ROVE 2
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see rove main, tag, crossroads main and gps tag
court packing? ct judicial capture
problem loADING?
merri ok
rove2bak122
https://www.alternet.org/2022/01/jan-6-karl-rove/ 1/6 anniversary
dick c support dtr liz // roe tho bushes hated djt for jeb attack; liz wants to pick thru rubble
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AN 10 26
Flawed Texas senatorial candidate Ken Paxton is already riding a bumpy train to Congress, especially with a likeable and photogenic Democrat. But a series of damaging leaks of private conversations and public details of his marriage philandering is doing nothing to help things.
But now, NBC News says sources inside the Paxton campaign are certain the GOP old guard is also working to sabotage Paxton’s race.
“There’s no doubt on our end that John Cornyn and Karl Rove are working against us,” a Republican working on Paxton’s race said when asked about damaging private conversations leaked to media outlets. “They’d rather be able to say ‘told you so’” than risk a Democrat winning the seat, added the person, who, like others in this article, was granted anonymity to speak candidly.
Cornyn could have legitimate hard feelings against the Paxton enclave. Cornyn lost his primary for the Republican Senate nomination in a painful upset to Paxton, but only after President Donald Trump unexpectedly endorsed Paxton. It did not appear to matter to Trump that Cornyn had voted with the president on almost every major issue. Trump considered Paxton more loyal due to his far-right views. And the resentful president may hold hard feelings after Cornyn jumped ship against Trump’s attempt to derail the 2020 election that he lost.
Since his return to the White House, Trump has systematically targeted GOP lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal, orchestrating primary challenges against sitting senators and representatives. Notable victims include Senator Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, who lost his primary after voting to convict Trump during his second impeachment trial, and Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who challenged Trump on government spending and the Epstein files. Trump has also threatened Senators Rand Paul and Lauren Boebert for supporting Massie.
Many of Cornyn's fellow Republicans were disappointed by Trump's actions in Texas, and now Paxton’s campaign smells what they feel are hard feelings aggravating a series of damning leaks.
“Many in Paxton’s corner are convinced those aligned with Cornyn are trying to tank his chances, while other Republicans say Paxton’s negatives are so high and his litany of scandals so long that few want to associate with him,” reports NBC News. “They also say it was incumbent on Paxton and the groups supporting him to smooth things over with Cornyn, who pledged to endorse the Republican ticket without specifying Paxton.”
Even sources that are struggling to stay neutral are convinced that both sides are “laying the groundwork” to cast blame if Democrat James Talarico ends up claiming the Senate seat.
Cornyn’s camp adamantly denies the accusations.
“If Sen. Cornyn wanted Ken to lose, I can assure you he’d be more active in the campaign,” Cornyn strategist Rob Jesmer told CNN. “He has said he supports the Republican ticket. Given all Ken has said and done, I think that’s a pretty good place for Sen. Cornyn to be.”
But NBC News reports Paxton himself has said Cornyn isn’t in his corner, according to recently leaked audio.
“He’s clearly not helping. He wants me to lose,” Paxton said at a recent fundraiser, according to leaked audio of the event obtained by CNN, the fifth such leak from that fundraiser in recent weeks.
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mma
Why has Fox News benched Karl Rove?
Written by Matt Gertz
Published 10/05/26
Fox News political analyst Karl Rove has not appeared on his network’s weekday programming for the last three weeks, even as the midterm elections loom. Rove’s absence coincides with his newsmaking public statements warning about extremism within the Republican Party — and his denunciation by President Donald Trump.
While Rove appeared alongside Fox senior political analyst Juan Williams on the October 4 edition of Fox News Sunday (which airs on Fox broadcast stations and reairs later in the day on Fox News), he last appeared on a Fox weekday program on September 14, when anchor Martha MacCallum interviewed him on The Story.
Rove’s absence at a time when his analysis would theoretically be most useful is notable. He averaged 7 weekday Fox appearances per month from March through August, and that interview on The Story was his 5th of September, according to a Media Matters review of our database.
Rove makes news — but not for his employer
Rove’s disappearance from Fox's weekday airwaves overlaps with his increasingly strident criticism of extremist elements in the GOP, which has drawn attention from other news outlets.
Two days after Rove’s most recent Fox weekday appearance, The Wall Street Journal published a column in which the veteran Republican strategist and former top aide to President George W. Bush called out the “raw, uncut bigotry” of Texas GOP candidate Bo French, vowed to “vote for only the second Democrat in my life” rather than support French’s campaign, and warned that “the GOP has a growing number of Bo Frenches—and not only in Texas.”
Rove doubled down during a September 26 appearance at the Texas Tribune Festival and drew more headlines for his lament that the Republican Party is “being infiltrated by people like Bo French” and the white nationalist streamer Nick Fuentes, who he described as “a Nazi.”
No one needs to hear that message more than the audience at Fox, whose hosts played an essential role in mainstreaming and sanitizing the GOP’s far-right elements. But Rove’s denunciations of the extremists he says are taking over the party have been mentioned just once on Fox, according to a Media Matters review.
Fox contributor Josh Kraushaar crowned “our very own Karl Rove” the “winner” of the week during a panel discussion on the September 18 edition of Fox’s Special Report, arguing that Rove “spoke out with principle against the Texas railroad commissioner candidate, a Republican, Bo French, who made some racist tweets about Indian Americans attending the Texas football game.”
“You don't hear people going against party very often, and to hear those principles standing out, I think, was a real example that Karl Rove set,” Kraushaar said.
No one at Fox is apparently interested in following that example. Even Rove himself, in his Fox News Sunday appearance, did not address his critique of the GOP, instead focusing on downplaying the prospect of a Democratic midterm wave. The GOP’s extremism falls into what I’ve termed Fox’s negative space, the stories that the network’s stars seem loath to defend or even acknowledge to their viewers.
Fox benched Rove after Trump asked why the network helps “keep his RINO Voice alive”
Rove’s absence from Fox’s weekday airwaves also lines up with his denunciation by the president.
During his September 14 interview on The Story, the Fox analyst criticized Trump’s promise to give every American citizen $5,000 if Republicans hold the House and Senate, calling the proposal neither “well thought out” nor a political boon for the GOP.
Trump regularly watches Fox and responds to the programming he sees there, mixing praise of Fox coverage he appreciates with criticism of the network for failing to produce sufficiently consistent propaganda on his behalf. Just a few hours after Rove’s appearance, the Fox analyst received a harangue from the president.
“Karl Rove is so bad for the Republican Party, and completely wrong so often,” Trump posted to Truth Social. “He suffers from a major case of Trump Derangement Syndrome primarily because, for almost 10 years, I beat back and won against so many of the people and things that he wanted and espoused.”
“Why does FoxNews and the WSJ keep his RINO Voice alive,” the president added. “The guy is a stone cold loser!”
The network’s executives are keenly interested in maintaining good relations with Trump. Just last week, network founder Rupert Murdoch and several senior figures in his media empire reportedly dined with the president at the White House in an effort to “reset the relationship.”
And on Monday, The New York Times reported that Fox had hired as a contributor Karoline Leavitt, who served as White House press secretary in his second administration. Leavitt’s new colleagues will include Kayleigh McEnany, one of Trump’s first-term White House press secretaries; Mike Pompeo, who served as Trump’s secretary of state; Kellyanne Conway, who managed his 2016 presidential campaign; and Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law.
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struggle with flood zone w shit
play dead?! 'Shut up, sit down': Karl Rove explains why Carville’s advice on Trump was 'absolute right'
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2x
Commentary & Analysis
June 15, 2023
Harlan Crow’s deep dark money connections
By Adam Rappaport and Meghan Faulkner
Harlan Crow is more than Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s secret patron—he’s also deeply intertwined with the shadowy world of Republican dark money. In fact, Crow personally took part in the creation of the post-Citizens United dark money system and secretly helped bankroll some of the new groups.
Crow’s political spending started long before Citizens United opened the floodgates for anonymous money in American elections in 2010. Between 1977 and 2009, Crow and his companies gave more than $2.4 million to federal candidates, parties, PACs, and other political entities. Since Citizens United, he’s spent $13.8 million on federal politics, bringing his lifetime total of spending reported to the FEC to more than $16 million. But that’s not all he did. While it is impossible to track Crow’s undisclosed political giving, public information demonstrates his longstanding ties to the biggest figures and groups in Republican dark money.
One of Crow’s first forays into large donations was by providing some of the initial financing of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, an organization that spent millions running attack ads in 2004 against Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry and was later fined nearly $300,000 by the Federal Election Commission for failing to register as a political committee. Later, in 2009, Crow and his company spent more than $5 million on a failed ballot initiative in Dallas trying to block the city from building a city-owned convention center hotel which would have competed with Crow’s hotel.
Immediately after Citizens United, Crow took part in one of the first key events leading to the creation of the dark money system. As recounted by Kenneth Vogel in his book Big Money and separately by the Wall Street Journal, just weeks after the Supreme Court’s decision in January 2010, four leading Republican political figures set out to obtain the “seed funding” they needed to launch several post-Citizens United groups.
The four Republicans: consultant and former Bush White House aide Karl Rove, former RNC Chairman Ed Gillsepie, fundraiser Fred Malek, and former senator Norm Coleman, “laid out their blueprint for a sort of shadow party” to about “20 Republican plutocrats” at the Dallas Petroleum Club in early February 2010. They wanted funding for a network of what became some of the biggest players in outside political spending, including super PAC American Crossroads, which Rove explained would work to defeat then-President Obama and win Republican control of Congress, and dark money group the American Action Network.
Crow was one of the deep-pocketed billionaires who attended the fundraiser. Whether he gave that day or how much is not known. But after hearing Rove’s pitch, another Texas megadonor, Harold Simmons, proclaimed “I like this. I’m in for five [million].” Others followed suit.
Even as the Supreme Court was deliberating Citizens United, Crow reportedly provided the major funding for Liberty Central, another dark money group, this one with links to Justice Thomas. Liberty Central was a 501(c)(4) organization founded by Ginni Thomas in late 2009 that counted Federalist Society co-chair Leonard Leo as a board member. Ms. Thomas served as president through November 2010 and was paid a salary of more than $120,000. According to Politico, of the $550,000 in anonymous start-up funds the group received in 2009, $500,000 came from Crow, who also held an event for the group at his Dallas home a few months after it launched.
Liberty Central engaged in partisan politics during Ginni Thomas’s time in charge. The group acknowledged on its 2010 tax return that it spent a small amount of money on political activity, but as described in a 2012 IRS complaint filed by Common Cause, Liberty Central appeared to do far more than that, endorsing and supporting dozens of House and Senate candidates, conducting polling, and issuing scorecards of congressional candidates.
Asked later about his support of the group, Crow refused to even confirm his contribution, saying: “I disclose what I’m required by law to disclose, and I don’t disclose what I’m not required to disclose.”
“Crow has taken full advantage of the diminishing transparency laws around our politics.”
In 2011, Crow also made a contribution to another notorious dark money group called Americans for Job Security (AJS), which was uncovered by a CREW lawsuit and has not been previously reported. AJS spent more than $25 million in federal independent expenditures and electioneering communications in the 2010 and 2012 elections, making it one of the largest dark money groups at the time.
CREW filed an FEC complaint against the group in 2012, alleging that it should have registered as a political committee and disclosed its donors. After years of litigation, AJS settled the case, resulting in the first and largest release of dark money donors in the post-Citizens United era. The disclosure showed that Crow, through his company Crow Holdings, gave AJS $50,000 in May 2011.
How much more Crow has given to dark money groups over the years is unknown. He has, however, also donated huge amounts to super PACs closely associated with dark money groups, including several Rove and others pitched to him just after Citizens United. Between 2011 and 2018, Crow personally and through his companies gave $2.5 million to super PAC American Crossroads, which is closely related to dark money groups Crossroads GPS and One Nation. Crow also gave almost $1.5 million between 2016 and 2022 to the Congressional Leadership Fund, the super PAC sister of the American Action Network.
Crow’s secret political contributions and undisclosed gifts to Justice Thomas can be seen as two sides of the same coin, offering opportunities to exercise influence, while keeping the public in the dark about who is pulling the strings.
We do know that Crow has given extensively to politicians and political committees, thanks to reporting requirements, and that he has given significant gifts to Thomas, thanks to investigative reporting. But that spending is just what Crow and Thomas have been forced to disclose, and what came out against their will. In helping bankroll the Republican network of dark money groups following Citizens United, Crow has taken full advantage of the diminishing transparency laws around our politics—which Justice Thomas has been instrumental in dismantling. As a result, we will likely never know the true impact of Crow’s political spending on our government and our elections.
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Karl Rove shoots down far-right Michelle Obama conspiracy theory: 'It's pure lunacy' - Alternet.org
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https://www.alternet.org/trump-karl-rove-biden-documents/
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duck 3 25
The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com › magazine › archive › 2017 › 09 › how-america-lost-its-mind › 534231
How America Went Haywire - The Atlantic
Karl Rove was stone-cold cynical, the Wizard of Oz's evil twin coming out from behind the curtain for a candid chat shortly before he won a second term for George W. Bush, about how "judicious ...
- democracynow.org
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Democracy Now!
https://www.democracynow.org › 2012 › 8 › 22 › boss_rove_how_karl_rove_went
Inside Karl Rove's Secret Kingdom: Craig Unger on Stolen Votes ...
In a new book, author Craig Unger examines the return of Karl Rove, the man who masterminded the rise of George W. Bush from governor of Texas to a two-term presidency, who advised Bush during two ...
- politico.com
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POLITICO
Karl Rove and the Modern Money Machine - POLITICO
Like much about Karl Rove, who declined to comment for this article, it's a story that starts in the Bush White House, where a full 2½ years before the Supreme Court's ruling, Rove was ...
- britannica.com
Karl Rove's Legal Tricks | The Nation
jul 20o2
When Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen comes before the Senate Judiciary Committee for the hearing on her nomination to the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, she will face an unprecedented level of criticism from individuals and organizations familiar with her record of extreme right-wing judicial activism. The noisiest of these complaints is unlikely, however, to rival the loud critique offered by one of her fellow justices on the state court.
In 2000, when the Texas high court rejected one of many attempts by Owen to prevent a young woman from obtaining an abortion without parental consent, one of the justices who formed the majority felt it was necessary to explicitly condemn Owen’s effort to thwart the clear intent of the law. To follow Owen’s lead, the justice declared, “would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”
The Texas justice who identified Owen as a radical jurist because of her willingness to rewrite laws in order to achieve results never intended by legislators, no longer serves on the state court. He has a new job–as President George W. Bush’s in-house lawyer. That means that as the Senate Judiciary Committee prepares for a high-stakes hearing on Owen’s nomination to a place on the second-highest rung of the federal judiciary, White House counsel Alberto Gonzales finds himself in the uncomfortable position of having to sing the praises of a woman he knows from personal experience to be a right-wing radical.
How did Gonzales, who as White House counsel heads the Bush Administration’s screening committee on judicial appointments, wind up on the cheerleading squad for an appeals court nominee whose extremism he scored barely two years ago? That’s easy. Gonzales is not in charge on this one. “Owen,” explains Craig McDonald, director of the nonpartisan group Texans for Public Justice, “is a Karl Rove special.”
Rove, the political Svengali who ran George W. Bush’s presidential campaign and parlayed that experience into a taxpayer-funded job as White House senior adviser, has orchestrated Owen’s rapid rise ever since he plucked her from a gig as an undistinguished hired gun for Transcontinental Gas Pipe Line and other energy firms to make her his pet judicial candidate. Back in 1994 the man whom Lone Star pols still refer to as “Bush’s brain” wanted to make the state’s top court politically friendly for the man he was about to make governor. Owen seemed suitably pliable, and with Rove guiding her campaign, the political unknown who in sixteen years as a corporate lawyer was the sole counsel on only four cases that were tried to a verdict was suddenly a Texas Supreme Court justice. Now Rove is determined to place his protégée on one of the most influential appeals court benches in the land. This confirmation crusade is not about Owen, who has never been anything more than a political pawn for the nation’s premier GOP operative. It’s not even about Rove’s desire to exact revenge for the Senate Judiciary Committee’s rejection of Mississippi Judge Charles Pickering’s nomination to serve on the Fifth Circuit. Rather, Rove is working to win the fight to confirm Owen in order to send a powerful signal to movement conservatives about this Administration’s determination to pack the courts with judicial activists who are willing to challenge antidiscrimination laws, upset basic protections for workers and consumers, and, above all, build a judicial infrastructure that will eventually overturn abortion rights. “Clearly,” says McDonald, “Rove picked her as a favor to the right wing because she is the darling of the right wing.”
Satisfying the far right–especially the fundamentalist right, for whom banning abortion remains priority number one–is Rove’s special mission. Speaking in March to what he thought was a closed-door meeting of the Family Research Council, now the most influential Christian conservative activist group in the land, Rove preached about how the Administration and Republicans in Congress are “creating a culture of life” with legislation such as the House-passed Born-Alive Infants Protection Act. But, Rove said, the fundamental fight is for control of the courts. “We need to find ways to win the war,” he told 300 of the nation’s most determined abortion foes. “This is a gigantic war with a whole series of battles that need to be fought.”
The next battle is likely to be carried out on behalf of Owen, who “exemplifies the most extreme hostility to reproductive rights of any of the nominees that President Bush has named,” according to Kate Michelman, president of the National Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. Placing Owen on an appeals court that is already one of the most conservative in the land, Michelman argues, could have a devastating impact on the right to choose in Southern states, where that right is already under assault. Antiabortion activists effectively share Michelman’s views: In an action alert urging members to make calls on Owen’s behalf to Pennsylvania Republican Senator Arlen Specter, a supporter of abortion rights who sits on the Judiciary Committee, the Pennsylvania Pro-Life Federation said of her: “At least one of [Bush’s] appointments has already faced the abortion issue as a judge and ruled for the pro-life side.”
For the Bush team, which always worries about its right flank, the coming fight over Owen’s nomination offers an opportunity to energize right-wing troops for the US Supreme Court nomination wars–where the Administration will seek to upset the Court’s prochoice majority–which are as close as Chief Justice William Rehnquist’s next visit to his back doctor; for the 2002 Senate races that will determine the partisan balance in Washington; and for the 2004 re-election campaign, which is the continual obsession of the Bush team. Essential to all of Rove’s calculations is a plan to energize the religious right. Within Republican circles, Rove quietly expresses frustration with the fact that 4 million Americans who identify themselves as Christian fundamentalists, evangelicals or Pentecostals did not vote in 2000. “We may have failed to motivate them,” grumbles Rove. He has heard the message of conservative activists like Gary Bauer and Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, who say that the battle to shape federal courts willing to overturn the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion is what their constituents care about.
Ever since Bush’s election, religious right activists have been busy developing their capacity to wage judicial confirmation fights, preparing for what Dobson refers to as the “critical moment” when a Supreme Court opening occurs. Asserting that the battles over nominations are bringing on a “watershed moment in American History,” the Christian Coalition is stepping up activism on judicial selection issues. The Free Congress Foundation is developing files on Senate Democrats with an eye toward using their own statements about GOP delays in filling judicial vacancies during the Clinton years against them. Concerned Women for America, a 500,000-member social policy powerhouse, recently made Tom Jipping–the right’s ablest analyst of confirmation fights–its “senior fellow in legal studies.” And Jipping’s spin is now regularly echoed, often down to the exact phrasing, on theWall Street Journal editorial page, in the pages of conservative publications such as National Review and Human Events, and on radio personality Rush Limbaugh’s nationally syndicated program.
Conscious of the religious right’s intense interest in the shape of the federal judiciary, Rove has for some time been willing to clear his calendar–easily one of the most packed in Washington–in order to attend meetings of the White House judicial selection task force. His presence is just one indication of the Bush Administration’s willingness to politicize the judicial selection process to a greater extent than any previous administration. Dispensing with long-established bipartisan approaches, the White House ended the practice of having the American Bar Association screen potential nominees, began withholding documents from the Senate Judiciary Committee and transformed the White House into a command center for plotting to turn nomination fights into political dynamite. At GOP fundraising events, President Bush now repeats the mantra, “We’ve got to get good, conservative judges appointed to the bench and approved by the United States Senate.”
To that end, Rove has begun holding regular nomination and confirmation strategy sessions with key senators, GOP operatives from around the country and conservative interest groups. Party activists and campaign contributors have been asked to join the White House in ramping up efforts to defeat Democratic senators who oppose Bush’s judicial nominees. After Rove and Vice President Dick Cheney went to Capitol Hill for a closed-door meeting with Senate Republicans, a key Judiciary Committee member, Jeff Sessions, said, “The White House, I’m convinced, is confident and bullish and determined to push this issue, as we are in the Senate.”
On Capitol Hill, Rove is working not just with senators but also with members of the House of Representatives. He helped coordinate a May press conference at which two dozen Republican senators–including supposed moderates such as Maine’s Susan Collins, who showed up wearing a “Remember Pickering” sticker–took turns accusing Democrats of politicizing the confirmation process. Rove has also forged an alliance with US Representative Thomas Davis of Virginia, the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee, to get GOP members of the House to build home-state pressure on Judiciary Committee Democrats and to use the concerns about confirmation fights to gin up grassroots activism on behalf of Republican candidates. While polls show Americans in general rate judicial confirmation fights low on their list of concerns, GOP pollster Whit Ayres says, “It’s potentially a very significant campaign issue, particularly in generating intensity among Republican voters.” That may be even more true now that a June decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals to prohibit required recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance–because of the “one nation under God” line–is being spun by GOP pols as a new reason to “take back the courts.”
Rove’s most serious work is with the conservative faithful, who he believes can be a counterweight to the coalition of progressive groups that scored a surprising win in their push to prevent the confirmation of Pickering, an old-school Southern conservative. On the very day that the Judiciary Committee rejected Pickering for a place on the court of last resort for most federal cases coming out of Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, Rove mourned Pickering’s defeat as a “judicial lynching” before a Family Research Council gathering and promised revenge. And what sweeter revenge could there be than placing Owen–who is even more conservative than Pickering and, at age 47, able to make much more of a lifetime appointment than the 65-year-old Mississippian–on the Fifth Circuit bench?
On one of the nation’s most conservative state courts, Owen is part of a militant minority that argues that the court has not veered far enough right. She has written or joined eighty-seven dissents from court decisions she deemed insufficiently activist in scope and character. Her judicial advocacy has taken many forms–from active support for curtailing access to public records, to backing moves to undermine the role and authority of civil juries, to her persistent efforts to ease restrictions on business. On a court with an exceptionally well documented pro-business bias–a poll conducted by the court itself found that 83 percent of the Texas public, 79 percent of Texas lawyers and 48 percent of Texas judges believe campaign contributions play a significant role in determining the court’s stance on issues of interest to donors–Owen has distinguished herself as a slavish defender of corporations. “Mention her name and people say, ‘Oh, Judge Enron,'” notes Nan Aron, who heads the Washington-based Alliance for Justice. “If you were looking for a judge whose record illustrates the hold that Enron established over state courts, she would be a leading contender.”
The recipient of $8,600 in campaign contributions from Enron’s political action committee and key executives, including a $1,000 check from Enron CEO Ken Lay, Owen wrote a 1996 Texas Supreme Court decision that allowed Enron to avoid paying $224,989 in school taxes. It may be unfair to suggest that Owen gave Enron special treatment, however, since she sided with her corporate donors in more than 80 percent of the cases in which she participated–a notably higher ratio than the court as a whole. Owen is a “business can do no wrong” judge–even if that means twisting the law in absurd directions. When the court majority, in a relatively rare affront to a land developer, overturned a state law written specifically to exempt a single developer–who happened to be an Owen political contributor–from Austin’s water quality standards, she objected so vociferously that the majority opinion concluded: “Most of Justice Owen’s dissent is nothing more than inflammatory rhetoric and thus merits no response.”
Perhaps the most troubling characteristic of Owen’s pro-business record is the determination with which she has led fights to erect barriers that prevent injured consumers from recovering damages from corporations, that restrict the ability of civil juries to side with plaintiffs who sue corporations and that undermine antidiscrimination protections–particularly for women. Owen dissented from a ruling that upheld a jury verdict awarding a woman $160,000 in damages from a vacuum-cleaner sales company after she was raped by one of the firm’s door-to-door salesmen; Owen argued that it was unreasonable to have expected the corporation to do the background check that would have revealed the man’s previous arrest for indecency with a child.
After Owen was nominated for the Fifth Circuit bench, groups including the Texas AFL-CIO, the Texas Civil Rights Project, the Women’s Health and Family Planning Association of Texas and the National Council of Jewish Women sent a letter to President Bush that stated in part: “Justice Owen’s activism betrays a judicial philosophy at odds with your own stated goal of nominating judges who will interpret rather than write the law.” In a letter to Senate Judiciary Committee chair Patrick Leahy, a prominent Houston attorney who is board certified in civil appellate law wrote: “Justice Owen is the type of judge who can ignore facts–when it helps corporations to do so–yet rail against the failure of her fellow Texas Supreme Court justices to pay more attention to the facts when she wants the court to stop a minor from getting an abortion.”
Again and again, the conversation about Owen circles back to abortion. It is on this issue, above all others, that she has distanced herself even from fellow conservatives. In every decision she has written on this issue, she has argued against a woman’s right to choose. In a dozen “Jane Doe” cases in which the court was asked to allow a pregnant teenager to bypass the state’s parental notification requirements and receive an abortion, Owen voted every time to deny the bypass. When lawyers for a college-bound teenager who was in her fifteenth week of pregnancy–and who had already endured more than a month of legal delays–asked that the high court expedite action on the high school senior’s request for permission to bypass the parental notification requirement, the court majority quickly granted the bypass. Owen wrote a dissent that asked: “Why then the rush to judgment?”
“We’re going to hear people complaining that Justice Owen is being attacked unfairly by individuals and groups that raise questions about her approach to abortion issues,” says Sarah Wheat of the Texas Abortion and Reproductive Rights Action League. “But Justice Owen is the one who has made abortion an issue.” Noting the nominee’s activist record, Wheat adds, “Senators have a responsibility to determine whether federal court nominees can be trusted to uphold the law.”
When the Judiciary Committee holds its hearing on Owen, perhaps as early as this month, some Democratic senators are certain to raise concerns. But committee members are already feeling intense pressure from Bush supporters. The Vermont Republican Party is attacking Leahy for creating a “judicial crisis” with his failure to advance the Owen nomination, while the Traditional Values Coalition is attacking him nationally as “an out-of-control chairman leading an out-of-control committee in a time of war.” Some Judiciary Committee members, such as New York Democrat Chuck Schumer–who has complained about the Administration’s attempt to “stack the nation’s bench with right-wing ideologues”–have sent clear signals that they are willing to reject nominees who are not “mainstream” jurists. But there are no guarantees that the committee’s Democratic majority will follow Schumer’s standard. Some prochoice Democrats, such as Wisconsin Democrat Russ Feingold and North Carolina’s John Edwards, have expressed reservations about rejecting nominees on ideological grounds.
Veteran observers of nomination fights say that the Judiciary Committee vote on Owen’s nomination could set the parameters not just for future appeals court nominations and confirmations but for the Supreme Court nomination clashes. With the rejection of Pickering, Democrats on the committee signaled that they were willing to block the nomination of a judge with a troubling record of racial insensitivity. Now the question is whether the committee will take into account other forms of extremism–on issues such as workplace discrimination, corporate responsibility and, above all, the right to choose.
Texan Craig McDonald sees it as a worthy battle. “You hear talk about whether this judicial nomination or that judicial nomination deserves to be more controversial,” he says. “I would just say that as far as those of us who have watched Priscilla Owen and Karl Rove and George W. Bush for a lot of years are concerned, this is the one that deserves to be controversial.” McDonald adds that “the Owen nomination is not a Texas fight or a Fifth Circuit fight. This is really a struggle to determine whether a political operative, Karl Rove, and his crew are going to determine the makeup of our federal courts.”
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https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/karl-rove/ texas abort ban too extreme
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pension plan for barr, presumably rove does not need one tho career on skids since year GPS spent tons on $ but lost big? he got crit for denying big lie, so voter suppress to stay relevant, get back in good graces?
hayes recs
Constellation of Anti-Voting Groups Threaten Democracy
By Marc Elias
August 18, 2022
https://www.democracydocket.com/news/a-constellation-of-anti-voting-groups-threaten-democracy/
republican leaders of the anti-voting movement recently held a “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” to discuss my voting rights litigation. The event was billed as the inaugural leadership dinner for a group called the Honest Elections Project. I was not invited to attend.
There is a constellation of well-funded, right-wing groups that use the legal and political system to make voting more difficult and free and fair elections less likely. They range from mere vote suppressors to full-on election deniers. Most oppose expanding voting rights and support strict voting laws. Many seek to gut the Voting Rights Act entirely; others want it interpreted so narrowly as to be ineffective. None of these organizations supported Congress’ efforts to enact new pro-voter legislation.
These right-wing groups work closely with the RNC and with state legislatures to advance anti-voting legislation.
The American Constitutional Rights Union, Foundation for Government Accountability, Judicial Watch, Lawyers Democracy Fund, Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) and Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections are just a few of the groups fighting against voting rights in court. America First Legal Foundation, Election Integrity Network, Heritage Foundation and True the Vote also support anti-democracy legal efforts. The conservative American Legislative Exchange Council advances model anti-voting legislation for state legislatures.
We recently got a preview of how these groups will operationalize their legal efforts in court in the future. Earlier this year, a Florida federal judge struck down most of the state’s “Big Lie” voter suppression law. In doing so, the court found that Florida Republicans had intentionally discriminated against Black voters and had violated the constitutional rights of Floridians seeking to participate in the democratic process. On appeal, six national anti-voting groups filed separate “friend of the court” briefs opposing the lower court’s decision — in addition to the briefs by the state defendants and the Republican Party.
For many years, the Republican National Committee (RNC) was legally barred from participating in election monitoring or voter suppression efforts as a consequence of the GOP’s ugly history of targeting minority voters in the 1980s. When that bar was lifted in 2017, the RNC picked up where it had left off and ran so-called “election integrity” programs with state parties.
These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support.
Now, in the post-Trump era, the RNC directly partners with voter suppression groups and efforts that two years ago would have been unthinkable. The party’s dismal court results following the 2020 election coupled with MAGA supporters’ distrust of the party establishment has left the GOP operating in the penumbra of the current stars of the election denier and voter suppression movement.
It’s not just what these groups do, but who runs them.
On PILF’s board of directors, for example, are Cleta Mitchell and John Eastman,both of whom served as lawyers for former President Donald Trump. Mitchell participated in the infamous telephone call during which Trump demanded that the Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) find 11,000 votes and declare Trump the winner. Eastman, who has been in the news recently for having a search warrant executed against him, helped craft the January 2021 insurrection plan.
The Honest Elections Project — the host of the secret dinner — was formed in February 2020 and is connected to Federalist Society founder Leonard Leo.
The newest of these groups, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, was co-founded by former U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr (R) and Karl Rove, who served as former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.Casino billionaire Steve Wynn provides the organization’s financial backing as its finance chair.
This group is notably more competent and well-resourced than the legal buffoonery who led Trump’s post-election antics. Though I am no fan of Barr, he is unlikely to hire lawyers who claim Hugo Chávez rigged elections from the grave or threaten to release the mythological Kraken. With Rove on its board as well, Barr is almost certainly not going to hold press conferences in a landscaping parking lot.
Notably, the infrastructure on the right is eclipsing the organizations on the left.
Historically, most organizations and resources dedicated to protecting the right to vote were connected to the left. Today there are still many important civil rights and voting rights organizations that bring litigation to protect the right to vote. Their work is invaluable. But most of those groups have broader portfolios that extend beyond voting rights and have insufficient resources to meet their growing needs.
What is notable about the right wing’s approach is the scope and interconnected nature of their legal efforts to undermine voting rights and free and fair elections.
Right-wing legal groups work in tandem with Republican legislatures dominated by election deniers. These organizations can help generate the most effective voter suppression policies that Republicans turn into laws. When those laws are challenged in court, the conservative legal groups then help defend them.
This brings me back to the “gourmet dinner” at an “undisclosed location” that I was not invited to attend. The right wing holds these events and funds these groups because they know that they cannot win fair elections. These anti-voting legal groups offer a path for Republicans to wield majority political power without majority support. They know that they lost in 2020. They are embarrassed that Trump was routed in post-election litigation. Some are upset that his coup failed on Jan. 6.
They set up new groups, hold secret dinners and create new voter suppression laws hoping that we will give up. I’m not sure what gave them that impression. After Trump was defeated in 2020, his team fought dozens of times in court — and lost. We didn’t give up then, and we certainly aren’t giving up now.
NEXT UP
Conservatives Have Been Packing the Courts for Years
We deserve a forward-thinking judiciary filled with movement lawyers who want to see progress for our nation.
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ref
https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/ex-trump-ag-barr-others-launch-republican-backed-election-law-group-2022-07-21/
no lnx
Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections was co-founded by Karl Rove, hotelier Steve Wynn and lawyer Bobby Burchfield
The group opposes courts intervening in state election laws
and has already filed briefs in court cases over new voting restrictions
(Reuters) - Prominent Republicans including former U.S. Attorney General William Barr on Thursday launched a new legal group they say is aimed at defending state legislatures’ right to set election laws.
The nonprofit group, Restoring Integrity and Trust in Elections, is also co-founded by longtime Republican strategist Karl Rove, hotel magnate and GOP donor Steve Wynn and attorney Bobby Burchfield, who last year resigned from the law firm King & Spalding.
Burchfield told Reuters Thursday that the group was created in response to expanding court fights over election laws. It has already filed two briefs in election law cases backing state legislatures' ability to change voting rules.
“We do not think the courts should be setting the rules for elections. We believe that’s the province of state legislatures,” Burchfield said.
He said the nonprofit is not a “foil” to Democratic lawyers like Marc Elias, who left law firm Perkins Coie last year to start his own practice regularly litigating over election laws.
The group is not affiliated with former President Donald Trump and does not support particular candidates, Burchfield said. He said the groups' members reject claims made by some other conservatives that the 2020 election is illegitimate due to mass voter fraud.
Elias on Thursday told Reuters he believes the new organization is "fundamentally about making voting harder and opposing voting rights." He said that the state laws the group defends are falsely premised on the idea that fraud is rampant in U.S. elections.
One of the group's briefs, filed in June before the Montana Supreme Court, supports reinstating several new voting laws blocked by a judge in March, including ones eliminating same-day voter registration and heightening voter identification requirements in the state. The court in May suspended that ruling but has not issued a final decision.
Represented by lawyers from Jones Day, the group also filed a brief Tuesday at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit supporting a Republican-backed Florida law that restricts the use of drop boxes and third-party organizations' ability to collect voter registration forms. The court in May temporarily reinstated those measures after a lower court judge said they were racially discriminatory.
Wynn is the group's finance chair. It will also help others with a similar agenda through financial aid or "intellectual capital," by connecting them to lawyers, Burchfield said.
Burchfield last year represented the Republican National Committee and Trump’s reelection campaign in a pre-election legal challenge to North Carolina extending the deadline for receiving mail-in ballots in the 2020 race. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected the case.
He was previously an outside ethics adviser to the Trump Organization but said Thursday he no longer holds that role.
Thomson Reuters
Jacqueline Thomsen, based in Washington, D.C., covers legal news related to policy, the courts and the legal profession. Follow her on Twitter at @jacq_thomsen and email her at jacqueline.thomsen@thomsonreuters.com.
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anti-estb // TP freedom caucus BS, bannon // conspir victim of dark forces
an 622
no lnx
MAGA v. McConnell: Why Kimberly Guilfoyle is going after the GOP leader
Kimberly Guilfoyle speaking at the 2021 Student Action Summit, hosted by Turning Point USA at the Tampa Convention Center in Tampa, Florida, Gage Skidmore
Jon Skolnik June 19, 2022
Kimerly Guilfoyle, Donald Trump Jr.'s fiancé, on Thursday accused Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., of waging a "smear campaign" against former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, who is running to represent the state in the U.S. Senate.
The attack came this week in an email blast by Guilfoyle, Greitens' campaign chair, who alleged that the Senate Minority Leader "made a backdoor deal to try and have [Greitens] REMOVED."
"[McConnell has] gone to unimaginable lengths to keep a MAGA warriorlike Eric from winning the 1 SEAT we need to take back the 50-50 Senate," she exclaimed. "He even launched a smear campaign targeting Eric's children. When the RINO establishment employs the exact same tactics as the radical Left, enough is enough!"
Guilfoyle's remarks are the latest in a broader response to claims that Greitens subjected his ex-wife, Sheena Greitens, and their kids to physical abuse during their time together. Those abuse allegations were first levelled back in April 2020, shortly after the couple divorced.
Eric Greitens, for his part, has adamantly denied his ex-wife's account, arguing that if he had been abusive, the two would not have arranged a divorce settlement granting him joint physical custody of the children. Greitens has also alleged that his ex-wife's allegations, which were outlined in a signed affidavit, are part of a coordinated smear campaign waged by McConnell and GOP operative Karl Rove.
"I want to tell you directly, Karl Rove and Mitch McConnell," Greitens tweeted back in March. "Hear me now. You are disgusting cowards. And we are coming for you. We are no longer going to allow you to attack me and attack my kids and to destroy this country."
To support that claim, Greitens has cited a report by right-wing news site Breitbart alleging that Rove had forehand knowledge of Sheena Greitens' abuse allegations. The article also reported that Sheena Greitens' sister is employed by McConnell at the three different political consulting firms. Neither of these details clearly suggest that both McConnell and Rove mounted a coordinated attack against Eric Greitens' Senate campaign.
Both Rove and Sheena Greitens have denied conspiring against the former Missouri governor. Still, Breitbart has continued to suggest such involvement, most recently reporting on claims by Missouri Republican Rep. Billy Long that McConnell meddled in the GOP Senate primary by pressuring Long to drop out of the race.
"McConnell's efforts to get Long to drop out of the race could be an attempt to take away votes from former Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, the frontrunner in the race," the outlet suggested. "McConnell has a vested interest in stopping Greitens candidacy as the former Missouri governor has campaigned on voting against McConnell as Republican Senate leader."
Eric Greitens is currently coming out on top in the Senate primary, according to a recent poll by The Hill and Emerson College. The Senate candidate is the only one in the race to boast double-digit support.
For the most part, the former governor has attempted to align himself with MAGA values, even though he was reportedly reluctant to back Donald Trump in the 2016 election, according to Politico. Still, Eric Greitens has not yet received an official imprimatur from the former president.
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kty chem lobbyist grizzle
got rove to hire s johnson EPA head, who killed 2009 EPA endangerment implementation? stalled climate action till next admin?
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-joel-kaplan-washington-political-influence/}:
OMFG
KAPLAN REMAINED IN the Bush White House for all eight years. He rose to deputy chief of staff, managing a wide terrain of domestic policy issues, including federal surveillance law and immigration reform. He also proved adept at the Washington gamesmanship required to protect his boss.
:{:{In late 2007 the Environmental Protection Agency was on the brink of a historic feat: declaring that greenhouse gases posed a direct threat to the public through climate change.:{ On the afternoon of December 5, an EPA official named Jason Burnett emailed the agency’s official but unpublished Endangerment Finding to the Office of Management and Budget, thus triggering a federal review process that would in all likelihood lead to the first-ever regulations of CO2 emissions from vehicles and, eventually, power stations. A half-hour later, }:
Steven Johnson, Bush’s EPA administrator, walked into Burnett’s office. As Burnett recalls, Johnson had just gotten off the phone: Joel Kaplan was asking them not to send the report to the OMB. When Burnett said he’d already sent it, Johnson left, then came back five minutes later. “Joel is asking whether you can send a follow-on email, saying you sent it in error.”}:}:
“And I said, ‘Well, no—because I didn’t,’” Burnett recalls, laughing. “This is the key environmental issue of our time, the evidence is clear. No, I didn’t send it ‘by mistake.’” Johnson went back to the phone and again returned a few minutes later. “OK, Joel is going to tell Susan Dudley”—the OMB official who had received the EPA document—“not to open your email.” Burnett was speechless, and also somewhat impressed at Kaplan’s logic. Under a certain theory, if the email remained unopened, the OMB wasn’t in receipt of its contents. “And if you’re not in receipt of its contents, then you don’t have to take action that would flow from having received thisEndangerment Finding—literally, that the public is in danger from climate change.”
After the email sat unopened for weeks, Johnson drafted a letter directly to Bush. It read, “I have concluded that it is in the Administration’s best interest to move forward” with the EPA’s three-phase plan to regulate greenhouse gases. In January, Johnson sent the letter to the White House by courier. At the top, on EPA stationery, was a hand-scrawled note to Kaplan: “Joel, I really need your help in bringing these issues to closure. Thank you, Steve.” According to Burnett,Kaplan called a few days later and told Johnson to have someone from the EPA come over and take the letter back. Six months later, the EPA issued a new version of its findings; this time it did not make any formal recommendation.
When Bush’s term ended, Kaplan went to work for a Texas energy company. But he had kept in touch with Sheryl Sandberg, who was looking to build out Facebook’s small team in Washington. Kaplan joined in 2011, overseeing domestic policy. He understood little about how the internet worked and had to be taught by snickering staff. Yet the company’s main concern in DC at the time wasn’t fending off laws but building an image. In Washington, Facebook’s trajectory was reflected in its ever changing lease: from a cramped walk-up in DuPont Circle to swankier F Street digs in Penn Quarter to the Warner building on Pennsylvania Avenue—each move inching closer to the White House....
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as President Donald Trump and his allies desperately try to push the narrative that the election that's slipping away from him is actually being stolen via voter fraud, a longstanding top operative in the Republican Party threw cold water on the suggestion.
Karl Rove, the former adviser to George W. Bush, wrote a blog post on Thursday describing the state of the race. His overall analysis seemed to generally match the consensus view of election analysts at the time — votes in key swing states remain outstanding, but results look increasingly favorable for Joe Biden — though he didn't explicitly lay out that Trump is on a track to lose. He even put a negative spin on his analysis for Biden, arguing that his campaign did nothing to lift up down-ballot Democrats.
But in one notable paragraph, he sharply broke with the president and his allies who are concocting baseless claims about voter fraud to cast doubt on the results and drum up legal challenges to the process. The level of voter fraud needed to turn the election around for Trump, Rove explained, is just not plausible:
There are suspicious partisans across the spectrum who believe widespread election fraud is possible. Some hanky-panky always goes on, and there are already reports of poll watchers in Philadelphia not being allowed to do their jobs. But stealing hundreds of thousands of votes would require a conspiracy on the scale of a James Bond movie. That isn't going to happen. Though Democrats have been worried about reports that the post office — deliberately or otherwise — delayed delivery of a substantial number of mail-in ballots, they haven't been making sweeping claims about fraud that would undermine the final election. Those claims are coming from the Trump camp — which strongly suggests they think they're losing. It's notable that Rove, of all people, isn't on board for this gambit. "Karl Rove is an expert on fake voter fraud scandals," said HuffPost reporter Arthur Delaney. "He was involved in firing US Attorneys for not prosecuting bogus voter fraud cases, a disgrace that led to the resignation of the Attorney General."
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omfg baaaaaaccckkk!?
https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/the-terrifying-return-of-karl-rove-a-republican-character-assassin-joins-trumps-team/
digby
:{:{There have been many rumors in recent weeks that the Trump campaign is starting to disintegrate. This is not surprising. All you have to do is read Trump’s Twitter feed to see that the president does not like bad news and he will kill any messenger who brings it to him. Lately, there has been a whole lot of bad campaign news.The New York Times has reported that Trump has been getting so angry at the decaying poll numbers that he yelled at campaign manager Brad Parscale and threatened to sue him during a heated phone call. (Parscale reportedly replied, “I love you too,” and flew up to Washingon right away to mend fences.)}:
Indeed, the polls have not been looking good for Trump, but then they haven’t looked very good his entire term. An impeached president whose approval rating has always hovered around 42% doesn’t have a lot of room for error to begin with. Now that he’s shown what a disastrous leader he is in a crisis, there very little prospect that it’s going to improve.Naturally, Trump blames his campaign operatives for this because he will never accept responsibility for anything that goes wrong. Parscale has been just a bit too high-profile recently, even getting celebrity treatment from the New York Times, which is the sort of thing that makes the boss very angry.
He doesn’t like to share the spotlight, particularly with someone who seems to be making buckets of money while working for him.The Never Trumper PAC known as The Lincoln Project yanked Trump’s chain with that information this week, running another one of its ads pointedly designed to get under the president’s thin skin.[vids death star ]setting aside the macabre tastelessness of calling your campaign operation the “Death Star” while your candidate is recklessly mismanaging a runaway epidemic that has killed close to 100,000 of his own people, even as a pop-culture reference it’s absurdly off-base.}:
:{:{Does Parscale know that things didn’t end well for the Death Star?Parscale has cultivated a close relationship with Jared Kushner, the son Trump never had, so he’s probably safe. But you never know with Trump. His 2016 campaign cycled through a number of campaign operatives, some of whom are now either in prison or awaiting sentencing. There have been whispers that Trump might bring back Corey Lewandowski or Steve Bannon, but Javanka never cared for either of them so they’re probably off the table. If things get really desperate, I suppose he can always pardon Roger Stone and Paul Manafort and bring them back on board.The sad fact is that Trump’s options are limited.}:
While the entire Republican establishment has not just capitulated to Trump but now eagerly supports him, it’s interesting to note that so many high-profile GOP campaign strategists have gone the other way. There simply aren’t very many experienced people Trump can call for help.But there is one guy: Karl Rove, the man they used to call “Bush’s Brain,” whom George W. Bush affectionately dubbed “Turd Blossom.” Rove has backed away from active campaigning in recent years, preferring to drop his pearls of wisdom on Fox News and advise the dark-money super PAC American Crossroads, which he founded back in 2010. But reports this week suggest that despite Trump’s antipathy for the Bush family, Turd Blossom may be back in the saddle, advising Trump on how to salvage those swing states he sees slipping away.}:
:{:{According to NBC News, Rove has been quietly worming his way into the campaign for some time:Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has consulted Rove since the 2018 midterm elections, per three people familiar with the discussions. Before the pandemic, Rove had advised the Trump campaign it could be modeled, in some ways, after the Bush 2004 re-election race.}:
Of course he did. He certainly wouldn’t want to remind anyone of his total meltdown on Fox News on election night in 2012, when he refused to accept that Republican nominee Mitt Romney had lost Ohio, and with it the election, insisting that his own numbers were more reliable. Romney’s family had to call and tell Rove to back down so the candidate could concede with some measure of dignity.In fact, Rove is a perfect addition to the Trump team. For all his reputation as a “data guy” and number-cruncher, he’s really just an old-fashioned Republican character assassin. The New York Times has reported that Rove had a recent meeting with Trump and warned him “that he had fallen behind in the task of damaging [Joe] Biden, people familiar with the meeting said.” That’s the kind of tactic in which Rove specializes.}:
Rove first came to national attention as George W. Bush’s campaign manager in 2000. According to James Moore and Wayne Slater’s book “Bush’s Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential,” Rove was personally behind one of the most scurrilous episodes in GOP campaign history. He allegedly came up with the infamous push poll used in South Carolina to undermine support for Sen. John McCain with outright racist innuendo: “Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?”But then, Rove was a Lee Atwater protégé, so what else would one expect?
Crudely tearing down the opponent isn’t the only way in which Rove is particularly suited to be a Trump adviser. He was always exalted among the Beltway press for his supposed genius in figuring out that you should attack your opponents on their perceived strengths. For instance, the Bush campaign attacked John Kerry over his Vietnam War record in the 2004 election, when that was considered Kerry’s ace in the hole. In reality, Rove was always projecting his own candidate’s weaknesses onto his opponent. In that election, Bush had had to contend with the fact that he had started a useless war in Iraq and had himself dodged the draft, so the campaign’s best recourse was to make Kerry look like a liar and a coward.I hardly have to tell you how Trumpian that is. If Rove can get Trump to actually listen to him — which he probably won’t, since Trump won’t listen to anyone — it could be a formidable partnership.
:{:{Karl Rove won elections through the clever manipulation of the media with lots of talk about “the math,” the supposed inevitability of Republican victory and his own inflated mystique. In that regard, he mirrors Parscale, the high-living Trump campaign manager who has snookered the press into believing he’s a high-tech genius possessed of secret knowledge and endless resources. Both of them managed to slip their clients into a first term with a dubious Electoral College victory and a popular-vote defeat. It remains to be seen if Parscale can replicate Rove’s second-term victory in 2004, in which Bush won the popular vote, but almost lost the Electoral College.Bush’s Brain and Trump’s ego are going to ride Brad Parscale’s Death Star into November. Fasten your seatbelts; it’s going to be a bumpy flight.}:
==
8/20
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https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/foxs-whitewash-trumps-qanon-endorsement-helps-explain-how-it-happened-first Trump’s Wednesday endorsement of the deranged and dangerous QAnon movement as people who “love this country” thrilled its supporters while horrifying observers, who pointed out that his validation of an extremist ideology linked to violent acts would swell its ranks. But during his first interview following those remarks on Thursday night, the president faced no questions about his praise for unhinged pro-Trump conspiracy theorists who claim that he is on the verge of unraveling a global pedophile ring of Satan-worshipping Democrats and celebrities. As Fox News host Sean Hannity provided the president with his typical mix of sycophancy and softballs over the course of the half-hour phoner, Trump’s embrace of QAnon never came up.}:
:{:{Hannity’s decision to ignore the story put a capstone on Fox’s lackadaisical response to the president’s praise for advocates of a bizarre conspiracy theory that the FBI has termed a domestic terror threat. Fox News political analyst Karl Rove garnered press attention on Wednesday for calling QAnon supporters “nuts and kooks” and saying the president “ought to disavow them” on Special Report, and that program ran a segment on the “conspiracy theory” the following day. But none of the network’s highly rated prime-time hosts have mentioned Trump’s remarks at all, and by Thursday morning, Fox & Friends was decontextualizing part of the president’s comment as an anodyne reference to his administration “saving the world.”}:
Trump backing the QAnon movement seems like a natural fit -- the president is a notorious conspiracy theorist who finds it nearly impossible to disavow even his most reprehensible supporters. But his praise for the group can’t be separated from Fox’s unwillingness to try to establish guard rails for the Republican Party by denouncing it. Trump relies on Fox for news and information, and its coverage constantly shapes his worldview. If Fox’s hosts had condemned the QAnon movement in the years since it first emerged, it’s hard to imagine that the president would be praising it today -- or that it would have metastasized through the GOP to the extent that it has.}:
:{:{But Fox has largely kept discussions of the QAnon movement and its violent and unhinged ideology off its airwaves, even as its spread within the Republican Party has ensured that the network has repeatedly ended up promoting its supporters. I noted last week, after one of its adherents received the GOP congressional nod for a blood-red district, that QAnon has been referenced on only eight broadcasts on the network’s weekday evening programming over the previous two years -- almost all passing references that failed to describe the conspiracy theory’s dangers. The network’s on-air talent have alternately denied knowing anything about the movement and played footsie with it, engaging with its followers on social media, downplaying its extremism, and even praising aspects of it on Fox shows. Meanwhile, the network’s executives hired a prominent QAnon-supporting influencer to host a cooking show on Fox’s streaming service. }:
We know what it looks like when Fox tries to destroy the credibility of a movement with its audience, and that isn’t it. Fox hosts and personalities highlighted the Black Lives Matter movement during 288 weekday evening broadcasts over the same two-year span, building on racist and unhinged smears the network has deployed against its supporters since its founding. In recent months, as the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor drove new attention to Black Lives Matter’s campaign against racial injustice and police brutality,
Fox hosts redoubled their efforts to delegitimize it. Network star Tucker Carlson, perhaps the Fox host with the most influence on Trump right now, turned his program into a nightly assault on the group.}:
:{:{He called it a “totalitarian political movement” and denounced Republican leaders who expressed support for it.Trump got the message. He repeatedly lashed out at Black Lives Matter this summer, at times in direct response to segments he was watching about it on Fox. The president was particularly aggrieved by an anti-police chant that members of a Minnesota-based Black Lives Matter group used during a march in 2015 -- one that Fox has highlighted dozens of times in the years since. If Fox had devoted even a fraction of the venomous demonization it launched at Black Lives Matter activists to QAnon conspiracy theorists, the network could have warned off its millions of viewers -- including the president -- from the movement.}:
But Fox has not chosen that path, which would require trying to curb the excesses of the radicalized Republicans whose anti-Democratic fervor powers the network’s ratings. Instead, Fox sold out its viewers to a cult. The longer the network held its fire, the more vulnerable its audience was to the movement’s entreaties, and the harder it became to pry Trump supporters away from its conspiracy theories. Now QAnon’s ranks have swelled, its supporters have effectively become a key GOP constituency, dozens are running for Congress, and at least one will likely be elected to the House in the fall. With the president himself signing on as a validator, it may be too late to keep QAnon away from the levers of power.}:
QAnon may garner criticism here and there from some at Fox who, like Rove, find the spectacle of the president cozying up to “kooks” too much to bear. But I doubt very much that the network as a whole will engage in the full-spectrum denunciation needed to curtail QAnon’s growth. Instead, the days to come will likely bring a range of responses from Fox personalities, from ignoring the movement, to downplaying its importance and extremism, to condemning its critics for attacking Trump supporters. The press will be hammered for covering the story. Some network figures will claim that the QAnon movement makes some good points, perhaps even outing themselves as full-fledged supporters. Others will rely on whataboutism, with the president’s defenders pushing back against reporting on QAnon by demanding to know why the media isn’t asking Democrats to condemn antifa or Black Lives Matter.
Fox is a Republican propaganda outlet that is deeply devoted to Trump. As long as that party and its leader are standing by the QAnon cult, the network won’t dare to stand up to it.=
made 2018 player list
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https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2019/11/dark-money-group-one-nation-2018/
Karl Rove-linked ‘dark money’ group raised, spent big ahead of 2018 midterms One Nation, a “dark money” group that primarily backs Senate Republicans, saw its revenue spike last year ahead of 2018 midterm elections where the GOP picked up two seats in the upper chamber. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit hauled in $58 million last year, more than triple the $17 million it received in 2017. Read more 1Nation, a “dark money” group that primarily backs Senate Republicans, saw its revenue spike last year ahead of 2018 midterm elections where the GOP picked up two seats in the upper chamber. The conservative 501(c)(4) nonprofit hauled in $58 million last year — more than triple the $17 million it received in 2017, new tax returns obtained by OpenSecrets show.
:{:{The group was bolstered by a $10 million contribution from a single anonymous donor. Masterminded by former White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove, One Nation launched in 2015 and effectively replaced the once-dominant Crossroads GPS. One Nation spent more than it raised in 2018, totaling $64.1 million, as it funneled money to other conservative groups.Last year, One Nation gave $18.6 million to the Senate Leadership Fund, a GOP-allied super PAC that shares staff and offices with the nonprofit. The super PAC spent $95 million to back Senate Republicans ahead of the midterms, shelling out more than $20 million in ads attacking then-Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) alone.}:
:{:{That’s after One Nation laid the groundwork earlier in the year and in 2017 with ads hammering McCaskill’s record and boosting her successful Republican challenger. One Nation is already targeting 2020 Senate races, running ads to support vulnerable Sens. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) and Susan Collins (R-Maine). One Nation is applauding Ernst over her bill to end the electric vehicle tax credit, claiming the tax break “subsidizes wealthy car buyers but hurts farmers and jobs.”}:
In Maine, One Nation’s ads portray Collins as a fighter for those with diabetes and promote her bill to reduce insulin prices. Meanwhile, liberal dark money groups have been hammering Ernst and Collins with their own ads attacking their records on healthcare. The amount spent by dark money groups on these “issue ads” — which don’t directly advocate for or against the senators’ elections — is not required to be reported to the Federal Election Commission unless an election is near. One Nation has shelled out nearly $2.6 million on Google and Facebook ads since the platforms began tracking political ads in May 2018. Among its ads aired this year are those attacking Medicare for All, the healthcare proposal championed by some 2020 Democrats.}:}:
As a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, One Nation is not required to disclose its donors’ identities. Tax returns from the American Petroleum Institute reveal that the trade group gave $50,000 to One Nation last year, but the vast majority of its funding remains a mystery.
:{:{Another $5.4 million came from Crossroads GPS, which raised $7 million last year according to tax filings. That’s an uptick from the meager $75,000 Crossroads GPS raised in 2017, but the group still appears to be just an arm of the larger One Nation at this point. One Nation gave out a total of $3.8 million in grants to other conservative nonprofits, including anti-abortion groups such as Susan B. Anthony List and National Right to Life, last year. Pushing for more restrictive abortion laws across the states, both groups spent millions of dollars to influence state legislatures and drafted model legislation for anti-abortion lawmakers to follow, the Center for Public Integrity reported.}:
Susan B. Anthony List, which received $1.6 million, has become more active on the federal level, spending $2.4 million during the 2018 midterms to back congressional Republicans. The Rove-linked dark money group also gave $250,000 to Citizens for a Working America, a little-known dark money group based in Virginia. The group has been an active donor to several super PACs in recent years, bankrolling several groups that launched multimillion-dollar ad campaigns in federal and state elections. Some of the groups, such as Hometown Freedom Action Network, are closely tied to the dark money group. One Nation itself also funded groups running expensive ad campaigns in competitive races. It coughed up $1 million to American Economic Freedom Alliance, a D.C.-based dark money group that spent more than $330,000 running ads in Indiana boosting former Rep. Luke Messer’s (R-Ind.) failed Senate bid last year. The alliance also gave $600,000 to pro-Messer super PAC Hoosiers for Conservative Values, records show.}:
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:{:{2x?https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/05/why-karl-rove-uses-dirty-tricks-they-work/370811/Why Karl Rove Uses Dirty Tricks: They WorkKarl Rove reportedly hinted that Hillary Clinton may have brain damage from a fall—then quickly backed away. His history suggests it's a calculated maneuver. PETER BEINARTMAY 13, 2014 Karl Rove now denies reports that he said Hillary Clinton may have brain damage. “I never used that phrase,” he said on Fox News. True. What Rove said was, “Thirty days in the hospital? And when she reappears, she’s wearing glasses that are only for people who have traumatic brain injury? We need to know what’s up with that.”In other words, Rove didn’t say Hillary Clinton has brain damage. He hinted it, thus giving himself deniability while ensuring that the slur lingers in the public mind. Which is what he’s been doing his entire career.In 2004, Joshua Green reported in The Atlantic that Texas insiders accused Rove of spreading allegations that his rival, Republican consultant John Weaver, had made a pass at a young man at a GOP event.}:
Green also quoted an aide to a 1994 state Supreme Court candidate in Alabama who accused Rove of having quietly insinuated that his boss was a pedophile. Similarly, when George W. Bush ran for governor of Texas that same year, rumors swirled about the sexual orientation of incumbent Ann Richards. “No one ever traced the character assassination to Rove,” wrote Bush biographer Louis Dubose, “Yet no one doubts that Rove was behind it.” Most famously, when Bush was fighting for his life against a surging John McCain in South Carolina in 2000, fliers, emails, and push polls accused McCain of having fathered an African-American “love child” (he had actually adopted a girl from Bangladesh) and of suffering from mental instability as a result of his incarceration in Vietnam. McCain staffers, and McCain’s daughter, have accused Rove of orchestrating the rumors;
Rove denies any involvement.Why does Rove allegedly smear his opponents this way? Because it works. Consider the Clinton “brain damage” story. Right now, the press is slamming Rove for his vicious, outlandish comments. But they’re also talking about Clinton’s health problems as secretary of state, disrupting the story she wants to tell about her time in Foggy Bottom in her forthcoming memoir.Assuming she runs for president, the press will investigate Clinton’s medical history and age no matter what Rove says. But he’s now planted questions—about the December 2012 blood clot that forced her into the hospital, and about her mental condition as she ages—that will lurk in journalists’ minds as they do that reporting. If she has a moment of Rick Perry-like forgetfulness sometime between now and the fall of 2016, Rove’s comments make it more likely that voters will wonder whether she’s still with it mentally. Political consultants create narratives about the candidates they want to defeat: Al Gore fudged the truth; John Kerry was an elitist; Barack Obama wasn’t fully American; Mitt Romney didn’t care about ordinary people. Once you kindle public suspicion about your opponent, it’s easy to keep throwing logs on the fire. On the eve of the memoir that will launch Hillary’s pre-campaign public relations blitz, Karl Rove is starting that process now, despite having no evidence for the storyline he wants to convey.
For better—but mostly for worse—campaign 2016 is already here==https://www.alternet.org/citizens-united-just-15-groups-account-75-percent-dark-money-spent-us-elections Just 15 groups were responsible for more than 75 percent of dark money political spending from 2010 to 2016, and together poured more than $600 million—out of a total of $800+ million—into campaigns in the wake of the landmark Citizens United case, according to a new analysis from Issue One, a nonpartisan nonprofit that advocates for stricter campaign finance rules."Dark money groups hold enormous sway over what issues are, and are not, debated in Congress and on the campaign trail," the report explains. "But the donors behind these groups rarely discuss their motivations for bankrolling these efforts, leaving the public in the dark about who funds these increasingly prominent and potent organizations."
In addition the new Dark Money Illuminated (pdf) report, which identifies about 400 donors and organizations bankrolling these 15 secretive groups, the researchers also developed profiles for each dark money group and an "extensive, first-of-its-kind database containing nearly 1,200 transactions, each supported by primary source documents.""Right now, the dark money groups and anonymous donors behind them that endlessly bombard Americans with television ads spouting half-truths and outright lies do a disservice to voters," said Issue One CEO Nick Penniman. "In the internet age, every American should be able to know where the money is being spent and who is giving it in near real-time."Of course, overall political spending since 2010 is in the many billions of dollars, but the Issue One report specifically focuses on groups that have been allowed to conceal their donor lists.While the groups examined by Issue One have supported both Democrat and Republican candidates at various levels of politics, the only ones to break $100 million primarily back the GOP. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce—which gets substantial funding from big banks, pharmaceutical companies, and polluting industries—spent $130 million, and Crossroads GPS, co-founded by former White House strategist Karl Rove, spent $110 million. The third highest spender was the right-wing billionaire Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity.
Check out the full list: "Whether you're a conservative Republican or a progressive Democrat, policy ideas and candidates' positions should be promoted by organizations who are proud to be engaged in our public arena, not secretive front groups designed to deceive voters, hide donors, and deploy deceptive tactics," declared Tim Roemer, a former congressman and U.S. ambassador who co-chairs Issue One's ReFormers Caucus, a coalition of former politicians.Emphasizing that "transparency and disclosure are the building blocks necessary to empower citizens with information to fully and accurately assess the source and credibility of the groups trying to influence their votes," the report includes five recommendations for doing so:Increase donor disclosure, such as including the names of a dark money group's top donors on television, radio, print, or digital advertisements;Pass the Honest Ads Act, legislation before Congress that would create new disclosure standards for paid online political advertising modeled on the nationwide requirements for paid ads that appear on television or radio;
Develop new, national reporting rules to prevent donors from hiding their identities while bankrolling election-related advertisements;Encourage or even require groups to great CREATE? special accounts that are exclusively for political expenses; andRestructure and strenthen "the feckless, and deadlocked-by-design," Federal Elections Commission (FEC) "to ensure there is an effective cop on the beat to stop groups from breaking the rules that already exist.
Other critics of political spending by wealthy Americans and corporations have argued for far more radical reforms, including the reversal of the U.S. Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling and a transition to publicly-funded elections.On Tuesday, a federal appeals court ruled that a pair of dark money groups, including the Koch-funded Americans for Prosperity, must disclose top donors to California's attorney general—though, as the Los Angeles Times noted, state officials "are required to keep the information confidential unless ordered by a court."Last month, in a case that ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) brought against Crossroads GPS, a federal judge issued a ruling that invalidated an FEC regulation enabling dark money donors to avoid disclosure.
As Common Dreams reported, Center for Responsive Politics' Robert Maguire said that if the ruling stands, it "could fundamentally change the role dark money plays in elections (if it has a role at all)." yes magAbout an hour and a couple of drinks later, B. was still unconvinced and I was still deeply frustrated. It seemed to me that he was funneling energy that could be used to fight for the reality he wanted into defending his choice to not do anything. He was weaving a narrative about how powerless we were, one that echoed Rove’s infamous quote perfectly: “We’re history’s actors, and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.” reality-based?==he sort of disappeared after big gps$ failed in ___election, and as bush rep tanked? but legacy lives on:CU dark money to state (supreme ct) judge electionsandy krollhttps://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/judicial-elections-citizens-united-karl-rove/
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An important moment in the life of millennials came during the 2004 election, when Karl Rove and the right-wing collaborated to put nearly a dozen initiatives on the ballot to outlaw same-sex marriage during the 2004 election. It mobilized 10 million evangelicals to the polls and ushered in a wave of Republicans. Churches across the country railed against the immorality of homosexuality, bumping up against pop-culture icons coming out of the closet and anti-bullying campaigns aimed at teens.White evangelicals have coopted mainstream Christianity, and an entire generation has never lived in an world without hypocritical pastors worshiping the almighty dollar and begging the poor to send Jesus their retirement funds.
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random 2011l Rove, whose pro-Republican political groups have been repeatedly called out for spreading falsehoods, used his latest Wall Street Journal column to claim that President Obama will damage his campaign by pointing out the many falsehoods that Mitt Romney tells.In the Journal, Rove claimed that "alleging that Mr. Romney is a serial deceiver -- as the president and top advisers are doing -- is a hard sell. Mr. Romney came across last week as practical and thoughtful, authentic and a straight shooter."It's not a surprise that Rove would join his colleagues in the right-wing media in trying to deflect attention from the many falsehoods Romney uttered in the debate and elsewhere. After all, conservative political figures have fully embraced a post-truth political landscape.
But it takes particular nerve for Rove to suggest that Democrats should ignore falsehoods lobbed at them by Republicans.One of the groups Rove co-founded, Crossroads GPS, has put out 10 ads that the independent fact-checker PolitiFact has rated false, mostly false, or pants-on-fire false. By contrast, PolitiFact has rated only three of the Crossroads GPS ads as true or mostly true.Among Crossroads GPS' false charges: a claim that under the Affordable Care Act, "millions could lose their health care coverage and be forced into a government pool"; a claim that the health care law raised "18 different taxes" on people making less than $250,000; and a claim that unions don't have to comply with the Affordable Care Act, a claim that PolitiFact rated "pants on fire" false.
Another group Rove co-founded, American Crossroads, has not fared any better. PolitiFact has rated nine American Crossroads ads false or mostly false. It has not rated a single one true or mostly true.Among American Crossroads' false charges: a claim that 85 percent of recent college graduates are moving back in with their parents; a claim that Bill Clinton opposes Obama's "Buffet Rule" to ensure that the wealthiest Americans pay their fair share in taxes; and a claim that Obama broke his promise about the effect that his stimulus plan would have on the unemployment rate.http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/10/11/karl-rove-embodies-post-truth-politics-and-jour/190548 ==trump gop CA conv called rove dumbest alive =2015Karl Rove’s Group Funneled Dark Money To Help Elect GOP SenateSecret money flowed through multiple groups to aid Tillis, McConnell. Crossroads GPS, the politically active nonprofit co-founded by Republican political strategist Karl Rove, raised $69 million and made large contributions to other groups in 2014, according to a tax form disclosed on Tuesday.The group’s fundraising was far down from the $180 million it raised in 2012, when it spent large sums to oppose President Barack Obama’s re-election. In 2014, the conservative nonprofit reported to the Federal Election Commission that it spent $26 million on express electoral efforts to defeat congressional Democrats.
Aside from its own direct spending on elections, Crossroads GPS directed $13.6 million to other groups aiding Republican campaigns in 2014. None of the original donors aiding these Republican campaigns through Crossroads GPS are required to be disclosed.This included entirely funding the nonprofit group Carolina Rising with a $4.8 million donation. As reported by the Center for Responsive Politics, Carolina Rising spent all of its money promoting Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in his successful campaign to unseat Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.Carolina Rising was not the only group involved in the North Carolina Senate race funded by Crossroads GPS. The American Future Fund received $2 million from Crossroads GPS and spent $420,000 on advertisements touting North Carolina Libertarian Party candidate Sean Haugh’s support for legalizing marijuana and his anti-war stance. The ads were designed to appeal to young voters that Republicans wanted to steer away from voting for Hagan.Haugh was not pleased with the intervention, although his enmity was slightly misplaced. “While I appreciate the support, I now have a whole new reason to despise Koch brothers & their dark money,” he tweeted after the ads went up. American Future Fund had previously taken money from the political network operated by the billionaire Koch brothers.Another $390,000 from Crossroads GPS went to the nonprofit group Kentucky Opportunity Coalition.
This group spent all its money to support and promote Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in his successful 2014 re-election campaign against both his tea party-backed primary opponent, Matt Bevin (now governor-elect of Kentucky), and his general election opposition from Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.It is not at all surprising that Crossroads GPS would fund Kentucky Opportunity Coalition. They are both run by Steven Law, a former aide to McConnell, andconnections between the two groups were apparent while the campaign was underway.Crossroads GPS also sent $5.2 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest business lobby and a major political force in the Republican Party. Other contributions included $900,000 to National Right to Life; $125,000 to the National Rifle Association; $50,000 to Ethics & Public Policy Center; $50,000 to The John Hay Initiative; and $40,000 to Center for Individual Freedom.While Crossroads GPS is not required to disclose its donors, it did reveal the number and size of each contribution it received. The nonprofit group raised $69 million from 68 listed donations. Eighty percent of those funds came from just 11 donations each of $1 million or more. The largest two donations to the group were $20.6 million and $14.5 million.More: Crossroads Gps Dark Money 2014 Election Elections 2014 Thom Tillis
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http://www.opensecrets.org/outsidespending/detail.php?cycle=2012&cmte=American+Crossroads%2FCrossroads+GPSTotal Spent on 2012 Federal Elections: $176,429,025 99.2% spent in general electionGeneral Election Spending - How Successful Were They?$0 spent supporting 0 candidates who won $11,511,228 spent opposing 8 candidates who lost $175,065,090 total spent in general election on 32 candidates Success rate: by candidate:}: