<Generation Z is getting smarter about their money, with some starting to invest even before they turn 18, according to a new report.

The survey by FINRA Investor Education Foundation and the CFA Institute, which defines Generation Z as those aged between 18 to 25, concluded that 6 in 10 owned at least some investments. Some 41% said they were investing in individual stocks, and 35% in mutual funds.

However, crypto was their most popular investment. In fact, 55% are primarily invested in cryptocurrency like Bitcoin while 20% are exclusively invested in cryptocurrency and/or non-fungible tokens, or NFTs.

Others have sounded warnings about being heavily invested in crypto. Though Gen Z likes investing in crypto, investors should be cautious when putting money into the asset, the government said earlier this year.

The main motivator for Generation Z investors was to have enough money for traveling. Saving for unexpected expenses and retirement came in second and third place. respectively.

In March, the United States Securities and Exchange Commission’s Investor Education and Advocacy office said that investments in crypto asset securities can be “exceptionally volatile and speculative,” and that that the platforms where investors trade crypto may lack proper protections for investors.

The FINRA/CFA Institute report cited multiple reasons why young people are getting into investing, from the ability to learn about investing through social media and other online platforms, the existence of apps that let them invest small amounts such as through fractional shares, as well as the underlying fear of missing out on a key way to make money.

“Gen Z investors are a growing force of digitally savvy stakeholders who are making their entrance into the financial markets,” the report stated.

The main motivator for Gen Z investors was to have enough money for traveling, with 62% citing it as their top financial goal. Saving for unexpected expenses and for retirement came in second and third place, respectively.

The report was based on a survey of 2,872 investors and non-investors who were aged 18 to 25, as well as millennial and Generation X investors in the U.S., Canada, U.K., and China.

When first starting out, Gen Z generally tried their hand at crypto with 44% saying so in the report. About a third also said they started investing in individual stocks, and 21% said in mutual funds. The median amount they first began investing with was $1,000.

The typical Gen Z invests a median of $4,000. Gen Z women invest less than men — $3,000 versus $5,000 — and people of color in this demographic invest even less ($2,000) than white investors ($5,000).

Investing also started very early for some: A quarter of Gen Z investors said they began investing before they turned 18. “Starting to invest at a young age is common not only in the U.S., but also in Canada (24%) and the U.K. (22%),” the report said.

A separate report by Fidelity Investment also found that Gen Z is making impressive gains in their retirement savings. But what drives them to take the initial first step is the ability to invest small, as well as their own curiosity, it added.>

<A Texas House ethics panel recommended that Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) be impeached after a months-long investigation into alleged abuse of office.

The Republican-led committee unanimously approved the recommendations Thursday after outside attorneys presented evidence accusing the state attorney general of sweeping impropriety that verged on criminality, including claims Paxton had used his position to help a political ally, engaged in bribery and attempted to obstruct justice. The investigators also said Paxton had retaliated against staffers who accused him of crimes, pointing to an ongoing lawsuit brought against him by four former aides.

The recommendations included 20 articles of impeachment.

Texas lawmakers could vote on the matter as early as Friday. If Paxton is impeached in the state House by a simple majority, he would be required to temporarily step down and be barred from performing his duties while the state Senate holds a trial on the impeachment counts. A vote of two-thirds of the state senators would be required to approve his removal from office.

Paxton responded with a brief message on Twitter after the recommendation was made public, saying: “Overturning elections begins behind closed doors.”

He elaborated in a statement later in the day, castigating the investigation as an “illegitimate attempt to overthrow the will of the people.”

“Four liberal lawyers put forward a report to the House General Investigating Committee based on hearsay and gossip, parroting long-disproven claims,” he said. “By attacking the Office of the Attorney General, corrupted politicians in the Texas House, led by liberal Speaker Dade Phelan, are actively destroying Texas’s position as the most powerful backstop against the Biden agenda in the entire country.”

Impeachment is exceedingly rare in Texas. Only two officials have ever been impeached and removed from office in the state’s history, and the latest was almost 50 years ago, according to The Dallas Morning News.

Whatever happens, this week’s developments present a major threat to one of the most powerful Republicans in Texas and will force lawmakers to reckon with years of scandals and claims surrounding his office.

The investigation began in March amid a settlement made with Paxton’s former staffers for $3.3 million. The attorney general asked the Texas Legislature to fund the agreement, but lawmakers, including Phelan, a Republican, said he didn’t provide enough explanation as to why the state should foot the bill.

Paxton had gone on a tirade against Phelan in recent days, accusing the speaker of being drunk during a House session last week.

The attorney general has maintained the support of voters for years despite ongoing ethics and legal scandals and handily won reelection last November to a third term in office. He was indicted on federal securities fraud charges in 2015, although that case has yet to go to trial. He was also investigated for bribery allegations in 2017 before he was cleared of those charges.>

Paxton can suck it; he has had all the play his way--time to pay up.

<Far-right groups are complaining about being included in a Department of Homeland Security chart called the "Pathways toward terrorism" which includes research on terrorism and political violence and was written in 2008 by Sophia Moskalenko and Clark McCauley.

The researchers show how radicalization generally increases from benign political involvement, "increasing extremity of beliefs, feelings, and behaviors in support of intergroup conflict and violence," the study's abstract explains. "Across individuals, groups, and mass publics, twelve mechanisms of radicalization are distinguished."

So, political activism on the right can begin at the party level and slowly increase to anti-government militias, it says.

The Heritage Foundation was quickly triggered by being included in the bottom rung of the pyramid among the right entry-level groups. One piece they were miffed about was a researcher's comments that fringe extremists can infiltrate groups or rallies. For example, anti-government activists saw the COVID lockdowns as a unique opportunity for recruitment. The same happened on the left when the 1999 Seattle anti-WTO and Occupy Wall Street protesters were opportunities for anarchists.

The argument from the right is that President Joe Biden's administration is weaponizing the government against Republicans. Still, the administration explains that domestic terrorists come from far-right groups like those at the Jan. 6 attacks. Militia groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers were working with Republican Party leaders and lawmakers.

Speaking to Fox Business on Thursday, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), behind the so-called "weaponization" committee investigation, expressed outrage.

"This is really scary too," Jordan said. "But this is consistent, frankly, with what President Biden said last fall at Independence Hall with that eery background he had where he called half of the country fascists."

Jordan's reference was the Biden speech about "MAGA extremists," generally considered as the people who attacked the U.S. capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Jordan says that this belief exists in far too many U.S. Leaders.

Republicans have consistently attacked investigations into domestic terrorism. In the Feb. 2021 House Homeland Security, the FBI explained that there has been a steady rise in domestic extremism and violence.

“There’s no question in my mind that the rhetoric inflamed it and turned the boiling water from a hot pot of water to overflowing,” said Rep. John Katko (R-NY).

Yet, throughout the Donald Trump presidency, the administration "steps to weaken the federal government’s response to the growing crisis," American Oversight claimed at the time.

See Jordan's commentary below or at the link here.>

<Hard-line conservative Republicans are anxious about a possible deal between House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and President Joe Biden that would avert a catastrophic debt default.

The arrangement would raise the government’s debt ceiling through next year, depriving Republicans of another chance to take it hostage before 2024.

“They want to move it past the presidential election,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.), a member of the far-right House Freedom Caucus, told HuffPost on Thursday.

Speaking to reporters, Norman and others in his party said they’d just heard that negotiators were leaning toward a larger debt ceiling increase than Republicans previously supported in exchange for unspecified spending cuts.

Earlier this month, the House passed the Limit, Save, Grow Act, a Republican bill that would have cut federal spending, imposed so-called work requirements on federal safety net programs, and allowed the Treasury Department to continue borrowing money until next spring. The bill would lift the debt ceiling by $1.5 trillion or until March 31, 2024, whichever comes first.

“I am concerned about rumors to the effect — and I haven’t read or seen anything yet — but rumors that we may have some sort of a deal in place that would raise the debt limit for more than what was called for in Limit, Save, Grow for a whole lot less in return,” said Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.).

“If that were true, that would absolutely collapse the Republican majority for this debt ceiling increase.”

The Freedom Caucus has always insisted that it would accept nothing less than Limit, Save, Grow — even though for an eventual deal to become law, it would have to be acceptable to the Democratic-controlled Senate and White House.

The complaints from the Freedom Caucus, as well as worries among progressives, suggest that a more moderate deal may in fact be taking shape.

Negotiations appeared to be making progress ahead of a looming June 1 deadline to lift the debt ceiling, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-La.) told reporters that the “issues are narrowing.”

The federal government could default on its debts if lawmakers fail to reach a deal, an outcome that would risk shaking the financial system and pushing the economy into a recession.

Norman and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said they heard McCarthy’s negotiators were now considering an increase of more than $3 trillion, and it wasn’t clear to them that Republicans were getting enough on work requirements or spending cuts in return.

“It’s idiotic for him — for anybody to consider anything [other] than what we have,” Norman said.

Roy said his “antenna is up” over the deal lacking “transformative, substantive fiscal reforms necessary to raise the debt ceiling $4 trillion.”

Meanwhile, conservatives in the Senate also seemed spooked about an emerging deal. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) threatened to block expedited passage of any agreement that didn’t include “substantial” spending cuts.

“I will use every procedural tool at my disposal to impede a debt-ceiling deal that doesn’t contain substantial spending and budgetary reforms,” Lee tweeted Thursday. ”I fear things are moving in that direction. If they do, that proposal will not face smooth sailing in the Senate.”

Any single senator can force a lengthy debate and additional votes on the floor, so Lee’s threat could potentially lead the U.S. over the brink and into default if the Senate doesn’t act by June 1. Moreover, the House has yet to vote on anything, and GOP leadership has promised to give members 72 hours to review a deal before putting it on the floor.

In another sign that a bipartisan agreement may be close, progressives are also getting angsty about leaked negotiation details, including one possible idea to claw back additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service as Republicans had demanded. According to a report by The Associated Press, the IRS funding, which Democrats passed last year so the agency could go after wealthy tax cheats, would instead be shifted to other domestic programs.

“In case anyone had doubts about Republicans’ priorities, at the 11th hour before a catastrophic default, they’re making a last ditch effort to help rich people cheat on their taxes,” tweeted Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore,), who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, in response to the AP report.>

<he same day as recordings were made public that showed her intervening as one of her sons called 911 crying and saying that her husband Jayson Boebert was “throwing me around,” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) called LGBTQ+ people “degenerates.”

She was writing about The North Face’s brand partnership with outdoorsy drag queen Pattie Gonia, something that has many on the right upset this week and had them calling for a boycott. Pattie Gonia made an Instagram video announcing the brand’s “Summer of Pride” event, and The North Face is also selling some clothes with rainbow patterns on them.

Anti-LGBTQ+ trolls Matt Walsh and Michael Knowles finally said the quiet part loud.

“We’re here to invite you to come out… in nature with us!” Pattie Gonia says in the video while wearing a rainbow skirt in a forest. The video is rather innocuous – there were no sexual jokes, foul language, or nudity – but it has received numerous hateful comments from people saying they’re not going to buy from The North Face anymore.

“Well, I guess North Face wanted to get a taste of what conservatives did to Bud Light and Target,” Boebert wrote. “How many times do we have to explain to the woke marketing departments at these disgusting companies that America is not a nation of degenerates?”

“Let’s make it as shameful to wear North Face as it is to drink Bud Light!”

The word “degenerate” comes from a Latin word that means “to be inferior to one’s ancestors” and is associated with the Third Reich. Many far-right ideologies still use it today to emphasize their belief that society used to be better and that people doing things they don’t like is a sign of a loss of morality over time, especially when they’re talking about LGBTQ+ people. Televangelist Jerry Falwell, one of the biggest anti-gay activists of the 20th century, famously called Ellen DeGeneres “Ellen Degenerate” when she came out in the 90s.

Earlier this week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) was also upset at The North Face for the same video and went so far as to say that she said that she was giving up all name-brand clothing.

“Big name brands sexually targeting children makes me want to buy all generic brand clothing now,” Greene wrote. “Besides.. we can save a fortune NOT wasting money on labels that are grooming our children.” She added the hashtag #BoycottGroomers, a reference to how many on the right believe that LGBTQ+ people are child sex abusers.

On Twitter, many people criticized Boebert for writing about this just as she is being accused of covering up child abuse in her family.>

<The worst-kept secret in American politics is out: Ron DeSantis is running for president. For months, the governor of Florida has been eyeing up the opportunity of running as the Republican nominee. He has done all of the things you need to do – including a trip to the UK last month. He has also sat it out quietly as his main rival – Donald J Trump – has taken potshots at him.

It was an unenviable position for a putative candidate to have been in. Most polls show Trump way ahead of the other candidates among Republican voters. Despite – or because of – his legal troubles, he has settled at around twice the polling of his nearest rival. A poll this week showed Trump as first choice for 53 per cent of Republican-leaning voters and DeSantis at 26 per cent. Other contenders linger on single digits.

Some have taken such polls to suggest that Trump is unassailable. But all of them were taken before DeSantis was actually running. Now he has declared his candidacy, several things will happen. The first is that the Left’s attacks on him will heat up. This week Vanity Fair headlined a piece to suggest that DeSantis would happily share a platform with neo-Nazi sympathisers to launch his campaign. He should expect more of this, and it won’t hurt him at all on his own side. Republican voters have been through – and seen through – political hit jobs of this kind for years now.

The second thing is that DeSantis now has the opportunity to lay out what he would do in the Oval office. At this week’s online Twitter launch with Elon Musk, the governor managed to get into detailed policy as well as broad direction of travel announcements. But the third thing is that now DeSantis can – and should – respond to Trump’s barrage against him.

For months, Trump has been attacking DeSantis by trying out nicknames on him (the most inane being “Ron DeSanctimonious”, which doesn’t even fit the target). He has also started to try to criticise DeSantis’s record.

This is an unwise move. As governor of Florida, DeSantis has overseen a massive amount of growth in his state. Florida has become the number one destination in America for people fleeing Democrat-run, crime-ridden cities. During Covid, DeSantis took the bold decision to avoid locking down and was proved right. Furthermore, he has not only picked culture war battles but has also won them.

As a result, when DeSantis was asked about Trump’s recent attacks on him yesterday, he had the chance to point out that it is strange to be attacked by Trump from his Left. In an open debate between Trump and DeSantis, the former may revert to his bully-boy tactics, but the latter has achievements to run on.

In any case, all this means that the Republican primary has become interesting. The party now has an opportunity to have meaningful policy and direction-of-travel discussions – not least the question of whether the party wants to keep looking back to the 2020 election (which Trump still claims to have won) or forward to actually winning the next election.

It is a healthy position for a party to be in. The vibrancy of the debate within the American Right might be fruitfully contrasted with the lack of anything similar among their British counterparts.

But the bigger comparison is with the state of the Democrat [sic] party.

Last month Joe Biden released a video announcing his plan to run for re-election in 2024. The 80-year-old president is already the oldest man to have held that office, and it is not a reflection on everyone his age simply to note that Biden does not always seem to be up to the job. Though his vice-president, Kamala Harris, appeared in the launch video, she did not speak. The clear intimation was that Harris just could not be unstuck from the ticket so may as well stay along for the ride.

The only Democrat to have announced that they wish to challenge Biden is Robert F Kennedy Jr. In some polls he has been as close to Biden for the Democrat nomination as DeSantis is to Trump. But Kennedy is an outlier, someone who has picked up a certain amount of notice not just because of America’s love of dynastic politics, or his own often idiosyncratic views, but because nobody in the true mainstream of the party is challenging Biden.

In part that is because to try to kill the king at this moment would be seen as an act of lèse-majesté within the party. The assassin would not be rewarded. But the bigger problem for the Democrats is that, if you get rid of Biden, you have to jump down a generation from those who have held the party in their grip for so long....>

<....As Americans have been reminded from seeing Senator Dianne Feinstein wheeled into the chamber at the age of 89, the Democrats have a generational problem. Biden, Feinstein, Nancy Pelosi and others have controlled their party for a long time – too long for its own good. One result of this is that, while the Republicans can go down a generation and find plenty of talent (not least DeSantis, Senator Tim Scott and Governor Glenn Youngkin), the Democrats have a talent drought.

Nothing seems to grow below Biden. There was a time when Secretary of State Anthony Blinken was talked about as a successor. But the American electorate have hardly seen Blinken for the past two and a half years. Any foreign policy credit that can be picked up – and there is precious little of it – has been picked up by the president.

Just about the only name being bandied about to take up the Democrat mantle is Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. By contrast with DeSantis in Florida, Newsom presides over a state where 1 per cent of the population were chased out in a single year. They are leaving the state not just because of the high tax burden but because of the disintegration of the cities.

Newsom managed to ruin San Francisco as mayor before trying the same policies on a state-wide canvas as governor. He may be one of the only talked-about successors to Biden, but he would be the most talked-about candidate imaginable for the Republicans. If Newsom ever runs for the presidency, you can expect plenty of Republican commercials focusing on any one of his state’s filthy, zombie-ridden, crime-infested and tent-encamped streets.

As things stand, there is a significant ideas battle going on across the American Right and none at all on the American Left. Biden ran as a unifying moderate, but has governed as an anti-Republican – specifically an anti-Trump – Leftist. The Democrats who exist under him seem to spend most of their time trying to both pander to, and not get destroyed by, the extremists on their own side.

Newsom himself recently set up a taskforce to look into the paying of reparations to descendants of slaves in California. The group came back with a recommendation that billions of dollars should be paid to black Americans in the state for such crimes as “overpolicing”. Even Newsom has had to distance himself from the monster he created.

He, Biden and other Democrats are hoping that the Republicans run Donald Trump as their candidate in 2024, so that they can spend their campaign simply pointing at him and reminding voters that they are not Trump.

But if the Republicans choose wisely and well, the Democrats could yet be robbed of that opportunity and the one reason they have to ask the public to return them to office.>

<President Joe Biden’s team and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s deputies are nearing a deal that would raise the U.S. debt ceiling and avoid a market-shaking default, though getting it through Congress quickly could prove tricky.

McCarthy has said he’ll follow a rule to post any bill for 72 hours before votes, so that could mean House action on Tuesday or Wednesday. But the Senate then might end up with “essentially no time to pass the bill” by the Treasury Department’s June 1 debt-limit deadline, and therefore a short-term suspension might be needed in this ongoing process, said Capital Alpha Partners analyst James Lucier in a note.

However, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen late Friday extended her department’s debt-limit deadline to June 5 from June 1.

“The protests of conservative Republicans and progressive Democrats are music to our ears,” Lucier also said. “They are the sound of a deal being done. The individuals who are complaining are those who were never likely to vote for the bill in the first place.”

But what’s going into the bipartisan deal? Below are expected elements.

Lift the debt limit through the 2024 elections: The emerging deal calls for increasing the ceiling for federal borrowing so that no further hikes are needed until after the 2024 elections. The measure that the Republican-run House passed in April would have raised the limit on federal borrowing for only a year.

Some cuts to spending: Nondefense discretionary spending in the next fiscal year would be below the current fiscal year’s levels, but all discretionary spending would grow at 1% in 2025, according to a New York Times report citing people familiar with the developing deal. The Pentagon and veterans’ programs wouldn’t face cuts.

IRS to lose out on $10 billion, potentially increasing the deficit: The Internal Revenue Service scored an additional $80 billion in funding from Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act, with the agency saying it would use it to crack down on tax evasion by wealthy individuals and big companies. But now $10 billion of that funding would get taken away and essentially shift to nondefense discretionary spending, allowing Democrats to avoid further cuts in programs like education and environmental protection, according to the Times report. EvercoreISI analyst Tobin Marcus said in a note that “cutting tax enforcement funding as part of this deal will serve to increase the deficit at the margin, underscoring our consistent argument that this is a political exercise not a fiscal exercise.” Janet Holtzblatt, senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said the possible reduction “just nine months after IRA’s enactment points to the fragility of the $80 billion budget boost and could undermine IRS managers’ confidence that the funds will be available in the future to pay new hires and cover the costs of modernization of the agency’s technology.” A way to prevent government-shutdown fears this fall: “The deal also reportedly includes a mechanism for automatic ‘continuing resolutions’ if Congress cannot agree on detailed appropriations bills based on the caps set in this deal, which would take the threat of a fall government shutdown off the table entirely — good news for investors who would like to stop focusing on DC dysfunction,” Evercore’s Marcus said.

Work requirements called ‘major hang up’: Analysts have predicted the deal could feature tougher work requirements for the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, but probably not for food stamps and Medicaid. Work requirements on aid programs are “the major hang up at this point,” a McCarthy deputy, GOP Rep. Garret Graves of Louisiana, told reporters on Thursday.

Energy-permitting reforms: The deal looks set to include a measure to upgrade the U.S. electric grid for renewable energy, while also speeding up permits for pipelines and other fossil-fuel projects, according to a Bloomberg News report citing people familiar with the agreement.

Clawing back unspent COVID-19 aid: About $30 billion in unused COVID-19 funding is expected to be rescinded. Biden has sounded open to clawing back some unspent pandemic aid, saying on May 9: “We don’t need it all.“>

<In recent weeks many political pundits have opined that the struggle to secure a debt-limit measure shows the sad decline of the bipartisan traditions that used to keep the country humming along. But, as I believe we are about to discover, there’s actually some important bipartisan agreement on the subject, particularly in the deeply divided U.S. House of Representatives: Very few people in either party want to support the kind of deal Joe Biden and Kevin McCarthy are likely to strike.

As a deal grows closer, the grumbling from both Democratic and Republican members of the House is growing louder by the minute. The Hill reports that the hard-core conservatives who insisted on taking the debt-limit measure hostage in the first place are lining up to vote against a deal with the inevitable (if modest) concessions to Democrats:

Hard-line conservatives are fuming over the debt deal compromise being negotiated between Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and the White House — and they’re warning about collapsing GOP support….

The party’s right flank had lined up behind the GOP debt limit bill in April, with McCarthy winning support from some members who had never before voted for a debt limit increase. But while most Republicans saw that bill as a starting point for negotiations with Biden and expected compromise, many now insist that the GOP “hold the line” behind the bill and resist significant compromise….

“What I’m hearing is that they punted student loans. What I’m hearing is that they’re not engaging and making the changes necessary to the Inflation Reduction Act, which has basically got a $1.2 trillion price tag. What I’m hearing is that they’re not talking about getting rid of the IRS,” Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) said.

Meanwhile, Politico Playbook reports House Democrats are becoming mutinous:

Biden’s own party continues to grumble that the White House is losing the messaging war. And House Dems are especially peeved that Biden is planning to leave Washington for the weekend. “Please tell me that’s not true,” one anonymous Dem lawmaker told our colleagues. “You’re going to see a caucus that’s so pissed if he’s stupid enough to do that.” …

Then there’s the discontent over the contents of a deal, which is prompting some surprising Democrats to warn that their votes for a deal are far from assured, according to CNN. Late last night, Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine) — the kind of moderate Democrat whose vote Biden will ultimately need — told our colleague Adam Cancryn that he remains noncommittal on backing any compromise.

The dynamic behind all this kvetching about the negotiations from elements of both parties is simple: Most politicians want to oppose whatever deal is worked out. Why? Because the prevailing opinion among Democratic activists in Washington and around the country is that any concessions on spending are too much, while among Republican activists there is a passionate belief that any deal that doesn’t include massive spending cuts and conservative policy riders is too little. The two parties are in fundamental disagreement over the size and shape of federal spending and all sorts of side issues (including conservative demands that every single poor person receiving federal benefits go to work). Compromising on any of these issues to deal with what remains the largely abstract proposition of a debt default is and will remain unpopular in both parties’ bases. And as polling makes clear, the broader public is completely confused and malleable on all the issues related to the debt-limit debate; there’s really no constituency out there for a particular solution.

So the toughest job for the negotiators may not be reaching agreement on a debt-limit deal. It may be the subsequent task of deciding which members of Congress (particularly in the House, where the deal is in most danger) will be given permission to vote against it while securing an overall majority, plus the majority of Republicans required by one of the concessions McCarthy made to secure his Speakership in January.

When the crisis is safely past, you can expect that a lot of those lucky members vouchsafed a “no” vote will waste no effort informing party activists back home they stood on principle when others sold out their heritage for a mess of pottage (among Republicans, weak-assed spending caps; among Democrats, a release of the debt-limit hostage). And the unlucky members asked to support the deal as a matter of party discipline will be nervously looking over their shoulders at potential primary challengers ready to blast them for having no spine.>

<In the recesses of the internet where some of Donald Trump’s most fervent supporters stoke conspiracies and plot his return to the White House, suspected con artists have been mining their disappointment over the last presidential election for gold.

They’ve been peddling “Trump Bucks,” which are emblazoned with photos of the former president, and advertising them online as a kind of golden ticket that will help propel Trump’s 2024 bid and make the “real patriots” who support him rich when cashed in.

John Amann told NBC News he bought $2,200 worth of Trump Bucks and other items over the past year only to discover they were worthless when he tried to cash them in at his local bank. So he’s gone on Twitter to warn other Trump supporters not to fall for this scam.

NBC News has identified the Colorado-based companies behind the Trump Bucks as Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots and reviewed dozens of social posts, online complaints and hundreds of misleading ads for the products. Additionally, NBC News has found at least a dozen people like Amann who say they invested thousands of dollars after watching the pitches on Telegram and other websites that strongly suggested that Trump himself was endorsing these products.

“Now I’m questioning whether he is aware of this,” Amann said of Trump.

Repeated attempts to reach a spokesperson for Trump and his re-election campaign by email have gone unanswered. No evidence suggests the alleged scammers are connected to Trump or his re-election campaign.

In addition to tweeting a warning to others about the scam, Amann said he posted a review on TrustPilot, a website where consumers can rate and review businesses.

The Federal Trade Commission, in response to a Freedom of Information Act request from NBC News, confirmed it has received one fraud complaint against Patriots Dynasty that was filed in January. But it provided no further details about the single complaint or who filed it.

The Better Business Bureau has given the companies, which operate out of an industrial center in the Denver suburb of Aurora, an F rating, and the 33 complaints on the BBB site are unsparing in their criticism of the company.

Repeated attempts to reach representatives for the companies by phone and email were unsuccessful. But Bank of America spokesman Bill Halldin said he’s heard reports from bank employees of customers coming in to exchange their Trump Bucks for actual cash, but the bank routinely turns them down.

“It’s hard to put a number on how many people have come in,” Halldin said when asked for more specifics about who these people are and where they are located.

BOA, as a matter of course, is continually on the lookout for fraudsters and circulates information in-house about possible scams, Halldin said.

That’s little comfort to Amann, who is 77 and lives in Houston. “There’s no way to cash out what I have,” he said.

What it is

Since 2020, when Joe Biden defeated Trump in the presidential election, internet hucksters have been selling pro-Trump products like coins, checks and cards and marketing them as novelty items.

The fine print on the websites offering these items usually notes that they are memorabilia.

But on social media and in promotional videos — many featuring faked celebrity endorsements — the sellers have tapped an audience that believes Trump’s ouster was part of a great conspiracy and that by investing in the Trump Rebate Banking System, or TRB for short, Trump will reward their loyalty by making them rich.

Those who buy these items, the ads from Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots suggest, will be rewarded when Trump unveils a new monetary system that will turn these products into legal tender worth far more than the purchase price.

Invest in a TRB membership card “issued by Donald Trump,” the ads from Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots claim, and the purchaser who spent, say, $99.99 on a “$10,000 Diamond Trump Bucks” bill will be able to cash it in for $10,000 at major banks and retailers like Walmart, Costco and Home Depot.

“TRB system membership cards are official cards issued by Donald Trump to allow Trump Bucks holders to use Trump Bucks as legal tender and deposit them in banks such as JP Morgan Chase, the Bank of America and Wells Fargo,” a narrator identified only as “John” that appears to be a computer-generated voice says in one YouTube ad just moments after cautioning viewers that “Trump Bucks are not legal tender.”.....>

<....“Wells Fargo has no affiliation with this product, and cannot accept it for deposit,” a bank spokesperson said.

JP Morgan Chase did not immediately respond to an email from NBC News seeking additional comment.

It’s a get-rich-quick scam that is catnip to a certain kind of Trump supporter — including QAnon believers and others who believe the former president is the only solution to America’s problems.

NBC also reached out to representatives for Walmart, Costco and Home Depot by email to see if they’ve had customers come in to try to cash in their Trump Bucks.

“We don’t have any connection to this, and it isn’t a problem we’re seeing at our stores,” Home Depot spokesman Terrance Roper said in an email to NBC News.

Walmart spokesman Robert Arrieta said “we have not heard of this scam.”

“We don’t have any program that resembles this,” Arrieta said and referred a reporter to the company’s fraud alert page.

Michael J. Clark, a former FBI agent who teaches criminal justice at the University of New Haven, said it’s likely many of the victims have not yet figured out they’ve been conned.

“If this is indeed a scam, the victims have not had enough time to realize they have been scammed as they will be awaiting the result of the 2024 presidential elections to receive the benefit of their initial outlay of money,” Clark said via email.

How it spreads

Fawning reviews are posted on dozens of websites with the headlines “SCAM OR LEGIT” that can stack Google with positive results and in hundreds of YouTube videos.

In AI-generated promotional videos shared on social media and in chat groups, celebrities and politicians, including Trump, appear to endorse the scam.

In one, Trump appears to announce the launch of the TRB system on Fox News.

“Let’s make America wealthy again,” the artificially generated voice of Trump says.

In another, Twitter-owner Elon Musk appears to say “That Trump certificate is not a joke, it’s real. Everyone needs to get as many as they can. I spend one million dollars on Trump certificates and this week I’m going to cash out my Trump items. Soon I will be the richest person on the planet again.”

In reality, the advertisement features footage lifted from Musk’s appearance at a TED event in 2022. The video ends with a slide advertising a free app that promises to “make your favorite celebrity say anything.

It’s so pervasive that even pro-Trump websites and Trump supporters have been sounding the alarm.

Blogger Noah Christopher, who is the moderator of the “WeLoveTrump” Telegram group with 26,000 subscribers, has urged his followers more than 30 times this year alone to “not get conned.”

“The faked videos have been posted relentlessly by fake social media accounts on Facebook, TikTok, and in Telegram groups catering to devoted Trump supporters,” Noah wrote last month. “Unreal how pervasive and aggressive this scam is.”

Christopher did not respond to an email from NBC News seeking additional comment.

One 75-year-old Alabama grandmother, who consented to having her picture taken but asked not to be identified by name for fear of internet harassment, told NBC News the message she got from watching the pitches on the internet was that Trump was going to make her rich.

But the grandmother, who describes herself as a “real patriot,” said what she got for the $1,500 she invested in Trump Bucks turned out to be fool’s gold.

“I saw all these ads on Telegram that had Trump pushing coins and checks that he endorsed and how you can cash them in after a year and make a profit,” the grandmother, who lives in Mobile, told NBC News. “I was told how you can go to Bank of America or Target or Amazon to cash them in.”

About six months ago, the grandmother said, she gathered up the Trump Bucks and commemorative coins she had purchased and drove 60 miles east to the nearest Bank of America branch she could find in Pensacola, Florida.

There, she said, she was greeted by a teller who told her she’d been scammed.

“When we get there the lady tells me she’s seen dozens of people coming in to cash these checks and they have nothing to do with this,” the grandmother said....>

<....A Florida woman who lives north of Tampa, and who also asked not to be identified by name because she fears internet harassment, said her 77-year-old mother-in-law was also fooled into investing tens of thousands of dollars in Trump Bucks.

“My mother-in-law has always been conservative and prone to believe in conspiracy theories,” she said. “But after Trump lost the election, she went down the internet rabbit hole with this.”

This isn’t the first time her mother-in-law has fallen prey to a Trump-inspired scam.

“Several years back, she got into Nesara, which says that a radical reset of the U.S. economy is coming and all debts are going to be wiped out,” the Florida woman said. “She thinks she’s getting all the money back and that she’ll make a huge profit too.”

First, the Florida woman said, her mother-in-law “started buying all this support Trump memorabilia from a website that clearly states it's memorabilia.”

“From there, she went to other sites which has all sorts of people claiming that if you buy these Trump coins or these Trump checks for, say, a hundred dollars, you’ll be able to take them to a bank and cash them in for thousands of dollars.”

To prove to her mother-in-law that she had been swindled, the Florida woman said she drove her to a nearby bank and urged her to try to redeem the Trump Bucks in her possession.

“We thought she got it, she even admitted she got scammed,” the Florida woman said. “But then giant boxes arrived at the house full of Trump checks and other stuff that she bought for $500 and that would supposedly be worth $6 million one day. We tell her she’s getting scammed and she says, ‘Just wait, Trump will make all the patriots rich.’”

“It’s like she’s in a cult,” the Florida woman said.

Who profits?

Good question. It’s not clear who concocted the TRB system scheme or created the fake promotional videos.

A 2022 New York Times investigation reported a Romanian marketing company to be at the origin of so-called Trump coins — which had been wildly popular in 2022 and were also fraudulently marketed as a kind of alternative currency.

Most of the posts and videos for the TRB system currently link to websites registered with the company names Patriots Dynasty, Patriots Future and USA Patriots, whose listed address can be traced to Shipoffers.com, a shipping center in Aurora, Colorado.

Shipoffers warehouse manager Josh Pier said the center ships Trump-related products but said it doesn't manufacture them. He declined to discuss what those products are and would not confirm the names of the companies it ships for. The company handles shipping for a variety of companies, he said.

Pier was echoed by Tony Grebmeier, one of the Shipoffers owners, who said he was unaware of any problems with any of the products the company ships and said if he was aware of any issues he’d take care of them.

Responding to overwhelmingly negative Google reviews, Shipoffers tells unhappy buyers that it doesn't actually make the products or bill customers.

The TRB products are purchased through online retailers ClickBank and Digistore24, which are affiliate marketing networks based in Idaho and Florida that connect would-be promoters with products to sell and earn commissions.

The unique links posted across social media and in the captions of YouTube videos contain the usernames of these affiliate marketers, who get a cut from each sale generated by the fraudulent ads.

A list of URLS for just one website, shows hundreds of affiliate marketers associated with a TRB membership booklet, a product falsely marketed as necessary to redeem the TRB products for real money.

NBC News has also reached out to ClickBank, Digistore24 and ShipOffers for comment. When an NBC News reporter called the Patriots Dynasty phone number, she got a busy signal. There was also no response to an email sent to the address associated with Patriots Dynasty.

The Alabama grandmother says she was initially fooled by the AI version of Trump she saw in the ads. She trusted Trump’s supposed business acumen and thought this was a good investment to have something to leave behind for her children.

“Now I realize, well, that was stupid,” she said. “But I bought them because I believed President Trump, because he knows all about finance, and he was going to help the real Trump Patriots get rich.”>

<At this point, it should be obvious that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s culture-war directives are designed to encourage parents to indulge in book purges for sport. Precisely because removals have become so easy, lone right-wing actors are feverishly hunting for offending titles, getting them pulled from school libraries on absurdly flimsy grounds, sometimes by the dozens.

A new turn in the explosive saga involving the poem that Amanda Gorman read at President Biden’s inauguration underscores the point. DeSantis is now defending a Florida school’s decision to restrict access to “The Hill We Climb” — a move that has become a national controversy.

“It was a book of poems that was in an elementary school library,” DeSantis told a convention on Friday, though it was in fact one poem. DeSantis insisted the school district in question merely “moved it from the elementary school library to the middle school library,” and ripped “legacy media” for calling this a “ban,” complaining of a “poem hoax.”

That’s a shameless but revealing characterization of what happened. It’s true that Gorman’s poem was removed from the elementary school section of the library at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes and that access was preserved for middle school students. But this came in response to an objection from one parent.

That parent’s complaint, which was obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, was that the poem has indirect “hate messages” and would “cause confusion and indoctrinate students.” In reality, Gorman’s poem calls for bridging our divides to enable our country to live up to its promise, declaring this an incomplete project. The idea that this represents hate and indoctrination is farcical.

If anything, the poem offers a dramatically different message from racial discourse the right usually objects to, i.e., that our white-supremacist past and continuing structural racism render our country irredeemable. The poem says our nation “isn’t broken but simply unfinished.”

DeSantis objects to calling what happened a “ban.” But the book was placed beyond the reach of elementary school kids for no reason whatsoever. What message does it send that a school went along with the idea that the poem read by the young Black poet at Biden’s inauguration is inappropriate for children, on grounds that it constitutes hate and indoctrination?

It’s also important to note that in response to complaints from that same parent, the school removed two other titles about Black history: “Love to Langston” and “The ABCs of Black History.” Her main objection to these books? They are “CRT” — meaning critical race theory.

That’s preposterous. Those books were written expressly to introduce kids in lower grades to these topics. As Stephana Ferrell, co-founder of Florida Freedom to Read, told me: “The books celebrate Black history, culture and famous voices in a way that connects with elementary school students.” Isn’t that what we want?

Finally, it’s absurd that all this happened due to such specious objections from one person. The school’s rationale for removing the books is that they’re age-inappropriate, but it doesn’t even say why they’re inappropriate for elementary school kids. It’s obvious that the school tried to split the difference, not removing them entirely but still seeking to make this one parent happy.

<“Murderers.” “Criminals.” “We are watching you.”

These are just a handful of the threats and abuse sent to meteorologists at AEMET, Spain’s national weather agency, in recent months. They come via social media, its website, letters, phone calls – even in the form of graffiti sprayed across one of its buildings.

Abuse and harassment “have always happened” against the agency’s scientists, Estrella Gutiérrez-Marco, spokesperson for AEMET, told CNN.

But there has been a rapid rise recently, coinciding with extreme weather in Spain. A severe drought has shrunk water levels to alarming lows, exacerbated by record-breaking April temperatures.

The abuse got so bad that in April, AEMET posted a video on Twitter calling for an end to the harassment, and asking for respect. Even the government intervened. Teresa Ribera, Spain’s minister for the ecological transition, posted on Twitter in support of the agency: “Lying, giving wings to conspiracy and fear, insulting … It is time to say enough.”

The harassment of meteorologists by conspiracy theorists and climate deniers is not a phenomenon confined to Spain.

National weather services, meteorologists and climate communicators in countries from the US to Australia say they’re experiencing an increase in threats and abuse, often around accusations they are overstating, lying about or even controlling the weather.

In Spain’s case, much of the trolling revolves around the rehashing of an old conspiracy theory: so-called “chemtrails.”

Under many of the agency’s Twitter posts, especially those that refer to more extreme weather, users have posted images of blue skies, crisscrossed with wispy, white trails. They falsely claim the trails contain a cocktail of chemicals to artificially manipulate the weather – keeping rain away and causing climate change.

It’s a theory roundly rejected by scientists.

Airplanes do release vapor trails called contrails, short for condensation trails, which form when water vapor condenses into ice crystals around the small particles emitted by jet engines.

But scientists have been clear: There is no evidence “chemtrails” exist.

‘One of the hardest experiences’

In April, meteorologist Isabel Moreno wrote a tweet saying “rain skips Spain,” with an image of a band of rain stretching across Europe but missing Spain almost entirely. She was completely unprepared for the response.

“It was one of the hardest experiences in social media in my life,” said Moreno, who appears on the Spanish TV channel RTVE. “I received HUNDREDS of responses to an (apparently) inoffensive tweet,” she told CNN in an email.

Many accused her of covering up weather manipulation.

“Do not take us for idiots,” said one. “They dry us up, and you are the spokesperson for those who do it,” said another. And on, and on.

While there were plenty of supportive messages, too, it was scary, Moreno said. “I have never seen either that amount of responses nor that level of aggression.” It took days for her to be able to go onto Twitter again without feeling anxious or stressed.

This phenomenon may be particularly pronounced in Spain, but it spreads much wider.

In France, meteorologists have been accused of exaggerating the country’s drought and heat.

Météo France, the French national meteorological service, said the agency’s communications are “the object of more and more repeated attacks,” a Météo France spokesman told CNN.

Climate misinformation on social media is particularly widespread, he said. It “seems to be on the rise, both in terms of the number of attacks directed against scientific publications but also the increasingly aggressive tone of the insults.”

In Australia, the Bureau of Meteorology has been bombarded with criticism of its reporting of temperature records, with claims they have been inflated to make climate change seem worse. A spokeswoman for BOM called these claims inaccurate. “The Bureau transparently reports on and provides access to its very large climate data records,” she said.

And in the UK, meteorologists reported unprecedented levels of online harassment during last year’s record-breaking heat wave, which led to the first-ever “red warning” for heat.

“As scientists communicated this information, they were accused of instigating a nanny state hysteria,” Liz Bentley, the chief executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, told CNN.....>

<....The Met Office was even accused of changing the color palette of its maps to make them look more dramatic. “We hadn’t, it was just really hot,” Oliver Claydon, a communications officer at the Met Office, told CNN.

US meteorologists and climate communicators have not escaped the barrage of abuse and conspiracies.

“Whenever I posted about global topics, like the yearly temperature report, the comments section would be filled with political jabs and conspiracy theories,” said Elisa Raffa, a broadcast meteorologist with Queen City News, based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

As a woman in the media, she more often receives comments about her appearance than the science she’s communicating, she told CNN.

Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at Woodwell Climate Research Center, said she’s seen a ramp up of abuse lately.

“I receive almost daily verbal declarations of my ignorance and climate alarmism,” she told CNN.

An erosion of trust

Some disinformation experts draw a straight line from the conspiracies that flourished during the Covid pandemic – when experts faced a slew of abuse – to the uptick in climate conspiracies.

People need “trending” topics on which to hang these theories, said Alexandre López-Borrull, a lecturer in the Information and Communication Sciences Department at Universitat Oberta de Catalunya in Spain.

As Covid-19 fades from the headlines, climate change has become a strong rallying point. There’s been a big increase in “insults directed at all organizations related to the weather,” he told CNN.

“It’s a logical evolution of the broader trend around pushback on institutions, and the erosion of trust,” said Jennie King, the head of Climate Research and Policy at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a think tank focused on disinformation and extremism.

These kinds of conspiracies are usually grounded in the idea that a set of institutions is “using the pretext of climate change, or the pretext of solving public policy issues, to enact some insidious agenda,” she told CNN.

And the weather is an easy way in. Many aspects of climate science can feel very technical or abstract, but the weather is something people interact with frequently, said King.

“It’s a much more immediate way to bring a wider audience into that skepticism … planting seeds of doubt against the climate agenda writ large,” she said.

The role meteorologists have in explaining how climate change affects the weather, especially extreme weather, is a particular flashpoint....>

<....Extreme weather can be alarming, especially when there are consequences and sacrifices, such as Spain’s water restrictions.

Conspiracy theories feed on this fear by offering a simple, enticing explanation, said López-Borrull. It’s easier to believe climate change is fake, or a manipulation by powerful people, than get your head around the complex problem and what it means for society.

“Change is hard and scary,” Francis said

‘I’m just trying to do my job’

It’s difficult to combat conspiracy theories when they bubble up. Some experts say they offer simple charts and rebuttals when they can, but try to ignore those who come in bad faith.

Doug McNeall, a climate scientist and statistician at the Met Office Hadley Centre, a UK research center, said that, as a scientist, he welcomes being challenged. “If people come with better evidence, and you change your mind, that’s good,” he told CNN.

But that’s not been his recent experience. “These people were not coming with better evidence,” he said. “They were coming to stop us talking about climate science.” He now relies much more on the block button.

Moreno echoed this. “I find it very difficult to change the minds of people that really have strong beliefs in these conspiracies,” she said. It’s easier to prevent the ideas from taking hold in people in the first place by tackling the myths and explaining how the atmosphere works, she added.

This kind of communication can really help, said King. Some of the best initiatives are “when media outlets or scientific institutions really try to demystify the process of how they produce public interest data,” she said.

King worries about the impact of these conspiracies on climate politics. “If we want to implement any policies, ambitious or not, around the environmental agenda, and the acute crisis of climate change, it does now seem that this is going to rear its head,” she said.

López-Borrull hopes meteorologists and climate communicators will persevere and not be pushed away from online spaces.

“The answer is not disappearing or closing social media profiles … they have to remain on social media because they are really useful,” López-Borrull said.

But as the climate crisis causes more extreme weather, harassment could increase even further.

And it takes a toll, said Raffa.

“I think it’s easy for people to forget I’m human, some of those comments can be hurtful. I’m just trying to do my job.”>

<Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination Wednesday by promising to bring the suite of culture war policies he’s signed into law in Florida to the whole nation if he’s elected in 2024.

“The woke mind virus is basically a form of cultural Marxism,” DeSantis said in an appearance on Fox News the same day he announced his campaign. “At the end of the day, it’s an attack on the truth. And because it’s a war on truth, I think we have no choice but to wage a war on woke.”

This “war on woke” serves as the central justification and argument for DeSantis’ bid for the GOP nomination. By challenging the supposed liberal tilt in American culture as expressed in schools, the media and the corporate workplace culture, this “war,” and the legislation behind it, shows DeSantis as a culture fighter who gets things done.

But there’s one big problem for DeSantis’ war: the U.S. Constitution.

Broad swathes of DeSantis’ anti-woke agenda — from restrictions on the teaching of social science about race in colleges and universities, to bans on corporate diversity training to limits on public protests — have been temporarily suspended by judges who found them very likely to be in violation of the first and 14th amendments.

In suspending these laws, federal judges called them “positively dystopian” and the defenses presented in court “wholly at odds with accepted constitutional principles.” The suspended provisions of the laws may yet be upheld as they move through appeals courts and, possibly, U.S. Supreme Court review, but, at the moment, DeSantis’ offensive against the “woke mind virus” has been partially reversed.

These multiple losses in court put a constitutional blemish on DeSantis’ claims of success as a culture warrior who can deftly enact the social conservative agenda.

One of the laws partially suspended is the pillar of DeSantis’ war: The Individual Freedom Act, popularly known as the Stop WOKE Act, prohibits the promotion or advancement of eight concepts related to race in public schools, colleges and universities and in private-sector corporate trainings. The definitions of the prohibited concepts are based on a Trump administration executive order banning government contractors from engaging employees in certain diversity training programs.

In response, a group of university professors, students and corporations filed three lawsuits challenging the law’s prohibitions on teaching race-based concepts or using them in diversity trainings for private-sector employees. The two lawsuits challenging the law’s application to colleges and universities were heard as a single case. In each case, U.S. District Judge Mark Walker in northern Florida, who was nominated by President Barack Obama, suspended the law’s application with strong language.

“The State of Florida lays the cornerstone of its own Ministry of Truth under the guise of the Individual Freedom Act, declaring which viewpoints shall be orthodox and which shall be verboten in its university classrooms,” Walker wrote in his November 2022 decision on the law’s provisions governing colleges and universities.

“Recently, Florida has seemed like a First Amendment upside down,” Walker wrote in suspending the provisions governing private corporations. “Normally, the First Amendment bars the state from burdening speech, while private actors may burden speech freely. But in Florida, the First Amendment apparently bars private actors from burdening speech, while the state may burden speech freely.”

In both cases, Walker determined that the law improperly allowed the state to discriminate against speech based on viewpoint: Professors or corporate trainers were banned from discussing the race-based concepts if they could be seen to be advancing or promoting them but not if they were criticizing or disparaging them.

“It’s pretty black-letter law that if the government is saying you may not offer a training that espouses one viewpoint but you can offer a training that espouses the opposite viewpoint, that that is pretty blatant viewpoint discrimination,” said Shalini Agarwal, a lawyer at the nonprofit Protect Democracy who serves as counsel for the private-sector plaintiffs....>

<....Further, the law’s language in describing the eight banned concepts is incredibly vague, which Walker ruled likely violates the 14th Amendment’s Due Process Clause.

“A law cannot pass constitutional muster if the people that are supposed to be following them do not understand what’s prohibited conduct and what’s permitted conduct,” said Greg Greubel, a lawyer at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression representing some of the university professors and students.

Walker notes this in his decision by pointing to the fact that one banned concept contains a confusing triple negative.

The law bans instruction that states “Members of one race, color, national origin, or sex cannot and should not attempt to treat others without respect to race, color, national origin, or sex.” (Emphasis added.)

Such vague and contradictory language results in a “cacophony of confusion” that is “bordering on unintelligible,” Walker writes.

The law’s provisions were also deemed unconstitutionally vague because they allow discussion of the prohibited concepts if they are “given in an objective manner without endorsement.” Since no definition of “objective” is provided, the professors and corporate trainers would be, according to Walker, “at a loss on how to discuss concepts like white privilege, systemic racism, and white supremacy without simultaneously endorsing the notion that such prejudice should be overcome.”

“When teaching history it is very difficult to teach in an objective manner if the state says you cannot promote these things but you can denigrate them,” Greubel said.

Due to Walker’s decisions, the Stop WOKE Act’s provisions limiting college and university classroom discussions and corporate trainings are on hold. As of March 16, an appeals court panel upheld Walker’s injunction on the college and university prohibitions. However, the Stop WOKE Act’s prohibitions on teaching the eight race-based concepts in primary and secondary education remain in effect.

These are not the only pieces of DeSantis’ anti-woke war that have been blocked.

Walker also blocked an anti-protest law, enacted in response to Black Lives Matter protests, from going into effect, ruling that a provision allowing prosecutors to charge anyone present at a protest where a handful of people commit acts of violence against people or property created a chilling effect on protected First Amendment activity. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit upheld the injunction on the law until the Florida Supreme Court rules on the definition of the law’s vague terminology....>

<....Both a U.S. district judge and the 11th Circuit ruled that a law banning large digital media platforms from taking down accounts, removing or appending notes to posts and “shadow-banning” users is unconstitutional. DeSantis had described the law as necessary to prevent digital corporations from discriminating “in favor of the dominant Silicon Valley ideology.” The challenge is now before the U.S. Supreme Court after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit upheld a similar law in Texas.

DeSantis’ dismissal of former Hillsborough County prosecutor Andrew Warren was deemed a violation of Warren’s First Amendment rights by the courts. DeSantis claimed that Warren, a reform-minded prosecutor, was improperly refusing to prosecute certain crimes when he removed him from office. A U.S. district judge ruled that DeSantis’ allegations were “false” and there was “not a hint of misconduct” in Warren’s actions. Warren is now petitioning in federal court to be reinstated.

The only major lawsuit that has gone DeSantis’ way has been a challenge to the Parental Rights in Education law, also known as the “Don’t Say Gay” law, that bans certain discussions of gender and sexuality in primary and secondary schools. That lawsuit failed after the parents and students who sued were denied standing by U.S. District Judge Allen Winsor, a Donald Trump nominee. The plaintiffs have since filed an appeal.

And, of course, there’s Disney’s recent lawsuit alleging that DeSantis’ efforts to strip the company of governance of the Florida special district where Disney World resides amounted to illegal retaliation violating the company’s First Amendment rights. While such retaliation cases are often hard to prove, Disney’s lawsuit contains copious evidence from public statements and DeSantis’ own book highlighting how his actions were driven by a desire to punish the company for speaking out against the “Don’t Say Gay” law. DeSantis responded to Disney’s lawsuit by calling it “political” and without “merit,” and he asked the court to disqualify the judge assigned to the case, Mark Walker, due to his previous decisions that went against the governor. That lawsuit is pending.

More lawsuits are expected to come after the latest legislative session expanded the Stop WOKE Act and the “Don’t Say Gay” law and banned gender transition health care for minors.

Though the federal courts have increasingly tilted toward conservatives since the Trump administration, protecting the First Amendment’s free speech rights remains an area where the judicial wings of both parties can find agreement. The conservatives on the Supreme Court have been especially protective of the free speech rights of corporations, a key target of DeSantis’ war.

“I am very very confident in our position,” Greubel said.

Still, this broad effort to limit First Amendment rights by imposing restrictions on what may be discussed in colleges, universities and the private sector raises concerns among those who work to protect those rights, especially as DeSantis looks to take this war national in his presidential campaign.

“It seems really un-American, a lot of the targeting of protester speech rights, the targeting of private employer speech rights, the targeting of speech rights on college campuses,” Agarwal said. “A lot of it is not what Americans recognize as within the bounds of the law.”>

Now , I post the best posts on this page . <refused> said that he is a psychologist , he was talking sense and I was talking nonsense . I proved that it was me who was talking sense and he was talking nonsense.

And here are people like <saffuna> , <diademas> , <am wazir> who ganging up against me.

Why do you encourage such people , <perfidious> ? People like <saffuna> , <refused> , <diademas> , <fsr> , <moronovich> , <al wazir>, <check it out > , <schweigzwang>, <hemateme> , <keypusher> ....

Me ? I have courage/strength to stand alone .

Why do you encourage such people , <perfidious> ?

<White House and congressional GOP negotiators have reached an agreement in principle to avert a debt default. Now they have to get it to President Joe Biden’s desk in time.

Hill leaders will now race to draft and pass the deal as quickly as possible — through both the House and Senate — ahead of the June 5 deadline. McCarthy said he expected bill text would be finalized Sunday and that the House would vote on the legislation Wednesday.

And both Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy still have to sell their respective parties on the agreement, navigating fraught votes in both chambers. McCarthy immediately hosted a call with members after the deal was announced, calling it a “big win” and claiming Democrats didn’t get “one thing” that they wanted out of the negotiations on a member-wide conference call, according to three people on the call.

While conservative Rep. Bob Good (R-Va.) vocally criticized the agreement — saying he was “extremely disappointed” that the deal didn’t include “any meaningful cuts” — other Freedom Caucus members praised the deal, including Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Warren Davidson (R-Ohio). Though both said they wanted to see the text, Jordan praised McCarthy for a deal where the government is “spending less” than it did before and getting Democrats to move on work requirements.

“Seems like a pretty darn good deal to me,” Jordan said, according to one of the people on the call.

And the speaker forcefully defended the agreement after Good’s criticism, saying it could pass the Senate and that he never claimed the legislation the House passed last month would be the “end all bill.”

McCarthy concluded the call around 10:30 p.m., telling his conference that he needed to speak to the White House again and make sure the text reflected their agreement on principle. “Let’s stick together,” he said while concluding the call. Biden and McCarthy will talk again Sunday, the speaker had told reporters earlier.

In addition to lifting the $31.4 trillion borrowing cap through the 2024 presidential election, the deal in principle would keep non-defense spending roughly flat for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1, according to a person familiar with the negotiations, falling far short of the $130 billion in cuts at fiscal 2022 levels that Republicans had originally demanded.

However, Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), a close McCarthy ally, flatly rejected — and laughed at— that characterization of the deal, instead asserting that non-defense and non-veterans funding would be at fiscal year 2022 levels.

Non-defense spending would increase by 1 percent in 2025, followed by years of nonenforceable funding targets, according to the person familiar. Republicans had initially pushed for a decade of strict funding limits. Defense spending would be set at the level proposed in Biden’s budget for the coming fiscal year, representing a modest 3.5 percent increase over current funding levels — less than what many Republican defense hawks would’ve liked to see for the Pentagon in order to keep pace with inflation.

The agreement includes policy changes to work requirements for the TANF and SNAP programs, including time limits for SNAP recipients up to age 54, according to a source familiar with the negotiations who was not authorized to share details publicly. Veterans and the homeless would be exempt from new or existing time limits. The changes are likely to be unpopular with House Democrats.

But it imposes no new work requirements for Medicaid, a win for the White House.

In other victories for Biden, the agreement protects the environmental provisions from the Inflation Reduction Act, including clean energy funding. It also doesn’t touch Biden’s student debt relief plan.

McCarthy, speaking to reporters, touted that the deal had “historic reductions in spending,” no new taxes, no new government programs and would make reforms to “lift people out of poverty,” referring to the adjusted work requirements.

Republicans are expected to need a sizable number of Democrats to help them clear the bill through the House amid early signs that some conservative members are unlikely to support a deal that is significantly different than a bill the House passed last month. One Democratic lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly, expected that 60 to 80 Democrats would vote for the deal, though they cautioned that represents an early estimate....>

<....Biden and McCarthy spoke on the phone just hours before the deal was announced in an attempt to resolve final sticking points, including a GOP push to include work requirements on social safety net programs. And the agreement followed days of closely watched negotiations between Reps. Garret Graves (R-La.), Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.), OMB Director Shalanda Young and Steve Ricchetti, a trusted Biden counselor.

But Hill leaders and the White House still have major political hurdles to overcome. The grind of the legislative process could push Congress up against the June 5 deadline, when Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has warned the country will run out of money to pay its bills.

House GOP leaders have pledged to give their members a full 72 hours to review a bill. They’ve bent that rule this year already, but Republicans have vowed they won’t try to truncate the time on any debt limit legislation. Even leadership allies believe doing so would threaten GOP support for the deal.

House Democrats are planning to have a member call at 5 p.m. Sunday, according to a person familiar with the details.

The bipartisan deal is expected to test McCarthy’s hold on his right flank, including members of the House Freedom Caucus. But Johnson said Saturday night that he was hearing wide Republican support for the deal.

“Members I am talking to, from centrists to people who are real conservatives, they are incredibly supportive of this deal. That doesn’t mean we’ll get 222 votes. But a huge cross-section of this conference is excited about the deal,” Johnson said.

McCarthy needs to get a majority of his own conference to support the deal, something he predicted Saturday that he wouldn’t “have any problem” doing. But given a possible conservative rebellion, he’s also going to need votes from House Democrats, who have vocally urged Biden to not bend to GOP demands in order to clinch an agreement.

And as he faced outside pressure from House Democrats, Biden has also sought to portray himself as willing to go to bat for his party’s priorities. Asked Friday about concerns that he could give too much away to Republicans on work requirements, Biden clapped back: “I don’t bow to anybody.”

<It's no secret that the Irish have a great command over the English language.

The Emerald Isle has produced some of the world's most celebrated writers of all time. Yet Irish people's flowery use of the English language goes far beyond putting pen to paper.

We can express ourselves just as colorfully when we speak. Irish idioms and phrases can conjure images as vivid as those of any poet.

Case in point: Irish trash talk. Take a look at the creative ways the Irish insult with these savage expressions.

"If you've been to Tenerife, they've been to Elevenerife"

Referencing the largest of Spain's Canary Islands, a popular vacation spot amongst the Irish, this is another way of saying someone has to constantly one-up others.

"The tide wouldn't take that one out"

In other words, this person is so off-putting, physically or personality-wise, that they couldn't even be taken out to sea, let alone on a date. There's also a more graphic version: "A sniper wouldn't take that one out."

"They wouldn't spend Christmas" or "They'd peel an orange in their pocket just so they wouldn't have to give you a piece"

Some colorful ways to describe a cheapskate.

"They'd get up on a gust of wind"

Used when talking about a sleazeball or a player.

"If there was work in the bed, they'd sleep on the floor"/"They wouldn't sleep in the same room as a shovel"

For a person so lazy, they'd go out of their way to avoid work.

"That one's a few sandwiches short of a picnic" or "That one's two shillings short of a pound"

Used to describe someone who's not very bright.

"They'd steal the eyes out of your head" or "They'd take the milk out of your tea and come back for the sugar"

Needless to say, these are about someone with sticky fingers.

"Two of you wouldn't make one eejit"

Eejit is Irish slang for an idiot or fool. It's sometimes used affectionately, but evidently not in this case.

"They'd go through you for a shortcut"

Usually used in reference to someone rough or loutish.

"If they were a bar of chocolate, they'd eat themselves"

A vivid way of describing someone vain.>

<Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, wants a “national divorce.” In her view, another Civil War is inevitable unless red and blue states form separate countries.

She has plenty of company on the right, where a host of others – 52% of Trump voters, Donald Trump himself and prominent Texas Republicans – have endorsed various forms of secession in recent years. Roughly 40% of Biden voters have fantasized about a national divorce as well. Some on the left urge a domestic breakup so that a new egalitarian nation might be, as Lincoln said at Gettysburg, “brought forth on this continent.”

The American Civil War was a national trauma precipitated by the secession of 11 Southern states over slavery. It is, therefore, understandable that many pundits and commentators would weigh in about the legality, feasibility and wisdom of secession when others clamor for divorce.

But all this secession talk misses a key point that every troubled couple knows. Just as there are ways to withdraw from a marriage before any formal divorce, there are also ways to exit a nation before officially seceding.

I have studied secession for 20 years, and I think that it is not just a “what if?” scenario anymore. In “We Are Not One People: Secession and Separatism in American Politics Since 1776,” my co-author and I go beyond narrow discussions of secession and the Civil War to frame secession as an extreme end point on a scale that includes various acts of exit that have already taken place across the U.S.

Scaled secession

This scale begins with smaller, targeted exits, like a person getting out of jury duty, and progresses to include the larger ways that communities refuse to comply with state and federal authorities.

Such refusals could involve legal maneuvers like interposition, in which a community delays or constrains the enforcement of a law it opposes, or nullification, in which a community explicitly declares a law to be null and void within its borders. At the end of the scale, there’s secession.

From this wider perspective, it is clear that many acts of departure – call them secession lite, de facto secession or soft separatism – are occurring right now. Americans have responded to increasing polarization by exploring the gradations between soft separatism and hard secession.

These escalating exits make sense in a polarized nation whose citizens are sorting themselves into like-minded neighborhoods. When compromise is elusive and coexistence is unpleasant, citizens have three options to get their way: Defeat the other side, eliminate the other side or get away from the other side.

Imagine a national law; it could be a mandate that citizens brush their teeth twice a day or a statute criminalizing texting while driving. Then imagine that a special group of people did not have to obey that law.

This quasi-secession can be achieved in several ways. Maybe this special group moves “off the grid” into the boondocks where they could text and drive without fear of oversight. Maybe this special group wields political power and can buy, bribe or lawyer their way out of any legal jam. Maybe this special group has persuaded a powerful authority, say Congress or the Supreme Court, to grant them unique legal exemptions.

These are hypothetical scenarios, but not imaginary ones. When groups exit public life and its civic duties and burdens, when they live under their own sets of rules, when they do not have to live with fellow citizens they have not chosen or listen to authorities they do not like, they have already seceded.

Schools to taxes

Present-day America offers numerous hard examples of soft separatism.

Over the past two decades, scores of wealthy white communities have separated from more diverse school districts. Advocates cite local control to justify these acts of school secession. But the result is the creation of parallel school districts, both relatively homogeneous but vastly different in racial makeup and economic background....>