<Neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes’ vow to dish out the “death penalty” for Jewish people if Donald Trump is re-elected is another important reason for people to vote in the 2024 election, The New Abnormal team says.

“So many of the people that are perpetrating the lies and the destruction on the country, they are evil doers. They are people that worship false gods. They are people that practice magic or rituals or whatever and more than anything, those people need to be, when we take power, they need to be given the death penalty straight up,” Fuentes said. “I’m far more concerned about that than I am about even non-white people or mass migration. These people that are communing with demons and engaging in this sort of witchcraft and stuff. These people that are suppressing the name Christ and suppressing Christianity, they must be absolutely annihilated when we take power. This is God’s country. This is Jesus’ country.”

“So, he hates magicians?” The New Abnormal’s co-host Danielle Moodie questioned.

“Yes. I.e. the Jews and Muslims, I think,” co-host Andy Levy said.

“Oh, okay. Different than like Copperfield,” Moodie said.

“Now I understand how women were burned at the stake and I’m certain that those kind of bonfires will be back in vogue if in fact you people sit at home and say that you don’t wanna vote in 2024. Here’s what you got coming your way in 2025.”

“It really says a lot about the Jews that Nick Fuentes hates us even more than he hates black people. It’s unreal,” Levy said.>

There are some winners in this world of ours.

He should be locked up.

<Colorado GOP Rep. Lauren Boebert could be sweating recent news that her own "improper behavior," such as being kicked out of a musical after vaping and fondling, is causing her Republican challenger to gain more endorsements and bring in even more cash.

Boebert, who at first denied vaping in the theater but ultimately apologized after security footage revealed her conduct, is facing an intra-party challenge from Grand Junction attorney Jeff Hurd. Boebert has been bleeding support for months after being politically "wounded" by her own antics and scandals.

Now, Hurd is gaining even more steam, according to a local report.

"Not only is Grand Junction attorney Jeff Hurd continuing to pick up more endorsements from fellow Republicans in his bid to get the GOP nomination for the 3rd Congressional District over U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, but they’re giving him money, too," the outlet reported. "The latest prominent local Republican to throw support his way is state Sen. Janice Rich, R-Grand Junction, who previously said she typically doesn’t chose [sic] one Republican over another."

Rich isn't the only one, according to the news report.

"Rich joins a growing list of well-known Republicans locally and statewide to support the challenger over a two-term incumbent, many of whom said they did so because of some of Boebert’s actions, most recently her being escorted out of a Denver theater for improper behavior," the outlet wrote. "After that theater incident, when Boebert was caught on surveillance cameras vaping and groping her date while in an audience that included children, Rich told The Daily Sentinel she was 'disappointed' in Boebert’s actions and was 'praying' over whether she would continue to back the congresswoman."

Boebert's theatrical activity isn't the only reason fellow Republicans are looking twice.

"That incident and her narrow win last year — by 546 votes — against Democrat Adam Frisch has some Republicans concerned that Boebert could lose the seat to a Democrat if she is the nominee, a seat Republicans need to maintain their slim majority in the U.S. House of Representatives," according to the article. "Frisch is running again, and outpacing Boebert in campaign donations by a margin of about 4-1.">

<Progressive state judges are on a partisan political roll. Fresh off the 4-3 Colorado Supreme Court’s banishment of Donald Trump from the ballot, a 4-3 majority on the Wisconsin Supreme Court on Friday overturned precedent and tossed the state’s legislative maps.

The four progressive justices ordered the maps redrawn because they violate the state constitution’s requirement that legislative districts be contiguous. Yet the legislative “islands” they fret about contain so few voters that they have no discernible impact on elections. The justices used their existence as a legal excuse.

The decision invalidates district maps for all state representatives and senators. The court ordered lawmakers to draft new maps in time for the primaries in August 2024, a project they will have to complete by the spring. If the Republican Legislature and Democratic Gov. Tony Evers can’t find a compromise, the court will do it for them.

If (when) they do so, Justice Jill Karofsky writes for the majority, the court will “consider partisan impact,” not merely fixing the contiguity issue on which the case was decided. When the justices granted the case, they declined to hear the partisan gerrymandering claim “due to the need for extensive fact-finding.” But now they threaten to do so having overturned the maps on other grounds.

Message to the GOP Legislature: Better concede to Gov. Evers’s wishes, or the court will rewrite the maps as the four judges desire.

Justice Karofsky paints political intervention as a virtue, noting that unlike lawmakers “we do not have free license to enact maps that privilege one political party over another” and that the court’s “political neutrality must be maintained” regardless of “whether a case involves an extreme partisan gerrymandering challenge.”

If you believe that, you probably thought new Justice Janet Protasiewicz was kidding when she called the legislative maps “rigged” to win the judicial primary election this year. This entire exercise is an effort to blow up the current maps to help the Democratic minority.

All of this is extraordinary because the contiguity gaps have existed for 50 years in district maps drawn by both political parties. The Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the maps as recently as 2022 in Johnson v. Wisconsin Elections Commission. Three members of the new progressive majority adopted maps containing districts with detached territory in that very case.

“The matter of legislative redistricting was thoroughly litigated and resolved after the 2020 census,” Justice Brian Hagedorn writes in dissent. The court adopted new maps and ordered their use until the political branches drew new ones, a practice commonly done following a census.

Justice Rebecca Bradley was more scathing in her dissent: “With its first opinion as an openly progressive faction, the members of the majority shed their robes, usurp the prerogatives of the legislature, and deliver the spoils to their preferred political party. These handmaidens of the Democratic Party trample the rule of law, dishonor the institution of the judiciary, and undermine democracy.”

The ruling means that a single judicial election result has become a license for the narrowest court majority to overrule the court’s own recent precedent and the will of the voters in years of legislative elections.

There’s no doubt the GOP Legislature tilted the state maps in the party’s favor, as legislatures in Illinois, New York and other states have done. But that tilt in Wisconsin was moderated after the recent post-2020 census legal challenges. It will be difficult for the court to draw new maps without gerrymander distortions that favor Democrats given that the party’s voters are concentrated in and around Madison and Milwaukee.

None of this is a political accident. The project to take over state supreme courts is a national progressive priority led by Eric Holder, Barack Obama’s Attorney General. Billionaire donors and labor unions poured tens of millions of dollars into the Protasiewicz race, while Republicans were caught flat-footed and playing defense on abortion.

Wisconsin in the 2010s was a leader in conservative reform on school choice, public-union monopolies, and more. Democrats aim to erase it all using the state Supreme Court as their hammer. Four judges are now the Badger State’s de jure Legislature.>

Powerful lot of whingeing from the right-wing faction of the Court, now that their takeover attempts have been brought to heel.

<When I was in high school, “WWJD” was the biggest cultural trend in the Christian community. The plastic bracelets, the t-shirts, the mugs: Jesus had officially been branded.

In any situation, we were to ask, “What would Jesus do?” This question called us to reflect on his teachings, life trajectory and words. That question was meant to help guide us so that we would know how to navigate whatever it was we were going through. It was a simple reminder for people of faith to do their damnedest to act like Jesus.

Over the last few years, it seems we’ve forgotten to ask that question. And—more often than not—the people who claim to be followers of Christ act in a way that is the exact opposite of what I understand that Jesus stood for.

This new brand of Christianity—the one currently synonymous with MAGA—has managed to hijack the original intention of the Christian faith and make Jesus the face of gun rights, nationalism, racism, homophobia, and anti-women’s rights.

Somehow, they have allowed Jesus to become the face of their negative intentions and resistance towards social justice, compassion, and love. Their version of Jesus was birthed out of gross misinterpretations of the Bible—fear, resentment, and a need to have their exclusionary mindset validated.

As I’ve watched it all unfold, all I can ask is, “Do you truly think this is what Jesus would do?”

I have been a Christian my entire life. I was raised with a progressive mindset that always led with love and when I think about Jesus and all he stood for, I think about him vowing to help those in need: the hungry, the homeless, the sick and the imprisoned; or, as stated in Matthew 25, the least of these. I think about helping strangers, being a voice for the voiceless and always acting in love. And while it’s easy to pair Jesus with the phrase, “Love your neighbor as you love yourself,” what Jesus would do goes far, beyond that.

I firmly believe the people leading the conversations about social justice should be Christians, but the reality is, they aren’t.

When you take on the task of representing someone whose sole purpose was to make the world a better place, your actions should always speak louder than your words. But the actions we have seen from a party that weaponizes faith often negatively affect the lives of people who are not straight, white, Christian, cisgendered males.

So, if we aren’t showing all people that we are Christians and true followers of Christ by our love and by acting in a way that Jesus would, then what exactly are we doing?

Do we really think Jesus would look in the face of a Black American and shoot down claims of racial injustice as irrelevant and untrue? Or would he show the traumatic history of how Black lives have been systemically undervalued and devalued in this country and ask that you focus your attention on their needs?

Would he spend his time actively oppressing the LGBTQ community, or would he embrace them and show them love and affirm that they too are made in God’s image? The answer, based on his life trajectory, is clear. And grasping this key point and admitting that inequality exists in the world requires belief in a God that is not solely of our own reflection....>

<....Jesus’ life and teachings have been misconstrued time and time again, leading people to not see the correlation between his example and being an advocate for social justice. And while there are several controversial issues within the church, one thing that should never be up for discussion is how we as followers of Christ advocate on behalf of and show up for one another.

We should never question the core message of what Jesus taught us and what he stood for: love.

And we show we love our neighbor by fighting for justice. We show we love our neighbor by not dismissing their cries for help, by showing up for them and replicating how Jesus chose to love justly, in a world riddled with inequality. That is what Jesus would do.

Why does advocating for the unborn take precedence over helping underprivileged neighborhoods? Why is preventing people who love each other from getting married more important than fighting for justice for your brother in Christ? Why is making sure opportunities are available for yourself while revoking them from others at the top of the priority list? Why are we constantly looking for ways to ostracize others and deny their existence in this world?

Pursuing justice and replicating the life and teachings of Jesus Christ go hand in hand. You cannot have one without the other.

Despite what current political rhetoric presents, Jesus wasn’t American and didn’t spend his time on Earth speaking out against gay marriage or women advocating for their own bodies. He didn’t do everything in his power to oppose an entire race of people that are simply asking to matter. And if he were alive today, something tells me he would be an advocate for gun regulation to save lives.

Christians need to take a hard look at what values they stand for. We must be about who we are for and not who we are against.

Controlling others and forcing them to live the way we think cannot be the entire impetus of any faith—not ours, and not anyone else’s. Micah 6:8 lays it out so simply. “And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.”

Truly ask yourself: What. Would. Jesus. Do? Then be ready to live out the answer.>

<[Event "Pillsbury Memorial"] [Site "Watertown Mass"]
[Date "1984.12.01"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "1.11"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Connell, Paul"]
[ECO "E84"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Pillsbury Memorial"] [Site "Watertown Mass"]
[Date "1984.12.01"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "2.4"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Wolff, Patrick"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "C05"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Pillsbury Memorial"] [Site "Watertown Mass"]
[Date "1984.12.02"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "3.6"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Shaw, Alan"]
[Black "Epp, Edward"]
[ECO "B36"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<[Event "Pillsbury Memorial"] [Site "Watertown Mass"]
[Date "1984.12.02"]
[EventDate "1984"]
[Round "4.6"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Dracup, James"]
[Black "Shaw, Alan"]
[ECO "E90"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

<Remember how outraged Donald Trump's fraud-trial judge sounded in September, when he ordered the dissolution of much, if not all, of the Trump Organization?

Back then, six days before trial, the judge scorned Trump's history of fraudulent, "pie-in-the-sky" net-worth statements in a company-crippling ruling that's on hold, for now, pending appeal.

Three months later, things are not looking any better for Trump and his golf-resort and real-estate empire.

After 10-and-½ weeks of testimony, and with only closing briefs and arguments left before he issues his verdict, New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron appears even more convinced of, and gobsmacked by, Trump's fraud.

"Voluminous," Engoron called the state attorney general's evidence of wrongdoing, in a mid-December decision that described Trump's $1,350-an-hour star accounting witness with this wry statement: "For a million or so dollars, some experts will say whatever you want them to say."

So what can we expect next from a Manhattan judge who's already openly affronted by a decade's worth of proven fraud and three long years of fighting Trump over pretrial subpoenas, contempt-of-court rulings, and gag orders?

When the verdict comes down sometime before the end of January, will Engoron kill, cripple, or merely sting Trump's business empire?

Experts Business Insider reached out to are leaning toward "kill."

"The judge has already declared the corporate death penalty," Diana Florence, a veteran financial-crimes prosecutor for the Manhattan district attorney's office now in private practice, said.

"So unless he backs off of that, from now on it's all about how painful and slow the death is," she said.

Could the Trump Organization really be dissolved?

Potentially, yes — though years of appeals would play out first.

A lawyer and spokesperson for Trump did not respond to a request for comment for this story. But Trump has long challenged the attorney general and judge by maintaining that the case is a political witch hunt and that he committed no fraud.

Those challenges will intensify, experts predict, if the verdict doubles down on the corporate death penalty, aka "judicial dissolution.''

It's the worst thing a judge can do to a company. Trump would fight dissolution all the way to the Supreme Court, John Moscow, a veteran financial-crimes prosecutor for the Manhattan DA who's now a senior counsel at Lewis Baach Kaufmann Middlemiss in New York, predicted.

"He can try to claim he was deprived of his property without his Constitutional right to due process," Moscow said.

"And the answer will be, 'You've had three years of process of law,'" he said, noting the length of time that the case has been before Engoron, both pretrial and on trial.

"It's bulls***," Moscow said. "But they'll try it."....>

<....How would dissolution even work?

It would start with zapping the certificates.

In his September ruling, Engoron found that the evidence already on the record proved, pretrial, that Trump fraudulently added billions of dollars in imaginary wealth to annual net-worth statements he sent to banks. And Trump, the judge added, continues to issue faulty financial statements.

To stop the wrongdoing immediately, Engoron ordered the cancellation of all of Trump's New York "GBL 130 certificates," without which a company, partnership, or LLC cannot legally do business in the state.

You can't buy property, you can't borrow money, you can't collect rents, you can't enter into contracts — not legally, anyway — unless you have an active "GBL 130" filed with New York's Department of State, Florence said.

"It's like a company's birth certificate," she said. "Except that if I tear up your birth certificate, I don't kill you."

Engoron's September ruling struck at each Trump business entity that has one of these certificates on file in New York. State records show this includes two asset-packed entities: DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC and DJT Holdings LLC.

According to a 2017 organizational chart of the Trump Organization, prepared by the company as part of an insurance deal, these two LLCs contain the bulk of Trump's corporate subsidiaries and property-owning LLCs. The Trump Organization has about 500 entities, though state records show some are no longer active.

Moving down the chart, The Trump Organization, Inc., and The Trump Organization, LLC, are both named as defendants in James' lawsuit. They, too, have state certificates, records show.

And if pulling the certificates for these four umbrella entities somehow wouldn't bring all of the Trump Organization to a skidding stop, the New York certificates for multiple individual Trump business entities, located further down the organizational chart, are also in peril.

That includes the LLCs and corporations for his flagship Trump Tower, his 200-acre Westchester, New York estate, many of his licensing deals, and his stakes in other buildings, such as his ground lease for 40 Wall Street.

This spree of certificate-yanking is precisely what New York State Attorney General Letitia James asked for when she filed the massive, $250 million lawsuit now on trial: it's first on her list of proposed fraud punishments.

But the judge went way beyond James' request in his September ruling, which remains on ice pending appeal.

Engoron ordered that once the Trump certificates are pulled, a receiver be appointed "to manage the dissolution of the cancelled LLCs," meaning to manage the sale of the Trump properties that lost their certificates.

Wait, Letitia James doesn't want the corporate death penalty?

She very specifically does not.

James just wants the Trump Organization to stop committing fraud. She isn't trying to put it out of business entirely.

Her lawsuit asks that the Trump Organization be subjected to five years of audits and monitoring, along with five-year bans on any New York-based borrowing and property acquisition.

She specifies in her suit that the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust — the top of the organizational chart, and the entity that owns 100% of Trump's business empire — should survive, though under "independent governance." The sole trustee is Donald Trump Jr.....>

<....It would be a startling, unexpected move if, in closing briefs due January 5, James suddenly starts demanding the Trump Organization's death.

Engoron is expected strike [sic] the bigger blow.

Engoron made a point of noting that, in instances of persistent, ongoing fraud, a big hammer called "permanent injunctive relief" is a tool in his judicial toolbox under New York's AG-empowering Executive Law 63(12).

The judge's September 26 fraud ruling swung that big hammer and means to inflict permanent damage.

Which properties would have to be sold?

Again, before dissolution, Engoron's upcoming verdict would have to double down on his September ruling — and would have to be upheld on appeal. But if that happens, nobody seems to know precisely what would be "dissolved," or sold off.

Florence and Moscow believe the September ruling zaps Trump's state certificates from the top of the Trump Organization down and would liquidate almost everything in this New York-headquartered empire of golf courses and skyscrapers.

The entirety of Trump's estimated $2.6 billion in assets hangs in the balance, they believe.

But even the judge has conceded that more clarity is needed.

How many "GBL 130s" does Trump Organization have? How many of the underlying licensing deals and properties have co-owners and partners, or any other interest-holders? In a court-ordered fire sale, what happens to them?

Engoron noted these questions himself in an October 5 "supplemental order" to the September dissolution ruling.

It ordered Trump Organization officials to work on answers with the retired federal judge Barbara S. Jones, the independent monitor that James asked for, and Engoron installed, a year ago.

How bad, beyond Trump, could dissolution get?
Complicating matters more is that it's not just Trump's certificates in play.

Engoron also ordered the cancellation of certificates for any business that four longtime Trump executives — also defendants in the James lawsuit — own.

They are Trump's two eldest sons — the Trump Organization executive vice presidents Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump — the former Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, and the former Trump Organization comptroller Jeff McConney.

If Engoron's September 26 ruling survives as is, the New York certificates of any business entity those four men own, including any LLCs for personal property, would also be canceled.

Expensive homes are often held in LLCs, which protect their owners' privacy and legal liability.

"What entities are covered here?" Trump's defense lawyer, Christopher Kise, asked Engoron in person during a pretrial hearing one day after the September dissolution order.

"You have New York entities that just own a house or a townhouse," he said.

"Maybe Don Jr.'s or Eric's residence. Are those covered?" the lawyer asked.

"At least under a technical reading of the order, those entities should be surrendering their GBL 130s even though they have no connection to this," Kise added.

And what if Donald Trump, Jr.'s and Eric Trump's properties have co-owners and mortgages? What happens to these other stakeholders?

The judge had no immediate guidance, promising only to figure things out with help from Jones.

A week later, as the fraud trial began, the Trump defense team filed its appeal of the September dissolution order, complaining that it was "overbroad" and could irreparably harm non-parties to the lawsuit....>

<....Can't Trump just Houdini his way out of this?

Couldn't Trump wriggle out of all this by merely moving Trump Organization headquarters out of New York, changing some LLC names, or transferring everything to, say, Ivanka Trump?

No, no, and no, Florence and Moscow said.

Trump tried some name-game funny business early on, claiming in court documents a year ago that the Trump Organization can't be sued because technically that's just branding shorthand and not a legal entity. Engoron rejected the argument.

Then there was the time Trump formed Trump Organization II, LLC — registered in New York the same day James sued him and still an active entity, state records show.

The attorney general's office sounded the alarm, concerned that Trump could try to move assets to some sound-alike company that's not being sued.

Engoron quickly ordered Trump to alert the court-imposed monitor about "any corporate restructuring, disposition or dissipation of any significant assets."

In still more oversight, Trump was ordered to give the monitor 30 days warning of any "anticipated restructuring," and "any plans for disposing, refinancing, or dissipating any significant Trump Organization assets."

Alternatively, each month, Trump must submit a sworn statement attesting that no such activity has taken place.

Given how closely he's being watched, an appeal remains Trump's best Houdini move, though it's a long shot.

So far, Trump has lost, and Engoron has won, nearly every fraud-case appellate contest, including his efforts to remove James from the case, stop her investigation into the Trump Organization, halt her many subpoenas, and dismiss the lawsuit.

A notable win came over the summer when a Manhattan appellate panel removed Ivanka Trump from the lawsuit for statute-of-limitations reasons.

But the temporary stay on dissolution remains, for now, Trump's biggest appellate victory.

What if the judge doesn't kill Trump Org outright?

Let's say Engoron has a change of heart or realizes he's kicked a legal hornet's nest swarming with Trump's angry outside licensing and leasing partners. Let's say that in his verdict, the judge removes "dissolution" from his list of Trump-fraud punishments.

It's hard to imagine those Trump "GBL 130s" will survive in their current form.

James wants the Trump Organization to continue under a harsh spotlight of court oversight. Transferring those certificates to a receiver who reports to the judge is the likeliest way that will happen.

Somebody has to run the thing. You can't just pull Trump's certificates and leave it at that, Moscow said.

Trump would continue to own whatever buildings, licensing deals, and other assets that lose their GBL 130s.

But without them, Trump would immediately lose his LLC protection against lawsuits if someone tumbled down the escalator at Trump Tower.

"That's one big bullseye on his forehead, that's how I read it," Moscow said. During any window of time when the properties have no certificates, "you could sue Trump directly."

What other sad tidings could a verdict bring?

Plenty more penalties loom on the verdict horizon, and they'd hurt like hell.

The state's trial evidence suggests the attorney general will ask for well over $250 million in penalties, plus interest — a sum that, if ordered, would represent the ill-gotten gains from a decade of Trump lying to banks about his worth.

The sum includes the interest savings from $400 million in loans. Trump used fraud to trick bankers into lending this money at rock-bottom interest rates of as little as two and three percent, James alleged at trial, at a total interest savings of $168 million — a number the defense disputes.

The cash penalty may also include more than $100 million in proceeds from Trump's sale of his Washington, DC, hotel and Bronx golf club, money James said he couldn't have pocketed without lying to banks about his worth.

So Trump could lose control of his company and a big pile of cash. Anything else?

Back when she sued, James also asked that Trump and his sons be permanently barred from running a New York business.

Trump would become a real-estate mogul in exile, a penalty that Trump biographers told BI would alone take a tremendous financial and psychic toll.

Trump "grew up fantasizing about Manhattan," the biographer Michael D'Antonio, the author of "The Truth About Trump," said.

"This would be the rare case that he's actually punished in a way that matters," he said.

Closing briefs are due January 5, with closing arguments set for January 11.>

<From the farm where he retired in the Pennsylvania countryside, Roger Williams has been keeping up with the latest news about his preferred presidential candidate, Donald Trump – including the comments he has made about wanting “to be a dictator for one day”.

Related: Scranton stands by native son Biden but even here enthusiasm is elusive

“For one day – don’t get it twisted,” Williams, 67, replied when asked about the comment that amplified fears that Trump, if successful in his campaign to return to the White House in next year’s election, would take steps to dismantle US democratic institutions.

“He wanted to put his foot down and dictate some things that needed to get done. That’s what he meant,” Williams said as he sat at 4th Street Pub in West Hazleton, a town in Pennsylvania’s north-eastern Luzerne county that was key to Trump winning the state and the presidency overall.

In the seven years since he transformed the Republican party with his 2016 election victory, Americans have grown used to Trump saying brash, strange and insulting things in public, but the comments he made about wanting to be a dictator have landed differently.

Polls show the former president is the overwhelming frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination next year, even though he is facing federal charges for his well-documented attempt to overturn the 2020 election, when voters rejected his bid for a second term and replaced him with Joe Biden.

Media outlets have already reported that Trump is considering purging thousands of civil servants and replacing them with ideological loyalists, using the justice department to retaliate against former officials who turned against him and deploying the military to crush protesters if he wins a second term in 2024. Earlier this month, Trump went public with his desire for absolute power when he took questions from conservative Fox News commentator Sean Hannity at a town hall in Iowa.

“Under no circumstances, you are promising America tonight, you would never abuse power as retribution against anybody?” Hannity asked. “Except for day one,” the former president responded.

We have Biden because of Trump, and we have Trump because of Biden. I don’t want either of them to run

“I love this guy,” Trump continued, referring to Hannity. “He says, ‘You’re not going to be a dictator, are you?’ I said: ‘No, no, no, other than day one. We’re closing the border and we’re drilling, drilling, drilling. After that, I’m not a dictator.’”

Days later, in a speech at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala, Trump doubled down. “I said I want to be a dictator for one day. You know why I wanted to be a dictator? Because I want a wall, and I want to drill, drill, drill,” he told the sympathetic crowd.

The former president’s foes pounced on the remarks to press their case that he is too dangerous to hold office gain. “The greatest threat Trump poses is to our democracy, because if we lose that, we lose everything,” Biden said at a campaign reception in Los Angeles.

It will be voters in places such as Pennsylvania whose judgment of Trump’s remarks will matter most. One of a handful of swing states expected to determine the outcome of next year’s presidential contest, Trump won the Keystone state in 2016, and lost it four years later to Biden. His arrival on the political scene left a lasting imprint in Luzerne county, which once leaned Democratic but broke decisively for Trump in his first presidential election, and where the GOP has generally done well ever since.

Several voters in the county who spoke to the Guardian said they remain unnerved by Trump, but the former president’s fans portrayed the concerns about his desire for dictatorship as overblown.

“That’s all bull,” said retiree Joe Belletiere, 74, of the ex-president’s remarks. “They took that out of context.”....>

<....A former Democratic [sic] who switched parties when Trump first ran in 2016, Belletiere now describes himself as a “staunch Republican”. Sipping coffee in a McDonald’s where he meets up with his friends every morning in Hazleton, a medium-sized city neighboring the smaller, more-conservative West Hazleton, Belletiere said Trump is just showing his resolve to achieve longstanding campaign promises, like building a wall along the border with Mexico, and increasing the country’s already record oil production.

“He’s going to dictate taking the wall down and opening up the oil,” he said.

Sitting nearby, 77-year-old Richard Yanac said he once again planned to vote for Trump, expecting him to bring down prices that had risen throughout Biden’s presidency due to a long list of factors, including the economy’s broader recovery from the disaster brought about by Covid-19.

“I don’t think he’d be a dictator,” Yanac said. “I’m a Trump person, and I hope that when he gets in, he shuts down the border, he starts drilling and he gets the prices down.”

Polls have recently shown a tight race between Trump and Biden, with several finding the sitting president lagging among voters in Pennsylvania. They have also shown that voters are sour on both men, and that feeling was very much alive among the retirees who hold court at the Hazleton McDonald’s.

“We have Biden because of Trump, and we have Trump because of Biden. I don’t want either of them to run,” said Bob Capparell, 74. A lifelong conservative, he’s supporting ex-New Jersey governor and Trump foe Chris Christie, or perhaps Nikki Haley, who served as the former president’s UN ambassador.

Asked whether he thought Trump could become a dictator, Capparell replied, “He would be, absolutely. You’d never get him out of office, never.”

While Trump’s triumph in Luzerne county and Pennsylvania as a whole in 2016 was one of the many shocks he gave Democrats that year, there’s evidence his staying power has waned. The county supported him again in 2020, but by a percentage point less, and Democratic candidates won four seats in the county council in last month’s elections.

Bob Buchman, 72, voted for Trump in 2016 because he “believed his baloney”, but backed Biden four years later. Faced with the same choice again, he’ll vote for Biden, if he must.

“I’d take 10 Joe Bidens before I’d take one Donald Trump. He just lies and lies and lies,” he said. “I’m afraid if he gets in now, he’ll just have four years of getting even.”>

<Donald Trump had a lot on his mind the night before Christmas, at least according to multiple late night Truth Social messages, including one offering a "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" after a long list of grievances.

In his Christmas-centered message, the former president echoed past accusations of "election interference" and targeted President Joe Biden, as well as Special Counsel Jack Smith, who is behind two of Trump's multiple ongoing cases.

"THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN, LIED TO CONGRESS, CHEATED ON FISA, RIGGED A PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, ALLOWED MILLIONS OF PEOPLE, MANY FROM PRISONS & MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, TO INVADE OUR COUNTRY, SCREWED UP IN AFGHANISTAN, & JOE BIDEN’S MISFITS & THUGS, LIKE DERANGED JACK SMITH, ARE COMING AFTER ME, AT LEVELS OF PERSECUTION NEVER SEEN BEFORE IN OUR COUNTRY???" Trump wrote on Sunday. "IT’S CALLED ELECTION INTERFERENCE. MERRY CHRISTMAS!"

The "Merry Christmas" message followed other messages, one blasting the congressional subcommittee that investigated the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and the Colorado Supreme Court ruling Trump is disqualified from being on the state's ballot.

"Almost everybody agrees, even most of the crazed Radical Left Lunatics, that the Colorado decision is political delusion, and that I am, separately, fully entitled to PRESIDENTIAL IMMUNITY, without which Crooked Joe Biden, whose Deranged Prosecutor, Jack Smith, is merely serving his bosses wishes, would be prosecuted for destroying our Country," Trump wrote, claiming Biden could be prosecuted for his handling of exiting Afghanistan and the current southern border crisis.

Trump plans to appeal the Colorado decision, which is based on a 14th Amendment clause that bans people from holding office who took part in an insurrection.

The former president has won legal battles in other states where activists have made the same argument, citing Jan. 6. Biden told reporters over the weekend he "can't think of one reason" a president would have absolute immunity, something Trump is arguing in his cases.>

<[Event "89th US Open"]
[Site "Boston Mass"]
[Date "1988.08.??"]
[EventDate "1988"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "1-0"]
[White "Rizzitano, James A"]
[Black "Bauer, Richard N"]
[ECO "E13"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]

1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 e6 3.f4 d5 4.Nf3 Nf6 5.Bb5+ Bd7 6.Bxd7+ Qxd7 7.Ne5 Qc7 8.exd5 Nxd5 9.Nxd5 exd5 10.Qe2 Be7 11.O-O O-O 12.d3 Bd6 13.Qf3 d4 14.Bd2 Bxe5 15.fxe5 Nc6 16.Rae1 Nxe5 17.Qg3 f6 18.Rf5 Rae8 19.Bf4 Qd7 20.Rh5 Qf7 21.Rh3 Ng6 22.Rf1 Re2 23.Bd6 Rfe8 24.Rh5 b6 25.h4 Nf4 26.Rxf4 Qxh5 27.Rxf6 Qd5 28.Rf1 Rxc2 29.h5 Qxh5 30.Qf4 h6 31.Bf8 Qg6 0-1>

We have freedom to post here--you do <not> get to dictate content.

<Republicans in Congress aren’t just doing all they can to impeach the Biden name – and possibly President Joe Biden himself – they’re also going to extraordinary lengths to protect two billionaire GOP megadonors who helped the party remake the Supreme Court in recent years.

For one, House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-KY) are trying to stymie Washington, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb’s investigation into Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo.

Schwalb is looking into allegations that Leo is illegally profiting off non-profits. Jordan and Comer have responded by threatening to subpoena Schwalb.

Meanwhile on the other side of the U.S. Capitol, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee walked out en masse, boycotting Democrats’ effort to subpoena Leo and Republican jurisprudence sugar daddy Harlan Crow over the hundreds of thousands of dollars in gifts he’s given to Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni over the decades, according to a ProPublica investigation.

The GOP offensive to protect two billionaire donors is blatant hypocrisy, according to ethics watchdogs.

“There are many senators who will say anything. I mean, as long as it's their guy, they'll defend anything, and they have no consistency whatsoever and they're completely hypocritical,” Melanie Sloan, a senior adviser for nonpartisan watchdog American Oversight, told Raw Story.

In today’s tribal and perpetually warring Congress, it seems even pay-to-play politics are now partisan. While Senate Republicans are vowing to use all procedural tools at their disposal to block Leo and Crow from being subpoenaed, most in the party are also backing the Biden impeachment inquiry because they say Hunter Biden was selling access to his father — an accusation for which they’ve provided no evidence to date.

On paper – paper stamped with GOP letterhead, mind you – the impeachment inquiry is focused on buying access.

“It better be, because, quite honestly, Hunter Biden's personal problems aren't the issue. The issue is whether he was selling access to a vice president willing to provide that access, and whether the vice president at the time – the current president – was enriched by it,” Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) told Raw Story.

As for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in private jet travel, stays at his private retreat and luxurious free vacations aboard his 162-foot yacht that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and his wife Ginni admitted to receiving from Harlan Crow?

“That's not enriching yourself, because you went on a boat ride for God's sake. That's not the same as cash in your checking account,” Cramer said of ProPublica’s revelations.

Cramer argues, if the trips weren’t free “maybe he wouldn't have gone on it.”

“The difference is … he’s a friend. Friends are allowed to provide hospitality for you in their home or on their boat. That's very different than a foreign adversary providing cash to a sitting vice president of the United States through his son. That's barely, barely even in the same ballpark, if at all,” Cramer said. “It’s a stretch, to say the least. It's just, it's not the same thing.”

That’s not even mentioning the free private school tuition Thomas’ nephew – who he raised like a son – received from Crow, which ProPublica estimates could have totaled upward of $150,000.

Senate Democrats, some of whom argue Thomas was in a prime position to rule on cases that effect Crow’s fortune, are particularly interested in whether Crow declared the lavish free vacations and travel as business expenses on his federal taxes.

For Leo – co-chairman of the Federalist Society, including the $1.6 billion fortune it now controls – Campaign for Accountability filed an IRS complaint alleging he’s funneling money from seven nonprofit entities he controls to his for-profit businesses, thus illegally profiting off campaign donations. The apparent interference from Jordan and Comer is appalling to watchdogs.

“Then, at the same time, they're screaming about the politicization of justice when they talk about Donald Trump, but they want to tell a sitting U.S. attorney – you know, the state's attorney for D.C. – who he can and can't look at because they don't want him looking at Leonard Leo,” Sloan said. “They just are bowing down at the altar of Leonard Leo and his $1.6 billion.”

House Republicans deny they’re interfering with an ongoing investigation.

“I’m confused. So it’s OK for Democrats to subpoena Leonard Leo and Harlan Crow, but not OK for us to look into AG Schwalb? Isn’t that literally the definition of a double standard — a.k.a Democrats can do something, but we can’t?” Russell M. Dye, communications director and counsel for the House Judiciary Committee, emailed Raw Story.....>

<.....Republicans say there’s no reason for an investigation, because the megadonors aren’t accused of trying to change the outcomes of specific cases before the Supreme Court.

“I really think there's like a fundamental difference here between trading favors and not, right? The difference here is the consideration. I've seen no evidence that any of the Supreme Court justices, least of all Clarence Thomas, offered to give anything back. To me, that’s the big difference,” Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) told Raw Story.

“Now look, if Harlan Crow or anybody else wrote $100 million to a Supreme Court Justice, and say, ‘Hey, please do this thing in my benefit’ — well, that raises some serious problems. But is it the standard that a Supreme Court justice can't have a rich friend?” Vance continued. “If they want to set that standard, it’s up to them, but I don't think that that raises nearly the same pay-to-play concerns as Joe Biden’s situation.”

Gifts are different than business appears to be the current GOP ethical standard for such matters.

“We're not talking about gifts. This is business. So with Hunter [Biden], this is, you know, he's on the Burisma board. He's doing these foreign business deals in Ukraine and China and lots of offices, and he is openly out there selling his dad,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told Raw Story. “At the very least, he's clearly making money off his father. The question is, did the president benefit from that? That's what they need to answer. So that's why we have the inquiry.”

When pressed on the impeachment inquiry into Biden, former Senate Judiciary Committee Chair Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) wasn’t up to date on the specifics, even as he proudly remembers getting the investigative ball rolling for House Republicans.

“You’re talking about the substance of it. I’m not sure I can talk about the substance of it,” Grassley told Raw Story. “Except, the process is necessary to complete what [Sen. Ron] Johnson (R-WI) and I started four years ago, and that is to get all the information that Congress is entitled to in our oversight capacity and that's what it's all about, as far as I know.”

The Supreme Court adopted a new code of ethics since the lavish gifts were first reported, so Democrats’ complaints are outdated, Grassley argues.

“Because the judicial branch put out their … new regulation, and if that doesn’t take care of it – and we won't know that for a little while, maybe a year or two – then maybe that'd be a legitimate question,” Grassley said. “But right now it’s not a legitimate question considering the initiative of the Supreme Court.”

After all, 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee walked out of the vote to subpoena Leo and Crow on November 30 – allowing Democrats to pass the measure 11-0 – Senate Republicans argue the vote broke committee rules.

“They’re not legal,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Raw Story. “Anybody who knows a lawbook from a J. Crew catalog knows they can get those subpoenas quashed in one hearing.”

Because of wholesale GOP opposition, there doesn’t seem to be the votes to formalize the subpoenas on the Senate floor where Republicans are threatening to require a 60-vote threshold.

“You’ll never see this come to the floor,” Judiciary Committee ranking member Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Politico. “We’ll attack it legally, we’ll vote against it. It’d be a s—show.”

Even as the party hasn’t decided how it will proceed in the Senate, many Democrats expected this.

“We're going after the icons of the Republican Party, Leonard Leo, of course, and, to some, Justice Thomas. They’re very sensitive to that,” Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) told Raw Story. “Public sentiment is overwhelmingly in our favor, so they have got to be strident in opposition.”

The two different standards for Biden and GOP donors is remarkable to Democrats.

“Republicans want to protect the court that they have packed, and they protect the court by maintaining its status as an unaccountable highest court of the land,” Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) told Raw Story. “It looks like they're doing everything they can to keep hidden the secret relationships that are going on at the court with powerful interests that bring cases before the court.”

To the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), this made-for-Fox-and-Newsmax drama shows how completely former President Donald Trump has remade the GOP in his own image.

<After a tumultuous year in the Oregon legislature, a federal judge ruled against a preliminary injunction from state Senate Republicans trying to get on the ballot next year, one step closer to disqualifying them from reelection due to excessive absences.

Republican senators who are barred from having their name on next year’s ballot sued to overturn Secretary of State LaVonne Griffin-Valade's ruling upholding Measure 113 — a voter-approved law that bars state lawmakers who rack up ten or more unexcused absences in a single legislative session from running for election in the next term.

Voters added Measure 113 to the Oregon Constitution in an effort to prevent Republican walkouts, and it was tested for the first time in court this year when several state GOP Senators held the longest walkout in Oregon history to protest Democratic-backed legislation.

Around 68% of Oregon voters cast their ballot to change the state’s constitution in an effort to discipline lawmakers who participate in walkouts. Oregon Republicans both in the House and Senate have a history of boycotting Democratic-backed legislation. GOP lawmakers walked out in May 2019 to block a tax bill to fund state schools and again in June to prevent a cap-and-trade bill from passing. Republicans refused to come to work in 2020 to protest a climate change bill and led another walkout in 2021.

The latest boycott lasted six weeks, as the walkout began on May 3 when 10 senators refused to attend Senate floor sessions, claiming a number of Democratic bills were not written in plain language. Lawmakers cited a state law from 1979 that requires legislation to score above a 60 on the Flesch readability test, stating bills should be at an eighth grade or ninth grade reading level. The walkout ended on June 15, when Democrats agreed to make changes to bills regarding abortion and gun control.

However, the effects of the walkout lingered when Griffin-Valade pledged to uphold Measure 113 in August, noting her “decision honors the voters’ intent” of barring the members from seeking reelection after an excessive number of unexcused absences.

Five state senators who are up for reelection in 2024 are barred from putting their names on the ballot: Republican Minority Leader Tim Knopp, Republican Lynn Findley, Republican Dennis Linthicum, Republican Art Robinson, independent Brian Boquist, and Republican Bill Hansell. Hansell has opted not to launch a reelection bid.

Republicans issued a statement following Griffin-Valade’s decision, saying they will challenge it in court.

“After repeated unlawful and unconstitutional actions by President Rob Wagner and other Democrat [sic] leaders in the 2023 Session, Senate Republicans held them accountable by peacefully pausing the session to gain compliance with Senate Rules, Oregon Law, and the Oregon Constitution,” Knopp said in a press statement in August.

Attorneys representing Boquist, Hayden, and Linthicum said the walkout was a form of political protest protected by the First Amendment and therefore should not be punished. The senators' legal team also argued marking their absences unexcused violated the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection under the law. They requested a preliminary injunction to block the secretary of state from keeping their names off the ballot.

U.S. District Court Judge Ann Aiken disagreed with their arguments, rejecting the preliminary injunction request on Dec. 13. Aiken wrote in her ruling that “these walkouts were not simply protests — they were an exercise of the Senator Plaintiffs’ official power and were meant to deprive the legislature of the power to conduct business.”

“The Oregon Constitution requires that each chamber of the Oregon legislature have a quorum of two-thirds of the members to conduct business,” Aiken added. “In recent years, the legislature has been intermittently paralyzed by walkouts in which members of the minority party absent themselves to deny the legislature a quorum.”

Despite Aiken’s ruling denying a preliminary injunction, the federal case can still move forward.

The Oregon Supreme Court will rule on another case brought on by a different group of Republican lawmakers, including Knopp. That case focuses on the language of Measure 113, which attorneys argue was confusing. GOP lawmakers believe the language implies they can run for reelection in 2024, serving from 2025 to 2029, but can’t run in 2028.

State Republicans will try to get a decision in both cases before the March 12, 2023, deadline for candidates to file to run for office.>

<As House speaker in 2019 and the early 2020s, Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-California) oversaw a diverse caucus of progressives, liberals and centrists who didn't always see eye to eye. Republicans now have a small single-digit House majority under far-right Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana), but disagreements between progressives members of The Squad and centrists remain.

The Squad is an alliance of left-wing House Democrats that includes, among others, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). In an article published on Christmas Day 2023, The Guardian's David Smith describes the possible impact that divisions between The Squad and centrist House Democrats might have going into the 2024 election.

"A looming clash between the center and left of the Democratic Party could unseat members of the 'The Squad' of progressives and hand a gift to Donald Trump's Republicans in the 2024 elections," Smith explains. "The war in Gaza has divided Democrats like no other issue and is likely to play a key role in party primaries that decide which candidates run for the House of Representatives…. Ideological tensions with moderates are set to spill into the open during a primary season that kicks off on 5 March with races in Alabama, Arkansas, California, North Carolina and Texas."

One Democrat who is sounding the alarm about these divisions is Chris Scott, president of the progressive Advance the Electorate Political Action Committee (ATE-PAC).

Scott told The Guardian, "A lot of us have seen the headlines that Squad or Squad-adjacent members could be in trouble this cycle. When I look at 2024, this is not the cycle where we need to be getting in a battle within our home faction. There is a much greater threat to us all that we need to be focused on."

The ATE-PAC leader continued, "If you're having a progressive and centrist go against each other in an open seat, that's one thing. But to start taking shots at your own is a dangerous precedent, and I don't think we need to fall into that trap this cycle.">

<[Event "Wch U 18"]
[Site "Innsbruck AUT"]
[Date "1987.??.??"]
[EventDate "1987"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Lautier, Joel"]
[Black "Gurevich, Ilya"]
[ECO "E61"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]