TUBERVILLE SEN
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DUMBEST GUY IN SENATE? PHOBE? SHARIA
many ppl saying trumpism will survive trump
EVANG?
somewhat neglected
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primary on coup
trump coup?! substack
jack smith phone tap bs 10 25
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AN 10 26
The Alabama Supreme Court ruled Friday on whether the courts can address Sen. Tommy Tuberville's Florida vs. Alabama residency.
First, the court did not decide whether Tuberville met the residency requirements. It used a workaround and upheld the lower court's dismissal of the case.
AL.com reported that the issue was whether courts could enforce the law that requires a candidate to have a certain number of years of residency in the state before running for governor. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that it lacks jurisdiction to enforce the law and that political parties are responsible for enforcing it.
“Today’s decision opens the door to ineligible candidates, including non-U.S. citizens, to seek elected office so long as the political parties fail to do their jobs in ensuring that their nominees comply with the Constitution,” said Barry Ragsdale, the attorney who filed the lawsuit.
“The statutory language is expressly limited to ‘any proceeding for ascertaining the legality, conduct, or results of any election’ or ‘any injunction, process, or order from any judge or court, whereby the results of any election are sought to be inquired into, questioned, or affected, or whereby any certificate of election is sought to be inquired into or questioned,’” the appeal brief said ahead of the arguments. “Appellants challenge only Tuberville’s constitutional eligibility to now serve as the certified nominee — which presumes that the results of the primary are valid and correct.”
Tuberville argued that the courts have no role in deciding whether he meets the constitutional legal requirements. The Alabama Republican Party already decided that he had lived in the state long enough.
In June, the Tuberville campaign released new documents to prove his residency, but it inadvertently exposed him to two potential charges. To prove he was an Alabama resident, his team recently produced seven years of tax documentation and property tax records. But it raised further questions about Tuberville's voting record.
“Our decisions in such cases have generally adhered to the rule that a primary-election contest brought under the primary-election contest statutes is the exclusive method authorized by law to challenge a party nominee's qualification for office before the general election," the judges wrote.
“Additionally, there is no statutory right to appeal a committee's decision to the circuit court or to this Court," they added.
It was the key piece of the ruling since the state's GOP had already decided he could be considered a qualified "resident."
Read the ruling here.
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an 9 26
Tuberville says he avoids reading to maintain his 'own opinion'
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RWW
08/21/2026
by
Right-wing politicians and pundits are intensifying their appeals to anti-Muslim bigotry in an apparent bid to solidify and energize the Christian Nationalist base of the Republican Party as polls show the party’s fortunes fading as we head toward the fall midterm elections.
While last year’s election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani gave bigots a big new target, right-wing demonization of American Muslims is nothing new. For years, religious-right leaders have undermined their posturing as champions of religious liberty by calling for discrimination against Muslims. Hard-core Christian Nationalists like Doug Wilson, invited by Pete Hegseth to preach at the Pentagon, does not believe Muslims or other non-Christians should be allowed to worship publicly or hold public office.
Sometimes religious-right leaders justify their hypocrisy by falsely claiming that the First Amendment was intended only to protect Christians. Sometimes they do so by falsely claiming that Islam—the second biggest religion in the world—is not even a religion, a fiction that some Republican legislators in Texas are scheming to put into law.
One of this year’s Republican strategies is fomenting fear and anger about the supposed threat that Sharia law is on the verge of replacing the U.S. Constitution—even though American Muslims represent well under two percent of the population.
One energetic practitioner of the Sharia-scare strategy is U.S. Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL). “Islamists are RIGGING our elections and planning their takeover of America,” screams a bold-face line in a recent email raising money for Tuberville and the Republican National Committee—with no evidence whatsoever to justify such a claim. It goes on:
Radical Islamists have infiltrated every corner of our country. They are in our government, our schools, and our communities. They are moving forward with their plan to take over America.
And unless you take a stand right now, they will be one step closer to eliminating our Constitution and replacing it with Sharia Law. …
The future of America is at stake.
It’s up to us to end the chaos right now before these Islamists change “In God We Trust” to “In Allah We Trust.”
Not over my dead body.
A different Tuberville-RNC email sent this week puts a harder partisan spin on the fearmongering:
The Democrats are doing it right under our noses.
They’re letting Sharia Law take root on American soil. Right Now. …
This is the red line.
We BAN Sharia Law today, or our children will live under it tomorrow.
MAGA religious leaders like Trump-promoting pastor Lorenzo Sewell are all too eager to lend a hand. The energetically pro-Trump Pentecostal-oriented outlet Charisma on Friday promoted a made-for-social-media tirade Sewell delivered at the Dearborn City Council earlier this week.
“America, we have lost this city,” Sewell shouted. “This is a city that is no longer up under American laws. We are up under Sharia law. We will not have it anymore. Enough is enough.”
“We are not a nation of Muslims,” Sewell yelled. “We are a nation of Christians. We are one nation under God, indivisible—the God of the Bible, the God of the Lord Jesus Christ. That’s the God in whom we serve.”
Sewell recently hosted and prayed over far-right provocateur and violent Jan. 6 rioter Jake Lang, who is on a “crusade” against American Muslims. Lang who told Sewell’s congregation that Muslims are “mongrel Third Worlders” who are “multiplying like cockroaches.” Said Sewell, “I love you, man.”
In another video Sewell posted this week, the pastor embraces Lang, who asserts that Islam is not a religion but “an insidious parasitical political movement.” Sewell urged Lang to promote an anti-Muslim rally he said he is planning to hold in New York City on the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks that, Lang said, “the Muslims did on our people.”
Earlier this year, Lang was captured on video protesting outside AIPAC and declaring, “White Christian men are not going to sit around while you turn our children into a bunch of n****r lovers.”
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AN 7 26
'Can’t prove that': Critics howl as Fox News shuts down a Tuberville lie
an 7 26
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AN 3 26
President Donald Trump’s administration is allowing prediction markets to gamble on war, prompting one conservative critic to describe the practice as “satanic.”
“Like dogfighting, gambling on war is the sort of hobby that is best described in simple, direct moral terms,” Joe Perticone of The Bulwark wrote on Thursday. “(‘Satanic’ was the one that came to my mind.) But I wanted to pose the question about regulating or banning this industry to some of the lawmakers who are familiar with prediction markets.”
After Kalshi CEO Tarek Mansour recently argued Americans should be able to “financialize everything and create a tradable asset out of any difference of opinion,” Perticone interviewed members of Congress about regulating or even banning the practice of gambling on war.
“Polymarket. Kalshi. I love ’em!” Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) told Perticone “before I could finish my question.” The journalist added that when he asked Tuberville if “it’s good for society to be gambling on events tied to war and military engagements,” the senator changed his tune.
“Oh, well, I didn’t know they were doing that,” Tuberville told Perticone. “Well, if it’s legal, I guess you can do it. I wouldn’t do it. But everybody’s got their own opinion on that.”
By contrast Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) accused the Trump White House of using their insider information to profit on the prediction markets about the Iran war.
“To me, it’s pretty clear there were people inside the White House who were making bets on Friday that war would start on Saturday,” Murphy told Perticone. “That particular bet—that war will occur within twenty-four hours—was not a normal bet that was being made on Polymarket. It was made on one day, Friday, by an unusually high number of people.”
Murphy added, “Unquestionably, that is people at the White House or friends of the White House. So the Iran war is a disaster on its merits, but it is facilitating a new kind of corruption in the White House in which people are making money through Polymarket and Kalshi on war.” For this reason, the senator is drafting a ban on prediction markets gambling on government activity with “some exceptions for bond markets and financial markets.” At the same time, “Murphy pointed out that regulating and restricting the prediction markets will probably be an uphill battle, given how lucrative they seem to have been for administration insiders.”
“Obviously given that it looks like Trump’s crowd is making money on these prediction markets, Republicans are gonna react as if it’s an attack on them,” Murphy told Perticone. “It’s not. This would be really awful even under a Democratic president.”
Similar to Murphy, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told Perticone “the concept is predatory at its very core.”
“I think it’s very unhealthy, and I worry that these markets are not only speculative, but that there are insiders who may be manipulating them or manipulating the outcomes,” Warren told Perticone. “If this were an SEC-regulated market, there would be an automatic investigation into every one of those bets [on U.S. foreign policy]. But when the market is unregulated, insiders have free rein to manipulate it however they want.”
Earlier this week, the ongoing schism between Trump supporters over the war in Iran continued in earnest, with Trump supporter and influencer Laura Loomer sparring on X with former congresswoman and Trump critic, Marjorie Taylor Greene.
"This b—— is celebrating the death of American military members and thanking their families for their blood sacrifice,” Greene wrote of Loomer on Sunday. “But this is who Trump takes late night calls from and laps up her praise and worship. … And now Americans are once again coming home in flag draped coffins from another stupid pointless foreign war for foreign regime change on behalf of Israel.”
In response Loomer asked, "How much money are you making off of Muslims?"
Indeed, people in the Trump administration often seem not to be on the same page about whether the Iran action even constitutes a war. Appearing on CNN Monday with host Kasie Hunt, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Ok.) — who later that week was tapped as Trump’s new Homeland Security Secretary — insisted that Trump’s actions in Iran were not a war and had to be publicly corrected.
“This isn't a war, we haven't declared war. Everybody wants to say,” Mullin told Hunt. The CNN host then showed a clip of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth saying earlier that day that “we set the terms of this war from start to finish. We didn't start this war. But under President Trump, we are finishing it.”
Mullin responded by saying, “What he declared on us was war — meaning the Ayatollah declared war on us. We are not at war with the Iranian people. The Ayatollah declared war on us, we've already taken him out, and now we're eliminating the threat."
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mma
Laura Loomer pitches banning Muslims from running for office to members of Congress
Loomer also pressed representatives on her show about stripping Muslims of religious protections
Written by Reed McMaster
Published 11/07/25
Far-right influencer Laura Loomer has had an unusual amount of power over staffing and foreign policy decisions in the current Trump administration. Now, she is promoting anti-Muslim bills and pressuring congresspeople to strip Muslim people of their civil rights including the ability to hold office and religious protections.
Loomer has directly influenced the Trump administration's staffing and foreign policy decisions — now, she’s trying to do the same with Congress
- Loomer successfully advocated for U.S. foreign policy shifts, including the cancellation of visas for children seeking medical care. She called children from Gaza, some seeking prosthetic replacements for amputated limbs, “Islamic invaders.” Marco Rubio's State Department later announced, “All visitor visas for individuals from Gaza are being stopped while we conduct a full and thorough review of the process.” The Guardian, [8/16/25]
- :{Loomer reportedly met with President Donald Trump and pushed him to oust several national security officials.The next day, three members of the National Security Council were fired. Axios, [4/3/25]
- Sanctions were lifted on genocide-denying Bosnian politician Milorad Dodik after a push by Loomer and other conservative influencers. Loomer posted on social media, “Milorad Dodik @MiloradDodik of the Republika Srpska is enduring ruthless political attacks from a coalition of Muslims and globalists. These attacks are occurring as Dodik stands firm as a dedicated supporter of President Trump and as a defender of Western values.” New York Times, [10/29/25; Twitter/X, 10/23/25; NPR, 1/8/22]
- After interviewing Rep. Brandon Gill (R-TX), Loomer noted her plans to platform representatives that “are pushing back against Sharia law” and the “Islamification of America.” Adding, “I wanna be able to support Republicans and, you know, give them an audience and help support the campaigns of representatives that are actually fighting for America first, fighting to protect our country from an Islamic takeover.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/30/25]
- ## Loomer has a long history of anti-Muslim bigotry
- Loomer has described herself as a “proud islamophobe” and called Muslims “savages f**king everything up for everyone.” In just one among many moments of her anti-Muslim bigotry, Loomer suggested in a lengthy Twitter tirade following a 2017 terror attack in New York City that “we should never let another Muslim into the civilized world.” Right Wing Watch, [11/1/17; The New York Times, 10/31/17; Media Matters, 8/14/24]
- On her show, Loomer advocated for removing American citizenship from all Muslims who immigrated to the United States after 2008. She claimed, “I think that they need to denaturalize all the Muslims that came into our country under Obama and since Obama.” Loomer added, “Muslims. People who come to this country to become citizens to destroy it. Exactly. That's what they do.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/28/25]
- ## Loomer asked multiple members of Congress if they agreed with her view that Muslims should be barred from elected office
- Loomer asked Rep. Randy Fine (R-FL) if he also believed that Muslims should not be allowed to hold elected office. She asked, “The only people who have refused to take their oath of office on the Bible and the Constitution is every single Muslim who has ever served in the United States Congress. Andre Carson, Keith Ellison, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, all of them have refused to take their oath of office on the Bible and The United States Constitution. So, do you agree with me that it should be illegal for Muslims to hold political office in our country?” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/18/25]
- Fine admitted he wasn't sure how you could “ban a religion” from office but suggested instead that only “natural born” citizens should be able to hold congressional office. ”I don't know how you can ban a religion," he stated, adding, “I think the solution to a lot of this is to consider whether you should have to be a natural born citizen in order to be elected to Congress.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/18/25]
- When Loomer pushed Rep. Andy Ogles (R-TN) about potentially banning Muslims from elected office, she said, “That's personally what I think needs to happen.” She asked Ogles, “Why is the Republican party not doing enough to signal to these Muslims who are now, all of a sudden, running for positions all across our country?” She added, “What can be done to stop this? I mean, do we need to ban Muslims from running for office in our country? That's personally what I think needs to happen.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/28/25]
- In response, Ogles noted that Republicans would run into problems with constitutional law if they attempted to ban Muslims from elected office. He stated, “I don't know that there's anything that we could do that wouldn't fly in the, kind of the face of constitutional law.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/28/25]
- Loomer asked Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) if he supported Muslims being allowed to serve in the United States Congress, saying, “I personally don't." She questioned, “Do you think that Muslims should be allowed to serve in the United States Congress, whether that be in the House of Representatives, in the Senate? Do you think that Muslims should be allowed to hold elected office in our country? I personally don't.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/21/25]
- Tuberville stated there's no reason to ban Muslims from elected office as long as they “assimilate.” He added, “If they do that, I don't think we have any right to say no. I really don't.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/21/25]
- ## Loomer pushed members of Congress to remove religious protections for Muslims and stop treating Islam as a religion
- Loomer told Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) that Republicans in Congress need to recognize that Islam is “not a religion.” She claimed, “You can't coexist with Islam, and it's time for lawmakers like yourself and others to recognize the fact that Islam is not a religion, right?” Loomer continued, “We have to recognize that Islam is not practiced as a religion in the 56 Muslim countries. It is practiced as a legal code and a political system.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/23/25]
- Loomer also asked Fine, “Do you think that it's time that we strip Muslims of their so-called religious identity and religious protection here in America?” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/18/25]
- Fine suggested the “No Sharia Act,” his legislation which “prohibits the application of Sharia in the United States where it would violate constitutional rights,” would effectively strip Muslims of their religious identity. He claimed, “I think that's part of the purpose of the No Sharia Act, and that's what it does. It says the political ideology part of Islam is not coming to our country.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/18/25; Office of Rep. Randy Fine, 9/25/25]
- ## Loomer wanted Rep. Chip Roy's (R-TX) proposed anti-Muslim bill to create a total Muslim travel ban
- Loomer asked Roy if his “Preserving A Sharia-Free America Act,” which would ban anyone who adheres to Sharia law from entering the country, would serve as a travel ban, accusing all Muslims of being “Sharia adherent.” She said, “Since it would be the duty of every devout practicing Muslim to be Sharia adherent, doesn't that then mean that your legislation is just a full blown Muslim travel ban? Which is, in my opinion, what we really need in this country.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/23/25; Office of Rep. Chip Roy, 10/8/25]
- Roy suggested that his “Preserving A Sharia-Free America Act” could hypothetically ban all Muslims from entering the country if all Muslims are “Sharia adherent” like Loomer claims. He stated, “I don't think we should import people who subscribe to that. And so to the extent that that's true for every single person who's adhering to Islam, then so be it.” Rumble, *Loomer Unleashed*, [10/23/25]
//
11/03/25 3:57 PM EST
10/24/25 1:56 PM EDT
10/23/25
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AN 10 25
After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Republican then-President George W. Bush made it clear that he didn't blame Islam in general for al-Qaeda's violence. Bush described Islam as a "great religion," drawing a clear distinction between non-violent Muslims and Islamist terrorism.
But fear-mongering over Islamist "Shariah law" is common on the far right. Former Rep. Michelle Bachman (R-Minnesota) was obsessed with "Shariah law" during Barack Obama's presidency, and according to MSNBC's Steve Benen, this obsession persists among MAGA Republicans in 2025.
In his October 14 column, Benen explains, "Younger readers might not be aware of this, but between 2011 and 2015, the threat of 'creeping Sharia law' became quite common in far-right circles, before eventually getting picked up by some Republicans eager to score points with the most rabid elements of the GOP base. Newt Gingrich, for example, included an anti-Sharia provisions in his 2012 presidential platform."
Benen continues, "The basic idea behind this paranoid nonsense was that Americans needed to fear the demise of the separation of church and state, which would give way to the imposition of Islamic rules on the public against Americans’ will. State-sanctioned Sharia law did not and does not exist — at least not in this country — and the idea that government officials would impose Sharia on the populace was obviously silly. But at the time, too many Republicans and their allies took all of this quite seriously, as part of a bizarre campaign to scare people and turn Muslim Americans into a threat in need of government action."
The "Rachel Maddow Show" producer cites Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Alabama), and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) as some of the MAGA Republicans who are trying to scare their voters by claiming, without evidence, that "Shariah law" is making inroads in the United States.
"The fact that this anti-Sharia nonsense is apparently back suggests that the GOP's existing list of boogeymen isn't delivering the kind of results the party wants to see," Benen argues. "So at least some Republicans are turning back the clock, pointing anew to an old threat that still does not exist."
*Steve Benen's full MSNBC column is available at this link.*
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10/09/2025
by
- Angry that Bad Bunny has been chosen to perform at the Super Bowl, Turning Point USA will be hosting an alternate "All-American Halftime Show."
- Racist far-right commentator Isabella Moody is desperately trying to get a position as a host of the "Her Take" podcast.
- Sen. Tommy Tuberville responds to those who are upset that "Israel [is] killing all these innocent people in Gaza": "What about the ten thousands Christians that have been killed this year in Nigeria by Islamic terrorists?"
- Nick Fuentes declares that "if you're not Catholic, you're going to Hell": "Catholics are Christians, protestants are heretics."
- Finally, Joel Webbon says that "if you fire into a crowd of liberals, you've got about a hundred percent chance of hitting exclusively child predators."
an 8 25
Dumb as a post': Tuberville ripped for 'deeply shameful' claim after Army base shooting
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msnbc elections corrupts so let us not have them anymore
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blocking promotions again? an 9 24
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TUBERVILLE AN 7 25
GOP senator calls for ban on 'all these Chinese' entering US to study
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rww
7 25 raw
U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is joining a wave of Republican voices reviving criticism of the FBI’s Clinton email investigation—calling it “rigged” and saying it will be “fun” to watch Democrats “lawyer up”—as media scrutiny intensifies around Donald Trump’s ties to the late, notorious sex offender and financier Jeffrey Epstein and his refusal to release the files.
Fox News on Monday reported that the FBI, under then-Director James Comey, “botched” the Clinton emails investigation in 2016, citing a press release from U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA).
The FBI “failed to perform fundamental investigative work and left key pieces of evidence on the cutting room floor,” Senator Grassley alleged. “The Comey FBI’s negligent approach and perhaps intentional lack of effort in the Clinton investigation is a stark contrast to its full-throated investigation of the Trump-Russia collusion hoax, which was based on the uncorroborated and now discredited Steele dossier. Comey’s decision-making process smacks of political infection.”
ALSO READ:'Sick of it': House GOP fury rises as Trump ally Johnson dodges Epstein debate
On Tuesday, Senator Tuberville told Newsmax (video below), “James Comey’s FBI rigged the Hillary Clinton investigation so we would, you know, we would never know how badly she damaged our national security when they didn’t probe those crucial thumb drives.”
“What a colossal cover-up this has been,” Tuberville alleged. “It is a huge cover-up.”
“They’ve tried to push a narrative that basically they want to change our country that’s something it’s not. They wanted to take all the ability of us as Republicans, as Americans, to try to keep our country going in the right direction,” he said. “But the mainstream media, the Democrats, and a few Republicans have pushed this narrative of, ‘Let’s do it the right way. Let’s make sure we’re doing the right thing.'”
“It has been—it’s been—something that I’ve been shocked at since I’ve been here, and now we’re finally seeing things start to leak out, the truth of really what happened,” Tuberville claimed, not offering any specifics.
“The American people are going to find out, it is going to be fun up here to watch all this start taking a narrative, a true narrative of what really happened, of the Democrats trying to change this country into a socialist communist country for the last four years,” he alleged, apparently referring to the Biden presidency, of which Hillary Clinton was not a part.
“These people need to lawyer up, and they need to find out really what it’s really like to be under the gun, putting her hand up, testifying in front of people all over this country because it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be much watched, as we look at all this narrative being brought forward.”
After she served as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton testified, under oath and television cameras, before Congress, for 11 hours in a single day in 2015.
On Sunday, Tuberville claimed that President Donald Trump’s bloated ankles are the result of him “fighting the radicals in this country.”
Watch the video below or at this link.
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[## Tuberville accuses Zelensky of attempting to 'lure NATO' into Russian conflict
The Hill
47 days ago
Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) said Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was undoubtedly trying to "lure NATO" into their war with Russia. "There is no doubt, because he cannot win this war on his own. He knows he's losing," Tuberville said during a Sunday](https://www.aol.com/news/tuberville-accuses-zelensky-attempting-lure-110000779.html)
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05/06/2025 rww
by
- Shane Vaughn is excited about President Donald Trump's plan to spend millions of dollars on a military parade to celebrate flag day, which just so happens to fall on his birthday: "I don’t believe in coincidence — I believe in providence. The stars have aligned. The calendar has spoken. And on June 14th — Flag Day, no less — the world will once again look upon America. But not with confusion, not with contempt, not with weakness. They will see strength. And that strength has a name: Commander in Chief Donald J. Trump."
- Struggling to know what to get for Mother's Day? Stew Peters thinks a subscription to his virulently antisemitic network would be the "perfect gift."
- Joel Webbon does not think much of Vice President J.D. Vance's choice of a wife: "It's hard to be America First when you marry an immigrant."
- C. Jay Engel says that "America’s continuation is predicated on the removal of foreigners. That’s what it all boils down to."
- Rep. Mary Miller cheers on Trump's plan to reopen Alcatraz: "The first person to be sent to Alcatraz should be Anthony Fauci."
- Finally, Sen. Tommy Tuberville doesn't seem to understand how tariffs work: "How about we tax people all around the world who've come to our party but never brought anything? Now it's time to bring something to the party to help the United States of America and the taxpayers."
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AN 4 25
President Donald Trump's top loyalists are angling to climb the political ladder to help secure the future for his ultra-MAGA movement—and position themselves for greater influence. House members like far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are looking at the U.S. Senate, and far-right U.S. senators like Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) reportedly see hope in governors' mansions.
Some critical U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle are retiring, like Republican former Majority and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the second-highest-ranking Democrat senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois.
"Democrats anxious to deny Donald Trump and his Republican Party a governing trifecta as soon as possible are feeling pretty good about their prospects for flipping the House in 2026, given the GOP’s fragile margin of control and the historical pattern of sizable midterm losses for the president’s party," New York magazine's "Intelligencer" reported last month.
"But the Senate, which has the power to confirm Trump’s executive branch and judicial nominations, is really going to be a reach. Democrats would need to flip four Senate seats to win control of the chamber. And an already difficult landscape is being made even tougher by the retirements of Democratic incumbents Gary Peters of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and now Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. All three of these open seats could potentially trigger competitive races in 2026."
READ MORE: ‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons
Enter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who went from a freshman stripped of all of her committee assignments over incendiary language, to becoming chair of the Delivering on Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) subcommittee. She also sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security.
Congresswoman Greene is now thinking about becoming Senator Greene. If successful, her controversial tactics could have a dramatic impact on what is supposed to be the "world's greatest deliberative body."
Rep. Greene is reportedly eyeing a run to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, and believes she would “crush” any GOP primary opponent—except Governor Brian Kemp, should he choose to enter the race—according to the right-wing website Daily Caller.
"Republicans are laser-focused on defeating Ossoff, whose narrow victory over former Republican Georgia Sen. David Perdue in a January 2021 runoff election was partly responsible for costing Senate Republicans their majority during the 2020 cycle," Daily Caller notes, adding, "Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state that Trump won last November."
Could Greene beat Ossoff?
READ MORE: Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment
"This would be a dream for Dems in Georgia," should Greene run, observed veteran journalist Lydia Polgreen.
"Somewhere at the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] some operative is frantically wondering if there is anything they can do to ensure this happens," wrote University of Pennsylvania political and media historian Brian Rosenwald.
A Daily Caller source also suggested Ossoff would retain his Senate seat, especially should the election move into a runoff. And Ossoff "has been taunting Greene to jump into the race."
Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville is reportedly mapping out a run for the Alabama Governor's mansion.
"Tuberville told a group of donors at a private event on Wednesday night that his mind is officially made up," the conservative website Yellowhammer News reported. "Rather than seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate, he is ready to run his next race in Alabama, and serve the people of the state in Montgomery instead of Washington.
An official campaign announcement is imminent in the coming weeks, but latest reports offer insight into a finalized decision by Tuberville, who has been privately discussing jumping into the 2026 gubernatorial race for quite some time."
Senator Tuberville reportedly is "furious" at the leak, according to an opinion column at Alabama Political Reporter.
"Tuberville melted down like a plastic lawn chair in July. By Thursday morning, the whispers had turned into headlines. Then Tuberville took to Facebook — and things got weird."
“While I appreciate all the interest,” Tuberville wrote, “Suzanne and I are still praying about how to best serve the people of Alabama. When I have an official announcement about my future, you’ll hear it directly from me.”
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a top "Trump loyalist," is "strongly looking" at a run for the Tennessee governor's mansion.
The Tennessean reports that "early polling suggests she would likely be the Republican frontrunner. Some politicos across the state consider her success a foregone conclusion: at a Tennessee Chamber of Commerce event in January, attendees called her 'Gov. Blackburn.'"
And U.S. Rep. Jim Comer (R-KY), the chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, has also said he would be interested in running for governor.
READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution
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an 12 24
In March, about 100 gathered in Judge James Wynn Jr.’s hometown of Robersonville to throw him a surprise retirement party.
Nine months later, Wynn revealed his own surprise: he’s not giving up his seat on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals after all.
In a letter Wynn, 70, wrote to President Joe Biden Friday that was released the following afternoon by Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) — who rebuked the judge’s decision — he rescinded his January announcement that he would assume senior status, a form of semi-retirement where federal judges hear a reduced caseload and vacate their permanent seat on the court.
“I write to advise that, after careful consideration, I have decided to continue in regular active service as a United States Circuit Judge for the Fourth Circuit,” Wynn wrote. “I apologize for any inconvenience I may have caused.”
Wynn’s decision to remain in active service is the culmination of a monthslong drama over his seat on the bench. Biden named North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park as his choice to succeed Wynn, an Obama appointee, in July — and was immediately met with strident opposition from North Carolina Senators Tillis and Ted Budd.
“This nomination is a non-starter and the White House has already been informed they do not have the votes for confirmation,” the senators wrote in a joint statement at the time. “We still hope to work together to find a consensus nominee who can earn bipartisan support and be confirmed.”
The results in the Senate backed up that threat. In a deal to advance a slate of district court nominees, the Biden administration raised the white flag on his four remaining circuit court nominees, all of whom were said to lack the votes for confirmation. Park formally withdrew himself from consideration Thursday, and the following day, Wynn announced his reversal.
Tillis called Wynn’s decision “brazenly partisan” and a “slap in the face to the U.S. Senate” after the deal to hold the seat for Trump to fill. He urged the Senate Judiciary Committee — set to be controlled by Republicans beginning in January — to hold a hearing on the matter.
Carl Tobias, an expert on the federal judiciary who teaches at the University of Richmond, said he was not surprised by Wynn’s decision given the politicized process that prevented Park’s confirmation — Tobias had called Park an “extraordinary nominee” and a “consummate lawyer.”
“Judge Wynn certainly can retract his decision, and he’s done that, and I think partly due to what happened during the confirmation process for his successor,” Tobias said. “Article III judges are independent and they do whatever they need to do.”
The reversal denies Trump the opportunity to name what would have been his fourth appointee to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in a second term where he looks set to reshape the federal courts that cover North Carolina. The court has a roster of 15 active status judges, plus three who are on senior status. Wynn is the second federal judge from the state to “unretire” in the wake of the 2024 election, after Judge Max Cogburn Jr. for the Western District of North Carolina did the same in November.
Since that decision, Cogburn has been the subject of ethics complaints calling into question his integrity and impartiality. The conservative Article III Project submitted a letter to the Fourth Circuit alleging that Cogburn’s decision violated Canons 2 and 5 of the Code of Conduct for United States Judges — which require upholding impartiality and avoiding political activity, respectively.
Such complaints are certain to follow for Wynn from judicial activists on the right. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said prior to his announcement that should any circuit judge go back on their decision to take senior status, that would warrant “significant ethics complaints.”
“Never before has a circuit judge unretired after a presidential election. It’s literally unprecedented,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “As I have repeatedly warned the judiciary in other matters, if you play political games, expect political prizes.”
Xiao Wang, a professor at the University of Virginia School of Law who has studied retirements in the federal judiciary, said the precedent Wynn has set could pose challenges to future deals like the one to advance several Biden district court nominees. He said it may also encourage conservative judges to take senior status decisions that appear political, particularly as Trump takes office and seeks to fill as many vacancies as possible.
Wynn is not the first circuit judge to go back on a planned retirement. Judge Robert King, a Clinton appointee who serves with Wynn on the Fourth Circuit, also rescinded his plans to take senior status after Biden opted not to name his preferred successor. Judge Michael Kanne, a Reagan appointee who served on the Seventh Circuit, did the same for similar reasons.
With Wynn choosing to remain on the bench, judicial observers are turning their attention to Judge Jane Branstetter Stranch, 71, who serves on the Sixth Circuit and like Wynn, announced plans to take senior status only to see her planned successor, a former clerk of hers, fail to get a vote in the Senate.
Wang said the backlash to Wynn’s decision, including the ethics complaints he is expected to receive, could serve as a deterrent to other judges considering the same.
“The first one certainly makes it possible that there could be a second one,” Wang said. “Just depending on what the reaction is and if there are any consequences for this.”
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Tuberville: Secure the border because immigrants 'know nothing about God'
an 11 24
'Confused the United States with Russia’: Tuberville’s 'genuinely odd' claim mocked
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Hell to pay': Tommy Tuberville threatens Dems with another Jan. 6 riot
an 9 24
Tommy Tuberville — a scathing critic of Chinese companies — bought more Alibaba Group stock: report
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Tuberville: Democrats 'hate' women and want them 'extinct' - Alternet.org
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sec Austin cancer BS?
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an 6 24
“This is a war': Tuberville says Trump’s conviction is an attack on 'constitutional rights'
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an 1 24 no lnx thom
Why Trump wants a country where everything is for sale
Thom Hartmann
January 09, 2024
Donald Trump and his fellow rightwing billionaires have a plan for America. They want to turn the United States from a prosperous, middle-class nation into a country of paupers, where bribery is common and the wealthy can get away with anything.
The latest example of this comes from the House Oversight Committee’s report last week documenting how Donald Trump took at least $7 million in bribes in exchange for changes to US foreign policy when he was president.
Most of the world already operates the way Republicans are pushing our country: no social safety net, corrupt regulatory and police agencies, politicians and legislation for sale, and absolute immunity for the morbidly rich.
It was 1980 when I first really discovered what it’s like doing business or just living life in countries that are the models for how this nation’s rightwing billionaires are trying to remake America.
I was a volunteer on behalf of an international relief organization out of Germany and had flown into Kenya, on my way to Uganda. Tanzania had recently evicted the murderous dictator Idi Amin (who was welcomed, along with his bevy of wives, by Saudi Arabia, where he lived like a king in his own palace to the day he died). Famine was creeping across the northern part of the country. (I wrote about this trip in The Prophet’s Wayand published that chapter on my website.)
Three days in a row I’d gone to the Ugandan embassy to try to get an entry visa into the country; each time I was told, after waiting a few hours and without explanation, to come back the next day.
I was staying at the New Stanley Hotel in Nairobi, and they had an outdoor bar called the Thorn Tree Café, where Ernest Hemmingway used to stay and where he popularized the Swahili word “safari” and wrote The Snows of Kilimanjaro. I’d gotten to know an old British expat who lived in the hotel and we shared a couple of gin-and-tonics every afternoon in the café. When I told him about my frustration, he said:
“When you go in tomorrow, slip a $20 bill into your passport when you hand it to the official. You’ll get your visa.”
There were a couple of other regulars sitting with us and they all agreed, so the next day, with some trepidation, I tried the bribe. It worked: the Ugandan diplomat lifted the bill out of my passport, it vanished into the top drawer of his desk, and I had the visa stamp in my passport in thirty seconds.
When I got to the airport and the Ugandan Airlines’ check-in desk, I was told that my plane reservation, which I’d booked and paid for over the phone, “Can’t be found.” The agent shrugged, like it was an everyday occurrence. I slid another twenty across the counter and he broke into a huge smile, scratched out a line on the flight manifest with his pencil, and said, “Give me your name again?” I did and he wrote it in and an hour later I was on the plane to Entebbe.
A few months later I was in Haiti, meeting with the government official in charge of licensing foreign charities to operate in the country. He was less subtle than the Ugandans; he told me right up-front that I’d have to give him a substantial cash down-payment (I’m remembering $5,000, but could be in error) and an annual smaller payment, all in cash and all handed over directly to him.
While I was successful in starting a program in Uganda that’s still running to this day (among others), when the level of bribery got as high and as naked as it was in Haiti, we chose to pull the plug on our plans to operate in that Caribbean country.
Later that year I was pulled over by a Mexican police officer while driving with a Vice President of Scientific Atlanta from the Acapulco airport to our hotel; the cop told me — even though I’d been traveling the same speed as every other car on the highway — that I’d have to stay in town for a week to show up in court unless I gave him $50 cash on the spot. He got his bribe, and, on reflection of some legal peril, I listed it as such on my expense report.
You may be shaking your head right now, thinking all of this bribery to do business or even travel in foreign countries is terrible. America would never tolerate such corruption, right?
Wrong.
We’re already there on one level; it’s just that there’s only one class of Americans who can legally bribe the system to get what they want, and they blow through every obstacle in front of them by simply paying people off.
That group is America’s rightwing billionaires. And they damn well want to keep things that way. As long as they can bribe their way into or out of things, they’re very happy with the status quo and will continue to fund efforts to keep things this way.
Look at, for example, how they spiffed Clarence Thomas to get him to agree to be the deciding vote in Citizens United, which legalized bribery of both American politicians and Supreme Court justices. Multiple rightwing billionaires spent literally millions of dollars buying Thomas’ and his wife’s loyalty and rewarding their behavior on the billionaires’ behalf.
The fossil fuel industry showers millions every year on Republican politicians, both in direct bribes campaign contributions and through the political cover they get from the rightwing media and think-tanks they underwrite. As a result, you won’t find a single Republican politician who’s willing to do anything whatsoever about climate change, and most won’t even acknowledge it exists so long has the money keeps flowing.
Ditto for Big Pharma, Big Insurance, and Big Banks: all three routinely rip off Americans, and the Republican answer is to gut the regulatory agencies that might hold them to account.
While Uganda was in chaos in 1980 and the people I paid off were probably just freelancing because they weren’t even getting paid, when I was in Haiti I heard from other people operating in the country that part of the bribe money they’d paid was going all the way to the top: “Baby Doc” Jean-Claude Duvalier ran that country like his own personal corrupt little fiefdom until he was deposed in 1986.
Donald Trump aspires to Baby Doc (or even “Papa Doc”) status, and showed us — during the one-term presidency that Vladimir Putin helped him secure — how he and his billionaire buddies want to reshape our country in Duvalier’s image. This is how a country travels the path from functioning democracy to corrupt oligarchy.
Trump came into office echoing a widespread public freak-out about the 20 million or so jobs that had been offshored to China by Reaganomics. Trash-talking China worked really well on the campaign trail for Trump, but when he became president he began acting like that Mexican cop who’d pulled over me and my client.
— The Chinese embassy and one of the country’s largest banks (that helps North Korea evade US sanctions) shoveled $5.5 million into Trump’s corporate checking accounts; within months he hopped on a plane, flew to China, and told Chinese dictator Xi “my feeling toward you is an incredibly warm one.”
— Trump was trash-talking Qatar, calling them a “funder of terrorism,” so, as Mary Trump notes in her excellent newsletter:
“[I]n April of 2018, the Qatari Permanent Mission to the United Nations bought a fourth apartment at Trump World Tower for $6.5 million, and then in the SAME MONTH, Donald welcomed its monarch to the Oval Office and labeled Qatar as a partner in ‘stopping the funding of terrorism.’”
Not only that, Qatar went on to backstop a billion-dollar buyout of Jared Kushner’s terrible 666 Fifth Avenue building purchase.
— Trump was ignoring Kuwait’s desire to buy an air-force-worth of F18 Hornet fighter jets, so, like my sticking a $20 bill into my passport in Nairobi, they moved their Christmas Party to his DC hotel, putting hundreds of thousands of dollars in Trump’s pocket; he promptly approved the sale of the weapons systems.
— Saudi Arabia was reeling under international condemnation for murdering and dismembering Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, so they gave Trump well over a half-million dollars cash by renting entire floors in his properties; he immediately went against his own policy advisors’ advice and began selling them billions of dollars’ worth of high-tech weapons without congressional authorization.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg, the little bit that Democrats on the House Oversight Committee were able to discover before Republicans took control of the House and put Trump toady James Comer in charge of the committee; Comer immediately ended the investigations into the Trump family and redirected their efforts to investigating Hunter Biden. (There’s a great summary of the House Democrat’s report, with a link to the report itself, here.)
This is the America that our country’s rightwing billionaires want. Where everything is for sale, but the price is usually so high that only the morbidly rich can afford it.
— Want $600 billion a year in fossil fuel subsidies that help destroy our children’s future? Give Republican politicians a few hundred million over the years.
— Want to own a private island and run an underage sex ring? Just buy off or blackmail enough politicians and a guy who ends up in Trump’s cabinet will, himself, arrange sweetheart deals for you to avoid prison or liability (until it all comes unraveled years later).
— Want such massive tax cuts that they will leave the nation $34 trillion in debt and siphon a full $50 trillion out of the homes and savings of working class people, reducing the middle class income from two-thirds of us to 43 percent? Just recycle a few billion of those trillions to fund a few hundred Republicans’ campaigns.
America has become a nation increasingly run by rightwing grifters and greedy corporations:
— Want to sell pesticides that are neurotoxic to children?
— Dump toxic waste from mining operations into our rivers where it will poison downstream water supplies?
— Gut workers’ rights?
— Sell off and ruin public parklands for pennies on the dollar?
— Steal from working people’s retirement plans without consequence?
Every one of those five things (and more) happened in the first months of Trump’s administration, and in every case there was big money paying off Trump and congressional Republicans for taking those actions.
We’re seeing a similar embrace of corruption in Republican-controlled states across the country. Texas’ Attorney General Ken Paxton, for example, has been facing securities fraud charges for eight years now; the trial is finally scheduled for next year, but don’t hold your breath. Meanwhile, he’s suing to prevent women with crisis pregnancies from getting life-saving abortions.
In Virginia, that state’s Republican Attorney General went after “good government” as soon as he took office. As Radley Balko notes in his Substack newsletter, The Watch:
“Jason Miyares made his priorities clear the moment he took office. Shortly after the Virginia Republican was sworn in as the state’s new attorney general in 2022, he abruptly fired everyone in the conviction integrity unit (CIU), the office charged with investigating and rectifying wrongful convictions. …
“Miyares fired 17 attorneys and 30 total employees, including many attorneys in the civil rights division, as well as the general counsel for the University of Virginia — who at the time had taken leave to serve as lead investigator for the special congressional committee investigating January 6th. Miyares insisted the attorney’s termination had nothing to do with his work on the attempted insurrection.”
And it’s not just American billionaires who are paying off Republican politicians (and apparently one Democrat in the Senate). A foreign billionaire who may be the richest man in the world controls a massive social media operation that can build up or tear down any Republican who doesn’t dance to his tune.
Vladimir Putin, a billionaire who makes his friends into billionaires, has invested heavily in social media troll farms, now that billionaires Zuckerberg and Musk have dialed back on content moderation, leaving Nazis, Russian agents, and their Republican fellow travelers to flourish on their platforms.
Putin’s social media operations have been so successful that he’s managed to bring a few dozen Republican politicians under his control, most notably Tommy Tuberville and Marjorie Taylor Greene. As the Byline Supplement Substack newsletter noted last week:
“Among Republican politicians, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has led the way in normalizing extremist pro-Russian propaganda, making a public appearance at a pro-Putin rally and floating Putin’s peace plan which cedes all occupied territory to Russia. Greene calls the defense of Ukraine a corrupt scheme, citing as her source a Russian propaganda outlet that was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department over alleged interference in the 2020 presidential elections.
“On the US Senate side, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama blames Democrats, claiming Democrats “created” the war in Ukraine — exactly parroting the Kremlin influence operation as reported by the declassified US intelligence assessment. Tuberville has gone so far as to green-light a Russian takeover of Ukraine, opining against all contrary evidence that he sees no risk of further Russian aggression once Ukraine is subdued. Tuberville is a close ally of Donald Trump, who claims he has a plan for an immediate end to the war.”
And, of course, Putin was able to buy Trump’s loyalty by running an online influence operation, outed by Robert Mueller’s investigation, that helped Trump win the electoral college and occupy the White House even though he lost to Hillary Clinton by about 3 million votes.
This is the America our rightwing billionaires have been working to create ever since the Reagan Revolution: a nation where everything’s for sale and everyone’s on the take.
After all, when everybody’s a criminal, nobody’s a criminal.
And it all really started in a big way when five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery by billionaires (1976) and corporations (1978), most recently overturning hundreds of good government laws nationwide with their bizarre Citizens United (2010) decision declaring that corporations are persons and money is “First Amendment-protected ‘free speech.’”
For two decades now, we’ve had Republican justices who’ve been put on the bench through millions of dollars from a handful of rightwing billionaires and the institutions they fund. They’re then groomed with first class and private jet travel, homes, travel trailers, speaking gigs, entrance to billionaire-only private events, and millions in “pay” opportunities for justices’ spouses.
They’re backstopped by billionaires who own media operations like Fox “News” and the CEOs of industries that want to continue making money while exploiting or even killing us and our children.
The simple reality is that today in America rightwing billionaires can buy just about anything, including tax breaks, new laws that protect them and their businesses, and immunity from prosecution for anything they say or do. They can even buy henchmen who will take down university presidents who offend them.
Widespread Republican victories this November will make the situation far worse, and, if Trump keeps his promises, will finish the job Reagan began of gutting the middle class and fully handing control of America over to the GOP’s billionaire overlords.
Then Ken Paxton, Clarence Thomas, and Ron DeSantis types of politicians will rule the nation, always bowing to the demands of their rich benefactors.
Democrats (Senator Menendez notwithstanding) have been fighting this corruption and promise to end the culture of bribery and impunity that Citizens United established. They tried with the For The People Act, but the GOP filibuster prevailed.
The choice has never been starker: do we want America to sink farther into the GOP‘s version of Uganda or Mexico? Or do we want to become a nation where we all have opportunity and prosperity, and all Americans are both bound and protected equally by the law?
What kind of country do we want to leave to our children? A functioning democracy or a corrupt kleptocracy run by the toadies of a handful of rightwing billionaires?
The stakes this November are huge. Pass it along.
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sen-tuberville-said-trumps-nazi-rhetoric-needs-to-go-further-says-reporter
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12 23 finally caved on holds except top gen?
several artls
'Brutal': Ex-Dem senator pinpoints the 'moment that Tuberville fell apart' - Alternet.org
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7 23 250 officers?
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florida man?
https://www.alternet.org/alabamas-tuberville-florida-resident-columnist/
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vet $ pledge
https://www.alternet.org/Bank/tommy-tuberville-2662300640/
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rww
jennifer Bendery @ HuffPost: Tommy Tuberville Celebrates Broadband Funding He Voted Against.
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retaliation for mil abortion, woke dod?!
https://www.alternet.org/abortion-2659709091/
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https://www.alternet.org/tuberville-opponent-accuses-no-clue/ what voting rts act is
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edit bd
...
Last night’s hearing, however, suggested one more layer.
A cover-up of the congressional coup.
By the Congress.
Hinting hard
The goal appears to have been getting enough members of the US Congress to vote to overturn the results of the 2020 election. The GOP had a Senate majority at the time. They could have, in theory, overruled the will of the people, at least temporarily. Ultimately, however, just 147 Republicans, including eight senators, objected.
I don’t know, had they amassed enough votes in the Senate, where things would have gone after that. Perhaps it would have triggered the 12th Amendment. Perhaps it would have thrown the process back to red states that Joe Biden had won, where friendly Republican legislators would have fixed things so Trump could stay in office.
READ MORE: [Watch: Outtakes of Trump on January 7th — he can't say the election's over
In any case, the former president spent a lot of time talking about congressional Republicans and talking directly to congressional Republicans to such a degree as to suggest there was another layer of his grand seditious conspiracy that’s only now coming into light. That’s certainly what the J6 committee has been hinting hard at.
Co-conspirators?
Last week, the panel’s Stephanie Murphy saidTrump met in late December with US Reps. Matt Gaetz, Andy Biggs, Brian Babin, Jody Hice, Louie Gohmert, Andy Harris, Mo Brooks, Paul Gosar, Scott Perry and Jim Jordan. Margaret Taylor Greenewas there. So were Mike Pence, Mark Meadows and Rudy Giuliani. (Seven of these members asked for pardons. Ditto Meadows, Giuliani and Greene.)
They tried getting the former vice president to go along with the conspiracy. It called for him to reject the count all by himself or send it back to the states where state GOP legislators were waiting.
Pence had refused before. I’m guessing those at the meeting expected him to again. He did. The next step was finalizing a scheme to bring tens of thousands of Trump loyalists to the capital, including armed paramilitaries (eg, Proud Boys and Oath Keepers), in order to terrify not only Pence but GOP senators into reinstalling Trump.
Terrifying GOP senators
According to the J6 committee’s Elaine Luria, Trump was told 15 minutes after returning to the White House after his speech on the Ellipse that the US Capitol was under siege by an armed mob. After the briefing, Luria said, Trump began calling GOP senators for the purpose of persuading them to overrule the results of the election.
On the one hand, the former president had insurgents sacking and looting the seat of government, threatening lawmakers with death – in Mike Pence’s case, with hanging from a makeshift gallows. (It was revealed last night that Pence’s Secret Service detail believed they were going to die. They sent messages of love to their families.) On the other, Trump pushed GOP senators by phone to get on board.
During that time, White House staffers tried and failed to persuade Trump to respond to the assault. (He did not issue orders to anyone, not the secretary of defense, the secretary of homeland security, the attorney general, no one.) Instead of telling them to go home, as staffers had hoped, he posted a tweet accusing Pence of betrayal.
After “pouring gasoline on the fire,” as witness Sarah Matthews said, the former president made more phone calls to Republican senators. Later that evening, after Trump had called for the insurgents to go home, Rudy Giuliani made even more calls to Republican senators.
Indeed, the J6 committee’s Adam Kinzinger named them. They were: Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty, Tommy Tuberville and Lindsey Graham. Of that number, only three voted to overturn the results of the election: Cruz, Tuberville and Hawley.
The cover-up
Giuliani also called US Rep. Jim Jordan.
Jordan, as I wrote last week, was nominated to serve on the initial select committee to investigate J6. Speaker Nancy Pelosi vetoed his nomination, though. Good thing she did. The current committee would have been compromised by the presence of a congressman who was a serial witness to the serial crimes under investigation.
Jordan was nominated by Kevin McCarthy. As the J6 committee reminded us last night, the House minority leader talked to Trump after the attack. He said Trump said he had “some responsibility” for J6. McCarthy said he told Trump that the House Democrats were likely to pass an impeachment resolution and that he should resign.
Trump didn’t resign, of course.
Perhaps the fix was in.
Implication by omission
Liz Cheney, the vice chair of the J6 committee, reminded us that the committee’s work goes on. Hearings will resume in September, she said. Then the Wyoming congresswoman used some curious math:
Today, we know far more about the president’s plans and actions to overturn the election than almost all members of Congress did when President Trump was impeached on January 13, 2021, or when he was tried by the Senate in February of that year.
Fifty-seven of 100 senators voted to convict President Trump at that time, and more than 20 others said they were voting against conviction, because the president's term had already expired.
Cheney said “almost all,” I think, because a dozen GOP members had been deeply involved in or material witnesses to Trump’s conspiracy.
She said “57 of 100,” I think, because it takes 67 senators to remove and convict a president. She said “more than 20 others,” because she’s apparently giving these GOP senators the benefit of the doubt.
But that still leaves around 20 unaccounted for. Why?
Perhaps because some, or all, of these 20 or so Republican senators had been in contact with the former president as the insurrection was unfolding and therefore potential co-conspirators in the crime.
Perhaps because some, or all, of these 20 or so Republican senators voted against conviction, thus taking steps to cover up the crime.
In any case, it was implication by omission.
The appearance of a conspiracy
We know at least six of them were evidently in both camps. On the evening of J6, Rudy Giuliani called Blackburn, Hawley, Cruz,Hagarty, Tuberville and Graham hoping they would object to the vote count. (Three did.) This same group voted to acquit Trump of treason.
If that’s not a rigged outcome, it sure looks like one.
Liz Cheney seemed to be inviting us to put the former president’s second impeachment trial in light of what we know now.
She seemed to be asking us to consider what it means when at least a dozen sitting members of the House were material witnesses as well as grand jury members deciding on an indictment (impeachment).
She seemed to be asking us to see that at least six of those Senators were materially involved in a crime of which they sat in judgment.
If that’s not a conspiracy, it sure as hell looks like one.
READ MORE:Video shows Josh Hawley running to evade the rioters he had earlier praised
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https://www.citywatchla.com/index.php/cw/guest-words/24209-the-money-trail-ginni-thomas-emails-to-overturn-biden-s-election-leads-to-charles-koch
2020 ELECTION CONSPIRACY - The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Bob Costa of CBS News have unleashed a fury of renewed interest in the work of the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
Last Thursday, Woodward and Costa set off a political firestorm when they released the contents of emails that Ginni Thomas, wife of the sitting Supreme Court Justice, Clarence Thomas, had sent to President Donald Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, in 2020, urging him to overturn the Biden election win and attempting to steer his efforts in that regard.
A total of 29 emails were obtained by Woodward and Costa, with the bulk of the emails occurring in just the month of November 2020, raising questions as to how many more emails are still out there from Thomas to the White House from December 1, 2020 through January 20, 2021 when Biden was sworn in.
Much of the current news debate around the emails is focusing on whether Clarence Thomas should recuse himself from cases involving groups with which his wife is involved and whether the Select Committee should subpoena Ginni Thomas to testify. While those are certainly important issues, what has thus far been ignored is the smoking gun trail that leads directly to the doorstep of billionaire and right-wing Republican political mastermind, Charles Koch, the Chairman, CEO (and majority owner with the heirs of his deceased brother David) of the fossil fuels conglomerate Koch Industries.
Wall Street On Parade has previously documented that at least three of the front groups that fomented the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Trump and that actively solicited thousands of people to turn out for the January 6 event at the Capitol, were funded by Koch Industries or its front groups.
The smoking gun in the Ginni Thomas email thread occurs in an email dated November 10, 2020 when she tells Meadows to “Listen to Rush. Mark Steyn, Bongino, Cleta.” Thomas is clearly referring to conservative commentators Rush Limbaugh, Mark Steyn and Dan Bongino, and lawyer, Cleta Mitchell.
Cleta Mitchell is best known in the Trump election saga as the lawyer who was on the January 2, 2021 call with Donald Trump when he phoned the Secretary of State of Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, and told him this: “I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” That call took place two months after the presidential election. (Mitchell stepped down from her long-term employment at law firm Foley & Lardner after her presence on that call made the news cycle.)
But Cleta Mitchell’s relationship with Ginni Thomas dates back at least a decade earlier – and not in a good way.
Cleta Mitchell had filed an amicus briefin the Citizens Unitedcase before the Supreme Court that was decided on January 21, 2010. That case would be the tipping point to allow unlimited sums from corporations – like Koch Industries — in U.S. elections.
Just eight days after Justice Thomas voted in favor of that decision to open the floodgates to corporate money in campaigns, Cleta Mitchell made a move that looked very much like a quid pro quo to Ginni Thomas. Mitchell, then still a partner at Foley & Lardner, filed an application with the Internal Revenue Service to set up a nonprofit called Liberty Central, Inc.on behalf of Ginni Thomas. According to IRS tax filings, Liberty Central received a combined $1.478 million from dark money donors in 2009 and 2010.
On the IRS tax filings for Liberty Central for 2009 and 2010, Ginni (Virginia) Thomas is listed as President and CEO. The 2010 tax filing shows that Ginni Thomas received $120,511 in compensation from Liberty Central that year. She eventually stepped down from an official post at the nonprofit, stating she would serve as a consultant.
Liberty Central had the fingerprints of Charles Koch all over it. Acting as General Counsel in 2010 for Liberty Central was a former lawyer for the Charles G. Koch Foundation, Sarah Field. A former Koch lobbyist, Matt Schlapp, served on the Board of Liberty Central at inception.
Mitchell’s law firm, Foley & Lardner, employed three attorneys working as lobbyists for a Koch Industries affiliate, Koch Companies Public Sector, LLC in Madison, Wisconsin in 2011. The Koch-related lobbyists were Ray Carey, Jason Childress and Kathleen Walby.
Mitchell, herself, was a former lobbyist at the federal level in years 2005 through 2008 for the Alliance for Charitable Reform, a project of The Philanthropy Roundtable, another tax-exempt organization. Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark money groups which also have Charles Koch’s fingerprints all over them, were spun off from the Philanthropy Roundtable in 1999. (See our report: Koch Footprints Lead to Secret Slush Fund to Keep Fear Alive.)
Mitchell is listed on the 2018 federal tax filing for SteveBannon’s charity, Citizens of the American Republic, as an officer of the organization, holding the position of Secretary. Bannon and others were charged in August of 2021 by the Department of Justice with bilking donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars through that charity.
Senator Ron Johnson, a Republican from Wisconsin, was one of those pushing the narrative on television that the election had been stolen from Donald Trump. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, lawyers and staff of Foley & Lardner were the third largest donor to Johnson’s campaign committees since 2015. Employees and officials of Koch Industries ranked fifth.
There were only eight Republican Senators who refused to certify the votes for the challenged states of Arizona and/or Pennsylvania. Those Republican Senators were: Ted Cruz of Texas; Josh Hawley of Missouri; Rick Scott of Florida;Tommy Tuberville of Alabama[2 calls jan 6? trump and rudy?]; Roger Marshall of Kansas; Cindy Hyde-Smith of Mississippi; John Kennedy of Louisiana; and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming. Every Republican Senator who refused to certify the election results on January 6 received funding from Koch Industries PAC.
Trump’s Chief of Staff, Mark Meadows, whom Ginni Thomas enlisted in the White House to help overturn Biden’s election win, was previously a member of the House of Representatives from North Carolina from 2013 to 2020. He also received campaign funding from the Koch Industries PAC throughout his time in Congress.
Charles Koch is usually very careful in keeping an arm’s length relationship between himself and his political operations. But on at least one occasion Koch conducted a dinner meeting directly with sitting Justice Clarence Thomas at a private club in California.
In January 2008, Justice Thomas attended an all-expenses-paid, four-day trip to the Koch brothers’ semi-annual political gathering in the Palm Springs area of California. (According to his 2008 disclosure form and the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas’ expenses for that trip were paid by the Federalist Society, a conservative nonprofit that Koch foundations have generously supported.)
Justice Thomas’ trip to the Koch event occurred in the same year that the Citizens United case was accepted by the Supreme Court. The Court accepts less than two percent of all cases appealed to it.
Wall Street On Parade was previously able to confirm with Scott Markley, Public Information Specialist at the Supreme Court, that during that January 2008 visit to the Koch political gathering, Justice Thomas was hosted by Charles Koch and his wife, Elizabeth, at the private Vintage Club where Charles Koch is a member.
The Citizens United decision did not pass the smell test when it was approved in a 5-4 vote by the Supreme Court. Four of the nine justices wrote a scathing dissent that raised the issue of unprincipled behavior, writing that the majority had ruled on issues that were not even legally before the court.
The money that the Koch political machine pumped into putting Trump in the Oval Office quickly paid big dividends in his first term (and made it clear as to why Charles Koch would have wanted to see a second Trump term).
Koch Industries’ law firm, Jones Day, sent 12 of its law partners to staff up key positions in the Trump administration on the very day Trump was inaugurated. Jones Day has since sacked the press release it issued at the time but you can read the reporting on it at the American Bar Association Journal.
Once Trump was settled in the Oval Office, a Koch front group, then known as Freedom Partners, mapped out the agenda it expected Trump to march to. In a document titled “Roadmap to Repeal: Removing Regulatory Barriers to Opportunity,” the group listed the laws and regulations it expected to be repealed in the first 100 days of Trump’s administration. The Trump administration dutifully marched to the beat. Repeal the Paris Climate Accord – done. Tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy – done. Gutting federal regulations and the Environmental Protection Agency – done.
By the spring of 2018, 12 people who previously worked at Freedom Partners were working in the Trump administration. Freedom Partners has since disbanded but when we last took a look at the nonprofit in July 2018, we found that all but one of Freedom Partners’ 9-member Board of Directors was a current or former Koch company employee. The Board Chair of Freedom Partners at that time was the same Mark Holden that was the General Counsel of Koch Industries.
It’s time for the House Select Committee to subpoena not just Ginni Thomas and Cleta Mitchell. It’s time to hear from Charles Koch directly on how so much money bearing his fingerprints ended up fomenting the attack on the Capitol on January 6.
There will never be a better time than now for the American people to finally get at the truth.
(Pam Martens & Russ Martens are authors at CounterPunch.org. This originally appeared on Wall Street on Parade.)
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ref 1/20/21
Money Trail to the Siege at the Capitol Leads to Charles Koch and Koch Industries
...Red Flag # 4: Koch Industries, through its ownership of i360, was deeply entangled in the campaigns of members of Congress who voted against certifying the votes for Joe Biden. (What kind of intelligence agencies and FBI would allow a private fossil fuels conglomerate like Koch Industries to directly run campaign activities for federal candidates for Congress?) We broke the news in 2018 that Koch Industries had purchased i360.We obtained that information from an internal newsletter at Koch that was available online and from the fact that help-wanted ads for i360 sent applicants to apply at Koch Industries. (The company hasn’t denied our reporting over the past two years.)
We reported this at the time:
“The i360 website says that its database now has information on 199 million voters from all 50 states; information on 290 million consumers with 700+ data points; information on precinct election returns as well as data from the Census, NOAA, the Bureau of Labor Statistics and geo-spatial data; individual sentiment information on candidates and issues from its social media operations; and information from its grassroots groups (read Americans for Prosperity) and paid door-to-door knockers who are using a sophisticated hand-held device to update the database in real time in the pivotal weeks before an election.
“But i360 is far more than just a voter database. It has social media targeting operations and really scary data collection that reaches into people’s homes. Consider this from their website:
‘Through an exclusive partnership with D2 Media Sales, the strategic relationship between DirectTV and Dish, i360 is able to identify households that meet your target criteria and serve ads uniquely to those households – no matter which stations or programs they are watching. With dozens of i360 custom segments pre-matched to more than 20 million DIRECTV and DISH homes, campaigns can now reach the largest addressable TV advertising platform in the nation. One-to-one television targeting combines the emotional impact of TV advertising with the precision and accuracy of direct mail marketing – resulting in the most cost-effective and high impact buying solutions.”
According to Federal Election Commission records, a number of Republican House Reps who objected to the certification of Biden’s win utilized the services of i360. For example, Mike Johnson of Louisiana paid i360 $15,580 for what he called “electronic media expense.” Elise Stefanik of New York paid i360 more than $128,000 which she tagged as telephone service, web service, equipment rental, or simply “subscription.” Barry Moore of Alabama paid i360 $12,815 in 2020 for fundraising mailouts and ad buys.
Senator Tommy Tuberville, who objected to the certification of Biden’s win, also engaged the services of i360 in 2020. Tuberville paid i360 $50,875 for data subscriptions and making phone calls. As the Capitol was under siege and Trump was watching these scenes on TV, he spoke with the newly-sworn in Senator Tuberville by phone, urging Tuberville to make more objections to the certification of the vote, according to reporting at CNN.At around 7 p.m., Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, made a second call to Tuberville. The call went to voice mail. Giuliani left this message for Tuberville, according to CNN, based on a report from The Dispatch:
“Sen. Tuberville? Or I should say Coach Tuberville. This is Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer. I’m calling you because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislatures to get more information to you. I know they’re reconvening at 8 tonight, but it … the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow — ideally until the end of tomorrow…”
The nagging question, of course, is what Trump and Giuliani had planned for “tomorrow.”
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an 5 22
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines appeared politely dumbfounded by questions from Alabama freshman U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville, as he seemed to suggest the United States Intelligence Community should not be assisting Ukraine in Russia’s unprovoked and illegal war.
“Good morning, Director Haines,” Tuberville, a former college football coach began in a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Tuesday. “In your best assessment does Russian intelligence closely monitor our Secretary of Defense?”
“Russian intelligence tries very closely to monitor all of our senior leaders,” Haines patiently replied.
“Thank you,” Tuberville continued. “So you believe that noted that when he or ah, when he or said that Russia weakened and that the U.S. will move heaven and earth to arm Ukraine, do you believe that’s right he should say that?”
“Yes, I think Secretary of Defense should say –” Haines responded before being cut off.
“Do you believe Russia blames the U.S. intelligence community for helping Ukraine shoot down a Russian plane carrying hundreds of people?” Tuberville asked.
“I’m sorry, sir. Can you repeat the question?” Haines, not understanding what Tuberville was talking about, requested.
“Do you believe Russia blames us, our intelligence agency, for Ukraine shooting down a plane with hundreds of troops on board? Do you think Russia blames us for that?” he asked.
“Which plane are you thinking of?” Haines inquired.
“There was a plane recently that was shot down, a Russian plane that had 100 troops. Do you believe that they blame our intelligence agency for that?”
“I don’t know sir.”
“Okay. Do you believe that Russia blames our U.S. intelligence for sinkin ah their flagship, Moskova? [we admit public we did assist so not dumb q?]Do you think they blame us for that?”
“I don’t know sir. We haven’t seen any direct reports –”
“To what extent you access [sic] that Russia believes it is at war with the west and United States? Do you think that they believe they’re at war with us?”
“Russia has historically believed that they are in a conflict, in effect, with NATO and the United States on variety of issues including in cyber and so on.”
“So you believe that they’re fighting us? That they’re they’re fighting us as well as they’re fighting Ukraine? Correct?”
“In a sense, their perception. Yeah.”
“Because we’re arming them and we’re talking. Okay.”
Tuberville’s apparent defense of Russia, his apparent implication that the U.S. Intelligence Community should not be assisting Ukraine is not only ill-founded and wrong, it lies in his tragic misconception of what is actually happening.
“As the Alabama Republican sees it,” MSNBC reported in February about Tuberville, “Russia invaded Ukraine because it’s a ‘communist country’ in need of ‘farmland.’ That’s not even close to being true.”
In October, before Alabama voters chose Tuberville over incumbent Democratic Senator Doug Jones, “the Alabama Media Group’s Kyle Whitmire noted, ‘Tuberville is in hiding,'” that same MSNBC report stated. ” The columnist added, ‘[I]f a campaign won’t let its candidate speak openly because he can’t do so without saying dumb things that hurt his chances of winning the election, what the heck is going to happen when he’s in the United States Senate?'”
Now we know.
Watch:
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1021 an
undercover jrnlist windsor
..."Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio confided in her that Donald J. Trump would soon announce he was running again for president in 2024," Gabriel reports. "Glenn Youngkin, the Republican nominee for governor of Virginia, revealed to her that he could not publicly press his anti-abortion agenda for fear of losing independent voters….Her encounter in December 2020 with Tommy Tuberville, then a senator-elect from Alabama, elicited the first real evidence that some Republicans in the Senate would reject the Electoral College votes certifying Mr. Biden's victory — a move based on groundless claims of fraud."
Windsor, according to Gabriel, hasn't been shy about saying outrageous things she doesn't actually believe in the hope that Republicans will agree with them. For example, she once told far-right Republican Cecil Bell, Jr. — who serves in the Texas House of Representatives — "This is a Christian state, and Democrats are not Christian." Bell wasn't the least bit offended:
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921 an
when a coronavirus pandemic has killed more than 4.7 million people worldwide and over 695,000 of them are in the United States — according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore — a vaccine mandate for the U.S. Armed Forces makes perfect sense. But a lawsuit filed by a "MAGA medical group," consisting of far-right anti-vaxxers and conspiracy theorists, is aiming to stop the Pentagon's vaccine mandate, according to Daily Beast senior researcher Adam Rawnsley.
Gen. Lloyd J. Austin, Secretary of Defense in the Biden administration, ordered all active-duty members of the U.S. Armed Forces to get vaccinated for COVID-19 — and the far-right MAGA anti-vaxxers, in response, have filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon.
Rawnsley, in an article published on September 30, explains, "Lt. Col. Theresa M. Long, who serves as the brigade surgeon for the Army's 1st Aviation Brigade, filed an affidavit late last week in support of the suit's motion to block the vaccine mandate — arguing against the requirement based in part on her false belief that 'all persons who have received a COVID-19 vaccine are damaged in their cardiovascular system in an irreparable and irrevocable manner'…. The affidavit was filed as part of a suit brought by lawyers working with America's Frontline Doctors (AFLDS), according to the group, and requests a declaratory judgment blocking the vaccine requirement, on behalf of Staff Sergeants Dan Robert (USA), Hollie Mulvihill (USMC), and anti-vaxxers within the military."
Long, according to Rawnsley, "has joined a small but increasingly vocal group of field-grade officers encouraged by conservative activists and media as part of the right wing's crusade against COVID-19 vaccine mandates."
"The few officers and enlisted service members who have gone public with their opposition to the vaccine mandate are now finding increasing support among Republican members of Congress," Rawnsley notes. "Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), James Lankford (R-OK), Roger Marshall (R-KS), Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), for example, have recently drafted (a) proposed amendment to the annual National Defense Authorization Act that would gut the proposed vaccine mandate."
According to Rawnsley, roughly 70% of the U.S. military has been vaccinated for COVID-19. Austin and President Joe Biden would like to get that number even higher.
The good news about the AFLDS lawsuit, according to Rawnsley, is that it "faces long odds."
"Within the military," Rawnsley observes, "Long's own court filing suggests that ardent anti-vaccine attitudes may not be that widely shared. Long wrote that she's encountered 'mixed results in terms of acceptance, rejection and threats of punishment' over her opinions."
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an 621
June 29, 2021
Newly-elected Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) is facing scrutiny amid reports about his ownership of stock in a Chinese company linked to the Chinese Communist Party.
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an 121
...(The satirical news site *The Onion* deftly handled this, calling out each of the 126 with an individualized message. To Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, "You have been absolutely fearless when stopping the American people from participating in elections;" to Rep. Tim Burchett of Tennessee, "Never again will we allow U.S. citizens to recklessly turn in their ballots;" to Rep. Mike Johnson of Louisiana, "Thank you for bravely standing up to the American voters;" and so on. Each was accompanied by an especially beguiling photo of a maggot.)
Many of those same members and more—some 140—are now lending their names to the smoke-and-mirrors effort in Congress to challenge the votes of the Electoral College, which already has given the election to Joe Biden. The votes of the electors officially are to be announced on Wednesday by Vice President Mike Pence in his capacity as President of the Senate.
In normal times, this would be a mere formality, but Trump and Republicans have decided to turn it into a clumsy attempt at a coup d'etat, ignoring the rule of law and numerous court rulings. They're putting on an act, trying to overturn the results of a free and fair election as a dumbshow of power, all out of fear of Tin Hat Trump's "base" of voters and to preserve a status quo that ignores the diversity of America, cossets the rich and fosters hate, poverty and inequality.
In the House, the leaders of this effort include the feckless Louie Gohmert of Texas, known as "America's craziest and dumbest congressman." Having just had an election lawsuit thrown out by a Federal appeals court on New Year's Day, he went on *Newsmax* suggesting that the alternative now is going to the streets and "being as violent as antifa and BLM."
He's joined in this mad pursuit—simultaneously dumbing down and radicalizing a significant portion of the party and American populace—by the usual suspects, led by Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama and including Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey, Jody Hice of Georgia and Joe Wilson of South Carolina. New members of the House are piping up, too, including QAnon queen Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia.
On the Senate side, opposition to finalizing the presidential result is being led by Josh Hawley of Missouri, a man of vaulting ambition who wants to be president so badly he's is willing to violate his sworn oath of office and destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights to get there, using conspiracy theories and falsehoods to oil his way into the White House as early as 2024.
In a letter published Saturday, eleven other Republican senators and senators-elect demanded an "emergency 10-day audit" of results in "the disputed states,"—in other words, the states Trump is shocked—shocked!—that he lost to Joe Biden, states he assumed would be a cinch for him. They weren't.
Remember their names:
- Ted Cruz (Texas)
- Ron Johnson (Wisconsin)
- James Lankford (Oklahoma)
- Steve Daines (Montana)
- John Kennedy (Louisiana)
- Marsha Blackburn (Tennessee)
- Mike Braun (Indiana)
- Cynthia Lummis (Wyoming) (new senator)
- Roger Marshall (Kansas) (new senator)
- Bill Hagerty (Tennessee) (new senator)
- Tommy Tuberville (Alabama) (new senator)
Sadly, this Dirty Dozen (including Hawley), a so-called "Sedition Caucus" in the Senate, probably won't be deterred by news of that phone call Trump made to Georgia's Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, trying to bully him into finding more votes to change the result in the state from Biden to Trump—a conversation much like the one with Ukraine President Zelensky that a year ago got Donald Trump impeached.
Trump's impeachment didn't lead to conviction by the Senate, thanks to Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who would brook no new evidence or witnesses, turning the trial into a sham with a predetermined outcome. But McConnell now is opposed to his colleagues' efforts to subvert the Electoral College. Why? Because McConnell is all about the raw power he alone holds in the Senate. He cares for that and little else except, of course, tax cuts for the superrich, holding rules and regulations at bay and getting as many conservative Federal judges approved by the Senate as quickly as he can.
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https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/tuberville/
Trump lost so overwhelmingly at the ballot box, some members of Congress are ready to wage an internal government war to fight for him.
One such Republican is newly elected Alabama Republican Tommy Tuberville. Speaking at a campaign rally in Georgia, Tuberville told supporters that because Trump lost it was time to act.
"Folks, we got to grab a hold and hold on. We have no choice. Listen to me now. We have no choice but to win this election. They're going to try to steal it. They're going to try to buy it. They're going to tdo everything they can to lie, cheat, and steal to win this election. Like they did in the presidential election. It's impossible. It is impossible what happened. But we're going to get that all corrected. I'm gonna tell you: don't give up on [President Trump]. Don't give up on him."
Outside the rally, Lauren Windsor asked Tuberville what he was going to do to "fix" what he said was wrong.
"We're going to fight hard," he said.
A staffer quickly tried to rush him away and keep him from answering any questions.
"Just wait," he told the staffer. "Just — well, you see what's coming. You've been reading about it in the House [of Representitives]. We're gonna have to, we're gonna have to do it in the Senate."
As Tuberville mentioned, the Senate hasn't taken up the idea the way the House has and Senate Majority Leader MitchMcConnell (R-KY) warned his caucus not to go anywhere near the debate. Tuberville didn't seem to get the memo.
"I find it unfathomable that anyone would acquiesce to election theft and voter fraud because they lack the courage to take a difficult vote on the House or Senate floor," said Tuberville's colleague Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL)in a Politico interview. "Last time I checked, that's why we were elected to Congress."
See the video of Tuberville in the video below:
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old BS about "socialism" in nazi acronym?
an 1120
In a new interview, Sen.-elect Tommy Tuberville (R-AL), who just emerged victorious from a race against Democratic Sen. Doug Jones, appeared to be confused about why and who America was fighting in the Second World War.
"It's concerning to me that a guy can run for president of the United States and have an opportunity to win when he leans more to a socialist type of government, you know, one-payer system in health care, raise taxes 20 percent, when the other half the country is basically voting for freedom, let us control our own lives, stay out of our life," said Tuberville, a former college football coach. "You know, as I tell people, my dad fought 76 years ago in Europe to free Europe of socialism."
In World War II, the United States was fighting against the Axis powers, which were mostly right-wing fascist governments. In fact, Americans fought alongside the socialist USSR as allies.
Read the full quote below:
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