DIRTY TRICKS 2

<font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">5/18 age of trump</font><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>
</b></font></div><div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: large;"><b>1/22 tag drtytrk</b></span></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>SEE THREE</b>
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see negative attack ads</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see gerry redmap</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see oppo res</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">8/18 adding alex jones, so not just unfair techniques by pol ops in an election, but also media enablers (fox sinclair pending)</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">aha interesting to do analysis, massive asymmetry</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">bak 1119
</font><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">see native advert brand studio = crypto</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><a href="https://theconversation.com/stolen-elections-open-wounds-that-may-never-heal-128613">https://theconversation.com/stolen-elections-open-wounds-that-may-never-heal-128613</a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">redmap did systemic long term damage TP--> freedom cocks, suicide squad, unaccountable old white guys --> voter suppression, anti-abortion ..</b><span times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large">.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-decade-republicans-hijacked-our-democracy-via-the-gerrymander/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/12/the-decade-republicans-hijacked-our-democracy-via-the-gerrymander/</font></a></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref 1</font></div><div><a href="https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/16448/chevrons-slapp-suit-against-ecuadorians-corporate-intimidation/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.greenpeace.org/international/story/16448/chevrons-slapp-suit-against-ecuadorians-corporate-intimidation/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">many lnx</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></div><div>
</div><div><b>Chevron’s SLAPP suit against Ecuadorians: corporate intimidation</b></div><div>by Rex Weyler 11 <b>May 2018 </b>|  </div><div>
</div><div>These days, when powerful corporations get caught breaking the law, polluting the Earth, violating human rights, or all of those crimes simultaneously, they don’t pay the fine and make amends, like normal citizens. They attack.</div><div>
</div><div>Corporate lawyers spend millions to assault victims with<b> SLAPPs (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation). </b>The most recent SLAPP strategy in the US, popularized by attack-dog New York law firm Gibson Dunn, employs US “racketeering” (RICO) laws against environmental groups, victims of pollution, and their lawyers.</div><div>
</div><div>The purpose of a SLAPP lawsuit is not necessarily to win in court, but rather to intimidate, harass, demonize, and bankrupt the weaker opponent. “The powerful use their abundance of resources to enact revenge,” explains the American Civil Liberties Union. Many jurisdictions now ban SLAPP suits, but corporations still shop around for lax jurisdictions and sympathetic judges.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2013, for example, when Greenpeace Canada exposed Resolute Forest Products’ destructive logging in Québec, Resolute filed a retaliatory $7-million lawsuit against Greenpeace Canada and two staff members in Ontario, which did not yet have anti-SLAPP laws. Later, Resolute used US courts to attack Greenpeace USA and Greenpeace International under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, created in 1970 to prosecute organized crime syndicates. “This lawsuit,” said Greenpeace US director Annie Leonard, “is an attempt to silence, vilify, and criminalize activism.” As with most of these intimidation lawsuits, the RICO case in the US was thrown out of court, but Resolute promptly filed an amended suit.</div><div>
</div><div>In perhaps the most vindictive SLAPP in history, Chevron — one of the world’s largest corporations, with over $260-billion in assets — found a sympathetic New York judge to accept a RICO lawsuit against the victims of its vast oil pollution in Ecuador’s Amazon basin.</div><div>
</div><div>Legal thuggery</div><div>
</div><div>Chevron’s Amazon troubles began in 2000 when it purchased Texaco, inheriting liability for the company’s oil field pollution in Ecuador, known as the<b> Amazon Chernobyl. </b>Texaco/Chevron had dumped some 16 billion gallons of toxic wastewater into rivers and abandoned over 900 carcinogenic waste pits. The Indigenous rainforest inhabitants claim they were left with destroyed land, polluted water, and an epidemic of cancer and birth defects.</div><div>
</div><div>[pix Abandoned toxic oil dump, Ecuador. Courtesy of Amazon WatchAbandoned toxic oil dump, Ecuador. Courtesy of Amazon Watch © Amazon Watch]</div><div>
</div><div>In 1993, the victims sued for damages in the US. Chevron fought for nine years to shift the case to Ecuador, where they may have expected to influence the courts. Chevron fully accepted jurisdiction in Ecuador, where the case began in 2003. Six years later, in light of overwhelming scientific evidence, Chevron realized that they would likely lose. <b>In 2009 the oil company hired the notorious “rescue squad” law firm of Gibson Dunn, found a corporate-friendly Judge, Lewis A. Kaplan in New York, and began a series of SLAPP attacks on the victims, on their lawyers, and on the Ecuadorian judicial system. Over the next five years, Kaplan allowed virtually any Chevron motion, denied defendant motions, mocked the victims and their lawyers, and allowed a RICO racketeering case against two Ecuadoreans — Secoya Indigenous leader Javier Piaguaje and farmer Hugo Camacho — and their American lawyer, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Steven Donziger.</span></b></div><div>
</div><div><b>Meanwhile, in Ecuador, the Indigenous and peasant villagers won a $9.5 billion compensation judgment, confirmed by appellate courts and by Ecuador’s Supreme Court (Court of Cessation). In response, Chevron sold its assets in Ecuador, fled the country, refused to pay, and threatened the victims with a “lifetime of litigation.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The company has since retained over 60 law firms, 2,000 lawyers, paralegals, six public relations firms, squads of private investigators, and at least one bribed witness, who later admitted to lying. Lawyers for the victims estimate Chevron has spent over $2 billion to avoid payment of the court judgement, the largest collection of SLAPP suits in history.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher (Gibson Dunn) promotes itself as a corporate “rescue squad” specializing in “shielding clients” from “billions in liability”.</b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">They boast of getting George W. Bush installed as US president by stopping a Florida vote recount, and shielding Lehman Brothers from liabilities in the largest bankruptcy filing in U.S. history.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Randy Mastro co-chairs the firm’s litigation department</b>; <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">infamous for a string of court censures for fabricating evidence, lying and other criminal misconduct. In 2015, the High Court of England sanctioned Gibson Dunn for fabricating evidence to frame the political rival of the firm’s client, the President of Djibouti, Africa.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>In 2005, a federal court in California sanctioned Gibson Dunn for tampering with a witness, “obstruction, gamesmanship and flagrant disregard” of Court orders. </b>In 2007, the Montana Supreme Court assessed a $9.9 million fine against Gibson Dunn for “blatantly and maliciously trying to intimidate” its adversary, using the judicial system for “legal thuggery”. The following year, a New York federal judge sanctioned the firm for “unacceptable shenanigans”, including hiding documents and outright lies. A California federal judge concluded that the firm’s misconduct is “a product of a culture which permeates” Gibson Dunn.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As Chevron faced losing the pollution case in Ecuador, CEO John Watson and General Counsel R. Hewitt Pate turned to Gibson Dunn’s “rescue squad” for help. The lawyers, led by Mastro, soon revealed their abusive tactics. An Oregon federal judge sanctioned the Gibson Dunn lawyers for using the discovery process — intended to provide information to opposing counsel — to harass a small legal non-profit assisting the Ecuadorian victims. In Ecuador, appellate judges rebuked Chevron’s new lawyers for threatening trial Judge Nicolas Zambrano with criminal charges and prison unless he dismissed the case.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>However, the Ecuadorian decision stood, Chevron owed its victims $9.5 billion, and Randy Mastro went to work harassing the victims, their lawyers, and the Ecuadorian justice system before a gleefully encouraging Judge Kaplan in New York.</b></div><div>
</div><div>Judge as prosecutor</div><div>
</div><div>Chevron and Gibson Dunn knew precisely who<b> Judge Kaplan </b>was, when they launched their series of SLAPP suits through his court.</div><div>
</div><div>In 2004, Kaplan allowed the NY Police Department to arrest any “recognizable group” of 50 or more cyclists riding together, as a way of stopping bicycle protests, specifically by the environmental group Critical Mass. Although the First Amendment of the US Constitution protects “freedom of assembly”, Kaplan argued that “traffic flow” held precedent over the right of citizens to assemble in peaceful protest. When Lehman Brothers employees sued Lehmans for failing to protect their pension plan, violating the Employee Retirement Security Act, Kaplan simply dismissed the case.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At The Robing Room, a judicial review forum, one commenter warned, “if you are representing big business interests, Judge Kaplan will find a way to rule in your favor. If you going up against big business interests, you are out of luck.” Others describe Kaplan as “working for business interests” and “part of the old-boy network.”</span></div><div>
</div><div>“We knew that Gibson Dunn and Chevron had selected Judge Kaplan as an ally,” said Steven Donziger, lawyer for the original Ecuadorian plaintiffs, Frente de Defensa de la Amazonía (FDA). “A normal judge’s responsibility is to insure impartiality, decorum, and legal integrity. In the RICO SLAPP suit, Kaplan served more as a member of the prosecution team. He mocked defendants, laughed at defense motions, praised Chevron, granted their every wish, and insulted the entire Ecuadorian justice system.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Marathon of preliminaries</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The highly unusual three year discovery and deposition process, prior to the actual trial, revealed a succession of nightmarish legal irregularities:</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>No media confidentiality: The SLAPP began in April 2010, when Kaplan forced filmmaker, Joseph Berlinger to turn over 600 hours of outtakes from his acclaimed 2009 documentary, Crude: The Real Price of Oil</b>. Kaplan ridiculed the journalist’s request to protect confidential sources. “If this is your best argument,” jeered Kaplan, “you’re in a lot of trouble.” A media coalition — including The New York Times, NBC, and HBO — filed a First Amendment objection with the court, and Robert Redford, writing in the Huffington Post, called the decision a “shocking” betrayal of US First Amendment rights.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Insulting a foreign Court: Kaplan and Chevron lawyer Mastro used the Berlinger hearings to insult the courts in Ecuador, where Chevron had insisted the trial be held.</b> Mastro called the Ecuador courts “a sham” that would cause “any American to shudder at … what passes for a judicial system.” Kaplan openly laughed when asked to delay until an Ecuadorian court could provide input. “If this were the High Court in London,” Kaplan taunted, “you can be sure I’d wait.” Despite Mastro and Kaplan’s disdain here, the Ecuadorian justice system appears as impartial and honourable as any such system in any modern nation.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Insulting the defendants:</b> Throughout the proceedings and in written memoranda, Kaplan referred to the 30,000 class-action victims in Ecuador as “so-called plaintiffs”, suggesting that their “standing in this matter is debatable to say the least.” He referred to their case in Ecuador as “the game” and “not a bona fide litigation.” When Donziger’s attorney made a routine request for time to review thousands of documents, Kaplan scoffed, “Don’t tell me about how long Mr. Donziger needs. I know the game here.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>No attorney-client confidentiality: </b>Kaplan invoked a minor technicality to claim that Donziger, the victims’ US lawyer, had “waived” all attorney-client privilege, and insisted he turn over to Chevron lawyers 17-years of confidential communications with his clients, including, emails, notes, and his entire hard drive. Defense attorneys called this “the most sweeping forced production of privileged documents in history.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Monster deposition: Federal rules typically limit individual depositions to one day, possibly two days in extraordinary cases. Once Chevron had all of Donziger’s confidential client files, they forced him, with Kaplan’s approval, to endure an unorthodox 18 days of discovery deposition, during which 20 or more Chevron/Gibson Dunn lawyers pelted him with petty and personal questions. According to Donziger’s RICO case rebuttal, Chevron’s lead PR consultant, revealed in 2009: “<b>Our L-T [long-term] strategy is to demonize Donziger.”</b></span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>Special Master: Judge Kaplan appointed his former law partner, Max Gitter, as “Special Master” or private judge to rule over the protracted deposition</b>, paid entirely by Chevron. According to the Amazon Defense Coalition, Kaplan approved secret payments to Gitter, totaling “likely well over $1 million.” Like Kaplan, Gitter approved Chevron requests and dismissed defense requests. He revealed his conspiratorial relationship with Mastro and Chevron when he made a ruling based on the contents of a future Chevron document that had not yet been filed with the court. Upon realizing his error, he muttered, “Mr. Mastro, am I correct about that?” Mastro responded, “absolutely correct.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Judge proposes Chevron strategy: During the discovery hearings, Judge Kaplan exclaimed: “Do the phrases Hobbs Act, extortion, RICO, have any bearing here?</b>” signaling to Chevron lawyers that they should file a racketeering complaint. Shortly thereafter, on February 1, 2011, Chevron filed their RICO complaint against Donziger, Piaguaje, and Camacho, claiming that the 10-year case before three levels of Ecuadorian courts amounted to criminal extortion. Chevron asked for billions of dollars in damages, from Donziger, a sole practitioner, and two impoverished villagers, which required a jury trial. Kaplan accepted the claim and assigned the case to himself.</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</span></div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">International powers: After the RICO filing, Judge Kaplan presumed to issue a universal injunction, allegedly prohibiting any court in any nation from enforcing the environmental judgment against Chevron, two days before the Ecuadorian court announced that judgment. I</span>n September, 2011, the US Court of Appeals vacated the injunction, chastizing Kaplan for inflicting damage on international comity, the principle among modern nations to show respect for each other’s legal systems.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Implacable hostility: By this time, Donziger and the Ecuadorian victims were almost broke, which Donziger claims, “was the whole point of Mastro’s and Chevron’s strategy.” Nevertheless, <b>renowned defense attorney, John Keker, a former US marine, highly respected for legal integrity,</b> offered to help the beleaguered defendants. “This case has degenerated into a Dickensian farce,</span>” Keker said. “Encouraged by this Court’s implacable hostility toward Donziger, Chevron will file any motion, however meritless, in the hope that the Court will use it to hurt Donziger.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Fishing expeditions: Chevron served Donziger, Piaguaje, and Camacho, with hundreds of new document requests and over a thousand “requests for admission,” disputed claims that Chevron could argue were “admitted” if the defendants could not respond.</b> The impoverished Ecuadorian peasants kept almost no documents and rarely engaged in written communication. The requests imposed a massive new expense for the defendants. Kaplan also allowed Chevron to serve subpoenas on Amazon Watch, Google, Microsoft, and others, seeking email accounts to track the activities of some 100 lawyers, students, journalists, and academics that supported the Ecuadorian’s cause. “These were fishing expeditions,” Donziger explained, “that violated everyone’s right to privacy.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Scorched Earth: By May 2013, before the actual trial had even begun, the defendants were thoroughly destitute, and their defense attorneys — Keker and Craig Smyser, who had been deferring payment — could no longer continue.</b> Both attorneys expressed outrage at Kaplan’s refusal to grant common sense measures to streamline the burdensome process. “Through scorched-earth litigation, executed by its army of hundreds of lawyers,” said Keker, “Chevron is using its limitless resources to crush defendants and win this case through might rather than merit.” Smyser, called the lawsuit a “legal blitzkrieg” that Kaplan not only tolerated but “encouraged”.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">After four years of gruelling discovery depositions and document demands by Chevron — the exhausted defendants’ best hope for justice rested on the trial jury. A jury would remove some decision-making power from Kaplan, and would hear overwhelming evidence of Chevron pollution and legal misdeeds. However, Kaplan had new surprises in store.</span></div><div>
</div><div>[pix Ecuadorians and P. Bellegarde, court, 2018 © Johanna LunaHugo Camacho, Amazon Defense Coalition (second from left) was one of the villagers named in the US RICO case. Here, he joins Domingo Paes, Achuar; Canadian Assembly of First Nations Grand Chief Perry Bellegarde, Janeth Cuji, Kichwa; and Rafael Pandam, President of the Indigenous Amazonian Parliament of Ecuador, in a Canadian court © Johanna Luna]</div><div>
</div><div><b>The RICO Trial</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">No jury: On the eve of the trial, Chevron decided, with Kaplan’s approval, to drop their financial damages claim, which meant that Kaplan could drop the jury and decide the outcome himself. </span>“Chevron,” said Donziger, “apparently panicked at the notion of trying to sell their fraud and extortion claims to anyone other than Kaplan.” The defense demanded a jury trial, based on their right to a jury in a RICO case, a long-standing legal principle in cases that carry criminal implications. Kaplan refused. He would decide himself about the defendants’ guilt or innocence.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>No pollution talk</b>: Even though Kaplan had presumed the authority to “set aside” an Ecuadorian environmental judgment with a 10-year, 220,000-page evidentiary record of Chevron’s environmental crimes, and to characterize that entire proceeding as an act of “extortion,” the corporate-friendly judge barred the defense from even mentioning anything “related to the existence of pollution in Ecuador.” The pollution, he said, was “not relevant.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>No dirty-tricks talk:</b> Furthermore, Kaplan ruled that the defense could not mention evidence of Chevron’s campaign or Gibson Dunn’s campaign of “dirty tricks” operations, past courtroom crimes, lies, and fabricated evidence. Chevron, of course, was allowed to discuss any alleged history of the defendants, dredged up from four years of ruthless depositions, spies, and private investigators.</div><div>
</div><div><b>Tsunami of paper:</b> On the first day of trial, Chevron placed over 2,500 exhibits into evidence en masse, nearly 10,000 separate assertions, to which the impoverished defense was given less than a week to respond. If they failed, Kaplan could deem the defendants’ objection “waived.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Anonymous witnesses: Kaplan accepted testimony from Chevron witnesses whose identity they kept hidden from the defense, </b>preventing the normal investigation necessary for effective cross-examination. The defense expressed outrage at this violation of “basic legal principles,” which they said would “be right at home in the Spanish Inquisition.”</div><div>
</div><div><b>Editing the evidence: At this point, the defense caught Randy Mastro presenting edited video, in which he had cut out critical contextual words from Mr. Donziger’s comments</b>. According to trial transcripts, when the defense brought this to the judge’s attention, Kaplan adjourned, did some research, and responded: “About 15 words were edited out … I assume there was no attempt to mislead.”</div><div>
</div><div>Chevron’s claim that the entire Ecuadorian judicial process — ten years of court trials and appellate reviews in three levels of courts — had been “fraudulent” rested, however, almost entirely upon one, single witness.</div><div>
</div><div>[pix Steven Donziger at oil well © Lisa GibbonsSteven Donziger, lawyer for the Ecuador plaintiffs for 25 years, at oil site in Ecuador’s Amazon © Lisa Gibbons</div><div>The Witness]</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In American Lawyer magazine, in 2009, David Hechler, describes Gibson Dunn’s “game plan,” to shield clients from liability in foreign pollution cases: “find witnesses” who will accuse the foreign court of “fraud.” In a separate American Lawyer story, Gibson, Dunn lawyer Robert Cooper, explains, “We prepared the witnesses to tell our story.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>In Ecuador, on behalf of Chevron, Gibson Dunn found one such witness, Alberto Guerra, a former Ecuadorian judge who had been removed for misconduct, including accepting bribes</b>. According to Amazon Watch, Chevron lawyer Andres Rivero and Chevron private investigator Yohi Ackerman paid Guerra $48,000 in cash, and agreed to pay him $12,000 a month for at least three years. Chevron lawyers allegedly negotiated and smoothed Guerra’s immigration into the US, paid for his family to move, hired lawyers to get them green cards, and bought them a car, auto insurance, and health insurance.</div><div>
</div><div>[ pix Justice Now protest, Ecuador. Photo courtesy of amazonwatch.orgJustice Now protest, Ecuador. Photo courtesy of amazonwatch.org © Amazon Watch]</div><div>
</div><div>According to a letter from the defense to the US Department of Justice, <b>Chevron has paid Guerra at least $2 million in cash and benefits, in exchange for false testimony. According to an affidavit by legal ethicist Erwin Chemerinsky </b>— Founding Dean of the University of California at Irvine School of Law and a prominent US legal scholar — these payments to Guerra violated fundamental ethical rules of law.</div><div>
</div><div>In New York, over 53 days by Guerra’s admission, Gibson Dunn’s Randy Mastro helped him prepare his testimony about “fraud” in Ecuador. On the stand before judge Kaplan, <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Guerra claimed that Ecuadorian lawyers promised presiding judge Nicolas Zambrano $500,000 to allow them to write the final judgment, which Guerra claimed they gave to Zambrano on a flash drive. Guerra also claimed that he possessed a draft copy of the fraudulent judgment and that he met with the plaintiffs’ American lawyer Steven Donziger to discuss the alleged “bribe”.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Quickly, however, Guerra’s story fell apart.</b> Immigration records showed that Donziger was not even in Ecuador when Guerra claims the meeting took place. No evidence of a flash drive was ever produced, and Guerra’s computers did not turn up the draft judgment, or even a single email from the plaintiffs’ attorneys. When this came to light, Guerra changed his story, claiming that after “strengthening my memory” he now recalled working on this draft, not at home, but rather had taken an eight-hour bus ride into the jungle, where he claimed he edited the judgment on a laptop handed to him by one of the Ecuadorians’ lawyers.</div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>However, this story crumbled as well when forensic analysis showed that the trial judge had never downloaded the judgement from a flash drive and, rather, had opened and saved his own written judgement document more than 400 times over three months on his own office computer.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Furthermore, after the RICO trial, in a separate arbitration under the US-Ecuador Bilateral Investment Treaty, Guerra admitted under oath that he had lied to Chevron’s lawyers about his involvement in the alleged attempt to influence the Ecuadorian judgement. “I did exaggerate about [some things], yes,” said Guerra under questioning. When a lawyer asked him, “And among the ways you tried to leverage your position was to falsely tell the Chevron representatives that the Plaintiffs had offered you $300,000?” Guerra answered, “Yes, sir. I lied there.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Nevertheless, Kaplan accepted Guerra’s testimony and rejected defense efforts — Motion to strike testimony and Motion for terminating sanctions — to strike Guerra’s testimony, which the defense claims was fabricated during the 53-day session with Chevron lawyers.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The final twist appeared as Judge Kaplan crafted a judgment. By dropping the money claim, Chevron had avoided a jury but also undermined its own case. A plaintiff must seek either money for damages or an injunction, a court-ordered condition placed on the defendant. The Court of Appeals had already reversed Kaplan’s earlier injunction and could do so again. Without a money claim or injunction, Chevron lacked standing.</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Perhaps to avoid this problem, Kaplan based his guilty verdict on a “non-statutory claim for equitable relief” from an allegedly fraudulent judgment. </b>According to Donziger’s rebuttal, the decision lacked “due process,” since the claim had never been presented by Chevron or argued in court, and “relied on vague 18th and 19th century treatises” that “had been effectively repealed and replaced by the statutory framework for enforcement of foreign judgments … during the twentieth century.” Typically, a judge can’t invent a new claim for the plaintiff after a trial has ended.</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Republic of Ecuador filed an Amicus Brief, stating that “Judge Lewis Kaplan reached far beyond the issues presented to unfairly—and unnecessarily—impugn the integrity of the Republic of Ecuador.” They stated that Kaplan’s “unfounded commentary”, against a “sovereign democracy”, was based on “unreliable evidence”. The Ecuadorian court charged that Kaplan relied almost exclusively on one Vladimiro Álvarez Grau, an avowed political opponent of the Ecuadorian government. “Chevron sought out a favorable forum,” the Ecuadorian court wrote. “The District Court [Kaplan], fulfilling Chevron’s wishes, chose to make far-reaching judgments based primarily on the opinions of a single partisan.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><b>Finally, the Ecuadorian court confirmed that Chevron Corporation remained responsible for the impact of its pollution. </b>“In 2005,” the court wrote, “ChevronTexaco dropped the name ‘Texaco’ and reverted to its original name, Chevron Corporation. There is no indication in the record before us that shortening its name had any effect on ChevronTexaco’s legal obligations. Chevron Corporation therefore remains accountable.”</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Furthermore, in a separate discovery hearing, the US Third Circuit court cautioned: “The circumstances supporting [Chevron’s] claim of fraud largely are allegations and allegations are not factual findings.”</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">This historic SLAPP lawsuit, possibly the most expensive in history, appears to have failed, even after Kaplan’s decision</span>.<b> Foreign courts have ignored Kaplan’s injunction, and Donziger and his clients are making progress in Canadian courts, where the victims are attempting to collect the Ecuadorian judgment by seizing Chevron Canada’s assets, and where they have won three consecutive unanimous appellate court decisions. Donziger and the Ecuadorian villagers have said they would welcome Chevron to claim in Canada that the Ecuadorian judgment was fraudulent. “If they had to bring Guerra to Canada before a neutral judge,” says Donziger, “we believe the company’s entire RICO narrative will collapse.”</b></div><div>
</div><div><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">SLAPP suits represent a threat to public protest and free speech. They have no place in a democracy.</b></div><div>
</div><div>References and Links</div></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> =</font></p></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1119 crypto?</font></p><div class="mag-header" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 19px; padding: 0px; position: relative; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h3 class="magcat-titlte entry-title" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 17px; font-family: " open="Open" sans="Sans" sans-serif="sans-serif" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" px="px"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/11/dhs-created-a-fake-university-near-detroit-as-part-of-a-sting-operation-targeting-foreign-students-and-around-250-have-been-arrested-so-far/" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: all 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; display: block; font-size: 18px; letter-spacing: 0px; line-height: 1.4;">DHS created a fake university near Detroit as part of a sting operation targeting foreign students — and around 250 have been arrested so far</a></h3><div class="grid-post-box-meta mag-meta" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 7px 0px 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 12px;"><span class="author-italic author vcard" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); font-size: inherit;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/author/alex-henderson/" title="Posts by Alex Henderson" class="author url fn" rel="author" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer; font-size: inherit;">Alex Henderson</a></span></div></div><div class="mag-excerpt entry-content" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; color: rgb(49, 49, 49); font-family: Cabin, sans-serif; font-size: 17px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.5;">Complaints from immigrant groups about the U.S. Department of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) didn’t start with President Donald Trump: there were plenty of deportations under former President Barack Obama,…</p></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div><p data-wc="69" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><p data-wc="69" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">1119</font></p><p data-wc="69" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/11/12/elizabeth-warren-pregnancy-fired-america-rising/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://theintercept.com/2019/11/12/elizabeth-warren-pregnancy-fired-america-rising/</font></a></p><p data-wc="69" style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">in oct <span style="letter-spacing: 0.01em;">documents surfaced that appeared to contradict a key story told by Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the campaign trail. In her telling, Warren’s “dream job” as a public school teacher ended in 1971 when the school principal noticed she was “visibly pregnant,” a form of employment discrimination that was legal and common during that era. On October 7, a conservative website presented archived documents that appeared to challenge that narrative, including the minutes of a meeting in which the school board had voted to extend Warren’s tenure and another in which the board notes that Warren herself resigned from the job.</span></font></p><div data-reactid="212" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The story spread like wildfire, moving from conservative publications to major newspapers. Even Kellyanne Conway, a counselor to President Donald Trump, <a href="https://twitter.com/KellyannePolls/status/1181314387048615936" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">weighed</a> in on the controversy to suggest that the Democratic candidate had lied about her life story</b>. More records seeming to challenge Warren’s narrative emerged, including a <a href="http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people7/Warren/warren-con1.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">2007 interview</a> in Berkeley, California, in which Warren appeared to say that she left teaching on her own accord to raise her child and seek additional education credentials, as well as a contemporaneous newspaper story about Warren leaving the school “<a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/elizabeth-warren-pregnancy-claim-democratic-presidential-candidate-stands-by-being-pushed-out-of-teaching-job/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">to raise a family</a>.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Warren has stood by her story that she was “shown the door” because of her pregnancy. “When I was 22 and finishing my first year of teaching, I had an experience millions of women will recognize. By June I was visibly pregnant — and the principal told me the job I’d already been promised for the next year would go to someone else,” Warren <a href="https://twitter.com/ewarren/status/1181556990906118144" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">said</a> on Twitter last month.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>But how did these documents surface in the first place? According to the results of an open records request, an opposition research group known as America Rising had requested documents from the Riverdale Board of Education in New Jersey just weeks before the news appeared</b>. It asked for “Warren’s employment records,” as well copies of other records requested from the school board from the previous two years.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In response to the request, a school official provided America Rising with the school board minutes that became the basis for the story that erupted the following month, along with emails from a Wall Street Journal reporter, who had requested similar records in April.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">America Rising — which is <a href="https://www.desmogblog.com/america-rising-llc-pac-america-rising-squared-definers-public-affairs" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">affiliated</a> with a political action committee, a public relations firm, and a for-profit research company, as well as several news websites — has been <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/?data_type=processed&committee_id=C00542902&two_year_transaction_period=2014&two_year_transaction_period=2016&two_year_transaction_period=2018&two_year_transaction_period=2020" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">backed</a> over the years by Republican donors, including hedge-fund billionaires Paul Singer and Ken Griffin, private equity investor John Childs, and banker Andrew Beal.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">America Rising did not respond to a request for comment.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> The organization did not claim direct responsibility for the Warren story, but <a href="https://americarisingpac.org/meeting-minutes-contradict-elizabeth-warrens-claim-of-being-fired-over-pregnancy/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">touted the documents</a> as soon as <b>they appeared online via an allied conservative website called the Washington Free Beacon. Free Beacon is also <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/27/us/politics/trump-dossier-paul-singer.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">funded by Singer</a>.</b></span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>America Rising is known for attempting to dig up dirt on politicians, journalists, and activists on behalf of donors’ interests. The group went after journalist <a href="https://www.politico.com/blogs/on-media/2016/01/america-rising-pac-sets-sights-for-koch-chronicler-jane-mayer-218081" style="text-decoration-line: none; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">Jane Mayer</a>, shopping negative information about the New Yorker writer following the publication of her book “Dark Money</b>.” In 2016, America Rising focused on environmentalist <b>Bill McKibben,</b> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/opinion/sunday/embarrassing-photos-of-me-thanks-to-my-right-wing-stalkers.html?r=0&module=inline" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">dispatching its team</a> to obtain thousands of documents from McKibben’s past and to follow the Vermont-based writer, filming him at public events, as well as while grocery shopping and sitting in a church pew. This year, Definers Public Affairs, an affiliate of America Rising that shares the same staff, decided to <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/09/04/definers-facebook-oppo-research-controversy-1480400" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">rebrand</a> following <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/15/definers-republican-firm-plan-defend-facebook-attack-rivals-soros" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">revelations</a> that the company had been retained by Facebook to orchestrate a campaign to smear its critics.</font></p></div><div id="third-party--article-mid" class="NewsletterEmbed-container" data-reactid="213" style="font-size: small; background: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px -20px 20px; width: auto; display: flex; justify-content: center;"><div class="Newsletter-shortcode Newsletter-shortcode-layout-full" data-reactid="214" style="box-sizing: border-box; width: fit-content; display: flex; margin-right: 0px;">
</div></div><div data-reactid="223" style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 1em; box-sizing: border-box; line-height: 1.5; letter-spacing: 0.01em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The current America Rising research effort on Warren appears to be part of a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/15/gop-group-preps-opposition-research-blitz-against-mike-bloomberg.html" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">broader dive</a> into the Democratic field, which is being <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2017/09/18/trump-team-guns-for-2020-rivals-242781" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box;">coordinated</a> with America First Policies, the nonprofit arm of Trump’s Super PAC. The effort involves research on Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Michael Bloomberg, Joe Biden, Cory Booker, and other Democratic candidates.</font></p></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-could-be-a-major-force-in-2020-but-not-if-republicans-can-help-it/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-could-be-a-major-force-in-2020-but-not-if-republicans-can-help-it/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Students could be a major force in 2020 — but not if Republicans can help it</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos October 25, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republicans are always looking for ways to find people likely to vote for Democrats and keep them from voting, and that’s putting a big voter-suppression target on college campuses, where one poll has found<b> 45% of students to be Democrats and just 24% Republicans. </b>This is where Republican creativity truly flowers—not in the arts or music, but in finding ways to keep students from voting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Voter ID laws are always fruitful, with state after state passing laws making it anywhere from confusing to completely impossible to use a college ID to vote. That’s the case in Wisconsin and North Carolina and Texas and Tennessee</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. In New Hampshire, legislators jumped over that and required out-of-state college students to get New Hampshire drivers licenses and auto registrations, effectively a poll tax.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> This stuff can make a big difference, reports The New York Times: </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Nationwide, student turnout in the 2016 presidential election exceeded that of the 2012 presidential vote — but according to the Tufts institute, it fell sharply in Wisconsin, where the state’s voter ID law first applied to students that year.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Donald Trump prevailed in Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes, and there are more than 170,000 students in just the University of Wisconsin system</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In Texas, in case a punitive voter ID law wasn’t enough, </b>Republicans passed a law against polling places that are only open for part of the state’s 12-day early-voting period. That affects a significant number of college campus polling places. Florida Republicans, too, took aim at early-voting places on college campuses, and when their first effort was struck down by the courts, they found a backdoor way to revive it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Students can also run into trouble knowing at what address to register to vote, with some campuses spread across multiple precincts and elections officials not always sympathetic to helping them figure it out.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wouldn’t it be nice if Tom Steyer was investing the tens of millions of dollars he’s currently spending on ads for his own presidential campaign in helping make sure students are able to vote?</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/civil-rights-group-challenges-rejection-of-george-mason-student-voter-registrations/2019/10/24/10e27f60-f66e-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/civil-rights-group-challenges-rejection-of-george-mason-student-voter-registrations/2019/10/24/10e27f60-f66e-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Civil rights group challenges rejection of George Mason student voter registrations</font></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-could-be-a-major-force-in-2020-but-not-if-republicans-can-help-it/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/10/students-could-be-a-major-force-in-2020-but-not-if-republicans-can-help-it/</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>
</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Students could be a major force in 2020 — but not if Republicans can help it</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Laura Clawson / Daily Kos October 25, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Republicans are always looking for ways to find people likely to vote for Democrats and keep them from voting, and that’s putting a big voter-suppression target on college campuses, where one poll has found<b> 45% of students to be Democrats and just 24% Republicans. </b>This is where Republican creativity truly flowers—not in the arts or music, but in finding ways to keep students from voting.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Voter ID laws are always fruitful, with state after state passing laws making it anywhere from confusing to completely impossible to use a college ID to vote. That’s the case in Wisconsin and North Carolina and Texas and Tennessee</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. In New Hampshire, legislators jumped over that and required out-of-state college students to get New Hampshire drivers licenses and auto registrations, effectively a poll tax.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> This stuff can make a big difference, reports The New York Times: </span><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“Nationwide, student turnout in the 2016 presidential election exceeded that of the 2012 presidential vote — but according to the Tufts institute, it fell sharply in Wisconsin, where the state’s voter ID law first applied to students that year.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">Donald Trump prevailed in Wisconsin by fewer than 23,000 votes, and there are more than 170,000 students in just the University of Wisconsin system</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In Texas, in case a punitive voter ID law wasn’t enough, </b>Republicans passed a law against polling places that are only open for part of the state’s 12-day early-voting period. That affects a significant number of college campus polling places. Florida Republicans, too, took aim at early-voting places on college campuses, and when their first effort was struck down by the courts, they found a backdoor way to revive it.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Students can also run into trouble knowing at what address to register to vote, with some campuses spread across multiple precincts and elections officials not always sympathetic to helping them figure it out.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wouldn’t it be nice if Tom Steyer was investing the tens of millions of dollars he’s currently spending on ads for his own presidential campaign in helping make sure students are able to vote?</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">----</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/civil-rights-group-challenges-rejection-of-george-mason-student-voter-registrations/2019/10/24/10e27f60-f66e-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html">https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/civil-rights-group-challenges-rejection-of-george-mason-student-voter-registrations/2019/10/24/10e27f60-f66e-11e9-8cf0-4cc99f74d127_story.html</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politics</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Civil rights group challenges rejection of George Mason student voter registrations</font></div></div></div><div><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">AN</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">dem woman would not yield till cops</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">agreed no vote 9/11 then did it</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="font-weight: 700; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Largest North Carolina paper denounces state Republicans as ‘connivers’ for attempting a ‘theft of democracy’</font></span></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div><div><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">omg</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/secret-files-reveal-how-north-carolina-gop-operative-helped-systematically-stopped-black-people-and-students-from-voting"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/secret-files-reveal-how-north-carolina-gop-operative-helped-systematically-stopped-black-people-and-students-from-voting</font></a></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Secret files reveal how North Carolina GOP operative helped systematically stopped black people and students from voting</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Igor Derysh / Salon September 11, 2019</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Secret files found on a longtime Republican operative’s computer after his death revealed that he compiled racial data to help his party draw new political maps and impose voter ID laws.</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Thomas Hofeller, who is considered the master of modern gerrymandering, left behind at least 70,000 files that were found by his estranged daughter after his death in August 2018. Some of those files have already been used to successfully challenge North Carolina’s gerrymander and the Trump administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the census, which Hofeller argued would help “Republicans and non-Hispanic whites.”</font></span></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More files, obtained by former Salon editor David Daley at The New Yorker, show that Hofeller and his race research played a key role in Republican gerrymandering efforts in North Carolina and other states, as well as other efforts intended to make it harder for African-Americans and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">college students</span> to vote.</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Though North Carolina Republicans have argued that their maps discriminate based on partisanship and not race, Hofeller’s files show that he compiled maps with overlays of the black voting-age population by district, suggesting that racial data was a key part of the gerrymander, which is at the center of a years-long legal battle.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The files contradict claims Republicans have long used to defend their maps in court</b>. Republicans had long denied that a congressional-district line that cuts right down the middle of the largest historically black college in the United States, North Carolina A&T State University, was intentionally drawn to dilute the black vote, even though it effectively guaranteed two Republican districts. But Hofeller’s files show that the effort clearly focused on the race of students.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Hofeller created “giant databases that detailed the racial makeup, voting patterns, and residence halls of more than a thousand North Carolina A&T students,</b>” Daley reported. “He also collected similar data that tracked the race, voting patterns, and <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">addresses of tens of thousands of other North Carolina college students. Some spreadsheets have more than fifty different fields with precise racial, gender, and geographic details on thousands of college voters.”</span></font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A spreadsheet found on Hofeller’s computer shows that the operative s<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">orted students by the residence halls</span> they lived in along with racial data and voting status information.</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hofeller also had dozens of “intensely detailed studies” of the racial makeup of North Carolina college students that was cross-referenced with driver’s license files to determine whether these students likely had a proper ID to vote, according to the report.</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Emails on his computer also show that Hofeller billed North Carolina Republicans tens of thousands of dollars for his work</b>. Federal Election Commission filings also show that the <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">national Republican Party paid Hofeller more than $2 million for his work.</span></font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Other files show that Hofeller, a key player in the Trump administration’s push to add a <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">citizenship question to the census,</span></b> compiled data on the citizen voting-age population in North Carolina, Texas, Arizona and other states going back to 2011. In memos, Hofeller argued that drawing maps based on the number of citizens rather than the population would “clearly be a disadvantage to the Democrats” and help “non-Hispanic whites.”</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hofeller also submitted memos to the Trump administration urging them to justify the census question with the dubious argument that it was necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. The New Yorker report shows that he also worked for a Massachusetts Republican who wanted to use the Voting Rights Act to turn Boston into a single district, so Republicans could contend for suburban Massachusetts congressional seats. Though Hofeller’s efforts were unsuccessful in Massachusetts, the files show he also compiled data on states like Virginia, Mississippi and Alabama.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Emails found on Hofeller’s computer also show that he advised top Republicans in Florida on gerrymandering effort, despite a state constitutional amendment that bars partisan gerrymandering. Florida officials have denied that Hofeller played any official role in the effort but a state judge later ruled that the Republicans “conducted a stealth redistricting operation that snuck partisan maps into the public process and made a ‘mockery’ of the state’s constitutional amendments,” The New Yorker reported.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The files show that Hofeller also traveled around the country to educate Republicans about redistricting and urged them to push for<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> prison gerrymandering, which allows inmates to be counted as residents of the area where the prison is located, often helping Republican lawmakers.</span></font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Hofeller’s emails also show that he grew concerned that his maps would be undone by the anti-Trump wave that followed his election.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Meanwhile the GOP continues to bury its collective heads in the sand or in other higher places. Trump is only a product to this stupidity,” he wrote to a Republican consultant in 2016. “Do not worry about us in North Carolina in terms of redistricting. Even in the coming political bloodbath we should still maintain majority control of the General Assembly. The Governor cannot veto a redistricting map, so the Democrats hope is that the Obamista judiciary will come to their rescue.”</font></span></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Last week, a North Carolina court struck down the state’s legislative maps that Hofeller helped create,</b> ruling that they violated the Constitution. The new map had been drawn after the Supreme Court struck down North Carolina’s previous map as a racial gerrymander.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court ruled that Hofeller’s maps “deliberately minimized the effectiveness of the votes of citizens with whom they disagree,” arguing that the map amounted to “viewpoint discrimination” against Democrats and an effort to “retaliate against voters” for voting for Democrats.</font></span></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court said that the files on Hofeller’s computer showed evidence of “predominant focus on maximizing Republican partisan advantage in creating the 2017 Plans.”</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“The evidence establishes that Dr. Hofeller drew the 2017 Plans very precisely to create as many ‘safe’ Republican districts as possible, so that Republicans would maintain their supermajorities, or at least majorities even in a strong election year for Democrats,” the court said. “Hofeller drew the maps with an <b>intent to preserve Republicans’ control of the House and Senate.”</b></font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The court gave state lawmakers two weeks to draw nonpartisan maps. Republicans have sued to try to get a court to seal or destroy the files, arguing that they should remain confidential because they were obtained from his daughter and not from him.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The files could be a treasure trove for voting rights groups as they seek to challenge years of Republican efforts to gerrymander districts in order to gain an unfair advantage, as well as to impose voter ID laws to make it harder for certain populations to vote.</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We’ve already seen that these files have been instrumental in exposing lies around the effort to add a citizenship question to the census and around subverting a court’s order to redraw gerrymandered lines,” Kathay Feng, the national redistricting director of Common Cause, told The New York Times. “The Hofeller files are important because they’re the only thing that will allow the American people to know the truth behind the efforts to rig redistricting and elections.”</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The files show only a fraction of the work Hofeller did, which stretches back to the 1980s. Files obtained by The New Yorker show that Hofeller continued to work to help Republicans even after he was diagnosed with lung cancer.</font></b></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“I still have time to bedevil the Democrats with more redistricting plans before I exit,” he wrote to a friend. “Look my name up on the Internet and you can follow the damage.”</font></span></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b></b></font></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">OMG</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mirror/whataboutism?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-and-his-henchmen-have-eagerly-dug-for-a-biden-scandal-in-ukraine-now-its-coming-back-to-bite-them"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/09/trump-and-his-henchmen-have-eagerly-dug-for-a-biden-scandal-in-ukraine-now-its-coming-back-to-bite-them</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump and his henchmen have eagerly dug for a Biden scandal in Ukraine. Now it’s coming back to bite them</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Bob Cesca / Salon September 10, 2019</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Donald Trump grows noticeably more desperate, he’s blundering his way into more unforced errors, metaphorically stepping on a series of rakes scattered on the White House lawn. With each careless step onto another rake, he keeps clobbering himself in the face again and again. In particular, Trump appears to be setting a trap for Joe Biden, should the former vice president win the Democratic nomination next year. But it’s a plot that’s already backfiring. After all, my rule remains: Trump always makes things worse for Trump.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Before we dig into the latest harrowing developments on this front, let’s review. Back in May, I wrote about a story originally reported by the New York Times involving Joe Biden, his son Hunter Biden and Ukraine.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Late in the Obama administration, Joe Biden was dispatched to Kiev, armed with a relatively severe ultimatum. While there, the Times reported, Biden threatened to withhold a billion dollars in government loans unless the then-prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, was fired. Shortly thereafter, Shokin was indeed fired and replaced by Yuriy Lutsenko. The cash was released.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Here’s where it gets hinky — but not really. Prior to Biden arriving in Kiev, an investigation had been underway by prosecutor Shokin into a natural gas company called Burisma Holdings. One of the corporation’s board members was Hunter Biden, the vice president’s son and a New York lawyer who apparently pulled down a salary of $50,000 per month for his position with the company.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">While it may look as if Biden exploited the loan money as leverage in order to kill an investigation into a corporation that employed his son, Bloomberg learned that the Burisma investigation had been shuttled to the back burner in 2015 before Biden’s trip and, the report added, the Obama administration’s intention was to convince the Ukrainian government to crack down on corruption in general.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A former Ukrainian official, Vitaliy Kasko, told Bloomberg, “There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against [Mykola] Zlochevsky.” Zlochevsky is the founder and owner of Burisma.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Fast forward to 2019. Somewhere around the time Rudy Giuliani held meetings with prosecutor Lutsenko in New York, Ukraine reopened the case against Burisma in March of this year (although Bloomberg disputes this detail as well). The Times also reported that Lutsenko took up the case again in order “to curry favor from the Trump administration for his boss and ally.”</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Bloomberg and the New York Times agree in their reporting that Burisma was a topic of conversation between Giuliani and Lutsenko in Manhattan.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">However, since Ukraine elected a new president, 41-year-old Volodymyr Zelensky, a reformer who’s not beholden to the Kremlin, prosecutor Lutsenko was replaced by Ruslan Riaboshapka in late August. So this means the Trumpers have to start from scratch, trying to convince the new Ukrainian government to keep digging into Hunter and Joe Biden. Naturally, Rudy answered the call, meeting with officials from the Zelensky administration in Madrid, according to the Times and confirmed by Giuliani, where Trump’s TV lawyer tried once again to convince Ukraine to focus on the Bidens.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>The meeting must’ve gone badly because Trump has decided Prime Minister Zelensky isn’t an ally, and it probably doesn’t help that Zelensky isn’t a Putin disciple. Consequently, Trump has withheld $250 million in promised military aid to Ukraine, all while Ukraine continues to fight off Putin’s loyalists in that region. Trump also refuses to invite Zelensky to the White House.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Yes, it’s another gigantic, sloppy tongue-kiss for Putin from the president, further confirming Trump’s ongoing status as Putin’s puppet, endangering U.S. national security and undermining democracy here and elsewhere. And that’s not all …</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>It’s also collusion in plain sight</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Trump and Giuliani are busily blackmailing Ukraine, leaving it vulnerable to Putin’s aggression, in order to strong-arm Zelensky into helping the Trump campaign defeat Joe Biden by manufacturing the whopper Democratic scandal of the 2020 election cycle.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">As the Washington Post editorial board observed last week, “Mr. Trump is not just soliciting Ukraine’s help with his presidential campaign; he is using U.S. military aid the country desperately needs in an attempt to extort it.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Fortunately, the House Intelligence Committee, along with both the Foreign Affairs and Oversight Committees, will launch simultaneous investigations into Trump’s and Giuliani’s attempted collusion with Ukraine. Intelligence Committee chair <b>Adam Schiff, D-Calif.,</b> said in a statement:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A growing public record indicates that, for nearly two years, the President and his personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, appear to have acted outside legitimate law enforcement and diplomatic channels to coerce the Ukrainian government into pursuing two politically-motivated investigations under the guise of anti-corruption activity. As the 2020 election draws closer, President Trump and his personal attorney appear to have increased pressure on the Ukrainian government and its justice system in service of President Trump’s reelection campaign, and the White House and the State Department may be abetting this scheme.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What separates this investigation from the ongoing 2016 Trump-Russia collusion probe is the clear-as-crystal fact that Giuliani confessed to meeting with Andrii Telizhenko in May, and with Ukrainian official Andriy Yermak in August to try to make it all happen. The Trumpers stupidly wanted everyone to know what they were doing in order to hamfistedly inject the Biden story into the conservative-entertainment complex.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Ever the impulsive, erratic doofuses, the Trump team badly botched the story and instead of keeping their powder dry, they circled back for more. I guess William Barr’s factually inaccurate summary of the Mueller report convinced Trump that he could get away with anything, no matter how obviously corrupt it was. As a result, we’re looking at yet another impeachment article added to the conga-line of high crimes committed by this White House.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Of course, none of this will keep Trump from amplifying the Biden story when the time comes. Regardless of the facts and irrespective of further revelations from the congressional committees, Trump will frame the story as Biden colluding with Ukraine. The Republicans are never afraid of projection, that’s for sure. Worse, Trump will accuse the House committees of also colluding with Ukraine if and when documents are requested from Kiev, including a transcript of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Zelensky.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The good news is that the story is complicated and therefore not easily summarized by a Trump tweet or with a rally zinger for Trump’s Red Hats to repeat like the dutiful fanboys they are. Democrats will have plenty of time to prepare a defense, knowing exactly where Trump is headed with this non-scandal. There’s also the distinct possibility this will all end up as another rake handle to Trump’s face, magnifying the fact that he’s not just grossly unfit for re-election, but grossly unfit to continue serving his first term as well.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> bktv 9/8/19 </font></div><div><a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?462768-1/american-carnage"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.c-span.org/video/?462768-1/american-carnage</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><span class="time" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-weight: 600; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; text-transform: uppercase; display: block; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><time style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">JULY 18, 2019</font></time></span><h1 class="video-page-title" itemprop="name" style="margin: 0px 0px 5px; padding: 2px 0px 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; font-weight: normal;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">American Carnage</font></span></h1><div class="initial" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-variant-numeric: inherit; font-variant-east-asian: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3; vertical-align: baseline; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; font-style: inherit; font-variant: inherit; font-weight: inherit; font-stretch: inherit; line-height: 1.3em; vertical-align: baseline; display: inline;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Politico Magazine chief political correspondent Tim Alberta explored divisions in the Republican Party that led to the election of President Trump.</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">2016 debate <b>newt losing by attacking other cands, so goes after media</b> 2 nuke ["no" i don't want to address current scandal?], won NC primary when he was in single dig?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"><b>mcconn dangled scotus seat</b> to hard rw and evang;</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">;pence team sure beat until <b>comey re-open hillary emails (not an intentional dirty trick, but outcome just as bad)</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p><p><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/disgusting-chat-log-with-photos-show-alleged-tampering-with-absentee-ballots-in-miami/"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2019/05/disgusting-chat-log-with-photos-show-alleged-tampering-with-absentee-ballots-in-miami/</font></a></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ost of the chat log for a group, which named itself after the candidate they served, seemed to be the typical dry canvassing discussion you’d expect between campaign workers: coordinating lunch plans, meeting points, talking strategy, etc.</font></p><div class="p1_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Until, that is, it suddenly wasn’t.</font></p><div class="p2_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="alt_ad_block story-page-in-content-graph-2" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Diaz de la Portilla used to be a GOP Florida Senator for 10 years. He ran in last year’s election against Zaraida Barreiro for Miami-Dade County Commissioner. Although the election is nominally nonpartisan, Barreiro is a Democrat, and Diaz de la Portilla is Republican.</font></p><div class="p3_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The chat log <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/alex-diaz-de-la-portilla-campaign-discussed-ballot-tampering-whatsapp-transcript-shows-11177865" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">was leaked to the <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Miami New Times</em>.</a> The chat showed pictures of absentee ballots accompanied by disturbing texts.  These were first posted by a Miami blogger that I have linked to, but you can also see the photos on the main <em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">MNT</em> story.</font></p><div class="p4_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">One showed a photo of an absentee ballot marked for Zoraida Barreiro with the text  “<a href="https://www.crespogramnews.com/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Byebye</em></a>.”</font></p><div class="p5_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Another person in the group posted a different ballot and wrote “<a href="https://www.crespogramnews.com/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">S</a><em style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;"><a href="https://www.crespogramnews.com/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">tolen, hahahaa. I did not give it to the lady but what do we do if she voted for Zoraida????</a>"</em></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Below is a <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/alex-diaz-de-la-portilla-campaign-discussed-ballot-tampering-whatsapp-transcript-shows-11177865" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">discussion</a> between five people in the group:</font></p><div class="p7_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><span style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Person 1: Tear up the ballot good.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 2: Are you sure?<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 1: Take it to [NAME REDACTED].<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 2: Take it better.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 3: She will know what to do.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 3: Okay, perfect!<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 4: [Thumbs up and happy-face emojis]<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 5: Take it to [TOWING COMPANY] at the end. Make sure that nobody sees it please.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 2: Nooo<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 2: I already have it super hidden.<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 5: [Thumbs-up emoji]<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" />Person 2: Ready!<br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;" /><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Person 2: Thank God we took away votes from two democrats, hahaha</strong></font></span></p><div class="p8_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alex Diaz de la Portilla <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/alex-diaz-de-la-portilla-campaign-discussed-ballot-tampering-whatsapp-transcript-shows-11177865" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">responded</a> to the paper’s story by saying “None of this is from my campaign or my campaign workers,” he said. “Your article is libelous.”</font></p><div class="p9_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As a reminder, the group called itself “Alex Diaz de la Portilla” and had 150 pages of political chat discussion that included photos of absentee ballots they acquired.  I should also mention that Diaz de la Portilla <a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-2001-11-08-0111080284-story.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">was once fined $311,000 for 311 campaign violations.</a> Moving on.</font></p><div class="p10_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zoraido Barreior responded as well:</font></p><div class="p11_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Proof they will do anything to steal an election!”</font></p><div class="p12_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Diaz de la Portilla is currently running for the city of Miami’s commission, and is <a href="https://www.voterfocus.com/CampaignFinance/candidate_pr.php?c=muncitymiami" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">far ahead in the money game,</a> as you can see.</font></p><div class="p13_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This speaks to a wider issue. Absentee ballot fraud has been rampant in Miami for decades. Way back in 1997, the Miami mayor’s race <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article111207622.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">was overturned </a>because of more than 5,000 fraudulent absentee ballots.  “Boleteros”, or ballot brokers, who can have large teams of people working for them, get paid for collecting absentee ballots. This has been <a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article1942201.html" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">problematic</a>. Rick Scott paid thousands to a <a href="https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2012/10/8/1141573/-Still-Wondering-How-Rick-Scott-Won-U-Need-to-Read-This" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">shady boletero for his 2010 election</a>, and despite losing with early and Election Day voting in liberal Miami-Dade, Scott suddenly surged there with thousands of absentee ballots.</font></p><div class="p14_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Surprisingly, Scott always targeted the non-existent “in-person” voting fraud as governor; yet he never addressed the massive actual fraud with absentee ballots.</font></p><div class="p15_16" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Odd that.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">spanberger jok, cia applic leaked foia's ~ brat, push polls, she still won</font></div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/01/midterms-project-veritas-infiltrated-several-democratic-campaigns/1838657002/" style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/11/01/midterms-project-veritas-infiltrated-several-democratic-campaigns/1838657002/</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid] hmmn usatoday</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p class="speakable-p-1 p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">WASHINGTON – <b>Activists with the right-wing group Project Veritas embedded with campaigns of unknowing Democrats across the country ahead of the midterms. And in most cases, candidates didn't know they were a target until they saw the finished videos. </b></font></p><p class="speakable-p-2 p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So far, the controversial group led by founder James O'Keefe, has posted undercover videos with liberal campaign workers or candidates in six tight races. And O'Keefe says more are to come in the days leading up to the midterms.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">"It's trying to get as much done in the short amount of time we have," O'Keefe told USA TODAY in a phone interview. His goal, he says, is to "expose what these people really believe and think."</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>O'Keefe's tactics of secretly recording targets to expose them have attracted a barrage of criticism over the years and many of the group's previous videos have been discredited partly because of the edits and cuts, allegations O'Keefe denied while talking to USA TODAY.</b></font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Despite the controversy, the group's videos this cycle could hurt Democrats running in some of the nation's closest watched races, those that could decide which party controls Congress. </font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Those known to have been targeted by the group in this election cycle include: Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, North Dakota Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, Tennessee Senate candidate Phil Bredesen, Arizona Rep. Kyrsten Sinema, Florida gubernatorial candidate Andrew Gillum, Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and House candidate Abigail Spanberger.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The aim, O'Keefe says, is to expose the beliefs of progressives who are running in mostly red states, those won by President Donald Trump in 2016. He says his stings have uncovered Democratic candidates being untruthful to woo moderates in their state. </b></font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He says he<b> doesn't need to be liked by the elite</b> and calls his videos the "purest form of journalism" because there is no spin or opinion, rather just the words of their targets. </font></p><div id="module-position-RuNkA3o1LY0" class="story-asset video-asset" style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><div class="ui-video-wrapper " itemprop="video" itemscope="" itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">[vid of?]
</font><div class="ui-video-controls story-video inline-story-video" style="display: inline-block; margin: 0px 0px 10px 60px; position: relative; height: 60px; width: 540px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><p class="video-desc" itemprop="description" style="margin: 0px 0px 20px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 20px; padding-top: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democrats are hoping for a 'blue wave' in the midterm elections, but they are defending more seats than they are challenging. Will they lose seats? <span class="credit">USA TODAY]</span></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p></div></div></div><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><span class="exclude-from-newsgate"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 700; margin-right: 3px;">More: </span><a data-track-label="inline|intext|n/a" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/10/30/project-veritas-films-undercover-video-kyrsten-sinema-and-staffers-james-okeefe/1815913002/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Right-wing activist group films undercover video of Kyrsten Sinema, staffers</a></font></span></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><span class="exclude-from-newsgate"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="font-weight: 700; margin-right: 3px;">More: </span><a data-track-label="inline|intext|n/a" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/10/11/oregon-republicans-ask-ethics-investigation-into-brown-campaign/1609024002/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">Oregon Republicans ask for ethics investigation into Brown campaign</a></font></span></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But O'Keefe has been accused of editing videos to misrepresent the context of conversations as well as other dubious acts that include a failed sting of the Washington Post. He was also convicted in 2010 of using a fake identity to get on to federal property during one of his projects.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In November 2017, the Post said it was approached by a woman who worked for Project Veritas. She tried to make false accusations against then-Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore, who was already mired in a sexual misconduct scandal and would eventually lose the Alabama special election to Democrat Doug Jones.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That attempted sting was one example of what critics say are ongoing efforts by O'Keefe's group to discredit mainstream media and liberal groups.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">O'Keefe wouldn't say how the footage was captured in the six Democratic races but in at least three of the instances, a Project Veritas employee offered a fake name and posed as a campaign employee to gain access. O'Keefe said they use a "variety of different <b>methods and sources</b>" to get the foot</span><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);">age. </span></font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He acknowledged the group's tactics are controversial but argued the secret recordings make people "more honest" and said to blame those who are making the comments because they're "spilling the beans" to a stranger.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>"The truth is paramount, not our tactics,"</b> O'Keefe said in one recent video. </font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">McCaskill called for a special prosecutor to investigate after one of the operatives posed as an intern and recorded the senator talking about wanting tighter gun laws and a campaign employee saying she supports abortion in an attempt to demonstrate she was hiding her views because of the tight race against the state's Attorney General Josh Hawley.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px; background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>McCaskill called the secretive recordings "illegal" and a "fraud." </b></font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Sinema, who is running in a tight race against Republican Rep. Martha McSally, <a data-track-label="inline|intext|n/a" href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2018/10/30/project-veritas-films-undercover-video-kyrsten-sinema-and-staffers-james-okeefe/1815913002/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">called the undercover videos of her and staffers a "stunt."</a> While the goal may have been to uncover her secret views on topics, many of her comments caught by the group on gun laws and did not appear to strongly contrast with her public opinions on issues.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the video, Sinema is captured talking about immigration, specifically that she believes reform is needed but a path to citizenship should be offered to those who haven't committed a crime.</font></p><p class="p-text" style="margin: 0px 0px 15px 60px; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-stretch: normal; line-height: 22px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">...</font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">rare Dem?</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/kentucky-secretary-of-state-alison-grimes-staff-searched-voting-records-for-investigators-rivals-records-show" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;">https://www.propublica.org/article/kentucky-secretary-of-state-alison-grimes-staff-searched-voting-records-for-investigators-rivals-records-show</a></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">theory hardball vs beanball</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/how-republican-dirty-tricks-got-even-dirtier-the-gop-has-played-dirty-for-years-in-the-trump-era-theyve-pushed-even-further/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/02/how-republican-dirty-tricks-got-even-dirtier-the-gop-has-played-dirty-for-years-in-the-trump-era-theyve-pushed-even-further/</a></font></div><div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">AN 119</font></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">A consulting firm with ties to Israeli intelligence pitched a plan to the Trump campaign to use social media and foreign assistance to interfere with the 2016 election that turned out to be eerily similar to Russian meddling.</font></p><div class="p1_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wikistrat started gaming out a foreign influence campaign just days after Donald Trump entered the race, and an associated firm pitched senior campaign official Rick Gates on the plan in April 2016, <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/mueller-witness-team-gamed-out-russian-meddling-in-2015?ref=scroll" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration-line: none; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">reported The Daily Beast</a>.</font></p><div class="advertisement " style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="teadsNative" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The pitch by Psy Group, which is reportedly owned by Wikistrat founder Joel Zamel, laid out an election influence campaign that involved creating thousands of fake social media accounts to support Trump, and Zamel himself took part in at least two meetings in Washington in 2016 and 2017.</font></p><div class="p3_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">His staff at Psy Group continued making connections about their social media manipulation scheme with individuals who represented themselves as close to the Trump campaign.</font></p><div class="p4_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Zamel met with Donald Trump Jr. after his father became the Republican presidential nominee to discuss the plan, which resembled the election interference already underway by Russia and the scenario described by Wikistrat the year before.</font></p><div class="p5_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators have already questioned Zamel, who is so low-profile that no public photos of him are known, and Gates has agreed to cooperate as part of a plea agreement.</font></p><div class="p6_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><br style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></font><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It’s not clear whether the Psy Group plans were ever implemented, but some former employees said at least parts of them were carried out.</font></p><div class="p7_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An attorney for Wikistrat pointed out the firm had conducted hundreds of simulations on a variety of scenarios, and many in the cybersecurity world were concerned about foreign election interference when Psy Group conducted the sim.</font></p><div class="p8_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But one former employee who helped create the 2015 report said the accuracy of their predictions are spooky in retrospect.</font></p><div class="p9_10" style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; margin: 0px 0px 17px; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“At the time we were discussing the subject of cyber-interference in democratic processes, it seemed and felt like just another idle intellectual exercise and scenario planning project for political scientists,” said Peter Marino, a former Wikistrat analyst. “But retrospectively, it feels a bit too on-the-nose not to be disturbing.”</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/israeli-firm-pitched-don-jr-on-election-meddling-scenario-in-2016-and-it-sounds-exactly-like-the-russia-scheme/">https://www.alternet.org/2019/01/israeli-firm-pitched-don-jr-on-election-meddling-scenario-in-2016-and-it-sounds-exactly-like-the-russia-scheme/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><div style="font-size: small;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><p class="yiv6330116412headline3" style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="https://rawstory.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=80b42ecc21f29763320aceb90&id=d4730e7c63&e=4da1f92934" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><b>Mark Meadows and the gerrymandered district: How Republicans ‘cracked’ the liberal city of Asheville </b>— and elected a right-wing buffoon</font></a></p><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px; font-style: italic;" /><p style="margin: 10px 0px; padding: 0px;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republicans "cracked" the liberal city of Asheville into two safe…</font></p></div><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></b></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><span helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>In a major victory for voting rights, a federal court has once again struck down North Carolina’s gerrymandered congressional district voting map,</b> saying it was unfairly drawn to help Republican candidates. In 2016, Republicans won 77 percent of the state’s House districts despite receiving just 53 percent of the statewide vote. A redrawn map could put more seats into play for Democrats in November, but the case may first go back to the Supreme Court.</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 8px; margin-bottom: 8px; font-size: small;"><b><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></b></p></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><div class="headline" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="node-title" style="line-height: 52px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That time Democrats secretly used Russian social media tactics</font></h1></div><div class="teaser" style="margin-bottom: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden" style=""><div class="field-items" style=""><div class="field-item even" style=""><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="">The Democratic Party may be furious about the tactics' possible impact on democracy, but they aren't above using them.</font></div></div></div></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Remember those dubious <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/us/politics/takeaways-russia-social-media-operations.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Twitter and Facebook tactics the Russians reportedly employed</a> to influence the United States’ 2016 election? You know, the ones that Democrats have been railing against for a couple of years. Turns out that the Democratic Party may be furious about their possible impact on American democracy, but isn’t above using them.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to The New York Times, “a group of Democratic tech experts” mimicked Russia’s social media tactics in the infamous 2017 Alabama senate race between Republican Roy Moore and Democrat Doug Jones. Jones ultimately beat accused sex offender Moore by a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-doug-jones-beat-roy-moore" style="text-decoration-line: none;">narrow margin</a>, earning Democrats another seat in the Senate.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just a year after the Alabama special election, a secret project which, according to one of the participants, aimed at garnering a better understanding of Russian methods, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/19/us/alabama-senate-roy-jones-russia.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">has come to light</a>. As reported by the Times:</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">An internal report on the Alabama effort, obtained by The New York Times, says explicitly that it “experimented with many of the tactics now understood to have influenced the 2016 elections.”</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" /></font><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The project’s operators created a Facebook page on which they posed as conservative Alabamians, using it to try to divide Republicans and even to endorse a write-in candidate to draw votes from Mr. Moore. It involved a scheme to link the Moore campaign to thousands of Russian accounts that suddenly began following the Republican candidate on Twitter, a development that drew national media attention.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“We orchestrated an elaborate ‘false flag’ operation that planted the idea that the Moore campaign was amplified on social media by a Russian botnet,” the report says. …</font></p></blockquote><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The project had a budget of just $100,000, in a race that cost approximately $51 million, including the primaries, according to Federal Election Commission records. … Despite its small size, the Alabama project brought together some prominent names in the world of political technology. The funding came from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, who has sought to help Democrats catch up with Republicans in their use of online technology.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The money passed through American Engagement Technologies, run by Mikey Dickerson, the founding director of the United States Digital Service, which was created during the Obama administration to try to upgrade the federal government’s use of technology. Sara K. Hudson, a former Justice Department fellow now with Investing in Us, a tech finance company partly funded by Mr. Hoffman, worked on the project, along with [Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of the cyber security firm New Knowledge].</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Due to the limited scope of the effort, it’s considered highly unlikely it had a significant impact on the 2017 election. However, as the Times’ piece points out, the cause for concern lies in whether future U.S. elections will be determined by questionable tactics such as these. The Alabama incident illustrates that it’s not just foreign entities that are invested in stacking the odds in favor of their interests. As Republican consultant Dan Bayens put it, “You’ve got Russia, which showed folks how to do it, you’ve got consultants willing to engage in this type of behavior and political leaders who apparently find it futile to stop it.”</font></p></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/11/was-gary-hart-set-up/570802/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">fallows</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <span class="smallcaps" lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" box-sizing="box-sizing" inherit="inherit" font-variant-numeric="font-variant-numeric" normal="normal" font-variant-east-asian="font-variant-east-asian" font-variant-caps="font-variant-caps" small-caps="small-caps" letter-spacing="letter-spacing" rem="rem" text-transform="text-transform" lowercase="lowercase">the spring of 1990,</span><span lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"> </span><span lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">after he had helped the first George Bush reach the presidency, the political consultant Lee Atwater learned that he was dying. Atwater, who had just turned 39 and was the head of the Republican National Committee, had suffered a seizure while at a political fund-raising breakfast and had been diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor. In a year he was dead.</span></font></div><div class="blah" a="a" b="b" grid-template-columns="grid-template-columns" fr="fr" px="px" font-family="font-family" lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; display: grid;"><div class="l-articlecontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: none; width: 736px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; align-self: start; grid-area: 1 / 1 / auto / span 1;"><section class="l-articlesection s-cms-content" itemprop="articleBody" id="article-section-0" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 64px;"><div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atwater put some of that year to use making amends. Throughout his meteoric political rise he had <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/30/obituaries/lee-atwater-master-of-tactics-for-bush-and-gop-dies-at-40.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'0',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">been known for both his effectiveness and his brutality</a>. In South Carolina, where he grew up, he helped defeat a congressional candidate who had openly discussed his teenage struggles with depression by telling reporters that the man had once been<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> “hooked up to jumper cables.” As the campaign manager for then–Vice President George H. W. Bush in 1988, when he defeated Michael Dukakis in the general election, Atwater leveraged the issue of race—a specialty for him—<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/this-1988-ad-inspired-the-gops-latest-attack-on-tim-kaine/2016/10/03/c74931f8-8980-11e6-8cdc-4fbb1973b506_video.html?utm_term=.6df9d92a9ea4" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'1',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">by means of the infamous “Willie Horton” TV ad</a></span>. The explicit message of the commercial was that, as governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had been soft on crime by offering furloughs to convicted murderers; Horton ran away while on furlough and then committed new felonies, including rape. The implicit message was the menace posed by hulking, scowling black men—like the Willie Horton who was shown in the commercial.</font></p></div></section></div><aside class="l-rail l-rail--right l-rail--1" role="complementary" style="box-sizing: inherit; flex-basis: 300px; flex-shrink: 0; min-width: 300px; grid-area: 1 / 2 / span 1 / auto;"><div class="u-dynamic-content js-dynamic-content is-rendered lazyloaded" data-include="/api/2.0/articles/570802/related-articles/?page_size=4 module:theatlantic:js/components/recirc-content" data-insert="false" data-section="side" data-source="curated" data-title="More Stories" data-currentinclude="" style="box-sizing: inherit; opacity: 1; transition: opacity 0.5s ease 0s;"><section class="c-recirc-content" style="box-sizing: inherit; left: auto; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; position: static; right: auto; width: auto;"><div class="c-recirc-contentitems" style="box-sizing: inherit; overflow: auto hidden; white-space: nowrap; width: auto;"><ul class="c-recirc-contentlist" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: flex; list-style: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column;"><li class="c-recirc-item c-recirc-item--" id="recirc-item-3" style="box-sizing: inherit; border-bottom: 1px solid rgb(211, 220, 230); display: flex; padding: 16px 0px; position: relative; white-space: normal; width: auto; -webkit-box-orient: horizontal; -webkit-box-direction: reverse; flex-direction: row-reverse; -webkit-box-pack: justify; justify-content: space-between;"><div class="c-recirc-itemcontent" style="box-sizing: inherit; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1;" /></li></ul></div></section></div></aside></div><div data-section="full" data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-desktop.html" data-pos="boxinjector-d" class=" ad-boxinjector-d-wrapper" lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="blah" a="a" b="b" grid-template-columns="grid-template-columns" fr="fr" px="px" margin-top="margin-top" em="em" font-family="font-family" lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; display: grid;"><div class="l-articlecontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: none; width: 736px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; align-self: start; grid-area: 1 / 1 / auto / span 1;"><section class="l-articlesection s-cms-content" itemprop="articleBody" id="article-section-1" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 64px;"><div data-template="hippo/components/ads/native-mobile.html" data-pos="native-only" class=" ad-native-only-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the last year of his life, Atwater <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/13/us/gravely-ill-atwater-offers-apology.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'2',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">publicly apologized for tactics like these</a>. He told Tom Turnipseed, the object of his “jumper cables” attack, that he viewed the episode as “one of the low points” of his career. He apologized to Dukakis for the “naked cruelty” of the Willie Horton ad.</font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">And in a <b>private act of repentance that has remained private for nearly three decades, he told <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Ray</span>mond Strother that he was sorry for how he had torpedoed Gary Hart’s chances of becoming president.</b></font></p><p class="dropcap" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">S<span class="smallcaps" style="box-sizing: inherit; font-variant-numeric: normal; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-caps: small-caps; letter-spacing: 0.0625rem; text-transform: lowercase;">trother, 10 years older</span> than Atwater, had been his Democratic competitor and counterpart, minus the gutter-fighting. During the early Reagan years, when Atwater worked in the White House, Strother joined the staff of the Democratic Party’s most promising and glamorous young figure, Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. Strother was Hart’s media consultant and frequent traveling companion during his run for the nomination in 1984, when he gave former Vice President Walter Mondale a scare. As the campaign for the 1988 nomination geared up, Strother planned to play a similar role.</font></p><div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-house-mobile.html" data-pos="housepromo-m" id="housepromo-m" class=" ad-housepromo-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> early 1987, the Hart campaign had an air of likelihood if not inevitability that is difficult to imagine in retrospect. After Mondale’s landslide defeat by Ronald Reagan in 1984, Hart had become the heir apparent and best hope to lead the party back to the White House. The presumed Republican nominee was Bush, Reagan’s vice president, who was seen at the time, like many vice presidents before him, as a lackluster understudy. Since the FDR–Truman era, no party had won three straight presidential elections, which the Republicans would obviously have to do if Bush were to succeed Reagan.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gary Hart had a nationwide organization and had made himself a recognized expert on military and defense policy. I first met him in those days, and wrote about him in <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Atlantic</i> articles that led to my 1981 book, <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">National Defense</i>. (I’ve stayed in touch with him since then and have <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/a-word-more-about-gary-hart/61968/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'3',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">respected his work and his views</a>.) Early polls are notoriously unreliable, but after the 1986 midterms, and then–New York Governor Mario Cuomo’s announcement that he would not run, many national surveys showed Hart with a lead in the Democratic field and also over Bush. Hart’s principal vulnerability was the press’s suggestion that something about him was hidden, excessively private, or “unknowable.” Among other things, this was a way of alluding to suspicions of extramarital affairs—a theme in most accounts of that campaign, including Matt Bai’s 2014 <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">All the Truth Is Out. </i>Still, as Bai wrote in his book, “Everyone agreed: it was Hart’s race to lose.”</font></p><div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-pos="boxinjector-flex-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-flex-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Strother and Atwater had the mutually respectful camaraderie of highly skilled rivals. “Lee and I were friends,” Strother told me when I spoke with him by phone recently. “We’d meet after campaigns and have coffee, talk about why I did what I did and why he did what he did.” One of the campaigns they met to discuss afterward was that 1988 presidential race, which Atwater (with Bush) had of course ended up winning, and from which <a href="https://www.c-span.org/video/?c4587087/presidential-candidate-gary-harts-exit-speech" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'4',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">Hart had dropped out</a>. But later, during what Atwater realized would be the final weeks of his life, Atwater phoned Strother to discuss one more detail of that campaign.</font></p></div></div></div></section></div><aside class="l-rail l-rail--right l-rail--2" role="complementary" style="box-sizing: inherit; display: flex; flex-basis: 300px; flex-shrink: 0; min-width: 300px; grid-area: 1 / 2 / span 1 / auto; -webkit-box-orient: vertical; -webkit-box-direction: normal; flex-direction: column; -webkit-box-pack: center; justify-content: center;"><div data-section="side" data-template="hippo/components/ads/rail.html" data-pos="native-rr" class=" ad-native-rr-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit;" /></aside></div><div data-section="full" data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-desktop.html" data-pos="boxinjector-flex-d" class=" ad-boxinjector-flex-d-wrapper" lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" px="px" style="box-sizing: inherit;"><div class="blah" a="a" b="b" grid-template-columns="grid-template-columns" fr="fr" px="px" margin-top="margin-top" em="em" font-family="font-family" lyon="Lyon" text="Text" georgia="Georgia" serif="serif" font-size="font-size" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; display: grid;"><div class="l-articlecontainercontainer" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: none; width: 736px; -webkit-box-flex: 1; flex-grow: 1; align-self: start; grid-area: 1 / 1 / auto / span 1;"><section class="l-articlesection s-cms-content" itemprop="articleBody" id="article-section-2" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-left: auto; margin-right: 64px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Atwater had the strength to talk for only five minutes. “It wasn’t a ‘conversation,’ ” Strother said when I spoke with him recently. “There weren’t any pleasantries. It was like he was working down a checklist, and he had something he had to tell me before he died.”</font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What he wanted to say, according to Strother, was that the episode that had triggered Hart’s withdrawal from the race, which became known as the <b><i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Monkey Business </i>affair, had been not bad luck but a trap.</b> The sequence of events was confusing at the time and is widely misremembered now. But in brief:</font></span></p><div data-template="hippo/components/ads/article-mobile.html" data-pos="boxinjector-m" class=" ad-boxinjector-m-wrapper" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin-bottom: 1.2em; margin-top: 0px;"><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In late March 1987, Hart spent a weekend on a Miami-based yacht called <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Monkey Business. </i>Two young women joined the boat when it sailed to Bimini. While the boat was docked there, one of the women took a picture of Hart sitting on the pier, with the other, Donna Rice, in his lap. A month after this trip, in early May, the man who had originally invited Hart onto the boat brought the same two women to Washington. <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">The Miami Herald</i> had<a href="https://www.miamiherald.com/latest-news/article2154781.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'5',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;"> received a tip</a> about the upcoming visit and was staking out the front of Hart’s house.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> (A <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/21/magazine/gary-hart-the-elusive-front-runner.html" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'6',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">famous profile of Hart by E. J. Dionne</a> in <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">The New York Times Magazine</i>, in which Hart invited the press to “follow me around,” came out <b>after this stakeout—not before, contrary to common belief.</b></span><b>)</b> A<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">Herald</i> reporter saw Rice and Hart going into the house through the front door and, not realizing that there was a back door, assumed—when he didn’t see her again—that she had spent the night.</span></font></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Amid the resulting flap about Hart’s “character” and honesty, he quickly suspended his campaign (within a week), which effectively ended it. Several weeks later came the part of the episode now best remembered: the <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/famous-political-sex-scandals/9/" data-omni-click="r'article',r'',d,r'intext',r'7',r'None'" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; outline: none; transition: all 0.15s ease 0s; box-sizing: inherit; text-decoration-skip-ink: auto;">photo of Hart and Rice together in Bimini</a>, on the cover of the <i style="box-sizing: inherit;">National Enquirer.</i></font></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-bottom: 1.2em; box-sizing: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><i style="box-sizing: inherit;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">...</font></i></span></p></div></section></div></div></div></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">red tide post election dirty tricks</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/heres-rundown-gops-anti-democratic-red-tide-and-what-you-can-do-stop-it">https://www.alternet.org/heres-rundown-gops-anti-democratic-red-tide-and-what-you-can-do-stop-it</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In </font><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">the wake of the 2018 “blue wave,” we’re now seeing a “red tide” of anti-democratic power-grabs -- strategies, tactics and rationales designed to deny the will of the voters — not just in Wisconsin, but in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina, Maine and elsewhere.</span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/11/19/defeated-republicans-scramble-to-push-through-unpopular-laws-before-dems-take-over/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">mid-November</a>, Salon’s Igor Derysh reported on GOP efforts to rush unpopular laws through three state legislatures: Rolling back minimum wage raises and paid sick leave protections in Michigan, a new new voter-ID requirement in North Carolina, and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/11/12/wisconsin-republicans-look-to-limit-governors-power-after-scott-walkers-defeat/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">restricting Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers’ executive powers</a> in Wisconsin. But the picture has darkened considerably since then, both within these three states and beyond. </font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The power grab politics we’re seeing fall into three main categories:</font></p><ul style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In<b> Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and North Carolina lame -uck legislatures </b>are engaged in overriding will of the voters, with the back-up protection of gerrymandering protecting them from reversal and from voters' wrath. (Something similar may be happening with county board of supervisors in Maricopa County, Arizona, with noise being made about stripping the Democratic election supervisor of powers as well.)</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <b>Maine,</b> GOP Rep. Bruce Poliquin has <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/11/30/maine-republican-demands-new-election-unless-hes-declared-winner-of-race-he-lost/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">brought a lawsuit against the ranked-choice vote election</a> of his Democratic opponent, Jared Golden. As I’ve described before (<a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/03/26/this_one_reform_defeats_donald_trump_and_saves_democracy_too_bad_the_gerrymandering_gop_never_listened_but_maybe_they_will_now/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">here</a> and <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/05/31/ranked-choice-voting-is-still-alive-in-maine-and-heres-why-it-matters/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>), RCV makes democracy more robust, which drives GOP crazy, so here they’re trying to attack it arguing the opposite. The power-grab mentality simply cannot understand the power-sharing benefits involved in ranked-choice voting, and can only see it as some kind of trick.</font></li><li><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <b>North Carolina’s 9th congressional district race, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/12/05/politics/north-carolina-election-fraud/index.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">there’s overwhelming evidence</a> of actual electoral fraud </b>(involving hundreds, if not thousands of ballots), driven by the power-grabbing mentality. This flies in the face of the myth of voter fraud, which has never been supported by more than a few scattered examples among many millions of votes. Both the myth and the reality reflect the underlying worldview of right-wing Republican activists, and given how fact-free the “voter fraud” myth is, we should expect this example of GOP electoral fraud to be used to further suppress Democratic voters.</font></li></ul><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The first category is so overflowing with examples that it’s impossible to do justice to the other two in a single story, but they need to be recognized as parts of the same overall dynamic, a zero-sum quest for power, eerily estranged from any sense of shared purpose that power might serve.</font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></font><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As noted at <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/5/18125544/north-carolina-power-grab-wisconsin-michigan-lame-duck" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Vox</a>, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/05/us/politics/wisconsin-governor-legal-challenge.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">New York Times</a> and elsewhere, after Democrat Roy Cooper won the North Carolina governor’s race in 2016, North Carolina Republicans wrote the playbook for lame-duck power grabs that Wisconsin and Michigan Republicans are using today — playbooks focused on stripping power from the executive branch and assuming it for themselves. But as the list above shows, Wisconsin and Michigan aren’t alone, nor are GOP power grabs limited to legislatures grabbing power from the executive branch, nor is the 2016 North Carolina playbook the sole origin point for the power grabs going on. </font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Vox notes, the basis of most such power grabs is the GOP’s unprecedented post-2010 gerrymandering.  Former Salon executive editor David Daley wrote the book on this, “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B016APOCRU/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?encoding=UTF8&btkr=1" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Ratfked</a>.” (Salon interview <a href="https://www.salon.com/2016/06/13/this_is_how_the_gop_rigged_congress_the_secret_plan_that_handcuffed_obamas_presidency_but_backfired_in_donald_trump/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">here</a>.)  But there’s also a history of legislative power grabs attacking state courts since the early 2000s, as <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/02/18/full-court-press-gops-state-level-power-grab-goes-far-beyond-trump/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">I wrote about earlier this year</a>. </font></p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> 2003 stands out as especially significant because of power grabs in two of the most populous, politically consequential states: The unprecedented <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20031105094556/https:/www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=16947" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">recall of California Gov. Gray Davis</a> (the first governor ever recalled for purely political reasons, with no allegations of malfeasance)</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> and the</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> equally unprecedented mid-decade <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/17/opinion/a-texas-size-power-grab.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">redistricting of Texas’s congressional districts</a>.  </span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Both were legally permissible, but violated long-standing norms, </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">a category of political action described by Harvard Law professor Mark Tushnet as “<a href="https://scholarship.law.georgetown.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1557&context=facpub" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">constitutional hardball</a>.”  While 2003 was hardly the beginning of constitutional hardball, it signaled the start of a new phase, focused on state-level machinations, which is now more intensified than ever.  </span></font><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Yet more recently, a counter-movement from below has suddenly emerged. Redistricting reform </b>— taking the process out of politician’s hands — <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/everybody-loves-redistricting-reform" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">proved enormously popular this year</a>, the Brennan Center noted. Ballot measures passed in five states — Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio and Utah — putting the breaks on future extreme partisan gerrymandering. While uniformly more popular with Democrats, the measures received more than 60 percent support from Republicans in four of the five states.  The Brennen Center analyzed the county-level approval rate and compared support to that in statewide partisan elections, finding that “these proposals did strikingly well among Republicans, far outperforming candidates of either party in nearly every instance.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Michigan was a particularly interesting example, because GOP officials openly opposed the citizen initiative, as “a Democratic power grab,” the Center noted. “Despite that, the measure won more than 61 percent of the statewide vote and a majority of the vote in 66 of the state’s 84 counties,” including all of the most populous GOP-leaning counties, as can be seen from this chart: </font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;" /><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">What this tells us, in no uncertain terms, is that there’s light at the end of the tunnel, if only we can manage to find our way. But finding our way includes understanding where we are. So let’s take a closer look at the forms that power-grab politics has taken this post-election season.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Wisconsin</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Wisconsin, Democrats Tony Evers and Josh Kaul ran for governor and attorney general, respectively, on a promise to defend the Affordable Care Act, and remove the state from a GOP lawsuit challenging the law. The GOP power grab would block them from doing that. It gives GOP lawmakers control of litigation involving the state, and allows them to replace the attorney general with state-funded private attorneys. It also entirely eliminates the position of solicitor general, the state’s in-court representative in high-profile cases. It’s as if Congress took over the Department of Justice, and farmed out work to private law firms—a jaw-dropping violation of the separation of powers. </font></p><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> </font></span><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">As Dan Kaufman, author of "<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Fall-Wisconsin-Conservative-Conquest-Progressive/dp/0393635201/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1544038428&sr=8-1&keywords=dan+kaufman%2C+the+fall+of+wisconsin" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">The Fall of Wisconsin</a>," told <a href="https://www.governing.com/topics/politics/gov-wisconsin-governor-power-grab-lame-duck-republicans.html" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Governing magazine</a>, “Tony Evers campaigned on certain things. He ran on the position of defending the Affordable Care Act. That was a central part of his campaign. Nobody ran on their side on stripping power away from the incoming governor, whoever it may be.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">While there are many other aspects to the GOP power grab —“It's a dense, 141-page bill, with a lot of changes,” Kaufman said — this stands out as a defining feature, if only because so much else was simply smuggled through. “Like most of what has happened in the last eight years, there was no public input, with one limited hearing,” Kaufman explained. “The process itself is maybe the biggest outrage for people.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Wisconsin story actually starts two years before North Carolina Republicans wrote their playbook, and its essence is straight-up deception of the voters, as University of Wisconsin professor <a href="https://journalism.wisc.edu/staff/michael-wagner/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Michael Wagner</a> explained in a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2018/12/05/election-expert-wisconsin-gops-power-grab-is-a-textbook-example-of-how-democracies-die/" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Salon interview last week</a>: </font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Gov. Walker took office and immediately pursued legislation curtailing the power of labor unions. He had not campaigned on it. It was so controversial it filled the capitol with protestors for weeks. He leaves office with the capitol filled with protesters once again as he is asked to sign legislation that he and his fellow Republicans did not campaign on during the election season.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">More than that, Wisconsin had long observed the norm that once an election was held those in power would stop pursuing any contested policies, as Wagner explained:</font></p><blockquote style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">When Gov. Walker replaced outgoing Gov. Doyle, Doyle halted his signature high-speed rail project at Walker’s request, as Walker had been against it. What is happening now in Wisconsin is a subversion of democracy – Wisconsin Republican lawmakers are changing the job descriptions of the governor and attorney general between Election Day and Inauguration Day simply because their side lost. This is a textbook example of how democracies die. That is, when norms about the peaceful transfer of power are violated, we are in trouble.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Georgetown public policy professor Donald Moynihan, late of the University of Wisconsin, agreed. “It’s impossible in Wisconsin history to find anything even remotely similar,” he told Salon for this story.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The new legislation also restricts the governor’s power to negotiate state-federal relations, another key feature of executive power. “That might sound like inside baseball, but it’s a huge deal, since Medicaid and Medicare drive state budgets,” Moynihan said, going on to explain: </font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Evers’ predecessors used this power to put their impri</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">... quite long]</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/in-11th-hour-power-grab-republicans-in-wisconsin-and-michigan-use-koch-playbook-to-subvert-the-will-of-voters">http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/in-11th-hour-power-grab-republicans-in-wisconsin-and-michigan-use-koch-playbook-to-subvert-the-will-of-voters</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Wisconsin and Michigan, Republicans in their respective state legislatures </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">are aiming to clip the wings of newly elected Democratic governors by curtailing executive-branch power with legislation </span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">advanced in lame-duck sessions controlled by GOP majorities.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div class="mce-content-body" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; line-height: 1.5;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">It’s no coincidence that the list of proposed or enacted changes to executive power furthers the agenda long advanced by entities tied to billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, who set out more than a decade ago to build state-level power through politicians willing to march to their beat.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Just before dawn this morning, Wisconsin legislators <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/in-11th-hour-power-grab-republicans-in-wisconsin-and-michigan-use-koch-playbook-to-subvert-the-will-of-voters/%22https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/republican-lawmakers-approve-amended-lame-duck-bills-after-capitol-all/article_6051c782-b63b-5318-876c-55fec6d61ce3.html%E2%80%9D" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">concluded an all-nighter</a> by passing bills that will shorten the period allowed for early voting (which proved advantageous to Democrats in last month’s elections) and allow lawmakers to intervene in defense of court challenges to legal statutes by hiring their own special counsel rather than leaving such measures to the attorney general, the position won by Democrat Josh Kaul.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The Wisconsin State Journal <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/in-11th-hour-power-grab-republicans-in-wisconsin-and-michigan-use-koch-playbook-to-subvert-the-will-of-voters/%22https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/republican-lawmakers-approve-amended-lame-duck-bills-after-capitol-all/article_6051c782-b63b-5318-876c-55fec6d61ce3.html%E2%80%9D" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">wrote of the early-voting measure</a>:</font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(239, 243, 243); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; hyphens: none; padding: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0.75em 2em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">That would curtail the current date window for early voting in large cities such as Madison or Milwaukee — shortly after record early voting totals, especially in those large cities, helped Democrats win every statewide race in the November election.</font></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Wisconsin legislature also barred the incoming attorney general from withdrawing a lawsuit currently in progress against the federal government, through which the state seeks to nullify the Affordable Care Act, and enacted work requirements for people who receive Medicaid.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">In addition</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">, the legislature enacted a scheme to protect the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, which Governor-elect Tony Evers said he wanted to dissolve. The WEDC has drawn <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/4/18123784/gop-legislature-wisconsin-michigan-power-grab-lame-duck" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">scrutiny for the deal</a> it cut with the Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn—$3 billion in incentives to offset the building of a $10 billion plant.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">And if Evers should wish to ban firearms from the state capitol building, he’s now barred from doing that, too.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, who <a href="https://www.politifact.com/wisconsin/statements/2018/dec/03/wisconsin-republican-legislative-leaders/wisconsin-republicans-gave-gop-governor-more-power/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">decried a lame-duck session</a> convened by Democratic legislators in 2010—just before his inauguration and the seating of a newly elected Republican majority—appears poised to sign off on whatever the Koch-allied legislature rams through in its closing days.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In Michigan, the three top spots in the executive branch—governor, secretary of state and attorney general—were <a href="https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/michigan/2018/11/29/bill-would-allow-legislators-intercede-any-court-case-involving-state/2150818002/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">won by Democratic women</a>. There, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/4/18123784/gop-legislature-wisconsin-michigan-power-grab-lame-duck" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">according to Vox</a>, the Republican-led legislature is seeking to reserve for itself the right to “intervene in any legal battles involving state laws that the attorney general may be reluctant to defend.” One bill advanced in the legislature’s upper chamber would move enforcement of the state’s campaign finance law from the secretary of state’s office to a to-be-created commission, and will see a vote next week.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Last night, meanwhile, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/419859-michigan-legislature-guts-minimum-wage-paid-sick-leave-measures" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Michigan lawmakers reneged</a> on a deal they made with the voters when they enacted, earlier this year, increases in the minimum wage and a paid-family leave law</b>. That earlier legislation, which would have raised the minimum wage to $12 an hour by 2022 and allowed employees of large companies to earn paid family leave by a formula that capped at 72 hours of paid leave per year, was enacted in response to proposed ballot measures for those requirements. Once the legislature enacted those measures, organizers withdrew the ballot measures. Now they’ve been gutted in the lame duck.</font></p><h5 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; font-weight: normal; hyphens: none; line-height: 1.1; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The significance of Michigan and Wisconsin</font></b></h5><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The loss of those two key Midwestern governorships to Democrats was a surprising and stinging rebuke to the Kochs, whose flagship Americans for Prosperity organization spent millions in a failed effort to re-elect Wisconsin’s Walker, who lost the governor’s mansion to Tony Evers by <a href="https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/results/wisconsin/governor" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">less than a percentage point</a>, and spent millions more in negative ads against Democrat Gretchen Whitmer, who bested Republican Bill Schuette in Michigan’s gubernatorial contest.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> According to the Grand Rapids-based </span><a href="https://www.mlive.com/news/index.ssf/2018/10/heres_how_much_money_the_gover.html" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">MLive website</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, as of October 26, Americans for Prosperity had spent $3.9 million in ads against Whitmer, and that “groups associated with the<b> Republican Governors Association</b>,” to which both David Koch and Koch Industries have donated millions in recent years, spent $4.3 million in ads that boosted Schuette and disparaged Whitmer. By October 31, the Wisconsin State Journal reported, Americans for Prosperity had also spent $5.8 million on ads against Evers and Kaul, the Wisconsin Democrats, and ads in favor of GOP candidates for legislative positions in that state.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>If any one politician is a product of the Koch machine, it’s Scott Walker, who was brought into the Americans for Prosperity fold when he was <a href="https://www.alternet.org/story/149965/wisconsin_is_a_battleground_against_the_billionaire_kochs%27_plan_to_break_labor%27s_back" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">a mere county executive</a> in Milwaukee.</b> Once in the Wisconsin governor’s mansion, which he won in 2010, Walker set about effecting the Kochs’ <a href="https://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/2011/06/02/workers-learned-fear-unions-wisconsin/" target="blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-auth="NotApplicable" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">number one goal</a>: the kneecapping of public-sector unions in order to starve them of resources they had successfully deployed in the past to turn out the vote for progressive candidates.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>Initially, Wisconsin was something of a pilot project for the Kochs; </b>it was the place where they tested the model for gaining state power via Americans For Prosperity, which was <a href="https://www.theinvestigativefund.org/investigation/2011/06/02/workers-learned-fear-unions-wisconsin/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">conceived as a counterweight</a> to door-knocking power of the unions, as well as a policy-promoting organization that would ply the Kochs’ anti-regulatory, climate-science-rejecting, tax-cutting ethos to politicians eager for a little help on the ground in winning campaigns.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000"><b>Wisconsin, they knew, held a place of awe in the history of the U.S. labor movement;</b> it is the state where the public-sector unions were born. Break the unions there, and you could send the fear of God into the heart of every labor activist and union member. So they set about doing just that.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And Michigan, one of the last remaining strongholds of private-sector manufacturing unions, would be next on the list.</font></p><h5 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; font-weight: normal; hyphens: none; line-height: 1.1; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Wisconsin pilot project</font></b></h5><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In 2005, Americans for Prosperity established its beachhead, employing a known dirty-trickster, Mark Block, to head the Wisconsin AFP chapter.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Block had been banned from participating in Wisconsin politics for three years, due to his flouting of campaign laws when he ran a successful 2001 state Supreme Court campaign for a local judge. The minute his sentence was fulfilled, AFP hired Block to set up its Dairy State shop. (More on Block’s shady acts </span><a href="https://www.alternet.org/story/151231/gop_hopeful_herman_cain%3A_david_koch%27s_stalking_horse" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">here</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.)</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">At a 2010 Tea Party rally in Sheboygan, <a href="http://prospect.org/article/scott-walkers-shady-deals-win-him-campaign-cash-billionaires" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Block said his goal</a> was to grow the state’s AFP membership to equal that of the Wisconsin Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> The agenda? Unfettered energy expansion, rollbacks of environmental regulations, “entitlement reform,” opposition to any government-subsidized health care, redistribution of public education dollars to private entities, lower taxes (of course)—and the diminishment of labor unions.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Block shepherded AFP’s efforts on behalf of Scott Walker’s first gubernatorial bid that year, and was implicated in a <a href="https://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Mark_Block#Caging_Scheme_with_Americans_for_Prosperity" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">vote-caging scheme</a> in Milwaukee. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Block’s AFP organizing also </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">helped Ron Johnson defeat incumbent U.S. Senator Russell Feingold</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">, and elect two new freshmen congressmen: Reid Ribble and Sean Duffy. Future House Speaker<b> Paul Ryan</b>, his congressional career long celebrated by AFP, also benefited.</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Within weeks of taking office, Walker <a href="https://www.alternet.org/story/149965/wisconsin_is_a_battleground_against_the_billionaire_kochs'plan_to_break_labor's_back" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">took aim at Wisconsin’s public-sector labor unions</a> with a bill that gutted collective bargaining rights, sparking 18 days of protest at the state capitol building in Madison as legislators rammed it through and thousands of protesters chanted and disrupted. Americans for Prosperity bused in modest numbers of counter-protesters. Walker prevailed.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In 2011, Block went on to run the Herman Cain presidential campaign and got caught doing some <a href="https://www.alternet.org/story/151182/wall_street_journal_honcho_shills_for_secret_worker%27education%27_program_linked_to_koch_group" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">grifty</a> <a href="http://archive.jsonline.com/watchdog/noquarter/state-firms-cash-to-herman-cain-may-breach-federal-campaign-tax-laws-132898423.html/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">things</a>. But Walker and the legislators who allied with him continued to enjoy AFP’s support.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">One of those legislators is Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, whose former policy director, Eric Bott, currently runs the Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin chapter. It was Fitzgerald who pushed today’s lame-duck bills through, complaining to the <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/in-11th-hour-power-grab-republicans-in-wisconsin-and-michigan-use-koch-playbook-to-subvert-the-will-of-voters/%22https://madison.com/wsj/news/local/govt-and-politics/republican-lawmakers-approve-amended-lame-duck-bills-after-capitol-all/article_6051c782-b63b-5318-876c-55fec6d61ce3.html%E2%80%9D" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Wisconsin State Journal</a> that “he did not understand the outrage from the public and Democrats, and emphasized repeatedly that the measures were ‘inside baseball.’”</font></p><h5 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; font-weight: normal; hyphens: none; line-height: 1.1; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The Michigan model</font></b></h5><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The Koch brothers and Michigan’s Republican Gov. Rick Snyder haven’t always seen eye to eye, but, once elected, Snyder apparently felt he owed the Kochs a debt.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> After all, they played a significant role in Snyder’s election to the governor’s mansion in 2010. According to MSNBC’s Ned Resnikoff, David Koch donated nearly $1 million the Republican Governors Association Michigan PAC that year, which spent heavily for Snyder’s election.</span></font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">So,<b> under pressure from Americans For Prosperity, Snyder flipped on his previous opposition to the anti-union measures known by the Orwellian label “right to work” laws,</b> and signed a law passed in the Republican legislature that was designed to thin the ranks of unions.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The law echoed, <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/in-11th-hour-power-grab-republicans-in-wisconsin-and-michigan-use-koch-playbook-to-subvert-the-will-of-voters/%22https://billmoyers.com/2012/12/11/how-michigans-right-to-work-law-came-to-be/%E2%80%9D" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">almost word for word</a>, model legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a policy organization that receives substantial funding from the Koch brothers and their company.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Also pushing for the right-to-work law were entities funded by Michigan’s influential DeVos family, the right-wing, evangelical Amway dynasty whose members also take part in the Koch donor network.</font></p><h5 style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; font-weight: normal; hyphens: none; line-height: 1.1; position: relative; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><b style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Not going quietly</font></b></h5><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Given their patrons’ investment of tens of millions of dollars in their political careers, Republican lawmakers in these two states—the Koch brothers’ shiniest trophies for nearly a decade—were not about to quietly cede control of the states’ top offices to the will of the voters.</font></p><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It’s a tactic that legislatures seated by wealthy, Koch-connected plutocrats rolled out two years ago <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/5/18125544/north-carolina-power-grab-wisconsin-michigan-lame-duck" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">in North Carolina</a>, when Democrat Roy Cooper unseated the incumbent Republican governor, Pat McCrory</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. </span><a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/12/5/18125544/north-carolina-power-grab-wisconsin-michigan-lame-duck" style="background-color: transparent; box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">According to</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> Vox’s Tara Golshan:</span></font></p><blockquote style="background: rgb(239, 243, 243); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; hyphens: none; padding: 1.5em; margin: 0px 0.75em 2em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">Cooper has been fighting these changes in the courts ever since, to varying degrees of success. The supermajority of Republicans has rendered him “very ineffective,” said Bob Phillips, the executive director of Common Cause North Carolina, a voting rights and campaign finance group in the state.</font></p></blockquote><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">In North Carolina, the reigning plutocrat is Art Pope, heir to a dime-store fortune, who at one time served as chairman of the board of Americans for Prosperity. He and his family foundations are part of the Koch donor network.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; line-height: 1.5;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">The strategy is based on raw power. The will of the voters means little if it gets in the way of wielding that power. And if one’s last exercise of that power depends on breaking the infrastructure of government so as to deprive one’s opponent of access to it, then so be it. It’s almost epic: a little salting of the fields, so to speak.</font></p></div></div><div class="layout-constrain--narrow" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; max-width: 47.2222em; padding-left: 1em; padding-right: 1em; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="tags" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; border-top: 5px solid rgb(239, 243, 243); margin-bottom: 2em; padding-top: 1em;"><p style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><strong style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear;">Tags:</strong> <a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/charles-koch/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Charles koch</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/david-koch/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">David Koch</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/eric-bott/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Eric Bott</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/gretchen-whitmer/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Gretchen Whitmer</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/josh-kaul/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Josh Kaul</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/mark-block/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Mark Block</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/richard-devos/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Richard DeVos</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/rick-snyder/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Rick Snyder</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/scott-fitzerald/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Fitzerald</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/scott-walker/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Scott Walker</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/people/tony-evers/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Tony Evers</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/alec/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">ALEC</a><a href="http://www.rightwingwatch.org/organizations/americans-for-prosperity/" style="box-sizing: border-box; transition-duration: 0.2s; transition-property: background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform, -webkit-transform; transition-timing-function: linear; background-color: transparent; outline-offset: 0.111111em; text-decoration-line: none;">Americans for Prosperity</a></font></p></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">W<a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-republicans-jam-through-82-scott-walker-nominees-one-day" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: 700;">isconsin Republicans jam through 82 Scott Walker nominees in one day</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-power-grab-protestors-state-capitol">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-power-grab-protestors-state-capitol</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>failed in n carolina? also done now in MI</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><font style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">St</font><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">inging from their defeat at the polls in November, Republicans are now</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/wisconsin-gop-power-grab-bills-public-debate-one-minute" style="text-decoration-line: none;">rushing a set of bills</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><b>through a special session of the Wisconsin State Assembly nakedly designed to curb the power of Democratic Governor-elect Tony Evers and Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul, and handicap Democrats' competitiveness in upcoming elections.</b> The bills are scheduled for a vote on Tuesday, with the plan of getting them on outgoing GOP Gov. Scott Walker's desk so he can sign them before losing his job in a few weeks.</span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But Republicans didn't plan on the furious wave of protests that would descend on the state capitol in Madison on Monday afternoon.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Demonstrators crowded outside as the bills were debated, trying to shout down Republicans' power grab: [pix tweets]</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The protests were spurred along by MoveOn political director Ben Wikler, who has been covering the GOP's power play closely since last Friday when the bills were first introduced, and who urged his followers in other states to call senators in key districts:</font></span></p></div><div><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"> =</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/north-carolina-election-fraud-board-elections-meeting">https://www.alternet.org/election-03918/north-carolina-election-fraud-board-elections-meeting</a></font></p><div class="headline" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><h1 class="node-title" style="line-height: 52px; margin: 0px 0px 10px; clear: both;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Actual election fraud may have taken place in this North Carolina race — but it looks like it helped the Republican</font></h1></div><div class="teaser" style="margin-bottom: 15px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div class="field field-name-field-teaser field-type-text-long field-label-hidden"><div class="field-items"><div class="field-item even"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is a possibility the 9th Congressional District results will simply be thrown out and the election redone.</font></div></div></div></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Friday, the North Carolina Bipartisan State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nc-election-officials-plan-hearing-over-fraud-concerns-in-us-house-race-raising-possibility-of-new-election/2018/11/30/d1fc0450-f4b7-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">voted</a> 7-2 to hold a hearing before December 21 over the allegations of election fraud in the race for the 9th Congressional District. This follows the unanimous vote of every Democrat and Republican on the board to <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article222263905.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">refuse to certify</a> the results earlier this week.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Republican Mark Harris defeated Democrat Dan McCready by a razor-thin margin of 905 votes. But the result has been marred by reports of <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/30/18119546/north-carolina-9th-district-election-board-bladen-county" style="text-decoration-line: none;">irregularities with absentee ballots</a> in Bladen County.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Democratic attorneys presented multiple sworn affidavits to the Board of Elections from voters, including elderly African-Americans, who reported a young woman unexpectedly arriving at their house to take their ballots, in one case even saying she would fill in votes for offices that were left blank. Another voter reported seeing unauthorized people running election results after the polls closed, while yet another alleged to have overheard people saying that Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr., a local political operative working with Harris' campaign on absentee ballots, would be paid a $40,000 bonus if Harris won the election.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On top of it all, the absentee ballot numbers in Bladen County are <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/30/18119546/north-carolina-9th-district-election-board-bladen-county" style="text-decoration-line: none;">bizarre</a>, with far more unreturned ballots than in any other county in the district, and with the Republican winning these ballots by 61 to 38 even though registered Democrats led Republicans in accepted absentee ballots by 42 to 19.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Taken together, it is unclear whether any of this was decisive in Harris winning the election, but the irregularities are serious enough that the Board of Elections cannot certify the results.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the greatest twist of irony, Republicans in North Carolina have long used the specter of "voter fraud" to enact draconian identification laws that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/29/the-smoking-gun-proving-north-carolina-republicans-tried-to-disenfranchise-black-voters/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">disproportionately impact people of color</a>. The type of fraud they claim these laws fight — people showing up in person at polling places to cast multiple ballots — <a href="https://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/debunking-voter-fraud-myth" style="text-decoration-line: none;">virtually never happens</a>. Now, one of the most significant potential cases of fraud in the state appears to have been perpetrated to favor the Republican candidate — and no voter ID law would have prevented it.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">This House race was one of the most closely-watched in the country. Harris, a controversial Baptist pastor from Charlotte who <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article73748797.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">led the charge</a> to legislate discrimination of trans people in public restrooms, has argued women should <a href="https://www.alternet.org/mark-harris-defends-his-claim-wives-should-submit" style="text-decoration-line: none;">submit to their husbands</a>, and thinks <a href="https://thinkprogress.org/north-carolina-candidate-congress-criminalize-homosexuality-05e8b5914d7b/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">homosexuality should be criminalized</a>. Earlier this year, he shocked observers when he <a href="https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/election/article210774979.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">unseated</a> incumbent GOP Rep. Robert Pittenger in his primary. Though the 9th District is <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/congress-trump-score/robert-pittenger/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">very conservative</a>, Harris' liabilities as a candidate made it a <a href="https://shareblue.com/marine-vet-dan-mccready-congress-north-carolina-nc-09/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">close race</a> against McCready, a Marine veteran and green energy investor.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is unclear what happens now. Harris, who was already <a href="https://spectrumlocalnews.com/nc/charlotte/news/2018/11/16/newly-elected-nc-congressman-mark-harris-attends-orientation-in-dc" style="text-decoration-line: none;">setting up shop in D.C.</a>, is now in a legal limbo that could prevent him from being seated in Congress. Ultimately, the Board of Elections could end up certifying the results after their investigation, or they could <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nc-election-officials-plan-hearing-over-fraud-concerns-in-us-house-race-raising-possibility-of-new-election/2018/11/30/d1fc0450-f4b7-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">throw out the election entirely and do it over</a>. Meanwhile, North Carolina Republicans are <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/11/30/18119546/north-carolina-9th-district-election-board-bladen-county" style="text-decoration-line: none;">threatening to sue</a> to force the election to be certified as is. And as if all of that were not enough, a bill passed by Republicans in the state legislature made partisan changes to the Board of Elections that will <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/nc-election-officials-plan-hearing-over-fraud-concerns-in-us-house-race-raising-possibility-of-new-election/2018/11/30/d1fc0450-f4b7-11e8-aeea-b85fd44449f5_story.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">dissolve the current membership in a few weeks</a>, creating the potential that their replacements will overturn all of this.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><interaction data-token="5b96855f8198b4e625350260" data-context="true" data-tags="" data-fallback="true" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" /></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">There is no telling what the end result of this process will be. But the whole affair is a test to the integrity of the democratic process — and to people's faith in it.</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></p></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> =</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">AN</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-so-scared-beto-orourke-hes-released-nasty-and-false-attack-ad">https://www.alternet.org/ted-cruz-so-scared-beto-orourke-hes-released-nasty-and-false-attack-ad</a></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">flag burning bs ad, beto o'r</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></p></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-pac-publishes-security-application-former-cia-agent-running-democrat"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/republican-pac-publishes-security-application-former-cia-agent-running-democrat</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Abigail Spanberger is the Democratic candidate in Virginia’s 7th district, and a former officer in the CIA. The Congressional Leadership Fund is a Republican Super PAC associated with Paul Ryan, which plans to hand out over $100 million to GOP candidates for the election this fall. But money isn’t the only thing that the PAC is handing out. They’ve also <b>produced the application Spanberger submitted in seeking security clearance with the CIA</b>, making her personal information public. How the PAC obtained this form is an open, and important, question.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">According to<em> <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/28/us/politics/cia-officer-house-election-super-pac.html" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none;">the New York Times</a></em>, the<b> Republican Congressional Leadership Fund </b>has both published the form, with some personal information redacted, and made it available to reporters. Security applications, by their nature, provide highly detailed background information. They may require that the person involved produce information on actions that could potentially be embarrassing, even if not illegal.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">As an example, since obtaining Spanberger’s form, a polling company connected with the Republican PAC has conducted</span><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> push polls </b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">asking voters if they would be less likely to support the Democratic candidate </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“if she knew that the candidate had taught at a school funded by the Saudi royal family that had ‘numerous students arrested for terrorism.’” The Republican PAC has also put out a “news release” on this topic.</span></font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 20px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Spanberger is currently running strongly against Republican Representative Dave Brat in what the GOP had regarded as a “safe” district. With a broad range of endorsements and support, this represents another district that Republicans are finding a challenge in 2018 after a series of walk-over elections. So it’s understandable that Republicans are desperate to find an edge.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The problems is: Where did they find it? <b>The Congressional Leadership Fund claims that the form was obtained through a FOIA request to the Post Office, </b>where Spanberger worked briefly while waiting for clearance from the CIA. But the version of the document, and the fact that the copy given to reporters seems to be unredacted, does not square with the version that should be produced through a FOIA request. In fact, the unredacted form cannot be released under the Privacy Act.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The Democratic candidate has sent a cease-and-desist letter to the executive director of the Congressional Leadership Fund, demanding that the PAC destroy all copies of the form and “agree to not use the information in any fashion.” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">And the real question boils down to: Is someone within the Trump White House handing out classified information to be used against Democratic candidates?</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The <em><a href="https://www.richmond.com/news/virginia/government-politics/conservative-pac-releases-document-on-spanberger-teaching-at-saudi-funded/article_9f25ad24-4816-5872-b37f-a72e3c4fba8c.html" target="blank" title="" style="text-decoration-line: none;">Richmond Times-Dispatch</a></em> shows how Republicans are attempting to use even the controversy about how they obtained this document to harm Spanberger. A spokeswoman for the Congressional Leadership Fund replied to questions that “It should surprise no one that Ms. Spanberger would want to hide from voters that she worked at a school that produced some of the world’s most dangerous terrorists.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>Spanberger was a substitute teacher at a prep school for wealthy students, filling in for a teacher on maternity leave, between the time she finished her Masters degree and before she took her Post Office job. No student she taught has been connected to terrorism in any way</b>. She also waited tables. Republicans have not yet produced a news release claiming that she served a plate of eggs to Osama bin Laden … but there’s still time.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Daily Kos Elections rated the VA-7 race as “Leans Republican” on Aug 22. The Cook Report has moved the race to “Toss up.”</font></p><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">had not occurred to me that trump pointing out media at rally for abuse/attack is dirty trick b/c done in the open:</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) has repeatedly gone to bat to block investigation of President Donald Trump's ties to Russia, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-nunes-memo-continues-to-backfire/2018/02/26/6647de50-1b2d-11e8-b2d9-08e748f892c0_story.html?utm_term=.2a063e1ea62e" style="text-decoration-line: none;">target</a> anyone outside his committee who is doing so.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">He also appears to be adopting one of Trump's favorite tactics: call any media criticism "fake news." And his crusade against a local paper in his district, the<em> Fresno Bee</em>, has had consequences.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The <em>Bee</em> has <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/marek-warszawski/article216739445.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">endorsed</a> Nunes in every election he has run in since his first bid for Congress in 2002. Nonetheless, the paper has increasingly published criticisms of his conduct in the Trump years, culminating in a recent <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/article212299034.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">exposé</a> of a Napa Valley winery Nunes invested in, which reportedly had drugs and sex workers onboard its yacht at a charity event.</font></p><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin-bottom: 20px;"><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">After the paper ran editorials criticizing Nunes for not answering questions about his link to the winery, he took out a lengthy <a href="https://www.fresnobee.com/opinion/editorials/article213209074.html" style="text-decoration-line: none;">campaign ad</a> attacking the newspaper. "Sadly, since the last election, the <b><em>Fresno Bee</em> has worked closely with radical left-wing groups to promote numerous fake news stories about me," he proclaimed in the ad.</b></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The ad worked all too well, according to <a href="https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/wjkazq/devin-nunes-is-using-trump-like-fake-news-attacks-on-the-fresno-bee-and-its-working?utm_campaign=sharebutton" style="text-decoration-line: none;">VICE News</a>:</font></p><blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It was a rare campaign expenditure for Nunes, who isn’t seen as particularly vulnerable in his deep-red Central Valley district. But it was heard by enough voters in the district that Fresno Bee reporters received an uptick in hate mail, angry social media posts and voicemails denouncing their reporting and the paper.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Mackenzie Mays was the Fresno Bee reporter who wrote the original story on the winery controversy. In response to Nunes’ ad, she received voicemails calling her and her colleagues "corrupt bastards" — but she said it wasn’t the first time she’s gotten hate from readers, and their attacks have only gotten more vicious recently — since Trump was elected.</font></p></blockquote><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Nunes is not unique. Numerous Republicans now reflexively attack the press, from Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) shouting "<a href="https://www.rollcall.com/news/politics/gosar-claims-fake-news-about-previous-charlottesville-claims" style="text-decoration-line: none;">fake news</a>" at a CNN reporter for challenging his claim that the Charlottesville riots were a false flag, to Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) <a href="https://shareblue.com/claudia-tenney-house-republican-new-york-fake-news/" style="text-decoration-line: none;">doing the same</a> at reporters questioning her claim that mass shooters are mostly Democrats, to the incident last year in which Greg Gianforte <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/may/24/greg-gianforte-bodyslams-reporter-ben-jacobs-montana" style="text-decoration-line: none;">body-slammed a <em>Guardian</em> reporter</a> one night before being elected to Montana's congressional seat.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In the Trump era, GOP lawmakers seem increasingly emboldened to treat the press itself as a political enemy. And the damage that does could long outlast Trump.</font></p></div><div><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></div></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.alternet.org/heres-how-right-wingers-have-gotten-away-ridiculous-lies-decades</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">T<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">his week, in a sudden bout of atypical decency and common sense, a cavalcade of social media companies and content platforms — including YouTube, Spotify, Apple and Facebook — finally </span><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/aug/06/apple-removes-podcasts-infowars-alex-jones" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">banned Alex Jones and his media empire Infowars</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</span></font></div><div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The move was long overdue, as Jones has spent his whole career peddling not just right-wing disinformation, but the worst kinds of conspiracy theories, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/01/comprehensive-guide-alex-jones-conspiracy-theorist-and-trump-valuable-asset/214668" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">demonizing innocent people and running cover for legitimate villains</a>. Jones has used his platform to terrorize the families of shooting victims, even parents of the Sandy Hook children, by suggesting they are "crisis actors" participating in a massive hoax. On the flipside, he's denied violence committed by actual murderers, <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2016/12/01/comprehensive-guide-alex-jones-conspiracy-theorist-and-trump-valuable-asset/214668#okc" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">claiming that Timothy McVeigh </a>was a "patsy" and that arguing that David Koresh, who impregnated 12-and-13-year-olds and <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/waco/topten2.html#started" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none;">almost certainly ordered a mass suicide that killed multiple children</a>, was an innocent victim.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">It's a sign of how trollish and amoral conservatives have become that their instinct was to rush forward and claim that </span><a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2018/08/06/empire-strikes-back-right-wing-media-defend-alex-jones-after-infowars-banned-several-major-platforms/220912" target="blank" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); text-decoration-line: none;">it was an assault on free speech for online platforms</a><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> to refuse to distribute the steady stream of lies and defamation that pours out of Infowars. Most of these folks didn't even pause for breath between trying to get writer Sarah Jeong fired from the New York Times for jokes mocking racists to </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">declaring that "free speech" requires private companies to<b> signal-boost </b>an amoral monster like Jones</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">. Such bad faith isn't merely a tool of the right. It's the central organizing feature of the troll lifestyle that they've created for themselves<b>.  W</b></span><span style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">hat's going on here is not a mystery. American conservatives long ago decided that</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> nothing mattered more than winning.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> They won't hesitate to support harassment, defamation, disinformation or, as we're now learning, possible treason, if they feel the end result will be a few more votes for the Republican party.</span></b></span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But the whole Jones debacle highlights a very real problem that social media and other content platforms have to contend with: <b>Where do you draw the line? </b>Jones may be on the fringe, but his show was linked to the Republican mainstream in the sense that most of the American conservative movement functions by peddling disinformation and, in many cases, conspiracy theories</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> Banning all disinformation from these sites would mean wiping out the vast majority of right-wing content, which would no doubt result in even more squalling that we're hearing now. But the current situation, where some lies cross the line but others don't, is a muddled mess that allows for all the bad-faith posturing about "free speech" that's going on now.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It's not quite fair to blame Mark Zuckerberg personally for this particular problem, because misinformation isn't just about "fake news" or the blatant fictions of Infowars. It goes straight to the heart of Republican politics, even before the party nominated a conspiracy theorist and con man to be their presidential candidate. Making false claims, intentionally or otherwise, has been a central Republican tactic for decades, and it's just getting worse. [ yes, but DNA is max engagement, leads to addiction, megaphone for rw lies/conspiracy]</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Take climate-change denial as the primary example</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> There's a widespread, tacit acceptance in the mainstream media that it's normal for Republican politicians to "believe" that climate change is a hoax. (Even though that wasn't universally true even 10 years ago.) This is taken as somehow categorically different and less awful than, say, claiming that a mass shooting of children is a hoax.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But is it really all that different? In both cases, the person is apparently claiming that a widespread fiction has been created to trick the public into embracing certain policies, and that the hoaxers are so powerful they are able to hoodwink the media, the government and the public at large into believing them. In both cases, the conspiracy being posited would require literally thousands of people to pull it off and then to be quiet about it for decades. With climate-change denialism, there's even the suggestion that the conspiracy is worldwide, requiring a level of organization and secrecy that is frankly impossible for real-world human beings to pull off.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>In both cases, the impact of the conspiracy theory</b> is so horrible it's hard to contemplate. With conspiracy theories about mass shootings, surviving family members are harassed and hounded, even forced to move to escape their tormenters. With Pizzagate, we've already seen an armed vigilante holding a restaurant hostage because he believed lies about pedophiles organizing there.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"><b>But with climate change, a more socially acceptable conspiracy theory, the cost of indulging the lie is death.</b> People are dying from heat, people are dying from floods and people will die from resource wars — all because we were too crippled by a conspiracy theory to take action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions when that could have prevented or mitigated this catastrophe.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The reason we have Infowars, and have conservatives defending it, is because<b> we — the public, the media, politicians — didn't do enough to stand up to the rising tide of right-wing lies a decade ago. We politely agreed to treat empirically false claims on everything from climate change to economic policy as if these were matters of opinion on which reasonable people could disagree, rather than a question of one side flat-out denying actual reality</b>.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> So we shouldn't be surprised now that conservatives feel emboldened enough to back up the guy who accuses innocent people of being pedophiles or faking children's deaths.</span></font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Kicking Infowars off social media is a good start, but to get our disinformation epidemic under control, more drastic measures need to be taken. Gatekeepers of all sorts, journalists in particular, need to become more active in fighting back and challenging conservatives on their lies, including those that have been falsely categorized as differences of opinion. We gave them an inch and they took a mile. It was a massive mistake that should never be made again.</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 22px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); line-height: 32px !important;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">amanda marcotte</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"> </font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">everything you love will burn</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everything-You-Love-Will-Burn/dp/1568589948">https://www.amazon.com/Everything-You-Love-Will-Burn/dp/1568589948</a></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">new rep</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">once a nuclear move, now common</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">occupy publish pix and info of cops who used excess force (origin?)</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">ethics of doxxing of alt rt</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">anniv of charlottesville (interesting class divide: prepies with prof'l future do not want to be outed but atomwaffen proles do not care b/c see no prof future)</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><a href="https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-8-2018/">https://kpfa.org/episode/letters-and-politics-august-8-2018/</a></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><a href="https://www.politico.com/gallery/16-worst-political-dirty-tricks"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">https://www.politico.com/gallery/16-worst-political-dirty-tricks</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><h2 style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Martin Van Buren’s corsets</font></h2><p style="box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; line-height: 1.5;" helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Folk hero Davy Crockett (right) wrote in 1836 that presidential candidate Martin Van Buren (left) “is laced up in corsets, such as women in town wear, and, if possible, tighter than the best of them.”</font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">=</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://listverse.com/2014/01/18/10-worst-dirty-tricks-in-american-politics/">https://listverse.com/2014/01/18/10-worst-dirty-tricks-in-american-politics/</a></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Dirty tricks are those political maneuvers that go beyond mere negative campaigning. They involve the secret subversion of an opponent’s campaign via outright lies, spying, or any other tactic intended to divert attention from policies in an underhanded or unethical way. At their best, dirty tricks erode the public’s conference in the political system, and at worst they can cost lives. Below are some of the most notorious dirty tricks in the history of US politics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">The 1960 presidential election between Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon was one of the closest races in history. It is also notable for being the first election where television played a decisive role in determining the winner.Nixon and Kennedy had agreed to a series of debates, the first ever aired on live TV. Kennedy had used the new medium of television to great effect during his Massachusetts Congressional races and his campaign team understood how to manage their candidate’s on-screen appearances to maximize his appeal. In contrast, Nixon had occasion to make television appearances while Vice President, but his team had never used the medium during a competitive race.Prior to the first debate on September 26, 1960, the candidates had agreed that neither would use any makeup. Both Kennedy and Nixon broke this agreement but in very different ways—Kennedy had a layer of professionally applied makeup put on before the debate, but Nixon used an over-the-counter product called “Lazy Shave” to conceal his five-o’clock shadow. On top of that, Nixon’s team knew that their candidate broke a sweat easily, so they set the thermostat keep the studio nice and cool. But Kennedy’s team also knew about the Vice President’s hyperhidrosis and secretly turned the temperature up a few degrees. When the cameras began to roll, the difference between the candidates was striking to audiences watching at home. Kennedy appeared youthful and relaxed, while Nixon, who was only four years older than his opponent, poured sweat and repeatedly had to dry his face with a handkerchief. The debate was viewed by 70 million people, and later polling showed that over half of voters were influenced by the candidates’ debate performances. Political scientists still argue over the impact of the debate, but given that Kennedy won the election by just over 100,000 votes, a few degrees on the thermostat may have made all the difference.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">9The John McCain Love-Child Rumor640px-McCain_in_PentagonIn early 2000, the top contenders for the Republican nomination for president were Governor George W. Bush of Texas and Senator John McCain of Arizona. Bush was better-funded and had the support of the Republican establishment, but McCain’s insurgent campaign had pulled off an upset during the first primary contest in New Hampshire, beating Bush by 19 points. The second primary would be held in South Carolina and if Bush lost there he would likely lose the nomination. Enter Bush’s top campaign strategist, Karl Rove, a man known for his take-no-prisoners approach to campaigning.Rove’s weapon of choice against McCain would be a tried and tested dirty trick—the whisper campaign. A whisper campaign involves spreading a tawdry or malicious rumor about your opponent—while making sure the rumors aren’t traceable to you. Two weeks before the election, pamphlets began appearing under windshields at candidate debates that used a picture of McCain with his adopted Bangladeshi daughter to allege that McCain had an illegitimate African-American daughter, a charge that could cost him votes in a state that had not entirely left behind its ugly history of segregation. Next were the anonymous pollsters calling local Republicans and asking them if they would be more or less likely to vote for McCain if he were mentally unstable due to his time as a POW in Vietnam. McCain was so enraged by the vicious attacks that he confronted Bush in person to demand that he stop; when Bush denied responsibility for the smear campaign, McCain replied, “Don’t give me that st!” By Election Day, McCain had lost his lead and Bush won by 11 points. With no feasible path to the nomination, McCain dropped out of the race, but he never forgave Bush for the attacks on his family and wartime heroics.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">8Lee AtwaterGeorge_h_w_bush_lee_atwater_jamLee Atwater was the dark master of the dirty trick and he more than deserves an entry all his own. He got his start in his home state of South Carolina, working on the 1978 Senate campaign for notorious segregationist Strom Thurmond. But it wasn’t until 1980 that Atwater’s cutthroat tactics truly came to the fore, when he served as campaign manager for Republican Congressman Floyd Spence in his race against Democrat Tom Turnipseed. Atwater discovered that Turnipseed had undergone electroconvulsive therapy as a teenager to treat a case of severe depression. From then on, when Atwater was asked about Turnipseed at press conferences, he would reply, “I’m not in the habit of responding to people that were hooked up to jumper cables.” Turnipseed tried to direct the focus to the policy differences between the candidates, but by then Atwater had caused enough voters to question Turnipseed’s mental health that he lost the race.But Atwater’s most ruthless play—one that would ultimately earn him widespread condemnation from Republicans and Democrats—came when he managed George H.W. Bush’s 1998 presidential campaign. Bush’s Democratic opponent was Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, and by the middle of 1988 Dukakis was polling a few points in the lead. It was then that Atwater decided the gloves needed to come off, leading to the infamous Willie Horton commercial. While governor of Massachusetts, Dukakis had overseen a program that granted weekend furloughs to convicted felons. One of those felons, convicted murderer Willie Horton—who happened to be African-American—was on furlough when he raped a white woman and stabbed her boyfriend. Atwater worked with several outside groups to develop an ad about the furlough program that displayed Horton’s face immediately after an image of Dukakis. The racist overtones of the ad were so apparent that Atwater knew it would be political suicide for the Bush campaign to air it directly. Instead, he contacted several wealthy Republican donors to create a front group called the National Security Political Action Committee, which then “independently” aired the commercial. Atwater’s goal, in his own words, was to “make Willie Horton Dukakis’s running mate.” When the ad aired, it had the desired effect of linking Horton with Dukakis in the minds of many voters, and when the inevitable charges of racism were leveled against the Bush campaign, they vehemently denied any connection to the ad. The Horton ad made it impossible for Dukakis to shake the label of being “soft on crime” and his campaign went into a death spiral. Come the election, he lost to Bush in a landslide.Atwater was rewarded for his efforts by being made chairman of the Republican National Committee. However, after only a year in the position, he was stricken with incurable brain cancer. Before the cancer claimed him at age 40, he expressed regret for his ruthless tactics and even sent letters of apology to Turnipseed and Dukakis, though some former Atwater associates have questioned the sincerity of his remorse.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">72002 Phone Jamming In New Hampshire178410094Leading into the 2002 mid-term elections, the Democrats held a one seat majority in the US Senate. Both parties fought tooth-and-nail to defend existing seats and pick up new ones, and perhaps nowhere was more heavily contested than the New Hampshire race between Democratic Governor Jeanne Sheehan and Republican Representative John Sununu.As the election loomed, Sheehan and Sununu were running within a few percentage points of each other, which meant both sides’ “Get Out the Vote” operations on Election Day would make all the difference. The Democrats’ most important campaign was based around a series of phone banks run by the party and affiliated unions, who would call Sheehan’s supporters to make sure they got to the polls. But on the day of the election, the Democrats’ operations ground to a halt when their phone lines suspiciously went down. By the time the lines were back up, Sheehan’s campaign had lost crucial ground. The police opened an investigation and uncovered a dirty trick that would land several local Republican officials in prison. Investigators learned that Chuck McGee, the director of the New Hampshire Republican Party, had collaborated with Republican strategist Allen Raymond to hire a telemarketing firm to jam the Democrats’ phone lines. McGee and Raymond were both convicted of conspiracy to commit telephone harassment and sentenced to several months in prison. The regional director of the Republican Party, James Tobin, was also indicted and convicted of conspiracy, but after the Republican Party spent more than $6 million on Tobin’s legal fees, his conviction was overturned on appeal. As for the election, the phone jamming scheme helped Sununu squeak out a 19,000 vote win over his opponent. But Sheehan would stage a comeback in 2008, when she handily defeated Sununu in a rematch for the Senate seat.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> 6Thomas Jefferson’s Pamphleteerthomas-jefferson-portraitNext time you think that today’s politicians have brought campaigning to a new low, just remember to keep the election of 1800 in mind. Dirty tricks are not a modern invention and none other than Thomas Jefferson pioneered the oldest one in the book—spreading outright lies about your opponent. In 1800, the United States chose between the Federalist Party’s candidate, incumbent President John Adams, who was associated with a strong central government and the financial industry, and the Democratic-Republican’s candidate, Thomas Jefferson, who was linked with strong support for states’ rights and the agrarian class. The election was a struggle over the young nation’s future, but the campaign had one key difference from modern contests—candidates at the time did not actively campaign, but rather had their supporters advocate on their behalf. In fact, both Adams and Jefferson remained at home for the duration of the campaign. But don’t think the candidates weren’t playing a central behind-the-scenes role in their campaigns. Jefferson contacted one of his supporters, pamphleteer James Callender, to print a series of vicious tracts spreading lies about Adams. Callender’s publications alleged that Adams planned on going to war with France and that he had a “hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman.” Callender’s slanderous attacks damaged Adams’ credibility and helped Jefferson win the election. Given his role in Jefferson’s victory, it shouldn’t have come as a surprise when Callender wanted a favor from the new president. Jefferson’s former attack dog wanted to ply his skills as postmaster of Richmond, Virginia, but after the contentious election Jefferson wanted to appoint moderates. Callender did not take this rejection well. He retaliated against his former boss with fervor, publishing numerous scandalous pamphlets about Jefferson, including the first print allegations that he fathered children with his slave Sally Hemmings (a fact that would be proved by DNA testing nearly 200 years later). However, aside from tarnishing Jefferson’s public image, he accomplished little with his attacks and died in obscurity.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">5Nixon’s Plumbers640px-Nixon_edited_transcriptsYou knew Richard Nixon would be on this list again. This entry deals with an infamous group known as the White House Plumbers, given the name because they fixed “leaks.” The Plumbers were composed largely of former CIA agents, whose activities were funded off-the-books by siphoning money from Nixon’s reelection campaign. The Plumbers’ first jobs involved preventing leaks of classified documents regarding the administration’s foreign policy. The White House had been rocked by the revelation of the Pentagon Papers—a classified report leaked by State Department employee Daniel Ellsberg showing that Presidents had been lying about the Vietnam War since the days of Eisenhower. In retaliation, the White House ordered the Plumbers to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to find information that could discredit him. The Plumbers also conspired to burn the Brookings Institution, a center-left think tank, because the White House suspected that employees of the organization might be leaking classified State Department documents to the press. But the Plumbers didn’t just fix leaks. As 1972 neared, the group began to expand their operations to include sabotaging Nixon’s political opponents. The group’s most famous act was the burglary of the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate office complex. Five of the Plumbers were arrested when an observant security guard noticed a strip of tape covering a door latch and called the police. The break-in ultimately led to Nixon’s downfall, as journalists and Congressional investigators continued to probe financial connections between the Watergate burglars and Nixon’s reelection committee and the White House responded by committing bribery, perjury, and obstruction to conceal the truth. The Plumbers’ dirty tricks ended up taking down Nixon rather than his opponents. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">4DebategateJimmy Carter, Ronald ReaganWe have another presidential debate and another dirty trick that may have tipped the outcome of an election. In 1980, President Jimmy Carter was fighting for reelection against former California Governor Ronald Reagan. By late 1980, Carter had recovered from devastatingly low approval ratings caused by his handling of the Iran Hostage Crisis and was running neck-and-neck with Reagan. Carter repeatedly refused his opponent’s requests for a debate, leading to Regan pointedly debating a third-party candidate instead. But Carter finally relented, and the only debate between the candidates was set to take place exactly one week before the election.The Carter campaign was busy preparing when it received a shock—a copy of the campaign’s debate prep book outlining the president’s strategy and talking points had been stolen from the White House and delivered to Reagan’s campaign headquarters. During the subsequent debate, Reagan handled himself ably, delivering several witty rejoinders to Carter’s attacks, while Carter fumbled a question about nuclear arms. Reagan pulled ahead of Carter after the debate and went on to win the election in a landslide. As for Carter, he still feels that the theft of his debate prep book contributed to his loss that November.The controversy surrounding the theft, which became known as “Debategate,” did not end with the election. The FBI opened an investigation to find the culprit, while a Congressional subcommittee conducted a separate investigation into the matter. The strongest suspect at the time was Reagan’s campaign manager, Bill Casey, who went on to lead the CIA during the 1980s, but neither the FBI nor the Congressional subcommittee were ever able to identify the thief. A more recent theory contends that Paul Corbin, a Democratic strategist and close friend of the Kennedy family, was behind the theft. According to this theory, Corbin was still bitter about the brutal campaign between Carter and Senator Ted Kennedy for the Democratic Party’s nomination, and out of spite he photocopied the debate prep book and delivered it to Bill Casey. This theory has its doubters, but is supported by the fact that Corbin visited Reagan’s campaign headquarters three times immediately before the debate. </font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">3The Morey Letterrsz_640px-1880republicanposterThe 1880 presidential election between Congressman James Garfield and General Winfield Scott Hancock saw a dirty trick that played on the popular prejudices of the time. In those days there was widespread prejudice against Chinese immigration, although Chinese-Americans constituted less than one percent of the population. It was amidst this atmosphere that a bombshell rocked the campaign when, just days before the election, a letter signed by Garfield was discovered and published in a New York newspaper. In the letter, known as the Morey Letter after its intended recipient, Garfield proclaimed his support for unregulated Chinese immigration to the United States. The letter caused an uproar and, in a response that would be remarkable today, Garfield held off making a statement because he wasn’t immediately sure whether he had actually penned the letter or not. While Garfield’s aides combed through his files to see if he had in fact written the missive, Hancock’s supporters savaged Garfield in the press, claiming that his policies would cause a wave of immigration that would cost Americans their jobs. Garfield’s aides finally confirmed that the letter was a forgery a week after the story broke and the campaign went into damage control mode. In a move that he should have probably taken when the story first broke, Garfield provided newspapers with a copy of an old letter he had written so they could publish it alongside the Morey Letter and readers could compare his handwriting and signature for themselves. Garfield’s response managed to stem the outrage caused by the initial release of the forgery and he went on to narrowly win the election by a mere 2,000 votes—though historians believe the Morey Letter made the election much closer than it would otherwise have been, costing Garfield victory in California and Nevada.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">2Brooks Brothers Riot78741444The 2000 presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore was one of the closest in US history, ultimately decided at the Supreme Court. The day after the election, neither candidate had reached the magic number of 270 electoral votes needed to win, since the vote tally in Florida was too close to call. Bush maintained a lead of 1,784 votes on election night but a mandatory recount narrowed his lead to just a few hundred votes. Then, Gore’s campaign used a provision in Florida law to request that several counties perform a manual recount. It was against this backdrop that a miniature riot helped shut down the recount. On November 18, 2000, the Miami-Dade County election department was furiously sifting through piles of votes by hand in order to meet the Florida Supreme Court’s deadline. In response, the Republican Party used its national infrastructure to organize a protest with the goal of shutting down the recount. Hundreds of angry protesters showed up at the election office, shouting and pounding on the glass doors of the building. Election officials stopped the public recount and continued their work in a small room out of public view. It was this move that triggered what would become known as the Brooks Brothers Riot, named after the line of conservative business wear stereotypically associated with the Republican establishment. The protesters, some of whom were later identified as staff members of Republican Congressmen, entered the building and beat on the door where the recount was taking place, with some officials claiming they were shoved or hit when they tried to speak to the protesters. The disorder contributed to the county election board’s decision to stop the recount. The whole issue became moot a few weeks later, when the US Supreme Court ruled that Florida’s recount violated the Equal Protection Clause and ordered an immediate halt, which in effect delivered Bush the election. As for those protesters at the county election department, many later went on to land positions in the Bush administration.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">1Nixon Sabotages The Paris Peace Talks640px-Lyndon_Johnson_Richard_Nixon_1968We top out our list with a callous political move that condemned thousands of American soldiers to death. By 1968 the Vietnam War had been in full swing for four years. In March, President Lyndon Johnson ordered a limit to US bombing of North Vietnam in order to open up peace talks. Nixon, who promised he had a secret plan to win the war, knew that any peace agreement concluded before the election would devastate his chances of winning the presidency. So Nixon decided to relay a secret message to the President of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, claiming that he would secure a better deal for South Vietnam if he won the election. Thieu—who figured he had little to lose, since he could pursue a deal regardless of who won the election—backed out of the peace talks at the last minute.President Johnson became aware of Nixon’s machinations when NSA wiretaps of South Vietnam’s US ambassador revealed the plot. Johnson was furious at what he considered Nixon’s traitorous actions but he was prevented from publicizing it for fear of alerting the South Vietnamese that their ambassador’s communications were being monitored. That doesn’t mean that Johnson just sat idly by—he used every backroom channel available to thwart Nixon. Johnson ordered the FBI to place Nixon’s campaign under surveillance and relayed the details of the plot to Democratic nominee Hubert Humphrey, so that his campaign could publicize Nixon’s treachery. However, Humphrey’s aides believed he would handily win the election, and the campaign saw no need to make the shocking accusation that a presidential candidate had engaged in treason. Meanwhile, the Nixon campaign continued to berate the Democrats for failing to make any progress in resolving the Vietnam War. Nixon even had the gall to offer to travel to South Vietnam to get Thieu back to the negotiating table (we can only imagine how productive that meeting would have been). Nixon ultimately went on to win the election by less than one percent, at which point it turned out that his secret plan for peace in Vietnam was to intensify the US bombing campaign and to expand the war into neighboring Cambodia and Laos. In 1973, the US would reach a peace deal with North Vietnam under much of the same terms as those discussed in 1968. Over 22,000 American soldiers died in those five years, along with countless more Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians—proof that sometimes dirty tricks can have a death toll attached to them.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">In the spring of 2010, the conservative political strategist <b>Ed Gillespie</b> flew from Washington, D.C., to Raleigh, North Carolina, to spend a day laying the groundwork for<b> REDMAP,</b></span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> a new project aimed at engineering a Republican takeover of state legislatures. Gillespie hoped to help his party get control of statehouses where congressional redistricting was pending, thereby leveraging victories in cheap local races into a means of shifting the balance of power in Washington. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">It was an ingenious plan, and Gillespie is a skilled tactician—he once ran the Republican National Committee—but REDMAP seemed like a long shot in North Carolina. Barack Obama carried the state in 2008 and remained popular. The Republicans hadn’t controlled both houses of the North Carolina General Assembly for more than a century. (“Not since General Sherman,” a state politico joked to me.) That day in Raleigh, though, Gillespie had lunch with an ideal ally: James Arthur (Art) Pope, the chairman and C.E.O. of Variety Wholesalers,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> a discount-store conglomerate. The Raleigh News and Observer had called Pope, a conservative multimillionaire, the Knight of the Right. The REDMAP project offered Pope a new way to spend his money.</span></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That fall, in the remote western corner of the state, John Snow, a retired Democratic judge who had represented the district in the State Senate for three terms, found himself subjected to one political attack after another. Snow, who often voted with the Republicans, was considered one of the most conservative Democrats in the General Assembly, and his record reflected the views of his constituents. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">His Republican opponent, Jim Davis—an orthodontist loosely allied with the Tea Party—had minimal political experience, and Snow, a former college football star, was expected to be reëlected easily. Yet somehow Davis seemed to have almost unlimited money with which to assail Snow.</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Snow recalls, “I voted to help build a pier with an aquarium on the coast, as did every other member of the North Carolina House and Senate who voted.” But a television attack ad presented the “luxury pier” as Snow’s wasteful scheme. “We’ve lost jobs,” an actress said in the ad. “John Snow’s solution for our economy? ‘Go fish!’ ” A mass mailing, decorated with a cartoon pig, denounced the pier as one of Snow’s “pork projects.” It criticized Snow for “wasting our tax dollars,” citing his vote to “spend $218,000 on a Shakespeare festival,” but failing to note that this sum represented a budget cut for the program, which had been funded by the legislature since 1999.</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><b>In all, Snow says, he was the target of two dozen mass mailings, one of them reminiscent of the Willie Horton ad that became notorious during the 1988 Presidential campaign</b>. It featured a photograph of Henry Lee McCollum, a menacing-looking African-American convict on death row, who, along with three other men, raped and murdered an eleven-year-old girl. After describing McCollum’s crimes in lurid detail, the mailing noted, “Thanks to arrogant State Senator John Snow, McCollum could soon be let off of death row.” Snow, in fact, supported the death penalty and had prosecuted murder cases. But, in 2009, he had helped pass a new state law, the <b>Racial Justice Act, [signed by mccrory, boasted abour in wiki?]</b>that enabled judges to reconsider a death sentence if a convict could prove that the jury’s verdict had been tainted by racism. The law was an attempt to address the overwhelming racial disparity in capital sentences.</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><b>“The attacks just went on and on,” Snow told me recently. “My opponents used fear tactics. I’m a moderate, but they tried to make me look liberal.” On Election Night, he lost by an agonizingly slim margin—fewer than two hundred votes.</b></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">After the election, the North Carolina Free Enterprise Foundation, a nonpartisan, pro-business organization, revealed that two seemingly independent political groups had spent several hundred thousand dollars on ads against Snow—a huge amount in a poor, backwoods district. Art Pope was instrumental in funding and creating both groups,</span><b> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Real Jobs NC was responsible for the “Go fish!” ad and the mass mailing that attacked Snow’s “pork projects.” The racially charged ad was produced by the North Carolina Republican Party, and Pope says that he was not involved in its creation. But Pope and three members of his family gave the Davis campaign a four-thousand-dollar check each—the maximum individual donation allowed by state law.</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">Snow, whose defeat was first chronicled by the Institute for Southern Studies, a progressive nonprofit organization, told me, “It’s getting to the point where, in politics, money is the most important thing. They spent nearly a million dollars to win that seat. A lot of it was from corporations and outside groups related to Art Pope. He was their sugar daddy.”</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Bob Phillips, the head of the North Carolina chapter of <b>Common Cause,</b> an organization that promotes campaign-finance reform, said that Snow’s loss signals a troubling trend in American politics. </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">“John Snow raised a significant amount of money,” he said. “But it was exceeded by what <b>outside groups</b> spent in that race, mostly on commercials against John Snow.” Such lopsided campaigns will likely become more common, thanks to the Supreme Court, which, in a controversial ruling in January, 2010, struck down limits on corporate campaign spending. For the first time in more than a century, businesses and unions can spend unlimited sums to express support or opposition to candidates.</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><b>
</b></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">Phillips argues that the Court’s decision, in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, has been a “game changer,” </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">especially in the realm of state politics.</span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> In swing states like North Carolina—which the Democrats consider so important that they have scheduled their 2012 National Convention there—an individual donor, particularly one with access to corporate funds, can play a significant, and sometimes decisive, role. “We didn’t have that before 2010,” Phillips says. “Citizens United opened up the door. Now a candidate can literally be outspent by independent groups. We saw it in North Carolina, and a lot of the money was traced back to Art Pope.”</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">Though conservatives like Pope took the lead in exploiting the new possibilities for corporate spending, the use of ostensibly nonpartisan advocacy groups has been proliferating on both the left and the right. <b>Fred Wertheimer, who heads Democracy 21, another group that works for campaign-finance reform, says, “Tax-exempt organizations that are supposed to ‘promote the social welfare’</b> are being improperly used by Democratic and Republican supporters alike to engage in extensive campaign activities.” He just filed a complaint about the practice with the Internal Revenue Service. “The disastrous Citizens United decision has opened the door wide to influence-buying,” he says.</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">John Snow was not the only candidate in North Carolina to fall victim to such tactics. In Fayetteville, an hour south of Raleigh, <b>Margaret Dickson</b>, a sixty-one-year-old retired radio broadcaster and media executive who had been married for thirty-one years and had three grown children, was seeking reëlection to the North Carolina State Senate. She’d served seven years in the state’s General Assembly, had the backing of much of the business community, and considered herself a centrist, pro-business Democrat. Then came what she calls “<b>the hooker ad</b>.” Her Republican opponent released an ad suggesting that Dickson was using her seat to promote her personal investments. As Dickson describes it, “They used an actress with dark hair who was fair, like me. She was putting on mascara and red lipstick. She had on a big ring and bracelet.” A narrator intoned “Busted!” and the actress’s hand grabbed what appeared to be a wad of hundred-dollar bills. Dickson says, “The thrust of it was that I am somehow prostituting myself.” Another television ad, paid for by Real Jobs NC, described Dickson as a <b>“Tax Twin” to Nancy Pelosi,</b> saying that there was “not a dime’s worth of difference” between them. (Dickson’s voting record is substantially less liberal than Pelosi’s.) Dickson held a press conference to defend her record, but it was too late: “Those ads hurt me. I’ve been through this four times before, but the tone of this campaign was much uglier, and much more personal, than anything I’ve seen.”</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Variety Wholesalers, Pope’s company, had contributed two hundred thousand dollars to Real Jobs NC. Roger Knight, the group’s executive director, told me that the Citizens United decision made it much easier to raise money, because “it allowed us to direct the fund-raising toward businesses.”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"> He added that Pope provided the fund-raising effort with essential seed money. “Art would provide some of the guidance” on the attack ads, Knight said, and because Pope was on the board “he would approve them.” Pope says that he was dismayed when he saw the “hooker” ad, which was paid for by Dickson’s opponent. But he and three family members gave money to the opponent’s campaign, and Dickson argues that “political contributors make paid advertising possible” and “bear some responsibility.”</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">Dickson’s opponent, meanwhile, was championed by another corporate-backed group with financial ties to Pope, Americans for Prosperity, a national Tea Party group, which spent eleven thousand dollars disseminating its message. In the past decade, Pope and groups affiliated with him have contributed more than two million dollars to Americans for Prosperity. Pope is one of the organization’s four directors. Americans for Prosperity bills itself as an independent, nonpartisan “social welfare” organization. But, that fall in North Carolina, its ads, like those of Real Jobs NC, promoted only Republicans.</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">On Election Night, Dickson fell about a thousand votes short of victory in her district, which has a population of more than a hundred and fifty thousand. “I’ve never met Art Pope,</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">” she says, but she is convinced that “Art Pope was after my seat. It wasn’t personal. They wanted control, and they were willing to say anything and do anything to achieve it.”</span></font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline">
</font><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="font-family: " times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" font-size="font-size" large="large" cursor="cursor" pointer="pointer" display="display" block="block" padding="padding" px="px" outline="outline"><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That same fall, Chris Heagarty, a Democratic lawyer, ran for a legislative seat in Wake County, which includes Raleigh, where Pope lives. He had previously directed an <b>election-reform group, </b>and was not naïve about political money. Yet even he was caught off guard by the intensity of the effort marshalled against him. Real Jobs NC and Civitas Action spent some seventy thousand dollars on ads portraying him as fiscally profligate, and Americans for Prosperity spent heavily on behalf of his opponent.</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> One ad accused him of having voted “to raise taxes over a billion dollars,” even though he had not yet served in the legislature.Another ad depicted Heagarty, who has dark hair and a dark complexion, as Hispanic. (He is Caucasian.) The ad was sponsored by the North Carolina Republican Party, to which Pope had contributed in 2008. Heagarty said, “They slapped a sombrero on a photo of me, and wrote, ‘Mucho Taxo! Adios, Señor!’ ”</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">He said, <b>“If you put all of the Pope groups together, they and the North Carolina G.O.P. spent more to defeat me than the guy who actually won.” He fell silent, then added, “For an individual to have so much power is frightening. The government of North Carolina is for sale.”</b></span></font></div><div><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>Rebekah Mercer Standing by Cambridge Analytica After Blackmail Scandal</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">A source close to the family says that she intends to remain on the company’s board, and is ‘working to be part of the solution.’</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">BETSY WOODRUFF</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4"><b>03.19.18</b> 6:10 PM ET</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Billionaire heiress Rebekah Mercer is standing by embattled data firm Cambridge Analytica—at least for now. A person close to Mercer, who sits on the firm’s board, told The Daily Beast she has no immediate plans to leave her post there, despite a<b> bombshell report alleging the company used Ukrainian sex workers to try to get compromising material about its clients’ political opponents.</b></font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“She is working to be part of the solution,” said the source, of one of American conservatism’s most powerful mega-donors.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">“She has always worked to make sure she observes and abides by all established norms and legal mandates,” the source added.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The source said Robert Mercer, former co-CEO of America’s most lucrative hedge fund, is just a passive investor in Cambridge Analytica and has never been on its board. Rebekah Mercer is his daughter, and conducts broad business oversight as a board member.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">Cambridge Analytica broke into the American political scene in 2015, working for Sen. Ted Cruz’s primary campaign and touting its “psychographic” voter modeling program. During the primaries, it also worked alongside allies of Ben Carson and Donald Trump. Steve Bannon has long been close with the firm, and once owned a stake in it, per McClatchy. The firm drew the attention of Congressional investigators looking into potential coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. And its head, Alexander Nix, once reached out to Julian Assange to offer the firm’s services in releasing emails hacked from Hillary Clinton’s email account. Assange confirmed the outreach to The Daily Beast, and said he turned down Nix’s overture.</font></p><p><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">
</font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">The Mercers were among Trump’s most generous supporters, spending millions to support his campaign.</font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">ref</font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">https://www.thedailybeast.com/ex-trump-consultant-and-cambridge-analytica-ceo-alexander-nix-offered-to-blackmail-politicians-with-prostitutes</font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no linx</font></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></font></font></p><p style="line-height: 29.5px; margin: 0px 0px 15px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Executives from <a class="TrackingLink LinkWrapper" href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/russia-probe-now-investigating-cambridge-analytica-trumps-psychographic-data-gurus" style="transition: color 0.15s ease; background-color: transparent;">Cambridge Analytica, which was hired by the Trump presidential campaign</a>, have been caught on tape promising an extraordinary package of propaganda strategies to potential clients including filming opponents in compromising situations with Ukrainian sex workers.</font></font></p><p style="line-height: 29.5px; margin: 0px 0px 15px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump" style="transition: color 0.15s ease; background-color: transparent;">Over the weekend a whistleblower who worked with Cambridge</a> came forward to claim that the company had surreptitiously misused the Facebook data of 50 million people in order to win election campaigns</font></font></p><p /><p style="line-height: 29.5px; margin: 0px 0px 15px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Alexander Nix, the CEO of Cambridge Analytica, was seen on tape <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://www.channel4.com/news/cambridge-analytica-revealed-trumps-election-consultants-filmed-saying-they-use-bribes-and-sex-workers-to-entrap-politicians-investigation" style="transition: color 0.15s ease; background-color: transparent;">talking to undercover reporters from Channel 4 News</a> saying that his operatives would never be caught because they worked all over the world using a number of front organizations.</font></font></p><p style="line-height: 29.5px; margin: 0px 0px 15px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The U.K. information commissioner responded to the Channel 4 News footage by announcing that she <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://twitter.com/C4Emily/status/975816038846730241" style="transition: color 0.15s ease; background-color: transparent;">would apply for a warrant</a> to enter the Cambridge Analytica offices to seize evidence. Hours later, at around 11 p.m. local time, a senior politician announced that Facebook “auditors and legal counsel” had just been <a class="LinkWrapper LinkWrapper--external" href="https://twitter.com/DamianCollins/status/975856097163702272" style="transition: color 0.15s ease; background-color: transparent;">ordered to leave the Cambridge Analytica offices by British officials.</a></font></font></p><p style="line-height: 29.5px; margin: 0px 0px 15px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">British Prime Minister Theresa May backed an investigation into Facebook and Cambridge Analytica on Monday, and the European Union said it would launch a probe into the alleged misuse of private data.</font></font></p><p style="line-height: 29.5px; margin: 0px 0px 15px;" times="Times" new="New" roman="Roman" serif="serif" background-color="background-color" rgb="rgb"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">On the undercover film, Nix’s colleague Mark Turnbull, the managing director of Cambridge Analytica Political Global, explained that the plausible deniability was a crucial element and said it was vital that people seeing false rumors online never discovered where they were coming from.[vid]<span style="text-align: center;">“We just put information into the bloodstream of the internet and then watch it grow, give it a little push every now and again,” he said. “Like a remote control. It has to happen without anyone thinking, ‘That’s propaganda,’ because the moment you think, ‘That’s propaganda,’ the next question is, ‘Who’s put that out?’”</span></font></font></p><p><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></font></p></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></font></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div></div>