mike lee 2 sen 7%

===

NO MERRI

SEE VOTER SUPPRESS CLETA

ginni cleta SAVE act EASTMAN

SEE BEArs ears antiquities act killed PARKS PUBLIC LANDS

pow --> mofo JUST ROUTINELY THE WORST // RON JOHNSON EG VOODOO TERMINALLY ONLINE PUNKED?

lcv 8% --> 7 lifetime 2025 3%

troll caucus? hard right? gosar massie mtg boebert

promoted to primary 9/14 b/c oppose 28th

bro opus dei?

trump coup 4 22, GINNI, Leo, Ledeen, EASTMAN

covid pos 1020

fascist tweet? offIc hanDLe bASED ~ jusge/rule of law

ADF

bak 8 22 endit1

===

once principled? never trumper? 2016 rnc? LDS NOW Massively online

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DOCKET 10 26

...

Among the people now going to bat for Eastman are Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and a coalition of former Trump attorneys who helped his 2020 election subversion effort: anti-voting lawyer Cleta Mitchell, former One America News Network reporter Christina Bobb, recently departed U.S. Department of Justice pardon attorney Ed Martin, lawyers Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell, and others.

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9 26 https://globalextremism.org/post/project-2025-comes-for-public-lands/

No Accident: Project 2025 Comes for Public Lands

September 23, 2026

William Perry Pendley wrote the Interior Department chapter of Project 2025. Doug Burgum now runs the Interior Department, and he is carrying it out. Endangered species, America’s public lands, and the sacred places on them are paying the price.

Key Takeaways

Project 2025 wanted wild horses disposed of. The government sold 3,700 of them last year, many for as little as $25, through a loophole that for some ends at a slaughter plant.

Project 2025 complained that Trump’s first-term monument cuts didn’t go far enough. He has now cut Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments, both in Utah, by about 90 percent each.

Project 2025 wanted the Endangered Species Act kept out of the way of “economic development.” The wildlife agencies didn’t wait for Congress. They rewrote the rules, and 20 states and the District of Columbia sued on September 9. Five days later, Fish and Wildlife told its field offices that killing an endangered animal breaks no law unless the killing was the point.

Project 2025 called for “aggressively building the border wall system on America’s southern border.” Homeland Security has waived cultural and environmental laws to build it, and crews are blasting Kuuchamaa, a Kumeyaay sacred mountain on the U.S.-Mexico border.

The mustangs had waited years in an Idaho feedlot, penned there since helicopters ran them down off the range. In March, the Bureau of Land Management finally shipped 68 of them out. The trailers went 1,800 miles east to Brandon Jones, an Ohio livestock trader who had paid the government $25 a head. Around midnight the next day, two double-decker cattle trucks came for the horses. Jones won’t say where they went.

Jones told The New York Times, which ran the investigation on its front page in August, that he has nothing to do with Fred Bauer. Bauer is one of the largest exporters of slaughter horses to Canada, where they are processed into meat for human consumption and sold abroad.

William Perry Pendley, who wrote Project 2025’s Interior chapter, once ran the bureau now selling those horses. A federal judge ruled in 2020 that he had served unlawfully as its acting director for 424 days. His chapter asked Congress to repeal the Antiquities Act and to rein in the Endangered Species Act. Congress has done neither. Interior, under Secretary Doug Burgum, has found other ways, and the horses show how.

Project 2025’s section on wild horses ends by telling Congress to pass a law letting the bureau “dispose humanely of these animals.” Congress never did, and it still bars the bureau from spending money to kill healthy wild horses. A 2017 survey of 556 registered voters, commissioned by wild horse advocates, found 80 percent of respondents, including 86 percent of Trump voters, opposed killing them.

Livestock inspection records show some of the government’s mustangs on trucks bound for Canadian slaughter plants.

The bureau posts wild horses on its online adoption site, and after three one-week listings with no takers, it labels a horse unadoptable and can sell it. Once sold, the horse loses its protections. The buyer promises in writing not to slaughter it or knowingly sell it to someone who will. The middleman signs nothing, and the horses go to Canada. The government can spend more than $3,000 to capture a mustang and bring it to market, then sell it for $25.

Slaughter plants pay up to $750 per horse.

Clare Staples runs Skydog Sanctuary, a rescue for wild horses and burros with ranches in California and Oregon. She wrote to Burgum the day the Times story ran, demanding the sales program be shut down. She had spent more than a year combing the bureau’s own sales records and standing at the kill pens. Her count runs 19 months, a longer stretch than the government’s one-year figure: 6,331 wild horses sold, against a historic average of about 1,200 a year. More than half were one to four years old, prime adoption age, and nearly three-quarters sold for $25 or less. Staples has tracked 333 wild horses and burros into kill pens this year alone. Selling protected animals for $25 to be butchered abroad, she said, is “a betrayal of the law and the American people.”

Sacred Lands

Trump signed the monument orders in the Oval Office on July 13, 2026, with Utah’s senators, Mike Lee and John Curtis, Gov. Spencer Cox, and state House Speaker Mike Schultz lined up behind him. The proclamations took effect September 11, and Bears Ears was reduced from 1.36 million acres to 121,000, a 91 percent cut. Grand Staircase-Escalante lost about the same share. Conservation groups sued on September 2.

The proclamation itself acknowledges the twin buttes known as the Bears Ears, “which are considered sacred by the Native American tribes that call this area their ancestral home.” The same document lists “critical minerals such as silver, copper, molybdenum, lead, uranium, vanadium, and zinc.”

The proclamation also ended the Bears Ears Commission (BEC), through which the Hopi Tribe, the Navajo Nation, the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, the Ute Indian Tribe of the Uintah and Ouray Reservation, and the Pueblo of Zuni had co-managed the monument with the federal government. In its place is an advisory committee whose named seats number 15: five for the tribes, four for San Juan County and its towns, and six for people recommended by Utah’s governor. The secretaries of the Interior and Agriculture now have no “obligation to engage, consult, or coordinate with the BEC or a comparable entity,” the proclamation states, though it still requires them to consult tribes under other laws.

Pendley has fought over sacred ground before. In 1996, Mountain States Legal Foundation, the Denver firm he then led, sued the Park Service over a voluntary June climbing ban at Devils Tower in Wyoming, a site many Northern Plains tribes hold sacred. A federal appeals court tossed the case in 1999, ruling that the climbers had no standing to sue.

In his Project 2025 chapter, Pendley wrote that Trump’s first-term review had been “insufficient” because only two Utah monuments were cut. The next administration, the chapter says, “must seek repeal of the Antiquities Act of 1906.” The law protects “cultural and natural resources of historic or scientific interest on federal lands,” and it confines each monument to the “smallest area compatible with proper care and management of the objects to be protected.” Whether that clause lets a president carve down a monument a predecessor created is the question the conservation groups have asked a federal court to answer.

The day the cuts took effect, mining companies filed 16 new claims on land stripped from Bears Ears.

What Counts as Harm

Since 1975, wrecking an animal’s habitat has counted as harming the animal. The Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service deleted that definition in a rule published July 14, 2026, and wrote nothing to replace it. The rescission took effect September 14. Logging the last of an owl’s nesting ground no longer harms the owl. Two more rules followed a week later. Newly listed threatened species lost their automatic protection. Critical habitat can now be trimmed when a company makes a credible case about the cost of preserving it.

Twenty states and the District of Columbia sued in federal court in California on September 9, five days before the harm rescission was due to take effect. The rules “are wrong on the merits, the morals and the law,” Washington Attorney General Nick Brown said. The complaint calls the harm rescission “a reversal of staggering proportions.” The rescission’s own preamble invites companies holding “take” permits to hand them back “in order to not have to continue spending resources to mitigate.”

Brian Nesvik, director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, signed the memo on September 14 and sent it to every one of the agency’s field offices. The New York Times obtained a copy. It turns on one word. Until now, “take” has covered killing or injuring a listed animal whether or not anyone meant to. Now it covers only the killings someone intended. Wildlife advocates say that lets a logging company knowingly cut down a forest full of endangered bats, as long as it was after the timber.

Most endangered animals that die at human hands are killed by accident, in the course of somebody’s business, the Times reported. Because those deaths have counted as take, developers seek permission first. A builder who wants to put houses where an endangered salamander lives traditionally applies for an incidental take permit promising to protect a few of them, or pays to conserve some elsewhere, and the government forgives the rest. The memo appears to upend that arrangement. If an accidental death breaks no law, nobody needs the permit.

Andrew Mergen argued endangered species cases for the Justice Department and teaches law at Harvard now. Everyone has understood the act to mean one thing, he told the Times: “Don’t kill endangered species.” The memo drains it of that meaning. People are held responsible all the time for harm they never intended but should have seen coming, Mergen said.

Interior’s press office wouldn’t say why it adopted the new reading, or whether the memo is already in force, and sent an unsigned statement saying the act “continues to prohibit take of endangered wildlife.” Stateline reported on September 21 that the memo’s instructions to staff take effect immediately.

Pendley’s chapter asks Congress to keep the Endangered Species Act from being used to “seize private property, prevent economic development, and interfere with the rights of states.” Interior got there with a rule and a memo. Pendley cheered the result. The new reading, he told Cowboy State Daily, “will shield innocent people from litigation by the country’s largest law firm, the Department of Justice.”

The Border

Kuuchamaa, a 3,885-foot peak that straddles the border near Tecate, is sacred to the Kumeyaay. In their creation story, a shaman became the mountain. It has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1992, and the listing itself states that disturbing its natural state would be sacrilegious. Contractors have been blasting it anyway, and the explosions send rock tumbling down its Mexican side.

From a park in Tecate, Baja California, about half a mile away, Norma Meza Calles can hear the crews breaking boulders. Kumeyaay from both sides of the border have climbed the mountain for generations to sit on those boulders, Meza Calles, a Kumeyaay leader who works as a guide, told KPBS. “They’re destroying it,” she said in Spanish. “No one ever consented or supported the use of dynamite on the mountain,” Emily Burgueno, a Kumeyaay Nation member in California, told the Associated Press. The Department of Homeland Security waived cultural and environmental laws to speed the work.

Project 2025’s Homeland Security chapter directs the Pentagon to “assist in aggressively building the border wall system on America’s southern border.” Congress has since put more than $46 billion behind construction. The waiver power Homeland Security is using comes from a 1996 immigration law that Congress broadened in 2005, long before Project 2025 existed.

In Southern Arizona, the wall has reached O’odham country, which straddles the border. In April, a Homeland Security contractor damaged the Las Playas Intaglio, a 1,000-year-old fish-shaped geoglyph in the Cabeza Prieta National Wildlife Refuge that pointed toward the Gulf of California. The Tohono O’odham Nation sued Homeland Security in June to stop a 30-foot wall in three places along the stretch of border that crosses its reservation. Tribal leaders posted No Trespassing signs on August 7. U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon denied the Nation’s request to halt construction a week later. On August 25, according to the Nation, contractors entered the reservation with about 20 masked, armed Border Patrol agents. Homeland Security says the work sits inside the Roosevelt Reservation, a 60-foot federal strip along the border. The Nation appealed on August 26.

About 30 miles west of the reservation, a second fence is planned 150 feet from the existing wall through Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. Crews have already cleared ground a few miles east of Quitobaquito Springs, a desert oasis where O’odham families have held ceremonies for generations and where the endangered Quitobaquito pupfish and the Sonoyta mud turtle live. Lorraine Marquez Eiler, a Hia-Ced O’odham elder whose great-great-grandparents walked about 50 miles through the Sonoran Desert to the springs, called the wall “another slap in the face” to her ancestors. “This is not ours to own. It is ours to protect,” Verlon Jose, chairman of the Tohono O’odham Nation, said at the springs.

Nobody Home

The National Historic Preservation Act requires federal agencies to weigh what a project will do to historic places, and to consult tribes, before they build. Pendley’s chapter asked Interior to revive a first-term order “clarifying” those reviews. Hiring rules under the Trump administration cap the agencies at one new employee for every four who leave, so most vacancies stay open.

Landscape Architecture Magazine combed Office of Personnel Management data and counted about 6,700 Park Service departures, close to three in 10 of the people who worked there in 2024.

The White House wanted deeper cuts. Its 2026 budget asked Congress to take nearly $4 billion from the land agencies. Appropriators balked and held Park Service funding roughly level, but a budget line can’t rehire a ranger who took the buyout. This year’s request targets the Historic Preservation Fund, which pays for state and tribal historic preservation offices. It would cut the fund by 95 percent.

What Hasn’t Happened Yet

Pendley’s complaint about Trump’s first term was that the cuts to protected lands stopped at the Utah line. The new list doesn’t. In April 2025, a senior Interior official told E&E News the department was weighing cuts to at least six monuments: Bears Ears, Grand Staircase-Escalante, Ironwood Forest, Chuckwalla, Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks, and Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni-Ancestral Footprints of the Grand Canyon. Burgum said the monuments were under review but “not a top priority of the administration.” Two are done. Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni covers 917,618 acres around Grand Canyon National Park, takes in Red Butte and land the 13 tribes of the Grand Canyon Tribal Coalition fought to protect, and keeps new uranium mining out. It is still on the list.

The horses never needed a vote. The ban on killing them rides in the spending bill nearly every year, and the White House left it out of its 2027 budget request, as it did the year before. Congress put it back last time.

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The Far-Right Campaign to Destroy Our National Monuments

The attack on Bears Ears was just the first successful salvo of a robust offensive backed by dark money and powerful allies in Washington.

Jimmy Tobias NATION MAG

Bears Ears dark money

A billboard outside Blanding, Utah, stating opposition to the Bears Ears Monument designation. ODD SPARSE RW AND BLUE HASHTAG FLAG

(Reuters / Andrew Cullen)

On December 4, Donald Trump swaggered onto a stage in Utah’s sprawling granite capitol building and declared before an adoring crowd of local politicians and conservative activists that he would radically shrink two national monuments in the state’s wild and arid southeastern region.

“I don’t think it is controversial, actually,” he told his audience, without irony. “I think it is so sensible.”

The audience laughed and clapped and cheered. Then the president sat down and signed an order that dismembered both the 1.3 million-acre Bears Ears National Monument and the 1.8 million-acre Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument. Designated for protection by President Obama and President Clinton respectively, the two monuments were meant to preserve red-rock landscapes rich in intricate topography, ancient artifacts, and Native American sacred sites. They were meant to protect forever federal land owned by all Americans. But with a stroke of his pen Trump eradicated those protections, shrinking the monuments by a collective 2 million acres and raising the prospect that the terrain they occupied may someday be open to uranium mining, coal extraction, or oil and gas drilling.

As the ink on his presidential order dried, Trump mingled onstage with prominent county commissioners, Utah’s congressional delegation, and the governor. The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” blared over loud speakers in the background.

The Salt Lake Tribune, in a blistering editorial later that week, called the gleeful event “downright sickening.” It was, according to the Tribune, a “disgraceful display of hubris” that showed Utah “at its very worst.”

But the conservative operatives and politicians onstage were apparently too pleased to care about optics—and not without reason. Trump’s attack on the two national monuments, after all, wasn’t just a lucky break, a gift that fell from the sky. Rather, it was the result of a savvy, multiyear campaign by a network of far-right organizations with powerful friends in Washington and financial backing from dark-money funds tied to the billionaire Koch brothers and their political kin.

Led by organizations like Utah’s Sutherland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), the Heritage Foundation, and an array of allies, this network has labored assiduously over the last few years to undermine the legitimacy of federal lands across the American West. It has done this, in part, by working to erode public support for key conservation laws and institutions, including the Antiquities Act of 1906. And it has had great success.

Trump’s trip to Utah, his decision to destroy the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase–Escalante monuments, is a consequence of that deeper, long-game campaign to chip away at America’s conservation system.

The Antiquities Act is one of this country’s oldest conservation statutes. It empowers the executive branch to unilaterally protect “objects of historic or scientific interest” on public land by declaring them national monuments. Theodore Roosevelt signed it into law in 1906, and since then every president save Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush have used it to designate national monuments on federal lands across the country. The act was instrumental in establishing the progressive conservation paradigm that later gave birth to public-interest laws like the Wilderness Act, the Endangered Species Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act. And in this era of intractable partisan polarization, the act has been one of the few reliable tools presidents can use to preserve portions of this nation’s vast public estate.

This is precisely what President Obama did when he established the Bears Ears National Monument on December 28, 2016, after months of deliberation and a campaign by a coalition of Native American nations. The monument preserved public access and prohibited most commercial activity on more than 1.3 million acres of Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service land in southeastern Utah.

“The protection of the Bears Ears cultural landscape is powerful medicine for healing—of the land, of plants and animals, and for all people,” wrote a coalition of tribal governments, including the Hopi, Navajo, Ute, and Zuni Nations, at the time of the designation. “The Bears Ears National Monument will also ensure continued access to tribal ceremonies, firewood and herb collection, hunting, grazing and outdoor recreation.”

But even as the tribes were celebrating their historic achievement, conservative groups in Utah and Washington were gearing up to roll back the designation, tapping into a long tradition of trying to rip monument protections from the public domain. From the beginning, the Antiquities Act—and the monuments it protects—has had powerful enemies: When Teddy Roosevelt used the law in 1908 to protect more than 800,000 acres of the Grand Canyon, mining, cattle, and other commercial interests were enraged; the prospector turned US Senator Ralph Cameron fought the federal government for control over portions of the canyon for years, ultimately losing the battle when the Supreme Court ruled against him in 1920.

Trump's decision to destroy the Bears Ears and Grand Escalante monuments is a consequence of a deep, long-game campaign to chip away at America's conservation system.

In the century since, the struggle between commercial interests and conservationists has never really ceased. Our country’s 640 million acres of federal land are a titanic repository of natural wealth and scenic splendor—a grand, albeit imperfect, social-democratic experiment. Laws like the Antiquities Act constrain the ability of powerful interests to do as they please on these lands. By banning or limiting activities like mining, drilling, and grazing in order to promote conservation values, they enshrine the notion that the public interest takes precedence over private and even local concerns.

As a result, both the public lands and the conservation laws that protect them are constantly under attack. From the Sagebrush Rebellion in the 1970s and ’80s to the militant occupation of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge early last year to the many local lawmakers and activists today who seek to transfer federal lands to state and local control, the dedicated foes of the federal domain have always been with us. The attack on the Antiquities Act is just the latest iteration of this anti–public land legacy. This iteration, though, has had astonishing success—and powerful supporters.

The state of Utah, with its world-renowned canyons, is the ground zero of the anti–public land movement today. Since at least 2012, right-wing politicians and activists there have been leaders of the so-called land-transfer movement, an effort across the West to force the federal government to relinquish ownership over the public lands to state and local governments. And the state has also been the site of vigorous and ongoing anti-monument activity. So it’s not altogether surprising that it was in Utah that a well-connected far-right think tank called the Sutherland Institute largely led the charge against both the Bears Ears National Monument and the Antiquities Act itself.

From its headquarters in Salt Lake City, Sutherland launched a flagship website called rescindbearsears.org, filling it with a constant squall of anti-monument content. It produced an array of video clips that cultivated and amplified the voices of local residents opposed to the monument, including the local county commission and members of the Aneth Chapter of the Navajo Nation. It maintained a constant social-media presence, organized a petition drive, and sent staffers to Capitol Hill to rally against the proposed monument. Its operatives flooded news outlets with op-eds, publishing regularly in The Hill, The Salt Lake Tribune, and Deseret News, among other places.

“What would you think if you found out that one individual could take away your home, ruin your livelihood and destroy your culture—all in the name of securing his legacy and furthering his political agenda?” wrote Matthew Anderson, director of the Sutherland Institute’s Coalition for Self-Government in the West, of the Antiquities Act in a November 2016 Daily Caller op-ed. “Such a proposition seems impossible in the land of the free and the home of the brave. But an antiquated law makes this a reality for countless Americans every day.”

The Institute also worked in the Utah State Legislature. According to e-mails obtained by the Western Values Project, Sutherland’s Matthew Anderson actually wrote the draft language of a controversial resolution the Utah Legislature passed in February 2017 that called on President Trump to rescind the Bears Ears National Monument designation.

The Sutherland Institute’s campaign was a multifaceted and far-reaching attempt to shape the public narrative about Bears Ears, and the group had the influence to pull it off. The Institute’s president, Boyd Matheson is the former chief of staff to Utah’s junior US senator, Mike Lee, and an oft-mentioned prospect for high office himself. (In October, he met with Steve Bannon and Citizens United President David Bossie to discuss a potential challenge to Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, but ultimately decided to pass on the chance.)

According to tax filings, the Institute has also received at least $1.3 million between 2010 and 2015 from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, two dark-money funds that have taken millions of dollars from the billionaire fossil-fuel tycoons Charles and David Koch and their network of corporate magnates and conservative donors. Mother Jones has described the two entities as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement”—multimillion-dollar donor-advised funds that strive to conceal the identity of their benefactors.

The Sutherland Institute is also a member of the State Policy Network, or SPN, an association of state-based think tanks and advocacy groups that the Center for Media and Democracy describes as “the tip of the spear” of a “nationally funded policy agenda in the states that undergirds extremists in the Republican Party.” SPN and its member groups have together received large cash contributions over the years from corporate interests and conservative billionaires, including the Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund, the Bradley Foundation, and the Scaife Foundations.

Sutherland did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but, in a written statement last May, a spokesperson told me that the group “has not received any out-of-state funds for research or communications related to the Bears Ears issue.” According to tax filings, however, many of the donations the group typically receives from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund are earmarked for “general operations.”

By spring, it was clear that Sutherland’s message, and that of its allies, had been well received in Washington, DC. Their efforts were shepherded along by Utah’s congressional delegation, including Senator Orrin Hatch, who once described Obama’s Bears Ears designation as a “massive land grab,” and Representative Mike Lee, who has taken a pro-environment stance on just 9 percent of his congressional votes, according to the League of Conservation Voters. Representative Rob Bishop, the powerful chair of the House Natural Resources Committee and a longtime opponent of environmental laws and regulations, also played a crucial role in stoking animosity toward the Antiquities Act and Bears Ears in particular.

On April 26, Trump held a press conference at the Interior Department headquarters in Washington, DC, where he announced that his administration planned to “review” and possibly resize or rescind dozens of national monuments across the West, including Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante. During the conference, Trump singled out Utah’s senior senator, Orrin Hatch, for praise.

“Believe me, he’s tough,” said Trump of Hatch, who is perhaps Utah’s most powerful political figure, a man that has taken more than $870,000 in career campaign contributions from the fossil-fuel industries. “He would call me and call me and say, ‘You got to do this.’” And Trump did it.

Upon news of the White House’s national-monument review, staffers at the Sutherland Institute rejoiced. From a chic office building, the Institute’s Matthew Anderson celebrated the announcement in a video broadcast over the group’s website and social-media accounts.

“As the dust settles from President Trump’s executive order calling for review of national monuments, Western rural communities wake up to a brighter and more hopeful future,” he said. In May, when Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke traveled to the Bears Ears National Monument as part of his review, photos of the event showed Anderson by his side.

As the Sutherland Institute continued its anti-monument campaign over the summer and fall of 2017, it had a notable assortment of allies at the local, regional, and national level.

In Utah, a group called Strata Policy stands out. A research institution that takes a “liberty-minded” approach to the issues of “the environment, energy, and public lands,” the group has published a number of anti-monument op-eds and submitted a lengthy public comment to the Interior Department opposing Bears Ears. In November, it unveiled a slick, professionally produced 14-minute documentary that features local opponents of the monument and frames the Bears Ears designation as a tyrannical imposition.

As with Sutherland, Strata has close ties to what is often described as the Koch network. The group has received more than $500,000 in recent years from Donors Trust. It also received a $310,000 grant from the Charles Koch Foundation in 2015 for general operating support, and a $1.1 million grant in 2014. Strata’s co-founder and president, Randy Simmons, is a professor at Utah State University (USU), where he served as the Charles G. Koch Professor of Political Economy from 2008 to 2012, according to LinkedIn. Simmons also runs USU’s Koch-funded Institute of Political Economy. (After a number of requests for comment, Strata informed The Nation that its president was away on holiday.)

The Property and Environment Research Center (PERC), in Bozeman, Montana, which describes itself as “the home of free market environmentalism,” has also been a stalwart voice against the Antiquities Act. Its many fellows have churned out a regular stream of anti-monument op-eds this year. In late September, a PERC adjunct fellow and Pacific Legal Foundation lawyer named Jonathan Wood published an opinion piece in The Washington Post arguing that Trump has a legal right to shrink Bears Ears and other monuments like it. And in May the House Committee on Natural Resources, which is chaired by the powerful Utah Republican Representative Rob Bishop, posted on its website an op-ed published in Montana newspapers in which PERC staffer Shawn Regan calls for the “modernization” (i.e., dismantling) of the Antiquities Act.

PERC, meanwhile, received more than $130,000 from Donors Trust between 2010 and 2015 alone. It also gets support from the Charles Koch Foundation, which gave it a $150,000 grant for general operating support in 2015. PERC’s executive director, Reed Watson, worked as an associate at the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation between 2008 and 2009. One of the members of its board of directors, Kimberly Dennis, is also chairman of the board of Donors Trust and vice chairman of the board of Donors Capital Fund. And PERC counts among its many fellows Randy Simmons, the director of Strata Policy in Utah.

This close-knit network of anti-monument activists, however, is not confined to the western side of the 100th meridian. Powerful people with close Koch ties have also been agitating passionately against the Antiquities Act in Washington, DC.

The Nation

This Is How the Trump Administration Gives Big Oil the Keys to Public Lands

Adam Federman

The American Legislative Exchange Council, a network of state elected officials and private sector operatives that receives consistent funding from Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, has long had its gun sight set on the Antiquities Act. In 2000, the group approved a model bill that legislators could use to denounce potential national monuments within their state’s borders. ALEC reapproved that bill in 2013. The model bill has a similar objective, if different language, as a resolution passed by the Utah legislature in 2016 that urged President Obama not to designate the Bears Ears National Monument and called on Congress to prevent future presidents from independently designating national monuments in the state. Meanwhile, the floor sponsor of the legislature’s February 2017 anti–Bear’s Ears resolution—the one that the Sutherland Institute helped draft—was a state senator named Wayne Niederhauser. Niederhauser is the second vice chair on ALEC’s board of directors. ALEC, meanwhile, received $500,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation in the years 2014 and 2015 alone.

The Heritage Foundation—that 100-pound gorilla of far-right policy-making—is also out to destroy the Antiquities Act. With its bank accounts flush with funding from a wide variety of corporate entities and wealthy individuals, it has enormous sway in Washington, DC. At least three of its former employees currently work at the highest levels of the Interior Department. According to her LinkedIn page, Elinor Renner, a special assistant to the Interior secretary, worked in a variety of roles at the Heritage Foundation from December 2012 until July 2017, when she took a job in the federal government. Lori Mashburn, who began serving as Interior’s White House liaison in May, has worked on and off for Heritage since 2011.

The foundation’s influence is indisputable. And it has used that influence to rail against Bears Ears as well as other national monuments. In 2015, for instance, it published a report called “The Antiquated Act,” in which it called on Congress to repeal the executive branch’s ability to independently designate national monuments. And in October of this year, it partnered with the Sutherland Institute to hold a summit in Washington called “National Monuments and The Communities They Impact.” The event featured speeches by Representative Rob Bishop of Utah, Senator Mike Lee of Utah, Hannah Downey of PERC, and the Sutherland Institute’s Boyd Matheson and Matthew Anderson, who also formerly worked in Congressman Bishop’s office. The gathering’s central message was simple: Obama and others have abused the Antiquities Act’s intent and so it must be abolished in its current form.

When The Nation reached out to Heritage to inquire about its involvement in the campaign to shrink Bears Ears, as well as its connection to groups like the Sutherland Institute and ALEC, a Heritage spokesperson responded with a statement saying that the organization’s “experts have long-argued that antiquities designations strip economic opportunities away from local communities, with often little-to-no input from them. For far too long these designations have exceeded their statutory limitations and President Trump is right to shrink this abuse of power.”

Other Koch-backed groups that have militated against national monuments in recent months include Americans for Prosperity, the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Many of these organizations, from the Sutherland Institute and ALEC to Heritage and Cato, are also major proponents of transferring federal land to state and local government, thereby depriving millions of Americans of their stake in the public domain.

In June, almost every single one of the groups named above came together to send a letter to President Trump. They called on the White House to “reduce or rescind egregious national monuments where local support exists to do so.” The letter’s signatories included the Sutherland Institute, Strata Policy, ALEC, Heritage Action for America, Americans for Prosperity, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, numerous members of the State Policy Network, and the American Energy Alliance.

On August 24, 2017, after many months of lobbying and agitation, these groups finally got their way: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke completed his national monument review and recommended that the president shrink or otherwise alter a slew of national monuments across the country. Just three months later, during that gloating rally in December, Trump made his first move on those recommendations, shrinking Bears Ears by 85 percent and shrinking Grand Escalante by nearly 50 percent. It was the largest cutback of land conservation protections in American history. And the president will likely modify or shrink a half dozen other sites in the months ahead, including the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument in southern Oregon.

After Kirk shooting, right-wing media revive false narrative about attack on Minnesota legislators

Written by Matt Gertz

Published09/17/25

In the wake of the killing of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk, many on the right have claimed that all political violence comes from the left, an argument used to justify a broad crackdown against their political enemies. The June shooting of two Democratic state legislators in Minnesota is the most prominent recent evidence against that argument (though hardly the only such case).

But several right-wing media figures have found a rhetorical solution by suggesting that the alleged Minnesota shooter — who reportedly had a “hit list” of dozens of other Democratic leaders and was, according to his friend and roommate, a supporter of President Donald Trump — is actually a leftist.

In fact, the right-wing media bubble is so impermeable to facts that contradict its narratives that prominent Republican figures, including Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Attorney General Pam Bondi, have pushed the same claims.

The right’s false narrative about the Minnesota shootings

Federal prosecutors allege that Vance Boelter committed “targeted political assassinations” when he shot and killed Minnesota House of Representatives Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband, then shot and wounded Minnesota State Sen. John Hoffman and his wife, in the early morning hours of June 14.

:{:{Boelter, like many alleged perpetrators of political violence, seemed to be suffering from mental illness that muddled the clarity of his views. But his preferences appear to be with the political right — he was reportedly an evangelical Christian who preached against abortion and the LGBTQ community, and according to his roommate and longtime friend, he “supported Trump and tuned in to programming from Alex Jones’s conspiracy-filled Infowars site.”}:

And his targets were universally on the political left: Hortman, and Hoffman’s legislative district, were reportedly named in a “hit list” that law enforcement subsequently recovered from Boelter’s vehicle; the list also included Gov. Tim Walz, dozens of other Democratic lawmakers from Minnesota and elsewhere, and “figures with ties to the abortion rights movement, including Planned Parenthood.”}:

None of these facts should suggest that the political right or the Republican Party as a whole bear responsibility for Boelter’s alleged political violence or that their repression is justified to prevent similar attacks. They are relevant, however, to the question of whether political violence is solely directed from the left toward the right.

But while those facts were trickling out in the days following the attack, MAGA influencers were spinning up a narrative in which Boelter was actually a leftist. Some even suggested that the attacks may have been ordered by Walz, perhaps as retribution for the legislators supporting legislation the governor opposed. This argument rested on two ludicrously thin pieces of evidence. First, Walz had, in 2019, reappointed Boelter to a workforce development advisory board that reportedly “has about 60 members, many of whom are not politically connected or would have meaningful access to the governor or interactions with him.” Second, police found flyers with “No Kings” written on them in Boelter’s vehicle, which they said could have indicated he planned to target anti-Trump protests scheduled to take place later that day.

The right revives the false Minnesota narrative following Kirk’s killing

Many prominent right-wing figures seem to have either never heard any information about Boelter outside of those initial conspiracy theories, or learned of it but decided to hide the facts from their audiences. And now, in the wake of Kirk’s killing by an apparent leftist whose alleged motive was to stop Kirk’s “hate,” the false narrative has been revived by MAGA commentators who are trying to push back against arguments that the Minnesota shootings were a case of political violence from the right.

Fox & Friends co-host Brian Kilmeade, while listing recent cases of politically motivated killings on September 13, described the Minnesota shootings as follows: “And then, June 14, these Minnesota legislators were killed, something to do with what’s going on locally — they didn’t like what Tim Walz was doing, or a former staffer of Tim Walz.” Neither Kilmeade nor Fox’s graphic identified the legislators as Democrats.

Fox host Will Cain claimed on his Tuesday broadcast that “essentially bullets are flying in one direction,” but the left is trying “to make this a both-sides problem of political violence” by falsely attributing cases like the Minnesota shootings to the right.

“What we know about that particular suspect’s motivations remains somewhat unclear, but we do know that he had with him flyers that had No Kings Day protests solicitation on them,” Cain said. “There is also some suggestion he was upset about the way Hortman voted when it came to illegal immigrants and health care. Before we assume it is both sides, let’s get the facts on each instance.”

Video

Citation

From the September 16, 2025, edition of Fox News' The Will Cain Show

Newsmax host Rob Finnerty offered a similar explanation on his show later that night. “They're trying to pretend that what happened to Charlie Kirk has nothing to do with the left, that this happens all the time on both sides, which is not true,” he said, before turning to the Minnesota shootings.

“The problem with that, Melissa Hortman was a Democrat, and while her death was tragic, she was actually killed by another Democrat,” Finnerty claimed. “Not only that, a Democrat who worked directly for Tim Walz, was appointed by Tim Walz, the governor of Minnesota, Kamala's running mate, meaning that in this case, a Democrat literally assassinated another Democrat.”

“Because that's the left,” he continued. “That's what they do as a party, and it's not being covered by the rest of the media. It's being covered up.”

This narrative about the Minnesota shooting is so prevalent in right-wing media — and the GOP’s leaders are so ensconced within the right-wing media bubble — that Republican politicians have promoted it.

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), who is pathologically online, had posted shortly after the June attack that the shooter had been a “Marxist.” He later deleted his posts after being confronted by Sen. Tina Smith (D-MN), who had also been on the alleged “hit list.”

But three months later, their colleague Cruz also linked the Minnesota shooter to the left.

When Cruz called political violence “a left-wing problem” during a CNN interview on Tuesday, host Kaitlan Collins responded by pointing to the Minnesota shooting.

“You need to get your facts right,” Cruz replied. “The assassin there was not a right-wing assassin acting on a political motive. The assassin there was someone who had been an appointee of Tim Walz, and he was a deranged lunatic.”

Likewise, asked about the Minnesota shooting on Monday, Bondi said of the alleged killer, “I believe they said that they were supporters of Gov. Walz."

As I wrote last week, we can’t have a real conversation about political violence if we can’t admit that it has come from both sides. But many on the right just don’t seem capable of doing that, and they’re backfilling whatever explanations they can conjure up to avoid admitting the existence of political violence from the right.

// MMA

### On the killing of Charlie Kirk, political violence, and the right’s response

09/12/25 1:22 PM EDT

### Right-wing disinformation machine spins up a false profile of Minnesota shooting suspect

06/16/25 12:50 PM EDT

### After the killing of a leading Minnesota politician, Laura Loomer pushed baseless claims

06/20/25

---

RWW

07/11/2025

Kyle Mantyla

David Badash @ The New Civil Rights Movement: ‘Racial Profiling’: Border Czar Blasted for Claim ICE Can Detain for ‘Personal Appearance’

President Donald Trump’s hand-picked border czar, Tom Homan, is facing backlash from legal and political experts after asserting that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents do not need “probable cause” to detain individuals—and can do so based on factors like “personal appearance.”

Josephine Walker @ Axios: Governors accuse Trump admin of stalling disaster recovery

Multiple governors say they're being increasingly pushed to scrounge for disaster recovery money without the support they traditionally rely on from the federal government.

Nathan Taylor Pemberton @ The New York Times: Trolling Democracy

If you want to know where Republican politics is heading, look at the memes. Since the start of its second term, the Trump administration and its G.O.P. surrogates have been crashing out online.

Asawin Suebsaeng and Ryan Bort @ Rolling Stone: The DOJ’s Epstein Memo Is Tearing the Trump Administration Apart

Kash Patel and Dan Bongino are not happy with AG Pam Bondi's handling of the investigation into the convicted sex offender.

Media Matters: Steve Bannon calls Jack Posobiec a “sap” for his part in the Trump DOJ's Epstein binder stunt

Posobiec was one of 15 right-wing influencers involved in the Epstein PR blitz in February, and is quoted at the time as saying “more and more pieces of this” would be coming.

Samuel Benson @ Politico: Mike Lee Can’t Stop Throwing Social Media Grenades. His Church Isn’t Happy.

The Utah senator’s online persona has further damaged his already frayed relationship with The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

an 6 25

Benji Backer, author of The Conservative Environmentalist, slammed Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) on social media, accusing him of “secretly trying to sell” America’s public land for development, and called Lee's proposal made a “loser issue.”

A land sale plan introduced by Lee as part of President Donald Trump's “One Big Beautiful Bill" has sparked widespread concerns, The Hill reported Wednesday.

This provision in the current Republican budget proposal could put more than two million acres of public land across 11 western states on the auction block. But it has drawn backlash from environmental groups, hunters, regional leaders, and even some conservatives, the report noted. Even Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) has railed against the idea, promising he would be a "no forever" on selling public land.

This proposal from Lee, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is a longstanding push among many Western conservatives to transfer federally managed land to state or private hands.

IFrame Content

Lee argues the measure would promote domestic energy production, generate new income, and ease housing shortages. States in the crosshairs of this proposal include Utah, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming.

In a video released by his office, the Utah Republican stressed that national parks, monuments, and designated wilderness areas wouldn’t be included in the sales. Instead, the focus would be on “isolated parcels” suitable for development or infrastructure projects.

“Washington has proven time and again it can’t manage this land. This bill puts it in better hands,” Lee said last Thursday, in comments highlighted by The Hill.

Despite his defense of the plan, Lee has faced opposition even within his party. The report noted that Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Mont.) led an effort to strip the land sales clause from the House version of the bill. Calling himself a “hard no” on the issue, Zinke succeeded in having Montana excluded from the scope of the legislation, per the report.

---

LAST WORD JON ST RIp HIM TWT 100X/ DAY? took down but no apology, perp walk

Ex-Montana senator delivers profanity-laden 'wake up' call to Sen. Mike Lee

---

an 6 25

After a longtime Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband were assassinated over the weekend — and another legislator and his wife were hospitalized after being attacked by the same shooter — Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) joked about it on social media. And one of his Senate colleagues from Minnesota took notice and recently confronted him.

57 year-old Vance Boelter is the primary suspect in the killings of former Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark on Saturday. Boelter is also allegedly responsible for the shooting of Democratic-Farmer-Labor (or DFL, which is the Minnesota equivalent of the Democratic Party) state senator John Hoffman and his wife on the same day, who both remain in critical condition. Investigators say he had a list of other DFL elected officials, including Sen. Tina Smith (DFL-Minn.) and former Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz. Boelter is accused of dressing as a police officer, in which he donned body armor and a "hyper-realistic mask" before allegedly carrying out the attacks.

In two tweets from his official X account, Lee wrote "this is what happens when Marxists don't get their way" and "nightmare on Waltz street." As of Monday evening, the tweets have not been taken down."

On Monday, Multiple Capitol Hill reporters noticed that Smith pulled Lee out of a Senate Republican meeting to confront him over the posts. She told reporters "let me just gather myself" before eventually giving the details of the confrontation.

IFrame Content

"I told him that I thought it was brutal and cruel. He should think about the implications of what he's saying and doing. It just further fuels this hatred and misinformation," she told CNN reporter Maju Raju.

"I wanted him to hear from me directly how painful that was and how brutal that was to see that on what was just a horribly brutal weekend," she continued. Smith went on to say that the Utah Republican "didn't say a lot," and that "frankly, I think he was a bit stunned."

"He certainly didn't promise to take it down or say anything publicly about it," she added. "He seemed kind of surprised to be confronted."

===

---

sleazeball conspir projection rubber

update tim miller bulwark mike lee, dsouza....

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....}:

---

ggl 6 25

: Mike Lee Is A Real Piece Of Sh*t - by Evan Hurst}:

_Wonkette_

https://www.wonkette.com › mike-lee-is-a-real-piece-of...](https://www.wonkette.com/p/mike-lee-is-a-real-piece-of-sht)

38 minutes ago — Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, Mike Cernovich, they've all lied about Boelter. ... D'Souza tweet with the picture of the “No Kings” fliers ...

Well, folks, they caught the motherfucker. We don’t know exactly what took so long to find the Christian nationalist anti-abortion activist Trump supporter who impersonated a cop and assassinated Democrats in Minneapolis on Friday night, with plans to target many more, but they caught him. Maybe they were just looking the wrong places? We would have checked Republican politicians’ houses first, but that’s just us.

Anyway, they found him in a field.

Again, who this guy Vance Boelter is, it’s not shrouded in mystery, and it’s been out in the open from the beginning. He’s one of them. He’s just a typical Republican voter who decided to assassinate some Democrats. You’d think MAGA would be proud of what it’s wrought. And some of them are, to be sure.

But then there are piece of dogshit Republican senators like Mike Lee who have been lying since the beginning.

caption...

Why so ashamed, bud?

You’d think considering Mike Lee’s extremist record,he might already be lobbying Donald Trump for any extra pardons he’s got lying around for Boelter.

Vance Boelter is a registered Republican.He’s an anti-gay, anti-abortion pig. He’s a conservative Christian preacher. Basically all the red flag characteristics that say “Here’s a guy you shouldn’t leave your kids alone with,” but that MAGA Americans find godly and manly. Again, why is Mike Lee so ashamed? He has a lot in common with this guy! Surprised they aren’t taking up a collection for this guy’s legal defense in Mike Lee’s church. He just reminds us so much of Mike Lee (or any other white Republican loser, they really do all look alike).

As Tim Miller from The Bulwark notes,a bunch of Republicans and MAGA conservatives have taken this tack, instead of embracing this guy who is just like them in so many important ways. Elon Musk, Charlie Kirk, Mike Cernovich, they’ve all lied about Boelter. Previously (?) Kremlin-funded weirdo Benny Johnson claimed Boelter was a “left-wing Tim Walz appointee.” Today Benny is rambling about how the murders are a “leftist false flag.” Also something about “I’m sorry, but these are the same agencies that brought you the Whitmer Fednapping, that brought you January 6, that brought you the Epstein cases, that brought you Ghislaine Maxwell. These are the same people. These are the same people.”

Uhhhh okeydoke. We guess Kash Patel and Pam Bondi are now card-carrying members of the Deep State voices in Benny Johnson’s head community.

Musk tweeted that “the far left is murderously violent.” Laura Loomer said that “Walz’s goons are now assassinating lawmakers who support legislation Walz opposes.” (There’s a whole conspiracy theory they made up surrounding this that involves healthcare legislation in Minnesota, it’s too stupid to type, but you can read it if you want.)

:{How Did Evil Russians Manage To Fool Dave Rubin, Tim Pool, AND Benny Johnson? Wow!

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/9485412-evan-hurst)

September 5, 2024

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/how-did-evil-russians-manage-to-fool)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/how-did-evil-russians-manage-to-fool)

Mike Lee also had another tweet about it that said “Nightmare on Walz Street.” Ohio Republican Senator Bernie Moreno — another Republican dude with a lot in common with Vance Boelter — tweeted this, a retweet of another right-wing liar connecting “No Kings” fliers found in Boelter’s car with Randi Weingarten and teachers unions somehow.

He hasn’t removed it. None of the posts and tweets we’re referencing in this post have been removed.

[

Sherrod Brown's Gross Republican Opponent Pretty Sure Women Over 50 Too Old To Vote On Abortion

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/9485412-evan-hurst)

September 24, 2024

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/sherrod-browns-gross-republican-opponent)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/sherrod-browns-gross-republican-opponent)

A mouthy extremist Republican state senator in Tennessee named Brent Taylor, who represents a tiny slice of Memphis, a city that otherwise cannot stand him, posted a Dinesh D’Souza tweet with the picture of the “No Kings” fliers, because that’s how debased and pathetic he is. He then proceeded to babble like a dementia patient for 9,000 paragraphs about leftist violence:

The Left's violence masquerading as free speech is a stain on our republic, and it’s escalating at a terrifying pace. From assassination attempts on President Trump—twice in two months—to torching cars at Tesla dealerships during Tesla Takedowns. Members of “Progressive” groups like this have now turned to a call to arms.

Los Angeles burns under their orchestrated chaos, with anti-ICE riots seeing Molotov cocktails, looted businesses, and attacks on federal agents, all while Governor Newsom and Mayor Bass fumble, blaming others for their failures. […]

This is the Left’s legacy: burning cities, targeting conservatives, and excusing violence as “resistance.” Their hypocrisy is glaring—silent on their own extremists while attempting to demonize the Right. It’s time to call this what it is: a dangerous, unhinged movement that threatens our way of life.

Ahem OK sure, pal. Below that are comments from Memphis voters telling him to go drink piss in hell, which is something Memphis voters say to Brent Taylor a lot. (He’s a big buddy of Todd Starnes, which should tell longtime Wonkette readers what kind of guy we’re making fun of here.)

[

Todd Starnes Writes Love Letter To Donald Trump's Penis

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/14358125-evan-hurst)

July 27, 2015

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/todd-starnes-writes-love-letter-to-donald-trumps-penis)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/todd-starnes-writes-love-letter-to-donald-trumps-penis)

Again, there was never any mystery who this murderous piece of shit is. The story, from the beginning, was Typical, Unremarkable Trump Voter Assassinates Democrats. He’s an anti-abortion Christian extremist, which is no surprise, because that’s a really common thing to find in a terrorist profile. There were anti-abortion extremists all over the place among the domestic extremists who attacked the Capitol on January 6. Far-right extremists are the greatest domestic terrorist threat to the United States, and have been for a long time, no matter how much the Trump Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security try to cover that up so they can blood libel people who aren’t white.

This is their dude, y’all.

Why they lyin’?

It couldn’t be shame causing them to do this, because white conservative Christian men and the people who serve them don’t have the capacity for that.

We guess they just find it extremely politically inconvenient right now, since everybody hates Trump and his agenda and his incompetent Cabinet, and Trump’s North Korean birthday parade was more poorly attended than a common wiener dog race at the county fair.

Not a great time to remind America just how much they hateall religious conservative Republican extremists, we reckon!

Everybody Hates Trump, And His Little Nazi Loser Friends Too}:

[Evan Hurst](https://substack.com/profile/9485412-evan-hurst)

Jun 12

[Read full story](https://www.wonkette.com/p/everybody-hates-trump-and-his-little)](https://www.wonkette.com/p/everybody-hates-trump-and-his-little)

Also Republican politicians are simply bad people who are going to hell when they die, and that’s why they’re doing this.

We probably needn’t try to psychoanalyze it any further.

Evan has a side project called The Moral High Ground, you should check it out and subscribe there too!

Follow Evan Hurst on BlueSky!

Are you guys on Instagram? Let’s get that going.

Follow Evan on Facebook.

Here, a LinkTree!

For clarification…

Facebook · Liz Cheney/Adam Kinzinger Against Trump

17 hours ago](https://www.facebook.com/groups/1077620615994293/posts/for-clarification/2271478359941840/)

... Mike Cernovich and Collin Rugg for spreading baseless claims. The facts simply don't support their narrative. Yesterday, some mainstream ...

[### How X baselessly implicated Gov. Walz in a political killing

PolitiFact

https://www.politifact.com › article › jun › conservative...](https://www.politifact.com/article/2025/jun/15/conservatives-link-Tim-Walz-MN-lawmaker-shooting/)

2 days ago — Boelter was named a suspect in the June 14 killing of state Rep. Melissa Hortman, a former Democratic speaker, and her husband Mark, and the ...

[### Utah Sen. Mike Lee is calling for an investigation into a ...

Facebook · KSL NewsRadio

60+ reactions · 2 days ago](https://www.facebook.com/KSLNewsradio/posts/utah-sen-mike-lee-is-calling-for-an-investigation-into-a-former-fbi-director-aft/1139552201541939/)

Utah Sen. Mike Lee is calling for an investigation into a former FBI director after a social media post that Lee claimed had a "cryptic message" ...

Missing: Boelter ‎musk ‎souza ‎cernovich

[### Who Elon Musk likes to talk to on Twitter — including Catturd

New York Post

https://nypost.com › 2022/11/26 › who-elon-musk-like...](https://nypost.com/2022/11/26/who-elon-musk-likes-to-talk-to-on-twitter-including-catturd/)

Nov 26, 2022 — Mike Cernovich, a right wing influencer and cancel culture pioneer who has engaged with Musk frequently on Twitter this year, said he believed ...

[### 'Debt slavery': Mike Lee, Elon Musk ally against 'big ...

The Salt Lake Tribune

https://www.sltrib.com › news › politics › 2025/06/05](https://www.sltrib.com/news/politics/2025/06/05/debt-slavery-mike-lee-elon-musk/)

Jun 5, 2025 — Sen. Mike Lee joined Elon Musk in criticizing the proposed spending in President Trump's "big beautiful bill." Musk called it 'debt slavery ...

Missing: Boelter ‎souza ‎cernovich

[### Sen. Mike Lee on Musk, Trump fallout: 'But ... I really like ...

Deseret News

https://www.deseret.com › politics › 2025/06/05 › trum...](https://www.deseret.com/politics/2025/06/05/trump-confirms-musk-relationship-deteriorated-over-spending-bill/)

Jun 5, 2025 — Mike Lee broke his silence on the feud between President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on Thursday, making clear the Utah senator is not ready to ...

Missing: Boelter ‎souza ‎cernovich

[### What's with the online bromance between Elon Musk and ...

E&E News by POLITICO

https://www.eenews.net › Articles](https://www.eenews.net/articles/whats-with-the-online-bromance-between-elon-musk-and-mike-lee/)

Dec 6, 2024 — Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Elon Musk are having something of a bromance on social media, but their budding relationship is unlikely to warm the ...

Missing: Boelter ‎souza ‎cernovich

[### 'That Is An Invented Fiction': Mike Lee Says Elon Musk, DOGE ...

YouTube · Forbes Breaking News

223.9K+ views · 4 months ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNJ5UWNhqd8)

5:10

'That Is An Invented Fiction': Mike Lee Says Elon Musk, DOGE Are Not 'Messing With' Social Security. 223K views · 4 months ago ...more ...

Missing: souza ‎cernovich

[### parickards.bsky.social - Audrey

Bluesky

https://bsky.app › profile › parickards.bsky.social](https://bsky.app/profile/parickards.bsky.social)

There's no bottom for Trump, Musk, Cernovich, or any MAGA influencer referenced below. They'll lie for profit daily, without concern for the pain they cause or ...

---

OOPS ITS CRAPO

2 25 an ah

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which significantly lowered the corporate tax rate in the United States, is due to expire at the end of 2025. President Donald Trump and his GOP allies in Congress favor extending those cuts, but many Democrats are opposed.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, Democrats critics say, was a major gift to millionaires and billionaires but did little or nothing to help the middle class. Moreover, they argue, the 2017 cuts increased the United States' federal deficit.

But Democrats may be unable to stop an extension from passing. Republicans have small majorities in both branches of Congress, and according to NBC News' Sahil Kapur, GOP lawmakers may be able to get around the rules of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Kapur, in an article published on February 28, explains, "Extending the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which Trump signed into law in 2017, would cost $4.6 trillion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the official nonpartisan scorekeeper. That's under the 'current law' metric that has traditionally been used, as the tax cuts are slated to expire at the end of this year. But Senate Republicans want to use a different scoring method called the 'current policy' baseline, which would assume that extending tax cuts costs $0 because they're already law."

Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Kapur notes, is among the GOP lawmakers who favors the "currency policy approach," which, Crapo said, "recognizes that extending current law does not change the tax policy, does not reduce tax revenue."

Another supporter of the "currency policy" approach is Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), who told NBC News, "We should be using 'current policy.' We need to avoid a massive, automatic tax increase. That seems like a perfectly rational thing to do, and there shouldn't be a score."

Kapur reports, "Congressional GOP aides say the idea could have a huge impact on what they're able to pass in the budget bill. If they use the current accounting process, they have no chance of making the 2017 tax cuts permanent, because that would require paying for it. And this process would also be key to unlocking Trump's other tax proposals, like slashing taxes on tips and overtime pay. It's a tacit admission that Republican leaders have no expectation of paying for the cost of their tax agenda."

READ MORE:['Going to own it': GOP strategist says this issue may be Trump’s 'canary in the coal mine']

*Read the full NBC News articles at this link.

---==

===

an 1 25

U.S. Senate Democrats raised concerns Wednesday that Republicans have scheduled a hearing for one of President-elect Donald Trump’s nominees before he completed the necessary paperwork and an FBI background check.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer and Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Martin Heinrich separately criticized the decision, saying it sets a troubling precedent.

“Yesterday, the Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources noticed a hearing for Governor Doug Burgum to serve as the next secretary of the Interior, without minority consent, as has long been standard practice,” Schumer said during a floor speech. “Senate Democrats on the committee expressed reasonable objections to proceeding to this hearing, because the committee has not yet received basic information on Governor Burgum’s background.”

Heinrich, a New Mexico Democrat, released a written statement that he was extremely disappointed Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee, chairman of the committee, scheduled the hearing for Burgum, the former governor of North Dakota.

“The Senate has a constitutional duty to advise and, if it determines, consent to the President’s nominees. This requires careful consideration of each nominee,” Heinrich wrote. “To achieve this, for decades, nominees that have come before the ENR Committee have submitted responses to a standard questionnaire and a completed financial disclosure form, approval from the Department’s ethics office, and completion of an FBI background check. Until these steps have been completed, I will not consent to notice of nomination hearings.

“Every nominee, every party, every administration should be subject to the same standards. I would urge Chairman Lee to reconsider his decision.”

A committee spokesperson said Heinrich has not yet received confirmation the FBI completed Burgum’s background check.

Heinrich also hasn’t received Burgum’s financial disclosure report, called Form 278e, or paperwork from the Office of Government Ethics saying their personnel have reviewed his financial disclosures and ethics agreements, and they believe he is in compliance with ethics laws, as required by the Ethics in Government Act, according to the spokesperson.

Lee in his own statement wrote that it was “disappointing to see Ranking Member Heinrich seeking to delay issuance of a hearing notice instead of focusing on delivering what voters demanded in November’s election: restoring American energy dominance after years of high energy prices and policy failures.”

“Governor Burgum submitted his paperwork to the Office of Government Ethics last week, and the committee has the same amount of paperwork that Energy and Natural Resources Committee Democrats had in 2009 when they noticed confirmation hearings,” Lee wrote. “I, as chairman, have made every effort to work with our Democratic colleagues, but we won’t give in to delays that undermine the American people’s mandate. It’s time to move forward and focus on solutions that will unleash America’s full energy potential, and I hope Democrats will work with us to deliver results for the American people.”

Burgum hearing anticipated next week

Burgum’s hearing is scheduled for Tuesday at 10 a.m., making it one of the first hearings for any of Trump’s nominees. Trump announced in November that he wanted Burgum, who ended his second term as North Dakota’s governor in December, to lead the Interior Department.

Burgum, 68, graduated from North Dakota State University in 1978 before going on to attend Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where he received a master’s of business administration in 1980.

He worked at Great Plains Software, becoming CEO before Microsoft bought the company in 2001. Burgum then worked as senior vice president for that company until 2007. A year later, he co-founded venture capital firm Arthur Ventures.

Yahoo Finance estimated in 2002 that Burgum’s net worth was approximately $1.1 billion.

Burgum was first elected as governor of North Dakota in 2016 with 76.5% of the vote and then reelected in 2020 with 65.8%.

Other confirmation hearings scheduled for Tuesday include a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing for former U.S. Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia, whom Trump plans to nominate for VA secretary, and an Armed Services Committee hearing for Pete Hegseth, whom Trump wants to lead the Department of Defense.

The confirmation process is expected to continue Wednesday with hearings for Trump’s pick for Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem of South Dakota, in the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee; his selection for secretary of State, Marco Rubio of Florida, in the Foreign Relations Committee; and the pick for Office of Management and Budget director, Russ Vought, in the Homeland Security committee.

Others are likely to be scheduled in the days and weeks ahead, but the Senate cannot take floor votes on the nominees until after Trump takes the oath of office on Jan. 20.

No hearing yet for RFK Jr.

Chairman of the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Bill Cassidy said during a brief interview earlier this week he didn’t know when he would begin committee hearings with Trump’s nominees for public health agencies, like the National Institutes of Health or Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since they hadn’t yet completed their paperwork and background checks.

The Louisiana Republican said he hoped to begin those hearings before the end of January, but wasn’t sure if that would be possible.

“The only reason I hesitate is because, obviously, we have other hearings and I’m not sure if everything … that we need to receive, we have received. So partly, this is outside my hands,” Cassidy said.

Other committees, he said, were also waiting on paperwork and background checks from some of Trump’s nominees before scheduling hearings.

“I know other committees have had issues that they’ve not yet received everything they need to receive, in which case I don’t control that process,” Cassidy said.

The ongoing outbreak of highly pathogenic avian influenza, also known as bird flu, or H5N1, is one reason Cassidy gave for why he wants to quickly confirm public health nominees.

“Well, H5N1 is serious, absolutely. And, of course, you want to get people in there, you want it to be the right person, on and on and on,” Cassidy said. “So I think we proceed with all due haste.”

Louisiana reported the country’s first human death related to the ongoing bird flu outbreak on Monday, shortly after Cassidy gave his comments about the confirmation process.

Cassidy met on Wednesday with Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Trump’s nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, in the senator’s Capitol Hill office, a typical part of the nomination process.

Cassidy, a physician who earned his medical degree from Louisiana State University Medical School in 1983, wrote on social media afterward that he had “a frank conversation” with Kennedy.

“We spoke about vaccines at length,” Cassidy wrote. “Looking forward to the hearings in HELP and Finance.”

*Ariana Figueroa contributed to this report.

Last updated 4:13 p.m., Jan. 8, 2025

Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Ohio Capital Journal maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor David Dewitt for questions: info@ohiocapitaljournal.com.

===

12 24 pattern targets FDIC; tesla crash data kia 40 of 45 excessive data collection trans 2

an 12 24

Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) said the time has arrived for the Transportation Security Administration to be grounded – and he has at least one Republican in the lower chamber on board.

Lee made the comments on Monday in a string of social media remarks where he also called for an end to the Affordable Care Act when lawmakers return next month with a Republican trifecta.

“Congress should abolish TSA,” Lee told his social media followers on X. “If Congress somehow can’t abolish it, Congress should at least (1) privatize it, and then (2) require what remains of TSA to truly compete with private security contractors.”

The Utah senator’s announcement caught the attention of Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO), who reposted Lee’s comment with her own remark: “Hear, hear!” she wrote.

The proposal to do away with the TSA – created weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks – would upend safety measures for the country’s mass transportation. But the agency has landed on the radar of conservatives who have criticized it for overstepping its authority and violating peoples’ rights.

Congressional Republicans have promised to gut several federal agencies when Donald Trump reemerges in the White House next month, including the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the Department of Education.

Lee in March also proposed axing the TSA.

But political scientist Rachel Bitecofer pushed back on the suggestion being floated by Lee and other conservatives with a stinging two-word rebuke: "OK moron," she wrote in an X reply above a photo of a second plane preparing to slam into the World Trade Center on 9/11.

===

an 11 24

As the clock winds down on Democratic control of the U.S. Senate, upper chamber lawmakers on Thursday confirmed President Joe Biden's nomination of David Huitema, head of the State Department's ethics program, to lead the Office of Government Ethics for a five-year term.

Senators voted 50-46 in favor of Huitema's confirmation to head the OGE through the duration of Republican President-elect Donald Trump's tenure, averting at least temporarily a scenario in which the winner of the 2024 election—who has refused to sign required transition-related ethics agreements and whose first term saw thousands of conflicts of interest—would be empowered to fill or stonewall the post.

IFrame Content

The OGE has been without a director for more than a year, ever since the term of Trump appointee Emory Rounds expired. In September, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) blocked Senate Democrats' attempt to confirm Huitema via unanimous consent until after the presidential election, alleging "political weaponization of the U.S. government against Donald Trump by the Biden-Harris administration."

As the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said ahead of Huitema's conf

One of the most important roles of the Office of Government Ethics is to oversee and advise the presidential transition process. The selection and nomination of most new administration officials takes place during the transition, in which OGE's vetting of pending nominees for conflicts of interest is most critical. The office needs to be fully staffed and operational during the course of the transition period.

However, Walter Shaub, who led the OGE during the Obama administration and resigned in 2017 after months of conflict with the Trump White House, warned in a Thursday interview with Government Executive that "it might be a hollow victory for government ethics if Trump fires Huitema after the inauguration."

"Even if Trump doesn't fire Huitema, OGE won't be able to prevent Trump's top appointees from retaining conflicting financial interests if the Senate grants Trump's request that lawmakers conspire in skirting or short-shrifting the constitutional confirmation process," Shaub added.

Still, ethics advocates cheered Huitema's confirmation, with the watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington hailing what it called the "good news" and "an important step to safeguard ethics compliance ahead of a second Trump administration that threatens to be even more corrupt than the first."

As one Democratic strategist said on social media following his confirmation, "Buckle up, David Huitema."

===

an 9 24

If former President Donald Trump wins the November election, he'll likely appoint a staunch loyalist to head the Department of Justice and wage legal warfare against his political opponents. One top contender for the job flipped from one of the ex-president's biggest critics to a loyal lieutenant.

The Atlantic's Tim Alberta recently profiled Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who rose to prominence after being elected in 2010 with the help of the far-right Tea Party movement. As the son of former Reagan administration solicitor general Rex Lee, the Utah Republican grew up in Washington, D.C. in proximity to power. But as Alberta's sources recalled, Lee was unlike his father in his relentless thirst for accolades and his penchant for extreme partisanship.

One of those sources is former Rep. Enid Mickelsen (R-Utah), who eventually became the chair of the Utah Republican Party and witnessed Lee's rise to power. She recalled to Alberta thinking that "something's off with this guy." She said she knew Lee was different from his father, whom she "idolized," after he proposed ending birthright citizenship.

“That’s when the hair on the back of my neck stood up,” Mickelsen said. “He was telling people what they wanted to hear, not what was true.”

Still, Lee was considered more in the libertarian mold than a part of the MAGA faction. In 2016, the Utah senator led a failed attempt to nominate an alternate GOP ticket at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Ohio, hoping Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Marco Rubio (R-Florida) would replace Trump. He bemoaned Trump's authoritarian rhetoric and even posted a four-minute video calling for Trump to drop out of the 2016 race after the "Access Hollywood" tape emerged, in which the eventual 45th president of the United States was heard bragging about groping women without their consent.

But after the 2016 election, Lee was one of the many Republicans who made a visit to Trump Tower in New York to make amends with the president-elect, hoping to "clear the air" with the man he adamantly opposed just months prior. Former Rep. Joe Walsh (R-Illinois), who was part of the 2010 Tea Party wave, told Alberta that he viewed Lee's libertarian bent as authentic and was taken aback when he fully embraced Trump.

“If someone told me back then that Mike Lee would sell his soul to Donald Trump, I would have never believed it,” Walsh said. “I still can’t believe it.”

READ MORE:['Throat goat': GOP senator 'duped' by hoax letter claiming Jimmy Carter died

During Trump's presidency, Lee frequently flew with him on Air Force One, helped strategize his impeachment defenses and was even one of the architects of Trump's failed effort to stay in office after he lost the 2020 election. In 2022 he launched the @BasedMikeLee Twitter (now X) account, which is known for frequently posting far-right memes and even disinformation.

"Once a politician who seemed to be fashioning himself as a modern Daniel Patrick Moynihan of the right, Lee is now a very online MAGA influencer," Alberta wrote. "It’s as if Ned Flanders became a 4chan troll."

Lee is rumored to be one of the leading contenders to become Trump's next attorney general if he retakes the White House. The former president has said on the campaign trail he plans to politicize the DOJ to indict and prosecute his political opponents, and he'll almost certainly instruct his next attorney general to dismiss the two pending federal felony cases against him.

Click here to read Alberta's full article in the Atlantic (subscription required).

READ MORE:[Trump may tap self-described 'proud Islamophobe' Laura Loomer for his 2024 campaign: report

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an 7 24

On Friday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) amplified a baseless, debunked claim that President Joe Biden was experiencing a medical episode on board Air Force One. Now, the senator is getting roasted for his tweet by both journalists and commentators.

At 7:41 PM Eastern Time yesterday, far-right activist Laura Loomer tweeted: "Joe Biden is reportedly having a medical emergency on Air Force One right now" and that "press access has been removed." However, this was quickly debunked by X/Twitter's Community Notes function, which read that Biden "did NOT have a medical emergency on Air Force One following the Wisconsin rally and was perfectly fine throughout...and exited on his own after touching down in Delaware."

In response, Lee tweeted: "If Biden is having a medical emergency at this moment — on board Air Force One or otherwise — that raises ... a lot of questions." That tweet, which was posted at 8:09 PM Eastern Time last night, is still currently up on his official account.

White House pool reporter Sophie Hills of the Christian Science Monitor shed additional light on the president's health at the time of Loomer's initial tweet, writing that he stepped off of Air Force One at 7:34 PM and left with his motorcade afterward, before stopping at his home in Wilmington, Delaware at 7:50. This means Biden was already at home roughly 20 minutes before Lee sent his tweetl

Former Trump administration official Monica Crowley also tweeted Loomer's lie, only to backtrack and later tweet that there were "conflicting reports about Biden on AF1 but appears to be untrue."

Lee's amplification of Loomer's fictitious "medical emergency" resulted in harsh pushback on social media. Civil rights lawyer Leslie Proll called the Utah Republican's tweet "unconscionable." Biden campaign advisor James Singer accused him of "s—posting lies." And Joe Perticone – a contributor to never-Trump conservative website the Bulwark, noted the absurdity of a sitting U.S. senator relying on disinformation artists for news.

"The most concerning thing about a US senator’s judgment and intelligence is that he believes he’d first be hearing something as important as this from… Monica Crowley and Laura Loomer," Perticone wrote.

Former WGN reporter Jennifer Schulze also sharply criticized Lee and urged news outlets to "take a moment to cover this story about a sitting US Senator spreading malicious lies about the President."

"I know it's business as usual for republicans but it's still newsworthy," she tweeted.

Journalist Jamie Dupree noted the time difference between Lee's tweet and the time in the pool report when Biden was picked up by the presidential motorcade and driven home.

"Sen. Mike Lee R-UT tweeting out baseless medical rumors about Biden tonight. In fact, Biden was already back home (lid at 7:56 pm) by the time Lee was pressing the send button," Dupree posted.

READ MORE:[Trump's Truth Social posts 'beautiful' comparison to Jesus during court hearing

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an 11 23

the security surveillance dump announced this week that many Republicans claim will show the Jan. 6 Capitol riot was a mostly peaceful affair is about to blow up in their faces, an analyst wrote Wednesday.

Writing for Salon, Amanda Marcotte says the tactic of releasing the footage as an attempt to absolve those who participated "doesn't seem like the smartest electoral strategy."

"But the GOP now is primarily composed of professional trolls who cannot turn down an opportunity to spew noxious gases online," she writes. "Sure enough, some of the most annoying people in Congress tweeted conspiracy theories about the footage in language so fevered you could practically hear them panting as they typed."

:{:{:{Also read:Legal expert maps out realistic ways Trump can stop all of his trials:}:

Marcotte also points to a tweet from Republican Utah Sen. Mike Lee, in which he shared a picture of a convicted rioter who he claimed was an undercover federal agent — a claim that was easily debunked by NBC News reporter Ryan Reilly.

Marcotte also points out that Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene shared Lee's tweet, but later deleted it after it was shown to be fake. Lee, nevertheless, doubled down on the claim.

"We know Lee is lying because, while Lee may not be the smartest man, almost no one is stupid enough to believe this 'FBI did it' conspiracy theory," Marcotte writes, adding that the point of these conspiracy theories, "Is not to believe them, but to sucker liberals into go-nowhere arguments with disingenuous actors."

"The end game is to overwhelm their opposition with so many lies and bizarre digressions that people eventually just get exhausted and give up."

---

desantis indiv rights BS

https://www.alternet.org/mickey-mouse-would-disagree/

===

4 23 kos

rand Paul weighed in on Wednesday to brownnose billionaire trollboy Twitter owner Elon Musk in Musk's still-unexplained and one-sided battle against ... NPR, of all things. Earlier in the week Musk had, after getting through his previous top priorities of stripping The New York Times of its "verified" Twitter status and replacing the Twitter logo with a "doge" meme, told the site's engineers to add a "state-affiliated media" warning label to NPR's site account.

He did this despite NPR plainly and factually not qualifying for that "state-affiliated" tag according to Twitter's own declared rules—which became awkward when journalists and internet meanies alike took screenshots of those rules in which Twitter itself had used NPR as a named example of a media account that wouldn't qualify for the tag. Twitter eventually removed NPR as its example, but didn't change the public rules it had presented.

Twitter itself explains that the "state-affiliated" warning label is meant to designate media sites "where the state exercises control over editorial content," such as Russian media site RT. It's a designator to warn Twitter users against propaganda sites sponsored by foreign governments.

The American government does not have any means of controlling the editorial content of NPR, however—it can apply no pressure other than by whatever regulatory pressures it might use against any other media organization. NPR doesn't get any significant direct funding from the federal government. It was created by Congress a half century ago, but in its current incarnation receives its funds from sponsorships, foundational grants, donations, and "membership" fees paid by public radio stations that broadcast NPR-produced shows like Morning Edition or All Things Considered. Those public radio stations themselves get the vast majority of their funding through sponsorships and pledge drives, but they do get some federal grants. These come from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which ... is not NPR.

So Elon, whose companies rely extensively on government money and have been repeatedly saved from bankruptcy due to that federal money, is just flat-out wrong on this one. If anyone cares.

That brings us toRand Paul weighed in, that canker sore of a phrase that never makes anything better.Perennial twit and sitting Sen. Mike Lee weighed in to be even wronger than Elon was.

"To be clear, NPR is state-funded media," Lee tweeted with a link to the story.

Nope! Calling it "state-funded" is much, much wronger than Elon's "state-affiliated" label is. Mike Lee, who has been in the Senate long enough to know how to look these things up, is just lying.

But Rand Paul can do better! "If @NPR doesn’t want to be state-run media, we could always cut off their federal taxpayer funding…" Rand tweeted.

See now, that's just a flat-out lie and then some. Calling NPR "state-run" is disinformation. It's simply a hoax. NPR was spun off from a congressional edict a half century ago, and the "state" has not a damn speck of influence in NPR's programming. If NPR lost all of its "federal taxpayer funding" tomorrow, it would be ... just fine. Absolutely fine. The same cannot be said of Tesla or of SpaceX; government subsidies and contracts are the stuff that keeps Elon Musk's companies from collapse.

If SpaceX stopped getting federal money they'd be well and truly screwed, but you're not going to get Elon Musk or his "conservatism except with legal weed" fanboys to admit that. And heaven knows the white supremacists and neo-Nazi groups Elon is nurturing into site prominence aren't going to have a peep to say about it.

While it is tempting to believe that Paul and Lee are sucking up to Musk on Musk's website because they are spineless little weasels looking for his attention, it's probably more accurate to say that this is about Republicanism's hostility towards the news media in general. Musk is not alone in his belief that any media story questioning his extreme alleged brilliance amounts to a conspiratorial hit piece against him; this has been the stuff of Republican whines for decades before Musk became rich enough for his tantrums to matter.

Paul, in particular, has been fuming at the media for not going along with his disinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic. Paul is quite convinced that Anthony Fauci helped China build COVID-19 in a Chinese laboratory, or something (?) like that, and he is peeved that neither scientists nor the free press is buying what he’s trying to sell.

Again, though, what's going on here is that a narcissistic billionaire has bought himself a social media mini-empire so that he himself can spread disinformation against his perceived enemies, and high-profile Republicans like that very much. That's precisely what they've wanted all along. If the news makes you look bad, goes the Republican mantra, call it fake and invent a "better" version of the news that makes you look better.

Couple this with Elon Musk's new efforts to boost the known state-sponsored propaganda sites that Twitter used to police, and Twitter's turning into quite the Elon Musk-centered free-for-all. Musk is just fine with disinformation on the site. His only concern is how to best monetize it.

Eeeesh. I still say this ends with Elon either selling Twitter for a massive loss or with the site simply crashing and staying crashed due to a lack of anyone left who both knows how to fix it and gives a damn, but Musk is getting into weird Howard Hughes territory with this obsessive need to retaliate against news organizations that report on him. It's not going to be long before he's using his Twitter powers to change news account icons to dog pictures or sneaking into the system to write "I love Elon Musk" tweets from the accounts of The Washington Post or other high-profile accounts that have pissed him off.

---

Our planned Ukraine episode will have to wait, as Donald Trump is being arraigned in New York City for his role in falsifying records to hide hush money paid to Stormy Daniels. This is the first of a potential slew of indictments coming Trump’s way, and we are here for a celebration of karmic justice—and to talk about what happens to the Republican Party after this.

===

an bad 3 23

**U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene** (R-GA) and **U.S. Senator Mike Lee** (R-UT) are actively spreading anti-Ukraine disinformation, posting to Twitter a deceptively-edited video of Volodymyr Zelenskyy, which they falsely claim means the Ukrainian President wants America's "sons and daughters" to die defending Ukraine.

Senator Lee complained his personal Twitter account was suspended at some point after he retweeted the video. It was recently restored and his post with the deceptively-edited video has not been removed.

The original Twitter sources of the video have warning labels that Greene and Lee appear to have ignored before posting. Greene posted it to her official U.S. government Twitter account.

That warning, in the form of a readers' note, says: "This quote is taken out of context. The full quote is :'If Ukraine loses, Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO states, then the U.S will have to send their sons and daughters exactly in the same way as we are sending our sons and daughters to war'."

The Associated Press also published a fact check on Wednesday noting the deceptively-edited video is "missing context." The AP states: "He was not suggesting Americans would have to fight in Ukraine."

But in the deceptively-edited video Greene and Lee tweeted, Zelenskyy (via an interpreter) says, "the U.S will have to send their sons and daughters exactly in the same way as we are sending our sons and daughters to war."

Zelenskyy goes on to say, "and they will have to fight because it's NATO that we're talking about. They will be dying, God forbid, because it's a horrible thing."

In the full video from February 24, Zelenskyy is urging Americans to not give up on Ukraine. The most important portion of Zelenskyy's remarks have been edited out in Greene's and Lee's version: "If Ukraine loses, Russia is going to enter Baltic states, NATO states."

Greene tweeted, "There's not a parent in America that wants their son or daughter dying defending Ukraine's border. When have Ukrainian & NATO sons and daughters died defending America's border?"

Lee tweeted, "Zelensky has no right to presume that our sons and daughters will fight his war. Shame on him. We've somehow sent the message that we work for him. Shame on us!"

The 19-second deceptively-edited video has been viewed nearly 400,000 times.

Zelenskyy's (via interpreter):

"I would like to thank the American people. I would like to thank all of the American people that are supporting Ukraine, the Congress, the President, the TV channels, the journalists, and everyone that has been supporting us, and that percentage of Americans, as you've mentioned is increasing. I can tell them only one thing. If they do not change their opinion, if they do not understand us, if they do not support Ukraine, they will lose NATO, they will lose the clout of the United States, they will lose the leadership position that they are enjoying in the world, that they are enjoying for a very fair reason, and they will lose the support of the country with 40 millions of population, with millions of children. Are American children any different than ours? Don't Americans enjoy the same things as we do? I don't think we're that different. And I'm actually very happy that we have bipartisan support, but we keep hearing those messages from time to time and they’re dangerous.

There are political leaders that are elected by people. And if this issue is raised, those political leaders need to be responsible and cautious because people are looking at them. Who wants a third world war? Would anyone risk would anyone be willing to accept that risk? The US is never going to give up on the NATO member states. If it happens so that Ukraine, due to various opinions and weakened and depleting of assistance, loses, Russia is going to enter the Baltic states, NATO member states, and then the US will have to send their sons and daughters exactly the same way as we are sending their sons and daughters to war and they will have to fight because it's NATO that we're talking about and they will be dying, God forbid because it's a horrible thing."

===

j6 report ch 3

As discussed further in Chapter 5, that email contained Eastman’s 2-page memo proposing a strategy for January 6th based on the incorrect legal theory that Vice President Pence could assert some authority as President of the Senate to prevent or delay the election of former Vice President Biden during the joint session. Eastman’s memo relied on the fake votes, which the memo featured in the very first line: “7 states have transmitted dual slates of electors.” 120 When Eastman submitted his memo to Epshteyn, he also copied Chesebro, who had edited the memo and called it “[r]eally awesome.” 121

By that point, Chesebro and Eastman were coordinating their arguments about the fake-elector votes and how they should be used. On January 1, 2021, Chesebro sent an email to Eastman and Epshteyn that recommended that Vice President Pence derail the joint session of Congress. In it, he raised the idea of Vice President Pence declaring “that there are two competing slates of electoral votes” in several States, and taking the position that only he, or possibly Congress, could “resolve any disputes concerning them.” 122

Two days later, Eastman completed his second major memo advising President Trump and his team on strategies for January 6th, again arguing that there were “dual slates of electors from 7 states,” and calling for Vice President Pence to assert power to act “[a]s the ultimate arbiter” to take steps that could overturn the election, either by sending the election back to State legislatures to reassess or by rejecting Biden’s certified electoral votes from States in which there were also fake Trump electors.123

By early January, most of the fake elector votes had arrived in Washington, except those from Michigan and Wisconsin.124 Undeterred, the Trump team arranged to fly them to Washington and hand deliver them to Congress for the Vice President himself. “Freaking trump idiots want someone to fly original elector papers to the senate President . . .” Wisconsin Republican Party official Mark Jefferson wrote to Party Chairman Hitt on January 4th.125 Hitt responded, “Ok I see I have a missed call from [Mike] Roman and a text from someone else. Did you talk to them already? This is just nuts. . . .” 126

The next day, Trump Campaign Deputy Director for Election Day Operations G. Michael Brown sent a text message to other campaign staff suggesting that he was the person who delivered the fake votes to Congress.127 After sending the group a photo of his face with the Capitol in the background, Brown said, “This has got to be the cover a book I write one day” and “I should probably buy [Mike] [R]oman a tie or something for sending me on this one. Hasn’t been done since 1876 and it was only 3 states that did it.” 128 The reference to 1876 alludes to a controversy during that election about certain States’ electoral college votes.129

President Trump and his Campaign apparently had assistance from allies on Capitol Hill for this effort, including Senator Ron Johnson, his chief of staff, and the chief of staff to Representative Mike Kelly, although Senator Johnson has said that “[his] involvement in that attempt to deliver” fake elector paperwork “spanned the course of a couple seconds.” 130 On the morning of January 6th, Representative Kelly’s then-chief of staff texted an aide to the Vice President, Chris Hodgson, about hand-delivering the fake elector votes to the Vice President’s team before the joint session, a message that Hodgson ignored: “Just following up-any chance you or someone from your team can meet to take the Michigan and Wisconsin packets.” 131

According to the office of Senator Ron Johnson, Representative Kelly’s chief of staff then had a phone call with Senator Johnson’s chief of staff at 11:58 a.m. “about how Kelly’s office could get us the electors [sic] because they had it.” 132 Shortly after 11:30 a.m., the Trump Campaign’s lead attorney in Wisconsin had texted Senator Johnson expressing a “[n]eed to get a document on Wisconsin electors to you [for] the VP immediately. Is there a staff person I can talk to immediately.” 133 Senator Johnson then put his chief of staff in touch with the campaign to handle the issue.134

Shortly afterwards, Senator Johnson’s chief of staff texted Hodgson: “[Sen.] Johnson needs to hand something to VPOTUS please advise.” 135 When Hodgson asked what it was, the response he got was, “Alternate slate of electors for MI and WI because archivist didn’t receive them.” 136 Hodgson did not mince words: “Do not give that to him [the Vice President]. He’s about to walk over to preside over the joint session, those were supposed to come in through the mail.” 137

Those fake electoral votes, which the Trump team tried for weeks to manufacture and deliver, never made it to the Vice President. But they would have been invalid even if they did arrive on time. The Trump team’s activities were based on the false pretense that these fake electoral votes had a decisive role to play at the joint session of Congress. And yet any such role that they could have played would have helped unlawfully obstruct an official proceeding that determines how our Nation carries out the peaceful transfer of power between Presidents.

Indeed, as the joint session approached, Senator Mike Lee had expressed grave concerns about the fake elector effort in a series of text messages to one of the Trump team’s senior legal advisors. Although Senator Lee had spent a month encouraging the idea of having State legislatures endorse competing electors for Trump, he grew alarmed as it became clear that the Trump team wanted the fake electors’ votes to be considered on January 6th

...

On December 30th, Senator Lee texted Trump advisor Cleta Mitchell that January 6th was “a dangerous idea,” including “for the republic itself.” 139 He explained that, “I don’t think we have any valid basis for objecting to the electors” because “it cannot be true that we can object to any state’s presidential electors simply because we don’t think they handled their election well or suspect illegal activity.” 140 Senator Lee even questioned her about the plan’s dangerous long-term consequences: “[w]ill you please explain to me how this doesn’t create a slippery slope problem for all future presidential elections?” 141

ENDNOTES

===

an 1 23

a new report is shedding light on Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) attempt to Constitutionally justify former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the presidential election.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, the House Select Committee investigating the January 6 insurrection has released a transcript detailing his conversations with top lawyers who worked on Trump's campaign.

"Transcripts, documents, text messages, and the final report from the House Jan. 6th Committee show Lee actively tried to keep Donald Trump in the White House, despite Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election, and only abandoned the plot when it threatened to expand beyond that constitutional framework," the report reads.

The report also went in-depth about Lee's communications with Cleta Mitchell, a legal advisor for the former president's campaign.

"The Jan. 6 committee has now revealed that Lee was communicating with top Trump campaign legal adviser Cleta Mitchell that same day about strategies for keeping Trump in office," the report reads. "Mitchell was part of the now-infamous phone call where Trump pressured Georgia election officials to 'find' enough votes to give him the win in that state."

One of the text messages also focused on Lee texting Mitchell saying, “What should I be doing right now? I’m trying to find out what’s winnable and what isn’t. I suspect that the only way to win this election would involve identifying systemic fraud.”

At one point, Lee also contacted Mitchell in hopes of obtaining more information about alternate electors.

“Is there any chance we will see competing slates of electors named in some states?” Lee asked.

Mitchell reportedly instructed the Utah lawmaker to contact former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows who also had a role in the scheme. One day prior to Mitchell's suggestion, Lee per Salt Lake Tribune insisted that if “a very small handful of states' appointed alternate electors, 'there could be a path'" to overturn the election.

Although Mitchell has been tied to the scheme, she offered a different perspective during her testimony before the committee. According to her, Lee was the mastermind behind the idea.

“It wasn’t my idea,"Mitchell claimed. "It was actually Mike Lee’s idea."

===

A new report is shedding light on the conflict of interest surrounding controversial donations contributed to Sen. Mike Lee's (R-Utah) re-election campaign.

According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Virginia “Ginni” Thomas — the wife of U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas — donated to Lee's campaign twice in the same election cycle.

"Federal campaign disclosures show Thomas donated $750 to Lee’s 2022 campaign — $500 on Oct. 19 and another $250 on June 30 following his primary election win," the news outlet reported. "According to Federal Election Commission records, Thomas also donated $250 to Lee’s first campaign for Senate in 2010, which was her second-ever donation to an individual campaign."

Per the news outlet, Thomas' support of the Republican lawmaker surpasses financial contributions to his election campaigns.

"Thomas founded the conservative political group Liberty Central in 2009," the outlet wrote. "The following year, Liberty Central endorsed several congressional candidates, the first being Lee."

The report also offered more insight into the connection between Thomas and Lee. "Lee and Thomas were both involved in the effort to overturn Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election," the report reads. "They both texted then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows after the election was called for President Joe Biden."

"Both Thomas and Lee had connections to conservative lawyer John Eastman’s legally dubious scheme to have states won by Biden submit alternate presidential electors to throw the election to Trump. Lee referenced the plan in texts with Meadows, while the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol reportedly has email correspondence between Thomas and Eastman after the election."

In November, Lee was re-elected after defeating his opponent, Evan McMullin, who ran as an independent candidate. Lee won the election 53% to 42%.

===

12 22 anti porn bill?

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/09/far-right-republicans-disenfranchise-democrats/

// dirty tricks polarysis

badash an 9 22

More than 50 House and Senate Republicans are joining in an effort to disenfranchise “lame duck” Democrats in the House and Senate to prevent them from voting on critical budget legislation, but not trying to apply the same standard to their fellow GOP lawmakers.

In a move that sounds somewhat like what Senator Mitch McConnell did to derail Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court appointment, the far-right Republicans are urging their colleagues to block any budget bill until a new Congress is sworn in, hoping Democrats lose control of one or both branches of Congress.“

The Monday letters come as Congress has 10 days to take action before government funding runs out at the end of the fiscal year after Sept. 30,” The Hill reports.

“We must not accept anything short of a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution (‘CR’) that contains no additional spending or extraneous policy riders,” writes Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in the Senate GOP’s letter. “At a minimum, any agreement on a clean CR must carry over into the beginning of the 118th Congress. Failure to stand strong against lame-duck spending and caving to the Democrats will likely worsen inflation, prolong the current economic recession, and advance policies contained in the Biden administration’s progressive wish-list.”

The U.S. is not in a recession, nor is one expected in the coming months.

The House letter is even more extreme.

“Federal dollars are fueling rampant inflation and funding the Biden administration’s radical agenda,” it begins. “This includes empowering authoritarian bureaucrats at agencies like the IRS and FBI, implementing open-border policies that are threatening our communities, imposing COVID-19 mandates that shut down schools and are forcing our military servicemembers out of their jobs, and advancing self-destructive energy policies.”

Among the far right Republicans signing on to the Senate letter are Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

In the House, signatories include far right GOP Members of Congress Chip Roy, Ralph Norman, Jim Banks, Dan Bishop, Jim Jordan, Lauren Boebert, Kat Cammack, Scott DesJarlais, Scott Perry, Jody Hice, Ken Buck, Matt Gaetz, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Byron Donalds, Thomas Massie, and Louie Gohmert.

===

an 10 22

In most of the U.S. Senate races that reporters are paying close attention to, the two main contenders are a Democrat and a Republican: Democrat John Fetterman versus Republican Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, Democratic incumbent Sen. Raphael Warnock versus Republican Herschel Walker in Georgia, Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan versus Republican “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance in Ohio. But a major exception is the U.S. Senate race in deep red Utah, where incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Lee’s main competitor isn’t a Democrat, but a Never Trump conservative and former Republican who is running as an independent: Evan McMullin.

The Bulwark’s William Saletan, himself a Never Trumper, examines this race in a think piece published on October 28. As Saletan sees it, the antics of MAGA Republicans in this race and others underscore the “moral emptiness” that the Trumpified GOP is bringing to the 2022 midterms.

While Lee is very much a Trump loyalist and supported the former president’s coup attempt in late 2020, McMullin has no use for Trump and hasn’t been shy about slamming the Big Lie as a fabrication. McMullin can be quite critical of President Joe Biden from a policy standpoint, but like Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, McMullin has made it abundantly clear that he views Biden as the loyal opposition and the legitimately elected president of the United States — not someone who stole an election via widespread voter fraud.

“The most interesting political race of 2022 isn’t between a Democrat and a Republican,” Saletan writes. “It’s in Utah, where incumbent Republican Sen. Mike Lee faces independent challenger Evan McMullin. McMullin, a nearly lifelong Republican, is conservative on most issues, so Lee can’t beat him with the usual playbook: calling him woke or a tax-and-spender or a socialist. By neutralizing the GOP’s favorite lines of attack, McMullin has reduced the race to one crucial difference between the candidates: Lee’s complicity in Donald Trump’s schemes to undo the 2020 election.”

Saletan continues, “The Lee-McMullin race poses a difficult question: What exactly does the GOP stand for? Why should voters support a Republican senator against an opponent who agrees with him on policy but not on subverting democracy? If economic, moral, and foreign-policy conservatism no longer define the party, what does? What does it mean to be a Republican in 2022, beyond conspiring — or defending others who have conspired — to overturn elections when your party doesn’t win? McMullin is discovering that there are answers to that question, and they’re ugly.”

Utah’s Senate race has become a battle between a right-wing MAGA Republican and a right-wing non-MAGA ex-Republican. Saletan notes that because McMullin has promised not to caucus with either Republicans or Democrats if he wins, the Utah Democratic Party endorsed him — and Lee has responded by claiming that McMullin is “a Democrat running in disguise.”

Saletan slams Lee’s anti-McMullin attacks as “pure partisanship,” adding, “They’re about McMullin’s associations, not about issues. Lee talks about the Democratic Party the way red-baiters used to talk about the Communist Party: Any association with it is suspect. It’s true that McMullin courts Democratic voters and donors, along with independent and Republican voters and donors. That’s the whole point: McMullin is campaigning on unity. But to Lee, the Republican voters and donors are irrelevant. Consorting with Democrats, per se, is forbidden.”

One of Lee’s cheerleaders has been Fox New’ Tucker Carlson, who, Saletan notes, likened McMullin to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who is openly gay) in order to “insinuate that McMullin was gay.” McMullin is now married to a woman, but Carlson commented that in 2016, McMullin “was 40 years old, never married, and very obviously odd. Very odd.”

The “ugly” MAGA “smears” against McMullin, Saletan writes, demonstrate “the moral emptiness of today’s GOP.”

“A candidate who’s conservative on spending, values, and national security is under attack for courting Democrats, having been being unmarried in his thirties, refusing to vilify Dr. Fauci, affirming that black lives matter, and acknowledging that House Republicans tried to overturn the last election. In 2022, these are the taboos that define the Republican Party. Win or lose, McMullin has exposed them.”

===

on bd coup

https://www.alternet.org/2022/10/fox-news-host-mike-lee/

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/vanita-gupta

There's a right-wing smear campaign underway against one of Biden's top DOJ nominees

Vanita Gupta gives opening remarks at the Naturalization Ceremony in Nov. 2016, Lonnie Tague

Alex Henderson March 02, 2021

Vanita Gupta, President Joe Biden's nominee for associate attorney general, is among the Obama-era officials he has picked for his administration — and she has come under attack from the far-right Judicial Crisis Network.Washington Post opinion writer Jonathan Capehart defends Gupta in a column published this week, arguing that she should be confirmed regardless of what the JCN thinks.

"For a couple of weeks now, my morning newspaper-reading over coffee and yogurt has been interrupted by the aural pollution that is the attack ad against Gupta from the Judicial Crisis Network," Capehart explains. "As the Post's editorial board pointed out over the weekend, the Network's television ad 'is a doozy, mainly notable for the magnitude of the lies and distortions it crams into 30 seconds.'"

Under President Barack Obama, Gupta headed the Civil Rights Division at the U.S. Department of Justice. Gupta, according to Capehart, is "more than qualified to return as the agency's third-highest-ranking official." But that hasn't stopped JCN from smearing her.

"The lies and distortions are your garden-variety right-wing hysteria seeking to paint an unabashed liberal woman of color as a danger to the rule of law and to police," Capehart writes. "The lies don't stand up to the facts. More than 50 current and retired chiefs of police and sheriffs who worked with Gupta during her last tour at the Justice Department sent a letter of support to the Senate Judiciary Committee. So did the National Fraternal Order of Police, whose president noted the organization's working relationship with Gupta goes back to 2014."

Capehart continues, "And before that, as a lawyer with the ACLU, Gupta worked on cash bail reform, fair sentencing and other criminal justice reform issues with Koch Industries. Mark Holden, the firm's former general counsel and senior vice president, sent in a letter of support for her nomination."

Koch Industries is headed by 85-year-old billionaire CEO Charles Koch, who has been a major supporter of right-wing causes and has been a registered Libertarian. The fact that Gupta was willing to work with Koch Industries, Capehart writes, underscores her ability to "reach across the ideological divide."

If confirmed, Gupta will be working closely with Judge Merrick Garland, Biden's pick for U.S. attorney general — and Capehart is hoping that despite the JCN smear, she will be confirmed.

"Gupta and Lisa Monaco, nominated to be deputy attorney general, will both appear for their confirmation hearings on March 9," Capehart explains. "Both deserve to be confirmed. But Gupta ought to sail through the Judiciary Committee with the same ease that Garland did."

When Garland was challenged during his confirmation hearing by GOP Sen. Mike Lee of Utah for his support of Gupta and another nominee Republicans have criticized, the attorney general nominee was unequivocal: "I have complete faith in them."

https://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/mike-lee

18* 8%

regan epa admin

2021 Scorecard Vote

Regan Confirmation (EPA Administrator)

Senate Roll Call Vote 116

Issues: Other, Climate Change, Water, Air, Environmental Justice

The Senate considered President Biden’s nomination of Michael Regan to serve as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administrator. EPA uses science to protect our air and water, address climate change, and safeguard public health. The administrator is tasked with rebuilding the environmental regulations and programs that were dismantled by the previous administration. Regan is committed to doing this work while advancing climate action and racial justice. He has a long record of engaging stakeholders to build consensus and fighting for environmental justice in North Carolina. On March 10, the Senate confirmed Regan to be the EPA administrator by a vote of 66-34 (Senate roll call vote 116). YES IS THE PRO-ENVIRONMENT VOTE.

2021

500Sung Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2021459Restoring the Voting Rights ActJustice and Democracy

2021426Pérez Confirmation (Second Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2021420Voting Rights and Democracy ReformsJustice and Democracy

2021401Stone-Manning Confirmation (BLM Director)Other, Public Lands/Forests

2021357Build Back Better Budget ResolutionClimate Change, Clean Energy, Environmental Justice, Public Lands/Forests

2021346Promoting Polluting Energy SourcesDirty Energy, Climate Change, Air

2021320Eliminating Safeguards on Fossil Fuel ProductionDrilling, Dirty Energy, Climate Change, Oceans, Public Lands/Forests

2021303Defunding the Civilian Conservation Corps and Wildland FirefightingClimate Change, Public Lands/Forests, Other

2021298Restarting Construction of the Harmful Border WallWildlife, Public Lands/Forests, Environmental Justice

2021279Kim Confirmation (DOJ-ENRD Assistant Attorney General)Other, Environmental Justice

2021246Voting Rights and Democracy ReformsJustice and Democracy

2021236Fox Confirmation (EPA Assistant Administrator)Water

2021231Jackson Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary, Climate Change, Justice and Democracy

2021203Clarke Confirmation (DOJ-CRD Assistant Attorney General)Justice and Democracy, Other

2021178Investing in Water InfrastructureWater

2021175Repealing Assault on Methane Pollution SafeguardsClimate Change, Dirty Energy

2021150Mallory Confirmation (Council on Environmental Quality Chair)Other, Environmental Justice

2021125Becerra Confirmation (Health and Human Services Secretary)Other, Environmental Justice

2021123Tai Confirmation (United States Trade Representative)Other

2021119Haaland Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Other, Public Lands/Forests

2021116Regan Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Other, Climate Change, Water, Air, Environmental Justice

2021114Garland Confirmation (Attorney General)Other, Justice and Democracy

2021113Fudge Confirmation (Housing and Urban Development Secretary)Other, Environmental Justice

202186Striking Provisions to Help Farmers of ColorEnvironmental Justice, Agriculture

202170Raimondo Confirmation (Commerce Secretary)Other, Oceans

202166Granholm Confirmation (Energy Secretary)Other, Clean Energy

202159Impeachment for Incitement of InsurrectionJustice and Democracy

202143Bolstering the Dirty Water RuleClean Water

:{202132Supporting the Destructive Keystone XL PipelineDirty Energy, Environmental Justiice:{}:

p 2

2021 28Promoting Drilling for Fossil FuelsDirty Energy, Drilling

2021 11Buttigieg Confirmation (Transportation Secretary)Other, Transportation

2021 2Certifying Pennsylvania’s Electoral VotesJustice and Democracy

20211Certifying Arizona’s Electoral VotesJustice and Democracy

2020224Barrett Confirmation (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2020222Barrett Cloture Vote (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2020168Inadequate COVID Relief PackageOther

2020126Inadequate Policing ReformJudiciary, Other

2020125Wilson Confirmation (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2020123Walker Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2020121Great American Outdoors ActLands/Forests

2020118Defeating Effort to Derail the Great American Outdoors ActLands/Forests

202072Danly Confirmation (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)Dirty Energy, Clean Energy, Climate Change

202060MacGregor Confirmation (Interior Deputy Secretary)Dirty Energy, Climate Change, Lands/Forests, Oceans, Drilling, Wildlife

202041Kindred Confirmation (U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska)Judiciary

202036Brasher Confirmation (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

202014USMCA Trade DealClimate Change; Other

2019339Undermining the Land and Water Conservation FundLands/Forests

2019324Stopping Rollbacks of Carbon Pollution Limits for Power PlantsClimate Change

2019313Scalia Confirmation (Labor Secretary)Other

2019300Jorjani Confirmation (Interior Solicitor)Other, Lands/Forests

201977Bernhardt Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Climate Change, Drilling, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other

201968Wyrick Confirmation (District Court for Western District of Oklahoma)Other, Justice and Democracy

201944Rao Confirmation (D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals)Other, Justice and Democracy

201933Wheeler Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water

201929Miller Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Other, Justice and Democracy

201922Public Lands PackageLands/Forests

201920Undermining the Antiquities ActLands/Forests

201919Blocking Permanent Reauthorization of the Land & Water Conservation FundLands/Forests

2018259Farm Bill Conference ReportClimate Change, Clean Water...

===

denied he helped ron johnson? BUT...

Pratt represents a kind of pivot point between the right-wing extreme and the right-wing establishment. While Pratt is cozy with Howard Phillips, the Christian Reconstructionist founder of the Constitution Party, he's also friendly withformer House Majority Leader Richard Armey, the chairman of FreedomWorks, the kingpin of Tea Party Inc. astroturf groups. Armey once served on the advisory board of the now-defunct Family Foundation, an organization founded by Pratt, that housed an anti-immigrant group,English First (which still exists).

Ginni Thomas worked as an aide to Armey when he served in Congress in the GOP leadership, according to Politico. Today,Armey chairs FreedomWorks, the powerful Washington, D.C., organization that helped organize last summer's disruptions of town-hall meetings conducted by members of Congress about health care reform legislation. FreedomWorks also sponsored the stage program at the conclusion of last fall's 912 march [TRUMP? BECK] on Washington, and an anti-health care rally on the grounds of the U.S. Capitol last spring. Ginni Thomas also worked with FreedomWorks President Matt Kibbe when both were on staff at the anti-regulatory lobbying group, the Chamber of Commerce.Like FreedomWorks, in last month's GOP primary runoff for Utah's U.S. Senate seat, Thomas' Liberty Central endorsed Tea Party candidateMike Lee (the only candidate Liberty Central has endorsed so far).

===

dirty trick

an 9 22 badash

More than 50 House and Senate Republicans are joining in an effort to disenfranchise “lame duck” Democrats in the House and Senate to prevent them from voting on critical budget legislation, but not trying to apply the same standard to their fellow GOP lawmakers.

In a move that sounds somewhat like what Senator Mitch McConnell did to derail Merrick Garland’s Supreme Court appointment, the far-right Republicans are urging their colleagues to block any budget bill until a new Congress is sworn in, hoping Democrats lose control of one or both branches of Congress.“

The Monday letters come as Congress has 10 days to take action before government funding runs out at the end of the fiscal year after Sept. 30,” The Hill reports.

“We must not accept anything short of a ‘clean’ Continuing Resolution (‘CR’) that contains no additional spending or extraneous policy riders,” writes Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) in the Senate GOP’s letter. “At a minimum, any agreement on a clean CR must carry over into the beginning of the 118th Congress. Failure to stand strong against lame-duck spending and caving to the Democrats will likely worsen inflation, prolong the current economic recession, and advance policies contained in the Biden administration’s progressive wish-list.”

The U.S. is not in a recession, nor is one expected in the coming months.

The House letter is even more extreme.

“Federal dollars are fueling rampant inflation and funding theBiden administration’s radical agenda,” it begins. “This includes empowering authoritarian bureaucrats at agencies like the IRS and FBI, implementing open-border policies that are threatening our communities, imposing COVID-19 mandates that shut down schools and are forcing our military servicemembers out of their jobs, and advancing self-destructive energy policies.”

Among the far right Republicans signing on to the Senate letter are Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY), Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL).

===

Mike Lee (R-UT) claimed on Sunday that Democrats who disagree with Supreme Court must "hate democracy" despite the fact that he lobbied to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

During an interview on Fox News, Lee lashed out at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) after she said that a Supreme Court ruling against the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was "catastrophic" for "the sake of the planet."

"This begs the question," Lee responded. "Why do they hate democracy? Why do they hate allowing people to elect their own representatives to make laws? That's really what we're dealing with here."

"What is so offensive to them about the idea of having laws enacted by lawmakers who are elected by the people," he continued. "It's as though they hate the democratic process itself."

Earlier this year, the House Select Committee on Jan. 6 released text messages showing how Lee lobbied to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election after Donald Trump lost.

Watch the video below from Fox News.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2022/04/proof-congressional-republicans-subvert-election/

a recording made by a disgruntled election conspiracist is the strongest evidence yet that operatives in Donald Trump’s orbit summoned supporters to Washington on January 6 for the express purpose of coercing lawmakers into overturning the 2020 election.

News broke late Tuesday afternoon, whereupon this bombshell of a story was promptly buried under an avalanche of other news.

The main characters aren’t household names, but this story is every bit as important as the earlier revelation that Donald Trump, Jr, was pushing a detailed plan for a coup to his father’s chief of staff before the election had even been decided. And it’s even more important than the late-breaking news that Sen. Mike Lee talked up Trump lawyer John Eastman’s plan for a procedural coup in late November.

The star of the secret recording is Jason Sullivan, one-time aide to dirty trickster and longtime Trump confidante Roger Stone.

Sullivan told the Times he was invited to speak by a group of anti-vaccine activists, who were planning a permitted event in the capital on J6. (By amazing coincidence, Stone was scheduled to speak at an anti-vax event on the afternoon of J6, an engagement he missed, for reasons that are surely of great interest to the J6 committee.)

The call was made a week before the insurrection.

Sullivan repeatedly urged the other callers to intimidate the lawmakers who were meeting to certify the election. He told them they needed to make them feel like the people were “breathing down their neck.”

“If we make the people inside that building sweat and they understand that they may not be able to walk in the streets any longer if they do the wrong thing, then maybe they’ll do the right thing,” Sullivan said.

“We have to put that pressure there.”

This recording was made by a woman named Staci Burk, a former school board official turned election conspiracist. Burk filed an anonymous affidavit supporting one of Trump lawyer Sidney Powell’s many election conspiracy theories. Whereupon heavily armed paramilitary operatives calling themselves the 1st Amendment Praetorian (1AP) moved into her home for several weeks, ostensibly to guard her. Burk told the Times a 1AP member joined the call, and she made the recording because the armed men were making her feel unsafe. Members of 1AP were in the capital during the insurrection and members of the group have been subpoenaed by the J6 committee.

This recording partially corroborates previous claims by Ali Alexander, another one of Roger Stone’s associates. He said he schemed with members of the Congress to gather a crowd to pressure lawmakers into overturning the election during the certification ceremony.

In a video made before the insurrection, Ali Alexander claimed that he and US Reps. Mo Brooks, Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar “schemed up putting maximum pressure on Congress while they were voting.”

The video circulated on social media but was later deleted. The plan was to “change the hearts and the minds of Republicans who were in that body, hearing our loud roar from outside,” Ali Alexander said.

The Sullivan call proves there was an inside-outside game on J6.

The inside game was the procedural coup devised by John Eastman that was unfolding inside the Capitol on J6 as GOP legislators raised spurious claims of election fraud to overturn a free and fair election.

The outside game was the mob deliberately assembled in order to pressure legislators to go along with Trump’s illegal scheme.

===

raw story tom b an 4 16 22

According to former Republican National Committee spokesperson Tim Miller, nothing better demonstrates that even the “good Republicans” like Sen. Mike Lee (UT) engaged inhare-brained schemes to help Donald Trump steal the 2020 presidential election, than Lee’s text messages leading up to the Jan 6th insurrection.

As Miller notes in his Bulwark column, there has existed a narrative that there were “good” Republicans who were not involved in plotting to keep Trump in the Oval Office no matter what voters decided, and then there were the fanatics who saw no problem with running roughshod over the Constitution.

WithCNN reporting that Lee and fellow Republican Rep. Chip Roy (TX) were frantically texting former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows asking for help in disrupting the certification of the vote, Miller suggested that the “insane” wing of the party is deeper than people think.

With Lee and Roy’s texts demonstrating a swing from full-throated support for overturning to becoming appalled by the conspiracy theories and legal reasoning being put forth by former Trump attorney Sidney Powell, Miller wrote that the whole affair was a “clown show.”

“Among the self-appointed responsible Republicans, the story of Trump’s attempted election theft goes something like this: The former president had a few CRAZYpeople around him providing bad advice. Rudy and Lin Wood and Sidney “Release the Kraken” Powell and their ilk were egging on a strategy that was never going to work and that nobody was actually on board with,” Miller began. “Meanwhile, the rest of the players were maybe not profiles in courage, but they were trying to do the right thing. Just, you know, behind the scenes. Some were encouraging Trump to be more presidential—to finally do that growing into the office they had promised he would do four years ago now that he had lost.”

“The real story is that the circus was in town and even the supposed ‘good Republicans”’were happy to put on their clown make-up,” he added.

Listing off a series of the texts Lee sent to Meadows, Miller wrote that they are evidence that, “The true story is that ‘good Republican’ Mike Lee and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows were forcing the crazy into the Oval Office at the most combustible time imaginable.”

Noting that Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX) were openly trying to derail the certification of the 2020 vote, the former RNC official said Lee was just as bad — but doing it covertly

“In the end, Lee might not have voted to overturn the election but he was every bit a part of the coup as Cruz and Hawley and the rest. As it turns out this wasn’t the case of ‘responsible’ people trying to nudge things in the right direction in private,” he wrote before concluding, “It was a case where one posse of clowns was so insane that they were giving away the game. While the ‘responsible’ clowns like Mike Lee did everything in their power to figure out how they could keep the madman in power, without getting Rudy’s hair dye on their face.”

You can read the whole piece here.

===

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/24/us/politics/trump-purge-ginni-thomas.html

nyt no lnx

Among Those Pressing Trump to Weed Out Disloyalty: Clarence Thomas’s Wife

A group led by Ginni Thomas has targeted officials in the administration, and lobbied for its own preferred choices. As the president’s distrust in those serving him has grown, so has its sway.

Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, has targeted officials at the National Security Council, the former head of the White House personnel office and other top White House aides for replacement.

By Maggie Haberman

Published Feb. 24, 2020

Updated May 3, 2021

For the past 18 months, Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, and other conservatives have plied the White House with memos and suggestions about which people to fire — and who should replace them.

President Trump has generally treated Ms. Thomas’s suggestions coolly, passing them off to advisers, according to people familiar with Ms. Thomas’s efforts. But since the end of the Senate impeachment trial, the president has become more distrustful of the people filling the ranks of government and has been giving those recommendations a closer look.

The memos from Ms. Thomas were first reported by Axios.

Among Ms. Thomas’s top targets have been officials at the National Security Council, the former head of the White House personnel office, Sean Doocey, and other top White House aides. Another target was Jessie K. Liu, who recently left her job as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for a job in the Treasury Department that was later withdrawn by the White House.

Ms. Thomas, a politically active conservative who for nearly seven years has led a group called Groundswell, also successfully lobbied for a role for Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, the former attorney general of Virginia who is now the acting deputy secretary of homeland security.

Another conservative, Becky Norton Dunlop, an official at the Heritage Foundation, has also repeatedly passed names of possible appointments to personnel officials, administration officials said.

Mr. Trump recently shook up the personnel office, replacing Mr. Doocey with John McEntee, who was fired from his previous job at the White House, with a mandate to look for “bad” people, according to multiple administration officials.

Some administration aides have long been suspicious that people like Ms. Thomas and Ms. Dunlop are less interested in pro-Trump purity than in appointments for their own networks of friends. White House officials have privately questioned Ms. Thomas’s lobbying on personnel, and have saidMr. Trump — who is facing several decisions before the Supreme Court personally and in terms of administration policy — has made clear he is conscious of whom she is married to.

Still, in the last year, as Mr. Trump has grown more mistrustful of his government, the sway held by Ms. Thomas and her group has increased. Administration officials have routinely sent aides to attend weekly Groundswell meetings held at the offices of Judicial Watch, another conservative group led by a vocal defender of the president, Tom Fitton.

Image

Jessie K. Liu, who recently left her job as the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia for a job in the Treasury Department that was later withdrawn by the White House, was a target of Ms. Thomas’s.

Mr. Trump was also given a memo about Ms. Liu that officials attributed to a Senate Judiciary Committee staff member named Barbara Ledeen, [// HR McMaster JOK] another member of Groundswell, though it was drafted with input from other conservatives. The memo mentioned the failure to prosecute Andrew G. McCabe, a former F.B.I. official whom Mr. Trump has repeatedly attacked, as a strike against Ms. Liu, as well as her signing the sentencing memo of Michael T. Flynn, a friend of Ms. Ledeen’s.

Ms. Ledeen and Ms. Thomas did not respond to requests for comment.

Ms. Ledeen also raised concerns with the staff of Senator Mike Lee,a Utah Republican, about Ms. Liu when she was nominated for the No. 3 job at the Justice Department in March 2019, according to three people familiar with the discussion. After Mr. Lee and others objected to Ms. Liu’s appointment, the White House withdrew her nomination.

:{:{}:

Ms. Liu became a flash point again when she was nominated to the Treasury Department post. Someone provided Mr. Trump with a fresh copy of the memo attributed to Ms. Ledeen, according to a person familiar with the events.

And another memo Ms. Thomas passed along accused Mr. Doocey of obstruction related to State Department jobs, and claimed that he had surreptitiously switched one appointee for another for a foreign aid agency. That particular claim was demonstrably false, according to three people familiar with the memo.

The New York Times reported in January 2019 that Mr. Trump met that month with Ms. Thomas and a half-dozen of her members at what was at times a contentious meeting in the Roosevelt Room of the White House. At that meeting, Ms. Thomas insisted that White House personnel were blocking appointments of supporters of the president, and handed him a list of suggested appointees.

Since the meeting, Ms. Thomas and her group have been pressing Mr. Trump to replace job holders they did not consider reliably conservative and have complained to White House staff that they were not getting enough attention from the personnel office.

Privately, officials in that office told associates that Ms. Thomas’s suggested hires could never survive proper vetting, including possibilities such as David A. Clarke, the former sheriff of Milwaukee County for a homeland security role, or theFox News guest Dan Bongino [GROUNDSWELL]for a counterterrorism post.

Despite her own history of supporting Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for the Republican presidential nomination and of trying to stop Mr. Trump at the 2016 Republican National Convention, Ms. Thomas has presented herself to the White House as a barometer of who is sufficiently conservative and supportive of the Trump agenda, according to current and former administration officials.

Mr. Trump has alternately listened to and been dismissive of Ms. Thomas’s entreaties, according to people familiar with his thinking. But the White House has frequently sent administration officials to meet with members of Groundswell.

A person close to Ms. Thomas said she did not intend for Groundswell to be her alter ego, and that she merely saw herself as a launching point for conservative input at the White House.

One concern among White House officials has been that outsiders like Ms. Thomas and her allies do not understand how the personnel office functions.

:{:{}:

In its previous iteration under Mr. Doocey, the office tried to serve as a buffer, getting input and at times pushback about possible hires from the White House Counsel’s Office, the Office of Political Affairs and cabinet secretaries. Mr. Doocey, who had told associates that his goal was to always try to shield the president from problematic appointments, reported directly to the chief of staff.

Mr. Trump would sometimes tell conservative activists such as Ms. Thomas that he could not fulfill their wishes because his aides were stopping him. He has said such things even when he agreed that certain recommendations did not make sense, essentially faulting aides for his own choices to avoid confrontation,according to people familiar with the discussions.

Mr. McEntee will report directly to Mr. Trump, giving Mr. McEntee more leeway but also denying the president that buffer when it comes to dealing with people who try to lobby him on personnel matters.

But it is unclear how much ideological purity Mr. Trump can achieve in his appointments, given how few Republicans supported his candidacy from its inception, the rivalries within his administration, and the stream of aides, consultants, advisers or friends who at some point have whispered in his ear that someone was trying to undermine him.

===

===

dobbs amicus with cruz and mike lee

jOSH HAWLEY U.S. SENATOR Counsel of Record MICHAEL K. VELCHIK JOHN S. EHRETT 115 Russell Senate Office Bldg. Washington, D.C. 20510 (202) 224-6154 Ellen_James@hawley.senate.gov

===

an ah 4 22

since its formation 29 years ago in 1993, the far-right Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) has consistently fought against gay rights — often equating anti-gay discrimination with religious freedom. When Kristen Waggoner, legal counsel for ADF, spoke at Yale University on March 10, about 120 students protested her appearance. And in Utah, two well-known Republicans — Sen. Mike Lee and State Attorney General Sean Reyes — have added their names to a letter demanding punishment for Yale students who **protested**the March 10 event.

Salt Lake Tribune reporter Bryan Schott explains, “More than half of the school’s students signed an open letter critical of the decision by the Federalist Society to invite Waggoner to speak and condemned the presence of armed police at the protest. Yale Law School Dean Heather Gerken said the protest was ‘unacceptable’ behavior from the students, but they had not violated the school’s free speech policy.”

Co-founded by Focus on the Family’s James Dobson, the ADF (formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) represents a far-right form of White evangelical Christian fundamentalism and is considered a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).

“In addition to Lee and Reyes,” Schott reports, “Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, several U.S. House of Representatives members, five governors, and more than two dozen other state attorneys general also signed on. The letter was drafted by the same group responsible for the Philadelphia Statement, a document that decries the persistence of ‘cancel culture’ in American society. More than 1400 people signed the letter to Yale.”

The letter reads, “Instead of engaging with the panelists, a shocking number of Yale Law students hurled constant insults and obscenities at them.” But according to Schott, “The letter’s depiction of the event is primarily based on an initial report from the conservative Washington Free Beacon. That reporting has been credibly debunked by other publications, multiple videos and the school’s official account of the incident.”

Some of the debunking came from Slate’s Mark Joseph Stern. On March 18, Stern reported, “The students made their point at the very start of the event and walked out before the conversation began. Their exercise in free speech, however rowdy or distasteful, did not prevent the panelists from expressing their views. And their demonstration did not — contrary to the Free Beacon’s reporting — require administrators to summon the police.”

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/freedomworks-hopes-anti-critical-race-theory-organizing-will-bring-massive-right-wing-gains-in-2022/

freedomWorks, one of the many right-wing groups taking part in the dishonest campaign against critical race theory, is fomenting opposition to teaching about systemic racism in an effort to mobilize conservative voters to turn out in 2022 midterms and take over school boards.

The day after Thanksgiving, FreedomWorks President Adam Brandon wrote in a fundraising email that opposition to critical race theory “could be the key to making MASSIVE political gain in 2022.” He claimed that “the Left” is out to “indoctrinate children with CRT – so our kids will start hating our country and our God-given freedoms as much as the Left does.”

FreedomWorks’ Noah Wall followed up with an email a couple days later claiming that “The radical Left has proven that they are willing to do whatever it takes to brainwash future generations to transform America into a socialist nation.”

Brandon’s email touted FreedomWorks’ efforts to recruit and train school board candidates. He claimed that since the group had launched its BEST (Building Education for Students Together) initiative, it had hosted grassroots events reaching 3,700 activists, trained more than 300 activists to run for the school board, encouraged 150 of its Candidate Academy graduates to commit to filing paperwork to run for school board seats, and created partnerships with many of the other right-wing groups rallying activists to take over school boards.

Just a few days later, Sen. Mike Lee of Utah lent his name to a Dec. 1 FreedomWorks fundraising email that focused on other supposed threats from “the Left’s socialist wish list” such as a $15 minimum wage and statehood for the District of Columbia. Lee’s brief note introduced a longer message from Brandon, who asked for money to fight “the swamp” and elect right-wing candidates in 2022. “Whether it’s AOC’s so called ‘Green New Deal,’ Washington D.C. Statehood, Supreme Court packing—or the Democrats’ schemes to seize TOTAL control of our election system—America is facing a GRAVE THREAT.”

FreedomWorks is associated with the State Policy Network, a collection of think tanks and advocacy groups that promote right-wing policies at the state level. Brandon is a member of Council for National Policy, a secretive and influential network of right-wing and far-right activists.

Tags: Adam Brandon, Mike Lee. Noah Wall, Critical Race Theory, Election 2022 School Boards Council for National Policy Freedom Works FreedomWorks State Policy Network

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/eastman-memo/

By now, you've read about John Eastman's secret memo outlining six points by which he believed the vice president could overturn the results of the 2020 election on January 6.I defer to legal scholars to explain the memo's legal absurdities. I defer to political scientists to explain why the memo represents forces threatening our republic.

What I want to suggest is so plain I'm surprised that no one else has asked: isn't this evidence of a conspiracy to commit a high crime?

News of Eastman's memo put the debate over democracy reform into overdrive. The hope has been that the Democrats in the United States Congress, especially Senate moderates, will see the light. They must kill off, or seriously change, the filibuster in order to pass election laws that would not only reach or surpass the 1965 Voting Rights Act but also prevent a political party from pulling off a coup in broad daylight.

While the Eastman memo should, for obvious reasons, put that debate into overdrive, I'm wondering if we're misplacing our hopes. It's not that I think the filibuster is good. It needs to go. It's not that I think new election laws would be bad. We need more, in a hurry. It's that laws require enforcement, and enforcement of the law is pretty much the only thing that's going to stop people who have no respect for democracy, principle, the Constitution, tradition or anything else. Without equal treatment under law, in the form of prosecution, I don't see why new laws would stop people who hold themselves above it.

We really need to acknowledge the elephant in the room before we pin our hopes for democracy on changing a Senate rule. We really need to acknowledge the reason it's possible, in a rule-of-law country, for powerful and power-hungry people to hold themselves above the law. The reason is so obvious as to be invisible, and because it's invisible few people are talking about it right now. It's because powerful and power-hungry people are in fact above the law. "No one is above the law"? Pish. Anyone with senses, and sense, can see that's not true.

News of the Eastman memo only adds to what we already know. According to CNN, the plan was for Vice President Mike Pence to throw out "the results in seven states because they allegedly had competing electors. In fact, no state had actually put forward an alternate slate of electors — there were merely Trump allies claiming without any authority to be electors." That didn't matter, though:

Pence would have declared Trump the winner with more Electoral College votes after the seven states were thrown out, at 232 votes to 222. Anticipating "howls" from Democrats protesting the overturning of the election, the memo proposes, Pence wouldinstead say that no candidate had reached 270 votes in the Electoral College. That would throw the election to the House of Representatives, where each state would get one vote. Since Republicans controlled 26 state delegations, a majority could vote for Trump to win the election.

Two important points. One is about recognizing competing slates of electors when there were none. New laws in Georgia, Texas and other states now fill in what was missing in Eastman's memo. They allow for GOP-controlled legislatures to overrule election officials. They make room for assigning competing slate of electors when outcomes are undesirable. A future vice president might do what Mike Pence didn't.

My other point is about the impression made by CNN's reporting, and by the new book all this news comes from by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa — that Donald Trump's GOP allies believed the US Constitution forbade a vice president from recognizing competing slates of electors. The impression is of a founding document that sets the rules. "You might as well make your case to Queen Elizabeth II," Mike Lee reportedly said. "Congress can't do this. You're wasting your time." That's a dangerous impression to have in a rule-of-law country in which powerful and power-hungry people are in fact above it.

The Constitution is many things, but a set of unbreakable rules isn't one of them. It is whatever powerful and power-hungry people want it to be, when they want it to be and why. I don't know why Lee, Lindsay Graham and other high-profile Republicans were not all-in on the Eastman memo, but I do know the Constitution didn't stop them. I am confident, and you should be confident, that if they had reason to believe they could get away with it, they'd have found a way to make a coup by a political party in broad daylight seem "constitutional."

The Eastman memo is putting debate over democracy reform into overdrive. Fine and dandy. But the memo is also why we shouldn't pin our hopes on democracy reform. The incentives to cheat, steal, lie and otherwise commit treason in the pursuit of raw political power will be with us long after we've made all our dreams come true with the death of the filibuster. New laws won't take away corrupt incentives. The only way to do that is prosecuting the laws we already have. The only way to do that is prosecuting the principle of equal treatment under law so that powerful and power-hungry people are not in fact above it.

The Eastman memo is evidence of a conspiracy — a GOP conspiracy — to commit a high crime. And yet no one is being held accountable. No one will be held accountable as long as the Department of Justice is soft on high crime. Amid such lawlessness, why not give treason another go? By then, perhaps Lee, Graham and others will have found what they need to make a coup in broad daylight seem "constitutional."

sen. Lee throws a hissy fit and demands an apology when a legal expert criticizes Justice Alito

Alex Henderson

On July 14, election law expert Rick Hasen was among the people who testified during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on voting rights. Hasen has been critical of right-wing...

2016

may 26: U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas),Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and David Vitter (R-La.) today sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) end its use of law enforcement resources against political opponents of President Obama’s energy agenda.

These actions provide disturbing confirmation that government officials at all levels are threatening to wield the sword of law enforcement to silence debate on climate change,” the letter reads. “As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity’s opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct.”

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/01/republican-sen-mike-lee-lashes-out-and-spits-fire-over-trump-administrations-briefing-on-iran-strike/

===

green grade 7 of 100 8 lifetime

http://scorecard.lcv.org/moc/mike-lee

all wrong except border wall

2018259Farm Bill Conference ReportClimate Change, Clean Water

2018254McNamee Confirmation (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission)Climate Change, Clean Air

2018232Nelson Confirmation (Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2018228Clark Confirmation (Assistant Attorney General, DOJ Environment and Natural Resources Division)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water, Judiciary

2018223Kavanaugh Confirmation (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2018222Kavanaugh Cloture Vote (Supreme Court)Judiciary

2018174Grant Confirmation (Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2018160Oldham Confirmation (Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals)Judiciary

2018134Anti-Environmental Rescission PackageOther

201884Pompeo Confirmation (Secretary of State)Climate Change, Other

201880Bridenstine Confirmation (NASA Administrator)Climate Change

201877Exposing Waterways to Invasive SpeciesWildlife, Clean Water

201871Wheeler Confirmation (EPA Deputy Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water

201836Border Wall Funding & Anti-Immigrant PolicyOther

2017323Anti-Environmental Tax Bill that Opens Drilling in the Arctic RefugeLands/Forests, Dirty Energy, Drilling

2017268Wehrum Confirmation (Assistant Administrator, EPA)Climate Change, Clean Air, Other

2017259Eid Confirmation (10th Circuit Court of Appeals)Other

2017245Budget Resolution Paving the Way for Drilling in the Arctic RefugeLands/Forests, Dirty Energy, Drilling

2017243Protecting the Arctic RefugeLands/Forests, Dirty Energy, Drilling

2017242Undermining Federal Safeguards for Protected SpeciesWildlife

2017166Bernhardt Confirmation (Deputy Secretary, Interior)Climate Change, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other

2017125Extreme Assault on the Methane and Waste Prevention Rule (CRA)Climate Change, Dirty Energy, Lands/Forests

2017111Gorsuch Confirmation (Supreme Court)Other

201792Blocking Wildlife Protections in Alaska (CRA)Wildlife, Lands/Forests

201782Blocking Local Input about Public Lands (CRA)Lands/Forests, Toxics/Public Right to Know

201779Perry Confirmation (Energy Secretary)Climate Change, Clean Energy, Other

201775Zinke Confirmation (Interior Secretary)Climate Change, Drilling, Lands/Forests, Wildlife, Other

201771Pruitt Confirmation (EPA Administrator)Climate Change, Clean Air, Clean Water, Other

201768Mulvaney Confirmation (OMB Director)Other

201759Sessions Confirmation (Attorney General)Other

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/mike-lee-slams-conservative-mormon-owned-media-outlets-in-utah-for-not-being-right-wing-enough/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/republicans-are-waging-all-out-war-on-democracy-and-now-theyre-openly-admitting-it/

no lnx

Republican Sen. Mike Lee of Utah sparked a backlash this week when made an undercurrent of the modern conservative movement and the driving ideology of the Republican Party explicit.

"We're not a democracy," Lee tweeted on Oct. 7.

Twitter's not exactly known for the capacity to have in-depth discussions on political philosophy, but Lee hadn't even come close to using up his 280 characters. After significant outrage stirred by his first tweet, Lee expanded on the idea the following day with a slightly longer message.

"Democracy isn't the objective; liberty, peace, and [prosperity] are," he wrote. "We want the human condition to flourish. Rank democracy can thwart that."

Again, it was a striking sentiment, and it inflamed critics who have accused the Lee and the GOP of systematically trying to disenfranchise constituencies they believe won't vote for Republicans. But Lee didn't back down. He went to the conservative outlet the Washington Examiner, which essentially transcribed his own defense of his claims with little analysis or reflection. He shared a piece from DeseretNews, which offered a more balanced take on the controversy. And Conn Carroll, a spokesperson for Lee, provided a statement to Vox further defending the comments:

"At a time when Democrats want to pack the Court, eliminate the Electoral College, and turn the Senate into the House, it is very good that Americans are re-reading The Federalist Papers to rediscover why the founders put these specific republican checks on democratic passion into the Constitution.

But none of the defenses could shield from the fact that the senator's sentiments reflect a growing and dangerous anti-democratic element on the modern right-wing. The instinct has always been there, in some form or another, but you would nevertheless hear Republicans pay lip-service to the idea of democracy. Cynically, though, they began pushing extremely anti-democratic policies, such as restrictive voter ID laws and racial gerrymandering meant to dilute the votes of minorities and Democrats. They offered pro-forma excuses for these policies, such as voting the virtually non-existent problem of voter fraud, but many surely knew that they were just taking whatever advantage they could to keep power.

Lee's remarks, however, show how those cynical power grabs can merge with an ideology that is intrinsically elitist and whose adherents know it's deeply unpopular. This creates a strong incentive to rationalize opposition to democracy and justify restricting the influence of ordinary citizens on the government. The Utah senator's willingness to be openly dismissive of democracy may signal that his party will be increasingly willing to not even espouse traditional democratic values. This isn't likely to be a popular stance, but if they get their way, that won't matter.

Republicans, after all, already know they need to distort the playing field win and rule. That's why they concoct bizarre and ad hoc excuses for preserving the Electoral College, despite the fact that it was a ham-fisted compromise at the country's founding that has served to put the more unpopular candidate in the White House twice in living memory. That's why they're thrilled to appoint conservative Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, breaking the countless promises they made to leave seats open during a presidential campaign and rushing the process in the weeks before an election. They want their 6-3 conservative court, which can theoretically stand in the way of Democratic majorities in Congress and a Democratic president from enacting a popular agenda.

Loren Culp, Republican candidate for Washington Governor, articulated the objection to democracy in a recent video:

GOP nominee @LorenCulp to @KATUNews: “The problem with Democracy — you can look at quotes from famous Chinese lea… https://t.co/aOO0QfBxn6

— James Singer (@James Singer)1601749258.0

This is exactly the point. Republicans fear that, if the people are adequately represented in government, the government will have to do things they like, such as providing for basic needs like health care and housing. They deride providing such services as "socialism," which the Republican mind cannot abide.

In a recent column, the New York Times' Jamelle Bouie dispelled the frequently touted nonsense that the United States isn't a "democracy" but a "republic":

'For the founders, "democracy" did not mean majority rule in a system of representation. The men who led the revolution and devised the Constitution were immersed in classical literature and political theory. Ancient Greece, in particular, was a cautionary tale. When James Madison critiqued "democracy" in Federalist No. 10, he meant the Athenian sort: "a society consisting of a small number of citizens, who assemble and administer the government in person." This he contrasted with a "republic" or "a government in which the scheme of representation takes place." Likewise, in a 1788 speech to the New York ratification convention, Alexander Hamilton disavowed "the ancient democracies in which the people themselves deliberated." They "never possessed one good feature of government," he said. "Their very character was tyranny; their figure deformity."

In more modern terms, the founders feared "direct democracy" and accounted for its dangers with a system of "representative democracy." Yes, this "republic" had counter-majoritarian aspects, like equal representation of states in the Senate, the presidential veto and the Supreme Court. But it was not designed for minority rule.

...

If there's substance behind "We're a republic, not a democracy," it's not as a description of American government. There's really no difference, in the present, between a "republic" and a "democracy": Both connote systems of representation in which sovereignty and authority derive from the public at large.

The point of the slogan isn't to describe who we are, but to claim and co-opt the founding for right-wing politics — to naturalize political inequality and make it the proper order of things. What lies behind that quip, in other words, is an impulse against democratic representation. It is part and parcel of the drive to make American government a closed domain for a select, privileged few.

The anti-democratic impulse is commonplace on the right. GOP Chair Ronna McDaniel, for example, celebrated on Thursday a series of court rulings that make it harder for the American people to vote:

In the last two weeks alone, Republicans have won cases in: ? ARIZONA ? IOWA ? NEW HAMPSHIRE ? OHIO ? SOUTH CAROL… https://t.co/TgO6RXYBqS

— Ronna McDaniel (@Ronna McDaniel)1602191313.0

Meanwhile, Trump has explicitly said he thinks he needs Barrett to be approved by the Senate because he expects the Supreme Court to determine the result of the November election. He's not satisfied with simply competing in the Electoral College which, at least in 2016, was tilted in his favor. He's run a months-long disinformation campaign attacking mail-in voting, claiming the election will be rigged, and demanding that his supporters become poll-watchers — likely as an attempt to intimidate Democrats who want to cast ballots. He wants chaos, and then he wants his hand-picked justices to hand him the election, regardless of the will of the people.

Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a Trump sycophant, seems to agree.

"Now, we may have litigation about who won the election, but the court will decide," he said last month. "And, if the Republicans lose, we will accept that result. But we need a full court, and I think that's possible before the election."

So it should be clear that it's not just a Trump phenomenon. Republicans are committed to limiting the power of the voters to keep their hold on power. And in turn, the fact that Republicans need to persuade a minority of the country to win allows them to become more radicalized, thus pushing them to dilute voters' power even more.

And since gutting the Voting Rights Act, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to act to preserve voting rights or increase access to the ballot. With Barrett on the bench, that attitude is almost certain to be further entrenched.

===

https://insideclimatenews.org/news/04**012017**/exxon-climate-investigation-jeff-sessions-attorney-general-trump

over the past year, the battle lines formed along partisan lines on the question of whether the Justice Department should launch a probe intoExxonMobil's stance on climate change.

The designated referee in that battle was to have been U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, who received the formal letters staking out each side's position on an investigation.

One of those letters, sent by five Republican senators sympathetic to Exxon, carried the signature of Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions, who isDonald Trump's choice to succeed Lynch as the next attorney general.

That letter argued that a federal investigation of Exxon would suppress debate on the validity of climate change and amounted to prosecutorial misconduct. Any investigation of the oil giant must be stopped immediately and no future probes initiated, Sessions and the other senators told Lynch.

If he is confirmed by the Senate to replace Lynch, Sessions will become the nation's top law enforcement officer and would hold ultimate authority on the future of any federal investigations of Exxon, making it highly unlikely that any investigation underway would proceed any further. Sessions did not respond to an interview request.

Sessions would have a seat at Trump's cabinet table alongside like-minded climate denialists tapped to run the Environmental Protection Agency as well as the Departments of Commerce, Interior and Energy. And even if Rex Tillerson, Trump's choice for secretary of state, has acknowledged the scientific consensus that the risks of climate change are real and need to be dealt with, he has been the chief executive of Exxon for the past 10 years.

In other words, Sessions will fit comfortably into an administration loaded with supporters of the fossil fuel industry. That leaves little hope federal authorities will take action on Exxon, said Joel Schwartz, a former federal prosecutor who worked on the prosecution of the tobacco industry.

"If they don't see climate change as causing a problem then there is no crime to prevent; there is no wrong to right," Schwartz said. "Under their argument there can be no bad actors—just scientists with honest differences of opinion."

California Reps. Ted Lieu and Mark DeSaulnier were among the first to call for Lynch to open a probe of Exxon.The two Democrats asked the attorney general to determine whether Exxon had violated federal law by "organizing a sustained deception campaign disputing climate science" and "failing to disclose truthful information" about climate change.

The request came in the wake of an investigative series ofstories published by InsideClimate News that reveals Exxon scientists were warning of potentially catastrophic effects of a buildup of atmospheric carbon dioxide from fossil fuels as early as 1977. (The Los Angeles Times laterpublished stories researched by the Columbia School of Journalism.)

The Justice Department confirmed in January that it had referred the request to the FBI for an initial inquiry, but no details were ever disclosed.

In May, Sessions was one of five Republican senators who demanded Lynch halt that preliminary investigation.

"We write today to demand that the Department of Justice (DOJ) immediately cease its ongoing use of law enforcement resources to stifle private debate on one of the most controversial public issues of our time—climate change," according to the letter.

Sessions was joined by Sens. Mike Lee, Ted Cruz, David Perdue and David Vitter in signing the letter that suggested a prosecution of Exxon would amount to prosecutorial misconduct.

"As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity's opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct," they told Lynch.

David Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center and former director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection of the Federal Trade Commission, said the position staked out by Sessions and the others in the letter to Lynch is a signal Exxon will get a free pass at the federal level.

"That means it will be left to the state attorneys general to pick up the cudgel if there is going to be any holding Exxon accountable," he said.

But given Exxon's resources, its powerful allies in Congress and the ferocity it has shown in attacking the investigations being undertaken by New York and Massachusetts, other attorneys general may be reluctant to engage in litigation.

"They may believe it's the right thing to do, but they know they can't sustain the fight they will surely encounter," Vladeck said. "So Exxon...will go on about its business without being held accountable for its conduct."

Lieu and DeSaulnier, both Democrats from Southern California, are grudgingly accepting what lies ahead.

"It's not looking very encouraging," DeSaulnier said.

Lieu said he hopes the FBI will turn up enough evidence that cannot be ignored, but said, "I am pessimistic about the attorney general's office."

Exxon may also find a more agreeable Securities and Exchange Commission under the Trump administration. The SEC reportedly launched an investigation into how Exxon accounts for climate change impacts when it values its assets. Exxon has confirmed the SEC investigation and pledged its cooperation.

In the wake of the probe, Exxon announced in October that it was revising the estimated value of its Canadian tar sands reserves to conform to SEC guidelines.

On Wednesday, Trump announced lawyer Jay Clayton as his choice to replace Mary Jo White as SEC chair. Clayton has represented a number of Wall Street giants and could be instrumental in helping implement Trump's promise to scale back on financial regulation.

In addition to designating a chair, the new president likely will be making three other appointments this year to the five-member commission.

The commission is designed as a non-partisan body, and no more than three commissioners may belong to the same political party. Appointees are subject to confirmation by the Senate.

Yet Trump will shape the commission with conservative appointees who will be industry-friendly and lenient enforcers of regulatory rules, according to experts.

It's unlikely Trump will appoint commissioners explicitly opposed to investigating Exxon, saidAndrew Vollmer, a law professor at the University of Virginia and former deputy general counsel at the SEC. New Republican commissioners, however, are likely to share the president's ideological policy preferences, he said.

"The kind of people he will pick can influence and affect investigations," Vollmer said. "There is nothing improper about that as long as a commissioner does not have a conflict of interest."

Trump's appointee to head the SEC, for instance, could instruct the SEC's enforcement division to stop a particular investigation, he said. But that carries the risk of alienating staff and exposing the commission to public criticism, making the power more theoretical than real, he said.

Still, he said, "the chair has the power."

If allegations of wrongdoing came from a whistleblower, then the SEC would be mandated to conduct a summary investigation of Exxon, according to according toBevis Longstreth, a former SEC commissioner who was appointed by Ronald Reagan. But even then, it need only be a cursory look to satisfy the statutory requirements that the credibility of whistleblower complaints be weighed, Longstreth said.

"I don't think you can look to the SEC—given what will be its be makeup—to do very much in the way of an Exxon investigation," he said.

https://www.opensecrets.org/members-of-congress/summary?cid=N00031696

Top Contributors, 2013 - 2018

Contributor	Total	Individuals	PACs
Club for Growth	$360,732	$360,732	$0
Senate Conservatives Fund	$171,407	$165,907	$5,500
Kirkham Motorsports	$111,200	$111,200	$0
Pachulski, Stang et al	$82,400	$82,400	$0
Sullivan & Cromwell	$79,666	$79,666	$0

Top Industries, 2013 - 2018

Industry	Total	Individuals	PACs
Republican/Conservative	$745,272	$698,707	$46,565
Securities & Investment	$583,246	$565,246	$18,000
Lawyers/Law Firms	$388,641	$311,891	$76,750
Retired	$371,078	$371,078	$0
Real Estate	$319,540	$303,540	$16,000

---

2018

Club for Growth	$360,732	$360,732	$0	$0
2	Senate Conservatives Fund	$171,407	$165,907	$5,500
3	Kirkham Motorsports	$111,200	$111,200	$0
4	Pachulski, Stang et al	$82,400	$82,400	$0
5	Sullivan & Cromwell	$79,666	$79,666	$0
6	Edge Creek	$76,600	$76,600	$0
7	Microsoft Corp	$71,450	$33,950	$37,500
8	Uline Inc	$68,200	$68,200	$0
9	Gallery Furniture	$64,800	$64,800	$0
10	Charter Communications	$57,400	$33,400	$24,000
11	Arizona Diamondbacks/Datatel Inc	$56,700	$56,700	$0
12	Braman Motorcars	$52,000	$52,000	$0
13	Halliburton Co	$50,900	$45,900	$5,000
14	Comcast Corp	$48,600	$23,100	$25,500
15	Cinemark Holdings	$47,800	$47,800	$0
16	Koch Industries	$45,800	$10,800	$35,000
17	AT&T Inc	$44,000	$0	$44,000
18	Ocean Star International	$43,200	$43,200	$0
19	NorPAC	$42,800	$42,800	$0
20	1-800 Contacts	$39,850	$37,850	$2,000

===

eg retaliation

Senators Demand DOJ Cease Investigation Into Opponents of President Obama’s Energy Policies

may 26, 2016

|

202-228-7561 WASHINGTON – U.S. Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Mike Lee (R-Utah), Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), David Perdue (R-Ga.), and David Vitter (R-La.) today sent a letter to Attorney General Loretta Lynch, demanding that the Department of Justice (DOJ) end its use of law enforcement resources against political opponents of President Obama’s energy agenda.

“These actions provide disturbing confirmation that government officials at all levels are threatening to wield the sword of law enforcement to silence debate on climate change,” the letter reads. “As you well know, initiating criminal prosecution for a private entity’s opinions on climate change is a blatant violation of the First Amendment and an abuse of power that rises to the level of prosecutorial misconduct.”

The letter goes on to demand that Attorney General Lynch confirm that all investigations into any private individual’s views on climate change end within 14 days and promise not to initiate any future such investigations.

“Freedom of thought and inquiry is at the very heart of liberty,” Sen. Cruz said. “Sadly, the Obama administration and its allies in state attorney general offices across the country are threatening to use the power of government to intimidate and ultimately silence companies and researchers who do not agree with the government’s opinions about the allegedly harmful effects of climate change and what should be done about it. This is an abuse of power and a direct assault on the First Amendment. The Obama Justice Department should immediately cease any further consideration of such action and should instead do everything in its power to protect the freedom of thought of all Americans.”

“Threatening prosecution of those who dare to challenge the most outlandish scaremongering by climate activists strikes at the very heart of the Free Speech protections on which this nation was founded,” Sen. Lee said. “Issuing subpoenas to harass researchers and academics with whom they have communicated, as some state attorneys general offices have done, shows a basic disregard for Americans’ Freedom of Association. The public expects us to prevent such abuses, not perpetrate them. It is our responsibility to contain the inevitable chilling effects by calling for an end to any consideration by the Department of Justice of such harassment at once.”

“I have serious concerns any time that the Department of Justice uses its power to repress constitutionally protected speech and open dialogue on any public policy issue,” Sen. Perdue said. “Given the unprecedented politicization of the Obama Justice Department, the Senate Judiciary Committee’s oversight responsibilities have become more important than ever before. There is no place in our democracy for politically-motivated investigations by the Department of Justice.”

“Unnecessary government intrusion of private citizens’ lives is an unfortunate characteristic of the reign of the Obama Administration,” Sen. Vitter said. “It is contemptible for the Justice Department to target and threaten individual American citizens and private or non-profit organizations in pursuit of its far-left environmental agenda.”

Read the letter in its entirety here.

===

https://thinkprogress.org/republican-senator-mike-lee-speech-green-new-deal-dr-evil-star-wars-sharknado-6cc84aae7e7d/

In a bizarre speech on the Senate floor Tuesday, Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) mocked the notion of climate change and climate action with references to dinosaurs, Star Wars, Dr. Evil, Aquaman, giant sea horses, and even the movie Sharknado.

Lee was speaking in the lead up to a Senate vote Tuesday on the Green New Deal resolution, which calls for a very rapid transition to clean energy to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Democrats have labeled the vote a “sham,” claiming Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) introduced the resolution for the sole purpose of trying to embarrass and split Democrats. Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said McConnell had “made a mockery of the legislative process,” adding, “Everyone knows it’s a stunt…. [McConnell] puts something on the floor and then votes no, what’s the point of that?”

Lee’s speech would seem to prove Schumer’s point. While attempting to mock the Green New Deal, Lee revealed Republicans’ contempt for the issue of climate action.

Wildfires in Utah rage on, displacing more than 6,000 people

Two parts in Lee’s speech were particularly bizarre.

At one point, Lee appeared to turn serious, saying, “Critics will no doubt chastise me for not taking climate change seriously, but, please, Mr. President, nothing could be further from the truth. No Utahn needs to hear lectures about the gravity of climate change from politicians from other states….”

But instead of talking about the very real threat posed to Utah by warming-worsened droughts, heatwaves, and wildfires, Lee then joked, “… For it was only in 2016, as viewers of the Syfy network will remember, when climate change hit Utah, when our own state was struck not simply by a tornado, but by a tornado with sharks in it.”

Lee then described at length a scene from the movie Sharknado, for no apparent reason.

Lee closed his remarks by arguing that the solution to climate change won’t be found in the kind of rapid transition to clean energy the Green New Deal resolution calls for, but would rather be found in “maternity wards across the country.”

“The solution to so many of our problems at all times and in all places is to fall in love, get married, and have some kids,” he stated.

Why? “More babies will mean forward-looking adults, the sort we need to tackle long-term, large-scale problems. American babies in particular will likely be wealthier, better educated, and more conservation-minded than children raised in still-industrializing countries,” he said.

Scientists say Ocasio-Cortez’s dire climate warning is spot on

Aside from the fact that Americans generate vastly more carbon pollution per capita than people living in still-industrializing countries, Lee’s supposedly serious solution misses the central point of recent climate science.

Experts agree that the country must make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, or risk decades of worsening climate change. The Green New Deal is not a final or detailed plan to solve the climate crisis, but recognizes that the science demands very aggressive action now.

pow

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2019/03/senate-republicans-tried-to-mock-democrats-for-the-green-new-deal-then-mike-lee-pulled-out-his-charts/

Freshman congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) has inspired Republicans to talk about climate change, albeit not in the most productive way. When Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) forced a vote on the Green New Deal resolution on Tuesday as part of his efforts to brand all Democrats as socialists or sow division within their ranks, most of the focus remained on how Democrats would respond to the bad-faith ploy.

Instead, Democrats decided to vote “present” on Tuesday adopting a strategy similar to their approach last year when House Republicans brought a pro-ICE resolution to a vote. This show of unanimity included Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.), the Green New Deal resolution’s sponsor.

In fact, there isn’t a Green New Deal yet, beyond a framework, a name, and some very ambitious targets: Slashing greenhouse gas emissions to zero in a decade and guaranteeing jobs and fair wages. But it’s never too early for the war over the narrative to start. More moderate Green New Deal critics often complain that it goes too far on policy matters like nuclear energy, which the resolution did not address at all. And conservatives charge it will take awayAmerican livelihoods, cows, and air planes.

Remember: Republicans have no plan for confronting climate change. Few national Republican politicians will even admit that it is a problem, let alone propose policy options for how to slash greenhouse gasses and prepare for the future. So while the Green New Deal debate has forced Democratic presidential contenders and congressional leaders into debating serious choices over policy, the Senate Republicans (with cues from President Trump) treat climate change like a joke.

Consider Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and his contribution to the debate today.

Republicans have repeatedly characterized the Green New Deal as “ridiculous.” In keeping with the light-hearted attitude to sea-level rise and existential threats, Lee showed a series of charts to show just how “ridiculous” he considers the Green New Deal to be. “There isn’t a single serious idea in here,” he said.

“This image has as much to do with overcoming communism in the 20th Century as the Green New Deal has to do with overcoming climate change in the 21st,” he explained.

Swapping charts, he continued, “This is the real solution to climate change, babies…By having more children, you’re making your nation more populous, boosting its capacity to solve climate change.”...

===

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/6/27/17511348/mike-lee-republican-scotus

Conservatives reacting to Wednesday’s announcement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s retirement already have a popular choice for his replacement: Sen. Mike Lee.

Lee, from Utah, is a firebrand conservative and original Tea Party member loved by many libertarians and conservatives, but despised among establishment Republicans who saw his hardline moves as self-defeating.

Last summer, for example, he torpedoed a Republican plan to repeal Obamacare. “It seems like he’s against everything right now,” his fellow senator from Utah, Orin Hatch, said in an interview with Politico. “That’s the way it looks to me.”

And he’s widely blamed for helping Sen. Ted Cruz shut down the government in 2013.

When Lee ran for reelection in 2014, fellow Utah Republican Jon Huntsman called him an “embarrassment to our family, to our state, to our country to have him as a U.S. senator”

Though Lee is a lawyer, he’s not a traditional pick for a Supreme Court justice, as he’s not a legal scholar or sitting judge.

Nonetheless, Lee’s on President Donald Trump’s short-list of potential Supreme Court picks, and the senator has already said he “would not say no” if asked to serve.

Longtime friend and ally, Cruz, told Fox News that Lee would be his ideal choice.

[twt]

Other conservatives and libertarians echoed similar views on Wednesday, including conservative writer Erick Erickson,Fox News commentator Guy Benson, and Commentary magazine’s John Podhoretz.

Reason magazine’s Eric Boehm wrote Wednesday, “conservatives have plenty of reasons to like the prospect of a Justice Mike Lee,” and added, “libertarians would be hard pressed to find much ... to complain about Lee sitting on the Supreme Court, where he could fill Kennedy’s “swing vote” role and steer the court in an originalist direction.”

This isn’t the first time Lee has been pushed by conservatives as a possible Supreme Court choice; in 2016, after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia, Lee had the support of many Republicans as a potential Trump SCOTUS nominee, including then-Sen. Jeff Sessions and the powerful Heritage Foundation, which described Lee as having a “deep devotion to the Constitution” and added, “his speeches and writings ... reflect a keen desire to restore important constitutional principles, which he acknowledges is a daunting endeavor.”

Lee’s political views are a mixed bag of traditional conservatism and pro-privacy libertarian (a la Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, with whom Lee has voted against major defense bills, breaking with the GOP). It’s unclear just how realistic his chances are of landing on the Supreme Court, given both his past disagreements with other conservatives and his history with President Trump.

But the fact that he’s in the mix shows that at least some conservatives view him as just the “strict constructionist” they’re looking for on the Supreme Court — complete with Tea Party leanings and a willingness to divide.

Lee’s ideology isn’t straightforward

Lee is a former Supreme Court clerk and served as assistant United States attorney before entering private practice and ultimately running for the Senate. Since winning his 2010 race in the mist of the Tea Party movement, he’s been a reliable conservative in the Senate.

But the lifelong Republican is, as one conservative writer told me, “libertarian in his construction.” In 2011, he voted against both extending provisions of the Patriot Act based on privacy concerns and against the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act. And in 2014, he joined with Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) to write an amendment to that year’s National Defense Authorization Act to stop indefinite detention of Americans without trial.

Lee said that the purpose of that amendment, the Due Process Guarantee Act, was to “guarantee the right of the American people, while they exist, while they live from day to day, on U.S. soil, that they will be free from indefinite detention without trial, without the rights protected by our Constitution, without the rights that we’ve come to associate with our habeas corpus guarantees and other constitutional protections.”

In 2017, he joined a bipartisan group of senators to write a bill to end the indefinite detention of Americans, writing, “the federal government should not be allowed to indefinitely imprison any American on the mere accusation of treason without affording them the due process guaranteed by our Constitution.”

In a statement on Wednesday regarding his interest in a seat on the Court, Lee said, “I started watching Supreme Court arguments for fun when I was 10 years old. The president’s got a decision to make and I trust his ability to make it and make it well.”

Is Lee loyal enough to Trump?

There’s one potential stumbling block for Lee’s nomination to the Court: Lee never endorsed Trump during the 2016 presidential race. He even asked Trump to quit the race in October 2016 in a video posted on Lee’s Facebook page and aimed at Trump.

“I respectfully ask you, with all due respect, to step aside. Step down, allow someone else to carry the banner of these principles ... rather than weighing down the American people.”

..[opposed trump steel tariffs]

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/12/30/mike-lee-endorse-trump-2020-1075490

no lnx

Mike Lee isn’t tired of winning under Trump

The Utah Republican fiercely opposed Trump in 2016. Now he’s ready to endorse the president in 2020 after finding success in the Trump era.

By MARIANNE LEVINE and BURGESS EVERETT 12/30/2018 07:23 AM EST

In 2016, Sen. Mike Lee made a last-ditch attempt at the Republican National Convention to derail Donald Trump from winning his party’s presidential nomination — shouting on the floor until the convention chair walked off the stage. Two-and-a-half years later, he’s ready to endorse Trump’s reelection campaign.

“Look, I had some concerns and I expressed those,” Lee said in an interview. “I’ve been pleased with the number of things he’s done, and he’s been very helpful to me on criminal justice reform. … I’ve talked to him a lot and talking to him helps me develop a relationship with him.”

“I quite like him,” Lee said, adding that he intends to endorse Trump’s presidential bid this time around.

The Utah Republican is thriving in the Trump era, which has upended the Republican Party and left many of Lee’s colleagues smarting over the president’s erratic style. But while hawkish Republicans seethed as the president pulled out of Syria and upended plans to avert a government shutdown, December has been a good month for the libertarian-leaning Lee, who backs Trump in both fights.

Lee played a key role in pushing the Trump-backed prison and sentencing overhaul in the face of resistance from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). He even kept his own whip count in a bid to pressure leadership before the bill was ultimately passed — something Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn derided as “kind of a side show.”

And despite McConnell’s opposition, Lee also forced to the floor a resolution to withdraw U.S. support for the Saudi-backed war in Yemen. The measure, co-sponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), passed the Senate with bipartisan support.

“Those two issues,” Lee said, “are examples of what can happen with an idea when you cultivate it and nurture it over the course of many years.”

Meanwhile, Lee continues to strengthen ties with Trump, lunching with him and a handful of other conservative lawmakers at the White House amid a government shutdown that GOP leaders sought to avoid. “I’m a big believer in the need to bolster border security and I think he is right to place emphasis on that,” Lee said of Trump.

Lee’s spate of successes underscores his unique strategy: He works around party leaders to get his priorities implemented. It’s rubbed many of his GOP colleagues the wrong way, even as his influence has grown with a hard-line president.

Lee, who has a reputation as something of a loner in the Senate, isn’t abandoning his rogue tactics. Before the Senate left for the holidays he blocked passage of a bipartisan public lands bill, drawing scorn from Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.). Yet not long after Gardner yelled at Lee on the floor, the two hugged it out, Lee said. As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) put it, when Lee “disagrees with his Republican colleagues he does it in a way that sometimes maintains friendships, unlike some other members of his caucus.”

As to Lee’s relationship with Senate leadership, he will be “an independent actor until the day he dies,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a frequent foreign policy foe.

During his eight years in the Senate, Lee has played several roles, from Sen. Ted Cruz’s closest political ally to bipartisan dealmaker. He’s repeatedly challenged Senate leadership, but next year he is set to chair the Joint Economic Committee and will be included in influential chairmen’s meetings. He will also again lead the conservative Steering Committee, which meets weekly and represents the chamber’s conservative Republicans.

Though Lee still embraces the confrontational tea party politics that swept him into office and took out establishment-backed incumbent Bob Bennett in 2010, he’s also earning plenty of praise from his Democratic colleagues.

“Mike Lee was one of the earliest people I worked with as a United States senator on [criminal justice reform],” said Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.). “I still remember I was hours-old as a senator sitting on the subway with him talking about these issues. He’s been such a good partner of mine, and he should be celebrated as one of the champions.”

Lee’s Senate colleagues describe him as hardworking and a stalwart supporter of conservative values. But he also fought publicly with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) over criminal justice reform and keeps Senate leadership at arms length.

He tangled with Cornyn for weeks over how much support the criminal justice bill had. Each said he was right, although the final 87-12 vote reflected Lee’s whip count, which many in the party described as overly optimistic at the time.

Cornyn describes Lee as “a passionate guy” and that “there was just some misunderstanding about which whip count that the leader relies on.”

Back in 2016, Lee attempted to join Senate leadership by arguing that the party’s top members were subject to term limits earlier than expected, a reading of the rules that his colleagues rejected. He doesn’t seem eager to seek a formal leadership post now.

Lee said that while he doesn’t agree with Senate GOP leaders on every issue, he tries not to surprise anyone.

“I try to send signals to where I’m going, what I’m willing to do, what I’m not,” he said.

But just one day after the Senate passed the criminal justice reform bill, Lee stunned his Republican colleagues by blocking a vote on a public lands package led by Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska). Lee complained that the bill was airdropped on him just that morning. The argument fell flat among some of his colleagues, who privately groused that he was rewriting criminal justice reform on the fly, too.

By POLITICO MAGAZINE

“I’m pretty doggone upset,” Gardner yelled at Lee on the Senate floor. “Wonder why people are sick of this place? Because of tonight.”

While Lee has often found himself at odds with Senate colleagues, he’s capitalized on his relationship with the Trump administration to advance his priorities. Lee worked with Jared Kushner on criminal justice reform and with Ivanka Trump on a child tax credit that was included in the GOP’s tax overhaul.

“That’s an example of something that didn’t germinate, wasn’t planted by leadership necessarily but it was a good idea,” Lee said of the tax credit.

Next year, Lee plans to continue working with Ivanka Trump and Senate Republicans on a proposal that would allow new parents to use their Social Security benefits to take parental leave when a child is born and pay the money back later. He also sees an opportunity to block arms sales to Saudi Arabia, particularly with Democratic control of the House.

Lee describes his strategy as waiting for the right moment for an idea to succeed. The Yemen resolution gained momentum after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the administration’s refusal to directly link Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to Khashoggi’s killing.

“The stars aligned,” he said.

Lee was also a rare GOP voice applauding Trump’s move to pull U.S. troops out of Syria. Trump returned the favor, citing Lee approvingly in a tweet defending his Syria decision.

For someone so used to going it alone, Lee’s found a surprising ally in the White House.

“I had real concerns about him,” the senator said of the president, “and have been very pleased.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2016/12/08/heritage-foundation-s-climate-and-energy-policy-summit-science-deniers-emboldened-trump-s-electoral-victory

Heritage Foundation’s Climate and Energy Policy Summit: Science Deniers Emboldened by Trump’s Electoral Victory

This morning, while introducing the Heritage Foundation’s “premier energy-and-climate-policy event in America,” Becky Norton Dunlop offered a fleeting wisp of reasoned reality.

“A growing economy and an improving environment go hand in hand,” Dunlop said. She wasn’t, however, referring to the near-exponential growth in renewable energy jobs that have helped lift the country from the worst recession in a generation and the worst financial crisis in 75 years, the conditions that loomed over the last presidential transition. Nor was she referring to the historic decoupling of Gross Domestic Product from greenhouse gas emissions, which has shown consistent economic growth over the past five years both in the United States and globally while emissions have stabilized and slightly reduced at both scales.

Rather, Dunlop, who is reportedly assisting President-elect Trump’s transition efforts, was referring to stripping public health and environmental oversight of fossil fuel companies and creating “an atmosphere of freedom.”

So it proceeded throughout the “At the Crossroads III: Energy and Climate Policy Summit,” hosted by Heritage and the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Strong rhetoric backed by nothing besides someone else’s rhetoric. Claims based on stories from the fake news websites that populate so many Facebook feeds. Arguments based on fake science funded entirely by oil and gas companies.

Oil and coal are environmentally friendly because … we say they’re environmentally friendly… Or, Sea levels have been rising at the same rate for 100 years. (About sea level rise…)

The Hosts: Heritage Foundation and The Texas Public Policy Foundation

The Heritage Foundation is a conservative D.C. think tank that regularly promotes climate science denial through its publications and the public statements of its “policy experts.”

Once seen as closely allied to the Republican Party and the Reagan administration, the Heritage Foundation has recently undergone a considerable shift, as *The New York Times* described: “Long known as an incubator for policy ideas and the embodiment of the party establishment, it has become more of a political organization feeding off the rising populism of the Tea Party movement.”

The Heritage Foundation has also emerged as one of the most influential forces behind Donald Trump's transition team. As *Politico*reports:

“Part gatekeeper, part brain trust and part boots on the ground, Heritage is both a major presence on the transition team itself and a crucial conduit between Trump’s orbit and the once-skeptical conservative leaders who ultimately helped get him elected.”

According to ExxonSecrets, Heritage Foundation has received $780,000 from ExxonMobil since 1998. According to Greenpeace,The Heritage Foundation received $2,738,571 from Koch foundations between 2005 and 2011, with total Koch foundation grants between 1997 and 2014 adding up to a grand total $5,712,845.

The Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) is an Austin-based think tank that has received at least $911,499 from Koch-related foundations between 1998 and 2014 and nearly $4 million from the Donors Capital Fund and DonorsTrust, considered the “dark money ATM” of the Koch network.

Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, told the*Texas Observer*, “TPPF's donors are a Who's Who of Texas polluters, giant utilities and big insurance companies. TPPF is thinking the way its donors want it to think.”

The Climate Denial and Dirty Energy Summit

With a generally gloating tone, a few consistent themes were hammered over and over at this summit: that Trump would “unleash” oil and gas, thatScott Pruitt’s appointmentto lead the EPA would mean a stripping of regulations for fossil fuel industries, and, of course, that the science of climate change was unclear, and that most climate scientists are part of a vast conspiracy started by the United Nations in the 1970s.

After some brief introductory remarks by the Heritage and TPPF organizers, the day's sessions on Congressional updates, energy policy, the economy, and “science” featured a who’s who in fossil fuel–funded climate deniers. Here are some highlights.

The Honorable Mike Lee (R-UT), Member, Senate Committee on Energy & Natural Resources, and Chairman, Subcommittee on Water & Power

Senator Lee, who has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Chevron, Koch Industries, and other dirty energy companies, argued for the transfer of federal lands to state governments, and made the case for a “decentralization” of federal regulation of energy industries to the state governments.

On fracking:

“Despite the Chicken Little predictions of so many doom and gloom environmentalists out there, oil and natural gas production has boomed over the last decade largely because of the shale evolution that has taken place because of technological innovation.”

The Honorable Lamar Smith (R-TX), Chairman, House Committee on Science, Space and Technology

Rep. Smith, while taking a break from his ExxonMobil-funded duties, talked about issuing subpoenas to find out what climate advocacy groups and state attorneys general knew about what Exxon knew about climate science.

On climate advocates:

“The environmental extremists who fight against American energy are here to stay. They are determined to stop Americans from having access to affordable power.”

On the EPA’s endangerment finding for carbon dioxide (CO2):

The agency wants to “hide information” from the American people. “They cherry picked the data.”

About the Clean Power Plan:

“The rule will have little or no impact on global temperatures. Regulations should be based on sound science, not science fiction.”

The Honorable Pete Olson (R-TX), Chairman, Subcommittee on Energy & Power, House Committee on Energy & Commerce

Rep. Olson, who called fracked oil and gas “Liquid American freedom,” spent a lot of his time talking about how unfair and overly restrictive the EPA’s clean air rules were, while also applauding the agency and giving Republicans credit for writing the Clean Air Act and taking the pollution out of the air. The oil industry (and Koch Industries) is a big fan of Rep. Olson, and shows it in the campaign contributions rained down on him.

On climate science:

“There is climate change since the book of Genesis. I don’t believe that humans are about to destroy our Earth.”

On the Republican environmental tradition (but note that Olson voted against ozone — or smog — regulations):

“We are the party through Teddy Roosevelt that made our national parks. We are a party of our sportsmen that love the outdoors. We are the party that cleaned up the smog I breathed as a child in Houston to have clean air that my kids breathe today.

We will not pass a country on to our kids and grandkids that resemble the days where the Cuyahoga River was on fire.”

On nominated EPA head Scott Pruitt:

“I’m excited to have him come before our committee and say things I want him to say.”

The HonorableJames Inhofe (R-OK), Chairman, Senate Environment & Public Works Committee

Senator Inhofe, the upper chamber's most recalcitrant climate denier, reminded everyone about the Climategate non-story, and promised that Congress is going to use the Congressional Review Act to legislate away rules that Congress has already given federal agencies the authority to write.

On the Congressional Review Act (CRA):

”[CRA] is the vehicle that can be used if there is a regulation and you want to do away with it … the Senate can override. All it takes is 51 [votes] in the Senate to do this. We passed CRAs on all these regulations, but the President vetoes.”

On predicting the Trump victory:

“I asked, Is God really going to make America change that much? God's not going to let that happen to America.”

On the United Nations and using climate change to consolidate world power:

“Keep in mind, the IPCC [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] is the United Nations 'power plan.' That's where it all started and it's very important that people understand that.”

On Scott Pruittas director of the EPA:

“You’ll love this guy.”

Corbin J. Robinson, Jr., Principal, Quintana Capital Group

Corbin Robinson, who made his riches off coal and gas, confessed that he doesn’t know much about politics or science — “I am just a business guy trying to do my thing” — before proceeding to give a lecture on climate science.

Speaking to the climate science deniers from the afternoon session:

“My guiding light in terms of understanding the science … They are the real heroes. I am here to honor you.”

On climate science:

“News bulletin: the world is warming. Of course. It’s been warming since 1750 when the 'Little Ice Age' ended. Sea levels have been rising. They’ve been rising for the past 100 years.”

On the media’s coverage of climate change:

“I must say the media has done a marvelous job of not presenting the facts. I can't think of a more biased presentation. The educational community has not presented the facts. It is time in the next four years.”

On his proposal for a communications campaign:

“We need understandable bullet points. The science can’t be summarized, but the truth can be summarized … It’s time to go on offense. Develop a series of newspaper fold-outs with a series of bullet points on CO2. On CO2’s benefits for life and plant growth. CO2 always was and always will be. Man exhales CO2.”

David Kreutzer, Senior Fellow at The Heritage Foundation

A former economist with the controversial Berman & Company, Kreutzer spoke mainly about what he said were the economic costs and consequences of environmental regulations. He did not address President-elect Trump head-on.

Kreutzer lamented that CO2 emissions were not going to stimulate the economy. The debate, he argued, was how much regulations can hurt the economy, which he discussed without directly mentioning Trump's new anti-regulations EPA chief, Scott Pruitt.

“We at Heritage were accused of having some sort of denier economic model,” said Kreutzer, who also decried both the Lieberman-Warner and Waxman-Markey proposed cap-and-trade bills for addressing climate change. Both of those bills failed to pass, though a cap-and-trade model has been quietly inserted into President Obama's Clean Power Plan, which may never see the light of day in the next administration.

After disparaging cap-and-trade, Kreutzer moved onto the social cost of carbon, which he called “fiction.”

Patrick Michaels, Director of the Center for the Study of Science at the Cato Institute

Michaels, a long-time climate change denier, introduced his talk as one for “geeks.” Thereafter, he tore into climate change and climate science models.

There is an “epidemic of positive results in the [climate science] literature,” Michaels said, concluding this is the case due to “funding” issues, but not elaborating on what he meant by that. Michaels, of course, has admitted to taking 40% of the funding for his own work at the Cato Institute from the oil industry. The Koch brothers founded Cato.

“Science is very, very sick,” opined Michaels. “There is a natural variability, if you will, even if you assume the later warming is anthropogenic … The best solution is to do nothing. Because doing nothing is doing something.”

Michaels then called for President-elect Trump to do as he promised on the campaign trail: Rip up and toss out the United Nations Paris climate agreement. “We’re going to make climate great again,” joked Michaels.

Like Kreutzer, Michaels also discussed the social cost of carbon metric, but went further. “Social cost of carbon becomes the social benefit of carbon,” he said.

Patrick Forkin — Vice President of Strategy & Global Energy Analytics at Peabody Energy

...

Lies are the currency of the American right wing, so ubiquitous in politics and media that many have dubbed the phenomenon a "post-truth" crisis.

So it was genuinely surprising Monday when Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) — himself a hard-line member of the conservative movement and is in many ways a radical figure in his own right — called out a member of his own party for spreading fake news. His denunciation of Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) came in response to tweet thread about the pending criminal justice reform bill in the Senate, which is spurring divisions among members of the Republican caucus.

In his own tweet about the bill over the weekend, Cotton had spread fears about the bill, saying "it gives early release to 'low level, nonviolent' criminals like those convicted of assaulting police, even with deadly weapons," and to "criminals who steal passports & immigration docs from aliens who have been trafficked to keep them in captivity." He also said there have been no hearings on the bill.

"I highly respect my colleague from Arkansas but everything in his tweet and this thread is 100% Fake News," Lee said in response to Cotton's tweets.

He continued:

Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

Replying to @SenMikeLee

First, the House Judiciary committee passed the First Step Act out of committee on May 9 of this year, and the Senate Judiciary Committee passed the highly similar Sentencing and Corrections Act out of committee on Feb 15 of this year. These are not new policies. 2/

1,499

12:24 PM - Nov 19, 2018

258 people are talking about this

Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

Replying to @SenMikeLee

Second, and more importantly, the First Step Act does not “give early release” to anyone. Anyone claiming it does, does not understand how the bill works. 3/

1,565

12:24 PM - Nov 19, 2018

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Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

Replying to @SenMikeLee

What the First Step Act does do is encourage rehabilitation by incentivizing inmates to participate in recidivism reduction programs by giving them time credits that can help them qualify for prerelease custody. 4/

1,490

12:25 PM - Nov 19, 2018

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264 people are talking about this

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Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

Replying to @SenMikeLee

Nothing in the First Step Act gives inmates early release. It only incentivizes participation in recidivism reduction programs. At all times the Bureau of Prisons retains all authority over who does and does not qualify for early release. 5/

1,507

12:25 PM - Nov 19, 2018

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Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

· Nov 19, 2018

Replying to @SenMikeLee

Mike Lee

@SenMikeLee

If @SenTomCotton has good faith problems with this bill then he should welcome a full and open debate on the Senate floor where he can offer amendments to provisions he finds objectionable. But first this bill needs to be brought to the Senate floor so debate can begin. /END

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It was a stern rebuke to the Cotton, who has a long history of false statements and blatant lies. Cotton is also one of the most anti-immigrant members of Congress and has preposterously suggested that the United States has "under-incarceration" problem. In light of the fact that the United States has one of the largest incarcerated populations per capita in the world, and given the vast racial disparities that plague the system, it's unreasonable to interpret his views as driven by anything other than deep-seated racism.

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oppose yemen on const gnds 818

https://www.alternet.org/mike-lee-interstate-highways-civil-war-federalist-society

Mike Lee (R-UT), a member of the Judiciary Committee, one of the most libertarian members of the GOP caucus, is known for his out-of-mainstream positions on the Constitution. He has claimed that Medicare, Social Security, and child labor laws are unconstitutional. And he has justified this by arguing that the Constitution was "designed to be a little bit harsh."

But on Thursday, while giving the opening address to the right-wing Federalist Society, Lee made an even bolder claim: interstate highways must be abolished, or it could lead to civil war.

Lee's argument was that the Kavanaugh hearings, and the "evil" effort by Senate Democrats to investigate credible allegations of sexual assault against him, were indicative of the Left's greed for federal power — and this in turn was indicative of the fact that there is too much federal power period.

"For decades, we have pulled powers constitutionally reserved for the states and for the people into the federal government, and then, once they're here, we have transfered those from the people's elected lawmakers over to unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats, over to the administrative state," Lee complained. This, Lee argued, was part of a "fundamentally un-American contest" to "determine which half of our nation will have the power, at least temporarily, to unilaterally impose its will and its values on the other half," and “many on the left don’t seem too concerned," about it.

In his speech, documented by ThinkProgress, Lee warned that this state of affairs will make politics angrier and more violent until it eventually leads to a second civil war — and in order to prevent it, we must abolish several critical federal programs, including "the Interstate Highway System, "K through 12 public education," "federal higher education accreditation," "early childhood education," "the Department of Commerce," "housing policy," "workforce regulation," and the "huge glut of federally owned land."

Watch the full speech below: [vid]

Lee's belief that we must abolish highways has no basis in reality. As ThinkProgress notes, the Constitution gives Congress the power to "lay and collect Taxes" to "regulate Commerce ... among the several States." Interstate highways, being the means with which people actually travel between and ship goods between the states, are the quintessential component of interstate commerce.

Moreover, it is a bit rich to hear Lee complain about the powers of the federal government given that he has consistently supported expanding federal powers in certain areas. For instance, he wants federal laws banning abortions past 20 weeks and restricting access for minors.

Although Lee's views are extreme, his views are dangerously close to taking root in the corridors of power. The Federalist Society, America's foremost association of conservative lawyers and judges, has played a substantial rolein choosing President Donald Trump's judicial nominees. And Lee himself was briefly considered by Trump as a possible pick for the Supreme Court.

ctr-attack on gay marriage: religious rights/freedom [hobby lobby]

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-christian-legal-army-behind-masterpiece-cakeshop/

The Christian Legal Army Behind ‘Masterpiece Cakeshop’

A special investigation into the rise of Alliance Defending Freedom.

By Sarah Posner

September,Representative Vicky Hartzler, a Missouri Republican, held a press conference with four of her congressional colleagues to announce their support for Jack Phillips, a Colorado baker. The conservative Christian and “cake artist” had been found in violation of Colorado’s anti-discrimination law when he refused to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. Phillips is now the plaintiff in one of the most closely watched cases on the Supreme Court’s docket this term, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission.

This article was reported in partnership with the Investigative Fund at the Nation Institute. Additional research by Eli Clifton, Queen Arsem-O’Malley, Evan Malmgren, and Jake Bittle.

Hartzler had just spent a good part of her summer pressing for a ban on transgender people in the military because she believes they constitute a “domestic threat.” She was one of 86 Republican lawmakers who had just signed onto an amicus brief supporting Phillips’s novel claim that baking and decorating a wedding cake is constitutionally protected artistic expression. Phillips has also argued that he should not be required to deploy his creative talents on behalf of a same-sex couple, because doing so would violate his religious beliefs.

“A government that tells you what you must say and what you must do, and punishes you if you don’t, is frightening,” Hartzler said. “That kind of state power should scare all of us.”

Nearby, Phillips stood quietly with his attorney, Kristen Waggoner of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), which has mushroomed over the past few years into a Christian-right powerhouse. Founded 24 years ago because, as its longtime president Alan Sears once put it, “the homosexual agenda threatens religious freedom,” ADF now rivals some of the nation’s top private law firms in Supreme Court activity. It has trained thousands of lawyers, many of whom have gone on to government service at the federal, state, and local levels. The organization has helped shape “religious freedom” legislation; provides grants to other Christian-right organizations; and presses school districts to adopt its model policies on issues like transgender facility access. ADF now exerts far more influence than other legal organizations that litigate religious-freedom cases, such as the American Center for Law and Justice, the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, and Liberty Counsel. As the courts have ruled in favor of marriage equality over the past decade, ADF has positioned itself at the very center of the efforts to curtail LGBTQ rights under the guise of religious freedom.

The preparation of the congressional amicus brief was led by Ted Cruz, the Texas senator and former GOP presidential contender; Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican once rumored to be under consideration by Donald Trump for a Supreme Court seat; andRepresentative Mike Johnson, a freshman Republican from Louisiana and a rising conservative star. Johnson is one of dozens of former ADF attorneys around the country who were trained in the organization’s “Christ-centered” legal principles and now serve in government or the judiciary. As an ADF staff attorney, he led many of its legal fights against marriage equality.

In just one year, Trump has nominated at least four federal judges who have ties to ADF.

The involvement of Cruz, Lee, Johnson, and other congressional leaders is just one mark of ADF’s remarkable ascent. The organization, which once aspired to be merely a Christian antidote to the secular ACLU, has fast become a training ground for future legislators, judges, prosecutors, attorneys general, and other government lawyers—including, notably, in the Trump administration. Noel Francisco, Trump’s solicitor general, is an ADF-allied attorney, and Attorney General Jeff Sessions consulted with ADF when drafting Department of Justice guidance on religious-freedom issues. At the state level, at least 18 ADF-affiliated lawyers now work in 10 attorney-general offices; all of them were appointed or elected in the past five years. And in just one year, Trump has nominated at least four federal judges who have ties to ADF—Amy Coney Barrett, recently confirmed to the Seventh Circuit; Kyle Duncan, nominated to the Fifth Circuit; and Jeff Mateer and Michael Joseph Juneau, both nominated to district courts.

At the press conference, Johnson enthused about the potential impact of Phillips’s case, calling it “seismic.” Before quickly departing for a vote on the House floor, he explained that he and his colleagues were only seeking “a very careful balance” in the wake of Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court’s landmark 2015 decision enshrining marriage equality. “We have to figure out how everyone can coexist,” Johnson said. “An essential component of that is allowing everyone to live out their deepest convictions.”

At the core of Masterpiece Cakeshop is a radically revisionist idea: that laws protecting the civil rights of historically marginalized groups can violate the free-speech rights of the people who refuse to serve them. Although ADF has also charged that the Colorado law violates Phillips’s right to the free exercise of religion, a shadow looms over that claim, cast by the Supreme Court’s 1968 decision in Newman v. Piggie Park. There, the owner of a South Carolina barbecue chain claimed that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 “contravene[d] the will of God” and infringed on his right to the free exercise of religion, because his beliefs “compel him to oppose any integration of the races.” The Supreme Court rejected these claims as “patently frivolous.” Notably, ADF has put its free-speech claim, rather than the free-exercise-of-religion claim, front and center in its brief, casting Phillips as an artist whose freedom of expression has been violated.

===

Senate Bill Aims to Strip Protections From 1,098 Endangered Species Including Utah Prairie Dog, Florida Panther 9/17 see Wildlife.

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Republican U.S. Senators Orrin Hatch and Mike Lee of Utah introduced legislation this week that would strip federal Endangered Species Act protections for animals and plants found in only one state. Known as intrastate species, such imperiled animals and plants make up the majority of the 1,655 species protected under the act.

The legislation is backed by extreme anti-wildlife organizations that oppose the protection of the Utah prairie dog, an animal only found in Utah. In addition to ending protections for the prairie dog, the legislation would terminate protections for all 1,098 intrastate species, including 497 species in Hawaii, 234 species in California, 86 species in Florida and 20 species in Utah.

"Utah's senators hate their prairie dogs so much they're willing to destroy most of America's endangered wildlifeto wipe out this little animal," said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity. "From the Florida panther to virtually all imperiled species in Hawaii, every one of these intrastate species would be condemned to extinction. Americans do not support this ludicrous proposal."

S. 1863, the deceptively named "Native Species Protection Act," seeks to overturn a 10th Circuit Court of Appeals decision from earlier this year that affirmed the federal government's authority to protect the Utah prairie dog.

In that case, Judge Holmes—a Republican appointee writing for the three-judge panel—concluded that eliminating protections for intrastate species would "leave a gaping hole" and "undercut the conservation purposes" of the Endangered Species Act. The 10th Circuit decision marked the fifth time an appeals court has rejected arguments that extreme private property-rights advocates have been bringing for years.

"Republicans continue to demonstrate that their calls to reform the Endangered Species Act are completely hollow," said Hartl. "Instead of proposing ideas that help recover our most vulnerable wildlife, they're eager to let America's iconic animals go extinct."

Rep. Rob Bishop (R-Utah), chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, said in December that he would like to repeal the Endangered Species Act in its entirety. Since January congressional Republicans have launched 47 legislative attacks against the Endangered Species Act or specific endangered species. Since the Republican takeover of the House of Representatives in 2011, more than 268 attacks have been instigated.

These attacks continue despite the fact that 9 out of 10 Americans support the Endangered Species Act and want it either strengthened or left unchanged by Congress, according to a 2015 poll.

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endoresed ag swallow corrupt

While Michigan’s Republican Governor is busying retaining outside counsel over the poisoning of Flint’s water supply, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee is quietly blocking federal funding to the city— the lone senator daring to do so in Congress.

Lee, who in recent days has been publicly promoting his Article One Project (A1P) to help Congress reclaim its status as “the first branch,” has been privately holding relief funding for the city of Flint hostage,according to a new report from the Daily Beast.

A bipartisan bill to send $250 million to Flint to help repair drinking water infrastructure and $50 million to the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services to monitor for lead contamination is currently being “held” by Lee, according to frustrated Senate staffers who reached out to the Daily Beast. The bill also allocates an additional $100 million in relief for Flint specifically, and $100 million for water infrastructure projects across the country, including potentially Flint.

A “hold” is a Senate procedure that allows an individual senator to secretly stall legislation. When the legislation was first introduced by Democratic Michigan Senator Debbie Stabenow and Oklahoma Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, the bill had 10 senators placing “holds” in opposition, including Lee’s friend and fellow Tea Party Senator, Ted Cruz. But now, as the magnitude of the crisis in Flint has become clear and outrage across the country has grown, Lee stands alone in his crusade to block relief to residents of Flint — even Cruz has quietly slinked away. From the Daily Beast:

Privately the Utah Republican has relied on three reasons to justify his opposition to the legislation, all of which are procedural or philosophical.

Lee doesn’t like that the proposal is not being put through the ordinary and time-consuming gamut of Senate procedures known as ‘regular order’; has objections on how money from the stimulus is being repurposed for water infrastructure; and is concerned about the federal government getting involved in what he views as a local issue.

“We hear members of Congress complain about it almost as if we’re victims,” Lee recently told The Atlantic, in an interview promoting his new pet project, A1P. “We are not. We are the perpetrators,” he said, insisting that Republicans have failed to remain faithful to their vow to uphold conservative principles in Congress. With his latest maneuver to deprive Flint residents of federal relief funds after their public water supply was poisoned due to Republican cost-cutting measures, Lee is practicing his conservative principals — even if privately, and even if those conservative principles inadvertently hurt his own constituents. Again, from the Daily Beast:

The Utah senator’s objections may not play well at home, where he is running for reelection this year. Utah requires $3.7 billion for drinking water infrastructure over the next 20 years to meet minimum requirements in human health and safety, according to an EPA report presented to Congress in 2013.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/tea-party-senator-single-handedly-holding-federal-relief-funds-flint

Sophia Tesfaye is the Deputy Politics Editor at Salon.

nrdc: his month, Congress was very busy, apparently trying to get things done before the holidays, following which the budget battle will consume Hill activity for who knows how long.

In the crazy bill introduction category, Sens. Paul (R-KY), Lee (R-UT) and Heller (R-NV) and Rep. Amodei (R-NV) introduced companion bills entitled the “Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act” (H.R. 3533; S. 1731), which give complete control over endangered species management to states – regardless of whether such states actually wantto do what’s best for imperiled species or are equipped to do so. Additionally, it would require the consent of governors and passage of a joint resolution by Congress to list new species, leaving protections to politics—not science. And it would delist species after five years, regardless of whether they have recovered.

Burr's bill has 15 cosponsors, all of them global warming deniers: Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), Mike Enzi (R-Wyo.), John Thune (R-S.D.), John McCain (R-Ariz.), Dan Coats (R-Ind.), Richard Shelby (R-Ala.), John Barrasso (R-Wyo.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), John Boozman (R-Ariz.), Thad Cochran (R-Miss.), Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), David Vitter (R-La.), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), Mike Lee (R-Utah).

Lee, Utah's new senator, who was president of his law school's Federalist Society chapter.

===

green grade 7 of 100

:{:{}:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mike_Lee_(American_politician)

Michael Shumway Lee (born June 4, 1971) is an American politician, author, and attorney who is the senior United States Senator from Utah. A conservative, libertarian-leaning Republican, Lee has served in the Senate since January 3, 2011.

Born in Mesa, Arizona, Lee is a graduate of Brigham Young University. Lee is the son of Rex E. Lee, who was Solicitor General under President Reagan, founding dean of the J. Reuben Clark Law School and president of Brigham Young University. Lee began his career as a clerk for the U.S. District Court for the District of Utah before serving as a clerk for future Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, who was then a judge on the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. He then entered private practice with the Sidley Austinlaw firm in Washington D.C. In 2002, Lee returned to his home state to work as an Assistant United States Attorney for the District of Utah, a position he held until 2005. Subsequently, he joined the administration of Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, serving as the general counsel in the office of the governor from 2005 to 2006. Lee then reentered private practice in Washington D.C., with Howrey LLP.

In 2010, at the beginning of the Tea Party movement, Lee entered the party caucus process to challenge incumbent three-term Republican senator Bob Bennett. Lee defeated Bennett and business owner Tim Bridgewater during the nominating process at the Utah Republican Party Convention, receiving 1,854 votes in the final round. The two highest caucus performers were then put before primary voters, with Lee winning with 51% of the vote. He then defeated Democratic candidate Sam Granato in the senate election with 61% of the vote to Granato's 32%.

Early life and education

Lee was born in Mesa, Arizona on June 4, 1971, the son of Janet (née Griffin) and Rex E. Lee. His family moved to Provo, Utah one year later, when his father became the founding dean of Brigham Young University's J. Reuben Clark Law School. While Lee spent about half of his childhood years in Utah, he spent the other half in McLean, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C. His father served first as an Assistant U.S. Attorney General (overseeing the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Ford Administration) from 1975 until 1976, and then as the Solicitor General of the United States (charged with representing the United States government before the Supreme Court during the first term of the Reagan Administration) from 1981 until 1985. Lee is of English, Swiss, and Danish descent on his father's side.^[1][2]^

Growing up, Lee went to school with Senator Strom Thurmond's daughter, Nancy Moore Thurmond, and lived three doors down from Senator Robert Byrd. He was friends with Harry Reid's son Josh. Senator Reid was the Lees' home teacher. Lee recalls as a child how Senator Reid once locked him and Josh in their garage as a practical joke.^[1] According to Lee, the Reid family were the first Democrats he knew well and it was dealing with them that showed him the importance of being able to defend his political views in discussion with those who held other views.^[2]^

After graduating from Timpview High School (Provo, Utah) in 1989, Lee attended Brigham Young University as an undergraduate student, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in political science in 1994. He served as the president of BYUSA, a prominent student service organization,^[citation ^needed] and as student body president, during the 1993–1994 school year,^[3] serving together with his father, Rex E. Lee, who was president of BYU at the time. Lee received his Juris Doctor from the J. Reuben Clark Law School in 1997.^[3]^

Legal career

After graduation from law school in 1997, Lee served as a law clerk to Judge Dee Benson of the United States District Court for the District of Utah. The following year, he clerked for then-Judge Samuel Alito, who was serving at that time on the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. After finishing his clerkships, Lee joined the Washington, D.C. office of Sidley Austin, where he specialized in appellate and Supreme Court litigation.

Several years later, Lee returned to Utah to serve as an Assistant United States Attorney in Salt Lake City, preparing briefs and arguing cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. He served as general counsel to Utah Governor Jon M. Huntsman, Jr. from January 2005 until June 2006, when he returned to Washington to serve a one-year clerkship at the U.S. Supreme Court with Justice Alito.^[3] Lee returned to Utah (and to private practice) in the summer of 2007, joining the Salt Lake office of the Washington, D.C.-based law firm of Howrey LLP. Lee focused on courtroom advocacy and constitutional law.^[citation ^needed]^

As an attorney, Lee also represented Class A low-level radioactive waste facility provider EnergySolutions Inc. in a highly publicized dispute between the company and the Utah public and public officials that caused controversy during his Senate election. Utah's government had allowed the company to store radioactive waste in the state so long as it was low-grade "Class A" material. When the company arranged to store waste from Italy, many objected to the waste being foreign and that it could potentially be more radioactive than permitted. Lee argued that the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution allowed the company to accept foreign waste and that the waste could be reduced in grade by mixing it with lower grade materials, while the government of Utah sought to ban the importation of foreign waste using an interstate radioactive waste compact. EnergySolutions eventually abandoned its plans to store Italian radioactive waste in Utah, ending the dispute, with the 10th U.S. Circuit court later ruling that the compact had the power to block foreign radioactive waste from being stored in Utah.^[4][5]^

Political positions

Senator Mike Lee is a conservative Republican. *The New York Times* used the NOMINATE system to arrange Republican senators by ideology and ranked Senator Lee as the most conservative member of the Senate.^[6]GovTrack's 2017 analysis places Senator Lee to the right of the spectrum, to the right of most Republicans, but still to the left of a handful of Republican senators.^[7] Five ThirtyEight, which tracks Congressional votes, has found that Senator Lee votes with President Trump's positions on legislation 81.3% of the time as of July 2018.^[8]^

Privacy

In 2017, Mike Lee voted for S.J.Res.34, a joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission relating to "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services" from taking effect.^[9]^

Spending

In September 2018, Lee was among six Republican senators, Jeff Flake, Pat Toomey, Rand Paul, David Perdue, and Ben Sasse, as well as Bernie Sanders, that voted against a $854 billion spending bill, meant to avoid another government shutdown. Said bill included funding for the departments of Defense, Health and Human Services, Labor and Education.^[10]^

Climate change

In 2011, Mike Lee voted to limit the EPA's ability to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.^[11] In 2013, he voted to make it harder for Congress to put a price on carbon through a point of order opposing a carbon tax or a fee on carbon emissions. The measure did not pass.^[12] At a May 2016 event, he stated that it "has long been obvious that the Democratic Party's assertion that the science of climate change is "settled" is little more than a cheap public-relations ploy masquerading as a monopoly on scientific knowledge".^[13]^

In 2017, Lee was one of 22 senators to sign a letter^[14] to President Donald Trump urging the President to have the United States withdraw from the Paris Agreement. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Lee has received campaign contributions from oil & gas interests $231,520 and from coal interests $21,895 for a total of $253,415 since 2012.^[15]^

Healthcare

Senator Mike Lee was part of the group of 13 Senators drafting the Senate version of the AHCA behind closed doors.^[16] Senator Lee eventually came out against the bill, along with fellow Republican senator Jerry Moran of Kansas, bringing the "no" vote total among Republicans to four.^[17] This effectively stopped any chance of the bill's passage.^[18]^

Books

Since his election to the Senate in 2010, Lee has published four books:

The Freedom Agenda: Why a Balanced Budget Amendment is Necessary to Restore Constitutional Government (July 2011, Regnery Publishing)
Why John Roberts Was Wrong About Healthcare: A Conservative Critique of The Supreme Court's Obamacare Ruling (June 2013, **Threshold E**ditions e-book)
Our Lost Constitution: The Willful Subversion of America's Founding Document (April 2015, Sentinel)
Written Out of History: The Forgotten Founders Who Fought Big Government (May 2017, Sentinel)

U.S. Senate

Elections

2010

Main article: 2010 United States Senate election in Utah

Mike Lee ran for the U.S. Senate in 2010. At the Republican State Convention, he received 982 votes (28.75%) on the first ballot, defeating^{[clarification} ^needed] Tim Bridgewater (26.84% of votes) and incumbent U.S. Senator Bob Bennett (25.91% of votes). Bridgewater, however, won the second and third ballots to win the party endorsement. Both Bridgewater and Lee received enough support to have their names placed on the primary ballot.^[citation ^needed]^

In the primary election, held on June 22, 2010, Lee became the Republican nominee by winning 51 percent of the vote against Bridgewater's 49 percent.^[19]^

Lee won the general election on November 2, 2010 with 62 percent of the vote to Democrat Sam Granato's 33 percent and Constitution Party candidate Scott Bradley's 6 percent.^[20]^

2016

Main article: 2016 United States Senate election in Utah

Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland on February 26, 2015.

Lee ran for re-election in 2016. He was endorsed by the Club for Growth, the Senate Conservatives Fund, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.^[21]^

Tenure

Scorecards/Rankings

In 2011, Club for Growth gave him a 100% score. Only four other U.S. Senators received a perfect score: Rand Paul, Ron Johnson, Jim DeMint, and Tom Coburn.^[22] He also received a 100% Conservative voting record for 2011 from the American Conservative Union.^[23] The Heritage Foundation gave him a 99% score, ranking first only with DeMint.^[24]The only wrong vote he made, in the opinion of the Heritage Foundation, was voting for the GSE Bailout Elimination and Taxpayer Protection Act, which would privatize Fannie and Freddie.^[25] He received a Liberal Action score of 38%.^[26]^

Patriot Act

In February 2011, Lee was one of two Republicans, along with Rand Paul of Kentucky, to vote against extending the three provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act that deal with roving wiretaps, "lone wolf" terrorism suspects, and the government's ability to seize "any tangible items" in the course of surveillance.^[27] He voted in the same manner in May 2011.^[28]^

NDAA for Fiscal Year 2012

On December 1, 2011, Lee was one of only seven U.S. Senators, and one of only three Republicans, to vote against the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012.^[29] He opposed the bill because of concerns over Section 1021, the section of the bill that gives the Armed Forces the power to indefinitely detain any person "who was part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners", and anyone who commits a "belligerent act" against the U.S. or its coalition allies in aid of such enemy forces, under the law of war, "without trial, until the end of the hostilities authorized by the AUMF".^[citation ^needed]^

Social Security reform

In April 2011, Lee joined with Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) and fellow Senate Tea Party Caucus member Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to propose a plan they said would extend the financial viability of the U.S. Social Security retirement payment system.^[30] The three Senators' reform proposal (called the Social Security Solvency and Sustainability Act) was notable because it did not propose any tax increases to ensure solvency.^[31]Instead, it suggested that the $5.4 trillion difference between what was then funded and what had been promised could be eliminated by increasing the retirement age to 70 by the year 2032, and slightly reducing the benefits paid to upper-income recipients.^[32]^

Criminal justice reform

In 2013, Lee proposed a bill with the aim "to focus limited Federal resources on the most serious offenders" together with Dick Durbin (D) and Patrick Leahy (D). The bill would reduce some minimum sentences for drug-related offenses by half.^[33]^

In November 2018, Lee "called out" Sen. Tom Cotton, stating he was spreading fake news about the proposed First Step Act, a criminal justice reform bill. He referred to a tweet from Cotton saying that the legislation “gives early release to 'low level, nonviolent' criminals like those convicted of assaulting police, even with deadly weapons.” Lee retorted: “I highly respect my colleague from Arkansas but everything in his tweet and this thread is 100% fake news”. The "First Step Act does not 'give early release' to anyone. Anyone claiming it does, does not understand how the bill works", he continued. President Trump is a supporter of said legislation, while Cotton has remained an "outspoken critic".^[34] The bipartisan bill, drafted by Chuck Grassley, Lee, and Dick Durbin, passed the House of Representatives overwhelmingly, by 360-59 votes.^[35] The bill aims to "improve rehabilitation programs for former prisoners", and to "give judges more wiggle room" when sentencing nonviolent crime offenders, such as those involving drug charges.^[36]^

Foreign policy

As part of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in 2018, Lee co-sponsored a resolution, together with Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, "that would end U.S. military support for the Saudi-led campaign in Yemen's civil war". Interviewed by The Hill, he stated: "regardless of what may have happened with Mr. Khashoggi, we are fighting a war in Yemen that we haven’t declared, that has never been declared or authorized by Congress. That’s not constitutional."^[37] The Senate voted 60-39 to "formally begin debate on the resolution", which would require the President to "withdraw troops in or "affecting" Yemen within 30 days unless they are fighting al Qaeda."^[38]^

In April 2018, Lee was one of eight Republican senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin and acting Secretary of State John Sullivan expressing "deep concern" over a report by the United Nations exposing "North Korean sanctions evasion involving Russia and China" and asserting that the findings "demonstrate an elaborate and alarming military-venture between rogue, tyrannical states to avoid United States and international sanctions and inflict terror and death upon thousands of innocent people" while calling it "imperative that the United States provides a swift and appropriate response to the continued use of chemical weapons used by President Assad and his forces, and works to address the shortcomings in sanctions enforcement."^[39]^

Debt ceiling

Lee was criticized by Republican Sen. John McCain and others for being overly vocal in his criticism of other Republicans and for obstructing a deal to end the United States federal government shutdown of 2013.^[40][41]^

Flint water crisis

in 2016, Lee used a procedural hold to block a vote on federal assistance for the Flint, Michigan water crisis.^[42] He was initially part of a group of senators blocking $220 million in aid to repair lead contaminated pipes but, due to public pressure on others, Lee eventually became the last opposing senator.^[43] While initially anonymous, multiple sources leaked Lee's opposition to the media.^[44]^

Immigration

In February 2019, Lee was one of sixteen senators to vote against legislation preventing a partial government shutdown and containing 1.375 billion for barriers along the U.S.-Mexico border that included 55 miles of fencing.^[45] In that same month, he joined with Senator Kamala Harris to remove the per-country cap on employment-based green cards and raise the cap on family-based green cards from 7 to 15 percent.^[46]^

In March 2019, Lee was one of twelve Republican senators to vote to block President Trump's national emergency declaration that would have granted him access to $3.6 billion in military construction funding to build border barriers.^[47]^

Supreme Court

In March 2019, Lee was one of twelve senators to cosponsor a resolution that would impose a constitutional amendment limiting the Supreme Court to nine justices. The resolution was introduced following multiple Democratic presidential candidates expressing openness to the idea of expanding the seats on the Supreme Court.^[48]^

Trade

In January 2018, Lee was one of thirty-six Republican senators to sign a letter to President Trump requesting he preserve the North American Free Trade Agreement by modernizing it for the economy of the 21st Century.^[49]^

In November 2018, Lee was one of twelve Republican senators to sign a letter to President Trump requesting the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement be submitted to Congress by the end of the month to allow a vote on it before the end of the year as they were concerned "passage of the USMCA as negotiated will become significantly more difficult" if having to be approved through the incoming 116th United States Congress.^[50]^

Roy Moore endorsement and retraction

On October 16, 2017, Lee endorsed Roy Moore in the 2017 Alabama special election runoff, to fill the seat of U.S. Attorney General and former senator Jeff Sessions.^[51] Moore had been removed as the Alabama Supreme Court's chief justice in 2003, for defying a federal order to remove an illegal Ten Commandments monument from the Alabama Judicial Building. He was reelected as chief justice in 2012. In May 2016, Moore was once again removed from the bench by the Alabama Judicial Inquiry Commission (JIC), permanently via suspension for the rest of his term, making him ineligible for reelection,^[52] for ordering state probate judges to ignore a U.S. Supreme Court decision.^[53] In a 50-page opinion by the Court of the Judiciary, it denied Moore's appeal of the JIC's decision, and said Moore's removal was necessary "...to preserve the integrity, independence, impartiality of Alabama's judiciary."^[54] Nevertheless, Lee praised Moore for his "reputation of integrity" and said that he was essential to getting conservative legislation through the Senate. "That is why I am proudly endorsing Judge Roy Moore. Alabamians have the chance to send a proven, conservative fighter to the United States Senate,"^[51] On November 9, 2017, Moore was accused of molesting a 14-year old and other girls under the age of 18 when he was 32 years old.^[55] On November 10, Lee asked the Moore campaign to stop employing Lee's endorsement of Moore in its fundraising ads.^[56] Lee's spokesperson said of the sexual misconduct allegations, "If these allegations are true, Judge Moore should resign."^[57] Later that day, Lee rescinded his endorsement of Moore.^[58]^

Committee assignments

Current

Committee on the Judiciary

Committee on Energy and Natural Resources

Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation

Joint Economic Committee (Vice Chairman)

Committee on Foreign Relations (2011–2013)
Committee on Armed Services (2013–2017)

Personal life

Lee married Sharon Burr in 1993. They live in Alpine, Utah and have three children,^[59] John David, James Rex, and Eliza Rose Lee.^[60] Lee is a second cousin to former Democratic U.S. Senator Mark Udall of Colorado and current Democratic U.S. Senator Tom Udall of New Mexico, as well as former Republican senator Gordon H. Smith of Oregon.^[61]^

Lee has served on the BYU alumni board, the BYU Law School alumni board, and as a long-time member of the J. Reuben Clark Law Society and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies. Lee earned the Eagle Scout award from Boy Scouts of America in 1989 and was selected to receive the National Eagle Scout Association Outstanding Eagle Scout Award (NOESA) in 2011.^[62]^

Electoral hist

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