DIRTY TRICKS 4

ESTB 10 24

SEE VOTER SUPPRESSION

SEE VOTER ROLL PURGE

SEE GERRY 3 4 TARGET SIGNATURE GATHER MIZZOU PROP

see disinfo lie pwr any means gaslight

see fascism

SEE SUPERPAC DARK MONEY

3RD PARTY/PRIMARY VARIANT 5 26

SEE RETALIATE PRIMARIED FUNDERS SINGER VULTURE

SEE DOXING SWATTING

see gop maga mike

see legal suppress kash v troye

SEE PROJECTION RUBBER REVERSE // LIE PWR GASLT any means

SEE DIRECT MAIL HIT PIECE

SEE NEG ATTACK AD

SEE SPLIT TKT 3RD CAND

-=-=

neg ad fuckery driven bc repeat fail eg doge or bad polls 10 26?

mma

Here are the right-wing media figures endorsing “despicable” ad from Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy

The ad features Democratic nominee Amy Acton’s estranged mother, who defended her husband’s reported sexual assault of Acton when she was a child

Written by Zachary Pleat

Research contributions from Gideon Taaffe

Published 10/21/26

Multiple right-wing media figures are promoting an ad released this week by Ohio Republican gubernatorial nominee Vivek Ramaswamy’s campaign targeting his Democratic opponent, Amy Acton, featuring her mother calling her a liar. However, Acton has been estranged from her parent since the age of 12 in 1978, when her mother defended the candidate’s stepfather against accusations he had sexually assaulted Acton for two years, then fled the state with him as he became a fugitive from charges of child sexual abuse.

In Ramaswamy’s ad, which right-wing media personalities praised as “brilliant” and “absolutely hilarious,” Acton’s estranged mother accused her of lying about her past. But court records accessed by ABC affiliate News 5 Cleveland back up Acton’s story, with the outlet reporting, “Mahoning County Court records we obtained show that Cledith Arthur was arrested and charged with sexually abusing Acton, then 12 years old. The abuse went from ages 10-12, she said.” The article continued: “After pleading not guilty, he posted bond and fled, becoming a fugitive of the state until his death in 2004. Police tried to find him for numerous years, documents state. He and Acton's mother moved to Pennsylvania, according to public records.”

Acton’s brother, Philip Stearns, issued a statement following the Ramaswamy ad’s release, saying, “It’s not surprising that Vivek Ramaswamy has stooped to such a despicable low as to attempt to turn the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point. … After he was arrested and Amy and I were removed from their custody, our birth mother stayed married to Amy’s rapist until he died.”

Yet some right-wing media personalities are celebrating the ad, which Ramaswamy campaign manager Jonathan Ewing said “is a campaign-ending moment for Amy Acton.” Ramaswamy also shared commentary on the ad and Acton more generally from right-wing podcaster Megyn Kelly.

Daily Wire host Michael Knowles praised Ramaswamy’s ad as “brilliant, brilliant.” Knowles added: “I think it's a very, very effective ad. It's brutal.” [The Daily Wire, The Michael Knowles Show, 10/20/26]

Newsmax host Greg Kelly: “Everybody in Ohio and the country should be listening to Amy Acton's mom.” Kelly repeatedly praised Acton’s mother, saying, “The mother speaks with love here. I believe the mother loves Amy.” He continued: “And she seems like a very nice lady, actually.” Kelly concluded: “Wow, that's some — the mother, I believe her.” [Newsmax, The Greg Kelly Show, 10/20/26]

Video

Citation

From the October 20, 2026, edition of Newsmax's Greg Kelly Reports

Podcaster and former FBI deputy director Dan Bongino said of Ramaswamy’s ad: “This is the most destructive political ad I have ever seen.” Bongino added: “How do you vote for this lady? It's her mom. That's mom dukes. Ma, mommy, mom, ma. My kid goes, Ma. How do you vote?” [Rumble, The Dan Bongino Show, 10/20/26]

Trump political operative Roger Stone used the ad to smear Acton, saying, “Turns out she’s been lying for personal gain.” Stone claimed that Stearn’s statement “seems like a poor explanation.” [Red Apple Audio Network, The Stone Zone, 10/20/26]

Gateway Pundit’s Wayne Allyn Root called the ad “absolutely hilarious.” Root used the ad to say, “The more you meet these Democrat candidates, they’re all crazy. They’re all covering up for the fact that they’ve had mental illness their whole life. They’re crazy, whacked-out people.” [The Gateway Pundit, War Zone with Wayne Allyn Root, 10/20/26]

Newsmax host on Vivek Ramaswamy attack ad featuring Amy Acton's estranged mother: “Everybody in Ohio and the country should be listening to Amy Acton's mom”

10/21/26 8:56 AM EDT

Daily Wire host praises “brilliant, brilliant” attack ad featuring Amy Acton's estranged mother: “Incredible stuff is going on”

10/21/26 9:00 AM EDT

Dan Bongino praises Vivek Ramaswamy attack ad on Amy Acton: “This is the most destructive political ad I have ever seen”

Dan Bongino rails at Republicans condemning attack ad featuring Amy Acton's estranged mother: “What kind of freaking party is this? Holy Moses, man, take the freaking gloves off.”

10/21/26

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GGL 9 26

AI Overview

📌 Israel's AI Influence Campaign Led by Brad Parscale

Former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale and his firm, Clock Tower X, are overseeing a $46.5 million digital influence contract with the Israeli government to shape how artificial intelligence chatbots portray Israel and the conflict in Gaza. [1, 2]

⚙️ How the Operation Works

Targeting AI, Not Humans: The network of specialized websites receives minimal human traffic, built instead to feed data into large language models (LLMs) like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity. [1, 2, 3]

Algorithmic Mimicry: Partnering with AI-modeling firm Market Brew, the campaign designed sites to mimic the exact factual tone and sourcing structures that AI web crawlers prioritize. [1, 2]

Network Sites: Created domains include paxpoint.org, factsignal.org, and allyvia.org to inject pro-Israel framing directly into AI training loops and search outputs. [1, 2, 3]

Broader Outreach: The multi-million dollar public diplomacy initiative also encompasses targeted digital ads, mass AI-generated text messaging, and outreach via conservative media networks like Salem Media Group. [1, 2]

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk ...

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It's Working. The key intended audience of these sites is n...

Israel Is Paying Millions to Train AI Chatbots How to Talk About Gaza. It’s Working.

Nick Cleveland-Stout

Posted onJuly 28, 2026

Since October, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been quietly overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel. One article, titled “The Reality Behind Gaza’s ‘Journalists’: Terror Ties, Propaganda, and the Laws of War,” asserts that a majority of journalists in Gaza were linked to terrorist organizations. Another casts doubt on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in 2024.

The key intended audience of these sites is not concerned Americans, it’s not even humans—most of the sites average a few hundred unique visitors each month. Instead, Parscale and his firm, Clock Tower X, created them as part of a $46.5 million contract with the Israeli government to try and influence artificial intelligence-powered chatbots, tools like Claude or ChatGPT.

Parscale has made his goal of influencing artificial intelligence—often referred to as “LLM poisoning”—explicit. In his initial agreement with Israel, Parscale said that he would deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” as part of the contract. More recently, his team even told Axios they are “seeing success” at getting popular AI systems to incorporate information from their sites, though they declined to provide data.

And it is working, according to disinformation experts who reviewed a Drop Site analysis of chatbot queries and training data, meaning tens of millions of Americans who use chatbots are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale on behalf of the Israeli government.

Full piece in DropSite News

Since October, former Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale has been quietly overseeing an operation posting hundreds of blog posts on behalf of Israel. One article, titled “The Reality Behind Gaza’s ‘Journalists’: Terror Ties, Propaganda, and the Laws of War,” asserts that a majority of journalists in Gaza were linked to terrorist organizations. Another casts doubt on the killing of Hind Rajab, a five-year-old Palestinian girl killed by the Israeli military in 2024.

Parscale has made his goal of influencing artificial intelligence—often referred to as “LLM poisoning”—explicit. In his initial agreement with Israel, Parscale said that he would deploy “websites and content to deliver GPT framing results on GPT conversations” as part of the contract. More recently, his team even told Axios they are “seeing success” at getting popular AI systems to incorporate information from their sites, though they declined to provide data.

And it is working, according to disinformation experts who reviewed a Drop Site analysis of chatbot queries and training data, meaning tens of millions of Americans who use chatbots are increasingly likely to receive answers manipulated by Parscale on behalf of the Israeli government.

Investigations take resources. Subscribe or make a tax-deductible gift today.

When Drop Site asked Perplexity “Is it beneficial for the US to enhance military cooperation with Israel?” the chatbot responded with a one-word answer: “Yes.” The top source listed was Allyvia.org, a Parscale-created website dedicated to promoting the U.S.-Israel military relationship. Microsoft Copilot similarly cited Parscale’s websites.

Screenshot from Perplexity.

Allyvia is one of 10 different websites created by Clock Tower X, a boutique digital influence company owned by Parscale. Each website is dedicated to promoting a different Israeli narrative. FactSignal.org, for instance, fashions itself as fact-checking website tackling anti-Israel information, containing articles discrediting slain journalists as Hamas terrorists and rejecting the notion that Israel’s military actions in Gaza constitute a genocide. Paxpoint.org, meanwhile, promotes the narrative that Israel is a nation of peace.

All of Parscale’s websites contain a statement at the bottom which states “this material is distributed by Clock Tower X LLC on behalf of the State of Israel.” This statement is a mandatory disclosure requirement under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Despite this, when Drop Site asked prominent chatbots about the latest news from Paxpoint.org, Perplexity and Copilot did not flag that the site was created as part of an Israeli influence operation. Claude, ChatGPT, and Gemini did flag the caveat.

“Perplexity is built to give people cited, linked answers from a range of sources so they can go directly to the original reporting and reach their own conclusions,” spokesperson Beejoli Shah told Drop Site News when reached for comment.

Parscale’s websites—referred to throughout this article as the “Clock Tower network”—get cited by chatbots, but they also are successfully infiltrating the underlying training data.

The Clock Tower network started to get archived by Common Crawl—a nonprofit that oversees a massive repository of data used to train large language models such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude—earlier this year. Common Crawl is the backbone of the artificial industry, training 80% of the tokens of OpenAI’s GPT-3, making it a useful proxy for understanding if malicious actors successfully infiltrate AI training data.

READ MORE from Nick Cleveland-Stout at the Quincy Institute: “The Eighth Front: Inside Israel’s $1 Billion Influence Campaign.”

LLM Poisoning

In the examples above, users can at least trace the sources that chatbots are pulling from when they search websites directly, such as in the screenshots above. Infiltrating the training data itself, on the other hand, can lead to Israel-influenced responses that are nearly impossible for users to trace.

To measure how deeply the network had penetrated the data used to train AI models, Drop Site used Claude Fable to query Common Crawl to count how often Parscale’s sites appear in its monthly snapshots. According to that analysis, a sample of which was manually fact-checked by Drop Site, between January and June 10 sites were crawled by Common Crawl 912 times. While this is a drop in the bucket of Common Crawl data, emerging research suggests a very low number of documents can successfully manipulate AI chatbots, no matter the data volume.

The 10 sites are:

Paxpoint.org (crawled 220 times): Website dedicated to showcasing the narrative that Israel is a nation of peace. “Paxpoint highlights Israel’s ongoing commitment to peace and coexistence, sharing historical accords, humanitarian initiatives, and grassroots projects that bridge divides.”
Allyvia.org (crawled 158 times): Website dedicated to strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance. “Allyvia showcases how the US and Israel alliance directly benefits Americans through joint security, cutting-edge technologies, job creation, and shared values of liberty.”
Factsignal.org (crawled 108 times): Mission is to “prove that Hamas’ terrorist designation reflects global consensus and undeniable evidence of violence, not conspiracy”
Cognitura.org (crawled 106 times): Website claims to be a “research and education platform” dedicated to exploring how extremist groups such as Hamas operate.
Justorium.org (crawled 93 times): Website dedicated to arguing that Israel’s military actions in Gaza “follows international law and reflects the democratic ethics shared by the US and Israel.”
Culturavia.org (crawled 76 times): Website focused on celebrating cultural ties between U.S. and Israel.
Compassionpulse.org (crawled 57 times): Website dedicated to sharing stories, data, and eyewitness accounts of “how Israel protects civilians, delivers humanitarian aid, and upholds moral values shared with the US.”
Econora.org (crawled 49 times): Website dedicated to highlighting U.S.-Israeli trade relationship.
Innovascope.org (crawled 45 times): Website dedicated to highlighting U.S.-Israeli technology partnership.
Feedingyoufiction.com (crawled 1 time): Website featuring videos that claim footage coming out Gaza is staged and denying famine.

These sites are being crawled more and more. In January 2026, the sites were only crawled twice. In May, the sites were crawled 376 times, before a notable dip in June. To check the accuracy of Claude Fable, Drop Site manually searched for a sampling of 50 of the Clock Tower X URLs archived in Common Crawl’s CDXJ index, and did not detect any errors.

https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/i8UTh/2/

Hervé Letoqueux, Chief Executive Officer at Check First, an organization that combats digital disinformation, explained that Common Crawl’s status as the go-to source for training chatbots opens it up as a target for manipulation. “Common Crawl is widely used in the world of data science for training LLMs, which also means that actors want to manipulate the answers in their favor, which some studies have indicated are fairly easy to do.”

It only takes about “250 malicious documents to produce a ‘backdoor’ vulnerability in a large language model—regardless of model size of training data volume,” according to an October Anthropic study. The authors of the study note “this means anyone can create online content that might eventually end up in a model’s training data,” and that malicious actors “can inject specific text into these posts to make a model learn undesirable or dangerous behaviours, in a process known as poisoning.”

The Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab published a similar study earlier this year on Russia’s disinformation network’s attempts to influence LLMs and noted an important caveat. Because artificial intelligence companies have their own process of quality control when they incorporate data, “Inclusion in Common Crawl does not guarantee inclusion in any given model’s training data.”

Drop Site also performed a demo alongside Letoqueux to test five different chatbots—Microsoft Copilot, ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Claude AI, and Perplexity—on whether they could produce articles using only their training data. Of the five, the Parscale network consistently appears in the training data of Gemini and Copilot. Claude and ChatGPT did not appear to contain the websites in the training data, though these chatbots can still search Clock Tower X websites when responding to queries. Perplexity, meanwhile, appeared to be trained on some of the Clock Tower X websites.

Microsoft Copilot and Google Gemini did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

‘It is easy to prove that these models were trained on the Clock Tower X websites, though it is difficult to know the degree to which that influences the response a chatbot gives to a query,’ said Letoqueux.

Optimizing for AI

Parscale’s team has credited their success with a softer approach to selling Israel’s narrative. Scott Stouffer, Chief Technology Officer of Market Brew—a company that specializes in influencing LLMs that Parscale invests in—told Axios that information written in a “factual tone and tightly organized” is more likely to be cited in AI platforms. “What you can do is make sure that your information is structured, sourced, and aligned in a way that those systems are more likely to retrieve it when someone asks a question. It’s less about changing the conversation and more about making sure your facts are eligible to be part of it.”

Many of the blog posts on the Clock Tower network contain at least a few sentences of nuance, which disinformation researchers say make it more palatable for chatbots. For instance, the FactSignal blog post about how journalists in Gaza are supposedly secret terrorists states that, “Distinguishing between legitimate reporters and militant operatives is not always simple, but accurate reporting requires careful investigation and transparency.”

The author of many of the blog posts is Israel-based digital marketer Mark Ginsberg, according to the source code. Ginsberg, who registered as a foreign agent for Israel in March, advertises his expertise in Generative Engine Optimization—or LLM grooming—on his Linkedin profile. In a June article for The Times of Israel, Ginsberg laid out the argument for Israel investing in efforts to influence chatbots. “Israel needs to invest seriously in the defense of truth…It means ensuring that accurate information appears not merely in government archives but in search results, educational resources, encyclopedias, social media feeds, podcasts, documentaries, and AI training datasets,” Ginsberg wrote. Trying to influence AI training data, Ginsberg argued, is not “embracing disinformation” but rather stating “reality itself.”

Letoqueux, who reviewed the Clock Tower network sites, confirmed that because chatbots have a built-in preference for presenting a balanced view, websites that are sourced and present a lighter touch might be more successful. “These websites could probably be quite useful at doing damage control on questions such as ‘Is Israel committing a genocide?’ because they provide the Israeli narrative, which chatbots can then repeat as representative of one side of the debate,” said Letoqueux, who is the former head of operations at VIGINUM, the French agency responsible for identifying foreign digital interference.

Alice Lee, an analyst at NewsGuard, a disinformation tracking company, explained in an interview with Drop Site that the Parscale network sites have all the hallmarks of sites that would be successful at influencing chatbots. “The websites have bullet points, key takeaways at the top of the page, aggressive sourcing, digestible information, all of which increase the likelihood that this content is picked up by AI chatbots.”

While Russia’s Pravda network overall is far larger, Parscale’s sites have a far higher rate of successfully being archived. The Clock Tower network contains 900 different pathways—individual blog posts, fact sheets, etc—and 85% of them have been archived in Common Crawl, compared to Russia’s network at an average rate of around 2.5%.

Lee, who specializes in Russian disinformation, explained that whereas Russia is churning out easily debunkable propaganda at scale, Israel’s more targeted approach appears to be geared more toward conveying the Israeli narrative on half-truths, opinions, and disputed facts, which is more difficult for LLMs to dismiss. “It’s harder to put guardrails around opinion,” she explained.

Parscale appears to have created several other websites related to Qatar that did not end up being published. On the same IP address as the Clock Tower network, Drop Site identified domains for websites including “qataritracker.org” and “qatarfacts.com.” These sites are currently inaccessible.

The Clock Tower network is responsive to Israel’s shifting priorities. When the sites first launched in October, many of them posted frequently about how Israel is a peaceful nation. “While critics portray Israel as resistant to compromise, history shows the opposite: Israel has repeatedly made territorial and strategic concessions in exchange for peace, only to face renewed hostility,” reads one website page published in October, cited by Microsoft Copilot below. That page was archived by Common Crawl twice.

Screenshot of Copilot citing a Clock Tower X site.

Part of this effort included shaping the narrative over Israel’s military actions in Gaza. For instance, a page on Justorium.org titled “How Israel Reduces Civilian Harm in War Against Hamas and Hezbollah” claims that Israel went above and beyond international legal requirements to reduce civilian harm. The post says that Israel “used short warning strikes on rooftops, known as roof knocking, to signal imminent danger without causing casualties.” The New York Times has reported that Israel “significantly reduced its use of so-called roof knocks” from the first day of the war, and has often opted for 2,000 pound bombs that cause greater damage rather than more precise munitions.

That post has been archived by Common Crawl once, and is also cited below by Perplexity.

Screenshot of Perplexity citing from a Clock Tower X site.

Most recently, as debate in the U.S. erupted over a Congressional measure that could further intertwine the U.S. and Israeli military sectors, the Clock Tower network published a series of posts framing the move as a positive development. The House version of Section 219, as it’s known, passed as part of the annual defense spending bill this week.

When Drop Site asked prominent chatbots a question containing similar language from one of the Parscale sites, “how does technology collaboration between the U.S. and Israel benefit both nations?” Gemini, Copilot, and Perplexity once again cited websites from the Clock Tower network without noting these sources are created on behalf of the Israeli government.

Screenshot of Gemini citing a Clock Tower X site.

Screenshot of Copilot citing two Clock Tower X sites.

$4.5 Million a Month

Public opinion of Israel has cratered in the U.S. after its U.S.-funded military siege of Gaza has killed over 70,000 Palestinians, including across key demographics such as conservatives and evangelicals that have long supported the U.S.-Israel relationship.

According to a new Quincy Institute report by the author of this article, Israel has spent well-over $100 million on foreign lobbying efforts under FARA in the U.S. since 2023, hiring 17 new firms in 2024 and 2025 alone. Although Israel has historically avoided hiring official contractors under FARA, it is now on track to become the largest single spender in 2026.

Parscale, who gained national attention as Trump’s campaign manager for hiring the controversial microtargetting firm Cambridge Analytica, is the largest recipient of Israel’s massive influence investment. Parscale’s intention to influence chatbots was first reported by Responsible Statecraft in September, when he signed a $1.5 million a month contract with the Israeli government to integrate pro-Israel messaging into conservative media, carry out a mass texting campaign, and influence chatbots. Since then, the contract has tripled in size to $4.5 million a month.

Despite this increased investment, Israel does not appear satisfied with Parscale’s results so far. “We pissed at Brad Parscale,” one Israeli official familiar with the contract told Time. “We have paid him lots of money. But what did he do with it? Things have only gotten worse,” they said.

Stephen Walt, author of the “Israel Lobby,” suggested to the Quincy Institute that Israel is not seeing a return on investment because these kinds of influence operations are counterproductive. “Once a country gets the reputation for spinning constantly, and gets repeatedly caught making things up, then doing ever more of it just sends the message to listeners that more BS is on the way,” Walt said.

Parscale and Clock Tower X did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

The Clock Tower network serves another purpose. Parscale is also leading a mass texting campaign that reaches out to Americans under the auspices of supposed “peace” organizations. “Hi, I’m John with Friends for Peace. Quick question for folks in Illinois about Israel and Iran. Got a second?”

Then, after a back and forth, these chatbots frequently send links to the Clock Tower network, websites like Allyvia.org.

Text messages from “Friends for Peace.”

“Friends for Peace” is not a registered nonprofit or LLC and does not appear to exist as an organization, meaning Americans wanting to know who is behind the text operation would have to click the link and scroll to the bottom of each page to see the disclaimer that it is an operation funded by the Israeli government.

When the Wall Street Journal asked Parscale about if “Friends for Peace” was a real organization, Parscale replied, “What do you define as an actual organization?”

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AN 8 26

In one of the most competitive congressional districts in the country, a strange fight is brewing between the Pennsylvania Green Party and a candidate who is petitioning to appear on the ballot under their label.

Andrew Tupone submitted his nomination papers with thousands of signatures to the Department of State last month, seeking a spot on the ballot in Pennsylvania’s 7th Congressional District. He then released a statement appealing to the Green Party’s progressive voter base.

“[Incumbent] Congressman [Ryan] Mackenzie has been in lock step with Trump and he must be stopped,” it read. “After the Democratic National Party put their thumbs on the scale in the primary for Bob Brooks as the nominee, I believe local grassroots voters deserve another choice and that’s why so many are backing my candidacy.”

But the state Green Party is warning voters that the bid may be a ploy to trick voters in a race the Cook Political Report rates as a “toss up.”

On Monday, the party filed an objection to Tupone’s attempt to get on the ballot in Commonwealth Court.

“Tupone and his agents or affiliates … misled voters into signing the Nomination Papers on the mistaken belief that they were helping to place a candidate supported by the Green Party onto the ballot,” the objection reads. “Many of the voters who signed Candidate Tupone’s Nomination Papers would not have done so had they been aware that Candidate Tupone was not actually affiliated with or endorsed by the GPPA.”

The objection notes that Tupone was a registered Republican until mid-February 2026, when he changed his registration to Democrat. He changed it again to Green in April.

“My political beliefs always remained the same. It doesn’t matter what party I was registered to,” Tupone told the Capital-Star. “I am trying to buck the establishment of both parties … I’m running for universal healthcare, ending the genocide in Gaza and standing up to the establishment parties.”

A separate objection to Tupone’s petition to appear on the PA-07 ballot was filed by Democratic voters with ties to the party. They’re alleging issues with many of the 9,460 signatures Tupone collected and, like the Green Party, accusing him of paying out-of-state people to help collect them.

Tupone told the Capital-Star, “I am not aware of any paid operation and just thankful for the volunteers that want change this November and tired of the two party establishment.”

Chris Robinson, a spokesperson for the Pennsylvania Green Party said the group learned about Tupone from the media after he submitted his nomination papers.

“We had no idea who he was,” Robinson said. “There were records of him running for office in the past as a Republican, and you can look up his voter registration — anybody can do that — and it said he was a Republican up until [February] of this year.”

Robinson also learned Tupone had previously run for election to a Magisterial Judge seat in Northampton County, appearing on the general election ballot as a Republican in 2021. Though Tupone had cross-filed and ran in the Democratic primary as well both times.

Tupone told the Capital-Star that any accusation that he is a Republican acting as a spoiler is “simply not true and a false accusation by political operatives.”

It’s unclear if the Green Party has grounds to challenge Tupone’s place on the ballot. As a minor political party, it is not able to hold primaries the same way Democrats and Republicans can in the state. Instead, hopeful candidates must collect signatures and turn them into the Pennsylvania Department of State to appear on the general election ballot.

“That’s the way the Pennsylvania regulations are written,” Robinson said.

He added that it would take reforms agreed to by Republicans and Democrats in the state House to fix the problem, such as allowing minor parties to hold primaries or implementing what’s called “fusion voting,” which would allow candidates to represent multiple parties.

“There’s a whole bunch of things like that, and every voter you talk to probably has different things they’d like to see,” he said. “But nobody cares about that in Harrisburg. The people who are legislators in Harrisburg would like to keep things the same. It worked for them. Why change it?”

The 7th Congressional District election is expected to be one of the decisive races when it comes to which party controls the U.S. House in 2027.

The contest has been attracting national interest for much of the year.

According to OpenSecrets, a nonprofit that tracks spending in American politics, the race has already drawn over $9.5 million in contributions. Just over 75% of that has come from out of state.

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NEW VARIANT, SUPERPAC TO BOOST WEAK DEM CAND?

AN 5 26

Super PACs with ties to Republicans are spending money to promote weaker, left-wing candidates in Democratic primaries, in an apparent effort to help Republicans retain control of the House, The New York Times reports.

“They’re going into Democratic primaries and literally trying to boost the most extreme candidates and oppose the Blue Dog-endorsed candidates that, if they win, are going to beat the Republicans in the general,” U.S. Rep. Adam Gray (D-CA) said in an interview with the Times. The Blue Dogs are more centrist Democrats.

One “new mystery super PAC with ties to Republicans has spent more than $1 million meddling in at least three Democratic congressional primaries to select preferred opponents,” the Times reports. That group is spending money to promote “a left-wing sex therapist in Texas who has been accused of bigotry and antisemitism by leaders in both parties.”

It is also running ads in Democratic primaries in Pennsylvania and Nebraska.

In some of these races the spending is an effort to disrupt Democratic candidates “who are part of the Democratic Party’s ‘red to blue’ program, a special designation for top recruits in key races that could determine control of the House.”

The Times calls these “interventions in the opposing party’s primaries,” and reports that they are “apparently to elevate Democrats viewed as weaker candidates,” suggesting that “the race for control of the House has entered an intensive new phase in which both parties are vying for every imaginable edge.”

“Some Republicans privately believe the party’s best chance to hold power this year is to cast Democrats as extremists,” the Times reports.

Another super PAC formally aligned with Republicans is promoting a progressive Democrat in California.

Maureen Galindo is running for a Democratic seat from Texas. Party leaders are backing Johnny Garcia, who has worked in the local sheriff’s office. Despite having raised less than $10,000, Galindo finished first in the primary, advancing to a May runoff.

“In a text message,” the Times reports, “Ms. Galindo suggested the money for the mailer had come from ‘a billionaire zionist who made the pac to sabotage candidates,’ using the type of language that has previously prompted charges of antisemitism, including from Senator Jacky Rosen, Democrat of Nevada, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, who called her ‘openly bigoted.'”

Galindo told the Times, “Dems and Republicans uniting against me in the same week with the same message is evidence that theyre [sic] working together for the zionist billionaires that control our government and tax money.”

There are more races that Democratic strategists expect Republicans to meddle in, including in California, Michigan and Colorado.

---

===

ELECTION FUCKERY? CT LOSS 2 26 AN

Republicans just suffered a significant setback in North Carolina ahead of this fall's midterm elections, where they're hoping to stop Democrats from flipping a crucial U.S. Senate seat.

NBC News reported Monday that a lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee (RNC) and the North Carolina Republican Party — which alleged roughly 250,000 voters were improperly registered — resulted in the court allowing 73,000 voters to remain on the rolls while presenting identifying information.

Republicans were hoping to have all voters in question removed and their 2024 ballots thrown out after alleging that their voter registrations didn't include the last four digits of their Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers or a statement that they had neither document. Democrats countersued on behalf of North Carolina election officials, resulting in Monday's settlement granting extra time to the group of 73,000 voters.

According to NBC News, the North Carolina Board of Elections began updating its database of voter registrations last year, sending letters to roughly 82,000 voters asking them to update their registrations. Approximately 100,000 voters in the Tar Heel State lack identifiers like a driver's license number. Because North Carolina requires voters show ID when voting, the settlement allows for the 73,000 voters in question to present ID when casting their ballots, upon which election officials will update their information on state voter rolls with the information shown on those voters' identifications.

Had those ballots been tossed, it could have potentially changed the outcome of one or more U.S. House elections. According to the Associated Press' vote count, Rep. Don Davis (D-N.C.) narrowly won his race in North Carolina's 1st Congressional District by roughly 6,300 votes. And the statewide vote count could also prove decisive with Monday's settlement, as President Donald Trump only won North Carolina by 183,000 votes in 2024.

"This latest victory is a win for Americans and yet another blow to the Republicans’ scheme to disenfranchise voters ahead of the midterm elections," Democratic National Committee chairman Ken Martin said in a statement.

North Carolina voted for Donald Trump in 2016, 2020 and 2024. However, North Carolina voters also elected Democrat Roy Cooper to the governorship in 2016 and 2020, and elected Democrat Josh Stein as governor in 2024. Cooper is now running for North Carolina's open U.S. Senate seat, where he and former RNC chairman Michael Whatley are favored to win the March 3 primary. Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C,.) is retiring from the Senate and not seeking a third term.

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// putin?

an 2 26

Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, a former press secretary to President Donald Trump, is working with two of her judicial appointees to get around the Arkansas Constitution's term limits.

How? Instead of running for reelection to their own seats, they are running for each other's seats.

In doing so Sanders and the two judges, Nick Bronni and Cody Hiland, are undermining the “constitutional goal” behind that provision in the first place, Bolts Magazine reports.

The provision “is certainly reflective of the populist sentiments found in the Constitution of 1874 that wanted to limit gubernatorial power” Jay Barth, Hendrix College professor emeritus, told Bolts Magazine. The law was created as "a device to lessen the power of the governor" and the Sanders/Bronni/Hiland approach amounts to "something of a workaround.”

By contrast University of Arkansas law professor Joshua Silverstein, though admitting that “obviously they're running for each other's seat because they can't run for their own seats,” dismissed this fact as a “triviality.”

"You're not going to get politicians, judicial or otherwise, to not take advantage of an opportunity to stay in office,” Silverstein said. “It's not a big deal."

Bronni and Hiland are able to get away with seeking other’s seats while seeming to pursue “reelection” because, in February, the Arkansas legislature passed a bill called HB1223 that allows interim judges to brandish their new title on the ballot even when technically they are supposed to be facing voters “for the first time” for that office.

"I just don't think it was really solving a problem, and it looked like it was more maybe doing favors for people,” Representative Richard Womack, one of two Arkansas Republican legislators to vote against HB1223, told Bolt Magazine. "That was my gut reaction looking at it: This just looks somewhat likely anyway that we're trying to help certain people on the ballot."

This is not the first time that Sanders has been criticized for her seemingly casual approach to the law. In September Sanders received pushback from her own party when she scheduled a special election to fill a state senate seat in November instead of June. Arkansas law requires a governor to schedule special elections within 150 days after a legislative seat becomes vacant unless it is “impractical or unduly burdensome” to do so. In 2024 Sanders was also criticized when an audit revealed “potential legal violations” because she spent $19,000 on a lectern.

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AN 12 25 CONTEXT HISTORY

In joining a national redistricting arms race sparked by President Donald Trump, Virginia Democrats say they may impose a maximalist gerrymander that would disadvantage four of the state’s five Republican congressional representatives.

Republicans are crying foul.

But 12 years ago, Republicans in the Virginia Senate broke tradition by trying to force through a mid-decade redistricting of their own in an effort to win an outright majority in the chamber, which at the time was locked in a 20-20 partisan tie.

Back then, Democrats were the ones howling with indignation.

The Senate Republicans’ 2013 redistricting bid caused such an uproar that major legislative issues that year grounded to a halt for two weeks. A semblance of order was restored only after House Speaker Bill Howell — resisting tremendous pressure from fellow Republicans — ruled the Senate action out of order.

The 2013 incident is a reminder of the length politicians of either party can go when given the opportunity to perpetuate their political power.

“A pox on Republicans for starting it,” said former Republican Lt. Gov. Bill Bolling in a recent interview, “and a pox on the Democrats for now wanting to be part of it.”

The redrawing of Virginia’s legislative districts has happened only once every decade, soon after Census population totals are updated. The only exceptions have been when courts ordered the General Assembly to correct violations of the federal Voting Rights Act.

But in 2013, Senate Republicans didn’t want to wait the better part of a decade (and two election cycles) to reverse maps that Democrats had forced on them two years earlier.

The Senate GOP came up with a mid-decade surprise. They drew more favorable maps that, if adopted, would have put the GOP in a much stronger position in the next general election, which was scheduled for November 2015.

They waited for the House of Delegates to send over a routine bill that contained small, technical adjustments to existing House districts. The plan was to amend the bill to include wholesale changes to all 40 districts.

With Bolling’s tie-breaking vote, Republicans could push the GOP-friendly measure through the Senate. Then, all they would need was the House of Delegates (controlled by a GOP super-majority) to go along and for Republican Gov. Bob McDonnell to sign it into law.

Jeff Ryer, the political staffer for the caucus, said he worried for months that the word would get out. “It had to be one of the best-kept secrets I’ve ever seen in the General Assembly,” he said.

But the plan hit a snag.

Bolling, who in December 2012 bowed out of a bitter gubernatorial nomination contest with conservative Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, told GOP senators that they could not count on his tie-breaking vote.

“It was not something I was comfortable with,” Bolling recently said of the mid-decade changes. “ I was exploring the possibility of an independent campaign for governor. I kind of carved out a different path. I think a lot of guys (in the caucus) understood it.”

Senate Republicans had to put their surprise plan on hold for a day when at least one Democrat was absent.

The opportunity came on Monday, Jan. 21, when the late Sen. Henry Marsh, D-Richmond skipped the daily floor session to attend President Barack Obama’s second-term inauguration in Washington.

Marsh’s empty seat on the Senate floor gave the Republicans a temporary majority of 20-19.

To present the plan, the caucus turned to a moderate with a good-guy image. Sen. John Watkins, R-Midlothian, was the most unlikely legislator to pull what the Charlottesville Daily Progress editorial page would call “one of the most politically cynical and morally flawed maneuvers” in years.

“It wasn’t something I dreamed up,” Watkins said in an interview earlier this month. “The leadership told me, ‘You’re probably the only person who can stand up on the floor and get this through.’”’

Stunned, Democrats exploded with fury. They called the move unconstitutional. They vowed to sue. They threatened to throw sand in the legislative gears. “The collateral damage from this will be immeasurable,” thundered Democratic Senate Minority Leader Richard Saslaw, D-Fairfax.

Undaunted, Republicans rammed through the new maps on a party-line.

The bill moved back to the House, where its fate rested with Howell. The Speaker was charged with determining if House rules would allow the amendment to proceed.

In a recent interview, Howell said that almost from the start he believed the Senate amendment was not “germane” because it went far beyond the narrow scope of the House bill. But he faced pushback from within his own caucus.

House Republicans excluded Howell from some closed-door caucus meetings, an extraordinary challenge to his power. “There was a group within the caucus who said, ‘Why in the world would you not do it’?” said Howell, who served as Speaker from 2003 until 2018.

“There was one guy who said, Why don’t we rush the podium and take him out?’” Howell deadpanned. “Luckily that didn’t happen.”

As pressure built on Howell and the legislative uncertainty entered a second week, Senate Republicans sought to justify their mid-decade surprise.

In a Richmond Times-Dispatch op-ed, Sen. Ryan T. McDougle said the GOP’s action was justified in undoing Democratic maps that he said broke up communities of interest, manipulated population deviations and ignored opportunities to create a sixth minority-majority district.

“Those opposed to (the new maps) may call it a gerrymander, but they’re wrong, both historically and technically – the current districting scheme is a gerrymander,” McDougle wrote.

Some Senate Republicans were more candid about the political motivations of their plan.

Then-Senate Republican Leader Tommy Norment chided Senate Democrats, who had similar partisan incentives when they held power in 2011, of wrapping themselves “in a shroud of political virtue.”

In a recent interview, Norment said his biggest objection to the 2011 maps was that they broke up Yorktown, Jamestown and Williamsburg, known as the Historic Triangle.

“My interest was more geographic than partisan,” he said.

In the GOP redo, Williamsburg was removed from the district of Sen. John Miller, a Newport News Democrat, and restored to Norment’s domain.

But the tinkering with Miller’s district didn’t end there. Republicans stripped 16 precincts from Miller’s home base of Newport News and pushed a portion of his district across the James River, where it cut a narrow, 40-mile path from Smithfield to the outskirts of Petersburg, breaking up communities of interest along the way.

If the Senate plan had become law, Miller’s district would have gone from +15-D to +5-R – a rightward swing of 20 points.

As the standoff dragged on into February, Watkins came to regret his decision to go along with the January surprise. His nice-guy image was compromised and Democrats’ support of his two big initiatives — transportation funding and uranium mining — evaporated.

“With a single, premeditated act of political survival, the 31-year lawmaker and chairman of the Senate committee that oversees big business managed to get on nearly everyone’s #%!@ list,” observed Jeff Schapiro in the second of two columns in the Richmond Times-Dispatch that excoriated Watkins.

Meanwhile, then-Sen. Donald McEachin, D-Henrico, took the floor to lay bare the pretense of Senate Republicans’ claim that their maps had been motivated by “being good to Black folks.” He noted that the plan would pack Black people into districts, diluting their power in the suburbs.

“That is plantation politics,” McEachin said.

On February 6, the crisis ended when Howell issued his ruling that the Senate amendment strayed too far from the narrow, technical intent of the House bill.

Looking back, Howell said that most people who pressed him to rule otherwise understood his belief that the legislature’s institutional integrity depends on consistent application of the rules.

“They did not try to make the case it was germane,” Howell recalled. “They were just saying, ‘Bill, this would really help if you saw it this way.’”

Those who know Howell well say he was placed under an incredible amount of pressure to look the other way.

“Bill Howell paid dearly for that decision,” recalled Del. Bobby Orrock, R-Spotsylvania, one his lieutenants.

When asked if the ruling was the most significant decision in his 15 years as speaker, Howell said, “It was up there pretty high.”

Howell added that he wasn’t looking to open old wounds or make himself appear holier than thou. “It was an easy thing to do what I did because it was right,” he said.

Looking back, Watkins regrets his decision to go along with the plan. He agrees that Howell made the right call.

“You go through life and sometimes you screw up. This was one of them,” said Watkins, who announced in 2015 that he would not seek re-election, ending a legislative career that began in 1982.

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AN 12 25

Red state GOP goes scorched earth to keep its gerrymandered map off the 2026 ballot - Alternet.org

Missouri Republicans have been doing everything they can to block a referendum to put the state’s gerrymandered congressional map on the 2026 ballot. The latest twist came late last month when Attorney General Catherine Hanaway accused a company hired to collect signatures for the campaign of human trafficking.

You read that right: Human trafficking.

If true, it would be a massive scandal — and a grave tragedy. But so far, the only evidence Hanaway has cited are “reports.”

After she made the initial accusation on social media, we sought clarification from her office on where she heard these allegations, what “reports” she was referring to and what led her to believe they were credible enough to seek assistance from ICE, the federal agency that enforces immigration laws.

Her office didn’t respond.

A few days later, Hanaway issued a statement announcing she had launched a formal investigation into the allegations. So we asked again for any information about the source of these claims. And this time, Hanaway’s office was quick to respond to tell us that because there is now an active investigation, no information can legally be released.

Welp…

Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee seized on the news, using it in a Black Friday–themed text blast to warn Missourians not to sign petitions from a group being investigated for “improper conduct.”

At the center of the accusation is Advanced Micro Targeting — the Dallas-based firm hired by a PAC called People Not Politicians to collect signatures. The allegation is that AMT is bringing undocumented immigrants into the state to assist with the campaign.

To put it another way, at a time when many immigrants — regardless of their legal status — live in fear of being detained and deported, AMT has allegedly been able to convince some to stand outside of government buildings with clipboards.

AMT has strongly denied the accusations. According to the company, all signature gatherers are vetted through the federal E-Verify system. Every petition form lists the name of the signature gatherer, and all forms are reviewed by a notary who checks the signature gatherer’s ID.

Adding to the drama, AMT filed a federal lawsuit alleging four consulting firms are involved in an effort to pay AMT employees to abandon their work, turn over any signatures they gathered and badmouth the company — all to sabotage the petition drive.

Some employees, according to the lawsuit, were offered up to $30,000 to quit and provide “intelligence” to opponents of the referendum.

In a recording provided to The Independent by a supporter of the referendum, an individual who approached signature gatherers in Kansas City is heard identifying himself as an employee of one of the firms named in the lawsuit, Let the Voters Decide.

Let the Voters Decide, which is based in Florida, called AMT’s litigation a “bogus lawsuit” full of “absurd claims.”

And so here we are: an alleged sabotage campaign; an immigration investigation; a federal lawsuit; and a litany of procedural roadblocks.

The GOP is pulling out all the stops to keep the gerrymandered map off the 2026 ballot.

It’s understandable. Of the 27 times a referendum has been placed on the Missouri ballot, voters have rejected the General Assembly’s actions all but twice — including overturning a congressional map in 1922.

The fight over Missouri’s gerrymandered map seems destined to spiral deeper into political intrigue. What began as a dispute over lines on a map has now become a test of the state’s democratic backbone.

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AN 11 25

Two months after the assassination of MAGA podcaster Charlie Kirk, over 600 people have been targeted by the government with firings, suspensions, investigations and other actions, Reuters reports.

Educators, they note, are the main target, noting that "more than 350 education workers were fired, suspended or investigated in the days following the assassination, including 50 academics and senior university administrators, three high school principals, two cheerleading coaches and a theology instructor."

Reuters reports that "Republican officials publicly threatened to deprive universities and schools of taxpayer funds unless specific critics of Kirk were fired."

One of those people, Lauren Vaughn, a kindergarten assistant in South Carolina, was fired from her job after posting a Kirk quote defending the Second Amendment on social media followed by the now ubiquitous liberal rallying cry for gun control, "thoughts and prayers."

According to a Reuters review of court records, public statements, local media reports and interviews with two dozen people who were fired or otherwise disciplined, Vaughn "was one of more than 600 Americans fired, suspended, placed under investigation or disciplined by employers for comments about Kirk’s September 10 assassination."

At least 15 people were punished for "allegedly invoking 'karma' or 'divine justice,'" they note, "and at least nine others were disciplined for variations on 'good riddance.'"

"Other offending posts appeared to exult in the killing or express hope that other Republican figures would be next," they add.

But others like Vaughn were disciplined for simplycriticizing Kirk's politics, they note.

"This account is the most comprehensive to date of the backlash against Kirk’s critics, tracing how senior officials in President Donald Trump’s administration, local Republican lawmakers and allied influencers mobilized to enforce the Trump movement’s views," Reuters explains.

"The story maps the pro-Trump machinery of retaliation now reshaping American political life, detailing its scale and tactics, ranging from shaming on social media to public pressure on employers and threats to defund institutions," they add.

While Reuters notes that "Americans sometimes lose their jobs after speaking out in heated political moments," the post-Kirk situation was different "because of its reach and its public backing from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other top government officials."

"It represents a striking about-face for Republicans, who for years castigated the left for what they called 'cancel culture' – the ostracism or punishment of those whose views were deemed unacceptable," they add.

Vaughn is challenging her dismissal in a federal lawsuit filed September 18, seeking reinstatement, they write, but the school district maintains that her post “appeared to endorse Mr. Kirk’s murder or indicate that it was ‘worth’ him losing his life to protect Americans’ constitutional rights.”

Like Vaughn, Julie Strebe, a sheriff’s deputy in Salem, Missouri, lost her job after posting comments on Facebook about the shooting, including, “Empathy is not owed to oppressors.'

"She said her bosses were besieged with calls for her dismissal and that, at one point, a hand-drawn sign appeared across from her home reading, 'Julie Strebe Supports the Assassination of Charles Kirk,'" and has since had to install five surveillance cameras at her house to protect herself.

Reuters notes that "many Republican officials have embraced the punitive campaign," proposing "extraordinary measures," from lifetime social media bans to revoking visas over those they deem to have reveled in Kirk's death.

"Some academics compared the backlash to the 'Red Scare,' the anti-Communist purge that peaked in the 1950s, when officials, labor leaders and Hollywood figures were accused of Communist ties," Reuters notes.

Landon Storrs, a University of Iowa history professor, agrees, saying, "there are very disturbing parallels."

Even Trump loyalist Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) says it has gone too far, warning on his podcast that letting government decide “what speech we like and what we don’t” sets a dangerous precedent. Silencing voices like Jimmy Kimmel's might feel good, he said, but “when it’s used to silence every conservative in America, we will regret it.” BC DEMS GUBMINT EVIL SO THEY WILL USE PWR WE GIVE THEM FOR EVIL, AND WE ARE ALREADY PERSUCUTED VICTIMS OF BIG TECH WOKISM

Far right social media influencers like the X account Libs of TikTokstarted the revenge campaign almost immediately following Kirk's death, Reuters says.

"In the week after the shooting, Libs of TikTok shared the names and profiles of at least 134 people accused of celebrating violence or mocking Kirk’s memory, frequently tagging Trump administration officials including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Attorney General Pam Bondi. At times, the influencer posted disciplinary actions taken against specific government employees," they write.

The people Reuters has identified may not be accurate, they say, noting that "the tally of more than 600 people punished for criticizing Kirk is likely an undercount. Many companies and government organizations haven’t publicly disclosed terminations or suspensions."

The fallout has led to many peoples' silence, they report, saying, "The retaliation has silenced many voices. Scores of people who posted anti-Kirk comments have since scrubbed or locked their accounts, Reuters found. Others said in interviews that they are pushing back."

One of those, Kimberly Hunt, an HR worker in Arizona who was fired for her Kirk comments, is doing just that.

Hunt says she has raised more than $88,000 from a GoFundMe campaign titled, “Doxxed, Fired, but Not Silenced," saying she wants to use the money to further her education, become a content creator, and keep calling out people like Kirk.

“It’s definitely just emboldened me,” she says.

Not so for Florida Atlantic University associate professor Karen Leader, who was placed on administrative leave for her comments after a former staffer of Governor Ron DeSantis (R-FL) shared screenshots of her posts and tagged her employer.

“Whether my career is over or not, I don’t know,” Leader says. “But my life has changed.”

ref

A REUTERS SPECIAL REPORT

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an 10 25

On Tuesday, November 4, a wide variety of elections will be held in the United States —from gubernatorial races in Virginia and New Jersey to a mayoral race in New York City to three Pennsylvania State Supreme Court elections to a Philadelphia district attorney race. GOP and Democratic strategists will be paying close attention to the outcomes, looking for signs of what could lie ahead in the 2026 midterms.

In Geneva in Upstate New York, Republican Paul F. D'Amico and Democrat Ben Gummoe are competing in a Geneva City Council race. And he is now, according to the Finger Lakes Times (FLT), facing a controversy over an endorsement that never happened.

The Finger Lakes Times won't be making an endorsement in that race or any others, as the publication has discontinued political endorsements in its opinion section. But according to Times reporter Steve Buchiere, a D'Amico mailer implied that the Times endorsed him and used an older Times quote that, Democrats in Upstate New York argue, was used out of context.

In an article published on October 25, Buchiere quotes Mike Cutillo, the publication's publisher/executive editor, as saying, "While Mr. D'Amico may not have been intending to deceive, using words that were printed in the Finger Lakes Times years ago with no attribution of the date, it makes it seem like they were printed recently and also gives the appearance that we are endorsing him in his race for City Council in 2025. We are not. We stopped the practice of endorsing candidates years ago, and so, we don't think that those sentences should have been used in campaign literature for this year's race."

D'Amico is insisting that he never meant for the mailer to be misleading.

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"I have been using the statement in question on my printed campaign materials for (Geneva) City Council races in 2011 and 2015," D'Amico told the Times. "I also used the same statement on printed material for my supervisor race in 2013. I realize the FLT is not doing any endorsements for the 2025 City Council elections. If that is the perception of some on the Democratic side, I can't help that. It was not ever intended to represent an endorsement."

The Republican added, "The quote used was an opinion at the time of the FLT assessment on how I approached governing on City Council. It was accurate then, and there is no reason to think it changed."

But Todd Beeton, who chairs the Geneva Democratic Party, maintains that the older Times quote used in D'Amico's mailer lacked context.

Beeton told the Times, "It is telling that Paul D’Amico would use an old quote from more than a decade ago to try to trick voters into thinking the Finger Lakes Times had endorsed him in his race. This is just the latest in a string of dirty political tricks by D’Amico meant to mislead people, and Geneva voters are tired of it. Such deceptive tactics are one of the reasons we are seeing such enthusiasm for Ben Gummoe in his run to serve as Ward 2 councilor."

Read the full Finger Lake Times article at this link.

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GGL 9 25 Search Assist

The Missouri GOP is currently pushing to gerrymander the state's congressional districts, which would favor Republican candidates and potentially silence voters' voices. This effort is part of a broader strategy to maintain their supermajority in the legislature. komu.com democraticredistricting.com

Overview of Missouri GOP's Redistricting Efforts

The Missouri Republican Party is currently pushing for significant changes to the state's congressional districts. This effort is part of a special legislative session called by Governor Mike Kehoe.

Key Proposals

Gerrymandering Congressional Districts: The proposed congressional map aims to favor Republican candidates by altering district boundaries, particularly affecting the Kansas City area. This would extend districts into more conservative rural regions.
Changes to Initiative Petition Process: Another proposal seeks to modify how citizens can place measures on the ballot, potentially making it more difficult for voters to pass amendments to the state constitution.

Legislative Actions

Filibuster and New Rules: Senate Republicans used a controversial tactic to end a Democratic filibuster against these proposals. They passed new rules that prioritize House bills, allowing them to fast-track the redistricting measures.
Democratic Opposition: Democrats argue that these changes undermine their ability to propose important legislation and are primarily aimed at maintaining Republican power.

Public Response

Protests and Criticism: There has been significant public outcry, including rallies organized by Democrats and various voting coalitions opposing the redistricting efforts. Critics claim that the proposed changes do not address pressing issues like unemployment and economic challenges in Missouri.

komu.com democraticredistricting.com

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an 9 25

The Missouri Senate died at 1:42 p.m. Friday afternoon when Republican leaders refused to allow debate on a measure weakening the initiative petition process, GOP state Sen. Lincoln Hough said in an interview with The Independent.

A two-week special session to gerrymander Missouri’s congressional map and make it virtually impossible for voters to amend the state constitution ended Friday when Senate Republicans voted to cut off debate and steamroll both bills across the finish line.

Hough was one of only two Republicans who opposed every motion to cut off debate and voted against the bills.

About 20 minutes after the Senate adjourned, Hough said Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin visited his office and removed him as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. Hough has been chairman or vice chairman of the committee since he joined the Senate in 2019.

“She said, ‘we are tired of fighting with you,’” Hough said. ”To which my response was, ‘did you fight with me this week, or did I just go out here and vote no on something that was handed down to the Missouri Senate and a bunch of elected members who are not allowed to talk?’”

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It was the second time Hough has bucked his party this year when it sought to deploy procedural maneuvers to shut down debate. The first came in near the end of the 2025 session in May on bills repealing voter-approved laws expanding sick leave and protecting abortion rights.

“What I’ve seen at the end of last session, and what I saw this week, is a dismantling of what the Senate is supposed to be,” Hough said.

O’Laughlin did not respond to text messages seeking comment on Hough’s removal as chairman or his description of how it occurred. As of Saturday morning, the change in the committee line-up had not been posted to the Senate website.

Hough said he is not sure if he is still a member of the committee.

“I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “When the news was delivered to me, I didn’t ask a lot of follow up questions.”

The other Republican who broke with his party on Friday was state Sen Mike Moon of Ash Grove. Reached by text message Saturday, Moon said he had not been told of any changes in his committee assignments. He chairs the Veterans and Military Affairs Committee and the Select Committee on Equal Protection and DEI.

Moon, who has been punished by Senate Republican leadership in the past for some of his actions, declined to comment on the removal of Hough as Appropriations Committee chairman.

Lawmakers were meeting in their second special session of the year to do the bidding of President Donald Trump and gerrymander the 5th Congressional District to unseat U.S. Rep. Emanuel Cleaver, a Kansas City Democrat. The Senate passed the new map first, shutting off debate after letting Democrats speak against it for about four hours.

Next came the proposal added to the agenda by Kehoe to require both a majority of statewide votes and a majority of the votes in all eight of the state’s congressional districts to pass constitutional amendments proposed by initiative petition.

But along with the motion to take up the measure, state Sen. Brad Hudson, a Republican from Cape Fair, sent the motion to cut off debate before it began.

“My understanding of how this process is supposed to work is, if someone brings a bill before the body, then members are given the opportunity to have a conversation about it,” Hough said. “Maybe, I mean, call me crazy, but maybe even draft amendments and think about ways to improve something or change something.”

Republicans used several unprecedented maneuvers to muscle the two measures to final passage. The steps were orchestrated from the start to get the bills finished by Friday afternoon.

When the Senate convened, O’Laughlin presented a new set of rules intended to sidestep every opportunity Democrats could use to stall proceedings.

As a result, no senator was allowed to introduce a bill during the special session, the daily journal was never presented to the body for approval and House-passed legislation became the chamber’s top official priority for the first time in its existence.

The procedural step to shut off debate, called the previous question, is commonly used by the majority in the 163-member Missouri House, where no member can speak for more than 15 minutes on a topic, to move priority legislation.

But until this year, it was a rare move in the Senate, where the rules allow a member to speak as long as they like on any subject once they have the floor. Invoking the rule requires a motion signed by 10 senators.

The previous question has been used to move four bills this year, twice in the regular session and twice in the special session. It was also used to implement the new Senate rules.

But it had never before been used to pass a bill without any debate at all.

“It’s pretty easy to pass legislation in the Missouri Senate if you don’t have to talk about it, and you can just bring it before the body and say, we’re not, we’re not going to have any discussion whatsoever,” Hough said.

The Republican Party, he said, is suppressing every element that doesn’t walk in lockstep with the Trump White House.

“It seems that if you have any independent thought, or even just raise a question, you have a problem with this Republican Party,” Hough said. “And that is not the Republican Party that, 15 years ago when I first ran for the House, that I was part of.”

His disagreement with the procedures used to pass the legislation didn’t upset the progress of the bills. Shutting off debate requires 18 votes, and the fewest on any motion was 19.

“This is a dark day in the Missouri Senate,” Hough said. “It is a dark day when policy differences lead to the dismantling of the institution and the removal of individuals from chairmanships.”

In his seven years on the appropriations committee, Hough has shown himself as detail-oriented and able to build consensus while taking a tough negotiating position during final budget talks with the House.

With one more legislative session in his term-limited tenure, Hough won’t have to worry about pleasing leadership.

The upcoming budget could prove to be the most difficult to write in many years. When Kehoe vetoed $300 million in spending items in June, the news release accompanying the action said the state budget office was forecasting a general revenue shortfall of nearly $1 billion in the coming fiscal year.

“We’re definitely,” Hough said, “going to have some conversations about the direction of the state’s finances next year.”

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duck 8 25

48 Hills

https://48hills.org › 2025 › 08 › the-big-gop-money-attacking-newsoms-redistricting-plan

The big (GOP) money attacking Newsom's redistricting plan

6 days agoThe work of Charles Munger, Jr., who is a big GOP donor Here's the interesting thing: The mailers appear to be funded by Charles Munger Jr, the son of a billionaire investor who portrays himself as a supporter of fair elections.

Only include results for this site Hide site from these results

Deep-pocketed Republican donor launches 'misleading' mailers into Calif.

A quote plastered on the front of an anti-redistricting flyer prompted a clarifying statement from the organization

By Anabel Sosa,

Senior California Politics Reporter

Aug 27, 2025

California Gov. Gavin Newsom signs bills related to redrawing the state’s congressional maps on Aug. 21, 2025, in Sacramento, Calif.

Last week, scores of California households received a stark 8-by-11-inch flyer in the mail that declared, “We cannot save democracy by burning it down.” The mailer was sent out after Gov. Gavin Newsom announced that his proposal to redistrict California along partisan lines is headed to voters this November. But while the mailers, bankrolled by a major Bay Area donor to the Republic Party, were supposed to dissuade voters from approving the new congressional map, they included some misquotes that only led to more confusion.

The mailers were paid for by Protect Voters First, a campaign committee funded by Charles Munger Jr., a physicist who lives in Palo Alto and is the son of Warren Buffett’s late business partner. They urged voters to vote “no” on Proposition 50, the ballot measure for Newsom’s redistricting plan. The four-page mailer also had a quote from Gloria Chun Hoo, the president of the League of Women Voters of California, plastered on the front page: “Let’s protect the integrity of our democratic process and reject the dangerous idea of mid-cycle redistricting.”

The League of Women Voters, a leading good government group, immediately denied any involvement with Munger’s campaign.

A mailer from Protect Voters First in San Francisco. (Address details removed for privacy concerns.)

“You may have received a mailer from ‘Protect Voters First’ about the redistricting ballot initiative this November. By naming our organization and quoting Gloria Chun Hoo, the mailer wrongly implies that the League of Women Voters of California is part of their coalition and endorses the information contained in the flyer,” the organization said in a statement on Aug. 21. “This implication is not correct—we are not part of that coalition. The League of Women Voters of California did not authorize this action.”

A small attribution under the Hoo quote on the Protect Voters First flyer noted it had come from the Sacramento Bee. Hoo penned an op-ed for the paper that was published July 30, but it did not mention the Protect Voters First coalition.

Darius Kemp, the executive director of Common Cause, another good government group, said he was also quoted out of context. The flyer quoted him as saying “Point blank, this is a dangerous move” and defending independent redistricting as a system that works better. When reached for comment by SFGATE, Kemp referred to a news release issued by Common Cause on Aug. 22 that said, “Our position on mid-cycle redistricting is clear — we will not oppose mid-cycle redistricting efforts in states that meet our fairness criteria.”

Common Cause was initially critical of Newsom’s gerrymandering idea but later clarified its position before the mailers were sent out, saying in an Aug. 12 statement that the organization recognizes California’s effort as a “counterbalancing” measure in response to moves by Republicans in Texas. The organization has since said that the proposed new map for California meets its “fairness criteria.”

Charles Munger Jr., chairman of the Santa Clara County Republican Party, center, talks with Assemblyman Brian Jones, R-Santee, right, at the California Republican Party convention in Sacramento, Calif., Sunday, March 3, 2013.

While it’s still early days, it will be a two-month sprint for the “yes” and “no” campaigns to bring in millions of dollars — much of which will fund television ads and mailers like these that are targeted to sway undecided voters.

The national opposition campaign is led by former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who is recruiting national donors to contribute to the Stop Sacramento’s Power Grab committee, according to Politico. He is reportedly aiming to bring in upward of $100 million. Protect Voters First has already dumped $10 million toward the “no” effort. Meanwhile, Newsom’s campaign committee, called the Election Rigging Response Act, has already brought in over $11 million to support the redrawing of California’s map.

So far, it’s not clear what impact Protect Voters First’s flyers will have. What is clear is that they’ve confused voters. Even with the clarifying statements from Hoo and Kemp, some people online raised questions about whether those clarifications would reach enough voters. Right after the flyers went out, Reddit sleuths were seeking answers about who was behind the effort. One poster called the flyer “misleading s—t,” while another dug deeper: “went to the website listed at the bottom. in small letters at the bottom of the webpage is the name of the sponsor of this whole thing: Charles Munger Jr. So googled him: He donates millions to Republican CA candidates. SO, you guys in CA need to be fighting that. This Munger guy has very deep pockets and is obviously trying to get people to oppose the CA redistricting.”

A mailer from Protect Voters First in San Francisco.

Amy Thoma Tan, a spokesperson for Protect Voters First, maintained that those quotes were taken directly from newspaper op-eds but did not directly respond to claims that they mislead voters into thinking these organizations support Munger’s coalition specifically. She also did not specify how many households were targeted.

“The mailers were sent to Californians, therefore focused on fighting the gerrymandering happening here. Our coalition opposes gerrymandering in all states,” Tan told SFGATE.

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LEGAL/JUDICIAL SUPPRESSION?

NOTE CORNYN SIC FBI ON THEM; REPS LOCKED IN BLDG, DOGGED BY DPS TO GO TO CVS FOR TOOTHBRUSH, PERMISSION SLIPS LIKE hs

AN 8 25

One Democratic state representative in Texas speaking out against the Republican effort to redraw congressional district boundaries was just threatened with a felony charge for speaking to journalists.

That's according to a Wednesday article in the Houston Chronicle, which reported that Rep. Nicole Collier (D) had to abruptly end a press conference she joined from a bathroom at the Texas State Capitol. A video of the moment posted to X shows Collier being interrupted mid-speech while on a Democratic National Committee video stream with California Governor Gavin Newsom (D) and Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) while speaking to police.

"Sorry, I have to leave. They said it's a felony for me to do this," Collier said. "Apparently I can't be on the floor or in the bathroom — well, you told me I had to be here in the bathroom — no, hang on. Bye, everybody. I've gotta go."

After Collier left the call, Sen. Booker called it "outrageous" that the Texas Democrat was being forced to stop talking to the media.

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"First of all, let me tell you something. Representative Collier in the bathroom has more dignity than Donald Trump in the Oval Office," Booker said. "...What they're trying to do right there is silence an American leader. Silence a Black woman. And that is outrageous. I hope everybody took note of that."

"The fact that she can't even let her voice be heard is freakin' outrageous. And this is what we're fighting for," he continued. "This is ultimately what this is about. What we just witnessed: Them trying to shut her down and say it's illegal for her to be in the bathroom and on this call? This is the lengths that they're going to in Texas."

Watch the video of the moment below, or byclicking this link.

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maddow 3 scams on election. putin says no mail in votes. texas gerry,

https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/trump-putin-voting-machines-mail-ballots-executive-order-rcna225608

Aug. 19, 2025,

By Ryan Teague Beckwith, Newsletter Editor

President Donald Trump is talking about changing voting laws again, citing a recent conversation with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

After a summit in Alaska last week, Trump said Putin talked with him about election integrity. He then posted on Truth Social about plans to change voting machines before next year's midterms and again raised the issue on Monday while meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and European leaders at the White House — ostensibly to talk about peace in Ukraine.

But what exactly did Putin tell Trump, and what is Trump now trying to do? And were either man's claims accurate? Here are some answers.

What are Russian elections like?

Multiple outside groups have labeled Russian elections as illegitimate. In 2023, Russian Election Monitor, a group of European scholars, former and active politicians and public officials, found "a serious deterioration" in voting rights in Russia. The group cited last-minute changes to laws, attempts to complicate election observation, a lack of free debate, pressure on candidates and voters and a lack of independent election commissions. Some parts of Russia use electronic voting systems, which have been found to be vulnerable to manipulation and coercion. The European Parliament condemned Russian elections as "illegitimate and undemocratic."

Why would Putin, of all people, lecture the U.S. on voting?

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We don't know for sure. But as a former KGB agent, Putin was trained on how to emotionally manipulate people he's dealing with. (He famously brought his black Labrador to a meeting with then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is afraid of dogs.) Telling Trump that the 2020 election was rigged against him seems like an obvious way to get on his good side.

What did Putin say?

According to Trump, "he said 'your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting.' He said, 'Mail-in voting, every election —no country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections.' And he said that to me because we talked about 2020. He said, 'You won that election by so much.'"

Is any of that true?

No.

According to a 2024 count by the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 34 countries have mail-in voting, including Canada, Denmark and Germany.

:{:{An analysis of all known voter fraud cases in the U.S. from 2000 to 2012 found only 491 cases of mail voter fraud — during a period in which literally billions of ballots were cast.}:

Joe Biden won the 2020 election. Judges found various claims made by Trump and his allies to be without merit in more than 60 cases, and a statistical analysis by researchers from Harvard and Cambridge University found no evidence to back up the claims.

What did Trump say he would do next?

Trump said he was going to "lead a movement" to get rid of mail-in ballots and what he called "Highly 'Inaccurate,' Very Expensive, and Seriously Controversial VOTING MACHINES, which cost Ten Times more than accurate and sophisticated Watermark Paper, which is faster, and leaves NO DOUBT, at the end of the evening, as to who WON, and who LOST, the Election." He said he would sign an executive order to "help bring HONESTY" to the 2026 midterm elections.

What does he mean, exactly?

Honestly, it's hard to say. At one point he said he was required to give his license plate number to vote, which is not true. But in past remarks, Trump has called for nearly all voting to be done on paper ballots, counted by hand, on Election Day, with the winner declared on election night.

There are few problems with those proposals:

Nearly all U.S. voters already vote on paper or receive some kind of verified paper receipt. The 1.3% who don't live in Louisiana or parts of Indiana, Nevada, Tennessee and Texas, according to Verified Voting.

Hand-counting ballots is slower, less accurate and more expensive than using machines. All U.S. voting machines have to pass rigorous tests that show they can accurately count at least 10 million votes.

Early voting, whether by mail or in-person, is now legal in all but three states (Alabama, Mississippi and New Hampshire). In the 2024 election, more than 85 million votes were cast before Election Day, a little more than half of all ballots.

It would be extremely difficult to count all ballots cast on election night since there are nearly 10,000 separate jurisdictions, each with its own races for everything from the school board to the state legislature.

How flattery plays a role in Trump’s foreign affairs after Putin summit

06:47

Could Trump really change voting laws by executive order?

The answer here should be a clear no, but we live in unprecedented times. Under the U.S. Constitution, elections are handled at the local levelaccording to state laws, though Congress can set minimum national standards for elections. The federal role typically involves giving guidance to elections officials and offering grants to upgrade equipment.

At a practical level, making the kinds of massive changes to election law that Trump envisions would be expensive and take time to set up, even if every local and state official went along with it. The midterms are in about 14 months, which means there's a very narrow window for any changes to be made, as officials would need to buy, install and test machines and hire and train appropriate staff.

Trump did not say he would ask Congress to pass a law, which would be the only way to appropriate money, so it appears that he may simply try to order the states to make these changes by executive order, which would mean a flood of political pushback and lawsuits that would only shorten the amount of time available. As an example, one reason Louisiana has not replaced its outdated voting machines is that it would cost $105 million.

In his Truth Social post,Trump argued that states are "merely an 'agent' for the Federal Government" in counting votes and "must do what the Federal Government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them." Suffice it to say that this is not the traditional mainstream view of the U.S. Constitution, checks and balances or federalism.

Are there any problems with U.S. voting that could be addressed?

Sure. State and federal lawmakers could help replace those voting machines in Louisiana and parts of other states that don't have a voter-verified paper trail. More states could join a consortium of 25 states plus D.C. that shares voter registration information to track people who moved. State lawmakers could change laws that prevent officials from prepping early ballots to be counted, which would speed up results on election night.

Any other changes?

A major political figure could stop using his bully pulpit to baselessly attack the integrity of the U.S. voting system.

Ryan Teague Beckwith

Ryan Teague Beckwith is a newsletter editor for MSNBC. He has previously worked for such outlets as Time magazine and Bloomberg News. He teaches journalism at Georgetown University's School of Continuing Studies and is the creator of Your First Byline.

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an // sn 8 25

Toward the end of a four-hour hearing in central Pennsylvania on Friday, the judge overseeing a challenge to the constitutionality of Alina Habba’s appointment as acting U.S. attorney made a comment that will cause New Jersey Democrats’ hearts to sink.

“I think it’s very likely that Ms. Habba is going to end up, at some point down the road, as the United States attorney for the District of New Jersey,” Judge Matthew Brann said.

I don’t think Brann was signaling how he plans to rule on this matter later this week, because he noted that he has no “crystal ball.” I think what he may have intended to communicate to both sides in the matter is how this saga will likely end if it lands in the U.S. Supreme Court’s lap.

Let’s back up a bit for the uninitiated.

President Donald Trump named Alina Habba, a personal attorney who represented Trump in a civil defamation case, as New Jersey’s chief federal prosecutor back in March. That’s a role that requires confirmation from the U.S. Senate, but Trump didn’t nominate her until the tail end of her 120-day term as acting U.S. attorney. When her term was drawing to a close and there was no movement on her nomination — our two U.S. senators, both Democrats, object to Habba, and her confirmation is unlikely without their approval — New Jersey’s district judges were tasked with naming a more permanent replacement. They chose Habba’s second in command, Desiree Grace.

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The Trump administration then fired Grace, Habba resigned as U.S. attorney, and the administration gave Habba the No. 2 job in the office. Because the U.S. attorney spot was now vacant, Habba automatically assumed the role of acting U.S. attorney again, this time for 210 more days, the Trump administration says. Two men facing federal criminal charges then challenged Habba’s appointment as unconstitutional, leading to Friday’s hearing in Pennsylvania (the matter was handed to Brann because New Jersey’s district judges had conflicts).

I went into Friday’s hearing with a significant bias against Habba. I’ve written before about my distaste for her swooning over an alleged sex trafficker in January. I think her stated goal to help New Jersey Republicans get elected is disqualifying. And the zeal with which she tossed Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) behind bars — on a charge so flimsy she had to retreat just days later — was obscene.

Nothing about the hearing changed my mind on whether Habba is fit to serve as U.S. attorney. But the arguments persuaded me the law is murky enough that the fight to prevent her from staying in office will fail.

There’s no smoking gun here, despite the valiant efforts on both sides to argue their case to Brann. Yes, the Trump administration’s maneuvering was an obvious end run around the U.S. Senate confirmation process — but the administration’s reliance on the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, which allows first assistants in various government agencies to be the default acting No. 1, is convincing. And the challengers’ response is less so. They argue that the statute is automatic, triggered by a vacancy — meaning the U.S. attorney spot was vacant when Habba resigned, and so she can’t resume that position by later taking the No. 2 spot.

“What happened here was the president or the executive, they terminated the first assistant in order to backfill the role, and Ms. Habba then created the resignation — well, she resigned, created the vacancy to fill it herself. It’s circular. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. And it goes completely against what the statute is meant to protect,” said attorney Thomas Mirigliano, who is representing a man seeking to nullify Habba’s appointment.

Henry C. Whitaker, representing the Trump administration, countered that the vacancy in the U.S. attorney post existed not just at the moment Habba resigned — it also existed when she subsequently accepted the No. 2 post that allows her to become acting U.S. attorney for a new, 210-day term.

“The vacancy is a continuing condition,” Whitaker said.

Like I said, Brann gave no hint how he might rule on this — though he wisely conceded that he will not be the final word and said Habba and the New Jersey judges who tried to replace her may have to find a way to coexist. The judges, Brann noted, are appointed for life and are not likely to resign.

“They’re going to have to find a way to maneuver things together after this immediate issue, which is quite interesting, is resolved,” Brann said.

Brann is smart enough to realize that this matter may only be resolved by the nation’s highest court. The Roberts court has embraced the power of the executive, most recently in its June 27 decision limiting the power of federal judges to institute universal injunctions. Do we think the same justices, faced with a controversy over who gets to pick the U.S. attorney of New Jersey, will side with our state’s federal judges over Donald Trump?

If the Trump administration wins here, it may be a short-lived victory. Its own arguments on Habba hinge on her current appointment lasting for 210 days. That means her term has an expiration date of mid-February 2026, giving the administration plenty of time to find someone who has the qualifications to win confirmation from the U.S. Senate. Or enough time to think of a new legal strategy to keep her in the post no matter what.

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omg

an 8 25

"Ken Paxton asks judge to jail Beto O’Rourke for fundraising Texas Dems' walkout" was first published by The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan media organization that informs Texans — and engages with them — about public policy, politics, government and statewide issues.

*Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune’s daily newsletter that keeps readers up to speed on the most essential Texas news.

*Editor's note: This story contains profanity.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Tuesday asked a Tarrant County judgeto jail former U.S. Rep. Beto O’Rourke, in another escalation in Republicans’ broader effort to put an end to Texas Democrats’ walkout over a new congressional map.

Paxton sued O’Rourke and his political group, Powered by People, last week, arguing that the group was deceptively fundraising for and illegally supporting Texas Democrats’ walkout. Tarrant County District Judge Megan Fahey quickly granted Paxton’s request to temporarily block O’Rourke and Powered by People from fundraising for Democrats or spending money to cover their expenses.

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On Tuesday, Paxton claimed that O’Rourke had violated that temporary injunction at a Fort Worth rally Saturday, when he told the crowd, “There are no refs in this game, f—— the rules.”

According to a video of the event, O’Rourke appeared to say that phrase after urging the crowd to support retaliatory redistricting in other blue states — not in relation to the injunction.

Paxton’s motion also cited social media posts by O’Rourke after the injunction came down, in which the Democrat said he was “still raising and rallying to stop the steal of 5 congressional seats in Texas,” and included a donation link.

The attorney general said O’Rourke “repeatedly solicited donations” at the Fort Worth rally by urging the crowd to text “FIGHT” to a number that would automatically respond with a link to a donation platform.

Paxton’s motion asks the judge to imprison O’Rourke for the duration of the lawsuit, and to fine the Democrat $500 for each violation of the injunction.

Paxton’s lawsuit against O’Rourke and his group is part of an aggressive effort by Republican state leaders to break the impasse caused by Democrats’ exodus. Gov. Greg Abbott and Paxton have asked the all-Republican Texas Supreme Court to expel House Democrats, and Paxton, along with House Speaker Dustin Burrows, are turning to GOP-friendly Illinois courts to try to extradite the lawmakers taking refuge there.

Democrats left the state en masse last week, leaving the House without the minimum number of members to conduct business, to stall adoption of a new congressional map designed to give the GOP five additional seats in the U.S. House in next year’s midterm election.

Powered by People has been a top funder covering the costs of Democrats’ decampment, the expenses for which are mounting quickly. Democrats are on the hook for lodging, meals, travel and the $500-per-day fines accrued each day of the session they miss. They will also be responsible for thousands of dollars spent trying to compel their attendance, Burrows said Tuesday. He previously said they would not be able to receive their paycheck except in person, and that their office budgets would be slashed until they return.

O’Rourke filed his own lawsuit against Paxton Friday in El Paso district court, alleging that the attorney general was engaging in a “fishing expedition, constitutional rights be damned,” and asking the judge to block Paxton’s investigation into the organization’s practices.

“Paxton is trying to shut down Powered by People, one of the largest voter registration organizations in the country, because our volunteers fight for voting rights and free elections, the kind of work that threatens the hold that Paxton, [President Donald] Trump and Abbott have on power in Texas,” O’Rourke said in a statement responding to Friday’s injunction.

A spokesperson for O’Rourke did not immediately return a request for comment.

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ABBOTT PAXTON THREAT ARREST/ EXPLUSION

7 25 TEXAS GERRY GAVIN PRTIZKER ILL HOST DEM REP REFUGEE

'This is a war': Hochul joins blue-state push in brewing gerrymander arms race

David Badash

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AN 7 25

Sending 'a message': Red state GOP votes to disqualify Republicans who appoint Democrats

Anna Barrett, Alabama Reflector

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an 8 25

Trump is reviving his years-old plan to exclude undocumented immigrants from the U.S. census, which legal scholars say is in direct conflict with the Constitution’s requirement to count all persons.

“I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024,” Trump wrote Thursday morning. “People who are in our Country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

The President’s remarks appear to align with his plan to redistrict red states to deliver more GOP-controlled seats in the U.S. House of Representatives, where Republicans currently hold a razor-thin majority.

Absent court orders, it is extremely rare for a state, outside of the census window, to redistrict with the direct goal of providing more seats to a particular party, and the United States has never conducted a decennial census officially excluding undocumented immigrants.

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The Fourteenth Amendment states that “the whole number of persons in each State” is to be counted.

On Wednesday night, Trump White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller claimed that during the first Trump presidency, Democrats “rigged” the 2020 census by including undocumented immigrants, causing them to gain an extra 20 to 30 seats in the House.

“At every level this country—Illinois, Chicago, New York, Massachusetts—Democrats have gerrymandered the vote beyond recognition to try to maintain their advantage in the House elections,” Miller alleged.

“Democrats rigged the 2020 census by including illegal aliens,” he charged, despite every census in U.S. history, per the U.S. Constitution, having done so.

Independent analysis contradicts Miller’s claim.

“A Pew Research Center analysis found that if unauthorized immigrants were excluded from the 2020 apportionment count, three states could have each lost a congressional seat,” Axios reported.

Watch the video below or at this link.

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AN 7 25

President Donald Trump has openly declared war on Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who has been a consistent thorn in his side throughout his second term. Now, the billionaires funding Trump's primary campaign against Massie are being unmasked.

In a Thursday report for Politico, journalist Jessica Piper identified the three Republican megadonors behind the effort to oust Massie out of his northern Kentucky congressional district. According to Federal Election Commission (FEC) filings, hedge fund billionaire Paul Singer (known for taking Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito on a luxury fishing trip) has so far contributed $1 million to the MAGA KY Political Action Committee (PAC), making him the leading funder of the anti-Massie effort.

In addition to Singer, hedge fund manager John Paulson has ponied up $250,000 to MAGA KY. And a super PAC tied to Miriam Adelson — the widow of Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson — has so far donated $750,000 to the effort. Singer, Paulson and Adelson have net worths of $6.2 billion, $3.8 billion and $33.5 billion, respectively.

The $2 million from Singer, Paulson and Adelson has so far more than paid for the $1.2 million that MAGA KY has spent so far on the 2026 race in Kentucky's 4th Congressional District, which Massie has represented since 2012. But the Kentucky Republican has a sizable war chest of his own, with Politico reporting that he ended June with $1.7 million in his campaign account.

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Trump singled out Massie after the six-term lawmaker joined all Democrats in voting against his "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" this summer. While Democrats opposed the legislation over its $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid and more than $100 billion in cuts to food stamps, Massie railed against the bill for its gargantuan deficit spending — most of which went toward extending Trump's tax cuts that disproportionately benefit the wealthiest Americans.

Even though Trump has significant financial resources at his disposal to deploy against Massie, the Kentuckian is not likely to be an easy opponent for the president. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) called himself a "big supporter" of Massie, and said he would be campaigning with him across the Bluegrass State in 10 different cities across Massie's district. And anti-Massie Republicans have yet to coalesce around a single challenger. According to Ballotpedia, the only Republican who has formally declared her candidacy in the district is Nicole Lee Ethington, who is a registered nurse with no prior experience in elected office.

"They are wasting millions of dollars against me, and they are gonna lose the [House] majority because of that," Massie told NBC earlier this month.

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AN 7 25

Six years after Trump demanded Geogia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger “find” him enough votes to win in 2020, Republicans are still trying to find him votes.

“Now, he’s calling on Texas Republicans to find five congressional seats — before a single vote is cast in the 2026 midterms. And the GOP is answering that call,” said MSNBC co-host Symone Sanders Townsend.

Townsend referenced Texas Republicans proposing a heavily gerrymandered congressional map this week that gives Republicans control of 30 out of 38 House seats, despite 42 percent of the state voting for Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2024.

If enacted, Townsend said the Republican map would “erase Democratic power in one of the most diverse states in the nation.”

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“We’ve seen this kind of maneuver before,” said Townsend. “After the 2010 tea party wave election, Republicans launched a nationwide campaign called the Redistricting Majority Project (REDMAP) to win control of state legislatures ahead of the 2011 redistricting cycle. That effort paid off. Republicans gerrymandered themselves into durable congressional majorities in states like North Carolina, Ohio and Wisconsin. A decade later, we’re still living with the consequences.”

The map, she said, “slices up Black and Latino communities,” particularly in urban centers like Dallas and Houston and gives an advantage to a white population that only comprises about 40 percent of the state’s population. The Texas Tribune reportsat least 54 percent of lawmakers were white in 2023, and half are white men.

“Now, Trump is attempting a mid-decade REDMAP 2.0 in Texas, a state that already had one of the most gerrymandered congressional maps in the country and has a long history of using racial gerrymandering to suppress voters of color,” Townsend said.

This is part of a broader Republican Party strategy, said Townsend, which targets not only congressional maps but also state legislative lines.

“And that matters, because America’s policy doesn’t begin in Washington,” she said. “It starts in state capitols. Bathroom bills. Book bans. Voter roll purgers. Attacks on trans children. These policies are born in Republican-controlled legislatures and then bubble up to the national level.”

She added that Republicans know this, and "have been playing the long game," unlike Democrats

The public is already fighting back with hundreds of protestors showing up at redistricting hearings in Texas this week, but Townsend said Democrats need to get serious about investing in and flipping state seats or they could “lose a fair shot at the House not just in 2026, but until 2032. A full decade of minority rule.”

Read the full MSNBC report at this link.

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an 7 25

A prominent U.S. Senator is warning the Republican Party that if it continues its promise to redistrict their states, eliminating some Democratic-held House seats, she will “go nuclear” and work to do the same. It is rare for a state to redistrict at any time except after the decennial census, but top Democrats have indicated they are prepared to take action in several states.

President Donald Trump recently directed Texas to redistrict, declaring he wanted five of the 13 seats in the Lone Star State currently held by Democrats to become Republican. That alone would make Speaker Mike Johnson’s job easier — he currently oversees the narrowest margin in the House in nearly a century.

“I don’t know if it’s unprecedented what they’re trying to do in Texas,” U.S. Senator Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) told Axios on Wednesday (video below). “They’re trying to pick their voters, right? They’re trying to redraw the lines in the middle of a decade so that they have more seats, right? It is very open and obvious.”

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Senator Slotkin went on to explain that in her home state of Michigan—a critical swing state—voters added a constitutional amendment against gerrymandering, in response to “how bad it is when politicians get to draw their own districts.”

She noted that when the citizens’ commission is in charge of redistricting her state, it makes it more competitive.

“But I will tell you this,” Slotkin warned, “if they’re gonna go nuclear in Texas, I’m gonna go nuclear in other places.”

“I’m not gonna, like, fight with one arm tied behind my back,” said Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and Department of Defense official. “I don’t want to do that, but if they’re proposing to rig the game, like, we’re gonna get in that game and fight.”

House Democratic Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has indicated he wants to reorganize the congressional maps in California, New York, New Jersey, Minnesota, and Washington state, to help Democrats pick up as many seats as possible—if the courts allow it.

“We have a responsibility of making sure that we look at every single state of the union and do what we can to ensure that we maximize fairness in those jurisdictions,” Jeffries told CNN. “Some of the best and brightest lawyers in the country are looking at every single aspect of what’s possible in these states.”

Elections analyst Philip Germain responded to Slotkin’s remarks.

“Senator Slotkin continues to understand the moment we’re in and charts a course more Dems should follow,” he wrote. “Democrats cannot continue to ‘play nice’ at the expense of being forced into a competitive authoritarian system of government. We must fight now or get locked out of power.”

U.S. Senator Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) on Tuesday wrote:

“It’s time for Democrats to understand the existential threat. Republicans aren’t playing around and they will do this as long as it takes to keep power. It’s time we dilute VRA [Voting Rights Act] districts. There are plenty of Democratic districts that have 65-80% Dem performance.”

Watch the video below or at this link.

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an 6 25

'Time for action': Republicans beg Trump to use obscure law to deport Democratic candidate

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SEE PROJECTION RUBBER REVERSE // LIE PWR GASLT

AN 6 25 STATES N

Just hours after Minnesotans learned that Democratic House leader Melissa Hortman had been assassinated, right-wing influencer Collin Rugg, who has 1.8 million followers on X, posted a “report” that hinted that she’d been killed because of a recent vote on ending undocumented adults’ ability to enroll in MinnesotaCare, a subsidized health insurance for the working poor.

Mike Cernovich, another right-wing influencer who has 1.4 million followers on X, took Rugg’s post and amped it up, but in the “just asking questions” style of many conspiracy theories:

*“Did Tim Walz have her executed to send a message?”

They were deeply ignorant about the MinnesotaCare issue.

Walz and Hortman — who was instrumental in passing legislation allowing undocumented people to sign up for MinnesotaCare as speaker of the House in 2023 — negotiated a compromise with Republicans in the Minnesota Legislature to end eligibility for adults, but keep it for children. They did so to win necessary Republican support in the 67-67 House to pass a state budget. Without it, state government would have shut down on July 1.

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Both Hortman and Walz signed the compromise agreement in mid-May. This week, Hortman spoke tearfully about how difficult the vote was for her, but she was bound to vote yes on the issue because of the prior agreement.

The “theory” of Hortman’s killing was further undercut by the vote of Democratic Sen. John Hoffman — who was also targeted by the suspect — against rolling back MinnesotaCare for undocumented Minnesotans.

Rugg and Cernovich’s posts were shared widely and just the start of the disinformation.

Once law enforcement sources began revealing a suspect, right-wing influencers ran with an insignificant detail: That Vance Luther Boelter was a “Walz appointee.”

Like many states, but even more so here, Minnesota is home to hundreds of nonpartisan and bipartisan boards and commissions, which are composed of thousands of people who typically win the appointment by simply volunteering. There are currently 342 open positions on Minnesota boards and commissions. Boelter was appointed to the Workforce Development Council by Walz’s predecessor Gov. Mark Dayton and reappointed by Walz.

It was the equivalent of calling a Sunday school volunteer an “appointee of the bishop.”

No matter, the Murdoch media machine, specifically the New York Post, had their headline: “Former appointee of Tim Walz sought….”

Cernovich had his greasy foil hot dog wrapper and began constructing a hat:

“The Vice President candidate for the Democrat party is directly connected to a domestic terrorist, that is confirmed, the only question is whether Tim Walz himself ordered the political hit against a rival who voted against Walz’s plan to give free healthcare to illegals.”

Walz had no such plan. He had signed an agreement to end eligibility for undocumented adults.

Joey Mannarino, who has more than 600,000 followers on X, was more crass:

*“Rumor has it she was preparing to switch parties. The Democrats are VIOLENT SCUM.”

It was a ridiculous “rumor.” One of the last photos of Hortman alive was an image of her at the Democratic-Farmer-Labor’s big annual fundraising event, the Humphrey-Mondale dinner, which took place just hours before her assassination.

No matter, Cernovich wanted his new friends in federal law enforcement to act:

*“The FBI must take Tim Walz into custody immediately.”

Finally, fresh off his humiliating defeat at the hands of President Donald Trump, world’s richest man Elon Musk quote-tweeted someone again falsely alleging Hortman was killed by “the left” and added:

*“The far left is murderously violent.”

The suspect’s “hit list,” according to an official who has seen the list, comprised Minnesotans who have been outspoken in favor of abortion rights. CNN reported that it also included several abortion clinics, which doesn’t sound like the work of “the left.”

Right-wing influencers marred Hortman’s death and smeared Walz on a pile of lies.

In a different, saner world, they would be humiliated and slink away. But the smart money is that during the next moment of national crisis and mourning, they will again lie for profit.

Minnesota Reformer is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Minnesota Reformer maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor J. Patrick Coolican for questions: info@minnesotareformer.com.

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judge forum shopping wiki

In June 2023, Illinois governor JB Pritzker signed a bill intended to discourage forum shopping by requiring that any lawsuits challenging the constitutionally of a state law be filed in one of two counties, either Sangamon County where the state capital of Springfield is located, or Cook County, the state's most populous county and home to multiple state offices in Chicago.^[10]

In March 2024, the Judicial Conference of the United States announced a policy against "judge shopping" for cases seeking a nationwide injunction or related relief.^[11][12] "Judge shopping" in this context refers to forum shopping in which a litigant files in a local division of a district court where one or two judges are assigned nearly all cases (such as the Amarillo division of the Northern District of Texas or the Waco division of the Western District of Texas) rather than in a larger division with multiple judges. }:}:

Under the new policy, the Judicial Conference said that district courts should randomly assign any civil case seeking nationwide or statewide relief to any judge within the district. But the Judicial Conference policy is merely a recommendation and is not binding; on March 29, 2024, the Northern District of Texas, home to two judges frequently sought out by conservative litigants, announced that it would not adopt the Judicial Conference's recommendations.^[13]}:

...

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an 5 25

In a Thursday, May 29 post on X, formerly Twitter, President Donald Trump's White House adviser, Stephen Miller, angrily wrote, "We are living under a judicial tyranny." Miller's post was in response to a U.S. Court of International Trade ruling that blocks — at least temporarily — most of the tariffs Trump is imposing on the United States' trading partners.

But Miller isn't the only MAGA Republican who is using the phrase "judicial tyranny" to attack federal judges who are blocking Trump's executive orders. Trump and his MAGA allies, from U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to Vice President JD Vance, claim that federal courts are failing to respect the president's executive powers — and Trump's critics are responding that in fact, the courts are playing the role they are supposed to play in the United States' system of checks and balances.

In an article published by the conservative website The Bulwark on May 30, attorney Paul Rosenzweig — a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official — lays out the flaws and contradictions of the "judicial tyranny" arguments coming from Trump and his MAGA allies.

"Trump wants you to think that he is the victim of district court judges gone crazy enjoining his actions," Rosenzweig explains. "To make that case, he also wants you to think that what is happening to him is the same thing that happened to (former President Joe) Biden's policies — district court judges interfering with executive prerogative. But that's just not the case. And diving into the facts makes it clear that this argument really isn't about universal injunctions — cases where a district court judge grants interim equitable relief that applies across the entire country."

IFrame Content

Rosenzweig continues, " The argument is really about forum-shopping and judicial gerrymandering…. The facts on the ground are that the universal injunctions against Trump are truly universal. As of today, more than 20 different federal district court judges have issued injunctive relief in at least 180 different cases. And the number goes up with every passing day. There is no good evidence that Trump's opponents are forum-shopping — bringing cases before courts where there is the greatest expectation of having judges who will rule in their favor."

MAGA Republicans, Rosenzweig stresses, have a long history of seeking "universal injunctions" against Democratic policies they don't like — including far-right Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

"By March 2023," the former DHS official observes, "Paxton's office had filed 28 lawsuits against the Biden Administration in federal district courts in Texas; of those, 18 were filed in single-judge divisions, including Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk's division and a single-judge division held by another Trump appointee, Judge Drew Tipton…. In a world in which we could have confidence in the good faith of an administration and a presumption as to its regularity of operation, universal injunctions would be a little-used safety-valve check on executive authority. But today, we live in a different world — one where MAGA gamesmanship and judicial forum-shopping were instrumental in frustrating various Biden initiatives."

Rosenzweig adds, "Now that the shoe is on the other foot, it seems quite possible that the Court will depower judicial opposition in the service of conservative policy."

*Paul Rosenzweig's full article for The Bulwark is available at this link.

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WTF?

April 9, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Five

JESSE WATTERS (CO-HOST): We didn't want to kill Barack Obama, we just didn't think he was legally qualified to be president because of where he was born. And then Hillary, we didn't want to kill, we were just so afraid of her, we thought she'd kill us first.

But we do this in other countries. The CIA literally uses the same exact propaganda to stir up cultures in other countries to topple dictatorships we don't like. Now, we're doing it in our own country, and it's like almost working.

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an 4 25

Texas Governor Greg Abbott finally set a special election to replace Rep. Sylvester Turner (D-TX) after House Democrats threatened to sue the governor for allegedly dragging his feet to prevent an additional Democrat in the US House.

The date, however, still has critics furious.

“So, Greg Abbott just set our special election date for Congress: November 4th, 2025. They want us to go *8 months* without a voice in Congress,” tweeted Democrat Isaiah Martin, who is running for Turner’s 18th District seat this year. TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION! But here’s the thing: Republicans can try to delay all they want — they can’t stop what’s coming!”

Martin is confident a beleaguered Trump economy plagued with tariff-fueled chaos and GOP threats to cut Social Security could open a path for Democrats in the House for the upcoming midterm election.

Turner — who was both congressman and the former mayor of Houston (the fourth-largest U.S. city by population) — died of cancer on March 5, leaving behind a district with a high Latino and African American population that largely votes Democrat. Democrats seethed over Abbott delaying a special election long enough to prevent an earlier election.

“It's getting buried, but Houston will almost certainly not have representation in Congress until January 2027,” said MSNBC columnist Brandon Friedman on X prior to Abbott's announcement. “Democratic Rep. Sylvester Turner died nearly a month ago and Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has simply decided not to call a special election to fill the seat.”

Houston Chronicle reporter Jeremy Wallace agreed Abbott’s delay means the 18th Congressional District won't have a vote in Congress for another 7 months, and he added this gives a distinct advantage to US House Republicans this year.

“It also gives House Speaker Mike Johnson 7 months with one less Democratic vote to worry about,” said Wallace. “Currently Republicans have a 220-213 edge in House with two vacancies because of last month’s deaths of Turner and Rep. Raul Grijalva of Arizona.”

Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs set the special election to replace Grijalva, who died of lung cancer on March 13, for July 15. In contrast, Florida Gov. Ron Desantis set special elections to replace Trump appointees Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz on April 1, after they left Congress in January.

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gmail

*in partnership with The Guardian.

In May 2024, a flashy ad went viral on social media warning that “across the country, there are real cases of fraud and abuses of the [election] system that have eroded our trust”. The ad pledged that “whistleblowers” who shared evidence of election fraud “will be rewarded with payment from our $5m fund”.

This reward was courtesy of a just-announced group, the Fair Election Fund, which has deep connections to Elon Musk’s political network, according to materials obtained by Documented.

The Fair Election Fund pledged that “the bulk of the group’s budget will be devoted to paying whistleblowers” for sharing their stories, and that it would launch “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns” that would “highlight these cases”.

It was followed by another ad that ran in swing states during the Olympics and told viewers “you could be eligible for compensation” for sharing evidence of election fraud.

Despite the group’s high-profile, deep-pocketed backers and lucrative bounty offers, it never revealed any evidence of voter or election fraud. Instead, the group took a series of unrelated detours into tangential areas like third-party ballot access, and its effort to uncover fraud reaffirmed what numerous studies, court rulings and bipartisan investigations have concluded: voter fraud is extremely rare.

Pledge your support

The lack of evidence has not stopped Republicans in Congress and state legislatures from continuing to push restrictive voting laws aimed at addressing this phantom threat. Meanwhile, Musk is claiming that “fraud” justifies his efforts to slash government operations, but similarly has not revealed much evidence.

The Fair Election Fund has now gone radio silent. Sitemap data shows that the website has not been updated since October, and the X/Twitter account for the group has not posted since November. The group’s spokesperson, former representative Doug Collins, became Trump’s veterans affairs secretary, and is now also leading the office of government ethics.

Close ties to world’s richest man

The Fair Election Fund is a fictitious name for another 501(c)(4) non-profit, Documented can reveal, and operates within a network run by Musk’s top political advisers. The group received funding from the same dark-money vehicle Musk has used to channel his political spending, and also routed funds to another Musk-backed non-profit.

The group is housed within a non-profit now called Interstate Priorities, formerly known as the For Which It Stands Fund. Formed on 3 January 2023, the non-profit raised $8,226,000 from a single donation in 2023.

The group is led by Victoria “Tori” Sachs, a Republican operative who was also executive director of And to the Republic, a group also formed in January 2023 that supported Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, including by funding DeSantis’s private jets and hosting quasi-campaign events.

The naming of the two Sachs-led groups – And to the Republic and the For Which It Stands Fund – and the timing of their creation in January 2023 suggests that the group that now houses the Fair Election Fund was originally intended to support DeSantis’s run, which Musk initially supported.

Sachs’s involvement continued through 2024, with her name appearing on records that accompanied the Fair Election Fund’s broadcast purchases.

Since 2022, Musk has been secretly channeling his political spending through a dark-money non-profit called Building America’s Future. That group is run by Generra Peck and Phil Cox, two Republican operatives who were involved in DeSantis’s failed presidential bid and now advise Musk. Building America’s Future reportedly backed the Fair Election Fund in 2024. It also provided half of And to the Republic’s overall fundraising in 2023.

The Fair Election Fund has other ties to the Musk advisers who lead Building America’s Future. Cox’s digital marketing firm IMGE LLC, which provides services to several groups in the Musk-backed, Building America Future-tied universe, manages the Fair Election Fund’s Facebook page, and an IMGE employee appears to be responsible for articles on the Fair Election Fund’s website.

The Fair Election Fund/Interstate Priorities also acted as a conduit to support other Musk-backed groups. The group’s 2023 tax return shows that it made a $1,550,000 grant to Citizens for Sanity, which Musk funded in 2022 through Building America’s Future, and which aired racist and transphobic ads that election cycle. That grant made up almost the entirety of Citizens for Sanity’s funding in 2023.

Pledge your support

In the 2024 election cycle, Musk publicly disclosed at least $277m in political contributions to Super Pacs that worked to elect President Trump and other Republicans. It is not known how much he may have given to other politically active groups that disguise their donors.

A detour into third-party ballot access

The Fair Election Fund’s goal of exposing election fraud seemingly turned up nothing of significance.

Out of its $5m fund, the group announced $75,000 in “bounty” payments, releasing $50,000 in July 2024 and $25,000 in September 2024. The Fair Election Fund promised that it would “highlight” the election fraud stories it gathered through these payments via “aggressive paid and earned media campaigns”, but it never did so, which suggests that none of the evidence generated was consequential or credible.

Instead, the group took a detour in July 2024: it launched a $175,000 ad “blitz” targeting North Carolina state board of election (NCSBE) members who delayed placing third-party presidential candidates Cornel West and Robert F Kennedy Jr on the ballot. At the time, Republicans and their allies believed that West and Kennedy would act as spoilers to help Trump, by siphoning left-leaning votes away from the Democratic presidential nominee.

Ironically, the NCSBE had delayed a decision on West’s and Kennedy’s ballot eligibility based on evidence that petitions were obtained through fraudulent means – concerns that would seem to align with the Fair Election Fund’s stated mission of exposing election fraud.

The Fair Election Fund ads declared that the Democratic members of the NCSBE were “blocking your voting rights”, and offered a reward for evidence of the members’ “shady backroom deal”. The group also projected images on the side of the NCSBE’s building, and drove mobile billboards around the agency’s headquarters.

The Fair Election Fund also ran digital ads in North Carolina featuring Black voters, some of which asserted that “African American voices are not being heard”, while others declared “Support Equality, Support Inclusion, Support [Cornel West’s] Justice for All Party”. The group pushed similar efforts in states such as Michigan.

Democratic lawyer Marc Elias, who sought to keep West off of ballots in North Carolina and elsewhere, was a frequent target of the group. In October 2024, the group announced that it would be running a six-figure ad buy to “troll” Elias. The ads included mobile billboards around the Elias Law Group office as well as a full-page ad in the Washington Post, which declared: “We beat Marc Elias and his racist voter suppression lawsuits … He tried to disenfranchise tens of thousands of voters who support Cornel West, but the Fair Election Fund stopped him.”

The Fair Election Fund then veered into a series of efforts to chase other trending rightwing conspiracy theories.

For example, over the summer, the Fair Election Fund seized on to a far-fetched conspiracy theory about the online fundraising platform ActBlue, claiming to have found “60,000 potential discrepancies” in ActBlue-facilitated contributions to the Biden-Harris campaign, based on an investigation conducted “from late July to early August”. The group claimed to have “spent $250,000 on these initial findings” – a jaw-dropping sum to spend on a brief review of campaign finance records.

The group then announced a $50,000 ad buy in several swing states soliciting evidence from people who claim to have been “defrauded by ActBlue”. No evidence from this “investigation” has been made public.

In fall 2024, as conspiracy theories about noncitizen voting gained momentum, the Fair Election Fund announced that it would be launching a “six-figure investigation into noncitizen voting in seven key swing states”. The results of this “six-figure investigation” were never made public.

You’re on the free list for*The Shakedown

===

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tnr

Representative Ilhan Omar’s Republican colleagues are once again calling for her to be deported because they don’t understand U.S. law.

Representative Brandon Gill posted on X Tuesday in response to a post falsely claiming Omar was “hosting workshops” with Somali immigrants about their legal rights in the face of Donald Trump’s sweeping deportation orders.

“America would be a better place if @IlhanMN were deported back to Somalia,” Gill wrote, directing racist vitriol at a fellow member of Congress and a U.S. citizen.

Omar came under intense scrutiny after a whiny Elon Musk shared a link to a fake video that supposedly showed her “conducting seminars” with Somali immigrants on how to “evade” deportation. Musk claimed that she was “breaking the law. Literally. Outright.”

In the video, a clip of Omar explaining in Somali about Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination—a legal right that undocumented immigrants are free to exercise when encountering ICE agents—was spliced together with footage of unidentified people apparently of East African descent sitting in a room.

“She’s a major grifter and she hates America,” Musk wrote in a separate post on X.

Omar was quick to hit back at Musk Tuesday. “Well it just shows you how much he lacks an understanding of what our, of what the laws of this country are,” Omar said during an interview on CNN.

It appears that Gill has joined Musk in his weak understanding of American law—if that wasn’t obvious enough from his call to deport a U.S. citizen.

She clarified that the footage of her had been taken out of context from an interview with a journalist, who asked what her advice would be to undocumented Somalis, and that she hadn’t held a meeting like the one described.

Musk’s attacks against Omar come as she has been outspoken against his unlawful efforts to dismantle USAID.

...//

Elon Musk is sending his digital minions after Representative Ilhan Omar, all based on a fake video posted by the pitiable right-wing shill Ian Miles Cheong.

On Tuesday, Cheong posted an obviously edited video in which he claimed the progressive congresswoman was “conducting seminars for Somalians who are living illegally in the U.S. without documentation, providing guidance on how to evade deportation.”

The video shows a random room full of unidentified people of seemingly East African descent, then cuts to Omar being interviewed in a completely different room.

The richest man in the world shared the video, clutching at his pearls. “She is breaking the law. Literally. Outright,” he wrote on X of Omar allegedly telling immigrants that they were not required to answer questions if detained by ICE. And that didn’t even happen.

IFrame Content

Hundreds of Musk’s fans began flocking to Omar’s page, so much so that she had to clear the air herself.

“Hey Elon, every single person in this country deserves to know their rights. That’s legal. Maybe you should brush up on our laws given the fact you’re breaking them to steal American’s sensitive data,” Omar wrote, in reference to Musk’s aggressive takeover of the Treasury’s payment system. “PS. This video is manipulated, and I wasn’t even at the event shown.”

It’s ironic that a man who spends all day moaning about left-wing misinformation and suppression is using his massive platform to spread his own. And he’s just getting started.

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Revealed: Gun lobbyists and Cambridge Analytica weaponized gun owners’ private details - Alternet.org

an pro pub 2 25

Electing Trump: In 2016, the gun industry shared data about firearms owners and others with Cambridge Analytica to help elect Donald Trump and keep a Republican majority in the Senate.

Legal Worries: The gun industry and Cambridge tried but failed to get more customer data, records show. One gun seller worried about possible government investigations.

Profiling Gun Owners: Cambridge used the industry’s data to create behavioral profiles of people who had bought guns and other potential voters and then targeted them with specific ads.

These highlights were written by the reporters and editors who worked on this story.

Arthur Douglas has been passionate about guns his entire life. He spent his childhood hunting, then amassed a treasured collection of firearms, including antique rifles he considers priceless. For years, he’s worked as a firearms instructor for the National Rifle Association and the U.S. Concealed Carry Association.

But the 61-year-old building contractor was incensed to learn from ProPublica that his name, age, New Hampshire address, phone number and registered voting status were in a database compiled by the gun industry’s chief lobbying group to help friendly politicians win elections.

Douglas said he never gave anyone permission to use his personal information for political purposes. He considers his privacy rights sacrosanct, like those bestowed by the Second Amendment. “I like the idea that they’re pro-gun advocates,” he said of the gun industry. “I don’t like the idea that they’re getting information, possibly illegally, to forward their agenda.”

Douglas is one of millions of people whose sensitive personal information was compiled over two decades by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, working with some of America’s most iconic gun-makers and retailers. As ProPublica previously reported, the industry group assembled data on this collection of gun owners and others without their knowledge or consent to persuade them to vote in the industry’s interests. The NSSF credited the campaign with landmark victories that vanquished gun control efforts.

What happened to Douglas’ data in the past decade has never before been revealed. It involves a transatlantic transfer to a now-disgraced political firm, questions of illegality and concerns from insiders about the repercussions should authorities discover the secret data sharing. This story, built on interviews and a new cache of internal documents obtained by ProPublica, details for the first time the sophisticated and invasive nature of the gun industry’s electioneering.

The NSSF, based in Shelton, Connecticut, represents thousands of firearms and ammunition manufacturers, distributors and retailers, along with publishers and shooting ranges. While not as well known as the NRA, the trade group is considered the voice of the industry and is a power broker in business and politics.

In 2016, as part of a push to get Donald Trump elected president for the first time and to help Republicans keep the Senate, the NSSF worked with the consultancy Cambridge Analytica to turbocharge the information it had on potential voters. The U.S. subsidiary of a London-based firm, which would later go out of business amid a global scandal over its handling of confidential consumer data, Cambridge matched up the people in the database with 5,000 additional facts about them that it drew from other sources.

The details were far-ranging and intimate. Along with the potential voters’ income, debts and religious affiliation, analysts learned whether they liked the work of the painter Thomas Kinkade and whether the underwear women had purchased was plus size or petite.

Cambridge analysts ran the enhanced data through an algorithm to create psychological profiles that allowed for more incisive targeting. Potential voters were assigned one of five personality groups: risk-takers, carers, go-getters, individualists and supporters. Each got a tailored message. Risk-takers were viewed as highly neurotic and susceptible to ads that pricked their fears, Cambridge records show. Go-getters, on the other hand, would respond better to messages of optimism and the promise of a better future.

Privacy experts told ProPublica that companies that shared information with the NSSF may have violated federal and state prohibitions against deceptive and unfair business practices. Under federal law, companies must comply with their own privacy policies and be clear about how they will use consumers’ information, privacy experts said. A ProPublica review of dozens of warranty cards from those gun-makers found that none of them informed buyers that their details would be used for political purposes.

“There’s a pretty clear argument that in some of these cases, there is deception and practices that go against the language in the privacy policy,” said Calli Schroeder, senior counsel and global privacy specialist at the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

As it did after the presidential election of George W. Bush, the NSSF credited itself with helping Trump win in 2016, paving the way for a radically different American and global era. ... [long]

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Two anti-abortion activists who made sensational videos of Planned Parenthood officials nearly a decade ago pleaded no contest this week to a felony count of illegally recording someone without consent.

*This story first appeared at Cal Matters.

David Daleiden and Sandra Merritt secretly filmed Planned Parenthood executives in California and edited the clips in a way that purported to show them selling fetal remains. Monday’s plea deal and felony conviction ends a criminal case that has dragged through the court system since 2017.

Their explosive videos triggered multiple state investigations into the allegations, some of which were led by Republican attorneys general. Those inquiries cleared Planned Parenthood of any wrongdoing, but court cases related to the videos are ongoing.

Daleiden and Merritt pleaded no contest in San Francisco Superior Court and waived any right to appeal. A sentencing hearing will happen roughly a year from now.

Attorney General Rob Bonta, who has taken a firm stance supporting abortion access, said in a statement that the conviction helps ensure California residents can exercise their state constitutional rights to reproductive health care.

“We will not hesitate to continue taking action against those who threaten access to abortion care — whether by recording confidential conversations or other means,” Bonta said.

The conviction comes less than a week after President Donald Trump limited federal enforcement of a law meant to protect abortion clinic workers and pardoned 23 anti-abortion activists convicted of harassing abortion clinic workers.

The terms of the plea agreement prohibit Daleiden and Merritt from contacting or naming any of the victims of the illegal recordings. They must also obey all laws.

Daleiden downplayed the felony conviction in a statement on his website, Center for Medical Progress, saying that the conviction comes with “zero punishment.”

“After enduring 9 years of weaponized political prosecution, putting an end to the lawfare launched by Kamala Harris is a huge victory for my investigative reporting and for the public’s right to know the truth about Planned Parenthood’s sale of aborted baby body parts,” Daleiden said.

At the time, then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris launched an investigation into Daleiden and Merritt’s actions after they published a series of videos showing covertly filmed conversations of Planned Parenthood executives discussing abortion procedures and how tissue is collected and exchanged with research companies.

Donating fetal tissue to researchers and recouping expenses is legal under U.S. law and states may impose additional regulations.

The recordings sparked a firestorm of national outrage, particularly from conservative activists and lawmakers who oppose abortion, fueling calls to defund Planned Parenthood. The subjects of the recordings received death threats in the aftermath.

Planned Parenthood won a $2.2 million civil lawsuit in San Francisco against Daleiden and Merritt for violating fraud, trespassing and recording laws.

In an unsigned statement, Bonta’s office said it disagreed with Daleiden’s characterization of the plea deal.

“Make no mistake: the defendants are now convicted felons. They are guilty of feloniously recording private communications.”

Under California law, Daleiden and Merritt are eligible to ask a judge to reduce the conviction to a misdemeanor in 12 months if they adhere to the terms of the plea deal.

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// NC state scotus?

an 1 215

Georgia's state legislature is about to gavel into session next week, and there are already several proposed new voting restrictions on the docket for lawmakers to consider.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported Tuesday that Republican lawmakers emboldened by Trump's 2024 election victory in the Peach State are now hoping to have several GOP wish-list items signed into law that would make the voting process even more cumbersome in the critical swing state. Some of the bills include language mandating hand-counting of ballots and eliminating no-excuse absentee voting.

Some conservative activists are also reportedly advocating for legislation that makes it easier to challenge voters' eligibility, and for new rules to be put in place regarding county-level certification of election results. The renewed push for election changes comes after a fraught election cycle in which Georgia's Republican-controlled State Election Board attempted to ram through several last-minute changes that would have significantly delayed the counting of ballots.

“It was total nonsense what they were doing. It was a show unlike anything we’ve ever seen as election officials." Heard County election supervisor Tonnie Adams told the Journal-Constitution. "We’d like to see the entire rulemaking process changed.”

Democratic state representative Saira Draper is also pushing for an election-related law. Her legislation would make it illegal for the State Election Board to make changes to election laws during election years, arguing that election workers need time to be trained on how to follow and implement existing laws. She also wants to allow for parents with small children to be moved to the front of voting lines.

“The problem we’ve seen over and over again in election policy is responding to fears or made-up stories as opposed to actual facts,” Draper told the paper. “By playing to concerns of voter confidence, you’re basically changing policy for problems that don’t exist. I would like to see policies that are tethered to real issues as opposed to made-up issues for political purposes.”

Georgia Republicans have been pushing for sweeping changes to election laws ever since 2021, when President Joe Biden flipped the state blue after nearly 30 years. In 2022, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) was elected to a full six-year term, making it the first time since the 1990s that Georgia has been represented by two Democrats in the U.S. Senate.

Click here to read the Journal-Constitution's report in its entirety (subscription required).

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exxonknews gmail 12 24

Who’s funding this ‘newspaper’ mailed to potential jurors in Greenpeace’s trial?

A dark money trail linked to pipeline company Energy Transfer could be behind a mysterious mailer targeting North Dakota residents in the lead-up to its major trial with Greenpeace.

The following piece was co-published by DeSmog and ExxonKnews.

In early September, fossil fuel executive and Donald Trump megadonor Kelcy Warren quietly made a large donation to a political action committee few people have ever heard of. Warren is CEO of Energy Transfer, the company behind the infamous Dakota Access Pipeline, which in 2016 faced thousands of protesters including members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other opponents.

The timing is potentially significant because Warren made his $5 million donation to the super PAC called Turnout for America while his company pushed forward with a lawsuit against the nonprofit Greenpeace related to the Standing Rock protests.

Two weeks after receiving Warren’s contribution, Turnout for America paid $250,000 to Northern CB Corp. — an Illinois publishing and printing company — for “media services.”

One of the listed directors for Northern CB Corp. is Brian Timpone, a conservative businessman who owns Chicago-based company Metric Media, a Koch-linked network that runs more than 1,100 partisan websites masquerading as local news.

In October, residents in Morton County, where the Greenpeace trial is scheduled to take place, received a mailed publication called “Central ND News,” which featured articles decrying the Dakota Access protests and praising Energy Transfer. Central ND News is produced by Metric Media.

While news of this “weird” paper was first reported by Floodlight and the North Dakota News Cooperative, additional details related to Warren’s Super PAC donation are now being debated in the lawsuit itself.

Greenpeace is urging a North Dakota court to allow further investigation into who paid to send the publication attacking Dakota Access protestors to Morton County residents — and whether there was an attempt to exert “improper influence” over potential jurors in Energy Transfer’s favor.

“Given the importance of securing a fair and impartial jury … knowing who was directing these actions, to whom they directed the information, and why they did so are important issues to the fair administration of justice,” a Greenpeace brief shared with ExxonKnews and DeSmog reads.

A closely watched lawsuit

Energy Transfer’s $300 million lawsuit accuses the environmental group Greenpeace of unlawfully orchestrating protests against the Dakota Access pipeline in 2016 and 2017, during which time hundreds of protestors were arrested near the Standing Rock Sioux Indian Reservation — including climate activists and Indigenous water protectors.

Energy Transfer, which worked with law enforcement agencies to curtail the protests and used an international security firm to surveil and shift public opinion about the company’s opponents, claims that Greenpeace waged an “unlawful, malicious, and coordinated attack” to damage and defame the pipeline and the company itself.

**According to Greenpeace USA, Energy Transfer is suing the group because it “dared to uplift the Indigenous-led opposition movement at Standing Rock.”

The lawsuit could have implications for whether the fossil fuel industry is able to silence protesters as it embarks on major expansions, including the buildout of new gas and carbon dioxide pipelines, Gulf Coast LNG facilities, and petrochemical infrastructure. Experts and advocates say the case has all the hallmarks of a SLAPP, or strategic lawsuit against public participation — a larger legal tactic fossil fuel companies have been using to suppress dissent and drain their opposition of resources and time.

As the February 2025 trial draws near in the closely watched case, Greenpeace is now asking a state district court to grant an emergency motion to reopen discovery in the case, which would allow the environmental group to get more information about who funded the mailer to North Dakota residents.

In its new court filing, Greenpeace alleges that “there may have been improper influence over potential Morton County jurors through direct mailers containing negative reporting about Standing Rock protests that took place eight years ago, and benefits which Energy Transfer conferred on the local community six years ago.”

Greenpeace cites new details indicating that Kelcy Warren’s donation came around the same time as a surge of coverage from Central ND News targeting the Dakota Access protests. Central ND News began running a series on its website in August, called “On This Date in 2016.” The series contained six articles in August, three of which accused protestors of “unlawful” activities in their headlines. Subsequent articles in the series appeared a few times each month up until this week. There is no record of the paper covering those protests before this year.

The same day Turnout for America paid the Illinois publishing company, Central ND News published a story praising a donation that Energy Transfer made to a university in North Dakota six years ago. That story, written by C.D. Marsden (a name that Floodlight first found yields no results in a Google search), was featured in the October newspaper delivered to Morton County residents’ homes, juxtaposed with stories about Dakota Access pipeline protestors.

The 12-page paper included those stories in a section called “This Month in History: October 2016,” featuring one article titled “Area schools locked down as authorities respond to pipeline protests.” Another recounts the details of a felony arrest warrant accusing a pipeline protestor of charging a police officer on horseback.

“The purpose of that publication is quite clearly to remind people about what was happening eight years ago,” a lawyer for Greenpeace, Everett Jack, told the court at a December 9 hearing requesting the reopening of discovery. “We should be entitled to find out who made that decision.”

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One of Greenpeace’s lawyers — Derrick Braaten, who resides in Mandan, a city in Morton County — received the Central ND News at his home in October. The paper doesn’t appear to have any physical presence in North Dakota — it directed readers to the outlet’s website, and didn’t include any local advertisements, according to Greenpeace.*

Jack told Southwest Judicial District Court Judge James Gion that reopening discovery would allow Greenpeace’s attorneys to question the Texas-based printing company that sent the newspaper, FMC Printing. The group would seek to subpoena FMC Printing to determine whether the mailer was targeted only to Morton County residents, who directed that the mailer be sent there, and why. Depending on the results of that investigation, Greenpeace would consider requesting a change in venue for the trial.

“We’re filing this motion and seeking this discovery because I think this court would agree there’s nothing more sacred in the legal system than the right to a fair, impartial jury, and every lawyer knows that direct efforts to influenc[e] the jury pool are not okay,” Jack said.

‘Playing both sides’

Greenpeace has been fighting varying iterations of Energy Transfer’s case — which was originally filed under state and federal racketeering charges — for eight years, with individual Indigenous protestors and journalists also brought into the mix. This week, the Minnesota Supreme Court heard an appeal from Energy Transfer in its attempts to subpoena journalists who reported on the protests at Standing Rock, seeking to force them to produce confidential, unpublished material.

The Dakota Access pipeline began operating through North Dakota in 2017 after an executive action from then-President Trump. The pipeline, which protestors warned would threaten water supplies, sacred sites, and the climate, leaked 5 times in its first year of operation alone.

This fall, the day before the October mailing was sent, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe filed a new lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers arguing that the pipeline is operating illegally and should be shut down. Energy Transfer CEO Warren gave $5 million in campaign donations to Trump, who recently promised “fully expedited approvals and permits” to companies who invest $1 billion in the U.S.

:{Energy Transfer’s case, originally filed by the firm Kasowitz Benson Torres (long-time lawyers for Donald Trump), was taken over in 2023 by Gibson Dunn, a law firm with a record of “playing both sides” of the First Amendment on behalf of its corporate clients. }:{:Gibson Dunn}: lawyer Trey Cox represented Energy Transfer in its opposition to Greenpeace’s motion this week, arguing that juror questionnaires are the appropriate method to ensure a fair trial — and that whether or not Morton County residents received or read the newspaper was irrelevant.

ND Central News, he said, was a local newspaper that existed before the mailer was sent, and was simply covering matters involving a high-profile trial. Cox accused Greenpeace of trying to delay the trial date (which Greenpeace denied), and said its motion did not have “any basis in law or in fact.”

Energy Transfer, Metric Media, and Trey Cox did not respond to requests for comment.

“We don’t have any evidence that this newspaper in any way prejudiced potential jurors,” Cox told the court.

tmp

Dec 11th, 2024

Republicans Want To ‘Throw Out’ Thousands Of Votes In North Carolina Supreme Court Race

With House Veto Override Vote, North Carolina Republicans’ Power Grab Is Complete

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an 12 24

During a late November interview with The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell, attorney and Never

Trump conservative George Conway predicted that many GOP senators, in 2025, will be too "spineless" to reject Donald Trump's most "appalling" nominees. Conway, however, noted that Republicans will have only a small U.S. Senate majority next year, and that Trump's nominees could "go down" if a handful of GOP senators have enough of a "spine" to reject them.

Trump's MAGA allies, according to Conway and other Trump critics, won't hesitate to threaten and bully Senate Republicans who refuse to confirm his more controversial nominees.

MAGA Republicans often threaten members of their party with primary challenges if they stand up to the president-elect. And far-right MAGA attorney Mike Davis, during an interview for Politico's Playbook column, threatened non-compliant Senate Republicans withanother tactic: hiring private investigators to probe their backgrounds.

Politico's Adam Wren, in a Playbook column published on December 8, reports that Davis is "mobilizing his Article III Project to become the tip of the spear in building pressure from the base on Republican senators to confirm" former Fox News host Pete Hegseth (Trump's pick for defense secretary).

Davis told Politico, "The Article III Project is very excited about this new standard that drinking and womanizing is disqualifying for public office. I'm very happy to hire investigators for senators and use that standard."

Davis has never shied away from violent or inflammatory rhetoric.

In a November 6 post on X, formerly Twitter, the attorney said of Democrats, "Here's my current mood: I want to drag their dead political bodies through the streets, burn them, and throw them off the wall. (Legally, politically, and financially, of course."

*Read Adam Wren's full Politico Playbook column at this link.

50 on enemies list in book, cassidy lots of trump admin

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On Thursday, December 4, conservative Republican Olivia Troye — a former national security aide to ex-Vice President Mike Pence who supported Kamala Harris in the 2024 election — reported, on X, that she had received a letter from Kash Patel's attorney threatening her with legal action and demanding that she retract her "comments on MSNBC about his unfitness to serve as FBI director." But Troye declared, "I stand by my statements."

Patel is among the Trump allies journalist Ross Rosenfeld discusses in an article published by The New Republic the following day. From Patel to "War Room" host Steve Bannon to anti-vaxxer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Rosenfeld warns, President-elect Donald Trump's second term will have little or no tolerance for dissent.

"Trumpworld stands ready to stamp out dissent," Rosenfeld argues. "Not just the dissent itself, but the dissenters: those heretics who refute the Gospel of Trump and insist that his second coming, and his second administration, stands to deliver nothing but ill to the United States. Those with differing opinions are set to run afoul of those coming to power."

Rosenfeld quotes Patel's own words, noting that during an appearance on Bannon's "War Room," he threatened, "We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government but in the media. Yes, we're going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections."

But Patel, Rosenfeld stresses, is hardly the only Trump ally who has no tolerance for criticism of "King Donald."

Trump has nominated RFK Jr. to head the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

"Robert Kennedy Jr. fits snugly within this movement," according to Rosenfeld. "Like Patel, RFK Jr. has promised to clean house when approved for his new position as secretary of health and human services. He's said he'd likely fire around 600 employees at the National Institutes of Health who don't see his vision."

Rosenfeld adds, "He's also promised to fire, on Day One, 'every nutritional scientist at (the Food and Drug Administration) because all of them are corrupt — all of them are complicit in the poisoning of our children."

*Ross Rosenfeld's full article for The New Republic is available at this link.

===

In the 2024 election, many North Carolina voters were willing to split their ticket.

President-elect Donald Trump carried the state, but Democratic North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein defeated far-right GOP gubernatorial nominee Mark Robinson and will be sworn in as governor in 2025.

North Carolina, a swing state, will have two Democratic governors in a row. But outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper and other North Carolina Democrats are slamming Republicans in the state legislature for making a "power grab" via Senate Bill 382 — which limits Stein's powers as governor in a variety of ways.

READ MORE:[Mehdi Hasan rips Nikki Haley over Biden jab: 'You hated Trump'

For one thing, SB 382 prevents Gov.-elect Stein from appointing members of the North Carolina Board of Elections and moves that power to GOP Auditor-elect Dave Boliek.

Cooper, during a Tuesday, December 3 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," slammed the bill as an egregious "power grab." And Slate legal analyst Mark Joseph Stern has been equally critical of North Carolina Republicans and SB 382.

In a scathing post on X, formerly Twitter, Stern wrote, "This is a hugely corrupt power grab by the North Carolina General Assembly's Republican supermajority, seizing authority from the governor and the courts to prevent any meaningful check on legislative abuses. Authoritarian stuff. A really dark day for democracy in N.C."

SB 382 also prevents Rachel Hunt, North Carolina's lieutenant governor-elect, from chairing committees on energy issues.

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Ahead of Tuesday, Donald Trump is using five strategies to overturn the election, according to CNN.

The former president's campaign team has placed "an intense focus on Pennsylvania" — a critical battleground state — the news outlet reports.

Per the report, "Trump has already claimed without evidence that his opponents are cheating in the state, both on his social media and at campaign rallies. At a Tuesday rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Trump claimed that the discovery of hundreds of suspected fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County was evidence of cheating."

The second way the GOP nominee is setting the stage for election interference, is through billionaire "Elon Musk’s misinformation machine."

READ MORE:['It’s not even close!' Trump melts down over new report on conservative state collapse

CNN reports, "In Michigan this past week, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson tried to push back on a claim Musk shared about registered voters in Michigan, accusing him of 'spreading dangerous disinformation.' Musk responded that Benson was 'blatantly lying to the public.'"

Furthermore, the report notes, "Musk was latching onto claims alleging there were more ballots cast in Michigan’s early voters than there were identified voters, which the secretary of state’s office said was due to a data 'formatting error' that was corrected."

Third, Trump and Republican allies are "manipulating early voting numbers."

The former president, CNN reports, "claimed he had won because he was ahead, ignoring the fact that the in-person votes, which tended to be more Republican-leaning, had been counted ahead of mail-in ballots, which leaned more Democratic."

However, since Republicans have "embraced mail voting this year and there’s no pandemic pushing millions to vote that way, a similar phenomenon could still happen this election."

The fourth way Trump wants to thwart the election results, are through "baseless claims of rampant non-citizen voting."

The news outlet notes that "experts say illegal voting by non-citizens is extremely rare, and when it does happen, it is usually caught quickly. A recent Georgia audit of the 8.2 million people on its rolls found just 20 registered noncitizens – only nine of whom had voted."

Lastly, Trump is stoking "fears of another attempt to challenge the result."

Although Congress has taken steps "to blunt any attempt to of a 2020 repeat," by updating "the Electoral Count Act, the law that governs the January 6 congressional certification of the presidential election, in an attempt to make it harder to block certification," the ex-president "and his allies have been laying the groundwork to try to dispute the election should he lose."

READ MORE:[GOP officials in small swing state town slam Trump’s 'Third World hell hole' claim: report

A group of right-wing activists, according to CNN, have already invoked the "Stop the Steal" movement by "telling their supporters that the only way Trump can lose in 2024 is through fraud."

CNN contributor and Republican campaign attorney Ben Ginsberg said, "It’s unfortunate that he sees his path back to the White House as denigrating a basic American institution like elections. If you’re just starting to pay attention to this, the claims that you’re hearing in 2024 about the election system not being reliable is extraordinarily similar to what he and his supporters were saying in 2020."

*CNN's full report is available here.

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four years after losing the 2020 election to now-President Joe Biden, Donald Trump continues to claim that the election was stolen from him — a false claim that has been repeatedly debunked.

In 2024, Marc Elias and other Democratic lawyers fear that if Trump loses to Vice President Kamala Harris, he will try to overturn the election results.

According to Politico reporters Liz Crampton and Kyle Cheney, "Many of the people preparing to cast votes for Donald Trump in the Electoral College in 2024 were involved in his plot to subvert the election in 2020."

"Of the 93 Republicans designated as prospective presidential electors for Trump from the seven battleground states," Crampton and Cheney explain in an article published on November 4, "eight are facing felony charges for signing false Electoral College certificates in 2020, according to a Politico analysis. Another five signed similar certificates in 2020 but were not charged. And at least six others played notable roles in challenging the results of the 2020 election or promoting election conspiracy theories."

The reporters add, "All told, at least 1 in 5 prospective Trump electors from battleground states this year had some connection to the scheme to overturn the 2020 election."

The fact some of these "prospective presidential electors for Trump," Crampton and Cheney note, hasn't hurt their standing in the Republican Party.

"Rather than being punished or shunted aside for their role in an attempt to overturn a democratic election," the journalists observe, "they've been elevated. The GOP has rewarded those accused of felony crimes with a return to the coveted position they stand accused of abusing four years ago."

*Read Politico's full article at this link.

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rww 10 24

Trump campaign troll Brenden Dilley is calling upon his "meme team" to "unleash their absolute dankest memes" in the closing days of the presidential campaign.

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hey sis did the see missing ballots?

On Tuesday, October 29, Indiana Republican Larry L. Savage Jr. was arrested on theft charges for allegedly stealing or destroying voting ballots.

Savage, now 51, was among the Republicans who, earlier this year, sought the GOP nomination in his U.S. House district.

The alleged theft, according to Kansas City Star reporter Mike Stunson, occurred during a test of voting equipment in Madison Country, Indiana on October 3.

"The charges follow the testing of election equipment in Madison County as part of the Voting System Technical Oversight Program, according to an October 29 state police news release," Stunson reports. "People invited to attend the public test, which included Savage, a precinct committeeman, run pre-marked ballots through the machines to make sure they are properly working and counting votes correctly….. The testing was livestreamed online, and the footage showed Savage fold up two of the ballots and put them in his pocket, authorities said."

Savage, according to Stunson, "is also heard whispering to a Republican auditor candidate about the count of the ballots being wrong, according to court documents obtained by the Indianapolis Star."

"State police said they later found the missing ballots in Savage's vehicle," Stunson reports. "Savage told an investigator he took the ballots because he was told they weren't real, but the surveillance footage showed a woman overseeing the test telling attendees that they were 'live election ballots,' according to the Indianapolis Star."

Madison County prosecutor Rodney Cummings told Indianapolis' WISH-TV, "The ballots weren't there because he took them himself. He creates a controversy that never existed in an effort to undermine confidence in our election process.”

*Read the Kansas City Star's full report at this link.

an 10 24

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Churches helping a far-right group get predominantly Republican voters to the polls may be in violation of federal tax laws, according to several experts.

NBC News reported that Turning Point USA (TPUSA) — an Arizona-based group founded by MAGA activist Charlie Kirk — is primarily depending on churches to get out the vote for former President Donald Trump in Tuesday's election. And while churches have traditionally been an important tool for both major parties to spread awareness about upcoming elections, Kirk's clergy partners are engaging in explicitly partisan activity. This risks those churches losing their tax-exempt status with the IRS.

At Restoration Hope Church in Lake Havasu City, Arizona, Pastor David Rose recently allowed TPUSA to host one of its "Super Chase" events. These events involve training members of congregations on "ballot-chasing" apps that pinpoint likely Republican voters for them to target in phone-banking and door-knocking efforts. Likewise, the training sessions train participants to avoid reaching out to members of the "wrong party," meaning Democrats.

Rose insisted that the "Super Chase" session was "not an event hosted by our church nor was it a church related event," though NBC reported that it still "most likely violated tax law." The network reported that Rose was seen posing next to signs that read "Commie Kamala" and Trump's catchphrase, "Make America Great Again."

"It is common for churches to allow other organizations to use their facilities outside of church related events," Rose said.

But some tax law experts told NBC that Rose and other churches that have hosted "Super Chase" events — including in Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — are likely in violation of the Johnson Amendment. That's the 1954 federal law prohibiting tax-exempt organizations from participating in partisan politics.

University of Pittsburgh law professor Philip Hackney, who is also a former IRS employee, told the network that TPUSA's partisan political activity at churches "is at a different level than anything I’ve seen before," particularly given the group's documented ties to both the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee.

“The Republican Party, in effect,” Hackney said, “is explicitly using churches through this system in order to get out the vote.”

Notre Dame law professor Lloyd Mayer agreed that Kirk and TPUSA's congregational partners were risking losing their tax-exempt status given their blatantly pro-Republican electioneering. This is despite TPUSA insisting that the "Super Chase" events are perfectly legal.

“They can’t favor a particular candidate or, by implication, a group of candidates, like Republicans versus Democrats,” Mayer said. “This effort is obviously favoring getting out voters who will favor the Republican candidates.”

Click here to read NBC's report in its entirety.

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In Upstate New York, Republican Joe Mastroianni — who is running for a seat in the New York State Assembly — is facing allegations of mail theft. And he has said he "will not comment on this specific story."

Mastroianni, in that district, has been trying to unseat incumbent Democratic State Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara. Albany's WRGB Channel 6 News (a CBS affiliate) reports that Mastroianni is suspected of stealing a Santabarbara mailer, and "Ring camera videos" are being cited as evidence of the alleged activity.

Noting that "stealing mail is a federal offense," WRGB reports, "Ring video provided by the law office of Frank Salamone, who's also the Schenectady County Democratic Committee chairman, shows Mastroianni appears to be stealing an election mailer sent by incumbent Assemblymember Angelo Santabarbara. A voter in Scotia retrieved the video after noticing she did not receive the item that appeared in her U.S. Postal Service informed delivery. In the Ring camera videos, the mailman can be seen delivering the Santabarbara mailer around 1:30 p.m., and then, Mastroianni can be seen walking onto the porch with a female just before 6 p.m."

WRGB adds, "You can see, it looks like Mastroianni removes the mailer, folds it up, and puts it in his pocket while laughing."

Although he has declined to discuss the allegations, Mastroianni criticized Salamone for "making this issue central to this year's campaign" during a conversation with reporters.

When WRGB's Tom Eschen asked Mastroianni, "Was that you in the video?," the GOP candidate refused to answer and said, "I don't appreciate kind of the hit journalism.

Eschen also asked if voters would be concerned about him allegedly "stealing mail." Mastroianni didn't respond.

Dirty tricks? Trump Super-PAC sent out a bogus Medicare cancellation notice to scare voters about Kamala Harris.One of the largest pro-Trump superPACs has dropped a massive mailing of “Medicare Cancellation Notices” letting seniors know that Kamala Harris is preparing to end the program or at least throw them off it. As David Corn reports at Mother Jones, some of the richest men in America are behind it: “MAGA, Inc. is the top pro-Trump super PAC. It has raised over $300 million during the 2024 campaign, most of it from Republican billionaires, including Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager; Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner and real estate magnate who went to jail for tax evasion and for retaliating against a federal witness (and whom Trump pardoned); and Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, who has pumped in over $150 million.” What could these billionaires want? If you selected “more tax cuts” and “a return to segregation” I’d bet you’d have hit it right on the nose. Meanwhile, an unknown GOP-aligned group is sending text messages to college students in Wisconsin threatening them with prison if they dare vote. These people will stop at nothing…

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In Arizona, older people recently received a mailer declaring Medicare had been cancelled. It had a big red stamp that proclaimed, “Medicare Cancellation Notice.” Also emblazoned on its front was this: “Warning: Rates are going up & plans are being cancelled. Details enclosed.” Its return address was the “Department of Medicare Cancellation, Kamala Harris Administration.”

That return address should have been a tip-off that this was not an official notification—along with a scrawled add-on in cursive: “I hope you can afford to lose your insurance! — Kamala Harris XOXO.”

It’s hard to know whether any recipient saw this and received a shock, fearing their Medicare was being cut off. But the group that sent out this official-looking piece of campaign literature, Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC, was spreading false and misleading information about Medicare and about Harris.

The mailer sent out by Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC. It is designed as a “Medicare cancellation notice,” but it’s a misleading piece of campaign literature.

The backside of the notice claimed that Harris is “destroying Medicare.” It said that due to Harris, Medicare premiums were skyrocketing and that she “has a new plan that would completely liquidate Medicare funds,” adding, “All the money you’ve paid into Medicare will be gone.” It dramatically asserted, “Your care [will be] cancelled.”

None of this is true. Medicare premiums are not skyrocketing. For instance, the standard monthly Part B premium went from $164.90 in 2023 to $174.70 this year. Harris has no “new” plan to “completely liquidate Medicare funds.” She recently proposed expanding Medicare to cover long-term, in-home health care and said the program would be paid for by negotiating lower drug prices. She also called for widening Medicare to include hearing and vision benefits.

The backside of the mailer sent out by Make America Great Again, Inc., a pro-Trump super PAC.

The MAGA, Inc. mailer contained footnotes seemingly to back up its outlandish accusation. But they were vague and misleading. They appeared to point to references from years ago when Harris was a supporter of Medicare for All, which is no longer partof her policy agenda.

MAGA, Inc. is the top pro-Trump super PAC. It has raised over $300 million during the 2024 campaign, most of it from Republican billionaires, including Howard Lutnick, the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald; Paul Singer, a hedge fund manager; Charles Kushner, the father of Jared Kushner and real estate magnate who went to jail for tax evasion and for retaliating against a federal witness (and whom Trump pardoned); and Timothy Mellon, the reclusive heir to the Mellon banking fortune, who has pumped in over $150 million. (Mellon also gave $25 million to Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s failed presidential campaign.) MAGA, Inc., according to a memo it released this summer, aims to spend at least $100 million in ads to portray Harris as “the most radical liberal ever to run for President.”

MAGA, Inc., since its founding in 2022, has been a critical player in Trumpworld. Its first executive director was Taylor Budowich, a former Trump White House aide, who refused to cooperate with the House January 6 committee and who testified to the grand jury that investigated Trump’s alleged swiping of classified documents. He joined the Trump campaign in August. Other staffers have included Steve Cheung, now the Trump campaign’s combative spokesperson, and Chris LaCivita, co-manager of Trump’s current presidential bid.

Medicare is frequently a hot issue during a presidential campaign, in particular because seniors tend to vote at high rates. Harris’ campaign cites her accomplishments regarding Medicare, pointing out that the Biden-Harris administration capped out-of-pocket spending for Medicare beneficiaries and limited the cost of insulin for recipients at $35 a month. It also provided Medicare the authority to negotiate lower prescription drug costs. And Medicare solvency improved during the Biden years.

Repeatedly during the 2024 campaign, Trump has vowed not to cut Social Security or Medicare, though in March he did say in an interview, “There is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements, in terms of cutting.” (When he was president, Trump did propose Medicare cuts.) Tax experts have noted that Trump’s proposal to exempt taxes on Social Security would lead to Social Security and Medicare receiving $1.6 trillion less in revenue in the next ten years and push each into insolvency sooner. (Project 2025—which Trump has tried to distance himself from—calls for changes in Medicare that would move more recipients into Medicare Advantage plans that are run by private insurance companies, and, according to Fortune, this could increase the financial pressure on Medicare.)

Mother Jones contacted MAGA, Inc. and asked if the super PAC intended for the mailer to look like an official notice and if it was concerned a recipient might at first be scared, believing his or her Medicare had been cancelled. It did not respond.

Mailers often convey the most scurrilous political attacks. Yet they tend to receive little media attention and routinely escape fact-checking and rebuttal. (As I reported recently, in Michigan, Jewish Republicans mailed out campaign literature accusing Harris, whose husband is Jewish, of being bad for Jews.) So it’s unlikely that the seniors who saw this faux notice exclaiming Medicare has been shut down will subsequently receive a counter explaining that Medicare was not cancelled and is not being destroyed by Harris.

Political campaigns can be sleazy affairs. But there is something particularly odious about billionaires attempting to frighten Medicare recipients with phony messaging in order to persuade them to vote for a guy who has proposed Medicare cuts and who will shower the wealthy with large tax breaks. But to them, this must seem a solid investment.

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Voting rights groups are sounding the alarm about anonymous text messages allegedly sent to college students in Wisconsin, threatening them with prison if they vote, according to CNN.

"The unsolicited text, sent from at least one 262- number to cell phones of people in their early 20s on University of Wisconsin campuses and elsewhere, says: 'WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible,'" reported Katelyn Polantz.

Those statutes prohibit someone from voting by mail in a Wisconsin election if they have moved out of Wisconsin. They do not apply to students who moved to Wisconsin for school.

IFrame Content

Voting rights groups fear that students could be intimidated out of voting by the message, with Free Speech for People's Courtney Hostetler warning, “It’s trying to convince students living in Wisconsin they don’t have a right to vote there.”

ALSO READ:Busted: Armed man arrested at rally tied to Trump's 'secretary of retribution'

The groups have sent a report about this incident in a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul, urging them to investigate the matter.

Lying to voters about election procedures with the intent to trick or intimidate them out of voting is a crime, and cases of this sort have resulted in convictions in recent history.

Doug Mackey, a far-right social media influencer who went by the name "Ricky Vaughn," was jailed over a 2016 scheme to misinform Black voters that they could cast ballots for Hillary Clinton by text message. And a the pro-Trump duo of Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman agreed to pay $1.25 million in penalties over an illegal robocall scheme that falsely warned Black voters in the Midwest that voting could re-activate outstanding warrants and debt collection against them.

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Musk wears a black "Make America Great Again" ball cap while attending a campaign rally with former President Donald Trump on October 05, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

This week, we learned that Elon Musk has donated tens of millions of dollars to help former President Donald Trump return to the White House. But he's not stopping there. Yesterday, Musk announced that he is holding "a series of talks throughout Pennsylvania" over the next few days.

There is just one problem: Musk's events are likely illegal.

Musk, of course, has the right to hold an event explaining why he supports Trump. But these events, hosted by America PAC, a Super PAC founded by Musk, are not open to everyone. To attend, people must sign Musk's petition supporting free speech and the right to bear arms and have already voted in Pennsylvania.

twt]

The problem is not the petition, but the requirement to vote to attend Musk's event. Federal law prohibits making or offering to make "an expenditure to any person, either to vote or withhold his vote, or to vote for or against any candidate." Violators can be fined or face up to one year in prison.

The legal problems with Musk's events were first noted by UCLA law professor Rick Hansen, a well-known expert in election law. Hansen explained that to violate the federal law that prohibits vote buying, "it is not necessary to offer that a person vote for or against a particular candidate." Any financial inducement to vote or not vote is enough. In this case, Musk is offering something valuable — an invite to hear him speak — in exchange for voting. "Just like one cannot give out free ice cream or car washes or concert tickets," Hansen writes, "one cannot give out free admission to hear a speech by a tech entrepreneur."

Earlier this month, Musk offered $47 to anyone who could recruit a registered voter in seven swing states, including Pennsylvania, to sign his petition. He said his goal was to get one million signers. The goal was to collect valuable contact information and demographic data of potential voters. While such tactics might be distasteful, they are not illegal. In that case, the $47 was not provided in exchange for voting. Rather, the payment was in exchange for recruiting a petition signer. Musk's group will likely use the data collected to convince that petition signer to vote, but a vote is not required for the payment.

In the case of his talks in Pennsylvania, however, Musk crossed the legal line, only allowing people to access his talks if they have voted. While the law is clear, whether or not anyone will enforce it is far less certain. Musk is accustomed to doing what he wants and, with plenty of resources for skilled legal representation, cleaning up the mess later.

Little else is known about the details of Musk's tour of Pennsylvania. According to the America PAC website, Musk was scheduled to hold an event in Philadelphia on Wednesday and Thursday. But, as of this writing, the times and locations of the events have not been released.

Musk has secretly been spending millions on right-wing causes since 2022

While Musk has recently emerged as one of the most powerful forces for Trump in this election cycle, he has actually been giving huge sums to conservative causes since 2022, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

In 2022, Musk funded an ad blitz attacking Democrats on the economy, immigration, and transgender healthcare. The ads were run by a group called Citizens for Sanity, which got over $50 million of Musk’s money from a dark-money group called Building America’s Future (BAF).

Before Musk donated to BAF, the group’s operations were much smaller. In 2020, when it was founded, BAF only raised $300,000. In 2021, it raised $11 million. After Musk became a donor in 2022, its contributions nearly quintupled, reaching over $53 million.

Because BAF does not have to disclose its donors, it is not clear whether Musk has continued to fund it. But the group’s operations have remained extensive. In 2024, BAF has donated at least $22.8 million to right-wing political action committees.

Two PACs, Duty to America PAC and Future Coalition PAC, have been entirely funded by BAF, getting $16 million and $3 million, respectively.

Future Coalition PAC has used the cash to finance a controversial ad strategy. It is targeting Muslim and Arab-American voters in Michigan with anti-semitic ads about Vice President Kamala Harris’s husband Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish, and Harris’s stance on Israel, portraying her as a staunch Israel supporter. Simultaneously, the PAC is also taking out ads targeting Jewish voters in Pennsylvania, attacking Harris for being anti-Israel.

Another PAC that BAF has funded this cycle is Stand for Us PAC, which received $3.8 million from BAF. Stand for Us PAC has spent exclusively on state and local races, including in Missouri and West Virginia.

Trump is set to appear at a community roundtable hosted by BAF in Oakland, Michigan on Friday.

Musk's $75 million Super PAC

Filings released Tuesday reveal that Musk has donated nearly $75 million to America PAC. Musk gave the PAC $14.95 million in July, $30 million in August, and $30 million in September. Musk was the PAC’s only disclosed donor from July to September. The donations came after Musk said in March that he would not be donating to a presidential campaign.

From July to September, the PAC spent approximately $72 million, higher than “any other pro-Trump super PAC focused on turning out voters.” The PAC focuses on canvassing voters to increase early and mail-in voting in swing states, despite the fact that Musk routinely spreads misinformation about early voting to his 200 million followers on X, including that mail-in ballots are “insane” and “too risky.” Trump has reportedly “largely outsourced his 2024 campaign’s get-out-the-vote operation” to America PAC, partially made possible by a March Federal Election Commission (FEC) advisory opinion that allows canvassing operations to coordinate their message directly with a campaign....

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Fox anchor Bret Baier tried to explain away Trump's “enemy within” remark. Trump just proved him wrong — on Fox News.

10/16/24 mma

Fox anchor Bret Baier tried to explain away Trump's “enemy within” remark. Trump just proved him wrong — on Fox News.

Written by Matt Gertz

Published 10/16/24 mma

Former President Donald Trump said during a Fox News town hall which aired Wednesday that when he recently threatened to deploy the military against the “enemy from within,” he was talking about mainstream Democrats like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and her family. Trump’s damning admission should be humiliating for people who tried to help Trump clean up his initial comments — including Fox chief political anchor Bret Baier.

Trump claimed that “the bigger problem is the enemy from within,” which he described as “radical left lunatics” during a Fox interview that aired Sunday. “I think it should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military, because they can’t let that happen,” he told Maria Bartiromo. Later in the interview, Trump returned to the subject of “the enemy from within,” citing as an example Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA).

Trump’s meandering and nonspecific commentary is often difficult to follow. But he constantly uses authoritarian rhetoric, frequently accuses his political opponents of committing crimes including treason, and was recently described by his former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff as “fascist to the core.”

As critics pointed out the danger inherent in someone like Trump threatening to use the military against a nebulous domestic group, some of his supporters tried to rewrite the remarks to make them seem more palatable.

Baier took up their cause on Tuesday's Special Report. After saying Trump’s comments about “the enemy from within” were “raising eyebrows,” the Fox anchor aired a portion of the former president’s statement, criticism from MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, and Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s claim that his “belief” is that Trump was referring to undocumented immigrants who commit crimes.

“Gov. Youngkin trying there,” Baier said. “But I think JD Vance more on point where he said that if there is some big protest or something, that that is what the former president is talking about. He later talked about Adam Schiff, about being one of those enemies from within, or crazy left. And so a lot of people jumped on that. It is his words that cause some concern in a lot of corners.”

Video

CitationFrom the October 15, 2024, edition of Fox News' Special Report.

Baier later asked Josh Holmes, a former Republican congressional staffer and co-host of the Ruthless podcast, about the comments. Holmes replied that Trump was “obviously” discussing the possibility of urban unrest after the election, adding, “I think that’s what we’re talking about very clearly here. They can try to make it into something else.”

But at the town hall, which Fox reportedly stocked with Trump’s supporters, Fox’s Harris Faulkner asked Trump to address criticism of the “enemy from within” comment. In his response, Trump cited “the Pelosis” as an example of who he was talking about, adding, “these people, they are so sick and they are so evil.”

Video

CitationFrom the October 16, 2024, edition of Fox News' The Faulkner Focus.

HARRIS FAULKNER: Mr. President, Kamala Harris said you sounded unhinged and unchecked power is in our future. What do you say about that?

DONALD TRUMP: I thought it was a nice presentation. I wasn't unhinged. You know what they are? They're a party of sound bites. Somebody asked me can they be brought together? I never thought — I wasn't thinking like they could because they are very different. It is the enemy from within and they're very dangerous. They are Marxists and communists and fascists. And they say I use a guy like Adam Schiff. They made up the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It took two years to solve the problem. Absolutely nothing was done wrong, etc. They are dangerous for our country.

We have China, we have Russia, we have all these countries. If you have a smart president, they can all be handled. The more difficult are the Pelosis, these people, they are so sick and they are so evil. If they would spend their time trying to make America great again we would have — it would be so easy to make this country great. But what I heard about that, they were saying I was like threatening. I'm not threatening anybody. They are the ones doing the threatening.

In October 2022, a right-wing conspiracy theorist broke into the Pelosi home in San Francisco reportedly intending to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage. Finding the then-speaker absent, he assaulted and critically injured her husband Paul with a hammer. The assailant was ultimately found guilty of a slew of federal crimes and sentenced to 30 years in prison. Baier’s Fox colleagues responded by spinning up more conspiracy theories about Paul Pelosi’s assault, while Trump has repeatedly cracked jokes about it on the campaign trail.

Baier regularly downplays Trump’s authoritarian comments and actions on his Special Report program, where he is interviewing Vice President Kamala Harris for tonight’s broadcast.

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https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/07/us/politics/heritage-foundation-2024-campaign-immigration.html

nyt

no lnx

Heritage Foundation Spreads Deceptive Videos About Noncitizen Voters

The right-wing think tank has been pushing misinformation about voting into social media feeds. The Georgia secretary of state’s office called one video “a stunt.”

Once a staid think tank, the Heritage Foundation has recently made its mark seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.Credit...Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

Ken BensingerRichard Fausset

By Ken Bensinger and Richard Fausset

Sept. 7, 2024

In July, two men went door to door at a sprawling apartment complex in Norcross, Ga., an Atlanta suburb that is a hub for the region’s fast-growing Latino population, asking residents if they were U.S. citizens and whether they were registered to vote.

Speaking in Spanish, often peeking from behind half-closed doors, seven people told the men that they were not citizens but that they were registered to vote.

Although the two men claimed to represent a company helping Latinos navigate the election system, they were actually working with the Heritage Foundation and carrying a hidden camera. Days later, the conservative think tank posted a video on the social media platform X containing some of the footage the men had captured, calling it “staggering” evidence that 14 percent of noncitizens in Georgia — which Heritage said extrapolated to more than 47,000 people — were registered to vote.

“Based on our findings,” the video concluded, “the integrity of the 2024 election is in great jeopardy.”

The video was reposted by Elon Musk, X’s owner, who called it “extremely disturbing.” It quickly went viral.

But under scrutiny, those claims do not hold up. Three of the seven people Heritage filmed later said they had misspoken. State investigators found no evidence that any of the seven people on the tape had ever registered to vote. A spokesman for Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, called the video “a stunt.”

It was one of several misleading videos that the Heritage Foundation has pumped into social media feeds this year. While the once-staid think tank has received attention recently for Project 2025, the right-wing blueprint for a future Trump administration that the group funded, it has also made its mark with an aggressive effort to shape public opinion, seeding falsehoods about the integrity of the 2024 election across social media and conservative news outlets.

At the center of that effort is the Oversight Project, an arm of Heritage that conducts what it describes as investigations into immigration policy, among other topics. Borrowing from covert tactics used by the group Project Veritas, the Oversight Project has published videos about the supposed threat of migrant voting in shelters on the Texas border, in New York City and in North Carolina.

The project says it is preparing to release investigations of other states, including what its executive director, Mike Howell, recently described in a livestream on X as “a pretty big thing” targeting voter registration at the Virginia Department of Motor Vehicles.

“We view our role in this cause as breaking the bombshell news,” said Mr. Howell. The recording of the livestream appears to have been deleted after The New York Times contacted Heritage for this article, and the Oversight Project has so far not posted any videos about alleged noncitizen voting in Virginia.

Image

An open doorway into a room with a table and chairs. A large “Vote” sign in on the table.

An Atlanta polling location in March. There is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population.Credit...Christian Monterrosa for The New York Times

Few groups have done more to propel the false, but snowballing, theory that noncitizens are preparing to vote in droves in November, threatening the integrity of the election.

Heritage’s most recent effort, the Georgia video, tallied more than 56 million views, according to X’s statistics, and has become fodder for discussion on dozens of right-wing talk shows and podcasts, as well as on Fox News. The day after it was posted, both Mr. Raffensperger and Georgia’s attorney general, Christopher Carr, released statements, apparently in response to the video, pledging to investigate “specific” claims of voter fraud.

But there is no evidence to support Heritage’s findings in Georgia, a critical swing state with a large immigrant population, or, for that matter, anywhere else in the country.

Voting by noncitizens is illegal in almost all jurisdictions except for a few scattered municipalities that allow residents who are not citizens to vote in local elections. Any noncitizen convicted of trying to vote in a federal election faces stiff fines, prison time and potential deportation.

A study by the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy group that focuses on voting and criminal justice issues, found that one ten-thousandth of 1 percent of votes in the 2016 election were cast by noncitizens. The Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, has said that “noncitizens don’t illegally vote in detectable numbers.” The Heritage Foundation’s own analysis found just 23 documented cases of noncitizen voting across the country between 2003 and 2023.

Regardless of the evidence, critics say efforts like the Heritage investigation in Georgia could be used by former President Donald J. Trump and his allies to try to discredit the election results if he loses.

“The immigrant becomes the boogeyman,” said Richard L. Hasen, an expert on elections law at U.C.L.A. law school. “It provides a means of delegitimizing Democratic victories and creates a path for challenging them.”

Several election experts derided the Oversight Project’s methodology as deeply flawed. The group’s figures suggest it spoke to a total of 50 people — statistically, a tiny sampling — before coming to a determination that one in seven noncitizen residents of Georgia may be illegally registered to vote.

In an email to The Times last week, Mr. Howell stood by the group’s work in Georgia. “I am not surprised that when an individual admits to a crime on camera that they would later retract it when that video is made public,” he said.

Asked about research — including Heritage’s own data — showing how rare noncitizen voting is, he said: “The monumental number of noncitizens that have poured over our borders since 2021 have made any previous ‘study’ of noncitizens’ voting irrelevant.”

In a July interview on Real America’s Voice, a right-wing podcast network, Mr. Howell said that out of 40 people his investigators spoke to at an apartment complex in Charlotte, N.C., four said they were both registered to vote and not citizens. That led the Oversight Project to conclude that 10 percent of noncitizens in that state were most likely registered to vote.

Mr. Howell claimed the Biden administration was planning to “refuse a peaceful transition of power by relying on illegal aliens to vote for them, and that’s clear as day.”

In Georgia, Mr. Raffensperger's investigation into Heritage’s claims is continuing, according to Mike Hassinger, a spokesman for the secretary of state’s office. Mr. Hassinger said investigators had found no records suggesting that the people who appeared in the video had registered or voted, and “no pending or rejected voter applications from 2024” from the apartment complex.

The state investigators went to the apartment complex and spoke to two of those interviewed by the Oversight Project. One said she purposely gave the men at her door a fake name, and told them what she thought they wanted to hear “to get them away.”

Mr. Hassinger described the Heritage effort as “a stunt,” adding, “There’s no better word for it.”

The Times also spoke with a woman interviewed in the video. The woman, an immigrant from Honduras who asked that she be identified only by her first name, Marta, because she feared being deported, confirmed to the Times that she was not registered to vote and had never tried to register in the nine years that she had lived in the United States.

She had been surprised to see two strangers appear at her door and feared that if she told them the truth — that she was not registered to vote — they might try to register her and ask her to sign documents, potentially putting her at risk with immigration authorities.

Marta said that she had no idea she was being filmed until she was shown the video online and that the two men did not ask for her full name or address. “I just wanted them to go away,” she said.

The woman was first identified by Lead Stories, a private fact-checking group hired by social media platforms to verify content. The group also tracked down two other women who were shown in the video. Both denied having registered to vote.

On social media, the Oversight Project said it had tried to locate the seven people on state voter rolls but was “unable to find them,” adding that “non-citizens have shoddy address history records and often use fake documents and names.”

Founded in 1973, Heritage was long known as a policy shop, focused on promoting conservative, pro-business policies in Washington. In recent years, it has taken a sharp turn under the leadership of Kevin Roberts, an academic who said his goal for Heritage was “institutionalizing Trumpism.”

Mr. Roberts started the Oversight Project just a few months after arriving at Heritage, asking it to provide “aggressive oversight” of the Biden administration and “institutional support” to the conservative movement.

The Oversight Project partnered with an outside group, Muckraker, to produce both the Georgia and North Carolina videos. In April, they also teamed up to produce a video about a flier encouraging migrants to vote for President Biden. The groups said the paper was found in a shelter in Matamoros, Mexico, but the founder of the shelter denied being behind it. She said she had received death threats after the video was posted.

In March, the two groups used a hidden camera to film employees of a migrant aid group, La Jornada, that was providing documentation they said could enable noncitizens to register to vote. The executive director of that organization, which is based in Queens, N.Y., later said the document they had provided was not identification that could be used to register to vote.

Anthony Rubin, the founder of Muckraker, in a recent interview on InfoWars, the conspiracy spreading podcast hosted by Alex Jones, said that “anybody who claims this isn’t happening, they’re just burying their head in the sand.”

In March 2022, Mr. Raffensperger announced the results of a statewide audit that determined that 1,634 noncitizens had tried to register to vote among all of Georgia’s registered voters at the time, and had been blocked from doing so by existing state verification procedures. He also noted that none of them had cast ballots.

“So, my fellow Georgians asked me, ‘Are noncitizens voting in Georgia?’” Mr. Raffensperger said in May on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I can say, ‘No, they aren’t,’ because we’ve checked it.”

Ken Bensinger covers right wing media and national political campaigns for The Times. More about Ken Bensinger

Richard Fausset, based in Atlanta, writes about the American South, focusing on politics, culture, race, poverty and criminal justice. More about Richard Fausset

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an 10 24

Republican election officials are currently being sued in multiple states for purging eligible voters just before Americans go to the polls in November. Now, one watchdog group fighting back argues the purges are part of a larger GOP strategy.

According to the Independent, voters in both Alabama and Tennessee are suing their respective secretaries of state after finding out they had been removed from voter rolls for being "non-citizens." One of the plaintiffs, 49 year-old Alabama resident James Cozzad, is a registered Republican who voted in the 2016 and 2020 elections without incident. In a lawsuit filed in federal court, Cozzad said he had been "racking my brain to try to figure out how I ended up on the list of purged voters, but I have no clue."

"It feels like they are trying to make me think I’ve broken the law — just for trying to exercise my right to vote. While I hope it was just a mistake, I think if they were just trying to verify something, they would have done so long before the election," he continued. "Now I can understand why some people feel as though their vote isn’t worth casting."

The Independent further reported that thousands more voters have been purged from the rolls in states with Republican election chiefs — including Virginia, where the Department of Justice alleges Republican Secretary of the Commonwealth Kelly Gee has also removed thousands of voters. Even though there is no evidence that non-citizens have tried to vote in the Old Dominion State, Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin bragged about kicking approximately 6,000 voters from the rolls for allegedly being illegal immigrants.

These voter purges are notably taking place during the so-called "quiet period," in which states are barred from making drastic changes to their election systems and voter rolls within 90 days of an election. Watchdog group Protect Democracy attorney Anna Dorman is arguing that Republican secretaries of state — along with GOP groups filing frivolous lawsuits in the courts — are acting in "bad faith" and that their arguments are "not strong on the merits."

"Their sole purpose is to use the legitimacy of the court system to launder conspiracy theories and make them feel more legitimate, so that if the election results don’t go the way these people want in November, they have some additional conspiracies to put forward to try to undermine peaceful transfer of power," Dorman told the Independent.

The outlet reported that GOP-aligned groups have filed nearly 100 election-related lawsuits in 2024 alone, which are largely what Protect Democracy calls "zombie lawsuits." The group uses that term to describe litigation that will almost certainly get thrown out at first glance due to there being no factual basis to plaintiffs' claims of fraudulent activity.

“They’re part of a messaging strategy, not a legal strategy,” a Protect Democracy report read. “Regardless of whether this legal strategy will get anywhere, in any courtroom, it telegraphs a clear intent to subvert the election if Donald Trump loses.”

Earlier this year, both former President Donald Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) held a press conference at Mar-a-Lago to announce an initiative aimed at curbing non-citizen voting. Johnson unsuccessfully tried to include legislation that would require voters show proof of citizenship (like a birth certificate or a U.S. passport) upon registering to vote in the latest must-pass government funding bill. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated there are several million U.S. citizens who would not be able to meet that burden of proof due to difficulty locating or obtaining citizenship documents, meaning they would be disenfranchised.

Click here to read the Independent's report in its entirety.

READ MORE:['They're just coming after us': Project 2025 org is now harassing voter registration groups

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