<Behind the scenes at Trump's civil fraud trial, they're fighting on paper over a single, brief bit of testimony from Monday that New York officials say places Donald Trump at the top of a conspiracy to trick banks and insurers about how much he's really worth.

In the testimony, one of the Trump Organization's current top finance executives said he'd been told by his boss, then-CFO Allen Weisselberg, that "Mr. Trump" likes to see his bottom line "go up" each year.

Trump's side calls the testimony, by the Trump Organization's assistant vice president for finance operations, Patrick Birney, inadmissible hearsay.

But in court papers filed Tuesday afternoon, New York Attorney General Letitia James pushed hard to keep it in the trial. It is perhaps the strongest evidence directly implicating Trump, who famously shuns emails and computers and relies instead on spoken directives.

Trump's lawyers are expected to respond in a brief of their own in the coming days.

"We write further to the discussion on the record regarding the admissibility of the testimony from Patrick Birney that Allen Weisselberg told him "Mr. Trump wanted his net worth on the Statement of Financial Condition to go up," James' filing from Tuesday begins.

Birney's testimony is, actually, double hearsay. It alleges that Trump said something to his CFO, and that the CFO then relayed that something to Birney.

Neither Weisselberg nor Trump – both defendants in James' massive fraud lawsuit – have yet been asked to verify what they allegedly said in this game-of-telephone relay. But in sworn depositions before the attorney general's office, both Weisselberg and Trump have minimized their own involvement in the drafting of the net worth statements.

As hearsay, Birney's testimony cannot be admitted as proof that Trump actually did order his underlings to defraud banks, the judge noted on Monday.

"Is it admissible to show the truth of the statement? I would say no," New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron, who is presiding over the non-jury trial, said when Trump's side first raised the hearsay objection, minutes after Birney left the witness stand.

Still, "It can be admitted as evidence that they conspired," Engoron added, saying he needed to hear more arguments before deciding.

The judge asked both sides to send him within the next few days their brief arguments on whether Birney's statement is admissible or not.

Eric R. Haren, a special counsel to James, argued in the attorney general's brief that it doesn't necessarily matter if Trump ordered his numbers "go up." What matters is whether Trump and Weisselberg entered into an agreement or conspiracy.

The trial is being held to determine if Trump and four top executives – including Weisselberg, Eric Trump, and Donald Trump, Jr. – conspired to falsify business records and to commit insurance and bank fraud.

"Regardless of its truth, Mr. Weisselberg's statement tends to show the existence of an illicit agreement or scheme," Haren argues.

James has already proven that Trump and his top executives grossly misrepresented his worth by billions of dollars a year in the annual net worth statements he submitted to banks, insurers, and others.

And the judge has already ruled that a receiver be appointed to take over the company and to "dissolve," meaning sell-off, unspecified properties that benefitted from the fraud.

But the trial, which is expected to last well into December, will now determine if Trump and the other defendants intentionally conspired to break state banking and insurance laws, and what the final penalties will be.

James is seeking repayment of some $250 million she says Trump pocketed in interest-rate savings and other benefits. She also wants to permanently ban Trump and his top executives from ever running a business in New York state.

Trump has called the AG's case a politically motivated witch hunt, a claim he repeated as recently as Tuesday from just outside the courtroom doors.>

<A former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice is fighting a subpoena ordering her to appear in court in a lawsuit related to advice she gave about possible impeachment of a current liberal justice, calling it “unreasonable and oppressive.”

Republican lawmakers have threatened possible impeachment of current Justice Janet Protasiewicz related to comments she made during the campaign calling GOP-drawn legislative maps “rigged” and “unfair.” She joined with the liberal majority of the court in agreeing to hear a lawsuit supported by Democrats that seeks to overturn the GOP maps and enact new ones.

Wisconsin Republican Assembly Speaker Robin Vos asked three former conservative Supreme Court justices for advice on impeachment. Two of the three told him that impeaching Protasiewicz was not warranted. The third, former Chief Justice Patience Roggensack, has not said what her advice was and Vos has repeatedly refused to disclose it.

The liberal watchdog group American Oversight filed a lawsuit alleging that the three former justices researching impeachment for Vos had violated both the state open meetings and open records laws. American Oversight wants the judge to order the former justices to meet in public and to release records related to their work. It was also seeking attorneys [sic] fees.

Last week, Roggensack received a subpoena compelling her to attend a hearing in the case was scheduled for this Thursday. On Monday, she asked to be released from the subpoena.

“I believe it would be unreasonable and oppressive to require me to appear at a hearing on a motion for preliminary injunction and even for the Court to consider such a motion,” Roggensack wrote.

The judge scheduled another hearing for Wednesday afternoon, likely to address Roggensack's request.

Roggensack, in her affidavit with the court, said the order being sought, which included requiring the former justices to meet in public, would impair her First Amendment rights of freedom of expression, peaceably assembling and petitioning the government.

Roggensack said that Vos, the Republican legislator, asked for her advice on impeachment. Roggensack said she told him she had been researching the issue on her own “because I found the topic to be interesting and because I had not previously considered the standards for impeachment of a Supreme Court justice.”

Roggensack said she never considered Vos’s request to mean she was becoming part of a governmental body or committee as American Oversight alleged in its lawsuit.

Vos himself called the effort a panel when he announced in September that he was seeking their advice.

Roggensack said she had a lunch with the other two former justices, David Prosser and Jon Wilcox, along with Vos’s attorney. Prosser and Wilcox have also said that was the only meeting the three former justices had. They all said that they separately advised Vos and did not collaborate on their advice.

American Oversight filed open records requests with the former justices. Prosser released the email he sent Vos that included his impeachment advice, as well as voicemail messages from Roggensack and text messages they exchanged.

Neither Wilcox, Roggensack, nor Vos’ office have responded to its requests for records, American Oversight said.

Vos originally said he was considering impeachment if Protasiewicz did not recuse herself from the redistricting case. She didn’t recuse. Vos didn't move to impeach her, following the advice against impeachment from the former justices. But now he's suggesting he may attempt to impeach her if she does not rule in favor of upholding the current Republican maps.

The Wisconsin Constitution reserves impeachment for “corrupt conduct in office, or for crimes and misdemeanors.”>

<New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron rebuked lawyers for Donald Trump after his legal team allegedly attempted to intimidate a witness.

During his New York fraud trial, Trump was accused of talking during the testimony of appraiser Doug Larson, who testified that he didn't condone the Trump Organization's method of valuing properties.

Stewart Bishop of Law360 was in the courtroom as Engoron admonished Trump.

"Ok, I'll ask everyone to be quiet when the witness is testifying, particularly if it's meant to influence [the] testimony," the judge said, according to reports.

Trump attorney Lazaro Fields accused Larson of perjury in his previous testimony. Trump attorney Chris Kise then stood up and asked the court to advise Larson of his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, causing Engoron to have the witness escorted from the courtroom.

But prosecutors accused the Trump team of a stunt to intimidate Larson.

"This is witness intimidation, your honor," prosecutor Colleen Faherty told the judge.

"This is a performance," another prosecutor chimed in. "I've never seen anything like this."

"It's not a performance, I take this very seriously," Kise replied.

But Engoron refused to let the discussion derail the trial.

"Mr Kise...my role is to get the witness to testify. If he perjured himself yesterday or he perjured himself today, I don't care. I just want him to testify," the judge said. "Get the witness back here as soon as possible.">

<Over at The New York Times yesterday, Jerusalem-based reporter Isabel Kershner writes about the horrors of the past two weeks and the worries Israelis have for how the ongoing war against Hamas may go.

“All this is happening,” she notes in the article’s third paragraph, “amid a total breakdown of trust between the citizens and the state of Israel, and a collapse of everything Israelis believed in and relied on.”

She then quotes a Tel Aviv author, Dorit Rabinyan, who speaks of the sobering reality Israelis are facing because they’d chosen Benjamin Netanyahu as their prime minister:

“We have woken to a terrible sobriety about whose hands we put our fate in. … We thought we had military superiority, but there’s a feeling that someone up there forgot why he is there.”

What happened? Instead of taking seriously now-confirmed warnings about a coming Hamas attack shared by Egyptian and, apparently, US intelligence, the prime minister was instead occupied by “months of political and social turmoil over the divisive plans of Mr. Netanyahu’s ultranationalist government to curb the judiciary and undermine the country’s liberal democracy.”

And even now, she notes, one of the great frustrations of Israeli citizens is “Mr. Netanyahu’s refusal so far to openly accept any responsibility for the Oct. 7 disaster.”

Netanyahu’s authoritarianism and corruption are making it more difficult for Israel to deal with the horrific crisis Hamas has inflicted upon them. To deal with the crisis, he had to surrender some power to form a coalition/crisis government.

Here in the US, we had a similar experience, although, unfortunately, nobody moderated the corruption and incompetence of the Bush administration. President George W. Bush and his Vice President, Dick Cheney, were repeatedly warned that Bin Laden was “determined to strike inside the US.”

Bush, however, was busy trying to get Congress to pass a trillion-dollar tax cut for billionaires and Cheney was in secret meetings drawing up maps of the Iraqi oil fields that he and George would pass out to crony companies if they could find an excuse for a war.

Bush got his final and most alarmed warning from the CIA on August 6, 2001, a full month before the attack. Instead of putting the FBI and airport security on full alert, Bush decided to leave DC and take the longest vacation in presidential history, keeping him out of town until after the attack.

This was all just one month after Bush had attended a G8 summit in Genoa, Italy, where the Italian government had mobilized a battery of anti-aircraft missiles to protect the venue because of credible threats that Osama Bin Laden was planning to have his men hijack passenger jets to crash into Bush’s hotel, a threat that was well known to Bush and Condoleezza Rice.

Similarly, Donald Trump was warned by both China and his own scientists in December of 2019 and again in January of 2020 about how deadly and contagious Covid was and how it could potentially kill over a million Americans. He largely ignored the warnings (other than telling Bob Woodward about it), instead attending rallies and doing rightwing media hits non-stop, until hospitals in New York and Connecticut were having to use refrigerated trucks as morgues.

After only one month (March) of paying attention to his scientists and locking down the country, when the April 7th, 2020, New York Times front page headline proclaimed that the majority of non-geriatric Covid victims were Black people in Blue states, Jared Kushner came up with the bright idea that letting people die and blaming it on Democratic governors would be “an effective political strategy.”

Thus, that was the week Trump ended the lock-downs and began pushing people back to work, leading America to suffer the highest Covid mortality rate in the world with at least 500,000-700,000 unnecessary deaths. People who believe Trump continue to get sick and die to this day because of his lies about Covid: citizens today in Red counties are twice as likely to die of the disease as are Americans living in Blue counties.

The common denominator between Bush, Netanyahu, and Trump — and all the unnecessary deaths on all their watches — is that all three are corrupt far-right demagogic politicians who put their own personal wealth and power above the good of their nation.

That is, by and large, the norm for rightwing governments worldwide. Because they generally rule against the will of large parts of their populations, they instead spend their time figuring out ways to raid the public treasury or exploit their position in government to hang onto power.....>

<.....Examples include:

— Bush’s attempt to hand the 2.6 trillion-dollar Social Security trust fund over to New York banks;

— Cheney’s massive military bailout of the company he’d nearly bankrupted as CEO and his desire to seize Iraq’s oil fields on its behalf;

— Netanyahu’s multiple corrupt deals for which he’s now under indictment,

— Trump’s hustling Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar for billions to be paid out via his son-in-law and the LIV Golf Tour, his kids hustling Trump properties from the White House, his relentless lies while in office, etc.

It turns out that philosophies of governance matter. Hugely.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously said, “Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference” and Democratic administrations have taken it to heart ever since that 1933 speech.

When Democrats have control of Congress and the White House they pass all sorts of legislation to advance the public good, aid workers, care for the poor and disabled, strengthen public education, and provide for the needs of ordinary people. Occasionally they overreach or their programs don’t work or even backfire; they then fix them or try something different.

When rightwingers run our government, though, they pass laws like Taft-Hartley that gutted union rights, rip up voting rights, make it easier for fossil fuel companies to pollute and timber companies to clear-cut, and dial back people’s access to welfare and healthcare programs. And, of course, start wars (Grenada, Iraq/Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq) and pass tax cuts for their billionaire patrons.

Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Clinton, Obama, and Biden all proposed and put into law sweeping programs to build America and enhance the public good ranging from Social Security, the right to unionize, the minimum wage, Medicare, food stamps, Medicaid and greater funding for education.

Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Bush, and Trump all went for tax cuts for billionaires and worked to gut or privatize the agencies, infrastructure, and programs Democrats had set up....>

<.....There’s a reason for this.

— Leftwing governments believe in democracy, and so try to accomplish what’s best for the majority of people while protecting the rights of the minority; rightwing governments practice autocracy on behalf of the morbidly rich. Sometimes, like the old USSR or modern Venezuela, repressive and authoritarian rightwing governments pretend to be left-wing, but the police state aspects of their governance give the game away.

— Rightwingers don’t see democracy as a benefit or even an ideal; they see it as an impediment to further comforting the already-comfortable while enriching themselves in the process. Instead of building up disaster preparedness through strengthening, for example, FEMA, they work to redirect those government dollars back to their friends through things like $600 billion a year in oil industry subsidies and over $20 trillion (cumulatively) in Republican tax cuts to billionaires since 1981.

The result — when rightwingers are in charge — is government that’s not paying attention to real threats and, when they come, responds with profound incompetence or cynical exploitation. Bush and “heckofajob Brownie”; Netanyahu and Gaza; Trump and Covid, or his cynically tossing paper towels at hurricane victims.

Bush was not only incompetent in allowing 9/11 to happen despite multiple warnings that he refused to respond to, but when it did happen he tried to use it to his own political advantage and that of his Vice President by lying us into two unnecessary and illegal wars. After all, way back in 1999, as he was still planning his run for the White House, he told his biographer, Mickey Herskowitz:

“One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief. My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it. If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I’m not going to waste it. I’m going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I’m going to have a successful presidency.”

Rightwing governments rarely put the good of the people of a nation first; instead, it’s axiomatic that they achieve and wield power by scapegoating minority groups — usually racial or religious — and suppressing both voting rights and the rights of women to full participation in society.

While there have been a few self-declared left-wing authoritarian kleptocracies in history (most notably the USSR), the vast majority have been rightwing in their origin and nature. And, over time as their corruption becomes evident, their citizens grow to hate them.

In fact, over the past few years Spain, Brazil, and most recently Poland have rejected rightwing, bigoted, kleptocratic governments in favor of a return to normalcy and a progressive democracy. Israel could be next. The United States took a big step in that direction three years ago when we overwhelmingly rejected Donald Trump.

Nonetheless, the hard right here in America has funding from multiple “libertarian” billionaires, social media oligarchs, and a bought-off and corrupt Supreme Court that has legalized political bribery, making it much harder to dislodge authoritarian Republicans.

In fact, here in America, Jim Jordan is about to reboot Donald Trump’s attempt to damage America's readiness and defense of democracies around the world if he achieves the speakership.

A popular meme today, predictive of the dysfunction of the Trump administration and the GOP-run House of Representatives, is: “Elect a clown, expect a circus.”

But a much wider and internationalized perspective could rewrite it as: “Elect a right-winger, expect a poorly-handled crisis and an explosion of great wealth at the top.”>

<Far-right Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) suffered another humiliation on Wednesday, October 18 when his bid for speaker came up for a second full House vote and he lost yet again.

Democrats overwhelmingly voted to make House Minority Leader (D-New York) speaker, and 22 House Republicans voted against Jordan. Those Republicans didn't vote for Jeffries, but they did vote for Rep. Steve Scalise (R-Louisiana) or other members of the GOP's narrow House majority.

On MSNBC, election expert Steve Kornacki stressed that the second vote was even worse for Jordan than the first one — which found 20 Republicans voting against the Ohio congressman. Kornacki observed that in swing districts, the GOP lawmakers voting against Jordan appeared to be worried that a "yes" vote would hurt them in 2024.

MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, in response to Kornacki's analysis, remarked that Jordan was moving "in the wrong direction."

X, formerly Twitter, has been full of reactions to Jordan's second loss in a vote for House speaker.

Journalist Ed Krassenstein tweeted, "BREAKING: Jim Jordan has yet again lost the Speaker of the House vote. Will this be the final vote for Jordan or will a new candidate now emerge? Is it possible that Hakeem Jeffries could end up becoming the Speaker of the House through some bipartisan deal? Where do we go from here?"

In a separate tweet, Krassenstein commented, "It is looking like Democrat [sic] could potentially get something out of it. I doubt we will see Speaker Jeffries but they may get some concessions."

GOP consultant Mike Madrid posted, "If Jordan loses by a bigger margin this is a slap in the face of MAGA - the pressure campaign backfires and Republicans realize they can be beaten within their own party."

Journalist Robert Lusetich tweeted, "If McHenry ends up as Speaker, is it the beginning of the end for the Trump cult's hold on the GOP?"

However, Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-South Carolina), a Jordan supporter, vowed to keep promoting Jordan for speaker.

Duncan tweeted, "Don't lose faith if @Jim_Jordan loses a few votes on the second ballot. I'm committed to voting as many times as we must to get Jim elected as Speaker, as long as he is putting his name forward. If that means we vote all night, then buckle up cause we will vote all night!"

But pundit Carrie Sweet described the 22 GOP votes against Jordan as "a step in the right direction."

Talk radio host Barry Markson noted with Jordan having lost a second House vote, "GOP and Dems" were "discussing giving speaker pro tem Patrick McHenry more power, potentially through January, 2024 so the House can move forward. This will require both parties to approve."

OccupyDemocrats' Omar Rivero commented, "Jim Jordan just lost the second vote to become House Speaker. Happy Wednesday, y'all!">

<With just over a year to go until the 2024 elections, Republicans are beginning to realize that the abortion issue won't just go away. The GOP has faced a political quandary ever since Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health, the 2022 Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade, opened the door to abortion bans, which red states started to enact immediately. On one hand, abortion bans are wildly unpopular, and have only gotten more so as we hear horror stories about women being seriously injured or forced to carry dying babies to term. On the other hand, Republicans don't want to just give up on their long-standing dream of using forced childbirth to punish women for having sex.

To square this impossible circle, Republicans have relied on their favorite strategy: Relentless dishonesty. Lots of pseudo-compassionate noises about women's pain, while insisting that their sadistic impulses are "pro-life." They pretend to support hypothetical exceptions to abortion bans, which for the most part do not apply in actual reality. They make weak attempts to rebrand their agenda as "pro-baby." They feign support for contraception access while supporting organizations that actively work to demolish viable birth control.

That is, most Republicans most of the time are on board with the lying-through-our-teeth strategy. But not all! Meet New Jersey state Sen. Edward Durr, a truck driver-turned-politician who has a habit of saying the quiet parts out loud.

"A woman does have a choice! Keep her legs closed," Durr wrote in a 2020 Facebook post, in which he also called a pro-choice woman an "idiot." He also "liked" a post that called for "spaying women like dogs."

Democrats in New Jersey are pouring a lot of money into making sure that voters know about these Facebook comments. One Democratic PAC spent more than $500,000 on a TV ad tying Durr to other New Jersey Republicans by name. Another sent out a mailer highlighting his comments....>

<.....Republicans in New Jersey are crying foul, claiming that this is oh, so unfair. State Sen. Vince Polistina, who's named in the Democratic ads, called them "political hack jobs" and claimed they're "lying to voters." Another group of Republicans issued a joint statement saying that Durr's statements were "offensive and unacceptable" and "don’t represent us or what we believe in any way."

It's true that New Jersey Republicans have the luxury of mostly avoiding the issue, which doesn't come up too often in their largely Democratic state. But their claims that they're miles away Durr's views don't measure up to the evidence. Polistina, for instance, voted against two bills that would protect New Jersey abortion providers from legal persecution if they serve patients from out of state. The other Garden State Republicans complaining about this are tougher to pin down — no doubt on purpose — but would only commit to saying that they support exceptions from a possible abortion ban "for victims of rape or incest, or in case of a serious health risk."

Trump's dogwhistle to the Christian right is a permission slip to openly hate women The difference between Durr and most other Republicans is about surface-level rhetoric, not actual substance. That's demonstrated by the routine invocation of "rape exceptions." Making an exception for rape is just a more polite way of saying "shut your legs," since the implication is any woman who consents to sex deserves to run the risk of forced childbirth. And as reproductive health experts routinely point out, these "exceptions" are often meaningless in practice. Even if you're legally entitled to an abortion under those circumstances, you can't get one if all the competent providers have been run out of the state.

Durr's viewpoint may not be uttered in public very often, but it's at the foundation of the entire anti-abortion movement. Former Texas Solicitor General Jonathan Mitchell admitted as much about his state's abortion ban, which he played a major role in writing. In a 2021 Supreme Court brief defending that law, Mitchell wrote, "Women can 'control their reproductive lives' without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse." He condemned pro-choice court decisions for accepting the view that "women (and men) should have the right to freely engage to sexual intercourse."

Mitchell included that parenthetical "and men" to put a pseudo-egalitarian gloss on this puritanical crackdown, but his actual behavior suggests he's a big fan of the sexual double standard, or worse. Right now, he's representing a man named Marcus Silva, who is using the Texas abortion ban to sue friends of his former wife, apparently because they helped her leave him. Court filings suggest that Silva threatened to report his wife to police for having an abortion if she didn't submit to him "mind, body and soul." Other documents indicate that Silva tried to coerce her into having sex with him and doing his laundry, saying he'd drop the lawsuit in exchange. It sure sounds like Jonathan Mitchell believes women have no right to control their own bodies.

Earlier this month, Audrey Dutton of ProPublica published a story about abortion laws in Idaho, which illustrates how dishonest compassion-shaped words about pregnancy are when they come from the mouths of Republicans. Gov. Brad Little signed a near-total abortion ban in the state soon after the Dobbs decision, and talked a big game about much he and other Republicans would do to take care of the little ladies they were forcing to have babies.

"We absolutely must come together like never before to support women and teens facing unexpected or unwanted pregnancies," Little said, adding that "local and state government must stand ready to lift them up and help them and their families with access to adoption services, health care, financial and food assistance, counseling and treatment, and family planning."

Readers will not be surprised to learn that every word of that high-minded promise was a lie. Instead, Idaho Republicans have eagerly seized on every possible chance of persecuting and undermining young mothers and their children.

This isn't about some principled division, where Republicans are "pro-life" but also favor "small government." Depriving women of support after they give birth is part of the same misogynist program that motivates abortion bans. Poverty is part of the punishment they are inflicting on women. Once a woman has sex, there's really no limit to the pain that Republicans believe is her just deserts. Bleeding out from an untreated miscarriage, losing a job, delivering a baby to watch it die on the table, struggling to feed young children, being stuck in an abusive relationship: They understand perfectly well that these are among the likely outcomes of forced childbirth for women.

<If GOP Senate hopeful Tim Sheehy wanted to know how advocating for transferring control of federal lands to states goes over in a place like Montana, all he had to do was look at the last Republican to take a run at Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-Mont.) found out during his 2018 bid for Senate that it is an appallingly unpopular position.

Rosendale embraced federal land transfer as a candidate for the House in 2014, going as far as to call for a Montana takeover of all Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management lands within Montana’s borders. At a Republican debate that year, he dismissed federal lands as unconstitutional and said, “I believe that the citizens of Montana should have control and management of those areas, instead of the federal government.”

But by the time Rosendale ran for Senate four years later, he’d clearly heard an earful from his constituents. In a Billings Gazette op-edin April 2018, he wrote, “I’ve listened to the people of Montana and they mean business about protecting our public lands, opposing a federal lands transfer.” He added a section to his campaign website titled “Protect Our Public Lands,” in which he declared his belief that “our public lands must always stay in public hands.” And during a candidate debate, Rosendale acknowledged that “there was a time when I thought they could be better managed by the state,” but said he “talked to people all over the state and they’ve made it exceedingly clear that they do not want those lands transferred. And I not only understand that; I agree with that.”

Rosendale, who is considering a second Senate campaign against Tester, has since sponsored anti-public-lands legislation.

Montana is 35% federally owned. Poll after poll shows that voters in Western states, including Montana, overwhelmingly oppose transferring control or selling off federal lands.

None of this has kept Sheehy, a decorated military veteran and millionaire businessman, from making the same mistake as Rosendale.

“Local control has to be returned,” Sheehy told the Working Ranch Radio Show earlier this month. “Whether that means, you know, some of these public lands get turned over to state agencies, or even counties, or whether those decisions are made by a local landlord instead of by, you know, federal fiat a few thousand miles away. Local control will almost always produce better results than a federal mandate from bureaucrats who are unaccountable to the people that are ultimately subject to these regulations.”

While federal agencies are headquartered in Washington, D.C., most land management decisions are made by local field offices.

When HuffPost contacted Sheehy’s campaign about the radio interview, spokesperson Katie Martin tried to walk back what sounded like a full embrace of federal land transfer.

“Tim believes Montanans know best how to manage our land, not the Washington bureaucrats,” the spokesperson said via email. “Tim supports more local control and less federal mandates. Tim opposes a federal transfer of our public lands. Tim opposes the sale of our public lands. Tim supports better management and more local control of our public lands."....>

<.....When asked how federal lands being “turned over” to states — Sheehy’s words — differs from “transferring” them, Sheehy’s campaign said, “Calling for better management and more local control is not the same as “transferring them.”

Sheehy’s attempt to walk the line here mirrors a yearslong shift within the pro-transfer movement. As HuffPost previously reported, conservatives have largely been forced to abandon brazen calls for outright transfer and sale ― at least publicly — instead embracing savvier tactics aimed at achieving many of the same industry-friendly goals that would come with stripping lands from federal control. That has included supporting federal-state agreements that would give states a greater role in public land management and pushing permitting reform legislation aimed at giving states the authority to manage oil, gas and other energy development across the federal estate ― a de facto transfer of control that would establish federal lands in name only.

In that same radio interview, Sheehy condemned federal agencies, specifically the Bureau of Land Management and the Department of Agriculture, accusing them of being “hijacked, in many cases, by bureaucrats who are carrying out a political agenda.” And he railed against efforts to put additional federal lands into conservation. In May, the BLM unveiled a draft rule that would place conservation “on equal footing” with energy development and other traditional uses, including by granting the agency the authority to issue “conservation leases” to promote land protection and ecosystem restoration. Cattle ranchers have pushed back against the proposal, saying it would “upend” land management in the West.

“Instead of supporting the producers that they’re supposed to be enabling, they are putting constrictions in place that could potentially put them out of business,” Sheehy said. “So taking some of these leases, you know, out of agricultural production and moving them into conservation is deeply concerning. … We’re seeing battles take place all over the country, from Nevada to Washington to Montana, about what that really means.”

The most famous battle over land rights in Nevada was the 2014 armed standoff that notorious rancher Cliven Bundy led in Bunkerville over fees he refused to pay for grazing cattle on federal lands. It is not clear if Sheehy was referring to that incident. His campaign did not address several of HuffPost’s specific questions.

The Bundy family has long advocated for a state takeover of federal lands....>

<....Sheehy himself is a fledgling rancher. In 2020, he and his friend, former Navy SEAL Greg Putnam, started the Little Belt Cattle Company in Martinsdale, Montana. Today, the company actively ranches approximately 30,000 private and leased acres and owns 2,000 cattle.

Sheehy is digging in on a position he outlined early in his bid to flip Tester’s seat. On his campaign website, Sheehy writes that he has “a unique perspective on what the federal government is failing to address when it comes to tackling wildfires—they need to let Montana start managing our federal lands.”

Federal acres belong to all Americans, not just residents of the state where they are located.

Western voters have made their views on pawning off public lands abundantly clear. Released in 2017, a poll by the Center for American Progress found that 64% of Donald Trump voters opposed privatizing or selling off public lands. A survey by Colorado College in 2016 found that 60% of voters in seven Western states, including 59% of Montanans, opposed selling off significant federal land holdings. And a 2016 poll by Colorado-based conservation group Center for Western Priorities found that 63% of Montana voters would be less likely to vote for a candidate who supported selling public lands to reduce the budget deficit, compared with 20% who said they’d be more likely to support such a candidate.

Aaron Weiss, deputy director at the Center for Western Priorities, told HuffPost that the issue became “such a third rail that candidates across the West generally stopped going there” — and pollsters largely quit posing such direct questions.

“It’s incredibly consistent over the years and not even close,” he said of public opposition. “This is not like an issue that is on the margin for Montana voters. They are very clearly against transferring or selling off public lands.”

Weiss stressed that transferring control of federal lands to states would ultimately lead to their privatization.

“States and counties have to run balanced budgets, and we know the amount of money that the federal government spends just on firefighting alone on national public lands would bankrupt just about every Western state,” he said. “That’s not even getting into the other land management costs that go into managing large swaths of public land in keeping them public.”

“The inevitable outcome of any of these land transfer proposals, as much as folks try to frame them as, ‘Oh, this is just going to be a state issue,’ inevitably it leads to selling off and privatizing public lands because there is no way for states to handle the management costs,” he added. “Full stop.”

Both the Montana Republican Party and national Republican Party platforms support transferring federal acres to the states.

Sheehy may simply be towing the party line — something he has gotten quite good at since launching his campaign in June. But he is likely to soon find out just how problematic his recent comments can be for someone seeking political office in Big Sky Country.>

<North Carolina Republicans on Wednesday pitched new maps for the state's congressional districts starting in 2024 that appear to threaten the reelection of at least three current Democratic U.S. House members.

Senate redistricting committee leaders introduced two proposals that would rework the boundary lines for the state's 14 U.S. House seats. The state House and Senate want to enact a final plan by the end of the month. Candidate filing for the 2024 election is set to begin in early December.

North Carolina's congressional delegation is currently split between seven Democrats and seven Republicans following the 2022 elections conducted using a map that was drawn by a panel of trial judges. Supporters of that plan said it reflected North Carolina's usually close races for statewide elected office.

But statewide election data attached to Wednesday's proposals — results designed to determine partisan performance — indicate one of the Senate's proposals would create 10 districts that appear to favor a Republican candidate, three that favor a Democrat and one that could be considered competitive. In the other proposal, Republicans would appear to be in a good position to win 11 of the 14 seats. It wasn't immediately clear which of the plans — or a hybrid — will advance in the Senate.

While the state House will have some say over any final product before it receives support from a majority in each chamber, a plan creating a 10-4 or 11-3 split would be a significant electoral windfall for congressional Republicans seeking to preserve or build their narrow U.S. House majority next year. The state constitution exempts redistricting legislation approved by the General Assembly from Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper’s veto....>

<.....“The conventional wisdom is that this probably nets Republicans at least three seats in the U.S. House and makes the math of keeping a Republican majority a little easier," Asher Hildebrand, a redistricting expert at Duke University and a chief of staff to former Democratic Rep. David Price, said in an interview.

Current House Democrats whose reelection prospects appear threatened in the plans are first-term Reps. Jeff Jackson of Charlotte and Wiley Nickel of Cary, as well as second-term Rep. Kathy Manning of Greensboro. And depending on the plan, either Reps. Valerie Foushee of Chapel Hill or Don Davis of Greene County — both first-term Black lawmakers — could face running in Republican-leaning districts or have to run elsewhere.

“Do you run in a district that you know, that you’ve built some ties to, that you’ve been representing already but that now seems out of reach politically? Or do you move on and look at other races?” Hildebrand asked. "That’s a hard decision for the three, perhaps four, incumbents who will find themselves out of a seat.”

The current congressional plan that led to a 7-7 split was the result of trial judges who declared that lawmakers had failed to comply fully with a February 2022 ruling by the state Supreme Court that determined the state constitution outlawed extensive partisan gerrymandering. State law says such an interim map can only be used for one election cycle, giving lawmakers another chance to draw boundaries.

But last spring, the state Supreme Court — flipped from a Democratic majority to Republican — ruled that the state constitution didn't actually limit partisan gerrymandering. That freed up legislative Republicans to return to more GOP-friendly maps and reduced options available to Democrats to sue to block boundaries.

Wednesday's district proposals would split each of the state's largest counties — surrounding heavily Democratic Charlotte, Raleigh and Greensboro — into as many as three districts, some of which pull in more Republican suburban and rural voters.

GOP Rep. Destin Hall, a House Redistricting Committee chairman, said Wednesday in a text message that the Senate would consider a congressional plan first before sending it the House. He said House leaders “worked with Senate leadership on the congressional plan,” but he didn't say which Senate plan the House supported.

House and Senate redistricting committees also filed separate legislation Wednesday that would rework their own districts — the House for its 120 seats and the Senate for its 50 seats.

The state Supreme Court agreed in April that legislators could take another crack at drawing their own district boundaries for use through the 2030 elections because the premise upon which they drew the maps used in 2022 was wrongly decided by the previous Democratic majority on the court.

In a release, Cooper blasted Wednesday's maps as “gerrymandering on steroids" by Republicans who “have used race and political party to create districts that are historically discriminatory and unfair.”

Republicans gained enough seats during the 2022 elections that they were one additional House victory shy of holding veto-proof majorities in both chambers. They reached that goal in April after a House Democrat switched parties. Legislative leaders are now aiming to retain those supermajorities, which they've used to override all 19 of Cooper's vetoes this year.

The two committees scheduled meetings on Thursday to discuss the plans that were filed Wednesday, with committee votes likely early next week.>

Go to it, Elise the Otiose:

<Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY) thanked the U.S. Army’s Fort Drum, which serves the 10th Mountain Division, for hosting a Career Day event at Wheeler-Sack Army Field for high school students in her Congressional District 21.

With the photo below, featuring four teenagers in army camo and holding rifles, she wrote: “An incredible experience for NY21 students.”

Note: The 27th congressional district is rural and includes most of the Adirondack Mountains. It borders Vermont to the east and Canada to the north.

Local news station WWNYTV reported that hundreds of north country high schoolers attended the Career Day and got “hands-on experience with helicopters, [operating] a bomb defusal robot, and [donning] 89-pound protective gear.”

It’s been widely reported that the U.S. Army missed its last recruiting goal by 15,000 soldiers (or 25 percent of its target). While some politicians including Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama blame the low recruitment numbers on the military being “woke,” U.S. Army Public Affairs reports that fewer young Americans meet the military basic academic and fitness standards, and that the military is recruiting in a fiercely competitive labor market.

Last year, the Army launched a new Future Soldier Preparatory Course, to help young Americans meet the academic and fitness requirements needed to join the Army. During a recent Pentagon news conference, Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth and Chief of Staff of the Army Randy George detailed “sweeping changes in how the Army will identify and recruit talent” and “set a goal of at least a third of the Army's newest soldiers to have more than a high school degree by 2028, compared to 20 percent today.”

Note: Teenagers in Stefanik’s District will have another opportunity to visit Fort Drum. Organizers say another Career Day on the base is slated for Spring 2024.">

Gots ta train 'em raht!

Gawd! Murka! Apple pie!

<CNN anchor Brianna Keilar wasn’t buying a Republican congressman’s spin on Wednesday when he tried to blame the ongoing House leadership crisis on Democrats, mockingly noting the “interesting verbal gymnastics” he deployed to make his case.

Two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was removed as Speaker of the House, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) failed once again Wednesday in his effort to secure the gavel. With 22 Republicans voting for other candidates, the far-right firebrand actually lost support in the second round of votes on the House floor, showing his aggressive pressure campaign on GOP moderates was backfiring.

During an appearance on CNN following the latest failed vote, Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA)—who briefly ran against Jordan for the speakership—tried his best to accuse Democrats of causing the chaos that’s currently gripping the House.

Asked if Jordan should continue to seek the speakership despite Republicans increasingly voting against him, Scott said the Ohio Republican should keep going, invoking the lengthy process in January to eventually select McCarthy as speaker. At the same time, he added that the House wouldn’t “be in this situation” if the Democratic caucus didn’t vote with eight House Republicans to oust McCarthy.

Keilar pointed out that McCarthy didn’t even face 22 GOP holdouts during his marathon series of votes, wondering if this would lead Jordan and other Republicans to reconsider him as the nominee. Scott, however, continued to lay the fault at the Democrats’ feet.

“But Speaker McCarthy was elected and he was the Speaker of the House,” the Georgia congressman insisted. “He was the largest Republican fundraiser ever for us as House Republicans. The Democrats knew what they were doing when they put up 208 votes to take him out of the speakership. And that’s what created the current situation.”

Interjecting, the CNN anchor declared that “they didn’t take him out of the speakership” because the GOP is in the majority.

“Sure they did,” Scott retorted, prompting Keilar to remind the Republican lawmaker that “you’re the majority.”

Scott, meanwhile, repeatedly noted that Democrats made up “96 percent” of the votes to remove McCarthy from his leadership role, adding that “there were only eight Republicans” who didn’t support the ex-speaker.

“But, sir, who is in the majority?” Keilar asked.

“Well, the Democrats were the majority of that vote,” Scott replied.

“No! Who is in the majority in the House of Representatives?” Keilar shot back.

“The Republicans are in the majority, but the Democrats provided the majority of the votes to take Kevin McCarthy out of the speakership,” the GOP congressman responded.

Keilar, clearly growing exasperated with Scott’s feeble talking points, reminded him that Republicans “provided the key votes” to remove McCarthy and they could provide enough votes on their own to pick a new speaker. Scott, naturally, leaned back into his well-rehearsed spin.

“It’s some interesting verbal gymnastics, I will give you that,” Keilar snarked.

“What do you mean gymnastics?” Scott whined. “I’m just talking about the facts.”

After the congressman once again went through his talking points and claimed it was a “pretty calculated decision” by Democrats to boot McCarthy, the anchor reminded him that it was a Republican who filed the motion to vacate that led to McCarthy’s ouster in the first place.

“It was,” Scott finally conceded. “It was a Republican that had very personal differences with Kevin McCarthy.”

The Georgia Republican isn’t the only one who has attempted to blame the Republican leadership crisis on Democrats. When confronted by reporters on whether the speaker fight proves that “you guys can’t govern,” McCarthy said last week that it was Democratic members who brought “chaos to Congress.”

McCarthy doubled down on his blame game on Wednesday, grousing that “every single Democrat” had “voted to shut down one branch of government.” And it isn’t just GOP politicians who have faulted Democrats. CNN political analyst David Gregory recently wondered how long Democrats would “stand by in the world of identity politics” before becoming “part of the solution.”>

If I thought it worth the time, I might well blow the whistle; but that is a pointless exercise and would merely feed the fantasy.

<My account is under assault on a regular basis. I have become target #1 of chessgames employees. So unfair.

You say you are always around, but I've tried to contact you for two weeks. It's absolutely ridiculous that the techies march to the orders of zanzibar. It was a quiet summer and fall until z came back telling everyone what to do. They communicate behind the scenes to specifically harass my account. So unfair.

You have not responded to multiple messages. This is no way to treat a member whose account is under steady assault. Nobody wants to hear complaints, but feedback shows a business where it has serious problems.

What's more, when activated, my personal forum should be seen by the public in the chess forums column just like perfidious' hateful personal forum as he continues to cyberstalk FTB at will. He should have been stopped from harassing members a decade ago.>

<Following Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election, one of his lawyers, Kenneth Chesebro, sent an email to his colleagues claiming that although litigation challenging Joe Biden’s victory in Wisconsin would most likely fall flat, it was useful politically to push a reversal of the election results. “Just getting this on file means that on Jan. 6, the court will either have ruled on the merits or, vastly more likely, will have appeared to dodge again,” Chesebro wrote in emails obtained by The New York Times. Furthermore, Supreme Court inaction, he said, would give Americans “the impression that the courts lacked the courage to fairly and timely consider these complaints, and justifying a political argument on Jan. 6 that none of the electoral votes from the states with regard to which the judicial process has failed should be counted.” He admitted the litigation would have “only 1 percent” chance of succeeding. According to the Times, these messages will come up during Chesebro’s Oct. 23 trial for allegations that he participated in a conspiracy to create fake electors supporting Trump in multiple states that Biden had rightfully won. Chesebro’s team has sought to have his case dismissed, maintaining that he was only “researching and finding precedents in order to form a legal opinion.” Scott Grubman, one of Chesebro’s attorneys, said that the litigation was “maybe a long shot, but far from criminal.” But the outlet reported that the emails contradict the First Amendment argument that Chesebro was simply pondering possible legal tactics.>

<Republican lawmakers say they have been targeted by intimidation tactics, including death threats, from allies of Jim Jordan as his bid for the US House of Representatives speakership falters.

Several Republicans told reporters they had been subject to a pressure campaign by supporters of Mr Jordan, who lost a second vote for the gavel on Wednesday.

Mr Jordan, a right-wing Republican from Ohio, disavowed the harassment.

A hardline conservative revolt ousted the last Speaker on 3 October.

Marianne Miller-Meeks, an Iowa Republican, wrote in a statement on Wednesday that she had "received credible death threats and a barrage of threatening calls" after switching her vote to an alternative to Mr Jordan.

"One thing I cannot stomach, or support is a bully," she wrote.

Don Bacon, a Nebraska Republican who is a particularly vocal opponent of Mr Jordan, provided text messages to Politico that appeared to show his wife being harassed by a supporter of Mr Jordan.

"Your husband will not hold any political office ever again," one of the messages read. "What a disappoint [sic] and failure he is."

Mr Jordan denied any involvement in the pressure campaign.

"No American should accost another for their beliefs," he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday evening. "We condemn all threats against our colleagues and it is imperative that we come together. "Stop. It's abhorrent."

More than a handful of anti-Jordan Republicans, including Virginia's Jen Kiggans, Kay Granger of Texas and Florida's John Rutherford complained of inappropriate persuasion tactics from local conservative leaders and right-wing influencers backing Mr Jordan.

"Intimidation and threats will not change my position," wrote Ms Kiggans on X.

Though none suggested Mr Jordan himself was directly involved, most still placed blame for the tactics squarely at his feet.

Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican, told NBC News he had brought up the matter directly with Mr Jordan, saying: "I don't really take well to threats."

"He told me that he wasn't behind it, and he's asked people to stop, but if you've asked people to stop it. Why aren't they listening to you?" Mr Gimenez said.

He said his office had been receiving robocalls about his opposition to Jordan.

Arkansas Republican Steve Womack criticised what he referred to as the "attack, attack, attack" tactics of Jordan allies against those lawmakers who have opposed his speakership bid.

And even some of Mr Jordan's allies, including Byron Donalds of Florida, acknowledged that the strong-arm approach may have "backfired".

"I think it was to the detriment of Jim," Mr Donalds told reporters.

The infighting comes after Mr Jordan failed for a second time to gain enough support from his party to clinch the speakership.

The Republican on Wednesday fell short of the 217 votes he needed, after 22 of his fellow Republicans voted against him - two more than did so on Tuesday.

There is no end in sight to the prolonged leadership battle more than two weeks after Kevin McCarthy was removed as leader of the lower chamber of Congress in a backbench mutiny.

Without a Speaker, the Republican-controlled House is unable to pass any bills or approve White House requests for emergency aid. That includes potential help for Israel amid its war with Hamas.

Democrats, the minority party in that chamber, have so far offered no help on what they call "a Republican problem", voting unanimously each time for their own leader, Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

As frustration mounts, talk has grown in the House of empowering acting Speaker Patrick McHenry for a temporary period of up to 90 days.>

<"Be not among the winebibbers; look thou not upon the wine when it is red . . .At last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like an adder.>

<A familiar face announced her candidacy for the U.S. Senate in Arizona last week.

She looked like the hard-right, Trump-backed Kari Lake who lost last year's gubernatorial election. But she sure didn't sound like her. What she's saying: "I may disagree with Arizonans who voted for Joe Biden. I do. But I don't think you are a threat to democracy. You are a citizen just like me," Lake said at her campaign launch last week.

That's a far cry from her 2022 campaign cries, telling "John McCain Republicans" to "get the hell out" of her events.

Why it matters: Lake lost last year's gubernatorial election to Katie Hobbs 49.7% to 50.3%. To win this go-round, she needs to cater to a larger share of independents and moderate Republicans, and her apparent pivot seems designed to do just that.

The intrigue: Lake has maintained that both the 2020 presidential and 2022 Arizona gubernatorial elections were "stolen" and has not conceded in the latter. She's still in court contesting the 2022 results and has asked a judge to name her the rightful Arizona governor.

But she sidestepped the issue in her Senate announcement speech, only saying she will work to "restore honest elections," which is "not a Republican issue. It's not a Democrat issue. It's an American issue."

Between the lines: Lake has also softened her rhetoric on abortion, which she called the "ultimate sin" in 2022.

She instead told supporters last week that the government needs to provide more support to women so they have "real options" other than abortion.

In a statement to The New York Times, Lake said: "Republicans allowed Democrats to define them on abortion. … Just like President Trump, I believe this issue of abortion should be left to the states."

The big picture: Lake is courting more establishment Republican support this time around, fielding meetings with allies of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and representatives from the Senate Leadership Fund and National Republican Senatorial Committee, Politico reports.

Reality check: While Lake may be trying to expand her appeal, she's certainly not abandoning her allegiance to Trump. She played a filmed endorsement from him at her campaign launch.

What we're watching: There are two people who won't let voters forget Lake's former positions on hot-button issues: Her likely opponents, incumbent independent Sen. Kyrsten Sinema and Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego.

Already, the Arizona Democratic Party is circulating videos they call "The Lake Tapes" to remind voters of her 2022 commentary.

The bottom line: Time will tell whether Lake has the discipline to not revert to talking points that isolate moderate voters when Sinema and Gallego try to lure her there.>

In time, we shall see how canny she is; for now, she is talking a good game.

"Forgive them Caissa. They know not what they do.">

<In the midst of the second vote on U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan's nomination to be the next House Speaker on Wednesday, one right-wing lawmaker cut through the Republican infighting to remind his fellow GOP members of the common goal they share: cutting programs that millions of Americans rely on to obtain healthcare and afford their day-to-day expenses.

Speaking in favor of the Jordan [sic], Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) called on his colleagues to recognize the Ohio Republican's so-called "courage" in fighting "to get at the real drivers of debt, and we all know what they are. We all know it's Social Security, we all know it's Medicare, we all know it's Medicaid."

Cole recalled how he and former Rep. John Delaney (D-Md.) offered a proposal to make changes to Social Security akin to those made in 1983, when benefits for retirees were effectively cut by 13%.

"We never could get any help," Cole lamented. "[Jordan] is the guy that wants to create a debt commission, a bipartisan debt commission and get at the roots of our spending problem. That takes courage."

Progressives have long warned that as soon as they win the White House and majorities in the House and Senate, Republicans will not hesitate to slash Social Security and Medicare spending, and the party itself regularly claims the two programs are bankrupting the federal government—all while voting in favor of hundreds of billions of dollars in military spending.

Since Social Security is funded almost entirely through contributions of workers and employers, explains the advocacy group Social Security Works, the program does not contribute to the national deficit and "can never go bankrupt... Even if Congress were to take no action, Social Security could pay 100% of promised benefits for the next 12 years, and more than three-quarters of benefits after that."

Jordan, the group said on social media Wednesday as it posted the following image, supports plans to cut benefits by raising the retirement age to 70.

An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll found in April that 79% of Americans oppose reducing Social Security benefits and 67% oppose raising monthly premiums for Medicare, which Republicans have also proposed.

"Raise your hand if you DON'T want a speaker of the House who is hellbent on cutting your hard-earned Social Security and Medicare," tweeted Tennessee state Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-90).

While Republicans are not yet united around a speaker, said Social Security Works, "they are united on destroying our earned Social Security and Medicare benefits.">

<Donald Trump Jr. is among those conservative influencers who are defending an extreme right-wing social media influencer who was sentenced to seven months in prison for an election interference scheme against Black voters in 2016.

Despite consistently beating the drum of alleged "voter fraud," Republicans like the ex-president's son are lining up to support Douglass Mackey, who used his 58,000-follower social media account to push misinformation intended to trick Black people into into believing they could vote by text message, shortly after discussing with his supporters the importance of limiting "Black turnout."

Donald Trump Jr. said Wednesday that the Biden "regime" sentenced Mackey to 7 months in jail "for posting memes about Hillary."

"If anyone still thinks everything conservatives have been saying about the marxists & their intentions is hyperbole they’re idiots & deserve to live under the dems commie system," he wrote.

Conservative political operative Jack Posobiec also mirrored that same language.

Right-wing activist leader Charlie Kirk took things a step further.

"Democrats in the DOJ were so angry about Hillary Clinton losing that four years after her defeat, they tracked down and arrested the author of a meme they didn't like, and prosecuted him with a law meant to punish racial terrorism by the Ku Klux Klan," he wrote on Wednesday. "Douglass Mackey should never have been investigated, never have been arrested, never have been tried, never have been convicted. Now, the DOJ is shipping him off to seven months in federal prison. Douglas Mackey is a political prisoner, no different from anyone locked up in Xi Jinping's China."

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene also jumped on the bandwagon.

"The Communist Gulags are here in America. Douglass Mackey was just sentenced to 7 months in federal prison for the crime of posting memes," she said Wednesday. "Biden’s Department of Justice is fully weaponized against any political opposition. Who’s next? You?">

<New York Attorney General Letitia James' office suggested Thursday that the Trump Organization failed to produce evidence in the $250 million fraud trial of Donald Trump and his company, citing a recent report accusing a key witness of lying under oath.

The AG's office said in a letter that it has "identified likely omissions" in documents produced by the defendants related to 2016 exchanges with Forbes Magazine about the value of Trump's real estate assets.

That alleged failure "indicates a breakdown somewhere in the process," an official from that office warned the judge who will deliver verdicts in the ongoing civil trial.

It is "also suggestive of potentially broader issues in the production process," wrote the official, senior enforcement counsel Kevin Wallace, in the letter to Judge Arthur Engoron.

The accusation cuts against Trump's repeated claim that all of the witness testimony in the trial is "perfect for us." And it could undermine the defense of former Trump Organization chief financial officer Allen Weisselberg, who has been accused of lying on the stand in an effort to distance himself from false financial statements at the heart of the case.

The attorney general's suit accuses Trump, his sons Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the Trump Organization and top executives of misstating the true values of properties to obtain tax advantages and better terms on loans and insurance. James wants the court to levy $250 million in damages and permanently bar Trump and his two adult sons from serving as officers of any New York business.

Wallace, in his letter, proposed that an independent monitor conduct a forensic review of electronic data held by the Trump Organization from August to September 2016.

"If the Monitor determines that responsive information was not produced, she can provide an assessment of where in the process the failure occurred and propose remedies to ameliorate those issues," Wallace wrote.

The letter cites a Forbes article from last week accusing Weisselberg of lying during his sworn testimony last week in the civil trial in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The article, titled "Trump’s Longtime CFO Lied, Under Oath, About Trump Tower Penthouse," said Weisselberg falsely claimed on the stand that he had "never focused" on the valuation of Trump's apartment.

But Forbes, which has long tracked the wealth of the world's richest people, said that Weisselberg's claim is not true.

"A review of old emails and notes, some of which the attorney general's office does not possess, show that Weisselberg absolutely thought about Trump's apartment — and played a key role in trying to convince Forbes over the course of several years that it was worth more than it really was," Forbes wrote.

The article went on, "Given the fact that these discussions continued for years, and that Weisselberg took a very detailed approach in reviewing Trump's assets with Forbes, it defies all logic to think he truly believes what he is now saying in court."

Wallace noted in Thursday's letter that the defendants have "produced some documents reflecting ongoing exchanges with Forbes Magazine about the valuation of assets during August and September 2016."

Weisselberg as part of those exchanges had obtained financial information about the company's golf courses, Wallace wrote.

But he added, "While Defendants have produced some emails in that exchange, it appears they have not produced a later set of emails" between Weisselberg and a real estate expert, Steven Ekovich.

The alleged failure to produce those emails follows "multiple affidavits on behalf of the Trump Organization attesting to the completion of their production obligations," Wallace wrote.

He suggested an Oct. 27 deadline for the monitor to submit a report on the forensic examination.

Trump, who has attended five days of the trial, and his co-defendants have denied wrongdoing.

Engoron has already ruled that they are liable for fraud. The trial will settle six related claims alleged by New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Attorneys for Trump and Weisselberg did not immediately respond to CNBC's request for comment. Weisselberg, who has been loyal to Trump, served jail time for tax fraud in a criminal case related to his work at the Trump Organization.

Forbes removed Trump from its ranking of the 400 richest people in the U.S. earlier this month, alleging his current estimated net worth of $2.6 billion was down more than $600 million from a year ago.

James alleged in September that Trump overstated his net worth by up to $3.6 billion each year.>