<The idea of circular firing squads in politics is usually associated with House Republicans. But we may never have seen anything like the circle of mutual Democratic destruction taking place in New York among Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the party’s nominal leader, President Joe Biden.

The issue is illegal migrants and the so far unanswerable question is where to put the more than 107,000 who have poured into the city the past two years. With migrants, New York is no longer a sanctuary city. It’s a Democratic battleground.

New York’s Democrats want the migrant problem fixed, because if it festers, disgusted state voters likely will elect more Republicans to the U.S. House next year, as they did in 2022 when the GOP won a net gain of three seats. An August Siena College Poll found 82% of New Yorkers consider the migrant influx a serious problem. The Biden White House, apparently, does not. It has stiffed every request for help from New York—as well as from Democratic governors in Illinois and Massachusetts.

Even by the standards of thought-free progressive compulsion, Joe Biden’s southern-border policy never made sense. What other than a crisis did they expect as millions waded across the Rio Grande? But even after the crossings became a domestic-policy debacle, attacked by Arizona’s Democrats, Team Biden let it rip.

For a time, Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul blamed Texas Gov. Greg Abbott for rerouting to New York City’s Port Authority bus terminal thousands of the migrants who washed up in Texas. But the Abbott excuse has faded. The New York blame game has become an internal party feud.

It’s common to say New York City is in trouble because it’s a “sanctuary city.” But the city is in a special ring of migrant hell because it is the only city in the U.S. that has a so-called right-to-shelter mandate, itself the result of another historic progressive fiasco....>

<.....During the 1970s, New York was a leader in the movement to “deinstitutionalize” psychiatric hospitals and facilities for the mentally ill. The theory, for better or worse, was that the mentally ill should be cared for and medicated by community outpatient facilities.

That promise of community care was empty. Almost immediately, the mentally ill homeless proliferated on the streets of New York in the early 1980s. Naturally a lawsuit followed and naturally a New York court ruled that under the state constitution, the city was obliged to provide temporary housing to any homeless person who asked for it. Across 40 years, the city has been unable to house the mentally ill. Now the migrants arriving in New York, supported by the city’s activist lawyers, have claimed this right to shelter and been granted temporary housing.

An irony: The city is erecting migrant tent cities on the grounds of the long-abandoned Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. Policy failure begets policy failure.

The Adams administration estimates that by 2025 it will spend a mind-boggling $12 billion on the migrants. But despite the migrants and the Covid economic downturn, the city has been signing new labor contracts with public unions that will contribute to a budget deficit of nearly $14 billion by 2027.

A startling image from the crisis this summer was hundreds of migrants sleeping on the sidewalk in front of the historic Roosevelt Hotel, blocks from Grand Central Terminal. For weeks, residents of Staten Island have gathered almost nightly to protest the housing of migrants in a closed Catholic school. With no Republican available for even pro forma blame, New York’s Democrats have turned on each other, including the incumbent president.

“This crisis originated with the federal government,” Gov. Hochul said two weeks ago. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas returned fire with a letter accusing the state and city of a litany of “structural” migrant mistakes. He offered a list of federal migrant-housing sites, including one in Atlantic City, N.J. The GOP should have a 2024 political ad in the works with Mr. Mayorkas saying the border is closed, not open or secure.

Mayor Adams, after criticizing the White House for months (“We need an emergency action down at the border”), attacked Gov. Hochul for not compelling upstate counties to house migrants. That would be the parts of New York that tend to vote for Republicans. The governor’s lawyers cracked back with a 12-page letter dumping on Mr. Adams’s migrant efforts but offering their own housing site list—all inside the city, such as Aqueduct Race Track.

The chances are zero that the White House will acknowledge that its border policy, or nonpolicy, is responsible for an intraparty crisis. Gallup’s late-August poll put approval for Mr. Biden on migrant policy at 31%. New York’s Democrats are left with not much more than standard-brand buck passing. Republican House candidates watch and wait.

We may live in an era of personality-driven politics, but New York is proving that even in a blue state, the tolerance for misgovernance has limits.>

Ah, the fruits of another circle jerk in which no-one benefits, above all those who come to our shores for succour....

<It was a symbol of personal freedom. It transformed how we worked, and helped create the suburbs. It made it easier to connect with friends and family than it had ever been before.

When the petrol car became a mass market product at the start of the 20th century it was one of the most radical innovations of all time, one that fundamentally changed the way we live. There was “a car for every purse and purpose,” in the words of Alfred Sloan, the industrial genius who created General Motors. And yet, 100 years later, Sloan’s formula is, regrettably, no longer true. The petrol car is being turned into an unaffordable luxury, out of reach of most ordinary people - and given that electric vehicles won’t work for many of us the era of the car may be coming to a close.

Over the last few years, the Government has thrown everything it can think of at forcing us to switch to electric vehicles. There are big subsidies on offer, both for the car itself and for a home charging port. There are tax breaks for company vehicles, long since phased out for the petrol equivalent. There are exemptions from resident’s parking permits, and from the increasingly bewildering array of congestion and clean air charges that now mean driving from one British city to another involves almost as much paperwork as getting a visa for North Korea.

And from next year onwards, the auto manufacturers will have to meet a target of selling 22pc electric vehicles, rising to 52pc by 2028, ahead of a complete ban on the sale of new petrol cars by 2030.

There is a problem, however. Despite all the incentives, most of us are not yet convinced about making the switch. According to a survey this week by Auto Trader, only 47pc of drivers believe that an electric vehicle will work for them, while 56pc of drivers felt that they were too expensive to buy. In fact, there are a whole range of reasons why people don’t want them. They are expensive, with average prices above traditional models. The charging network is hopelessly inadequate, especially if, like most people, you don’t have your own driveway. There are doubts over how long the batteries last, minor collisions can cost thousands to repair if the power unit is damaged, and there is even a risk of them catching fire in enclosed space.

And yet, at the same time petrol cars are becoming increasingly unaffordable. There already was a trend for new cars to get more and more expensive: from 2011 to 2021 the average price of a new car in the UK rose by 39pc, compared to a 22pc rise in average wages, according to research by Moneybarn. But as quotas are introduced, that will only accelerate, since the only way the manufacturers can meet the target, at the same time as protecting profit margins, will be to make fossil-fuel driven models pricier and pricier. Add in the soaring cost of insurance, and the vast range of Ulez-style charges, and one point is clear. A petrol car will be a high-end luxury product, restricted to a tiny minority.

The result? Car ownership will soon be following home ownership into dramatic decline, driven off the road by central planning, and short-sighted, chaotic government policies. Instead, people will be forced onto shambolic public transport that might just about work in inner London, and within a few other major cities, but is practically non-existent in the suburbs, small towns or villages. In reality, the end of the car era will be the greatest backward step in living standards in recent memory. In terms of mobility and freedom it will take us right back to the 19th century - and it will be entirely our own fault. >

There is a groundswell within the Biden administration to implement such policies Over Here; I am, to put it mildly, sceptical of the efficacy of EVs.

<The Ohio Supreme Court on Thursday dismissed two lawsuits challenging the state’s congressional map — which was ruled unconstitutional last year as favoring Republicans — clearing the way for the map to be used for next year’s elections.

The Democrats and voting rights advocates who filed the complaints last March had both requested on Tuesday that the Supreme Court dismiss their cases: Neiman v. LaRose and League of Women Voters of Ohio v. LaRose.

In the petition to have their cases dismissed, the plaintiffs wrote that, even if a newly redrawn map were to correct all of the deficiencies of the one used in 2022, it would be an expensive and lengthy process that would leave Ohio residents in limbo for at least several more months.

“For all of these reasons, given that the [2022 map] is at least a partial remedy, and given the substantial costs and uncertainty that further litigation would entail, Petitioners have decided to no longer pursue their challenge,” the plaintiffs wrote. “They strongly believe this is the best result under the circumstances for the people of Ohio who deserve certainty about the congressional map that they will be voting under in this cycle, at the very least.”

The petition to have their cases dismissed marked something of a tactical retreat for Democrats and voting rights groups in their lengthy battle against Ohio’s congressional maps. In 2018, Ohio voters passed a constitutional amendment to ban partisan gerrymandering. In November 2021, state Republican lawmakers proposed a new congressional map that the Ohio Supreme Court rejected as unconstitutional last January, saying the GOP under that map would have been favored to win 12 out of 15 seats in Ohio — a violation of the new anti-gerrymandering amendment.

The Republican-led Ohio Redistricting Commission then redrew the state’s congressional map in March 2022, but the Ohio Supreme Court struck down the second map last July as one that still unconstitutionally favored Republicans. Though it was still being litigated, that was the map used for the November 2022 congressional elections in Ohio, in which Democrats won five out of 15 seats.

David Niven, an associate professor of politics at the University of Cincinnati who has done research on gerrymandering, said it was likely that the plaintiffs withdrew their challenge to the 2022 map this week because it was “the least worst option.” He noted that Democrats were able to pick up a House seat in Ohio for the first time in more than a decade under the 2022 map, mostly because new anti-gerrymandering rules meant the redistricting commission could no longer split up Cincinnati into different districts.

“I think the concern was multiple bad possibilities: One was that this would ultimately produce a hostile court ruling that would empower even worse state legislative and congressional maps in the future,” Niven told The Washington Post. “And the other was, if the court actually did throw out the [2022] map, there was … no guarantee that [a new map] wouldn’t come back worse than it was.”

Regardless, under the anti-gerrymandering provision passed in 2018, Ohio’s congressional maps must be redrawn after 2024 no matter what, since the redistricting commission passed it without a bipartisan commitment. (A map that the commission passes with bipartisan support is good for 10 years, while those that do not receive bipartisan support are only good for four years.)

“That was meant to be a punishment if someone was being too partisan, but Republicans are probably happy to have a chance to redraw the maps” every four years, Niven said.

Jen Miller, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, said Thursday that voting rights advocates, including her group, were going to instead focus “on getting politicians and lobbyists completely out of the process” through a new citizen-led ballot initiative called “Citizens, Not Politicians.”

“Litigation is incredibly expensive and time consuming and doesn’t guarantee positive results for voters,” Miller told The Post. “We are also focused on advocating for fair and responsive Ohio Senate and Ohio House maps, which are extremely gerrymandered, but are also being redrawn.”

In a video posted to social media shortly after the Ohio Supreme Court dismissed the lawsuits, David Pepper, a former Democratic state party chairman, blasted the likelihood that Ohio would be voting in 2024 using a congressional map that had already been deemed unconstitutional.

<A Georgia prosecutor fired back at a U.S. House inquiry into her investigation of Donald Trump by arguing the goal was to “advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations” and was “flagrantly at odds with the Constitution.”

“Your letter makes clear that you lack a basic understanding of the law, its practice and the ethical obligations of attorneys generally and prosecutors specifically,” Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis wrote Thursday to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Willis suggested Jordan buy a book for $249 to remedy his "total ignorance of Georgia's racketeering statute." She secured a racketeering indictment of Trump and 18 co-defendants for allegedly trying to overturn the 2020 election. Each of the defendants has pleaded not guilty.

Jordan, a Trump ally, wrote Willis on Aug. 24 asking for documentation of her investigation. Jordan also asked about communications with Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith, who is prosecuting Trump for election conspiracy charges. Jordan questioned whether Willis’s motivation for the indictment was political and whether she was coordinating with Smith.

But Willis replied Jordan had no business interfering in the case, either as a federal intrusion or legislative meddling in an executive prosecution. She said his letter contained “inaccurate information and misleading statements.”

“Its obvious purpose is to obstruct a Georgia criminal proceeding and to advance outrageous partisan misrepresentations,” Willis wrote.

Willis said sharing non-public information about the case could hurt the integrity of proceedings or could prejudice defendants, victims or witnesses.

“Your attempts at probing communications among and involving counsel in my office are wholly improper,” Willis wrote.>

<Former President Donald Trump’s narcissistic inability to accept he lost the 2020 election might be what keeps him from ever setting foot in the White House again (as commander in chief, anyway).

Trump couldn’t just be a normal sore loser – he had to go on a years-long rampage spouting gobbledygook about a “rigged” and “stolen” election. These lies have in turn been parroted by his Republican sycophants around the country.

It turns out many voters have taken that message to heart and may just sit out the 2024 election.

And it makes sense: If you don’t trust the integrity of U.S. elections, why waste your time casting a vote?

Trump must go: Republicans, ditch the Trump drama, and find a candidate not embroiled in criminal charges

Trump 'wins' among unlikely voters

A new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll of unlikely voters found this group (eligible voters but disenchanted citizens) favors Trump over President Joe Biden by a pretty wide margin.

It matters because this is a large bloc – as many as 100 million people – and these voters could swing the election one way or another.

Sure, Trump is awful. But that doesn't mean Biden is a good choice for president.

By nearly 20 points (32% to 13%), registered voters who say they probably won’t vote next year support Trump over Biden. And among eligible voters who aren’t registered, Trump has an almost 2-to-1 advantage over the president, 28%-15%.

It doesn’t do much good for candidates if their supporters stay home on Election Day. And the survey found much of the rationale not to participate came from Trump’s rhetoric.

As David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center and USA TODAY pollster, wrote this week:

“Here’s the irony of ironies – when the unlikely voters were asked why they were registered but not voting next year, about 13% used the words ‘election is rigged/corruption/unfair/don’t like the voting process/mail-in ballots.' These have been Trump’s words for the past five years, and the very people who could help elect him have totally soured on elections and voting.”

Where's Kamala? After all the hoopla and 'firsts,' the VP isn't living up to the hype

Don’t celebrate yet, Democrats

Before Democrats do a victory lap, they have enough to worry about in Biden. Despite four active criminal indictments, Trump remains in a dead heat with Biden in the polls.

Survey after survey of likely voters shows how unenthusiastic they are – even Democrats – about a second Biden term.

A recent Wall Street Journal poll found only 39% of voters have a favorable view of Biden and have given him low marks in his job performance, especially on the economy. Voters also say Biden, turning 81 in November, is simply too old.

And a brutal new CNN poll highlights how 46% of voters say “any Republican nominee for president would be a better choice" than Biden. Even 67% of Democrats want the party to nominate someone else.

But who? If Biden drops out, the most logical next choice would be his vice president, Kamala Harris. Yet, Harris is even less popular than her boss and has proved to be a total flop in her job. In a hypothetical matchup with Trump, Harris loses.

Both Biden and Trump broke records in 2020 for the number of votes each garnered. In 2024, after all that has transpired, it’s difficult to see how either candidate could muster anywhere near that much enthusiasm again.>

<Donald Trump is facing legal peril amid reports that one of his lawyers gave him several months warning that the FBI could arrive at his Mar-a-Lago resort to retrieve classified documents they sought, according to a legal expert.

Legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Joyce Vance was reacting to voice notes from Trump attorney Evan Corcoran, obtained by ABC News, which suggest the former president was told in May 2022 that federal agents would search his Florida estate for sensitive materials if he did not comply with a federal subpoena to return them.

The conversations cast major doubts on Trump's original claims that he was not prepared for the FBI search at Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, which he described on Truth Social as "a horrible and shocking BREAK-IN."

Trump is also accused of directing Mar-a-Lago workers Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira to move boxes of sensitive materials around the resort in order to prevent federal agents from finding the boxes of classified documents. Trump, Nauta, and De Oliveira have pleaded not guilty to all federal charges against them, including conspiracy to obstruct justice.

"Trump knew that a search was likely in the works when he set Nauta and De Oliveira to the task of removing boxes from storage in Mar-a-Lago, and subsequently returning fewer of them than were removed," Vance wrote on Substack.

"The inference is that Trump knowingly removed items he did not want prosecutors to find. That's a stunning development and advance in what we know about Jack Smith's evidence against Trump on the obstruction charge," she said. "So much for Trump's outraged protestations the day of the search that it happened without warning."

Vance added that the allegations against Trump are especially damning as the government "bent over backwards" to give the former president the opportunity to return classified documents they sought under subpoena.

"He didn't do so, even removing some once he learned a search was possible," Vance wrote. "Prosecutors can argue to jurors that the evidence shows that Trump deliberately secreted items out of view of his lawyers and also of DOJ, anticipating the search. The evidence against Trump could get even worse for Trump if his remaining co-defendants flip."

Newsweek reached out to Trump's legal team via email for comment.

The federal indictment filed against Trump by Special Counsel Jack Smith in June 2023 detailed how Trump asked his attorneys, "What happens if we just don't respond at all or don't play ball with them?" after being informed last May about the federal subpoena for the classified documents.

According to transcripts of Corcoran's voice notes, the attorney replied to the former president: "Well, there's a prospect that they could go to a judge and get a search warrant and that they could arrive here."

The indictment suggests that Trump still didn't want to comply with the federal subpoena, telling his lawyers "I don't want anybody looking through my boxes," and, "Wouldn't it be better if we just told them we don't have anything here?"

In a statement, Trump campaign spokesperson Steven Cheung told ABC News: "The attorney-client privilege is one of the oldest and most fundamental principles in our legal system, and its primary purpose is to promote the rule of law.

"Whether attorneys' notes are detailed or not makes no difference—these notes reflect the legal opinions and thoughts of the lawyer, not the client.">

<Disney has yet again won another round in its ongoing legal battle with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

The Mouse House and DeSantis have been entangled in a war after the company spoke out against his "Don't Say Gay Bill." DeSantis introduced a law that prevented discussing sexuality or gender identity in certain grades at Florida's public school and Disney publicly denounced the move after pressure from its workers at Disney World.

The latest loss for DeSantis came after a judge ruled Disney could amend its complaint and continue to pursue legal action. DeSantis agreed to Disney's motion to the change.

"Plaintiff has filed a Second Amended Complaint," ruled the judge, according to Deadline. "Accordingly, the motions to dismiss the First Amended Complaint are denied as moot."

"Defendants must respond to the Second Amended Complaint within 14 days. Alternatively, if the parties wish to stipulate that the earlier motions to dismiss, response, and replies (to the extent applicable to the remaining claim) should be directed to the Second Amended Complaint, they may file a joint notice saying so, and the court will address those arguments as applied to the new pleading," the judge added.

The company responded to the ruling.

"We will continue to fight vigorously to defend these contracts, because these agreements will determine whether or not Disney can invest billions of dollars and generate thousands of new jobs in Florida," a spokesperson told Deadline.

Disney had filed a federal lawsuit against DeSantis saying that Florida has violated its Article I constitutional rights under the Contract Clause, 1st Amendment right to free speech, 5th Amendment rights under the Takings Clause, and 14th Amendment rights to due process.

The legal dust-up started when DeSantis retaliated against Disney's public condemnation of his controversial bill by stripping the company of its self-governing rights over Disney World in Florida. For more than 50 years, Disney World operated in a special tax district known as the Reedy Creek Improvement District. This allowed it to be an autonomous site, until DeSantis dissolved the district to replace it with his own hand-picked board, now known as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District (CFTO).

Disney tried to quash the move by making a deal with the CFTO's predecessors, only for it to turn around and file a lawsuit against the company for what it alleges has limited its authority in the district.

"The brief summary is that Disney alleges that Governor DeSantis and the CFTOB have sought to punish Disney for speaking out against the 'Don't Say Gay' law by taking away their control of the Reedy Creek Improvement District, seeking to nullify a valuable development agreement signed between Disney and Reedy Creek, and threatening Disney with future reprisals if Disney does not change the content in shows and movies," Aubrey Jewett, associate professor and assistant director at the School of Politics, Security, and International Affairs at the University of Central Florida, told Newsweek in August.>

<A U.S. government watchdog agency on Thursday released a report exposing how former President Donald Trump's wall construction along the nation's border with Mexico negatively affected cultural and natural resources, as critics have long argued.

"The Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the Department of Defense (DOD) installed about 458 miles of border barrier panels across the southwest border from January 2017 through January 2021," according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO) report. "Most (81%) of the miles of panels replaced existing barriers."

"The agencies installed over 62% of barrier miles on federal lands, including on those managed by the Department of the Interior," the report continues. "Interior and CBP officials, as well as federally recognized tribes and stakeholders, noted that the barriers led to various impacts, including to cultural resources, water sources, and endangered species, and from erosion."

The GAO document details how the border wall work caused severe erosion; disrupted natural water flows; damaged native plants while spreading invasive species; disturbed wildlife habitats and migration patterns, including for threatened and endangered species; and destroyed Indigenous burial grounds and sacred sites.

"From the start, President Trump's border wall was nothing more than a symbolic message of hate, aimed at vilifying migrants and bolstering extreme MAGA rhetoric," said U.S. House Natural Resources Committee Ranking Member Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who requested the report in May 2021. "This racist political stunt has been an ineffective waste of billions of American taxpayers' dollars—and now we know it has caused immeasurable, irreparable harm to our environment and cultural heritage as well."

"So much damage has been done, but we still have the opportunity to keep it from getting worse," he stressed. "Environmental restoration and mitigation work must be led by science and input from the right stakeholders, including tribes and communities along the border. So many corners were cut in building the wall—let's not repeat history by cutting corners in repairing the damage it caused."

"The report also makes clear that federal land management agencies, like the Interior Department and U.S. Forest Service, must be involved in environmental restoration and mitigation. These agencies have the utmost expertise and scientific knowledge of the borderlands," he added, calling on Congress to include funds for Interior and the Forest Service in the fiscal year 2024 budget "to make sure they have a strong leadership role going forward."....>

<.....The GAO's report broadly recommends that the CBP commissioner and Interior secretary jointly document "a strategy to mitigate cultural and natural resource impacts from border barrier construction that defines agency roles and responsibilities for undertaking specific mitigation actions; identifies the costs, associated funding sources, and time frames necessary to implement them; and specifies when agencies are to consult with tribes."

The document adds that "the commissioner of CBP, with input from Interior, DOD, tribes, and stakeholders, should evaluate lessons learned from its prior assessments of potential impacts." The agencies have agreed to implement the recommendations, according to the GAO.

Building the border wall—which also increased rates of serious injuries and deaths among migrants—was a prominent pledge in Trump's 2016 campaign messaging. It was part of a broader anti-migrant platform that continued into his presidency, which also featured the notorious family separation policy.

When Democratic President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, he delivered on a campaign promise to suspend work on the wall. The following month, he ended Trump's related emergency declaration and halted funding toward wall construction. That April, DOD announced that it was canceling all border barrier projects paid for with funds originally intended for other military uses.

While Biden was widely praised for those moves, the GAO report points out that "pausing construction and canceling contracts exacerbated some of the negative impacts because contractors left project sites in an incomplete or unrestored state as of the January 2021 pause, and the sites remained that way, at times, for more than a year."

Biden—who has faced criticism from rights groups for some of his immigration policies—is seeking reelection in 2024. He is expected to face the Republican nominee. Trump is currently the GOP front-runner, despite his various legal problems and arguments that he is constitutionally barred from holding office again after inciting the January 6, 2021 insurrection.

The GAO report was released the same day as a United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund (UNICEF) alert that the number of kids traveling major migration routes in Latin America and the Caribbean hit a new record, due to gang violence, instability, poverty, and the climate emergency. As Common Dreams reported earlier Thursday, CBP has recorded more than 83,000 children entering the United States in the first eight months of this year.>

<A Democrat in Mississippi is turning on his own party for allegedly orchestrating significant voter fraud that swayed an election.

Former President Donald Trump was recently indicted in Georgia on criminal charges for his alleged efforts to challenge voter fraud and the election results in 2020.

In Mississippi, Democrat David Archie says his own party engaged in corruption and influenced a primary election. (Poll: Is America Better Off Under Biden? VOTE)

Democratic county chairperson Jacqueline Amos allegedly conducted a “high-tech election heist with corruption as well as fraud.”

Archie, who has served as Hinds County District 2 Supervisor, reportedly lost to Anthony Smith.

Hinds County election officials say Smith won by 63% of the vote. Smith reportedly won by nearly 1,900 votes.

Archie requested a ballot box review of the election results.

The Hinds County Democratic Party provided him with the paper ballots, but not the secondary confirmation measures, such as a voter signature book, digital images of the ballots, or the thumb drives from the voting machines.

Archie says Hinds County Democratic Executive Committee chairperson Jacqueline Amos is behind the corruption.

He alleges that Amos sent a text message that read, “Hey, don’t let them cheat Debroha Dixon out of her election. She won fair and square.”

“She won. But I’m going to f— David Archie on the site!!!” she alleged wrote in the text.

“The bottom line is that we have the text, she’s the chairperson, she’s the one that’s responsible,” Archie said at a press conference.

“She must be impartial to any and all elections here in Hinds County and this does not speak that she was being impartial to an election.”

“We have videotape of Jacque Amos going into boxes, bringing in thumb drives, bringing in ballots to be inserted into machines. We have pictures of Jacque Amos participating in what we think that is fraud as well as corruption,” he added.

Resident Taylor Pedigo agreed that there was election fraud.

“I was watching the election numbers come in and immediately I knew that something funny was going on, that this man that I had never heard of, that I had never seen a yard sign of… came out the gate with a huge lead. This leads me to believe that this needs further investigation,” Pedigo said.

Resident Cynthia Walker said, “I have reason to believe that we don’t know if you got 1,800 voters.”

“All we know is you got 1,800 paper ballots. Had she left me some books, and I came back to 1,800, had she left me some media sticks, and I came back to 1800, had she left me a tally sheet,” Walker continued.

“I came back to 1,800. Had they left us a receiving and a receipt in return form, we could come back to some serial numbers. Had they filled out the ballot accounting form, I could go back to 1,800. I can’t go anywhere but count those paper ballots. That does not tell us anything.”>

<Marjorie Taylor Greene has spent much of her congressional time chasing impeachment initiatives that will go nowhere, flashing hacked, nude images of the president's son, and attempting to creating committee soundbites to own the libs. In the meantime, her constituents suffer.

At her recent town hall, a constituent asked Greene what can be done about the lack of affordable housing in Floyd County:

Constituent Question: "I was wanting to know what is going to be done or helped with the housing crisis in Floyd Country. There's no way to get anything at all no matter how hard you try."

Greene: "Well guys, I'm no longer running my construction company. So, I don't know how to help you with that and that's a county issue or maybe even a state issue depending."

After Greene shifted blame toward not running her construction company anymore and to county and state government, Greene then dismissed the question card and continued on to the next one. Greene was clueless that unaffordable housing prices are a national issue caused by many factors including large investment companies buying up housing stock.

Since Greene is clueless about the difficulties in finding an affordable home, perhaps she should direct her constituents to the White House webpage. The Biden-Harris administration has announced actions to lower housing costs and boost supply by addressing land use and zoning barriers, resulting in everyone having "access to a safe and affordable home" as part of their Bidenomics initiative. The Biden-Harris administration is also cracking down on rental market "junk fees," strengthening financial assistance in buying a home, and providing initiatives to retrofit existing homes with energy efficient technologies.

Several of these initiatives to lower housing costs fall under programs that Marjorie Taylor Greene fought and voted against, including the American Rescue Plan. Greene is now threatening to shut down the government which would include these programs if her list of demands, including an impeachment inquiry, aren't met.

Imagine looking for an affordable home for weeks and then driving to Greene’s town hall, getting there early to fill out a comment card, patiently waiting for her to finish her long speech to get to your question, and then hear her spout this nonsense like she can’t do anything about your problem. MAGA Republicans like Greene deliver problems and vote against solutions.>

<At her town hall, Marjorie Taylor Greene was asked about improving the GOP messaging to "young women and minorities."

Constituent: "GOP is failing on messaging to young women and minorities. [Why] are they using the same strategist who are not having positive, winning results. There are plenty of voices who want [to help]."

Greene responded by claiming Trump’s arrest was political messaging to black voters:

“Well, I will tell you one thing that messaged to, I know, a lot of black voters, was President Trump being arrested down in the Fulton County Jail, and I don’t know how many of you probably saw a lot of the same videos I did where black Americans all over came out and said they have had enough.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene: “I will tell you one thing that messaged to, I know, a lot of Black voters, was President Trump being arrested down in the Fulton County Jail.

Watching as Trump’s unnecessarily long motorcade rolls down urban Atlanta doesn’t mean his criminality appeals to black voters. Having your MAGA social media feed inundated MAGA influencers telling you this doesn’t mean it’s true.

So why does Marjorie Taylor Greene think Trump’s criminality would appeal to black voters? I think we all know the answer to that one.>

<A legal scholar trolled Donald Trump after the former president named him on a social media post on Friday.

NYU law professor and former FBI General Counsel Andrew Weissmann called the former president’s attacks on him and several other legal experts a “Badge of honor.”

The former president assailed the legal scholars as members of a “Trump deranged crew” in a post about the efforts to remove him from the Colorado ballot citing a provision in the 14 Amendment.

“The group suing me in Colorado to ridiculously try and Unconstitutionally keep me off the ballot (I am leading against DeSanctimonious by almost 50 points, and beating Crooked Joe, BIG!), is TRUMP DERANGED ‘CREW,’ composed of many slime balls & groups like Norm Eisen through Brookings or Just Security, Andrew Weissmann, Joyce Vance, et al. They are, perhaps illegally, working with Weissmann acolyte Lisa Monaco at ‘Injustice.’ I have been beating them for years, including Impeachments. MAGA!!!

Weissmann in a social media post on X said: “’Acolyte’ and spelling my name correctly = sadly Trump could not have written this.” It was in a separate post that he called the naming and shaming a "badge of honor.">

<Greene declares war on colleges

Marjorie Taylor Greene, who was appointed by Republicans to the education committee during her first term, said she wants to defund colleges because they are ruining kids. Greene was responding to a question about talking student loan debt. The only idea she could come up with was defunding colleges:

“I tell you what I would like to do is I would to stop giving money to all these universities. I don’t know why big schools that have these big endowments need federal money. Does that make any sense? To basically ruin your children? Uh, they don’t need federal funding.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene: “I don’t know why big schools that have these big endowments need federal money.”

Education for me, but not for thee

Greene went to the University of Georgia and has sent her own children to college.

Greene uses UGA while campaigning and has praised their football team on the House floor.

Nonetheless, Greene just declared war on every college and university that receives federal funding. That’s almost all of them. MAGA Republicans are anti-education.>

<Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Friday proposed shielding a broad range of records about her administration, travel and security from public release as she called for a special legislative session next week focusing on additional tax cuts.

The Republican governor proposed the new exemptions to the state's Freedom of Information Act as the Arkansas State Police is being sued by an attorney and blogger who's accused the agency of illegally withholding records about Sanders' travel and security.

FOIA experts said the changes would severely weaken the 1967 law — signed by the state's first Republican governor since Reconstruction — that protects the public's access to government meetings and records.

Sanders, who took office in January, portrayed the changes as a way to modernize the law and make government more efficient.

“Arkansas has some of the most transparent FOIA laws in the country, and these reforms will do nothing to change that," Sanders at a news conference at the state Capitol. “But some are weaponizing FOIA and taking advantage of our laws to hamper state government, and enrich themselves.”

The proposed changes would prevent the state from releasing records "revealing the deliberative process of state agencies, boards, or commissions," including recommendations, memos and advisory opinions. Sanders said the language mirrors an exemption used at the federal level.

Robert Steinbuch, a law professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock's William H. Bowen School of Law and an expert on the state FOIA, said the move would “effectively remove transparency from state government operations.”

“I’m a conservative and conservatives claim to have fidelity to limited government,” Steinbuch said. “The only way to have limited government is through transparency and this will eliminate transparency for a host of decisions made by executive agencies.”

The proposal would also exempt records “that reflect the planning or provision of security services provided” to Sanders, as well as other constitutional officers and members of the Legislature. The proposal would instead require state police to release a quarterly report to the Legislature with the aggregate expenses for the governor's security detail. If enacted, the security exemptions would be retroactive and go back to records from January 2022....>

<.....Sanders cited her experiences facing threats going back to her time as press secretary for former President Donald Trump and more recent ones, including an Oklahoma man who pleaded guilty last month to threatening to kill her and other Republican politicians.

“Our current FOIA laws put me and my kids at risk, so we will update sections of the law so that the sources and methods Arkansas State Police uses to protect me and my family outside the governor's mansion are not subject to disclosure,” she said.

The proposal follows a law enacted in Florida to block the release of travel records of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is now seeking the GOP presidential nomination. Arkansas legislative leaders said they expect the changes to have majority support in both chambers of the majority-Republican Legislature.

Other parts of the measure would create an attorney-client privilege exemption under FOIA. It would also change the standard for courts awarding attorneys' fees to plaintiffs in FOIA lawsuits, which critics said would deter citizens from filing lawsuits to seek records being withheld.

John Tull, an attorney and counsel for the Arkansas Press Association, said the proposal, if enacted, “puts a big hole in our FOIA."

Other efforts to scale back the state's transparency law were defeated in the legislative session earlier this year following concerns they would weaken the public’s access to public records and meetings. Attorney General Tim Griffin, a Republican, formed a working group in June to look at possible changes to the law to take up in the 2025 regular legislative session.

Democratic Sen. Clarke Tucker, who was named to that group, said there may be a fair argument that the security exemptions are time-sensitive but didn't see the need to push now for other exemptions in a special session.

“All of the other proposed changes to FOIA, which are huge, I don't see the argument that those are time-sensitive and can't wait until January 2025,” Tucker said

The legislative session that begins on Monday will also focus on Sanders' call to cut the state's top individual income tax rate from 4.7% to 4.4%, a reduction that's estimated to cost the state $150 million a year. Sanders is proposing cutting the state's top corporate income tax rate from 5.1% to 4.8%, estimated to cost $35 million.

Sanders also called for a one-time nonrefundable tax credit to taxpayers making less than $90,000 a year of up to $150 per individual taxpayer and up to $300 for married spouses filing jointly. The credit will cost the state about $156 million.

The tax cut proposals come after the state ended the fiscal year with a $1.1 billion surplus, its second-largest ever. Sander proposed setting aside $710 million in surplus funds for a reserve fund “to keep responsibly phasing out the income tax entirely.”>

<US Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito rejected Democratic demands that he recuse from a pending tax case after he gave two interviews to one of the participating lawyers for use in a Wall Street Journal article.

In a unusual four-page statement released by the court, the conservative said that “there was nothing out of the ordinary about the interviews in question.”

The statement was the latest sign of brewing discord over the court’s ethics controversies, limited transparency and far-reaching rulings. Alito, who wrote last year’s decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, has been at flashpoint, in part because of his pointed rebuttals to outside criticism.

The articles, co-written by conservative lawyer David Rivkin and Wall Street Journal columnist James Taranto, included blunt comments from Alito about the leak of the court’s abortion 2022 opinion and calls for stronger ethics rules.

A July 28 article quoted Alito as saying Congress lacks the constitutional power to impose an ethics code on the court. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court — period,” Alito said in the article.

Rivkin is involved in a tax case involving foreign earnings, likely to be argued late this year. A group of Democrats led by Senate Judiciary Chairman Richard Durbin called for Alito’s recusal in an Aug. 3 letter to Chief Justice John Roberts.

Alito “surprises no one by sitting on a case involving a lawyer who honored him with a puff piece in the Wall Street Journal,” Durbin said in an emailed statement Friday. “Why do these justices continue to take a wrecking ball to the reputation of the highest court in the land?”

Alito said that Rivkin participated in the interviews “as a journalist not an advocate” and that they didn’t discuss the tax case “either directly or indirectly.”

Alito’s statement listed a number of interviews other justices have given over the years, along with cases in which they later participated involving those news organizations.>

<Political commentator Rogan O'Handley has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear his case regarding a California law that empowers state officials to counteract "misleading" election information on social media platforms. In 2021, O'Handley sued California in federal district court over communications the state had with Twitter alleging that he was posting disinformation on the platform about the 2020 election. He argued that the government's action of flagging his post was a violation of the First Amendment right to free speech. California countered that it was merely lawfully communicating its views to social media platforms, which then ultimately decided whether to remove the content the state identified as wrongful. O'Handley -- who goes by the handle @DC_Draino on the platform -- posted a week after the election on Nov. 12, 2020: “Audit every California ballot. Election fraud is rampant nationwide and we all know California is one of the culprits. Do it to protect the integrity of that state’s elections.”

Then-California Secretary of State Alex Padilla's Office of Elections Cybersecurity contacted Twitter about the post. "Hi, We wanted to flag this Twitter post [f]rom user @DC_Draino. In this post user claims California of being a culprit of voter fraud, and ignores the fact that we do audit votes," the office said, according to the lawsuit. "This is a blatant disregard to how our voting process works and creates disinformation and distrust among the general public," it added. O'Handley's lawsuit said Twitter responded by applying the following label to his tweet: "This claim of election fraud is disputed, and this Tweet can't be replied to, Retweeted, or liked due to a risk of violence." Twitter also issued a strike against O'Handley's account. The social media platform ultimately suspended him on February 22, 2021, following other tweets the company deemed violated its rules. In his January 2022 ruling against O'Handley, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer of the Northern District of California concluded that O'Handley had not proven California directly infringed on his free speech rights by the act of communicating with Twitter its views of his content, and he dismissed the case. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling in March. While acknowledging it was "possible to draw a causal line from the OEC’s flagging of the November 12th post to O’Handley’s suspension,” the court found there was no “state action” for O’Handley to challenge under the First Amendment. The judges added that Twitter "acted under the terms of its own rules, not under any provision of California law," when it suspended O'Handley. "That Twitter and Facebook allegedly removed 98 percent of the posts flagged by the OEC does not suggest that the companies ceded control over their content-moderation decisions to the State and thereby became the government’s private enforcers," they said. "It merely shows that these private and state actors were generally aligned in their missions to limit the spread of misleading election information," the judges found. O'Handley appealed his case to the Supreme Court in June. The justices must still decide whether they will take it up....>

<.....In his brief, the conservative commentator argued that government officials are free to engage in the modern public square of social media as much as anyone else, but "they must do so consistent with the First Amendment. "There is no 21st-century exception to the longstanding rule that the government cannot suppress or retaliate against views it doesn’t like," he contended. "State officials crossed constitutional lines here, discriminating on the basis of viewpoint and then claiming their own speech warranted more protection than that of private citizens," O'Handley said. He noted that Twitter had never censored his speech until California's OEC flagged his account. Several conservative groups -- including America's Future, the Free Speech Coalition and Gun Owners of America -- have submitted an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to take up O'Handley's case. "California pressured Twitter to censor and deplatform [O'Handley] for five tweets challenging the integrity of recent elections," the brief said. "California claims to be acting based on the highest motives to preserve faith in elections by protecting the public from hearing false and misleading information," it said. "The reality is that government officials censor to protect their power over the People -- not to protect the People. In fact, the People would have greater faith in elections if California did not censor criticism about how those elections are being conducted," the brief said. The amicus brief noted that California was free to advance its view that the election was conducted with integrity on social media or otherwise, but the problem was "it was covertly conspiring to have a private party censor the opposing view -- while implicitly threatening that private party if it failed to cooperate." "California denies that it did anything to pressure or coerce Twitter to censor Petitioner," it said. "The Ninth Circuit analyzed only one California election-related law before concluding that California had no power over Twitter, while ignoring the myriad other criminal and other laws which California could have employed if Twitter had disregarded California’s 'request.'" In July, a Louisiana-based U.S. district judge issued a preliminary injunction barring the federal government from communicating with social media companies. The Department of Justice appealed the matter to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which agreed to lift the injunction while the case makes its way through the court system.>

<I’m a story producer for Red Wine & Blue, a community of half a million diverse women organizing against extremism in their communities. I talk to women every day about how they’re seeing rising extremism, from attempted book bans from groups like Moms for Liberty and Take Back Our Schools, to gun violence by white supremacists and attacks on reproductive rights and LGBTQ+ people by the Republican party.

But I also hear about how women are getting involved, sometimes for the first time. Recently, I interviewed 16 women for a limited series podcast called ‘The Cost of Extremism’. Some were survivors of gun violence, some were educators and some were trans activists. They shared the toll that extremism is taking on our children with me, from hiding in dark places during active shooter drills to the threat of violence if they are trans.

Where I live in Ohio, Red Wine & Blue volunteers worked tirelessly talking to their fellow Ohioans across the political spectrum about voting to protect reproductive healthcare and our democracy.

Voters, especially women, turned out in force against Issue 1 in a frivolous $20 million special election orchestrated by Ohio Republican politicians to try and raise the threshold for citizen-led ballot proposals from a simple majority to 60%. And across the country, mainstream Americans are speaking up against book bans and voting against extreme school board candidates who are supported by politicians like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.

Republicans are fighting guns measure to protect children

One of the first women I interviewed for ‘The Cost of Extremism’ was Mia Tretta, a wounded survivor of the 2019 Saugus High School shooting in Santa Clarita, CA (a shooting I had never even heard of). I had to catch my breath when she told me she had just graduated from high school. She was only 18. My own daughter just started high school recently and, like many parents, I don’t even want to think about my kid being in this position four years from now.

Tretta told me that kids like her that are in the gun violence prevention movement wish they could just live a normal life like so many other teenagers. But while her peers are going to the beach every weekend, she’s advocating in DC for stronger gun legislation because instead of increasing gun regulation, Republicans are easing restrictions to carry firearms.

The fact that we have legislators that want to bring more guns into our schools and spend billions of dollars to train our kids how to fight off shooters and use tourniquets to help each other if their classmate is bleeding is beyond wild and it’s a reality I refuse to accept.

The extreme attacks on transgender people

I also interviewed Alejandra Caraballo, a trans activist. The amount of hate and disinformation about transgender people is outrageous, especially when it comes to the youth. CPAC Speaker Michael Knowles actually said that “Transgenderism Must Be Eradicated.”

Some extremists, such as Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw, are even trying to strip funding from children's hospitals that provide gender affirming care to trans youth. But, as Caraballo explained, gender affirming care starts with creating a loving environment that includes therapy and support.

Social transitioning usually means a haircut, different clothes, new pronouns and maybe a name change. Then as trans youth hit puberty they may start puberty blockers to give them more time to figure out their identity. Surgery is nearly nonexistent for anyone under 18....>

<.....Data from the Trans Legislation Tracker show that an unprecedented 566 anti-trans bills have been introduced in 2023, a number which is expected to grow as the year goes on and the 2024 election inches closer. These include restricting what sports teams kids can play on and what bathroom they can use at school.

Their hate won't win: LGBTQ+ politicians like me fight for equality. We'll keep winning despite vile attacks.

Last year a Utah high school athletics association went as far as secretly investigating a female athlete – without telling her or her parents – after receiving complaints from the parents of two girls she had defeated in competition suggesting the girl was transgender.

When referring to Republicans targeting trans people, Alejandra said, “This is the biggest issue in primary, not actual kitchen table issues, not inflation, not employment, not pay, not the economy, not gas prices, healthcare access - none of that. No, it's trans people. It's an obsession.”

Extremists are willing to demonize a group of people to try to get votes and stay in power. We all should be horrified by this.

And then we have Moms for Liberty

The final story I want to share is about Jennifer Jenkins. She currently serves on the school board of Brevard County in Florida, a seat she won by defeating the incumbent, Tina Descovich.

Descovich is the co-founder of Moms for Liberty, a group labeled as ‘extremist’ by the Southern Poverty Law Center because they are seeking to undermine public education, block schools from teaching accurate history and to divide communities through book bans, taking over school boards and targeting LGBTQ+ kids.

Members have called for LGBTQ+ kids to be put in separate classrooms, “like kids with autism and Down syndrome.” A chapter in Indiana recently quoted Hitler in their newsletter and in 2022 when Moms for Liberty took over a school board in the Berkeley County School District in South Carolina, they fired the district's first Black superintendent.

Jenkins told me about the constant harassment and intimidation she has experienced from this group, like when people showed up in front of her home with signs calling her a pedophile and a child abuser in front of her daughter. Jennifer said, “I would label it trauma, it was traumatizing. The only thing I could do to survive, though, was to keep pushing forward. I didn't have time to wallow. I didn't have time to think about backing down. I was just trying to survive.”

What I want is for people to get their heads out of the sand and wake up to the reality of what extremism is doing to our country. Extremism will cost us our communities, public education and ultimately our democracy if we don’t do something to protect the future for our kids. These stories in ‘The Cost of Extremism’ are the wake up call we all need.>

<Did special counsel Jack Smith use underhanded pressure tactics in his pursuit of former President Donald Trump? That's the allegation being made by one of the lawyers involved in the case -- and the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee wants answers. In a letter to Smith mailed Thursday, Ohio GOP Rep. Jim Jordan, who leads the Judiciary Committee, demanded evidence relating to assertions one of his senior prosecutors "allegedly improperly pressured Stanley Woodward, a lawyer representing a defendant indicted by you." The accusations of impropriety stem from a meeting between Jay Bratt and Woodward -- who represents one of the defendants in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case, Walt Nauta -- in which Bratt supposedly pressured Woodward "by implying that the Administration would look more favorably on Mr. Woodward’s candidacy for a judgeship if Mr. Woodward’s client cooperated with the Office of the Special Counsel." Jordan gave Smith until Sept. 21 to provide documents related to the allegations. "In November 2022, when your prosecutors were trying to secure the cooperation of Walt Nauta—who is alleged to have 'move[d] boxes of documents' at Mar-a-Lago—prosecutors, including Mr. Bratt, summoned Mr. Woodward to a meeting at the Department’s headquarters for 'an urgent matter that they were reluctant to discuss over the phone,'" Jordan said in the letter, obtained by Just the News. "When Mr. Woodward arrived, Mr. Bratt threatened him that Mr. Nauta should cooperate 'because he had given potentially conflicting testimony that could result in a false statement.' Mr. Bratt commented that he did not take Mr. Woodward as a 'Trump guy' and indicated that he was confident that Mr. Woodward 'would do the right thing,'" the letter continued. Bratt then allegedly "referenced Mr. Woodward’s pending application for a judgeship on the D.C. superior court, implying that the Biden Administration would perceive Mr. Woodward’s application more favorably if Mr. Nauta was a cooperating witness for the Special Counsel against President Trump." Woodward then broke off communications with the Department of Justice, saying there would be no further discussions unless Nauta was charged or given an immunity deal. Smith's office didn't stop there, Jordan's letter alleges. "After Mr. Woodward declined to give in to Mr. Bratt’s intimidation and coercion, Mr. Bratt once again sought to induce Mr. Nauta’s cooperation by attacking Mr. Woodward’s representation. On August 2, 2023, Mr. Bratt filed a motion in Mr. Nauta’s case raising alleged conflicts of interests presented by Mr. Woodward’s representation of two other witnesses “who could be called to testify at a trial in the case involving classified documents at Mar-a-Lago,'" the letter read. "He further suggested that the court should 'procure independent counsel' to be present at the hearing 'to advise Mr. Woodward’s clients regarding the potential conflicts.' Mr. Woodward’s reply brief stated that Mr. Bratt’s intimidation threats were merely 'an attempt to diminish the Court’s authority over the proceedings in this case and to undermine attorney-client relationships without any basis specific to the facts of such representation.'”....>

<.....This could be critical because, as Just the News noted, Woodward also initially represented Yuscil Taveras, an IT worker at Mar-a-Lago. After Taveras spoke with a public defender, he agreed to turn state's evidence -- which spared him a perjury charge, The Hill reported, and led to additional counts added to Trump's indictment. The letter asks Smith's office to produce information related to three specific areas regarding Woodward. First: "All documents and communications referring or relating to any appointment, meeting, or other visit by Mr. Woodward to the Justice Department, including the Office of the Special Counsel, concerning the representation of Mr. Nauta." Second: "All documents and communications between or among the Office of the Special Counsel, the Office of the Attorney General, or the Office of the Deputy Attorney General referring or relating to Mr. Woodward and his representation of individuals involved in the matters before you." Finally: "All documents and communications referring or relating to Mr. Woodward’s application to fill a vacancy on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia." Whether or not this is a game-changer in any way, shape or form remains to be seen; arguably, the biggest impact might be the doubt it casts on whatever testimony Taveras gives against the former president, considering the stench of coercion could hang over it. But then, if the stench of coercion hangs over part of the case, it could also spread to the entire proceeding -- and, keep in mind, this is the case taking place in Florida, which tends to be Trump territory. Even if legal pundits have been warning that the classified documents case presents the most trouble based on raw evidence in the indictment alone, if it turns out Smith's special counsel team was using strong-arm tactics to get people to cooperate, he'll face an uphill battle trying to establish credibility with a jury -- and with voters, as well.>

<Former President Donald Trump's legal team is reportedly considering calling lawmakers to the witness stand for his trial in the 2020 election case in Washington, D.C.

A report from the Daily Mail on Saturday claims Trump's lawyers are looking to call Republican members of Congress who objected to the electoral votes in some states during the special session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the 2020 presidential election.

The report named Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Ted Cruz (R-TX), with a source telling the outlet that objections by the senators were "very important" because a formal objection required a member of the House and Senate to sign off. Calling the witnesses would reportedly be to show that Trump's alleged concerns with the 2020 election were not unique to him.

Calling any witnesses, including members of Congress, would require approval from the judge in the case, and the move could face backlash from the prosecution, lead [sic] by special counsel Jack Smith.

Trump was indicted in Washington in August on various charges related to his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 election. He pleaded not guilty to the four charges levied against him in the federal court in D.C., last month.

The charges against the former president included conspiracy to defraud the United States, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.

The trial date for the case in Washington is set for March 4, 2024, later than when Smith wanted the trial to begin but much earlier than the Trump team had hoped to start it. The trial date falls just one day before Super Tuesday, when various states will hold their GOP presidential primaries.

Trump's indictment in Washington, D.C., on his alleged attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election is one of four that have happened this year. The former president was also indicted in Manhattan, a federal court in Florida, and in Fulton County, Georgia, on various charges.>