious action, then the equation anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism indicates that anti-Semitism is a positive and meritorious action. Can that be? No, it cannot be, and Israel’s supporters are guilty of defaming Jews and should be taken to task for their insistence that anti-Zionism = anti-Semitism. Or, maybe this shows the unworthiness of the word anti-Semitism, that it is not a word to describe hate; it is a hateful word used to prevent debate and harm people.

Moral degradation

Pro-Israel organizations have used nefarious methods to skew voting patterns, manipulate the American mindset, and prevent legitimate debate. They have made a mockery of American democracy and allied Americans as partners in an intended genocide of the Palestinian people. Instead of focusing on China and Xinjiang, the U.S. authorities should focus on Israel and the Palestinian Occupied Territories. Or, maybe the government and media purposely shift the focus to China in order to divert attention from Israel?

Conclusion

The manner in which the Israeli settlers have inflicted their deadly operations on the Palestinians characterizes the happenings in an insane world. Imagine someone running through the streets, injuring innocent pedestrians and onlookers saying, “That’s not nice, you shouldn’t be doing that and others saying, “How can I help? And, when you’re finished, come over for a cup of coffee.”

Everything should be done to stop this madness; too little has been done and that little has been ineffective. The reason for this deficiency is obvious, a thought exists that bringing Israel to the Court of Justice harms the Jewish people and Americans have been brainwashed into thinking that preventing harm to the Jewish people is a priority. Just as anti-Zionism equates to anti-Semitism is an oxymoron, “bringing Israel to the Court of Justice harms the Jewish people” is also a contradiction. The Jewish people have already harmed themselves and should stop harming others. Helping other people is a high priority in a moral world. Helping the Palestinians to escape destruction is one of the high priorities. Accomplishing that task will not harm the Jewish people; it will prevent an eventual moral and physical destruction of the people of the book, a win-win proposition for all participants in the crisis.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dan Lieberman.

Sixty-six members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC), led by CPC Chair Representative Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Deputy Chair Ilhan Omar (MN-05), and Whip Greg Casar (TX-35), are calling on President Biden to prepare to invoke his constitutional authority granted in the 14th Amendment to uphold the full faith and credit of the United States and end Republican hostage taking of the economy that could trigger a financial catastrophe.

The members released a letter today urging President Biden to “fulfill the Executive’s Constitutional duty to faithfully and impartially administer the funds already enacted by law at the direction of Congress,” citing the clause which states “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred…shall not be questioned.”

The lawmakers sent the letter “in light of unremitting efforts by Congressional Republicans to hold the economic health of our nation hostage.” The Republicans’ framework imposes “drastic cuts,” and could take jobs from 780,000 people, nutrition assistance from 1.2 million women, infants, and children, Medicaid coverage from up to 21 million Americans, rental assistance from 640,000 families, and more, the lawmakers warn. “Surrendering to these extremist demands also sets a dangerous precedent that emboldens Republicans to pursue additional, anti-democratic hostage taking, particularly after their having been told previously that a clean debt-ceiling increase was nonnegotiable,” they write.

The members also emphasize the clear legal authority for the President to raise the debt ceiling under the 14th Amendment. “If the options are either agreeing to major cuts to domestic priorities under the Republican threat of destroying the economy and moving forward to honor America’s debts, we join prominent legal scholars, economists, former budget officials, and a former president in advocating for invoking the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.”

They conclude by urging the President to prepare to invoke the Constitution’s 14th Amendment “rather than acceding to bad-faith Republican attempts to harm our hard-fought economic recovery, reverse the climate progress of this administration, impose painful, burdensome, and ineffective new work requirements for recipients of [public assistance programs], and slash essential federal programs that lift up millions of Americans.”

The letter can be viewed here.

Signatories include: Representatives Pramila Jayapal (WA-07), Ilhan Omar (MN-05), Greg Casar (TX-35), Becca Balint (VT-AL), Nanette Diaz Barragán (CA-44), Earl Blumenauer (OR-03), Suzanne Bonamici (OR-01), Jamaal Bowman, Ed.D. (NY-17), Cori Bush (MO-01), André Carson (IN-07), Matt Cartwright (PA-08), Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (FL-20), Judy Chu (CA-28), David N. Cicilline (RI-01), Yvette D. Clarke (NY-09), Steve Cohen (TN-09), Danny K. Davis (IL-07), Madeleine Dean (PA-04), Rosa L. DeLauro (CT-03), Veronica Escobar (TX-16), Adriano Espaillat (NY-13), Maxwell Alejandro Frost (FL-10), John Garamendi (CA-08), Jesús G. "Chuy" García (IL-04), Robert Garcia (CA-42), Sylvia R. Garcia (TX-29), Daniel Goldman (NY-10), Jimmy Gomez (CA-34), Raúl M. Grijalva (AZ-07), Val Hoyle (OR-04), Jared Huffman (CA-02), Jonathan L. Jackson (IL-01), Sheila Jackson Lee (TX-18), Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. (GA-04), Sydney Kamlager-Dove (CA-37), Ro Khanna (CA-17), Barbara Lee (CA-13), Summer Lee (PA-12), Morgan McGarvey (KY-03), James P. McGovern (MA-02), Grace Meng (NY-06), Gwen S. Moore (WI-04), Jerrold Nadler (NY-12), Grace F. Napolitano (CA-31), Donald Norcross (NJ-01), Eleanor Holmes Norton (DC-AL), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY-14), Chellie Pingree (ME-01), Mark Pocan (WI-02), Katie Porter (CA-47), Ayanna Pressley (MA-07), Delia C. Ramirez (IL-03), Jamie Raskin (MD-08), Janice Schakowsky (IL-09), Melanie Stansbury (NM-01), Mark Takano (CA-39), Shri Thanedar (MI-13), Rashida Tlaib (MI-12), Jill Tokuda (HI-02), Paul Tonko (NY-20), Ritchie Torres (NY-35), Juan Vargas (CA-52), Nydia M. Velázquez (NY-07), Bonnie Watson Coleman (NJ-12), Nikema Williams (GA-05), and Frederica S. Wilson (FL-24).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

"We should be able to make our own decisions about our lives, bodies, and futures," said Johnson in a statement Monday. "The unrelenting attacks on our basic freedoms—including through the courts—demand that we reform our federal court system. Abortion rights, voting rights, LGBTQ+ rights, our democratic institutions, and so much more are at stake."

Johnson spoke toMSNBC's "Inside With Jen Psaki" on Sunday about Planned Parenthood's decision to join the court expansion movement, as other rights groups including NARAL Pro-Choice America, Latino Victory, and Newtown Action Alliance have in recent weeks.

The group was pushed toward its decision, she said, as U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk ruled last month that mifepristone, a pill used in medication abortions, should be taken off the market.

"The reality is, the court now has been fully captured in so many areas," Johnson said. "The fact that you have, again, this lone Texas judge, that can now bring cases, you can form shop there, bring cases to the Fifth Circuit, which is also conservative and up to the Supreme Court now, which has a conservative supermajority... And that is a way to circumvent the way in which popularly elected decisions are made."

"We need to see expanded courts, from the lower courts all the way up to the Supreme Court," she added. "We need to see term limits. We need to see ethical reforms."

Planned Parenthood's decision to join the court expansion movement, which has been led by groups including Demand Justice and Take Back the Court, comes as right-wing Supreme Court justices, particularly Justice Clarence Thomas, have faced intense criticism over alleged ethics violations. Recent reports have pointed to evidence that Thomas has for years received financial gifts from Texas Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without disclosing those financial ties as required by federal law, and Justices Neil Gorsuch and John Roberts have also faced scrutiny about their failure to disclose financial transactions and payments.

"It's really important to call for structural reforms that sustain progress," said Johnson. "It would be one thing to call for a justice to step down for whatever reason, but the reality is that the way in which the system has been captured requires us to engage in structural reform in a different way."

On social media, Johnson said Planned Parenthood's "expanded position" on the courts reflects an expansion of its "commitment" to protecting reproductive rights.

Demand Justice called Planned Parenthood's decision "an inflection point for the Supreme Court reform movement."

"The endorsement of key groups in the progressive ecosystem like Planned Parenthood shows just how far this campaign has come," said Brian Fallon, executive director of the group. "The public has awoken to the dangers of a captured, corrupt judiciary and is demanding solutions. The composition of the court will obviously not be changed overnight, but the consensus about the need for bold, sweeping reforms is growing by the day, and the salience of the court as a political issue has never been higher."

Sarah Lipton-Lubet, president of Take Back the Court, said Planned Parenthood's joining of the movement shows how court expansion has become "a mainstream progressive policy goal with the support of more than 60 members of Congress and some of the most respected and powerful abortion rights champions in our movement."

"A few short years ago, we were told court expansion was a pipe dream," said Lipton-Lubet. "With support from groups boldly advocating at the state level to leading national organizations, our movement is growing stronger every day. The right-wing extremists on the Court can try to rip our rights away, but we're fighting back even stronger—and we're going to win."

The Supreme Court has been expanded seven times in the past. Reform advocates also called for an addition of seats of lower federal courts to reflect growth in population, diversity, and the number of cases that judges hear.

"It won't be easy and it won't happen overnight but we WILL expand the Supreme Court," said Doug Lindner, senior director of judiciary and democracy for the League of Conservation Voters. "We WILL protect our abortion rights and our climate from these extremists. And we WILL pass on a vibrant, multiracial democracy to the next generation."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The Coronation of King Charles III was yet another instance of that complex in action. It was a spectacle, redolent of ancient ceremony, aged ritual, punctuated by the monarch’s statements of “I do”.

While this delighted a goodly number of punters, the whole affair also presented Republic and others of like mind to avail themselves of the chance to protest. Republic is one of the key groups attempting to stir the waters of change, running petitions, arranging protests and selling merchandise for the cause. On this occasion, the group was promising some of the biggest protests against the monarchy, with demonstrators sporting “Not my King” placards.

Unfortunately for the protesters, and for the right to assemble in general, the UK Parliament made sure to pass laws for that precise eventuality. Nothing would be left to chance. Security Minister, Tom Tugendhat, explained away the coincidental nature of the Public Order Act 2023 and it coming into effect just days before the Coronation. “We’re not just thinking of our own security but the security of heads of states, and we’re dealing with protest groups who have nothing to do with the UK but to do with foreign leaders visiting the UK.”

The 2023 statute builds on measures that were already used against anti-monarchy protests following the death of Queen Elizabeth II. As human rights legal academic David Mead noted at the time, the right to protest peacefully is protected in domestic law, while free expression is also protected by the European Convention on Human Rights via the Human Rights Act. But this did not prevent the police from making adventurous use of various countering provisions, though it was not clear what they were. Attention was paid to the possible use of section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, public nuisance, or arrest to prevent a breach of the peace.

Evidently, the Tory government did not feel these measures adequate in their severity. The 2023 Act specifically outlines such offences as “locking on” and “being equipped for locking on”, in addition to expanding stop and search powers. Police making use of such powers may, provided they are of or above the rank of inspector, authorise stop and search without the need for suspicion.

The locking on offence covers instances where a people “attach themselves to another person, to an object or to land”, do the same with other people, and “attach an object to another object or to land”. Such acts must also cause, or be capable of causing, serious disruption to two or more individuals or an organisation in a place other than a dwelling, and be accompanied with the requisite intent.

As for the offence of being equipped for locking on, a person is in breach “if they have an object with them in a place other than a dwelling with an intention that it may be used in the course of or in connection with the commission by any person of an offence under section 1(1) (offence of locking on).”

The government would have also delighted in the High Court’s decision to reverse a District Judge’s ruling to acquit a protester for allegedly breaching a police direction made under the Public Order Act 1986. In 2020, the protester in question sat down in Parliament Street, adjacent to Parliament Square. According to the police, the protest had stay within the confines of Parliament Square.

The decision, handed down the same week the new Public Order Act received Royal assent, held that the judge applied the wrong test in assuming that a defendant’s conviction had to be proportionate relative with their rights to free expression and assembly. It was a remarkable decision, and abysmal in the context of assembly and free expression.

In a statement from Commander Karen Findlay of the London Metropolitan Police, a fat finger of accusation was pointed at the Coronation protestors. There had “been a significant police operation after we received information protestors were determined to disrupt the Coronation procession.” It was “targeted at those we believed were intent on taking this action. It was not our intention to prevent protest”.

All in all, 64 arrests were made on May 6. Of these, 52 “related to concerns people were going to disrupt the event, and arrests included to prevent a breach of the peace and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance.” Eight arrests were also “made for other offences, including possession of an offensive weapon, drugs offences, and breaching a sexual harm prevention order.”

In the arrest count were six demonstrators from the Republic campaign group, suspected of having items among their placards that “could be used as lock on devices.” The Met investigation that followed proved otherwise. “Those arrested stated the items would be used to secure their placards, and the investigation has been unable to prove intent to use them to lock on and disrupt the event.” There was “regret that those six people arrested were unable to join the wider group of protesters in Trafalgar Square and elsewhere on the procession route.”

One of the arrestees, Republic head Graham Smith, subsequently revealed that three embarrassed officers, one with the rank of chief inspector, personally apologised to him and handed “the straps [for the placards] back to me.”

Such actions did little to douse the fire. “This,” fumed Smith, “has been a disgraceful episode and we will be speaking to lawyers about taking legal action. I also expect a full inquiry into why they repeatedly lied to us and who authorised the arrests.” The newly crowned King will be hoping that interest in the matter will be quick to die down. But even the attractive glossiness of pageantry won’t last.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The post A New Republican Assault on Children: Overturning Labor Laws appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Sonali Kolhatkar.

Steven Spainhouer’s son worked at one of the stores in the Allen, Texas shopping mall chosen by America’s most recent mass shooter (as of Saturday: there were seven this weekend).

He arrived at the mall just after the neo-nazi murderer had slaughtered several people, sometimes ripping their bodies and faces into an indistinguishable mass of flesh with his .322 ammunition.

The killer had moved on into the mall, Steven Spainhouer was probably thinking, when he saw a 5-year-old child.

“The first girl I walked up to was crouched down covering her head in the bushes, so I felt for a pulse,” Spainhouer, who is trained in CPR, told CBS News, adding that he then “pulled her head to the side and she had no face.”

Next, he found a dead woman who appeared to be laying across a young boy.

“When I rolled the mother over, he came out,” Spainhouer told CBS reporter JD Miles. “I asked him if he was OK and he said, ‘My mom is hurt, my mom is hurt.’ Rather than traumatize him any more, I pulled him around the corner, sat him down, and he was covered from head to toe.”
The child looked, Spainhouer said, “Like somebody poured blood on him.”

His mother’s blood. His dead mother who will never again hold or comfort that little boy for the rest of his life.

All because a white supremacist with a “Right Wing Death Squad” patch — commonly worn by Proud Boys — across his chest decided to shoot up a Texas shopping center with a mass-market version of the rifle the Army developed in the 1960s for hunting people in Vietnam.

Thoughts and prayers won’t do a damn thing. Coming from these mealy-mouthed Republicans, they don’t even comfort the families. All they do is prepare Texas for the next massacre.

In response to the unimaginable horror that weapon of war inflicted on these humans, Republican Congressman Keith Self — who represents Allen, Texas in the US House of Representatives — stepped up to a microphone and explicitly refused to say he’d do anything about the American slaughter:

“Our prayers are with the victims and their families and all law enforcement on the scene.”

Other Texas Republicans offered similar sentiments. Not even one of these cowards mentioned the word “gun” or promised to do a single damn thing.

Republican Governor Abbott minimized the tragedy, saying, “Our hearts are with the people of Allen, Texas tonight during this unspeakable tragedy.”

Republican Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick might as well have spit on the corpses, asking Texans to, “Please join me in mourning the victims of the unspeakable tragedy in Allen.”

Republican Senator John Cornyn, as he has so many times before, ignored the AR15 that made such a quick and complete slaughter possible, saying instead,“I am grieving with the Allen community tonight…”

Republican Senator Ted Cruz slipped into his usual sanctimonious acceptable-to-the-NRA word salad: “Heidi and I are praying for the families of the victims of the horrific mall shooting in Allen, Texas. We pray also for the broader Collin County community that's in shock from this tragedy.”

Indicted bribe-taker and fraudster Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton also talked like this slaughter was the result of some sort of bizarre natural disaster, saying, “Pray for Allen, Texas. Pray for these families and law enforcement…”

Thoughts and prayers won’t do a damn thing. Coming from these mealy-mouthed Republicans, they don’t even comfort the families. All they do is prepare Texas for the next massacre.

Representing the rest of America, singer-songwriter Ricky Davila tweeted a list of Republican politicians and the money they took from the NRA, adding:

“Fuck their thoughts and prayers.”

It turns out this slaughter isn’t really all that new or unique to the 21st century. America was once before awash in weapons of war, sparking a national fad of robbery and murder much like today’s trend of mass shootings.

We still remember their names:

— Bonnie and Clyde gunned down civilians and cops as they cut a bloody swath across the Midwest with their full-auto .30-06 fire from M1918 Browning Automatic Rifles, semiautomatic shotguns, and .45 ACP rounds from full-auto M1911 handguns.
— Machine Gun Kelly preferred the Thompson machine gun to kill as many people as possible as fast as possible.
— So did John Dillinger, who’s famous “Tommy Gun” has been recreated and is sold online today.
— Baby Face Nelson liked to kill FBI agents with his fully automatic .45 pistol.
— Pretty Boy Floyd’s famous weapon was an automatic Colt pistol.
— Ma Barker, who as a child was devastated when her hero Jesse James was killed in 1882, couldn’t hold a rifle (she was only 5’ 4” tall) so also used an automatic handgun.
— Al Capone preferred to carry a .38 Smith & Wesson handgun, letting his gang do the really bloody work with their automatic rifles and shotguns.

Collectively, through the late 1920s and early 1930s, these and hundreds of other less-well-remembered killers used weapons developed for the battlefield around the time of the Civil War and World War I to spill blood all across America. Weapons the Founders of America and Framers of the Constitution couldn’t have dreamed of.

And then America said, “Enough!”

In 1934, Congress passed and President Roosevelt signed the National Firearms Act (NFA), which didn’t outlaw even one single gun. Instead, it put a tax on automatic weapons, sawed-off shotguns, and a variety of other weapons of war. That’s all it took to stop the slaughter.

None of the weapons listed in the NFA are “illegal.” But they are under control.

I’ve legally held and fired the same fully automatic Thompson Machine Gun like Machine Gun Kelly and John Dillinger used, among others.

Many gun ranges offer rentals if you want to try target practice with them: I shot them at a public gun range in Marietta, Georgia when, back in the 1980s, I was working on my Georgia private detective license (which I held for 2 years while writing some pretty awful novels about a PI) and running an advertising agency.

Most of the people shooting those fully automatic weapons, in fact, looked pretty average, generally middle-class; there was even racial diversity and a lot of women.

It was perfectly legal because the owner of the shooting range had paid the tax to get the federal license.

And that’s where we can do something today by simply expanding the scope of the weapons covered by the NFA.

To be eligible to pay the tax, you must first acquire a Federal Firearms License.

Step one is to fill out an application with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, which you can find here. You pay a fee that can range from $30 to $3000 (most are $200 for fully automatic weapons, a number that hasn’t changed since 1934), provide a photo, and submit your fingerprints.

After you’ve been checked out, you’ll be called in for an in-person interview with an ATF Industry Operations Investigator, who will vet you for ownership of your very own fully automatic machine gun.

There were no gun buy-back programs back in the 1930s, and nobody went door-to-door confiscating guns.

But once everybody understood that it was illegal to sell or possess an automatic or sawed-off weapon of war without first getting a license and paying the tax, they simply started to disappear from the American scene (outside of licensed shooting ranges like today).

Which brings us to a simple proposal. When enough ethical politicians hold office to pull it off (hopefully after the 2024 election), simply amend the National Firearms Act to include semiautomatic weapons along with the existing category of fully automatic weapons and sawed-off shotguns.

After all, most semiautomatic weapons were originally developed for warfare: they are, pure and simple, designed to kill as many people as fast as possible, whether they be handguns or long rifles. (There are a handful of “sort of” semiautomatic low-capacity rifles commonly used for hunting; they could be exempted.)

This would not conflict with the 2^nd Amendment or even the Heller decision, as bizarre and twisted as it was, as I document in The Hidden History of Guns and the Second Amendment. It’s perfectly legal.

And it could take us back in time to a less deadly America.

Fire up Netflix or Amazon Prime and watch a few cop shows from the 1970s and early 1980s. McMillian and Wife, Adam 12, Hill Street Blues, Cagney and Lacey, etc.

Semiautomatic weapons were few and far between back then because they were so hard to get and expensive: they were widely acknowledged as purely for the battlefield. Cops carried revolvers, as did criminals. Rifles were mostly bolt-action.

And mass shootings almost never happened.

Semiautomatic weapons are very profitable for their manufacturers, and they’re the weapon of choice for mass- and school-shooters. Most are designed specifically to hunt and kill human beings.

Which is why we shouldn’t allow them to stay on our streets without restrictions. Let’s take them out of general civilian circulation, just as we did machine guns back in the day.

If you’re buying a gun to protect yourself or your home (a bad idea: guns in the home are far more likely to be used against a resident than a bad guy), a simple handgun is convenient and works just fine.

And any idiot who walks into the woods with an AR-style rifle will be laughed out of the forest by actual sportsmen: there’s nothing “sporting” about mowing down deer or rabbits with a giant magazine and .233 ammo. (Not to mention what it does to the meat and hides.)

In fact, the groups calling for continuing the unregulated status of semiautomatic weapons of war are mostly made up of people actually planning seditious warfare against the United States.

Members of the so-called “militia movement” and other crackpots believe the BS story the NRA started peddling in the mid-1970s that the 2^nd Amendment was written so average citizens could kill “tyrannical” politicians and American police enforcing their laws.

The reality is the exact opposite: the Constitution itself contains numerous references to the requirement of the government to put down insurrections and rebellions by people like today’s Proud Boys and Three Percenters.

Every one of the 50 states today explicitly outlaws unregulated civilian militias, either by constitution or law or both. Virginia, the home of Madison, Jefferson, Henry, Mason, Washington, etc., was the first, putting into their constitution in 1776:

“That a well regulated militia, composed of the body of the people trained to arms, is the proper, natural, and safe defense of a free state; that standing armies, in time of peace, should be avoided as dangerous to liberty; and that in all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” [emphasis mine]

Forty-eight of the 50 states have similar clauses in their constitutions requiring any militia in the state to be subordinate to civilian authorities: typically the governor, occasionally the legislature, or both. (Georgia and New York are the exceptions.)

Twenty-nine states have specific laws outlawing private militias altogether (Alabama, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Texas, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming).

Twenty-five states, as the Brennan Center for Justice notes:

“[H]ave laws that generally prohibit teaching, demonstrating, instructing, training, and practicing in the use of firearms, explosives, or techniques capable of causing injury or death, for use during or in furtherance of a civil disorder.”

(They include Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, Washington.)

As you can see from this history, the last thing the Founders — and politicians in every state over the past 200+ years — thought was that Americans should be armed with weapons of war to fight against the government that they themselves created.

And it’s not like this is a new issue: back in 1886 the US Supreme Court ruled, in Presser v Illinois (upholding state anti-militia laws), that:

“It cannot be successfully questioned that the state governments … have also the power to control and regulate the organization, drilling, and parading of military bodies and associations, except when such bodies or associations are authorized by the militia laws of the United States.
“The exercise of this power by the states is necessary to the public peace, safety, and good order. To deny the power would be to deny the right of the state to disperse assemblages organized for sedition and treason, and the right to suppress armed mobs bent on riot and rapine.”

Back in 1907, when the Klan was the main white supremacist militia of the day (although it operated under multiple different names in various states), the Washington Supreme Court ruled that:

“Armed bodies of men are a menace to the public. Their mere presence is fraught with danger, and the state has wisely reserved to itself the right to organize, maintain, and employ them.”

In other words, there is not one single legal rationale to keep weapons of war on the streets of America; if anything, doing so is antithetical to our Constitution and over 200 years of law, both state and federal.

It’s time to get these weapons of war off our streets, and we have the tool to do it in the National Firearms Act.

For years I’ve suggested we should treat guns like cars: require registration, a shooter’s license, and liability insurance. That’s still a good idea, but we must also figure out how to rid our towns and cities of these ultra-deadly weapons of war. This could do it.

We already have the law in place, and a sweeping change could come across our nation with a single tweak.

Had we done this a year ago, a little boy in Texas would still have his mother, and a five year old girl would still have her face.

Let your members of Congress know.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

For a second week, Montana Republicans have blocked Democratic transgender lawmaker Zooey Zephyr from participating in a debate over proposed restrictions on transgender youth.

Zephyr, a first-term Democrat from Missoula and the first openly transgender woman elected to the Montana legislature, hasn't been allowed to speak on the state house floor since last Tuesday, when she told Republican colleagues they would have "blood on their hands" if they banned gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth.

On Monday, her supporters brought the House session to a halt, chanting, "Let her speak!" from the gallery before being escorted out. Seven were arrested for criminal trespass. Republican leaders describe the disruption as an "insurrection."

Bigotry against minority groups based on sexual orientation or gender Identity, such as the trans community, is a way fascism takes root.

Also this week, at least two Bud Light marketing executives have been put on leave after transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney posted a video of herself on Instagram holding a custom Bud Light can with her face on it. The company had sent it to her to help celebrate a year since she began her transition and had sponsored Mulvaney's Instagram post.

Her post prompted a Star Wars cantina—Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, and Fox News hosts all calling for a boycott of Bud Light. Kid Rock posted a video of himself shooting 12-packs with a submachine gun, and others filmed themselves destroying and dumping out cans.

Anheuser-Busch facilities have received bomb threats.

Sales of Bud Light fell 17% in the week ending April 15 compared to the same week in 2022. Some bars are halting its sales.

***

It's tempting to dismiss all this as just another outcropping of crazy right-wing bigotry.

And it's tempting to be appalled at such blatant prejudice but believe there must be more important issues to worry about. According to the Pew Research Center, only 1.6% of U.S. adults are transgender or nonbinary (that is, their gender differs from the sex they were assigned at birth).

Yet let me remind you: Bigotry against minority groups based on sexual orientation or gender Identity, such as the trans community, is a way fascism takes root.

As the world tragically witnessed in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, the politics of sexual anxiety gains traction when traditional male gender roles of family provider and protector are hit by economic insecurity.

Fascist politics distorts and expands this male anxiety into fear that one's family is under existential threat from LGBTQ+ people who reject the family's traditional structure and traditions.

As philosopher Jason Stanley notes in his How Fascism Works (2018):

Men, already made anxious by a perceived loss of status resulting from increasing gender equality can easily be thrust into panic by demagoguery directed against sexual minorities… . The fascist leader is analogous to the patriarchal father, the "CEO" of the traditional family… . Attacking trans women, and representing the feared other as a threat to the manhood of the nation, are ways of placing the very idea of manhood at the center of political attention, gradually introducing fascist ideals of hierarchy and domination by physical power to the public sphere.

I don't mean to suggest that the imbibers of Bud Light or the Republican lawmakers of Montana are necessarily fearful for their manhood. But they may lean more toward hierarchy and domination than the typical American (Montana Governor Greg Gianforte famously punched a reporter who asked him a question about a Republican health-care bill).

Notably, Republican lawmakers now eagerly enacting restrictions on transgender youth across the nation have not moved to alleviate economic anxieties at the root of much of this. Why not? Because those anxieties fuel the anger that animates these politicians' most ardent supporters. Scapegoating a minority group based on sexual orientation or gender identity gives these supporters even more fuel.

A similar blind anger found expression in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021—which was a genuine insurrection, unlike this week's chants in Montana's legislature. A similar anger propels Trumpism to this day.

If the rest of us want to stop America's slouch toward fascism, we must do two things: First, speak out loudly and forcefully against sexual bigotry. Second, push lawmakers to restore some degree of economic security to the nation's large and increasingly precarious working class.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Robert Reich.

Kevin McCarthy has a keen new idea about what he thinks he can get out of Democrats in Congress in exchange for Republicans authorizing the government to pay the trillions in debt that Donald Trump racked up in his four years in office.

In exchange for lifting the so-called debt ceiling, McCarthy wants Biden and congressional Democrats to throw millions of families off food stamps (SNAP) and end even the possibility of any help to low-income young people unable to pay off student loans.

He claims this is because the federal government can't afford to help out students or hungry Americans. Nonetheless, his caucus is also pushing a new $1.8 trillion cut to the already-hobbled estate tax, paid exclusively by "lucky sperm club" children of the morbidly rich when they inherit fortunes they didn't lift a finger to create.

You'd think that discovering over a quarter-million Americans every year die from current poverty, and an additional 406,000 die every year from long-term or "cumulative" poverty, would move the GOP.

Ironically, this proposal came out the same week that The Journal of the American Medical Association published a new study finding that poverty is the fourth largest killer of Americans.

And by poverty, they're not just talking about the profoundly poor or homeless: For the purposes of this study they defined poverty as everybody living on less than the 50% median of income in the nation.

The study was unambiguous, noting:

"Current poverty was associated with greater mortality than major causes, such as accidents, lower respiratory diseases, and stroke. In 2019, current poverty was also associated with greater mortality than many far more visible causes—10 times as many deaths as homicide, 4.7 times as many deaths as firearms, 3.9 times as many deaths as suicide, and 2.6 times as many deaths as drug overdose."

The outlook for people who've spent at least the past 10 years living below the U.S. median income level is even more grim. The researchers refer to this as "cumulative poverty:"

"Cumulative poverty was associated with approximately 60% greater mortality than current poverty. Hence, cumulative poverty was associated with greater mortality than even obesity and dementia. Heart disease, cancer, and smoking were the only causes or risks with greater mortality than cumulative poverty."

Concluding that "poverty should be considered a major risk factor for death in the U.S.," the researchers noted that the situation is probably even worse than what they were able to easily measure:

"[O]ne limitation of this study is that our estimates may be conservative about the number of deaths associated with poverty."

You'd think that discovering over a quarter-million Americans every year die from current poverty, and an additional 406,000 die every year from long-term or "cumulative" poverty, would move the GOP.

After all, they control the poorest states in the nation, so this hits their constituents harder than it does the electorate of Democratic politicians. This hits right smack in the middle of where Republican politicians live.

But ever since five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court first legalized political bribery in 1976 and 1978, paving the way for the Reagan Revolution, the GOP has abandoned Eisenhower's embrace of unionization and anti-poverty programs to instead suck up to the morbidly rich and the corporations they control.

Just in the past six years, Republicans have:

• Repeatedly fought efforts to raise the $7.25 minimum wage (which would be over $15 if inflation-adjusted and over $25 if adjusted for worker productivity gains).
• Blocked passage of the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would give workers the right to join a union by simply signing a card, all while putting forward new legislation to block gig workers from unionizing.
• Cut funding for school lunches by about 40%.
• Refused to extend the Child Tax Credit, which lifted millions of families with kids out of poverty during the pandemic.
• Denied healthcare to low-incoming working families in almost a dozen GOP-controlled states by refusing to expand Medicaid.
• Sued the Biden administration all the way to the Supreme Court to stop Democrats' efforts to reduce the burden of student debt by a paltry $10,000.
• Responded to the slaughter of schoolchildren in Tennessee by proposing legislation making it impossible for grieving parents to sue gun manufacturers and sellers.
• Challenged legislative efforts by Democrats to slow down climate change by citing bullshit phony science promoted by the fossil fuel industry and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
• Demanded cuts in social security and propose raising the retirement age to 70 for people currently under 50.
• Supported the ongoing privatization of Medicare through George W. Bush's corrupt Medicare Advantage private insurance scam.

President Biden's $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan expanded child tax credits and access to Medicaid in 2021, lifting an estimated 12 million people, including 5.6 million children, out of poverty. As Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) economists noted:

"[T]he Rescue Plan may turn out to be the most effective single piece of legislation for reducing annual poverty since 1935."

When Republicans refused to go along with an extension of the program last year, however, childhood and general poverty both shot back up, proving that poverty in America isn't some mystical or even natural force, but a policy choice embraced by the GOP.

The so-called "party of life" doesn't, it turns out, give a damn about actual human life

When confronted with the option of cutting or even ending poverty in America (and the homelessness and crime attendant to it) or adding trillions to the money bins of the morbidly rich, Republicans choose the latter every time.

Biden's policies brought Trump's 14.7% unemployment rate all the way down to 3.6%, lifting millions of families out of poverty. Now, however, Trump appointee and lifelong Republican Jerome Powell has dedicated his efforts at the Fed to jacking unemployment back up (while doing nothing at all about out-of-control corporate price gouging) just in time for the 2024 election.

As Senator Ron Wyden said yesterday:

"Republicans manufactured this [debt ceiling] crisis, and Speaker McCarthy's proposal to get out of it would destroy jobs, worsen healthcare, increase hunger, hurt the climate, and make millions of American families poorer."

The so-called "party of life" doesn't, it turns out, give a damn about actual human life unless it has a net worth over a half billion dollars.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

• House Republicans approve bill banning transgender athletes in most women’s or girl’s school sports
• Julie Su’s nomination to serve as Labor Secretary faces opposition from Republicans and big business — and maybe some Democrats
• Attorney John Burris files federal civil rights lawsuit against Antioch and its police department
• Attorney Generals in 17 states want a recall of Kia and Hyundai cars because they’re too easy to steal

The post House Republicans vote to ban transgender students from women’s and girl’s school sports; Labor Secretary nominee Julie Su faces Republican opposition at confirmation hearing; Federal civil rights lawsuit filed against Antioch and its police department: The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – April 20, 2023 appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Again rebuffing calls from people across the United States, congressional Democrats, and President Joe Biden for a clean debt limit hike, GOP House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday officially unveiled a 320-page bill full of proposed cuts.

McCarthy (R-Cailf.) explained on the House floor that the so-called Limit, Save, Grow Act, formally led by Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), would raise the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024—averting a first-ever default, which would be disastrous for the U.S. and global economies.

Echoing McCarthy's Monday speech to Wall Street, the bill would also cap federal spending at fiscal year 2022 levels, limit spending growth to 1% annually, impose work requirements for social programs, block Biden's contested student debt relief plan, restrict federal rule-making, claw back unspent Covid-19 money, force through the House GOP's pro-polluter energy package, and repeal funding for Internal Revenue Service agents as well as electric vehicle and renewable tax credits.

"What Speaker McCarthy proposed today would harm millions of families and devastate our economic recovery."

While the GOP speaker tried to paint the proposal as "responsible," Democrats and progressive campaigners argued that it's anything but, warned of the consequences it would have for the American people and the planet, and renewed demands for a clean bill.

"Kevin McCarthy is treating our nation's financial standing like a hostage situation in order to hand Big Polluters whatever they want," declared Friends of the Earth government and political affairs director Ariel Moger. "We cannot listen to Republicans who are willing to threaten financial catastrophe rather than passing a clean bill that raises the debt limit."

Summarizing the House GOP's measure, Social Security Works tweeted, "The #RepublicanDefaultDisaster plan: Crash the economy unless Democrats agree to MASSIVE CUTS to programs seniors, people with disabilities, and working families rely on to survive."

\u201cEvery Democrat in Congress must stand united to stop the #RepublicanDefaultDisaster.\n\nIf your Rep is one of the so-called "Problem Solvers", call and tell them that only a clean debt limit increase is acceptable. \n\nNo closed door commissions to cut our earned benefits!\u201d

— Social Security Works (@Social Security Works) 1681944813

As Common Dreams exclusively reported earlier Wednesday, Social Security Works is among a couple dozen groups that sent GOP and Democratic leaders in Congress a letter demanding a clean debt ceiling increase, stating that "there are real disagreements among elected officials about the role of government, budgetary matters, and tax policy. We understand that and welcome a robust debate and seeing where the American people stand. There's a time and place for that debate. This is not that time."

In a statement after McCarthy's speech, ProsperUS coalition spokesperson Claire Guzdar similarly said that "Congress should move immediately to prevent federal default and eliminate the debt ceiling as a hostage for House Republicans to take in their crusade to cut needed investments."

"What Speaker McCarthy proposed today would harm millions of families and devastate our economic recovery," Guzdar added. "Anyone who is truly concerned about the deficit and debt should be looking to the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share."

\u201cSpeaker McCarthy's bill is not a serious plan to avoid a national default and would kick hundreds of thousands of Americans out of their jobs \u2014 all while protecting wealthy tax cheats. There is no reason to jeopardize the U.S. economy with this legislation going nowhere.\u201d

— Elizabeth Warren (@Elizabeth Warren) 1681937016

Liz Zelnick, director of the Economic Security and Corporate Power program at Accountable.US, pointed out that amid mounting fears of a default in recent months, "Speaker McCarthy has wasted precious time trying to corral the MAGA House majority over which economic hostage demands to make in exchange for not manufacturing a default crisis."

"If the speaker doesn't want to go down as the first to usher in a catastrophic default that will crater the economy and deprive seniors of Social Security," Zelnick charged, "he should immediately put a clean bill on the floor allowing the nation to pay its bills."

Top Democrats also called out McCarthy, with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) noting in a floor speech Wednesday that "months and months after he proposed making deep cuts as a condition, as brinkmanship, as hostage-taking, to just simply make sure that we avoid default—even now he is still short of the support he needs to pass a debt ceiling bill, because the chasm is too big between moderates and the hard-right extremists who are glad to see the economy taken hostage in exchange for their priorities."

"If Republicans drop their hostage-taking and approach Democrats in good faith, the default crisis can be resolved," Schumer said. "But if Speaker McCarthy does not change course, he will be leading America into default of not paying our debts for the first time."

After declaring that "this disaster of a plan is a nonstarter," Senate Budget Committee Chair Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) called out MAGA Republicans for "holding our economy hostage to service their wealthy donors" and vowed congressional Democrats "will never give into the demands of hostage-takers."

\u201cBREAKING: @POTUS is calling out Republicans for their plan to threaten default unless they can slash services for working families and give the rich and corporations more tax cuts.\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s the same old trickle-down dressed up in MAGA clothing.\u201d #RepublicanDefaultDisaster\u201d

— Americans For Tax Fairness (@Americans For Tax Fairness) 1681929594

Meanwhile, just after McCarthy's speech, Biden told members of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 77 in Accokeek, Maryland that "you and the American people should know about the competing economic visions of the country that are really at stake right now."

"I'm here in this union hall with you," the president noted. "Just two days ago, the speaker of the House, Kevin McCarthy, went to Wall Street to describe the MAGA economic vision for America."

"Folks, here's what's really dangerous: MAGA Republicans in Congress are threatening to default on the national debt... unless we do what they say... unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have," Biden said.

Defaulting would be "worse than totally irresponsible," he added, highlighting that working people, the middle class, and seniors would pay the price for putting the entire economy at risk.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reportedly set to unveil a proposal Monday morning that would slash federal food aid for millions of people as part of Republicans' broader plan to avert a debt ceiling crisis of their own making.

But Democratic lawmakers were quick to reject the idea of food assistance cuts, denouncing the Republican leader's proposal as immoral and unacceptable.

"My family and I depended on food stamps. So do over 65,000 men, women, and children in the community I serve," Rep. Summer Lee (D-Pa.) said in a statement Sunday after Politico reported that McCarthy's (R-Calif.) proposal includes an expansion of work requirements for certain Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients and a call to limit states' ability to waive work mandates—a power that has been used to ensure consistent aid access during times of economic turmoil.

The outlines of McCarthy's proposal resemble legislation introduced last month by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who suggested expanding SNAP work requirements for adults deemed able-bodied and without dependents. Specifically, Johnson's bill would impose the stringent requirements on such adults between the ages of 18 and 65, up from the current age ceiling of 49.

As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) notes, the existing SNAP work requirements for able-bodied adults limit benefits "to just three months in any 36-month period when they are not employed or participating in a work or training program for at least 20 hours a week."

In a recent analysis, CBPP estimated that Johnson's bill would put 10 million people at risk of losing benefits. The think tank stressed that around 4 million children live in households that the legislation would impact.

In her statement on Sunday, Lee said Congress "cannot allow Republicans' threats to crash our economy if we don't bend to their pro-starvation agenda."

"Stop playing politics with people's lives," Lee added.

Lee's fellow Pennsylvania Democrat, Sen. John Fetterman, also voiced opposition to the Republican speaker's planned attack on food aid:

\u201cCut SNAP for families\u00a0and kids while pushing tax cuts for billionaires? \n\nNot on my watch. https://t.co/ndwDkiIFLq\u201d

— Senator John Fetterman (@Senator John Fetterman) 1681690280

McCarthy's plan will come weeks after millions of people across the U.S. saw their federal food aid cut—in some cases by hundreds of dollars per month—as emergency allotments for the Covid-19 pandemic were terminated, forcing many to turn to food banks for support amid elevated prices.

The GOP plan's prospects are uncertain given Democratic control of the Senate and the White House's stated opposition to attaching more punitive work requirements or other attacks on aid programs to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling. The U.S. is expected to default on its debt this summer if Congress doesn't act.

Senate Republicans have expressed doubts that McCarthy's food aid proposal would be able to pass while still praising "the intent behind the House GOP efforts to expand work requirements for SNAP," as Politico reported.

"I mean, Godspeed. Get what you can," an unnamed Republican Senate aide told Politico. "We're going to live in reality over here."

According to Punchbowl, the broader debt ceiling plan that House Republicans are considering would raise the limit until May 2024—setting up another dangerous standoff in the near future—in exchange for "either a cap on non-defense discretionary spending or a cap on overall discretionary spending after reducing it to FY 2022 levels."

Such caps would require significant cuts to key federal education, healthcare, and housing programs. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development warned last month that the GOP's proposed spending cuts could affect rental assistance for 640,000 families and make it "impossible to stave off mass evictions."

Claire Guzdar, a spokesperson for the ProsperUS coalition, said in a statement that "the House Republican majority's latest proposal is a complete nonstarter."

"We have already lived through the economic devastation of deep cuts like those proposed here," said Guzdar. "Enough is enough. Congress must raise the debt limit without conditions or risk economic catastrophe."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

What is it about many modern day Republican candidates?

If they win an election, everything is on the up and up. If they lose, something was amiss and certainly unfair.

Defeated Supreme Court candidate Dan Kelly is the most recent example. After it became clear Tuesday night that Janet Protasiewicz would defeat him by a wide margin, he had nothing but bad things to say about his opponent.

She's a serial liar, he proclaimed in a speech at the swank Heidel House Hotel in Green Lake.

"I wish that in a circumstance like this, I would be able to concede to a worthy opponent," he told his assembled supporters. "But I do not have a worthy opponent to which I can concede."

Kelly called Protasiewicz's campaign "deeply deceitful, dishonorable and despicable."

"My opponent is a serial liar," he continued. "She's disregarded judicial ethics; she's demeaned the judiciary with her behavior. This is the future that we have to look forward to in Wisconsin."

This from the candidate whose campaign backers, including Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, sponsored an ad that used a Milwaukee rape victim's case to declare that Protasiewicz had a soft spot in her heart for sexual predators.

The ad, which claimed the Milwaukee judge had unleashed the perpetrator to again prey on the innocent, so upset the victim that she spoke out in Protasiewicz's defense.

"It immediately took my breath away," she said of the ad. "To see it in action, I wondered if there was any thought put into the human beings behind the cases."

Both sides in the campaign used inflammatory, low-ball TV spots, but for Kelly to suggest he was above it all is nothing short of laughable. In fact, the former justice was up on TV early and often suggesting his opponent was soft on criminals, cherry picking a handful of sentences out of the hundreds she had administered while on the circuit court bench.

What was so ludicrous about all those multimillion dollar attack ads is that Supreme Court justices don't rule on such cases in the first place.

Kelly closed his concession talk with, "I wish Wisconsin the best of luck, because I think it’s going to need it."

No, it's the other way around. Kelly, absurdly claiming that he would only rule on the principles of law and not his political beliefs, was all set to rubber stamp the right-wing Republican legislative agenda, as had the justice he was hoping to replace, Patience Roggensack. The gerrymanderers, the opponents of a woman's right to choose, the vote suppressors were all lined up.

Lucky for us, the voters sent them away.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Dave Zweifel.

When Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot lost her reelection bid in the first round of voting in February, onlookers prepared for the end of an era. Lightfoot was close to the police and the city’s moderate Democratic political establishment, so when she lost, progressives in Chicago saw an opening to elect a candidate who would advocate for the city’s public schools and address economic inequality, police brutality, and public safety.

Former Chicago Public Schools teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer Brandon Johnson came in second place in the February election and will face former Chicago Public Schools Chief Executive Officer Paul Vallas in a runoff election on Tuesday.

“Paul Vallas’s campaign is emboldening and legitimizing far-right extremists in Chicago, including Trump supporters.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Akela Lacy.

"When a Norfolk Southern train derailed last month in East Palestine, Ohio, it released toxins into the air, soil, and water, endangering the health and safety of people in surrounding communities," said Attorney General Merrick Garland. "With this complaint, the Justice Department and the [Environmental Protection Agency] are acting to pursue justice for the residents of East Palestine and ensure that Norfolk Southern carries the financial burden for the harm it has caused and continues to inflict on the community."

The lawsuit comes almost two months after a train carrying chemicals including vinyl chloride derailed in East Palestine, spilling chemicals into local waterways and ultimately the Ohio River, which provides drinking water for more than five million people.

"Whatever it takes to make East Palestine whole, Norfolk Southern needs to pay—and it's not enough to take their word for it."

Officials began a controlled release of vinyl chloride to prevent an explosion, a process that sent chemicals including hydrogen chloride and phosgene into the environment. Those chemicals have been known to cause symptoms including headaches, vomiting, and rashes. Earlier this month, data showed that local levels of dioxin, a carcinogen, were hundreds of times higher than the threshold for cancer risk, according to federal scientists.

Norfolk Southern has removed nine million gallons of contaminated wastewater from the site and hauled it to storage sites in states including Texas and Michigan. Earlier this week, officials in Baltimore blocked a shipment of wastewater to a treatment plant there, with one city council member noting that "too often cities with high rates of concentrated poverty and environmental degradation are asked to shoulder the burden for corporate malfeasance."

Government officials say toxic levels of contamination have not been detected in the air or water in East Palestine, but a poll by federal, state, and local authorities earlier this month found that 74% of town residents had experienced headaches following the derailment and controlled release, and 52% had experienced rashes or other skin issues.

On Friday, CNNreported that investigators with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experienced symptoms including sore throat, headache, coughing, and nausea while they were in East Palestine assessing public health risks.

By filing its lawsuit, said Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim of the DOJ's Environment and Natural Resources Division, the Biden administration is "demanding accountability from Norfolk Southern for the harm this event has caused."

"We will tirelessly pursue justice for the people living in and near East Palestine, who like all Americans deserve clean air, clean water, and a safe community for their children," said Kim.

In February, the EPA ordered Norfolk Southern to take full responsibility for the cleanup work, issuing a legally binding directive. It also demanded that the company attend all public meetings regarding the disaster, after officials refused to meet with residents following the crash.

Ohio filed a lawsuit against the company earlier this month, demanding that it pay for soil and water monitoring in the coming years as well as paying environmental damage and cleanup costs.

U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio)—a key sponsor of multiple recent railway safety bills—applauded the Biden administration for "following Ohio's lead and holding Norfolk Southern accountable to the full extent of the law."

The latest lawsuit against Norfolk Southern "should further serve as a wake-up call" to the rail industry, said Robert Guy, Illinois state director for the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers-Transportation Division.

Norfolk Southern and other rail companies have long lobbied for lax regulations and pushed workers to abide by a strict scheduling system that rail unions say places profits over safety.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Today, the House passed H.R. 1, better named the "Polluters Over People" Act, which paves the way for corporate polluters to develop new fossil fuel infrastructure backed by taxpayer-funded subsidies, hindering a just transition to affordable and reliable clean energy.

The Polluters Over People Act is a clear reflection of the fossil fuel industries' influence over elected officials who have backed a bill that would increase profits for Big Oil & Gas and fail to act on climate, jobs, and justice:

• Instead of stabilizing the economy, H.R. 1 would increase the deficit over the 2023-2033 period by roughly $2.4 billion by reducing direct spending by $4 billion and reducing revenues by $6.4 billion.
• H.R. 1 attacks half a decade of environmental protections, including provisions in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), Clean Water Act, and Clean Air Act, compromising public input processes on federal energy projects that can hurt the communities and Tribes who live beside toxic projects.
• By fast-tracking and rubber-stamping approvals for pipelines, Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports, oil & gas leases on federal lands, and mining on public lands, the Polluters Over People Act maintains our overreliance on unstable and costly fossil fuels to the benefit of industry profit margins.
• H.R. 1 is a clear attack on the climate by repealing the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, Methane Emissions Reduction Program, and investments in home electrification rebates, tools to reduce climate change-causing pollution.

In contrast to the Republican energy plan, Progressives have a path forward for our country that would reduce the cost of energy for everyday people, create new, local jobs for working families, and mitigate the climate crisis at the scale of action needed, all while reducing the national deficit by $252 billion.

In response to the House passage of the Polluters Over People Act, the Green New Deal Network—a coalition of 15 national organizations and 25 state tables—is demanding that Senator Schumer, Senate Democrats, and President Biden halt the progress of a bill that will undo decades of action on climate, jobs, and justice:

"The bottom line is that the Polluters Over People Act is nothing more than an inflation-causing and national debt-raising cash cow that explicitly benefits the fossil-fuel industry and corporations that are resisting the transition to clean energy. Republicans and the supporters of H.R. 1 are making it abundantly clear they're beholden to the fossil-fuel lobby over protecting frontline communities that need government action on the climate crisis and environmental injustices," said Kaniela Ing, National Director at the Green New Deal Network. "President Biden and Democrats in the Senate must hold the line on rejecting H. R. 1 by acting to protect our progress on climate action and rejecting Republicans' campaign to enrich their fossil-fuel industry buddies."

"At a time when toxic and climate disasters are on the rise, the need to protect bedrock environmental protections could not be more urgent. Yet, those backed by fossil fuel lobbyists in Congress continue to cater to their corporate sponsors rather than their own constituents. The passage of the Polluters Over People Act (HR1) in the House is simply another handout to dirty industry that will only fast track and expand harmful polluting projects in frontline communities," said Marion Gee, Co-Executive Director at the Climate Justice Alliance.

"H.R. 1 is a laundry list of giveaways to greedy, polluting corporations. Republicans are working with fossil fuel polluters to push harmful, dirty energy while undoing bedrock environmental protections for their monetary gain. Frontline communities are fighting back against dirty energy and harmful false solutions that we don't need and don't want. We stopped Manchin's dirty energy deal, and we will stop this heinous package that endangers frontline environmental justice communities," said Adrien Salazar, Policy Director at Grassroots Global Justice. "To deter the worst impacts of climate change requires a full phase-out of fossil fuels immediately, and we call on our climate champions in the Senate to uphold their promise to stand with our communities, oppose this terrible bill, and fight for real climate solutions that protect and invest in communities."

"The impacts of climate change are indisputable, and the perpetuation of toxic, chemical harms from oil and gas companies at the expense of people and the environment, as shown in the repeals and loopholes of this dangerous energy package, cannot be allowed passage," said Oscar Villalobos, Coalition Coordinator at the Green New Deal for DC Coalition. "Although House leadership deliberately places profits over people and disregards the gravity of the climate crisis, our members and allies stand unified in calling for the rejection of this wrong-headed legislation and champions a renewed commitment to the American people from our government by halting bailouts and political expediencies for the fossil fuel industry, and strengthening equitable climate justice for our future."

"H.R. 1 is a big step in the wrong direction. Republicans are putting the interests of Big Oil above communities, stripping protections against pollution in the Clean Water Act and cutting over $20 billion from last year's landmark climate bill, the Inflation Reduction Act," said Sophia Cheng, Climate Justice Campaign Director at People's Action. "In 2022, Chevron alone raked in $6.3 million per hour and the five largest Big Oil corporations made a record $200 billion in profits. H.R. 1 paves the way for bigger profits for Big Oil at the expense of our land, water, and health. Senate Majority Leader Schumer must hold firm to defeat this bill and President Biden must follow through on his commitment to veto any version of this dangerous policy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

According to the nonpartisan National Association of Attorneys General, a state attorney general’s job is to represent the public interest—not private, special interests—by, among other things, “enforcing federal and state environmental laws.” Attorneys general (AGs) in the five states most vulnerable to climate change, however, are doing the exact opposite: Instead of defending their constituents, they are defending the fossil fuel industry.

Each of the states—Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas—have sustained billions of dollars in climate change-related damage. Regardless, their AGs routinely collaborate on lawsuits and other actions to attack federal environmental safeguards, especially those designed to mitigate the impact of global warming. Why? At least partly—if not largely—because the AGs and their political organization, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), receive substantial financial support from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and their respective trade groups.

Here’s a roundup of what these AGs have been doing to make a bad situation worse.

Texas:Ken Paxton

Texas AG Ken Paxton’s constituents are suffering extreme heat, drought, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires, all exacerbated by climate change. The third hottest state, Texas annually averages more than 60 dangerously hot days, which are expected to nearly double by 2050 to 115 days per year, second only to Florida. Texas also faces the biggest threat in the nation from summer droughts, which are projected to become even more severe. As for hurricanes, Texas suffered no fewer than 81 tropical or subtropical cyclones from 1980 through 2021. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey—one of the worst—drenched Houston with more than 4 feet of rain, killed at least 88 people, and caused $125 billion in damage.

How has Paxton responded? By railing against what he calls a “radical climate change movement” and suing the federal government to protect corporate polluters.

In 2015, when he took office as AG after stints in the Texas Legislature, he sued the Environmental Protection Agency for strengthening a standard for ground-level ozone, better known as smog. A year later, he sued the EPA again for proposing new rules to reduce methane leaks downstream from oil and gas production sites.

Then, in 2017, Paxton defended ExxonMobil against investigations by New York and Massachusetts AGs to determine if the company broke any laws when it lied to shareholders and the general public about the threat of climate change. Along with AGs from 10 other states, including Louisiana and South Carolina, he filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in a US District Court in New York arguing that the investigation impinged on ExxonMobil’s First Amendment right of free speech. (The First Amendment, Paxton should know, does not protect fraud.)

Perhaps the most consequential of all Paxton’s actions, however, is a lawsuit he and AGs from 19 other states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, filed in 2021 challenging the EPA’s authority to curb power plant carbon emissions. The case ultimately wound up in the US Supreme Court, which, in its controversial West Virginia v. EPA decision, upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate such emissions under the Clean Air Act but significantly constrained its ability to do so.

More recently, Paxton and AGs from 24 other states, including Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, sued the Biden administration over a Labor Department rule allowing retirement plan managers to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors—including the impact climate change has on companies’ bottom lines. Paxton falsely claimed in a January press release that the rule prioritizes what he calls “woke” investing over protecting retirement savings when, in fact, the rule expressly prohibits fund managers from prioritizing ESG goals over earnings. (On March 20, President Biden vetoed a Republican-led bill that would have overturned the Labor Department rule.)

The main beneficiary of Paxton’s efforts? The oil and gas industry, of course. As his top industry sector contributor, it has donated more than $3.9 million to his campaigns since 2002, according to OpenSecrets’ compilation of contribution data. And since he became Texas AG, his largest oil and gas industry donations have come from individuals, including CrownQuest Operating CEO Timothy Dunn ($605,000), Midland Energy founder Syed Javaid Anwar ($495,000), and Desert Royalty CEO Kyle Stallings ($290,000), according to contribution data compiled by Transparency USA. Over that time, he also received funding from some of the biggest names in the business, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Phillips 66 and Valero Energy, as well as RAGA, which kicked in $1.18 million.

Louisiana: Jeff Landry

Nearly a million residents of Louisiana—the second hottest state—are threatened by coastal flooding, and between 2000 and 2021 the state was hit by 28 tropical or subtropical cyclones. The most devastating, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was the costliest natural disaster in US history, killing nearly 1,200 Louisianans and causing more than $160 billion in damage. More recently, Hurricane Ida battered the state with 150 mile-per-hour winds and a 14-foot storm surge in 2021, causing $75 billion in damage.

For example, in October 2021—the same month he signed onto the West Virginia v. EPA lawsuit—Landry joined 18 other AGs, including Paxton and AGs from Mississippi and South Carolina, on a letter to two Senate committees urging them to vote against tighter restrictions on methane emissions, which are considerably worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.

Landry’s deep ties to the oil and gas industry predate his time as Louisiana’s AG. Since 2007, when he ran unsuccessfully for state senator, the industry has been his top industrial sector donor, contributing more than $875,000 to his campaigns, according to OpenSecrets data. The industry also funds his Cajun PAC II, which—as a Super PAC—can accept unlimited contributions. Among Cajun PAC II’s biggest donors are Hilcorp Energy CEO Jeffery Hildebrand, who has donated $95,000; Harvey Gulf, an oilfield services company that contributed $50,000; and Dunn Exploration, which donated $47,500, according to a February 2022 post by a Baton Rouge Advocate investigative reporter.

In 2011, while serving a term in the US House of Representatives from Louisiana’s 3^rd Congressional District, Landry made national news by holding up a sign that read “DRILLING = JOBS” during President Obama’s national jobs plan speech. But he became even more entwined with the industry after becoming AG. Between 2019 and last December, he served on the board of Harvey Gulf, which paid him between $50,000 and $100,000 per year for legal advice, according to a Baton Rouge Advocateexposé, substantially padding his annual AG salary of $110,000. Landry, in turn, hired Harvey Gulf owner Shane Guidry to serve as a “special agent/investigator” for his AG office. Although Louisiana statute explicitly bars AGs from practicing law outside of the job, the Louisiana Ethics Administration has yet to issue an opinion regarding Landry’s relationship with Harvey Gulf.

Mississippi:Lynn Fitch

The sea level off the coast of Mississippi—the fifth hottest state—is rising more rapidly than in most other coastal areas, largely because the land is sinking. Currently 75,000 Mississippians are threatened by coastal flooding, and by 2050 an estimated 13,000 more residents will be at risk. Like its Gulf Coast neighbors, the state is routinely ravaged by hurricanes. In 1998, Hurricane Georges struck Mississippi’s coast near Biloxi, dropping 15 to 25 inches of rain and causing nearly $13.9 billion in damage. Seven years later, Hurricane Katrina strafed the Mississippi coast, killing more than 230 people and causing $32 billion in damage.

No surprise, Fitch is an oil and gas industry favorite. Since 2011, the industry has donated $78,450 to her campaigns for state treasurer and attorney general, according to OpenSecrets data, placing the sector among her top 10 industry contributors. Electric utilities, meanwhile, gave her $44,750. Her top donors include RAGA ($150,000), the independent oil producer William D. Mounger ($41,000), and Mississippi Power ($29,000), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Atlanta-based Southern Company, the second-largest utility in the country based on the number of its customers.

Florida: Ashley Moody

Florida is ground zero for climate impacts. Not only does it rank as the hottest state, it also is home to seven of the top 10 hottest US cities, and dangerously steamy days are predicted to jump from 25 to 130 a year by 2050, more than any other state. At the same time, routine flooding is already a major problem. Some 1 million Florida homes will be at risk by the end of the century, largely because the state sits on porous limestone and the sea level around the state, which has gone up 8 inches since 1950, could rise another 14 to 16 inches by 2050, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Meanwhile, the state has suffered 79 tropical or subtropical cyclones since 2000. One of the most recent, Hurricane Ian, slammed into the state’s Gulf Coast last fall, causing $50 billion to $65 billion in insured damages. It was the costliest disaster in the country last year.

Despite these ever-more ominous incidents, climate change did not make Florida AG Ashley Moody’s list of the top issues she plans to address. Last June, she told the Tampa Bay News 9 television station that she wants to make Florida “a safer, stronger place to live,” and specifically cited human trafficking, elder abuse and violent crime. All major problems to be sure, but no more than South Florida under water.

When Moody ran for attorney general in 2018, she promised she wouldn’t politicize the office. The AG’s role, she said during a Tampa Bay News 9 debate, “is not to advance a political agenda or pick topics that are personal to me and use the office to sue anybody I can come up with.”

After she took office in January 2019, that pledge went out the window. She became a team player, joining GOP AG initiatives on a range of issues. For example, along with 17 other state AGs, including Landry, Fitch and Alan Wilson from South Carolina, Moody supported Texas AG Paxton’s December 2020 lawsuit to block four battleground states’ certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

Moody also jumped in head-first to protect the fossil fuel industry. In June 2021, she joined a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s decision to revoke the Keystone XL pipeline permit. Twenty-two other state AGs were on board, including the AGs from the other four most vulnerable states to climate change. More recently, Moody issued a press release announcing that she and 19 other AGs, including Fitch, Landry, Paxton and Wilson, filed a comment with the US Department of Transportation opposing a rule requiring states to reduce on-road carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Since 2017, Moody has received nearly $339,000 from oil and gas companies and electric utilities as well as $300,000 from RAGA, according to Transparency USA data. More than half of her energy industry-related donations came from Duke Energy ($155,000), whose Florida power plants provide mainly fossil gas-fired electricity for three dozen counties, and Teco Energy ($85,000), owner of Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas, which supplies fossil gas to more than 400,000 customers across the state.

South Carolina:Alan Wilson

Like Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, South Carolina—the seventh hottest state—is in the crosshairs of the climate crisis. Between 1990 and 2016, the sea level off its 2,876-mile coast rose 6 inches, at least partly because the land is sinking. By 2030, it is expected to rise another 6 inches, posing a significant threat to the state’s tourism economy, and more than 16,000 homes will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045. Since 2000, more than 20 hurricanes have hit the South Carolina coast. One of the worst, Hurricane Florence, caused at least $1.2 billion in damage in September 2018. Four years later, Hurricane Ian—after pummeling Florida—smashed into North Myrtle Beach, causing an estimated $13 million in damage.

Even so, like his counterparts in the four other most vulnerable states, South Carolina AG Alan Wilson bends over backward to help the fossil fuel industry, and he has been rewarded for doing so. Since 2010, when he first ran for AG, Wilson has received more than $143,000 from electric utilities and fossil fuel companies combined, according to OpenSecrets data. The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina ($24,300), Duke Energy ($21,000) and RAGA ($21,000) are among Wilson’s top 10 donors. Koch Industries chipped in $14,000, while Alliance Coal and Dominion Energy both gave him $7,000.

Besides participating in the AG lawsuits and other actions cited above, Wilson joined 23 other Republican AGs who threatened to sue the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) last July if the agency adopted a new rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their climate change-related risks and explain how they plan to address them.

Wilson also has played a key behind-the-scenes role as chairman of RAGA three times since he took office in 2011, most recently between November 2021 and November 2022. As chairman, he met with corporate and law firm executives to solicit big-dollar donations for RAGA as well as his own reelection campaigns, according to records obtained by the nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog American Oversight. Those donations have enabled RAGA to support sustained, multipronged efforts to challenge federal government initiatives that threaten the interests of RAGA’s benefactors.

RAGA:A Stealth Power Player

Most people have never heard of RAGA. If they have, it is probably for helping instigate the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. The Rule of Law Defense Fund, RAGA’s fundraising arm, made robocalls the day before the event encouraging people to march on the Capitol “to stop the steal,” and Texas AG Paxton riled up the crowd on the Ellipse on the morning of January 6 before President Trump took the stage.

Less known is RAGA’s work on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. In 2014, the New York Times published an eye-opening investigation of its secret alliance based on thousands of pages of correspondence between energy industry executives and Republican attorneys general trying to block Obama administration proposals to address the climate crisis. RAGA AGs, the Times reported, are “the object of aggressive pursuit by lobbyists and lawyers who use campaign contributions, personal appeals at lavish corporate-sponsored conferences and other means to push them to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators.” In 2014 alone, the Times found, the fossil fuel industry donated some $16 million to at least a dozen Republican AG candidates.

That “aggressive pursuit” goes both ways. According to emails and documents obtained by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Republican AGs offer lobbyists and lawyers private, confidential meetings in exchange for contributions to RAGA, which—as a 527 political organization—can raise unlimited amounts of cash from individuals and corporations. Another RAGA document, obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group Documented, detailed the degree of access funders get at RAGA conferences, retreats and summits depending on how much they spend on their annual RAGA membership fee.

These annual “pay-to-play” contributions, ranging from $15,000 to $250,000, pay off. As CMD reported, less than two weeks after representatives from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and their trade groups attended a RAGA conference in August 2015, Republican AGs petitioned federal courts to block the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have established the first-ever limits on US power plant carbon emissions. Among the conference’s attendees were executives from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry trade group now called America’s Power, which gave RAGA $378,250 between 2015 and 2016; Koch Industries, which donated $350,000; coal giant Murray Energy, which contributed $250,000; and Southern Company, which gave RAGA $85,000, according to materials reviewed by CMD.

From its inception in 1999, RAGA—whose primary purpose is to elect (and reelect) Republican AGs—has been bankrolled by companies and trade associations seeking favors, including regulatory “relief”—rollbacks of consumer, environmental, public health and workplace safeguards. In recent years, top RAGA contributors have been corporations and trade groups from the gun, fossil fuel, health care, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, along with the US Chamber of Commerce and the Judicial Crisis Network (now called the Concord Fund), a dark money group that backs conservative judicial appointments, promotes voting restrictions, and funds right-wing advocacy groups.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and their trade groups—including the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute and National Mining Association—have collectively donated more than $10 million to RAGA over the last decade, according to Opensecrets data and RAGA contribution and expenditurereportdocuments, called 8872 forms. Leading contributors include Anadarko Petroleum ($1.5 million), the Ariel Corporation ($2.1 million), Koch Industries ($2 million) and Noble Energy ($1 million).

That kind of money buys loyalty, and the collective actions of RAGA members—particularly the AGs from Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas—show just how effective it can be at frustrating efforts to address climate change.

As a state’s top legal officer, AGs are supposed to function as the “people’s lawyer,” representing the interests of their state’s residents. All swear to faithfully discharge their duties. By putting the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of the health and safety of their own constituents, however, these five AGs are in blatant violation of their oath of office.

Note:This column’s list of the five most vulnerable states to climate change is based on the following analyses: Brookings Institution (January 2019), The Hill (November 2020), US News & World Report (December 2020), SafeHome.org (June 2021), Climate Check (October 2012), CNET (November 2021), Bankrate (July 2022), Policygenius.com (October 2022), and The Hill (October 2022).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Elliott Negin.

According to the nonpartisan National Association of Attorneys General, a state attorney general’s job is to represent the public interest—not private, special interests—by, among other things, “enforcing federal and state environmental laws.” Attorneys general (AGs) in the five states most vulnerable to climate change, however, are doing the exact opposite: Instead of defending their constituents, they are defending the fossil fuel industry.

Each of the states—Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas—have sustained billions of dollars in climate change-related damage. Regardless, their AGs routinely collaborate on lawsuits and other actions to attack federal environmental safeguards, especially those designed to mitigate the impact of global warming. Why? At least partly—if not largely—because the AGs and their political organization, the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), receive substantial financial support from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and their respective trade groups.

Here’s a roundup of what these AGs have been doing to make a bad situation worse.

Texas:Ken Paxton

Texas AG Ken Paxton’s constituents are suffering extreme heat, drought, flooding, hurricanes and wildfires, all exacerbated by climate change. The third hottest state, Texas annually averages more than 60 dangerously hot days, which are expected to nearly double by 2050 to 115 days per year, second only to Florida. Texas also faces the biggest threat in the nation from summer droughts, which are projected to become even more severe. As for hurricanes, Texas suffered no fewer than 81 tropical or subtropical cyclones from 1980 through 2021. In 2017, Hurricane Harvey—one of the worst—drenched Houston with more than 4 feet of rain, killed at least 88 people, and caused $125 billion in damage.

How has Paxton responded? By railing against what he calls a “radical climate change movement” and suing the federal government to protect corporate polluters.

In 2015, when he took office as AG after stints in the Texas Legislature, he sued the Environmental Protection Agency for strengthening a standard for ground-level ozone, better known as smog. A year later, he sued the EPA again for proposing new rules to reduce methane leaks downstream from oil and gas production sites.

Then, in 2017, Paxton defended ExxonMobil against investigations by New York and Massachusetts AGs to determine if the company broke any laws when it lied to shareholders and the general public about the threat of climate change. Along with AGs from 10 other states, including Louisiana and South Carolina, he filed an amicus (friend of the court) brief in a US District Court in New York arguing that the investigation impinged on ExxonMobil’s First Amendment right of free speech. (The First Amendment, Paxton should know, does not protect fraud.)

Perhaps the most consequential of all Paxton’s actions, however, is a lawsuit he and AGs from 19 other states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, filed in 2021 challenging the EPA’s authority to curb power plant carbon emissions. The case ultimately wound up in the US Supreme Court, which, in its controversial West Virginia v. EPA decision, upheld the EPA’s authority to regulate such emissions under the Clean Air Act but significantly constrained its ability to do so.

More recently, Paxton and AGs from 24 other states, including Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and South Carolina, sued the Biden administration over a Labor Department rule allowing retirement plan managers to consider environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors—including the impact climate change has on companies’ bottom lines. Paxton falsely claimed in a January press release that the rule prioritizes what he calls “woke” investing over protecting retirement savings when, in fact, the rule expressly prohibits fund managers from prioritizing ESG goals over earnings. (On March 20, President Biden vetoed a Republican-led bill that would have overturned the Labor Department rule.)

The main beneficiary of Paxton’s efforts? The oil and gas industry, of course. As his top industry sector contributor, it has donated more than $3.9 million to his campaigns since 2002, according to OpenSecrets’ compilation of contribution data. And since he became Texas AG, his largest oil and gas industry donations have come from individuals, including CrownQuest Operating CEO Timothy Dunn ($605,000), Midland Energy founder Syed Javaid Anwar ($495,000), and Desert Royalty CEO Kyle Stallings ($290,000), according to contribution data compiled by Transparency USA. Over that time, he also received funding from some of the biggest names in the business, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, Koch Industries, Phillips 66 and Valero Energy, as well as RAGA, which kicked in $1.18 million.

Louisiana: Jeff Landry

Nearly a million residents of Louisiana—the second hottest state—are threatened by coastal flooding, and between 2000 and 2021 the state was hit by 28 tropical or subtropical cyclones. The most devastating, Hurricane Katrina in 2005, was the costliest natural disaster in US history, killing nearly 1,200 Louisianans and causing more than $160 billion in damage. More recently, Hurricane Ida battered the state with 150 mile-per-hour winds and a 14-foot storm surge in 2021, causing $75 billion in damage.

For example, in October 2021—the same month he signed onto the West Virginia v. EPA lawsuit—Landry joined 18 other AGs, including Paxton and AGs from Mississippi and South Carolina, on a letter to two Senate committees urging them to vote against tighter restrictions on methane emissions, which are considerably worse for the climate than carbon dioxide.

Landry’s deep ties to the oil and gas industry predate his time as Louisiana’s AG. Since 2007, when he ran unsuccessfully for state senator, the industry has been his top industrial sector donor, contributing more than $875,000 to his campaigns, according to OpenSecrets data. The industry also funds his Cajun PAC II, which—as a Super PAC—can accept unlimited contributions. Among Cajun PAC II’s biggest donors are Hilcorp Energy CEO Jeffery Hildebrand, who has donated $95,000; Harvey Gulf, an oilfield services company that contributed $50,000; and Dunn Exploration, which donated $47,500, according to a February 2022 post by a Baton Rouge Advocate investigative reporter.

In 2011, while serving a term in the US House of Representatives from Louisiana’s 3^rd Congressional District, Landry made national news by holding up a sign that read “DRILLING = JOBS” during President Obama’s national jobs plan speech. But he became even more entwined with the industry after becoming AG. Between 2019 and last December, he served on the board of Harvey Gulf, which paid him between $50,000 and $100,000 per year for legal advice, according to a Baton Rouge Advocateexposé, substantially padding his annual AG salary of $110,000. Landry, in turn, hired Harvey Gulf owner Shane Guidry to serve as a “special agent/investigator” for his AG office. Although Louisiana statute explicitly bars AGs from practicing law outside of the job, the Louisiana Ethics Administration has yet to issue an opinion regarding Landry’s relationship with Harvey Gulf.

Mississippi:Lynn Fitch

The sea level off the coast of Mississippi—the fifth hottest state—is rising more rapidly than in most other coastal areas, largely because the land is sinking. Currently 75,000 Mississippians are threatened by coastal flooding, and by 2050 an estimated 13,000 more residents will be at risk. Like its Gulf Coast neighbors, the state is routinely ravaged by hurricanes. In 1998, Hurricane Georges struck Mississippi’s coast near Biloxi, dropping 15 to 25 inches of rain and causing nearly $13.9 billion in damage. Seven years later, Hurricane Katrina strafed the Mississippi coast, killing more than 230 people and causing $32 billion in damage.

No surprise, Fitch is an oil and gas industry favorite. Since 2011, the industry has donated $78,450 to her campaigns for state treasurer and attorney general, according to OpenSecrets data, placing the sector among her top 10 industry contributors. Electric utilities, meanwhile, gave her $44,750. Her top donors include RAGA ($150,000), the independent oil producer William D. Mounger ($41,000), and Mississippi Power ($29,000), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Atlanta-based Southern Company, the second-largest utility in the country based on the number of its customers.

Florida: Ashley Moody

Florida is ground zero for climate impacts. Not only does it rank as the hottest state, it also is home to seven of the top 10 hottest US cities, and dangerously steamy days are predicted to jump from 25 to 130 a year by 2050, more than any other state. At the same time, routine flooding is already a major problem. Some 1 million Florida homes will be at risk by the end of the century, largely because the state sits on porous limestone and the sea level around the state, which has gone up 8 inches since 1950, could rise another 14 to 16 inches by 2050, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Meanwhile, the state has suffered 79 tropical or subtropical cyclones since 2000. One of the most recent, Hurricane Ian, slammed into the state’s Gulf Coast last fall, causing $50 billion to $65 billion in insured damages. It was the costliest disaster in the country last year.

Despite these ever-more ominous incidents, climate change did not make Florida AG Ashley Moody’s list of the top issues she plans to address. Last June, she told the Tampa Bay News 9 television station that she wants to make Florida “a safer, stronger place to live,” and specifically cited human trafficking, elder abuse and violent crime. All major problems to be sure, but no more than South Florida under water.

When Moody ran for attorney general in 2018, she promised she wouldn’t politicize the office. The AG’s role, she said during a Tampa Bay News 9 debate, “is not to advance a political agenda or pick topics that are personal to me and use the office to sue anybody I can come up with.”

After she took office in January 2019, that pledge went out the window. She became a team player, joining GOP AG initiatives on a range of issues. For example, along with 17 other state AGs, including Landry, Fitch and Alan Wilson from South Carolina, Moody supported Texas AG Paxton’s December 2020 lawsuit to block four battleground states’ certification of Joe Biden’s presidential election victory.

Moody also jumped in head-first to protect the fossil fuel industry. In June 2021, she joined a lawsuit challenging the Biden administration’s decision to revoke the Keystone XL pipeline permit. Twenty-two other state AGs were on board, including the AGs from the other four most vulnerable states to climate change. More recently, Moody issued a press release announcing that she and 19 other AGs, including Fitch, Landry, Paxton and Wilson, filed a comment with the US Department of Transportation opposing a rule requiring states to reduce on-road carbon dioxide emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Since 2017, Moody has received nearly $339,000 from oil and gas companies and electric utilities as well as $300,000 from RAGA, according to Transparency USA data. More than half of her energy industry-related donations came from Duke Energy ($155,000), whose Florida power plants provide mainly fossil gas-fired electricity for three dozen counties, and Teco Energy ($85,000), owner of Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas, which supplies fossil gas to more than 400,000 customers across the state.

South Carolina:Alan Wilson

Like Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, South Carolina—the seventh hottest state—is in the crosshairs of the climate crisis. Between 1990 and 2016, the sea level off its 2,876-mile coast rose 6 inches, at least partly because the land is sinking. By 2030, it is expected to rise another 6 inches, posing a significant threat to the state’s tourism economy, and more than 16,000 homes will be at risk of chronic flooding by 2045. Since 2000, more than 20 hurricanes have hit the South Carolina coast. One of the worst, Hurricane Florence, caused at least $1.2 billion in damage in September 2018. Four years later, Hurricane Ian—after pummeling Florida—smashed into North Myrtle Beach, causing an estimated $13 million in damage.

Even so, like his counterparts in the four other most vulnerable states, South Carolina AG Alan Wilson bends over backward to help the fossil fuel industry, and he has been rewarded for doing so. Since 2010, when he first ran for AG, Wilson has received more than $143,000 from electric utilities and fossil fuel companies combined, according to OpenSecrets data. The Electric Cooperatives of South Carolina ($24,300), Duke Energy ($21,000) and RAGA ($21,000) are among Wilson’s top 10 donors. Koch Industries chipped in $14,000, while Alliance Coal and Dominion Energy both gave him $7,000.

Besides participating in the AG lawsuits and other actions cited above, Wilson joined 23 other Republican AGs who threatened to sue the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) last July if the agency adopted a new rule requiring publicly traded companies to disclose their climate change-related risks and explain how they plan to address them.

Wilson also has played a key behind-the-scenes role as chairman of RAGA three times since he took office in 2011, most recently between November 2021 and November 2022. As chairman, he met with corporate and law firm executives to solicit big-dollar donations for RAGA as well as his own reelection campaigns, according to records obtained by the nonpartisan, nonprofit watchdog American Oversight. Those donations have enabled RAGA to support sustained, multipronged efforts to challenge federal government initiatives that threaten the interests of RAGA’s benefactors.

RAGA:A Stealth Power Player

Most people have never heard of RAGA. If they have, it is probably for helping instigate the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the US Capitol. The Rule of Law Defense Fund, RAGA’s fundraising arm, made robocalls the day before the event encouraging people to march on the Capitol “to stop the steal,” and Texas AG Paxton riled up the crowd on the Ellipse on the morning of January 6 before President Trump took the stage.

Less known is RAGA’s work on behalf of the fossil fuel industry. In 2014, the New York Times published an eye-opening investigation of its secret alliance based on thousands of pages of correspondence between energy industry executives and Republican attorneys general trying to block Obama administration proposals to address the climate crisis. RAGA AGs, the Times reported, are “the object of aggressive pursuit by lobbyists and lawyers who use campaign contributions, personal appeals at lavish corporate-sponsored conferences and other means to push them to drop investigations, change policies, negotiate favorable settlements or pressure federal regulators.” In 2014 alone, the Times found, the fossil fuel industry donated some $16 million to at least a dozen Republican AG candidates.

That “aggressive pursuit” goes both ways. According to emails and documents obtained by the nonpartisan Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), Republican AGs offer lobbyists and lawyers private, confidential meetings in exchange for contributions to RAGA, which—as a 527 political organization—can raise unlimited amounts of cash from individuals and corporations. Another RAGA document, obtained by the nonprofit watchdog group Documented, detailed the degree of access funders get at RAGA conferences, retreats and summits depending on how much they spend on their annual RAGA membership fee.

These annual “pay-to-play” contributions, ranging from $15,000 to $250,000, pay off. As CMD reported, less than two weeks after representatives from fossil fuel companies, electric utilities, and their trade groups attended a RAGA conference in August 2015, Republican AGs petitioned federal courts to block the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which would have established the first-ever limits on US power plant carbon emissions. Among the conference’s attendees were executives from the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal industry trade group now called America’s Power, which gave RAGA $378,250 between 2015 and 2016; Koch Industries, which donated $350,000; coal giant Murray Energy, which contributed $250,000; and Southern Company, which gave RAGA $85,000, according to materials reviewed by CMD.

From its inception in 1999, RAGA—whose primary purpose is to elect (and reelect) Republican AGs—has been bankrolled by companies and trade associations seeking favors, including regulatory “relief”—rollbacks of consumer, environmental, public health and workplace safeguards. In recent years, top RAGA contributors have been corporations and trade groups from the gun, fossil fuel, health care, pharmaceutical and tobacco industries, along with the US Chamber of Commerce and the Judicial Crisis Network (now called the Concord Fund), a dark money group that backs conservative judicial appointments, promotes voting restrictions, and funds right-wing advocacy groups.

Meanwhile, fossil fuel companies, electric utilities and their trade groups—including the American Fuel & Petrochemical Manufacturers, American Petroleum Institute and National Mining Association—have collectively donated more than $10 million to RAGA over the last decade, according to Opensecrets data and RAGA contribution and expenditurereportdocuments, called 8872 forms. Leading contributors include Anadarko Petroleum ($1.5 million), the Ariel Corporation ($2.1 million), Koch Industries ($2 million) and Noble Energy ($1 million).

That kind of money buys loyalty, and the collective actions of RAGA members—particularly the AGs from Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina and Texas—show just how effective it can be at frustrating efforts to address climate change.

As a state’s top legal officer, AGs are supposed to function as the “people’s lawyer,” representing the interests of their state’s residents. All swear to faithfully discharge their duties. By putting the interests of the fossil fuel industry ahead of the health and safety of their own constituents, however, these five AGs are in blatant violation of their oath of office.

Note:This column’s list of the five most vulnerable states to climate change is based on the following analyses: Brookings Institution (January 2019), The Hill (November 2020), US News & World Report (December 2020), SafeHome.org (June 2021), Climate Check (October 2012), CNET (November 2021), Bankrate (July 2022), Policygenius.com (October 2022), and The Hill (October 2022).

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Elliott Negin.

As someone who regularly writes about the courts and the law, I often feel more like an obituary writer. Hardly a week goes by without Republican judges killing a fundamental right of Americans, often inventing a reactionary new legal doctrine from whole cloth to do so.

Recent Republican Supreme Court Justices and lower court judges increasingly act like politicians in black robes, imposing on the nation Republican policies which can't be passed by democratically elected branches of government. Moving at record speed, in less than two years they've effectively rewritten the Constitution without going through the difficult process of amending it.

In doing so, they've endangered the very foundation of democracy—the rule of law—which promises that the nation is governed by law and not by the political prejudices of a few men (and even fewer women).

Does anyone honestly believe that Roe v. Wade would have been overturned were it not for a handful of men led by Mitch McConnell, Don McGahn, Tom Leo, and Donald Trump who blocked Merrick Garland's nomination and installed Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett?

By simply changing the Justice on The Supreme Court, they managed to jettison 50 years of precedent and overturn the constitutional right of women to control their bodies. As Sen. Josh Hawley proudly proclaimed, without Trump saying "he's going to nominate pro-life judges, we wouldn't have pro-life judges on the bench." The very notion that a President already knows how a potential Justice is going to rule on an issue as monumental as the constitutional right to an abortion is in direct conflict with the rule of law. And it demonstrates that Neil Kavanaugh, who promised Sen. Susan Collins that he wouldn't support overturning Roe, is a liar.

James Madison wrote "Constitutional interpretation must be left to the reasoned judgment of independent judges, rather than to the tumult and conflict of the political process.

It's now unconstitutional to prevent an 18-year-old spousal abuser under indictment for a violent felony from packing heat with its serial number shaved off at a summer camp or domestic abuse shelter. Really? This is the rule of law in a modern civilized nation? It's more like the rule of the jungle.

In contrast, Mitch McConnell has famously expressed the view that the best way to change the law is to change the judges. As McConnell proclaimed in a 2018 interview, lifetime judicial appointments "are the way you have the longest-lasting impact on the country."

By overturning Roe, restricting the EPA's authority to fight climate change, expanding the Second Amendment, eviscerating the separation of church and state, and undermining the Fourth Amendment, the radical Supreme Court has effectively implemented key elements of Republican and pro-corporate political policies.

SCOTUS Makes All Gun Laws That Didn’t Exist When the Constitution Was Written Unconstitutional

Clarence Thomas's radical opinion in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen has made even the most common sense gun regulations unconstitutional.

First, in District of Columbia v. Heller (2008), The Supreme Court ruled for the first time since the Constitution was enacted that the 2nd Amendment protects an individual's right to own a gun.

Here's the actual text of the 2nd Amendment: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."

So-called "Textualist" Antoni Scalia's 5-4 majority opinion in Heller dismissed the clear text about a "well regulated Militia" as merely prefatory and disingenuously claimed that the only operative language was "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" outside the parameters of a militia. It overthrew the precedent of U.S. v Miller (1939) where SCOTUS had ruled that since ownership of a short-barreled shotgun does not have "some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia, we cannot say that the Second Amendment guarantees the right to keep and bear such an instrument."

But even Scalia's opinion held that "Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited. [It is] not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose." According to Scalia's opinion, examples of rights the 2nd Amendment does not protect include firearm possession by dangerous people, firearm possession in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings and conditions on the commercial sale of firearms.

After Heller, most lower courts followed a two-step test to decide if a gun control regulation is constitutional: First, whether the regulated conduct was protected by the 2nd Amendment and second, whether the state's justifications for the law outweighed the burden of the law on citizens' 2nd Amendment rights. This is very similar to the balancing test courts use to decide 1st Amendment cases. Under this approach, from 2008-2022 lower courts upheld many gun control laws.

Then in 2022, six Republican Justices gutted even Scalia's limitations on the reach of the 2nd Amendment.

Clarence Thomas' majority opinion in NY State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen eliminated the second step entirely, holding that "[W]hen the Second Amendment's plain text covers an individual's conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct. The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the nation's historical tradition of firearm regulation."

In other words, unless the government can prove that there was a similar gun control law in 1791 or 1867, gun control laws are presumed unconstitutional.

Lower federal courts have quickly followed SCOTUS' guidance to hold that:

• A spousal abuser has a constitutional right to gun ownership, since, according to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, "Our ancestors who wrote the laws [i.e white men] would never have accepted such restrictions."
• A long-standing federal law prohibiting people from possessing firearms with serial numbers that have been altered, obliterated or removed is unconstitutional since, per the Bruen legal rationale, serial numbers are not part of the "historical tradition of gun ownership." (Serial numbers didn't come into wide use until the late 19th century.)
• It is unconstitutional to prevent 18 to 20-year-olds from owning guns.
• It's unconstitutional to prevent someone under indictment for a felony from buying a gun.
• It's unconstitutional to ban carrying guns in summer camps, airports, Times Square, bars, cannabis dispensaries, theaters, stadiums, amusement parks, libraries, playgrounds, childcare programs, places serving individuals with developmental disabilities, homeless and family shelters, domestic violence shelters, and more. (Apparently there's no historical analogy since guns weren't banned from airports in 1789 or 1867.)

Under the "rule of law principles" as promulgated by five extremist Republican Justices and amplified by lower court judges, it's now unconstitutional to prevent an 18-year-old spousal abuser under indictment for a violent felony from packing heat with its serial number shaved off at a summer camp or domestic abuse shelter. Really? This is the rule of law in a modern civilized nation? It's more like the rule of the jungle.

SCOTUS Overturns the Constitutional Right to Privacy

Likewise, SCOTUS's ruling in Dobbs, overturning a woman's right to choose, has led to a string of even more frightening lower court decisions. Using a similar historical analogy rule as Bruen, Dobbs held that a constitutional right must be "deeply rooted in this Nation's history and tradition … The right to abortion does not fall within this category."

According to Roberts and his reactionary colleagues, if a regulation to limit greenhouse gases is tiny and not very effective, it's ok. But if it's actually big enough to make a difference on climate change, it's a "major question"

In his concurrence to Dobbs, Clarence Thomas even argued that precedents protecting the right to birth control in Griswold v. Connecticut, same-sex sexual relations in Lawrence v. Texas, and same-sex marriage in Obergefell are not deeply rooted in the nation's history and traditions and these precedents should be overturned by SCOTUS. (Notably, Thomas, who is in an interracial marriage with a "stop the steal" activist, does not mention Loving v Virginia upholding the constitutional right to interracial marriage as a candidate for reversal.)

Here are some of the lower court cases in the past few months that use the Dobbs reasoning to actually or potentially revoke women's reproductive health rights:

• A right-wing Christian federal judge ruled that women's health clinics federally funded under Title X may not supply birth control to teenagers without their parent's consent because one Texas parent wants to raise his daughters "in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality."
• In the next few weeks, a right-wing Texas judge is likely to issue a nationwide injunction against the most common abortion pill.
• Another right-wing Texas judge may block the Biden administration from requiring pharmacies to dispense the FDA-approved drug methotrexate, which can induce abortion but is also considered the gold standard for treating many autoimmune conditions.

SCOTUS Blocks Significant Regulation of Business

Last June, SCOTUS staged a virtual coup against government regulation of business in W. Virginia v. EPA. As I wrote in The American Prospect, "[W]hile the Republican Party, the Federalist Society, and their donors have packed the federal judiciary and the Supreme Court with anti-abortion and pro-gun radicals to fire up their base, their real motivation was to eventually undermine government regulation of business, much as SCOTUS overruled New Deal legislation in the 1930s until FDR's 'switch in time to save the nine' led to a new direction, which has survived, tenuously, until today."

The decision by the six extreme right-wing Justices blocked the EPA's authority to regulate greenhouse gases on a system-wide basis. Like his made-up doctrine of "corporate personhood" finding that corporations, like individuals, have a free speech right to make political contributions, John Roberts' opinion in this case was based on another made-up doctrine that appears nowhere in the Constitution or significant precedent, the so-called "major questions doctrine."

According to Roberts and his reactionary colleagues, if a regulation to limit greenhouse gases is tiny and not very effective, it's ok. But if it's actually big enough to make a difference on climate change, it's a "major question" that can't be regulated by the EPA's broad mandate from Congress to protect the environment. There's nothing "originalist" or "textualist" about this doctrine—Congress even named the Agency by its purpose: Environmental Protection. The decision is intended to further Republican's corporate campaign to shrink the "administrative state."

As Justice Kagan wrote in dissent, "The Court appoints itself—instead of Congress or the expert agency—the decisionmaker on climate policy. I cannot think of anything more frightening [emphasis added]."

And the danger goes beyond the threat of climate change. Since Roberts never defines what constitutes a "major question," he allows judges to decide on the fly that virtually any regulation they personally disagree with is unconstitutional. Conservatives claim their principles prevent courts from substituting their own policy preferences for the law as interpreted by the constitution's text and original intent. This demonstrates that these "principles" are bogus and right-wing judges feel free to ditch text and intent whenever it interferes with their political goals. Justice Kagan called the so-called major questions doctrine a "get out of text free card."

You can count on corporations and their right-wing legal allies to sue to block virtually every regulation they dislike as a violation of the "major questions doctrine"

Corporations and their extreme right-wing judicial allies are already using the "major questions doctrine" to seek to overturn other important regulations.

• A Texas federal court vacated President Biden's student loan forgiveness program, citing West Virginia v. EPA's major questions doctrine. Despite questionable legal standing by the plaintiffs SCOTUS heard the case and if it is consistent with West Virginia v. EPA, will likely deny debt relief to tens of millions of students.
  
• The Federal Trade Commission just proposed a regulation that would outlaw most "non-compete" clauses in employment contracts, which, for example, bar a burger-flipper at McDonald's from taking a job at Burger King for a higher salary. Recently retired Republican Federal Trade Commission member Christine Wilson wrote that "the major questions doctrine addressed in West Virginia v. EPA applies, and the Commission lacks clear Congressional authorization to undertake this initiative."
  
• The FTC is in the process of restoring anti-trust law to its prior importance by questioning anti-competitive practices which have gone unregulated for decades. Commissioner Wilson recently resigned in a huff, attacking the FTC in a Wall Street Journal op-ed article, claiming, inter alia, that the FTC is defying "the Supreme Court's decision in West Virginia v. EPA (2022), which held that an agency can't claim "to discover in a long-extant statute an unheralded power representing a transformative expansion in its regulatory authority." Her article is in effect a legal brief for Republicans to challenge virtually every new action to limit the power of monopolies and oligopolies.

You can count on corporations and their right-wing legal allies to sue to block virtually every regulation they dislike as a violation of the "major questions doctrine" and, under the precedent set by SCOTUS, for many of them to be struck down by their Republican judicial allies.

Who Bought the Rule of Law?

As Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (Dem. R.I.) writes in his essential book The Scheme: How the Right Wing Used Dark Money to Capture the Supreme Court" "Truly, our present Supreme Court is The Court That Dark Money Built."

According to Whitehouse, a single anonymous donor spent more than $17 million to secure the nomination and confirmation of Gorsuch and Kavanaugh. At least $580 million has been spent by dark money groups to remake the federal courts and to "cook up and push fringe legal theories that undermine even the federal government itself.

As The New York Times reported, West Virginia v. EPA "is the product of a coordinated, multiyear strategy by Republican attorneys general, conservative legal activists and their funders, several with ties to the oil and coal industries, to use the judicial system to rewrite environmental law, weakening the executive branch's ability to tackle global warming."

The plaintiffs in that case share many of the same donors as the campaigns to confirm five of the current Republican Justices—Roberts, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Coney Barrett. Per The Times, "[t]he ultimate goal of the Republican activists, people involved in the effort say, is to overturn the legal doctrine by which Congress has delegated authority to federal agencies to regulate the environment, health care, workplace safety, telecommunications, the financial sector and more."

As Federal Society activist and Trump's White House Counsel Don McGahn--who picked and shepherded the confirmation of Trump judges--bragged to CPAC, "Well, it's not a coincidence. It's part of a larger, larger plan I suppose. There is a coherent plan where, actually, the judicial selection and the deregulatory efforts are really the flip side of the same coin [emphasis added]."

Mitch McConnell toldTIME magazine, "when Donald Trump won, a week after the election I called Don McGahn… [A]nd I said Don, we've got an opportunity here to have a huge long-term impact on the country…. The tax bill was hugely important, but as soon as the government changes, believe me, they'll revisit the tax code. But here you have an opportunity, particularly if you get highly intelligent, relatively young people into lifetime positions, you can have a long-term impact on the country. So that's what we're in the process of doing…"

McConnell, McGahn, and Trump managed to confirm 234 right-wing judges including three Supreme Court Justices. Moving at lightning speed, they already remade the Constitution through judicial fiat.

It's a long-running coup against the rule of law, far more successful than January 6th.

Can Anything Be Done?

It's hard to come up with an easy fix for the Republicans' successful campaign to pack the Supreme Court and lower courts with right-wing activists who are remaking the law and the Constitution to enact their political goals. Quite frankly, Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society have outplayed Democrats on judicial appointments for decades.

Only 24 Senate Democrats voted to filibuster Alito's nomination to replace the relatively moderate Sandra Day O'Connor. 22 Democrats voted to confirm John Roberts. Although they had a Senate majority, 11 Democrats voted to confirm Clarence Thomas to replace civil rights lion Thurgood Marshall, despite credible charges of sexual harassment.

Quite frankly, Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society have outplayed Democrats on judicial appointments for decades.

In contrast, McConnell and his Republican colleagues have consistently played hardball. They refused to even give a hearing to Obama nominee Merrick Garland. Then after Trump became President, McConnell eliminated the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees to install Neil Gorsuch. Next, on a 50-48 party-line vote, he managed to confirm Brett Kavanaugh, despite credible charges of sexual harassment. Then, in contrast to his treatment of Merrick Garland, McConnell pushed through the confirmation of Amy Coney Barrett in a lame-duck session after Biden had won the Presidency and Democrats had won the Senate.

Gorsuch is 55 years old, Kavanaugh is 58 and Coney Barrett is 51. They will likely be voting to strike down constitutional rights and cripple the ability of the federal government to regulate corporations for decades. In order to rebalance the Court, two of Roberts (68), Alito (72), and Thomas (74) would have to die or become too ill to serve while Democrats control the Presidency and the Senate .

Short of that, unpacking the Court would necessitate passing the proposal to add more Justices to the Supreme Court. Otherwise, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Coney Barrett will likely still be voting to undermine the rule of law in the 2040s or even 2050s.

If there's any chance to preserve the rule of law, progressives and Democrats have to become as aggressive and laser-focused on the courts

In addition, during the Trump Presidency, McConnell managed to confirm 232 District and Circuit Court judges, many of them extreme right-wing activists. Part of his success came from McConnell eliminating so-called Blue Slips for Circuit Court judges, an arcane Senate "courtesy" tradition that requires both Senators from the state where the judge would sit to sign off on the nomination.

Blue slips are still required for District Court judges. Biden has managed to confirm 100 judges so far, most in states with two Democratic Senators. 38 of the 56 District Court without a pending Biden nomination are in states with at least one Republican Senator.

Senate Judiciary Committee chair Dick Durbin could eliminate these Blue Slips with a stroke of the pen. Despite widespread calls, including by me, Durbin has inexplicably refused to do so. He recently said he'll respect Blue Slips as long as a Republican Senator's objections to Biden nominees aren't based on race, gender, or sexual orientation. (What about judicial philosophy?)

Durbin's position follows the tragic passivity of Democrats on judicial nominations, in sharp contrast to McConnell's and his corporate Republican allies' laser-focused judicial activism.

If there's any chance to preserve the rule of law, progressives and Democrats have to become as aggressive and laser-focused on the courts as McConnell and his corporate Republican allies.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Miles Mogulescu.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

House Republicans have sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank requesting a broad range of documents related to what it says are the institutions' contributions to the Biden administration’s “censorship regime.”

The letters are the latest effort by a House subcommittee set up in January to investigate how the federal government, working with social media companies, has allegedly been “weaponized” to silence conservative and right-wing voices. So far, the committee’s investigations have amplified a variety of dubious, outright false and highly misleading Republican grievances with law enforcement, many of them espoused by former President Donald Trump. Committee members have cited supposed abuses that include the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, its investigations of Jan. 6 rioters and the Biden administration’s purported use of executive powers to shut down conservative viewpoints on social media.

Now, universities and their researchers are coming under the spotlight of the committee, which the Republicans have labeled the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The letters, signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is chair of both the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee, were sent in early March.

They cover an investigation into how “certain third parties, including organizations like yours, may have played a role in this censorship regime by advising on so-called ‘misinformation,’” according to a copy of one of the letters obtained by ProPublica.

The committee requested documents and information dating back to January 2015 between any “employee, contractor, or agent of your organization” and the federal government or social media organizations pertaining to the moderation of social media content. ProPublica confirmed the requests went to Stanford University, the University of Washington, Clemson University and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The letters have prompted a wave of alarm among those in the field that the congressional inquiry itself, no matter what it finds, will lead universities to pull back on this research just as the 2024 election gets underway. “Recent efforts definitely have a chilling effect on the community of experts across academia, civil society and government built up to understand broader online harms like harassment, foreign influence and — yes — disinformation,” Graham Brookie, who leads studies in this area at the Atlantic Council, told ProPublica.

“The ‘weaponization’ committee is being weaponized against us,” another researcher told ProPublica. Like half a dozen others interviewed for this story, this person asked not to be identified because of the ongoing congressional probe.

Democrats have called the committee a modern-day House Un-American Activities Committee, akin to the congressional committee that pursued alleged communists during the McCarthy era.

Since Rep. Jordan took over the gavel of the judiciary committee in January, he has issued more than 80 subpoenas and requests for documents. Recipients have included the CEOs of social media companies, intelligence officials who signed on to a statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 campaign and members of the National School Boards Association who asked the Justice Department to investigate threats of violence against school board officials. Jordan himself refused a subpoena to testify before the Democratic-led House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, prompting that committee to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

Jordan’s missives were sent a day after a committee hearing on the “Twitter files,” leaked internal communications from the company that purported to show how right-wing accounts were sidelined and silenced. In written testimony, a panelist accused a broad swath of organizations and individuals of being members of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” including, he implied, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, Department of Defense and universities. The witness wrote disinformation researchers, working with the government, are “creating blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling, and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, and even ban the people on these blacklists.”

A New York University study concluded in 2021 that social media had not silenced those on the right. “The claim of anti-conservative animus” by social media companies, the study said, “is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it."

A spokesperson for Rep. Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the 2016 elections, Stanford, UW, Clemson and others have engaged in research, sometimes in partnership with social media platforms, government officials and each other, into ways that disinformation can pose threats to democracy and how such efforts can be meaningfully countered. The role of lies and disinformation leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol gave increased prominence to their work.

As ProPublica has previously reported, sustained accusations by congressional Republicans and right-wing influencers that the Biden administration is stifling dissent have caused the administration to back away from its efforts countering disinformation, including canceling research contracts and sending messages inside the administration that disinformation work is too hot to handle.

Those moves followed a bungled rollout of a clumsily named “Disinformation Governance Board” to coordinate efforts to counter what the administration had called “dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.” Following criticism, the administration disbanded the board and accepted the resignation of its executive director, Nina Jankowicz.

Jordan has subpoenaed Jankowicz, too. She is scheduled to testify April 10 and said she will happily testify under oath.

“This sort of inquiry isn’t something that belongs in the United States Congress,” said Jankowicz. “But given that this method of bullying has caused other institutions to fold to Republican pressure in the past, I fear we may see the blunt force of congressional committees continue to be used in ways that are in direct opposition to the safety, security and free expression of the American people.”

Stanford did not answer a question about whether it stood by its research or make its researchers, the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Alex Stamos or Renee DiResta, available for comment. The university referred ProPublica to an online fact sheet addressing “inaccurate and misleading claims” made in the congressional testimony about Stanford’s “projects to analyze rumors and narratives on social media relating to U.S. elections and the coronavirus.” The German Marshall fund said it was working to address the request and Clemson University’s media relations department did not respond to requests for comment.

The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public issued a statement that said “We’re incredibly proud of our work,” adding that “some of the projects CIP researchers have contributed to have become the subject of false claims and criticism that mischaracterizes our work, a tactic that peer researchers in this space are also experiencing.” The statement did not specifically address the House requests.

A university spokesperson, Victor Balta, said in an email, “The UW stands behind this important research aiming to resist strategic misinformation and strengthen our discourse. We have received a request for documents and information, and a response is in progress.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Andrea Bernstein.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

House Republicans have sent letters to at least three universities and a think tank requesting a broad range of documents related to what it says are the institutions' contributions to the Biden administration’s “censorship regime.”

The letters are the latest effort by a House subcommittee set up in January to investigate how the federal government, working with social media companies, has allegedly been “weaponized” to silence conservative and right-wing voices. So far, the committee’s investigations have amplified a variety of dubious, outright false and highly misleading Republican grievances with law enforcement, many of them espoused by former President Donald Trump. Committee members have cited supposed abuses that include the FBI’s search of Mar-a-Lago, its investigations of Jan. 6 rioters and the Biden administration’s purported use of executive powers to shut down conservative viewpoints on social media.

Now, universities and their researchers are coming under the spotlight of the committee, which the Republicans have labeled the House Judiciary Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government. The letters, signed by Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, who is chair of both the House Judiciary Committee and the subcommittee, were sent in early March.

They cover an investigation into how “certain third parties, including organizations like yours, may have played a role in this censorship regime by advising on so-called ‘misinformation,’” according to a copy of one of the letters obtained by ProPublica.

The committee requested documents and information dating back to January 2015 between any “employee, contractor, or agent of your organization” and the federal government or social media organizations pertaining to the moderation of social media content. ProPublica confirmed the requests went to Stanford University, the University of Washington, Clemson University and the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

The letters have prompted a wave of alarm among those in the field that the congressional inquiry itself, no matter what it finds, will lead universities to pull back on this research just as the 2024 election gets underway. “Recent efforts definitely have a chilling effect on the community of experts across academia, civil society and government built up to understand broader online harms like harassment, foreign influence and — yes — disinformation,” Graham Brookie, who leads studies in this area at the Atlantic Council, told ProPublica.

“The ‘weaponization’ committee is being weaponized against us,” another researcher told ProPublica. Like half a dozen others interviewed for this story, this person asked not to be identified because of the ongoing congressional probe.

Democrats have called the committee a modern-day House Un-American Activities Committee, akin to the congressional committee that pursued alleged communists during the McCarthy era.

Since Rep. Jordan took over the gavel of the judiciary committee in January, he has issued more than 80 subpoenas and requests for documents. Recipients have included the CEOs of social media companies, intelligence officials who signed on to a statement about Hunter Biden’s laptop during the 2020 campaign and members of the National School Boards Association who asked the Justice Department to investigate threats of violence against school board officials. Jordan himself refused a subpoena to testify before the Democratic-led House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, prompting that committee to refer the matter to the House Ethics Committee.

Jordan’s missives were sent a day after a committee hearing on the “Twitter files,” leaked internal communications from the company that purported to show how right-wing accounts were sidelined and silenced. In written testimony, a panelist accused a broad swath of organizations and individuals of being members of the “Censorship Industrial Complex,” including, he implied, the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, CIA, Department of Defense and universities. The witness wrote disinformation researchers, working with the government, are “creating blacklists of disfavored people and then pressuring, cajoling, and demanding that social media platforms censor, deamplify, and even ban the people on these blacklists.”

A New York University study concluded in 2021 that social media had not silenced those on the right. “The claim of anti-conservative animus” by social media companies, the study said, “is itself a form of disinformation: a falsehood with no reliable evidence to support it."

A spokesperson for Rep. Jordan did not respond to requests for comment.

Since the 2016 elections, Stanford, UW, Clemson and others have engaged in research, sometimes in partnership with social media platforms, government officials and each other, into ways that disinformation can pose threats to democracy and how such efforts can be meaningfully countered. The role of lies and disinformation leading to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol gave increased prominence to their work.

As ProPublica has previously reported, sustained accusations by congressional Republicans and right-wing influencers that the Biden administration is stifling dissent have caused the administration to back away from its efforts countering disinformation, including canceling research contracts and sending messages inside the administration that disinformation work is too hot to handle.

Those moves followed a bungled rollout of a clumsily named “Disinformation Governance Board” to coordinate efforts to counter what the administration had called “dangerous conspiracy theories that can provide a gateway to terrorist violence.” Following criticism, the administration disbanded the board and accepted the resignation of its executive director, Nina Jankowicz.

Jordan has subpoenaed Jankowicz, too. She is scheduled to testify April 10 and said she will happily testify under oath.

“This sort of inquiry isn’t something that belongs in the United States Congress,” said Jankowicz. “But given that this method of bullying has caused other institutions to fold to Republican pressure in the past, I fear we may see the blunt force of congressional committees continue to be used in ways that are in direct opposition to the safety, security and free expression of the American people.”

Stanford did not answer a question about whether it stood by its research or make its researchers, the Stanford Internet Observatory’s Alex Stamos or Renee DiResta, available for comment. The university referred ProPublica to an online fact sheet addressing “inaccurate and misleading claims” made in the congressional testimony about Stanford’s “projects to analyze rumors and narratives on social media relating to U.S. elections and the coronavirus.” The German Marshall fund said it was working to address the request and Clemson University’s media relations department did not respond to requests for comment.

The University of Washington’s Center for an Informed Public issued a statement that said “We’re incredibly proud of our work,” adding that “some of the projects CIP researchers have contributed to have become the subject of false claims and criticism that mischaracterizes our work, a tactic that peer researchers in this space are also experiencing.” The statement did not specifically address the House requests.

A university spokesperson, Victor Balta, said in an email, “The UW stands behind this important research aiming to resist strategic misinformation and strengthen our discourse. We have received a request for documents and information, and a response is in progress.”

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Andrea Bernstein.

An analysis released Monday estimates that more than 10 million people across the United States—including 4 million children—would be at risk of losing food benefits if the GOP's proposed attacks on federal nutrition assistance become law.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) analysis focuses specifically on legislation introduced last week by Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), who wants certain recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits to face even more strict work requirements than they do under current law.

"Adults aged 18 through 49 without children in their homes can receive benefits for only three months out of every three years, unless they can document they are working or participate in a qualifying work program at least 20 hours a week or prove they are unable to work," note CBPP's Katie Bergh and Dottie Rosenbaum.

If passed, Johnson's bill would raise the age ceiling for the strict work requirements from 49 to 65, a move that Bergh and Rosenbaum argue would endanger food benefits for both the adults specifically targeted by the law and those in their households.

Adults between the ages of 18 and 65 and without disabilities would be subject to the work requirements and benefit time limits "unless they have a child under age 7 in their home," CBPP points out.

Research has demonstrated repeatedly that work requirements do virtually nothing to boost employment, undercutting the GOP's stated rationale for attempting to expand them year after year.

Johnson's legislation would also limit states' ability to temporarily waive SNAP benefit time limits for able-bodied adults, a freedom that has been used to ensure people have consistent access to benefits during economic downturns.

"A total of more than 10 million people, about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including about 4 million children, live in households that would be at risk of losing food assistance under the Johnson bill, based on our preliminary estimates," Bergh and Rosenbaum write.

People who would face the loss of benefits, according to CBPP, include "some 3 million adults up to age 65, primarily parents or grandparents, who live in households with school-age children." Those millions of children "would see their household's food assistance fall if their parents or other adults in the family aren't able to meet" the Johnson measure's work requirements, the analysis notes.

Additionally, the Johnson bill—which currently has 24 Republican co-sponsors—would potentially strip food benefits from "about 2 million older adults aged 50 to 64 who do not have children in their homes" as well as adults who happen to live in areas with higher levels of unemployment, making it more difficult to find and hold a job.

"A total of more than 10 million people, about 1 in 4 SNAP participants, including about 4 million children, live in households that would be at risk of losing food assistance under the Johnson bill."

While Bergh and Rosenbaum stress that "not everyone newly subject to these requirements would lose benefits," a "very significant number are likely to be impacted because they are out of work, the state failed to screen them for an exemption they should have qualified for, or they were unable to navigate the verification system to prove they are working."

"This is a punitive and ineffective approach," Bergh and Rosenbaum argue. "SNAP is successful at reducing poverty and food insecurity and should be both protected this year from cuts and be strengthened in some areas so that it does more to combat food insecurity and hunger."

Johnson's bill was introduced after pandemic-related SNAP enhancements were allowed to expire earlier this month, hitting millions of people with steep benefit cuts—in some cases hundreds of dollars per month—as food prices remain elevated nationwide.

"I'm just going to have to go back to not eating very much, about a meal a day," Teresa Calderez, a 63-year-old SNAP recipient who saw her benefits drop from $280 a month to $23, told NPR in a recent interview. "Unfortunately, I have known hunger. And it's not a good feeling."

The South Dakota Republican's proposal isn't the only one the House GOP is considering ahead of upcoming negotiations over the farm bill and the debt ceiling.

As CBPP notes:

Budget plans put forward by the Republican Study Committee and by Trump-era Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought would also take food assistance away through harmful work requirements while, respectively, instituting a strict block grant (often used to promote large, unspecified cuts) and radically restructuring SNAP by capping program spending.

In addition, the extensive cuts that House Republicans passed in their 2018 farm bill and similar measures the Trump Administration pursued by regulation could offer clues to what may be ahead in the farm bill debate. In 2018, we detailed how such provisions would hurt older people, workers, children, women, people with disabilities, and veterans. The House-passed bill would have caused more than 1 million households with more than 2 million people to lose benefits altogether or have them reduced. Those provisions were soundly rejected on a bipartisan basis in the Senate.

Facing criticism for failing to keep pandemic-related SNAP expansions alive, Democrats in the House and Senate have pledged to oppose any food assistance cuts going forward.

Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), chair of the Senate Agriculture Committee, said during a hearing last week that Congress "must ensure that the farm bill continues to support the nutrition programs that serve as a lifeline to millions of people and families across this country."

"The SNAP program provides food assistance for more than 41 million Americans, including children, seniors, veterans, and people with disabilities," said Stabenow. "Spending on nutrition programs does not rob resources from other farm bill programs, just as crop insurance doesn't rob resources from other programs when disaster strikes and spending goes up."

"But threats we are hearing from some in the House in favor of reckless and indiscriminate mandatory budget cuts will result in cuts to all farm bill programs," the senator added. "We cannot go backward at a time when our farmers and families need us most."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

This content originally appeared on openDemocracy RSS and was authored by Chrissy Stroop.

“CPJ, alongside both domestic and international rights groups, warned Turkish authorities that the country’s new disinformation law would hinder freedom of the press. Today we saw that prediction come true as Sinan Aygül became the first journalist tried and convicted under this arbitrary charge,” said Özgür Öğret, CPJ’s Turkey representative, who attended the trial. “Authorities should not fight Aygül’s appeal and must reform this law to ensure journalists can do their jobs without fearing arrest or imprisonment.” 

Authorities arrested Aygül, chief editor of the privately owned website Bitlis News and chair of the Bitlis Journalists Society, in December 2022 after he tweeted allegations about a sexual abuse case involving a government employee, before deleting them and apologizing for being mistaken.

The new disinformation law carries a prison term of up to three years for those convicted of publicly spreading false information that causes concern, fear, or panic. Turkey’s largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, applied to annul the amendment with the Constitutional Court of Turkey, where it remains pending, according to news reports.

CPJ’s email to the chief prosecutor of Bitlis province did not immediately receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Following a year in which strike activity surged and public approval of unions reached its highest point in nearly six decades, Sen. Bernie Sanders joined Democratic lawmakers and a lone Republican on Tuesday in reintroducing legislation that would strengthen workers' organizing rights and crack down on corporate union-busting.

Named after the late labor leader Richard Trumka, the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act would, among other changes, give unions and employers the ability to override state-level "right to work" laws, enhance strike protections, ban anti-union "captive audience" meetings, and empower the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to impose monetary penalties on companies that violate workers' rights.

"At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when too many workers are falling further and further behind, we need to make it easier for workers to exercise their constitutional right to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages, benefits, and working conditions," said Sanders, chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee.

"We need to hold CEOs accountable for flagrantly violating labor laws, illegally firing pro-union workers, and closing down pro-union shops," the Vermont senator continued. "If we are going to reverse the 40-year decline of the middle class, reduce the widening gap between the billionaire class and everyone else, and take on the unprecedented level of corporate greed in America, we have got to rebuild the trade union movement. That is what the PRO Act is all about and I am proud to be introducing this bill in the Senate."

Rep. Bobby Scott (D-Va.), who led the bill's reintroduction in the House, said that "Congress has an urgent responsibility to ensure that workers can join a union and negotiate for higher pay, better benefits, and safer workplaces."

"Passing the PRO Act is the most critical step we can take this Congress to achieve that goal," said Scott, the top Democrat on the House Education and Workforce Committee. "I urge my House and Senate colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join me in advancing the most significant update for workers’ labor organizing rights in more than eight decades."

Even amid high public support for unions and successful organizing drives at Starbucks and other prominent companies across the nation, the percentage of U.S. wage and salary workers who were union members last year was just 10.1%—a historic low that experts attribute to inadequate labor protections and relentless union-busting by corporations.

"While unionization levels increased in 2022, the share of workers in a union decreased despite a substantial amount of union activity and extremely high union popularity, and that drop is part of a decades-long decline in unionization," Heidi Shierholz, Margaret Poydock, and Celine McNicholas of the Economic Policy Institute wrote earlier this year.

"The decline is occurring not because workers don't want unions, but because our current system of labor law is broken," they argued. "Recent worker organizing efforts send a clear message that workers want unions. We must therefore adopt policies that make it easier for workers to form unions. At the federal level, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act provides a comprehensive set of reforms that would strengthen private-sector workers’ right to form a union and engage in collective bargaining."

"With CEOs spending $340 million a year on union-busting tactics to intimidate and silence workers seeking to form unions, the deck has never been more stacked against workers speaking out."

The PRO Act passed the House in both 2020 and 2021 but never reached the floor for a vote in the Senate, where the legislative filibuster requires at least 60 votes to pass most bills. Last year, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.), Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), and Senate Republicans refused to back the bill, which is furiously opposed by corporate lobbying organizations such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"The PRO Act is how we level the playing field," AFL-CIO president Liz Shuler said in a statement Tuesday. "It is how we stop the intimidation, the lies. This is how we let workers, not wealthy corporations, decide for themselves if they want the power of a union."

Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.) was the only Republican to join Sanders and congressional Democrats in reintroducing the PRO Act, which received just five GOP yes votes—including Fitzpatrick's—when it passed in 2021. The bill's legislative hurdles are likely even steeper in the present with Republicans in control of the House.

Mark Zuckerman, president of The Century Foundation (TCF), nevertheless applauded lawmakers for reviving "one of the most ambitious and comprehensive attempts to fix our broken labor laws to date."

"Not only does the legislation ban the most commonly used union-busting techniques, it strengthens workers' fundamental right to strike and ensures that millions of workers currently excluded from labor law protections due to misclassification have an equal right to join a union," said Zuckerman. "Perhaps most importantly, the PRO Act would treat labor rights as civil rights—an idea that TCF has helped push into the mainstream for years."

The Worker Power Coalition, an alliance of national labor, climate, and progressive groups representing 24 million workers, also applauded the bill's reintroduction, calling the PRO Act "the best opportunity in generations to unrig our economy for working people."

"As Starbucks and Amazon union campaigns have sparked a national wave of worker activism with new union elections up 58 percent in just the first half of 2022, there has never been a more urgent time to ensure workers have an even playing field by fixing our outdated, broken labor laws," the coalition said. "With CEOs spending $340 million a year on union-busting tactics to intimidate and silence workers seeking to form unions, the deck has never been more stacked against workers speaking out."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

"The Native people of this land after Wounded Knee, they had like a surge of new pride in being Native people," Dwain Camp, an 85-year-old Ponca elder who took part in the 1973 revolt, told The Associated Press.

"Anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the #LandBack issue, all of that is just a continuation."

Camp said the occupation drove previously "unimaginable" changes, including the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, the Indian Child Welfare Act, the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, and the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

"After we left Wounded Knee, it became paramount that protecting Mother Earth was our foremost issue," he explained. "Since that period of time, we've learned that we've got to teach our kids our true history."

Camp said the spirit of Wounded Knee lives on in Indigenous resistance today.

"We're not the subjugated and disenfranchised people that we were," he said. "Wounded Knee was an important beginning of that. And because we're a resilient people, it's something we take a lot of pride in."

Some of the participants in the 1973 uprising had been raised by grandparents who remembered or even survived the 1890 massacre of more than 200 Lakota Lakota men, women, and children by U.S. troops at Wounded Knee.

"That's how close we are to our history," Madonna Thunder Hawk, an 83-year-old elder in the Oohenumpa band of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe who was a frontline participant in the 1973 occupation, toldIndian Country Today. "So anything that goes on, anything we do, even today with the #LandBack issue, all of that is just a continuation. It's nothing new."

Nick Tilsen, an Oglala Lakota who played a prominent role in the 2016-17 protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock, North Dakota and who founded the NDN Collective, toldIndian Country Today that "for me, it's important to acknowledge the generation before us—to acknowledge their risk."

"It's important for us to honor them," said Tilsen, whose parents met at the Wounded Knee occupation. "It's important for us to thank them."

Akim Reinhardt, an associate professor of history at Townson State University in Baltimore, told Indian Country Today that the AIM protests "helped establish a sense of the permanence of Red Power in much the way that Black Power had for African-Americans, a permanent legacy."

"It was the cultural legacy that racism isn't okay and people don't need to be quiet and accept it anymore," he added. "That it's okay to be proud of who you are."

Indian Country Todayreports:

The occupation began on the night of Feb. 27, 1973, when a group of warriors led by Oklahoma AIM leader Carter Camp, Ponca, moved into the small town of Wounded Knee. They took over the trading post and established a base of operations along with AIM leaders Russell Means, Oglala Lakota; Dennis Banks, Ojibwe; and Clyde Bellecourt, White Earth Nation.

Within days, hundreds of activists had joined them for what became a 71-day standoff with the U.S. government and other law enforcement.

On March 16, U.S. Marshal Lloyd Grimm was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Two Indians were subsequently killed during the standoff. Frank Clearwater, a 47-year-old Cherokee from North Carolina, was shot in the head while resting in an occupied church on April 17 and died a week later. The day after Clearwater's death, Lawrence "Buddy" Lamont, a local Lakota and Vietnam War veteran, was shot through the heart by a sniper during a shootout. He was 31 years old.

Black activist Ray Robinson, who had been working with the Oglala Sioux Civil Rights Organization, went missing during the standoff. In 2014, the FBI confirmed that Robinson died at Wounded Knee, but his body was never recovered.

AIM remains active today. Its members have participated in the fights against the Dakota Access, Keystone XL, and Line 3 pipelines, as well as in the effort to free Leonard Peltier, a former AIM leader who has been imprisoned for over 45 years after a dubious conviction for murdering two FBI agents during a separate 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Reservation.

Kevin McKiernan, then a rookie reporter for NPR who was smuggled into Wounded Knee after the Nixon administration banned journalists from covering the standoff, said in an interview with NPR that the #LandBack movement—spearheaded in the U.S. by NDN Collective—is a leading example of the occupation's legacy.

"And I think that there is a collective or a movement like that on every reservation with every tribe," McKiernan said. "They're going to get back, to buy back, to get donated—just do it by inches."

"That's what's going on in every inch of Indian country today," he added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Conservatives have viewed America’s higher education institutions with suspicion for years. Remember Spiro Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativity?” But distrust of public education has now become part of the Republican party’s DNA. According to a Pew public opinion poll, for instance, fifty-nine percent of all Republicans and Republican-leaning independents believe that colleges and universities have a negative effect on the country. It’s no surprise, then, to see Florida’s Yale and Harvard educated Governor, Ron DeSantis, beef up his expected run for the presidency by attacking public education across the board.

DeSantis began by banning books and dictating curricula in K-12. Now he’s feeding red meat to his Republican colleagues by declaring war on Florida’s “woke” colleges and universities. Proclaiming that they teach ideological conformity and prepare students for “leftist” activism, DeSantis promises to restore academic freedom by eliminating courses on race, gender, and sexuality, to name the most obvious. He also wants more courses on Western Civilization, i.e., on Europe and the United States. And to keep faculty in line, DeSantis wants to eliminate tenure, the backbone of academic freedom. You want to teach students how to think and raise questions, Professor? Start looking for a new job. But not here in Florida.

DeSantis is already implementing this purge by turning the New College of Florida, a public college with about 700 students and a reputation for free thinking, into a bastion of political conservatism. Without concrete evidence, DeSantis blamed the college’s low enrollment on what he dubs its “ideological” filter. Using this accusation as his justification for intervening, he packed the college’s Board with his political loyalists, fired the President and replaced her with a political ally at more than twice the salary. Following his overt political takeover of the New College, the Governor plans to implement his higher education program as described above.

In the name of ending “woke” brainwashing, Yale and Harvard educated DeSantis and other Republican Governors – see Virginia’s Glenn Youngkin, another Harvard grad – are using their political power to squeeze out trained professional educators to impose a right- wing version of reality on a generation of students. But the attack on “woke” culture is merely a smokescreen for DeSantis, Fox News, and their ultra conservative base. They don’t want a population capable of cutting through the baloney of misinformation, “fake news,” and the dense fog of intellectual apathy. For instance, while Fox News hosts blasted lies about election fraud, they privately mocked their sources as nuts. DeSantis knows the country’s real racial history. But his aggressive assault on critical race theory and its proponents assumes that racism can be washed out of reality. The Right never clearly defines the concept, they just want people to see CRT as anti-white propaganda. The attack on CRT is just a straw horse, a shiny object, to keep people from thinking seriously about the history, nature, and direction of American society.

It’s scary that ivy educated governors like DeSantis and Youngkin demonize higher education. They rely on these McCarthy-like tactics because they fear the consequences of an educated public. As Thomas Jefferson observed, an educated public is essential to a functioning democracy. According to a Pew poll, about a quarter of the adult population hasn’t read a book in the past year, and, worse yet, about half the adult population reads at the sixth-grade level or below. If the likes of DeSantis and Youngkin have their way, schools from kindergarten through college will produce non-thinking automatons, cheerful robots, the passive, non-questioning citizenry essential for authoritarian governments.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Scheuerman and Sid Plotkin.

Former President Donald Trump has reportedly told his close associates that he wants to expand the use of the federal death penalty—and even take steps to turn the United States' internationally condemned use of capital punishment into a public spectacle—if he wins another White House term in 2024.

Citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, Rolling Stonereported Tuesday that Trump is "still committed to expanding the use of the federal death penalty and bringing back banned methods of execution" such as firing squads, hanging, the guillotine, and group killings.

The Republican former president has even "mused about televising footage of executions, including showing condemned prisoners in the final moments of their lives," according to one of Rolling Stone's sources. "Trump has floated these ideas while discussing planned campaign rhetoric and policy desires, as well as his disdain for President Biden's approach to crime."

Democratic lawmakers and watchdog organizations reacted with alarm and disgust to the reporting, which comes as the Biden administration is facing continued pressure to abolish the death penalty at the federal level, a goal the president pledged to work toward on the campaign trail.

The Biden Justice Department, under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland, is currently pursuing the death penalty for Sayfullo Saipov.

Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-N.J.) wrote in response to the Rolling Stone's reporting that "the leader of the Republican Party wants to televise live executions on tv and to start using the guillotine in America."

"This is what the Republican Party stands for," he added.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) tweeted that "this is batshit crazy."

"This is how dictators handle crime," the Wisconsin Democrat wrote. "This man should never, ever be president again."

In the six months before Trump left office in January 2021, his administration carried out the first federal executions in 17 years, putting 13 people to death in a widely denounced killing spree that defied court orders and steamrolled pandemic-related safety measures.

ACLU executive director Anthony Romero noted earlier this month that "among those executed in our name were two Black men who were not the triggermen in murders committed by others; two Black men with significant claims of intellectual disability; one member of the Navajo Nation; two men who were teenagers when they committed their crimes; and a mentally ill woman who had been repeatedly abused and tortured as a child, teen, and young woman."

While lethal injection was used in each of the above cases, Rolling Stone's Asawin Suebsaeng and Patrick Reis noted Tuesday that "rules made during Trump's presidency made federal firing squads more feasible."

"Previously, lethal injection was the only permissible federal method of execution," Suebsaeng and Reis observed. "But under the administration's new rules, if lethal injections are made legally or logistically unavailable, the federal government can use any method that is legal in the state where the execution is located."

"Former Attorney General Bill Barr, the ideological architect of Trump's execution binge, told Rolling Stone in December that Trump and his administration would have had more people put to death soon, had he won a second term in 2020," the outlet continued. "'Yes—that was the expectation,' Barr succinctly summarized in a phone interview."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Following former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley's launch of her 2024 presidential campaign Tuesday, progressives cautioned that while the Republican has spent years cultivating a so-called "moderate" public persona, her policy positions make it abundantly clear that as president, she would promote a right-wing agenda similar to the Trump administration, in which she served for nearly two years.

Haley, who also served as South Carolina's governor before joining the administration of former President Donald Trump in 2017, has advanced right-wing policies both domestically and abroad, and since leaving public office four years ago, has used her platform to promote "extreme hardline positions on foreign policy," wrote Daniel Larison at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

The Republican has strived to center her response to the 2015 Mother Emanuel AME Church shooting in Charleston by a white supremacist as evidence of her moderation, including in her campaign launch video footage of the speech she gave weeks after the massacre when signing a bill to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state capitol.

Progressive strategist Sawyer Hackett noted, however, that moments earlier in the video she denied that the deep history of institutional racism has contributed to persistent inequality in the United States.

\u201cIn this ad, Nikki Haley explicitly rejects the idea of institutional racism\u2014then goes on to highlight her role responding to the the white supremacist massacre in Charleston.\nhttps://t.co/kTwHTqKkYZ\u201d

— Sawyer Hackett (@Sawyer Hackett) 1676379744

"Make no mistake: Nikki Haley is no moderate," said Christina Harvey, executive director of progressive advocacy group Stand Up America. "From her support of Trump's policy of putting children in cages and the regressive reproductive health policies she pushed as governor of South Carolina to her opposition to federal voting rights legislation and her unwavering support of Donald Trump—even after he incited the January 6 insurrection—Nikki Haley has shown her true colors."

During her six years as governor of South Carolina, Haley signed anti-reproductive rights bills including one that banned abortion care after 19 weeks of pregnancy, with no exceptions for pregnancies resulting from rape or incest.

With anti-abortion rights Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expected to also announce a run for the GOP presidential nomination, NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju said the primary is already becoming "a race to the bottom."

"Whether it's serving in Donald Trump's Cabinet or signing an extreme abortion ban into law, Nikki Haley's record is chock full of red flags," said Timmaraju. "Haley's views on abortion are just as extreme as others gunning for the Republican nomination, and we look forward to working alongside our members to defeat the Republican nominee, whoever it may be."

Haley's campaign launch ad also included a claim that President Joe Biden is promoting a "socialist" agenda, which Poor People's Campaign co-chair Rev. Dr. William Barber II interpreted as an attack on those who "believe in living wages, voting rights, and healthcare for all."

\u201cEverything Nikki Haley says in her new ad attacking Biden/Harris et al as \u201csocialist\u201d if they believe in living wages, voting rights, & healthcare for all is the same politics of lies & division that Trump used, just in a softer voice.\u201d

— Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II (@Rev. Dr. William J. Barber II) 1676383516

During Haley's two years as U.N. ambassador under the Trump administration, she was a strong proponent of the president's so-called "zero tolerance" policy under which thousands of migrant children were separated from their parents and guardians, Trump's push to pull out of the U.N. Human Rights Council, and the administration's decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal.

Though she briefly criticized Trump for inciting the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 in an effort to stop the certification of the 2020 presidential election results, Haley soon after defended the former president and called on Democratic lawmakers to "give the man a break" as they impeached Trump for a second time.

"When we needed leaders to stand up for our democracy and our freedoms, Haley fell in line with Donald Trump, again and again," said Harvey. "That's exactly the opposite of what our country needs. Unfortunately, it doesn't make her unique. Whether the Republican nominee is Nikki Haley, Donald Trump, or someone else, there will likely be a MAGA Republican with a track record of undermining our democracy on the GOP ticket come November 2024."

At the Quincy Institute, Larison wrote that Haley's effort to cast herself as a moderating voice in the Republican Party while also defending the former president has left her "with no obvious base of support" and has likely rendered her a long-shot candidate.

"There is so little daylight between Haley's own positions and those of Trump that it will be difficult for her to criticize anything he did as president," Larison wrote. "Haley's foreign policy record is bound up with Trump's to such an extent that she will struggle to distinguish herself from him."

Barber called on voters to focus on "the main message: None of the Republicans planning on running disagree with Trump on policy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Julia Conley.

As Republicans threaten cuts to Social Security and other essential federal programs, Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), along with Reps. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) and Val Hoyle (D-Ore.) in the U.S. House of Representatives, introduced legislation that would expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and ensure Social Security is fully funded for the next 75 years – all without raising taxes by one penny on over 93 percent of American households that make $250,000 or less.

These estimates reflect an analysis of the legislation conducted by the Social Security Administration at the request of Sen. Sanders. The analysis was also released today in a letter from Chief Actuary Stephen Goss.

Joining Sanders, Warren, Schakowsky, and Hoyle on the Social Security Expansion Act are Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), as well as 25 cosponsors in the House including Reps. Alma Adams (D-N.C.), Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), Cori Bush (D-Mo.), Troy A. Carter (D-La.), Greg Casar (D-Texas), Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Jesús Chuy García (D-Ill.), Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.), Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), Rick Larsen (D-Wash.), Barbara Lee (D-Calif.), Stephen F. Lynch (D-Mass.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Gwen Moore (D-Wis.), Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Grace Napolitano (D-Calif.), Eleanor Holmes-Norton (D-D.C.), Donald M. Payne, Jr. (D-N.J.), Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

“At a time when nearly half of older Americans have no retirement savings and almost 50 percent of our nation’s seniors are trying to survive on an income of less than $25,000 a year, our job is not to cut Social Security,” said Sen. Sanders. “Our job is to expand Social Security so that every senior in America can retire with the dignity that they deserve and every person with a disability can live with the security they need. The legislation that we are introducing today will expand Social Security benefits by $2,400 a year and will extend the solvency of Social Security for the next 75 years by making sure that the wealthiest people in our society pay their fair share into the system. Right now, a Wall Street CEO who makes $30 million pays the same amount into Social Security as someone who makes $160,000 a year. Our bill puts an end to that absurdity which will allow us to protect Social Security for generations to come while lifting millions of seniors out of poverty.”

“Social Security is an economic lifeline for millions of Americans, but many seniors are struggling with rising costs,” said Sen. Warren. “As House Republicans try to use a manufactured debt ceiling crisis to cut the Social Security that Americans have earned, I’m working with Senator Sanders to expand Social Security and extend its solvency by making the wealthy pay their fair share, so everyone can retire with dignity.”

“Social Security lifts more people out of poverty than any other program in the United States. In 2021 alone, Social Security lifted over 18 million seniors out of poverty,” said Rep. Schakowsky. “Instead of working to protect Social Security, my Republican colleagues are plotting to cut benefits and raise the retirement age. I am proud to introduce the Social Security Expansion Act with Senator Sanders, Senator Warren, and Congresswoman Hoyle, to protect the national treasure that is Social Security. This bill will extend the Social Security trust fund’s solvency and expand benefits so that everyone in America can retire with the security and dignity they deserve after a lifetime of hard work.”

“Every American should be able to retire with respect and security by knowing that they will receive the Social Security payments they have earned,” said Rep. Hoyle. “With the rising cost of living, it’s time to modernize and expand the program. I’m proud to co-lead the Social Security Expansion Act, my first bill in Congress, which helps address the disproportionate amount Social Security recipients spend of their income on things like health care and prescription drugs. While House Republicans are willing to put Social Security on the chopping block, we are fighting hard to protect Americans’ hard-earned benefits and expand coverage.”

One of the most successful and popular government programs in U.S. history, Social Security has never failed to pay out every benefit owed to every eligible American on time and without delay. Before 1935, when it was signed into law by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, about 50 percent of the nation’s seniors were living in poverty, as well as countless Americans living with disabilities and surviving dependents of deceased workers. Nearly 90 years later, the senior poverty rate is down to 10.3 percent and in 2021 alone, during the onslaught of the Covid-19 pandemic, Social Security lifted 26.3 million Americans out of poverty, including more than 18 million seniors.

Despite this long legacy of combatting poverty, more must be done to strengthen the program, not cut it. While the average Social Security benefit is only $1,688 a month, nearly 40 percent of seniors rely on Social Security for a majority of their income; one in seven rely on it for more than 90 percent of their income; and nearly half of Americans aged 55 and older have no retirement savings at all.

By requiring millionaires and billionaires to finally pay their fair share into the program, the Social Security Expansion Act would ensure the fund’s solvency to the end of the century, help low-income workers stay out of poverty by improving the Special Minimum Benefit, restore student benefits up to age 22 for children of disabled or deceased workers, strengthen benefits for senior citizens and people with disabilities, increase Cost-Of-Living-Adjustments (COLAs), and expand program benefits across-the-board.

The Social Security Expansion Act has also been endorsed by more than 50 major organizations, including: Social Security Works, AFA CWA, AFSCME, Alliance for Retired Americans, American Federation of Government Employees, American Federation of Teachers, American Postal Workers Union, BMWED/IBT, International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers (IFPTE), United Electrical, Radio & Machine Workers of America (UE), United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, National Education Association, Indivisible, MoveOn, National Domestic Workers Alliance, People's Action, Public Citizen, Care in Action, CASA, Center for Medicare Advocacy, Center for Popular Democracy, Blue Future, Church World Service, CommonDefense.us, Connecticut Citizen Action Group, Demand Progress, Health Care Awareness Month, Hunger Free America, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, Just Care USA, National Partnership for Women & Families, NETWORK Lobby for Catholic Social Justice, NJ State Industrial Union Council, Oregonizers, Our Revolution, Right to Health Action (R2H Action), Sunrise Movement, The National Employment Law Project, Upper West Side Action Group: MoveOn/Indivisible/SwingLeft, Working Families Party, National Korean American Service & Education Consortium (NAKASEC), Indivisible Marin, Children's Aid, P Street, East New York Farms, Partners for Dignity & Rights, Generations United, Broadway Community, Inc., National Council of Jewish Women, New York State Public Health Association, Justice in Aging, National Women's Law Center, Americans for Tax Fairness, National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, Labor Campaign for Single Payer, and American Medical Student Association.

Read the bill text, here.
Read the fact sheet and full list of supporting organizations, here.
Read the Social Security Administration’s analysis of the legislation, here.
Read an analysis of what the world’s wealthiest people would pay under this legislation, here.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The campaign of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis—a strident supporter of loosening gun regulations—tried to ban firearms at an election night event in Tampa last year and blame the city for the policy, The Washington Post said in a report published Friday that had critics on both sides of the political aisle calling the presumptive 2024 Republican presidential candidate a hypocrite.

According to the Post, DeSantis' campaign sought to prohibit guns from the governor's reelection victory party at the Tampa Convention Center, a city-run venue, last November 8, while suggesting city officials claim responsibility for the ban.

The Post obtained an October 8 email from Chase Finch, the convention center's safety and security manager, saying that "DeSantis/his campaign will not tell their attendees they are not permitted to carry because of the political optics."

"DeSantis caters to an extremist, MAGA Republican base by pushing permitless carry while having the privilege to keep those same armed extremists at a distance."

Finch explained that the request for the city to shoulder blame was due to "Republicans largely being in support of 2A," a reference to the Second Amendment."

"Basically it sounds like they want us to say it's our policy to disallow firearms within the event space if anyone asks," he added, drawing a response from city administrator Nicole Travis stressing that "we are not saying anything about concealed carry."

"That is the responsibility of the renter," Travis said. "We follow state statute that permits concealed carry."

Responding to the Post report, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, tweeted that "the level of hypocrisy here is just astounding."

\u201cChickenshit FL Gov. DeSantis wanted guns banned at his election night party in Tampa but wanted city, not his office, to be named responsible for the prohibition so he could still lay claim to avidly supportIng gun rights. GOP hypocrisy is congenital. https://t.co/0tU30BFWPr\u201d

— Meteor_Blades (@Meteor_Blades) 1676129126

Fred Guttenberg—an activist whose daughter Jaime Guttenberg was one of 17 students and staff shot dead during the February 14, 2018 massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida—said DeSantis "is a fraud and he should be treated that way."

"The tough guy act covers for a small, weak, and weird man," he tweeted. "His decision to be OK with others being at risk of gun violence but not him and to try and cover that up? WEAK!"

Shannon Watts, founder of the gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, wrote on Twitter that "the hypocrisy of 'the dangers of unregulated guns for thee but not for me' is next-level."

"DeSantis caters to an extremist, MAGA Republican base by pushing permitless carry while having the privilege to keep those same armed extremists at a distance," she added. "DeSantis is reportedly forcing attendees at his events to go through metal detectors and he's also refusing to attend events unless guns are banned. Yet he's simultaneously pushing for permitless carry to strip gun safety requirements. Safety for him, violence for everyone else."

Under a Republican-authored bill backed by DeSantis, Florida would become the 26th state to allow people to carry concealed loaded guns without permits. There are currently around 2.6 million concealed carry permits in the state, according to the Tallahassee Democrat.

\u201cRon DeSantis wanted guns banned from his victory celebration at the city-run Tampa Convention Center & wanted the city to take responsibility for the ban. He protects himself while working to make Floridians less safe with his permitless carry legislation. https://t.co/lzrZSWITFM\u201d

— Newtown Action Alliance (@Newtown Action Alliance) 1676124117

The election night party wasn't the only time DeSantis' campaign has tried to keep guns out of events attended by the governor.

Alachua County GOP Chair Tim Marden told the Post that he skipped a DeSantis fundraiser last October because the governor was insisting upon having metal detectors at the event—outside of which a gun rights protester was arrested.

"In my thinking, it was a little hypocritical to have this measure in place for law-abiding citizens at a time when a lot of folks in the gun community will condemn a Democratic politician for having a security force," Marden said.

Luis Valdes, Florida state director of Gun Owners of America, told the Post that "DeSantis continually pays lip service to the Second Amendment as he positions himself for a nationwide run, and yet what I am seeing as a constituent of his and as a Floridian is that his events are gun-free zones."

"His primary rivals will clean his clock on guns," he added.

At the polar opposite of the gun control issue, Florida Moms Demand Action volunteer Wendy Malloy told the Tampa Bay Times that "this proves what we already knew—when it comes to gun violence, Gov. DeSantis puts 'political optics' before public safety."

"Our lawmakers should stand up to Gov. DeSantis' hypocrisy and reject permitless carry," she added.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Last night, President Joe Biden called out Congressional Republicans for their plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. Several Republicans erupted in outrage, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) yelled “liar.” In response, Biden said “I enjoy conversion…as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare is off the books now, right?” and urged the entire room to “stand up for seniors.” Many Republicans in the room, including Speaker Kevin McCarthy, stood up and applauded.

This was a masterful moment of stagecraft from President Biden. But no one should mistake it for any real commitment from Republicans to back off their deeply held desire to cut Social Security and Medicare. Fortunately, Biden himself doesn’t appear to be making any such mistake.

After the speech, Biden tweeted “Look: I welcome all converts. But now, let’s see your budget.” Similarly, Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said yesterday afternoon that McCarthy “says he wants cuts, where? He hasn't named a single place where he wants them. Is it going to be Social Security or Medicare? Don't just say no, prove it. Show us your plan."

Biden and Schumer are right. Republicans have a long history of trying to cut Social Security and Medicare. Republican leaders keep saying — often to their donors behind closed doors — that they want to do it. Most recently, former Vice President Mike Pence told a closed door conference that he wants to “replace the New Deal with a better deal” by privatizing Social Security, handing our earned benefits over to Wall Street.

Pence was only the latest in a long line of Republicans with plans to cut Social Security and Medicare. Last year, the Republican Study Committee, which counts about 75 percent of House Republicans as members, released a budget that would raise the retirement age for Social Security and Medicare to 70, decimate middle class Social Security benefits, and voucherize Medicare. These are the very same House Republicans who erupted in outrage last night!

The story is no different in the Senate, where Senator John Thune (R-SD), the second highest ranking Republican in the Senate, has said that he wants to use the debt limit to force cuts to Social Security and other programs. Thune specifically endorsed raising the retirement age.

Thune’s colleagues have plans of their own. Last year, Senator Rick Scott (R-FL) released a plan to put Social Security and Medicare on the chopping block every five years. Scott recently compared spending on the programs to “alcoholism.” Not to be outdone, Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) wants to turn Social Security and Medicare into discretionary spending, putting them in jeopardy every year, and says that Social Security was “set up improperly.”

Yet despite all these plans, Republicans realize that cutting Social Security and Medicare is incredibly unpopular, even with their own voters. That’s why, when Biden put them on the spot, they had no choice but to stand and applaud for protecting benefits. And it’s why they’re so desperate to go behind closed doors and force Democrats to cut benefits, so that the public can’t see which party’s fingerprints are on the cuts.

Two bills, the TRUST Act and the Bipartisan Social Security Commission Act, would do just that. Both of these bills would create fast-tracked commissions to cut Social Security and Medicare behind closed doors. They are designed to give politicians cover to enact unpopular benefit cuts and claim they had no choice.

The Biden Administration has rightfully called these bills “death panels” for Social Security and Medicare. Democrats must stand strong and refuse to go behind closed doors with Republicans. They must continue to make it clear, as Biden did last night, that only a clean increase in the debt limit with no cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or any other program is acceptable.

Additionally, Democrats should follow the lead of Biden and Schumer by continuing to demand Republicans release their specific budget plan. Until Republicans release a budget that doesn’t cut a single penny from current or future Social Security and Medicare benefits, their claims that the programs are “off the table” are empty words. Furthermore, every member of Congress — Republicans and Democrats alike — should take the pledge to never cut Social Security and Medicare under any circumstances.

Democrats should make it clear to the American people which party supports Social Security by holding a vote on expanding, never cutting, Social Security’s modest benefits. Democratic legislators have already authored several plans to do just that. President Biden ran on a similar plan. Now, he should release an official White House plan that expands Social Security with no cuts and requires the wealthiest to pay their fair share.

Then, Biden should challenge Republicans to release their own plan for Social Security and hold a vote. Let the American people see, in the light of day, the plan that each party has for the future of our earned benefits.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Nancy J. Altman.

Those scenarios "are serious developments," said researchers at the university, but the melting of ice "will have very little influence on the global temperature until 2050." The weakening of AMOC and Amazon dieback will have a "moderately" greater influence on global temperatures.

"Human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve."

"By extrapolating current trends," reads the study, "permafrost thaw and Amazon Forest dieback are expected to release somewhat more than one year's worth of today's anthropogenic CO2 emissions between now and 2050. Thus, the contributions of these two processes to the remaining carbon budget are small. Since both will only moderately affect the global surface temperature, we deduce that they also only moderately inhibit the plausibility of attaining the Paris agreement temperature goals."

Such tipping points "could drastically change the conditions for life on Earth," but for experts, progressive politicians, and campaigners who share the goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C—or as close to that as possible—"they're largely irrelevant," said Jochem Marotzke, a study co-author and professor at the university's Cluster of Excellence "Climate, Climatic Change, and Society" (CLICCS).

In other words, The Hillexplained, "Keeping global warming below 1.5°C—the goal set in the Paris agreement—is implausible for social reasons, not technical ones."

The researchers also examined 10 "drivers of social change" including media, United Nations climate policies, transnational initiatives, climate regulations, climate litigation, knowledge production, consumption patterns, corporate responses, fossil fuel divestment, and climate and social movements like the global Fridays for Future movement and Extinction Rebellion.

With fossil fuel companies continuing to make long-term investments in oil and gas extraction even as they announce pledges to reach net-zero carbon emissions, and rampant consumption of carbon-intensive goods showing no sign of slowing down, the study says, corporate responses and consumption patterns "continue to undermine the pathways to decarbonization, let alone deep decarbonization."

A number of social drivers including social movements, climate regulations, and fossil fuel divestment were found to currently "support decarbonization, but not deep decarbonization by 2050," which is needed to attain the 1.5°C goal.

"There are promising reforms underway, especially at the E.U. level," reads the report, adding that "general and ongoing public interest in and focus on climate policies" is an "enabling condition" that could help strengthen global movements and ramp up pressure on policymakers.

The researchers' assessment of the 10 social drivers demonstrates "that human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve," tweeted CLICCS. "However, human agency is strongly shaped by injustices and social inequalities, which inhibit social dynamics toward deep decarbonization by 2050."

The study identified how human actions can help shift the current trajectory "toward deep decarbonization," including:

• The election of governments committed to climate action in countries including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, and the U.S.;
• More engagement and influence of individuals and organizations with strong and independent climate science journalism, to help support societal mobilization for climate action; and
• Proactive communication from everyone interested in a more productive public debate on climate action based on social consensus.

"In order to be equipped for a warmer world, we have to anticipate changes, get the affected parties on board, and take advantage of local knowledge," said Anita Engels of the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability at University of Hamburg. "Instead of just reacting, we need to begin an active transformation here and now."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Those scenarios "are serious developments," said researchers at the university, but the melting of ice "will have very little influence on the global temperature until 2050." The weakening of AMOC and Amazon dieback will have a "moderately" greater influence on global temperatures.

"Human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve."

"By extrapolating current trends," reads the study, "permafrost thaw and Amazon Forest dieback are expected to release somewhat more than one year's worth of today's anthropogenic CO2 emissions between now and 2050. Thus, the contributions of these two processes to the remaining carbon budget are small. Since both will only moderately affect the global surface temperature, we deduce that they also only moderately inhibit the plausibility of attaining the Paris agreement temperature goals."

Such tipping points "could drastically change the conditions for life on Earth," but for experts, progressive politicians, and campaigners who share the goal of limiting planetary warming to 1.5°C—or as close to that as possible—"they're largely irrelevant," said Jochem Marotzke, a study co-author and professor at the university's Cluster of Excellence "Climate, Climatic Change, and Society" (CLICCS).

In other words, The Hillexplained, "Keeping global warming below 1.5°C—the goal set in the Paris agreement—is implausible for social reasons, not technical ones."

The researchers also examined 10 "drivers of social change" including media, United Nations climate policies, transnational initiatives, climate regulations, climate litigation, knowledge production, consumption patterns, corporate responses, fossil fuel divestment, and climate and social movements like the global Fridays for Future movement and Extinction Rebellion.

With fossil fuel companies continuing to make long-term investments in oil and gas extraction even as they announce pledges to reach net-zero carbon emissions, and rampant consumption of carbon-intensive goods showing no sign of slowing down, the study says, corporate responses and consumption patterns "continue to undermine the pathways to decarbonization, let alone deep decarbonization."

A number of social drivers including social movements, climate regulations, and fossil fuel divestment were found to currently "support decarbonization, but not deep decarbonization by 2050," which is needed to attain the 1.5°C goal.

"There are promising reforms underway, especially at the E.U. level," reads the report, adding that "general and ongoing public interest in and focus on climate policies" is an "enabling condition" that could help strengthen global movements and ramp up pressure on policymakers.

The researchers' assessment of the 10 social drivers demonstrates "that human agency has a large potential to shape the way climate futures will evolve," tweeted CLICCS. "However, human agency is strongly shaped by injustices and social inequalities, which inhibit social dynamics toward deep decarbonization by 2050."

The study identified how human actions can help shift the current trajectory "toward deep decarbonization," including:

• The election of governments committed to climate action in countries including Australia, Brazil, Chile, Germany, and the U.S.;
• More engagement and influence of individuals and organizations with strong and independent climate science journalism, to help support societal mobilization for climate action; and
• Proactive communication from everyone interested in a more productive public debate on climate action based on social consensus.

"In order to be equipped for a warmer world, we have to anticipate changes, get the affected parties on board, and take advantage of local knowledge," said Anita Engels of the Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability at University of Hamburg. "Instead of just reacting, we need to begin an active transformation here and now."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

"It remains unclear when House Republicans will bring the Omar resolution to the floor for debate and a final vote," The Hillreported. "Democrats still need to formally submit a separate resolution with their roster for the Foreign Affairs Committee." That is expected to happen by Thursday.

The GOP has sought for years to remove Omar, a principled critic of Israeli apartheid and Washington's role in perpetuating it, from the HFAC. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) has unilateral authority to boot any lawmaker from a select committee, but because the HFAC is a standing committee, removing a member from it requires a full House vote.

On Tuesday night, after Rep. Max Miller (R-Ohio) introduced the measure to remove Omar from the HFAC over supposedly "antisemitic" remarks, the progressive lawmaker tweeted that "there is nothing objectively true in this resolution."

In response to Miller's argument that "Omar clearly cannot be an objective decision-maker on the Foreign Affairs Committee given her biases against Israel and against the Jewish people"—a contention that wrongfully equates criticism of Israel's colonization of Palestine with criticism of Jewish people—the Minnesota Democrat said that "if not being objective is a reason to not serve on committees, no one would be on committees."

In a Wednesday statement, Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) called the House GOP's pending vote against Omar "the latest racist attack by the far-right to silence progressives in Congress who speak up for a human rights-centered foreign policy, including Palestinian human rights."

"Anti-Palestinian politicians and organizations" have long tried "to censor the Congresswoman's consistent calls for accountability for the Israeli government's apartheid and human rights violations against Palestinians," said JVP. "Sadly, these Republican attempts to attack Congresswoman Omar have been buoyed in the past by attacks on Palestinian rights advocates within the Democratic party."

According to Beth Miller, political director of JVP Action: "These attacks are happening because Congresswoman Omar is effective. Because she is a progressive. Because she is a Black Muslim woman. Because her values are universal and include fighting for Palestinians."

"The GOP is riddled with white nationalists and antisemites," said Miller. "It is infuriating and absurd that they are trying to distract from the bigoted hatred in their own party by attacking a progressive woman of color. Congresswoman Omar consistently calls for the Israeli government to be held accountable for its crimes—crimes the GOP would rather cover up."

Meanwhile, Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said Monday that the CPC "stands fully behind our deputy chair."

"Omar is a valued member of the Democratic caucus and of this Congress," said Jayapal. "Throughout her service in Congress and on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, she has brought her essential and unique voice and lived experience to bear: as a refugee, war survivor, and soon, as the first African-born ranking member on the Africa Subcommittee."

"You cannot remove a member of Congress from a committee simply because you do not agree with their views," Jayapal continued. "This is both ludicrous and dangerous. In the last Congress, Republican members were moved from committees with a bipartisan vote for endangering the safety of their colleagues. Speaker McCarthy is attempting to take revenge and draw false comparisons."

Jayapal praised the few Republicans "who have already rejected this idea" and expressed hope that "more will join them to state their opposition so it is not brought to the floor, or vote against it should it be brought to the floor."

As The Washington Post reported Wednesday:

Republican leaders have worked for weeks to ensure that there were enough votes to pass a resolution removing Omar from the committee through their razor-thin majority margin, which stands at three as Rep. Greg Steube (R-Fla.) remains away from Washington recuperating from a traumatic fall. Opposition to the effort emerged last month as four lawmakers signaled that they wouldn't support the measure, citing concerns that it would continue a precedent set by former speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

But the inclusion of a provision in the four-page resolution, that Republicans argue provides due process to Omar, seems to have appeased at least one crucial voter, as Rep. Victoria Spartz (R-Ind.) announced Tuesday that she would now support the measure. Reps. Ken Buck (R-Colo.) and Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) have publicly suggested that they would vote against it before the resolution's text was released Tuesday, while Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) has said he remained undecided. Republican leadership aides, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to outline private whip counts, said they have the votes to pass the measure whenever Democrats formally appoint Omar to her committee.

Jayapal affirmed earlier this week that Democrats "will stand strongly with Rep. Omar: an esteemed and invaluable legislator, a respectful and kind colleague, and a courageous progressive leader."

On Sunday, Omar argued that House Republicans are trying to oust her from the HFAC because they disapprove of having a Muslim refugee from Somalia on the panel, as Common Dreamsreported.

Omar has been the frequent target of Islamophobic bigotry, including from Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which paid Facebook to host attack ads that endangered the lawmaker's life. Due to credible death threats, the Minnesota Democrat is often assigned security by the U.S. Capitol Police.

In her Sunday conversation with CNN's Dana Bash, Omar acknowledged that she apologized for the wording of her February 2019 tweets tying U.S. lawmakers' support for Israel to money from lobbyists—at the time, she specifically called out AIPAC, which has given millions of dollars to members of Congress.

The GOP's campaign to expel her from the HFAC "is politically motivated," Omar said. "In some cases, it's motivated by the fact that many of these members don't believe a Muslim, a refugee, an African should even be in Congress, let alone have the opportunity to serve on the Foreign Affairs Committee."

On Monday, Omar asserted that her work on the HFAC has contributed positively to "advancing human rights, holding government officials accountable for past harms, and advancing a more just and peaceful foreign policy."

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) concurred, tweeting Monday that Omar's work on the panel "matters deeply and Republicans' cowardly efforts to remove and silence her are a disgrace."

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) echoed Pressley, writing on social media: "It's shameful that Republicans are trying to remove her [from the HFAC] after smearing her for years. We need her voice, values, and expertise on the committee."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), meanwhile, noted that "Omar is once again facing ugly personal and political attacks with incredible courage and dignity."

"It is outrageous that the House leadership wants to boot her off the Foreign Affairs Committee," Sanders tweeted. "Fair-minded Republicans must join Democrats in preventing that from happening."

This article has been updated to include a statement from Jewish Voice for Peace.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

According to the international team of 35 scientists who conducted the study, the four most consequential sources of disruption are "edge effects" (forest changes caused by nearby deforestation and the ensuing habitat fragmentation); "selective logging"; and forest fires and extreme droughts intensified by the fossil fuel-driven climate crisis.

Based on their analysis of existing data on the extent of edge effects, timber extraction, and fires from 2001 to 2018, researchers found that 5.5% of Amazonian forests are degraded. When data on extreme droughts was considered, their estimate of the total degraded area grew to 38%.

The Guardian, which had early access to the full paper, summarized the scholars' findings as follows on Thursday: "Fires, land conversion, logging, and water shortages have weakened the resilience of up to 2.5 million square kilometers of the forest, an area 10 times the size of the U.K. This area is now drier, more flammable, and more vulnerable than before, prompting the authors to warn of 'megafires' in the future."

A substantial chunk of the world's largest tropical rainforest—nicknamed the "lungs of the Earth" due to its unparalleled capacity to provide oxygen and absorb planet-heating pollution—is "less able to regulate the climate, generate rainfall, store carbon, provide a habitat to other species, offer a livelihood to local people, and sustain itself as a viable ecosystem," The Guardian noted.

Degradation, defined as human-induced changes in forest conditions, has led to carbon emissions equivalent to or greater than those from deforestation, the authors note. As an accompanying statement explains: "Degradation is different from deforestation, where the forest is removed altogether and a new land use, such as agriculture, is established in its place. Although highly degraded forests can lose almost all of the trees, the land use itself does not change."

Co-author Jos Barlow, a professor of conservation science at Lancaster Univerity, said that the cumulative impact of the key degradation factors examined "can be as important as deforestation for carbon emissions and biodiversity loss."

In addition, the paper makes clear that Amazon forest degradation is associated with significant socioeconomic harms that require further investigation.

"Degradation benefits the few, but places important burdens on many," said co-author Rachel Carmenta from the University of East Anglia. "Few people profit from the degradation processes, yet many lose out across all dimensions of human well-being— including health, nutrition, and the place attachments held for the forest landscapes where they live."

"Many of these burdens are hidden at present," Carmenta added. "Recognizing them will help enable better governance with social justice at the center."

"Preventing the advance of deforestation remains vital, and could also allow more attention to be directed to other drivers of forest degradation."

Looking ahead to 2050, the paper projects that the four main drivers of Amazon forest degradation "will remain a major threat and source of carbon fluxes to the atmosphere" regardless of whether deforestation is halted.

"Even in an optimistic scenario, when there is no more deforestation, the effects of climate change will see degradation of the forest continue, leading to further carbon emissions," said lead author David Lapola, a researcher at the Centre for Meteorological and Climatic Research Applied to Agriculture at the University of Campinas. However, "preventing the advance of deforestation remains vital, and could also allow more attention to be directed to other drivers of forest degradation."

Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the recently inaugurated leftist president of Brazil—home to roughly 60% of the Amazon—has vowed to make "this devastation" of the forest "a thing of the past."

"There's no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon," Lula said during a mid-November speech at the United Nations COP27 summit—the first he made on the international stage after defeating Brazil's far-right ex-president, Jair Bolsonaro.

The Amazon passed a key tipping point at the tail end of Bolsonaro's four-year reign, during which ecological destruction accelerated as logging, mining, and agribusiness companies routinely violated the rights of Indigenous forest dwellers.

Last week, Lula accused Bolsonaro of committing genocide against the Yanomami people, who are enduring a deadly rise in hunger and disease due to a surge in illegal gold mining.

Lula, who drastically reduced deforestation and curbed inequality when he governed Brazil earlier this century, recently launched the first anti-deforestation raids of his new administration.

"There is hope now, but our paper shows it is not enough to resolve deforestation," Barlow told The Guardian. "There is much more work to be done."

As the new paper notes: "Whereas some disturbances such as edge effects can be tackled by curbing deforestation, others, like constraining the increase in extreme droughts, require additional measures, including global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Curbing degradation will also require engaging with the diverse set of actors that promote it, operationalizing effective monitoring of different disturbances, and refining policy frameworks."

The authors propose creating high-tech systems to monitor forest degradation and implementing policies to prevent illegal logging and better manage the use of fire.

"Public and private actions and policies to curb deforestation will not necessarily address degradation as well," said Lapola. "It is necessary to invest in innovative strategies."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

Republican Rep. Rick Allen of Georgia suggested last week that he would support raising the Social Security retirement age—a policy change that would slash benefits across the board—because people have approached him and said they "actually want to work longer."

Confronted by an advocate in the Capitol Building and asked how the GOP plans to cut Social Security, the congressman responded, "We're not going to cut Social Security."

But seconds later, Allen contradicted himself by expressing support for raising the retirement age, saying the move would "solve every one of these problems"—not specifying what the "problems" are from his perspective.

Watch:

Allen is a member of the Republican Study Committee, a House GOP panel that released a policy agenda last year calling for gradually raising the "full retirement age" from 67 to 70, partially privatizing the New Deal program, and mean-testing benefits.

As Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project, a left-wing think tank, has explained, raising the Social Security retirement age is "just a straightforward benefit reduction being expressed in an opaque way."

"Social Security does not have one retirement age. It has 96 retirement ages, one for each month between age 62 and 70," Bruenig wrote in October. "What people call the 'full retirement age' (FRA) is just a placeholder in a formula that determines the benefit level at all 96 retirement ages."

"When someone proposes increasing the retirement age to 68," he continued, "all they are really proposing is to cut monthly Social Security benefits by around 7% at all 96 retirement ages. A proposal to raise the retirement age to 70 is just a proposal to cut monthly benefits by around 23% at all 96 retirement ages."

House Republicans have repeatedly signaled in recent months that they will exploit every point of leverage they have—including a fast-approaching showdown over the debt ceiling—to pursue long-sought cuts to Social Security under the guise of "saving" the program from a non-existent financial crisis.

During a House Republican conference meeting last week, a slide presentation indicated that the GOP intends to use its narrow majority in the lower chamber to push for "reforms" to "mandatory spending programs"—a category that includes Social Security and Medicare.

"Republicans want you to work until you die," the progressive advocacy group Social Security Works tweeted Sunday. "Shameful."

Max Richtman, president and CEO of the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, wrote in an op-ed for The Hill last week that "America's seniors cannot afford benefit cuts, including raising the eligibility ages for future Social Security and Medicare beneficiaries."

"Of course, the public is not demanding that Social Security and Medicare be cut. Quite the opposite: both programs remain overwhelmingly popular. A large majority of voters (83 percent) across party lines say they want to see Social Security expanded, not slashed, with the wealthy contributing their fair share in payroll taxes," Richtman continued. "Nevertheless, McCarthy has empowered a handful of ultra-MAGA members to dictate policy for the new House majority."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

Very early Saturday morning, Kevin McCarthy finally won on the 15th round of voting for Speaker.

In return, the right-wing Freedom Caucus got a promise from McCarthy that he would not approve a simple increase in the debt ceiling unless spending was held back at 2022 levels — which, with more than 7 percent inflation, would require huge cuts in everything from defense spending to Social Security and Medicare. And if McCarthy breaks his promise, any member of the Freedom Caucus can move to remove him from the Speakership.

For years now, a major goal of the extreme right has been to undermine Social Security and Medicare, the most popular programs in the federal government. The extremists will not succeed. But the coming fight over raising the debt ceiling seems likely to become the defining battle over the next six to nine months. (In 2011, the mere possibility that the U.S. might not be able to pay its bills rattled markets worldwide.)

Note, too, that Congress must also fund federal agencies and programs before the current fiscal year ends on Sept. 30. The current $1.7 trillion spending “omnibus” measure was adopted in the waning hours of 2022. A failure to replace it would be a second cause for a government closure in the fall.

The three parts of the Congressional Republican Party — the fiscal conservatives, the cultural warriors, and the MAGA anti-democracy Trumpers — have come together behind fiscal conservatism — draped in warrior language, with the potential for a MAGA anti-democracy outcome. They are more dangerous than ever.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Robert Reich.

On the eve of the second anniversary of the January 6 attack, Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar asked the public to imagine if far-right Republicans—now locked in a chaotic fight over the House speakership—controlled the lower chamber of Congress two years ago, when supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent effort to overthrow the government.

"We remember the insurrection," Omar (D-Minn.) said in an appearance on MSNBC late Thursday. "We remember that the House was organized. We were ready, Democrats were ready—we'd already elected a speaker, we were ready to defend the Constitution, we were ready to defend our democracy. Imagine if this was to happen under Republican control?"

Just hours after the failed coup attempt of January 6, 2021—an attack fueled by Trump and his allies—a majority of House Republicans voted to toss out 2020 presidential election results from Arizona and Pennsylvania, citing baseless claims of fraud pushed aggressively by the former president.

The House, then controlled by Democrats, ultimately rejected the Republicans' challenges, as did the Senate. According to the Congressional Research Service, "both houses of Congress must agree to an objection for a state's electoral vote to be excluded from the vote count."

In the months that followed, the lower chamber formed a committee that launched a sweeping probe into the events of January 6, accumulating troves of evidence demonstrating that Trump was ultimately responsible for the Capitol assault. Testimony obtained by the committee also revealed that several Republican lawmakers—including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.)—asked Trump for pardons in the wake of the insurrection.

The prospect of an attack like the January 6 insurrection taking place with the House controlled by a majority sympathetic to the mob is alarming to contemplate, Omar said Thursday. Many of the Republicans who voted to overturn the 2020 election results remain in their seats, including the California lawmaker vying for speaker and a ringleader of the far-right opposition.

"Tomorrow, when we walk in on the anniversary of January 6th, we will have no House organized," Omar said. "This is going to be the first time in over 100 years where we clearly cannot defend our democracy and our Constitution. We don't have the House in order, and the Republicans don't seem to be any closer in electing a speaker."

"It is just a shameful sight to see," Omar added, "not just for Americans but people across the world that expect us to have figured this out, being one of the oldest democracies in the world."

In a column on Thursday, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Will Bunch argued that "we can't move on, let alone learn, from 2021's insurrection when that uprising—crippling our government in the name of celebrity fascism—never ended."

"Over these two years, we've watched the violent tragedy of one January morph into this January's farce, yet it's the current farce that has brought the nation to a standstill and elevated the power of the extreme right," Bunch wrote. "Until there is actual accountability for what really happened on January 6, 2021, America's calendar will remain stuck on that date, which will live in infamy."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jake Johnson.

“I don’t think there is any potential merit because it’s already tainted.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Daniel Boguslaw.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• A monster storm is hitting Northern California this evening – there are already reports of downed trees and flooding.
• California Governor Gavin Newsom declares a state of emergency, as much of the state prepared for an intense winter storm that could produce what meteorologists call a bomb cyclone, or a storm that intensifies rapidly. 
• The heavy rains may bring flooding along the Russian River.
• North Bay advocates are calling for more emergency shelter and law enforcement to stop citing people sheltering in cars, as unhoused residents brace for the intense winter storms. 
• Much of Europe is experiencing a record breaking winter heat wave.
• California Republican Kevin McCarthy comes up short on the 4th, 5th and 6th ballots to choose a new House Speaker. Even Donald Trump’s endorsement of McCarthy isn’t persuasive.
• President Biden says he’ll make his first presidential visit to the U.S. Mexico border when he travels to Mexico City next week.
• And Poland’s Defense Minister signs a deal to buy a second batch of U.S. Abrams battle tanks.

Image: Flooding in Sonoma County in 2008 by Patrick Dirden via FLICKR

The post Monster storm hits Northern California, prompting Gov Newsom to declare a state of emergency; CA Republican Kevin McCarthy falls short after six rounds of voting to choose a new House Speaker; North Bay homeless advocates call for more emergency shelter appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

Today, as House Republicans convulse over electing their next Speaker, the civil war in the Republican Party comes into the open. But it’s not particularly civil and it’s not exactly a war. It’s the mindless hostility of a political party that’s lost any legitimate reason for being.

For all practical purposes, the Republican Party is over.

A half century ago, the Republican Party stood for limited government. Its position was not always coherent or logical (it overlooked corporate power and resisted civil rights), but at least had a certain consistency: the GOP could always be relied on to seek lower taxes and oppose Democratic attempts to enlarge the scope of the federal power.

This was, and still is, the position of the establishment Republican Party of the two George Bush’s, of its wealthy libertarian funders, and of its Davos-jetting corporate executive donor base. But it has little to do with the real GOP of today.

In the 1990s, Newt Gingrich and Fox News’s Roger Ailes ushered the Republican Party into cultural conservatism -- against abortion, contraception, immigration, voting rights, gay marriage, LBGTQ rights, and, eventually, against teaching America’s history of racism, trans-gender rights, and, during the pandemic, even against masks. At the same time, the GOP was for police cracking down on crime (especially committed by Black people), teaching religion with public money, for retailers discriminating against LBGTQ people, and for immigration authorities hunting down and deporting undocumented residents.

Gingrich and Ailes smelled the redolent possibilities of cultural conservatism, sensed the power of evangelicals and the anger of rural white America, saw votes in a Republican base that hewed to “traditional values” and, of course, racism.

But this cultural conservatism was so inconsistent with limited government – in effect, calling on government to intrude in the some of the most intimate aspects of personal life – that the Party line became confused, its message garbled, its purpose unclear. It thereby opened itself to a third and far angrier phase, centering on resentment and authoritarianism.

The foundation for this third phase had been laid for decades as white Americans without college degrees, mostly hourly-wage workers, experienced a steady drop in income and security. Not only had upward mobility been blocked, but about half their children wouldn’t live as well as they lived. The middle class was shrinking. Good-paying union jobs were disappearing.

Enter Donald Trump, the con-artist with a monstrous talent for exploiting resentment in service of his ego. Trump turned the Republican Party into a white working-class cauldron of bitterness, xenophobia, racism, anti-intellectualism, and anti-science paranoia, while turning himself into the leader of a near religious cult bent on destroying anything in his way – including American democracy.

A political party is nothing more than a shell – fundraising machinery, state and local apparatus, and elected officials, along with a dedicated base of volunteers and activists. That base gives fuels a party, giving it purpose and meaning.

Today’s Republican base is fueling hate. It is the epicenter of an emerging anti-democracy movement.

The Republican Party will continue in some form. It takes more than nihilistic mindlessness to destroy a party in a winner-take-all system such as we have in the United States.

But the Republican Party in this third phase no longer has a legitimate role to play in our system of self-government. It is over.

What we are seeing played out today in the contest for the speakership of the Republican House involves all of these pieces – small-government establishment, cultural warrior, and hate-filled authoritarian – engaged in hopeless, hapless combat with each other, and with the aspirations and ideals of the rest of America.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Robert Reich.

The previous day, Ben-Gvir vowed to visit the contested site—which has been illegally occupied by Israel for over half a century—sometime this week, possibly as soon as Tuesday or Wednesday.

Yair Lapid, who stepped down as Israel's prime minister last week and now leads the opposition, said Monday that "Itamar Ben-Gvir must not go up to Temple Mount. It is a deliberate provocation that will put lives in danger and cost lives."

Lapid, of the liberal Yesh Atid party, added that Netanyahu must tell Ben-Gvir: "'You are not going to the Temple Mount. People will die.'"

However, Ben-Gvir, who is also the leader of the Otzma Yehudit (Jewish Power) party, declared that "no one will threaten us or tell us anything."

"The Temple Mount is the holiest place for the people of Israel. We will not give up on any place in the land of Israel," he continued.

"I'm against the racist policy at the Temple Mount, as well as the racism against Jews," added Ben-Gvir—who was convicted in 2007 of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization after he advocated the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.

The Palestinian resistance group Hamas, which governs Gaza, warned Monday that it "won't sit idly by" if Ben-Gvir visits Al-Aqsa.

Middle East Eyereports Hamas spokesperson Abd al-Latif al-Qanua called the planned visit "another example of the arrogance of the settler government and their future plans to damage and divide Al-Aqsa mosque."

"The Palestinian resistance will not allow the neo-fascist occupation government to cross the red lines and encroach on our people and our sanctities," he added.

Otzma Yehudit lawmaker Zvika Fogel—a former Israel Defense Forces brigadier general who in 2018 advocated killing Palestinian children—said that Ben-Gvir "will visit the Temple Mount whenever he sees fit."

"We shouldn't treat his visit as something that will lead to an escalation," he added. "Why not see it as part of realizing our sovereignty?"

Under an Israeli-enforced policy, only Muslims are permitted to pray at Al-Aqsa. Jews and others are allowed to visit during assigned times and under strict restrictions.

Last year, attacks on the compound by Israeli occupation forces and settler-colonists wounded hundreds of Palestinians.

Ben-Gvir—who believes Isreal's founders "didn't finish the job" of ethnically cleansing all Arabs from Palestine—has visited Al-Aqsa several times while serving in the Knesset, Israel's parliament. He also led an October 2022 Jewish supremacist march through the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of occupied East Jerusalem, where he brandished a pistol and threatened to "mow down" Palestinians protesting the ethnic cleansing of their neighborhood.

"We have to be concerned about next intifada."

King Abdullah of Jordan—whose Hashemite monarchy has had custodianship of Jerusalem's holy sites for nearly 99 years—toldCNN last week that "I always like to believe that, let's look at the glass half full, but we have certain red lines. And if people want to push those red lines, then we will deal with that."

"We have to be concerned about next intifada," the king continued, referring to the mass Palestinian uprisings that occurred from 1987-93 and again from 2000-05. The second intifada erupted after then-Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon (Likud) visited Al-Aqsa.

"If that happens, that's a complete breakdown of law and order and one that neither the Israelis nor the Palestinians will benefit from," Abdullah added. "I think there is a lot of concern from all of us in the region, including those in Israel that are on our side on this issue, to make sure that doesn't happen."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

A Long Island prosecutor on Wednesday launched an investigation into George Santos after the Republican congressman-elect admitted to telling a litany of campaign trail lies about his religious background, education, and employment history.

"The numerous fabrications and inconsistencies associated with Congressman-Elect Santos are nothing short of stunning," Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly, a Republican, said in a statement.

"The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the 3rd District must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress," she added. "No one is above the law and if a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it."

Santos, 34, is scheduled to be sworn in next week when the House reconvenes—and Republicans take control—after holiday recess. The Associated Press reports he could face investigations by the House Ethics Committee and the Justice Department.

As the AP notes:

The Republican has admitted to lying about having Jewish ancestry, a Wall Street pedigree, and a college degree, but he has yet to address other lingering questions—including the source of what appears to be a quickly amassed fortune despite recent financial problems, including evictions and owing thousands in back rent.

Santos' lies have drawn scorn from both sides of the political aisle, with Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) tweeting in response to the new probe that "Santos will be gone by the end of his term or well before then. He should RESIGN."

\u201cThe background noise surrounding George Santos must not distract from the central issue. \n\nThe $700,000 dollar question: Where did all the money come from?\u201d

— Ritchie Torres (@Ritchie Torres) 1672245752

On Tuesday, outgoing Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) tweeted that aspiring house speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) needs Santos' backing.

"That is why his lies to get elected will be forgiven," Kinzinger opined. "He literally lied to win. FRAUD."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Brett Wilkins.

Comprehensive coverage of the day’s news with a focus on war and peace; social, environmental and economic justice.

• The U.S. Supreme court rules 5-4 that Trump era pandemic limits preventing migrants from coming to the U.S. to seek asylum will stay in place for now.
• The death toll continues to climb in Buffalo New York following a historic storm that has buried the city and its roads. More than 100 state law enforcement officials are brought in to enforce a ban on driving.
• Looking ahead to the new year and the US Supreme Court’s docket, legal experts are sounding the alarm that the highest court is enacting a radical conservative legal movement that is unraveling civil rights and legal protections. KPFA’s Corinne Smith reports.
• One of the leaders of the right wing plot to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic Governor is sentenced to 16 years in prison.
• The Democratic opponent of New York’s newly elected Congressman George Santos says the Republican should resign after he was found to have told one lie after the other about himself and his accomplishments.
• Newly released January 6 transcripts show that Cassidy Hutchinson says she saw her former boss, White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows burning documents in his office fireplace December of 2020 and January 2021.

Image: US Supreme Court building via Wikipedia

The post US Supreme Court rules 5-4 to keep Title 42, restrict asylum seekers for now; Death toll climbs in Buffalo, NY after massive storm; Republican Congressman-elect admits to lying about his resume appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

A human rights group on Wednesday denounced Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for pulling "another political, inhumane stunt" by deploying National Guard troops to El Paso and "further militarizing the southern border, terrorizing border residents and vulnerable migrants."

The Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) was referring to Abbott's decision to use "state resources to promote a racist, anti-refugee, xenophobic agenda" after Democratic El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser declared a state of emergency last Saturday in an effort to prevent unhoused asylum-seekers from freezing to death.

"Our country desperately needs a comprehensive and updated immigration reform and asylum system."

"The city of El Paso's declaration of emergency was an attempt to enable the city to access much-needed resources to help the arriving vulnerable migrants at the border," BNHR executive director Fernando García said in a statement.

"For the past few days, our community and nation have witnessed children, women, and entire families sleeping on the streets, suffering from extremely harsh, cold weather," said García. "Those images are a reflection of our broken and inhumane immigration system, fueled by our federal government's inaction in supporting nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other entities who stand ready to welcome asylum-seekers."

El Paso Times reported that while Leeser had "long resisted issuing a state of emergency declaration... the sight of people on downtown streets with temperatures dipping below freezing" inspired his decision, which was made to allow the city to tap into the state's more abundant humanitarian and logistical resources.

"El Paso Deputy City Manager Mario D'Agostino said the state emergency declaration would give the city more flexibility in operating larger sheltering operations and provide additional transportation for arriving asylum-seekers," the newspaper reported. The city "requested additional personnel for feeding and housing operations, additional busing operations, and state law enforcement."

But García noted that "rather than assisting in humanitarian and logistical support," Abbott is using Leeser's declaration "to feed into the racist, xenophobic, and white supremacist rhetoric of 'an invasion' by militarizing our city further and effectively imposing his illegal Operation Lone Star."

As The Texas Tribune, which has reported extensively on the right-wing governor's militarized border crackdown, explains:

Abbott launched Operation Lone Star to ramp up security along the Texas-Mexico border in March 2021, citing insufficient policies from the federal government. He announced that the state would deploy resources from the Department of Public Safety and the National Guard. The Texas Legislature dedicated nearly $2 billion toward the effort. But the operation has been mired in controversy; National Guard troops have called it a disaster, and migrants arrested on state trespassing charges have gotten caught in confused legal proceedings, their lawyers citing due-process violations.

García said that BNHR is "outraged to learn of the arrival of the Texas National Guard... who have staged military vehicles and razor wire at the Río Bravo." The organization demands "the immediate withdrawal" of soldiers from the area, he added, "and the halt of any immigration strategy that further militarizes our border."

When he announced the emergency declaration last Saturday, Leeser said that supplementary humanitarian aid would only become more necessary after Wednesday, when Title 42 expulsions were scheduled to end and as many as 6,000 daily apprehensions and street releases were expected.

However, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday granted a request from 19 GOP-led states to temporarily block the Biden administration from lifting the Title 42 public health order that has been weaponized to expedite the removal of asylum-seekers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its Tuesday filing, the Biden administration asked the high court to issue a final decision by Friday.

"The solution to the border situation has never been more evident," García said Wednesday. "Our country desperately needs a comprehensive and updated immigration reform and asylum system."

"BNHR calls for much-needed investments to establish a welcoming infrastructure at the border," said García, who proposed the establishment of new "Ellis Island welcoming centers" around the border to "provide the necessary services and legal support that asylum-seekers and refugees desperately need."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

A human rights group on Wednesday denounced Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for pulling "another political, inhumane stunt" by deploying National Guard troops to El Paso and "further militarizing the southern border, terrorizing border residents and vulnerable migrants."

The Border Network for Human Rights (BNHR) was referring to Abbott's decision to use "state resources to promote a racist, anti-refugee, xenophobic agenda" after Democratic El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser declared a state of emergency last Saturday in an effort to prevent unhoused asylum-seekers from freezing to death.

"Our country desperately needs a comprehensive and updated immigration reform and asylum system."

"The city of El Paso's declaration of emergency was an attempt to enable the city to access much-needed resources to help the arriving vulnerable migrants at the border," BNHR executive director Fernando Garcia said in a statement.

"For the past few days, our community and nation have witnessed children, women, and entire families sleeping on the streets, suffering from extremely harsh, cold weather," said Garcia. "Those images are a reflection of our broken and inhumane immigration system, fueled by our federal government's inaction in supporting nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and other entities who stand ready to welcome asylum-seekers."

El Paso Times reported that while Leeser had "long resisted issuing a state of emergency declaration... the sight of people on downtown streets with temperatures dipping below freezing" inspired his decision, which was made to allow the city to tap into the state's more abundant humanitarian and logistical resources.

"El Paso Deputy City Manager Mario D'Agostino said the state emergency declaration would give the city more flexibility in operating larger sheltering operations and provide additional transportation for arriving asylum-seekers," the newspaper reported. The city "requested additional personnel for feeding and housing operations, additional busing operations, and state law enforcement."

But Garcia noted that "rather than assisting in humanitarian and logistical support," Abbott is using Leeser's declaration "to feed into the racist, xenophobic, and white supremacist rhetoric of 'an invasion' by militarizing our city further and effectively imposing his illegal Operation Lone Star."

As The Texas Tribune, which has reported extensively on the right-wing governor's militarized border crackdown, explains:

Abbott launched Operation Lone Star to ramp up security along the Texas-Mexico border in March 2021, citing insufficient policies from the federal government. He announced that the state would deploy resources from the Department of Public Safety and the National Guard. The Texas Legislature dedicated nearly $2 billion toward the effort. But the operation has been mired in controversy; National Guard troops have called it a disaster, and migrants arrested on state trespassing charges have gotten caught in confused legal proceedings, their lawyers citing due-process violations.

Garcia said that BNHR is "outraged to learn of the arrival of the Texas National Guard... who have staged military vehicles and razor wire at the Rio Bravo." The organization demands "the immediate withdrawal" of soldiers from the area, he added, "and the halt of any immigration strategy that further militarizes our border."

When he announced the emergency declaration last Saturday, Leeser said that supplementary humanitarian aid would only become more necessary after Wednesday, when Title 42 expulsions were scheduled to end and as many as 6,000 daily apprehensions and street releases were expected.

However, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts on Monday granted a request from 19 GOP-led states to temporarily block the Biden administration from lifting the Title 42 public health order that has been weaponized to expedite the removal of asylum-seekers during the Covid-19 pandemic.

In its Tuesday filing, the Biden administration asked the high court to issue a final decision by Friday.

"The solution to the border situation has never been more evident," Garcia said Wednesday. "Our country desperately needs a comprehensive and updated immigration reform and asylum system."

"BNHR calls for much-needed investments to establish a welcoming infrastructure at the border," said Garcia, who proposed the establishment of new "Ellis Island welcoming centers" around the border to "provide the necessary services and legal support that asylum-seekers and refugees desperately need."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Kenny Stancil.

"Despicable." "Disgusting." "Egregious." "Terrifying."

"What a gross abuse of power for no apparent purpose than to harass law-abiding Texans that he's prejudiced against."

Those were some of the responses to reporting by The Washington Post on Wednesday that the office of Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sought to create a list of state residents who had changed their gender on driver's licenses and other Department of Public Safety (DPS) records.

"Need total number of changes from male to female and female to male for the last 24 months, broken down by month," the head of the DPS driver's license division wrote to colleagues on June 30, according to an email obtained via public records request. "We won't need DL/ID numbers at first but may need to have them later if we are required to manually look up documents."

As the newspaper detailed:

After more than 16,000 such instances were identified, DPS officials determined that a manual search would be needed to determine the reason for the changes, DPS spokesman Travis Considine told the Post in response to questions.

"A verbal request was received," he wrote in an email. "Ultimately, our team advised the AG's office the data requested neither exists nor could be accurately produced. Thus, no data of any kind was provided."

Asked who in Paxton's office had requested the records, he replied: "I cannot say."

While Paxton's office did not respond to requests for comment and public records obtained by the paper—entitled "AG Request Sex Change Data" and "AG data request"—did not indicate why his office sought the information, LGBTQ+ individuals and rights advocates are fearful, given the Texas GOP's "unrelenting assault on trans rights."

Last year, Texas lawmakers introduced over 40 anti-trans bills—more than any other state—with a focus on youth. GOP legislators have already signaled they plan to continue pushing such bills.

Meanwhile, Paxton in February released a nonbinding legal opinion claiming that gender-affirming care for minors—considered medically necessary by professional organizations including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medical Association—is child abuse. GOP Gov. Greg Abbott then ordered the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate child abuse claims filed against parents who may be providing their children with such care.

The Texas Supreme Court in May overturned a statewide injunction on procedural grounds but also concluded that Abbott did not have the authority to order the investigations. In response to another legal challenge filed by the ACLU and Lambda Legal, a Travis County district judge in September issued a second injunction blocking such probes for families that belong to the advocacy group PFLAG and those named in the suit.

The ACLU was among the organizations and individuals alarmed by the Post's new reporting. The group said that "this is an alarming attack on the privacy, safety, and dignity of transgender Texans. Trans people deserve to live free from persecution—in Texas and everywhere."

Human Rights Campaign (HRC) legal director Sarah Warbelow also weighed in with a statement:

For the LGBTQ+ community as a whole, but for transgender Americans in particular, today's story out of Texas is chilling. Weaponizing state agencies and their public records to pinpoint and single out transgender Texans is terrifying, albeit not shocking. Throughout 2022, Attorney General Paxton, along with Gov. Abbot, have stopped at nothing to attack the very existence of transgender youth and adults. This development shows how far they're willing to go in discriminating against transgender people. HRC stands with all members of the trans community in Texas who are living in an even higher state of emergency today, as we will continue to hold extremist officials accountable.

"This is terrifying. Government seeking this kind of information (for no known legal reason) is clearly intended to intimidate people," tweeted Jonathan Schwabish, a podcaster and senior fellow at the Urban Institute's Income and Benefits Policy Center.

James Slattery, a "recovering lawyer and agitator for voting rights" in Austin, similarly said: "This is disgusting: TX AG Ken Paxton tried to use driver's license data to compile a list of people in the state [who] are transgender. What a gross abuse of power for no apparent purpose than to harass law-abiding Texans that he's prejudiced against."

Texas-based digital strategist Sawyer Hackett asked, "What could he possibly need this info for—beyond harassment and persecution?"

"Trans Texans deserve better than to be policed and surveilled," asserted the advocacy group UltraViolet, adding that Paxton "is performing an egregious act of state-sanctioned violence—rounding up records of people who have changed their gender identities."

The Democratic Attorneys General Association declared that "Ken Paxton and Texas Republicans' targeted attacks on trans Texans are despicable. LGBTQIA+ Texans have the right to live without fear of their lives being scrutinized or put in jeopardy."

Some critics even drew comparisons to the Nazis:

"We're horrified to hear TX AG Paxton's office tried to seek detailed data on trans Texans," said the Congressional LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus. "Paxton and the Texas GOP have led effort after effort to attack transgender people. We must protect trans people who are being targeted by their state governments."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

Photograph Source: Office of the Speaker – Public Domain

Republican operatives such as former House Speaker Paul Ryan among others believe their party has a problem.  For Ryan it is Trump, for Republican Senator Mitt Romney, it is a lack of vision or bad messaging.  Other Republicans see the problem as a failed state nomination process that produces candidates out of touch with suburban voters.

All this may be correct but something more fundamental may be at root.  It is not the messaging but the actual message or vision that is the problem.  And it will grow as a problem into the future as the Republican Party faces an existential crisis in the coming years as its base is literally dying out.

America needs viable party competition.  There is no democracy in the world that is a one-party state.  The parties too must reflect majority preferences, tempered by respect for the rights of minorities.  But  to win elections and govern parties must build coalitions and form majorities.  This means they need to reflect majority preferences or face oblivion.

Yet Ryan confuses the symptom with the cause.  For Ryan, he sees Trump as the problem. Jettison the latter from the Republican Party and it can return to  “Reagan 2.0,” a party of limited government, deregulation, and low taxes.  For others, part of the solution to achieving roughly the same vision is changing the party nomination process such that Trump extremists do not win control.

But perhaps the real  problem is the message or the underlying public policies that  Ryan  advocates.   Even if a Reaganite set of public policies were where America once was  40 years ago, that is no longer the case.  The country currently finds broad majorities at odds with the policies of  what their vision of the Republican Party should be.

Every two years  since the early 1970s the National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago  performs the General Social Surveys.   The GSS  is arguably the most comprehensive survey on American public opinion in the country.  The most recent 2021 study is instructive on many scores.

Consider first regulation of the economy and the role of the government in society.  In 2021, 51% of those surveyed  believe taxes on the rich are too low or much too low.  Nearly 67% believe that those with higher incomes should pay a much larger share of their income in taxes than those with low incomes.

More than 57% believe the government has a responsibility to meet the needs of those who are sick, unemployed, or elderly.   More than 64% believe or strongly believe business profits are not fair.  More than 70% believe that the government should ensure wages  of low paying individuals increase as the economy grows and a similar 71% believe the income distribution in America is unfair  More than 55% favor more government regulation of the economy. Nearly three-quarters believe workers should  be represented on corporate boards of directors.

Additionally, 66% believe or strongly believe the government spends too little to ensure individuals are healthy.  When it comes to  protecting the environment and  improving education,  62% and 65% have similar views.

When it comes to social issues, nearly 69% believe abortion should be legal, although  with some qualifications.    Almost half at 46% believe  climate change is due to human activity—a response more popular than any other.  Three out of four favor permits  to own guns.  And 61% believe police treat Whites a lot fairer than Blacks.  Finally, 74% oppose opening  up public lands for development.

Across the board it is clear that majority opinion nationally favors a more activist government  to regulate the economy and business and to ensure that  the basic needs of individuals are met.  This is not laissez-faire Reaganism.  Moreover the stance on social issues such as abortion, guns, and the environment is not about do nothing when it comes to reproductive freedom, crime or safety, and climate change.  The vision articulated by Ryan  simply is out of touch where the majority of America is.  And it will become less popular over time.

As the Baby Boom and Silents exit the political scene and are replaced by the Millennials and Gen Z, this generational shift makes Reaganism 2.0 even more antiquated.  Surveys of the latter two generations even more strongly support the majoritarian preferences noted in the GSS.  As rural America depopulates, the base for the Republican Party  will wane.  Over time the more urban and suburban areas of the country will continue to grow. And these areas hold attitudes on issues consistent with the GSS results.

As I argue in my new book Trumpism:  American Politics in the Age of Politainment—the number one rule of politics is having a good narrative that  is forward and not backward looking. The Ryan message is retrograde and fails to appeal to an existing and emerging majority.

Demographics are not destiny but they do portend change.  The Democratic Party too faces existential problems but for the Republicans the problem is more pressing.

In 2012 after Mitt Romsey lost the presidency to Barack Obama the national Republican Party soul-searched and concluded it needed to change to reach out to women and people of color.  Trump’s ascendency  forestalled that.  The problem is not a messaging issue for the Republicans, it is a message and policy problem.  As with dinosaurs who failed to adapt and became extinct, the Republicans need to do the same.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Schultz.

In the aftermath of the 2022 midterm elections, analysts are wondering why the seemingly inevitable Republican wave did not materialize. As we sift through the surprising results, there is a common denominator among many of the progressive victories: ballot measures. All five ballot measures on abortion went for the pro-choice side, as Republicans and independents joined Democrats to expand and protect reproductive rights. In Nebraska and Nevada, voters overwhelmingly voted to increase their state's minimum wage, even as Republicans won big races in both states. And, South Dakota became the most recent Republican-controlled state to pass Medicaid expansion.

Republican legislators regularly introduce restrictive bills after their constituents approve progressive policies at the ballot box.

In state after state, midterm voters expressed their support for progressive policies through ballot measures. Yet while successful citizen-led ballot measures have led to progressive change in states across the country—and progressive leaders are already planning for measures that will be on the ballot during the 2024 election—access to the ballot measure process itself is not guaranteed.

For years, Republicans have been trying to subvert direct democracy and restrict access to ballot measures. In examining hundreds of ballot measure-related bills across the United States from 2017 through 2021, we found hundreds of instances of Republican legislators attempting to restrict ballot measure processes through higher petition signature thresholds, intensive petition circulator obligations, stringent election process requirements, and other restrictions. Even more significantly, we found that when Republicans hold a trifecta—controlling the governor's mansion and both houses of the legislature—legislators are much more likely to introduce bills that restrict the ballot measure process. Time and again, when Republicans hold power, they wield it to silence the will of the people by making it harder for citizens to pursue direct democracy.

These trends are even more alarming when put into context. Republican legislators regularly introduce restrictive bills after their constituents approve progressive policies at the ballot box—often by large margins. Missouri legislators introduced 74 bills that attacked direct democracy between 2017-2021, many introduced directly after Missourians voted for wildly popular ballot measures, like medical marijuana legalization and minimum wage increase measures. And, in Florida, the most aggressive legislative efforts followed on the heels of voters restoring the right to vote to Floridians with felony convictions in 2018, with lawmakers introducing several restrictive bills in 2019, 2020, and 2021.

Moreover, before the 2022 general election, Republicans attempted to subvert specific ballot measures, to overthrow the will of the people. For example, in late August, the Arizona Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision to invalidate a voting rights measure based on overwhelming challenges by conservatives—including those with ties to former President Trump—even though the initiative collected twice the number of required signatures. In Michigan, the Michigan Supreme Court had to step in after Republican members of the State Board of Canvassers refused to certify a pro-choice initiative and a voting rights initiative for placement on the ballot. And, Republicans are expected to push for additional restrictions to the ballot measure process in the coming months.

It is no secret why right-wing Republicans are working so hard to undermine direct democracy. Conservatives know their policy platform is deeply unpopular, so they must resort to structural impediments that allow the minority to rule. These efforts reflect a broader conservative goal—to deny the will of the people for the benefit of the few. Recent history shows that ballot measures are one of the most powerful tools Americans have to participate in our political system, and the GOP should be ashamed by their efforts to restrict this critical pillar of American democracy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Emma Olson Sharkey, Kentiya Orange, Carrie Olson-Manning.

The post Sex, the Culture Wars and a Republican Congress appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by David Rosen.

Photograph Source: Glenn Youngkin – CC BY 2.0

The Republican Glenn Youngkin, a political novice, became the 74th governor of the bellwether (“purple”) state of Virginia on 15 January 2022.

It soon became clear that Youngkin regarded the governorship as a stepping-stone to something greater, coy though Youngkin has been about his presidential ambitions. To some extent this tentativeness is understandable.

If Joe Biden wins a second term in 2024, it will be 2028 before Youngkin can make a run at the presidency. If a Republican wins in 2024, they will almost certainly run for reelection in 2028, which will delay a Youngkin presidential bid by another 4 years, that is, until 2032. So 2024 is probably the optimal date for a Youngkin pitch at the presidency.

The need to start campaigning for 2024 may explain why, his reticence about his intentions notwithstanding, Youngkin is spending a lot of time outside his state stumping for Republican candidates.

In the recent midterms, Youngkin campaigned for Republican gubernatorial candidates in 10 states–  Maine, Connecticut, New York, Michigan, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, Kansas, Wisconsin, and Arizona (the candidate here was Kari Lake). Every one of the 10– all but one on the party’s out of touch far-right– lost, but they received the consolation gift of a trademark Youngkin red fleece vest.

There is a joke on social media: “What is the difference between G_d and Glenn Youngkin? Answer: G_d is everywhere and Glenn Youngkin is everywhere but Virginia”.

Back in Virginia, the peripatetic Youngkin donated to 3 congressional candidates. Two lost, but received the solace of a Youngkin fleece vest like their losing out-of-state counterparts.

Youngkin has the comportment of a sociable and civil-minded country club Republican, but this belies his corporate background as the co-CEO of a ruthless and at times criminal asset-stripping outfit (the Carlyle Group), and the contentious policies espoused by the governor’s office.

Governor Youngkin’s unrelenting preoccupation has been with “wedge” cultural issues.

As becomes a Republican, Youngkin favours restricting abortion, but will only say his preference (for now) is for a 15-week ban, though his other statements on this issue indicate he wants a narrower time limit, probably as low as 6 weeks. The speculation is that Youngkin will wait until the 2023 Virginia elections to see if Republicans hold onto the House of Delegates and flip the state Senate before making his next move on abortion. There is little point in taking up a more radical position on abortion if any move by Youngkin is likely to stall in the general assembly and attract adverse publicity as a result.

Youngkin has also sought to downplay the considerable weight of Virginia’s difficult history where race is concerned. Two episodes come to mind here.

The first is the risible “snitch line” Youngkin set up for people to call in and rat on teachers whose teaching brought-up “divisive issues”. Youngkin, whose own children attend private schools, said this was to preempt the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Virginia’s schools. CRT is not taught in schools, so this was a blatant attempt to whip Youngkin’s ill-informed base into a benighted frenzy. The predicable then happened: hoaxers jammed the line with fictitious reports, so much so that it was taken down quietly in September.

The second was a crude attempt to whitewash the history and social studies curriculum in Virginia’s public-school system. Youngkin and his handlers refused to deny that this draft revision, which was promptly withdrawn after it had been rejected by the Department of Education, was outsourced to “educational services” provided by rightwing think-tanks and foundations.

The introduction to the botched draft said that the aim of the curriculum revamp is “to restore excellence, curiosity and excitement around teaching and learning history…. The standards will recognize the world impact of America’s quest for a ‘more perfect Union’ and the optimism, ideals and imagery captured by Ronald Reagan’s ‘shining city upon a hill’ speech…. Students will know our nation’s exceptional strengths, including individual innovation, moral character, ingenuity and adventure, while learning from terrible periods and actions in direct conflict with these ideals”.

These vacuous rhetorical flourishes with their overt political bias (“Reagan” being easily recognizable Republican code), downplayed slavery and the genocide of the first peoples—there is only one mention of the civil rights movement and a couple of sentences on slavery and racism (the draft maintained there were several causes for the Civil War apart from slavery). The draft also referred to Native Americans as “America’s first immigrants”.

Youngkin has also set out to make life difficult for the minuscule minority of Virginia’s trans school students. He has introduced a new school policy requiring students to use lavatories or play for sports teams in line with their biological sex and not their gender identity.

All these attempts to excite Republicans with Trumpian “hot button” issues are not likely to yield much for the crude opportunist Youngkin.

Trump’s star is being dimmed, and Ron DeSantis is making the running when it comes to claiming the Orange Man’s mantle. DeSantis is governor of a red state, and is not going to penalized for stealing Trump’s clothes in the way that Youngkin, governing a purple state, is likely to be.

This accounts for Youngkin’s propensity to speak out of both sides of his mouth when in Virginia, and to leave the rough stuff for his out-of-state campaigning.

So far Youngkin’s strategy (if it is that) has produced very little for him.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Kenneth Surin.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has intensified pressure on the Biden administration to give Ukraine a top-tier U.S. drone capable of firing four Hellfire missiles or eight Stinger munitions. The 16 senators, led by Iowa Republican Sen. Joni Ernst and West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin, called the Gray Eagle MQ-1C “the Ukrainian government’s highest-priority military equipment transfer request” of unmanned aerial systems and said it would have “the potential to drive the strategic course of the war in Ukraine’s favor.”

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Jeremy Scahill.

A House Republican from Pennsylvania said Sunday that Congress will intervene to stop a nationwide strike if rail companies and unions don't reach a contract agreement soon, a step that would likely force workers to accept a deal without any paid sick days.

Acknowledging that rail workers "have a very reasonable ask" for better benefits and wages as they continue to labor under a punishing scheduling system, Rep. Brian Kevin Fitzpatrick said in a Fox News appearance Sunday that "Congress will not let this strike happen, that's for sure."

"Tell your elected leaders to give railroad workers the sick time they need or let them strike."

"It would be devastating for our economy" Fitzpatrick added. "We'll get to a resolution one way or another."

Powerful industry groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Association of American Railroads have been pressuring Congress to step in after members of the largest rail union in the United States voted to reject a White House-brokered contract deal that rebuffed workers' push for at least 15 days of paid sick leave. The deal, touted by the Biden White House as a victory for workers and profitable rail companies, does not include a single paid sick day.

Under the Railway Labor Act of 1926, Congress has the authority to intervene in rail labor disputes—power it has used in the past. In September, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) blocked Republican legislation that would have forced rail workers to accept the inadequate contract recommendations of an emergency board convened by President Joe Biden.

The prospect of congressional intervention ahead of a potential strike on December 9 has angered rail workers who say it would let giant companies off the hook, allowing them to continue abusing their employees while raking in record profits. Rail workers are often forced to be on call 24/7—with minimal rest between long shifts—and are penalized for taking days off for doctor's appointments or health emergencies.

In June, a locomotive engineer died of a heart attack after he put off a doctor's visit when his employer BNSF—a rail giant owned by Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway—called him into work.

"When railroads refuse to give us sick time, what they are saying is their profits are worth more than their workers and the national economy," Ross Grooters, co-chair of Railroad Workers United, tweeted over the weekend. "Hold the railroads accountable. Tell your elected leaders to give railroad workers the sick time they need or let them strike."

Progressive lawmakers have also placed blame for the looming strike with large railroad companies, which have been gorging on their own stock, reporting huge profits, and enriching shareholders and executives while refusing to budge on workers' longstanding demands for basic quality-of-life benefits.

"The corporate greed never ends," Sanders wrote Sunday. "Last year, the rail industry made a record-breaking $20 billion in profits after cutting their workforce by 30% over the last six years. Meanwhile, rail workers have ZERO guaranteed paid sick days. Congress must stand with rail workers."

Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.), chair of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, said last week that he is "hoping the railroads will get reasonable."

"This is the 21st Century and to have skilled workers being denied sick leave, even unpaid sick leave, is unconscionable," DeFazio told Bloomberg Government. "Freight rail companies are watching their record profits, 'Oh my God, if we give people paid sick leave our stock might drop by a dollar.' Give me a break."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jake Johnson.

There is an understandable eagerness to celebrate that the Republican party failed to generate a “red wave,” and even experienced some major defeats, in this year’s election. Equally understandable is the inclination to seize on post-election Republican in-fighting as a hopeful sign of the party’s weakening. 

There is currently a blame game going on the right, and for perhaps the first time since 2016, some once-significant Republican leaders—former Governors Chris Christie and Larry Hogan, former House Speaker Paul Ryan, even Trump’s Attorney General William Barr—have called for a break with Donald Trump. Others, most notably former Vice President Mike Pence and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, have distanced themselves from Trump, positioning for possible runs in a 2024 presidential primary. The blame game is real. Equally real is in-fighting within the Republican Senate and House caucuses, especially the latter, where titular leaders Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy face challengers who are making real demands as a condition of future support—demands that will no doubt be met, for both McConnell and especially McCarthy are unprincipled cowards willing to do whatever is necessary for them to hold power.

This is all very real. And every fissure within the Republican Party is worth noting and—if possible—exploiting. But it would be a huge political and even moral mistake to exaggerate the importance of these intra-Republican differences. 

Every fissure within the Republican Party is worth noting and—if possible—exploiting. But it would be a huge political and even moral mistake to exaggerate the importance of these intra-Republican differences. 

It is tempting to believe that voters this November repudiated election denialism and an obsession with The Big Lie and registered a preference for “normality.” And some voters did do this in some settings, like Michigan. But a great many did not. Wisconsin voters returned Democratic Governor Tony Evers; but they also returned Republican majorities to both houses of the state legislature, and re-elected Ron Johnson, one of Trump’s strongest supporters, to the U.S. Senate. Texas voters re-elected far-right Governor Greg Abbott, and Florida voters re-elected even farther-right Governor Ron DeSantis, both of whom remain wedded to The Big Lie to this day, however much they might be out of favor with Trump, and however much their “accomplishments” extended beyond the re-litigation of 2020.

The voters who returned a majority of Republicans under the leadership of McCarthy, Steve Scalise, Elise Stefaniak, and Jim Jordan to the House surely did not repudiate election denialism. As CBS News observed: “In the next Congress, there are projected to be 156 GOP House members who have raised doubts about the validity of the 2020 election, an increase from the 147 GOP House members who, in January 2021, voted to object to the certification of the Electoral College.” Virtually every House Republican who voted against the certification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory on January 6, and then voted against any effort to investigate that insurrection, is returning to Congress. Indeed, they will be accompanied by some new members who actually participated in or at least actively supported the January 6 episode. As the Washington Post reports: “While the Republican Party suffered surprising losses in the midterms, including defeats of many who bought into Trump’s false election claims, the arrival of freshman lawmakers who had come to Washington as pro-Trump activists on that violent day underscores the extent to which the House Republican caucus remains a haven for election deniers.”

The House Republican leadership made very clear, long before the election, that if the party was returned to power, it would use this power to subject the Biden administration and even House Democrats to relentless investigation. And now that its control of the House in 2023 is assured, the same leaders have reiterated this promise. Kevin McCarthy, virtually certain to be the next Speaker of the House, has gone further, pledging to remove three high-profile Democrats—Reps. Adam Schiff, Eric Swalwell, and Ilhan Omar—from their important committee assignments in retaliation for Nancy Pelosi’s similar treatment of Marjorie Taylor-Greene in 2021. (Back in February 2021 Pelosi, when asked if she had concerns about a precedent being set, replied: “None, not at all . . . If any of our members threatened the safety of other members, we’d be the first ones to take them off a committee.” Now McCarthy will punish some of the Democrats’ most public defenders of democracy, while elevating neo-fascist Greene to a major role in the new Congress.)

Writing in The New Republic, Alex Shephard argues that “A New Republican Civil War is About to Begin,” explaining that “the GOP’s old guard is pinning their renaissance on a Ron DeSantis renaissance. But Donald Trump’s counterestablishment has beaten them once before.” Shepherd’s piece nicely outlines the sources of friction within the Republican party and the foolishness of counting out Trump. At the same time, the piece’s caption is misleading. For there really is no longer a GOP “old guard,” though there are some, like McConnell, who are old and whose loyalty to the party preceded Trump and has often been tested by him. The GOP is the party of Trumpism even if there are now others, beyond Trump, who now might vie for its leadership—or might ultimately refuse to vie for leadership, ceding it to the twice-impeached, disgraced former President who remains the most popular leader among Republican voters, currently holding a 30 point lead over his nearest rival, DeSantis.

Yascha Mounck writes in The Atlantic about “How Moderates Won the Midterms.” Yes, some fanatics were defeated. But who are the “moderates” among the current leaders of the Republican Party either inside of Congress or outside of it? It is true that a handful of pretty far-right Republicans who refused to embrace the January 6 insurrection, such as Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, won election. But these candidates are hardly “moderates”; Kemp’s support for the Senate candidacy of Herschel Walker furnishes clear proof of that. 

Perhaps the best clue to the meaning of the current recriminations among Republicans is contained in a recent Guardian piece entitled “Trump for 2024 would be ‘bad mistake,’ Republican says as blame game deepens.” The piece quotes an important Republican who recently vacated his House seat to run for the U.S. Senate: “It would be a bad mistake for the Republicans to have Donald Trump as their nominee in 2024. . . Donald Trump has proven himself to be dishonest, disloyal, incompetent, crude and a lot of other things that alienate so many independents and Republicans. Even a candidate who campaigns from his basement can beat him.”

These are powerful words . . . . spoken by Mo Brooks, until very recently one of Trump’s most fanatical supporters, who refused to concede Biden’s victory in 2020, and who spoke at Trump’s January 6 Ellipse rally, declaring “Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass.”

If ever there was a MAGA-inspired insurrectionist, it was Brooks, who entered the Alabama Senate race in 2021 with the blessing of Trump, only to run afoul of Trump’s ego, causing Trump to shift his support in the Republican primary to Big Lie proponent Katie Britt. Here is how Politico described the bitter battle that ensued between the two Republican candidates:

Even after Trump put his weight behind Britt in the runoff — and as public and internal polling showed Brooks’ prospects as weak — top conservative commentators like Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Mark Levin and Charlie Kirk declared their support for Brooks up to the final day of the campaign. Kirk, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Reps. Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Mark Green (R-Tenn.) and Chip Roy (R-Texas) and Arizona Republican Party chair Kelli Ward spent Monday night on a tele-town hall in support of Brooks, as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) also continued to lend their support.

. . . Throughout the runoff campaign, Britt continued to rack up her own endorsements from high profile Republicans, including Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Joni Ernst (R-Iowa). In the final weeks, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the GOP nominee for governor in Arkansas, and commentator Steve Cortes have also put out statements and videos in support of Britt’s campaign. That follows several other incumbent senators endorsing her earlier this year.

Britt proceeded to win the primary and then the Senate seat in November’s election. The first woman elected to an Alabama Senate seat, Britt’s victory hardly attests to the failure of Trump-aligned election denial. And Brooks’s very public denunciations of Trump hardly attest to ascendancy of Republican “old guard moderates”—unless the likes of Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, Charlie Kirk, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, Rand Paul and Marjorie Taylor-Greene are considered voices of moderation. Indeed, once Britt won the primary, these leaders of The Grand Old Party came together behind her, just as they have all more recently denounced the Justice Department investigation of Trump, rallying behind Jim Jordan’s demand for Congressional investigation of the well-known Critical Race Theorizing Marxist, Merrick Garland.

This is moderation? This signifies real disagreements within the Republican Party?

It is surely true that some Republican voters have lost their appetite for Trump. It is just as true that Trump remains by far the most popular leader among Republican voters, and that, just as in 2016, it is very possible for him to win the Republican nomination, and the presidency, even without the support of a majority of voters. But the more important truth is that should Trump fail to be the Republican nominee in 2024, the nominee is very likely to be another far-right Republican, someone, like Ron DeSantis, whose intelligence and proven autocratic savvy make him even more dangerous.

As Jelani Cobb has recently argued in The New Yorker, Trumpism has an enduring power that far exceeds Trump himself, and “the forces of intolerance, racism, and belligerence he harnessed in American politics will persist” regardless of whether Trump ever again runs for political office. 

These forces continue to circulate in civil society and the body politic, spreading lies and conspiracy theories, taking over school boards across the country, and waiting to be re-mobilized by Republican leaders in 2024. In the meantime, House Republicans will use their very real congressional powers to obstruct the Biden presidency, relentlessly attack the Democratic Party, and create chaos in the heart of the federal government.

Only a few short weeks and months ago it was widely understood by a wide range of commentators that the Republican Party is an explicitly illiberal party that most resembles “autocratic parties in Hungary and Turkey,” and is indeed an “antidemocracy party.”  No less an authority than retired U.S. Judge J. Michael Luttig, one of the premier Republican jurists in the country, said as much in public testimony before the House January 6 Committee, declaring that “one of our national political parties . . . the former President’s party cynically and embarrassingly rationalizes January 6,” refusing to commit itself to the Constitution and continuing to undermine the legitimacy of liberal democracy.

Yes, in this year’s election some of the most cynical and embarrassing Republican candidates were repudiated—though many were not. Yes, there is back-biting and in-fighting among Republican leaders jockeying for position as the next election cycle looms. But has the Republican Party really changed? Some might wish it has. But wishing does not make it so. And so the party continues to represent a clear and present danger to American democracy.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Jeffrey C. Isaac.

At first glance, the images below appear to be political maps. And in the most real sense of the word they are: the county-by-county differences shown by the map from Jeremy Ney's brilliant American Inequality Substack newsletter and the state-by-state screen shot from the CDC's NCHS below it.

Both reflect, in large part, decades of regional policy differences.

Long-lived parts of America have generally embraced progressive policies dating back to FDR's New Deal; the early-death parts of our country most often reflect conservative opposition to everything from the working-class wealth that unionization and higher minimum wages bring, to the availability of healthcare through Medicaid expansion.

2019 Life Expectancy by State — Source: National Center for Health Statistics of the Centers for Disease Control

To zoom out ever farther, since many conservative policies affect the entire country, consider what happened to the health of our nation in the 1980s with the Reagan Revolution. It's particularly visible when you compare the outcomes of our healthcare system with other developed countries.

Our World In Data lays it out starkly, as you will see below. One of the proudest accomplishments of the neoliberal Reagan Revolution was—following a bill Nixon signed in 1973 that opened the door—overturning laws in state-after-state that required both hospitals and health insurance companies to run as non-profits.

Reagan also, in 1983, ordered the DOJ, FTC, and SEC to essentially stop enforcing anti-trust laws dating back to the 1891 Sherman Act, resulting in the "Mergers & Acquisitions Mania" that characterized the 1980s and inspired the "greed is good" movie Wall Street starring Michael Douglas.

Health insurance companies, hospitals, and pharmaceutical manufacturers all morphed from regional and competitive organizations into giant, monopolistic predators.

Their profits exploded and our lifespans collapsed. Every year now, they spread hundreds of millions of dollars around Washington DC and state capitols to prevent regulation and maintain the status quo.

We are, quite literally, the only country in the world with a corrupt Supreme Court that has legalized this kind of a vicious attack on its citizens by a bought-off political party and their morbidly rich donors.

The Republicans on the Supreme Court call it "free speech" but every other nation in the world knows it's simply naked, criminal, political bribery.

As you can see above, the average American spends more than twice as much on healthcare every year as do the citizens of any other developed country in the world. And, as the Reagan Revolution really bit hard in the 1980s and 1990s, our average lifespans collapsed while corporate healthcare profits exploded.

And it's not just death by lack of healthcare that skews these statistics: if you're concerned about being murdered, it's also a good idea to avoid states run by conservatives.  As the centrist Third Way think tank noted last month:

• "In 2020, per capita murder rates were 40% higher in states won by Donald Trump than those won by Joe Biden.

• "8 of the 10 states with the highest murder rates in 2020 voted for the Republican presidential nominee in every election this century."

It's true of Red cities as well. Again, from Third Way:

"For example, Jacksonville, a city with a Republican mayor, had 128 more murders in 2020 than San Francisco, a city with a Democrat [sic] mayor, despite their comparable populations. 

"In fact, the homicide rate in Speaker Nancy Pelosi's San Francisco was half that of House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy's Bakersfield, a city with a Republican mayor that overwhelmingly voted for Trump."

And don't even think about having sex in Red states: they generally lead America in sexually transmitted diseases, presumably because most have outlawed teaching sex education in their public schools.

The five states with the highest rates of Chlamydia infections are Alaska, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and New Mexico. The highest rates of Gonorrhea are in Mississippi, Alaska, South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana. 

Speaking of schools, the states with the lowest educational attainment in the nation are entirely Red states. Ranked from terrible to absolutely worst, they are: Idaho, Indiana, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nevada, Louisiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, and West Virginia.

As giddy as Republicans are about "owning the libs," the citizens they govern pay a tragic price for the sport. They are literally dying as conservative politicians revel in their ability to cut taxes for the rich and suppress wages and healthcare for everybody else.

Republicans are about to take over the House of Representatives and begin their "investigations" into, well, anything that will distract from these terrible statistics. In the meantime, Americans, particularly those in Red states and counties, will continue to die at rates considered obscene by the standards of every other developed nation in the world.

Our next chance to put America back on track will be in two years, and we damn well better get ready.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Thom Hartmann.

Abortion rights protesters in Louisville, Ky., on June 24, 2022.

Photo: Jon Cherry/Getty Images

We got here because of the far right’s proven record of entrenching minority rule.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

Photo by Manny Becerra

For my new play, “The Conductor,” I’ve learned how Chinese immigrants from Shanghai and Beijing became pawns in a nationwide effort to destroy public education and suppress different interpretations of American history and culture. Proof that this was part of a national effort is that some of the same money that elected a far-right candidate in the Ohio primary, and supported the Gov. of Virginia, who won by defaming Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, contributed heavily to the recall of three San Francisco Board members, A Black, a Latina and a Samoan who wanted to give Blacks and Latino children a quality education.

The Blackboard member Alison Collins was singled out. She received death threats due to demagoguery from the press, including The New Republic, The New York Times, Fox News, and astroturf organizations financed by white nationalist billionaires who made their fortunes in the Tech. Industry. They insist that American education be Anglo Centric, which is a problem in the West. The West is heavily influenced by Spanish culture. The descendants of families whose lands were granted to them by Don Pablo Vincente de Sola, the last Spanish Governor of Alta California, are in court from time to time with claims that the invading Americans stole their land. The town where I live, Oakland, California, was owned by the Luis Maria Peralta family, who came to California in 1776. His family was granted 44,800 acres. “In 1851, Edson Adams, A. J. Moon, and Horace W. Carpentier, without paying the slightest regard to the rights of Peralta, the land owner, squatted on the Rancho San Antonio near the foot of the present Broadway street. They did not attempt to buy or lease any of the lands but seemed to have adopted the resolution of possessing themselves of it by means other than right and justice. They boldly assumed it was Government land and proceeded to parcel it among themselves. Other squatters soon followed them, and the lawful owners found themselves hemmed in on every side by the trespassers. The thousands of cattle belonging to Peralta, roaming among the oaks and feeding upon the plains, were stolen and killed.” After having stolen the Peralta’s land, the American Carpentier became mayor of Oakland.

Despite the attempt to eradicate the West’s Spanish culture, it remains a force.

Unlike the Anglo-Centric East, the West is bi-lingual and multicultural, with Spanish literature dating back to 1619 when Gaspar Perez de Villagra published his epic poem,”Historia de Nuevo Mexico.”Because of an enforced Anglo-Centric school curriculum, many Hispanic students and their parents, are unaware of this heritage.

Ignorant of American history, San Francisco students, whose parents are Chinese immigrants, taunted Black students with imagery from racist popular culture. Alison Collins, a New York University graduate, explained to these Chinese kids that the Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organization. The immigrant Chinese are also unaware of the history of atrocities committed against the Chinese since the Gold Rush, which includes the largest mass lynching in American history, which occurred in 1871 in Los Angeles, and the selling of Chinese girls as sex slaves as early as the 1850s. For now, Chinese Americans are members of the Democratic coalition. White Nationalists aim to rent this coalition.

Another big fear among the white settler population is an alliance between Black Americans and the group they call Hispanics, many culturally distinct groups lumped together by the media. Using the slaveholder’s “one-drop rule,” millions of “Hispanics” are Black. A Chinese American avant-garde led by writer Frank Chin opposes the Anglicization of Chinese Americans and their use as pawns by the white right, but unlike Black writers, who are part of the canon, their voices have been barely noticed. White Americans prefer their Chinese to be docile and agreeable. White writers coined the term” model minority,” stereotyping Asian Americans as “hard-working” and assimilable instead of idle non-achieving Blacks who resist assimilation.

The following are some recent comments by spokespersons for the settler population; all meant to depict Hispanic defections from the Democratic coalition:

Stanley Greenberg writes in The American Prospect, “The party is also losing support from working-class Blacks and Hispanics.”

A New York Times Op-ed by Mike Madrid added sarcastically, “While Democrats Debate’ Latinx,’ Latinos Head to the G.O.P.”

The Times’ David Brooks, who, with Bret Stephens, never misses an opportunity to denigrate Black people in their New York Times’ Op-eds, wrote:

“In this country, the phrase ‘people of color’ sometimes covers a wide array of different ethnic experiences. It contributes to a simplistic oppressor/oppressed narrative in which white Republicans are supposed to be on one side, and P.O.C. are supposed to be on the other.

That made it harder to anticipate that Trump would make the impressive gains among Hispanics in 2020 that he did.”

Though President Biden would not have won without the support of Black men and Black and Latino women, in 2020, some Black men favored Trump by eighteen percent. He’s seen as a “gangsta” and a “playa,” so some Hip Hop stars like Kanye West supported him. Rapper Luther Campbell of “2 Live Crew” said he attended a Trump party that was so “wild” that he left!

“Me, Mike Tyson, and Eddie Murphy were invited to his mansion in West Palm Beach one time. And he had all these women running around. It was so much going on to the point that I couldn’t take what was going in that room, and I left.”

Luke would not say exactly what occurred at the mansion, only offering, “It was some wild things going on. It was some things I can’t even say over this radio.”

These Blacks and Hispanic men, thirty-nine percent of whom voted for Trump in 2020, who view Trump as a blown-up Macho Man toy must not be acquainted with how authoritarian regimes work. They should look at how Trump’s heroes and dictators operate in the Philippines, Turkey, North Korea, and the Russian Federation. Trump wanted to shoot the members of Black Lives Matter demonstrations so that future protests may be met with live ammunition under a second Trump presidency. Those arrested under a second Trump administration might disappear, and the relatives who show up with photos of the missing might disappear. The police will have full powers to treat Black and Brown citizens in any way they desire, given members of the supreme court nominated by Trump recently ruled that the police aren’t required to read suspects their Miranda rights. Thousands of police show their hatred for Black and Hispanic Americans through posts on social media.

What else should we expect from Trump 2, a man who showed dominance over the Republican Party by his hand-picked candidate, J.D. Vance, winning Ohio’s primary? Merciless and lacking compassion, Vance is your ideal Republican candidate. When his mother needed help, he wrote in his book Hillbilly Elegy “J.D. visits his mother in Middletown. At his time in the story, she is homeless but sleeping in a decrepit hotel. J.D. contemplates his mother’s situation, his situation, and his Christian faith. He also thinks about the parent-child relationship, even though he remained emotionally detached from his mother. He decides not to help her financially.” What other goodies can we expect from Trump 2? This man wanted to lead an armed insurrection against the government on Jan. 6, 2021.

Junior vigilantes encouraged by white nationalist hero, Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with automatic weapons, will be hunting for left-wing demonstrators. They might invade Black neighborhoods to murder, rape, and pillage, which was the habit of white mobs during the 19th and 20th centuries. Given the fratricidal mass extinction event among young Black males resulting from Reagan’s administration giving the Contras the green light to market crack in our neighborhoods, who would be left to defend these settlements?

Those Hispanic males attracted to Trump’s phony Strongman posturing are probably unaware that one million Hispanics were deported under the Herbert Hoover administration, whether they were American citizens or not. Hoover blamed Mexican Americans for the Depression and accused them of taking American jobs.

“Working-class Blacks and Hispanics for the G.O.P.?” You can forget about unions, and strikes will be met with lethal force. You can forget about The Bill of Rights. If some Black and Brown men go over to Trump, they will join most Gentile white women already there. They voted for Trump twice, choosing race over gender.

They succumbed to Trump’s promise that he’d save them from rapists pouring across the Mexican border-Juan Horton- when they’re more likely to be raped by an acquaintance. They are suckers for a Republican version of the protection racket, and the fact that white women’s vote for Trump led to Trump judges overturning Roe Vs. Wade was not mentioned by T.V. commentators.

The reaction to the slaughter of Hispanic children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, by the Republican Governor, shows that the Governor and his party are more loyal to the gun lobby than devoted to the safety of Hispanic children.

Will this dissuade some Hispanics from voting for Republicans?

Maybe not. Two leaders of white nationalist groups are Hispanics. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a Cuban American, is the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right fascist group that led the attack on the Capitol. The founder of another white nationalist group, the Groypers, is Nicholas Joesph Fuentes. Even though thousands of immigrant children claim that they have been sexually molested in detention camps, and even though

The Republican party is suppressing the Hispanic vote in Texas, the Hispanic vote is trending more toward the Republican Party.

I solicited the views of three influential Hispanic authors about why some Hispanic voters are going Republican. Historian Paul Ortiz says that those who migrated to the United States in the early part of the 20th Century harbor racist and classist attitudes about recent arrivals from Central America.” So like, I have a lot of elders who, you know, they’re, you know, my, so my grandparents, you know, literally what Mexico, 1914. Revolution, they all fought in the revolution. And so when they got here, I mean, they were screwed over terribly and, and very few of that generation ever became citizens. And so I have elders, my father’s brothers who are pretty racist about immigrants, even Mexicans. They inherit the racism brought by the Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch empires, and those empires were built upon the idea of racial prejudice.But at the same time,Mexico, Chile and The Dominican Republic have anti-racist traditions as well.

Alejandro Murgia is a leading Latinx poet and filmmaker. He is a former poet laureate of San Francisco.

One: Latinos tend to be very patriotic and very religious. Therefore, they can be super-patriots, stand up for the flag, the war, etc., to prove that they belong. Religiously—they have affinity with anti-abortion groups, hence the right-wing appeal as well as with El Trompudo, as he’s known on my block, because he too is anti-abortion.

Two: There’s that old immigrant versus new immigrant prejudice, though that doesn’t apply if you think in a continental way. But everybody knows that old prejudice, the F.O.B. target, as ridicule and subject to violence, runs across all immigrant communities. There’s also racism—the refugees at the border are dark, foreign-looking, and sometimes don’t even speak Spanish but an indigenous language. A Latino on this side of the border, one that’s already very assimilated, might say—they don’t look like me. I’m going to be anti-immigrant (just like trumpism). I’m an American—I don’t even call myself Mexican, or,_________fill in the blank with your favorite country.

And then there’s admiring the strong man, tough guy posture, and often, sadly enough, disenfranchised people, the poor, those with little in their lives, including hope, see the so called powerful and want to emulate them, and believe that by following that flag, they will become like them. The truly sad part is that El Trumpudo doesn’t care tres cacahuates for them, so they live in an illusion that they are part of something bigger than themselves, but they’re just the sawdust the horses of the powerful trample on.

As the U.S. Hispanic population grows, many of the residents that were born here or have been raised here have assimilated the English language, customs & values and in U.S. Census Surveys, 60% of those born in the U.S. self-identify as “White-Hispanics”. As for the Mexican American population, particularly in the Border States of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, history reflects their indigenous/native roots, their Mexican heritage, Cultura de La Raza.

Although the majority of the Hispanic voters vote for Democrats, a number of them have chosen to elect Republican candidates, reflecting that party’s appeal to elders that distrust the Democrats, due to disinformation, that they veer left or Socialist because of “The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live in South Vargas reply arrived two days after” the worst human smuggling event in United States history.”

53 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico were found baked alive as they entered Texas, a state that invading slaveholders declared after they overthrew the Mexican abolitionist government.

Yet it’s the proslavery invaders who are honored in American textbooks.

The British taught colonizers that the way to maintain control is to divide and conquer. The British brought this strategy to North America- a strategy that was used successfully against Native Americans. It still works.

Ishmael Reed’s second jazz album, “Hands of Grace” has been released by Reading group. Click here for a sample. 

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Ishmael Reed.

A MAGA "patriot" broke into the home of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi in order to kidnap her, break her kneecaps, and perhaps beat her to death with a hammer.

Since 2017, when Trump took office, threats against members of Congress have increased tenfold. And actual incidents of far-right terrorist activities have skyrocketed.

When he didn't find her, he fractured the skull of her 82-year-old husband. "Where's Nancy? Where's Nancy?" the attacker demanded of Pelosi's husband, echoing the chant of the January 6 insurrectionists who sought to lynch Pelosi.

Echoing him, Republican Marjorie Taylor Green "liked" a Facebook comment that "a bullet to the head would be quicker" than removing Pelosi through elections.

Republicans have devoted $40 million to ads that demonize Nancy Pelosi in terms far beyond political disagreement. Little wonder someone took these attacks seriously and sought to kill her.

Republican leaders are responding with more conspiracy theories or, at best, feeble denunciations. "There's no place for violence," said the Republican governors of Virginia and Maryland.

In reality, the GOP has plenty of room for violence. Indeed, Trump's Republican Party has become the party of violence, glorifying and benefiting from threats, intimidation, and force.

Violent groups like the Proud Boys were among Trump's most reliable storm troopers at the Capitol insurrection. Heavily armed racist "militias" act as armed auxiliaries for state Republican Parties, seeking to intimidate legislators, election officials, and voters with armed demonstrations.

Republican leaders denounce Democrats as enemies of the people who hate and want to destroy America. They deride Democrats as "radical" leftists, opponents of God and Christianity, and even as pedophiles and child traffickers who promote the "grooming" of children for sexual abuse.

By early 2021, a majority of Republican voters believed "The traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it." More than a third believed "it may be necessary at some point soon for citizens to take up arms against the government." Almost one in five Republican men consider violence justifiable "right now."

Since 2017, when Trump took office, threats against members of Congress have increased tenfold. And actual incidents of far-right terrorist activities have skyrocketed.

Armed MAGA protestors picketed the homes of secretaries of state who declined to overturn voting results after 2020—some even broke into the homes of officials' relatives and threatened sexual violence. Still others tried to make a "citizen's arrest" of election workers.

Those who administer elections have endured two years of terroristic threats from Trump supporters ("you and your family will be killed very slowly," one said), and many have resigned.

The Republican Party is central to these developments. The Republican National Committee calls the murderous January 6 insurrection "legitimate political discourse" and decries any investigation of the assault as the "persecution of ordinary citizens."

Meanwhile Republican candidates glorify and model the political use of guns. Hundreds of Republican ads feature candidates brandishing and shooting assault weapons, with one declaring "open season" on opponents and dedicating AR-15s to the "fight against tyranny and evil."

Of course, the GOP also has nonviolent plans to thwart the will of the people should voters reject them, such as electing secretaries of state prepared to refuse to certify outcomes they don't like. But such efforts may well be augmented by guns.

In 1863, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "Among free men, there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet." Today's Republican Party is dedicated to proving Abe wrong.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Mitchell Zimmerman.

The Republican Party's regressive policies are not just unpopular, but a new study out Wednesday suggests they are also deadly to those who live under them.

Working-age mortality rates have been rising for decades across the United States, but premature deaths are more pronounced in states where "conservative" policies predominate and less common in states that have adopted more "liberal" policies, according to peer-reviewed research published in PLOS ONE.

"If we don't have the proper regulations in place to protect people, then what happens is that they could be exploited."

Policies that "expand state power for economic regulation and redistribution, protect the rights of marginalized groups, or restrict state power to punish deviant behavior" were defined by the study's authors as "liberal," while those with opposite aims were deemed "conservative."

For eight policy domains—criminal justice, marijuana, environment, gun safety, health and welfare, private labor, economic taxes, and tobacco taxes—the authors scored state-level measures enacted from 1999 to 2019 on a 0-to-1 continuum, with zero representing the maximum conservative score and one the maximum liberal score.

Using annual data from the National Vital Statistics System, the authors calculated state-level age-adjusted mortality rates during the same time period for deaths from all causes and from cardiovascular disease (CVD), alcohol-induced causes, suicide, and drug poisoning among adults aged 25 to 64.

When they merged the data on working-age mortality with data on state policy contexts, the authors found that liberal policies were associated with fewer early deaths among 25- to 64-year-olds between 1999 and 2019.

"Changing all policy domains in all states to a fully liberal orientation might have saved 171,030 lives in 2019," the researchers estimate, "while changing them to a fully conservative orientation might have cost 217,635 lives."

Study co-author Dr. Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University, told USA Today: "As an academic who does scientific research, I studiously avoided talking about politics in my professional work... But the data are pointing us to that as a determinant of health."

Even after controlling for state-specific environmental conditions and demographic characteristics, the authors found that states that invested more in public education and economic security had lower working-age mortality rates than states that gutted workers' rights, environmental regulations, and access to healthcare, including abortion.

"If a state policymaker were to say to me, 'it's unfair to criticize my state because I have a low-educated, low-income population,' I would ask them, 'why do you have a low-educated, low-income population?'" lead study author Jennifer Karas Montez, a professor of sociology at Syracuse University, told USA Today. "It's because of your policy environment."

Demonstrating how state policy contexts influence individual behaviors associated with premature deaths, researchers observed "especially strong associations... between certain domains and specific causes of death: between the gun safety domain and suicide mortality among men, between the labor domain and alcohol-induced mortality, and between both the economic tax and tobacco tax domains and CVD mortality."

"If a state policymaker were to say to me, 'it's unfair to criticize my state because I have a low-educated, low-income population,' I would ask them, 'why do you have a low-educated, low-income population?'"