<Georgia Republicans have removed Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis' biggest threat.

State Senator Colton Moore announced on Thursday that the state GOP voted to oust him over his calls to defund and investigate the district attorney in the wake of her sweeping RICO indictment that named former President Donald Trump and 18 of his allies as co-conspirators in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election results in Georgia.

"Today's removal is a direct result of me calling on my Republican colleagues in the Senate to do their job and sign onto an emergency session to investigate Fani Willis," Moore said in a statement shared with Newsweek. "The Georgia Constitution clearly outlines the legislature's power to call an emergency session to investigate a judicial officer. After urging my Republican Senate colleagues to join me...they responded by acting like children and throwing me out of the caucus."

Days after Willis indicted Trump, Moore asked Governor Brian Kemp to call for a special session and bring legislators back to the state Capitol to review Willis' actions in the probe and "determine if they warrant impeachment." Under state law, there can only be a special session at the governor's request or if three-fifths of both legislative chambers sign a letter demanding it. While Republicans have the majority in both chambers, their majorities are not large enough to clear the three-fifths threshold.

Kemp has also signaled his refusal to take such action, saying in August that while Georgia law allows for the removal of local prosecutors who violate their oath, "Up to this point, I have not seen any evidence that DA Willis' actions, or lack thereof, warrant action by the Prosecuting Attorney Oversight Commission."

Georgia House Speaker Jon Burns has also spoken out against Moore's demands, saying that defunding Willis' office "flaunts the idea of separation of power, if not outright violates it."

"A select few are calling to defund a duly-elected district attorney of this state and her office in an attempt to interfere with the criminal justice system," Burns wrote to his Republican colleagues in an August memo. "It is unfortunate some would knowingly suggest such a reckless course of action despite the devastating effects it would have."

Despite being removed by his fellow Republicans, Moore defended his efforts to investigate Willis and insisted that Georgia voters were 100 percent with him.

"I stand by my Republican principles. I stand by the Republican platform. I will continue to serve as a Republican Senator from the great state of Georgia," Moore said. "Unfortunately, now I will be forced to refer to my colleagues, who ran on being 'Trump conservatives' as the RINO caucus." RINO refers to Republicans in Name Only.

"This is the fight of our lifetime, and I will continue to double down to defend the rule of law and do what is right," he added.

In response, far-right political activist Laura Loomer called the development an abomination and expressed her continued support for Moore. Trump supporter and co-founder for the America First Media Group Matt Couch also criticized Moore's ousting, writing on X, formerly Twitter: "The corruption in the GOP is evident in EVERY single state in America.. Its [sic] out of control.."

Newsweek reached out to the Georgia Republican Party via email for comment.>

<An upcoming case that will be heard by the Supreme Court could potentially have far-reaching implications on the United States tax structure, according to a new report.

The Roosevelt Institute and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP) collaborated on the report released Wednesday about Moore v. United States. The case, which is scheduled to be heard in December, deals with whether the U.S. Constitution's 16th Amendment authorizes Congress to tax unrealized sums without apportionment among the states.

Charles and Kathleen Moore are minority shareholders in an Indian farming firm, and they have disputed a provision in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed by Congress in 2017 after the IRS presented them with a $15,000 bill for their investment. The Moores argue the reparation tax is not on income and violates the 16th Amendment that requires direct federal taxes to be apportioned among the states. After losing a suit in District Court in Washington state in 2022, the Moores' dispute will be heard by the Supreme Court.

The Roosevelt Institute and the ITEP explained that before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, American individuals and corporations "owning stock in a foreign corporation were allowed to defer payment of U.S. tax on profits generated by the offshore company until those profits were 'repatriated.'"

The think tanks wrote that legal scholars believe the Supreme Court "could rule in a variety of different directions—each with different impacts on Congress' past and future taxing powers."

If the high court sides with the plaintiffs, almost 400 multinational corporations could collectively receive $271 billion in tax relief. The report noted Chief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justice Samuel Alito are said to own stock in 19 companies that could receive a combined $30 billion if the court strikes down the repatriation tax.

Newsweek reached out to the public information officer for the Supreme Court via email for comment.

The report also argues that depending on the scope of the decision, the Supreme Court could "supplant Congress as a major American tax policymaker, putting at legal jeopardy much of the architecture of laws that prevent corporations and individuals from avoiding taxes, and introducing great uncertainty about our democracy's ability to tax large corporations and the most affluent."

Common Dreams wrote about the report on Moore v. United States and said that while justices could take a narrower view on specific parts of the Moore case, a broader ruling could possibly protect individuals from a wealth tax.

The Manhattan Institute, one of eight conservative advocacy groups that filed amicus briefs urging the Supreme Court to hear the Moores' case, argued in a filing that "the case presents the court with an ideal opportunity to clarify that taxes on unrealized gains, such as wealth taxes, are direct taxes that are unconstitutional if not apportioned among the states."

The Roosevelt Institute and the ITEP report further warned that the Supreme Court's ruling could even affect social programs and the federal deficit.

"In Moore, the Roberts Court could decide with the stroke of a pen to simultaneously forgive big business decades of tax dues, increase the federal deficit over the long run, jeopardize future public revenue and essential social programs, escalate these multinational companies' already sizable after-tax profits, and further enrich their shareholders," the report authors wrote.>

<It's all well and good to treat the House Republicans' careening toward a government shutdown as a cabaret farce staged for our amusement.

However, the threat to ordinary Americans, especially those dependent on government programs, is no joke.

Even if the Republicans don't provoke the shutdown currently likely to begin at 12:01 a.m. Sunday, the budget cuts House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Bakersfield) has said he would support to meet the demands of his caucus' far-right wing would devastate government assistance to the most vulnerable Americans.

As outlined by the Center for American Progress and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, two progressive think tanks working from official communications including the budget resolution released Sept. 20 by House Budget Committee Chair Jodey Arrington, they would involve these cuts in the social safety net:

A cut of $14.7 billion, or 77%, in Title I education grants to school districts with high levels of poverty, which fund services and supports for students from low-income or disadvantaged backgrounds. The CBPP calls this funding "a core federal support for K-12 education."

Reduction of the fruit and vegetable benefit in the Agriculture Department’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) by 56% to 70%, affecting about 5 million participants.

Unsustainable reductions in low-income assistance programs for housing and heating. $1.9 trillion in Medicaid cuts over 10 years.

These cuts go well beyond those agreed upon in the debt-ceiling negotiations last May, which McCarthy accepted.

As a sop to the Republicans' rich patrons, the House caucus would rescind all of the $88 billion in additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service that was enacted as part of last year's Inflation Reduction Act.

This exceeds the $21-billion cut in the debt-ceiling negotiations. It's the usual GOP penny-wise-and-plain-foolish approach to IRS funding, since it hamstrings the agency's enforcement capabilities and taxpayer services such as phone advice.

Every dollar spent on enforcement yields multiples in recovered taxes. The IRS reported in July that it had recovered $38 million in delinquent taxes from more than 175 high-income taxpayers in previous months, using the enforcement funding provided by the Inflation Reduction Act. Obviously, that sticks in the craw of a party devoted to protecting its patrons from paying their obligations.

The absurd truth of all this "negotiating" is that it won't help Speaker McCarthy, America's most outstanding political invertebrate, get a funding proposal through his chamber that would be even remotely acceptable to the Senate. That includes Senate Republicans, who have signed on to a bipartisan spending scheme....>

<....There are doubts that McCarthy can get any proposal through his caucus, which is effectively controlled by extremists who keep moving the goalposts by insisting on ever more draconian spending cuts. They show every sign of determination to shut the government down this weekend, even though it's a political article of faith that the public always blames the GOP for shutdowns (as it should), leading to disaster at the ballot box.

The lack of character among congressional Republicans, not excepting those aligned with McCarthy, is truly amazing. These are people who have no compunctions about slandering working Americans while taking every opportunity themselves for slacking off.

Rep. Garret Graves (R-La.), one of McCarthy's lieutenants, remarked during the debt-ceiling negotiations that Democrats were "willing to default on the debt so they can continue making welfare payments for people that are refusing to work."

The serene nerviness of this slander was truly impressive, given that the House of Representatives had taken 12 of 20 workdays off in April and 10 of 22 workdays (not counting Memorial Day) off in May. Overall, the House has been scheduled to be in session only 117 days in 2023, fewer than half the 240 days most of the rest of us are at work.

The House took off the entire month of August and didn't return to session until Sept. 12, all while the possible shutdown was looming. The rest were officially designated "district work days," to which we can only respond, "Oh, sure."

Graves has resurfaced during the shutdown negotiations, telling the Washington Post that the Republicans' “bottom line is we’re singularly focused right now on achieving our conservative objectives," which include "huge savings."

As the Post toted up the numbers, those savings involved "taking more than $150 billion per year out of the part of the budget that funds child care, education subsidies, medical research and hundreds of additional federal operations."

If there's a silver lining in the House GOP's performative horseplay, it's that it has cured the political press of treating the standoff as a symptom of congressional dysfunction. It's not; as is being reported more accurately and sensibly in recent days, it's a symptom of Republican dysfunction and, more than that, McCarthy's dysfunction.

No one doubts that a workable budget plan can be enacted by the House. McCarthy's problem is that it would involve House Democrats agreeing to get it over the finish line. But any action that requires him to reach agreement with the Democrats would provoke his own right wing to mount an ouster campaign. So McCarthy is as guilty as the rest of them.

The ancient Greek philosopher Diogenes went about with a lantern in search of an honest man. We don't even need that much: Just a man with a hint of steadfastness in his makeup. Apparently we'll have to keep looking.>

<As the second-tier GOP presidential candidates were flinging venom at each other during the second primary debate — without frontrunner Donald Trump in the room — Republican National Committee (RNC) Chairperson Ronna McDaniel was focused on a Democrat, not a Republican, as she reminded voters that she’s leading a charge against Governor Josh Shapiro (D-PA).

McDaniel says that Gov. Shapiro is “springing an unclear and unnecessary last-minute rule change on PA voters just weeks ahead of a key November election,” and that the RNC and the state-run Pennsylvania GOP “are continuing our shared mission of fighting for election integrity by demanding immediate answers.”

Governor Shapiro recently announced a plan to automatically register new voters when they get their driver's licenses or state identification. It’s a change in the PA voter registration default setting to opt-out instead of opt-in.

Note: The Washington Post reports that Pennsylvania "has calculated that 1.6 million people who are currently eligible to vote in Pennsylvania are not registered" and quotes Shapiro saying: “I see voter participation as key to strengthening democracy.”

McDaniel is expected to do more than criticize Shapiro. The Delaware Valley Journal reports that the demand letters sent by the RNC and PAGOP to the governor “are commonly issued immediately prior to a lawsuit.” (The RNC is currently involved in almost 60 election “integrity” lawsuits nationwide.)

GOP frontrunner Trump has railed against Shapiro’s new automatic voter registration rule, claiming more voters is disadvantageous to Republicans.

“Pennsylvania is at it again! The Radical Left Governor, Josh Shapiro, has just announced a switch to Automatic Voter Registration, a disaster for the Election of Republicans, including your favorite President, ME!" Trump posted on Truth Social. "This is a totally Unconstitutional Act and must be met harshly by Republican Leadership in Washington and Pennsylvania.”

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 24 states and Washington, D.C. have enacted or implemented automatic voter registration. It is not compulsory — individuals may choose to opt out of registration when, for example, they getting [sic] their driver’s license or later by returning a mail. (Opt-out options vary by state.)

Trump added: “the RNC and Ronna McDaniel must spend their time working on this, instead of meaningless Debates where I am up by more than 50 points.”

Note: The “meaningless” GOP debate participants at the Reagan Library in Simi Valley, California, included Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum.>

<A teacher at a Wisconsin school made an antisemitic gesture and remark in class, but allegedly didn't "intend to cause harm," according to an investigation by the district.

According to the local parent newsletter "Elmbrook Community Need to Know," on Sept. 21 an eighth grade math teacher from Wisconsin Hills Middle School gave the Nazi salute to her class and told the students to respond with either "Heil Hilter" or "Heil [Teacher Surname]."

After garnering media attention, the school sent a letter to all families following a similar message that was only sent to students and families directly impacted earlier in the week.

The Elmbrook school district declined further comment, but provided FOX News Digital with the letter Principal Matt Schroede sent to all families of the middle school Friday.

The Elmbrook school declined to provide further comment to Fox News Digital, but confirmed antisemitic remarks were made by providing a letter that was sent to the middle school's families this week.

The letter acknowledged the incident occurred and said a "complete investigation" took place.

"Regrettably, one of our teachers made an antisemitic gesture and remark during class that is highly offensive to both Jewish and non-Jewish individuals, something we would not tolerate from any student or staff member at Wisconsin Hills," the letter said. "Following a complete investigation, it was our determination that the teacher did not intend to cause harm, yet it was a clear violation of our staff professional responsibilities."

The letter added that in the course of the past week, "disciplinary action and corrective measures" were implemented "including antisemitism education."

"To be clear, the behavior described above is not condoned nor does it represent the attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors of our staff members," the letter concluded. "As we do with our students, we will hold our staff to the highest standard of professionalism and respond quickly when that standard is not met."

An anonymous parent of Elmbrook schools said the incident seemed to be "part of a pattern of inappropriate behavior in staff at Elmbrook in the last few years," citing a sex survey given to students, an inappropriate link in an email signature and explicit books brought into school that didn’t follow policy guidelines.>

<An anonymous whistleblower claims Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ office improperly altered and withheld public records related to ongoing scrutiny of the office’s spending, according to the whistleblower’s attorney.

Rogers-based attorney Tom Mars sent a letter Friday to state Sen. Jimmy Hickey, R-Texarkana, offering his client’s testimony and documents to aid a requested legislative audit.

On Wednesday, Hickey asked the Legislative Joint Auditing Committee to investigate Sanders’ office’s purchase of a $19,000 lectern, which has been widely criticized on social media. He also asked the committee to look into the retroactive shielding of several government records after Sanders signed additional Freedom of Information Act exemptions into law this month after a special legislative session.

Mars provided a copy of his letter to the Arkansas Advocate and declined to comment further, saying it “speaks for itself.” The Arkansas Times first reported on the letter.

The letter says Mars’ client “can provide clear and convincing evidence” that Sanders’ office altered and withheld documents that Little Rock attorney and blogger Matt Campbell of the Blue Hog Report requested in recent weeks. Campbell has been scrutinizing and reporting Sanders’ use of the Arkansas State Police airplane for in-state travel as well as her office’s spending habits and purchase of the lectern from an out-of-state events company with a state-issued credit card. Mars’ client alleges that members of Sanders’ staff, including Communications Director Alexa Henning:

Altered a FOIA-accessible document “to give it a different meaning” and directed the state Department of Transformation and Shared Services not to share the original document with Campbell.Withheld FOIA-accessible documents, including some that reflect Amazon purchases by Sanders’ office.Removed portions of FOIA-accessible email threads.Directed the Department of Transformation attorney in charge of FOIA responses “to deliver a ‘flash drive’ to the Governor’s Office with TSS’s proposed responses and thereafter returning the sanitized version to TSS on a ‘flash drive.’”

Henning did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Friday afternoon.

Mars and his client claim that Sanders’ office altered and concealed the original copy of an invoice from the event design and management firm Beckett Events LLC, which Campbell posted on X (formerly Twitter) on Sept. 15. The 3% credit card processing fee of $554 brought the $18,475 lectern purchase to a total of $19,029.

Beckett Events founder Virginia Beckett is a Washington, D.C.-area lobbyist. Mars and other critics of Sanders’ administration have posted photos on X linking Sanders to Beckett and another D.C.-area consultant, Hannah Stone of Salem Strategies. Social media posts also show that Stone and Beckett were in France over the summer at the same time as Sanders was visiting on a “trade mission.”

Mars states in his letter to Hickey that if the auditing committee concludes that his client’s allegations are true, those responsible will have likely violated two state laws regarding public records. Violating the state FOIA is a Class C misdemeanor, and tampering with public records that are not court records is a Class D felony.

Hickey sent the request for a legislative audit to committee chairs Sen. David Wallace, R-Leachville, and Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, R-Paragould. The request seeks to examine “all matters, involving the Governor or the Governor’s Office, made confidential” by Act 7 of 2023, a new law that went into effect immediately upon Sanders’ signature and applied retroactively back to June 1, 2022.

Act 7 shields from public access all records and communications concerning the planning or provision of security services to the governor and other state elected officials. Sanders initially supported legislation that proposed much broader exemptions but was narrowed down after bipartisan pushback.

Cortney Kennedy, interim chief legal counsel for Sanders’ office, received Mars’ letter in addition to Hickey. Kennedy defended the proposed exemptions to the FOIA before a state Senate committee earlier this month.

Hickey told the Advocate Friday he had no comment on the letter.

He said he requested the legislative audit partly to clarify how the auditing committee will report its findings to the Legislature, since Act 7 specifies the committee’s ability to do so despite the new exemption to the FOIA.

He also said he believes the audit is necessary in light of “everything with the timeline, the way it’s transpired, the special session we had, the exemption that we made [to the FOIA] and the fact that we made it retroactive.”

<In an op-ed published Friday legal expert Jonathan Turley addressed his testimony as the GOP's star witness in the first hearing of the House impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden on Thursday saying that, as expected, his testimony angered people both on the left and on the right.

"Today, caution is considered cowardice and impartiality is viewed as chicanery," Turley wrote in the op-ed published at The Messenger. "Yet our Constitution demands more of each of us at these moments. We can rise to that challenge, as the Framers hoped we would, or we can continue our national descent into rage and ruin."

"It is the difference between laying the groundwork for a real impeachment or for just another political hit-job," he added.

Turley testified, that in his opinion, there is sufficient evidence to warrant an impeachment inquiry – but not yet for actual impeachment. But as he points out in his op-ed, that was not enough for some Trump loyalists, namely Steve Bannon, who slammed Republicans for not calling someone to testify that the evidence is strong enough for actual articles of impeachment.

But according to Turley, if he fulfilled Bannon's wishes, it would be like, "calling a special grand jury and demanding an indictment before any witnesses or evidence are presented."

Turley writes that Republicans "rightly criticized" the last two impeachments of former President Donald Trump, and praised them taking a more "principled approach" to President Biden. "They have spent months developing a record on what is now a clear influence-peddling scheme operated by Hunter Biden, James Biden, and their associates," Turley wrote.

"Even some past critics now recognize that this was a corrupt influence-peddling operation, but most insist that Hunter was simply selling the 'illusion' of influence."

But as far as declaring Biden "guilty," Turley says we don't know enough yet.

"This is a constitutional process, not just some trash-talking cable show (although, admittedly, it was hard to tell at moments in the hearing).">

<House Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene said that there will be a government shutdown when funding runs out on Sunday, but blamed this on Democrats during an appearance on conservative network Newsmax.

Republicans and Democrats in Congress must agree a new funding bill by the end of Saturday to avoid a government shutdown. This would see millions of federal workers furloughed and many others forced to work without pay.

Currently, there is no indication the two parties are anywhere near an agreement. Speaker Kevin McCarthy failed to get a short-term spending bill through the House on Friday after GOP hardliners joined Democrats to vote it down. Even if passed, it almost certainly would have been rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, since it mandated steep government spending cuts.

Appearing on Newsmax's Eric Bolling The Balance on Friday, Greene said: "Yes, there is unfortunately going to be a shutdown, but you know who we can really blame for that? Democrats."

A clip of the remarks was posted on X, formerly Twitter, by the Acyn account where it received more than 161,500 views.

Greene's comments are just the latest contribution to an ongoing war of words over who is responsible for any shutdown, which is likely to intensify if one does go ahead.

The official White House X account has been giving an hourly countdown to the beginning of shutdown, which it blames on "extreme House Republicans."

For example, at 9 a.m. ET, the White House X account posted: "15 hours until Extreme House Republicans shut down the government.

"This shutdown would jeopardize vital nutrition assistance for nearly seven million women and children across the country."

McCarthy has taken a different view, commenting: "I don't have a journalism degree—but why does the media expect the Republican House to just follow the Democrat Senate's lead on government funding?"

As the House failed to put through a stopgap spending bill on Friday, the Senate was pushing its own legislation, which passed a procedural vote earlier this week with a bipartisan split of 76-22.

Another procedural vote is due on Saturday, but it is unlikely the bill will pass the Senate before a shutdown begins. Even if it does go through the upper chamber, it is unlikely to be accepted by many Republicans in the GOP-controlled House.

If McCarthy makes concessions to the Senate, he risks hardline Republicans calling a vote to remove him from the speaker's office. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said earlier this month that the House GOP leader must be in "total compliance" to avoid a motion to vacate the chair.

In an interview with ProPublica, due to be published on Sunday, President Joe Biden said: "The speaker has made a terrible bargain. In order to keep the speakership, he's willing to do things that he, I think, knows are inconsistent with constitutional processes, No. 1."

Biden added: "No. 2, I think it says that there is a group of MAGA Republicans who genuinely want to have a fundamental change in the way that the system works. And that's what worries me the most.">

<Special counsel Jack Smith is calling on the federal judge overseeing former President Donald Trump's 2020 election subversion case to urgently install a gag order, flagging several social media incidents he believes warrant restrictions on the former president.

Smith said in a court filing on Friday to U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan that Trump should not be permitted to "obtain the benefits of his incendiary public states" and then "avoid accountability" through "feign[ed] retraction." He was referring to Trump's appearance at a gun store in South Carolina on Monday, during which he was videotaped holding a custom Glock.

Trump's spokesman Steven Cheung posted a video to X, formerly Twitter, saying, "President Trump purchases a @Glock Inc. in South Carolina." However, Cheung later deleted the post and said in a statement to the Washington Examiner that Trump "wanted to buy one" but did not confirm the purchase.

However, Smith believes the video caught Trump "potentially violating his conditions of release, and tried to walk that back in a similar fashion." While under a federal indictment, Trump is allowed to possess existing firearms but may not receive new ones.

"The defendant either purchased a gun in violation of the law and his conditions of release, or seeks to benefit from his supporters' mistaken belief that he did so," Smith wrote.

Smith also stated that Trump's attacks on Gen. Mark Milley, outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and a prosecutor in Smith's office, are evidence to support imposing a gag order.

"In sum, the Court may enter an order in this case restricting the parties' extrajudicial statements if the statements present a 'substantial likelihood of material prejudice' as long as the Court's order is narrowly tailored to the objections of preventing comments that are likely to influence the actual outcome of trial or are likely to prejudice the venire," Smith said.

Chutkan scheduled a hearing for 10 a.m. on Oct. 16 to hear arguments on the gag order request. The trial is scheduled to begin on March 4, 2024, the day before Super Tuesday, a fact that the defense says is a reason to dismiss the gag order, arguing it would censor a presidential candidate during the 2024 election.

Trump's team has pushed back against Smith's claims that Trump's statements have intimidated potential witnesses and "it is absurd to suggest the prosecution and the Court are ‘intimidated’ by critical social media posts.” The former president is known for posting inflammatory remarks on social media, including calling out prosecutors and judges in his indictments for being politically motivated or "radical" liberals.>

<The Archdiocese of Baltimore announced Friday that it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization days before a new state law goes into effect removing the statute of limitations on child sex abuse charges and allowing victims to sue their abusers decades after the fact. The step will "allow the archdiocese to equitably compensate victim-survivors of child sexual abuse" by clergy while the local Catholic Church continues its mission and ministries, Archbishop William Lori said in a statement posted on the archdiocese website, the AP reports. The move is the best way to compensate survivors, since the archdiocese's resources would have otherwise been exhausted on litigation, Lori said.

"Staggering legal fees and large settlements or jury awards for a few victim-survivors would have depleted our financial resources, leaving the vast majority of victim-survivors without compensation, while ending ministries that families across Maryland rely on for material and spiritual support," he said. On Sunday, Maryland will end its statute of limitations for filing civil lawsuits for child sexual abuse against institutions. Victims are already planning to file suits when the law takes effect. Lawmakers included a provision in the law that would put lawsuits on hold until the Supreme Court of Maryland can decide on the law's constitutionality, should it be challenged. (A state investigation found the archdiocese often did little to stop "horrific and repeated abuse" by clergy.)>

<The 14th Amendment isn't going to save us from Donald Trump. Nor is a ruling in New York state that he defrauded multiple banks and insurance companies over a ten-year period. Nor are the 91 charges against him in his four criminal indictments. Nor is another ruling by a New York judge that he raped E. Jean Carroll and is liable for $5 million in civil damages. His base loves him for every scam he pulled, every norm he trashed, every law he broke.

There may be red state after red state across the South and Midwest voting for Trump every time he says "jump," but there aren't enough of them, and they don't have enough electoral votes. What will save us are our numbers. Republican presidential candidates have won the popular vote only once in the last 35 years, when George W. Bush beat John Kerry in 2004. In every other election, Democrats won the popular vote, even when they lost the election overall because of the electoral vote count. Put simply, there are more of us than there are of them.

What we're going through today, right at this moment, are the beginning rumblings of the ground beneath the feet of Republicans that will become an earthquake in 20 years, when demographers predict that White people in this country will reach minority status. For a long time, they said it was going to happen in 2050, now they say it will be 2045, but check this out: non-Hispanic White Americans under 18 are already a minority.

And it's happening from both directions.

There are more non-White babies being born at the same time that there are more White people dying. They're dying for all the reasons people do – heart disease, cancer, Alzheimer's, liver disease, diabetes, emphysema – and now they are also dying because of the political party they belong to. Nate Silver reported on his Silver Bulletin Substack on Friday that the death rate from COVID in red states is 35 percent higher than in blue states. A study from Yale University published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in July found that Republican-leaning counties in Ohio and Florida had excess death rates from COVID that were 43 percent higher than Democratic-leaning counties. Silver pointed out that the methodology behind the study was simple math: Researchers cross-checked voter registrations against death records, county by county, and added them up. After COVID vaccines became widely available early in 2021, "Republicans began having considerably higher excess death rates," as compared to Democrats, Silver reported. Note that the study was done by comparing people by party registration. The people dying from COVID were voters, and more Republican voters than Democratic voters died by a large margin.

Republicans know this, and they are terrified by it, or at least they should be. This isn't a normal shift in death rates that could be attributed to ecological factors or more people in one party than the other working in higher risk jobs. This statistical anomaly was brought on by the Republican Party on its own members as they opposed vaccines and started scare mongering about "the government" putting microchips into you using COVID shots. Some Republicans even spread the utterly bogus rumor that more people were dying of the vaccine than of COVID. Too bad they can't interview the corpses. Maybe that would change their minds....>

<.....Republicans know they have had only one candidate win the presidency by a majority vote since 1988. They know the numbers are against them. They know people of color will be a majority in twenty years. That's why they appointed Supreme Court justices who would deliver Shelby County v. Holder for them, the decision that eviscerated the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and led to a tsunami of voter suppression across the country. What do you do when the number of your voters is going down? Why, you make it harder for the voters of the opposing party to vote. What do you think the panic in the Republican Party over immigration is about? They know immigrants coming over the Southern border aren't taking jobs from American citizens. They know immigrants don't commit more violent crime than American citizens – in fact, it's the opposite. What scares Republicans is that the immigrants who crossed the border yesterday fleeing oppression and poverty and seeking asylum and opportunity will become voters not tomorrow, but soon enough. And they will remember who was on their side as they struggled to better their lives and eventually become citizens.

So will young people reaching voting age this year and next year and the year after that. They'll remember which political party was pushing enormously unpopular restrictions on abortion, which party had banned books in school libraries in their high schools and colleges. Already the 18 to 29 vote nationally goes to Democrats by a 28-point margin, 63 percent to 35 percent. And young people vote. A study by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) at Tufts University's Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life found that 27 percent of young people between 18 and 29 cast votes in the 2022 midterm elections. The same study found that the aggregate youth voter turnout was 31 percent in 10 of the most electorally competitive states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Another piece of very bad news for Republicans.

Republicans know that they will eventually have to appeal to voters with policies that don't turn them off and turn them against their party, but they're not there yet. You would think that having won the war over abortion at the Supreme Court, Republicans would be celebrating their win and resting on their laurels. But no, they're doing just the opposite. They are attempting to make abortifacient medication illegal, to ban buying it online and having it shipped by mail, and some states are even attempting to pass laws to make it illegal for women to travel out of state to get an abortion. Right now in the Senate, Tommy Tuberville is holding up the promotion of over 300 general officers because he opposes a Pentagon policy that allows female soldiers to take leave and travel away from the posts to which they are assigned to get an abortion when they are posted in a state that forbids the procedure. How do you think that makes women who serve in the military feel about the Republican Party?....>

<.....This kind of regressive, authoritarian politics is costing Republicans votes, and because their party is led by the Authoritarian in Chief, Donald Trump, they are stuck. Even voter suppression is working against them – look at the results of the 2020 election in Georgia and Arizona. Look at the overall results of the 2022 midterms, usually a blow-out for the party out of power. They failed to retake the Senate and held onto the House by a margin that has plunged the Republican Party into such disarray that they are on track to shut down the federal government this weekend because Speaker Kevin McCarthy cannot control his caucus with the narrow majority Republicans hold over Democrats in the House.

Republicans are holding onto red states with gerrymandered majorities, but their control is slipping, and it is beginning to weaken in presidential election years. Georgia isn't going to go to the Republicans next year. Neither is Arizona. The abortion issue is beginning to turn reddish but competitive states like Ohio into toss-ups. Abortion is also costing Republicans votes of women in the suburbs and across the board in states like Kansas, which recently voted to keep abortion legal in the state by voting down a state constitutional amendment that would have made it illegal. Voters affirmed by referendum abortion rights in 2022 in California, Michigan and Vermont, and turned away statewide referendums that would have further restricted abortion rights in Kentucky and Montana.

Even if Republicans wanted to do something to appeal to voters more broadly, they are hamstrung by what we call the Trump base – voters in thrall to the man more than to the party. That base is White, and it's old, compared to voters in general, and they are headed into two decades when this country will get increasingly younger and less and less White.

This is not a good trend for the Republican Party, because politics is a game of numbers, and the numbers are going against them. It's good news for Democrats that there are more of us than there are of them, but only if we turn out and vote. We can't sit back and let the actuarial tables and the issue of abortion carry the day for us. There is power in numbers only if we exercise it with our votes. It's either that, or we won't have a vote that's worth anything anymore. Stand up and be counted. Vote.>

<The Trump Organization is poised to pocket millions of dollars from its recent deal to sell its contract to operate Trump Golf Links Ferry Point in the Bronx to casino operator Bally’s Corp., according to sources familiar with the transaction.

This payout comes just in time for the Trump Organization, as a New York judge ruled this week that the former president’s company is liable for fraud, and said he would cancel its New York State business licenses.

Even though the Trump Organization is appealing the anti-real-estate-industry judge’s ruling, sources say if the negotiations between Bally’s and the Trump Organization had dragged on another week or two, a deal may not have been possible given the uncertainties involved in the appeals process.

A source familiar with the talks told The New York Post, son Eric Trump had been negotiating up to the last minute seeking to fatten the deal with Bally’s.

While terms of the Bronx golf course deal were not disclosed, the price Bally’s will pay for the 20-year lease could top $100 million if specific performance targets are met.

The transaction is a shot in the arm for Bally’s, since the gaming company needed to secure the golf course contract as a prelude to bidding on one of New York’s new casino licenses this spring.

Despite the Trump Organization’s legal troubles, sources say Bally’s was also motivated to close the golf course deal quickly rather than face the possibility of protracted negotiations with a court-appointed receiver. Meanwhile, New York State Judge Arthur Engoron’s ruling casts further uncertainty over the future of the Trump brand in New York real estate.>

<House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer is shuffling the impeachment deck chairs while a shutdown looms and the government sinks — or so say the GOP Congressman’s opponents, with an increasing number of Republicans among them. Even MAGA political operative Steve Bannon has been calling out Comer for doing a terrible job.

As one commenter says about Bannon’s reaction: “Lol. Bannon is so calm, but he’s basically saying, we got no case, and we should be more careful about calling witnesses who will confirm that.”

Comer has long been flailing, by his own standard, in trying to produce actionable evidence against Joe Biden — but now the Congressman is also getting crushed on the optics. Selling an alternative narrative without hard facts requires very strong optics people can buy into — as Bannon knows — and Comer’s “performative” prosecution just doesn’t cut it, Bannon says.

Comer is evidently starting to understand. One of the witnesses Comer relied on to stoke innuendo about Joe Biden’s participation in his son Hunter Biden‘s business deals was Hunter Biden business partner Devon Archer. Comer’s committee had Archer testify about Joe Biden’s role in the business and during that testimony Archer expressly said that Joe Biden didn’t provide “access” even if his son tried to sell the “illusion” of access to his father.

During the first impeachment inquiry hearing yesterday, Rep. Dan Goldman — who was one of the only lawmakers to stay in the room for all of Devon Archer’s testimony — tried to get that exculpatory statement, made under oath, into the record. Comer blocked it.>

<In an alternate reality that sometimes collides with the one we are living in, Radical Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has unveiled a two-part plan to block Special Counsel Jack Smith, who has been tasked with investigating former President Donald Trump.

Greene seems to think she can ignore the separation of powers and let Congress block the DOJ's special council from doing his job, which in this case is holding Donald J. Trump accountable for criminal activity that he is accused [sic].

What's Greene's brilliant plan?

Transfer Control of Special Counsel Funding to Congress: Greene proposes shifting control of funding for special counsels from the Department of Justice (DOJ) to Congress.

Currently, the DOJ manages the funds allocated to support Smith's investigation. Defund Jack Smith: The second part of Greene's strategy involves Congress defunding Jack Smith, effectively bringing an end to what she views as politically motivated investigations against Trump.

To fund a special counsel right now … the people that have control of that is the Department of Justice itself... My legislation would give Congress the authority and the power to fund special counsels every single year, just like all of our other appropriation bills MTG doesn't seem to recognize, or even care that this would further politicize the investigations of the DOJ, because she isn't REALLY against politicization of the DOJ. Like many others of her ilk, she is only for law and order when it doesn't apply to her and her small subgroup.

I will not vote to fund the government if Congress doesn't do this.

Her extreme right outfield bleacher seat conditions include an impeachment inquiry vote on Joe Biden, defunding Biden's "weaponization of the government" (whatever that is), eliminating all COVID vaccine mandates, and withholding funding for the war in Ukraine. At least she is consistent... on being out of touch with reality.

This plan by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene reveals a concerted effort among the Jan. 6 defending circles in Congress which lacks vision other than acting as a virtual lever to distract the public while appealing to a small base of right wing radicals within her party. It seems single purpose and not like a reusable solution for like matters in the future.

We must all hope that the good people of Georgia's 14th district will spare America and the World another term of this cartoon candidate on November 5, 2024. She's proven a great enough threat to our democracy and system of government and common respect and decency between Americans.>

<Conservative pro-Trump Republicans raged after the House of Representatives passed a stop-gap spending bill to keep the government open for 45 days, saying it would prevent spending cuts that they had hoped to pass.

The House voted 335 to 91 for a stopgap spending bill called a continuing resolution (CR) as it continues to pass the 12 spending bills before the end of the year.

House conservatives have long opposed passing continuing resolutions and hoped to use the appropriations process to pass right-wing policies despite the fact they had little chance of the Democratic-controlled Senate passing them or President Joe Biden signing them.

The continuing resolution did not include any riders but simply extended spending to the same levels they were last year, although it did not include spending for Ukraine.

“We lost our leverage,” Rep Ralph Norman (R-SC), a member of the House Freedom Caucus, told The Independent. “People up here that never would surrender anything, I mean anything, they just were not going to have a shutdown. So that’s the way it worked.”

Conversely, Rep Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), told reporters that she would vote no but said she did not feel conservatives were undermined.

“No, I’ve been open and transparent the entire time,” she said.

Rep Tim Burchett (R-TN), one of the most fiscally conservative Republicans, told The Independent that he knew how the final vote would happen.

“They just cut a sweet enough deal, or enough people would abdicate their duty,” he said and added that the House would never pass proper spending bills. “And we'll be back 45 days we'll be back here, ‘we're gonna work on a CR, we're going to work on this.’”

Rep Matt Gaetz (R-FL), one of the most persistent critics of Republican leadership, had threatened earlier this month that if House Speaker Kevin McCarthy passed a “clean” continuing resolution that he would file a motion to vacate, which would trigger a no-confidence vote to depose Mr McCarthy.

But Mr Burchett said he was not sure that the speaker would be deposed.

“You gotta find somebody to get enough votes,” he said. “That’s part of the problem.”

But even some non-Trump Republicans expressed anger at the passage of the bill. Rep Nancy Mace (R-SC), a frequent target of former president Donald Trump, voted against the legislation.

Ms Mace told The Independent that Congress should pass 12 separate spending bills as the law mandates. Earlier in the week, the House had voted to pass three out of four major spending bills that they had passed a rule to allow for debate.

“A CR is what we always do to bulls*** the American people,” she said. “We don’t have a budget.”

She also faulted Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer for not taking up the spending bills that Republicans had passed despite the fact they contained many policies Democrats would consider poison pills.

“Quite frankly, Schumer full of s***,” she said. “Schumer has per cent of the government funding spending bills on his desk right now that he could approve, but he refuses to so if there's a shutdown, blame Schumer.”

For their part, House Democrats praised the passage of the continuing resolution, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries saying that extremist Republicans lost.

“The American people have won,” he told reporters. “The extreme Maga Republicans have lost. It was a victory for the American people and a complete and total surrender by right-wing extremists who throughout the year have tried to hijack the Congress.”

The bill was largely expected to pass the Senate on Saturday evening and head to Mr Biden’s desk before midnight.

Ms Mace was seen walking onto the House floor with Mr Gaetz. But when asked whether he would file a motion to vacate, Mr Gaetz didn’t answer.>

<Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), a key architect of a symbolic resolution to "expunge" the two impeachments of former President Donald Trump, is being called out by conservatives and liberals alike for her quick judgment on the Democrat [sic] lawmaker accused of pulling a House fire alarm.

Stefanik, who has consistently stood behind Trump despite his 91 felony charges in various districts, is also known for standing by George Santos. Santos has also been indicted for alleged felonies, and is accused of fraud and of lying about his entire background.

Despite her stance on Trump and Santos, Stefanik was quick to condemn Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who has been accused of pulling the fire alarm in order to delay a key funding vote. For his part, Bowman has claimed he didn't know that he would trigger the alarm when he pressed the door.

"A Democrat Member of Congress just committed a felony by pulling the fire alarm to try to delay and stop a Congressional vote to fund the government," Stefanik said.

Political onlookers were quick to point out the double standard.

George Conway, a conservative attorney and frequent critic of Trump, said the act was "outrageous."

"He should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. I can’t imagine how livid you’re going to be when you hear about this other guy who’s been charged with committing **91** felonies," the lawyer added.

Donald Trump biographer Tim O'Brien also called out the lawmaker.

"I can’t remember what [Stefanik] posted about the former Republican president who bought a gun on the campaign trail while under multiple indictments," the Bloomberg Opinion editor said.

Former Associate White House Counsel Ian Bassin also chimed in.

"I have no problem with an investigation into what reportedly was Rep. Bowman pulling a fire alarm, and with him facing appropriate accountability if it’s true," he said. "But if you’re focused on that while whitewashing a violent attack on the Capitol, you’re unfit for public office."

Stephen Bainbridge, a Professor of Law at UCLA, had this to say:

"Were you this upset when a defeated President tried to incite an assault on the Capitol to overturn the election?" he asked Stefanik.

National security attorney Bradley Moss also piled on.

"Oh, so efforts to delay and stop a Congressional proceeding do constitute felonies? Wonderful. Thank you to [Stefanik] for conceding that Donald Trump committed a felony."

Andy Roddick, a former American tennis player, even joined in.

"And he should be prosecuted for it. See how easy that is?" he asked Stefanik.>

<Former President Donald Trump's top lawyer put it bluntly when speaking at a conservative conference five years ago: The goal was to name judges who would help further the administration's deregulation agenda.

"There is a coherent plan here where actually the judicial selection and the deregulatory effort are really the flip side of the same coin," White House counsel Don McGahn said onstage at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2018.

That plan is bearing fruit. The Supreme Court’s new nine-month term starts Monday, with three major cases shaped by Trump-appointed judges that could hobble federal agencies already on the docket.

The process started when, among other things, prospective Trump nominees were probed about their views on federal agency authority as their records were scrutinized for expertise on the issue, something previous administrations had not done, McGahn said. He cited Justice Neil Gorsuch, then recently appointed to the Supreme Court, as an example of what the White House was looking for.

Long after Trump has left office, his judges and justices are making their mark just as McGahn predicted, serving as participants, liberal critics say, in what Trump adviser Steve Bannon called the "deconstruction of the administrative state."

In all three cases now before the Supreme Court, Trump-appointed judges were involved in lower court rulings that teed up the legal issues for Supreme Court review. The court’s conservative majority has repeatedly shown its willingness to limit bureaucratic authority. Brianne Gorod of the left-leaning Constitutional Accountability Center said there had been a "long-standing multifaceted conservative attack on the administrative state" that includes two elements.

The first is to find suitable plaintiffs to bring the challenges.

The second is to ensure there are "judges on the bench who will be receptive to those arguments,” she said.

McGahn did not respond to messages seeking comment on how Trump’s approach has fared.

Trump made judicial appointments a priority, with the acquiescence of the Republican-led Senate. He appointed 54 appeals court judges and 174 district court judges, as well as three Supreme Court justices. President Joe Biden, aided by a now Democratic-controlled Senate, has followed Trump's lead in trying to fill judicial vacancies as quickly as possible, with considerable success.

The Supreme Court hears oral arguments Tuesday in the first of the three regulatory cases currently on the docket. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau v. Community Financial Services Association of America threatens the federal agency that was established to protect consumers from unlawful financial services practices. At issue is whether the mechanism allowing the agency to be funded directly by the Federal Reserve instead of a specific congressional appropriation is unconstitutional.

The challengers are represented by Noel Francisco, who served as solicitor general under Trump and, like McGahn, works for the Jones Day law firm. Francisco did not respond to a request for comment.

In another case yet to be scheduled, Securities and Exchange Commission v. Jarksey, the justices will consider whether to curb the power of the SEC to bring enforcement actions for securities violations.

Finally, the court in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo will weigh whether to overturn a landmark ruling from 1984 that gave federal agencies leeway to interpret the law when the statute is not clear. It was Gorsuch's critique of that ruling, when serving as an appeals court judge, that helped put him on Trump's radar as a possible Supreme Court nominee.

In both the CFPB and SEC cases, the Biden administration is appealing decisions against the government issued by conservative judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. In the Loper Bright case, which concerns a challenge to a fishing regulation, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has a majority of Democratic appointees, ruled in favor of the government....>

<.....In the CFPB case, all three judges — Don Willett, Kurt Engelhardt and Cory Wilson — were appointed by Trump. The decision against the agency was unanimous. Previously, District Court Judge Lee Yeakel, appointed by President George W. Bush, had ruled for the agency.

The Jarksey decision, also by the 5th Circuit, included an all-Republican-appointee panel with one judge, Andrew Oldham, appointed by Trump. The other judges, Jennifer Elrod and Eugene Davis, were appointed by President George W. Bush and President Ronald Reagan, respectively. Davis dissented from the ruling that went against the agency. That case went directly to the appeals court, so there was no district court ruling.

in Loper Bright, the appeals court was split 2-1 in ruling in favor of the agency. The majority consisted of Democratic appointees: Judge Sri Srinivasan, appointed by President Barack Obama, and Judge Judith Rogers, appointed by President Bill Clinton. The dissenter was a Trump appointee, Judge Justin Walker. The district court had ruled in favor of the agency in a decision issued by a Democratic appointee, Judge Emmet Sullivan.

The 5th Circuit in particular, which has six Trump appointees among its 16 active judges, has a reputation as a favored place for conservative activists and Republicans to bring legal claims.

The court includes judges who are "both extreme enough and aggressive enough to issue really kind of astonishing decisions," said Greg Lipper, a lawyer who filed a brief backing the CFPB.

Jenn Mascott, a professor at George Mason University law school who filed a brief backing the challenge to the CFPB, pushed back on that assessment, saying that cases are shaped more by the people bringing them and their lawyers than the judges themselves.

"I really think it's the litigants shaping the claims. They decide what claims to bring. They face the action by the regulatory bodies," she said.

There would not be so many cases taking aim at regulatory decisions if federal agencies were more restrained in wielding their power, she added.

"A lot of what we are seeing now is responding to the very broad actions taken by presidents and agencies under both parties," Mascott said. "I don’t think, no, that the process is particularly political.">

<The Putin GOP wants misinformation to reign as we head into the 2024 election. Without lies, they can’t win most competitive elections, and they want to keep those lies safe from fact-checking, regardless of what accurate information the voters need or the damage they inflict on our nation.

As a result, Stanford University is considering shutting down their Election Integrity Partnership that calls out political lies across social and mainstream media and their Stanford Media Observatory; other groups that do similar research are also on the brink of shutting down in the face of expensive and time-consuming attacks from Jim Jordan and other Republicans in Congress and from rightwing media.

The Republican attacks on fact-checkers come as increasing numbers of Americans reject Republican policies on everything from gutting Social Security to banning abortion to making it harder for city-dwellers to vote: the new Trumpy GOP has decided that abandoning that whole pesky idea of democracy itself is the way to go.

We see this in Ohio, where the Republican Secretary of State has re-written the description of an abortion-rights ballot measure to confuse voters after losing an attempt to prevent it from showing up on the ballot altogether failed.

We also see it in:

— Alabama, ignoring the US Supreme Court’s order to strip out the white supremacy from their electoral maps.

— North Carolina, where Republicans flipped their Supreme Court to overrule its own previous decision to prevent racial gerrymanders benefiting Republicans.

— Wisconsin where Republicans are trying to impeach a Democratic Supreme Court justice because she opposes their gerrymandered maps.

— Ohio’s gerrymandering, with Republicans ignoring their own GOP-controlled Supreme Court.

— Florida, where DeSantis and Republicans passed a permitless gun-carry bill opposed by 77 percent of Floridians and now allow the state to take trans kids away from their families.

— Tennessee, where Republicans kicked three Democrats out of office for daring to fight for abortion and civil rights.

— Red states across the country that have passed laws blocking tens of millions of mostly-city-dwelling American citizens from voting and continue to purge other tens of millions from the voter rolls just before elections.

This is where the lies come in, with Republican politicians routinely lying about everything from Democratic positions on abortion (falsely saying “Democrats support abortion up until the moment of birth and even, horrifically, after that”) to climate change to Ukraine to Republican plans to end or privatize Social Security to crimes committed by Donald Trump.

And that doesn’t begin to count the lies they tell about individual Democrats and the policies they support. As Justin Higgins, a former policy adviser for House Republican Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, told Aaron Rupar:

“You can basically make up your own reality in right-wing media.”

And Jim Jordan wants to keep it that way. The Republican Chair of the House Judiciary and “Weaponization of Government” committees is using his power to harass and intimidate fact-checking organizations at every level....>

<.....For example, as The Washington Post reports:

“The National Institutes of Health froze a $150 million program intended to advance the communication of medical information….

“Academics and government scientists say the [Jordan] campaign also is successfully throttling the years-long effort to study online falsehoods, which grew after Russian attempts to interfere in the 2016 election caught both social media sites and politicians unaware.”

Republican-aligned social media oligarchs are jumping on the bandwagon. The Washington Post report notes that:

“…12 major media accounts from Russia, China and Iran saw the number of likes and reposts on X nearly double after Musk removed labels calling them government-affiliated.”

Those Russian and Chinese sites have been major sources of lies and disinformation trashing Democrats and democracy while supporting Republican politicians, including Donald Trump. Oligarchic and authoritarian nations, after all, would much rather have America turn into a full-blown strongman state than remain a thorn in their side with all our talk about democracy and human rights.

Musk has also sued the Center for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH), alleging the group has engaged in a “scare campaign to drive away advertisers” and is using information technically not their own to identify falsehoods on the Twitter/X platform. Jordan then jumped into the action, accusing the group of taking federal funds that it insists don’t exist.

As The Washington Post noted:

“X also alleged, without offering evidence for its claims, that the CCDH operations were ‘activist organizations masquerading as research agencies, funded and supported by unknown organizations, individuals and potentially even foreign governments with ties to legacy media companies.’”

Republican-controlled appeals courts have even successfully blocked the Biden administration from telling social media companies and other news outlets when they’ve discovered foreign disinformation campaigns promoting lies that are destructive to American public health or our democracy.

Rightwing “news” outlets from Alex Jones to Fox “News” have been successfully sued for tens to hundreds of millions for promulgating lies; now the entire billionaire-supported authoritarian movement is pushing back against fact-checkers with muscle and money.

The Post reports that the attacks by Jordan, Senator Joni Ernst, and others have taken universities and academics who study online lies and disinformation “by surprise.” Numerous experts, not wanting to get embroiled in inquiries and litigation that could cost hundreds of thousands in legal fees, are fleeing the field or moving to private universities, where their work can’t be subpoenaed according to The Washington Post.

Laura Edelson, an assistant professor of computer science at Northeastern University who was formerly the Justice Department’s chief technologist and was investigating online lies, told The Washington Post about her job change:

“I knew that because of the way our field is being attacked that the cost of the work I do is a lot higher at a public institution. I just didn’t want to pay that cost, and that’s why I only applied to private universities.”

As the headline at Raw Story summarizes:

“Jim Jordan blamed for 'throttling' safeguards against misinformation before election.”

The Putin Caucus in the GOP, along with the fossil fuel billionaires who continue to fund climate denial online, appear quite pleased that they’ve succeeded in intimidating fact-checkers just in time for the 2024 election.

So now the work of fighting the lies and telling the truth falls to us, to you and me, and our own ability to use social media and networks of friends and family to rebut the lies coming from Moscow, Saudi Arabia, and China via the GOP.

Tag, we’re it!>

<Indicted four times on a total of 91 criminal charges, former President Donald Trump has not yet gone to trial. And so, at present, Trump is, in more ways than one, a man with no convictions — other than those that serve his own personal and political interests.

Abortion is the most recent example, but by no means the only one. In 1999, Trump declared that he was “very pro-choice.” By 2011, as he contemplated running for president, Trump referred to himself as “pro-life.” In 2016, he said women who get abortions should receive “some form of punishment.” The next day, he claimed doctors “should be held legally responsible, not the women.”

With considerable justification, Trump takes credit for the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, voted for by three justices he appointed: “I got the job done. I got it done.” In 2022, however, Trump insisted the post-Roe abortion issue was responsible for the GOP’s disappointing performance in the midterm elections. More recently, Trump denounced the six-week abortion ban signed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.” Asked whether he supports anti-abortion legislation by each state or the federal government, he replied, “Frankly, I don’t care.”

Trump has declined to say whether he would sign a 15-week federal abortion ban. Without exceptions for rape, incest and the health of the mother, he now emphasizes, Republicans “would probably lose the majorities in 2024 … and perhaps the presidency itself.” Mindful, no doubt, that anti-abortion activists insist “it’s never ‘a terrible thing’ to protect innocent life,” Trump has also tried to square the circle he has drawn: “but you have to follow your heart — can’t do it just for the election … same time we have to win elections.”

President-elect Trump promised in 2016 to make America’s decaying infrastructure “second to none” and put millions of people to work rebuilding it. But the Democrats turned down his offer to work with them if they stopped investigating him. Trump never submitted a bill to Congress, and his administration’s recurring announcements of “Infrastructure Week” became a running joke. In 2021, Trump warned Republicans in the Senate to oppose a bipartisan infrastructure bill because it would be “a big and beautiful win” for Biden, which “will be heavily used in the 2022 election.”....>

<.....In 2012, when Barack Obama was president, Trump pressed Republicans to “use the debt ceiling as leverage to make a great deal.” They “once again hold all the cards with the debt ceiling. They can get everything they want,” he tweeted. In 2019, President Trump declared, “I can’t imagine anybody ever even thinking of using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge.”

In 2021, he urged Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to “use the debt ceiling” to “kill” President Biden’s economic agenda. “If they don’t give you massive cuts” in the national debt — $7.8 trillion of which piled up on his watch — Trump told Republicans, “you’re going to have to do a default.” Asked why he no longer opposed using the debt ceiling as political leverage, Trump said, “Because now I’m not president.” In September, Trump identified another reason: Shutting down the government is the “last chance to defund those political prosecutions against me and other Patriots.”

When Russia invaded Crimea in 2014, Trump praised Vladimir Putin and predicted “the rest of Ukraine will fall … fairly quickly.” In 2019, President Trump threatened to withhold $400 million in military aid until Volodymyr Zelensky announced a corruption investigation of Hunter Biden and the Biden family’s business dealings. In May 2023, the former president refused to say whether Russia or Ukraine should prevail or whether he’d send more military assistance to Ukraine.

In July, he declared that as president he would end the war “in one day. One day.” He would “tell Zelensky, no more. You got to make a deal. I would tell Putin, if you don’t make a deal, we’re going to give him a lot.” Less than two weeks later, Trump advised congressional Republicans to “refuse to authorize a single additional shipment of our depleted stockpiles … to Ukraine until the FBI, DOJ, and IRS hand over every scrap of evidence they have on the Biden Crime Family’s corrupt business dealings.”

People often have two reasons for their actions: a good reason (aimed at others) and the real reason. Trump’s “good reason” is his promise to millions of people who feel marginalized to make them and America “Great Again.” His real reason, however, is staying out of jail, returning to power and exacting revenge against everyone who has criticized, opposed, wronged or betrayed him. Trump claims he has no choice, because American politics has become “cheap and dirty,” and “they’re doing it to us.”

But Americans do have a choice. Casting our votes wisely and well requires determining whether a candidate’s claims are principled or self-serving.>